In a possible future this may be named: "Philosophy From a Layman's Point of View", playing on Quine's "From a Logical Point of View".
This whole (web-)page of my writings belongs to my person, i.e., © Terje Lea / Terje L. F. Olsnes-Lea / Leonardo F. Olsnes-Lea 2004 - 2011. Make no mistake about it!
Update: 02.07.2011.
Links to the various arguments. Please click the first letter.
Epistemology, On the Goodman's New Riddle of Induction
Philosophy of Science, Suggestion to Solution of the Paradox of the Ravens
Epistemology, The Transmission Argument
Philosophy of Science, The Efficiency Argument
Ethics, The River Argument and The Resources Divide
Metaphysics, 1 Considerations of the Logic of David Hume in Metaphysics Philosophy,
2 The Problem of Evil and the Causation Theory to Make a New Theory of God and to Near St. Thomas on His
Postulations
Philosophy of Religion, A Solution to the Problem of Evil - A Theodicy
Philosophy of Science, Reinforced Falsification
Ethics, Basic Beliefs for Deontological Theories
Metaphysics, Another Proof of the External World
Metaphysics, An Answer to Identity
Philosophy of Science, The Power of a Single Span of Time - an Instance - Contrary to Hume on
Induction - The Refutation of the Problem of Induction
Philosophy of Science, Criticism of Kuhn's Paradigms - Building Babel's Tower
Epistemology, Comment on Brains in Vats
Philosophy of Mind, Comment on Zombies
Philosophy of Science, (Work for) A Proper Arch for Science - Criticism of Quine and Others
Philosophy of Science, On Scientific Revolutions
Philosophy of Science, On the Assertion That All Observation is Theory-Laden
Logics, On Axioms
Logics, On Paradoxes
Ethics, Ethical Objectivity - Objection to Arguments of Companions in Guilt
Philosophy of Mind, Argument for Dualism
Philosophy of Science, Comment on Imre Lakatos and Evolution Theory
Philosophy of Mind, Comment on the Knowledge Argument
Philosophy of Religion, A Challenge to Richard Dawkins and the Atheists
Ethics, A Modal Objection to Rawls
Metaphysics, Five Arguments For Free Will
Logics, Opinions on Gödel's Theorems of Incompleteness and Possibly Tarski
Ethics, Wittgensteinian Ethics
Metaphysics, Remark on Truth - Plain Realist View
Philosophy of Language, Solution to the Descriptive Problem of Superman versus Clark Kent
Philosophy of Language/Logics, The Relation Between Syntax and Semantics in Terms of Reduction
Philosophy of Mathematics, Over Principia Mathematica by B. R. and A. N. W.
Philosophy of Language, An Attack on Indexicality
Philosophy of Science, A Mapping of (Descriptive, Nomothetical) Laws in Psychology / This
argument is last updated!
Note: The most newly created argument is always placed lowest on the page.
Epistemology, On the
Goodman's New Riddle of Induction
The very riddle goes like this:
'Suppose that all emeralds examined before a certain time t are green. At time t, then, our observations support the hypothesis that all emeralds are green; and this is in accord with our definition of confirmation. Our evidence statements assert that emerald a is green, that emerald b is green, and so on; and each confirms the general hypothesis that all emeralds are green. So far, so good.
Now let me introduce another predicate less familiar than 'green'. It is the predicate 'grue' and it applies to all things examined before t just in case they are green but to other things just in case they are blue. Then at time t we have, for each evidence statement asserting that a given emerald is green, a parallel evidence statement asserting that that emerald is grue. And the statements that emerald a is grue, that emerald b is grue, and so on, will each confirm the general hypothesis that all emeralds are grue. Thus according to our definition, the prediction that all emeralds subsequently examined will be green and the prediction that all will be grue are alike confirmed by evidence statements describing the same observations. But if an emerald subsequently examined is grue, it is blue and hence not green. Thus although we are well aware which of the two incompatible predictions is genuinely confirmed according to our present definition. Moreover, it is clear that if we simply choose an appropriate predicate, then on the basis of these same observations we shall have equal confirmation, by our definition, for any prediction whatever about other emeralds - or indeed anything else.'
'From Nelson Goodman's 'The new riddle of induction' in Fact, Fiction and Forecast - 3rd ed. Bobbs-Merrill 1973.
My answer and response to the riddle:
Introductory note.
If you compare David Humes original view on this issue, you will find something striking:
Do we have any knowledge of events which we have not experienced or are not now experiencing?
His answer to this is:
Inductive reasoning has proved reliable in the past.
Therefore inductive reasoning is (generally) reliable.
David Hume is therefore considered an inductivist in epistemology.
This introductory note may strike you as puzzling, but you can imagine I'm writing a book. Alright?
The serious argument against Goodman.
So the discerned situation from the original statement of David Hume to Nelson Goodman's new riddle of induction is the following and what I have written:
It is like detonating and thereby suspending the world and the suspended person in it to identify something else that would be totally different than the suspended world. The riddle constitutes a paradox. It simply states that time cannot be manipulated in any way more than the material world that epistemology was there to explain in the first place.
'Scene 1. Take 1. Hmmm... You've heard? Yeah, I have. What are we going to do about it? Let's do a Merleau-Ponty on this one.' End.
It takes out a part of what it is trying to contribute to. And by taking out that part you ruin the whole of the reality you are already trying to explain.
Comment on Lawfulness. With lawfulness, it's presumed that your set of observations complies and is exhaustive for all conditions this lawfulness concerns. This means that your set in your span of time, instance, is complete to the degree that information overall in reality is contained and is complete in this span of time, instance.
In the opposite, to have a confirmation bias to everything you experience, you have to believe that:
* there is no possibility for describing lawfulness in reality.
* there is no lawfulness in nature, simply!
This should be contradictive to intelligence to most people. I can't see any possible history of earth with a reality from those two beliefs if they are to represent reality.
If Goodman resorts to the category of dimensions, one should think about what a huge impact it really is to assume a manipulation of time. If I say, at time, t1, everything is normal, at time, t2 one dimension of space disappears so the reality is now one dimension of time and two dimensions of space. Are people likely to accept this? Surely not! So making this shift of properties in substance is just like that. Perhaps the 2-dimensions of space are more credible if they are considered in objects. That this lollipop of ice-cream suddenly becomes flat as a paper. Well, this is just the starter.
Point nr. 2. If these properties change, why can't the whole earth turn green uniformly. Everything in the world becomes green. This is counter-intuitive. One can continue these thoughts with something like constant changes of colours, randomly, objects that are blue turn red and equally random they change colour back again. This is also counter-intuitive. The Goodman's paradox touches on the very pre-condition to make consistent descriptions and thus making science. The manipulation of time in the paradox is very unreasonable, like, when you consider it, has no possibility in any reality. Let me mention Descartes. If we consider that Descartes in his Meditations, (M), are supposed to make consistent and coherent thoughts in one moment and then consider him to be inconsistent and incoherent in the next, we can assume that this property changing effect as a function of time is making Descartes writing his Meditations, (M'), very differently. Why do Goodman choose to make some substance change colour? Obviously, the properties of the mind are more immediate to us than some substance. Some substance can be turned into nuclear weapons! To counter this argument, we have to prove what substance is and in such a way that there can't be any shift of property as a function of time.
Principally, colour is a property in chemistry and if we are to change the colour of this substance, the very substance itself has to change. When we are in the world, we experience continuity in a consistent and coherent way. The thoughts flow naturally through our minds. When we have these properties working in our minds and these minds are in the world, why shouldn't it be reasonable the same properties of reality that make our minds work so smoothly also govern the matters that are external to us? My point is, of course, that time is so fundamental that there is no room for properties to change as a function of time. (I think you should disregard the natural process of substances breaking down to other substances as a matter of corrosion or deterioration. These changes have explanations in science, including matters that relate to radiation.
According to Goodman's standard, it's logically equal to consider property changes in all other aspects, especially regarding matters in the external world. One can play around with colour, taste, smell, hardness, whatever. So your sugar tastes like chilli, is it still sugar? What about "weight"? Something is suddenly super-heavy. Why isn't this mentioned as an example? I believe it's because it's obviously strange to put it this way and Goodman's Paradox would fall away if he would play with the property of weight as weight is key in the periodic system. Finally, if one property of say green emeralds is to change, how can he limit this time-set change to only emeralds? Why can't you equally well have objects beginning to levitate? You know why? Because it would look stupid! The Goodman's Paradox is solved by Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Conclusion: The Goodman's new riddle of induction is meaningless.
By
Terje Lea
©June2004, ©September2009 and ©February2010
Philosophy of Science, Suggestion to Solution of the Paradox of the Ravens
First, from Induction and Probability
The Paradox of Ravens:
It is plausible to suppose that 'All ravens are black' can be incrementally confirmed by the observation of one of its instances, namely, a black crow. However, 'All ravens are black' is logically equivalent to 'All non-black things are non-ravens'. By parity of reasoning, an instance of this statement, namely, any non-black non-raven (e.g., a white table), should incrementally confirm it. Many would object to this and say this is absurd like in cases of justifying indoor ornithology. Moreover, the equivalence condition - whatever confirms a hypothesis must equally confirm any statement logically equivalent to it.
- Partly from "The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy" by General Editor Robert Audi.
My suggestion to a resolve:
All ravens are black. Formally expressed in logic as: (x)(Px>Qx)
All non-black things are non-ravens. Logically equivalent: (x)(~Qx>~Px)
Apparently, first one could be inclined to believe that (x)(~Qx>~Px) is absurd, as mentioned above, since it would confirm (x)(Px>Qx) in an almost infinite number of instances.
I name the form of (x)(Px>Qx) for S and I name the form of (x)(~Qx>~Px) for T.
Let me presume a number of variants of objects for S and T to be 1 billion. It is a small world. A child's world perhaps, concerning this child's experience.
A raven will then be 1 of 1 billion objects and so on for others with similar forms of S and T.
Then I would in other words seek to confirm by either one 2 billions statements by every observation for our raven.
First a billion of similar forms of S and then a billion of similar forms of T.
As all observations naturally will increase in scale, up to 1 billion in this example, and so will also similar forms of S and T increase in scale, in combination, 1 billion in this example.
I may have gotten the mathematics wrong in this. There's a suspicion that the total number of confirmations, both negative and positive, is actually 1 billion in the 2nd power, 10^9^2=10^18. Feel free to email me on this.
This will lead to that all observations and non-observations get classified and will either be confirmed positively or negatively.
All observations/classifications of objects are being confirmed in parallels.
What I then mean is that it is sensible and reasonable to make observations of 'an object, material or immaterial, that is not' as much as one would make observations of other 'an object, material or immaterial, that is'.
Example:
Sir David Attenborough, the Nature-celebrity, is out in the wilderness identifying new birds with his binoculars. As he notices them he identifies them by their natural distinctions. He checks with the referance and finds that this bird is not the bird he thought it would be and sums up what the bird he found is not. Until he finds the similarities of the bird he is watching or until he identifies it as a novelty, he assumes that this bird is in the book. But the last point is of course that he knows that most birds are already identified. The human race has multiplied into such numbers that most in the wilderness is known to it. From all of the instances found in the book of birds one must now conclude with the fact that this bird is this bird and none of the other. Although they may be close to another due to course of evolution.
Why should it constitute a paradox as long as the classes of the perceived objects stay the same? For God's sake, pardon me, this is experience. Who would not argue for experience? You should really go out and explore the world in nature or in books and share with others, implicitly your life gets richer. I think, with the introduction of life-worlds, whether they are personal or shared, communicated, that "The Paradox of the Ravens" becomes solved. Life-worlds are finite and nice to play with in this relation.
Comment on Life-World. Life-world in this sense is the accumulation of personal experiences from reality, possibly as much as from yourself internally up to this point as from outside your consciousness. Here I'm using it primarily as a view from the classical external world, that is, only experiences and views of reality are considered.
The overall healthy issue is this: It just limits experience to its sensible and reasonable field of application. Let's assume that we then level the analysis at our life-worlds which are really finite up to the present point and at the point of your death, but not until then. Ultimately, we'll have to admit that we have no final knowledge of biological variations other than formulated as "knowledge of biological variations" on Earth now, [date]. There may even be issues then, too, like with the definite knowledge of past, having yet to uncover the traces of previously extinguished ravens which have looked exactly like those today. I think the genetic engineering has turned the whole world on its head in that it now can create everything that we have in past thought of as impossible. Perhaps, some team of crazy scientists make these "unearthly" creatures real in the nature. The future is really blurred!
Considerations I can make. My approach to the Paradox may be simple, but the consequence is deeper than the appearance we commonly jump. Affirming ravens of this colour or that aside, it's our wish to know what the world is, but this is at present beyond us. If we are hypothetical about it, we would have to include incredibly many factors about the ravens in order to make the scientific picture complete. Let's start with the DNA of ravens. How do we know the specific generation of this DNA and what entails the DNA to make the ravens in the colour or colours (GMO for instance) they are in. What environment creates the raven? I can only acknowledge that we are far from that kind of knowledge. Thus, being in nature and making knowledge of its beings is a naive approach, an intuition. Unless we get the equation right on genetics, nurture and environment, lawfulness inherent, we are bound to be restricted by the simplicity of our life-worlds, experience. We dearly want to say we know it all and die peacefully, but reality is just different from that! There's probably infinity or at least, a scope of this universe that stretches well beyond our appetite for time. If we are to do justice to it, we can't settle with anything less than the possibilities in reality itself before we are truly happy. If you ask me, I'd say I can go for it! :-)
Remark1:
It should be added that many people have come up with resolves on the Paradox of the Ravens, but I have not read any of them yet.
Remark2:
This was first written, my version of the resolve, 14.02.2000. I later edited it 25.07.2004, 19.09.2009, 21.09.2009, 14.11.2009, 23.11.2009 and 24.11.2009.
Remark3:
This is just the Bayesian account. I don't take it further as the Bayesians do. I believe it is impossible to make a certain prediction unless you have a finite selection to choose from. In most cases of reality, especially when it comes to new discoveries, you never get this chance. 11.01.2009.
Terje Lea © 2004-2009
Epistemology, The Transmission Argument
The transmission is, of course, that fact p enters your mind and that you are able to justify this notion of fact p entering your mind. Thus, the transmission should be very clear!
The Transmission Argument has been my line of thought ever since I've started to investigate epistemological circumstances and eyeing the possibility to express it in words as I've now done! This is the reason for this writing's title even today when it may just as well be "Epistemological Integrity as Decisive Property"!
Tagline: You need to set the environment right in order to get results and you also need the right investigation on that environment to get results.
This work is meant as an addition to or a critique of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
It is a matter of being in the spin so to speak. Information can be said to be fluctuating from what is perceived to the perceiver, but also from the perceiver to what is being perceived in the way that the logic of the perceiver has an effect on what is seen. This can be recognised as a postulation. The issue is that perception has some integrity connected to it both from the perceived and from the perceiver. In this way the words, the idiom, 'to be in the situation' comes to its full rights as with this 'an undivided being (between us) between the perceived and the perceiver.
The classic, epistemologic resolve:
1 fact p
2 person a believes fact p,
3 person a is justified, objectively, that fact p
Concl.: Person a has knowledge
Further comment:
1. Let's say you have a 100% hunch to what you are looking for.
2. Let's say you have a 100% data-material to what you are looking for.
3. Let's say you have a 100% investigation-data integrity or "fit".
Sum: You have the answer to what you are looking for.
Dictionary.com defines integrity as "2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire" which is in this, my, interpretation to be a relationship between yourself as the scientist and your object of knowledge. The relationship between you and the object is whole in some sense, whether to a complex or parts of it.
Collated into:
1 fact p
2 person a has 100% hunch of fact p
3 person a believes fact p
4 person a has 100% data-material to what he is looking for
5 person a has 100% investigation-data integrity or "fit" to what he is looking for
6 person a is justified, objectively, that fact p
(7) Conclusion: person a has knowledge
This certifies knowledge and it is irrefutable.
Various comments:
You only need one of the percentages to be 100% and the other two to be to the least degree to have this certified and irrefutable knowledge! But then again, I've not been wrong in writing 100% on all three of them and claim the same! That I'm writing this now can't be held against me in my opinion.
You should also note that the two sentences or lines, "2 person a has 100% hunch of fact p" and "4 person a has 100% data-material to what he is looking for", are redundant in the strict sense and that they are mostly added for extra sense, explanatory impact, that may enable people to have more use of this information. All this should be obvious!
Thus this kind of Epistemic Integrity is not a virtue in this context. It's a requirement.
While Frederick F. Schmitt writes about integrity as a kind of virtue, I think of it as kind of (natural) property about you and your relationship to your data (and to the end-point of investigation, being a kind of revelation of new data, possibly, a discovery). To formulate a "law" is rather a matter of aptitude to one's own skill in relation to what you have before you and thus not so much a kind of "Integrity" in my sense because the propositions, logics and knowledge base are already in your head. Thus I think it's absurd to speak of Integrity toward what is already in your head and mostly a matter of logics and mathematics to put together. If you however, become well acqainted with your data, have a great "Integrity", then you may generate this "law" more easily. Thus this "law"-making may be a kind of "Integrity"-issue in this sense.
Another remark on Schmitt's Epistemic Integrity which I find is used to tear away credibility from the Perspectivists who most people, I believe, see as unserious people in Epistemology. Therefore Epistemic Integrity destroys Perspectivism. In Schmitt's perception, by my interpretation, a charge is being made against unreasonable or dubious epistemologists claiming the Perspectivism position.
Epistemic Integrity then has to be decided among a larger community for it to be credited to a person or to a proposition that's held by this person. One should remember that Integrity in English most often equals Honesty and telling the truth. Thus from the ethical Integrity to epistemic Integrity, Integrity enters the meaning of honesty and reasonability concerning epistemological views/propositions/claims!
Therefore, as Schmitt's Integrity is designed to remove Perspectivism as a credible position, I design Integrity as a property of your own relation to research data that, in my opinion, leads to certified and irrefutable knowledge! Not that this is important to write, but it seems to me that Schmitt is using Integrity differently than I do, hence I cite Merleau-Ponty differently than he does in that same respect. My description is also significantly different from his and I think it's plausible that these 2 different interpretations can be given Epistemic Integrity. You can think about this for yourself... I leave it at that for now, possibly until the purchase of Kornblith's book (2001).
Educational note. It's implicit that "data" and indeed "fact p" are all data leading up to and including fact p! If you are to acquire fact p, you do indeed need to also know the necessary underlying factors. I think this is pointed out by examinations of Entailment in Epistemology. While Entailment should be logically valid and sound if properly set up in logical structure, it may be alluringly simple to consider Epistemology only as setting up some logical relations. Therefore, it must be clear that I see epistemology as hard work, most of the time, being thorough investigation and invention of right words to right contexts and design of apparatus and approach to closure of examination!
The Closure Principle, loosely, by example of Sir Alexander Fleming and his discovery of the Penicillin:
1. Rubble takes place with various accidents such that fact of Penicillin obtains
2. By his competence, Sir Alexander Fleming detects some anomaly to be further described
3. Sir Alexander Fleming determines this to be Penicillin
4. Sir Alexander Fleming has made the Penicillin knowledge to the world (and as I see it, it will stand as knowledge forever!!!)
So how do you want it? I think all knowledge can be expressed through such a chain of entailing descriptions by this Closure Principle. My Integrity stands thus as a kind of working approach, one that determines the relationship between the fact P and researcher, person, A for knowledge to irrefutably obtain. I think we are facing the Utopia for Epistemology in this decade to come!
By false belief status the model splits like this:
Model 1
person A has belief in fact P falsely
fact P (non-existing)
person A is not justified in belief of fact P
(simply because one can NEVER truly justify a false belief)
Model 2
person A has belief in fact F (non-existing)
fact F
person A is not justified in belief of fact F
(simply because one can NEVER truly justify a belief isn't there, that is, far more obvious than model 1)
By mere illusion of belief (possibly not necessary) the model splits like this:
Model 1
person A has belief in fact P by mere illusion (also falsely, thus)
fact P (non-existing)
person A is not justified in belief of fact P
(simply because one can NEVER truly justify a false belief)
Model 2
person A has belief in fact F (non-existing)
fact F of how the illusion arises
person A is not justified in belief of fact F
(simply because one can NEVER truly justify a belief isn't there, that is, far more obvious than model 1 I'd like to add here that even if the illusion isn't detected by person A, there is most certainly explanatory force in adding this explanation, epistemologically speaking, as above)
The argument doesn't include the Integrity stuff because it's simplified! Besides, Integrity can also be seen as a part of Justification.
You may think that this argument undermines the Gettier argument and I think so too!
In the future, I may consider to add examples to this The Transmission Argument. We'll see!
Terje Lea © November, 2004, Terje Lea © March, 2006, Terje Lea © July, 2010, Terje Lea © January, 2011 and Terje Lea © February, 2011.
A comment on integrity is added 05.11.2009.
Note: the last comment has by and large first been published on the Philosophy Now forum 11.02.2011.
Note2: The following paragraph has been made 09.11.2004 (2004-11-09) and it is: It is a matter of being in the spin so to speak. Information can be said to be fluctuating from what is perceived to the perceiver, but also from the perceiver to what is being perceived in the way that the logic of the perceiver has an effect on what is seen. This can be recognised as a postulation. The issue is that perception has some integrity connected to it both from the perceived and from the perceiver. In this way the words, the idiom, 'to be in the situation' comes to its full rights as with this 'an undivided being (between us) between the perceived and the perceiver.
Note3: Some of this text is "secured" by RSS data since 2010.
Philosophy of Science, The Efficiency Argument
Definition of Efficiency (one of them): Accomplishment of or ability to accomplish a job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort. -'Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary from Gramercy.
The solution by The Efficiency Argument is two-sided. It demands the theory to be as slim as possible and that it successfully describes the phenomena in the observation set it is supposed to describe.
In a sense, this gives the right map/"theory" to the right landscape/"phenomena in the observation set", to be blunt.
This work is meant as a criticism insofar I like to shatter the kind of skepticism Feyerabend is promoting, or a complementation, contrast of the book, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, I think, of Paul Feyerabend.
I.e.: The whole of science is explainable by the sole use of HDM (hypothetico-deductive-method).
25.02.2005. A possible mindset of a beginning: a 'fact' may be something else than a fact, but 'a result' is usually a result of a rational process and is therefore more desirable to obtain than 'a fact'. It is why I would find 'a result' more plausible as an objective to a theory of science rather than 'a fact'. This underpins the continuation that will look at all processes like methods and like everything else in order to make a system of discoveries into processes. The rational processes will in turn make 'facts' into results.
05.03.2007. My work will be in the crossfire between Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend where I emphasise HDM and Efficiency with Impact sided with efficiency. It will be something with a touch of foundationalism (inductivism has died).
It's worth noting that The Efficiency Argument solves nicely the tack-on problem in Philosophy of Science because it cuts the theory down to the minimum required to describe the experimental data.
Efficiency goes through the whole row of science: efficient framework/method (HDM, Fallibilism, Falsificationism/Confirmation) which makes efficient theories (minimally complex and sufficient enough to serve the empirical foundation) which in turn effectively describes the observation set of phenomena correctly. In essence, any concept or proposition that's added to the theory in question has to add meaning to the theory's empirical foundation.
The Efficiency Argument entails:
* The Efficiency Argument itself
* Fallibilism
* HDM
* Falsification/Confirmation
* (Possibly Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein)
* Significance graphs (by Philip Kitcher)
* The theories themselves
* The process of making these theories
(There may be minor changes to this list, but none of them will be from literature that's published after 02.02.2010 and the additional information that's written to this title after this date, is also of no crucial importance to making this declaration of what has already been presented here. What has been written under this title up to this date is sufficient itself for making the declaration except this possible, little addition that has been mentioned.)
There's no allowance here that relieves you of the need to explain empirical meanings/consequences for example. To describe by minimum requirements doesn't mean that you leave something out of the picture or that you can leave something out of the picture, justifyingly.
I think the realists are well supported by this, being a scientific realist, myself.
When I mention "efficiency" it's for setting focus on possible limits for speculation in shaping (every) theory according to it's empirical foundation and the novel conceptual use/utility. I'm not sure if this explains it properly, but I'm in the beginning of the project (although being at it since 2004).
Additional virtue of this argument is that it allows some metaphysics to be included as long as it serves the cause of scientific efficiency. This has been a problem with other demarcation criteria, famously exemplified by Wittgenstein declaring his work of metaphysical nature to be burnt after having been used. This is no longer a requirement!
It should also be commonplace to remark that reading science should inform you of the latest devlopment and the smartest solution to what you're reading, normatively speaking, insofar the science presented really is science and not a document of history and that the science has been carried out properly in being the current, best science. In effect, you're always rewarded in getting informed and updated on a scientific problem, theoretically, in the science being the latest, newest science.
