04.30.12

The Paradox of Unreasonability

Posted in argumentation, logic, philosophy at 6:19 pm by nogre

“You’re being unreasonable!”

One or more of you may have had this directed at you. But what does the speaker mean by it?

Presumably the speaker believes that the listener is not acting according to some given standard. However, if the speaker had an argument to that effect, the speaker should’ve presented it. Hence, all the above statement means is that the speaker has run out of arguments and has resorted to name-calling: being unreasonable is another way of saying crazy.

Now, though, the situation has reversed itself. It is not the listener that has acted unreasonably, but the speaker. Without an argument that concludes that the listener is being unreasonable, then it is not the listener that is being unreasonable, but the speaker. The speaker is name-calling, when, by the speaker’s own standards, an argument is required. For what else is reasonable but to present an argument? So, by saying that the listener is being unreasonable, in essence the speaker is declaring themself unreasonable.

But, yet again, the situation reverses itself. If a person has run out of arguments, and makes a statement to that effect, then he or she is being perfectly reasonable. This returns us to the beginning! Therefore, by making a claim about someone else being unreasonable, you paradoxically show that you yourself are and are not reasonable, such that if you are, then you are not, and if you are not, then you are.

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06.03.11

Spell Sorites. No really.

Posted in argumentation, news, random idiocy at 8:33 pm by nogre

Since none of the other philosophy blogs I follow have mentioned it, one of the final round contestants of the National Spelling Bee was eliminated last night by misspelling “sorites.”   I believe the contestant put a ‘p’ in front of the word.  It makes me wonder if these kids know how to do anything other than spell words.

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03.11.10

Against Physics as Ontologically Basic

Posted in argumentation, biology, epistemology, evolution, ontology, philosophy, physics, science at 12:42 am by nogre

1.  Biology is epistemically independent of physics:

Let’s assume that biology is not epistemically independent of physics, i.e. to know any biology we must first know something about physics.  However, consider evolution as determined by natural selection and the struggle for survival.  We can know about the struggle for survival and natural selection without appealing to physics — just as Darwin did when he created the theory — and hence we can fundamentally understand at least some, if not most, of biology independent of physics.

2.  Physics supervenes on biology:

Whatever ability we have to comprehend is an evolved skill.  Therefore any physical understanding of the world, as an instance of general comprehension,  supervenes on the biology of this skill.

3.  Biology is just as fundamental as physics:

If the principles involved in biology and physics are epistemically independent and each can be said to supervene on  the other, then neither has theoretical primordiality.

Therefore physics is not ontologically basic.

.

.

[This argument was inspired by a discussion over at It's Only a Theory start by Mohan Matthen.

And I want it to be known that I HATE SUPERVENIENCE.  Basically if you use supervenience regularly then you are a BAD PERSON.  The only good argument that uses supervenience is one that reduces the overall usage of the word:  it is my hope that the above argument will prevent people from saying that biology supervenes on physics.  For every argument in which I thought that using supervenience might prove useful, I found a much, much superior argument that did not make use of the term.  I know you always live to regret statements like this, but right now I don't care.]

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02.24.10

Fodor May Yet Be Clever

Posted in argumentation, biology, evolution, philosophy, random idiocy, science, wild conjecture at 10:48 pm by nogre

I was trying to figure out what Fodor could have been thinking.  Here’s what I came up with:

1. If we are trying to figure out what Evolution has done, then we presuppose that Evolution is capable of doing something.
2. If Evolution is capable of doing something, then there must be some mechanism of Evolution that does the doing.

Now imagine yourself in the position of the mechanism of Evolution that does the doing, i.e. the mechanism that selects the traits that yield a higher fitness.

The question becomes: is it possible for you to select for a trait?

The answer is NO.

To understand why, consider what happens when we try to give an evolutionary explanation of something:  we are beset by a near infinite selection of different possibilities.  Only through careful study can we narrow down which traits are actually the ones that increase an organism’s fitness and, if we are in a historical context, only give a most likely candidate for such a trait.

Now imagine yourself back in the position of the mechanism.  The mechanism is stuck with the exact same sort of problem that we have when trying to figure out what it has done:  it has no more an ability to select a single trait than we have to figure out which trait it has selected with our first guess.  Whenever it tries to select for a trait, it may mistakenly also select for another trait that is not so good for the organism, or it may not have even recognized the trait it thought it was selecting for.

Therefore, since this mechanism can’t work, evolution is bunk.

OK.  Now let’s take a step back and look at this argument.  Basically there are two parts:  the first part is an argument that there is a mechanism that does the doing and the second part says the mechanism can’t have done anything.  When I saw Fodor speak on this topic, I believe (it was a while ago now) he spent a good deal of time on arguing for the first part and I didn’t really understand what he was up to.  Now it makes sense because if we accept that there is some mechanism that does the doing, then we may be committed to admitting to at least some amount of skepticism about evolution based upon the second part.  Getting even some skepticism about evolution would be a sufficiently large accomplishment, and so I figure this must be Fodor’s ultimate goal.

