Truthbearers and truthmakers

According to my commenter Anthony, "reality exists". I assume this is a reference to Ayn Rand's principle that 'existence exists'.  His idea seems to be that when we assert anything, what we assert must exist. Therefore we cannot assert anything false, for there is no state of affairs corresponding to a false statement.  If I utter 'Anthony is sitting', and Anthony is standing, there can be no state of affairs corresponding to my utterance. Therefore I cannot state anything.  The utterance exists, but what it tries to state does not.

There are many problems with this idea.  For every true statement, there is a corresponding negation.  Assume that Anthony is standing, and so the sentence 'Anthony is standing' states something true.  What about 'Anthony is not standing'?  It cannot be true, for it cannot be true that Anthony is both standing and not standing. But it cannot be false, for if this 'objectivist' account is true, there are no false statements.  Yet it seems to be a statement for all that.  If I can meaningfully assert that Anthony is standing, why can I not equally deny that?

What about beliefs?  Can I believe that Anthony is not standing, when he is standing?  Apparently not, for the object of my belief is a state of affairs (Anthony-not-standing) that has no existence, and according to Rand, only existence exists.  So I believe nothing.  Only when Anthony sits down can I have such a belief.

What about questions?  I ask 'is Anthony standing?'.  The person who says 'yes' has agreed to something.  The one who says 'no' has disagreed with the same thing, and so disagreed with something that exists.  So you can say 'no' to a true statement, yet you cannot make the corresponding negation.  You can say 'no' to 'is Anthony standing?', but you cannot say that Anthony is not standing.  That is quite puzzling.

The Stoic philosophers resolved the problem by distinguishing between utterance (phone) which may be mere noise, e.g. 'arxas grexurgh', articulate speech (lexis) which may be meaningless, e.g. 'green is happy', and discourse (logos) which is meaningful speech.  They also gave the name lekton to that which is signified by meaningful speech.  Lekton is derived from the Greek verb legein, which signifies 'to mean' as well as 'to say' (somewhat like that Latin dico).

Sextus Empiricus* gives the most complete account of their theory:

The Stoics say that three things are linked together, that which is signified, that which signifies, and the existing thing. That which signifies is the utterance, e.g. 'Dion'. What is signified is the thing indicated by the utterance and which we apprehend as subsisting with our thought, but the barbarians [i.e. non-Greek speaking] do not understand, although they hear the utterance. The existing thing is that which exists outside, e.g. Dion himself. Of these, two are corporeal, i.e. utterance and the existing thing, while one is incorporeal, i.e. what is signified, i.e. the lekton, which is true or false.

Thus we can distinguish between the state of affairs asserted by 'Anthony is standing', which some modern philosophers call the truthmaker, and the lekton, which some modern philosophers call the truthbearer.  The truthmaker exists in reality, given that Anthony is standing.  No truthmaker exists for 'Anthony is not standing'.  The truthbearer, by contrast, is an immaterial, nonphysical entity, the meaning of 'Anthony is standing'.  This has the value true.  A truthbearer also exists for 'Anthony is not standing', but that has the value false.

There is nothing in Rand's theory that precludes the existence of such non-physical truthbearers or lekta. So long as such non-physical things exist, they are a form of reality (albeit a non-physical form).  I don't know, of course, whether Rand's theory does preclude non-physical things.  But if it does, it faces the difficulty of explaining statements which are false.

*Adv. Math. viii 11, 12.

What does not agree with reality, does not exist.

We might have got there at last with Anthony, who now says "what does not agree with reality, does not exist".  I rather thought it was heading in that direction.  What a false statement asserts, does not agree with reality.  "Snow is black" says that snow is black. But snow being black does not agree with reality. Ergo, snow being black does not exist.  Ergo, "snow is black" does not state anything at all, for if it did, it would have to express a state of affairs that is not real, a non-enity, a nullity, a void.  Ergo, there are no false statements: all statements are true.

Nailed it at last.

Bad music night: cod gaelic

It's Friday and bad music is with us again!!!  This week, cods scots and cod irish music.  Plenty to choose from, but we'll start with Killarney, by Michael William Balfe (1808-1870), sung by John McCormack.  Of Balfe, the wonderful Oxford Companion to Music rather back-handedly says he had "an instinct for easy-flowing melody, unembarrassed by any subtleties of harmony or orchestration".  See what you think.  I think it's absolutely hideous, as is Roamin' in the Gloamin', in this version by Harry Lauder.  Billy Connolly is very rude about this ('singing shortbread tins'), somewhat unfairly given that Lauder really was Scots, although he soon moved to London (and lived in our road for a bit) to make his fortune.  (Also what is this thing about 'the Blue Misty Hills of Tyree?' at 1:30? A Google search reveals only Connolly's version. Was there ever really such a song?)

Nor must we omit the awful and hideous Donald where's your troosers.  And finally, something slightly (but only slightly) more authentic, some Jimmy Shand.  I saw a pile of Jimmy Shand 78s in a junk shop years ago, and always regret not buying them.

The Joy of Antique Wikipedia Entries

There is a nice piece at Big Think on The Joy of Antique Wikipedia Entries.

It’s sheer magic: flyblown tomes you'd otherwise never encounter are suddenly thrust under your nose. People and events with zero impact on the modern world somehow become relevant again. Need to learn about New Hampshire conchologist Augustus Addison Gould? Of course you don’t, but thanks to the zombified 1911 Britannica, you can!

My father was obsessed with encyclopedias so I grew up in a house that was heaving to the rafters with all kinds of them.  There were even some volumes of the very first Britannica lying around in the stair cupboard.  So I appreciate the sentiments.  But it's a bit disappointing when a hundred year old source is the only information on the subject, as I pointed out here and here.  It's also irritating, as I have said hundreds of time, that Wikipedia is celebrated as some mystical magical emergentist phenomenon that has produced the sum of human knowledge by the underlabour of millions of uneducated volunteers.  This is simply not true, as I have argued.

And disappointing, again, that the horribly flawed Nature study is still being cited as evidence of Wikipedia accuracy.

William Kane Craig

Buddy Kane is a fictional character in the film ‘American Beauty’. He is an extremely successful estate agent, the "king" of real estate, who has persuaded many people to buy the homes that he is an agent for. William Lane Craig is a character in real life. He is an extremely successful theologian and public speaker who has persuaded many people to buy the claims of fundamentalist and literalist Christianity that he is a spokesman for.

Some questions for Anthony

Some questions for Anthony, who is still not convinced that any statements are false, yet (paradoxically) seems inclined to disagree with absolutely anything I say. I.e. for pretty much any x that I say, he strongly disagrees with x, yet will not admit that x is false (for he sees that if he says that what I say is false, he will have contradicted himself, given his implicit position that no statement is false, not even the statements of mine that he disagrees with). Well, some more questions for him.

