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By Jason Zarri
Ayn Rand had an ideology
To found philosophy on a tautology:
All A are A, at the end of the day
And therefore, you must do things her way!
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ScholardarityBringing scholars and students together to push the frontiers of knowledge with papers in History, Philosophy, Literature, Religion, Education and Theology |
Philosophy Limerick of the Day: Ayn Rand
Philosophy Limerick of the Day: Wittgenstein
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By Jason Zarri
There was once a philosopher, Witt
Who acted just like a git
He picked up a poker, and when thought a joker
Stormed out of the room in a fit
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Letter to the Editor
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Letter to the Editor
To the Editor:
Sir. Thank you for taking my letter. I am writing the Scholardarity Philosophy Editor to challenge an assertion made by Richard Dawkins to the effect that belief in religion is similar to belief in the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” The argument rests on a premise that religious belief or mystical experience is similar to the belief in an imaginary monster, given that both are invisible to the senses and without what scientific minds generally consider evidence. I rest my objection to this line of reasoning on the radical empiricism of William James, one that stands in contrast to a merely scientific empiricism in that it accepts mystical experiences as potential evidence. Non-dogmatic spirituality is not the same thing as a religious system that stands without evidence. Spiritual experiences stand on experience, which is evidence even if an undeniable degree of subjectivity does enter the picture as it must with all human experiences. Professor Dawkins rightly attacks authoritarian belief structures that rest on no evidence, but then proceeds to promote an ideology of scientism that equates anything without scientific verification with such belief structures.
A particularly odious argument that Professor Dawkins presents suggests that an invisible spiritual reality is equivalent to an invisible Spaghetti Monster by virtue of the fact that both are invisible to the senses and to laboratory equipment. Ironically, a somewhat similar disparaging dismissal is lodged by opponents of evolutionary biology. They will often claim that evolution is without proof because it has never been replicated in the laboratory, or that “monkeys do not change in to humans.” The notion that for evolution to be a proven fact “monkeys must change in to human beings” is a straw man that Professor Dawkins would never accept from any undergraduate challenging his positions, nor would I accept such nonsense if I were a substitute in a science class. Yet, the “monkeys do not turn in to humans” claim is more than superficially similar to the Flying Spaghetti argument. Both are attempts to argue by distorted comparisons and overly superficial claims about the opposing side’s narrative.
The crucial difference between belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster and belief in a spiritual Reality is that one rests on experiences commonly claimed across cultures while the other is one that most little children do not literally believe in, much less adults. Even cognitive psychologists who believe that religion is a vestigial biological adaptation would recognize the difference between what they consider a vestigial adaptation and something invented out of whole-cloth. It may be possible that there is a culture somewhere in the world that has a belief structure similar one with a flying wheat creature at its center. If such is the case, then I would argue for an analysis of symbols and a respect for the beliefs of that culture that do not rely on literalism. Often religions have symbols with esoteric meanings that are lost to those believers who are literalist. I am not one to mock an honest believer in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, of which there might be among the very young in many unrelated cultures, although I would certainly challenge any fundamentalist literalism on the question were I to be a teacher to one of them.
A radical empiricist in the mould of William James would allow for spiritual experience to be recognized as valid evidence and not attempt to explain it away as merely a biological adaptation (at least without allowing for many levels of understanding) or to disparage it with the Flying Spaghetti Monster epithet. Rationalists and adherents to the mainstream scientific school of empiricism are generally not so generous. Opponents are welcome to their opinions but not their own facts. There are indeed religious dogmas that are accepted without evidence, or merely as received wisdom, and such forms of dogmatism are dangerous. Yet, the notion that all forms of religion are either dogmas or made-up stories is unscientific because it does not rely on any actual empirical data gathering or anthropological exploration. Such a view ignores the anthropological literature. As such, it must be classed with the same type of simplistic arguments that creationists often wage against evolution, however distasteful such a comparison might be to Professor Dawkins and company.
