rabbits in the literature

is there any interesting connection between rabbits and 20th century analytic philosophy? obviously not, but i've found 2 interesting examples of philosophy and rabbits entering the same discussion:

quine's "lo, gavagai!"- the infamous thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. here's the situation: an anthropo-linguist is placed in a foreign land with some indigenous people speaking a language he has no remote clue about. they happen to find themselves in a field. the indigenous people point in a particular direction and exclaim "Lo, gavagai!" the linguist looks towards where they're gesturing, and he sees a rabbit. does this mean the indigenous people were talking about rabbits? or were they saying 'there goes dinner'? or maybe 'the village will have good luck this year'? well quine's idea is that there is no way to know what they were talking about. it's an epistemological point, from what i can tell.

wittgenstein's "duck-rabbit" - this example of wittgenstein, used to illustrate the difference between seeing AS and seeing THAT, is so famous a brewery is named in its honor. his main philosophical point was that there are some ambiguous symbols, and images, and in these cases (which are more commonplace than one might think), we have to see "as", meaning our own perceptions are necessarily imbued with personal concepts and whims. hopefully i didn't get wittgenstein TOO horribly bad in this brief characterization, although i probably did.

note:

I am neither addressing absolute skeptics, nor men in any state of fictitious doubt.

CSP, CP 5.319

constructive empiricism and its discontents

‘[A] realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality
than that which is represented in a true representation’

-Charles Sanders Peirce

(CP, 5.312. Quoted from Haack 1998: 35)

I. Introduction

In The Scientific Image, Bas van Fraassen has given us all another answer to the question ‘What is science?’(Van Fraassen 2001: 151) He names his answer ‘constructive empiricism’ and it is meant to be an alternative to the standard scientific realism. This new account, to my understanding, is a view that allows for the success of scientific theories only as empirically adequate, without any ontological commitment to unobservable entities. Although he does not deny their reality, he argues that we are not in any epistemic position to believe in them. There are many instances where I believe his arguments are flawed, and I will point some of them out. None of my objections will be definitive, but nevertheless I will argue that because scientific realism is both the pre-philosophical position and that of many scientists themselves, the burden of proof falls on van Fraassen to provide a successful alternative, something I believe he does not do. In the paper, I will first give a sketch of constructive empiricism as a freestanding ‘view’ of science, and then I will outline the main objections to the theory. My conclusion will state that constructive empiricism, although a theory that must be addressed very seriously, will not convince a strong-willed scientific realist because it (constructive empiricism) is itself subject to many of the same criticisms scientific realism is subjected to. However, the main aim of this paper is not to offer a positive defense of SR, just to create enough belief in the inadequacy of constructive empiricism that, if done well, the reader has some serious doubts about it.

II. Constructive Empiricism

Constructive empiricism is best understood as an alternative to scientific realism’s characterization of science. To van Fraassen, a scientific realist would agree to saying that ‘[science] aims to give us, in its theories, a literally true story of what the world is like; and acceptance of a scientific theory involves the belief that it is true. (van Fraassen 1980: 8)’ To van Fraassen, then, a scientific realist would agree that science makes assertions about the world which are literally true (i.e. these assertions attempt to genuinely refer to real objects and laws in nature), and that to accept a scientific theory is to believe that those objects and laws referred to are real. The main intuition motivating van Fraassen is that (1) sometimes scientific theories attempt to refer to objects we, as humans, cannot directly observe; (2) if we cannot observe something directly, we are not epis-temically warranted to believe in its truth; therefore (3) we are not warranted to believe in the reality of unobservable entities posited by (or assumed in) scientific theories.

Because of this problem of unobservables, van Fraassen is forced to give us an alternative example of what exactly science is. At this point, van Fraassen breaks with pre-philosophical notions of the nature of science. Scientific theories, presumably, make statements about the world. These statements can either be true or false, depending on how the world is, no matter if the entities posited are observable or not. However, van Fraassen returns with a challenging rebuttal: ‘Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate, and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate. This is the statement,’ van Fraassen says, ‘of the anti-realist position I advocate (van Fraassen 1980: 12).’ But this may then lead to the obvious question: what is it for a theory to be empirically adequate? To van Fraassen this means that a theory must ‘save the phenomena.’ In other words, a theory’s most tantamount purpose is to accurately describe the observable consequences of its acceptance. So there you have it. It is true that science may posit the existence of unobservable entities in many of its theories, but the main (if not the only) aim science has is to provide empirically adequate theories for future predictions of observable phenomena.

