29 November 2007

epistemic contextualism

Annis “Contextual Theory of Justification”

a/o/t = as opposed to; w/r/t = with respect to

The main idea Annis puts forth is an alternative to the alleged dualism of foundationalism an coherentism. His alternative is what he calls the “contextual theory of epistemic justification.” If someone claims to know some statement is true, then the possible objections are that either the person is in no position to know, or that the claim asserted is false.

The doubt needed to bring forth a real objection must be of the “real” kind as characterized by Charles Peirce a/o/t a Cartesian ‘paper’ doubt. So if the doubt is real it has to be a local doubt a/o/t a general skepticism.

Justification, Annis claims, is relative to the context of the issue raised. If a lay-person, in a common context has to justify some scientific claim, his remembering of someone else reading it in a secondary text at some point in the past, then, according to the context, he is justified in believing it. However, if the same issue is at hand at a graduate examination, then the method and depth of knowledge is presumed to be held at a higher standard of justification. At this point he says that the quest for an a priori method of justification is a misguided one, as justification is an activity which reflects the social nature of human activity.

However, all objections to a person’s claim to the knowledge of some statement must be motivated by the dual goals of obtaining truth and avoiding error, yet further, at the particular time of consideration. These conditions have to be in place to avoid Annis falling into an objective standard of justification, where otherwise future evidence against the claim of a person’s knowing something might also fall into the present objections.

Further, theories of justification have to be naturalized because they deal with the naturally occurring social element of human behavior, relative to a given social group. Here the discussion of the Kpelle tribe relies heavily on the objection that the real doubters of a person’s claim to knowledge must be motivated by truth, so if the tribe elders’ predictions come to be false more often than true, their reason to object to their elder’s supposed knowledge is justified yet still contextual in a local sense.

To fight against the infinite regress argument yet not fall into a foundationalist theory of justification, Annis argues that there are no BASIC bits of knowledge as the foundationalist might argue, but there are some contextually basic bits of knowledge in a given issue-context when the hypothetical group of objectors would not require reasons for them.

The strong points this theory has, in my view, is that it agrees with the claim that if someone is justified in believing a statement, then they should be able to attempt to defend that statement against possible objections. It also seems to be a consequence of this theory that if someone believes to know something and not have adequate justification for it, they have something to lose. I agree with these points at a basic level.

However, the example of the tribe, and the example of the twins seem to rub me the wrong way. The tribe people should accept higher standards of justification when there’s more at stake than something trivial, if their elders tend to be wrong. But I’m still not sure if this means that the standards of justification then don’t just rely on some context-relative schema, or if the schema itself should shift from a system of epistemological justification not-so-rigorous to one that is more rigorous w/r/t justification (even though it’s still context-dependent).

two abductive syllogisms

a formal [[EDIT 11/30: not formal, but CRITICAL]] analysis of two abductive arguments:

first, the creationists' argument for god from intelligent design.

(a) there is this universe which is gloriously complex (assumed)
(b) if god exists, there would be this universe which is gloriously complex (assumed)
(c) god exists (aim)

now as philosophers we have to define god. let's take the christian one, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent one. the idea is that only god could design this universe.

now the proper inquirer not only has to draw consequences of god existing, (there's lots of negative evidence. anything from the earth being created longer ago than several thousand years, to the fact that a triple O god would not allow for natural disasters, war, or just insert whatever evidence against god you like), but also notes that (1) it's completely unnecessary for explanation of the universe's complexity (this is where natural physical law and evolution come in) and (2) it wouldn't cohere with the rest of the scientific picture of how the world works. (1) and (2) are the epistemic virtues of parsimony and coherence.

now, because there are arguments against god's existence, because god existing is unnecessary to explain the complexity of the universe, and because it wouldn't fit in with the rest of the evidence we have about the world, that makes three strikes, the abduction is an invalid one. so, what does this finally prove? this proves that a christian god cannot explain why the universe is beautiful and complex and all that good stuff.

now, to the objective reality/scientific realism argument.

