Argument or GTFO
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.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus #6.54
My Propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps — to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must overcome these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chapter XI #38
At the critical moment, the leader of an army acts like one who has climbed up a height and then kicks away the ladder behind him. He carries his men deep into hostile territory before he shows his hand.
I haven’t heard or seen too many uses of the concept of “throwing away the ladder.” It seems interesting, though coincidental, that it shows up in these two places.
Wittgenstein is discussing the end of philosophy, how once you understand his statements in the Tractatus, you will understand how to move beyond thinking in those terms. And then everything will be solved.
Sun Tzu, on the other hand, is discussing how a leader can get the most out of those under her command by preventing retreat. The famous examples are of Hsiang Yu, and later Cortez, who burnt their ships behind them to prevent mutiny and ensure that their troops would fight as if their lives depended upon it (because they did).
Sun Tzu and Wittgenstein may be two of the most commented upon authors of all time. However, I don’t think either could have the other’s meaning in these passages, or at least I’ve never seen any commentary to that effect. However, this does not mean there is nothing to be learned:
For Wittgenstein, the recognition of the nonsensical is what is doing the work. His words are nonsensical and the realization of this is what allows you to move beyond them, to something better (says he). So by doing as he says, by recognizing his words as nonsensical, your retreat is prevented, because no one, save a mad man, would willingly return to a nonsensical philosophy when a better one exists. By climbing the ladder, you also discard it.
Compare this to Philosophical Investigations #309:
What is the aim in philosophy?– To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
The fly-bottle, a supposedly one way process, Wittgenstein is trying to walk back… In the Philosophical Investigations he’s trying to climb down the discarded ladder.
Dear readers, I’ve decided to try to get myself paid for my efforts. If you know of people or programs (graduate or otherwise) that would want someone like me, please let me know.
What I want to do is write up my theories about the causal structure in evolution; it will get done regardless, but it will get done faster and better if I have help. So I am looking for a place that does philosophy of science, biology and physics, but anywhere willing to fund my writing about these topics will be considered.
Any and all information, thoughts, wishes, questions, condemnations, etc., are encouraged. Leave a comment below or send me an email at noahgreenstein@noahgreenstein.com.
I was trying to figure out what Fodor could have been thinking. Here’s what I came up with:
- If we are trying to figure out what Evolution has done, then we presuppose that Evolution is capable of doing something.
- 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.
For those readers of mine, I’d like to open up a small opportunity. Quite a bit of my time and effort has gone into revamping parts of the theory of evolution and I have previously mentioned here that I’ve taught myself to program and created a simulation. Well, this isn’t completely true.
The short version is that I’ve made computers try to survive the real world. By real world, I mean my program contains lots of little files that make decisions, and these decisions are about buying and selling stocks, based upon actual real-time data available on the internet. The decision engines (or ‘orgs’, as I like to call them) that correctly predict the movement of the stocks make money and eventually replicate. Those orgs that are unsuccessful at predicting stock movements lose money and die off. The replication process is governed by genetic algorithms that include various mutations.
The short short version is that the program is a cross between a stock market program and a tomagotchi (digital pet). You host a colony of organisms that survive by ‘eating’ (buy and selling) stocks; it acts as your own personal hedge fund.
Anyway, I could use a tester or two, so if anyone here wants to participate, send me an email. I’ll get around to writing up more details about the program soon too.
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In other news, I’ve finally gotten around to updating the NYC Area Philosophy Calendar. Someone even sent me a nice email asking if I was still going to do it (before I got around to it.. busy busy) and another person even asked if they could start adding events.
Hmmm, interest in the calendar (it only took 2 years). An actual object (program) that came from studying philosophy (original theory of biology, 2004.). It’s taken some time but I feel like I must be moving up in the world.
I’d like to get anyone’s opinion about what he or she believes to be the single worst understood philosophical concept. Feel free to mention why you think so if you want. Also feel free to interpret the meaning of ‘worst’: across the general public, academia, grad students, old codgers, whatever (but do identify your target, please).
I was trying to figure out how planes stay in the sky.
So this is what I came up with.
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As the plane moves forward, a small vacuum is created above the wing. The vacuum is a low pressure zone which pulls the wing up and the air down to fill itself in (because Nature HATES a vacuum). This upward pull that the low pressure zone creates we call lift.
I thought, “Hooray. This isn’t so complicated! Planes stay up because they create small vacuums above their wings as they move forward, creating an upward force.”
Then I thought, “And this is why planes can’t fly in outer space, because there is no air to displace and create a vacuum.”
Then I thought, “But if there is an aether theory, why not?”
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So as a wing moves through a vacuum, generally we don’t think there is anything to cause lift or drag. But if we have an aether theory of a vacuum, i.e. there is some substance below what we can observe that our matter exists within, then why can’t we create a vacuum in that substance?
My line of thought was: Air is to Vacuum as Vacuum is to Black Hole.
Can’t we just spin a propeller fast enough in outer space to create lift? As the prop turns small vacuums in the aether will be created, and, insofar as Nature hates vacuums, a force will be created to fill in this vacuum, pulling the propeller in that direction.
(Someone please tell me how this is nonsense so I won’t go around thinking I’ve come up with a new model of space flight.)