As Ladyman has pointed out (2000: 840), the anti-realist position van Fraassen offers is epistemic, not metaphysical. In fact, he believes we ought to recognize objective ontological existence to objects that are actually empirically observable. He believes, however, that the empiricist must ‘withhold belief in anything that goes beyond [that]’ (van Fraassen 1980: 202). So, prima facie, van Fraassen seems to be sitting on the fence between agnosticism and atheism about the posited unobservables in our best scientific theories. However, he does mention at various times that believing in the entities proposed by scientific theories is not irrational, just not supported by empirical observation. Here van Fraassen introduces the distinction of empirical and superempirical virtues, where an empirical virtue is the only warranted epistemic virtue, and characteristics some theories have, such as explanatory power, elegance, parsimony, and coherence with other theories are merely ‘superempirical’ virtues that provide pragmatic reasons for their adoption.

Because constructive empiricism states science’s aim is to achieve empirical adequacy, constructive empiricists are left to explain explanation itself and its role in this alternative view of science. Many scientists believe explanation or nature is the ultimate goal of science. Moreover, whether or not the main goal of science qua science, explanatory power plays a major factor in theory choice. So if van Fraassen decidedly denies this, he is forced to provide an alternative account. Specifically, he must provide an account for the role abduction (or inference to the best explanation) has in science. In order for constructive empiricism to be an accurate account of the goings on of science, abduction must be denied as a legitimate rule of inference because it oftentimes appeals to unobserved or unobservable phenomena. So instead, van Fraassen insists abduction is a pattern of thinking that goes beyond what we’re epistemically warranted to make. Much like induction, van Fraassen says that he who uses abduction ‘is not thereby irrational. He becomes irrational, however, if he adopts it as a rule to do so, and even more if he regards us as rationally compelled by it’ (van Fraassen 1989: 132 from Ladyman 2002: 223). So, to van Fraassen, one has to make abduction at least as questionable as induction, although, as I will show later, he might be using an abductive argument himself when appealing to this claim.

It is possible to characterize constructive empiricism as a reaction to the strong underdetermination argument for scientific theories. (Ladyman 2002: 174) characterizes the argument as follows:

1. ‘For every theory there exist an infinite number of strongly empirically equivalent but incompatible rival theories.

2. If two theories are strongly empirically equivalent, then they are evidentially equivalent.

3. No evidence can ever support a unique theory more than its strongly empirically equivalent rivals, and theory-choice is therefore radically underdetermined.’

A constructive empiricist agrees with all of these premises, and offers a theory in lieu of the scientific realist position that allowed for such radical underdetermination to begin with.

III. Its Discontents

Van Fraassen wishes to create a working, positive model of science without committing ontologically to things he or the rest of the epistemic community can’t directly sense (and even some things you can), including small organisms, atoms and their components, ‘public hallucinations,’ (van Fraassen 2001: 155) and cosmology. However, certain parts of his theory must be air-tight to overcome the standard position of scientific realism. In this section, I will try to show that he still has things to work out, to say the least.

A. Observability

To van Fraassen, our biology and physics determine what is observable. And when I say ‘our,’ I mean we humans, at this point in time. The reason it is limited to we humans is that we are, as far as we know, the only members of our epistemic community. There are many ways to refute this statement, and there are even ways accept it and still believe in (directly) unobservable entities, but let me begin by making this distinction much more moot than van Fraassen thinks it is.

Let us set up a thought experiment, where the epistemic community is unable to hear pitches higher than a certain tone, yet dogs is able to hear the tone just fine. A subject buys a dog whistle that works to create two tones: one that is observable by humans, and one that is too high a register to be observable. However, the mechanism which creates the tones is the same for the two notes, save the pitch. The subject then blows the whistle to several dogs hooked up to neural-network dog-brain analyzers which report that the part of the brain that becomes active to these dogs is the same part of the brain that becomes active when listening to human listenable whistles. According to constructive empiricism, this experiment and any theory that would be adequate in regards to the results of the experiment would not warrant us in believing there was any sounds whatsoever from the higher-than-observable pitches. To me, this thought experiment goes to show that the line between observable and not observable is not only vague (something he acknowledges) but also something that is meaningless.

Another fact that is of interest in the observable/unobservable debate: microorganisms. Many biological theories posit single-celled structures that are crucial to the existence of multi-cellular structures that are indeed observable. However, it seems that as soon as these tiny organisms pass a certain threshold determined by our personal biology, then they are deemed unobservable and we must not commit ontologically to their existence. However, then how would van Fraassen explain the fact that there are some single-celled structures which are visible to the naked eye? It seems as though even though because we are able to see some of ostrich eggs and xenophyophore (giant, single-celled organisms living at the bottom of the sea), it is generally accepted that we accept the type known as ‘single-celled organisms.’ If we are already ontologically committed to directly-observable single-celled organisms, then why not extend that ontological commitment to smaller single-celled organisms that just happen to be smaller than the naked human eye? This limits our observability to our biology and the physics of our anatomy. However, our biology also equipped us with a brain to create tools for observation, from telescopes to sonar equipment to microscopes. These tools allow us to observe things that would otherwise be out of our biological reach (albeit indirectly). Furthermore, indirect observation is still observation. This all leads me to conclude that we are warranted in passing judgments about the existence or not of at the very least microorganisms, if not much more than that.