In light of this argument I offer this wild conjecture for your reading pleasure:

Replace “mechanism” with “agent”.  Now, instead of an argument against evolution, it is an argument against Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design has the designer/ agent built directly into it, and this makes the argument much more knock-down:  There is no need to argue for the existence of a mechanism because it is right in the title, and since the intelligence of ID is something like our intelligence, it makes sense that it would suffer from the same problems that ours does.

What I think happened is that Fodor was sitting around thinking why intelligent design doesn’t work and realized that if he could make a strong enough argument that evolution also required some sort of agent, in the form of an evolutionary mechanism, then he could return a similar result.  Since having a technical reason for discounting ID wouldn’t make much of splash, Fodor dropped the argument against ID and pursued the argument against evolution.

Personally I kind of like this argument against ID.  If I ever run into some ID people, I may even bring it up.

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02.23.10

On Block and Kitcher on Fodor

Posted in argumentation, biology, evolution, fitness, news, philosophy, science at 12:13 pm by nogre

Ned Block and Philip Kitcher have posted a review of Fodor/Piatelli-Palmarini’s “What Darwin Got Wrong” (via Leiter).

It is a well executed, though flawed, counter to Fodor’s arguments.  First they give a nice rundown of the underdetermination issue I posted about here.

Then they discuss the “intensional fallacy”.  They argue that the crux of F & P’s argument can be seen as trying to split up the causal efficacious trait and the selected-for trait.  This means that F & P believe that there is no way to connect the evolutionary reason – the trait that increased an organism’s fitness – with our explanation of the trait that was selected-for.  Block & Kitcher argue that it is trivial to match the two up because

selection-for is a causal notion, and, since causation is extensional, so is selection-for.

Insofar as we believe that our explanation of the selected-for trait is extensional, i.e. truth-preserving when switching between different names of the same thing, we can say that we do pick out the causally efficacious trait.

Unfortunately Block and Kitcher sacrificed our normal concept of explanation to make this counter-argument.  They note that explanations are never normally extensional, but that we are making an exception in this case.  This is ok to do because

we thinking beings can give (intensional) explanations in terms of [one trait] rather than the other properties. In giving the explanation, we (thinking beings) describe the property in our preferred way.

I do not understand what is going on here.  Basically it looks as if “preferred way” is just a fancy way to say “own words”, but describing something in our own words doesn’t make it right.  Nor is it a reason to change what should count as an explanation.

Unless Block and Kitcher are prepared to give further justification as to why we should disregard our normal understanding of explanation, it looks as if their solution to Fodor’s argument is ad hoc.  They are using explanation* — which is a special kind of explanation that can be extensional — but they have not given a reason why explanation* should be preferred over of regular explanation (outside of causing Fodor trouble).  Without this reason, the use of explanation* is ad hoc, and hence the argument fails because it turns on an ad hoc premise: the assumption that explanation* can be substituted for explanation.

However, I did say above that Block and Kitcher’s argument is well executed:  My argument against using an ad hoc term-term* distinction is obscure compared to their argument and so, for the vast majority of people, it will appear that their argument is effective.  Overall this is a good thing: less nonsense needs to surround evolution (though I’ll be a little sad to see it go: I’m #1 in a Google search for “fodor what darwin got wrong“).

[EDIT:  I've put up a new analysis (24 March 2010) of Fodor's argument here: Hypotheses Natura Non Fingo.  It also includes a review of the responses of Block, Kitcher and Sober ]

For my take on what Fodor got wrong, see my post What Fodor Got Wrong, and the follow up Dismantling Fodor’s Argument (also linked above in reference to underdetermination).  I’ll post something soon specifically addressing the intensionality issue:  Fodor’s Intensional Criticism of Evolution.

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01.23.09

Argument Structure

Posted in argumentation, epistemology, logic, philosophy at 1:19 pm by nogre

Basic argument structure goes like this:

1. Premise 1
2. Premise 2

———————–

3. Conclusion

Knowing how to argue is great, except when someone you disagree with is proving things you don’t like.  In that case you have to know how to break your opponent’s argument or provide an argument that they cannot break.

First thing that most people do to break an argument is to attack premises (assuming no fallacies are present).  To avoid accepting your opponent’s conclusion in line 3, if you can cast doubt on the truth of premise 1, then your opponent will never get to line 3.

Personally I think this sucks.  I hate arguing about the truth of premises because many times people have no idea what the truth is and hold unbelievably stupid positions.

G. E. Moore argued that if the conclusion is more certain than the premises, then you can flip the argument:

1. Conclusion
2. Premise 2

———————–

3. Premise 1

Instead of arguing about the truth of the premises, this strategy pits the premises against the conclusion by arguing that while the premises imply the conclusion, the conclusion also implies the premises.  Hence there is a question about which should be used to prove the other, and, as long as this question remains, nothing is proved.

This leads to a kind of argument holism.  An argument must first be judged on the relative certainties of its premises and conclusion before the premises can even be considered to be used to derive the conclusion.