Signed Sincerely,
Nathaniel Bates
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Tenseless* Presentism
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Tenseless* Presentism
(* For the purposes of this post I consider only the past and future tenses as genuine tenses. Think of the “present tense” as the null tense, if you like.)
I believe there’s a way for presentists to have their Relativistic cake and eat it too. That is, I think there’s a way to believe in the Special and General theories of Relativity (henceforth, I’ll refer to both as ‘Relativity’) while remaining a devout presentist. In order to do so, however, one does have to believe that these theories have been wrongly interpreted.
The idea is this: There is but one moment of time; this moment, the present moment. There were none before it, there will be none after it. At this single moment, there is a four dimensional space of variable curvature, at whose points exist everything that we perceive and interact with; everything, in a word, that we ordinarily take to exist in space-time. The only error of the ordinary conception lies in the belief that the fourth dimension is time. Time, on tenseless presentism, essentially involves the idea that ‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’ are irreducibly tensed notions; granted, entities may be ordered in the fourth dimension by relations of increasing entropy and whatnot, but that is not what ‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’ come to. It is the way that our experiences are laid out four-dimensionally that gives rise to our belief that the fourth dimension is time, and to experience it as time, even though it really isn’t. Nevertheless, these experiences give rise to intuitions about time, tense, and how the former involves the latter, and thus it is only tense that could underwrite the existence of real ‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’ relations, though on this view no such relations actually obtain.
In contrast to presentist views that treat Relativity as empirically adequate but false–either by regarding it as not describing a real structure, or by privileging some reference frame as the real present–tenseless presentism does neither of these things. Relativity does describe a real structure, and none of the reference frames within it are privileged, it’s just that we have wrongly interpreted the fourth dimension of this instantaneous space temporally. Even though it is treated different mathematically from the other dimensions, on this view that doesn’t make it a dimension of time, whatever else it may make it.
This version of presentism might not seem appealing, for it lacks the (alleged) virtue of more common versions of presentism, namely that they accommodate our (alleged) intuition that time really does pass, and that this passage is as we experience it to be. Still, tenseless presentism does respect our (alleged) intuition that tense is essential to genuine ‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’ relations, and to all appearances it has the definite virtue of not conflicting with accepted physical theory. So if you find presentism compelling and value the maximal consistency of one’s metaphysical views with science more highly than the (alleged) common sense intuition that our experience of time is veridical, I think tenseless presentism is the way to go.
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Ways Modality Could Be
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In this post I want to introduce the idea of a higher-order modal logic—not a modal logic for higher-order predicate logic, but rather a logic of higher-order modalities. “What is a higher-order modality?”, you might be wondering. Well, if a first-order modality is a way that some entity could have been—whether it is a mereological atom, or a mereological complex, or the universe as a whole—a higher-order modality is a way that a first-order modality could have been. First-order modality is modeled in term of a space of possible worlds—a set of worlds structured by an accessibility relation, i.e., a relation of relative possibility—each world representing a way that the entire universe could have been. A second-order modality would be modeled in terms of a space of spaces of (first-order) possible worlds, each space representing a way that the entire space of (first-order) possible worlds could have been. And just as there is a unique actual world which represents the way things really are, there is a unique actual space which represents the way that first-order modality actually is.
Why, though, should we adopt a framework like this? To motivate it, consider the fact that people have mutually conflicting intuitions about what the space of all (first-order) possible worlds is like. Does God exist in all, none, or only some worlds? Or consider the famous dispute between Platonists and nominalists concerning predication. Platonists think that at least some predications can be true only if objects exemplify properties, and nominalists deny this. They think that there are no properties, but that predications can still be true. For the one party, some predications essentially involve properties, and for the other none do. Platonism, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, is necessarily false. The same goes for nominalism. Either some predications essentially involve properties or none do. On the face of it, this is problematic for the view that conceivability implies possibility: Platonism and nominalism have both been believed, and by many very able philosophers at that. What is believed is conceivable in some sense, otherwise such “beliefs” would have no content. So both positions are conceivable, but only one is possible. Either way, conceivability doesn’t imply possibility.