I don't deny that (1)The Efficiency Argument can't be rephrased as what contributes to science or what has use to science, thus you can think of (2)The Argument of Contribution or (3)The Argument of Use/Utility. These 3 arguments should all be totally equivalent if formulated in the same (somewhat) scope.
Occam's Razor may also be similar to this argument in the sense of Isaac Newton's:
"We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."
I hereby declare the Demarcation Problem in Philosophy of Science for solved by this, under The Efficiency Argument!
(Hurray! Fireworks!)
Terje Lea©December, 2004, Terje Lea©February, 2005, Terje Lea©March, 2007, Terje Lea©January, 2010 and Terje Lea©February, 2010.
(The Declaration for the Solution to the Problem of Demarcation in Philosophy of Science has taken place 2nd February, 2010.)
I've added Philip Kitcher's Significance graphs today, 20.02.2011 although it has been added to the writing of the Philosophy Now forum for some time now (since 18.02.2011).
Ethics, The River Argument and The Resources Divide
The river argument: There is a big river. It divides into two smaller rivers. Two boats with 2 and 20 people respectively are going downstream each river. The boat with the 20 people is in danger of going out over a waterfall and into death while the other boat drifts safely off. You as a bystander can save those 20 people by tipping a rock over in the favour of the 20 people and making them safe but by doing this you kill the 2 innocent people.
The resources divide: A hypothetical situation. The Earth is beginning to get drastically quickly depleted of resources because of numerous problems. One is beginning to see a number of solutions to this problem. One of them is that you say it this way (I picked the worst): A part of the population is put outside a condition possible to aid. Another part of the population is in a position possible to alleviate, but because of security precautions to these numerous problems one just says that this other part of the world population is also outside a situation possible to aid. And then you arrive at this conclusion that it is best if the minority third part of the world population should live as far as possible and the rest SHALL DIE! Is this fair? Discuss this out of the diversity of ethical theories, teleological as well as deontological. (I will give a possible answer later in the rhetoric fashion of a relatively free answer.)
Utilitarianism is rather a crude approach to situations of ethics. It's very much ready to kill for the benefit of what is reflected in the numbers. The Deontologist has the best approach in my eyes and is most sensitive to every life and aspect of the situation. The short answer is that the Utilitarian may opt for killing the 2 people and save the 20 while the Deontologist may opt to do nothing at all, giving warnings don't count, and thereby assume that the preceding decisions of those who die are the factors that seal their destiny. The Resources Divide is lousily put, but it's a fine deontological approach to have an active mind of searching out preventive solutions to possible situations that may occur, giving concern to every life and every facet of the environment. The Utilitarian has this cold approach of letting the quantifications rule the situations. Maybe it's so that at the best, the Utilitarian and the Deontologist come to agreement, but I've yet to see such a way of calculation happen or be possible at all. The Utilitarian is then more likely to let people die because the numbers direct such a way to act and suggesting chaos and devastation if it's not acted upon. I don't need to hide that I'm a Deontologist and that I clearly see the Utilitarian in an inferior position.
This is a note for the Bentham utilitarianism above. You can basically disregard the above comment on utilitarianism. It's now some teaching of the history of ethics more than an argument. Today, in contemporary ethics, it's considered obsolete.
Firstly, it seems that Deontological Ethics and Rule Utilitarianism converge into the same good ethical picture. Further, Rule Utilitarianism and Act Utilitarianism resemble the discussion of Universals and Particulars in Metaphysics in which case I just say both! I bow to this. I can't see any important differences.
Utilitarianism Ethics = Deontological Ethics (identity logical relation)
I only choose deontology of the (Neo-) Kantian type because I think it reflects ethical values on a deeper basis. I no longer, in the modern, contemporary sense, separate between rule-utilitarianism, act-utilitarianism and deontology because I'm of the firm belief they can be given an expression that make the three systems equate one another. On top of that, virtue ethics is a very strong contender for my personal belief in a type of ethics, but I consider it too loose for now and it seems incredibly difficult to pin down those virtues you consider virtues in a precise and univocal way.
By Terje Lea, 19.03.2005, 12.11.2009, 30.01.2010, 23.03.2010 and 04.05.2010.
Metaphysics, 1 Considerations of the Logic of David Hume in Metaphysics Philosophy,
2 The Problem of Evil and the Causation Theory to Make a New Theory of God and to Near St. Thomas on His
Postulations
A finding of David Hume's reasoning suggests:
Application of thinking doesn't seem to be consistent with his theory of causation and his
theory of the problem of Evil. This is simply put by
comparing the equivalents of theories. Stated like this and only considering his pattern of thought, ie. logic, it looks like this:
The Problem of Evil by David Hume
If evil in the world is from the intention of the Deity,
then He is not benevolent.
If evil in the world is contrary to His intention, then He is not omnipotent. But it is either in accordance
with His intention or contrary to it. Therefore, either
the Deity is not benevolent or He is not omnipotent.
The Causation theory by David Hume
Cause and effect is a matter of, first, an observed constant
(ie., repeated) conjunction of events of one kind with events
of another kind; second, contiguity in space and time; third,
cause must precede effect.
The Problem of Evil by David Hume & The Causation theory by David Hume
Finishing: It gave me a good lead to investigate David Hume in this way. It lead me to Leibniz although noticing him from earlier.
Cause necessarily precedes effect
Transformed into (it doesn't account for all the elements):
If effect in the world is from cause, then cause and effect
are set in necessary connection.
If effect in the world is not consistently connected with cause, then cause and effect is not connected.
But effect is either in accordance with cause or it is not.
Therefore, either cause and effect are set in necessary connection or the cause and effect are not necessarily connected. If I take it from there I can lead it into the following.
Source:
Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide
By Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans (3rd ed)
ISBN 0-631-21321-X. An ideal choice for the beginner.
The Problem of Evil and the Causation Theory to Make a New Theory of God and to Near St. Thomas on His Postulations The Problem of Evil by Leibniz and Comments to the work of Leibniz
Appendices of Theodicy, G.W. Leibniz. Summary of the Controversy Reduced to Formal Arguments.
Comment to Objection 1 and its prosyllogism.
If God created the Universe and beyond to prove its own nature then God created a super-system even to God. God made system-Universe-and-beyond as super-God-system. And also, God made system-Universe-and-beyond God. Ergo, God makes itself, perhaps own buddies, perhaps they are necessarily of God that in return make up the same matter, God unconditionally.
As opposed to Heaven and the corrective Hell where Heaven is of rightness and Hell of wrongness. Where right is right and possibility of wrong is necessitated from that right. In comparison to anti-apple and anti-science there is nothing, but to right there is wrong. Apple and science do not have natural counterparts and if consideration is followed with apple, science and Heaven it now seems tangible. The apple may not prove eternal, but as natural construction it may prove as everlasting as nature itself. The analogy of science with Babel's Tower is not so bad either. What is depicted here are the cores of eternal, in its own right, apple, science and rightful Heaven. To speak of something temporary, like Hell, is useless when speaking of eternal. In math then, 1 to infinity is nothing for considering lim or limits.
The Problem of Evil.
With Leibniz, freely and approximately, you can set up the following. If the world is the best world of possible worlds from the intention of the Deity, then He is benevolent. If the bad in the world is according to His intention from the logic of a right action gives a possible wrong action, then He is omnipotent. Therefore, He is both benevolent and omnipotent.
The Causation Theory. By 21.06.2006 into:
If events in the world are necessarily from epistemologic contiguity,
then the events are for real in epistemologic sense.
If events in the world are necessarily phenomenologically (telepathic realities: energetically, energies or monads or so) linked,
then events are phenomenologically linked.
And so, events are both in accordance to epistemologic and phenomenologic realities.
Thus, events are necessary in epistemologic contiguity and phenomenologically linked.
I have in this notice have had the feeling that it's necessary to point out that phenomenology takes precedence to epistemology and that epistemology takes precedence to physics and the natural sciences.
Concluding part!
There is, with Leibniz, an inaccordance of David Hume and why he is not compatible regards to logic when one compares the argument of Problem of Evil and the argument of the Causation Theory. It is now changed and can be read in a more whole and unite way. Welcome!
Now you can yourselves begin to make the further inferences from the resemblances given. As a comment, however, let's say that there's more between heaven and earth than we can imagine and that we should pay respect to the stories swirling around in the human world. What is therefore given is a list of priorities where you're welcome to put in your perspective.
Now, to calm you down for this seemingly crazy comparison, my point is that the idea of God and the idea of Causality can't be contradictory (to eachother) because if they are, it becomes patently obvious that God is an untenable idea. Therefore, the logic of God must align with the logic of Causality and consequently the epistemological contiguity enters the picture! Further then, Hume must presume the inexistence of God by his presentation of God, even though his logic actually hits several religious thinkers and writers! To be honest, another target by Hume may be to attack these religious people's ill perceived views if I'm to be just to Hume.
Terje Lea©2006, January to June, 2009, July and 2010, July
Mark: 14.01.2006 12.23 AM.
Philosophy of Religion, A Solution to the Problem of Evil - A Theodicy
God is creating the best possible world. In creating the best possible world, God chooses the best possible process, namely the evolution. In showing shortcomings, people may fail the belief of God and replace partially that belief with ideas that lack in quality and therefore adhere to the instance of nothing. The beliefs that lack in quality make people fail. A bad quality is a quality that lacks in greater quality. The bad quality is therefore marked with something that is missing, it is marked with a degree of nothing. Evil is therefore of instance of nothing. So there it is, the world of something and nothing. God is represented with full and all quality. Perfection in this is open to all but it is of course difficult. In making the small great God is going full circle hence God’'s own nature and this constitutes the perfect drama of full quality. It doesn’t necessarily end there. It can continue into more circles of even new dramas of the full scale of smaller quality processes into greater quality processes and back again to the full quality of God. The conclusion of this is naturally that we are a part of a perfect drama between the gravities of nothing and all on the path back to God from where we originated.
I see no logical necessity for humans to be both good and evil. They can be, I think, very good and little evil. They can also be, I think, extremely good and very little evil. Possibly, humans should have the ability to be all good and not evil, but this is up to you!
Remark: This is essentially the wording of Plotinus' argument that can be found in his work, Enneads. There may be elements in this Solution that are not entailed by Plotinus'. It has been made clear to me by Peter Adamson in Philosophy Bites which I can highly recommend. The Plotinus' argument may also have been mentioned by prof. Jon Wetlesen in a course in ethics in 2000.
Terje Lea©2008, March, ©2009, October, ©2010, February, ©2010, March.
Philosophy of Science, Reinforced Falsification
I intend to combine cognition and falsification to reinforce falsification. Work will commence today.
By Terje Lea, 15.07.2008.
Ethics, Basic Beliefs for Deontological Theories
There is objective morality. What you do to the common pool of humanity is what you bear with you to the moment of death. This includes attitudes to humanity, as well.
In my belief of objectivity in this regard, I think there are good possibilities of plausibly arguing for morality to exist, that actions can be described as good or bad according to the subject of ethics and morals. As such, I think one can take it further to make the rational case to other people of reason of deciding objectively what the best consists in. The framework for this can be as extensive as every legal framework as I see it, without imposing particular problems.
I don't deny that moral mistakes happen on intent or faulty grounds of some of the reasons you describe. It should however be clear that the actual ethical system needs to be, first and foremost, rational, reasonable and plausible for it to be convincing. It can't be flawed. If you then attach whatever you like to it, the outcome should be the same. That is, reason is first and the rest, optionally, follows. Objectivity should suggest whatever in the actual situation that can be caught on camera, documented, traced. If you still have qualms about objectivity, you can interpret it as intersubjective. The subjects considering the situation at hand must be rational and able to agree what is the best ethical solution.
There are wrong and right actions in the subject, a human construct, of Ethics and Morals. We sense right and wrong actions and we sort them in a human made domain of ethics and morals. I don't deny there may be more fundamental truths of ethics and morals reflected in nature, a kind of "moral" expression existing in nature itself, but this is a longshot at best.
By Terje Lea, 15.03.2009, 11.11.2009, 12.11.2009 and 23.11.2009.
Metaphysics, Another Proof of the External World
I am and my being of perception is my internal world. This internal world is my mind, but since I have a mind and genetics tell me I'm a genetic representation of my parents, the function of the mind must follow my being that has been given the birth by my parents, therefore my parents must have minds too and as people die, my parents will and I remain. As my parents represents others who also die, I die. That which remains when I'm dead, is the external world, the world between myself, my parents and others.
By Terje Lea, 21.03.2009.
Metaphysics, An Answer to Identity
The origin that is the basis of your parents including genetics, the persistence of the processes in the consciousness, and the history of this consciousness are that which makes up the Identity of a Person in Metaphysics. Alzheimer's disease may question a number of issues. What do you think about split personality? What is the identity of a person that suffers from Alzheimer's disease? The things that have been mediated over and should be mediated over.
By Terje Lea, 21.07.2009.
Philosophy of Science, The Power of a Single Span of Time - an Instance
- Contrary to Hume on Induction - The Refutation of the Problem of Induction
First, the classical view on inference of induction is very mistaken. We have this moment right now. What do we make from it? Nothing changes. Everything changes. We are born and we are going to die. Life doesn't change at all. They are variations around the laws of nature. Along with scientific discoveries come change. The atom bomb has changed everything. Now nothing is the same. The internet is being born and again nothing is the same. We are set between regularities and irregularities. This is only seemingly so, I say. If we are to be deadly serious about our experience of nature that experience only reflects laws of nature. Clearly, the laws of nature can't be suspended. So the very attack on the classical inference from induction is this. When we experience something we actually perceive properties of the laws of nature. Of course, the nature is complex and it is thus compelling us to be very thorough! To hypothesise, if we could see one law of nature in effect at one time, span of time. We don't see this in several spans of time, but we get only this one chance in this example. So my assertion is consequently that because of the complexity of reality, we are used to perceiving facets of nature rather laboriously. We want to isolate instances to reflect only this mechanism that we are suspecting is a law of nature. So the real experience is really yielding truth in its very first instant. To be exact, you only need one case. When we see this apple falling from a tree, we should infer in that instant that objects can fall. When we see a birth of a human being we can infer that every human being is given birth. I believe that there are laws concerning the formation of the fetus regarding that particular biological system. I take theory of evolution to support me in that there can be no fire-breathing dragon emerging from the womb of a woman. We need only the one instance. The remaining instances are really only psychological assurances and refinements of this one, first instance. The difference of my view from Hume's view should be striking. Hume asserts we can never know anything, we continously infer from regularities. I think logic, for example, reflects lawfulness of nature and so I infer that if nature exists somewhere, it has to conform to logic as we perceive it. It can't be any different. Now we have this situation that each instance, span of time, is sufficient in themselves and this is very opposite to Hume's view. This is new to philosophy, isn't it?
What has been largely underdeterming our sense that everything remains the same, I suggest, have been scientific discoveries, be they the roundness of planet earth, black swans in Australia, the fantastic size of the universe, the minuteness of the smallest particles in nature, the common structure of DNA of living organisms, and power of fission and fusion, energy that is contained in matter. We see children sometime drawing purple dogs and objects rather alien in nature because they lack this notion of expectation or prediction. Their knowledge is not at our level, the complete in a sense. It's quite funny to think about the sci-fi writers wildness in exaggerating the changes of, let's say, the next 50 years. If there is something we can be certain of in this regard, it is that they exaggerate the future and that it will probably look more common and hospitable than what they write. It will nevertheless be different.
I believe the laboratory instance of a falling object given certain conditions is that all objects in the same situation fall. Is the notion of falling objects a habit of the mind? On my account, no!
Given the laboratory conditions of earth, like that is possible, it does indeed guarantee that it will forever be so. This is the very core of my message. The complexity of nature confounds us in our observations. It does, however, not mean that we can't learn from it if we have a good clue of what to look for, perhaps due to the discernment of that very complexity.
I like to note in considering Descartes' Meditations we are led to believe in the difference of mind vs. the body and the external world. Further there is the conclusion "I think or I doubt, therefore I am", but it's generally overlooked that his meditations, outside of what he says, also give notions of nature's consistency and coherency of the environment of where that mind is situated wherever that may be, I assume in the brain, and of that mind itself. So clearly Descartes' demon that is bewildering us, is unable to deny us exactly that consistency and coherency. I believe we can use this to bridge our minds into the external world. Nature as a whole is consistent and coherent. We can perhaps use this as an axiom to make assertions of logic and structure in nature. It is worth mentioning that the very ceramic jar 3000 years ago is still a ceramic jar today. The consistency and coherency of nature has enabled us to rely on our descriptive domain for at least the last 5000 years. Changes in our perceptions have not come from within our descriptive domain. We might deduct earthquakes from that. Godzilla will never tear itself out of the ground of the earth to lay ruin to the world. This we can say with absolute certainty today. Our descriptive domain is this way!
Am I arguing for some custom? Absolutely not! Isn't the notion of token observation contrary to the notion of custom of observation? Some people call Hume a scepticist in this regard. Isn't this correct?
Traditionally, both Hume and Goodman are being quite some obstacles to constructive efforts in Philosophy of Science. At the same time, I like to pave the way through them, round Kuhn in showing that the enterprise of science is about scaling that Babel's tower straight into Heaven and God's nature or whatever that is at the top of the tower.
I want to make myself clear. To mix me up with "Hume's Custom or Habit" is absolutely wrong!
Factors
1. Consistency and coherency (deduced from Descartes' Meditations)
2. The sum of natural laws (the usual consideration of our beings in nature)
3. Logics and mathematics are necessary aspects of nature and our minds (I hold the view that logics and mathematics are for real in a variety of senses)
4. The factors of 1. through 3. bridge our experience from one instant to the next and so on. Forever?
5. Point beside: 1. through 4. refute, in my opinion, "Hume's Custom or Habit", the problem of induction.
I'm absolutely killing "Hume's Custom or Habit". As it says, I'm against Hume on this.
This schema can be used in every instance of the universe.
Comment on Lawfulness. With lawfulness, it's presumed that your set of observations complies and is exhaustive for all conditions this lawfulness concerns. This means that your set in your span of time, instance, is complete to the degree that information overall in reality is contained and is complete in this span of time, instance.
In the opposite, to have a confirmation bias to everything you experience, you have to believe that:
* there is no possibility for describing lawfulness in reality.
* there is no lawfulness in nature, simply!
This should be contradictive to intelligence to most people. I can't see any possible history of earth with a reality from those two beliefs if they are to represent reality.
It's not like half the planet ceases to exist only because you see one half. It's rather that you're observation is being made and that the host of necessary conditions, lawfulness, follows it. So the act of seeing is in a way accepting a whole world with it. I think I can call this unseen state indirect observation yet it's a little different from what one usually implies with indirect observation.
Examples (I'll provide two): The book in the drawer example. We are in an office. We put a book in a drawer. We go out of the office. We go out of the house. We go out of the laboratory (a little bit unusual, a whole house in a laboratory). We wait 24 hrs (partying, binge drinking, whatever). We go back into the laboratory. We go into the house. We go into the office. We look into the drawer and there is our book. We can be absolutely certain of this in the first instance from my argument. In this example, we discount natural disasters, ie. big meteors landing on the laboratory and so on. We also discount any dishonest activity in this regard.
The sun rising the next morning example. We have a fabulous day and enjoy life. We go to bed in the evening and we expect the sun to rise the next morning. In this, we make the following inference. Our Sun in our solar system is not about to die, exploding and consuming earth, ceasing to support life on earth. We don't know of any threatening meteors on the verge to devastate life on earth. The earth keeps its path and tilting pattern because there is nothing there to prevent this. We live in relative safety as we are outside earthquake zones and dubious neighbourhoods. (Added: ) We are also not threatened by global nuclear war. We wake up in the morning to a clear, blue sky and a beautiful sunrise. This sunrise is absolutely certain this day, Sept. 18. 2009. We can be absolutely certain of this in the first instance from my argument.
The most general explanation to both of these examples is this: it's the "lawfulness" of nature that is this way! In any case, it's the same "lawfulness" that is going to prevent these examples to happen as desribed if anything! Thus "lawfulness" is on both sides (of the available two sides) of the situation and is unavoidable even if you add free will because you can't step outside the boundaries of nature. I think this clinches the argument.
Instead of making the direct predictions, I think it's worthwhile to ask oneself of what there is that can be different. Why should the nature be otherwise? Then you can make the predictions.
From my view, there are actually given instances that can be proven under certain circumstances, ie. laboratory conditions. For example, do you have the faintest notion that objects will levitate tomorrow and fly off into the universe? I think not! This is reasonable. Reality and every universe in it breaks down if the structures, factors 1. through 3., aren't there.
One remark: I'm generally very skeptical to "laws" expressed in probabilities. They're always underdetermined in my view. One person has noted that when you get down to the singular case, the case is always 100% to itself, ie. every case will happen necessarily. You certainly don't express gravity as probability. Clearly there are problems of predicting new knowledge and probability is not the way to go. However, you may make good evaluations of research projects and these can be expressed in probabilities in hindsight.
My understanding of laboratory work is to make one special relationship of nature stand out and it's this way I mean it. This is all theoretical, of course.
Quote: David Hume, AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, SECTION IV - SCEPTICAL DOUBTS CONCERNING THE OPERATIONS OF THE UNDERSTANDING, PART I writes: When I see, for instance, a Billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another; even suppose motion in the second ball should by accident be suggested to me, as the result of their contact or impulse; may I not conceive, that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause? May not both these balls remain at absolute rest? May not the first ball return in a straight line, or leap off from the second in any line or direction? All these suppositions are consistent and conceivable. Why then should we give the preference to one, which is no more consistent or conceivable than the rest? All our reasonings a priori will never be able to show us any foundation for this preference.
The reason for my interest in his knowledge of physics lies in this quote. I'm a little interested in snooker and there is no doubt that these people in the sport know what they're doing in playing those balls. There should be a very real possibility for constructing a machine that with a cue strikes a ball A with a given power into ball B and that the final position of ball B is known down to very minuteness even before the machine delivers the strike, ie. that the machine will be capable of doing this according to laws of nature. You let the machine strike the ball A once and then you reposition the balls. The following strikes are known, ie. final position of ball B! Thereby I find "...that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause?" strange indeed. It doesn't take much physics to understand that the assertion of Hume here is false.
It's remarkable that the title of the two works relevant to Philosophy of Science relates to human nature by "A Treatise of Human Nature" and "An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding". It leads me to believe that I read Hume such that Hume is to assert a criticism of the abilities of consciousness to gain cognition of nature and nature's workings. As such, it's an internal view, bringing forward the fact that we are not intimate, sufficiently close with nature to the degree that we can know what nature "is doing". So his view concentrates on the limitation of consciousness and doesn't say very much definitive about "laws of nature"." This means in short that we come up empty in regards to objective idea or knowledge of the necessary connections of nature in his eyes. I speculate that if Hume has wanted to make a global skeptical argument in Epistemology, other than what he's already written, he would have written a book about it and it's likewise in Philosophy of Science. He has had the option to be elaborate on nature in the external, "laws of nature" sense, but he fails to publish anything extensive. To interpret Hume in the sense that he's addressing relations outside the human nature scope of his works is to take it too far. He's simply to swift to bring about a plausible argument beyond this scope that is already mentioned.
One can still make the account of point 1. through 4. in the very early days of human history. One will have to say that their logics and mathematics are more informal, but that they buzz about and make concepts and descriptions.
The following is written to remove doubt in "laws of nature". I've never been thinking that when in "a single span of time, instance" I make certain considerations of nature that I would have to defend the "necessary connections in nature" (I therefore used "Finito" because I've been thinking I've been justified in literature and blatantly so. This may be mistaken in my approach, I'm sorry!). One note: If I consider this "single span of time, instance" to each "kind" of separate "happening" in nature, I claim that I still escape the induction. Alright, (when being in "a single span of time, instance") 1. I exist in the world, I see colours, substance and an incredible number of impressions, 2. I have this body I can feel and I can use it to feel the external world, 3. My body doesn't explode, but is perfectly whole through this time-frame, 4. What I see in this scenery (which may be all sorts) are patterns that I can relate to just as my body, there are no objects emerging in thin air, no sudden levitation, there's calmness and persistent objects, 5. Am I surprised in this environment? Basically not! The balls roll on the pool table when they are being moved, I sense, feel other people when I'm being touched and I feel objects against my body when I touch them, lean on them, lie on them and so on, I also sense gravity as I raise myself from the floor or bench, I sense gravity when I drop a Billiard-ball to the floor or on the pool table. Depending on your "first" "single span of time, instance" as a cognising mind and according to circumstances, there are therefore numerous instances you can draw from it. Your body is whole! It doesn't levitate. It doesn't rupture as such! The arm doesn't loosen from it and floats off in the air. You can breathe! You feel hungry! You discover you can eat! You can feel your stomach being filled! Unnecessary to say, perhaps, I think Merleau-Ponty's "Primacy of Perception" is the kind of angle I'm thinking about. The conclusion is that there are many inferences to make in "a single span of time, instance" when considering "necessary connections in nature". Although perceptions and cognitions may be very naive in the beginning, they uncover incredibly much from those instances not normally thought about because nature appears natural. Consistency and coherency are very important features of our minds, but how often do we consider it, even when we think of what we've thought? Surely unusual considerations, but they break down induction! (Finito!)