‘If it is possible to distinguish between the observable and the non-observable, then it is possible to distinguish between empirical adequacy and truth,’ van Fraassen (2001: 166) writes. In my view, there is no way to distinguish between them in any objective sense of the word. There may be clear cases for us, now, but this does not mean that we are right. However, even if we give van Fraassen this point, that there is a way to distinguish between the observable and the non-observable, there is still a flaw. Indeed, James Ladyman in his (2000) argues that in order for constructive empiricism to work, van Fraassen must believe in objective modal standards of observability. Consider:

‘The circumstances in which we would observe the moons of Jupiter and dinosaurs never obtain—they are counterfactual. Hence, in order to demarcate the observable in a principled way that can bear the burden placed upon it in the epistemology of constructive empiricism, and… independently of what has…been observed, the constructive empiricist is committed to believing in at least some counterfactuals.’

Apparently, constructive empiricists must entertain counterfactual statements; that is to say, in order for constructive empiricists to talk about what is observable and actual, they must commit to more than what is observable and actual. This implies belief in objective modalities that are themselves not observable, thus undermining one of the main motivations for constructive empiricism in the first place.

However, even after all of this talk about observability, it is not clear that we have completely refuted what van Fraassen has to say about the ontological status of unobservables. Remember: he acknowledges that believing in unobservables (or at least the unobserved) may have pragmatic value, and that it is not irrational to do so. He maintains, however, that it is not necessary for the success of science. Remember: this assertion assumes that there are certain things which are unobservable in principle, that is, unobservable not because we, as humans at this point in time, are unable to observe them, but that they are not able to be observed by any one, ever, from now till the end of the epistemic community of the world we know of. Even this I will grudgingly allow, using a method van Fraassen would frown upon. Inductively, and coming from a realist perspective, there are so many things that were at some point unobservable that have now been discovered, that there are pretty high chances that there will always be something that will remain unobserved by our epistemic community, even when reaching its infinite limit, thus rendering it even indirectly unobservable. At this point I will bite the bullet, if you could call it that, and say that these proposed objects we can know nothing of. But until we reach the end of our epistemic community, there are still good reasons to not only accept theories as empirically adequate, but also believe in the proposed unobservables.

A further problem that might be mudding the waters is the meaning of the term ‘exist’. Presumably, what van Fraassen means when he says that scientific realists must “believe that [scientific theories are] true” is that they refer to objects that are real. I interpret van Fraassen as meaning by this that they do, in fact, physically exist. However, a scientific realist is not committed to that. The theory of relativity is not something that physically exists, however it is a theory that predicts, describes, explains, and defines many physical phenomena accurately. So, in a sense, they are undeniably real in the sense that it is, in fact, a certain set of parameters and formulas we do, in fact use, and take to be the greatest approximation to the truth when it comes to large enough objects, even though, according to Popper, Einstein himself said it was false (Popper 1974: 121)

The most decisive way that I could come up with to try to refute the claim that belief in unobservables is unnecessary for empirical adequacy is the fact that there are many occasions in science, especially in bio- and nanotechnology, that we humans manipulate ‘unobservable’ entities for observable results. When we, as a scientific community, create single molecules of insulin for mass production, or subject patients to gene therapy, or create carbon nanotubes only atoms wide to provide the maximum amount of strength in the lightest of weights, we are directly observing the consequences of the manipulation of unobservables. To not believe in the unobservables necessary for the creation of their manipulation’s observable consequences is completely irrational. Even using van Fraassen’s terminology, the only empirically adequate theory is that which posits the actual physical existence of the unobservables constructive empiricists have to deny. Therefore, there are times when the only acceptable (and in fact the necessary) position to take is that of the scientific realist.

B. Superempirical Virtues

There is another proponent of constructive empiricism which falls under intense scrutiny: the equation of empirical virtue with evidential and, thus, epistemic virtue. To put this simply, this is another formulation of his previous claim that the only way we can know of anything is to directly experience it, observe it. In this section I will argue that although some superempirical virtues such as aesthetic pleasantness or simplicity have no innate reasons to be epistemically advantageous, there are instances where other superempirical virtues, specifically explanation and coherence, do have epistemic virtue. It will follow, from the picture I wish to paint below, that these so-called ‘superempirical’ virtues are more than just pragmatic in nature.