Anthony, please remain seated (I assume you are sitting at a computer terminal while you are reading this).

1. Do you agree that ‘Anthony is sitting’ is true?

Now stand up, please.

2. Do you agree that ‘Anthony is sitting’ is no longer true?

3. If so, do you also agree that ‘Anthony is sitting’ is now false?

Craig on an infinite old universe

I listened to some of the podcast of the Craig-Law debate.  Craig's argument is in stages.  (1) An argument that the world had a beginning in time. (2) That the world therefore had a creator (3) that this creator is good (4) that this good creator is the very being whose son is the Jesus who was resurrected.

Taking the first, I was surprised by his arguments about an infinitely old universe.  He seemed to be arguing that there are parodoxes associated with a denumerable infinity. For example, if you take away all the odd numbers, you are left with infinitely many even numbers, so an infinity subtracted from an infinity still equals infinity.  Is this a paradox, or just a feature of infinite domains?  He seems to acknowledge this, but then says that this means that infinity is simply a mental construct, and nothing real.  Therefore an infinitely old universe, which would have to be real, cannot exist.  That is also odd.  Most mathematicians, who are Platonists to the core, would hold that the natural numbers are real, but have no difficulty with the 'features' associated with a denumerable infinity. 

Did anyone else find this odd?

Craig Law podcast

Is here.

On living forever

A thoughtful post from the Maverick here.

The problem is not that our lives are short; the problem is that we are in time at all. No matter how long a life extends it is still a life in time, a life in which the past is no longer, the future not yet, and the present a passing away. This problem, the problem of the transitoriness of life, cannot be solved by life extension even if, per impossibile, physical immortality were possible. This problem of the transitoriness and vanity of life is one that religion addresses.

I'm sure he knows the bit where Wittgenstein asks rhetorically (at the end of the Tractatus, I don’t have the reference with me) whether any problem is solved by the idea of my living forever.

Law vs Craig update

I didn’t make it to the debate at Westminster last night, having been lazy and left it too late to get tickets. You can get a flavour from the comments here, though, and a podcast will be available soon. The consensus seems to be the Law lost the argument because he did not even attempt to reply to Craig’s ‘kalam’ argument (The kalam argument is that the universe has a beginning, that everything has a cause for beginning, and that the cause is God. I believe Aquinas rejects this argument). Law’s argument was that if God exists at all, he must be an evil God, and therefore Craig’s god (who is perfectly good) does not exist. I argued in an earlier post that perhaps God is not fair, in leaving many clues (e.g. dinosaur bones) that suggest that the universe was designed in a different way that he has said it was designed, and thus designed it in a way that invites punishment of the inquisitive and intelligent.

Further update: Stephen Law has now posted his version of the debate on his site, with the following sections, with transcripts of his opening speech, and his criticism of Craig's moral and Resurrection arguments.

I summarise Law’s opening speech as follows. Law begins with the standard argument from evil, including a graphic description of the suffering that has existed in the world. If Professor Craig’s god exists, there must be, not just some reason, but an entirely adequate reason for every last ounce of all this suffering and horror.
He turns to an interesting twist on this argument (I don’t know whether this is and original twist or not, I shall ask). An evil god hypothesis is as well supported by Professor Craig’s cosmological and fine-tuning arguments as is belief in his good god hypotheses. Yet, if you believe in an evil god, you face the mirror problem of explaining why there’s so very much good. But if the evil god argument is absurd, so is the good God. (This is essentially an appeal to identical logical form, which we at Beyond Necessity like very much).

He forestalls an objection. Some Christians try to explain certain evils by saying that, being good, god gave us free will. Law flips this around. Why couldn’t the evil god have given us free will in order to choose evil? By means of similar ‘flipping’ arguments, he argues “if the evil god hypothesis can, solely on the basis of observational evidence, be ruled out as highly unlikely, why can’t we similarly rule out the good god hypothesis?”. He concludes “That’s the challenge I am setting Professor Craig tonight. To explain why belief in a good god is, on the basis of the available evidence and arguments, not just a bit more reasonable than belief in an evil god, but very significantly more reasonable.”
It seems clear from this that the Facebook commenters here did not understand Law’s point. One of them says “The kalam was not challenged once, only the moral nature of the Creator of the cosmos”, as though this was an objection, and quotes Craig as saying several times that “it’s a strange form of atheism that holds to the existence of an uncaused, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, powerful, transcendent and personal being who just isn’t morally perfect”.

This is not a reply to Law’s argument. As Law makes clear above, his evil god argument applies equally to the kalam argument as to the fine tuning argument. Law is not challenging these arguments themselves, but rather challenging the fact that they do not support the existence of an uncaused, immaterial, timeless, spaceless being who is good, rather than evil.

Do false statements exist?

Commenter Anthony questions whether false statements exist, and says

In order for me to concede that false statements exist, I would need clarification of what is meant by "statements" and what is meant in saying that they "exist". If the answer I receive is "they just do" or "most people accept that they do", you can argue all you want about "burden of proof", but I will not be convinced, any more than I would be convinced by the same "arguments", that "red unicorns exist".

OK then.  Starting with the definitions.  There are various definitions of 'statement' but I will go with 'declarative sentence' for this one.  As for 'exists', I will read 'false statements exist' as equivalent to 'some statements are false'.  See my earlier remarks about Brentano equivalence.

So we need to demonstrate to Anthony's satisfaction that some declarative sentences are false.  That is easy.  The sentences "The sky is red" is a declarative sentence, and it is false.  So, some declarative sentences (i.e. at least one) are false.  If Anthony denies that "The sky is red" is false, there is an equally easy reply.  If you deny something, you are denying that it is true. But if you are right in denying this, it must be false. So in order to make the objection at all, you have to concede that at least one declarative sentence, in this case "'The sky is red' is false" is false, and thus concede the point.  More generally, to affirm "no declarative sentence is false" is to deny "some declarative sentence is false". But if that denial is right, "'some declarative sentence is false' is false" is true, and so at least one declarative sentence is false, namely "no declarative sentence is false".  Slightly more formally:

(1) No declarative sentence is false (assumption)
(2) "Some declarative sentence is false" is false (E and I are contradictory opposites)
(3) "Some declarative sentence is false" is a declarative sentence (definition)
(4) Some declarative sentence is false (substitution)
(5) Contradiction (1 and 4)

I doubt this will be the end of the matter.