So all the way from the earliest humans' feeble attempts of descriptions and concepts that are entailed by this new view apart from induction, we're in this scientific age. We have then, if we look at it, what about chemical reactions such as making a bonfire from wood and the numerous other instances. When we are hungry, we need food to drive our biochemical engine or else we die. Let's take the example of the bicycle. You have this chain from the gearwheel with the pedals going back to the gearwheel with the bicycle-wheel. Certainly, we don't find a "chained" connection in nature like that. The necessary connections we are discussing are of the kind that it takes clouds in the sky for rain to happen. It takes combustible objects to make fire. It takes sturdy or hard materials to make constructions. I think I can continue endlessly. There are so many examples from what has been learnt in the average person's education and experience in the developed world in the modern age of the 21th century A.D. that from what is laid out here, the necessary conclusion forces through and it says the Problem of Induction is history!
Just to settle it completely, it should now be obvious that "when I go to bed tonight, I can definitely rely on wakening up tomorrow without induction"! The issue has really been written above, but I think it's nice to add the state of a night's sleep into this picture. Thereby, enjoy the new view, surely!
As a tip for both understanding this argument and for seeing a good trick in it, please, take this into account: My view is that "laws of nature" in this context are more easily sorted out if you use "lawfulness" and to this you still need your thoughts to come in a row and life to be allowed to live. It's also a recommendation of mine that one doesn't mix "laws of nature" and what these laws of nature are supposed to be because it quickly gets incredibly complicated and one is still discussing the status of "laws of nature" in Philosophy of Science as a separate theme, thus underlining the complexity of this issue! Lastly it should be noted that Helen Beebee in Philosophy Bites points to "necessary connections of nature" in a sentence that really takes out David Hume on this (in my context, by this, at least).
(I hope to restructure this argument so that it reads more nicely and looks like a composed whole!)
By Terje Lea, September, 2009, November, 2009, February, 2010, November, 2010 and January, 2011.
Note: I've been developing this argument on the Philosophy Now forum so that the dates when some of the notes have been available to the public are not entirely correct. This goes especially for the additions of January, 2011.
Philosophy of Science, Criticism of Kuhn's Paradigms - Building Babel's Tower
Introduction and Argumentation.
This is the case for Cumulativism in the expression of Interconnectedness, Complexity and Technology, (ICT).
It's clear to me that if the Paradigms of Kuhn are supposed to be true, they have to be logically equivalent. I believe Kuhn states that one isn't able to choose rationally any Paradigm, you are more or less drawn into one by all sorts of strange reasons whether they be feelings, social connections or what. You have this Ptolemaic System. Is this supposed to be equivalent to Einstein's Theory of Relativity or Copernicus' Heliocentric Worldview? It's obvious they are not equivalent. It's also obvious the various worldviews hold different cognition based on different assumptions and observations. Let me add the technological development that has made extensions to our eyes, like the Hubble telescope.
It's therefore established that these K. Paradigms are "chosen" or chosen relatively closely temporally. In this, one first problem is to come up with something at all. Each of these are also building on assumptions of concepts, models - theories, and underlying, historical work whether this is mathematics, (naive) remarkable discoveries, development in technology such as telescopes, magnifying glass, general thinking of what reality should be, ie. conceptualisation and speculation. Maybe we get 2 or 3 "Paradigms" to choose from. As these Paradigms are considered, elaborate testing is going on, perhaps coming up with something.
Today, what are our options in choosing from paradigms? We have perhaps these 2 or 3 theories in quantum physics. I sense that scientists are well aware they may be wrong! This means competition is open. We can't certainly begin to doubt observations in space and come up with a different astronomical worldview. We have to say that technology nails something for us. Again I point to advances in other fields that are not actually considered by these scientists in this paradigm.
Conclusion: We have this giant landscape in science (2009) where advances happen all over. Scientists are connected by the internet to exchange agreements, thoughts, and differences of opinion. They are probably expecting new technology and checking for relevant work done elsewhere on Earth and ISS, all-other-wise. There are, I guess, numerous problems in science currently that are being investigated like the dualism of photons and what have you. Then, it's impossible to determine any single paradigm because everything is interconnected and is developed in unison everywhere. It's impossible to make an incision around particular efforts as a consequence. The "community" lives and dies together. Besides, as I see it, today, most disagreements are theoretical and thus not subject to empirical testing. How is Kuhn doing? I think he looks bleak!
Further: In the case of the Paradigm of Einstein's Relativity, shouldn't one acknowledge both Einstein and Riemann on it? As I've pointed out, it's impossible to make a "jump" in time and come up with our science, let's say, 500 years ago or 2500 years ago. This should be blatant and clear! I thereby come up with a second conclusion, that we are in effect "climbing a mountain, science-wise" or "scaling that Babel's tower, science-wise". I think I can say that we know that back in time, people have been more wrong or less objective than we are today, but this may have been necessary! It can't be said definitely, but the scope of the development through history lies there. A new theory of evolution, science-wise?
When I use the word "truth" in connection with paradigm, I mean of course that it's the concept of paradigm that's supposed to be true. I must be crazy if I say that the Ptolemaic worldview is supposed to represent truth, I mean of course, the paradigm.
One of my arguments here is that technology may be the whole engine of cognition and scientific progress. Does it matter to consider paradigms if the Ptolemaians have not had the chance, i.e. aids to see with, the corroboration of observations, to make the cognition that are required to become Copernicans (I may have left out some mathematics here and more). So you seem to have skipped the argument of the technological requirements of scientific progress. If it's technology that makes scientific happen, does it make sense to call it a paradigm? It's obvious that technology represents the inter-subjective.
Can you truly say that our future scientific progress doesn't have a broad inter-subjective, "objective", character in that everyone will recognise the right theory to believe in because it's technology that will decide those beliefs?
So all in all, I think it's better to see science as a whole doing gradual advances in the light of the development of "assumptions of concepts, models - theories, and underlying, historical work whether this is mathematics, (naive) remarkable discoveries, development in technology such as telescopes, magnifying glass, general thinking of what reality should be, i.e. conceptualisation and speculation". All science is broadly based therefore only the scientist-spearheads make the mistakes while cognition of the best alternative is inevitable.
I also note that scientists are well aware they may be wrong! Isn't this counter to Kuhn who is asserting that scientists are blind when they are in a paradigm and that they die with it. Because the scientists die (of old age and whatever) and are those who are driving the paradigms, new paradigms emerge. Is this the case today? I think not. I fail to see that Kuhn is happy with underlying, historical work in explaining his paradigms.
I try to establish cognition as a function of history, especially in the sense of technology with writing "we have to say that technology nails something for us." I believe it's clear that technology isn't subject to paradigms.
A thought strikes that is already implicit. Kuhn can really be accused of crudeness in creating the paradigms because he's ignoring those processes leading to the paradigms in sufficiently thorough terms. Call my assumption contextualism or what you want, but it's derived from "assumptions of concepts, models - theories, and underlying, historical work whether this is mathematics, (naive) remarkable discoveries, development in technology such as telescopes, magnifying glass, general thinking of what reality should be, ie. conceptualisation and speculation". As Kuhn fails to deal with these processes properly, his argument of paradigms is an illusion.
The concept of paradigm is wrong, ie. first question. The science that makes up these "paradigms" is historically false, too, but at that stage in history, that science is still very reasonable. The current science is, of course, the best we have. You know there may be troubles if I use the word "objective".
I say there's definitely cognition in science when the theories are being tested (I don't want to go through the whole HDM and otherwise here) and in the meanwhile that advances in other fields, especially the development of technology, come into play and seal the deal cognitively. You admit that Kuhn makes a point of "strange reasons", but I say that in my argument there are no such "strange reasons" (I don't account for crazy scientists).
I believe Kuhn makes the point that scientists in a paradigm are blind, have no cognition, of advances that competing scientists make. Again, I take it further with technology, it's the technology which is definitely cognitive, that decide the cases where scientific progress can be made.
When I write "paradigms are not true" I intend to say that Kuhn's invention or use of the concept of paradigm in his theory or description of the structure of scientific revolutions is wrong or mistaken or faulty or an illusion. There's no doubt that Kuhn is serious with his book, but this is obvious! Otherwise, I'll do exactly what you have written! Thanks!
Note: Some people may point out that some paradigms happen as a function of "accidents" or unforeseen events. I'm thinking of penicillin or whatever, but I want people to have in mind that these investigative people have been through education and what (Einstein is a Ph.d. when he comes up with the relativity theory, not that it is an accident) and are usually in the process of rigorous research. These people, like Sir Alexander Fleming, are extremely attuned to pick up remarkable events. I don't think any such possible situation is weakening my attack on "paradigms", Kuhn's book. This is so because they are building on that foundation of assumptions that is historically set. I don't deny there are excellent scientists, but they are a part of history, "standing on the shoulders of giants".
I will work on the history of science part. We'll see where it gets. One start may be to draw in as much people as possible into the relativity theory as an example and also make an analysis of assumptions that have proved crucial to Einstein's work.
My point with the technology is simply to emphasise this, it's a blatant truth that some people work on astronomy and some on the substance of glass, i.e. telescopes. In this way, discoveries, the work on theories, in a wide sense, happen in an almost impossibly identifiable manner. So many people are involved in any field of science and continuously so as one field doesn't stop the other in times of less progress.
Copernicus has had a library at his disposal and it leads me to the notion of corroboration of observances. What has been the Ptolemaians' opportunity to systematise and archive their observations? There may be other angles into it. Just this also: Claudius Ptolemaeus, 90 A.D. - 168 A.D. and Nicolaus Copernicus, 19 February 1473 A.D. - 24 May 1543 A.D. Equal pre-conditions?
Along with the point that science, and so technology, is being developed all the time in every field, I think when it comes to the readily applicable technology, it's inter-subjective. The cognitive value of the Hubble telescope is striking. This makes me think that as soon as technology is developed, from that very other field of science, i.e. electronics and what else, that is used in astronomy for example, can decide scientific disputes quite easily. Let's think of x-rays in the case of a broken leg or something thereof. It's bad to say it this way, but I'm in difficulty of finding an outstanding example. I can also point to advances in computing power to the fields of science that can have great use of that.
I have no wish to say there's no theory in technology and that as such, it's just one theory to another. Still, the efforts are obviously broad as theoreticians working with logic in computer-circuits have no idea what the user end is. Similarly, scientists in remote areas may unknowingly work toward a common goal. The other side is that relative transparency in science allows scientists to check for better equipment and "methods" in the interconnectedness. I have the sense that when technology (the host of theories that underlie it) is brought in, one has a clear idea of its utility. (I should perhaps be more cautious here, but I take it from the use of scientific instruments in satellites.) May it be possible to create a giant scientific map of theories in every field and then calculate their upper boundary of discovery? That sounds like some Devil's work. I'm not sure if that's possible to calculate. If you use MRI in some cognitive science, you say that the theory of the MRI limits the cognitive science's aspect in this case, to create theory that is useful? Not only that but this is supposed to be some sort of "self-validation"? I think I disagree (strongly). Let's think of chemistry. If we use some sort of device to analyse chemical compounds, that is a case of self-validation? Even if we agree that the device is calibrated to detect some compound, it's use is not given in determining the world. This should be clear.
There's no chance in identifying one paradigm that isn't affected by the development in the other fields, concrete or abstract. The actual "paradigm" is so fundamentally connected to both the history leading up to this and the contemporary efforts in other fields that it's useless to bother calling it paradigm. There's no explanatory force beyond this particular problem that has gotten stuck and that the other fields of science lack the ability to make it unstuck, progressing. I may be inaccurate with the phases of Kuhn's here. Please, bear with me. However, the point is made.
As progress happens in every field and is thus broad, it's impossible to say which advances in which field will prove crucial to any other field. The applicability of discoveries is not for certain. Yes, I'm definitely looking for a better or simply more comprehensive and interconnected, i.e. different, historiography of science if it's possible to acquire.
This should be said, I rely on the cognitivity of science being worked with and that scientists are able to see the futility or success of their own theory, work. As you have pointed out, back in the old days, this probably has taken a whole lot of time and that people have perished before some decisive event would happen.
I think a "paradigm" in Kuhn's sense is the emergence of an important theory of science that people at that time view as "true", "reliable" or whatever thereof and that it's being worked on and corroborated, perhaps, with the additions of ad-hoc sentences or corrections. The period of the dominance of this theory is this "paradigm".
With the word "cognition" I mean "that which one can grasp or understand with one's mind". It should be fairly common. As for the choice of theory to work with I guess I'm a kind of Popperian, that if the theory one scientist is working with gets bashed, nulled by the work of others, this one scientist is very much able to understand it and shift the efforts to some other theory. Equally I think the opposite is true too. All in all, scientists are able to recognise their own and others' failures or successes in working with theories.
What I'm thinking of when I say that technology is cognitive, is that the results of using this technology definitely are inter-subjective, like looking at some kind of imaging, spectrograph, the rest. That there's no doubt about the utility of this technology.
Let's assume some scientists are working on glass and optics and some other scientists are working on astronomy. Now, the scientists working on glass and optics come up with an improved telescope. The scientists working on astronomy are wondering about the features on the moon or something and use this improved telescope. If the scientists working on astronomy get new knowledge from this, are we then supposed to consider this invalid because "the developments this theory (on the substance of glass and optics, basically mathematics) allows on the "right" theory of the features of the moon and thus that this constitutes "some sort of self-validation"? I must say that this is false! Are we supposed to doubt the mathematics expressed through glass? Can we predict the use of advances in science applied to all of nature? Definitely not!
It's obvious that technology relies on theory, but sometimes it may be a lot more pragmatic than f.x. a theory in astronomy or cosmology. The point is still the interconnectedness in all of science, more or less! As such, these considerations may not be new, but I've yet to see anyone making a good case for it, ie. historiography of science, an actual work published digitally or at least in paper, (multi-volume) book.
Necessarily, my attack on Kuhn includes that scientific revolutions and paradigms are considered pop-culture. The truth is that advances in science are gradual and progressive. At least, the data collected is clearly cumulative and perhaps corrected. It should be exciting to see what levels on can achieve in micro- and macro-scopes in the sciences. My exposition, view of scientific historiography, consists of the three factors, Interconnectedness, Complexity and Technology (ICT). This will make the best explanation of the history of science and defeat Kuhn's theory of "Paradigms".
Concerning the status of paradigms through time, I have to admit that I'm wrong in equalling the paradigms regardless of time. Let me quote Kuhn from SSR, 3rd ed., chapter 9, p. 96: wrote:
Quote: "...After the pre-paradigm period the assimilation of all new theories and of almost all new sorts of phenomena has in fact demanded the destruction of a prior paradigm and a consequent conflict between competing schools of scientific thought..."
If I find more of these instances I'll quote them too.
The amount of data is in every matter considered independently of "paradigm" or phase of history of science you're in. If our perception of gravity changes significantly, it's no more gravity. It's something else. That is, it's the data that guide us in making appropriate concepts and descriptions. This may be seen as causal, but I think it represents something else. The word "gravitare" means to attract or so and it fits nicely the observation we have of seeing things fall to the ground. It sounds basic and I'll try to look for a better example or two.
From SSR 3rd ed. p. 96 about Normal science and cumulation:
Quote: "Normal research [as opposed to outside the specific paradigm], which is cumulative, owes its success to the ability of scientists regularly to select problems..."
I think Kuhn mentions a number of times that in his theory, Normal science is cumulative. This is opposed to my view that science is overall cumulative in the data gathering.
As such, if it's only "normal science" that is cumulative then it should be indeed possible to claim that "paradigms" are equal in standing because previous gathering of sense-data and speculation are obsolete in Kuhn's language. This is abruptly wrong in my opinion. One only needs to look to the steady progress of technology to get a clue of this. Not only that, but I've made it a main point that science very much interacts with technology. Technology is, as we all know, just a different expression of science that is worked out in other fields than where it's applied, typically in the scientific experiments in this regard and usually decisively so.
Are the data thrown out? No! In the experiments that are taken to support the Caloric-theory, there are inaccuracies. These inaccuracies lead to misinterpretations and to the faulty conclusion. I think, if we carry out the experiments today in the same way they have been then, we should get the same data as in the past. Obviously, we look at those data very differently now than back then. We are probably able to identify where they have gone wrong and how the set of data may be corrupt or at least inaccurate. At times, I find that Kuhn isn't separating between the generation of experimental data and the inferred theories thereof. Rather the correct view should be that all sorts of experiments generate a data bank of past experience. If the experiments have been carried out correctly in the past with that technology and accuracy of the time then it's just to repeat them and we get the same data over again. Past experiments are inter-subjective or objective within the boundary of what they have available at that time. We continually use this history to position ourselves for the future, not to repeat ourselves.
Concerning the Ptolemy astronomy versus the Copernican astronomy. There are still these factors that may have contributed to the progress possible. One should have in mind that this is a period of 1300 years:
1. Increasing number of astronomers and people contributing to astronomy.
2. The formalisation of specific educational training of astronomers.
3. Increasing observation gathering incl. increasing documentation of observations, perhaps also more accurate.
4. The printing press is developed some 150 years ahead of Copernicus, further making his library of astronomy actual. There's also the development of writing equipment and the quality of paper itself.
There you have it. Has this been included in the account made by Kuhn? Not that I know of.
It says in "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" p. 17, Philosophy of Science - The Central Issues by M. Curd and J. A. Cover, "On some occasions, at least, tests are not requisite to the revolutions through which science advances. But that is not true of puzzles."
Kuhn makes a point in "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?" implying that puzzle solving promotes science better than Popper's testing of hypotheses, but when Kuhn does this, he forgets that the actual astronomical observations can be tested against the explanation that best fits the picture of the set of observations. This is actually the case with the anomaly of Newton's system where the perihelion of Mercury has been out of line. The anomaly has been bothering astronomers all the time up to Einstein's Theory of Relativity. This is written on p. 85 of Donald Gillies' book, Philosophy of Science in the Twentieth Century.
This may be some of the reason why my criticism of Kuhn has been made possible. He has devoted himself in too great a degree to linguistic constructs and less to the objective facts concerning the actual scientific observations that in a sense represent Scientific Realism. This can partly explain his motivation to hold the Theory of Paradigms even if it's in fact been written appx. 8 years after 1. ed. of "The Structure".
Further: I've been reading Kuhn some more and I find this striking statement: Kuhn, SSR, p. x, Preface write: Quote: "Though subsequent events have somewhat relaxed those restrictions and have made possible simultaneous independent publication, this work remains an essay rather than the full-scale book my subject will ultimately demand." It's quite astonishing that the followers of Kuhn call his work definitive when he surely haven't bothered to finish it. This is written in February 1962 and Kuhn lives to 1996. It looks sloppy by Kuhn. I wonder how many excuses that are going to be made on the grounds that the book is unfinished. It makes me think of an analogy with the religious character of Jesus who can be said to be more holes than substance. At least, everyone can now see how the Complexity part falls into my pocket.
To make the distinction fully between Kuhn and myself and why my description has more use than Kuhn's, beside being true, is that with my theory of ICT it should be possible to determine the careful steps that lead to a successful theory in a complex picture of historiography of science rather than the very crude image given by Kuhn and his incomplete work, by his own words, of The Structure!
Preliminary notes follow.------------------------------
Kuhn, SSR, p. 4, writes:
Quote: "Nor does it make less consequential the particular constellation to which the group, at a given time, is in fact committed."
The sense of mine is here that Kuhn seems to incorporate this into his beginning paradigm of normal science where the alleged puzzle solving takes place in order to reveal anomalies to theory as science is developed. I like to draw a comparison to ancient Greek history and suggest that its scope certainly entails Einstein's work. What does this mean? I point out that one is dedicated to the best no matter what one's situation is. Therefore, I think, it's equally good to suggest that one is attacking the current theory as much as one is making confirmations to it. The message is that the observations are calling for the theory's future, whether one is "friendly" or "hostile" to it. It's my impression that Kuhn puts a great deal of theory-laden observations into his foundation of SSR, (clearly) to the extent that he blurs out the distinction between (experimental) observations and theory that's tested. As one knows, the theory is supposed to be defined in a way that makes testing possible, otherwise the experiment is useless or not an experiment at all. Does this mean that the ancient Greek have been committed to anything less than to the best of their ability? No, because they at that time needed more observations and the appropriate observations. Those, as we all know, haven't been achieved or developed, especially technically, before much later.
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Some further writings of various kind.
I've been reading the article, "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?", before SSR has arrived from the bookstore. It's funny why Kuhn bothers to reiterate his puzzle solving and compare it against Popper's testing of hypothesis. It should be clear what Kuhn says before bothering to say that his view opposes Popper's.
It turns out that puzzle solving is formulated in ch. 4 of SSR. The very chapter is named "Normal Science as Puzzle-Solving".
Missing pieces in physics! Missing pieces in the other fields of science! So, the question is, are we in crisis in Particle Physics according to Kuhn? We have currently a situation akin to the one in Newtonian physics where the anomaly of the perihelion of Mercury is known.
This also comes together with our ability to make observations without being dependent on theory or without fusing our theories with our observations. I think we are just forced to carry on with scientific investigations regardless of what Kuhn's analysis tells us and, at the same time, without being blind while doing so.
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I just like to add, having learnt of Ian Hacking's "Interactive Kinds", that it may be just as an effective term to describe the history of science as my "Interconnectedness, Complexity and Technology (ICT)". Also, "interactive kinds" reinforces "natural kinds" beautifully!
Therefore, you may already now want to begin to read Ian Hacking and make your own Cumulativist version of it! Good luck!
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I'm wondering about writing about the "paradigm" of the microscope to crush the notion of paradigm because the microscope (or the telescope) extends so beautifully from our natural observing capacity and through relatively plausible optics mechanisms. Eventually I hope this is to happen, the crushing of the notion of paradigm, nevertheless.
It can be worth noting the preceding history to the laboratory and why one has decided to use laboratories in the first place. Because Kuhn is explicitly unable or not willing to separate theory and necessary experiment apparatus for making the case of the theory. Thus, experiment apparatus is not some arbitrary "black magic" device, but maybe in the Kuhnian sense, charicaturely!
What other choice is there? There are indeed deep limitations to being a human being, thus we need the microscope, the LHC, the other particle accelerators, the SOHO satelite, the spectrometer and the rest!
It maybe unnecessary to say that this writing or outlining will be a total crash with "The Structure" even if his "Structure" in many senses is well told and expertly composed.
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(I write forthcoming on quotes from SSR until I've finished reading it.)
Case studies by ICT. (Upcoming!)------------------------------
The two cases I've decided on are "Einstein and the possible contestants" and "Lavoisier and the Caloric theory of heat". I may add more cases than this, but nominally these are the two cases I desire to investigate. I think these two cases also provide enough workload and they are also sufficient to provide credibility of ICT if the work is done properly. This is just a notice to interested readers and it is going to be removed as the case studies are played out.
By Terje Lea, September, 2009, November, 2009, December, 2009, February, 2010, March, 2010, June, 2010 and February, 2011.
Note: this last comment added, 04.02.2011, has first been written on the Philosophy Now.
Epistemology, Comment on Brains in Vats
"Brains in Vats" is non-efficacious. It has no effect to our relationship with nature despite that we're in this "simulation". Equally, Brains in Vats have nothing more to say in Epistemology than to posit God on a cloud as a master of universe. Actually, they're equally good or bad and thus not under serious consideration.
I'll add further: just as you can abuse mathematics like in the case of Zeno's paradox, the argument of "Brains in Vats" is an abuse over what can be said with words analogous to Zeno's mathematics. I'd therefore call "Brains in Vats" a formal criticism, but one that doesn't have any ontological virtue, it's impossible to make its reality plausible or not!
So how do you know that you are not God or a part of God? This is obviously a "crazy" question in the Epistemological sense (as of today, most certainly), but it's equally crazy to say that "Brains in Vats" matter in Epistemological terms.
Ontological virtue means it has no bearing on reality, as more charitable people may get the sense of. So how are you going to prove that "Brains in Vats" has any impact on our relationship to nature? Of how we live, how we discover or how we develop the next 100 years. This is the key isssue!