(d) science works. (assumed)
(e) if there's a world out there independent of what we believe, then science would work. (assumed)
(f) there's a world out there independent of what we believe. (aim)

now let's draw some consequences of the antecedent and its negation, just as before. first, draw consequences from (f). there is evidence for reality being independent of what we believe of it as we see through everyday experience (this is the positive evidence bit). it fits in with the rest of our knowledge about the world (the coherence bit). and finally (f) is actually necessary to explain how science works so it is as pasimonious as it's going to get.

now of course i owe an account, a reason as to why it's necessary for there to be a real world independent of you and i to explain that science works. this is easier than it seems. if you never lived, would there still be trees? whether or not anybody ever got to investigate genetics as far as we have, or whether scientists thought it was 48 chromosomes before and think it's 46 now (and change their minds tomorrow), is there a right answer as to how many chromosomes we as humans actually have? if i never went to argentina, would it still be there? the answer to all the questions is yes, and as such give evidence to the contention that in there are bits of reality out there about which we can both state propositions and be causally independent of any individual's beliefs or existence. ultimately, in order to fully investigate the answer of these questions (as a scientist does), then there must be something that you're investigating, otherwise it's just subjective musings.

but now, to be more thorough and fair , let's draw some of the consequences of -(f) [the negation of the conclusion]. -(f) does have an advantage over (f) in its being more barren. but it directly contradicts experience. let me fully illustrate this point:

(1)if there is no world out there independent of what we believe it to be, it follows that the world does depend on what we believe it to be.
(2)some jellyfish are poisonous (i got stung by one last... year, i think?)
(3) but for some jellyfish to be poisonous, then jellyfish must exist whether i think them to exist or not, and being poisonous must be a property that exists whether i ever get stung or not.
(4) but, as constituents of this belief-dependent world, jellyfish being poisonous does depend on my beliefs after all.

(3) and (4) are contradictory, so -(f) does not cohere with the rest of what we know about the world and leads to logical contradictions. and lastly, we have overwhelming evidence against there not being a real world, as with every day of our lives we get in our cars and go places, hug our families, use computers to communicate with other individuals across the country, etc.

(f) has positive evidence, it coheres with our knowledge, yet it does posit more causally necessary entities than

-(f), which is more parsimonious is TOO parsimonious, because then we wouldn't have enough epistemological base for any inquiry of any kind, whether it's a scientist hypothesizing quarks or the layperson trying to figure out how to fix his bike. Furthermore, -(f) has negative evidence, and it does not cohere with experience.

so the abductive syllogism of (d-f) is very well supported a vast amount of positive evidence.

so what does this show? well... it shows that based on the best evidence we have so far, there is a real world out there independently of what we believe. the alternative is that science is just another legitimate dialogue among many, yet could ultimately be dealing in fictions, which (1-4) shows is inconsistent.

also notice that, in order to consider these (and any) abductions, you need go go through the formal process of logical analysis, the pragmatic process of drawing manifested effects of propositions (consequences), AND the external process of empirical investigation.

24 November 2007

courses

Philosophy 101 - Intro (Figdor)

Philosophy 210 - Symbolic Logic (Morris)

Philosophy 272- Modern Philosophy (Rabinsky)

Philosophy 331 - Social & Political Philosophy (Rabinsky)

Philosophy 341 - Philosophy of Language (Evnine)

Philosophy 345 - Metaphysics (Figdor)

Philosophy 343 - Philosophy of Science (Seigel)

Philosophy 391 - Philosophy of Journalism (Figdor)

Philosophy 495 - Senior Thesis (Haack)

Philosophy 510 - Formal Logic (Hilpinen) - Proof Theory, Completeness, Modality

Philosophy 540 - Epistemology (Haack) - Justification Theories, Applied Epistemology

Philosophy 541 - Mind and Language (McGinn) - Naming and Necessity, WRPL, Mindsight

Philosophy 560 - History of Logic (Hilpinen) - Aristotle, Frege, Peirce, Kripke

Philosophy 581 - Pragmatism (Haack) - Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty

Philosophy 644 - Seminar in Mind (McGinn / Rowlands) - Perception, Consciousness

________________

Psychology 207 - Cognitive Psychology (Choer)

Mathematics 506 - Mathematical Logic (Dvorsky) - Proof, Godel, Sets

19 November 2007

epistemological virtue of open mindedness

Dewey’s How We Think and the Epistemological Virtue of Open-Mindedness.

Dewey’s definition of open-mindedness has two aspects which are jointly necessary to fully grasp the concept:

First, and possibly most importantly, being open minded means not having prejudice, partisanship, and “other such habits as close the mind and make it unwilling to consider new problems and entertain new ideas”. This part of the definition implies that open-mindedness is an epistemological attitude that both allows for new ways of tackling old problems, the consideration of handling new problems in both new and old ways. One idea opposite of open-mindedness is not only closed-mindedness (which could be characterized only accepting old answers to old problems).