Hot chicks explain philosophy

I didn't realise these were on the internet.  This one is pretty straightforward*. A chick in a bikini says "To make abstractions hold in reality is to destroy reality".  It's Hegel (Vorlesungen über der Geschichte der Philosophie, Berlin, 1836), but that's not the point. It's Hegel as quoted by an attractive girl in a bikini.  It's a setup: the intended point is that hot chicks in bikinis and profound Germanic philosophy are an inappropriate combination. But why?  Is it the bikinis, or the hotness, or both?

This one is more difficult.  It looks like a setup again, particularly when she gets to the definition of Philosophy: "Philosophy comes from 'Philo', to love, and 'sophy', hearing yourself talk".  But then the same person gave us this, which appears to be entirely serious, even when she says "what the concept of God comes down to is that God is a concept".  There is no bikini, but there is a fair amount of pouting.  Or this - more existence of God plus cleavage. Is the combination of the ontological argument plus pouting and beauty appropriate?  **

Is physical ugliness the only suitable handmaiden of philosophy, and is physical attractiveness a distraction?  That would be the traditional view. Aristotle was reproached for paying attention to his clothing, as though attention to physical appearance was an bad thing in a philosopher.  Kant was said to be so ugly that his face was 'a reproach to physiognomy', as though this did not matter, even a good thing.  But our modern view is more enlightened. There really shouldn't be anything inappropriate about quoting Hegel, dressed in a bikini.  Why does it seem there is?

But enough of that.  I'll leave the problem to Bill Vallicella, who we know lurks around here occasionally, and has more Platonistic tendencies.

* Thanks to commenter 'The Blind Dog' for reminding me of this.
**This is nothing to do with gender, by the way, and the same applies to the idea of any of these guys deconstructing Wittgenstein.

Bad music night: La Gasolina

My previous examples of bad music were mostly things I have a soft spot for.  It is very difficult to find examples of really bad music.  Here is an exception: Daddy Yankee- La Gasolina.  I really hate this.  I hate it beyond hate itself. The female members of my family insist on playing it in the car.  I tell them it is forbidden and that the patriarch should have authority in the family, but they do not listen.  They do not understand how very awful it is. 

The words are bad - the whole song appears to be the words 'I love petrol' uttered in Spanish, first by a guy, and then by the chicks in the backing band.  But the words are immaterial: the whole point of this series was to find music that is without any possibility of salvation.  Imagine this music without the words, as it would be if there existed a Karaoke backing version (hopefully not).  Exactly.  It is unembarrassed by any modulation, any harmonic shift, any progression to different tonal environment.  It is simply horrible beyond words. 

The badness of this is fundamentally similar to the badness of 'modern jazz', about which I have been meaning to talk for a while. Perhaps more next week.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Dangerous children's books

Stephen Law is writing a children's book.  I was entertained by this part

The discovery that electricity is what makes our muscles move was discovered a long time ago – back in 1791, by Luigi Alysio Galvaniby. He found that the muscles of dead frogs twitched when they were struck by an electric spark.
In fact, when someone’s heart stops beating, doctors sometimes use a machine to restart their heart with a jolt of electricity. The patient is brought back to life with an electric shock.
Why does electric shock work? Well, the heart is a big muscle that pumps blood around the body. Your heart beats each time it gets a little electric shock from your brain. So when it stops beating, it can sometimes be restarted with an extra big shock of electricity.
But beware. A big shock of electricity can stop your heart beating forever. Electricity is dangerous stuff.

The writer's train of thought is almost in neon.  Kids, electricity, wires, applying high voltage to body parts, electrocution of young ones, lawsuits against author of children's book, disappearance of any profit from book, possible homelessness etc.

Stephen (judging from the photo on his blog) is from that generation who remember plugs that you could unscrew and thus easily get access to copper wires with high voltage, so you could see which things explode when you electrocute them. First, this is no longer possible, as plugs are just solid plastic now.  Second, kids aren't interested in stuff like electricity any more, except insofar as it powers computers and moronic video games.

Also, why is anyone writing a book for kids, these days?

Paradox and contradiction

Remind me never to contribute to an internet discussion forum on any subject save the most uncontroversial or simple (say, gardening). "No, it is not a paradox. Contradictions do not exist." There are two mistakes here.

(1) Mistake one is that the existence of a paradox implies the existence of a contradiction. Not so. A paradox involves an apparent contradiction, i.e. two statements that appear to contradict. Thus a paradox does not imply a contradiction any more than any statement of the form 'it appears that p' implies a statement of the form 'p'. For the antecedent can be true with the consequent false. It can appear that the sun is going round the earth, without the sun going round the earth.

(2) Mistake two is that contradictions do not exist. Not so.  A contradiction is two statements, one of which denies the other.  Since such pairs of statements exist, it follows that contradictions exist.  For example, the statements 'the earth is flat' and 'the earth is not flat' are a contradiction. The statements exist, ergo etc.  Probably the claimant meant that no state of affairs expressed by a contradiction exists, which is true, if you believe the Principle of Contradiction.

Three million dollar Wikipedia

Jay Walsh of the Wikimedia foundation writes

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – October 5, 2011 – The Wikimedia Foundation announced today it has been awarded the largest-ever grant in its history: $3.6 million from the Stanton Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to successfully serve their growing readership. The Wikimedia projects currently reach more than 422 million unique visitors around the world every month (comScore, August 2011), making Wikipedia the fifth most-popular website in the world. The grant will fund development of a new editing interface that will make it possible for people to easily edit Wikipedia without needing to learn special wiki syntax. It will also support development of new technical features to make Wikimedia a friendlier and more understandable environment for new editors.

Goodness.  Nearly four million dollars, but how is that going to solve the problem of people being scared off by a site that coddles vandals and trolls, insults experts, and is generally run by pricks?

Arguments from similarity

I thought some more about the evolution argument I discussed yesterday, and decided that, the argument is sufficiently general to be addressed by general logical principles, and does not require detailed knowledge of the science of DNA. The argument is that Unqualified appeals to similarity do not demonstrate common descent any more than they demonstrate common design. Which is absolutely correct. The argument “X’s are similar, therefore X’s have a common descent” lacks a middle, and is therefore invalid. To make it valid, we need a premiss that connects the term ‘similar’ to the term ‘have a common descent’. The premiss ‘X’s that are similar have a common descent’ would clearly do, but is clearly untrue. For example, pebbles that have been washed over by the tide for many years are all similar in that they are smooth, but they have no common descent. Snowflakes all display a common form, but have no common descent, etc.