But maybe that’s not quite true. Perhaps, though only one of these positions is actually true, and hence first-order possible, both views are second-order possible. So maybe conceivability does imply possibility—at some order or other. Related considerations might apply to semantic content and possibility: If we can coherently mean something, it can be the case—at some order or other.
And what is the accessibility relation itself like? Presumably it is reflexive, but is it also symmetric, or transitive? And whichever of these properties it may or may not have, could that itself have been different? Could at least some rival modal logics represent ways that first-order modality could have been?
To be clear, the claim is not just that some things which are possible or necessary might not have been so, but rather that the nature or structure of actual modality could have been different. Even if the accessibility relation is actually both symmetric and transitive, maybe it could have (second-order) been otherwise: There is a (second-order) possible space of worlds in which it is different, where it fails to be symmetric, or transitive. We must, therefore, introduce the notion of a higher-order accessibility relation, one that in this case relates spaces of first-order worlds. The question then arises as to whether that relation is symmetric, or transitive. We can then consider third-order modalities, spaces of spaces of spaces of possible worlds, where the second-order accessibility relation differs from how it actually is. I can see no reason why there should be a limit to this hierarchy of higher-order modalities, any more than I can see a reason why there should be a limit to the hierarchy of higher-order properties.
The accessibility relation is not the only thing that might be thought to vary between spaces of worlds: Perhaps the contents of the spaces can vary as well. While I presume that the contents of the worlds themselves remain constant—it makes doubtful sense to suppose that in one space an object o exists in w_1 and in another space o doesn’t exist in w_1—we may suppose that the spaces differ as to which worlds they contain. Thus we might have a higher-order analogue of a variable-domain modal logic.
I do not expect this kind of framework to settle the issue of how modality at any order actually is—no more than I expect ordinary first-order modal logic to settle (aside from first-order necessary truths) what is actually the case. What goes for the actual world goes for the actual space of worlds, and for all higher-order spaces of spaces. What I do hope for is that it will, if it proves to be coherent, help to clarify the terms of the debate about the way modality is—to help us to state the issues, and to see their interrelations, as clearly as we can.
I think that’s enough for this time. I’ll leave the further development of such a framework for another occasion–or occasions—provided that you, my readers, think it merits further development.
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Hard Compatibilism?
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Hard Compatibilism?
Incompatibilism is the view that free will is incompatible with determinism; compatibilism is the view that it is compatible with it. Libertarianism is the combination of of incompatibilism with the view that determinism is false, hard determinism is the combination of incompatibilism with the view that determinism is true. Hard incompatiblism is the view the free will is compatible neither with determinism nor with indeterminism. By considerations of symmetry, there ought to be a sixth view, hard compatibilism, which holds that free will is compatible both with determinism and with indeterminism, though as far as I know it has not found any defenders. But it seems to me to be a view no less plausible than any of the others, and a good deal more plausible than hard determinism and hard incompatibilism.
My own view is that the debate over the compatibility of free will with determinism would be better construed as a debate over the compatibility of moral responsibility with determinism, because I think that free will and moral responsibility might come apart; incompatibilists might be right about free will, but moral responsibility can still be taken to be compatible with determinism. However, if someone disagrees with me about that, they could say that my view on what’s necessary for morally responsible choice applies to free will as well, and so that both free will and moral responsibility are compatible with both determinism and indeterminism.
What is it that’s required for morally responsible choice? There may be many things, and what’s specifically required might vary between circumstances, but I think it primarily includes an agent’s being able to deliberate, and to do so without coercion, to clear-headed and rational, to understand the difference between what’s morally right and what’s morally wrong, and to have the ability to do as they wish. The important point is that none of these things seems to require the truth either of determinism or of indeterminism. Granted, they require that if a possible world is indeterministic it can’t also be massively irregular in its behavior, but I don’t know of any good reason to think that an indeterministic world would have to be. Thus for all I can see a priori, some possible worlds may be deterministic and others indeterministic, and there may be morally responsible agents in both kinds of worlds.