Prove to me that "Brains in Vats" means something beyond Zeno's paradox, people! Why shouldn't I be able to gather knowledge beyond the speculation of God or brain-in-a-vat? Given life's premises, we have no other choice for real! So what if we die and find ourselves in a brain-in-a-vat, still, given our (likely) past and our development in human history this far, I see no reason to not keep going the way we've used to, ie. develop science and enjoy knowledge of life!
Another point, if we end up in Heaven, are we really less justified to speak of knowledge! Of course not! Then Brains in Vats" enters the same... Also, even then, hypothetically and by an extremely charitable interpretation, can we really consider the value of these "illusionary experiences" null. My answer is, even in this absurd situation, NO because it relates to being in a certain state of mind, almost as if you retrieve stories or art from people who have been on LSD or other psychotic drugs. So even then we have to admit that what these beings we have left behind as we're now in this "true" state of being a brain in a vat or in Heaven, are in fact living lives according to the premises and consequently determine knowledge also accordingly. The premises give knowledge, undeniably, in the most extreme situation and by an extremely charitable interpretation.
I can certainly say that there's no way that philosophy escapes reality. So even the philosophical arguments, whatever they are, need to be plausible (in realistic terms, otherwise they can't obtain a truth value). You can't simply write something, call it philosophy and think that it applies if it's rubbish, fantasy or whatever... There are indeed quality criteria... Brains in Vats: even if you envision a brain in a vat in a world in world type of setting, that is, it's possible to construct a brain in a vat in this world of reality (or some other), you need to show for it's absolute impossibility to always obtain "a natural death" in case of an intruder who destroys your brain-in-a-vat. Usually, brains in vats come as the idea that some God-like scientists set up the whole reality in this kind of machine (brains in vats). Further, one should show for how this can be sustained as life-form and engaging in an illusionary reality in a way that can be perceived as natural without any limitations whatsoever! I think this is both impossible and implausible and this is my conclusion. "Brains in vats" lacks the virtues to be convincing!
As for comparison, I must say the Brains in Vats-argument looks as weak as Astrology does in Philosophy of Science.
By Terje Lea, October, 2009 and August, 2010.
Philosophy of Mind, Comment on Zombies
How do we know that Zombies can ever come into physical being even if it's conceivable to us? What if there is a functional expression in nature just because of this consciousness? I mean that a potential zombie is that of a dead-born fetus. While we note it's conceivable, that conceivability may be wishful thinking about relations in nature and I believe we don't want to say such things about nature before we know what we are talking about. Even this unknown status of consciousness can have its play in nature although we don't know exactly what this entails at this point. Science-fiction literature is also conceiving quite a lot about the future and the nature, but we usually don't trust it or take it to be more than mere entertainment.
I've been hesitant to what position I'd take on the metaphysical conceivability of zombies. It's now more clear while at the same time coming from a Realist metaphysical position. I've also been feeling wrong about denying the metaphysical conceivability of zombies and simultaneously admitting a kind of "limited" mind. I come to this conclusion, upholding a decent, open mind and liking the challenges: one thing is to conceive a zombie metaphysically, another isssue is whether this is serious or not. I think it's not serious hence the metaphysical conceivability of zombies is unserious!
By Terje Lea, October, 2009 and March, 2010.
Philosophy of Science, (Work for) A Proper Arch for Science - Criticism of Quine and Others
I try to include the following three philosophers, Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel and Imre Lakatos, in this. I see this as furthering a kind of Logical Positivism without the verificationism. Rather one can replace it with confirmation of Hempel's. There are probably quite a few Philosophers of Science who have this approach and I like to add my voice to it.
Life-world as "Life-world in this sense is the accumulation of personal experiences from reality, possibly as much as from yourself internally up to this point as from outside your consciousness. Here I'm using it primarily as a view from the classical external world, that is, only experiences and views of reality are considered." to which I can add Descartes' affirmation of the self and that it underscores the importance of being in one's right mind as one sets out on the scientific enterprise. People may think of Neurath's ship, but my version says that one should work to make sense of the mystery of one's existence, one's life-world.
This project aims to make as little room for relativism, deviation, and stupidity as possible.
The first two targets are Quine's Indeterminacy of Translation and Two Dogmas of Empiricism. To begin with I can think of using the position of the Artificial Language Philosopher to solve Quine's issue with analyticity and arguing that a certain scope can make the case against total Indeterminacy. I have the sense, though, that Quine wishes to point out that more than one translation is possible. I think it's satisfactory to take out the possibility of total relativism here. I like to add that Quine's force-field is relativistic too and that my angle of life-world as one definite point of beginning is to be preferred.
I admit my knowledge of the three leading ideals and some of the opposition is lacking and I have to learn more before I can make some impact.
I write on this project in the spirit of a summary of history, an eclectic story, something entirely solid and new or a combination of these.
This is the bare beginning.
By Terje Lea, 16th November, 2009 and 18th November, 2009.
Philosophy of Science, On Scientific Revolutions
I will argue here that Scientific Revolutions belong to "pop-culture" and that they require decades to have impact. This impact is rarely discussed so I will do just that. Just to mention one grotesque example of a Scientific Revolution, one can regard the transition from Ptolemaic astronomy to Copernican astronomy, a process that probably has taken something like 1400 years. I find it hard to call this a revolution in the sense revolutions take place in the political sense. This project is now open!
There are two ways to understand the concept of scientific revolutions. One is the bound development of science being named revolutions as in the one I've mentioned. The other understanding is to identify the beginning of a revolution within the scope of a theory and also when this revolution is ended and the world is in a new "state". People may have read my opening of the project in one of the two ways, but not both. Now, everyone should be able to see it both ways!
I intend to include more to this like the view of common people, impact in people's lives and other. Is there any revolution taking fully place within a normal life-span?
By Terje Lea, 21th November, 2009 and 25th November, 2009.
Philosophy of Science, On the Assertion That All Observation is Theory-Laden
It's my perception that theory has definite limitations in affecting observations to the extent they are theory-laden observations. It's against the nature of objectivity of science that there's any significant room for the theory-laden observations. If there's a question of theory-laden observations, it's first and foremost in the disclosure of new phenomena in the first experiences where one may get tricked. Surely, if the issue is under serious scrutiny and by several people, my bet is that theory-laden observations hardly play any role at all! Yet, I can very well right away recommend more and better studies into theory-laden observations, but I find that the natural sciences are in greater extent shielded from this than the "new" sciences, like psychology. I think this may be due to various reasons. For the kicks of it, what if one lets the natural scientists examine theory-laden observations in their field, psychologists examine theirs and compare the conclusions? It strikes me that the question of theory-laden observations always come up in relations to psychology, like there's some dubious powerplay going on because of the great variation of practices!
It's funny how one claims observations theory-laden while at the same time hailing radiologists for increasing aptness for viewing x-rays down to insane detail/minuteness. In some regard, this should be contradictory.
It's my belief that children have limited possibilities for own theories and thus they make the observations. If they see a green ball, there's a "thought"/imprint/signal in the brain that corresponds to/is this green ball. If they see it again the same thing happen over again in their brain. Perhaps they also have associated thought like "I like that green ball", but this is something that comes in addition to the signal in the brain from the mere observation.
I recognise the little deviation of "I like blue better than red", but I think we agree that your driver's license requires you to hold a kind of "objective" view. It's the same thing in science. You need to be up to the level in order to count in. Otherwise, I expect quick ejection!
It's seems strange how you can move from one theory into a better theory and still be that theory-laden observations dependent. It appears that analysis does indeed mean something in carefully examining a problem. I think we're inventing a kind of new "language" in order to explain anomalies and that this "language" settles into a firm theory.
By Terje Lea, 21th November, 2009, 23rd November, 2009, 6th December, 2009, 12th December, 2009 and 30th January, 2010.
Logics, On Axioms
I believe every subject, discipline can be axiomatised and have logical structure, objectively. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems just imply that we're in the middle of reality, past and future, perhaps it's infinite, and that coming truly full circle is beyond us. It will take further developments in logics to overturn this and I'm not going to say that it is possible. I'm aware that such a project has failed in the past in relation to mathematics and that I will have to make a better analysis, work in this regard to be able to succeed! The Godel thing. The axioms are not supposed to be proved by the system they define or make the scope of.
By Terje Lea, 25th November, 2009 and 27th November, 2009.
Logics, On Paradoxes
I see little reason for paradoxes to have significance. Usually, I think they point to a problem that has not been significantly dealt with! I've been working with The Paradox of The Ravens and it dissolves because of the wrongful premises one has put into the picture. This structure may be similar to all other paradoxes. Therefore, perhaps the medicine is to apply and device better concepts and descriptions.
Liar's Paradox: I consider the Liar's paradox to be meaningless. If one ends up in a Liar's paradox in the first place, I suggest there's something wrong with the descriptions or explanations. So you should improve on these before one give's up on the situation and ends in Liar's paradox. It's also puzzling to me how Liar's paradox enters Godel's Incompleteness argument. I'll look more into Godel's Incompletenss, but this is not important to this writing. My opinion on Liar's paradox stands!
Paradox of the Ravens: It's clear to me that the Raven paradox is call an "intuitive" paradox, but I say that serious inquiry doesn't allow for intuitive paradoxes and one should be looking for the deeper solutions to the simple enrichment of life-experience. I refer you to what I've written on this paradox before.
Zeno's Paradox: This is also meaningless! However, I think the importance of this paradox lies in the way you apply your tools, being both mathematical descriptions and all other descriptions and concepts you can think of. To refute it is simply to designate and add units like the meter for the distance in question! As I've written, this is a good example of abuse of mathematics, philosophy and all else. It's one to learn from in order to provide good skills in whatever subject you like to involve with!
By Terje Lea, 25th November, 2009 and 27th August, 2010.
Ethics, Ethical Objectivity - Objection to Arguments of Companions in Guilt
To begin with, I believe in ethical, moral objectivity. I believe there's no particular problem in proving this/make a good case for it.
1. That the ethical system is flawless in the sense that there is no obvious allowance of moral wrongdoing in it.
2. "...ethical claims are objective if it is possible for agents who make them to do so correctly or incorrectly. Objectivity in this sense implies the possibility of moral error.(3)" That is to say that moral mistakes exist, not that moral errors are committed ethically.
3. "...ethical claims are objective if they are 'answerable to substantial [ethical] facts and properties in the world that exist independently of the contingent practice of making those claims and the relevant attitudes of those who make them' (p. 6)(1).(4)"
4. "...ethical claims are objective if reasonable agents competent with the concepts that constitute them would converge in 'favorable circumstances of rational inquiry' (p. 7)(2).(5)" That is to say, in my opinion, that there are objective moral duties in relation to the object in question.
From the book review of (1)(2)Hallvard Lillehammer's Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity written by (3)(4)(5)Terence Cuneo in the journal Mind Volume 118, Number 470, April 2009, ISSN 0026-4423.
It's also worth mentioning the book of Paul Bloomfield's Moral Reality, OUP, 2004 that the review mentions.
I see the description of an Ethical Objective system as an (mathematical) intersection of the above 4 points. The Ethical Objective system should thus satisfy the most strict and strongest requirements for such a system. It's worth noting that it should be humanly possible to fit into it with a least one member, one human being, and that it should live up to general requirements of plausibility and reasonability.
One more thing: I think it should be noted that "reasonable agents" mean people who are able to separate right from wrong and are basically in agreement with the actual system of ethics in question. If the case is otherwise, they fall into a different group and are not relevant to the system that is being discussed. This may limit the number of people who can adhere to that system quite severely, but that is the nature of the current diversity of humanity.
I've made some additions to the book review and as such the whole is more a new argument than a factual instance that I like to address.
The framework for every Ethical Objective System can be as extensive as every legal framework as I see it, without imposing particular problems.
The further work to the Ethical Objectivity is this. The obstacle one meets is concerning depth. I think the human cognition decides the depth of the ethical system's reach, absolutely and objectively, of the Ethical Objectivity discussed. If the human being can't have knowledge about a deeper fact of nature then one can't also say that the human being can commit any mistakes in that relation. It's therefore of no use to point to a phenomenon that lies outside the normal or possible human cognition because a sufficient ethically objective system isn't constructed at all to take care of those phenomena's ethical content. No matter what, the ethically objective system will therefore relate to our common life-world, the life-world that one can actually say something objective about. It's therefore the case that all hypothetical micro- and macro-phenomena are outside the domain that actually can have some influence on the human being's ethical and moral life. It's therefore not decisive to have absolute knowledge to have an efficient ethical objective system as long as one does one's duties for the best in this actual effective ethical objective system in what concerns information and possibilities. In that kind of view, one can plausibly say that doctors in ancient history may have been acting ethically objective in some cases, if not all, of course, despite a very limited knowledge about the human body. It's clear that science will form an outer frame for our life-worlds wherein this Ethical Objective System functions as in the question of preventive measures concerning Global Climate Changes and also about our limitations in size of total world population that should or can exist without collapsing into chaos and extinction of being examples of conscious beings capable of knowledge, possibly effecting one's own salvation.
Consequently, let's look at abortion again. What if two parties agree on the fact that guilt may not apply for abortion because there are factors that speak strongly for and against as well as the indeterminate status of the fetus to be removed, both on brain function and emotional function(1) when the procedure is carried out? Thus, abortion for these two parties remains a private, informed and "esoteric" decision, yet respected by either party in companionship without guilt!
Hypothetically speaking, it's plausible to say that being a human without an ethical system in the 21st century and aligning oneself with the ancient humans and humanoids like the Cro-Magnons, seems just crazy! It's laying such a waste to a whole heritage, legacy of philosophical civility! The ancient humans before civilization can be said to be driven by evolutionary, biological instincts! Nihilism, relativism or other destructive ethical approaches are historically insensitive, possibly rationally insensitive, absurd or out of touch.
As much as Paul Bloomfield makes the argument of having and maintaining good physical health, I'd like to add the following:
It should be possible to determine Integrity, Mental Health and Physical Health by keeping one's ethics. People may fool themselves, but I think that the most sensitive factor of these three, being Integrity, is very much affected by both bad attitude/mindset and bad actions, altogether being bad morals and possibly bad ethics.
Through the arsenal of diagnostics like various lie-detectors, (f)MRI-scans, interviews, somatic examinations and what have you it should be possible to make good judgment on the status of these 3 factors, Integrity, Mental Health and Physical Health. Any reasonable doubt can therefore be removed for what kind of companion one is socialising with. Any person with substantial deviation in either Integrity, Mental Health and Physical Health from the characteristics that are condoned by exactly this Ethical Objectivity can thus be excluded from the desirable group of people that comply with Ethical Objectivity. The days of the Arguments of Companions in Guilt are consequently numbered!
It should be a fundamental belief that morality/ethics is to respect rationality in others, also the potential of such in others, eg. children. This doesn't capture ecology very well, but I can think of it as intelligent/rational to allow nature and animals alike a natural life (for various reasons) incl. agricultural/aquacultural. Thus, as this is a facet of being rational as a person, every person should respect people with ecological views and the ecological view therefore becomes the only ethical view in this respect, a general starting point.
Rationality in this sense is nothing mysterious. It's just the capacity to score well/great on IQ-tests, having a fine, intelligent flow of thoughts and doing a good or great working performance, whatever this may be, being in the stream so to speak!
Although I've written about rationality above I like to write the following to make it perfectly clear. There are (at least) two kinds of Rationality that it's fair to speak of. One is the rationality according to function, being the way you apply your mind to whatever problems, practical or intellectual. The other one is rationality as in being of good mental health, being well-developed. It should be clear that rationality is the top premise of this Ethically Objective system that I ascribe and develop from a Neo-Kantian position.
This is a writing for removing any religious notion to the word Rationality and thus the system of Rationality may seem reasonable to everyone. I'm in doubt whether I. Kant has meant any religiousness at all with his "kingdom of ideas". People have interpreted it this way, but I can't see that there's a single factual instance of this in his text. Quite the opposite, I think he thinks that the common person is able to make clever thoughts, to take part in the "kingdom of ideas". I find this a much more charitable reading of him and it makes him look better too!
Repugnance and appeal to emotions/feelings/aestheticism are not any good way to get there even though I support every argument that makes a good foundation for Ethical Objectivity.
It should be noted that people of good moral attitude and behaviour seem better able to create and maintain, by keeping the duties, social relationships both in symmetric and asymmetric terms.
I'm with Dr. Sam Harris when he argue by objectivity of flourishing and happiness, potentially by and in everyone, on TED Talks that some/all moral questions or some/all outside spectrums of some/all moral spectrums can be answered by science. Now, I don't know if this is consensus within a group of scientists and philosophers alike and if this is documented by scientific articles. He does mention psychology and neuro-science as two (obvious) angles to answer this scientifically. It must be admitted by myself, whether or not Dr. Sam Harris agrees, however, that flourishing and happiness are still normative, unscientific, ethical objectives. One can indeed be relatively poor and still be generally happy and one can work too much and thus flourish beyond one's happiness. It's also a question to what ends we are supposed to be flourishing and happy. Where does this flourishing and happiness lead to if there's no destination in sight? Isn't then life only a matter of taste and artistry in life? What about doing extreme sports and other activities where one does risk one's own life? The question is not so much a matter of this risk-taking person's life, but this person's social connections, possibly causing grief in these people by the risk-taking. Thus, it's yet to see to what extent one can fully argue that the objectives of flourishing and happiness can be scientific. Indeed, this scientific notion has implicitly some kind of normative destiny to it that Dr. Sam Harris is in debt to answer.
It's admirable of Dr. Sam Harris of denoting this "scientific", given the normative objectives, and at the same time quenching the lunatics who promote death and destruction. It's certainly worth a thorough scientific study of what underlying causes there are for people's misfortunes when it's so commonly known that most or all people like to be happy, flourishing or both.
(1)Remark concerning abortion by The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG):
By The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG),
"Fetal Awareness - Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice".
From this link:
http://www.rcog.org.uk/fetal-awareness-review-research-and-recommendations-practice
Fetal Awareness
* The fetus cannot feel pain before 24 weeks because the connections in the fetal brain are not fully formed
* Evidence examined by the Working Party showed that the fetus, while in the chemical environment of the womb, is in a state of induced sleep and is unconscious
* The Working Party concluded that because the 24 week-old fetus has no awareness nor can it feel pain, the use of analgesia is of no benefit
* More research is needed into the short and long-term effects of the use of fetal analgesia post-24 weeks.
The full report:
http://www.rcog.org.uk/files/rcog-corp/RCOGFetalAwarenessWPR0610.pdf
Article, this particular webpage, is published: 25/06/2010 (summary and more).
Game over! You lose, relativists and subjectivists! I'd say there is no objection by the subjectivists and relativists that can overcome Ethical Objectivity (now)! I've been meditating this for quite a while and I'm now at peace by the preceding sentences. There is simply no chance to refute Ethical Objectivity anymore.
The argument is not finished by these words and remains to be made a paper of academic quality, if not a book.
By Terje Lea, 11th November, 2009, 9th December, 2009, 11th December, 2009, 6th March, 2010, 24th March, 2010, 26th March, 2010, 12th April, 2010, 22nd April, 2010, 25th April, 2010, 26th April, 2010, 4th May, 2010, 10th May, 2010, 9th June, 2010, 28th June, 2010 and 24th October, 2010. Minor change of title, 18.11.2010.
Philosophy of Mind, Argument for Dualism
This may be something I share with one or more people, but it's worth noting that "out-of-body" experiences are examples of thinking or sensing that put marks in brain activity, signal firing when a person recalls this memory. This should be able to pass for being a solid example of an argument for Dualism. This can be confirmed by a MR-examination or something like that where there's created an actual, objective signal firing of the recollection of this sensation. This sensation can also be compared by the signal firing due to the visual stimuli of the artistic picture of this sensation. You then have the recollection and the artistic picture or image, by your instructions and whatever aids used to create it as closely as possible to the subjective view of this "out-of-body" experience such as revisiting and taking pictures of the surgery room. You get the MR image of recollection and of the artistic picture. You can also ask this person to hypothetically try to view one's self while in the surgery room and have this 3rd MR image compared to the other 2. Remember, this person has no reason to lie about seeing one's self in 3rd person apart from the body and in all honesty what ways are there, but the subjective story of which you know nothing and therefore has no authority in? Why shouldn't you at least take this view into mind as a possibility? Of course, the skeptics are questioning the reality of this sensation, sensing, but I can't say that it can represent any weight to the discussion if the empirical examination by MR actually supports this discernment of distinction of experience. Let's just make the note also that the background story of the person having such an experience or the patient who is brought to the hospital in cardiac arrest or some other serious condition.
Thoughts? Does this clinch the case for Dualism? At least, "out-of-body" experiences remain anomalies in the Reductionist account.
It is understood that this Dualistic account suggests that the actual sensing/thinking happens in the mind outside of the body and thus it doesn't require any brain to function/exist! This should be, bang, in the middle of the street of the Dualism. Emergentism is backed by a number of underlying structures and as such can't be compared to the "out-of-body" experience which has no material links, no physical foundation. Your response?
If you are in fact outside of your body, which you have to be to truly see yourself from the outside of it (it doesn't count if you use your eyes in the skull to see a reflection in some mirror), then there's something that escapes the physicalist account. This sensing that happens outside of yourself transfers to your brain as it is carried with the non-physical soul, consciousness, mind to the brain and make the appropriate signal firings there as one recalls the "out-of-body" experience. So why is this not understandable? Why is it hard to understand that other people have truths to tell? Do you have problems with imagining an "out-of-body" experience or do you question its reality such as naming it fantasy?
It should take a near-death or short period of clinical death to be able to have the OoB experience, something which should be too harsh to demand for any amount of money, although, of course, I can understand James Randi. Second, it is not given that the OoB experience is controllable in any way more than seeing one's self looking down on one's own body in 3rd person perspective. Therefore, if the situation arises at all, the account from the patient/person is what it is, "...looking down on my self...", which is not like "let's do an OoB experience on this person. The whole argument, new or not, builds clearly on a recognition that an unknown phenomenon takes place and produces the account in the mind of the patient which is consequently told. By the way, this is not a thought experiment. I haven't invented the OoB phenomena. It's a story told by several people around the world, I believe. All I want to show, is a kind of procedure that should certify the OoB experience and in turn make the case for Dualism. I can't make an OoB-exp on my self like that. This should be a sufficient answer to what you've written.
Key words: no James Randi contest - accidental OoB-exp - no physical links, material basis - recollection of OoB-exp produces/is creating signal firings in the brain.
Foundation: several accounts of OoB-exp by different people with no motive of lying.
As I've noted, this is not a thought experiment in the classical sense because there are actual stories from people forming the investigation on it and providing the basis for this thread's purpose of highlighting possible consequences from it in respect to a case for Dualism.
Here's a link from Wikip.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience. I'd like you to put special attention to the section of Van Lommel studies. The rest is crap, I think.
As much as the beginning of the universe or existence itself is a mystery, you'll have to accept other people's accounts, subjective stories as accounts/stories of possible factual reality that may give directions on what actually exists! You can't subject people to near-death or clinical death and at the same time exercise good ethics for proving something experimentally. If one denies the possibility of an honest story of some phenomenon, then one is at a loss because one may lose important leads about what reality has to offer. In there being "no physical links" I emphasise the mystery of this phenomenon. What can I do? People mysteriously see themselves in 3rd person perspective. If there have been physical links, this would be a matter of physicalism! The nature of this is subjective and I find no possibility for solving it other than asking people to be serious about other stories outside their own heads! Read the Van Lommel stuff and write what you think, please! I have no more than you have, other than some belief in possibility and the logical connections from it as in this thread!
You can also take note of this from Dr. Sam Parnia (a scientist indeed, clearly...): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uk...t-of-body-experiences.html. There are serious efforts from serious people who are investigating this. Article is from 2008. Hah!
It's a procedure that is meant to be applied after someone is reporting having had the OoB-exp so that there's no interruption in the surgery situation and that every report can be treated equally. It's still possible to apply a procedure to something without having a case of experiment, this should be obvious.
In the traditional literature, as of today and given that "ghosts" exist and are not detectable, an OoB-exp that is confirmed in either way, using my account of the procedure or Dr. Sam Parnia's, is undeniably Dualism, whether you like it or not! It's just too easy to write off Dualism by asserting that all must be physical. As long as "ghosts" are seen as "non-physical" in the current literature, there's no way around this. I agree that the future may be able to change our view and describe "ghosts" as physical, but it's simply not the case today!
In current literature as a matter of fact:
Physicalists generally speak of mind as being the brain or something commonly known to be physical and not something else!
Substance Dualists (incl. Descartes) speak of the mind as being a distinct entity apart from the brain!
So, if you want to go on to redefine the literature of Philosophy of Mind, then go ahead and do so!