The real principle we need to appeal to is that things which are similar are (or are highly likely to be) similar by a common nature or cause. The scholastics had a wonderful word for this: ratio, which has a common meaning that cannot be translated by any single word, but which in the present context would be translated by ‘reason’ or even ‘explanation’. When we see things with an identical or similar structure, there should be a explanation or reason for this. Pebbles washed by the tide are smooth for the very reason that they are washed by the tide, being knocked against other pebbles, smoothing the pointy bits. Snowflakes are similar because they are all water, which has a consistent molecular structure (at least I assume so, otherwise I’ll leave this to experts).

Primates and humans share similar DNA. There should be a reason for this. One reason is that God made the DNA similar. But is there a simpler explanation? Surely there is. Science tells us that DNA is a highly complex molecule. Common experience tells us that DNA is very ‘weak’ – it degrades quickly outside its natural environment, which is a living organism. So DNA cannot randomly occur. We also know, from common experience, that it can occur by reproduction. Humans reproduce other humans, primates reproduce primates, plants reproduce plants. (I have a spider plant in the attic that I have replicated for more than 20 years by the usual well-understood techniques). So, one simple explanation for the similarity of DNA is that it replicates itself. It reproduces its form in matter (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen etc. molecules).

Thus, the simplest explanation of the similarity of form of DNA is by replication or reproduction. This does not require invoking a designer who caused the similarity.

Did Apple change our lives?

A nice article yesterday in the mail, by once young fogey, now officially old fogey, A.N.Wilson.

Einstein fundamentally altered how we look at the universe. Jobs merely developed nice-looking gadgetry which enabled us to do things we did already – listening to music, sending messages and garnering information.

Whereas we once looked information up in a book, we now search for the (often inaccurate) information online. Whereas we once sent telegrams, we now send emails. Yes, Steve Jobs made shopping online easier and more attractive. But it is still only shopping.

Evidence for evolution?

An interesting article here.  Interesting because, though apparently by a Christian fundamentalist anti-evolutionist, who in my experience are not the most cogent or reasonable of apologists, it does indeed appear cogently and reasonably written.  For example, he says "Unqualified appeals to similarity do not demonstrate common descent any more than they demonstrate common design".

Since I know practically nothing about evolution, and rarely watch nature programs mainly because I dislike animals (smelly, poor conversationalists), I leave it to others to comment.

The Politics of Knowledge

Any book about Wikipedia must confront the issue of what Larry Sanger has called The Politics of Knowledge.  There is a nice piece by him in The Edge which gives you the general flavour.  Should we be told what knowledge we need?  Or do we know what we need already?  It's  a difficult paradox, that Plato would have appreciated.

Sanger's view is clear:

In the Middle Ages, we were told what we knew by the Church; after the printing press and the Reformation, by state censors and the licensers of publishers; with the rise of liberalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, by publishers themselves, and later by broadcast media—in any case, by a small, elite group of professionals.  But we are now confronting a new politics of knowledge, with the rise of the Internet and particularly of the collaborative Web—the Blogosphere, Wikipedia, Digg, YouTube, and in short every website and type of aggregation that invites all comers to offer their knowledge and their opinions, and to rate content, products, places, and people. It is particularly the aggregation of public opinion that instituted this new politics of knowledge.

We should not be told what we know.  This whole approach to knowledge contrasts strikingly with the view of education that I grew up with, which I shall attempt to characterise, and which I shall try to defend.

When I grew up in 1950s Britain, when broadcasting was under the shadow of a man called John Reith.  Reith's whole philosophy of broadcasting was unashamedly anti-populist or 'elitist' (if you like).  His endeavour was to carry to the greatest number of people everything that was best in every department of human knowledge, endeavour and achievement, and to avoid whatever was harmful.  The arbitrators of 'best' and 'harmful', of course, were the elite group of producers who ran the BBC.  Reith was often criticised for setting out to give the public not what it wanted but what it needed, to which he replied "the answer was that few knew what they wanted, fewer what they needed".  As if to say, the public, the crowd, do not know what they need to know, and so must be told.

So, in the 1950s, there were only three BBC stations, all state-controlled.  There was the 'Light Programme', the most popular, devoted to what is now called 'British Light Music', of which Puffin' Billy and Barwick Green are archetypes (interesting how these tunes are engraved in the collective subconscious of my generation), as well as 'variety shows' and comedy. The "Home Service" was the channel for news, features, and slightly more demanding drama . Finally there was the "Third Programme" which was unashamedly highbrow and 'elitist', consisting of classical music concerts and recitals, and scientific and philosophical talks, poetry readings and classic or 'experimental' plays. Anna Kallin (who naturally has no Wikipedia biography) was responsible for much of the philosophical and cultural programming, of which this page gives you a strong sense.

It's easy to be critical of this approach now.  Yet it had a wonderful effect. It was on the radio, free for anyone to listen to, and brought directly into the living room the contrast between between 'high' and 'popular' culture. The very idea of 'high' culture, and the idea that some kinds of knowledge are better, was made manifest.  It must have inspired many young people to get an education.

If you believe in the distinction between high and popular culture, you cannot avoid the Reithian  approach to broadcasting, or something like it. It is a logical consequence.  Popular culture by definition is what the populace want, or think they want.  High culture by definition is higher and better.  It is what the populace needs, and is what they should want (even though they think they don't want it).  If you believe in the distinction at all, you cannot avoid an 'elitist' approach like this.  That is the Reithian politics of knowledge.

If you don't believe in it, you may as well get the general public to write down what they know, or what they think they know.  That is the Wikipedian politics of knowledge.

Which is right?  I welcome Larry Sanger's views.

Surely

Surely we cannot agree with what the Maverick says here.  Is the word 'surely' a device of literary bluster, to be used when one is unsure about something, or sure about what one has no right to be sure about?  Surely not. 'Surely' frequently occurs in English translations of Aristotle, and practically every sentence of scholastic philosophy contains the word 'patet' (it is clear, obvious) or 'manifeste' (manifestly, clearly) or 'certe' (certainly, surely).  Surely these writers cannot have been unsure in using these words, or sure about what they had no right to be sure about?

Though Bill's point certainly raises the interesting question: why say that something is sure, or certain or obvious, when it clearly is sure or certain or obvious?  Surely it is redundant?  Perhaps it indicates a residual uncertainty after all.  I don't know.

Nothing about ants here, please move on

The blogger statistics are telling me that 270 people have come to this site this year searching for information about ants.  This easily beats the next popular search term, "existential import" (128 searches).  Puzzling in light of the fact that the ranking of this blog for 'ant' on a Google search is about 200th.

