11/22/2013
Mind, Vol 54 No 236, Oct 1950
This paper examines the question of whether machines can think. Since it was written when "machines" was still a broad term that could refer equally to a type-writer or an electronic computer, much of the work of the paper is clarifying, and exploring, what kind of machine could fit the bill for being able to learn, and, perhaps, think. Author works on re-phrasing the question to whether a machine (from here on, also "computer") can succeed at the "imitation game" as well as a man could. Here is the baseline game:
Interrogator (C) uses (probably) a keyboard and monitor to communicate with a separate, isolated, man (A), and a woman (B). Both A and B are trying to convince C that each is a woman. In other words, the man is trying to trick C into believing he is a woman. At some point, C makes the assessment on the gender of A and B. It is expected that C will have some degree of success at this.
Author's argument is that if a computer can take A's place and trick C as much of the time as A can, then a computer has played the imitation game as well as a man could, and thus was doing whatever a man was doing just as well. What is interesting is that author spends only a little time discussing the appropriateness of using this kind of game as an alternative to the "can machines think" question (pg435).
After discussing what kind of machine is envisioned (pg435-442), author considers objections (pg443-454):
1. The Theological objection: only humans with souls can think. Response: we're just making another vessel for a soul.
2. The 'Heads in the Sand' objection: if computers thought, humans would not be as special. Response: maybe so but it's possible, no?
3. The Mathematical objection: there are limits to the computing power of machines, cf Godel's proof. Response: and there aren't limits to the computing power of humans?
4. The Argument from Consciousness: thinking is part of understanding, which is part of consciousness, which machines do not have. Response: unless you're charitable, nobody else but you has consciousness. Thus, why not also be charitable about a machine that does what you can do equally well?
5. Arguments from Various Disabilities: machines can't do so many things that humans can do. Response: computers are getting better and much, and furthermore, arguments from disabilities don't hold up when comparing humans to each other. There is an interesting discussion on what kinds of mistakes computers can make (pg448-9) in this section. Author uses a distinction between "errors of functioning" and "errors of conclusion". You can program errors of functioning, but you may want to take that frailty away from computers to the extent possible. However, there is nothing that says a computer can't (and won't, often) make an error of conclusion, e.g. come up with the wrong answer through a flawless method. Author uses the example of inductive reasoning getting an outcome wrong even when used perfectly.
6. Lady Lovelace's Objection: machines do not have learning and cannot come up with anything new. Response: yes, but it isn't hard to see how they will be able to, someday. Furthermore, is novelty the mark of thinking? If so, even humans might not think very much.
7. Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System: the nervous system and a computer are too different, fundamentally. Response: this should not affect the imitation game, or the validity of conclusions, no matter which medium they were reasoned from.
8. The Argument from Informality of Behavior: there is no good way to possibly index all the appropriate behaviors for every situation for a computer, and since humans know the appropriate behaviors for every situation, humans cannot be the same as computers. Response: a computer can know what to do if given the right education and programming. There is also an interesting discussion on the difference between "rules of conduct" and "laws of behavior" here (pg452).
9. The Argument from Extra-Sensory Perception: humans have ESP. Response: since this may be true, to restrict the experiment to a "telepathy-proof room".
The remainder of the paper largely deals with what it would be like (theoretically) to create a learning computer. There includes an interesting discussion (pg454-5) about how the "real mind" is elusive, using a metaphor of the "skin of an onion".
11/15/13
Proudfoot, Diane - Rethinking Turning's Test
11/15/2013
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol 110 No 7, July 2013
Author starts by reviewing the history of Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" paper in Mind. The central question is whether a computer could "be said to think", but it was replaced with the question: "are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game". For Turing, the criterion for thinking morphed into what could be taken for an imitation of human activity, and author sets to give a fresh interpretation of the test as a "response-dependence" approach (pg393).
First author reviews the "canonical" view, which employs behaviorism as the criterion: if the machine behaves as a thinking creature would in a given context, it is thinking. Author argues that Turing did not mean to give even sufficient (let alone necessary) conditions for thinking using behaviorism. The interrogator's (the human's) response to the behavior is a necessary part to success in the imitation game. Turing used a different game, one of a man trying to fool an interrogator into believing he was a woman, as the benchmark for how well a computer could fool an interrogator into believing it was thinking. Author discusses how puzzling this emphasis on the interrogator's response is for behaviorists. Instead of writing off this crucial element as misguided, author suggests that the behavoristic interpretation is what is misguided.
The new interpretation author puts forward starts with Turing considering the "idea of 'intelligence'" (pg396) as an "emotional" one, but meaning specifically that we apply the label "intelligent" partly due to our own mental state and perspective; it is response-dependent (pg397). The trick now is to indicate what kinds of subjects and what kinds of conditions are "normal" to elicit the prototypical response, which was Turing's point with the imitation game (pg398). Author argues that common objections to Turing's thesis is that it fails to capture response-independent notions of intelligence miss the point (pg399).
Author reviews an objection to Turing's test, first from Ned Block's "Aunt Bubbles" thought experiment (pg400-2). Block's thought experiment points out the logical possibility of a (very) large index of conversations, which would emulate intelligence if there was an (impossibly) fast search and probability mechanism. Author responds by putting the operator "actually" into the Turing schema.
Next discussed are rival views to the behavioristic one; the first is Moor's response-independent view (pg402-3). Moor wants the test to be evidence for thinking, which would be internal to the mechanism. Stuart Shieber argues that the test is an "interactive proof" of intelligence. Author also believes this view misses the response-dependence of the test (pg404).
Author talks about how response-dependence doesn't need to undermine objectivity, or that it is compatible with "qualified" realism (pg405). Author then talks about more the more recent understanding that "intelligence is in the eye of the observer", a form of (perhaps) illusionism, with comments on the Chinese Room from Jordan Pollack. Further discussion is about a problem with response-dependent concepts: that humans anthropomorphize (just about anything) (pg407-8) "the forensic problem of anthropomorphism". Author believes the Turing test has a two-part solution to this: (1) create a situation where there is a disincentive to anthropomorphize (the judge's accuracy would decline), and (2) making anthropomorphism into a controlled variable (pg409).
The Journal of Philosophy, Vol 110 No 7, July 2013
Author starts by reviewing the history of Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" paper in Mind. The central question is whether a computer could "be said to think", but it was replaced with the question: "are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game". For Turing, the criterion for thinking morphed into what could be taken for an imitation of human activity, and author sets to give a fresh interpretation of the test as a "response-dependence" approach (pg393).
First author reviews the "canonical" view, which employs behaviorism as the criterion: if the machine behaves as a thinking creature would in a given context, it is thinking. Author argues that Turing did not mean to give even sufficient (let alone necessary) conditions for thinking using behaviorism. The interrogator's (the human's) response to the behavior is a necessary part to success in the imitation game. Turing used a different game, one of a man trying to fool an interrogator into believing he was a woman, as the benchmark for how well a computer could fool an interrogator into believing it was thinking. Author discusses how puzzling this emphasis on the interrogator's response is for behaviorists. Instead of writing off this crucial element as misguided, author suggests that the behavoristic interpretation is what is misguided.
The new interpretation author puts forward starts with Turing considering the "idea of 'intelligence'" (pg396) as an "emotional" one, but meaning specifically that we apply the label "intelligent" partly due to our own mental state and perspective; it is response-dependent (pg397). The trick now is to indicate what kinds of subjects and what kinds of conditions are "normal" to elicit the prototypical response, which was Turing's point with the imitation game (pg398). Author argues that common objections to Turing's thesis is that it fails to capture response-independent notions of intelligence miss the point (pg399).
Author reviews an objection to Turing's test, first from Ned Block's "Aunt Bubbles" thought experiment (pg400-2). Block's thought experiment points out the logical possibility of a (very) large index of conversations, which would emulate intelligence if there was an (impossibly) fast search and probability mechanism. Author responds by putting the operator "actually" into the Turing schema.
Next discussed are rival views to the behavioristic one; the first is Moor's response-independent view (pg402-3). Moor wants the test to be evidence for thinking, which would be internal to the mechanism. Stuart Shieber argues that the test is an "interactive proof" of intelligence. Author also believes this view misses the response-dependence of the test (pg404).
Author talks about how response-dependence doesn't need to undermine objectivity, or that it is compatible with "qualified" realism (pg405). Author then talks about more the more recent understanding that "intelligence is in the eye of the observer", a form of (perhaps) illusionism, with comments on the Chinese Room from Jordan Pollack. Further discussion is about a problem with response-dependent concepts: that humans anthropomorphize (just about anything) (pg407-8) "the forensic problem of anthropomorphism". Author believes the Turing test has a two-part solution to this: (1) create a situation where there is a disincentive to anthropomorphize (the judge's accuracy would decline), and (2) making anthropomorphism into a controlled variable (pg409).
11/1/13
Lovejoy, Arthur - Plentitude and Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza
11/01/2013
The Great Chain Of Being, Ch 5 Harvard University Press, 1936
Author sets out to discuss the relationship between Leibniz's principle of plenitude and his principle of sufficient reason, and whether Leibniz can avoid "absolute logical determinism" that characterizes Spinoza. Author starts by reminding us of Leibniz's writings on the 'single chain' of 'natural beings', that is a gradation and not strict species and genus divisions (pg145). The discussion moves to the principle of sufficient reason, and an inspection of the various (imprecise) formulations of it that Leibniz uses. Author argues that Leibniz's primary motivation is not to justify the particulars of the universe as "goods" but merely as non-arbitrary (pg146-8). Most thinkers of the time held a division between concepts (roughly, Platonic ideas) and objects, with concepts being maintained (for Leibniz) in the mind of God: it was here where ultimate reasons for existence "were to be sought" (pg147-8). The strategy here was to combine the two realms into one, and to add to the realm of objects the reason for their existence, in which case their existence would be self-justifying (pg148-9).
Author explores the thinking of the time relating to the origin of the universe and the "first cause", which must have been internal to itself and independent of other causes, in a word, God (pg149-151). The next question, answered in the affirmative by Spinoza, is whether only God's existence is justified, or whether such justification extends to all objects (pg151-3). The problem for Spinoza, as presented by author, is that the principle of plenitude should have resulted in all beings existing all at once, and not the creation and cessation of things over time (pg154-5). The alternative to Spinoza, according to author, is not to deny the necessary existence of God, but to deny the necessary existence of creation (pg156-165) (cf Duns Scotus, Aristotle, Augustine). In this conception, God creates the universe without motive. Author discusses Milton's struggles with these two ideas for some time (pg160-2).
Author turns back to Leibniz to explore his principle of sufficient reason (pg166-8). Leibniz agrees with Spinoza, against the previously discussed philosophers, that God must have some reason for creating things. Author imputes two reasons for Leibniz's beliefs: (1) as a principle of psychology all conscious choices must have motivating reasons and (2) practically, it is intolerable to believe that chance is the principle of the universe. Author reviews the challenge of Buridan's ass leveled by Clarke against Leibniz (pg168-9), and Leibniz's clumsily response. Author then introduces Leibniz's third alternative, between the determinism of Spinoza and the chance of his critics: that the world so created must not only be logically possible but also "compossible", consistent with each other. Thus the formation of "sets" of entities, and thus many different possible worlds, from which God chooses one, using God's will (a concept Spinoza seems to leave out from God) (pg170-1). The second feature that he needed, above the concept of compossibility, is that of "moral necessity" instead of metaphysical necessity (pg172-3). Author concludes this second distinction has no "logical substance" and that Leibniz is thus mostly equivalent to Spinoza (pg174-6).
Author goes on to argue that Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason "pass[es] over explicitly into the principle of plenitude"(pg177), which author discusses next (pg177-180). The problem for Leibniz is that sometimes he speaks of a degree of perfection in monads (in things), and thus might be caught into having to argue that a world with more eg, human monads, is better than one with eg, crocodile ones. But Leibniz needs to justify crocodiles, so he asserts that all monads have equal rights to existence (pg179). Instead, Leibniz places value on diversity of essence, not just quantity of more perfect ones. Author finally discusses Leibniz's response to those who believed in the possibility of a physical vacuum. Here Leibniz seems to eschew the principle of plenitude in favor of panpsychism and anti-materialism, which argues that minds, not matter, are the fundamentals of the universe (pg181-2).
The Great Chain Of Being, Ch 5 Harvard University Press, 1936
Author sets out to discuss the relationship between Leibniz's principle of plenitude and his principle of sufficient reason, and whether Leibniz can avoid "absolute logical determinism" that characterizes Spinoza. Author starts by reminding us of Leibniz's writings on the 'single chain' of 'natural beings', that is a gradation and not strict species and genus divisions (pg145). The discussion moves to the principle of sufficient reason, and an inspection of the various (imprecise) formulations of it that Leibniz uses. Author argues that Leibniz's primary motivation is not to justify the particulars of the universe as "goods" but merely as non-arbitrary (pg146-8). Most thinkers of the time held a division between concepts (roughly, Platonic ideas) and objects, with concepts being maintained (for Leibniz) in the mind of God: it was here where ultimate reasons for existence "were to be sought" (pg147-8). The strategy here was to combine the two realms into one, and to add to the realm of objects the reason for their existence, in which case their existence would be self-justifying (pg148-9).
Author explores the thinking of the time relating to the origin of the universe and the "first cause", which must have been internal to itself and independent of other causes, in a word, God (pg149-151). The next question, answered in the affirmative by Spinoza, is whether only God's existence is justified, or whether such justification extends to all objects (pg151-3). The problem for Spinoza, as presented by author, is that the principle of plenitude should have resulted in all beings existing all at once, and not the creation and cessation of things over time (pg154-5). The alternative to Spinoza, according to author, is not to deny the necessary existence of God, but to deny the necessary existence of creation (pg156-165) (cf Duns Scotus, Aristotle, Augustine). In this conception, God creates the universe without motive. Author discusses Milton's struggles with these two ideas for some time (pg160-2).