For the last few days or so I was in Amsterdam (briefly), Israel and Istanbul. I had some thoughts along the way and I hope you’ll find them interesting.
Amsterdam:
Heineken tastes MUCH better in Amsterdam. Now I won’t be able to drink it States-side, which kind of sucks. Hopefully the memory will fade soon and I will be able to go back to my ignorant bliss.
[On the flip side I had some Sam Adams while in Israel and near spit it out.]
Israel:
1) In the 3 days I was in Jerusalem I wanted to figure out why everyone finds it to be the place for religion. Here’s what I came up with:
These images were taken within the same minute at on Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem . However, my camera was set to New York time, so it is really 1:34 am (NY +7). I’ve put up two images because I want to give the best view of the street that I can to make my point: the top image was with flash, which only reaches so far, but does not make blurry images; the second image was long exposure and gives a more accurate view, but, try as I might, I can only hold myself so still. Hopefully you will be able to imagine how it looks between the two. (see this image from Wikipedia too)
The second picture – this is the more accurate to life shot – shows the street to be very bright and, in fact, unusually bright. Times Square-bright even but, as you can see, this street has normal stores and streetlights; no neon, no giant billboards. So how is this feat of lighting achieved?
Nearly everything in Jerusalem is made of the off-white Jerusalem stone. Ben Yehuda street is an old, pedestrian only street with no asphalt and hence is white on 3 sides. This makes it reflect light incredibly well, as I hope you can divine from my shoddy photography.
Imagine the extra hours of usable time that people would have because they needed less fuel for their lamps, and multiply this by thousands of years. I figure that a place with nice weather and well above average lighting conditions, such as Jerusalem, would be conducive to people sitting around reading and arguing about stuff, and hence religious studies.
2) Gaza:
Israel on the whole seemed rather safe and so completely normal while I was there that it was hard to reconcile it with the place the media covers. Granted I didn’t go anywhere near where the fighting was, but I was in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and observed how people were living, and I thought it could have been San Diego. I’ve never been to San Diego, but I think it must be pretty with a friendly population that mostly speaks English and has nice weather, which was my experience in Israel. So what is going on?
Again, 2 pictures:
The first map is of Israel alone and it is what we see when we are looking at the fighting going on. The second is of the Middle East. When an Israeli thinks about Israel, it is the second map and the distance scale of the first map that come to mind. From this perspective, it looks as if Israel is a teeny bastion of non-Muslims trying to eek out an existence in a world of Islam. If you look at the top map, Gaza doesn’t appear all that big, but since Israel is so small, that little bit of usable land is important.
Of course that bit of land isn’t so important to start killing people over.
However, what I was told, was that Gaza was part of long term strategy to take down Israel from within: Since there are many more Muslims in the region and world, if more can gain residency in Israel through Gaza, then in only a few years they will be able to out vote the Jews. So every settlement matters because each represents an increased voting bloc and tips the balance of power away from the current establishment.
This presents a dilemma because either the Jewish state must change its democratic principles if it wants continued existence, or else die slowly to the ever increasing Muslim population. So the crude, stop-gap solution was to just eradicate the Palestinian settlements. This at least explains some of the reasoning; whether the actions taken were justified is a different question.
Istanbul:
Everyone is interested in Obama. These ads were ubiquitous (notice the second ad right behind the first on the left hand side.):
Garanti is a bank.
This is what Google Translate tells me the text says:
support loan interest rates
using the most comprehensive credit insurance for Turkey is out of 3 women in markets bonus
warranty package to revive the economy of the world will envy
Much of the world still operates with the dollar. I bought some ridiculously nice leather shoes from a dingy shop for US $30 – they didn’t even accept Turkish Lira. I handed the guy 2 20s and the man immediately became concerned: this confused me until he pulled a stack of Benjamins (US 100s) out of his pocket an inch thick and started going through it looking for a 10. He had to go across the street to get me change.
My thought was that the current US president is, for all intensive purposes, on the $100 bill. Money has value because people believe that it guarantees something of worth, goods and services. This guarantee of worth is made by large, trusted institutions likes banks and governments, and as the head of the biggest institution, Obama is where the buck stops.
So the unsurprising conclusion is that the entire world is counting on Obama to fix the financial crisis. I don’t know anything about Garanti Bank, but 1.19% loans do sound good.
Yesterday was very strange.
Last Friday I finished up my metaphysics and promptly went on a short vacation to see some friends. I got home Tuesday night.
Then came yesterday. It was the first whole day in which I had to really spend time worrying about what to do now that I have written everything I ever wanted to.
The proper term for what happened was I flipped out.
I was at a bar on Friday. One of my friends says, “Hey Noah, there’s another philosopher here, come talk.” So I go and chat.
She wrote a MA thesis on Levinas. But somehow we got to ethics. I started making fun of virtue ethics, which she believed in. Something about me saying she had tomatoes being cultivated in her head got her riled up. Since I had said I was unimpressed with Singer earlier, she figured me for a deontologist.
“You love rules. You love following rules.. You looove Kant. You want to fuck Kant. You want to fuck Kant!”
This was said in a progressively louder voice, with the last sentence being heard by everyone. For some reason it turned heads and made her friend think it was time to leave.
But not before I got her number.
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