But there’s another element of open-mindedness that needs to be addressed: the second natural enemy to open mindedness is empty-mindedness, which is the susceptibility of certain minds to be too quick to adopt new solutions to problems better solved by older methods, or accepting to tackle a new problem where there isn’t a problem to be solved. Dewey likens empty mindedness to an empty house, one that has a big “vacancy” sign out front and invites all comers. So being open minded, while allowing for the thorough recognition of our own fallibility, also retains to old ideas when they’re better anchored in experience, and keeps the good aspects of old ideas when possible.

A very interesting sentence is: “Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakness to admit that a belief to which we have once committed ourselves is wrong.” This sentence implies that admitting to your own mistakes is oftentimes a sign of a person who has more agreeable epistemological attitudes. And of course the entire article takes for granted that having better or worse epistemological attitudes is indicative of whether inquirers reach correct conclusions about the world. The quotations Dewey provides from Mill and Locke both talk about how the mind is constantly making conclusions about the world, yet there are many ways in which our conclusions can go wrong. Having an open mind allows us to both acknowledge that some (and for some, probably a lot!) of the conclusions and generalizations we’ve arrived at about the world are wrong, yet it doesn’t lead inquirers to the pitfalls of extreme skepticism either. The epistemological virtue of open mindedness allows inquirers to think critically about their own inquiry.

(Text: John Dewey, How we Think)

16 November 2007

Haack on Roll-Hansen on Haack on Feminism

In her newest book, responding to Roll-Hansen (who critiques her stern stance against feminist epistemology), Susan Haack writes:

I admit that I was tempted to write, "the appropriate response to such silly gender-feminist propaganda...," so perhaps I should comment briefly on Roll-Hansen's criticism that my tone may be "too sharp." Having no taste for the chewy blandness of much contemporary academic prose, I do my best to be as forthright and plain-spoken as possible; and perhaps, to ears accustomed to the shameless mutual flattery in which members of this or that academic clique now routinely indulge, the forthright and plain-spoken sounds "too sharp." It's ironic, really, given that irresponsibly exaggerated denigration of truly remarkable minds is apparently regarded as perfectly OK: as with Sandra Harding's suggestion that Newton's Principa could be properly described as a "rape manual," or Richard Rorty's dismissal of Peirce as a "whacked-out triadomaniac." In any case, I suspect that what most enrages some people is less my tone than my annoying habit of quoting what they actually said and then trying to clear up any convenient ambiguities--and, no doubt, my constitutional inability to take the more grotesque recent forms of academic pretentiousness as seriously as their proponents think they deserve. But I won't apologize for my sense of humor, since without it I would surely have given up long ago!

("Scrutinizing Science Studies" 2007. A Lady of Distinctions: Susan Haack Responds to her Critics. Cornelis de Waal (Ed.) Amherst: Prometheus Books.)

Haack inherited more from Peirce than philosophical notions. =D

14 November 2007

On Empty Names



Talking About What's Not There: Reference, Meaning, and Empty Names

'Pegasus has wings.' 'Sherlock Holmes lives in 221b Baker Street.' 'Hamlet kills Claudius." These sentences at first glance seem to be true in some sense, false in another, and meaningless in yet another. But which is right? More importantly, how are we to deal, in a systematic way, with the everyday habit found in natural languages of referring to empty names? Do they not have meaning? I will try to incorporate some of the views represented by the leading philosophers we've read in class (Kripke, Braun, Russell, Frege) yet advocate a position that, at least to my knowledge, would not coalesce with any of their views.

Before I continue I would like to make a distinction: there may be in fact two problems when talking about the problem of empty names. First and foremost, the proper name itself seems not to refer, so the use of the name, in itself, is a problem. I will refer to this problem as ENP1. However, an additional problem arises when using these empty names in sentences to express propositions. This shall be ENP2. In what comes I hope to spell out the consequences of both of these problems, some strategies used to solve either or both, and additionally attempt to give reasons why no account I've encountered so far is satisfactory.