Author turns back to Leibniz to explore his principle of sufficient reason (pg166-8). Leibniz agrees with Spinoza, against the previously discussed philosophers, that God must have some reason for creating things. Author imputes two reasons for Leibniz's beliefs: (1) as a principle of psychology all conscious choices must have motivating reasons and (2) practically, it is intolerable to believe that chance is the principle of the universe. Author reviews the challenge of Buridan's ass leveled by Clarke against Leibniz (pg168-9), and Leibniz's clumsily response. Author then introduces Leibniz's third alternative, between the determinism of Spinoza and the chance of his critics: that the world so created must not only be logically possible but also "compossible", consistent with each other. Thus the formation of "sets" of entities, and thus many different possible worlds, from which God chooses one, using God's will (a concept Spinoza seems to leave out from God) (pg170-1). The second feature that he needed, above the concept of compossibility, is that of "moral necessity" instead of metaphysical necessity (pg172-3). Author concludes this second distinction has no "logical substance" and that Leibniz is thus mostly equivalent to Spinoza (pg174-6).
Author goes on to argue that Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason "pass[es] over explicitly into the principle of plenitude"(pg177), which author discusses next (pg177-180). The problem for Leibniz is that sometimes he speaks of a degree of perfection in monads (in things), and thus might be caught into having to argue that a world with more eg, human monads, is better than one with eg, crocodile ones. But Leibniz needs to justify crocodiles, so he asserts that all monads have equal rights to existence (pg179). Instead, Leibniz places value on diversity of essence, not just quantity of more perfect ones. Author finally discusses Leibniz's response to those who believed in the possibility of a physical vacuum. Here Leibniz seems to eschew the principle of plenitude in favor of panpsychism and anti-materialism, which argues that minds, not matter, are the fundamentals of the universe (pg181-2).
10/11/13
Westphal, Jonathan - Philosophical Investigations #693: "Meaning..."
10/11/2013 and 10/25/2013
Unpublished paper
Author's main point is to agree with Wittgenstein during his Philosophical Investigations that meaning and thinking are distinct, and to deny that "meaning" is a mental activity emanating from a speaker. Author starts with scholia #693 from the Investigations that talks about teaching the construction of a series and then 'meaning' that the student write the right number in the hundredth place of the series. This is taken to be a case of meaning something without thinking it.
Author starts with discussing the difference between teaching the construction of a series with the construction of a particular series (one without any tricks or traps). Author argues that Wittgenstein is unclear when he talks about teaching the construction of a particular series, if the student already knew how to construct series in general (cf #691, #143).
An additional problem that author introduces is the idiomatic use of "mean" in English compared to the German verb "meinen", which is more "dynamic" and therefore might have been a better target for Wittgenstein. In English, some uses of "mean" are commonly considered "stative".
The next problem is whether 'meaning to write' in this case means that the student write the series to the hundredth place, or does the teacher mean for the student to write the actual number at that place. In other words, does the teacher mean for the student to do the task, or for the student to write a particular number/calculation. Author takes Wittgenstein to mean the latter, which, while it encompasses the former, also implies meaning a specific answer.
To get greater clarity about what "to mean it" implies, author turns to #692, which turns to a criterion (behavioristic?) for accomplishing what was 'meant', rather than requiring the student's actions to match the teacher's mental state/activities. Author sees a favorable comparison with the activity of thinking, in this case thinking of a class does not mean thinking of each individual that makes up the class. So the resolution of the problem of what particularly is meant (the task or the number), can be resolved by claiming that the class of right answers was meant.
Author then turns to a positive account of what "to mean" in this case is doing: it is picking out a thing by "contrast or contraposition, in a non-logical sense". It is "removal of some definite ambiguity or some ignorance". For author, meaning in this sense is only required when things need to be distinguished for the sake of clarity or teaching. Author argues that "to mean" here mostly means "to pick" or "to choose". This picking is dynamic, but it is also subject to external criteria for whatever method we have of distinguishing (asking for clarification, pointing, showing, etc).
More broadly, however, author argues that Wittgenstein is trying to establish that the best understanding of "to mean" (not the ones where "meaning" is "picking"), is as a "stative or fientive" verb, not an active one. By contrast, "to think", has both dynamic and stative applications. Of course there are idiomatic uses of "meaning" that can be dynamic, but that is usually because the usage of "meaning" is filling in for another verb, like "picking", or, in some cases, for "intending" or "thinking".
Unpublished paper
Author's main point is to agree with Wittgenstein during his Philosophical Investigations that meaning and thinking are distinct, and to deny that "meaning" is a mental activity emanating from a speaker. Author starts with scholia #693 from the Investigations that talks about teaching the construction of a series and then 'meaning' that the student write the right number in the hundredth place of the series. This is taken to be a case of meaning something without thinking it.
Author starts with discussing the difference between teaching the construction of a series with the construction of a particular series (one without any tricks or traps). Author argues that Wittgenstein is unclear when he talks about teaching the construction of a particular series, if the student already knew how to construct series in general (cf #691, #143).
An additional problem that author introduces is the idiomatic use of "mean" in English compared to the German verb "meinen", which is more "dynamic" and therefore might have been a better target for Wittgenstein. In English, some uses of "mean" are commonly considered "stative".
The next problem is whether 'meaning to write' in this case means that the student write the series to the hundredth place, or does the teacher mean for the student to write the actual number at that place. In other words, does the teacher mean for the student to do the task, or for the student to write a particular number/calculation. Author takes Wittgenstein to mean the latter, which, while it encompasses the former, also implies meaning a specific answer.
To get greater clarity about what "to mean it" implies, author turns to #692, which turns to a criterion (behavioristic?) for accomplishing what was 'meant', rather than requiring the student's actions to match the teacher's mental state/activities. Author sees a favorable comparison with the activity of thinking, in this case thinking of a class does not mean thinking of each individual that makes up the class. So the resolution of the problem of what particularly is meant (the task or the number), can be resolved by claiming that the class of right answers was meant.
Author then turns to a positive account of what "to mean" in this case is doing: it is picking out a thing by "contrast or contraposition, in a non-logical sense". It is "removal of some definite ambiguity or some ignorance". For author, meaning in this sense is only required when things need to be distinguished for the sake of clarity or teaching. Author argues that "to mean" here mostly means "to pick" or "to choose". This picking is dynamic, but it is also subject to external criteria for whatever method we have of distinguishing (asking for clarification, pointing, showing, etc).
More broadly, however, author argues that Wittgenstein is trying to establish that the best understanding of "to mean" (not the ones where "meaning" is "picking"), is as a "stative or fientive" verb, not an active one. By contrast, "to think", has both dynamic and stative applications. Of course there are idiomatic uses of "meaning" that can be dynamic, but that is usually because the usage of "meaning" is filling in for another verb, like "picking", or, in some cases, for "intending" or "thinking".
9/20/13
Haslanger/Alcoff/Langton/Antony/O'Connor - The Stone
09/20/2013
The Stone (Blog) from The New York Times Sept 2, 2013
This is a series of 5 short pieces about women in philosophy, following the resignation of a well-known philosopher Colin McGinn. I'll briefly summarize the main points of each piece:
Haslanger: The stereotypical philosopher is an old man with a beard. The numbers of women in philosophy is dismal. With that low amount of fellowship, nothing as overt as sexual harassment is needed to keep women from the field since 'alienation, loneliness, bias, microaggression, discrimination, etc' are also effective.
Alcoff: One problem with philosophy is the "ultimate fighting" intellectual combat approach. It enhances social imbalance like gender, seniority, race.
Langton: The caricature and stereotype of the philosopher can become a "stereotype threat" that engenders under-performance in non-represented groups. But the history of philosophy, as it is selectively taught, does not include the women and other contributors.
Antony: There is a "male fog of anxiety that floats through the halls of academia" over sexual harassment and other politically-correct initiatives. But frankly most of it all amounts to a growing consensus that men will have to change their ways, and will possibly be subject to light discipline or public embarrassment if they don't. But please don't threaten that this will somehow damage effective pedagogy; such a claim seems hysterical.
O'Connor: It is difficult to encourage women to enter philosophy due to how unfriendly it can be to them. This is a "double bind". A double bind is a barrier for entrance for some, and then simultaneously difficult/impossible for those who have gained entrance to fix the problems. It's men who need to do much more.
The Stone (Blog) from The New York Times Sept 2, 2013
This is a series of 5 short pieces about women in philosophy, following the resignation of a well-known philosopher Colin McGinn. I'll briefly summarize the main points of each piece:
Haslanger: The stereotypical philosopher is an old man with a beard. The numbers of women in philosophy is dismal. With that low amount of fellowship, nothing as overt as sexual harassment is needed to keep women from the field since 'alienation, loneliness, bias, microaggression, discrimination, etc' are also effective.
Alcoff: One problem with philosophy is the "ultimate fighting" intellectual combat approach. It enhances social imbalance like gender, seniority, race.
Langton: The caricature and stereotype of the philosopher can become a "stereotype threat" that engenders under-performance in non-represented groups. But the history of philosophy, as it is selectively taught, does not include the women and other contributors.
Antony: There is a "male fog of anxiety that floats through the halls of academia" over sexual harassment and other politically-correct initiatives. But frankly most of it all amounts to a growing consensus that men will have to change their ways, and will possibly be subject to light discipline or public embarrassment if they don't. But please don't threaten that this will somehow damage effective pedagogy; such a claim seems hysterical.
O'Connor: It is difficult to encourage women to enter philosophy due to how unfriendly it can be to them. This is a "double bind". A double bind is a barrier for entrance for some, and then simultaneously difficult/impossible for those who have gained entrance to fix the problems. It's men who need to do much more.
8/16/13
Fried, Barbara - Beyond Blame
08/16/2013
Boston Review & Forum, June 28, 2013
This article is a scholarly overview of the philosophical solutions (and challenges) to the problem of free will, with focus on the practical application of assigning blame. The article was then commented upon by other philosophers in the forum.
The article begins with the conundrum that moral philosophers pose to themselves as a hypothetical, in light of evidence about influencing factors in decision-making. The hypothetical is: if all choices are determined, can there be free will? Author looks at this specifically relating to blame and the cost of it: the prison system in the US, the perspective that people are at fault instead of being subjected to some sort of widespread social disorder, etc. Author reviews the state of debate: interest was reignited after Rawls' A Theory of Justice, followed by Nozick and Dworkin, shaking roughly into two camps:
-Capatibilism (free will and blame are compatible with determinism)
-Incompatibilism (free will and blame are incompatible with determinism)
Since Incompatibilism believes the two concepts cannot coexist, there are naturally proponents of either blameless determinism or free will. Author calls the first "Skeptical Incompatibilists" and the second "Libertarian Incompatibilists". Author first discusses the latter and concludes that Libertarian Incomaptibilists rest "profoundly consequential judgments on the insubstantial hook of abstract possibility" (pg4). Author moves then to Compatibilism, which continues to assign blame even after admitting (hypothetically) to determinism. This is an old problem, and author goes back to Jonathan Edwards to show the struggles with it. Author ultimately argues that Compatibilism does not give a normative basis for assigning blame, but first author gives an example of a bus driver that, even after exercising all proper care, is unfortunate enough to hit a child with his bus. Author believes we would blame this person, and this is unfair because "fate" intervened in the outcome of the situation (pg6). The "indigestible core" of Compatibilism is that it is all "fate" that determines every action. Author then acknowledges she is a Skeptical Incompatibilist.
The second part of the paper deals with the reasoning why most people are so intent to hold onto the concept of free will, and to "[make] the world safe for blame" (pg7). Here are the author's thoughts:
i. Humans naturally believe in their own agency, and that of others
ii. Blame is indispensable in controlling and normalizing human behavior (social benefits vs costs of a useful fiction)
iii. Belief in blame, ergo free will, treats each fairly, as you see yourself (a variation on i) (pg8-9) Author spends some time on this one, calling it "very Kantian" and troubling since it equates respect only with free will. Author channels Erin Kelly in outlining a different kind of respect: taking the perspective of the agent who committed the supposedly blameworthy action. Author also argues here that allowing for diminished responsibility due to diminished agency is "deeply problematic" for the Compatibilist since there is no logical stopping place until Incompatibilism.
iv. Blame is just part of the world (variation on i)
Author concludes that there is some hope in some places on the more practical level, moving the US criminal incarceration system away from being entirely focused on blame, which author believes is very harmful.
A forum from a variety of philosophers follows, here:
http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/barbara-fried-beyond-blame-moral-responsibility-philosophy-law
Here is a brief summary from each response:
Christine Korsgaard:
Action is judged by a success/failure rubric, blame is the collective agency of a society assigning "failure" to actions. This is only useful if there is a collective view of success, a goal or telos to the society or other communal unit (family). When there is a fractured view, blame comes unhinged.
Erin Kelly:
Blame isn't rampant because of a misunderstanding in the metaphysics of free will and determinism; it's a misunderstanding that criminal justice is where blame should be assigned. Also, even on a personal level, there are many responses to a wrongdoing: blame is only one and is not even necessary.
Adriaan Lanni:
If the harm is the mass incarceration, better to focus on that and moral arguments against it, rather than a debate about free will, though Lanni is sympathetic to Fried's views.
Mike Konczal:
Though the harms regarding blame are agreed upon, a different system that relies on statistical models and assumes determinism might be more authoritarian than we would want.
Paul Bloom:
The elementary argument against blame (determinism) has to remember that not only blame is jettisoned, but all choice, which is too much to lose. Choice doesn't have to be free to be chosen during deliberation, for which we can hold people accountable. Blame and guilt can motivate good behavior.
Gideon Rosen:
Re-frame "choice" as "control" and remember that there are forms of control (like a standard of competence) that are consistent with determinism, as the compatibilist would have. Fried's claims are actually quite radical, meaning that all crimes only have victims (there is no blameworthy perpetrator).
Brian Leiter:
Fried has just hit the tip of the ice berg: this "blame fest" has been happening since (at least) Jesus. Nietzsche has tried to re-word the discussion: "villain" becomes "enemy", "scoundrel" becomes "sick", and "sinner" becomes "fool". This understands that bad thoughts and bad character are worth remedying and sanctioning, but can do without compatibilism.