I mentioned this oddity before, but I think I now understand the reason.  Of all the 10 billion people in the world, about 128 are interested in existential import.  Since few other blogs or sites have anything about this, all those 128 people have ended up here.  By contrast, probably 60 million of the world's population have some interest in ants - perhaps they like to fry them and eat them, or perhaps they got stung.  Of those 60 million, only 270 managed to get through the 20 or so Google pages before they found this blog.  I.e. everyone who looks for existential import, finds it here.  Only a tiny tiny fraction of the people looking for information about ants will get to here.  But a tiny fraction of a very large number is a number for all that.

Stephen Law versus William Lane Craig

I’m thinking of going to the debate between ‘Christian Apologist’ William Lane Craig, and atheist philosopher Stephen Law:

17th October 2011 from 7:30pm – 10pm
Westminster Central Hall, Storeys Gate, London, SW1H 9NH
Premier Christian Radio Debate on the existence of God against atheist philosopher Stephen Law, who is also editor of the magazine of the Royal Institute of Philosophy THINK.

Law discusses it on his blog in several posts, the latest of which is here. One of the commenters on Stephen’s blog says

This is not being regarded as a game or some dry academic exercise by them. You are there to be beaten, defeated, humiliated and ridiculed, and, by extension, so is the whole atheistic worldview that you represent.

But then again, perhaps not. In what sense one can ‘win’ a debate like this? A show of hands is foolish, given who will be turning up (diehard supporters of Law, diehard supporters of Craig, neither side likely to be convinced by any argument on the opposing side). The only way to ‘win’ at logic is to survive careful analysis of your arguments, performed in a dark and quiet room, for at least five hours, alone. Logic and debate are quite different things, as is obvious from the following comments at an atheist website 

William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian philosopher, apologist, author, and public debater. He is the best debater – on any topic – that I’ve ever heard. As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments.

I.e. it is conceded that Craig is a good debater, yet his arguments are flawed.

Also, I was really not sure who to support. I studied Craig as part of my theology diploma, and I thought his arguments were slippery and crowdpleasing. On the other hand, I have a visceral dislike of atheism. In the end, Michael Sullivan decided it for me. In an excellent post here, he says that “One does not reason to Christianity or reason to Catholicism in the sense that philosophy ever proves (in any sense) that the Christian doctrines are true.”

That is entirely Ockham’s position (as I understand it). So I shall support Law against Craig, as if it mattered. Is Michael right? Well, Thomas thought you could reason to Christianity, and perhaps prove it in some sense. And Phillips has this to say:

Just as in S. Thomas's day there were those who maintained that the existence of God is to be accepted by faith alone, and so is not to be demonstrated, so there are also in our own. It is, in fact, felt by those who take this view to be, in some sort, impious to attempt to prove what they firmly believe; and possibly there is mixed with this attitude a kind of false mysticism, as if they had already a kind of direct intuition of God. All that has been said earlier as to the nature of the human intellect and its proper object runs counter to such an idea as this, for we are convinced that we know the immaterial and supersensible by means of the material and sensible; the proper object of man's intellect being the natures of material things. Moreover, it is clear that to say that we know God's existence by faith is to make an assertion which refutes itself, since no one can accept anything on the authority of God, i.e. by faith, who is not first convinced that there is a God. Hence S. Thomas says here in answer to this objection, that the existence of God is not an article of faith, but one of the 'preambula' to the articles of faith, natural knowledge being presupposed by faith, as nature is by grace, and in general that which is perfectible by perfection. (my emphasis)

Music night

For Sarah, who is getting better, I hope. Variations for the Healing of Arinushka by Arvo Pärt.

Is bullshitting the same as lying?

Failing to tell the truth is not necessarily lying.  We can sincerely believe what we are saying, as Augustine says, and thus not intend to deceive, even though what we say happens to be false.  Or we can say what we know to be false, without deceiving, as when our audience knows that it is false, and we know that they know. "Now for the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth".  Conversely, we can tell a big lie by telling the truth, but not the whole truth, and thus deceive in effective ways.

What about bullshitting (the coarse phrase is an American one, which has the same meaning as the now almost archaic defunct British English 'flannel' - to talk evasively)?  Is it lying? I haven't looked at Harry Frankfurt's excellent 'On Bullshit' for some time, but I know he develops a 'theory of bullshit' in a very philosophical way -giving necessary and sufficient conditions of bullshit, and so on.

Looking at it again, it is wonderfully funny.  "Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth." (my emphasis).

Now, Frankfurt claims that the essence of bullshit is a lack of connection to a concern with truth, and  indifference to how things really are.

This is the crux of the distinction between [the bullshitter] and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is  anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.

And he says that "it is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth".

Is that right?  I don't think so.  The essence of bullshit is the project of conveying a falsehood without articulating it.  Proof:  when you spot the falsehood that the bullshitter is attempting to convey, and try and force him (or her, usually him) to articulate it, the bullshitter will immediately move on from that place, to avoid it becoming occupied by the truth.  He, or she, will use various methods and means - sometimes accusations of bad faith, sometimes professing ignorance or misunderstand, and very often a move to a higher level of generality ("let's step back for a minute").  Bullshitters of the unsubtle and unskilled and ephemeral variety frequently descend into complete nonsense.

Therefore, their evident consciousness of the place to avoid - such a consciousness, in fact, that the place becomes clear and obvious, by dint of the trampled ground around it, is proof that they are not unconcerned with the truth, and that they do have an interest in it.

Further proof: nearly all people hate a barefaced lie. This may be because their parents told them it was wrong, perhaps it is part of our genetic code.  It may be simply the fear of being found out.  One liar who lied to me quite recently said to me "I do not think I ever lied to you".  He could not bring himself to say 'I lied'.  Nearly all ordinary liars are bullshitters, on this understanding.

I assume Harry Frankfurt has spent a great deal of his time in an academic department, indeed, a department of philosophy.  Such people have a deep concern for the truth, and generally little reason to lie.  Moreover, their whole training is intended to eliminate the vagueness and unclarity of ordinary discourse.  This may be the cause of his mistake.

Crowdsourcing philosophy

I am starting work on the Wikipedia book.  One of the central themes will be the ideology of crowds: are they mad, or are they wise?  Probably a little bit of both.  Wikipedia is good at handling matters of detail. But as I have said before, if Wikipedia tried to write the decline and fall of the Roman empire, which requires assembling the right 'little facts' in the right order, and placing a narrative around these, the result would be very bad.  I periodically return to the philosophy article itself, looking for evidence of progress.  Here it is at the end of Wikipedia's first year of existence.