Here is a brief, simple statement of ENP1: Usually, when using proper names, we are referring to objects. However, we sometimes use words that don't refer to existing objects. How does a theory of language explain this? Historical development of the problem rose to reactions against a theory of names proposed by John Stuart Mill. His theory was that a name's only purpose was to designate that which is being referred to. This seems to be the intuitive, pre-philosophical position. When uttering "Michael Jordan", we're simply talking about Michael Jordan. But the position gets complicated and downright contradictory very quickly: what if we're talking about a non-existing object? When I talk of "Frodo" I cannot be talking about an actual Frodo because "Frodo" does not denote any physical being; so either

(a) I am referring. By referring to 'Frodo' i am indeed referring to something that does not exist physically. This has the unfortunate consequence of a metaphysical explosion, where every and anything cognizable does exist and that which is physical just happens to subsist. Further, this view will force me to explain why or how any not materially-existing entity can have properties, if i wish to say anything about this non-existing entity. I will put this view aside for fear of ontological commitment. (From purely secondary sources, I understand this is the approach Meinong took). OR

(b) I am attempting to refer yet I am not. However, the name also carries with it some set of descriptions or a manner in which it was presented (a sense). The name, then, has no referent yet is not meaningless either (this is the approach Frege takes). OR

(c) I am attempting to refer yet i am not. Any name is replaceable with a definite description that insinuates its own existence. So any predicate attributed to this failed proper name would not hold because there's no subject to latch on to (this is the approach Russell takes). OR

(d) I am attempting to refer yet I am not. This makes the sentence meaningless. Attempting to attribute properties to nothing is impossible. (This is the approach Kripke et al. take)

The Causal theory of names gives the intuitive account of what a name means: its reference. In other words, 'meaning' and 'reference' are words which refer to the same concept. If this theory is true, then empty names are meaningless. 'Frodo', 'Santa Claus', and 'Pegasus' have no meaning. But surely we have some kind of ideas and mental properties associated with those words, even though they fail to refer to physical objects in the world. A person who uses the term 'Frodo' attempts to refer to some small hobbit; 'Santa Claus' attempts to refer to a jolly old man who gives presents in December; 'Pegasus' attempts to refer to a horse with wings. This theory has its problems, because if 'Frodo' fails to refer in the same way 'Pegasus' does, then they should be interchangeable within sentences where they're used without losing any significance. so 'Pegasus has the ring' and 'Frodo has wings' should be equally meaningless. However, this doesn't seem to go well with our intuitions.

The Descriptivist theory of names deals better with empty names than the causal theory, yet it has startling problems in other areas. It deals better with empty names because it equates these empty tags with descriptions of the intended properties of those tags, such that 'Santa Clause' would be translated as E(x) (Cx& Px & Jx & Rx) where C=is Chubby, P= gives Presents, J= is Jolly, R= is Red. The existential qualifier automatically implies 'Santa Claus' exists. Kripke pointed out that in effect these Descriptions which could be used as a strategy against saying empty names are meaningless would also make the properties attributed to the names necessary. Although I don't have much of a problem accepting this consequence, a lot of people do.

Neither of these two theories are satisfactory. The Descriptivist program ignores the fact that any proper name does have a causal link to that which is referred to, or at least attempted to refer. This is obviously and almost trivially true when the proper name accurately designates an individual in the real world. However, to properly use a name it seems as if we have to know something about exactly what we're talking about, not only have the ability to causally apply its use.

Take,
for example, a case of mistaken identity in babies. Suppose a given woman has identical twins, and the mother has decided to name them 'Rex' and 'Fred'. At the time of birth, 'Rex' means Rex and 'Fred' means Fred. however, almost immediately afterwards a malignant nurse puts them in their cribs and switches their wristbands so that Rex's says 'Fred' and Fred's says 'Rex'. The entire rest of their lives Rex and Fred suffer from mistaken identity. But something seems wrong about this example, because it seems as though at some point the names that were originally intended for their persons becomes irrelevant, not only because of their repeated anchoring with a different name in such a way that the new name does begin to refer in other people's minds (as Evan's 1973 example of 'Madagascar'), but also because of the independent properties each individual twin begins to acquire and become associated with their new, supposedly incorrect names. That is to say, save talk of possible worlds, some properties do seem to have more of an anchoring in the individual than others: if Fred once saw a particular musician or Rex a particular sporting event, then them having done that doesn't seem to influence who they are very much. However, if Fred decided in grade 7 to become a physicist and Rex decided at a similar age to dedicate his life to practice of Fencing, then these bits of information seem indispensable to any moment of framing reference of the person at some point in the future. So there are in fact two ways here that the Causal Theory of Reference seems to make things a bit uneasy.