It seems that the statement (S) that ‘The only type of valid epistemic evidence is empirical evidence’ would be heartily accepted by constructive empiricists (and possibly empiricists in general). However, to constructive empiricists, the only way (S) (an epistemic claim) would be accurate is if it itself has been empirically proven. This brings up two questions: (1) is (S) empirical and (2) if it is, has it been shown to be true? I do not know the answer to (1), but I believe it might not be. If one approaches knowledge from an empirical point of view, the only way to justify that statement is to argue that it is the best explanation from our observed experience, and constructive empiricists have just abducted as they wished not to. Also, I propose no to (2), because we have good reasons to believe that other types of evidence are also epistemic, even if we privilege empirical evidence (coherence with other empirically adequate theories, for instance).

1. Explanation and Abduction

As I mentioned before, constructive empiricists must deny that explanation has any epistemic virtue whatsoever. Accepting a theory’s explanations is a pragmatic virtue, as ‘…theory acceptance has a pragmatic dimension.’ Furthermore, the explanatory power of a theory ‘insofar as [it] goes beyond consistency, empirical adequacy, and empirical strength… do[es] not concern the relation between the theory and the world, but rather the use and the usefulness of the theory’ (van Fraassen 1980: 88). The interesting thing about van Fraassen’s position is that he does not deny that explanation has some value in the proves of selecting scientific theories, just that he claims that the explanation in-itself is no grounds for picking the theory, as explanation in itself will probably not bring about observable consequences and as such is not empirical. This point is immediately contestable.

The theory of evolution is generally accepted to have been an abductive inference. It explains a lot about the origins of species through the process of natural selection. And although there have been opportunities to show predictive power for the theory, there are no empirical tests that can fully mimic the process to such a point that we would be able to warrant, according to van Fraassen’s standards, empirical adequacy. Additionally, ‘evolution’ itself refers to an, again, according to van Fraassen, unobservable process. Nevertheless, it as accepted by the vast majority of members of the scientific community and even van Fraassen himself.

At the end of his chapter critiquing realism, van Fraassen provides a model of the changes in scientific theories over time not as having an ultimate goal (like Intelligent Design advocates might say of species), but instead as a Darwinian fight for survival where: ‘For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition… only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched on to actual regularizes in nature’ (van Fraassen 1980: 40). The irony, of course, is that, if my interpretation is correct, he is falling right into the trap he crafted for the scientific realist.

Van Fraassen’s inconsistencies aside, abduction seems to be a real way of thinking that is justified by its provisions of satisfactory explanations. Of course, just like induction, it is not infallible. Also, as Ladyman reminds us in his (2002: 219), neither abduction nor induction (nor deduction, for that matter) is safe from the skeptic, so, depending on your position, either abductions is as bad as induction or as good as induction (possibly deduction as well).

2. The Empirical Virtue of Coherence

There is yet another superempirical virtue that I find to have evidential virtue when applicable, and that is coherence. Here I will argue that even if one agrees with van Fraassen in that empirical adequacy is the strongest of epistemic virtues, coherence could still supplement the epistemic content of a theory. Coherence for its own sake does not necessarily mean it is an empirical virtue, as one could easily imagine a thesis cohering with another that does not have any empirical adequacy. I am going to frame this argument in the terms van Fraassen himself proposes, in order to show that even when giving him most of his points even when they may not be due, coherence is easily interpretable as epistemically valuable and thus his thesis that empirical adequacy is the only factor in determining epistemic value.

There may be instances when one is trying to determine the epistemic value of a theory, T₁. Let us suppose, of course, that this theory is empirically adequate for predicting phenomena, P, such that [T₁, P]. P just so happens to be related in an empirically significant way, R, to another phenomena, Q, such that [R (P, Q)]. Phenomena Q, in turn, has an empirically adequate theory, T₂ such that [T₂, Q]. Now, let us also suppose that there is a theory, T₃, such that it is also empirically adequate in describing phenomena P, such that [T₃, P] yet T₃ is inconsistent with T₁ and is furthermore incoherent with T₂. In my view, even though both T₁ and T₃ are empirically adequate in describing P, T₁ is not explicitly incoherent with T₂ and thus T₁ has added evidential support T₂ has with its empirical adequacy in describing Q. Thus the preference of T₁ over T₃ is not a purely pragmatic one, it is also supported by its coherence with another relevant theory that is empirically adequate. If my characterization holds, empirical evidence is not the only epistemic evidence, and thus empirical adequacy is not the only virtuous manner of obtaining evidence.