George Sher:
Fried is mistaken to believe that compatibilism is on a slippery slope when excusing agents with diminished control. Diminished agents do not have sufficient connection to reality to have control; hence some of their actions can be excused. Blame, at the very least, gives power to our moral values.
TM Scanlon:
Fried's efforts to banish all responsibility in banishing blame is an overreaction. Since blame requires seeing the actor's attitudes, by necessity the blamer needs to take the point-of-view of the perpetrator. The trouble with today's "blame fest" is that it confuses substantive responsibility with moral responsibility.
Reply by Fried:
Of course there still needs to be a code of conduct that is enforceable, but for the sake of harm reduction, not to mete out moral responsibility. Compatibilism, even with deliberation, control, etc. built in, still has an indigestible core, and "common sense" is no benefit.
Boston Review & Forum, June 28, 2013
This article is a scholarly overview of the philosophical solutions (and challenges) to the problem of free will, with focus on the practical application of assigning blame. The article was then commented upon by other philosophers in the forum.
The article begins with the conundrum that moral philosophers pose to themselves as a hypothetical, in light of evidence about influencing factors in decision-making. The hypothetical is: if all choices are determined, can there be free will? Author looks at this specifically relating to blame and the cost of it: the prison system in the US, the perspective that people are at fault instead of being subjected to some sort of widespread social disorder, etc. Author reviews the state of debate: interest was reignited after Rawls' A Theory of Justice, followed by Nozick and Dworkin, shaking roughly into two camps:
-Capatibilism (free will and blame are compatible with determinism)
-Incompatibilism (free will and blame are incompatible with determinism)
Since Incompatibilism believes the two concepts cannot coexist, there are naturally proponents of either blameless determinism or free will. Author calls the first "Skeptical Incompatibilists" and the second "Libertarian Incompatibilists". Author first discusses the latter and concludes that Libertarian Incomaptibilists rest "profoundly consequential judgments on the insubstantial hook of abstract possibility" (pg4). Author moves then to Compatibilism, which continues to assign blame even after admitting (hypothetically) to determinism. This is an old problem, and author goes back to Jonathan Edwards to show the struggles with it. Author ultimately argues that Compatibilism does not give a normative basis for assigning blame, but first author gives an example of a bus driver that, even after exercising all proper care, is unfortunate enough to hit a child with his bus. Author believes we would blame this person, and this is unfair because "fate" intervened in the outcome of the situation (pg6). The "indigestible core" of Compatibilism is that it is all "fate" that determines every action. Author then acknowledges she is a Skeptical Incompatibilist.
The second part of the paper deals with the reasoning why most people are so intent to hold onto the concept of free will, and to "[make] the world safe for blame" (pg7). Here are the author's thoughts:
i. Humans naturally believe in their own agency, and that of others
ii. Blame is indispensable in controlling and normalizing human behavior (social benefits vs costs of a useful fiction)
iii. Belief in blame, ergo free will, treats each fairly, as you see yourself (a variation on i) (pg8-9) Author spends some time on this one, calling it "very Kantian" and troubling since it equates respect only with free will. Author channels Erin Kelly in outlining a different kind of respect: taking the perspective of the agent who committed the supposedly blameworthy action. Author also argues here that allowing for diminished responsibility due to diminished agency is "deeply problematic" for the Compatibilist since there is no logical stopping place until Incompatibilism.
iv. Blame is just part of the world (variation on i)
Author concludes that there is some hope in some places on the more practical level, moving the US criminal incarceration system away from being entirely focused on blame, which author believes is very harmful.
A forum from a variety of philosophers follows, here:
http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/barbara-fried-beyond-blame-moral-responsibility-philosophy-law
Here is a brief summary from each response:
Christine Korsgaard:
Action is judged by a success/failure rubric, blame is the collective agency of a society assigning "failure" to actions. This is only useful if there is a collective view of success, a goal or telos to the society or other communal unit (family). When there is a fractured view, blame comes unhinged.
Erin Kelly:
Blame isn't rampant because of a misunderstanding in the metaphysics of free will and determinism; it's a misunderstanding that criminal justice is where blame should be assigned. Also, even on a personal level, there are many responses to a wrongdoing: blame is only one and is not even necessary.
Adriaan Lanni:
If the harm is the mass incarceration, better to focus on that and moral arguments against it, rather than a debate about free will, though Lanni is sympathetic to Fried's views.
Mike Konczal:
Though the harms regarding blame are agreed upon, a different system that relies on statistical models and assumes determinism might be more authoritarian than we would want.
Paul Bloom:
The elementary argument against blame (determinism) has to remember that not only blame is jettisoned, but all choice, which is too much to lose. Choice doesn't have to be free to be chosen during deliberation, for which we can hold people accountable. Blame and guilt can motivate good behavior.
Gideon Rosen:
Re-frame "choice" as "control" and remember that there are forms of control (like a standard of competence) that are consistent with determinism, as the compatibilist would have. Fried's claims are actually quite radical, meaning that all crimes only have victims (there is no blameworthy perpetrator).
Brian Leiter:
Fried has just hit the tip of the ice berg: this "blame fest" has been happening since (at least) Jesus. Nietzsche has tried to re-word the discussion: "villain" becomes "enemy", "scoundrel" becomes "sick", and "sinner" becomes "fool". This understands that bad thoughts and bad character are worth remedying and sanctioning, but can do without compatibilism.
George Sher:
Fried is mistaken to believe that compatibilism is on a slippery slope when excusing agents with diminished control. Diminished agents do not have sufficient connection to reality to have control; hence some of their actions can be excused. Blame, at the very least, gives power to our moral values.
TM Scanlon:
Fried's efforts to banish all responsibility in banishing blame is an overreaction. Since blame requires seeing the actor's attitudes, by necessity the blamer needs to take the point-of-view of the perpetrator. The trouble with today's "blame fest" is that it confuses substantive responsibility with moral responsibility.
Reply by Fried:
Of course there still needs to be a code of conduct that is enforceable, but for the sake of harm reduction, not to mete out moral responsibility. Compatibilism, even with deliberation, control, etc. built in, still has an indigestible core, and "common sense" is no benefit.
5/3/13
Putnam, Hilary - What Theories Are Not
05/03/2013
Mathematics, Matter and Method
This article tries to take apart the "received view" about the relationship between scientific theories and observations, and between theoretical terms and observational ones. For author, there are two two-part distinctions: observation/theoretical terms and then observational/theoretical statements. Author asserts that the supposed problems that these distinctions are meant to fix are not really problems: (1) how to understand theoretical terms? (2) how do you make sure theories aren't fulfilling the evidence, rather than how it's 'supposed' to go? (pg216). And finally, that the distinctions are "broken-backed", meaning that they fail to distinguish (pg216-7).
Author starts with Carnap in his Testability and Meaning. Carnap's idea is that there is an "observation language" or vocabulary, and that these correspond to observable qualities; author then pushes Carnap about whether the terms could also apply to unobservable qualities. The problem: if the observation terms can only refer to observable things, author argues that "there are no observable terms" (pg218); or if they can, then there isn't a problem with talking about unobservables that can be solved with vocabulary. What is really happening here, according to author, is that unobservables are being conflated with theoretical ones. This is a mistake (pg219) and misses what is important about theories.
Author then takes a small interlude to move to discuss the "notion of 'partial interpretation'", first giving Carnap's assertion about it and then discussing how it has been "applied indiscriminately" to terms, theories, and languages (pg220-1). Author discusses various ways a "partial interpretation" could be employed (pg221) and proceeds to dissect each possible understanding in the following pages (pg222-4). Author employs an extended discussion of a common understanding of "soluble". The discussion is meant to ridicule Carnap's understanding of a "partial interpretation": for Carnap, when sugar cubes dissolve in water, what we should do is respecify the meanings of theoretic terms based on observation.
Author returns to what he considers to be the ersatz problem: giving meanings for theoretic terms. Author asks: why assume they should get their meanings from only observation terms? The worry about circularity is a worry that occurs in any language. Perhaps the worry is about how theoretic terms become used in a language: author explores these worries as well (pg225). Interestingly, author claims that language can introduce more refined expressions using less refined ones: "we use less-refined tools to manufacture more-refined ones" (pg226). The argument here is that it is simply not possible to introduce a term into a language that neither relies on imprecise "primitives" or other terms whose precise definition at some point doesn't rest on primitives (pg226).
Mathematics, Matter and Method
This article tries to take apart the "received view" about the relationship between scientific theories and observations, and between theoretical terms and observational ones. For author, there are two two-part distinctions: observation/theoretical terms and then observational/theoretical statements. Author asserts that the supposed problems that these distinctions are meant to fix are not really problems: (1) how to understand theoretical terms? (2) how do you make sure theories aren't fulfilling the evidence, rather than how it's 'supposed' to go? (pg216). And finally, that the distinctions are "broken-backed", meaning that they fail to distinguish (pg216-7).
Author starts with Carnap in his Testability and Meaning. Carnap's idea is that there is an "observation language" or vocabulary, and that these correspond to observable qualities; author then pushes Carnap about whether the terms could also apply to unobservable qualities. The problem: if the observation terms can only refer to observable things, author argues that "there are no observable terms" (pg218); or if they can, then there isn't a problem with talking about unobservables that can be solved with vocabulary. What is really happening here, according to author, is that unobservables are being conflated with theoretical ones. This is a mistake (pg219) and misses what is important about theories.
Author then takes a small interlude to move to discuss the "notion of 'partial interpretation'", first giving Carnap's assertion about it and then discussing how it has been "applied indiscriminately" to terms, theories, and languages (pg220-1). Author discusses various ways a "partial interpretation" could be employed (pg221) and proceeds to dissect each possible understanding in the following pages (pg222-4). Author employs an extended discussion of a common understanding of "soluble". The discussion is meant to ridicule Carnap's understanding of a "partial interpretation": for Carnap, when sugar cubes dissolve in water, what we should do is respecify the meanings of theoretic terms based on observation.
Author returns to what he considers to be the ersatz problem: giving meanings for theoretic terms. Author asks: why assume they should get their meanings from only observation terms? The worry about circularity is a worry that occurs in any language. Perhaps the worry is about how theoretic terms become used in a language: author explores these worries as well (pg225). Interestingly, author claims that language can introduce more refined expressions using less refined ones: "we use less-refined tools to manufacture more-refined ones" (pg226). The argument here is that it is simply not possible to introduce a term into a language that neither relies on imprecise "primitives" or other terms whose precise definition at some point doesn't rest on primitives (pg226).
4/19/13
Schaffner, Kenneth - Ernest Nagel and Reduction
04/18/2013
The Journal of Philosophy, Aug/Sept 2012
This is a long paper that explores Nagel's theory of reduction; how it has changed over time and how it relates to a current example. The author first gives Nagel's theory of reduction and its motivations. Nagel was following in the scientific tradition that was able to "absorb" other branches of science into mechanical models. Nagel's prototypical example is the reduction of "classical thermodynamics to statistical mechanics (SM)" (pg535). There were two types of reduction:
-homogeneous: no novel properties are introduced
-heterogeneous: properties are explained in terms of other ones: e.g. temperature to molecular energy
It was the heterogeneous reductions that were the more interesting, though they do not eliminate the earlier "folk" categories. (pg535-6)
Author recaps the various conditions that Nagel placed on theory reduction:
-That hypotheses and axioms take the form of explicit statements whose meanings are fixed by the discipline (pg536-7) (these were Nagel's first and second conditions; author calls them "0").
-Deriviability: the laws of the reduced science are the logical consequence of the reducing science's "theoretical assumptions" (pg537).
-Connectability: terms in the reduced science must be connected somehow to the reducing science using additional "assumptions" (pg537-8).
Author then discusses the extensions and revisions to Nagel's model, first from his own work in creating the "Generic Reduction Replacement" system, in which obsolete or discredited theories could also be reduced (pg540). Also discussed were alternatives like Wimsatt's claims that it isn't theories that should be reduced but "mechanisms" (pg541-2) or a kind of eliminatist-reconstruction "New Wave" advocated by the Churchlands (pg542). Finally, author talks about the functionalist approach to mind and the complications brought on by arguments about multiple realizability (pg543-4). The next section talks about the response to Nagel's model in the 21st century, starting with Hartmann's and (separately) Butterfield's defense of Nagel. The first part of this discussion is about derivability where the concern is over whether the reducing theory's connections can be stronger than a "strong analogy" to the reduced theory (pg545-6). The emerging defenses mainly argue that there is no need to have an overarching concept or definition of "analogy", and that reducing theories need only have an analogy to the reduced (pg545-8). Next is a discussion of connectability, specifically about the nature of the "bridge-laws" or "connectability assumptions". Here author defends his own view that these are synthetic, extensional connections against the two-part analysis of Dizadji-Bahmani that argues that identity statements are internal to a reducing theory, but bridge laws are external to that reducing theory (pg548).
Because "actual reduction is hard to do", there has been a rise in discussions about partial reduction (pg549). Author advocates that the more common types of reduction are 'patchy/local/creeping', at least in the e.g. biological or neurosciences (pg550). However, author gives a lengthy summary in the next section of a systematic reduction of optics undertaken by Sommerfeld (pg551-9). The extended example begins with stressing the importance of Nagel's first condition, that the formulations for both reduced and reducing theories be explicitly stated and connected. Another primary take-away is that the equations used for reduction are more simple than the more "complex and rigorous" (pg556) Maxwell ones, and that in some places, notably when experimenting with diffraction, the Maxwell equations do not provide a rigorous reduction (pg557-8). But author's reading of this, backed up by successive analyses from e.g. Boooker & Jackson, Saatsi & Vicker is that this is a good case of his GRR, where the reducing theory corrects the reduced but does not give a rigorous reduction because it relies on analogy (pg558). However, all-told, even in sciences where there can be significant reduction, there are failures "at the margins" (pg559).
