Showing posts with label Philosophers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophers. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
Monday, January 18, 2021
Two devastating reviews
First, David Albert's review of A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. Here's a link to the review and here's an excerpt from the end of it:
When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.
Second, Edward Feser's review of From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett. Here's a link to the review and here's an excerpt from the beginning of it:
How do you get blood from a stone? Easy. Start by redefining “blood” to mean “a variety of stone.” Next, maintaining as straight a face as possible, dramatically expound upon some trivial respect in which stone is similar to blood. For example, describe how, when a red stone is pulverized and stirred into water, the resulting mixture looks sort of like blood. Condescendingly roll your eyes at your incredulous listener’s insistence that there are other and more important respects in which stone and blood are dissimilar. Accuse him of obscurantism and bad faith. Finally, wax erudite about the latest research in mineralogy, insinuating that it somehow shows that to reject your thesis is to reject Science Itself.
Of course, no one would be fooled by so farcical a procedure. But substitute “mind” for “blood” and “matter” for “stone,” and you have the recipe for Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back.
Ouchie.
Monday, January 11, 2021
Saturday, January 9, 2021
Quote of the Day
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people -- all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
C.S. Lewis
"Equality"
In Present Concerns
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Quentin Smith
I just learned that Quentin Smith passed away last month. He was an atheist philosopher that I respected greatly, despite his controversial claims about Kripke. Smith fully accepted Big Bang cosmology, but argued that the best explanation of it is that the universe just popped into existence without any kind of cause. In case this sounds like the theistic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), the difference is that theism maintains that the universe has a cause -- God, in case you were wondering -- but that there was not some pre-existent "stuff" that the universe was made out of. That is, God didn't create the universe out of something else that was already there, he created the stuff itself. So the difference is in saying the universe has an efficient cause but no material cause (theism) and saying that it has neither (Smith). I find this implausible in the extreme, but Smith gave as good a defense of this as can be done. It's impressive. Adolf Grünbaum, a more famous philosopher of science, argued the same thing, but much less convincingly. Smith and William Lane Craig debated a few times (and were apparently friends) and they published a book together highlighting their disagreements, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
The Knowledge Argument
Say there's a woman named Mary who has monochromacy, or black/white color blindness, so that everything looks like a black and white film. Despite this disadvantage, Mary becomes a celebrated neurologist, and actually the foremost expert on color perception. She knows exactly what is happening in the brain when someone sees the color blue, for example, even though she can't see it herself.
Anyhoo, one day Mary is sitting underneath a tree reading a book about Isaac Newton when an apple falls on her head and momentarily knocks her out. When she wakes up her monochromacy is gone: she can see the green grass, she can see purple mountain majesties, and she can see the clear blue sky. She had never seen these colors before. She had never known what "blue" looks like. But she knew everything that happened in the brain when someone experienced the color blue. So the question is: does Mary know something now that she didn't know before? This is the Knowledge Argument.
This isn't as easy to answer as you might think. I've been asking my students this for years and it's usually a split vote. One point to make here is that knowing what blue looks like wouldn't be propositional knowledge, but does it count as knowledge then? Some people think it's obvious Mary knows something that she didn't know before (what blue looks like) and others think it's obvious she doesn't.
The issue here is about qualia (singular: qualium), the "what it's like" experiences. Thomas Nagel wrote an essay called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which really brought this point home. Many philosophers of mind say that qualia are the heart and soul of the mind, and even human life in general. But the problem is that qualia can't be quantified and are effectively invisible to science. Science seeks to explain things from a third person perspective, but qualia are intrinsically first person in nature. Mary could describe color perception from a third person perspective but with no awareness of the qualium "what blue looks like". So the reason this is important is that, if Mary knows something after seeing the color blue that she did not know before, then there are important things -- foundational, fundamental things -- that science cannot address. If you had a complete physical, scientific description of the entire universe, it would be intrinsically incomplete, since it would not include qualia.
Moreover, the third person perspective is derived from the first person: to describe something from the third is to observe it from another standpoint, but ultimately this just means to observe it from what a first person perspective from that other standpoint would be. There can be no (to reference another Nagel work) view from nowhere. So science is utterly dependent on the first person perspective, and thus qualia, but cannot address them.
Naturally, all this is controversial. Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, deny the reality of qualia. The philosopher who came up with the Knowledge Argument, Frank Jackson, eventually changed his mind about it because of the implications it had, viz., that there is more to reality than the physical world. Jaegwon Kim, who gives Nagel a run for his money as the greatest living philosopher in my opinion, fully accepts the reality of qualia and their centrality in human life, but still defends physicalism: see his books Mind in a Physical World and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. And there's a collection of some of the most important essays about the Knowledge Argument which has the unfortunate title There's Something about Mary. So now you know what to read during the quarantine.
Anyhoo, one day Mary is sitting underneath a tree reading a book about Isaac Newton when an apple falls on her head and momentarily knocks her out. When she wakes up her monochromacy is gone: she can see the green grass, she can see purple mountain majesties, and she can see the clear blue sky. She had never seen these colors before. She had never known what "blue" looks like. But she knew everything that happened in the brain when someone experienced the color blue. So the question is: does Mary know something now that she didn't know before? This is the Knowledge Argument.
This isn't as easy to answer as you might think. I've been asking my students this for years and it's usually a split vote. One point to make here is that knowing what blue looks like wouldn't be propositional knowledge, but does it count as knowledge then? Some people think it's obvious Mary knows something that she didn't know before (what blue looks like) and others think it's obvious she doesn't.
The issue here is about qualia (singular: qualium), the "what it's like" experiences. Thomas Nagel wrote an essay called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which really brought this point home. Many philosophers of mind say that qualia are the heart and soul of the mind, and even human life in general. But the problem is that qualia can't be quantified and are effectively invisible to science. Science seeks to explain things from a third person perspective, but qualia are intrinsically first person in nature. Mary could describe color perception from a third person perspective but with no awareness of the qualium "what blue looks like". So the reason this is important is that, if Mary knows something after seeing the color blue that she did not know before, then there are important things -- foundational, fundamental things -- that science cannot address. If you had a complete physical, scientific description of the entire universe, it would be intrinsically incomplete, since it would not include qualia.
Moreover, the third person perspective is derived from the first person: to describe something from the third is to observe it from another standpoint, but ultimately this just means to observe it from what a first person perspective from that other standpoint would be. There can be no (to reference another Nagel work) view from nowhere. So science is utterly dependent on the first person perspective, and thus qualia, but cannot address them.
Naturally, all this is controversial. Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, deny the reality of qualia. The philosopher who came up with the Knowledge Argument, Frank Jackson, eventually changed his mind about it because of the implications it had, viz., that there is more to reality than the physical world. Jaegwon Kim, who gives Nagel a run for his money as the greatest living philosopher in my opinion, fully accepts the reality of qualia and their centrality in human life, but still defends physicalism: see his books Mind in a Physical World and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. And there's a collection of some of the most important essays about the Knowledge Argument which has the unfortunate title There's Something about Mary. So now you know what to read during the quarantine.
Your eyes are the darkest shade of light gray I've ever seen . . .
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Some more recent acquisitions
Nonfiction:
William P. Alston, A Realist Conception of Truth.
---, The Reliability of Sense Perception.
Robert Audi, The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality.
Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning.
Michael Bergmann, Justification without Awareness: A Defense of Epistemic Externalism.
Edwyn Bevan, Symbolism and Belief.
Roderick M. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing.
Paul Copan, ed., Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan.
Daniel C. Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds.
Alvin I. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition.
George S. Pappas and Marshall Swain, eds., Essays on Knowledge and Justification.
Ernest Sosa, Epistemology.