The definition of philosophy is a philosophical question in its own right. But for purposes of introducing the concept, we can say that, approximately, it is the study of the meaning and justification of beliefs about the most general, or universal, aspects of things--a study which is carried out not by experimentation or careful observation, but instead typically by formulating problems carefully, offering solutions to them, giving arguments for the solutions, and engaging in dialectic about all of the above. Philosophy studies such concepts as existence, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. It asks questions such as "What is goodness, in general?" and "Is knowledge even possible?" Some famous philosophers include Plato, Aristotle, Rene Descartes, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant.

The article lacks any of the formatting that Wikipedia developed later, and there are no pictures, and it is short. But the definition is as good as you are likely to get for such an abstruse and difficult subject. As it points out " the question "What is philosophy?" is itself, famously, a vexing philosophical question.  That was probably the high point of the article, more than ten years ago.  It has had some spectacular low points, in particular here, when two rather deranged editors took control of the article ("As a consequence of the collapse of colonialism and imperialism in the twentieth century, philosophy now is classified according to three major geographical regions, Western philosophy, Eastern philosophy, and African philosophy").  The worst degradation is prevented largely because of two academically trained editors who try to take care of it. However it seems to be reaching a low point again.  Someone has arranged the article around geographical headings, which makes no sense.  As one of the better editors remarks on the talk page.

I notice some editor(s) have hamhandedly integrated the history sections with the previous "Geographical" sections of the article. Since the geographical sections were very poorly written (i.e., terribly sourced, tendentiously written, riddled with dubious claims, huge WP:UNDUE problems), this has the net effect of seriously degrading the quality of a half-decent section of the article. Can we revert to the prior organization, or substantially rewrite the entire section to repair these huge problems? To put it simply: if you open almost any reference book on philosophy, or encyclopedia article on philosophy, you will see in the corresponding "history" section a far, far better treatment than the eyesore this article is currently burdened with. And such treatments will be substantially closer to the previous "history of western philosophy" section than the current revision. 271828182 (talk) 00:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Take a look at a previous version, ... compare it with the current version, which is barely coherent. Or, as I suggested, compare it to virtually any "history" section of a competent encyclopedia article or reference source on philosophy. The "non-western" sections have always been rubbish, and this just embeds the rubbish front and center. 271828182 (talk) 22:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC) 

Quite.  It makes little sense to organise philosophy geographically.  It is a single subject with a single tradition that begins with the Greeks, passes to the Romans, and to the Western medieval philosophers by way of North Africa, Persia, Moorish Spain and many other places.  The geography and history are interesting, but incidental to the subject matter. As Larry Sanger (who wrote the 2001 version referenced above) wrote in 2004

One has only to compare the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy to Wikipedia's Philosophy section. From the point of view of a specialist, let's just say that Wikipedia needs a lot of work. (Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism by Larry Sanger  Kuro5hin, Fri Dec 31, 2004)

Roundup

A busy week in real life (blogs are not real life, of course). Meanwhile, some links. An excellent, if long, post by Michael Sullivan on ‘narrative’ here.  And the Maverick on consciousness, on truth, and on Kerouac.

Logically ripped off

In an earlier post I argued that the purveyors of New Age mumbo-jumbo depend on logic to further their claims.  Here's an example.  Release Technique, a positive thinking product promises to show you "step by step, how to remove the negative blocks that prevent you from living a fulfilling life of ease and abundance."  The promise is a carefully formulated proposition that involves living a rewarding life, in ease and abundance, i.e. lack of want.  It also promise that "The Release Technique's Self Help Program will help you get control over your health and finances and live in certainty."  It is advertised as "the greatest advancement in the history of behavioral science.

It goes further.  It says "Many graduates have doubled and tripled their income, became a partner with their employer, climbed the corporate ladder, retired wealthy, gained a competitive edge, taken charge of their lives, overcome serious problems, gotten a clear direction in life, and achieve financial freedom. They have gone into business for themselves and are doing spectacularly well! They have moved into brand new homes and have gotten better jobs, become healthier." These are all easily verifiable criteria.

The point being that all this does not depend on abandoning the laws of logic.  On the contrary, the promises have reasonably clear truth conditions, and make claims that could be shown to be true or false, and thus depend for their very meaning and intelligibility on the existence of standard or ordinary logic.

Reasons are given for believing this technique will be effective.  A satisfied customer writes "This is my first encounter with the Release Technique. I feel I have gained a lot from this course, I became aware I had a lot of my hidden agendas, negative thoughts and beliefs that were running my life. As I was releasing, I got more clear and light, feeling more relaxed and more quiet, more peaceful and more serene. I received $425,000 since using the method. Thank you, thank you."  This is a standard part of the scientific method.  Always question the claims being made, and seek evidence of their truth (in this case, the evidence being a customer statement of having made $425,000).

This all justifies our going to the check-out counter here and forking out $279. Though I don't recommend going any further, folks, given what it says in Ripoff Report here.

The point is, scammers rely on ordinary logic to make their claims, and to back them up.  Warning: check the soundness, as well as the validity of their arguments.  A valid argument is one whose premisses cannot be true with the conclusion false.  It can be valid even when the premisses are false.  A sound argument, by contrast, is a valid argument with true premisses.  If you are going to part with $279, go for soundness every time.

So farewell September

Vallicella links to Dinah Washington here. But surely Peggy Lee's version is better. A voice like no other, and the little piano break at 1:13 is exquisite.

Logic and male status

Pamela Gerloff has commented on my earlier post with some remarks that deserve to be taken seriously.  Her main points are as follows (I hope I have summarised them correctly).

1.  That the discussion on this site is  male-dominated.
2. That research (such as by sociolinguist Deborah Tannen) shows that male conversation typically serves a different purpose than female, leading to misunderstanding.
3. Male discussion is characterised by jockeying for position and establishment of status, which is different from how women tend to approach discussion.
4.  Likewise, discussion on this site is about commenters asserting their own status as superior thinkers and logicians and not about fruitful intellectual inquiry.

How do we answer this?  In one sense, it is easy. Logicians are concerned about the validity of arguments alone, and the complaints by the commenters here were about exactly that.  Pamela's arguments simply weren't valid.  Now even if it is correct that the men's comments were motivated by positioning and status, in order to establish themselves as 'superior thinkers and logicians', that hardly invalidates their position.  If an argument is invalid, it is invalid, whatever my motivation in affirming its invalidity.  The reply to Pamela seems clear: her first argument was invalid, and so was her reply to critics, which was a form of ad hominem (addressing the person, not the reasoning).

In another sense it is more difficult.  I am sure Pamela will reply that my objection remains stuck on the rails of 'male logic'.  Calling ad hominem is just another move in the game of patriarchal domination. Why, after all, is it called 'ad hominem' (to the man)?  There is a nice observation by Robin Turner along this line.