In the penultimate section author talks about the conditions for partial reduction. Author gives a general suggestion: partial reductions should be treated as completed reductions but ones that have exceptions (pg562-3). Author also adds another condition to his GRR that is much like Nagel's original condition of explicit formulations, roughly, that there must be enough codification of hypotheses and theories that can allow for a judgment about whether reduction is successful (pg563).
The Journal of Philosophy, Aug/Sept 2012
This is a long paper that explores Nagel's theory of reduction; how it has changed over time and how it relates to a current example. The author first gives Nagel's theory of reduction and its motivations. Nagel was following in the scientific tradition that was able to "absorb" other branches of science into mechanical models. Nagel's prototypical example is the reduction of "classical thermodynamics to statistical mechanics (SM)" (pg535). There were two types of reduction:
-homogeneous: no novel properties are introduced
-heterogeneous: properties are explained in terms of other ones: e.g. temperature to molecular energy
It was the heterogeneous reductions that were the more interesting, though they do not eliminate the earlier "folk" categories. (pg535-6)
Author recaps the various conditions that Nagel placed on theory reduction:
-That hypotheses and axioms take the form of explicit statements whose meanings are fixed by the discipline (pg536-7) (these were Nagel's first and second conditions; author calls them "0").
-Deriviability: the laws of the reduced science are the logical consequence of the reducing science's "theoretical assumptions" (pg537).
-Connectability: terms in the reduced science must be connected somehow to the reducing science using additional "assumptions" (pg537-8).
Author then discusses the extensions and revisions to Nagel's model, first from his own work in creating the "Generic Reduction Replacement" system, in which obsolete or discredited theories could also be reduced (pg540). Also discussed were alternatives like Wimsatt's claims that it isn't theories that should be reduced but "mechanisms" (pg541-2) or a kind of eliminatist-reconstruction "New Wave" advocated by the Churchlands (pg542). Finally, author talks about the functionalist approach to mind and the complications brought on by arguments about multiple realizability (pg543-4). The next section talks about the response to Nagel's model in the 21st century, starting with Hartmann's and (separately) Butterfield's defense of Nagel. The first part of this discussion is about derivability where the concern is over whether the reducing theory's connections can be stronger than a "strong analogy" to the reduced theory (pg545-6). The emerging defenses mainly argue that there is no need to have an overarching concept or definition of "analogy", and that reducing theories need only have an analogy to the reduced (pg545-8). Next is a discussion of connectability, specifically about the nature of the "bridge-laws" or "connectability assumptions". Here author defends his own view that these are synthetic, extensional connections against the two-part analysis of Dizadji-Bahmani that argues that identity statements are internal to a reducing theory, but bridge laws are external to that reducing theory (pg548).
Because "actual reduction is hard to do", there has been a rise in discussions about partial reduction (pg549). Author advocates that the more common types of reduction are 'patchy/local/creeping', at least in the e.g. biological or neurosciences (pg550). However, author gives a lengthy summary in the next section of a systematic reduction of optics undertaken by Sommerfeld (pg551-9). The extended example begins with stressing the importance of Nagel's first condition, that the formulations for both reduced and reducing theories be explicitly stated and connected. Another primary take-away is that the equations used for reduction are more simple than the more "complex and rigorous" (pg556) Maxwell ones, and that in some places, notably when experimenting with diffraction, the Maxwell equations do not provide a rigorous reduction (pg557-8). But author's reading of this, backed up by successive analyses from e.g. Boooker & Jackson, Saatsi & Vicker is that this is a good case of his GRR, where the reducing theory corrects the reduced but does not give a rigorous reduction because it relies on analogy (pg558). However, all-told, even in sciences where there can be significant reduction, there are failures "at the margins" (pg559).
In the penultimate section author talks about the conditions for partial reduction. Author gives a general suggestion: partial reductions should be treated as completed reductions but ones that have exceptions (pg562-3). Author also adds another condition to his GRR that is much like Nagel's original condition of explicit formulations, roughly, that there must be enough codification of hypotheses and theories that can allow for a judgment about whether reduction is successful (pg563).
4/12/13
Suppes, Patrick - Reflections on Ernest Nagel's 1977 Dewey Lectures Teleology Revisited
04/12/2013
The Journal of Philosophy, Aug/Sept 2012
This paper is a summary and examination of Nagel's 1961 chapters on biological teleology and Nagel's further arguments in the 1977 Dewey lectures. In the first section, author reviews Nagel's 1961 arguments against teleological explanation being "essential" to biology: (1) the teleological can be given analogues with the mechanical, (2) the teleological used to be the account for most physical processes, which have since been replaced by the mechanical (thus teleology in biology might be only provisional). Nagel's point is that a type of system theory will also do for biological explanation, that that biology doesn't require "a radically distinctive logic of inquiry". (pg506)
In the next section, author skips to Nagel's 1977 discussions of the various shortcomings of newer theories about explanation in biology. One analysis is of Mayr's "program" view, which separates some biological functions into the "teleomatic" and the "teleonomic" (pg507). The teleomatic is "automatic, as is the case for many human habits" and the teleonomic is more in line with the teleological. Author summarizes Nagel's main objections: That just because a process is controlled by a program does not mean it's teleological, and finding a good criterion to distinguish between the supposed two kinds of programs is not possible. The last part of this section includes Nagel's restatement of his theory which is now called the "system-property view", which includes a difficulty with variables that are not "determinantly connected by known laws of nature" (pg508).
Section III examines the second half of chapter 12 in Nagel's The Structure of Science. In it, Nagel responds to the arguments offered by biologists resisting reduction of biology to physics. Nagel concludes that though this is not possible (yet), there must remain this possibility (pg509). The next section author shows Nagel's discussion of functional explanations and focuses on Nagel's criticisms of functional explanations that may smuggle in teleology, such as: "blood contains leucocytes for the sake of defending the body against invading bacteria." (pg510). Nagel deals with Hempel's analysis of the possibility of multiple causes (pg511) and also a view Nagel is sympathetic to in Michael Ruse's "welfare" view. Nagel's views are summarized on the bottom of pg512. The final section of the paper is author's comments on biological explanation with particular extended discussion on how solving the problem of consciousness will lead to ever more intermixing of physics, chemistry, and biology.
The Journal of Philosophy, Aug/Sept 2012
This paper is a summary and examination of Nagel's 1961 chapters on biological teleology and Nagel's further arguments in the 1977 Dewey lectures. In the first section, author reviews Nagel's 1961 arguments against teleological explanation being "essential" to biology: (1) the teleological can be given analogues with the mechanical, (2) the teleological used to be the account for most physical processes, which have since been replaced by the mechanical (thus teleology in biology might be only provisional). Nagel's point is that a type of system theory will also do for biological explanation, that that biology doesn't require "a radically distinctive logic of inquiry". (pg506)
In the next section, author skips to Nagel's 1977 discussions of the various shortcomings of newer theories about explanation in biology. One analysis is of Mayr's "program" view, which separates some biological functions into the "teleomatic" and the "teleonomic" (pg507). The teleomatic is "automatic, as is the case for many human habits" and the teleonomic is more in line with the teleological. Author summarizes Nagel's main objections: That just because a process is controlled by a program does not mean it's teleological, and finding a good criterion to distinguish between the supposed two kinds of programs is not possible. The last part of this section includes Nagel's restatement of his theory which is now called the "system-property view", which includes a difficulty with variables that are not "determinantly connected by known laws of nature" (pg508).
Section III examines the second half of chapter 12 in Nagel's The Structure of Science. In it, Nagel responds to the arguments offered by biologists resisting reduction of biology to physics. Nagel concludes that though this is not possible (yet), there must remain this possibility (pg509). The next section author shows Nagel's discussion of functional explanations and focuses on Nagel's criticisms of functional explanations that may smuggle in teleology, such as: "blood contains leucocytes for the sake of defending the body against invading bacteria." (pg510). Nagel deals with Hempel's analysis of the possibility of multiple causes (pg511) and also a view Nagel is sympathetic to in Michael Ruse's "welfare" view. Nagel's views are summarized on the bottom of pg512. The final section of the paper is author's comments on biological explanation with particular extended discussion on how solving the problem of consciousness will lead to ever more intermixing of physics, chemistry, and biology.
4/5/13
Adams, Robert Merrihew - Involuntary Sins
04/05/2013
The Philosophical Review, Vol 44, No 1 (Jan 1985)
Author has a thesis that there can be moral wrongdoing that is non-voluntary. The paradigm example is of improper or disproportionate anger, that doesn't manifest itself in voluntary action. Just the mental state itself is morally culpable or wrong.
Author first addresses the alternatives to the theory that there are "involuntary sins". The first alternative is that involuntary acts like disproportionate anger is only wrong due to tending to be displayed in voluntary actions (pg 4-6). If this were possible then the counter-example of (involuntary) self-righteousness would not be morally offensive because the voluntary actions stemming from those motivations are all exemplary. It is instead the attitude or motivation that is offensive, and author argues that such an attitude for self-righteousness is non-voluntary (pg6).
The second alternative understands mental states to be blameworthy, but re-interprets all such states to be voluntary (pg6-11). For author, this argument may possibly work if one equates operations of the will to be the same as "voluntary", but really what author is getting at is activity under the subject's control-- a subset of the will but one author finds no "simple matter" to explain (pg6-7). Author undertakes this explanation (pg 8-9) and the analysis contains as its key a "trying" or meaning to do something; in other words: you can't try to do something you don't have any control over. Of course this analysis largely excludes desires and emotions since such are commonly understood as reactive and not apt to be tried to be had (pg9-10). After this understanding, author talks about the virtues of having a soul to be ordered like the American system of government: with checks, balances, and different parts working independently but all for the benefit of the same entity.
The third alternative is that we can be blameworthy for mental states only due to the indirect control we have over them: through "self-culture" (pg11-14). Author uses an example of unconscious ingratitude toward a benefactress as being blameworthy despite no indirect control or even consciousness over the attitude (pg12-13).
Author next tries to clarify the affirmative position: it does not preclude moral approbation for striving to have the right attitudes, but it does go further to find it morally wrong to have the wrong ones-- even when they are out of a subject's control (pg14-15). Interestingly, author talks about taking responsibility for having a bad attitude, as a kind of ownership-taking, not essentially tied to voluntary action (pg15-16). The next section explores the nature of "cognitive sins": it doesn't matter if you're conscious of having them, or that you may be ignorant of your propensity or having of them (pg17-18). Author takes some time to combat Donagan's claims about negligence around moral beliefs and attitudes (pg19-20).
Author tries to confront what seems like a reasonable account from Blum, which argues that while attitudes can be morally bad/good, involuntary ones aren't blameworthy but do underwrite being thought of "poorly". In other words, the ingrate isn't blameworthy but considered poorly. (pg21- ) Author believes that the theory can accommodate some of this intuition by varying the kinds of appropriate responses to involuntary sins: they aren't punishable as voluntary ones are (pg21), but instead subject to reproach, which is a form of blaming (pg22).
Another objection comes from a kind of slippery slope argument, that asserts that if humans can be blameworthy for non-voluntary factors, why can't we also be blameworthy for things that don't seem moral: like not being athletic or musical. Author suggests that a cognition of moral relevance will partly do the work, and also proposes some general guidelines: (1) these are states of mind (2) directed at intentional object(s) (3) that have their causes within a rich-enough psychology to appreciate moral relevance, (4) and have alternatives that can be grasped by the intellect. (pg25-7). What is also part of this theory is that it is not wrong to desire something that is not inherently bad-- in other words bad only if acted upon, or due to bad consequences (pg27-8). Next, author tries to clarify his theory with determinism; the theory would fit with both compatibilism or incompatibilism with some sort of agent or "substance" causation.
The Philosophical Review, Vol 44, No 1 (Jan 1985)
Author has a thesis that there can be moral wrongdoing that is non-voluntary. The paradigm example is of improper or disproportionate anger, that doesn't manifest itself in voluntary action. Just the mental state itself is morally culpable or wrong.
Author first addresses the alternatives to the theory that there are "involuntary sins". The first alternative is that involuntary acts like disproportionate anger is only wrong due to tending to be displayed in voluntary actions (pg 4-6). If this were possible then the counter-example of (involuntary) self-righteousness would not be morally offensive because the voluntary actions stemming from those motivations are all exemplary. It is instead the attitude or motivation that is offensive, and author argues that such an attitude for self-righteousness is non-voluntary (pg6).
The second alternative understands mental states to be blameworthy, but re-interprets all such states to be voluntary (pg6-11). For author, this argument may possibly work if one equates operations of the will to be the same as "voluntary", but really what author is getting at is activity under the subject's control-- a subset of the will but one author finds no "simple matter" to explain (pg6-7). Author undertakes this explanation (pg 8-9) and the analysis contains as its key a "trying" or meaning to do something; in other words: you can't try to do something you don't have any control over. Of course this analysis largely excludes desires and emotions since such are commonly understood as reactive and not apt to be tried to be had (pg9-10). After this understanding, author talks about the virtues of having a soul to be ordered like the American system of government: with checks, balances, and different parts working independently but all for the benefit of the same entity.
The third alternative is that we can be blameworthy for mental states only due to the indirect control we have over them: through "self-culture" (pg11-14). Author uses an example of unconscious ingratitude toward a benefactress as being blameworthy despite no indirect control or even consciousness over the attitude (pg12-13).
Author next tries to clarify the affirmative position: it does not preclude moral approbation for striving to have the right attitudes, but it does go further to find it morally wrong to have the wrong ones-- even when they are out of a subject's control (pg14-15). Interestingly, author talks about taking responsibility for having a bad attitude, as a kind of ownership-taking, not essentially tied to voluntary action (pg15-16). The next section explores the nature of "cognitive sins": it doesn't matter if you're conscious of having them, or that you may be ignorant of your propensity or having of them (pg17-18). Author takes some time to combat Donagan's claims about negligence around moral beliefs and attitudes (pg19-20).