I will close, then, with two questions: First, has anyone defended hard compatibilism in the free will literature? Second, even if they have, why does it seem to have found so few defenders? For it seems to me to be a position eminently worthy of defense, and if it’s not, I’d like to know why.
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Climate Change (Infographic)
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Allison Lee has shared an infographic on climate change with us. Thanks Allison!
Created by: Learnstuff.com
Original Infographic: Here
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Looking for Guest Bloggers
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For a while my blog Philosophical Pontifications and this blog have, unfortunately, been primarily monologues. In the interest of starting more conversations, both about philosophy and the humanities in general, I’ve decided to look for guest bloggers. You can contribute one post, a series of posts, or even become a regular contributor–it’s entirely up to you. Contributions about philosophy will be posted on both blogs, and contributions on other sub-disciplines of the humanities will be posted only at Scholardarity. If you’re interested, you can email me with a post idea or rough draft at jlzarri@scholardarity.com.
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The Nature of Analytic Metaphysics
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The Nature of Analytic Metaphysics
As he was leaving a philosophy conference in a nearby possible world, one of my counterparts overheard the following conversation:
Smith: Great job on your presentation on the problem of the many! You almost convinced me to give up on multipleism.
Jones: Glad to hear it! How many of you did I almost convince?
Smith: Ha-ha. Well, anyhow, I hope you have a good weekend!
Jones: (Chuckles to himself)
Smith: What’s so funny?
Jones: Uhh…nothing.
Smith: C’mon, out with it.
Jones: Well, I never thought about it before, but it just occurred to me that we call Saturday and Sunday ‘the weekend’ when Sunday is really the first day of the week. It’s a little incongruous to count the first day of the week as a part of its end, isn’t it?
Smith: Hmm…that’s interesting. I guess I always thought of Monday as the first day of the week.
Jones: Ah, a clash of intuitions! How…usual—for us, anyway. Perhaps I think Sunday is the first day of the week because I’m Anglican, and you think Monday is because you’re agnostic?
Smith: Wait a minute…“intuitions”? Are you saying you’re a realist about “days of the week”?
Jones: Well, yes. Why wouldn’t I be? After all, today is Friday, right? And Friday is a day of the week. So, since it’s true that today is Friday…
Smith: A semantic argument? Really? Next thing you know you’ll be telling me you think holes exist too! “After all, Swiss cheese is full of holes. So, since it’s true that Swiss cheese has holes in it…”
Jones: Very funny. But a parody isn’t a counterargument.
Smith: Ok, how about this: Suppose God creates a universe out of nothing—or, as I would be more inclined to believe, that it springs into existence uncaused—lasts for a single day, and then completely vanishes. If there truly are “days of the week,” what day of the week would it have been?
Jones: Two points. First: I’m not sure that being (some particular) day of the week is an intrinsic property of a span of time. In fact, I doubt it. But let’s pretend it is. Why couldn’t it just be a contingent fact about a span of time that it’s a certain day of the week? There may be many possible worlds that answer to your description, some being intrinsic physical duplicates of each other. Maybe being Sunday, for example, is a non-physical, non-supervenient property that is instantiated in some of these worlds and not others. Maybe God just chooses at random what day of the week to make it in those worlds. Again, I doubt it, but I don’t think it’s conceptually incoherent. Second: Suppose, as I take to be more probable, that that what day of the week it is is supervenient on, or constituted by, certain of our social practices. In that case, what day of the week it is—if any—would in your scenario depend on whether there are people around in your short-lived universe. If there are, and they had false memories which concerned the appropriate social practices, what day of the week it was would be determined by the content of their false memories, and also by what they did during that one day—which days they marked on their calendars, for instance. Your thought experiment, I think, only seems to pose a problem for me because your description of the universe is under-specified.