As for Physicalism: I take it from p. 11 in Jaegwon Kim's book, Philosophy of Mind, 2nd ed., where it says: "Since physicalism broadly understood is the basic framework in which contemporary philosophy of mind has been debated..." It says further: "Take two immaterial minds: We have to say that they are exactly alike in all physical respects since neither has any physical property and it is not possible to distinguish them from a physical perspective." I don't intend to shrink all physicalists to identity theorists, I just want to write that physicalists don't speak of minds like the substance dualists and that every physicalist require that mind is in or is something material or physical, whether it's non-reductionists, reductionists or functionalists. It says physicalist for a very good reason and that reason doesn't include "ghosts" or minds outside of the body or other traditional physicality.
By Terje Lea, 30th December, 2009 and 2nd January, 2010.
Philosophy of Science, Comment on Imre Lakatos and Evolution Theory
Is the good Imre wrong here?
"A given fact is explained scientifically only if a new fact is predicted with it....The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one." See pages 34-5 of The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, 1978. - Wikipedia, under Imre Lakatos
And in his 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture 1[8]he also claimed that "nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific", thus implying Darwin's theory of evolution did not satisfy Lakatos's own criterion of at least predicting some novel fact(s), and so either it was pseudoscientific or else there was something wrong with Lakatos's criterion. - Wikipedia, under Imre Lakatos
The point here is that Darwinism does fulfill Lakatos' own criterion of being scientific because as it has been commented that finding fossil of a rabbit in a certain layer from a certain age and in a certain place is very much a novel fact despite it has been buried in the ground for just that long. Every time we dig up new fossils they are new facts to us and such subject to the strenghtening/weakening/refutation of Darwinism.
This is clearly the case, the way I see it, that Lakatos' is on good ground with his criterion, but wrong in assuming Darwinism isn't subject to new findings dug out of the ground! Maybe he's been thinking that the fossils are so old that they can never represent something new, but this is clearly mistaken! There you are, Lakatos' being corrected in some respect at least!
By Terje Lea, 30th December, 2009 and 2nd January, 2010.
Philosophy of Mind, Comment on the Knowledge Argument
Information about the knowledge argument can be obtained here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia-knowledge/.
First, it pisses me off to read about the Knowledge Argument again. Why? Because it turns on our charitable view of supposing that complete physical knowledge doesn't include actually seeing the colour in question. Why should it be wrong to include a colour chart with any documentation describing colours? My necessary conclusion is that the whole Knowledge Argument as written by Frank Jackson has to be overthrown because of this. So the whole argument boils down to rules of scientific documentation and I really think scientific literature is allowed to go beyond the strict black ink on white paper stuff.
What is left? Qualia is the notion of having a private experience of qualities in nature, typically such as colour or taste. So, Mary may be left in the belief of having complete physical knowledge, yet she lacks the private sensations of everyone else. I'd still say that she has all the necessary representative knowledge needed to possibly be this person of complete physical knowledge. In this sense, this one person is all that is needed to bring knowledge to the next generation, without ever resorting to receiving opinions from others. I'd say it's necessary for her to have all cognitive abilities without deficiencies such as colourblindness. Mary needs to be able to hold all this knowledge and I don't need to apologise to anyone for it. In this sense, she's indeed the successful, sufficient mediator of knowledge to future generations without ever failing these future generations in any regard!
If someone lacks the sight of colour, they are lacking something compared to other people, they have less knowledge! Hypothetically, this is the same as someone who has actually seen a proton compared to a person like most of us, who has only theoretical knowledge of the proton. This person who has actually seen a proton has more knowledge about protons than ordinary people.
The concept of colours has to be filled with the colours just like the concept of wavelengths are filled with wavelengths. The fact there's a wavelength corresponding to colour doesn't make it a colour! Wavelength is expressed in numbers and not colour!
Bottom line: the Knowledge Argument is useless!
I read from Wikipedia that Jackson has since then withdrawn from the Knowledge Argument and I suspect it's for good reasons!
By Terje Lea, 1st January, 2010, 2nd January, 2010 and 5th January, 2010.
Philosophy of Religion, A Challenge to Richard Dawkins and the Atheists
I have for a time been sympathic to the Atheist claim of believing in something close to science, but here's the limit!
It can hardly be said that Atheists can believe in Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real. Atheists are undeniably going to write those sizes off as psychological compulsions! What can happen in light of this? When Dawkins point out that Atheists can have just a positive attitude as the Religious believer, he fails to give the other story that Atheists may also at the same time and of some proportion of their group, not believe in any Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real and this can happen without breaking any duties inherent in the Atheistic system! Thus, I can soundly say that Dawkins and the Atheists are insincere about their message of Atheism and in Dawkins case, I think he fails an ideal of being a good scientist specifically for these two reasons of Ethics/Morals and Meaning!
Let's say the whole world turns Atheistic. This should be conceivable! The whole world goes to Hell, ends in catastrophe because riots have broke out and human kind has failed to make the exodus to other planets! Human life and consciousness end just there, it's all over! The "soul" of the Atheist says "so what? We would have been f**ked anyway, it has just been a matter of time and, ta-da, that time is now". My point is that the lack of dedication in Atheism of Ethics/Morals and Meaning may lead the human kind terribly awry! Still, the Atheists, spearheaded by Dawkins, fail to give recognition to this aspect! To the Atheists, there are no inherent duties to anything, social Darwinism including war and famine are just as rightful as promoting the good values!
"I give you this picture. Imagine that you have a good deal of pebbles strewn out on the floor. All these pebbles represent truths. Atheism has this tendency to be the act of laying one's arms around most of these pebbles, but not all. Religiousness has this tendency to lay the arms around a much greater area than just the pebbles so you get a lot of empty room within those arms as well. What I'm trying to say is that Atheism is likely to cut the future too limited while Religiousness gets the future too wide and includes too much. Therefore, being religious can represent a better critical thought than Atheism! I think it's too easy to suggest Atheism represents critical thought!"
Atheism may really f**k this over while Religious people just believe in some surplus in the worst case scenario!
There's nothing in the Atheistic system that commits the Atheist to Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real. A Religious believer, of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, various others, is always committed to Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real because they are integral in the Religious systems! This is simply not the case in Atheism!
Let's just remember that Hitler and Stalin have not been primarily motivated by Christian beliefs! Even though, lately, Muslim Radicalists are guilty of terrorism resulting in 4000(?) deaths in USA, you forget to mention to hundreds of thousands who have died in the wake of the war against terrorism! There are good historical reasons for showing why the non-Atheist societies are not as successful as the post-Christian ones! Besides, Religious believers come across as more predictable in human relations than Atheists.
While the end of human kind to the Atheist is just the end, the end to the Religious believer is a catastrophe! I still fail to see why Atheists necessarily are committed to Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real and I mean real. Clearly, there's an ontological void with the Atheist in regard to Ethics/Morals and Meaning! Even so, why don't you address my point of Atheistic Social Darwinism? I believe this is widespread with Atheism, yes? Being idealistic about Atheism isn't typical with Atheists, isn't this so?
I can also mention that the Brights' net, http://www.the-brights.net/ , doesn't mention ethics, morals or humanistic ideals once. It does however mention the word "civic" which can go in many directions and doesn't necessarily include any specific obligation, ethically or morally!
Besides, Greek belief may still indicate a kind of naturalistic Religion, but I'm at loss to be specific. It's still early thought and that particularly should mean something in this relation, moving from Polytheism to Monotheism, f.x.
While the Greek have been busy describing the world at that stage, we now face this dichotomy of "humans as limited organisms, only existing in a span of time" and "humans as eternal, immortal beings, having a kind of place in the Universe/God's Heaven". It may very well be for this reason, that Greek thought has been taking care of more mundane concerns and also been having the underpinning/assumption of human kind coming to the natural end whatever it may be to the world they may well think to exist infinitely. We now know the sun is going to swallow earth, not to mention other concerns or opportunities our advanced Astronomy gives us! There are surely differences! I think you have to see this, too!
Isn't it true that Atheism is embracing the end of human kind more lightly than Religious believers? It's almost an assumption in Atheism that the life of human kind is limited! I can also say that it's very much too early to suggest that the success of Western culture is due to Atheism. That whole culture is mostly post-Christian and still a good portion of scientists today are Religious! Japan, with South-Korea, Taiwan and parts of India and Pakistan has also been able to achieve technology and standards of Western culture. I don't know so much about eastern Religious thinking, but I'm curious of how they view Atheism. To my knowledge, most of Japan adheres to one religion or another. I don't think Japan is considered Atheistic in any significant sense! Yes? More on this: According to the CIA World Factbook 84% to 96% adhere to Shinto and Buddhism while 4% to 16% of the demographic population adhere to other religions or non-religious, atheist groups.
I agree that "modern legal and cultural ethical systems are based more on secular rules and human-oriented bias than they are on religious revelation", but these, I believe, are not there for Atheistic reasons. They are there for making accommodation to a plural society where many religions (and non-) and cultures meet.
Really, are Atheists given incentives in the form of Heaven and Hell? I believe they are not! I doubt Atheists are committed in particular to anything at all. If you can get away with, not being caught by the police, a vicious act, I see two different mind-sets of the Atheist and the Religious. Atheist: "Hah, I've gotten away with it!" Religious: "Oh shit! I'm going to burn in "Hell" for this. My soul is shit!" I can understand the good intent of responsible Atheists for taking it as far as it can go in respects to the enterprise of the human kind, but I fail to understand any definite obligation.
Taken, though I still have doubts toward whether they are wholly "non-theistic". I've just made a note on being Religious and as such, I'm right, yet not in the "human in the Universe and in the relation to salvation and infinity" notion. As I understand it from Wikpedia, both Shintoism and Buddhism incorporate to a large extent some concepts of spirituality and possibly infinity in whatever, rebirth, Nirvana, Buddha-matrix, some stuff. I think they're more "theistic" on the personal level than you would like to know, perhaps, yet I have no clue myself! I'm just speculating from what I've read about the two rel. on Wikip.
I'd say this conscience is to larger extents founded and present in Religious people than in Atheists. F.x. take the sentence that all people are created in God's image. Isn't this something undeniably good? I agree on the part of sanity, but I find that Atheists give up more easily in the face of adversity or possibilities that invite to wrongful behaviour. Religious people are more stalwart because they, on a personal level, have expectations of reward on a metaphysical, religious ground. I see no reason for Atheists to necessarily behave decent because there's nothing more than mere existence to that system of belief. Not only that, but Atheists widely believe that human kind isn't more than a limited time-span to be repeated again on another planet or not at all. It's like the view that every human effort is futile because in the Big Picture nothing MATTERS! This is key in this thread! In facing such a picture, people may easily become depressed and give up on ideals! This may cause dangers in human relations in the future! Yet, I find that you speak of being good and all that which is just fine, but this real address of this futility isn't answered by any of you who are Atheists or take that side in this thread. I think this is funny... perhaps sad...
Authority, no! However, I'm a Deist and I can report on my own challenges. I can also imagine... Less of infinity, mere biological organism... so on... (I barely recall some psychological study that has come to the conclusion that being good has lead to better morale. The word is "morale" with an e which makes me think of the generals leading an army and being good on so on... This is a while back so it's with doubt I mention it.)
To the readers of this thread:
Can you tell me
the devotion of people who think they are mere biological organisms with limited time (Atehists, like it or not)
as opposed to
the devotion of people who think they are souls with nurturing duties of that to achieve rewards of infinity and "Heaven" or punishment of "Hell"
please?
I agree that Atheists, ideally, can be as good people as Religious, but Atheists lack the definite underpinning of anything beyond this mortal life, whether you consider this to be only your own life span of the span of the history of human kind. This is a fact. I can't deliver a taxonomy on Religious beliefs, but surely, by Religious I mean an unbreakable belief in infinity which exists in most Religious beliefs. The Brights' Net describes a beliefs in ghosts to be contrary to their cause...
I don't deny that Atheists can be as good as or better than many Religious people. Your sentiment is good and I have no problem with that. However, I take the possibility of fatality while sending the message that we should think twice before we accept Atheism as progress and advancement. We may miss or lose incredibly important intuitions if we let go of Religion. I deeply encourage people to stay Religious or become Religious because it's the best without risking to lose anything. All Religions, the major ones incl. Scientology, carry a positive message yet the practice of some believers, especially Muslims today, is not so good.
Pointing to the devotion of a "mere biological organism" should speak for itself. The reality of moral in Atehists vs. Religious is very differently founded and you should know this! It's therefore it says "for real"! If you assert that Ethics/Morals and Meaning are good because people behave better and feel better, you must admit that this justification is wholly psychological and not real! Even if you take Paul Bloomfield's argument that Morals bring better health you are still at a loss because it's only valid for a certain span of time and it may still be that some vicious people retain much of their health to the extent that it's impossible to effectively separate a good person's health from this vicious person's health.
Religious people are called delusional, how insulting isn't that?
As for process, I've been writing and thinking of philosophy at least since 1998 so I certainly should be processing or taking part in a process for that reason. Also, this thread is now 6 pages which is also a result of a process. Good?
I am soundly in Moral Realism, being a Moral Realist. My belief in moral is reflected in reality down to the very smallest particle/Monad! When you point out my generalisation of Religious/Atheist, it's because I spare myself of the time of taxonomy of Religions I don't know so much about. Take the Religions in India, f.x.
That you point to the weakness of Atheism of not dealing with mystery is good, but they want it that way and refuse to see any point in mystery like "existence"! I share this notion!
If we look at "unwritten social rules", I sense Atheists are more willing to comply with these, these being criminal actions! No? That is, Atheists have potentially more Moral closet skeletons of immorality than the Religious person, especially one who is adamant. I hope you understand what I mean by "unwritten social rules".
The Religious teachings don't imply wrongful practices and are only peaceful when properly followed! Witness the large population of Religious people in the world who are very peaceful and in accordance with their beliefs (to a large extent, at least)!
What do you say to pessimistic Atheists? To the pessimistic Religious person it can be something like: "keep doing the right thing, eventually you'll get rewarded!" You know, the Atheist can risk dying without getting any rewards of his belief system! In some respects, therefore, a Religious believer is guaranteed reward because of the beliefs held while an Atheist receives... nothing, but amputation of joys, good life and the pains of death itself. Does the bell ring for some people here?
I may ask you: there are no problems with Atheism? Atheists believe in Ethics/Morals and Meaning for real just as much as Religious people? Where's the reward of moral behaviour for the Atheist if there's no money, no better material life and no more drinking beer? I can see that some bonds may be strengthened for the Atheist who is moral, but even those may not bring anything immediate other than having the possibility to die with respect from the loved ones/friends.
To people who are considering a kind of Religion, Pascal's Wager may be a good way, at least initially! In the minimal sense, one is to some degree considering those possibilities of infinity and nurture of the soul. This should be an improvement! So this is true, when you mention Pascal's Wager, you are indeed capturing a part of my argument in being serious about entities or truths outside of one's realm! Very good!
Still, I find it valid to point to the difference of duties and values between Atheists and Religious people. This whole thread is about the possible dangers if it comes to the situation that people are coerced by Atheistic incentives to use force on other people in order to sustain themselves and their way of living. If people begin to find nothing else to fight for than luxuries, I fear the worst! The resources are definitely going to be more strained in the future with the growing world population. Not only this, but if people fail to support some possible eternal aspect that has real value of some kind out of being Atheists, I sense chances may be wasted of achieving some really marvellous feat!
The scenario is this: people turn Atheists (100%) because the immaterial rewards can't be proven or fail to be proven scientifically. Crises emerge and a greater part of the Atheists is forced into depressive conditions, forcing through conflicts of the severe kind. Then slavery comes into existence, because one finds the need to the work force, yet the Atheistic riches are beyond everyone! In some respects, there's greater risk of failing one's duties from the Atheistic side than from the Religious side. Atheism is a more fragile system/belief where its followers are more easily swayed to immorality if the circumstances don't go their way! This may be dangerous or become a threat to humanity in the future. I'm just saying it. I'm not some Fatalist spelling doom and destruction, but I find the optimism in Religiousness so compelling that I like to tell you about it!
Let me spell it out a different way: Dawkins fails to acknowledge that if either of the entities God, soul, Heaven or infinity by moral behaviour, are true, then Atheism is false as we know it! You may miss a part of the picture if you waste your good being to the haphazard occasion! If you fail a certain level of moral, you may find your "soul", yet to be proven, to be doomed!
So in a difficult situation an Atheist may opt to "sell the soul" for short-term benefit of some kind. My support in this, is for the Religious people who stick it out until the end, who stay honourable despite being in an environment that pushes toward immorality and indecency, who are able to never lose hope and wear the storm off, who are able to see the light in the tunnel.
In this system of resilience, I name the victor the Religious people! Because they have inherent, integral reasons for carrying the torch to the destination!
I wonder if I share some of Ayn Rand's Unknown Ideal here, that there's an abundance of positive effects in the future in making one's way through with something that's worth the fight! I suggest at least that this "something" is the adherence to a high standard of moral, something a Religious person can call the nurture of the soul in infinite terms!
My writing is of the opinion that every living person can be motivated to do wrong without belief in the threat of infinite punishment or reward in the afterlife. This is an important difference! It should also read: My writing is of the opinion that every living person is more fragile in one's adherence to moral in case of adversity to do wrong without belief in the threat of infinite punishment or reward in the afterlife. These are basically the two claims of this thread and they should speak for themselves!
I want all people to live morally for the sake of being moral among other things, such as enjoying and appreciating your own life in all your aspects. This is a call to moral on behalf of aspects that may miss the Atheistic account! Some facts are likely to be missed because of the relatively "narrow" view of Atheism!
That Religion compels one in a more steady way than Atheism and that there is actually correlation between moral adherence and belief of infinity. The stake of the Religious person is infinity, while the illusory stake (the real stake is the same as for the Religious person) of the Atheist is only that short span of factual life and possibly the enterprise of the human kind. Atheism is short-sighted! Trading in for limitedness instead of infinity!
Here is a fine account of what scientific ideals of Atheism may turn into: http://creation.com/the-darwinian-roots-of-the-nazi-tree-weikart-review You should not, however, eat this raw! The humanism of 2010 is much more sane than then. On the other hand, we're now facing other and different kind of problems that probably can challenge this account in similarity again.
You'll have to admit that Atheism is in danger of missing important Truths about the whole thing, after-life-existence, God, Heaven and Hell, infinity and all that... There's real danger that Atheism leaves something (important) out!
I'd like you to note the crucial difference that phlogiston, alchemy, earth air fire and water have all been subject to (open) scientific scrutiny and phlogiston, alchemy are just completely out of the picture! The traditional 4 elements of the earth are now explained differently than in the past, ie. been "reduced". As such, after-life-existence, God, Heaven and Hell, infinity are all entities subject to scientific investigation, but they're hard to get the hands on, therefore they are also subject to credible belief in a Religious person!
I think Religious believers are likely to argue for Moral Realism while Atheists are likely to argue for every theory in the spectrum incl. Nihilism.
Let's also consider a possible nuclear war.
The Religious person is confronted with the action of pushing the button and destroying God's creation!
The Atheist is confronted with doing what's necessary, sending the nukes or not!
Clearly, the attachment to the Earth is different in an Atheist and a Religious person.
Association to this, Descartes and Newton both see that the mission is to describe the miracle (from God) of all, the world, life and the lot!
First of all, I think evolution has done away with all unhealthy Religions, so the Religions today have survived through a qualifying process! This means also that there's no virtue in human sacrifice! In this sense, Religions are the result of ideas that are good and what goodness consists in. I contend that "Atheism doesn't necessarily entail an ethical system" at all! I also think that "exactly the same charge is true of theism." is contradictory. Why do you bother to have something holy or precious if it's not right? I mean "right" to the best ability of discerning something as right! It misses something. When you announce something holy, it means there's an eternal, immaterial value about it! This goes nicely together with the qualifying process of evolution of Religions. You question Deism and I think a problem with Deism is that it isn't organised so that its members are more inclined to the same moral. But still, Deism announces what's precious and if that concept is empty, there's no use with one's God belief!
Without acknowledging it and without having the alleged positivity and love of human kind, there's one devious black strand of Atheism that goes the absolutely wrong way and it is basically and only this that I want to address! As opposed to logical, rational thinking, sane observation-making religious people, this kind of atheists don't care and have no implicit commitment toward human kind and this is the problem. Atheism lacks an inherent obligation toward human kind as opposed to the much better and normative Humanism!
You may object that a religious person needs no ethical code, but then again, this is a less honest/conman "religious" person!
If God is Truth (and the ontology of God turns out true as well) and you don't want God, then you have a problem, you!
The baseline of this challenge is:
You say you want logical, rational thinking, sane observation-making religious people to which I (deeply) agree!
AND
I say I want Humanists to which you (probably?) (deeply) agree!
On an end note, it may be that some of the Christian thinking isn't so bad afterall. Fx. a possible interpretation of the first commandment, "you shall not have any other God than me", may be "you shall worship truth"!
Thus, this is really done before it starts! Clear? To the best for all! Cheers!
By Terje Lea, 5th January, 2010, 6th January, 2010 and 13th July, 2010.
Ethics, A Modal Objection to Rawls
About the original position.
I've been thinking long and hard of Rawls ethics of fairness, ultimately coming down to a baseline of Kantian ethics.
But finally it has to be this:
Of course, when you're in this original position, you have nothing and everything should be treated as a possibility. But the objection is this: you have your attitudes, why should not those (good) attitudes lead to solutions in everything, from the removal of homelessness to getting rid of poverty!
So, the possibility doesn't arise at all given a few good attitudes on behalf of many people. With your attitude every situation would run very differently and therefore some destinies would simply not exist!
Conclusion is that, given a specific run up to a point of a drug addict, the original position says you suddenly should step in and take course to that destiny, but that's not fair, because your attitude would make that course of life not occurring in the first place. Is therefore (John) Rawls theory of ethics invalid/unfair/implausible?
A possible contradiction lies with the fact that if you remove psychology from this "you" of original position then what is there left to reason with? Are you supposed to sympathise with all sorts of people? Are you supposed to care for every lunatic doing every mistake in the world?
I've found a paper that investigates modal facets of John Rawls. I don't know if mine is similar or equivalent. I have no access to JSTOR (at the moment) or to the archive of Analysis (Oxford Journals). The paper by Michael E. Levin and Margarita Levin named "The Modal Confusion in Rawls' Original Position" can be found here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3327785
One can introduce these general rules to the course of every destiny:
One has the duty to follow the (best) procedure if one gets into trouble.
One has the duty to investigate the best possible solution to a difficulty one inadvertently comes into.
What's also funny, what are the characteristics this person of destiny, anyway? It's the sense that this person is without discipline, without sense of duty, without freedom, without morality, without mental/physical health, without any particular intelligence and so on.
Is this argument of Rawls begging for our support to stupidity?
I mean, what do you do if you are Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe right now? What do you (a feminist, intellectual, interested in reducing world population) if you this poor, ten-kids mother living in the Bronx? What do you do if you're Adolf Hitler in the bunker in 1945?
How freaked is the situation supposed to be before one says it's impossible to imagine it, to sympathise with it, to consider it an unreasonable situation to be in?
Bottom line: what destinies are non-existent with "you" in them?
The paper by Michael E. Levin and Margarita Levin named "The Modal Confusion in Rawls' Original Position (MC)" is indeed damning to the extent expected. It claims "If this paper and PK [The Problem of Knowledge in the Original Position, Auslegung V (May 1978); henceforth PK.] are right, A Theory of Justice is a non-starter because its crucial concept—the original position—rests on contradictory interpretations of the modal notions." It's such a fine paper that I feel that I've been indoctrinated to Rawls' Theory which is a very ugly feeling. This paper, MC, should be on the flip-side everywhere where Rawls' Theory appears. It's certainly worth both the attention and reading. (I sense it's my duty to inform you of this paper since I've brought it up and I think you like to know of this powerful argument by MC. Reading Rawls' is never to be the same after knowing this paper, I guarantee you.) When this paper says non-starter and Rawls intends it to be just that starter, I think this paper equates Rawls' Theory of Justice to be worthless. It may be harsh to say it, but that's the consequence of fact!
As much as I believe in "non-hackable systems" (given non-physical access, a very common belief, I suspect) in computer science, I also see a normative system in society in response to Rawls' or just generally, this being the perfect flow of information in society and the perfect exercise of office and law, meaning no corruption. In effect, this is presupposed by most people, I think. If you're given also a non-violent conditioning from your parents, enabling you to carry out your duties as a responsible person, there shouldn't be a single situation that can't be overcome, with (voluntary) suicide being the safety-hatch.
I'll come back to it, but the paper, MC, mentions terms like Theoretical Psychology and Entailment of original position P of possible current condition C and the whole "road" up to that point.
By Terje Lea, 27th January, 2010, 29th January, 2010, 10th February, 2010 and 11th February, 2010.
Metaphysics, Five Arguments For Free Will
The Deep Intuition and Mystery of Consciousness Argument
I'd simply say that consciousness is unknown to us in its nature therefore it may just as well be that we are governed by Free Will as we are Determined, but we have deeper intuitions of having Free Will, therefore we have Free Will. Deep intuition/sense suggests truth!