Ernest Sosa and Jaegwon Kim, eds., Epistemology: An Anthology (1st edition).
Barry Stroud, Hume.
Peter Unger, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1.
---, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2.
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus' Essential Teachings on Discipleship.
Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church.
Fiction:
Italo Calvino, The Complete Cosmicomics.
Tony Daniel, The Robot's Twilight Companion.
Jack Dann, ed., Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Philip José Farmer, Night of Light.
Walter M. Miller, Jr., Conditionally Human.
---, The View from the Stars.
Kim Stanley Robinson, The Martians.
---, Galileo's Dream.
---, The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson.
Cordwainer Smith, The Rediscovery of Man.
Robert Charles Wilson, Spin.
Sunday, November 1, 2020
The Lucas-Penrose Argument
Brace yourselves, this one can melt your brain.
In the early 20th century, it was thought that mathematics could be made into a complete formal system. This is a system in which every element has a complete definition, every entailment is deductive (so that conclusions necessarily follow from premises), and which contains no contradictions. But some basic concepts are unformalizable. "Truth," for example, allows us to form the Liar Paradox: "This statement is not true." If it's true, then it's false, and if it's false, it's true. So no formal system can have a truth predicate in it. (This isn't a mark against truth, btw.) One motive for this is a system with a contradiction leads to the principle of explosion, since ex falso quodlibet -- from a contradiction, everything follows.
Anyhoo, Kurt Gödel, inarguably the greatest logician of the 20th century, suggested we use a concept in place of truth that IS formalizable and doesn't lead to a paradox: provability. "This statement is not provable" doesn't lead to a problem like the Liar Paradox. But since such a statement can be made within any formal system, and since any such system must involve deductive provability, it follows that there can be no complete formal system. This is the intuition behind Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. We'd been chasing a mirage.
This was around 1930. About the same time we had huge strides made in artificial intelligence by the likes of Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, etc. Turing came up with the idea of a Turing machine, which is an instantiation of a formal system, the cause-and-effect processes of the machine standing in for the deductive ground-consequent relations of the formal system. But since any formal system will have a statement within it to the effect of "This statement is not provable within this system" (called a Gödel sentence), such would also have to be the case for a Turing machine.
This is a problem because a Turing machine can only affirm provable claims, so any given machine will have a Gödel sentence which it cannot affirm. Human minds, however, have no such limitation: we can see that there is a Gödel sentence within our own systems of thought and affirm it, recognizing that it is correct. It is correct that "This statement is not provable within this system" is not provable within that system. This has two consequences: 1) Human minds cannot be reduced to Turing machines. They cannot be fully explained by the mechanistic cause-and-effect processes that are going on in the brain. There is an element of the mind that goes beyond it, and this element is truth-conducive. 2) Turing machines, and artificial intelligence in general, cannot fully duplicate the processes of human minds. They may be able to duplicate the end-products, but they can't produce them the same way that human minds do: through non-deductive (non-formal) reasoning. They can only do it via mechanistic cause-and-effect processes which don't have to be truth-conducive in order to arrive at those end-products.
This conclusion was reached by Gödel himself in his 1951 Gibbs Lecture, "Some Basic Theorems on the Foundations of Mathematics and Their Implications", but it wasn't published until the third volume of his Collected Works came out in 1995. J.R. Lucas -- who in writing this post I have learned passed away earlier this year, which devastates me -- however, wrote an enormously influential essay in 1961, "Minds, Machines, and Gödel" which presented the same idea. It motivated a lot of objections which Lucas responded to in philosophy journals, and then he published his book "The Freedom of the Will" in 1970, the last third of which is on the implication of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems for the mind and AI. You can read most of his essays online at https://web.archive.org/web/20160718073705/http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/. Later, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose defended the argument in his own way in his books The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind.
Simple, no?
In the early 20th century, it was thought that mathematics could be made into a complete formal system. This is a system in which every element has a complete definition, every entailment is deductive (so that conclusions necessarily follow from premises), and which contains no contradictions. But some basic concepts are unformalizable. "Truth," for example, allows us to form the Liar Paradox: "This statement is not true." If it's true, then it's false, and if it's false, it's true. So no formal system can have a truth predicate in it. (This isn't a mark against truth, btw.) One motive for this is a system with a contradiction leads to the principle of explosion, since ex falso quodlibet -- from a contradiction, everything follows.
Anyhoo, Kurt Gödel, inarguably the greatest logician of the 20th century, suggested we use a concept in place of truth that IS formalizable and doesn't lead to a paradox: provability. "This statement is not provable" doesn't lead to a problem like the Liar Paradox. But since such a statement can be made within any formal system, and since any such system must involve deductive provability, it follows that there can be no complete formal system. This is the intuition behind Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. We'd been chasing a mirage.
This was around 1930. About the same time we had huge strides made in artificial intelligence by the likes of Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, etc. Turing came up with the idea of a Turing machine, which is an instantiation of a formal system, the cause-and-effect processes of the machine standing in for the deductive ground-consequent relations of the formal system. But since any formal system will have a statement within it to the effect of "This statement is not provable within this system" (called a Gödel sentence), such would also have to be the case for a Turing machine.
This is a problem because a Turing machine can only affirm provable claims, so any given machine will have a Gödel sentence which it cannot affirm. Human minds, however, have no such limitation: we can see that there is a Gödel sentence within our own systems of thought and affirm it, recognizing that it is correct. It is correct that "This statement is not provable within this system" is not provable within that system. This has two consequences: 1) Human minds cannot be reduced to Turing machines. They cannot be fully explained by the mechanistic cause-and-effect processes that are going on in the brain. There is an element of the mind that goes beyond it, and this element is truth-conducive. 2) Turing machines, and artificial intelligence in general, cannot fully duplicate the processes of human minds. They may be able to duplicate the end-products, but they can't produce them the same way that human minds do: through non-deductive (non-formal) reasoning. They can only do it via mechanistic cause-and-effect processes which don't have to be truth-conducive in order to arrive at those end-products.
This conclusion was reached by Gödel himself in his 1951 Gibbs Lecture, "Some Basic Theorems on the Foundations of Mathematics and Their Implications", but it wasn't published until the third volume of his Collected Works came out in 1995. J.R. Lucas -- who in writing this post I have learned passed away earlier this year, which devastates me -- however, wrote an enormously influential essay in 1961, "Minds, Machines, and Gödel" which presented the same idea. It motivated a lot of objections which Lucas responded to in philosophy journals, and then he published his book "The Freedom of the Will" in 1970, the last third of which is on the implication of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems for the mind and AI. You can read most of his essays online at https://web.archive.org/web/20160718073705/http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/. Later, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose defended the argument in his own way in his books The Emperor's New Mind and Shadows of the Mind.
Simple, no?
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Searle contra Dennett
In 1992 when John Searle published The Rediscovery of the Mind. Daniel Dennett reviewed the book in The Journal of Philosophy, and you can read his review here. Then Searle published a critique of several then-recent books on philosophy of mind, including Dennett's Consciousness Explained in his column in The New York Review of Books, which you can read here: scroll down to the bottom, or do a page search on "Quotes 11".
Here's where it gets interesting: Dennett then wrote a letter to the NYRB blasting Searle, to which Searle responded, and you can read both here. Prior to this, Searle and Dennett were, I think, friendly rivals. Not after. Dennett writes, "Searle doesn't have a program of research. He has a set of home truths to defend. They land him in paradox after paradox, but so long as he doesn't address the critics who point this out, who’ll ever know? ... There is not room in these pages for Searle to repair fifteen years of disregard, so no one should expect him to make good here, but if he would be so kind as to tell us where and when he intends to respond to his critics with the attention and accuracy they deserve, we will know when to resume paying attention to his claims."