If women reject logic and rely solely on feelings, they are left in the weak position of having to argue with feelings. Feeling that something is true does not make it true, and it will not convince anyone else that it is true either. You can say, "I feel X", but the person you are arguing with can just as well reply, "Well I don't." The result is that the argument usually goes nowhere. This is particularly damaging in arguments between men and women, since both sides are likely to go away with their prejudices strengthened; the men think women are subjective, emotional and illogical, and the women think men are impersonal, cold and over-intellectual.

To justify their feelings of hurt at being "beaten" in an argument, the women concerned may go further and dismiss the whole thing as "male logic", as though there were two types of logic, on for men and another for women. This then places the men in an impossible position, since if they attempt to be reasonable, they are accused again of using "male logic", in the same way that if a woman gets upset in an argument, it is taken as proof that she is overly emotional, and hence irrational. This does not only lead to a lack of communication between the sexes, it leads to a lack of communication in which women come off worse, since policy is generally made as the result of argument, not sharing feelings. [link]

Bad music: unreasonable music

As it's been a bit of a New Age week here at Beyond Necessity, and because it's Friday, when we venture into the world of strange and bad music, here is some music people were simply too wasted to get anything right*. We'll start with the 13th Floor Elevators, 60s psychedelic band and stoner heroes.

Ex-bandsman Tommy Hall is on the right, a 66 year old who has spent most of his life dropping acid. "We were trying to get into the results of acid," he says, "to get into the results of the universe." So he made it a rule to drop acid every time someone picked up an instrument. As the  interview says, "it's challenging to comprehend everything he's saying". Why would that be. Hall wrote the sleeve notes for The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, their 1966 album, urging everyone to get away from that boring and narrow old Aristotelian logic.

Actually some of their music does anticipate the music of the 1970s, but not Don't Fall Down, which sounds terrible even if you are very stoned.  This is proof that 'psychedelic drugs' damage the rational parts of the mind.

Moving, on here is Journey by Gentle People, which actually managed 21,000 views.  The original is actually 15 minutes long but that wouldn't fit onto YouTube, which is just as well.  I already pointed out that marijuana destroys the short-term memory, which has a bad effect on logic, but also music, where you get stuck at the repeat bar :|| for ages, similar to driving round Swindon.

Finally something more modern and rappy.  "5 weed songs", of which I only got past the first, and Cypress Hill performing Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk.  Note the endless repetition of the initial motif, supposedly sampled from Grant Green's Down on the Ground, which is also very bad.

*Yes there is something wrong with that sentence.

Objective reality revisited

The proprietor of Maverick Philosopher, who we will call 'Bill', has just posted about my comments on objective reality. Definitely worth reading, but makes me realise my comments (that there is such a thing as 'objective reality') were not entirely consistent with what I have been strenuously maintaining both here and over there,  namely that there is no such thing as objective reality after all.  For example, way back here, or here.

I have argued that there are no truthmakers, otherwise the truth of 'it will be sunny tomorrow' would depend on the existence of a present truthmaker.  But if that truthmaker does exist, then a few seconds later it did exist. But we can't change the past, so we can't change the truthmaker, and since the truthmaker makes the future true, it follows that we can't change the future.  But we can change the future: it is not determinate.  Therefore there are no truthmakers.  Therefore there is no 'objective reality'.

Fortunately Bill failed to spot this irregularity.

Logic: a guy thing?

One of the commenters yesterday apparently suggested that all this obsession with logic is ‘a guy thing’. Hmm. I strenuously try to avoid any form of political correctness, but what if I had asked whether sewing was ‘a girl thing’. Public flogging? Roasting? Actually I know a lot of female logicians, e.g. Catarina Dutilh-Novaes who blogs here, who is not only a logician but a specialist in medieval logic, nothing better than that. The late Elizabeth Anscombe was famous for her rigorous argumentation, so much so that C.S. Lewis (supposedly) abandoned his career as a philosopher theologian for Narnia, after being soundly defeated by her.

In logic and reasoning, there is no male and female, for logic involves thought, and assuming we are thinking (and not spewing out a meaningless word salad), we cannot think illogically.

Thought can never be of anything illogical, since, if it were, we should have to think illogically. . . . It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. —The truth is that we could not say what an ‘illogical’ world would look like. . . . It is as impossible to represent in language anything that ‘contradicts logic’ as it is in geometry to represent by its coordinates a figure that contradicts the laws of space or to give the coordinates of a point that does not exist [Wittgenstein, Tractatus 3.03]

Perhaps there are male/female differences when it comes to the art of persuading. Men persuade in various, often unsubtle ways. Females, and in particularly my wife, persuade by asking questions a bit like those computer dialogue boxes with radio buttons: “Shall we leave at 6:30 or 7:00 tonight, Yes/No”. With the difference that the computer dialogue box has a default marked so that if you hit return, you get the default, and I think there is no female equivalent of this.

Non-Aristotelian states of consciousness

I have been following up Dr. Pamela Gerloff’s post about the ‘Possiblity Paradigm’ with a few comments of my own, most of them on this page. I pointed out a number of logical flaws in her argument, and she has finally replied exactly as I thought she eventually would, by saying “From within your paradigm it appears to be gobbledlygook, and full of logical inconsistences. That's correct, when perceived from within your paradigm,” and “You are trying to understand what I'm saying from within your philosopher/logician's thought framework/paradigm.”

This is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for the purveyor of New Age mumbo-jumbo. If you try to point out any flaw in their reasoning whatsoever, they will simply reply that the flaw is from your ‘logical’ standpoint or ‘paradigm’. It is a limitation of your mind constrained by ordinary logic. And of course there is no reply to that. If your opponent in argumentation refuses to abide by the rules of logic, the argument is over. Except to note that New Ageists nearly always use ‘ordinary’ logic to put forward their arguments. In her original post, Gerloff claims that Lester Levenson exists, and backs up her claim by saying she knows former students of his, which is an obvious appeal to standard scientific reasoning (give evidence). She cites evidence that Lester recovered from apparently incurable cancer as reason for believing the more extraordinary claims, such as being able to withstand nuclear blasts by the power of thought. So she is trying to persuade us using ordinary logic as a first step. Yet as soon as we question her second step, she explains that ‘ordinary’ logic fails. But if that were true, the first step would fail. This is inconsistent.

This reminds me so much of the 1960s and 70s. The 13th Floor Elevators were a 60s band who advocated chemical agents (such as acid and weed) as a gateway to a higher, 'non-Aristotelian' state of consciousness, which would transcend ordinary ‘Aristotelian logic’. I remember many conversations, or what passed for conversations with the smokers of weed and the herb where this very same argument was propounded. Not really arguments, of course. Any substantial logical point was met with that irritating condescending smile of the weeder who is already at the ‘higher state of consciousness’. “You simply don’t understand, man”. The fact being, of course, that marijuana blocks all short-term memory so effectively that any movement from premisses to conclusion – which requires remembering what the premisses were – is impossible.