To put it more simply, if there are two empirically adequate theories vying for the same phenomena, it makes sense to pick the one that coheres with another theory which is also empirically adequate, especially if the two phenomena in question are related somehow. This gives evidence not only from the theory itself, but also from the other theory which has already been established to be empirically adequate.

IV. Concluding Thoughts

I don not know if this is really begging the question, but it seems to me that a scientific realist will always have an upper hand over the anti-realist about science from the brute fact that science works. Yes, I see a similarity between the preceding sentence and Putnam’s ‘No miracles’ argument. However, the point of this paper was to show that (1) in order for constructive empiricism to work, van Fraassen needs to convince us to drop whatever scientific theory we have (especially if we’re realists) and become constructive empiricists. However, all in all, even if we accept all of van Fraassen’s arguments, there are still problems with the position. There’s the problem of the apparent contradiction regarding objective modalities as I mentioned before. There’s also the problem of underdetermination. One of the main motivations for becoming an anti-realist about science was that if one accepts the Quine-Duheim thesis, there is a strong underdetermination to our theories about the world. This is because, for any theory, there’s an infinite number of theories that are also empirically adequate. However, constructive empiricism falls for the same objection: for every empirically adequate theory, there is also another infinite set of empirically adequate theories and thus theory-choice becomes impossible to be determined objectively. So much so, that in (Ladyman 2002: 212-3) there is talk of van Fraassen rejecting abduction yet ‘advocating a rule of “inference to the empirical adequacy of the best explanation.”’

Without a doubt some of his arguments could be interpreted as circular and there are some pretty big potential flaws, but van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism is the biggest threat to realism in the sciences since The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It is a powerful force and interpretation that must be dealt with in order to have a successful philosophy of science.

At the end of the day, though, constructive empiricism did not provide an adequate enough philosophy of science. So, for me, personally, I will stick to scientific realism, unobservables and all… at least until something more convincing comes along.

References

Haack, S. (1998): ‘“We Pragmatists…”: Peirce and Rorty in Conversation’, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Ladyman, J. (2000): ‘What’s Really Wrong with Constructive Empiricism? Van Fraassen and the Metaphysics of Modality’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 51.

Ladyman, J. (2002): Understanding Philosophy of Science, New York: Routledge.

Popper, K. (1974): “The Problem of Demarcation”, Popper Selections, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

van Fraassen, B. C. (1980): The Scientific Image, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

van Fraassen, B. C. (1989): Laws and Symmetry, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

van Fraassen, B. C. (2001): ‘Constructive Empiricism Now’, Philosophical Studies, 106.

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Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Hume & extreme empiricism

Hume's extreme skepticism about any empirical, observed knowledge of the external world is based on a very misguided and extreme empiricism. Although he allows for knowledge of certain simple mathematical and logical truths, anything beyond that is not directly supported by experience, and thus condemned unreasonable. To reconstruct his argument briefly: when interacting with the external world, we can be sure of our impressions of the sensations from the external input. However, we can never be certain about anything regarding these impressions other than that we experience them. Thus, making any sort of rational statement about these impressions goes beyond our experience. We are so uncertain about these impressions that we cannot be even sure that impressions we have received in times prior following a certain pattern will continue to do so. This is what some philosophers have called the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature (PUN). It is because of PUN that we believe something causes another thing. This principle is in fact an inferred hypothesis (induction) that has appeared to work in the past; but because we can’t truly experience this uniformity—only the perceived effects of it were it true—there is no rational way we can justify our own belief in its (PUN’s) existence. Moreover, because most, if not all observational (i.e. scientific) knowledge is based on this assumption, we have no more reason to believe in scientific knowledge than any other method of obtaining knowledge—methods a scientific person may consider to be complete hogwash (i.e. tarot, soothsaying, etc).

Obviously Hume goes wrong somewhere in this argument. Scientific knowledge does, more often than not, make accurate predictions about the future. They predict astrological phenomena all the time, for one. We also rely on technologies that have been enabled for use by scientific and engineering advances only producible by the application of scientific formulas that have at least at some point or another been tested with the rigor of experience. But finding these types of examples would not persuade anyone just yet, we must somehow prove the validity of the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature.

To be quite honest I’ve always been inclined to just toss aside skepticism of this nature because it seems so set against the intuitive outlook of the world that it can’t possibly be right. But let us give the skeptic a fighting chance. First, the Principle of the Uniformity of Nature is the assumption that underlies any notion of cause and effect. No principle of the uniformity of nature and no induction is possible. Inductions of all shapes and kinds would be impossible. If the clouds were really dark outside, the temperature dropped various degrees, and you heard a couple of thunderclaps, you would have no more reason to believe that there was going to be a nasty thunderstorm than if you were to believe that a sandstorm were to appear where you stood. Or that you were going to spontaneously combust. This is ludicrous!