Author tries to confront what seems like a reasonable account from Blum, which argues that while attitudes can be morally bad/good, involuntary ones aren't blameworthy but do underwrite being thought of "poorly". In other words, the ingrate isn't blameworthy but considered poorly. (pg21- ) Author believes that the theory can accommodate some of this intuition by varying the kinds of appropriate responses to involuntary sins: they aren't punishable as voluntary ones are (pg21), but instead subject to reproach, which is a form of blaming (pg22).
Another objection comes from a kind of slippery slope argument, that asserts that if humans can be blameworthy for non-voluntary factors, why can't we also be blameworthy for things that don't seem moral: like not being athletic or musical. Author suggests that a cognition of moral relevance will partly do the work, and also proposes some general guidelines: (1) these are states of mind (2) directed at intentional object(s) (3) that have their causes within a rich-enough psychology to appreciate moral relevance, (4) and have alternatives that can be grasped by the intellect. (pg25-7). What is also part of this theory is that it is not wrong to desire something that is not inherently bad-- in other words bad only if acted upon, or due to bad consequences (pg27-8). Next, author tries to clarify his theory with determinism; the theory would fit with both compatibilism or incompatibilism with some sort of agent or "substance" causation.
3/29/13
Dworkin, Ronald - Religion Without God
03/29/2013
The New York Review, April 4, 2013
This is an excerpt of the first chapter of author's posthumously published book. Author starts by arguing that the divide between the non-religious and the religious is too crude. Plenty of people who don't believe in a personal god have beliefs that there is a "force" that is "bigger than themselves". This can be available to the atheist as well as the theist. Author argues that there can be such a thing as a religious atheist, and uses Einstein as an example: "It was Einstein's faith that some transcendental and objective value permeates the universe, value that is neither a natural phenomenon nor a subjective reaction to natural phenomena." But then if there is a religious atheist, there needs to be a good definition of "religion", which is difficult, according to author, since use of the word is partially meant to define it-- an "interpretative concept". Instead, author opts to look for a "revealing" ideal use of the word. What is the point of such an exercise? For author, it could perhaps help separate questions of science from questions of value; shrinking the impetus for cultural and value wars.
Author attempts to give some structure to a "religious attitude" by claiming it involves making both the "biological and biographical" sources of intrinsic value: that to be religious entails believing there are intrinsic values relating to both human life and the world we inhabit. Of course the problem now is to find out what those values are, and how they are known (hint: traditionally, a god told them to us).
First off, there is a dichotomy between the religious and the naturalist-- for author-- someone who believes that all there is can be revealed by the natural sciences. Another thing the religious attitude is not: it isn't "grounded realism", which takes values to be real but only due to some natural capacity to reason about them. For author, the religious means that value is both "self contained and self-certifying". During this discussion, author defines the term "faith" as well, as, in the first order, that "we accept a felt, inescapable conviction rather than the benediction of some independent means of verification as the final arbiter of what we are entitled to responsibly believe". Author means to include mathematics, logic, and science into what is fundamentally taken on faith. Faith when it comes to value contains another layer, since emotion is part of convictions about value. The point here for author is that the realm of value is about objectively true things (for the religious person) and it is self-justifying. It is not, as some theists believe, that god underwrites values. Author embarks on a description of the 3 abrahamic religions as two-parted: one is a science part and the other is a value part. The science part gives answers to tough questions, and god is included in the story. But, author claims, the science part cannot ground the value part, since they are conceptually distinct. "The universe cannot be intrinsically beautiful just because it was created to be beautiful". Ultimately, author says that values justify themselves within a larger scheme of value, and that a god is conceptually distinct from this.
The New York Review, April 4, 2013
This is an excerpt of the first chapter of author's posthumously published book. Author starts by arguing that the divide between the non-religious and the religious is too crude. Plenty of people who don't believe in a personal god have beliefs that there is a "force" that is "bigger than themselves". This can be available to the atheist as well as the theist. Author argues that there can be such a thing as a religious atheist, and uses Einstein as an example: "It was Einstein's faith that some transcendental and objective value permeates the universe, value that is neither a natural phenomenon nor a subjective reaction to natural phenomena." But then if there is a religious atheist, there needs to be a good definition of "religion", which is difficult, according to author, since use of the word is partially meant to define it-- an "interpretative concept". Instead, author opts to look for a "revealing" ideal use of the word. What is the point of such an exercise? For author, it could perhaps help separate questions of science from questions of value; shrinking the impetus for cultural and value wars.
Author attempts to give some structure to a "religious attitude" by claiming it involves making both the "biological and biographical" sources of intrinsic value: that to be religious entails believing there are intrinsic values relating to both human life and the world we inhabit. Of course the problem now is to find out what those values are, and how they are known (hint: traditionally, a god told them to us).
First off, there is a dichotomy between the religious and the naturalist-- for author-- someone who believes that all there is can be revealed by the natural sciences. Another thing the religious attitude is not: it isn't "grounded realism", which takes values to be real but only due to some natural capacity to reason about them. For author, the religious means that value is both "self contained and self-certifying". During this discussion, author defines the term "faith" as well, as, in the first order, that "we accept a felt, inescapable conviction rather than the benediction of some independent means of verification as the final arbiter of what we are entitled to responsibly believe". Author means to include mathematics, logic, and science into what is fundamentally taken on faith. Faith when it comes to value contains another layer, since emotion is part of convictions about value. The point here for author is that the realm of value is about objectively true things (for the religious person) and it is self-justifying. It is not, as some theists believe, that god underwrites values. Author embarks on a description of the 3 abrahamic religions as two-parted: one is a science part and the other is a value part. The science part gives answers to tough questions, and god is included in the story. But, author claims, the science part cannot ground the value part, since they are conceptually distinct. "The universe cannot be intrinsically beautiful just because it was created to be beautiful". Ultimately, author says that values justify themselves within a larger scheme of value, and that a god is conceptually distinct from this.
3/22/13
Guyer, Paul - Passion for Reason: Hume, Kant, and the Motivation for Morality
03/22/2013
Proceedings and Addresses of the APA Vol 86 Issue 2 (Eastern Div)
This is a paper that tries to find some common ground between Hume's conception of morality as grounded in the passions and Kant's as grounded in a duty to law. The first part starts with an examination and summary of Hume's conception of moral principles as motivational, and thus not the sort of thing that reason, analyzed as "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" is suited to provide (pg5-6). In order to be moved to action we must first have a preference; reason doesn't play that part (pg6).
After this familiar distinction between reasoning and moral sentiment, Hume still tries to explain why we elide them so much: it is because reasoning is a calm activity, as is the realization of moral sentiment-- it too is mostly done calmly (pg7). Author argues further that Hume is offering a more substantive theory: that humans deeply prefer calm and tranquility. Here author reasons that the opposite of a calm passion is a violent one, and a preference for calm would be a preference for freedom from a violent passion, hence humans can have a calm preference for calm freedom (pg7). Author then takes some time to unpack Hume's discussion on the different preferential qualities, focusing specifically on "tranquility" as very highly regarded. Hume means to have the passion for tranquility as both other- and self-regarding, and also argues that this passion must be a calm passion, since it seems absurd to have a violent passion for tranquility (pg8). Thus, according to Hume, we have a strong calm passion for tranquility, the freedom from importune passions.
The next discussion is about Kant, and starts with his famous claim about moral motivation having nothing to do with personal gratification or inclination (pg9). But author argues that Kant believed that reason was not an ultimate end but an instrumental one to attain freedom (pg10-11). The idea author argues for is that, for Kant, we have a passion for our own individual freedom, but reason recognizes that this is universalizeable and thus the passion for (individual) freedom is transformed through reason into some kind of non-passionate motivation for universal freedom (pg11-2). Author first reads Kant's two major formulations in the Groundwork to be relating to securing freedom of choice for all rational actors (pg13). Interestingly, author acknowledges that Kant's version of freedom isn't the negative version of freedom from urgent passions but a positive version of freedom to set one's own ends (pg14). Then, author reads portions of Kant's Critique to suggest that once reason has determined the will to the proper course, it has to pass through the eye of pleasure/pain in motivation before it gets to action (pg14-5). Author goes on to talk about how Kant lists a 'panoply' of aesthetic and/or emotional ways in which humans susceptible to duty (reason) in action (pg15-6). The conclusion is that, for Kant, the self-regarding passion in freedom is molded by reason into a universal concern for the freedom of all (pg17), and becomes a type of "enthusiasm".
Proceedings and Addresses of the APA Vol 86 Issue 2 (Eastern Div)
This is a paper that tries to find some common ground between Hume's conception of morality as grounded in the passions and Kant's as grounded in a duty to law. The first part starts with an examination and summary of Hume's conception of moral principles as motivational, and thus not the sort of thing that reason, analyzed as "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact" is suited to provide (pg5-6). In order to be moved to action we must first have a preference; reason doesn't play that part (pg6).
After this familiar distinction between reasoning and moral sentiment, Hume still tries to explain why we elide them so much: it is because reasoning is a calm activity, as is the realization of moral sentiment-- it too is mostly done calmly (pg7). Author argues further that Hume is offering a more substantive theory: that humans deeply prefer calm and tranquility. Here author reasons that the opposite of a calm passion is a violent one, and a preference for calm would be a preference for freedom from a violent passion, hence humans can have a calm preference for calm freedom (pg7). Author then takes some time to unpack Hume's discussion on the different preferential qualities, focusing specifically on "tranquility" as very highly regarded. Hume means to have the passion for tranquility as both other- and self-regarding, and also argues that this passion must be a calm passion, since it seems absurd to have a violent passion for tranquility (pg8). Thus, according to Hume, we have a strong calm passion for tranquility, the freedom from importune passions.
The next discussion is about Kant, and starts with his famous claim about moral motivation having nothing to do with personal gratification or inclination (pg9). But author argues that Kant believed that reason was not an ultimate end but an instrumental one to attain freedom (pg10-11). The idea author argues for is that, for Kant, we have a passion for our own individual freedom, but reason recognizes that this is universalizeable and thus the passion for (individual) freedom is transformed through reason into some kind of non-passionate motivation for universal freedom (pg11-2). Author first reads Kant's two major formulations in the Groundwork to be relating to securing freedom of choice for all rational actors (pg13). Interestingly, author acknowledges that Kant's version of freedom isn't the negative version of freedom from urgent passions but a positive version of freedom to set one's own ends (pg14). Then, author reads portions of Kant's Critique to suggest that once reason has determined the will to the proper course, it has to pass through the eye of pleasure/pain in motivation before it gets to action (pg14-5). Author goes on to talk about how Kant lists a 'panoply' of aesthetic and/or emotional ways in which humans susceptible to duty (reason) in action (pg15-6). The conclusion is that, for Kant, the self-regarding passion in freedom is molded by reason into a universal concern for the freedom of all (pg17), and becomes a type of "enthusiasm".
3/15/13
Railton, Peter - That Obscure Object, Desire
03/15/2013
American Philosophical Association Proceedings, Vol 86 Issue 2 (2012)
Author starts by recounting some damaging attacks on the concept of desire. It used to be thought that desire + belief could rationalize action, but Quinn, Scanlon, and Parfit all attacked this notion, saying it was too primitive to be counted: a desire as a disposition to bring about P (if the appropriate beliefs were true), is not enough to give a reason for the action: there needs to be something more, something about the P or the subject that explains or gives reason for P (a "desirability characteristic")(pg22-3). Author aims to reply to these attacks here.
Author first considers whether a desire as merely a disposition to act is too bare, and revisits Hume's original formulation of a non-normative passion, something not subject to reasoning (pg23). Author takes a biographical interlude to discuss advertising and how it hopes to affect its viewer: "by liking an image, we could come to want what it represents" (pg24). This first formulation is the simple Humean or neo-Humean model of having a disposition toward effecting P (pg25). One upshot of this understanding of the installation of a disposition toward P (through advertising) is that, to author, desire is "creative". Not just in the instrumental sense but in the sense that thoughts, beliefs, and experiences can create new desires in the subject. Secondly, contra the behaviorists, desire is teleological (pg26-7). Thus, this first formulation is rationally intelligible. Author goes over the etymology of the words desire, want, and like (pg28). Upon revisiting the counterexample offered by Quinn, the Radio Man, who has a "desire" by having the disposition to turn on radios whenever he is near them, author seems to agree with Quinn that what is lacking is the desire (pg29). Author proceeds to the instrumental elements of desire that rhyme with an Aristotelian schema (pg30-1), calling it "appetitive intellect" or "intellectual appetition". But author also shows the two-fold character of desire: one is the "positive affective attraction" and the other is "focused appetitive striving" (pg31).
Author comes around again to the problem with the formulation of desire as a disposition toward P: it fails to capture that desire is a "pro-attitude" (pg32). It is an attitude that is like other emotions, it is regulative on our actions, and also our actions provide feedback to our emotions. Author explores this feed-back relationship through a proxy discussion of fear and confidence (pg33-5). Author incorporates the feedback related to desire into a newer formulation (pg36).
After the more inclusive focumlation, author takes a look at the empirical side of desire in a modern-day psychology course. There, the old categories of want/preference/desire and models of drives and satiation were significantly outdated (pg36-7). The inadequacy of the philosophical formulation, even the prospective/retrospective one author had come to recently, was brought out in the discussion of addiction. In addiction, the pleasure in the experience attenuates and even can become nil but the compulsion to engage in the experience persists. There was a distinction between affect and "incentive salience" (pg37), or wanting (a difference between appreciating P and wanting P). Addictive drugs operate directly on the 'wanting' system, skipping the recalibration and influence of the 'liking' system (pg37). Author goes further into the science of affect, and comes away with 2 broad conclusions: (1) Affect permeates perception and cognition, as well as decision-making (pg38), and (2) any possible distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive affect is not possible. "Cognitive appraisal" is relevant to all affective states, and affect itself is information-giving and proto-normative (pg39).
Returning to meld the psychology of desire with its updated philosophy, author first talks about a 'prospective model' of the world that (constitutionally?) involves affect (pg39-40). Another lesson brought out by talking about modeling the environment to shape expectations and affect, is that desire does not aim baldly, but "under a favorable representation" (pg41). What emerges is that desire is good at aiming at (evolutionary) goods, just like perception is good at aiming at (evolutionarily relevant) truths (pg41). Author walks through a series of disputes in the philosophy of desire and motivation using the prospective model formulated earlier, discussing Parfit, Frankfurt, Williams and finally squaring it with Hume (pg42-5).