I have to agree with Searle's assessment of Dennett's accusations: "Dennett’s letter has a peculiar rhetorical quality in that he is constantly referring to some devastating argument against me that he never actually states. The crushing argument is always just offstage, in some review he or somebody else wrote or some book he published years ago, but he can’t quite be bothered to state the argument now."
I should also point out that I tend to agree with Searle's argument:
However, I am suspicious of making it into an argument because it allows Dennett and others (like the Churchlands) to argue that you can make a distinction between appearance and reality with regards to conscious states, and their philosophies of mind explain how. All they have to do is deny that premise. Certainly that's not a very plausible option, but they could do it. I'm not sure if you could prove Searle's point via an argument to someone who was dead-set against it.
Here's where it gets interesting: Dennett then wrote a letter to the NYRB blasting Searle, to which Searle responded, and you can read both here. Prior to this, Searle and Dennett were, I think, friendly rivals. Not after. Dennett writes, "Searle doesn't have a program of research. He has a set of home truths to defend. They land him in paradox after paradox, but so long as he doesn't address the critics who point this out, who’ll ever know? ... There is not room in these pages for Searle to repair fifteen years of disregard, so no one should expect him to make good here, but if he would be so kind as to tell us where and when he intends to respond to his critics with the attention and accuracy they deserve, we will know when to resume paying attention to his claims."
I have to agree with Searle's assessment of Dennett's accusations: "Dennett’s letter has a peculiar rhetorical quality in that he is constantly referring to some devastating argument against me that he never actually states. The crushing argument is always just offstage, in some review he or somebody else wrote or some book he published years ago, but he can’t quite be bothered to state the argument now."
I should also point out that I tend to agree with Searle's argument:
An intuition in [Dennett's] sense is just something one feels inclined to believe, and such intuitions often turn out to be false. For example, people have intuitions about space and time that have been refuted by relativity theory in physics. In my review, I gave an example of an intuition about consciousness that has been refuted by neurobiology: the commonsense intuition that our pain in the arm is actually located in the physical space of the arm. But the very existence of my conscious states is not similarly a matter for my intuitions. The refutable intuitions I mentioned require a distinction between how things seem to me and how they really are, a distinction between appearance and reality. But where the existence of conscious states is concerned, you can’t make the distinction between appearance and reality, because the existence of the appearance is the reality in question. If it consciously seems to me that I am conscious, then I am conscious. It is not a matter of “intuitions,” of something I feel inclined to say. Nor is it a matter of methodology. Rather it is just a plain fact about me—and every other normal human being—that we have sensations and other sorts of conscious states.
However, I am suspicious of making it into an argument because it allows Dennett and others (like the Churchlands) to argue that you can make a distinction between appearance and reality with regards to conscious states, and their philosophies of mind explain how. All they have to do is deny that premise. Certainly that's not a very plausible option, but they could do it. I'm not sure if you could prove Searle's point via an argument to someone who was dead-set against it.
Monday, September 7, 2020
The Modal Ontological Argument
Arguments for and against the existence of God constitute one of the main topics in philosophy over the last few thousand years. By far, one of the craziest family of arguments is ontological arguments. They claim that the concept of God entails his actual existence. God is, by definition, the supreme being, the greatest conceivable being, the maximally great being, the perfect being, the being greater than which none can be thought. But if our conception of God is that he doesn't exist, he wouldn't be the greatest conceivable being since we could conceive of him existing and hence being even greater. Therefore, God must exist. Right? Anyone? Hello?
Ontological arguments sound like riddles, but some of the greatest intellects throughout history have defended them. Just in the last 100 years we've had Kurt Gödel (inarguably the greatest logician of the 20th century), Norman Malcolm, Alvin Plantinga, and Charles Hartshorne all defending versions of it. The standard objection to ontological arguments, from Kant, is that they treat existence as if it were a property a being could have or fail to have. But a being that failed to have existence wouldn't be a being at all. The recent counterargument is that this would only apply to Descartes's ontological argument, not to those of others, like Anselm's (or, for that matter, Kant's).
The contemporary versions use modal logic. This is basically the logic of possibility and necessity. If it's logically possible for you to do or be something -- say, waking up one morning as a giant cockroach -- then you have the modal property of "possibly existing as a cockroach." The weird thing is that, if it is possible for you to wake up one morning as a cockroach, then this modal property would not itself be a possible property you may or may not have, it would be an actual property. If something is possible, then its possibility is necessary (possible in all possible worlds), and if it's necessary, it's actual. So if it's possible you may wake up as a cockroach, then you actually have the modal property of "possibly existing as a cockroach." This sounds weird but it's a basic premise in modal logic (axiom S5) and as far as I know, it is uncontested in logical and philosophical circles.
So: say God is the maximally great being -- he has all positive properties, has them without limit, and has no negative properties. If this is logically possible, then God exists in at least one possible world. Now say God exists in only one possible world. Then he would lack the modal property of "possibly existing in world 2," and so wouldn't be maximally great. OK, so he has the property of possibly existing in worlds 1 and 2 and that's it. But then he lacks the modal property of "possibly existing in world 3." Now say he has the modal properties of "possibly existing in all possible worlds but one." Then he would lack the modal property of "possibly existing in that one world," and by lacking that modal property, wouldn't be maximally great. So if God exists in one possible world, he exists in all possible worlds. And the real world is a possible world, since if something is actual, it must be possible. Another way to say this is that any maximally great being worth its salt would exist necessarily, not just contingently; and if a necessarily existing being exists in one possible world, it exists in all possible worlds. Here's a rundown.
1. A maximally great being (God) is logically possible.
2. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in at least one possible world.
3. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in all possible worlds (otherwise he wouldn't be maximally great).
4. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being (still God) exists.
There are some very interesting things about this, each one leading to the next. First, virtually every step in this argument is uncontroversial among logicians and philosophers, including atheists. But, second, there's a way to avoid the conclusion: deny the first premise. Deny that God, a maximally great being, is logically possible. Then God doesn't exist in any possible world. In fact, Plantinga, one of this argument's advocates, explicitly makes this point. Third, this means that God either exists in no possible worlds or all possible worlds. He either can't exist or can't not exist. He's either logically impossible or logically necessary. Fourth, since in order to say that God does not exist we have to say God cannot exist, the atheist bears the burden of proof. They must show that it is logically impossible for God to exist, that a maximally great being entails a logical contradiction. The theist only has to maintain that it's logically possible. But you don't have to prove something is logically possible unless you have a reason to think it may not be.
Naturally, one of the main objections to God is precisely that a maximally great being entails logical contradictions. For example, such a being would be maximally merciful but also maximally just. But these are, allegedly, incompatible since perfect justice would conflict with perfect mercy. Some individual traits are accused of being incoherent: could a maximally powerful (omnipotent) being create a stone so big that even he couldn't move it? If he can't, then there's something he can't do: make that stone. If he can, then there's something he can't do: move that stone. Either way, there's something he can't do and so omnipotence is a chimera. Naturally again, there are plenty of counterarguments and countercounterarguments and countercountercounter . . . . etc. Regardless, the modal ontological argument is fascinating, not least because it makes denying God's existence much more problematic.
Ontological arguments sound like riddles, but some of the greatest intellects throughout history have defended them. Just in the last 100 years we've had Kurt Gödel (inarguably the greatest logician of the 20th century), Norman Malcolm, Alvin Plantinga, and Charles Hartshorne all defending versions of it. The standard objection to ontological arguments, from Kant, is that they treat existence as if it were a property a being could have or fail to have. But a being that failed to have existence wouldn't be a being at all. The recent counterargument is that this would only apply to Descartes's ontological argument, not to those of others, like Anselm's (or, for that matter, Kant's).