We experience the PUN because we continue to see patterns emerging in significant ways in our everyday lives; we are actually more reasonable to believe in it than not. If you were to eat, among other things, tomato one day and you break out in hives, you realize that something you ate today might have brought those hives. After some self experimentation, or a visit to an allergist, you realize that eating tomatoes will be directly followed by those hives, and assuming you don’t like hives, you will discontinue your ingestion of tomatoes. Being a reasonable person, in my opinion, is at least in part recognizing that these patterns do emerge, identifying the relevant patterns in your life, and the acting accordingly. These patterns are experienced if only we expand on our notion from the Humean, mostly barren idea that we can only experience sense impressions, to a more broad conception of experience as the interaction between the senses and our own intellect to analyze it.

The main problem justifying this PUN philosophically is that it is an induction. Inductions are, by definition, logical inferences that will never be 100% certain. They are the proposal of a general rule or probability based on the experience of one thing following another significant amount of times. Inductions themselves are not deductively provable. Deductions are the other way around, there is a rule, and we are used to apply that rule in order to get the output. Deductions actually take less thought, because as long as you understand the rule, you can never misuse it. Inductions are a bit more synthetic, because it requires one to recognize patterns. But the induction itself, as a mechanism of pattern-recognition, is not itself applicable to any deduction, and it is thus deductively invalid. But this is okay! It doesn’t have to be!

The practice of creating and using inductions is valid because it works. Inductions have worked, do work, and there is no reason to believe that they will stop working any time soon. We have a great, vast amount of evidence that inductions have worked. Every time that we set foot in a car we are actually making an induction—that it will work just like the last time, that our seatbelt will actually work according to the standard safety regulations—and we are betting our lives on it. I guess this might be a pragmatic justification of induction and, by extension, the PUN.

This is what happens when empiricism is taken to the extreme. In the world of Hume, where no induction is rationally valid or justifiable, we are blind rats living in an ever evolving maze without any cheese. Sure, we can never be 100% sure of our inductions or any observational knowledge, we’d be bigger fools to think we have no rational reasons to believe them.

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.

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)

truth theories

yeah... i've been hung up on beliefs lately. now comes some thoughts on truth. the way i'm gonna go about it is offering some theories of truth and me just basically running my yap about them. quickly, before i go on to do just that, i say i stand by what i roughly said last post, that if you believe homo sapiens evolved from australopithecus, then you'd say of the sentence "Homo sapiens evolved from australopithecus" that it is true. but what is being said to be true there? the sentence? the proposition expressed by the sentence? the belief? not sure yet. let's keep these questions in mind when we analyze these theories of truth

*truth as ideal (plato) -- what's true is what resembles some ideal of truth. well i think for something to be true it at the very least has to predicate on something in the (one) real world. so this gets thrown out almost immediately.

*truth as correspondence (russell, early wittgenstein, aristotle?) -- something is true iff it corresponds to the facts or the real world or something of the sort. i think there's something to this, although most of the time when expressed it makes you commit to some pretty insane metaphysics. logical atomism is the most extreme case here and it's just tough to swallow that there're pretty much two worlds matching in structure exactly, just one in the physical world and one in the logical world. again, seems a bit crazy if you adjust the theory with the metaphysics. the bad part is that if you don't commit to crazy metaphysics, the correspondence aspect of the theory seems kinda trivial, and doesn't make much of a difference. still, seems to be on to something.

*truth as semantic (tarski, davidson?) -- there are several ways to phrase this, but i'm gonna put it like this: "R" is true iff S, & R names S. in english: "snow is white" is true iff snow is white. this theory would run into a lot of problems except for the fact that he includes the addendum that R must be a name for S. anyway, this seems to agree a bit with what i was saying... in fact it's not far from it, really, although i was mentioning it in terms of beliefs being true. i'm not quite sure what "true" predicates over here, but i'll say this sounds about right.

*truth as disquotational/deflationary/redundancy (ramsey, quine?) -- seems very similar to the last one. ramsey said that for all p, it is true that p iff p. e.g. it is true that convertibles are a type of car iff convertibles are a type of car. this is what i believe to be the most harmless of the theories: it doesn't force you to adopt any outlandish metaphysics, it is still connected to the real world through real kinds, and it retains the concept of realness being an objective quality some things have while other things don't. possibly, the nonrealists and/or nominalists out there will still object due to the use of real kinds. [i might be running together theories that don't really belong... if you think i am then let me know]

*truth as final opinion (peirce) - quick overview of peirce: he used the pragmatic maxim, which stated that the meaning of x is the practical consequences x has. so to peirce, truth is that which will keep being affirmed by a hypothetically infinite (timewise) community of inquirers (coi). so if this coi were to say "dinosaurs became extinct due to a meteor" at some time far into the future, and there is little to no undermining evidence, then that is the truth. this kind of view compensates for the fallibility of the coi at any point before that which they gave their final opinion.