American Philosophical Association Proceedings, Vol 86 Issue 2 (2012)
Author starts by recounting some damaging attacks on the concept of desire. It used to be thought that desire + belief could rationalize action, but Quinn, Scanlon, and Parfit all attacked this notion, saying it was too primitive to be counted: a desire as a disposition to bring about P (if the appropriate beliefs were true), is not enough to give a reason for the action: there needs to be something more, something about the P or the subject that explains or gives reason for P (a "desirability characteristic")(pg22-3). Author aims to reply to these attacks here.
Author first considers whether a desire as merely a disposition to act is too bare, and revisits Hume's original formulation of a non-normative passion, something not subject to reasoning (pg23). Author takes a biographical interlude to discuss advertising and how it hopes to affect its viewer: "by liking an image, we could come to want what it represents" (pg24). This first formulation is the simple Humean or neo-Humean model of having a disposition toward effecting P (pg25). One upshot of this understanding of the installation of a disposition toward P (through advertising) is that, to author, desire is "creative". Not just in the instrumental sense but in the sense that thoughts, beliefs, and experiences can create new desires in the subject. Secondly, contra the behaviorists, desire is teleological (pg26-7). Thus, this first formulation is rationally intelligible. Author goes over the etymology of the words desire, want, and like (pg28). Upon revisiting the counterexample offered by Quinn, the Radio Man, who has a "desire" by having the disposition to turn on radios whenever he is near them, author seems to agree with Quinn that what is lacking is the desire (pg29). Author proceeds to the instrumental elements of desire that rhyme with an Aristotelian schema (pg30-1), calling it "appetitive intellect" or "intellectual appetition". But author also shows the two-fold character of desire: one is the "positive affective attraction" and the other is "focused appetitive striving" (pg31).
Author comes around again to the problem with the formulation of desire as a disposition toward P: it fails to capture that desire is a "pro-attitude" (pg32). It is an attitude that is like other emotions, it is regulative on our actions, and also our actions provide feedback to our emotions. Author explores this feed-back relationship through a proxy discussion of fear and confidence (pg33-5). Author incorporates the feedback related to desire into a newer formulation (pg36).
After the more inclusive focumlation, author takes a look at the empirical side of desire in a modern-day psychology course. There, the old categories of want/preference/desire and models of drives and satiation were significantly outdated (pg36-7). The inadequacy of the philosophical formulation, even the prospective/retrospective one author had come to recently, was brought out in the discussion of addiction. In addiction, the pleasure in the experience attenuates and even can become nil but the compulsion to engage in the experience persists. There was a distinction between affect and "incentive salience" (pg37), or wanting (a difference between appreciating P and wanting P). Addictive drugs operate directly on the 'wanting' system, skipping the recalibration and influence of the 'liking' system (pg37). Author goes further into the science of affect, and comes away with 2 broad conclusions: (1) Affect permeates perception and cognition, as well as decision-making (pg38), and (2) any possible distinction between cognitive and non-cognitive affect is not possible. "Cognitive appraisal" is relevant to all affective states, and affect itself is information-giving and proto-normative (pg39).
Returning to meld the psychology of desire with its updated philosophy, author first talks about a 'prospective model' of the world that (constitutionally?) involves affect (pg39-40). Another lesson brought out by talking about modeling the environment to shape expectations and affect, is that desire does not aim baldly, but "under a favorable representation" (pg41). What emerges is that desire is good at aiming at (evolutionary) goods, just like perception is good at aiming at (evolutionarily relevant) truths (pg41). Author walks through a series of disputes in the philosophy of desire and motivation using the prospective model formulated earlier, discussing Parfit, Frankfurt, Williams and finally squaring it with Hume (pg42-5).
2/22/13
Dewey, John - What I Believe
02/22/2013
The Forum, Living Philosophies VII, March 1930
This article was written as a summary of Dewey's outlook and perspective, not necessarily the development of a particular argument. Author starts by discussing the change in connotation that the concept of "faith" has taken on, from an acceptance of a definite body of beliefs-- a creed-- to a "tendency toward action". This is reflective, author argues, of the change in the culture from the search for unchangeable, immutable substance to an acceptance of change and context-dependent values. This was started with the scientific method and was outwardly manifested with the industrial revolution. Author's pitch is to use the broad term "experience" as the basis for a new set of human values. Interesting: "Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning." (pg179).
Author does not believe that this change in perspective will be a death-knell for religion. Instead, religion will adapt and form onto this new way of approaching values and still be a source of meaning. The main problem, as author sees it, is that religion has become "so respectable", that is, largely ensconced in the social construction. Author takes some time to decry the current system of economic organization, from wage-slavery to the unhealthy distribution of wealth, and further talks about how cynicism or modernity has imperiled the possibility of a systematic philosophy.
The Forum, Living Philosophies VII, March 1930
This article was written as a summary of Dewey's outlook and perspective, not necessarily the development of a particular argument. Author starts by discussing the change in connotation that the concept of "faith" has taken on, from an acceptance of a definite body of beliefs-- a creed-- to a "tendency toward action". This is reflective, author argues, of the change in the culture from the search for unchangeable, immutable substance to an acceptance of change and context-dependent values. This was started with the scientific method and was outwardly manifested with the industrial revolution. Author's pitch is to use the broad term "experience" as the basis for a new set of human values. Interesting: "Search for a single, inclusive good is doomed to failure. Such happiness as life is capable comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situation of experience its own full and unique meaning." (pg179).
Author does not believe that this change in perspective will be a death-knell for religion. Instead, religion will adapt and form onto this new way of approaching values and still be a source of meaning. The main problem, as author sees it, is that religion has become "so respectable", that is, largely ensconced in the social construction. Author takes some time to decry the current system of economic organization, from wage-slavery to the unhealthy distribution of wealth, and further talks about how cynicism or modernity has imperiled the possibility of a systematic philosophy.
2/8/13
Dewey, John - Philosophies of Freedom
02/08/2013
On Experience, Nature, and Freedom: Representative Selections, Richard Bernstein, ed. Bobbs-Merrill, 1960
This article was originally published in 1928 and uses as its starting point a "recent book on sovereignty" as a springboard for an investigation into the concept of freedom and choice. Author first makes the point from the book, that political ideas (like "freedom" or "sovereignty") are not necessarily "true" but expedient or serve a utility in a social context (pg262). From here author explores a rough, abstract recounting of the association between the concepts of choice and freedom, claiming that freedom is used to underwrite choice so that norms of behavior can be enforced using punishment and liability (pg262-3). To provide the link between punishment and choice, or more broadly just deserts and choice, author argues there was the development of freedom of the will, or the concept that humans had the power to make indifferent choice; the morally wrong one being blameworthy due to the right one being available to the will. Author finds these acrobatics still not up to the challenge of justifying liability, since the punishment is meted to the concrete individual, when it is the will that is supposed to be punished (pg264).
Author instead looks at responsibility as a forward-looking enforcement, meaning that the concept should be employed to influence future behavior, not to punish past. But then without the doctrine of free will, how is the concept of choice to be understood? Author takes that up next, first starting at a very basic level, discriminating between random and selective behavior. Selective behavior, even in inorganic matter, is "evidence of at least a rudimentary individuality or uniqueness in things" (pg265). The starting point is that selective behavior is an expression of the nature a thing. The next step involves the psychology of humans, and author claims that humans have a greater sensitivity to varied and opposing experiences; humans collect them into complexes of experience, which contributes to responses to situations by varying them and not making them deterministic or mechanical (pg266). The point here is that because humans witness and collect and experience varied responses to situations, there is no one determined behavior for any particular set of circumstances. With the variation of experience, author asserts that human choice is the individual's formation of a new preference from competing and varied ones (pg266-7).
Author takes a break from this discussion to go through the political concept of freedom as being free from external constraints (pg267-8) and ties it to the classic Lockean Liberal economic concept of property and freedom of constraint over types of industry. These economic notions invaded the psychological realm with the philosophy of "self-expression", author argues. Despite one's self-expression conceivably at odds with another's, author argues there is a pernicious link between human's instincts and impulses (self-expression) and naturalness or "native" originality (pg269). Author's conclusion here: classical Liberalism is flawed if it was to suppose that individuals simply needed to be set free from external constraints in order to solve political and economic problems (pg270), while it also simultaneously provided important emancipating work. The work of emancipation, however, was also flawed in that it freed up the economic interests of some emerging classes (merchants, industrialists) at the expense of failing to free individuals across classes (pg271). This failure is traceable to the idea that individuals have powers and rights that simply need to be "freed" in order to be exercised properly, without regard to prior economic conditions, education levels, or other forms of capital. The response, then, to a call for political freedom and for individual freedom of choice, is in "positive and constructive changes in social arrangements" (pg272).
Author then examines the conception of freedom as it relates to power in action, and uses Spinoza as a lens. In Spinoza, author interprets a certain powerlessness in action, but a power to bend one's actions into conformity with the whole, which humans can understand through the intellect (pg273-4). This seed germinated in Hegel, whom author explores next (pg274-5). The point is to unpack a different notion of freedom: power in action, in accordance with law or "manifestation".
The resolution between the two conceptions, freedom from external constraint to make choices or freedom as having power behind one's actions, is what author gives next (pg275-6): an intelligent choice that manifests individuality enlarges the range of action from an individual, increasing her power. Even if a plan of action is thwarted by external events, author holds that the subject who performs the action gains power and freedom. If one does not believe this, author enlists the help of the "moralists" who claim that freedom and personal power can always be exercised in the realm of the moral, no matter what external circumstances do (pg278). Author uses an example of a child who could have her preferences all attended to, or inhibited. Neither is the way to develop personal freedom (pg278-80).
Author assesses this formula against Kant, who found a particular problem with freedom because his belief that all behavior is causally determined. Author finds this a misguided problem too focused on antecedents rather than consequences (pg281-2). In other words, if intelligent choice is the product of causal forces, who cares? Author also looks at what kind of information science gives about causation and claims it gives how things relate to each other, not how they are, intrinsically (pg283). The individuality of things in themselves is open to house choice (pg284), apart from "scientific law". Author ends with a thorough take-down of classical Liberalism.
On Experience, Nature, and Freedom: Representative Selections, Richard Bernstein, ed. Bobbs-Merrill, 1960
This article was originally published in 1928 and uses as its starting point a "recent book on sovereignty" as a springboard for an investigation into the concept of freedom and choice. Author first makes the point from the book, that political ideas (like "freedom" or "sovereignty") are not necessarily "true" but expedient or serve a utility in a social context (pg262). From here author explores a rough, abstract recounting of the association between the concepts of choice and freedom, claiming that freedom is used to underwrite choice so that norms of behavior can be enforced using punishment and liability (pg262-3). To provide the link between punishment and choice, or more broadly just deserts and choice, author argues there was the development of freedom of the will, or the concept that humans had the power to make indifferent choice; the morally wrong one being blameworthy due to the right one being available to the will. Author finds these acrobatics still not up to the challenge of justifying liability, since the punishment is meted to the concrete individual, when it is the will that is supposed to be punished (pg264).
Author instead looks at responsibility as a forward-looking enforcement, meaning that the concept should be employed to influence future behavior, not to punish past. But then without the doctrine of free will, how is the concept of choice to be understood? Author takes that up next, first starting at a very basic level, discriminating between random and selective behavior. Selective behavior, even in inorganic matter, is "evidence of at least a rudimentary individuality or uniqueness in things" (pg265). The starting point is that selective behavior is an expression of the nature a thing. The next step involves the psychology of humans, and author claims that humans have a greater sensitivity to varied and opposing experiences; humans collect them into complexes of experience, which contributes to responses to situations by varying them and not making them deterministic or mechanical (pg266). The point here is that because humans witness and collect and experience varied responses to situations, there is no one determined behavior for any particular set of circumstances. With the variation of experience, author asserts that human choice is the individual's formation of a new preference from competing and varied ones (pg266-7).
Author takes a break from this discussion to go through the political concept of freedom as being free from external constraints (pg267-8) and ties it to the classic Lockean Liberal economic concept of property and freedom of constraint over types of industry. These economic notions invaded the psychological realm with the philosophy of "self-expression", author argues. Despite one's self-expression conceivably at odds with another's, author argues there is a pernicious link between human's instincts and impulses (self-expression) and naturalness or "native" originality (pg269). Author's conclusion here: classical Liberalism is flawed if it was to suppose that individuals simply needed to be set free from external constraints in order to solve political and economic problems (pg270), while it also simultaneously provided important emancipating work. The work of emancipation, however, was also flawed in that it freed up the economic interests of some emerging classes (merchants, industrialists) at the expense of failing to free individuals across classes (pg271). This failure is traceable to the idea that individuals have powers and rights that simply need to be "freed" in order to be exercised properly, without regard to prior economic conditions, education levels, or other forms of capital. The response, then, to a call for political freedom and for individual freedom of choice, is in "positive and constructive changes in social arrangements" (pg272).
Author then examines the conception of freedom as it relates to power in action, and uses Spinoza as a lens. In Spinoza, author interprets a certain powerlessness in action, but a power to bend one's actions into conformity with the whole, which humans can understand through the intellect (pg273-4). This seed germinated in Hegel, whom author explores next (pg274-5). The point is to unpack a different notion of freedom: power in action, in accordance with law or "manifestation".
The resolution between the two conceptions, freedom from external constraint to make choices or freedom as having power behind one's actions, is what author gives next (pg275-6): an intelligent choice that manifests individuality enlarges the range of action from an individual, increasing her power. Even if a plan of action is thwarted by external events, author holds that the subject who performs the action gains power and freedom. If one does not believe this, author enlists the help of the "moralists" who claim that freedom and personal power can always be exercised in the realm of the moral, no matter what external circumstances do (pg278). Author uses an example of a child who could have her preferences all attended to, or inhibited. Neither is the way to develop personal freedom (pg278-80).