The contemporary versions use modal logic. This is basically the logic of possibility and necessity. If it's logically possible for you to do or be something -- say, waking up one morning as a giant cockroach -- then you have the modal property of "possibly existing as a cockroach." The weird thing is that, if it is possible for you to wake up one morning as a cockroach, then this modal property would not itself be a possible property you may or may not have, it would be an actual property. If something is possible, then its possibility is necessary (possible in all possible worlds), and if it's necessary, it's actual. So if it's possible you may wake up as a cockroach, then you actually have the modal property of "possibly existing as a cockroach." This sounds weird but it's a basic premise in modal logic (axiom S5) and as far as I know, it is uncontested in logical and philosophical circles.
So: say God is the maximally great being -- he has all positive properties, has them without limit, and has no negative properties. If this is logically possible, then God exists in at least one possible world. Now say God exists in only one possible world. Then he would lack the modal property of "possibly existing in world 2," and so wouldn't be maximally great. OK, so he has the property of possibly existing in worlds 1 and 2 and that's it. But then he lacks the modal property of "possibly existing in world 3." Now say he has the modal properties of "possibly existing in all possible worlds but one." Then he would lack the modal property of "possibly existing in that one world," and by lacking that modal property, wouldn't be maximally great. So if God exists in one possible world, he exists in all possible worlds. And the real world is a possible world, since if something is actual, it must be possible. Another way to say this is that any maximally great being worth its salt would exist necessarily, not just contingently; and if a necessarily existing being exists in one possible world, it exists in all possible worlds. Here's a rundown.
1. A maximally great being (God) is logically possible.
2. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in at least one possible world.
3. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in all possible worlds (otherwise he wouldn't be maximally great).
4. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.
5. Therefore, a maximally great being (still God) exists.
There are some very interesting things about this, each one leading to the next. First, virtually every step in this argument is uncontroversial among logicians and philosophers, including atheists. But, second, there's a way to avoid the conclusion: deny the first premise. Deny that God, a maximally great being, is logically possible. Then God doesn't exist in any possible world. In fact, Plantinga, one of this argument's advocates, explicitly makes this point. Third, this means that God either exists in no possible worlds or all possible worlds. He either can't exist or can't not exist. He's either logically impossible or logically necessary. Fourth, since in order to say that God does not exist we have to say God cannot exist, the atheist bears the burden of proof. They must show that it is logically impossible for God to exist, that a maximally great being entails a logical contradiction. The theist only has to maintain that it's logically possible. But you don't have to prove something is logically possible unless you have a reason to think it may not be.
Naturally, one of the main objections to God is precisely that a maximally great being entails logical contradictions. For example, such a being would be maximally merciful but also maximally just. But these are, allegedly, incompatible since perfect justice would conflict with perfect mercy. Some individual traits are accused of being incoherent: could a maximally powerful (omnipotent) being create a stone so big that even he couldn't move it? If he can't, then there's something he can't do: make that stone. If he can, then there's something he can't do: move that stone. Either way, there's something he can't do and so omnipotence is a chimera. Naturally again, there are plenty of counterarguments and countercounterarguments and countercountercounter . . . . etc. Regardless, the modal ontological argument is fascinating, not least because it makes denying God's existence much more problematic.
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
The Burden of Proof
It seems like everyone has a simplistic idea of who bears the burden of proof and it drives me freakin' nuts -- almost as much as people using "begs the question" to mean "forces us to ask."* The simplistic idea is that the person making a claim must bear the burden of proof, while the person who denies the claim does not. This is the standard in formal debates to keep them from going too far afield. Courts of law apply it as well because our justice system is premised on the "innocent until proven guilty" standard. So it's not unreasonable to mistake it as the universal standard, but it's still a mistake.
In philosophy burden of proof issues are notoriously difficult. Sometimes the person making a claim bears the burden of proof, but sometimes the person denying a claim bears it. Sometimes all parties bear it. It depends. And there's no absolute standard agreed upon by philosophers, although there are some clear examples. One traditional philosophical issue is the problem of other minds. How do we know that other people are really sparks of self-consciousness? The simplistic idea of burden of proof would say the person who denies other minds exist (solipsism) does not shoulder any of the burden of proof, but in this case he shoulders all of it. The person who affirms that other minds exist does not need to prove anything.
One objection people raise is that you can't prove a negative. Except you can. Of course you can. I can prove there is no full-sized elephant in this room right now. I can prove that there is not an army of fifty foot tall badgers ransacking downtown Portland as we speak. In fact, Karl Popper's philosophy of science says that all science can do is falsify claims, not prove them, in which case, science only proves negatives. It can't prove the positive claim "All swans are white" but it can prove the negative claim "Not all swans are white" by finding one example of a swan that isn't white. What you cannot do is empirically prove a universal negative. But you can still empirically prove a non-universal negative (like "Not all swans are white") and you can logically prove a universal negative (if it's a logical contradiction).
Another objection people raise is Bertrand Russell's suggestion of a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. The person making this claim shoulders the burden of proof because in the absence of any evidence or reason to think such a teapot exists, the rational response is to disbelieve it, not just to be agnostic about it. We don't need a reason to disbelieve it, since in the absence of evidence we don't shoulder any burden of proof. But we do have a reason to disbelieve it: it's completely ad hoc or contrived. The more ad hoc a suggestion is, the less likely it is true. The teapot apologist must provide evidence to overcome the ad hoc-ness of the claim. Contrast this with the problem of other minds: there the solipsist is making the ad hoc claim and so must bear the burden of proof.
Most claims end up somewhere in between orbiting teapots and other minds (orbiting minds?), meaning that burden of proof is difficult to establish. The more ad hoc a claim is, the larger the share of the burden of proof one has, and sometimes denying a claim is more ad hoc than affirming it, not least because denying some claims can have repercussions that are outrageous. Carl Sagan said, "Incredible claims require incredible evidence," which is also simplistic and false, but if we restate it as "Ad hoc claims require sufficient evidence to counter their ad hoc-ness" then it can be salvaged, although it may not work as well as an aphorism.
* Incidentally, "begs the question" means you're arguing in a circle. You are assuming (begging) what is at question. So if I said "Trump is the most honest President ever," and when you asked why I believe that, I said, "Trump said so, and the most honest President ever wouldn't lie about something like that," I would be begging the question. The question is whether Trump is honest and my reasoning assumes he is in order to conclude he is. It argues in a circle, it begs the question. I actually wrote about this on Quodlibeta back in the day.
In philosophy burden of proof issues are notoriously difficult. Sometimes the person making a claim bears the burden of proof, but sometimes the person denying a claim bears it. Sometimes all parties bear it. It depends. And there's no absolute standard agreed upon by philosophers, although there are some clear examples. One traditional philosophical issue is the problem of other minds. How do we know that other people are really sparks of self-consciousness? The simplistic idea of burden of proof would say the person who denies other minds exist (solipsism) does not shoulder any of the burden of proof, but in this case he shoulders all of it. The person who affirms that other minds exist does not need to prove anything.
One objection people raise is that you can't prove a negative. Except you can. Of course you can. I can prove there is no full-sized elephant in this room right now. I can prove that there is not an army of fifty foot tall badgers ransacking downtown Portland as we speak. In fact, Karl Popper's philosophy of science says that all science can do is falsify claims, not prove them, in which case, science only proves negatives. It can't prove the positive claim "All swans are white" but it can prove the negative claim "Not all swans are white" by finding one example of a swan that isn't white. What you cannot do is empirically prove a universal negative. But you can still empirically prove a non-universal negative (like "Not all swans are white") and you can logically prove a universal negative (if it's a logical contradiction).