In support of this, I can add:
The Old Man of Free Will Argument
I just came to think of a funny issue in support of Free Will. Everyone knows proving Free Will means something big. The question is, would you shed the last 10 years of your (natural) life-span (80 instead of 90) to prove it? I think I would! I can provide these reasons for it: proving Free Will, die with good mental health and die with relatively good physical health. In this way, I can have the possibility to show that the mind is Free to do with the body as it pleases. Cool, what!? :D This on top of a philosophical life, just great! I can think of the end-note: "...and by this I prove Free Will! Goodbye!"
(It's presumed that death takes place with overdose of anesthetics or the willful contraction of a lethal condition.)
I think this example separates Free Will from Determinism by the fact that we don't necessarily have to go all the way! We don't have to have kids. We don't have to do our best. We don't have to work like dogs. We don't have to be nice. We don't have to be creative. We don't have to spend our time wisely. So on...
More support:
Willful Evolution Argument
One thought I've had in favour of agent causation is that I think evolution is better off with rewarding the best decisions and best work and "properties" like good looks from having good parents. So, (1) if we have an impression that it's up to us, then we put in the effort. (2) If we don't have this impression, we just go with the flow. I'd say clearly that (1) is best and that Agent Causation wins!
More support (Artillery! Fire!):
The Plentiful Possibility to Die Argument
Let's think of a possible situation in some special country (Suicide New-Haven) where everyone can, by obtained certification, have their suicide. Now, is it really plausible that people are going to throw themselves neck over head into the daily business, all the way down to the basic instincts? For some strange, plausible reason, I don't think so! Not by far! Because we are people and not some instinctive animals without concepts of ethics, dignity, reason, intrinsic worth and so on.
More artillery fire:
Contraceptives and Abortion Argument
Contraceptives and abortions show that we are completely in charge of the production of kids by contraceptives and abortions including chemical ones, possibly.
How does the Determinist answer to this? How can we be determined to invent anti-production of kids? How can we deny ourselves the natural course of a natural number of kids?
From this, Determinism is a sinking ship! Goodbye to a stupid, inhuman idea!
By Terje Lea, 31st January, 2010, 3rd February, 2010 and 7th February, 2010.
Logics, Opinions on Gödel's Theorems of Incompleteness and Possibly Tarski
(Logics and Philosophy of Mathematics?)
(I really think it looks better now. You can consider it for being a wholly serious outlook on the Incompleteness by K. Gödel!)
It's my opinion that Gödel's Theorems on this matter make either unreasonable assumptions on axioms or try to say too much, particularly on a system's axioms which may themselves, ultimately be hinged on a nature of infinity. It seems strange to me that Gödel's "Incompleteness" is about not being able to prove the axioms from within the given system. In my opinion, every "idiot" goes only for consistent and Gödel "incomplete" systems. This should be clear! I see no problem with the descriptive power of this system as a consequence of Gödel "incompleteness".
If Gödel's two theorems are to kick in, the human viewpoint would have to be completely different and the ontological status of infinity soundly removed, but this is clearly not the case today.
The theorems of Incompleteness should thus be renamed Theorems of Non-Self-Reference or Theorems of Non-Tautology.
Drawing from the Philosophy of Science, I see the creation of systems like (non-Euclidean geometry and) Fuzzy Logic, being only (two) one example(s), as sliding in nicely with existing systems and this should also be kept in mind when you regard the whole story of various systems through the course of human evolution.
(Wild) questions:
Are the Gödel theorems of incompleteness contradictions? Are they begging for the impossible, implicitly?
Are the theorems controversial?
What kind of system is it the theorems ask for?
I've been thinking that you can add as many axioms to a system you'd like in order to have the useful scope of descriptive tools you'd like. That these axioms can't be proved by the very same system, can't hardly be a problem, no?
For educational purposes: How do you build something without having a world to build something in first? Why question the building materials you've selected when you're making a building? How do you prove your "Universe of Discourse"? I sense there's something "sick" about imposing a requirement of being able to prove the establishment of the world that's going to support your descriptions. What I'm saying is that Gödel's "incompleteness" is negligible as opposed to other possible meanings of "incompleteness".
Further work: Following in the vein of Raymond Smullyan I like to add that Gödel's "incompleteness" can possibly be combined with Tarski to be Tarski-Gödel "incompleteness"-"undefinability"! I've gotten to this point thanks to the reading of Raymond Smullyan on Wikipedia where Smullyan refers readers on to Tarski from being fascinated by Gödel! Although being uncertain about both, I'm now on some material of Gödel, at least, and work will continue. This means in no way that I withdraw from the Gödel "incompleteness". It's rather a possible addition to this.
I also find these 2 possible interpretations of Hilbert's 2nd Problem. The first is the one that is answered by Gödel that axioms can't be proved by the system they establish, but the 2nd one is that the scope in some future may be prove to be inconsistent by the very application of these axioms. I've gotten the word that one of Euclid's axioms has been either proven to be false or to be excessive and it's in this line of thought I'm thinking of the 2nd interpretation of Hilbert's Problem and it's possible resurrection.
This is just a notice for what follows. I've visited Wikip. on Tarski some time ago and then it says that Tarski has proved both geometry and algebra to be both complete and consistent. The page seems heavily edited today, 02.07.2010 and it doesn't say so anymore. So, this is a pause for me and an angle I need to investigate if I'm to get somewhere with my writing on this.
* Geometry - Complete and fulfills all descriptive tasks.
* Algebra - Complete and fulfills all descriptive tasks.
* Arithmetics - Incomplete and fulfills all descriptive tasks (yet missing its Gödel "completeness" by Tarski).
Further:
* Language - Incomplete, I think, and fulfills all descriptive tasks (yet missing its Gödel "completeness" by Tarski).
* HDM and science - Incomplete, I think, and fulfills all descriptive tasks (yet missing its Gödel "completeness" by Tarski).
Also, in the light of all this, we have the issue of computability. Can everything be computed? Can one set up a complete computer system that replaces the human being as the scientist and what have you, except its functioning of consciousness? What is "completeness" or "incompleteness" in this regard?
This also goes for the semantic/syntactic divide. If we can replicate the human reasoning by computing, then what is left of this "semantic" ability?
It should be exciting to see how this develops, but it will demand quite a lot of effort and time.
Well, project is ongoing. Please, be patient. This is one of my weakest writings and I lack (a lot of) knowledge on the issue.
By Terje Lea, 07.02.2010, 11.02.2010, 16.03.2010, 17.03.2010 and 03.07.2010.
Ethics, Wittgensteinian Ethics
Ethics that is constructed by the argument/structure in Philosophical Investigations. This may be a very fruitful enterprise of making a fine a-religious foundation and a pedagogical angle for "objectively" bringing up kids. This project has now been opened.
By Terje Lea, 22.02.2010.
Metaphysics, Remark on Truth - Plain Realist View
I'm not a skeptic to truth! There are many truths out there and I'm saying this.
Even if we don't know neither the biggest facts nor the smallest facts, we should affirm our existence and its whole journey up to today, 22.04.2010, and assert that we pretty much know all that's between these levels/frontiers in the boundary, being between these biggest and smallest facts. That is: our language is precise when it's applied within this boundary and consequently it expresses truth!
I think I'm very much aligned with both Tarski's theory of truth and the Logical Positivists' protocol sentences.
I have really told this story, being a kind of Cumulativist version, in a Philosophy in Science class in Spring 2008. The story is that astronomy represents the biggest facts and physics, biochemistry and medicine to mention some, represent the smallest facts. Everybody knows by now that knowledge in astronomy has grown enormously since ancient times and that the cattle on the fields are now consisting of molecules and DNA where they've been representing meat and milk before, perhaps in 2000 BCE.
You can hold your hands in a 45 deg. arc with one straight hand pointing downward and the other straight hand pointing upward to give a very fine, simple picture of this Cumulativist version above and it probably goes well with the young in being a story of Philosophy of Science you can tell them.
By Terje Lea, 20.03.2010, 21.03.2010 and 22.04.2010.
Philosophy of Language, Solution to the Descriptive Problem of Superman versus Clark Kent
I first encountered this notion of distinction in a class of Philosophy of Mind in the spring of 2008. Since then the question has been raised as posing a problem to description by a member of Philosophyforums.com that I've answered to.
My answer is: I agree that a simple switch of disguise-identities doesn't work. In this description we should compensate Lois Lane's belief by writing this: “Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly.” is equal to, in Lois Lane's eyes, “Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent in disguise can fly". This is true! We can indeed write "Superman" is identical with "Clark Kent in disguise" and vice versa to accommodate Lois Lane's view. Just a note: for Lois Lane, the two names are not interchangeable, in fact they are logically separate entities to her, much as the Morning Star and the Evening Star has been in the past, as is presented by Gottlob Frege in one of his papers, but for us on the outside of the situation, they are both interchangeable and represent the same logical entity. You can question the issue of logical identity, but if you fail to make proper logical identification, making the right logical identity relation, these terms remain logically separate to you.
To enter the point of numerical identity is indeed to say that Superman and Clark Kent is one and the same person and constitutes, of course, a logical identification of these two appearances being the same person. The issue with Lois Lane is that she fails to address a modality of possibility of Superman being Clark Kent, possibly due to Clark Kent acting like a frail person at crucial moments. This failure of hers in the cartoon series of this identification, making the logical identity relation, is causing her to believe that there are two logically separate identities, Superman and Clark Kent being two different people.
It is about Identity, but it enters the larger context on the question of Dualism. How so? Because, if the Superman/Clark Kent question would remain, we could argue there are questions that are insoluble in nature. Now, as this is thoroughly resolved by this writing, it has no use anymore. Even then, the historical record of the non-descriptive attack can prove useful in the future as to how we are supposed to describe the soul in any good manner. At least, this is my angle to it.
Note1: It appears that one philosophical reference is in the belief that Lois Lane gets to know Superman as Clark Kent. I haven't followed the latest developments in the Superman cartoon series/comic book, but it is obvious that this example is for the time Lois Lane doesn't know Superman as Clark Kent.
Note2: This has first been essentially written on Philosophyforums.com under "An Attack on Indexicality", hence the first date, but I've edited it here considerably.
By Terje Lea, 19.06.2009, 21.03.2010 and 22.03.2010. Note added, corrections made, pedagogical clarification made, 23.03.2010 and 12.05.2010.
Philosophy of Language/Logics, The Relation Between Syntax and Semantics in Terms of Reduction
This is the start of the project of writing about the relationship between syntax and semantics for reducing semantics to only syntax (to a certain point). This may only be a summary of existing literature or my addition to that line of thinking. I think Searle is inconclusive about syntax at best, but there are good chances that there are others who are more prominent in this sense of this project that I like to investigate.
Here we go!
(Interesting books and possibly people:)
By Terje Lea, 21.11.2010.
Philosophy of Mathematics, Over Principia Mathematica by B. R. and A. N. W.
This is the start of the project of researching a possible completion of the Principia Mathematica by Russell and Whitehead.
For the time being, I have this to write. Out of 'I know nothing and my set is empty! Can you call illusions knowledge? I don't think so! What is it to know? I have absolutely no idea! To "know" has been assigned to me! Thanks, Russell, for pointing out the danger of having a single proposition of knowledge!' TL (I think this quote has been made around 20.11.2009 or a little bit later, but at least in 2009. 23rd Nov. 2009 is by record of Twitter.), I think the set theory that breaks the Principia Mathematica can be solved by S = ∅ (set of solution is empty).
In case of protest, one should remember that one object/member lower down the hypothetical chain of sets (by categories) triggers necessary objects/members all the way up to the "first natural level where one would otherwise see an empty set right below it". "The first natural level" can also be seen as "the deepest level" before, if any at all, the empty set can occur.
You can add all the (meaningless) categories/set containers you want under a natural set/one set that contains members, but where do you get when the bottom container is empty? Clearly, it's just rubbish and thus it's not a serious argument against the project that Principia Mathematica represents.
If this is the only problem, the way for Principia Mathematica is completed. If not, I think there are good chances for completing it.
[Edit:] Added ""The first natural level" can also be seen as "the deepest level" before, if any at all, the empty set can occur." [End of edit.] I've added more also.
By Terje Lea, 04.03.2011 and 05.03.2011.
Note: this has essentially first been written on the Philosophy Now forum under "Over Principia Mathematica by B. R. and A. N. W." today, 04.03.2011.
Note2: I'm sorry for the messy style the writing is in at the moment. I'll try to make a more slick writing as the project develops.
Note3: I'm also of the opinion that Mathematical Philosophy and Philosophy of Mathematics is of the union, ∪, relationship. It's thereby only a detail if I place this writing in either discipline.
Note4: additional comment has first been added on the Philosophy Now forum today, 05.03.2011.
Note5: I've added member and members to object and objects to avoid ambiguity.
Philosophy of Language, An Attack on Indexicality
People... I have been reading "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" by John Perry and I have a proposal in reaction to it.
I consider here the three indexicals, I, here, and now. Only these!
We want to have a timeline. So here I'll try to remove now by:
A human by the name Jesus, social security number so-and-so, white robe, long hair is dead, therefore we are in year 0 (zero).
We want to mention a certain place. So here I'll try to remove here by:
A place is at the coordinates so-and-so in the system of planet Earth.
We want to mention a certain person. So here I'll try to remove I by:
A person by the name so-and-so, with the social security number so-and-so, perhaps a description and a history so-and-so.
So, are indexicals necessary? I suggest that they are wholly ripe for elimination, theoretically. They are around because they are practical. Let's say we have an actual, obvious space and in it is an object. By giving the right description, we can remove the need for pointing and thus the definite need for indexicals disappears.
Let's try with an example from John Perry's article.
John Perry writes something like this: "I'm looking for the person who is making a mess in the supermarket. After a while I find that the person who is making the mess is myself. I'm making a mess. I'm taking action to limit the mess."
If I'm to explain this without indexical, I:
(John Perry is making a mess at time, t1, in the supermarket, but he does not know this.) John Perry is looking for the person who is making a mess in the supermarket at time, t2. After a while at time, t3, John Perry finds that the person who is making the mess is himself. John Perry has been making a mess. John Perry takes action at time, t4, to limit the mess.
F**k the indexicals!
What do you think? Can we do without the indexicals? If something is unclear, please point it out!
P.S.: Hans Reichenbach is developing something similar in "Elements of Symbolic Logic, 1947", §50: Token-reflexive Words. We are in the same direction, I believe, with me being a bit more radical.
Isn't language necessary for the expression of thoughts and communication? I can't see that it's around for sole practical reasons. Where is the alternative? I think it's unfair if you undermine this thread with bullsh*t! Why don't you just let it sink to the bottom of the ocean? Be serious!
That's good. I've been searching the net for other contemporary articles and I've been unsuccessful so I haven't searched this time around. Well, people, if you want the article known, just consume it! I don't exactly know the importance of indexicals, but I've already hinted at the practical importance. You don't have any arguments for the sake of theory? I'm just curious, how deep into Phil. of Lang. are you?
First, John Perry is arguing for the strict necessity of especially the essential indexical. Second, you have my attack on that kind of notion. There is no implication that the indexicals are going to be dropped from the language or that there is a wish for that kind of thing. This is foremost about the necessity of the indexicals and maybe also about certain contexts, the way I understand it.
I haven't analysed whether some parts of language are necessary or not. Has there been an issue on whether natural language is sufficient for the description of science? I believe a lecturer I've had has made a confirming comment on that.
Some people say that time isn't objective, but I think you can make every point in time objective as long as you stick to it and work out it's relativity to the other parts of the universe.
I think a language looks better if there's no necessity for indexicals. Somehow, it then appears scientifically deeper.
There is a strange way of argumentation in the paper of John Perry. It's like there's only been sloppy attempts of making fitting, exhaustive descriptions replacing the indexicals and when one gives this up, one latches onto the necessity of the indexicals. Why can't we assume: "at this moment" = "now", for example?
Reinvigoration. I'm sorry for having taken so long.
"The person that has the frame of mind of the person of context that is given" is "I".
"The person already given"="the given person"=indexical "myself"
"The description of location and person that gives the person"=indexical "I"
I think "I" includes "here". I have therefore added location to the formula.
"The moment has arrived"=indexical "now"
I'll counter any argument from memory loss and say that one can lose the conception of the word "I" as well in the case of memory loss. I therefore think that the indexical and the exterior description is still on equal footing. Memory loss is also a matter of empiri of investigation, just to have mentioned it.
What do you put into Perry's argument except linguistic focus and reflexivity?
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "1) The pain that "NameY" is experiencing is of no importance compared to the pain NameX is experiencing because I am NameX.
2) The pain that "NameY" is experiencing is of no importance compared to the pain NameX is experiencing because NameX is NameX."
I think 2) can be rephrased as
2') The pain that "NameY" is experiencing is of no importance compared to the pain NameX is experiencing because NameX is making the comparison.
I think some people speak of "now" as a time frame within which a scene is being played out.
I'm sorry I have included "himself" in the writing. It's a mistake and you are correct in pointing it out. I'll try to improve.
'I am NameX' usually means, in the indexical free world, that 'NameX is introducing NameX to others'.
Cuthbert wrote:
Quote: "Similarly, any time after now is in the future. Also, it's now 8:04am on 6 May 2009. But it's not the case that any time after 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the future. In the time it took to write the conclusion, 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the past."
Indexical free: Similarly, any time after the sense of moment given is in the future. Also, it's in another moment given 8:04am on 6 May 2009. But it's not the case that any time after 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the future. In the time it took to write the conclusion, 8:04am on 6 May 2009 is in the past.
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "There are ten people at a party. Someone says "bert1 knows where the host has hidden the Ferrero Rocher." I say, "bert1 is bert1". Everyone else says "So what? We all know that already." Then I say "Sorry, I meant that I am bert1". "Oh!" says everyone, "Then tell us where the Ferrero Rocher are!""
Indexical free: There are ten people at a party. Someone says "NameX knows where the host has hidden the Ferrero Rocher." NameX says, "NameX is NameX". Everyone else says "So what? Everyone in the party know that already." Then NameX says "Sorry, NameX is intending to say that NameX is introducing NameX to the others of the party and the person of the given location is in the moment doing so". "Oh!" says everyone, "Then tell the rest where the Ferrero Rocher are!"
I think my solution also solves:
There are ten people at a party. Someone says "NameX knows where the host has hidden the Ferrero Rocher." Two people (one of them NameX) simultaneously say, "NameX is NameX". Everyone else says "So what? We all know that already." Then NameX say "Sorry, NameX meant that NameX is introducing NameX to the rest of the party". "Oh!" says everyone, "Then tell us where the Ferrero Rocher are!"
Also, I don't think one should be forced to use the geocoordinates to designate a location. A good relative description can work just as well. The relative geocoordinates are supposed to solve the extreme cases.
bert1 writes,
quote: "Are we allowed to use 'is'? Is there an implicit 'now' in 'is'?"
I certainly find that we are allowed to use a given tense as appropriate and the rest should now be obvious.
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "Lets say we have a complete objective psycho-physical description of both NameX and NameY. Nowhere in these descriptions does it say which one of these people I am. When I say 'I am NameX, and not NameY' that is an extra fact not contained in the descriptions."
The indexical-free descriptions are dynamic and update as fast as new information is added to the situation. I think this is solved by what is already written.
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "But something is definitely removed from the language if we remove 'I', and not just convenience."
I disagree and you and the rest have not pointed to what this may be.
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "Is it a metaphysical issue?"
I think there is little to find in metaphysics regarding the descriptive use of indexicals, but that's just my opinion.
A funny fact.
In G. E. M. Anscombe's book of Mind and Language - Wolfson College Lectures 1974 1975 p. 65 it says in a footnote: "In Latin we have "ambulo" = "I walk". There is no subject-term. There is no need of one."
bert1 wrote:
Quote: "What makes 'the given location' the location where NameX is?"
"Given" is a short for a more comprehensive description of information that is not included in the situation that is being analysed. It is always possible to give that kind of information. This is part of the argument against the necessity of indexicals.
As a quick response: twin people, twin planets and everything else that is a twin to something is usually given a separating name otherwise it runs counter to the custom of giving names. Twin objects with the same name are counter to intelligence.
It has already been pointed out that "himself" is an indexical in the thread. "I am John Perry" is the equal to "John Perry knows that John Perry's name is John Perry". The main issue has been to show that the indexical "I" is not essential.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "They are not the same belief. If I believe that "John Perry knows that John Perry's name is John Perry" that does not mean that I believe that "I am John Perry." As a matter of actual fact, I do hold the former belief, but not the latter."
They represent the exactly same meaning in that specific context in that situation. Obviously, when you put yourself into the equation, the situation, we are speaking of something entirely different and you fail to acknowledge this. I think you have skipped the information in this thread that says "The indexical-free descriptions are dynamic and update as fast as new information is added to the situation."
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "You cannot eliminate "himself" for the same reason that you cannot eliminate "I" in the explanation of Perry's behavior. To say that John Perry finds out that the person who is making the mess is himself is to say that John Perry finds out that "I am making the mess" (that is the belief that is required to explain Perry's behavior, because if John Perry believes that John Perry knows that John Perry's name is John Perry then he will still not behave the way he does in the store unless he also believes that he is John Perry, i.e., unless he also has the belief that "I am John Perry")."
I can very much eliminate indexicals with descriptions, but I and everyone else who do it must be very sensitive to what is contained in the actual situation. I don't think you try to eliminate indexicals even. You just seem to postulate the necessity of the indexicals. If you are up for the challenge, why don't you give an example of a situation where the indexicals are necessary? I'm more than willing to make the eliminations as I have done several times already in this thread.
I believe I'm not missing Perry's point, but I have no sympathy with it. I also think that attribution of belief and belief states can very well be done by proper descriptions.
I think Perry is identifying more with his indexical "I" than he is with the unique identifier of a proper name. To a certain degree, I understand this, but not when it comes to the "full power" of description.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "So what attributions of belief do you make to Perry that explain his behavior but do not employ the first-person pronoun?"
I think the solution is to use the proper name and make a sufficient description to what it is supposed to explain including beliefs and belief states, respectively.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "Belief contexts are referentially opaque. This means that the substitution of co-referential expressions/proper names in sentences involving belief ascriptions can change the truth value of the sentences."
I don't think this is the case if it's done thoroughly.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "Consider the true sentence “Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly.” Now substitute “Clark Kent” for “Superman” and we get “Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent can fly,” which is false."
I agree that a simple switch of disguise-identities doesn't work. In this description we should compensate Lois Lane's belief by writing this: “Lois Lane believes that Superman can fly.” is equal to, in Lois Lane's eyes, “Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent in disguise can fly". This is true! We can indeed write "Superman" is identical with "Clark Kent in disguise" and vice versa to accommodate Lois Lane's view.
Just a note. For Lois Lane, the two names are not interchangeable, but for us on the outside of the situation, they are.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "Likewise, if Perry believes that “John Perry is making the mess,” but does not believe that “I am John Perry,” then he will not act as he does in the store unless he also believes that "I am John Perry", and this despite the fact that "John Perry" and "I" (when uttered by John Perry) are co-referential."
Let's turn the situation around: we can imagine, rather unlikely, that John Perry has no association to "I", but has a strong identification with his name. So when he believes "I'm making a mess", it's simply rubbish to him, but when he's in the belief that "John Perry is making a mess", there's an immediate reaction. We can hypothetically imagine that some people have brought up their child without making it learn what "I" is. This is, of course, very strange, but so and so. I believe that John Perry is simply making a postulation of our intimation of the indexical "I" and plays a psychological game around our recognition of our own name (and the power of descriptions), that is mostly an unique identifier.
My use of "intimation" is to mean "what we make dear to our heart" or something like that. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to redefine the English language.
(John Perry is making a mess at time, t1, in the supermarket, but John Perry does not know the given fact.) John Perry is looking for the person who is making a mess in the supermarket at time, t2. After a while at time, t3, John Perry finds that the person who is making the mess is John Perry. John Perry has been making a mess. John Perry takes action at time, t4, to limit the mess.
This is a context-specific description, explanation, of John Perry's behaviour.
Philo1965 wrote:
Quote: "It is not an explanation of Perry's behavior because, of course, it leaves out the fact that he must know that he himself is John Perry before he will come to act as he does. Calling it "context-specific" does not change that fact. He may just as well have come to believe that "Roger Daltry is making a mess" as that "John Perry is making a mess" if he does not believe that he himself is John Perry."