So how does this tie back in to the discussion of empty names? I guess in some ways I'm attempting to scale back on the sharp distinction Kripke made between the metaphysics and epistemology of reference, because I believe in order to accurately use any name, especially when it is an empty one, a certain knowledge of some of its properties in necessary in order to do away with the conclusion that the name is meaningless. This may be more in tune with the Frege's or Evans's Theory of Names more than Russel's or Kripke's.


ENP2 creates even more of a problem because empty names are being used in sentences, some of which are intuitively true and some aren't. Both 'Pegasus exists' and 'Pegasus does not exist' seem to, at a glance, express some proposition that is either true or false. Presumably, the former is false while the latter is true. Many of the same problems as in PEN1 return, yet there are some additional ones: If it is required of a proposition to include both a subject and a predicate for it to have meaning (and it seems to be so), then statements purportedly asserting some proposition which include a subject-term that does not refer do not actually express any proposition, under a strict causal theorist's view. So neither of the two statements previously mentioned actually express a proposition. Furthermore, if a statement does not express a proposition, it seems to be meaningless (at least according to Davidson), another conclusion we don't want to reach, both because of the examples of negative existential statements about empty names and from examples dealing with less technical examples such as 'Frodo exists.' We want to say that this statement is not meaningless yet not true either.

Perhaps what would be best as of this moment is to give a brief sketch of Davidson's theory of meaning, as it is an important one that elucidates the problem of empty names when applied used in declarative sentences. According to his theory of meaning, any proposition P stated in object language L by statement S has the following meaning: 'S' is true iff P. This seems to be true when applied to formal languages without self-reference and empty names and other sorts of messy stuff, which is why Tarski preemptively limited his theory of truth to those types of languages. But attempting to apply it to natural languages is not a false start either. Both 'S' and P must express some proposition with a subject and a predicate (ideally both 'S' and P share the subject, predicate and their appropriate relation). The given language is comprised of a set of axioms (reminiscent of Kripkean semantics for proper names) in such a way that any particular term only refers. But as soon as a term which includes an empty name is considered, or evaluated for its meaning, the biconditional is not true and thus the proposition fails to have meaning.

Let's use a concrete example: take into consideration the proposition that 'Santa Claus is jolly.' Let us name this proposition "Santa Claus is jolly." so that, to find its meaning, we must apply it in Davidson's meaning schema: "Santa Claus is jolly" is true iff Santa Claus is jolly. Now, if 'Santa Claus is jolly' is an illegitimate proposition, deemed so from the fact that Santa Claus doesn't refer to a physical object in the real world, then the proposition is meaningless and has no truth value. However, the left side of the biconditional asserts that that which we had just determined to have no truth value is in fact true, which turns out to be a false assertion (because the truth value of said proposition is undetermined). This makes the entire biconditional false and we have no meaning for the sentence. This is an undesired consequence because we do have certain cognitive associations with the proper name 'Santa Claus' that might give us reasons to believe he's either jolly or not.

Braun attempts to clean this problem up by proposing two possible solutions a supporter of the causal theory may adopt. The first option is ultimately to bite the bullet and say that this alleged proposition is in fact meaningless because of the fact that it isn't a proposition. Along with this option he proposes that there may in fact be a pragmatic replacement to what he calls the No Proposition view. If I understood him correctly, where a statement like 'Vulcan does not exist' may be uttered, the real content of the statement is a conditional along the lines of "If we were to check space at this location and time, there would not be a planet there." I am interested in this solution, yet he does not go into detail, so I will not consider it past this moment.

The alternative view, one that Braun himself prefers, is what he calls the Unfilled Proposition strategy. In this view, any statement using an empty name is in reality an attempt to attribute a predicate to something that is not there. However, it still saves the structure of propositional content and thus explains how we might be fooled into thinking that we are in fact expressing a proposition. Again, to give an example: 'Vulcan is a planet' is structurally similar to the assertion that 'Venus is a planet'. But where the latter has a propositional composition of <Venus, being a planet>, the former has a propositional composition of [ ____, being a planet]. However, even Braun himself brings up an objection to his theory, that give another empty name, any other empty name, the unfilled proposition would look identical. the statement 'McX is a planet' would also look like [ ____, being a planet] if McX doesn't refer.

At least on the face of it, Braun's argument in favor of the Unfilled Proposition view is at the very least susceptible to the very same arguments against Kripke-Millian views on proper names: if proper names only refer, then the use of empty names shouldn't make any difference in cognitive content, and statements about them should be equal in propositions expressed.