Another objection people raise is Bertrand Russell's suggestion of a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. The person making this claim shoulders the burden of proof because in the absence of any evidence or reason to think such a teapot exists, the rational response is to disbelieve it, not just to be agnostic about it. We don't need a reason to disbelieve it, since in the absence of evidence we don't shoulder any burden of proof. But we do have a reason to disbelieve it: it's completely ad hoc or contrived. The more ad hoc a suggestion is, the less likely it is true. The teapot apologist must provide evidence to overcome the ad hoc-ness of the claim. Contrast this with the problem of other minds: there the solipsist is making the ad hoc claim and so must bear the burden of proof.
Most claims end up somewhere in between orbiting teapots and other minds (orbiting minds?), meaning that burden of proof is difficult to establish. The more ad hoc a claim is, the larger the share of the burden of proof one has, and sometimes denying a claim is more ad hoc than affirming it, not least because denying some claims can have repercussions that are outrageous. Carl Sagan said, "Incredible claims require incredible evidence," which is also simplistic and false, but if we restate it as "Ad hoc claims require sufficient evidence to counter their ad hoc-ness" then it can be salvaged, although it may not work as well as an aphorism.
* Incidentally, "begs the question" means you're arguing in a circle. You are assuming (begging) what is at question. So if I said "Trump is the most honest President ever," and when you asked why I believe that, I said, "Trump said so, and the most honest President ever wouldn't lie about something like that," I would be begging the question. The question is whether Trump is honest and my reasoning assumes he is in order to conclude he is. It argues in a circle, it begs the question. I actually wrote about this on Quodlibeta back in the day.
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Some recent acquisitions
Nonfiction:
Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus.
Frederick Copleston, Aquinas: An Introduction to the Life and Work of the Great Medieval Thinker.
Charles Darwin, From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books (Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals), edited by Edward O. Wilson. (Unfortunately, it doesn't include The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits, so I'm kinda bummed.)
Cardinal Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics. (I've been wanting this one forever.)
Cardinal Avery Dulles, A History of Apologetics. (I've been wanting this one forever.)
The Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament. (Almost 3,000 pages. Got it for about $25.)
Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers. (I had this years ago and it was lost in shipping when we moved back to the States.)
John Lennox, God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (One of the few Lewis books I didn't have, although I've read it more than once.)
Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. (OK, this one I've really wanted forever)
_______, Darwinism and the Divine: Evolutionary Thought and Natural Theology.
_______, The Science of God.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, 2 volumes. (I love Nietzsche, and my impression of Schopenhauer is that he's a forerunner of Nietzsche who was more pessimistic.)
Wilbur Marshall Urban, The History of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. (This was published in 1898, so as a history it's a little out of date. I'm just a big fan of Urban.)
Fiction:
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions. (This is all of his short story collections in one volume.)
Fredric Brown, From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown. (Gold.)
Ted Chiang, Exhalation. (Short stories, and the ones I've already read are amazing. The title story is incredibly relevant to philosophy of mind.)
James S.A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes.
_______, Caliban's War.
_______, Abaddon's Gate. (I've watched The Expanse, the show based on these books, and loved it, but the books were expensive. I got these first three as a boxed set for about $20 which is much cheaper than I've seen any of them.
Cixin Liu, The Wandering Earth. (His short stories. I've loved everything I've read from him.)
Ken Liu, Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation. (Chinese short stories that Ken Liu translated and edited. He also writes his own books and stories, so I'm going to give those a look in the near future.)
Fred Saberhagen, Love Conquers All. (Same author as the Berserker series. I wanted this one because Saberhagen was a Catholic and from what I understand, this is his version of Brave New World.)
John Scalzi, Redshirts.
Lucius Shepherd, The Best of Lucius Shepherd.
Michael Swanwick, The Dog Said Bow-Wow.
John Varley, The Persistence of Vision.
Peter Watts, Blindsight. (This supposedly has some philosophical relevance to the Chinese Room argument.)
Andy Weir, Artemis. (Same author as The Martian.)
Robert Charles Wilson, The Harvest.
Wednesday, August 26, 2020
Contrasts
Today I read two articles critical of Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism. The first was an exercise in frustration. It took passages in the Bible which say God sent a deceiving spirit or something similar, and use this to argue that the Judeo-Christian God lies. In this case, Judeo-Christian theism gives one a defeater for the belief that their cognitive faculties are reliable just as much as naturalism allegedly does. It was exasperating to read this just because the authors' exegesis was so painfully bad. One of the foundational rules in exegesis -- in exegeting any text, not just the Bible -- is to interpret the unclear in light of the clear. These authors never mention the explicit passages in the Bible that say unequivocally that God does not, will not, and cannot lie. They just superficially accept what they want the text to mean. They go on to suggest that allowing miracles opens the door to chaos, although they condescendingly invite theists to provide some sort of repeatable, predictable evidence of miracles. It was just so incredibly superficial. It reminded me of a fictional conversation between Carl Sagan, Sylvia Plath, and Allen Carpenter in Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and the late great Jerry Pournelle.
"I'm still getting used to this," Carl said. "Allen, you must have thought about this a lot. How can you justify keeping people in Hell? What gives God the right to demand we worship Him?"
"Come now," Sylvia protested. "Where does right come from? You're going to judge God? By whose standards? You say yours, but what makes yours any better than anyone else's?"
"Sylvia--"
"I mean it, Allen. You two are smarter than almost anyone I ever met, but you sure have awful educations! People have been arguing about this for thousands of years! And you act like you've just thought of the questions."
"I notice you never answered my question," Carl said. "What gives God the right to demand we worship Him?"
"I haven't heard any such demand," Sylvia said. Maybe we just need Him, and we're miserable if we don't have Him."
"People have been arguing about this for thousands of years and you act like you've just thought of the questions." That pretty much sums up the article.
Friday, August 21, 2020
The Unconscious Violinist
The pro-choice position is that women have the right to do what they want with their bodies, but the pro-life position claims that the fetus is not the woman's body; it's the fetus's body. Since the right to swing your arms ends where another person's nose begins -- that is, your right to do what you want with you body ends where your use of your body harms someone else's body -- then if the fetus is an actual person, this would bear on whether a woman has the right to abort it. One problem with this is that the the woman and the fetus are organically connected, so the relationship between the mother and the fetus would be a unique one (really, the only example I can think of that's even remote comparable is conjoined twins), and that's a detail that could potentially change the equation.
Judith Jarvis Thomson is a moral philosopher and she came up with an argument that has greatly influenced the abortion debate. She grants these pro-life claims for argument's sake in order to construct a thought experiment. Say you wake up in a hospital bed and discover you're hooked up via tubes and whatnot to another person who is unconscious. Then you're told that this person is a famous violinist, a great artist, and has a kidney disease or something, and the only way to save him was to hook him up with someone else who closely matches his various biological conditions so that this other person's kidneys will filter his blood as well as your own -- and congratulations! your kidneys fit the bill. After nine months, everything can be disconnected and the violinist can be woken up, cured of his disease or condition. So do you have the right to refuse to take part in this procedure?
Thomson says yes. Granted, the unconscious violinist is a person; granted he will not survive without this procedure, this does not entail any responsibility on your part to allow your body be used as an object or tool to keep him alive for the next nine months. As a person, the violinist has the right to live, but he does not have the right to use someone else's body for his own purposes. So even if the fetus is a human being, a person, it does not have the right to the use of the woman's body.
Some people have raised objections to this. For one thing, at best, it would only apply to pregnancy by rape. Thomson argues that the fetus is using the woman's body in a nonconsensual way, but if the woman chose to have sex, the parallel between Thomson's thought experiment and abortion doesn't hold. We could add the detail that the woman attended a party with the understanding that there was a nontrivial chance of her being hooked up to an unconscious violinist for nine months afterwards. But this muddies the waters enough so that it isn't obvious that she has the right to unplug herself from the violinist. She knew that was a possible outcome of going to the party. Honestly, the first time I heard the Unconscious Violinist Argument, I thought it was an argument against abortion because of this point.