Smith: Wow, you’re really taking this seriously! Ok, I’ll play along. Let’s say there really are days of the week. It still doesn’t follow that there’s a fact of the matter about which day—Sunday or Monday—is the first day of the week. Any member of any group can be the first, or second, or third…on an arbitrary ordering. But you seem to think that Sunday is “objectively” the first day of the week. And what I’d like to know is what you think it is that makes it true that Sunday, rather than Monday—or any other day—is really the first day of the week.
Jones: Does something have to make it true that Sunday’s the first day? Maybe it just is! “Explanations come to an end somewhere.” But as it turns out I do think there’s an account to be had: As I said before, I think that what day of the week it is is determined by social convention. Why then couldn’t it also determine which day is the first?
Smith: Social convention might determine it, if it could first determine what being first comes to in this context.
Jones: I think it can. As long as ‘first’, or some equivalent word, is already in use, we can say that a day is the first day of the week iff most other members of one’s society, understanding that they are participating in a social convention, agree to call it ‘the first day of the week’. Given my supposition that the word ‘first’ is already meaningful, my account is non-circular.
Smith: Non-circular, but maybe not non-contentious. Let’s “get medieval” and make some distinctions. Call the view—or the apparent view—that Sunday is the first day of the week ‘Sundayism,’ and the (apparently) rival view ‘Mondayism.’ Now, we can distinguish two versions of each view. ‘Strong Sundayism’ is the view that Sunday is essentially the first day of the week, and ‘weak Sundayism’ is the view that it is only contingently the first. Correspondingly, we also have strong Mondayism and weak Mondayism…
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The conversation continued for quite some time. When it was finally over, my counterpart left feeling privileged to have overheard what he rightly suspected to be the beginning of one of the great metaphysical debates of his time. To some the dispute between Sundayists, Mondayists, and their anti-realist critics seemed interminable, impractical, or at least a bit odd. But the philosophers who were involved rested easy, secure in their conviction that they were doing their part by making a small but important contribution to the advancement of human knowledge.
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All My Personal Information Is For-Sale on the Internet!
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All My Personal Information Is For-Sale on the Internet!
I plugged my name into Google and Peoplefinder was offering my name, age, and previous addresses for free, and different levels of my information for a dollar, fifteen dollars, or forty dollars a month, that is, 39.95, of course!
We have returned from the anonymity of the big city to the technology-based everybody-knows-everything-about-everybody of a small village. The question to ask: does this work against being human or is it helpful to it?
Knowledge is power and this is really knowledge without relationship. So power comes very close and relationship is like a paper relationship that is reduced to letter writing or now emails; or a telephone relationship that was reduced to calling each other – or sometimes a one-way imaginary relationship; or a Facebook internet relationship that is also virtual and somewhat unreal unless it adds and deepens the quality of a real and living relationship.
After reading Bill Keller’s OP-ED piece, the “Invasion of the Data Snatchers,” (NYT 1/14/2013, p. A21) I realize that it is really not the case that everybody knows everything about everybody: things the government does are classified and top-secret and can remain so for twenty years or more at a time. That spells untold information about us and very little for the most part about our security state. Bill Keller points that out by mentioning Daniel Solove’s book Nothing to Hide. The government should not say “Trust us. We are the good guys.” Checks and balances have to be strong so that individuals are not trampled and undone by the concentration of power on top. That has been one ingredient in the freedom we enjoy in our country.
This power imbalance is not the only way the people at the grass roots become dis-empowered: racism divides us, our classes do, that is, those who have money and those who don’t, and in a strange way our political parties now function that way. Perhaps the old tactic of divide and conquer has also been translated into that of divide and rule, but perhaps the division of the parties has only paralyzed the two chambers of our representative government, the security state gobbles up more and more power.
What do you think?
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