Again, the descriptivists run into big problems (outlined by Kripke) when dealing with positive propositions that assert properties onto things that obtain because these descriptions are doomed to be necessary. There is also the problem of circularity or reference, where the descriptivist might fall into a vicious circle if all he knows of a referent is the same property he uses to provide a definite description for the same referent. If 'Albert Einstein' is defined as 'The discoverer of the Theory of Relativity' and 'the Theory of Relativity' is defined as 'the theory discovered by Albert Einstein' and nothing else, then those two names would not be able to singularly pick out Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity, but would designate any two individuals with the relationship of discovery of a type of theory. These and many other problems make pure descriptivism inadequate for reference in most cases, yet for some of the same reasons this makes desciptivism strong explanatory-wise when it comes to empty names.

Is there a go-between, an intermediate position? Could it be that there is some theory that falls between these two arguably troubled enterprises that takes the best of both sides while being strong enough to defend against criticisms from both angles? I sure haven't found a perfect fit yet, but there is much to ask for a theory of meaning and reference. If there is one aspect I believe must be saved is the distinction between meaning and reference. Or if one aspect of meaning is just reference, maybe there is also an additional aspect to it that cannot be ignored. Even though descriptivism as described in Russell (1905) has been shown to be largely false, there's something in there that can be recovered. Likewise with Kripke, as his position saves many intuitions for non-empty names. Frege almost incorporated bits from both, but he also either left a lot of questions unanswered (how does a proper name tag an individual, or fail to?) or drew some unintuitive conclusions (that a sentence's reference is its Truth value). Either way, the role of fiction, meaning in context, metaphors, malapropisms, and countless other linguistic and semantic phenomenons have been left unaccounted for, and surely a complete theory of reference and empty names will have a lot of work to do.




Bibliography

David Braun. 1993. "Empty Names." Nous 27: 449-69.

-----. 2006. "Names and Natural Kind Terms." Handbook of Philosophy of Language. Lepore and Smith (eds). Oxford, EN; Oxford University press. Note: Found via Braun's website at URL: http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~braun/Papers/names.pdf

Donald Davidson. 1967. "Truth and Meaning" The Philosophy of Language. A.P. Martinich (ed). 3rd Edition, Oxford, EN; Oxford University Press.

Martin Davies. 2005. "Gareth Evans." The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Donald Borchert (ed). 2nd Edition, McMillan Reference USA. Note: Found via Davies's website at URL:
http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~mdavies/papers/evans.pdf

Gareth Evans. 1973. "The Causal Theory of Names." The Philosophy of Language. A.P. Martinich (ed). 3rd Edition, Oxford, EN; Oxford University Press.

Gottlob Frege. 1892. "On Sense and Nominatum." The Philosophy of Language. A.P. Martinich (ed). Herbert Feigl (trans). 3rd Edition, Oxford, En; Oxford University Press.

Saul Kripke. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, Ma.; Harvard University Press.

Marta Reimer. 2003. "Reference." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Note: Found vie SEP at URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reference/

Bertrand Russell. 1905. "On Denoting." The Philosophy of Language. A.P. Martinich (ed). 3rd Edition, Oxford, EN; Oxford University Press.

Alfred Tarski. 1944. "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics." The Philosophy of Language. A.P. Martinich (ed). 3rd Edition, Oxford, EN; Oxford
University Press.


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11 November 2007

amateur metaethics part 1: on ethical systems

okay, due to some discussions with G i kinda wanna develop my thoughts on ethics. so this is kinda what i've come up with so far:

any ethical system can be reduced to a set of axioms of what isn't permissible. a hypothetical, single-cause environmentalist ethics would include pretty much one axiom: {hurting the earth or any natural things therein is impermissible}. anything that adheres to that axiom is okay, although up for debate, under that ethical system, and anything that violates that law is condemned as "wrong".

of course, it's very rare for anyone to follow such a simple ethical system, and probably nobody does. irl, people have multiple axioms they attempt to incorporate in ethical systems. so it also seems to me that some of these axioms are weighted. if, for example, you subscribe to a fundamentalist evangelical right-wing pro-lifer christian ethical system, you'll put more emphasis on axioms such as {abortions are impermissible} than on {not attempting to treat your neighbors as your kin is impermissible} (or some other variant of the golden rule). so in the case where some one who follow the system i just described is faced with a choice of (a) acting civilly towards a someone who decides to have an abortion and (b) attempting to deny their choice of aborting, they'll go for (b).