*truth as cash value (james) -- true is good in the way of belief. a true belief will benefit most. what's true is what's expedient in our thinking. these three formulations of vaguely the same idea seem to be interpretable in at least two ways: short-run and long-run. in the short term, it does seem to me that certain false beliefs could benefit more than true ones, making this theory contradictory. but in the long run the truth will be more useful than the false... at least to people seeking to understand reality. however, both in the short and the long run, it does seem to me that as a general rule truth is more valuable than falsity.

*truth as coherence (hempel, putnam, davidson?) - truth is what coheres to a set of logical statements. obvious objections: maybe p coheres with a set, and so does not p. this theory downplays the role the real world has when it comes to truth. it doesn't completely rule it out, but once you try to incorporate some connection between the real world and the coherent set, it starts to sound more like correspondence. eh... again, like the cash value, there does seem to be at least something here. at some ideal point in the future when we have most if not all true statements (statements about the world in some way), then they're bound to cohere, merely due to the fact that there couldn't both BE and NOT BE a real kind, or any certain thing. but this is kinda trivial.

*truth as conversational (rorty, late wittgenstein, foucault, french literary theorists) -- deny that truth is at all objective or even characterizable. all they say is that truth is what's "defensible from all comers" or "withstands all conversational objections" (quoting rorty here). some of these are more extreme than others, but all share a type of relativism that ultimately does away with truth and replaces it with whatever they prefer (tribes, games, power). although i'm convinced that this is wrong, there is a bit you can tease out which might be true. again, if seen from the long run, and if assumed that "truth" is a real predicate, then what happens to be true will be defensible from all comers, precisely because there will be irrefutable evidence (gathered from the real world). likewise, the truth will withstand all conversational objections but precisely because it isn't solely based on conversation, because it's anchored in the real world, somehow.

so.. i think most of these (all but one, actually) have something going for them, but some (probably redundancy and semantic) appeal to me more because they have some real-world element without making me commit to much. did i characterize any of these unfairly? which do you think is closer to the truth??

EDIT (11/1): i think i forgot to mention that i tried to organize the theories in order from making TRUTH a big deal to making it the least big deal.. well denying it. i kinda like ramsey's redundancy and the theories close to it most because it admits truth is out there, but it's not a big deal metaphysically. further, epistemologically speaking, ramsey's theory still allows for there to be an anchoring in the real world which requires inquiry to find out if something is true or not (or at least to gather evidence.)

on belief

right so i'm in epistemology class and we're discussing doubters of the legitimacy of the epistemological enterprise. one strategy of debunking epis. is to deny one of the major tenets of the definition of knowledge most people would agree with (JTB). susan haack starts to characterize certain beliefs on belief that deny beliefs. these are accounts like the churchlands' and/or stephen stich's, accounts that pretty much argue: that which we believe, the processes we'd describe as beliefs are (replaceable with/reducible to) --> (connectionist artificial intelligence/computational cognitive science). on other words, what we think is belief is really ONLY some type of neurophysiological goings on in our brain and that's that. something fishy going on here...

detour into the philosophy of mind for a sec: okay so it seems that if we assume materialism (which i do), then all physical objects are made out of material stuff and nothing more. to me, this includes whatever we might call the "mind." the brain causes these mental states we subjectively experience, so in a way even our minds are material. however, much like supervenient qualities emerge in ant colonies and such, i think "consciousness", whatever that is, can only be explained as an emergent property (at least not yet) explainable in terms of its constituent parts.

so in the sense i just kinda described in a really rough way, belief is at least in part physical, because it necessarily involves our brains and ourselves. but is there anything else to it?

as an admitted pragmatist, i think it does. specifically, there has to be an action-related element. peirce argued convincingly that a belief was a habit of action. eg if you want to ice skate, and you believe there is an ice skating rink at such location, you go to the location to ice skate. this is a simple modus ponens, observable through a person's behavior. to help account for certain cases where one's behavior isn't so clearly observable, f.p. ramsey proposed to interpret someone's belief as a willingness to bet on the proposition in question. haack brings up the objection that some people might be already be rich (therefore less hesitant to bet or more willing to bet for the fun of it) or maybe be adrenaline junkies of such (so more willing to bet in risky ways). but i think these objections do reflect real epistemological attitudes in people, in the sense that some people are more willing to risk their knowledge's ass (in a way being more fallibalist than others). so these two objections i put to the side.