I find that normal people definitely know their name. It's so fundamental to us that people learn their own name before they learn the meaning of "I". Obviously, I can turn this on it's head to counter you and say that "He may just as well have come to believe that "Roger Daltry is making a mess" as that "John Perry is making a mess" if he does not believe that he himself is his own "I" when he calls himself "I"". If you take this stand, it's impossible to convince you no matter what description I put on the table. So in reality, you don't ask anything of me because no matter what I answer it falls short in your view. Instead of having me to try to eliminate the indexicals, why don't you come up with a situation where you think it's impossible to eliminate the indexical? While you're at it, you're welcome to add to the paper of John Perry. Is it really impossible to explain your behaviour without using indexicals? This problem should be rife in psychology then, but I find that psychologists are able to explain behaviour all the time, even the beliefs and belief-states as long as they are communicated honestly. I really think you may be some kind of an indexical-fundamentalist as you seem to make contradictory demands that ensures the continuation of your view of the indexicals. If there is nothing new to this discussion from you, I think we have finished.
jtoma wrote:
Quote: "Other than being 'wholly ripe for elimination', theoretically speaking, why do you want to get rid of indexicals? Perhaps I am being crude. Do you want to create an indexical free language?"
I want to show that indexicals are neither essential nor necessary. I want to create a potentially indexical free language.
jtoma wrote:
Quote: "I mean that there would be a different description being filled in depending on what you know about the person. Does that make any sense?"
I think it certainly makes sense in this regard. From earlier: "The indexical-free descriptions are dynamic and update as fast as new information is added to the situation." Maybe there is also something to learn from it in the process.
Is this good? Cheers!
I bet that you are very sensitive to her name, your lover, as well like if you hear it over the calling system at the mall. When you say "you, my lover" I think it comes close enough to your affection for the name like "Shania, my lover". In this situation I think there's equal affection for the unique identifier as when you use "you" for your lover. You obviously put a lot into it than a third person. This angle can be accommodated for in the descriptive situation, I hold. The extremity comes down to this: as long as there are thoughts or whatever that can be expressed in communication, they are. Rather, to save time, one economises slightly, but not when it's important. There may be mental imagery swirling around in a situation, but if one uses some time on it, it's really no obstacle. In the end there's some kind of "magic" put forward by the proponents of the indexicals. I think that is unfair in the communicative situation. Is it what is "heavenly"? Is it what is unique? Is it about "extra-sensory" qualities? I don't know. I rely on the descriptive power.
jtoma wrote:
Quote: "What would be the virtue that an indexical free language would have that an indexical containing language does not have?"
Good question! I can't say there is any difference at all. It may appear more "scientific" if it's indexical free, but it's really in the air. It's not a part of the purpose of this thread to answer this question. I have yet to discover the essential, the necessary about it. Cheers!
In relation to indexicals, it's worth noting that in suggesting there's a particular mystery with "I", one can equally highlight the mystery of substance. The depth of mystery of calling on a person by that person's name is equally mysterious as investigating the nature of substance. Therefore, the mystery of "I" and this person's name is exactly the same. "I" doesn't add or deduct anything to this mystery. If possible, calling on the "soul" of a person after this person's death by this person's name is equally meaningful as if this person is to use "I" in this "soul"-state. The two terms still nominate exactly the same information!
It says in the paper by Perry, following from above, that:
"In these three cases [you can investigate the paper for yourselves] the subjects in explaining their actions, would use indexicals to characterize certain beliefs they came to have. These indexicals are essential, in that replacement of them by other terms destroys the force of the explanation, or at least requires certain assumptions to be made to preserve it."
My emphasis.
By essential in the meaning of necessary, this doesn't walk, I say. I'm against this notion of essential, but in exactly this quote, I'm uncertain to what definite opposition I bother to have other than I can make equally good objective (without the use of indexicals, especially "I") descriptions. It's also uncertain if using indexicals takes away any objectivity at all as the utterers are always in the given context. Much of this has its responsibility upon the one who is making the description where I adhere to the possibility of making as accurate a description as information and context allow, not necessarily without indexicals, but always possibly (as good). This should therefore be an incredibly minor issue and it may be one that has been exaggerated by the publishers and editor of The Philosophy of Language by A. P. Martinich, 5 ed., not really playing any important classic role at all.
On the other side, I've gained quite some consciousness of description by pursuing (more difficult) indexical-free descriptions and it may represent fine training and insight in going through this yourself (possibly mostly in one's scientific pursuit).
There's no dogma in it for all I care. I use the indexicals all the time yet it strikes me that scientific papers demand more rigour. There's no program to get rid of the indexicals! There's no holocaust of the indexicals (perhaps this is rather distasteful...).
Getting rid of them, dogmatically or systematically would require major efforts in a wide number of people and it would probably go against people's logic (of what language is supposed to yield or provide).
In line with writing of present tense as the indexical now, I can present these two sentences:
Should we have a cup of tea? Perhaps we can have a cup of tea later, if not? It can also be nice to think about this solution where the 2nd sentence takes out everything later than "now", implied by the 1st, a kind of "locking nut" to the first nut on the bolt.
Long live the indexicals and also the possibility of doing without them. Cheers!
This is the start of these examples I'm going to present indexical-free, equivalent to the indexical versions:
The Careless Shopper
I once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing my cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with a torn sack to tell him he was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker. But I seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on me. I was the shopper I was trying to catch.
I believed at the outset that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess And I was right. But I didn't believe that I was making a mess. That seems to be something I came to believe. And when I came to believe that, I stopped following the trail around around the counter, and rearranged the torn sack in my cart. My change in beliefs seems to explain my change in behaviour.
I am making a mess.
Indexical free (IF):
John Perry once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing John Perry's cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with a torn sack to tell the shopper with a torn sack that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker. But John Perry seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on John Perry. John Perry was the shopper John Perry was trying to catch.
John Perry believed at the outset that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. And John Perry was right. But John Perry didn't believe that John Perry was making a mess. That seems to be something John Perry came to believe. And when John Perry came to believe that, John Perry stopped following the trail around around the counter, and rearranged the torn sack in John Perry's cart. John Perry's change in beliefs seems to explain John Perry's change in behaviour.
John Perry is making a mess.
(It's presumed that John Perry's name stand to John Perry's own perceptions in this example. The shopper with a torn sack is equally unique in John Perry's belief, that is, it is the same person John Perry is following.)
The Tardy Professor
In the first a professor, who desires to attend the department meeting on time, and believes correctly that it begins at noon, sits motionless in his office at that time. Suddenly he begins to move. What explains his action? A change in belief. He believed all along that the department meeting starts at noon; he came to believe, as he would have put it, that it starts now.
IF:
In the first a professor, who desires to attend the department meeting on time, and believes correctly that the department meeting begins at noon, sits motionless in the professor's office at the moment of time. Suddenly the professor begins to move. What explains the professor's action? A change in belief. The professor believed all along that the department meeting starts at noon; the professor came to believe, as the professor would have put the words, that the meeting starts at the moment the professor realises the time, noon.
The Lost Hiker
The author of the book, Hiker's Guide to the Desolation Wilderness, stands in the wilderness beside Gilmore Lake, looking at the Mt. Tallac trail as it leaves the lake and climbs the mountain. He desires to leave the wilderness. He believes that the best way out from Gilmore Lake is to follow the Mt. Tallac trail up the mountain to Cathedral Peaks trail, on to the Floating Island trail, emerging at Spring Creek Tract Road. But he does not move. He is lost. He isn't sure whether he is standing beside Gilmore Lake, looking at Mt. Tallac, or beside Clyde Lake looking at Jack's peak, or beside Eagle Lake looking at one of the Maggie peaks. Then he begins to move along the Mt. Tallac trail. If asked, he would have explained the crucial change in his beliefs this way: "I came to believe that this is the Mt. Tallac trail and that is Gilmore Lake."
IF:
The author of the book, Hiker's Guide to the Desolation Wilderness, stands in the wilderness beside Gilmore Lake, looking at the Mt. Tallac trail as the Mt. Tallac trail leaves the lake and climbs the mountain. The author desires to leave the wilderness. The author believes that the best way out from Gilmore Lake is to follow the Mt. Tallac trail up the mountain to Cathedral Peaks trail, on to the Floating Island trail, emerging at Spring Creek Tract Road. But the author does not move. The author is lost. The author isn't sure whether the author is standing beside Gilmore Lake, looking at Mt. Tallac, or beside Clyde Lake looking at Jack's peak, or beside Eagle Lake looking at one of the Maggie peaks. Then the author begins to move along the Mt. Tallac trail. If asked, the author would have explained the crucial change in the author's beliefs in the following way: "The author came to believe that the trail the author is perceiving is the Mt. Tallac trail and the lake the author is perceiving is Gilmore Lake."
(The author of the book, Hiker's Guide to the Desolation Wilderness is the author throughout the text above.)
Except for the three headers that I've taken from a paper, these texts under these three headers are all the perfect reproduction of the paper of John Perry.
My argument/attack against indexicality is from a propositional, de dicto position. This written, it's in support of the possibility (concerning even those entities that are not) of a good/exhaustive description that's context-specific. Description is thus a matter of precision and applies where it should.
I've now added the indexical-free versions. They are finished.
So, some "funny" thoughts:
I am John Perry -> John Perry is presenting John Perry to others.
I am John Perry -> John Perry is John Perry in John Perry's belief (reinforcing self-belief or just thinking about one's identity and name)
In my opinion, it may be possible to equalise the de re position with the de dicto position and thus making it quite indifferent of what kind of propositional belief you have. This means also that it all boils down to description again! A fundamental/necessary belief in Indexicals is futile in my opinion. They can be bypassed. Proper description may be richer too, as shown above.
[Edit, 11.05.2010:]
From Wikipedia, 11.05.2010, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re :
Quote: "There are two possible interpretations of the sentence “Peter believes someone is out to get him”. On one interpretation, ‘someone’ is unspecific and Peter suffers a general paranoia; he believes that it is true that a person is out to get him, but does not necessarily have any beliefs about who this person may be. What Peter believes is that the predicate ‘is out to get Peter’ is satisfied. This is the de dicto interpretation.
On the de re interpretation, ‘someone’ is specific, picking out some particular individual. There is some person Peter has in mind, and Peter believes that person is out to get him." End of quote from Wikipedia.
De re: As it focuses on the person, the "thing", one can plausibly write this:
Peter believes someone is out to get him because he's suffering from paranoia and thus his belief may/is not (be) true.
Peter believes someone is out to get him because he knows about this person who is out to get him.
I think these two explanations are better to clarify the situation. To simply assert that a shortcoming of information explains one position better than the other, is simply to be untruthful and dishonest.
De dicto: As it focuses on the words, the sentences, one can plausibly write this:
Peter believes someone is out to get him because he's suffering from paranoia and thus his belief may/is not (be) true.
Peter believes someone is out to get him because he knows about this person who is out to get him.
The sentences become the same because the care for information adheres to both positions regardless if you focus on the "thing" in question or the words/sentences.
I can't believe this proves my point on de re and de dicto, but it's at least a precursor of what I believe is to come on the distinction between de re and de dicto. I've also come across de se (of oneself) that may fall into the same batch as one should always take into account that the world is not in your head or anyone else's, thus one should accomodate one's views to fit objectivity or everything thereof or as close to it as one can get. [End of edit.]
I've written "Indexical Free" on the examples above and this is not correct (although essentially, it is). I'm now going to put a lid on this indexical coffin for good!
Here it follows:
(the list from SEP, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/, is ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘this’, and ‘that’; ‘here’, ‘now’, ‘actually’, ‘presently’, ‘today’, ‘yesterday’, and ‘tomorrow’; ‘my’, ‘his’, ‘her’,‘actual’, and ‘present’ (some may include 'given' too))
Indexical free, from before (IF*):
John Perry once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing John Perry's cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with a torn sack to tell the shopper with a torn sack that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker. But John Perry seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on John Perry. John Perry was the shopper John Perry was trying to catch.
John Perry believed at the outset that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. And John Perry was right. But John Perry didn't believe that John Perry was making a mess. That seems to be something John Perry came to believe. And when John Perry came to believe that, John Perry stopped following the trail around around the counter, and rearranged the torn sack in John Perry's cart. John Perry's change in beliefs seems to explain John Perry's change in behaviour.
John Perry is making a mess.
Indexical free, now (IF):
John Perry once followed a trail of sugar on a supermarket floor, pushing John Perry's cart down the aisle on one side of a tall counter and back the aisle on the other, seeking the shopper with a torn sack to tell the shopper with a torn sack that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. With each trip around the counter, the trail became thicker. But John Perry seemed unable to catch up. Finally it dawned on John Perry. John Perry was the shopper John Perry was trying to catch.
John Perry believed at the outset that the shopper with a torn sack was making a mess. And John Perry was right. But John Perry didn't believe that John Perry was making a mess. The belief of John Perry that John Perry was making a mess seems to be something John Perry came to believe. And when John Perry came to believe that John Perry was making a mess, John Perry stopped following the trail around around the counter, and rearranged the torn sack in John Perry's cart. John Perry's change in beliefs seems to explain John Perry's change in behaviour.
John Perry is making a mess. (Changes have been underlined.)
To the uninitiated: there are several meanings of "that" in English. In the indexical sense, one wishes to take out "pronoun" and "adjective", leaving "adverb" and "conjunction" out because they are not relevant, simply. Thus only one example has been modified!
An extra note: by this, I supersede both Hans Reichenbach and John Perry so there's no need to pretend.
Perhaps, for those who may have finished "that" before me, I say "I made this" and you reply "I fixed "that""!
Some words on De Se, De Re and De Dicto:
All these positions come down to explanatory power which is a plausible claim where one "camp" claims superiority over the others.
*De Se claims to be closer to one's self thus closer to the best explanatory power. This is a plausible claim and you have to be in sympathy to it.
*De Re claims to be closer to the thing itself as focus, objectivity, thus closer to the best explanatory power. This is a plausible claim and you have to be in sympathy to it.
*De Dicto claims to be closer to the language itself and its use as focus, thus closer to the best explanatory power. This is a plausible claim and you have to be in sympathy to it.
The conclusion is that all of these positions have to be equivalent if the above considerations are to be taken seriously and I think they are!
[Edit:] Educational note: You may want to object over "3 best explanations, how can that be?" But I suggest that, when considerations altogether respected, they eclipse one another thus the emphasis falls back to the description itself and how it is made! [End of edit.]
[Edit2:] Additional note that may be to your interest: There is a direct conflict between Indexicality (indexicals are necessary) vs. Noun-ity/noun_placeholders (nouns have the possibility to replace indexicals totally [..., but this view is not dogmatic, i.e., you are not forced to stick to only nouns. You are of course allowed the full range of language]) So you can't hold Indexicality/indexicals are indispensable as a view if you are sympathic/adhere to my argument put forward here because I think it's quite clear now that indexicals are dispensable (perhaps not a pretty language, but still...). [End of edit.]
By Terje Lea / Terje L. F. Olsnes-Lea, 2009 - 2011
Note: "Time-stamps" below are the original ones and most are probably CET/CEST.
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Note2: This writing is NOT created lastly, but I've considered it to be more honest to place it lowest because it has been added LATEST. Thus priority to added latest rather than most newly created, transferred from "Issues from the Internet.
In addition, this writing has been added 27.03.2011, without having any significance because, prior to this, it has already been published.
Philosophy of Science, A Mapping of (Descriptive, Nomothetical) Laws in Psychology
I will now suggest, commonly or not, 2 laws of psychology in the descriptive nomothetical sense and these 2 are, firstly:
1. You are the most important person in the world to yourself!
2. The mentality is lead by morality either toward health and positivity, upward, you might say, or downward, toward a corrupt and unhealthy mind,
in an invariant way, that is, people are destined either upward or downward by choices of morality.
Another descriptive nomothetical law may be the law of evolution, as an example...
Outside neurology, these 2 are among the very few found today (in this academic subject), tentatively if you doubt it.
You can protest all you want, they will always remain a part of my scientific legacy and I also see that it doesn't help much that I speak from the meagre position of layman (of philosophy and more), inflicted or not, by what I consider to be the (perceived, by being layman, only) professional standing!
These 2 laws are backed by my psychiatric/psychological findings presented as a quote on my Ident/Index100 pages and my (new) law of schizophrenia under Psychiatric Views and Findings.
A 3. law may be expressed as this: Physical environment including the effects from it, gives effects to the mind of this person in this environment, of the kind that physically inflicted pain has various effects in the mind such as fear, hate, anger and solutions for removing both the effect, the pain, and its cause, in this case, by this inflicted pain!
It's a necessary assumption for the above law that this person has a kind of mind of normal, healthy psychology to begin with.
Yes, maybe psychologists should publish a kind of "Collection of Laws in Psychology" or "Laws in Psychology" or begin to emphasise them more! Or Philosophers of Science may do it for you, you lazy ones, obsessed with "experimenting"!
This comes in the wake of a writing to my blogs and is hereby started, being a fairly large project.
By Leonardo F. Olsnes-Lea, 02.07.2011.
Note: this has been published to my blog on blog.t-lea.net and the other blog on Angelfire on 2011-07-01 01:59:56 and developed there in two spans of time, first shortly after this time-stamp and at another time-span around 2011-07-02 appx. 20:00:00.
Note2: this is now published in these "Phil. Notes" today, 2011-07-02.
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Things to add:
ReplyDelete_MY_ solution to the set theory of mathematics, founded in the example of Kant and his four categories, Analytical and Synthetic and Apriori and Aposteriori, one being empty: Apriori Synthetic.
The one more to remember may be this, although, not certainly: The library of Copernicus prior to his Heliocentric Theory has happened by the biggest collection of astronomy data by his contemporaries. At least, it must be said that the library to his disposal has been of significant size, even renowned! It now resides in Stockholm, Sweden!
The interesting fact, however, in the aspect of Cumulative Growth of Knowledge, is the gathering of astronomical data all since an ancient Chinese sighting of Haley's(?) Comet and up to finishing Copernicus own theory of the Heliocentric Solar system. Even then, one has discussed Copernicus' theory for some years (100?) after his publishing, after his theory was _known_ (as "papers" would take time to get known by other academics properly by physically being possible to read, the "paper" to get acquired)! Cheers!
Over "Ethics, Ethical Objectivity - Objection to Arguments of Companions in Guilt", I'd like to voice my support for ammoniotic fluid testing after (only) 12 weeks! This makes it possible for future parents to choose to not have babies with Down's Syndrom (primarily) if not other conditions as well (on a _specified_ list)! Some religious people (or hypocrites?) are against this and are warning against the selection society. Though it needs to be said that the tests lie well within people's autonomy (that the selection society isn't _forced_ on people). I think one shouldn't refuse people the opportunity to have this testing on grounds that they choose health in front of Down's Syndrom and that having a child with Down's Syndrom is a considerable burden? Therefore, to pass a law that makes it possible for people to have the testing after (only) 12 weeks should be uncontroversial (and fortunately within the acceptable 5 months abortion time limit as opposed to the 7 months abortion limit _today_)!!!
ReplyDeleteAccording to Norwegian law, it seems they've already set a strict limit for ordinary abortions to 3 months, and setting up special conditions for abortions beyond this with _no_ upper time limit until child is born. This may be dubious, but them about that! Earlier though, as noted the time limit has been 7 months absolutely!
ReplyDeleteThe url, http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19750613-050.html, by "Lov om svangerskapsavbrudd [abortloven]"!
ReplyDeleteThis is also a classic within Applied Ethics beside allowing suicide/euthanasia and the discussion over abortion. This is the primary reason why I write on it, that it's a fairly important question, philosophically, and carries some impact on people's sentiments and worries around the World!
ReplyDeleteTo under the discipline of "Philosophy of Mathematics", "Over Principia Mathematica by B. R. and A. N. W.", I've taken sentiments from Kant and his 4 categories as above and the logics of set from Socrates and his "I know nothing!" There may be a slight objection by parallellity "out there", to demand that the empty category may require other non-empty categories/sets next to it, for my set theory to work! This is wrong, I think, because Ãf you wanted to only discuss the strain with the empty set, there is no doubt that you would be able to exactly this. Also, in any other chain of sets, you can also envision an empty set below the last one with content. This is done for saying something on WHY the last one IS empty and why the one above HAS SOMETHING to say or add! This should be obvious, even if they "look better" with parallel sets, for comparison or some other (psychological?)!
ReplyDeleteI have also written on "Remark on Truth - Plain Realist View" which runs nicely along with "Epistemology of Logics", one that I think Colin McGinn has picked up on by his concepts as "atoms". Atom is indeed a concept that I hold to be valid still yet there are smaller parts of it below, being additional concepts akin to the example of the Cow and how the cow has been parted to other concepts, now being DNA, molecules and "atoms" in some sense...
ReplyDeleteEven then, you should note that serious science is the frontier for new "truths" and that calory has gone into the history books as an invalid concept, not true as such, but true in other senses such as a concept that has been investigated and that can be found in the history of science and how scientists have
been searching and sometimes failed in the search, making funny concepts exactly like the concept of "calory" or "calory theory", more preferred...
Equally, in being in this 45 deg. arc. Harry Potter, the Hardy Brothers of the teen crime novels and a bunch of other fictional characters are added to the story of
concepts, but only on that level, never in history, but in the books, that they are now true characters of stories, of fiction, but they have NO standing as being TRUE
in the real world. They don't obtain truth in the same sense as quants, photons, atoms, ions, chemical substances, etc.! This is an addition of explanation, pedagogics, to my remark on Truth as a matter for the realists out there in the World!
Truth theory is sometimes placed in either of two subjects, metaphysics and philosophy of language!
Clearly then, the World of Truth today is ENORMOUS!
You just need to place the truths correctly!
Even then, when Tarski says that "snow is white" and means it, it doesn't mean that the chemical definition is less right, NO, it means that when we are out in the nature to identify snow, we look for something white (or grayish, if we look for ash/dust-covered snow by the roads, for some foolish reason or another). Similarly, we look for small spots of green or yellow as we approach our petri-dishes. This, either, doesn't take away the description of bacteria as such, no, it's just the way we approach them in real life when we are to identify them!
Note: This has just (written minutes ago) been transferred from a public posting under my profile on Facebook, Leonardo F. Olsnes-Lea, time, 03:55, date, 26. Feb. 2012 CET!
In leaving "a bit of sh*t for the idiots" as "they are known to like the sh*t", I've added a little funny sentence over Gettier's Argument (that's undoubtedly TRUE)! Not that I dislike Gettier's Argument! No, on the contrary, it is what I see as necessarily true and cutting a good deal of epistemological stupidity in the same instance!
ReplyDelete"Undermines", my instance, a walling of mine (as by mining of resources) and complete with supporters to go! Gee, the World is a miracle, also now an epist. Utopia!
The sentence for idiots is: "You may think that this argument undermines the Gettier argument and I think so too!" And I just claim that they "wanted it" or "provoked it into writing"! As you expect the Jangling Janes and Jacks are still the f*ck-ups of the World!
Note: First written to Facebook moments ago!
Corroboration of Support to Tarski on Defeating the Two Incompleteness Theorems
ReplyDeleteOn Finitism: To suggest that Finitism defeats my notion of completeness contrary to Godel and his Incompleteness Theorems is implausible because to merely take the cardinal numbers and say that they are infinite and therefore incomplete logically, becomes untenable because a line has infinite points (by Zeno, half of half of half) or the same with the circle or the sphere within a circle where I do indeed put all the cardinal numbers (Cantor numbers) all the way to infinite, the symbol is ∞. This makes my support to Tarski and the defeat of Godel and the two theorems COMPLETE! Godel is by this utterly defeated in this, with respect of course, myself standing on the shoulders of giants! Cheers!
Skolem distrusted the completed infinite and was one of the founders of finitism in mathematics. Skolem (1923) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoralf_Skolem#Completeness !
Url, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del !
Url, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finitism !
Note: This relates in particular to "Logics [subject matter], Opinions on Gödel's Theorems of Incompleteness and Possibly Tarski" under "Philosophical Notes".
As a matter of principal demonstration: There is something called the Alphabet and it has 26 types of characters/symbols and the alphabet is by this COMPLETE [to the English language]! Gödel's incompleteness theorems are destroyed! They no longer hold validity!
ReplyDeleteThe fact that there are Cantor numbers or that numbers generally extend infinitely is no problem in mathematics and it is sufficient to describe the scope of inifinite propositions to counter Gödel on this matter, the alleged "incompleteness"!
So when I write "* HDM and science - Incomplete, I think, and fulfills all descriptive tasks (yet missing its Gödel "completeness" by Tarski)." I intend, of course, to further address the status of this by Gödel and myself with Tarski on the end. So: Gödel and myself (with Tarski) Then: 1. Incomplete and 2. Fulfills all descriptive tasks (3. yet missing its Gödel "completeness" by Tarski)!
The post above has been first written to my Facebook profile, public setting, as well as the below:
ReplyDeleteThis matters concern any given described areal or subject bounded by the platonic line of a circle. That is, a circle that has the Platonic thinness of a line, i.e., the circle itself holds no volume!