Author assesses this formula against Kant, who found a particular problem with freedom because his belief that all behavior is causally determined. Author finds this a misguided problem too focused on antecedents rather than consequences (pg281-2). In other words, if intelligent choice is the product of causal forces, who cares? Author also looks at what kind of information science gives about causation and claims it gives how things relate to each other, not how they are, intrinsically (pg283). The individuality of things in themselves is open to house choice (pg284), apart from "scientific law". Author ends with a thorough take-down of classical Liberalism.
2/1/13
Smith, John - The Reconception of Experience in Peirce, James and Dewey
02/01/2013
America's Philosophical Vision, Ch 1, University of Chicago, 1992
This is a paper given as an address at a conference and is basically a summary of the three conceptions of the concept of experience given by Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The goal is to show their reactions to and departures from the British Empiricist tradition and Kant. Author first gives a summary (or caricature) of traditional empiricism (pg18-19) and then a congealed response from the Pragmatists (pg19-20).
Author reviews and condenses the views on "experience" starting with Peirce (pg20-25), then James (pg25-29), and then Dewey (pg29-34). Generally, the main contentions against British Empiricists are as follows: "experience" isn't a passive exercise but an active process between the self and the world, perhaps even eliminating the subject/object distinction, and: "experience" is best conceptualized not as atomistic bits to be used as a foundation for knowledge but instead as a rich mix of the sensory and the rational.
America's Philosophical Vision, Ch 1, University of Chicago, 1992
This is a paper given as an address at a conference and is basically a summary of the three conceptions of the concept of experience given by Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The goal is to show their reactions to and departures from the British Empiricist tradition and Kant. Author first gives a summary (or caricature) of traditional empiricism (pg18-19) and then a congealed response from the Pragmatists (pg19-20).
Author reviews and condenses the views on "experience" starting with Peirce (pg20-25), then James (pg25-29), and then Dewey (pg29-34). Generally, the main contentions against British Empiricists are as follows: "experience" isn't a passive exercise but an active process between the self and the world, perhaps even eliminating the subject/object distinction, and: "experience" is best conceptualized not as atomistic bits to be used as a foundation for knowledge but instead as a rich mix of the sensory and the rational.
1/25/13
Dewey, John - An Empirical Survey of Empiricisms
01/25/2013
This article is an examination of the concept of experience, as it evolves throughout philosophical history: Plato & Aristotle, Locke, and the more modern view. Author sets as the goal to actually be reviewing the different notions of empiricism, but takes the firm subject matter to be the concept of experience (pg71).
Author takes the Greek philosophers to consider experience as a 'know-how', not a 'know-why' matter. Experience can give you the know-how, but the know-why was reserved for reason, and/or understanding causal forces. (pg71-3) Author reviews Aristotle's theory on the progression of experiential knowledge: first there's sensation, then perception, then memory and imagination, finally ending in knowledge in generality, and habituation regarding the subject matter. (pg73) But this is all without applying reason or method to experience: reason was reserved for the pure intellect and universal or necessary truths. In this light, author discusses a difference between Plato and Aristotle in that Aristotle was willing to let politics and society be subject to generalities and intricacies only noticed by the wise and those with practical knowledge, while Plato attempted to sketch out what a rational basis for these institutions would be in The Republic (pg74-5). Author summarizes the Greek thinking on pg77: the contrast is between knowledge (intellect) and opinion or belief (experience), and experience is limited to a subject matter (e.g. farming, crafting) while theoretical knowledge is not. These distinctions are underpinned by the distinction between phenomena and a deeper reality.
The second conception of experience author considers is propounded by Locke. Author admits to skipping intermediary steps, but wants to capture a "typical" conceptual difference from the Greeks. Locke reshaped experience as observation, which gave it a much more direct connection to nature (pg79). Locke then argued that observation is the test of knowledge, thus making the ideas that came from observation the fundamental sources of knowledge. Author summarizes Locke's argument against innate ideas (pg79-80), but shows that Locke did admit to some universals, for instance in the realm of mathematics and morals (pg80-1). The next "stage" author discusses was Locke's move to reduce much of human mentality to sensations or associations with sensations (pg81). Author reviews the effect that this philosophy had on institutions and culture (pg82-3), specifically the skeptical and critical demands it had on old, established institutions, and also on creating new ideals in education and legislation. Author then talks about JS Mill's further refinements on this kind of associational empiricism (pg84-5) and Mill's interest in logic taken from the natural sciences into the social ones.
The last discussion is about some of the primary differences the third "view" of experience has had from the past one(s). Author starts with James and illustrates the pragmatist approach to confirming the validity of ideas: through their consequences (pg86). This directly conflicts with Locke, who wanted ideas to be justified through their antecedents: through what implanted or begat them. Another difference is the development of a biological basis for psychology rather than an introspective or phenomenological one (pg86-7). This seems to be a move back toward Aristotle, author suggests. Author concludes this new view of experience is still "inchoate", and in progress.
This article is an examination of the concept of experience, as it evolves throughout philosophical history: Plato & Aristotle, Locke, and the more modern view. Author sets as the goal to actually be reviewing the different notions of empiricism, but takes the firm subject matter to be the concept of experience (pg71).
Author takes the Greek philosophers to consider experience as a 'know-how', not a 'know-why' matter. Experience can give you the know-how, but the know-why was reserved for reason, and/or understanding causal forces. (pg71-3) Author reviews Aristotle's theory on the progression of experiential knowledge: first there's sensation, then perception, then memory and imagination, finally ending in knowledge in generality, and habituation regarding the subject matter. (pg73) But this is all without applying reason or method to experience: reason was reserved for the pure intellect and universal or necessary truths. In this light, author discusses a difference between Plato and Aristotle in that Aristotle was willing to let politics and society be subject to generalities and intricacies only noticed by the wise and those with practical knowledge, while Plato attempted to sketch out what a rational basis for these institutions would be in The Republic (pg74-5). Author summarizes the Greek thinking on pg77: the contrast is between knowledge (intellect) and opinion or belief (experience), and experience is limited to a subject matter (e.g. farming, crafting) while theoretical knowledge is not. These distinctions are underpinned by the distinction between phenomena and a deeper reality.
The second conception of experience author considers is propounded by Locke. Author admits to skipping intermediary steps, but wants to capture a "typical" conceptual difference from the Greeks. Locke reshaped experience as observation, which gave it a much more direct connection to nature (pg79). Locke then argued that observation is the test of knowledge, thus making the ideas that came from observation the fundamental sources of knowledge. Author summarizes Locke's argument against innate ideas (pg79-80), but shows that Locke did admit to some universals, for instance in the realm of mathematics and morals (pg80-1). The next "stage" author discusses was Locke's move to reduce much of human mentality to sensations or associations with sensations (pg81). Author reviews the effect that this philosophy had on institutions and culture (pg82-3), specifically the skeptical and critical demands it had on old, established institutions, and also on creating new ideals in education and legislation. Author then talks about JS Mill's further refinements on this kind of associational empiricism (pg84-5) and Mill's interest in logic taken from the natural sciences into the social ones.
The last discussion is about some of the primary differences the third "view" of experience has had from the past one(s). Author starts with James and illustrates the pragmatist approach to confirming the validity of ideas: through their consequences (pg86). This directly conflicts with Locke, who wanted ideas to be justified through their antecedents: through what implanted or begat them. Another difference is the development of a biological basis for psychology rather than an introspective or phenomenological one (pg86-7). This seems to be a move back toward Aristotle, author suggests. Author concludes this new view of experience is still "inchoate", and in progress.
1/18/13
Strawson, Galen - Real Naturalism
01/18/2013
Proceedings and Addresses of the APA, Vol 86 Issue 2 Nov 2012
Author starts by claiming that author is a thorough-going naturalist. But what is the substantive conception of the natural? For author, it is that all reality is entirely physical. So this makes author a physicalist or materialist naturalist (pg126). Author takes there to be a conflict, however, with other sorts of physicalists/naturalists when it comes to the philosophy of mind. The problem is that humans are directly knowledgeable about experience, and only indirectly knowledgeable about non-experiential properties of physical objects. Author thinks the move in 20th century philosophy to question whether experience is real when compared to other physical properties has been a wrongheaded evolution, going from a methodological commitment to behaviorism to a ontological commitment against experience (pg127). Author highlights Quine and Smart here.
In section 2, author treats the term "physical" as a natural-kind term, one that denotes a natural kind, and one whose content we can be wrong about. Author briefly discusses the persistent ignorance about the world that plagues physicalism, but also acknowledges that equations like f = ma are likely good approximations of the truth. But the problem with such equations is that they are structural descriptions, where content still needs to be cashed out (pg128-130). Author considers the structural and mathematical elements of the physical sciences to be their strong suit, not because humans know so much about the world, but because they know so little. Author distinguishes between the "intrinsic nature" of reality and its structure, and that logico-mathematical representations of the world do not illuminate its intrinsic nature. In other words, physics has structural descriptive content, and even structural transcendent referential content, but does it have structural transcendent descriptive content? (pg130) If a self-professed physicalist/naturalist is tempted to say "yes", then author objects that physicalism, thus far, has left out consciousness, or qualia, from it description (pg131-2). So, the dilemma is as follows: (1) admit that physics only has Purely Logico-Mathematical Structural Description (PLM) and thus misses the non-structural intrinsic nature of reality, or (2) argue that the Causal-Spatio-Temporal Structural Description given by physics is all that remains to reality and thereby deny that experience is part of reality.
Author briefly summarizes the points made: that physicalism doesn't escape the Locke-Hume-Kant arguments about not knowing the thing-in-itself or understanding causation only by constant conjunction (pg133). Author considers those who think physics is the full fundamental description of the universe to be "not serious ... physicSalists". (pg134) Author uses the concepts of ignorance and knowledge-- what humans are ignorant about and what they know about-- in this discussion. The first and most certainly generally known fact is that there is experience. Naturalism must be "realistic", in that it must include this known fact (pg135). Author discusses prototypical examples of pre-philosophical understandings of experience: the kind of stuff you have when you're 6 years old: in short, having an experience is the knowing of the experience. (pg135-6) Author argues that there is no is/seems distinction when it comes to qualia, and that there are no arguments that can destroy the "real realism" of experience (pg137-8).
Interestingly, author claims that a "reduction" for the identity theorist, who claims that experiential states are identical to brain states, isn't reducing two entities to one in the ontological sense, just the epistemological one (pg138-9). The next discussion changes from defense to offense: is it known that anything non-experiential exists? To assume it does is unwarranted, according to author (pg140-1). Here, physicalism is compatible with panpsychism, which author explores (pg141-2). In conclusion, author asserts that if indeed this was widely accepted by philosophers, panpsychism would be widely acknowledged as a real possibility, which does not seem to be the case (pg143). Author runs through the arguments against false naturalists and finishes by asserting that it is not theoretically or ontologically cheaper to postulate the fundamental constituents of reality aren't experiential; it's either more expensive or, at best, equally pricey (pg146).
Proceedings and Addresses of the APA, Vol 86 Issue 2 Nov 2012
Author starts by claiming that author is a thorough-going naturalist. But what is the substantive conception of the natural? For author, it is that all reality is entirely physical. So this makes author a physicalist or materialist naturalist (pg126). Author takes there to be a conflict, however, with other sorts of physicalists/naturalists when it comes to the philosophy of mind. The problem is that humans are directly knowledgeable about experience, and only indirectly knowledgeable about non-experiential properties of physical objects. Author thinks the move in 20th century philosophy to question whether experience is real when compared to other physical properties has been a wrongheaded evolution, going from a methodological commitment to behaviorism to a ontological commitment against experience (pg127). Author highlights Quine and Smart here.
In section 2, author treats the term "physical" as a natural-kind term, one that denotes a natural kind, and one whose content we can be wrong about. Author briefly discusses the persistent ignorance about the world that plagues physicalism, but also acknowledges that equations like f = ma are likely good approximations of the truth. But the problem with such equations is that they are structural descriptions, where content still needs to be cashed out (pg128-130). Author considers the structural and mathematical elements of the physical sciences to be their strong suit, not because humans know so much about the world, but because they know so little. Author distinguishes between the "intrinsic nature" of reality and its structure, and that logico-mathematical representations of the world do not illuminate its intrinsic nature. In other words, physics has structural descriptive content, and even structural transcendent referential content, but does it have structural transcendent descriptive content? (pg130) If a self-professed physicalist/naturalist is tempted to say "yes", then author objects that physicalism, thus far, has left out consciousness, or qualia, from it description (pg131-2). So, the dilemma is as follows: (1) admit that physics only has Purely Logico-Mathematical Structural Description (PLM) and thus misses the non-structural intrinsic nature of reality, or (2) argue that the Causal-Spatio-Temporal Structural Description given by physics is all that remains to reality and thereby deny that experience is part of reality.
Author briefly summarizes the points made: that physicalism doesn't escape the Locke-Hume-Kant arguments about not knowing the thing-in-itself or understanding causation only by constant conjunction (pg133). Author considers those who think physics is the full fundamental description of the universe to be "not serious ... physicSalists". (pg134) Author uses the concepts of ignorance and knowledge-- what humans are ignorant about and what they know about-- in this discussion. The first and most certainly generally known fact is that there is experience. Naturalism must be "realistic", in that it must include this known fact (pg135). Author discusses prototypical examples of pre-philosophical understandings of experience: the kind of stuff you have when you're 6 years old: in short, having an experience is the knowing of the experience. (pg135-6) Author argues that there is no is/seems distinction when it comes to qualia, and that there are no arguments that can destroy the "real realism" of experience (pg137-8).