Another question we can ask is, how long is too long? What if she only has to be hooked up to the violinist for nine days? Or nine minutes? We can stand on principle here so that no amount of time is acceptable, but would you really think not having your autonomy overruled for nine minutes is more important than the violinist's life? What about nine days? Nine weeks? Or, to add another wrinkle, what if it's only nine hours but you know you only have fifteen hours to live and this will prevent you from accomplishing what you want during this time?
Again, this is all granting the pro-life position that the fetus is a person which is eminently contestable. I would conclude that the abortion issue does not have an obvious solution one way or the other, and if you're really confident of your position, maybe spend some more time thinking on it. I actually grew up with one side being the obvious, unquestioned one and then had some ideas presented to me which had never occurred to me, and after some contemplation, I switched teams.
Judith Jarvis Thomson is a moral philosopher and she came up with an argument that has greatly influenced the abortion debate. She grants these pro-life claims for argument's sake in order to construct a thought experiment. Say you wake up in a hospital bed and discover you're hooked up via tubes and whatnot to another person who is unconscious. Then you're told that this person is a famous violinist, a great artist, and has a kidney disease or something, and the only way to save him was to hook him up with someone else who closely matches his various biological conditions so that this other person's kidneys will filter his blood as well as your own -- and congratulations! your kidneys fit the bill. After nine months, everything can be disconnected and the violinist can be woken up, cured of his disease or condition. So do you have the right to refuse to take part in this procedure?
Thomson says yes. Granted, the unconscious violinist is a person; granted he will not survive without this procedure, this does not entail any responsibility on your part to allow your body be used as an object or tool to keep him alive for the next nine months. As a person, the violinist has the right to live, but he does not have the right to use someone else's body for his own purposes. So even if the fetus is a human being, a person, it does not have the right to the use of the woman's body.
Some people have raised objections to this. For one thing, at best, it would only apply to pregnancy by rape. Thomson argues that the fetus is using the woman's body in a nonconsensual way, but if the woman chose to have sex, the parallel between Thomson's thought experiment and abortion doesn't hold. We could add the detail that the woman attended a party with the understanding that there was a nontrivial chance of her being hooked up to an unconscious violinist for nine months afterwards. But this muddies the waters enough so that it isn't obvious that she has the right to unplug herself from the violinist. She knew that was a possible outcome of going to the party. Honestly, the first time I heard the Unconscious Violinist Argument, I thought it was an argument against abortion because of this point.
Another question we can ask is, how long is too long? What if she only has to be hooked up to the violinist for nine days? Or nine minutes? We can stand on principle here so that no amount of time is acceptable, but would you really think not having your autonomy overruled for nine minutes is more important than the violinist's life? What about nine days? Nine weeks? Or, to add another wrinkle, what if it's only nine hours but you know you only have fifteen hours to live and this will prevent you from accomplishing what you want during this time?
Again, this is all granting the pro-life position that the fetus is a person which is eminently contestable. I would conclude that the abortion issue does not have an obvious solution one way or the other, and if you're really confident of your position, maybe spend some more time thinking on it. I actually grew up with one side being the obvious, unquestioned one and then had some ideas presented to me which had never occurred to me, and after some contemplation, I switched teams.
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
The Lottery Paradox
Henry Kyburg was a philosopher who developed a theory of probability called statistical (or epistemological or sometimes just Kyburgian) probability, in contrast with Bayesian probability and logical probability. He's famous for coming up with the Lottery Paradox. Say there's a raffle with one million tickets, so one of the tickets between 1 and 1,000,000 will be picked. Since ticket 1 only has a one in a million chance of being selected, rationality requires us to believe that ticket 1 won't win. What is the probability that ticket 2 will win? Well, the same, one in a million. So rationality requires us to believe that ticket 2 won't win either. In fact, since every individual ticket only has a one in a million chance of winning, we should believe that every individual ticket will lose. But of course, we also know that one of those tickets will win. So rationality requires us to believe that ticket 1 will lose, ticket 2 will lose, etc. all the way up to ticket 1,000,000, but also that one of those tickets will win. This is a contradiction, there is no possible world where all the beliefs are true, yet it is irrational to deny any of them.
Kyburg was pointing out that there are three rational principles that lead to contradiction, and so we must reject one of them. First, if a proposition is probably true, it is rational to accept it. Second, if rationality requires us to accept proposition X and rationality also requires us to accept proposition Y, then rationality requires us to believe X and Y. Third, it is not rational to accept an inconsistent proposition. The Lottery Paradox shows that the second principle would mean we should accept that each ticket will lose and that one of them will win. This contradicts the third principle. To avoid this, we need to reject one of the three principles. Kyburg advocated rejecting the second: just because it is rational to believe ticket 1 will lose, ticket 2 will lose, etc., it doesn't mean it's rational to believe every ticket between 1 and 1,000,000 will lose. Many logicians, however, argue that we should reject the first principle: we shouldn't believe that ticket 1 will lose, we should believe it is very improbable that ticket 1 will win, but it might. Another possibility is to just throw up your hands and accept that an ideal form of rationality would still be imperfect and could entail contradictions. This is a rejection of the third principle. But accepting all three is not an option.
I'm inclined to reject the first premise -- or rephrase it so that instead of saying rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails falsehood, we say rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails ... wait for it ... a low probability. But regardless, the Lottery Paradox shows that logic, rationality, and probability are not as simple as they may appear.
Kyburg was pointing out that there are three rational principles that lead to contradiction, and so we must reject one of them. First, if a proposition is probably true, it is rational to accept it. Second, if rationality requires us to accept proposition X and rationality also requires us to accept proposition Y, then rationality requires us to believe X and Y. Third, it is not rational to accept an inconsistent proposition. The Lottery Paradox shows that the second principle would mean we should accept that each ticket will lose and that one of them will win. This contradicts the third principle. To avoid this, we need to reject one of the three principles. Kyburg advocated rejecting the second: just because it is rational to believe ticket 1 will lose, ticket 2 will lose, etc., it doesn't mean it's rational to believe every ticket between 1 and 1,000,000 will lose. Many logicians, however, argue that we should reject the first principle: we shouldn't believe that ticket 1 will lose, we should believe it is very improbable that ticket 1 will win, but it might. Another possibility is to just throw up your hands and accept that an ideal form of rationality would still be imperfect and could entail contradictions. This is a rejection of the third principle. But accepting all three is not an option.
I'm inclined to reject the first premise -- or rephrase it so that instead of saying rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails falsehood, we say rationality requires us to believe a low probability entails ... wait for it ... a low probability. But regardless, the Lottery Paradox shows that logic, rationality, and probability are not as simple as they may appear.
Thursday, August 6, 2020
Descartes's Evil Demon
Descartes was a 17th century philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. Once, in his early 20s, he went into a small cabin to stay warm. When he came out the next day he had invented analytic geometry. It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished.
He wanted to explore the nature of knowledge, so he came up with several methods allowing him to hypothetically doubt even the most obvious truths, such as that other people exist, that the physical world exists, that he has a body, etc. Again, this was all hypothetical. People often mistake him as actually calling these things into question, but Descartes explicitly says you'd have to be a lunatic to seriously doubt them. He was engaged in an exercise to see if there was some belief he could not doubt in a logical sense.
To this end he came up with the Evil Demon. That's how English speakers refer to it. In French it's mauvais génie which can mean evil genie or genius.