the reason for the different weights in the axioms of ethical systems may or may not be due to derivation. that is, there are a set of basic axioms and other, derrived axioms may be consequences or someway related to the basic axioms, yet the basic ones are more fundamental in such a way that violating those would cause more harm to the ethical edifice.

now, it's the job of the philosopher, ethicist, or metaethicist, to figure out if there's even a chance of any of these criteria for constructing ethical systems will yield a system that is the correct ethical system by any objective standard. further, if there IS a way to figure out if there's a "right" ethics, the philosopher should then use that method to figure out which ethics IS right after all, and then proceed to spell out the axioms involved.

a lot of people just see the variety of ethical systems and assume that, due to the sheer number of them, there must be something wrong with the concept, and ethics is really a word influenced by power, linguistic habit, gender, or whatever the flavor of the month is. although i'm all for throwing away concepts that are harmful to inquiry, i want to be a bit more rigorous as well.

we all know that people, people in power, have done horrible things and attempted to justify it in ethical terms. in a similar vein, we know that, historically, even arguably now in some cultures, women are treated as inferior and there exist ethical systems in which that's okay. but just because these systems of ethical justification exist doesn't mean that there isn't a system that actually gets the axioms right, or at least a way for us to figure which ones are right, or righter than others.

also, we all know that "ethics" is a word that is applied in individual instances by given people, and they may use it to refer to different things. but it, again, it doesn't follow from this that "ethics" is just a linguistic construction applied at given instances and nothing else, it might be that this word is being used to attempt to single out a particular conception with given properties (as anybody who adopts ANY ethical system would have to commit to).

okay, so in my next post i think i'll talk about some of my ideas on how to find the methodology of assessing ethical systems.

08 November 2007

chocolate: a process

my progression through types of chocolate went like this:


*milk - everyone's childhood favorite. at some point it became too sweet, so i went to...

*semi-sweet - chips used for cooking. still kinda sweet, but it had a bit of a kick

*girradelli 60% - still kinda sweet, but my first real forray into the world of dark chocolate. still an old fav

*lindt 60% truffles - very delicious. outer shell with creamy dark chocolate on the inside. i suspect the filling is less than 60% but still very very god

*endangered species smooth organic dark 70% - the title pretty much says it all.

*lindt equador 75% - the first of what i consider to be my "intense" dark chocolates. extremely rich and smoky in flavor.

*endangered species extreme dark chocolate 88% - too dark, wayyy too dark. at least that's what i say now. maybe i should've taken a milder step instead of jumping from 75% to 88%.

lindt 80% - i've found it to be, at least for now, my level of comfort. still dark enough to cause an impact in your mouth, yet still palatable.

07 November 2007

semantics and truth conditions

i have to admit sometimes i don't know why davidson thinks he can carry out a program similar to tarki's. tarski explicitly said his T-schema only applies to FORMAL languages with unambiguous predicates, no self-reference, and only a defined, pre-determined set of propositions and objects. davidson pretty much ignores this and goes ahead and tries to apply the T-schema to natural languages only to get meaning out of sentences. So we have something like:

(1) 'snow is white' is true iff snow is white.

which seems true, but doesn't really who much about meaning. but of course, because of the definition of an "if and only if" statement, it also makes sentences like

(2) 'snow is white' is true iff grass is green

true as well. of course this is absurd. yes, the biconditional is true, but it tells us nothing about the meaning because the name 'snow is white' doesn't designate whether grass is green. davidson kinda says that the precise theory of meaning wouldn't allow for cases like (2), or at least for not many of those cases, because each word in any statement will have a set of axioms that interpret the referent of words. for example, there will be axioms such as:

A1: 'dogs' refers to dogs
A2: 'snow' refers to snow
A3: 'is white' refers to the property of being white
...
An

such that cases similar to (1) will not occur (or at least not very often). but in effect all this does is equate meaning with (potentially mistaken) translations.

in effect, what i'm trying to say about davidson's adoption of tarki's t-schema adapted to get meaning is that it's both too strong and too weak. by this i mean that there are cases where the whole biconditional is met and we still don't want to say that we have meaning (such as in the case of (2)).