Interestingly, author claims that a "reduction" for the identity theorist, who claims that experiential states are identical to brain states, isn't reducing two entities to one in the ontological sense, just the epistemological one (pg138-9). The next discussion changes from defense to offense: is it known that anything non-experiential exists? To assume it does is unwarranted, according to author (pg140-1). Here, physicalism is compatible with panpsychism, which author explores (pg141-2). In conclusion, author asserts that if indeed this was widely accepted by philosophers, panpsychism would be widely acknowledged as a real possibility, which does not seem to be the case (pg143). Author runs through the arguments against false naturalists and finishes by asserting that it is not theoretically or ontologically cheaper to postulate the fundamental constituents of reality aren't experiential; it's either more expensive or, at best, equally pricey (pg146).
1/11/13
Nagel, Thomas - Value
01/11/2012
Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Ch 5, Oxford University Press, 2012
In this final chapter, author considers how the possibility of objective value (value realism) invalidates Darwinian physicalism. Part of the chapter is spent presenting the case for value realism as opposed to value subjectivism. A significant problem for author is that value subjectivism is a potent and coherent alternative to value realism. Author's strategy seems to be to argue that value realism is incompatible with Darwinian physicalism (similar to Street's argument), and so much the worse for Darwinian physicalism.
Author begins the discussion by assuming that practical reasoning is indispensably conscious. This already casts a shadow (according to author) over the possibility of practical reasoning and judgments being subject to materialist reduction, but author sets that aside for the time being. Author discusses the conflict between value subjectivism and value realism, and admits that value subjectivism is a valid alternative (pg98-100). In this context, "value realism" is the position that "our responses to moral situations try to reflect the evaluative truth and can be correct or incorrect by reference to it." (pg98). Author also defends value realism from the challenge that it needs metaphysical 'baggage', in other words, that something must be real in the world for value realism to be about. Author denies this: what value realism treats as its subject matter are the same worldly facts that we all use, like: there is a dog I might run over with a car if I do not brake (pg101-105). Interestingly, author argues that the best evidence for value realism is "the fruitfulness of evaluative and moral thought in producing results, including corrections of beliefs formerly widely held..." (pg104).
In section 3 author paraphrases the arguments of Sharon Street that moral realism is incompatible with Darwinian physicalism. For Street, this invalidates moral realism. For author, Darwinian physicalism must be re-thought (pg105). Author defends using a philosophical argument to refute empirical findings, arguing that human capabilities (presumably, to find objective moral values) are part of what needs explaining by science (pg106). Author outlines Street's argument, which basically points to a disanalogy between a survival value to having perceptual nodes that get at (some) physical reality and value/judgment nodes that get at (some) value/moral reality. In the first case, abilities that link to physical facts is adaptive. In the second, abilities that link to moral facts is not necessarily adaptive; what is far more adaptive is a co-evolution of species-specific inter-subjective values (pg107-8).
Author takes time to discuss the case for value realism using moral simples like pleasure and pain (pg110-1), and then moves to a positive account of the capacities for recognizing value, including free will (pg112-3). In short, humans can be "motivated by their apprehension of values and reasons, whose existence is a basic type of truth, and that the explanation of action by such motives is a basic form of explanation, not reducible to something of another form, either psychological or physical." (pg114) The idea author has in mind is that human action is explainable by "judgments", and those are irreducible or 'emergent' properties of a unified, conscious, mind. It is here when author states that epiphenomenalism in consciousness is incompatible with value realism (pg115-6).
Author then looks through the familiar lens of asking for both a constitutive and an historical account of a capacity to appreciate objective value. Author admits the historical account is 'obscure' or sketchy, but outlines how it might go, broadly as part of the development of life story (pg117-8). If value is tied to life, and to specific things that make certain lives go better and worse, then it is acceptable to treat value realism as life-dependent, or even species-dependent. Or perhaps even organism-relative. (pg119-120) Author discusses how the causal historical explanation seems implausible and turns instead to a teleological one that aims at a multiplicity of values (pg121-2). Author then defends teleology on its own, and compares it to the causal account, which author charges still cannot account for the evolution of the cell (pg123-4). Author concludes by saying that though this theory seems bizarre, so too do older theories when viewed through today's lens, and that the future remake of Darwinian physicalism will make the current en vogue theory also look ridiculous.
Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Ch 5, Oxford University Press, 2012
In this final chapter, author considers how the possibility of objective value (value realism) invalidates Darwinian physicalism. Part of the chapter is spent presenting the case for value realism as opposed to value subjectivism. A significant problem for author is that value subjectivism is a potent and coherent alternative to value realism. Author's strategy seems to be to argue that value realism is incompatible with Darwinian physicalism (similar to Street's argument), and so much the worse for Darwinian physicalism.
Author begins the discussion by assuming that practical reasoning is indispensably conscious. This already casts a shadow (according to author) over the possibility of practical reasoning and judgments being subject to materialist reduction, but author sets that aside for the time being. Author discusses the conflict between value subjectivism and value realism, and admits that value subjectivism is a valid alternative (pg98-100). In this context, "value realism" is the position that "our responses to moral situations try to reflect the evaluative truth and can be correct or incorrect by reference to it." (pg98). Author also defends value realism from the challenge that it needs metaphysical 'baggage', in other words, that something must be real in the world for value realism to be about. Author denies this: what value realism treats as its subject matter are the same worldly facts that we all use, like: there is a dog I might run over with a car if I do not brake (pg101-105). Interestingly, author argues that the best evidence for value realism is "the fruitfulness of evaluative and moral thought in producing results, including corrections of beliefs formerly widely held..." (pg104).
In section 3 author paraphrases the arguments of Sharon Street that moral realism is incompatible with Darwinian physicalism. For Street, this invalidates moral realism. For author, Darwinian physicalism must be re-thought (pg105). Author defends using a philosophical argument to refute empirical findings, arguing that human capabilities (presumably, to find objective moral values) are part of what needs explaining by science (pg106). Author outlines Street's argument, which basically points to a disanalogy between a survival value to having perceptual nodes that get at (some) physical reality and value/judgment nodes that get at (some) value/moral reality. In the first case, abilities that link to physical facts is adaptive. In the second, abilities that link to moral facts is not necessarily adaptive; what is far more adaptive is a co-evolution of species-specific inter-subjective values (pg107-8).
Author takes time to discuss the case for value realism using moral simples like pleasure and pain (pg110-1), and then moves to a positive account of the capacities for recognizing value, including free will (pg112-3). In short, humans can be "motivated by their apprehension of values and reasons, whose existence is a basic type of truth, and that the explanation of action by such motives is a basic form of explanation, not reducible to something of another form, either psychological or physical." (pg114) The idea author has in mind is that human action is explainable by "judgments", and those are irreducible or 'emergent' properties of a unified, conscious, mind. It is here when author states that epiphenomenalism in consciousness is incompatible with value realism (pg115-6).
Author then looks through the familiar lens of asking for both a constitutive and an historical account of a capacity to appreciate objective value. Author admits the historical account is 'obscure' or sketchy, but outlines how it might go, broadly as part of the development of life story (pg117-8). If value is tied to life, and to specific things that make certain lives go better and worse, then it is acceptable to treat value realism as life-dependent, or even species-dependent. Or perhaps even organism-relative. (pg119-120) Author discusses how the causal historical explanation seems implausible and turns instead to a teleological one that aims at a multiplicity of values (pg121-2). Author then defends teleology on its own, and compares it to the causal account, which author charges still cannot account for the evolution of the cell (pg123-4). Author concludes by saying that though this theory seems bizarre, so too do older theories when viewed through today's lens, and that the future remake of Darwinian physicalism will make the current en vogue theory also look ridiculous.
1/4/13
Nagel, Thomas - Cognition
01/04/2012
Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Ch 4, Oxford University Press, 2012
This chapter focuses on cognition, specifically the use of reason, as a feature of mind that is incapable of being considered valid by an evolutionary account of how it evolved. The general argument leveled by author is as follows:
1) modes of getting at true facts (that have been developed by evolution) are prone to certain kinds of errors, and/or are adaptations that are useful only in some local conditions (e.g. perception)
2) use of reason is not prone to error when used, and is not contained to only local applications (pg81)
3) Therefore, for reason to be a mode developed by evolution for getting at true facts, it is extraordinary.
Author starts by setting aside the possibility that computers can have knowledge, or that "higher-level cognitive capacities" can be done without consciousness. (pg71) Author then proceeds to take a common-sense approach to epistemology: there are true, objective facts about the world and most of the time perceptual and primitive minds have access only to how those facts appear, not their objective features (pg72-3). (This contrasts with some instrumentalist or nominalist 'anitrealist' theories of science and epistemology (pg74-5)) For author, appreciating the difference between appearance and reality is a higher-level cognitive capacity and is a rare ability in the animal kingdom (pg73), possibly partially attributable to language use. Author raises two questions: (pg74)
1. is it likely that evolution could have created a faculty that gets at the objective truth of the world using the faculty of reason?
2. can the faculty of reason be understood as an evolved mechanism?
Author first sketches out what an answer to the first question might be (pg76-78), with emphasis on language use, theory of mind, and cultural transmission of knowledge. What is distinctive about author's "just-so" story is that author is a realist: the objective facts of science and morals are there to be discovered and thus the faculty that develops in humans is one that reaches "discovers" those facts.
Author then moves to the second question: is the faculty of reason at all similar to other evolved faculties? Surely there are biases and distortions with our perceptual apparati, as there are also with emotional responses and intuitive probability calculations and value judgments (pg79). And yet the appreciation (and correction) of these distortions is not further subject to bias or distortion: it is taken as valid and justified. Further, the authority of reason isn't due to cultural history (pg70-80). A key difference for author here is that beliefs formed about objective truths using perceptual nodes are done through inference, while beliefs formed using reason are 'grasped directly' (pg80, pg82-3). Because of this, author asserts the inferential truth of evolutionary theory is only backstopped by reason, not the other way around, and thus cannot independently give validity to reason. (pg81) Author claims that the attempt to understand ourselves as creatures of evolution must "bottom out" in something recognized as "valid in itself" (pg81), which can only be reason and not evolutionary theory since that theory is itself held to the standards of reason.
The ability to reflect on modes of perception and intuition using reason is a kind of freedom (pg84), and one that author claims is not compatible with a "purely physical analysis". Author also wonders aloud as to whether language use is also not a radical development that is difficult to account for using evolution (pg84-5). Author reiterates the call that a historical explanation for the emergence of reason not show it to be "a complete accident" (pg86-8). Author then talks about the possibilities for a constitutive account (using the same language as in previous chapters: a call for a constitutive account and an historical one). Author is skeptical that a reductive account of reason is possible, thus a holistic or emergent one is more likely (pg87-8).
In the last two sections of the chapter, author explores the possibility of a teleological explanation as one for the development of mind. For author, this is a third option to a Darwinian physicalism or a theistic intentionalism. For author, the world would have to be probabilistic, not deterministic, and of the probabilities, one would have to be more likely than the rest based on its outcome fulfilling some sort of value or telos (pg92-3).
Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Ch 4, Oxford University Press, 2012
This chapter focuses on cognition, specifically the use of reason, as a feature of mind that is incapable of being considered valid by an evolutionary account of how it evolved. The general argument leveled by author is as follows:
1) modes of getting at true facts (that have been developed by evolution) are prone to certain kinds of errors, and/or are adaptations that are useful only in some local conditions (e.g. perception)
2) use of reason is not prone to error when used, and is not contained to only local applications (pg81)
3) Therefore, for reason to be a mode developed by evolution for getting at true facts, it is extraordinary.
Author starts by setting aside the possibility that computers can have knowledge, or that "higher-level cognitive capacities" can be done without consciousness. (pg71) Author then proceeds to take a common-sense approach to epistemology: there are true, objective facts about the world and most of the time perceptual and primitive minds have access only to how those facts appear, not their objective features (pg72-3). (This contrasts with some instrumentalist or nominalist 'anitrealist' theories of science and epistemology (pg74-5)) For author, appreciating the difference between appearance and reality is a higher-level cognitive capacity and is a rare ability in the animal kingdom (pg73), possibly partially attributable to language use. Author raises two questions: (pg74)
1. is it likely that evolution could have created a faculty that gets at the objective truth of the world using the faculty of reason?
2. can the faculty of reason be understood as an evolved mechanism?
Author first sketches out what an answer to the first question might be (pg76-78), with emphasis on language use, theory of mind, and cultural transmission of knowledge. What is distinctive about author's "just-so" story is that author is a realist: the objective facts of science and morals are there to be discovered and thus the faculty that develops in humans is one that reaches "discovers" those facts.
Author then moves to the second question: is the faculty of reason at all similar to other evolved faculties? Surely there are biases and distortions with our perceptual apparati, as there are also with emotional responses and intuitive probability calculations and value judgments (pg79). And yet the appreciation (and correction) of these distortions is not further subject to bias or distortion: it is taken as valid and justified. Further, the authority of reason isn't due to cultural history (pg70-80). A key difference for author here is that beliefs formed about objective truths using perceptual nodes are done through inference, while beliefs formed using reason are 'grasped directly' (pg80, pg82-3). Because of this, author asserts the inferential truth of evolutionary theory is only backstopped by reason, not the other way around, and thus cannot independently give validity to reason. (pg81) Author claims that the attempt to understand ourselves as creatures of evolution must "bottom out" in something recognized as "valid in itself" (pg81), which can only be reason and not evolutionary theory since that theory is itself held to the standards of reason.
The ability to reflect on modes of perception and intuition using reason is a kind of freedom (pg84), and one that author claims is not compatible with a "purely physical analysis". Author also wonders aloud as to whether language use is also not a radical development that is difficult to account for using evolution (pg84-5). Author reiterates the call that a historical explanation for the emergence of reason not show it to be "a complete accident" (pg86-8). Author then talks about the possibilities for a constitutive account (using the same language as in previous chapters: a call for a constitutive account and an historical one). Author is skeptical that a reductive account of reason is possible, thus a holistic or emergent one is more likely (pg87-8).
In the last two sections of the chapter, author explores the possibility of a teleological explanation as one for the development of mind. For author, this is a third option to a Darwinian physicalism or a theistic intentionalism. For author, the world would have to be probabilistic, not deterministic, and of the probabilities, one would have to be more likely than the rest based on its outcome fulfilling some sort of value or telos (pg92-3).
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