The evil demon has the power to manipulate your thoughts so that falsehoods seems obviously true. Descartes used this to ask whether he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5. It's logically possible that such a demon exists (that is, it's not a logical contradiction) so it's logically possible for Descartes's belief that 2 + 3 = 5 to be one of those beliefs that seem so blatant and obvious because the evil demon is messing with his mind to make it seem so. Ex hypothesi, 2 + 3 does not equal 5, it's just the evil demon's machinations that make it appear so. With this scenario, Descartes realized he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5.
At this point, Descartes is (theoretically) denying the existence of other people, his body, the physical world, and even the obvious truths of basic mathematics and logic. There doesn't seem to be anything he can't doubt. But this is where he reaches what is called the cogito: he's doubting, so he can't doubt that he's doubting. But doubting is not an event, it is an action, and so it requires an actor, a subject that is doing the doubting. Since doubting is a form of thinking, Descartes concludes "I think therefore I am" (Latin: cogito ergo sum). I can't doubt my own existence, because in order to do so, I have to surreptitiously affirm my existence. I am the one who doubts my own existence. So it is impossible to doubt one's own existence. On a practical level, he can't really doubt that 2 + 3 = 5 either, but there is a logically possible scenario that allows him to do so. There is no such scenario where he can doubt his own existence: in every possible world where he tries to doubt his existence, he exists.
From this foundation, Descartes tries to reestablish his beliefs about everything else, but on a much surer footing. He goes from his own existence to God to the physical world and other people, etc. It is at this point that many philosophers reject his arguments -- not that they necessarily deny these things are real, but that Descartes can't really prove them. And of course, there have been plenty of philosophers who have argued that one can deny one's own existence, such as David Hume and Peter Unger. Nevertheless, Descartes's evil demon argument has been one of the most influential ideas in philosophical history.
He wanted to explore the nature of knowledge, so he came up with several methods allowing him to hypothetically doubt even the most obvious truths, such as that other people exist, that the physical world exists, that he has a body, etc. Again, this was all hypothetical. People often mistake him as actually calling these things into question, but Descartes explicitly says you'd have to be a lunatic to seriously doubt them. He was engaged in an exercise to see if there was some belief he could not doubt in a logical sense.
To this end he came up with the Evil Demon. That's how English speakers refer to it. In French it's mauvais génie which can mean evil genie or genius.
The evil demon has the power to manipulate your thoughts so that falsehoods seems obviously true. Descartes used this to ask whether he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5. It's logically possible that such a demon exists (that is, it's not a logical contradiction) so it's logically possible for Descartes's belief that 2 + 3 = 5 to be one of those beliefs that seem so blatant and obvious because the evil demon is messing with his mind to make it seem so. Ex hypothesi, 2 + 3 does not equal 5, it's just the evil demon's machinations that make it appear so. With this scenario, Descartes realized he could doubt that 2 + 3 = 5.
At this point, Descartes is (theoretically) denying the existence of other people, his body, the physical world, and even the obvious truths of basic mathematics and logic. There doesn't seem to be anything he can't doubt. But this is where he reaches what is called the cogito: he's doubting, so he can't doubt that he's doubting. But doubting is not an event, it is an action, and so it requires an actor, a subject that is doing the doubting. Since doubting is a form of thinking, Descartes concludes "I think therefore I am" (Latin: cogito ergo sum). I can't doubt my own existence, because in order to do so, I have to surreptitiously affirm my existence. I am the one who doubts my own existence. So it is impossible to doubt one's own existence. On a practical level, he can't really doubt that 2 + 3 = 5 either, but there is a logically possible scenario that allows him to do so. There is no such scenario where he can doubt his own existence: in every possible world where he tries to doubt his existence, he exists.
From this foundation, Descartes tries to reestablish his beliefs about everything else, but on a much surer footing. He goes from his own existence to God to the physical world and other people, etc. It is at this point that many philosophers reject his arguments -- not that they necessarily deny these things are real, but that Descartes can't really prove them. And of course, there have been plenty of philosophers who have argued that one can deny one's own existence, such as David Hume and Peter Unger. Nevertheless, Descartes's evil demon argument has been one of the most influential ideas in philosophical history.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
The Consequence Argument
The motivation for compatibilism is to allow for moral praise and blame. If our actions are determined, it is difficult to see how we can be held responsible for them. Hard determinism accepts this and rejects moral responsibility. Libertarianism (NOT the political position) also accepts this and accepts moral responsibility. But if we are free to do what we want, then we can still say we are responsible for our actions, and so moral praise and blame is possible. Supposedly.
Peter Van Inwagen is one of the most important living philosophers. He earned his Ph.D. in 1969 and has began publishing on determinism and free will ever since. Eleven years into his academic career he converted to Christianity, which is interesting but unrelated to what I'm talking about. He also came up with the Consequence Argument which is essentially an argument against compatibilism. It argues that the free will of compatibilism does not allow for moral praise or blame, moral responsibility, and this takes away any motive for accepting compatibilism in the first place. We should either be hard determinists or libertarians.
The argument in a nutshell: if determinism is true, all of our actions are entirely produced by events in the remote past plus the laws of nature. But we have no control over events in the remote past or the laws of nature. Therefore, we have no control over our actions. If we have no control over our actions, we are not responsible for them, in which case praising us for our good acts and blaming us for our bad acts makes no sense.
Van Inwagen affirms free will, but also points out that it is a mystery. It has yet to be made into a coherent idea, despite the facts that we have an intuitive understanding of it and it has been something people have been discussing for as long as there's been people. Simply saying our actions are not determined is not enough, since we could hardly be held responsible for actions that just occurred spontaneously with no cause. Nicholas Rescher, another Christian philosopher and probably the most influential philosopher of science after C.S. Peirce and Karl Popper, published Free Will: An Extensive Bibliography, which is exactly what it says it is: over 300 pages of references. So I don't think the issue is going to be resolved anytime soon.
Sunday, July 26, 2020
Antilogisms
Antilogisms are a form of argument that take a syllogism and negate the conclusion. So whereas a syllogism might say:
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Its corresponding antilogism would be:
4. All men are mortal.
5. Socrates is a man.
6. Socrates is not mortal.
The interesting thing about this is that you can now accept any two premises, but not all three. You can accept that Socrates is a man and is not mortal if you deny that all men or mortal. Or you can accept that all men are mortal and Socrates is not mortal if you deny that Socrates is a man. So any two premises in a genuine antilogism can be made into a valid syllogism by negating the remaining premise.
There are a lot of interesting antilogisms and pseudo-antilogisms in philosophy. One of the most famous goes back to the ancient Greeks, and was re-emphasized by David Hume.
7. God is omnipotent (all powerful).
8. God is omnibenevolent (perfectly good and loving).
9. Evil exists.
This really captures the intuitive sense behind the problem of evil, which asks how a perfectly good and omnipotent God could allow evil to take place. Unfortunately, premise 9 is not the negation of the valid conclusion of a syllogism:
10. God is omnipotent.
11. God is omnibenevolent.
12. Therefore, there is at least one omnipotent, omnibenevolent being.
I think what the antilogism is trying to say is something like this:
13. God is omnipotent.
14. God is omnibenevolent.
15. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being would not allow evil to take place.
16. Evil does take place.
17. Therefore, God is either not omnipotent, not omnibenevolent, or neither -- perhaps by not existing.
(You could also throw omniscience in there to emphasize that God must be aware of the evil that takes place.) The problem here is defending premise 15. The history of philosophy (and theology) is filled with attempts to explain how God could allow evil to take place, called theodicies, which is not to say that any of them are successful. But if we negate 15 we get:
18. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being could allow evil to take place.