Personally I think this is great.  It is possible to just ignore whole arguments on the grounds that the person arguing hasn’t taken into account the relative certainties involved.  If you haven’t ensured that your premises are more certain than your conclusion, then you can’t expect anyone to accept your conclusion based upon those premises.

However this leads to a nasty problem.  If all arguments are subject to this sort of holism, then arguments can be reduced to their conclusions: if the whole argument is of equal certainty, i.e. the conclusion is just as certain as a premise, then there is no reason to bother with the premises.  If we just deal with conclusions, and everyone is certain of their own conclusions, then arguing is useless.

(In practice, of course, only mostly useless.  You can (try to) undermine someone’s argument by finding something more certain and incompatible with the conclusion in question (premises are always a good place to start looking).  For better or worse, though, even when people’s premises have been destroyed, all too often they still are certain of their conclusions.)

Moreover, if everyone is certain of their conclusions, then no conclusion is any more certain than another.  If everything has equal certainty, then nothing is certain.

How to get around this problem of equal certainty?

First let me mention that this is a strictly philosophical problem: in daily life we have greater certainty in some things than we do in others.  For instance I trust certain people, and hence if they say something is true then I will be more certain of it’s truth than if someone else were to say the same thing.  So fair warning: what comes next is a philosophical solution to a philosophical problem.

If something and its opposite are equally certain, then, generally, there is nothing more that we can know about it.  For example if we know that it is either raining or not raining, then we really don’t know much about the weather.   This applies in all cases, except for paradoxes.   In a paradox something and its opposite imply each other. Hence, in a paradox, there is only one thing, not a thing and it’s negation.

Most the time paradoxes only shows us things that cannot exist.  However, if what caused the paradox was the negation of something, then we can have certainty in that thing: it’s negation cannot exist on pain of paradox.

Therefore, to provided a rock solid foundation for an argument, a paradox must be appealed to such that the paradox must have been generated from the negation of the thing to be used as a premise.

As far as I can tell, this is the only argument structure that yields absolutely certain results.  All other arguments styles are subject to questions about the truth of premises and the legitimacy of using those premises (even if true) for proving a particular conclusion.

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07.08.08

A note on epistemology

Posted in argumentation, epistemology, mind, philosophy, wittgenstein at 3:16 pm by nogre

Justified true belief does not yield knowledge, and everyone should know this by now. Beyond Gettier’s argument, is this tack I heard given by Jaakko Hintikka:

You may believe something, fine, and have whatever justifications you wish. But how do you know the thing is true?

The point he was making was that far beyond the issue of problems in having the right sort of justifications is the problem of having truth as well. Whenever the Justified-true-belief scheme is used for knowledge the truth of the thing in question is whitewashed over: all the focus is put on the justification and the truth is assumed to exist separately.

For example if I make a claim P, then I clearly believe P, I will need to give justifications x, y, z, etc., and P needs to be true for me to count P to be part of my knowledge. The first two conditions are easy enough for me to demonstrate according to some standards, even if skepticism is still an issue. However, I, nor anyone else, has any ability to demonstrate the truth of P in ways over and above whatever I have given as my justification. Therefore Justified-true-belief reduces to Justified-belief, which no one accepts as knowledge.

Between this argument and Gettier, I see the Justified-true-belief scheme of knowledge as beyond saving. To recover some sense of knowledge, we can focus on this idea:

If you know something, then it is not possible to be mistaken.

There are two ways of dealing with this conditional. First, you can make your definition of what it is to know something always correspond with whatever you cannot be mistaken about. Besides being ad hoc, this sliding scale for knowledge does not correspond very well with what we generally take to be knowledge.

Secondly, we can make what it is not possible to be mistaken about correspond to our knowledge. Although you have already called foul, hear me out. If you were to find out certain things were wrong you might start to doubt your own sanity. For example if you were to find out all the basic things you ‘know’ were wrong – there is no such place as the United States, water is not comprised of oxygen and hydrogen, subjects and verbs are one and the same, you are currently not reading, etc., – you would have reason to worry (at least I would).

Therefore I suggest that knowledge is comprised of things that if they were to be false, then we would not be able to claim we were sane. This definition makes a distinction between things we can be mistaken about and things we cannot be mistaken about. To be mistaken about this second type of thing would entail an unacceptable consequence: if you are insane then you cannot claim to have knowledge.

Is this ad hoc, as above? No, because the definition of what would classify you as insane does not refer to knowledge specifically. For example take the statement, “If x, y and z are false then I am crazy.” No mention of knowledge whatsoever. Therefore this definition is not ad hoc.

Does this definition of knowledge correspond to our intuitions? Very much so: it is based specifically upon the everyday experiences we have and our most established theories of the world.

What about skepticism: can’t we always be mistaken? The skeptic here is asking us to imagine the unimaginable. If we do as the skeptic asks, then we would be required to imagine ourselves to be insane and tell the skeptic what we think as insane people. I can’t do this- I don’t even have a guess as to how to go about trying to do this.

In the end you are wagering your sanity in order to have a claim to knowledge. However, there is no danger in this bet because you hold all the cards: you know what you can imagine to be different. Therefore you gain a theory of knowledge and lose nothing.

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