AND there are cases where the biconditional is not met yet we still want to say there is some meaning. this type of thing happens often in natural languages: self-reference, sentences without truth values, vague predicates, metaphors, similes, malapropisms, and other stuff.

this position i take against davidson is probably due to the fact that my idea of meaning is (not surprisingly) akin to peirce's, where the meaning of something is its effects... but that's for a post at another time...

06 November 2007

class schedule for next sem!

i have a sweet schedule next semester, check it out:

History of Modern Philosophy (Rabinsky)

Mind and Language (McGinn)

Independent Study on the Philosophy of Mathematics (Bueno)

Senior Thesis on Peirce, Abduction, and Philosophy of Science (Haack)

oh and some geology class for a req :(

02 November 2007

abduction and occam's razor

gosh i don't know if this is gonna sound obvious but i think i finally understand abduction, it's role in science, and why parsimony is so important in scientific hypotheses! okay so very quickly: three methods of logical arguments: deduction, induction, and abduction.

in a deduction, you have an argument like this:

(1) all things that have hearts also have kidneys.
(2) david has a heart
/(3) david has a kidney

in an induction, you have something like this:

(4) all of these jellybeans in my hand are red
(5) i got these jellybeans from that bag
/(6) all the jellybeans in that bag are red.

in an abduction, your argument goes like this:

(7) the glove fits
(8) if he did the crime, then the glove must fit.
/(9) he did the crime.

so in (1-3) we're applying a conditional to get the consequent, in (4-6) we're inferring the conditional from what seems to be an antecedent and a consequent, and in (7-8) we're inferring the antecedent from a conditional and a consequent.

unless you're an extreme skeptic, deduction is valid if the premises and the negation of the conclusion are inconsistent. for induction, lots of people (hume, popper) have shown that it is isn't 100% accurate at all times or try to get rid of it, but it seems to me that we use it so often and it's true most of the time, so i'll just take it for granted that, even though it's not full proof, it's okay to use (a full explanation as to why i think this would take me into phil of language and metaphysics and i just don't wanna go there... maybe i'll do it at some other time).

now the one that seems to preoccupy some people (e.g. bas van fraassen) the most is abduction (or as some people call it nowadays, inference to the best explanation), especially in the context of science.

as i see it, in science there are problems. and in lots of these problems there is the following implied dillema: "X. Why X?" an example given in words: if i throw an apple into the air, it'll come right back down. why is this so?

in short, there is a phenomenon which already has been established to occur in the world and science's job is to figure out what causes it. if you will, there's a B and we're trying to figure out an A such that A -> B. now, to get a little technical, if the B has already been established as occurring in the world, then it has a truth value of 1 (where 1= true, and 0=false). but if B is already 1, then the relation A -> B will be 1 no matter if A is 1 or 0.

here's where the scientist comes in. the scientist proposes a hypothesis, A, to see if B follows, either necessarily or probably. if it does, then the hypothesis becomes a theory supported by observation. but again, the way he does this is by investigating in the real world. if B follows from A, as hypothesized by the scientist, then we have reason to believe A, making the abductive process complete. if not, try again, with a new antecedent (A*).

now comes the parsimony part. take the previous example given by (7-9). if we amend to (9)

(9)' he did the crime AND panda express is awesome

then the argument would still be valid. because if the rule remains that (8) and we have (9)', we could simplify (9)' to just (9) and

(10) panda express is awesome.

so (7) follows. but, as you can easily see, (10) is completely unnecessary and irrelevant (even if it might be true). that's why scientific theories attempt to posit the most barren metaphysics and the least amount of stuff necessary to solve the problem at hand, all the while trying to explain nature in terms of natural kinds and laws.

damn i just decided i'm gonna tag this aesthetics too because this is just beautiful.

01 November 2007

peircean metaphysics

as some of you know i'm writing my sr thesis on ideas found in pierce's writings. i'm not sure exactly what about him or his theories i'm going to write about just yet, but i might start a regular feature in the site which quotes him and analyzes it a bit. either way here's a quote:

from The Fixation of Belief (Section V Paragraph 9):

"[Science's] most fundamental hypothesis, restated in more familiar language, is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those realities affect our senses according to regular laws, and, though our sensations are as different as our relations to the objects, yet by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain by reasoning how things really are, and any man, if he have sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion."

there's a lot being said here: science assumes many things. there is a real world. there are real generals, including kinds and laws. human cognition depends on our individual quirks, but that doesn't impede us from finding out what's what. but to find out, we need both inquiry into the external world and introspection. and knowledge about this real world will lead to true statements about it.