Premises 7, 8, 9, and 18 are a consistent set. So 7, 8, and 9 is not a true antilogism. Naturally, we all want a reason to accept premise 18 -- a common claim is that God only allows evil when he is able to bring about a counterbalancing good from it -- but it's not necessary in the structure of the argument. As long as 18 is logically possible then premises 7, 8, and 9 do not form an antilogism.
To see an antilogism in action, let's apply it to this scene from "Gandhi."
This presents us with the following antilogism:
19. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
20. Gandhi is in South Africa.
21. "There are no colored attorneys in South Africa."
Granted, premise 20 is never actually stated, but I think we can infer it with confidence. Once again, we can accept any two premises but not all three. So Gandhi reverses premise 21 to form a genuine syllogism:
22. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
23. Gandhi is in South Africa.
24. "There is at least one colored attorney in South Africa."
And the rest of the scene shows how dangerous logic can be.
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Its corresponding antilogism would be:
4. All men are mortal.
5. Socrates is a man.
6. Socrates is not mortal.
The interesting thing about this is that you can now accept any two premises, but not all three. You can accept that Socrates is a man and is not mortal if you deny that all men or mortal. Or you can accept that all men are mortal and Socrates is not mortal if you deny that Socrates is a man. So any two premises in a genuine antilogism can be made into a valid syllogism by negating the remaining premise.
There are a lot of interesting antilogisms and pseudo-antilogisms in philosophy. One of the most famous goes back to the ancient Greeks, and was re-emphasized by David Hume.
7. God is omnipotent (all powerful).
8. God is omnibenevolent (perfectly good and loving).
9. Evil exists.
This really captures the intuitive sense behind the problem of evil, which asks how a perfectly good and omnipotent God could allow evil to take place. Unfortunately, premise 9 is not the negation of the valid conclusion of a syllogism:
10. God is omnipotent.
11. God is omnibenevolent.
12. Therefore, there is at least one omnipotent, omnibenevolent being.
I think what the antilogism is trying to say is something like this:
13. God is omnipotent.
14. God is omnibenevolent.
15. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being would not allow evil to take place.
16. Evil does take place.
17. Therefore, God is either not omnipotent, not omnibenevolent, or neither -- perhaps by not existing.
(You could also throw omniscience in there to emphasize that God must be aware of the evil that takes place.) The problem here is defending premise 15. The history of philosophy (and theology) is filled with attempts to explain how God could allow evil to take place, called theodicies, which is not to say that any of them are successful. But if we negate 15 we get:
18. An omnipotent and omnibenevolent being could allow evil to take place.
Premises 7, 8, 9, and 18 are a consistent set. So 7, 8, and 9 is not a true antilogism. Naturally, we all want a reason to accept premise 18 -- a common claim is that God only allows evil when he is able to bring about a counterbalancing good from it -- but it's not necessary in the structure of the argument. As long as 18 is logically possible then premises 7, 8, and 9 do not form an antilogism.
To see an antilogism in action, let's apply it to this scene from "Gandhi."
This presents us with the following antilogism:
19. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
20. Gandhi is in South Africa.
21. "There are no colored attorneys in South Africa."
Granted, premise 20 is never actually stated, but I think we can infer it with confidence. Once again, we can accept any two premises but not all three. So Gandhi reverses premise 21 to form a genuine syllogism:
22. Gandhi is a "colored attorney."
23. Gandhi is in South Africa.
24. "There is at least one colored attorney in South Africa."
And the rest of the scene shows how dangerous logic can be.
Thursday, July 23, 2020
The Chinese Room
The Chinese Room is a philosophical argument about the nature of mind that takes the form of a thought experiment. Imagine you're in a room with two slots. Tiles are slid in one with Chinese markings on them. You have a guidebook that tells you that if the tiles have such-and-such figures on them in such-and-such order, you are to take another tile that has other markings on it and slide it through the other slot. You eventually get very good at it, maybe you even memorize the guidebook. The question is: does your competence in operating the Chinese room mean that you understand Chinese? If you answer no, ask yourself what else it means to understand a language.
The answer most people would give is meaning. You know what symbols you should put through the output slot based on what the symbols that are put through the input slot are. But that doesn't correspond to knowing what the symbols actually mean.
John Searle, who first proposed the Chinese Room Argument, said it's the difference between semantics and syntax. Knowing what symbols should be made in response to other symbols is an issue of syntax, but semantics involves meaning, and that is left out of the equation.
Here's a great Kids in the Hall skit that accidentally makes this point.
Part of the reason this is absurd is that we could only take what he's saying as actual claims if he is actually asserting them. If he's just repeating sounds that, for him, have no meaning, we have no basis for accepting the meaning that the words have -- or the meaning they would have if spoken by someone who did understand them.
If the Chinese Room Argument is sound, there are some interesting consequences. One is that, if we believe that we do in fact understand meaning, that we are able to operate on a semantic level not just on a syntactic level, then our minds cannot be completely explained in mechanistic terms. Mechanism would only explain things on the syntactic level, and if we operate on a semantic level, then our minds transcend mere cause-and-effect mechanical processes.
Two, attempts to recreate minds on a mechanistic basis, i.e. artificial intelligence, will only ever operate on a syntactic level. It could be set up to respond in exactly the same way a mind operating on a semantic level does but it would be a sham. It would be an attempt to trigger our intuition that there is a mind behind the symbols that intends to communicate meaning (remember the movie Screamers?), but insofar as they are only functioning on a syntactic level, they are in the same situation as the non-Chinese speaker in the Chinese room.
Obviously, there's a lot more to be said about this: it's a live issue in philosophy with a lot of ink being spilled on both sides. It may be possible to generate an artificial intelligence that does operate on a semantic level. But how could we tell? It's output would be identical to one that only operates on a syntactic level. But then how do we know that other people -- friends, family, strangers -- are operating on a semantic level? This is the problem of other minds, which has also caused a lot of ink to be spilled.
The answer most people would give is meaning. You know what symbols you should put through the output slot based on what the symbols that are put through the input slot are. But that doesn't correspond to knowing what the symbols actually mean.
John Searle, who first proposed the Chinese Room Argument, said it's the difference between semantics and syntax. Knowing what symbols should be made in response to other symbols is an issue of syntax, but semantics involves meaning, and that is left out of the equation.
Here's a great Kids in the Hall skit that accidentally makes this point.
Part of the reason this is absurd is that we could only take what he's saying as actual claims if he is actually asserting them. If he's just repeating sounds that, for him, have no meaning, we have no basis for accepting the meaning that the words have -- or the meaning they would have if spoken by someone who did understand them.
If the Chinese Room Argument is sound, there are some interesting consequences. One is that, if we believe that we do in fact understand meaning, that we are able to operate on a semantic level not just on a syntactic level, then our minds cannot be completely explained in mechanistic terms. Mechanism would only explain things on the syntactic level, and if we operate on a semantic level, then our minds transcend mere cause-and-effect mechanical processes.
Two, attempts to recreate minds on a mechanistic basis, i.e. artificial intelligence, will only ever operate on a syntactic level. It could be set up to respond in exactly the same way a mind operating on a semantic level does but it would be a sham. It would be an attempt to trigger our intuition that there is a mind behind the symbols that intends to communicate meaning (remember the movie Screamers?), but insofar as they are only functioning on a syntactic level, they are in the same situation as the non-Chinese speaker in the Chinese room.
Obviously, there's a lot more to be said about this: it's a live issue in philosophy with a lot of ink being spilled on both sides. It may be possible to generate an artificial intelligence that does operate on a semantic level. But how could we tell? It's output would be identical to one that only operates on a syntactic level. But then how do we know that other people -- friends, family, strangers -- are operating on a semantic level? This is the problem of other minds, which has also caused a lot of ink to be spilled.
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