however, where i run into a big problem is what i think is when one tries to quantify degrees of belief. sometimes people can believe things more than other things... i believe i'm currently in my american studies class more than i believe, say, the legitimacy of quantum mechanics, although i do believe both. either way, even though i'd be able to act/bet more on my being in class than the physics theory, i don't know how much more. it would be a lot more, but i couldn't put a dollar value on it. but again, even though the cash value of my belief may be indeterminate, that doesn't mean that belief has nothing to do with action.

i hate to put myself in a situation where i agree with this guy, but richard rorty once wrote something about this that i tend to agree with. he said something along the lines of the following: if you believe something and you are not willing to act on it at all, then you don't really believe it. you're just fooling yourself linguistically. there has to be some element of self-risk when you do believe something (i guess lending itself to the ramsean analysis.)


so i guess that's what i believe about belief... sorry... couldn't help myself

games

inspired in part by later wittgenstein, in part by pseudo-meta-ethical discussions with G, and in part by a quasimoto song called "players of the game," i've been thinking a lot about the concept of games for the past couple of months. and while there are many issues that involve the 'concept' (and i use the term loosely here) of games, there are some issues i want to touch on.

the majority of the times i've heard of 'games' in an inquisitive discussion, it has been in the context of devaluing the validity of a problem or a situation. this is not to say that these problems don't exist at some level, but that they are usually confined to problems that arise in the applications of the rules of the game; rules that were arbitrarily or accidentally chosen. in this context, life could be a 'game', as could dating (hence the term "players"), politics, and many other aspects of life. i'm not saying i agree with any of these, but they deserve a further look.

these examples might lend themselves more to this type of analysis because it seems, because of sociological norms, that there are a certain set of accepted actions in social interactions that could be analogous to 'rules' and in order to be successful in these 'games' one has to take advantage of the knowledge one has of these rules to either play by them to the best of one's abilities or to chose to disregard them for strategic purposes.

even though i've never taken any meta-ethics classes, it seems that some people think that ethical norms are really just games as well. because of the added human element of ethics and my personal ambivalence of what's right and wrong in certain extreme cases, i don't completely throw this idea out either (but on a personal note, it might be because i don't have very strong ideas about this kind of thing). is it okay to kill 20 to save 400? is our national security more important than our individual rights? at times, i think there should be some sort of utilitarian answer to these questions, yet of course there are some conflicting intuitions within myself.

but i think the conceptual tool of 'games' fails to account for what i believe to be real problems in metaphysics and epistemology. wittgenstein's second attempt to annihilate philosophy (after his first attempt in the tractatus with logical atomism) was with the concept of language games in his investigations. his way of solving philosophical problems--problems such as, say, what is knowledge, what is existence--is to access them as problems only arising in the application of the rules of language. so something could count as knowledge iff it resembles other applications of the family term "knowledge" sufficiently. in effect, this specific strategy would make many of the problems philosophers face problems only philosophers of langauge (or maybe linguists or maybe members of an academic english/lit departments) should face.

i think this is misguided for a couple of reasons: first of all, it would just put a lot of people out of work if completely accepted. that or lots of people would move to english departments and call it a day. [see: richard rorty]. but on a serious note, some of these problems can't be solved by linguistic analysis. furthermore, these problematic situations can't be fully explained by linguistic analysis either. eg take problems of epistemology. ppl like wittgenstein and some of his followers like rorty just want to get rid of the entire enterprise. but surely knowledge has some problems:

• what counts as knowledge?
  
• what is belief?
• what is justification?
• how does one account for evidence?
• is there a causal element in justification?
• is knowledge based on foundations or cohesion or both or neither?
• what is truth?
• gettier?

and so on. these problems are not about the application of the term "knowledge." these are problems to be dealt with in the situations where the questions would arise in the real world. in other words, these issues go beyond applications of linguistic rules, they deal with problems to be dealt with in a scientific spirit, in which there will be needed some inquiry that looks out into the world (and yes, that includes your head) to try to find out some answers.

so here i used epistemology as a counter-example to a wittgensteinian "everything is a game" strategy of analyzing philosophical problems. but i think you can also provide real (here i mean real as in more than just linguistic) problems in metaphysics, although i'm not gonna provide an argument here. nevertheless, the strategy of games is helpful in understanding some things, especially activities arising from human social interaction.

ok, this has gone on long enough, and i probably didn't tie in a lot of loose ends in this post... but i'm gonna leave it like that. feel free to school me if you want :D