This is final! The descriptive power of all subjects, given that people stick to discipline, is COMPLETE!
Clarification on my writing on Gödel's incompleteness theorems:
I have, by my note on this in the Philosophical Notes (...), DESTROYED the notion of "Gödel's incompleteness theorems" because he begs the impossible by his theorems. Gödel's incompleteness theorems are not with us anymore in the sense of validity, as much as Tarski has obliterated him in Geometry and Algebra!
Operationalism is a key word and the logical set-ups is a key term!
I have reached a conclusion on Computability: Everything is computable! And if it's not then it's because an idiot made the computing so! This also falls under my considerations of descriptive power AGAINST Gödel's incompleteness theorems!
(Mark: Sunday at 22:02 from Facebook!)
This should sort under my final verdict on "Computability":
ReplyDeleteOperationalism is a key word and the logical set-ups is a key term!
I'm sorry for the little mess above.
Conventionally, the other then: Bew(y) = ∃x (x is the Gödel number of a proof of the formula encoded by y) from under the /premise/: y is the Gödel number of a formula /then/ the former sentence to this premise.
ReplyDeleteNeatly made by this, for time-stamp: From under the "Construction of a statement about "provability"
From 3 sentences,
1. y is the Gödel number of a formula and x is the Gödel number of a proof of the formula encoded by y
2. y is the Gödel number of a formula /THEN/
3. Bew(y) = ∃x (x is the Gödel number of a proof of the formula encoded by y)
First written to the Facebook profile and corresponding note moments ago.
To my text (and idea) of "Remark on Truth - Plain Realist View", I have this to add, formally:
ReplyDeleteIt has been implicit throughout that _my_ notion of being Truth Realist has this in it, ""snow is ice is blank" means snow is ice is blank" (as in the chemical substances, properties registry that occupy chemists so much)! Enjoy (with Truth(-realism))!
My writing on Truth can be found in the "Philosophical Notes" as "Plain Realist Remark over Truth" or some thereof. (See the blogs, please.)
The above is also a reformulation of Tarski's sentence as "snow is white ..."
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski !
Alfred Tarski (January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish logician and ...
And "'p' is True if and only if p.
(where p is the proposition expressed by "p")
The debate amounts to whether to read sentences of this form, such as
"Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white
as expressing merely a deflationary theory of truth or as embodying ..."
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflationary_theory_of_truth !
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_substance !
Url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_database !
Note: First added to Facebook, today, 11 July 2012, about 07:25 CEST, under my profile, Leonardo F. Olsnes-Lea.
My line "* (Possibly Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein)" under the Efficiency Argument (of Phil. of Science) only is there as exactly a possibility. It may be that I find that it's not needed under a final version of this idea some time into the future! Good?
ReplyDeleteUpon Tarski again as a more precise formulation: "snow is white because it is _loaded_ with air-bubbles that break light in such a fashion that snow actually is, under natural light, WHITE" iff. (iffy by original Tarski, but in plain language, "means") snow is white because it is _loaded_ with air-bubbles that break light in such a fashion that snow actually is, under natural light, WHITE! And this must be it, in good compliance with science to go!
ReplyDeleteOver the Epistemology of Transmission and reading the IEP of Transmission and Transmission Failure in Epistemology by Chris Tucker of University of Auckland, New Zealand, I think it's fair to say that I have made the assurance, the confidence to the proponents of Transmission Arguments as I've originally written them. [That my work and my words have made them confident directly!]
ReplyDeleteBesides, the article of IEP, 2010, runs nicely with my own writing on the topic of Epistemology from 2004 and that together they pull the burden of a carry very well, that Epistemology is now finally in Utopia by my explicit declaration from a while ago, that Brains in Vats fail and that a definitive Truth Theory as a Realist's point of view with a broad Tarski interpretation is in support of this. Thank you!
Url to Chris Tucker's http://www.iep.utm.edu/transmis/ .
Transmission and Transmission Failure in Epistemology [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
My own writing from 2004: "Epistemology [the discipline], The Transmission Argument, the title itself by url, http://whatiswritten777.blogspot.no/2011/08/philosophical-notes-of-intellectual.html as 3rd idea down on the page!
Besides, a note on Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright !
ReplyDeleteIntellectual property: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property !
To these other "uglies", Trade Secrets rely on /being secret/! I don't care how f*cked they get if they choose this strategy as I see no point for it! Company security and protecting the business as such with clients' data and the rest are /other/ considerations. These are NOT trade secrets!
ReplyDeleteTransmission Argument is looking better now. Tags are now also much better, although the search engines in the past used to go through whole or part of texts, defined with the search engine HQs.
ReplyDelete(Also, I withdraw on "Mr. Editor of Blogger Services" as the time and date stamp proved correctly afterall. My apologies to Google for this instance of "insult". The Time Zone is also currently confirmed set to CE(S)T.)
Over "Philosophy of Science, The Efficiency Argument", I'm "inclined" to add, over what people may want to know:
ReplyDeleteKarl Popper (by the LSE, formerly):
Popper is known for either or both of the Fallibilism and Falsificationism.
As such, not somewhere near a paper for this writing, I haven't bothered to mention his name. This little notification to you now certainly /clears/ this issue. Thanks.
(I'll add some reference here sooner or later, alright?)
Applied ethics is more than animal ethics, I can assure you. Here: Applied ethics! Warning: Only for the experts! The question for the Pugwash movement, from "not one legal system": if now the World is _so_ hideous, when are you/we to stop fighting a nuclear holocaust? How much "closet behaviour" are we as human beings supposed to accept when we know about modern day "cannibals" and eaters of 0-year-olds, the "candies" (also as in "bun-making"/"soul-locking then tormenting") as /they/ may call them, in their eyes?
ReplyDeleteThis is a serious extreme in applied ethics and one that, among others, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have been here to prevent in the first place, and I think _all_ ethical questions should be asked given that they fulfill academic (read:only for academics) standards!!! This consideration stands on the very end of applied ethics and is a definite extreme!
The above also *CLEARLY* (if you... "#¤%#¤%"¤%"¤#%&¤&%"%&"%&) underscores the importance of pro-suicide legislation and the death penalty as capital punishment!
The references for my epistemology argument:
ReplyDeletePlato's Theaetetus by standard academic compilation. Now also a compilation by book. Name later (of one who is Plato specialists).
Jonathan Dancy for general introduction, Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (1985, with 13 reprints).
Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception, paper.
General Editor Audi's presentation (one-volume encyclopedia, 1995) of Curt John Ducasse and his problem-solving attempt.
Curt John Ducasse himself for being main inspiration for bothering with the problem.
I have, thus, studied this issue all from 2000 to the dates that follow, primarily up to 2010/2011/2012.
First one in the World to do this, plausibly/credibly:
ReplyDelete"This certifies knowledge and it is irrefutable."
To the Objective Ethics from the TOC above. From all the way since my Investigations of Integrity started by the ethics.html-file 14 years ago, I now add this as well, to the line of "Integrity - Mental Health - Physical Health":
ReplyDeleteThe thought is that by acquiring knowledge and achieving competence the 6. element is scored, that Integrity says that one should be pro-active and that, given the ethics is complied with, reasonably [discussion in and by itself], then the social classes are forever protected because it is known that anybody "can do it".
This is mainly theoretical and do not account for the latest findings such as police corruption or other corruption and how widespread the carnivore human nature is in preventing the best of human nature to unfold, such as the freedom to be (entirely) pro-active, to seek to solve problems in society and so on!
[Some deluded people may think this running project is a description of a film. IT IS NOT!]
The time points for the declaration of 5 definitive philosophical theories are as follows:
ReplyDeleteEpistemology, 3. July 2010.
Philosophy of Science, Dem. Problem, 2. February 2010.
Metaphysics, Time (slash McTaggart Time), 21. January 2001, with slight reservation also, adding a bit more commenting after that. Noting that ALL time is dependent on the physical time, thus slashing McTaggart Time thoroughly, even though I side with the A-theorists here, I've noted for adding definitive judgment and this particular drawing as (sublime, but not friendly to) comment to Berkely, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Objective Ethics, 11. November 2009(?, slight reservation, 4 lie detectors simul. on top of Wetlesen-sent "joke" as my note over the sciences by the ethics boards by each and every, also the laws regarding corruption and crime, from Spring 2000.)
Philosophy of Science, Criticism/Destruction of Kuhn's Paradigms (by ICT), xx. September 2009 (also note on Kuhn's lack of understanding the nature of laboratory (not one mention) and the lack of his understanding in isolating features of nature (i.e., standard physics experiments in school in considering fx. Newton forces or all other, the balls smashing into the next, making the last make that swing)
Some also think that my Set Theory (only allowing one empty set downward the chain of sets, whether the set contains hypothetical set-items or real where the empty set *must* completely empty, S = ∅, solution group is empty.).
Have a nice evening!
The determination for the time effort (as Time slash McT. time) requires some sophisticated investigation into urls and all that, being final as it entered 1st time and entering formal commenting after.
First to my Facebook profile.
A slight clarification of my Efficiency Argument and the declaration that it's *complete*: Donald Gillies discusses two cases in history for science classification in his book of 1993, Blackwell, Phil of Science in the 20th Cent. 4 Central Themes. These concern Riemann Geometry and Democrit's Atomos. I definitely consider these two cases scientific at the point of their creation. Gillies does not.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we are unable to use the contributions of excellent scientists doesn't mean that /they/ are any less excellent. No, we simply lack the bridging components to make use of them to that developed/progressing end in that /other/ field as matter of disciplines. This concerns especially the two points:
* The theories themselves
* The process of making these theories
as these are noted under the very argument itself:
The Efficiency Argument.
As usual, the argument can be found under "Philosophical Notes".
Both of these two last comments are added minutes ago to my Facebook profile.
This Sunday, prayer or not, I'm pleased to announce to you:
ReplyDeleteA Call for the Total Abolition of Torture: My call for the total abolition (under ethics/applied ethics) has the following grounding as rationale,
1. the military power under UN "letter" of civilisation and progress is overwhelming and superior and it can be uttered that every enemy to this progress of human kind can be sufficiently monitored by other means and undergo "intense"/"hard" interrogation instead and so be reasonably covered for no particular hostile action of any significance to ever arise. Terrorism has been radicalised so much that all the possible rationale pro it is GONE! Torture is no more.
2. The decision for democratic ideas to stand unchallenged is now sufficient so to demand that all discussion is to happen peacefully and by no means by terrorism. Again, the rationale for torture for non-existent terrorism to arise is gone a second time.
3. We now have, collectively, such huge resources to clarify democracies and international understanding that no possible terrorist movement, theoretically, can arise and that no torture needs to counter it. Again, torture is no more.
4. There is seemingly no possibility for military conflict of the rational/intelligent kind to arise at all, thus no torture is needed for countering a military disaster to happen.
5. All other, the monitoring of the World is sufficient as it is now to say that only lunatics remains as challenge for any massmurder to happen, but as these are under no intelligent reasoning, one is effectively prevented the excuse to use torture in the first place and thus one is impelled to commit to work ethics for preventing military conflict or terrorism to happen at all. The conclusion must be that torture is to be effectively BANNED as soon as possible!
(Warning: I am famous for it (Objective Ethics/Integrity)! )
Sincerely yours,
Lenny F. Olsnes-Lea
The ideas, 15 years and running, Integrity and Objective Ethics,
this is also /laid down/ over matters such as the Military Complex of USA, "fixed" world poverty also by subversion, The powers of finances by the big corporations, like in mining, oil and gas, most infamously, also others. I am no idiot. Are we getting there?
Under, epistemology, The Transmission Argument:
ReplyDeleteAn early contribution to Truth theory and Epistemology:
Originally, from outside the making of the game, the 80s, into 1990/91:
You can safely take this from me, out of Ghost 'n' Goblins and the Knowledge Sentence from there: So if you can separate between (the descriptions) of Ghosts and Goblins /then/ you *know* that knowledge is profound!
In other words, no matter how the concepts of ghosts and goblins have arised, they are still with us as definite, and as much as Donald Duck has gained our attention for certain as entertainment, we are still entertained by the knowledge of ghosts and goblins as ideas in entertainment and as fantasy stories over fiction.
They are now three, by the way, with this being a description for it: Since then, I've secured the theory of knowledge, epistemology by Closure Principle at University of Oslo in 2000 and by the "genetic ladder" of JTB coupled with "hunch, data-integrity, and data set".
Cheers!
Note: Truth theory can enter several subdisciplines of philosophy,
metaphysics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and logics.
PS: This has first been written to Facebook some hours ago.
Over the "Closure Principle" in Epistemology:
ReplyDeleteI happen to have a reference with the U. S. Embassy to Oslo at the time in 2000 because they had begun using a specific email-system as part of their (less known) democracy work/"security valve" mechanism so to ensure (formally, at least) that democracy could happen Worldwide. This was in 2000, spring, of course, by the Tele2-email account. Thank you!
Besides, I believe that I was also asked to deliver a paper to my lecturer at the time and that I did this as well! "Hook-on-hook", modus ponens build-up of knowledge out of the HDM, directly!!!
So when Kornblith writes "Closure Principle (2000)" from a *politically hot* context and optimism for the 3rd Millennium/the very longed for year 2000 and beyond, *he means it!!!*
Formally settling the question of language philosophy (also including logical contorversies). This is it:
ReplyDeleteThe further development of my position on "Artificial Language Philosophy" is this simplicity, that more or less settles it, is that as the logical connectives enter the artificial language in non-contradictory way and maintaining the strict logical requirements of being consistent, the logical connectives can be read aloud like this fx. "the logical connective NOT" to [entity] "by parantheses" and reading onwards and that this, principally makes Carnap's project crossing the finishing line! Thank you for following me through!
Carnap is the Winner along with the rest of us!
Under Palliative Medicine/Care, I may yield a slight point on "making the patients wake up a bit in order to speak (sensibly)" with the closest ones. This also makes a duty to utilise good anasthetic practices like setting the drips, rather than imposing one's presence on the patient and this patient's closest ones as they bond or other.
ReplyDeletePalliative Medicine is now largely finished and uncontroversial and remains so with the motto: NO PAINS!!!
A slight point on "Philosophy of Science":
ReplyDeleteA general note on archeology.
one needs to document contextual information from the excavation site along with the tool of the C-14 Dating Method.
All other tools are allowed too as usual, but we can also lean back on period of excavation or time of finding and other technicalities.
Thus every object or group of objects should carry with it a kind of certified book or document. Something for ISO?
Remark: There is no doubt that archeology is a science here to stay and clearly separates itself from pseudo-science as long as it is conducted the proper ways!
I also have no qualms with lying down my credential of the Demarcation Criterium (The Efficiency Argument) for this judgment on archeology!
Some people may question themselves why I haven't added the references of fx. Karl Popper with The Efficiency Argument and the answer to this is that circumstances haven't allowed me too finish it properly and that this is not a fully developed paper of academic quality yet. No, it's now only "idea and cast" for this very important paper to the World, one that I've "designed the bones" to.
ReplyDeleteI can also admit that with Confirmation/HDM (Hypothetico-Deductive-Method)/Scientific Method (compl. entailed by HDM) Objectivity and Replication have been missing from the text in that very pedagogical sense until mentioned now.
In the meanwhile, you will have to wait some time more, uknown for how long because of a stressful "political" situation, i.e., the lack of access to library and university resources and calmness to get this paper properly grounded.
Some more comment - Free Will - Against Thomas Kuhn
ReplyDeleteObjection to the Determinists:
1st: The Determinists are unable, honestly, to formulate anything that can constitute Free Will. I have also a clear intuition for many choices. I must therefore have a clear intuition for the important choice of kids and so on. I do not, currently, have any such perception/cognition. Are they talking Social Power disguised as Determinism?
2nd: It's not allowed to promote academic ideas by dishonesty/corrupt minds.
Additional note: Thomas Kuhn has claimed that there is no principal difference between voodoo and science in works after his famous "essay", Structure of Scientific Revolutions. James Randi is probably against this (now). This is at least noted in a Norwegian book by UiO, Jo Sivertsen, "Vitenskap og rasjonalitet".
I am directly against this and his book, "Structure of Scientific Revolutions"!
The followers to Kuhn are therefore required to deliver this "scientific" voodoo film evidence to somewhere credible for evaluation BY ALL! Hah-hah-hah-hah.
Final Blow to Determinism - Free Will More
ReplyDeleteCorrection to the above/clarification: Objection to the Determinists:
1st: The Determinists are unable, honestly, to formulate anything that can constitute Free Will.
Are they talking Social Power disguised as Determinism?
Counter the Determinists, 1: I have also a clear intuition for many choices.
Counter the Determinists, 2: then I must therefore have a clear intuition for the important choice of kids and so on.
By the two points above, I do not, currently, have any such Determinist perception/cognition.
2nd: It's not allowed to promote academic ideas by dishonesty/corrupt minds.
Url: http://whatiswritten777.blogspot.no/2011/08/philosophical-notes-of-intellectual.html . (Please, CTRL-F and Free Will.)
Free Will Theorem can be "turned" (former letter to THEM?) added because of the God's view and as 2nd Version. Not the original Free Will Theorem as formulated by these mathematicians, 2. Princeton University? I do not bother to check.
http://whatiswritten777.blogspot.no/2011/08/philosophical-notes-of-intellectual.html . CTRL-F and Free Will.
Under my Set Theory:
ReplyDeleteHere is my solution against the number illusionists or rather Number Idealists:
Numbers are for REAL given that sets are for real and sets need to represent something, in logics given by the existential notation. In math, given by the exact number, usually, given bla, bla, bla...
Therefore, numbers have to be d*mn REAL, without a possibility for doubt!
This places nicely next to my Set Theory in Math that some people see as definitive.
This makes me a Number Realist along with my general position in Mathematics and Logics: the Realist's position.
Thus more, I add force to various people bothering to follow my intellectual path through life in providing intelligence and BEST solutions!
(That I write this out of who I am, MAN! (Without the /uncertainty/ like in puberty.))
This has been noted a while ago given some tech-eyes (state-crime) considerations!
This too has now been updated for proper reading, with a mistake or two. I'm sorry that this has been allowed to last for so long.
ReplyDeleteLiar's Paradox is now solved by dismissing the whole issue into Austin Speech Acts so that Liar's Paradox never gets a voice in logics, unless you're Graham Priest... :-)
ReplyDeleteA SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL - A THEODICY:
ReplyDeleteBy designating all evil as part of a perfect drama we can deduce further that we, presumably the worthy of Heaven, are given by the virtue of our system, the Earth, as one place of sentient life in competition with other places of sentient life in the Universe/Multiverse. So our system only produces a number of worthy souls by our virtue of our system and history as a whole. If we have been evil a lot, then few worthy souls have been produced. This can possibly turn out differently in these other places of good sentient life.
Under "A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF EVIL - A THEODICY" and God's Perfect Drama: The very point against the Problem of Evil, "People have been really naughty and thus evil exists. Live as a believer and behave properly and you get Heaven! God has made perfect rules for everything and thus the corrupt and evil go to Hell and even though the believer in God suffer, the moment of Death is one of salvation and from there they go to the place of goodness, Heaven!"
ReplyDeleteApplied Ethics: A Refined View on Abortion - The Sympathic Angle
ReplyDeleteThere are basically two views on abortions, the pro and the con.
Now, let's say there are heavy reasons for choosing either side. If this is the case then maybe abortion should be allowed? I think abortion should be allowed so that all people who need it may have their abortion and so that all who are fortunate to live lives that allow them to reject abortion.
Let's be clear: the ideal for both sides is that no abortions are carried out because nobody really wants an abortion, to kill a fetus.
So my entry is that the view of sympathy to abortion is to allow abortions and at the same time make good use of the contraception-pills or condoms to accommodate both views as ways of life!
(By this text, I don't list the usual arguments pro- and con-.)
Just a note: In my text I want to limit the pro-abortion position by saying that abortion is, in this context, limited to within 20 first weeks and that it does not include "emergency medicine" where "extreme" measures are used in order to save either, the mother or the fetus. If they intend to kill either the fetus or the mother then, ethically, why not overdose them by sedatives or similar that must be better than "other extremes". I guess this should be part of standard procedure for these cases either way! So as to reduce the dread/brutalities of medicine (by standard procedure)!
Regarding Free Will ( https://whatiswritten777.blogspot.no/2011/08/philosophical-notes-of-intellectual.html#FAFW )
ReplyDeleteWhy should we feel guilt if determinism is true? Emergentism of guilt? Hah-hah! Determinism is way out there!
Utilitiarianism and the Trolley Problem "joke" as Reductio ad absurdum of this type of ethics
ReplyDeleteLet's say that we have this train-conductor that has a choice of running over and killing this one person instead of the group of 5 people on a different track.
If we repeat this "procedure" infinitely, then these 5 people can put themselves in harms way and "present" one person on the other track and in this way kill "infinitely" many people which reduces the group of 5 "cynical" people to a very small group.
Conclusion: Utilitiarianism is not plausible as viable way for ethics!
Link, Reductio ad absurdum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum.
Another theodicy solution:
ReplyDeleteMy view of Evil, Hell and the Devil is that they have potentially existed forever as well as God, Heaven and Goodness.
I take this, Primordial Evil, from Genesis 1:3-5,
"3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day."
As such, the sins, "inherited sin" and being sinful, should not be underestimated. There are no duties toward "respecting evil", I think. Good life for all religious people should happen as soon as possible, no delay made to this end.
A slight comment on "Anti-Intellectualism" by Blake Roeber
ReplyDeleteFirst, the article seems just plainly wrong.
Let's say we are doing science and a fact is not yet established (as has been for Gravitational waves).
So by the Tripartite Definition by Plato we have
1. Person A's belief in fact p
2. Fact p*
3. Justified true belief (JTB) for person's A belief in fact p*
Now, how do you establish plausibility for your case that you have shown fact p by JTB when fact p isn't part of knowledge among people yet?
Yes, you build your case. For discoveries, you have a picture or other definite evidence of your newly discovered fact p. For experimental science, you build your case by complying with the scientific requirements such as Fallibilism and Falsificationism. You do this by showing a credible experiment that is the best done yet in science and somehow seems plausible for your claim that fact p is as you say it is.
For the experimental side of new facts of knowledge, you may want cases for the facts like Isaac Newton and his 3 laws of physics or Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity. These cases have stunningly plausible experiments for new ways of seeing nature and how nature works, providing at their time and later, calculable ways for parts of physics where chance has ruled earlier. Since their time, of course, nothing has essentially changed. Such is the strength of plausibility for some experiments. Thus, what I say, this is part of JTB for experimental science. It must be clear it's not the easiest to do in one's life!
The paper:
Blake Roeber; Anti-Intellectualism, Mind, Volume 127, Issue 506, 1 April 2018, Pages 437–466, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzw039
On the Meaning of Life
ReplyDeleteThere is only one meaning of life (now that we have the existence of souls, telepathy and other phenomena)! It is to "return" to God/Allah/Yahweh (or any other "white-list" Deity) according to the innermost meaning of the Bible (or of the other valid Holy Books)! This is that special Deity domain where one is given the Deity perspective of all that exists.
That some people find a "limited" outside the "white-list" religion Deity means only that they are wrong! They are measurably smaller people in terms of (Kantian) Ethics and Morality given bodily measurements of metabolism and the nervous system by electrometer or other, etc.
So I say that to be a kind of fully Kantian Ethical and Moral human being entails as necessity to be a follower of "white-list" religion and corresponding Deity.
I expect the science to match up with religious views in near future as one may more safely and demonstrably enjoy Out-of-Body Experiences and to have fun with the destruction of the body well knowing that one can also reincarnate if one so pleases!
The future still looks very bright!
For the Brains in Vats argument in Epistemology - Against Brains-in-Vats (further)
ReplyDelete- it should be enough to say that it remains "religious" in terms of standing and that seeking Truth and elaborating Truth have taken us beyond the imagination of 100 CE! Thus, "Tarski-Disquotationalists" and "Truth-Realists" have the recent 2000 years, more or less, of history on their side!
"Fiction has always been flexible!"
On Free Will - For FIVE (now six) ARGUMENTS FOR FREE WILL (see blog post)
ReplyDeleteIf now God is the First Mover and souls are of God - God's Temple - why shouldn't (the common) souls be "first" movers too?
Thus, speaking for the "anomalous" free will outside "bumping atoms" determinism...
There seems to be a psychological justification for denying a belief in Free Will such that Determinism is the justification for people doing evil.
ReplyDeleteIf they have had no free will in doing evil they are of course innocent which may be a way to deal with one's history of wrongdoing, of doing evil.
Along with it, there may also be the lying for supporting the same "illusion" and lying and evil do of course go well together, no matter how "subliminal".
Again, for free will, some people are indeed planning the number of kids they want.