Objective reality

Some of the more serious minded are getting irritated by this.  Someone called Dr. Pamela Gerloff, who claims to hold a "doctorate in Human Development" from Harvard University tells us that it is possible to cure yourself of cancer, heal other people, fix broken TVs simply by the power of the human mind (or awareness), by "seeing them as perfect".  She quotes, with apparent approval, one practitioner saying "If a nuclear bomb were to go off right now next to you, you wouldn't have to be affected by it."

The comments, both from the ones who find it a little unconvincing, and from others who are more sympathetic, are worth reading.  Philosopher Stephen Law writes "Are you actually suggesting that if we really, really believe we can fly by flapping our arms, and jump of the roof, then we will fly? Surely this takes the "power of positive thinking" too far?!".  Gerloff's reply included this gem:

From my point of view, and in my ongoing experience of life, I do not make the kind of judgments, decisions, and conclusions that you do about what is "objectively real" and what is not. When I say "anything is possible" I mean that in my operative framework of reality, I find it useful to approach the world *as if* anything is possible. It is possible/potentially not possible all at once.

I generally recommend people not to get upset about this sort of thing,  because in nearly all cases, and I think in this one, the problem is a simple logical confusion.  Clearly Gerloff does make the same judgments about what is 'objectively real' as we all do. I am sure she looks carefully when she crosses a busy street, and turns the gas burner off after she finishes cooking, and all those things.

Also, it's clear that even to disagree that there is such a thing as objective reality requires the existence of an objective.  Suppose Gerloff says "there is no objective reality".  Perhaps she means by that, that all reality is personal, or subjective, or constitutes her "operative framework of reality", or something like that.

But then she is saying that it is true that there is no objective reality.  And if I disagree with her (as I do), I have to say that this is false.  And to do that, I have to deny what she is saying.  I.e. whatever it was that she is saying is true, I am saying is false.  So that same thing - the thing she is asserting, and the thing I am denying - has to be common to both of  us.  We both have to get hold of the same proposition or thought or statement in order for her to assert it, and for me to deny it.

So, in order for me to disagree with Gerloff, there has to be an objective reality.   And I do disagree with her. Hence there is an objective reality.

A neutral point of view?

The 'The Neutral Point of View' rule is the second best known rule on Wikipedia. (The first is ‘verifiability, not truth', which I will talk about later). I have been doing some research on how this rule became a part of Wikipedia. An early version was completed by Larry Sanger for Nupedia in November 2000, as part of his editorial policy guidelines. Section D of part III on General Nupedia Policies (‘Lack of Bias’) contains the core idea of the neutrality principle.

Sanger’s test for lack of bias is whether it is difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what view the author holds. This in turn means that “for each controversial view discussed, the author of an article (at a bare minimum) mention various opposing views that are taken seriously by any significant minority of experts (or concerned parties) on the subject”. He adds that, in a final version of an article, “every party to the controversy in question must be able to judge that its views have been fairly presented, or as fairly as is possible in a context in which other, opposing views must also be presented as fairly as possible” (my emphasis).

In a second attempt at such a guideline, the ‘Neutral point of view’ policy drafted in December 2001, he writes “The neutral point of view attempts to present ideas and facts in such a fashion that both supporters and opponents can agree.” And “you should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly”. And “to write without bias (from a neutral point of view) is to write so that articles do not advocate any specific points of view; instead, the different viewpoints in a controversy are all described fairly.” (my emphasis, again).

The principle, as stated, is fundamentally flawed. If one view that p is contrary to another q (meaning that p and q cannot both be true), then it is very easy to determine which view the author holds, on the assumption that he or she is rational, and wants to avoid inconsistency (i.e. avoid asserting two things that cannot both be true). And of course it would be absurd to suppose that an encyclopedia, a source of knowledge, true propositions, should be asserting inconsistent statements.  Thus, the view that the author holds to be true is the one that the article states as true, and all other contrary views must be represented as false, or as mere beliefs.    Sanger's criterion that it should be difficult or impossible for the reader to determine what view the author holds is  impossible to apply.

His use of the term ‘mention’, and ‘fairly’ suggests a way out. We can state what the view is, i.e. truly say what its adherents hold, without saying anything true or false ourselves. For example, the statement ‘Flat earthers hold that the earth is flat’ is true (that’s what they say, after all), even though ‘the earth is flat’ is false, as far as we know.

 But that is no good either, at least not in an encyclopedia. For example, the article on the World Geodetic System opens

The World Geodetic System is a standard for use in cartography, geodesy, and navigation. It comprises a standard coordinate frame for the Earth, a standard spheroidal reference surface (the datum or reference ellipsoid) for raw altitude data, and a gravitational equipotential surface (the geoid) that defines the nominal sea level.

It does not assert that this is what round-earthers say or believe, nor does it mention the views of Flat Earthers at all. Wikipedia, and other encyclopedias, represents mainstream scientific opinion as true, and only represents other significant views by way of true statements about what its adherents believe.

There is exactly the same difficulty with Sanger’s December 2001 version.

If we're going to represent the sum total of "human knowledge"--of what we believe we know, essentially--then we must concede that we will be describing views repugnant to us without asserting that they are false. [my emphasis]

Another way round the difficulty is the idea of including only ‘significant’ views on a subject. Thus, in the Nupedia 2000 policy, Sanger refers to views hold by a ‘significant minority of experts’. In the later Wikipedia 2001 policy he refers to “all different (significant, published) theories on all different topics”. This is better, but still weak, for two reasons. First, the ‘published’ criterion includes all sorts of nonsense. Second, whether a view is significant or not is a value judgment, and thus difficult to verify.

In summary, none of these ways of ensuring neutrality – or rather, getting a bunch of internet amateurs to agree on matters on which there is considerable disagreement, such as Neurolinguistic programming, Pedophilia, The Palestine question or even the name of the British Isles* - were likely to work, and the only solution in past disputes has been simply to ban the disputing parties. It is impossible to assert any proposition without asserting that it is true. Simply mentioning it as a belief of certain people is inappropriate in a reference work. And deferring to mainstream scientific opinion makes it simply a copy of mainstream scientific opinion (which is what an encyclopedia should be anyway).

The 'verifiablity' principle came a bit later.  More tomorrow, or next week.

* A notable and long-running dispute in Wikipedia. The talk page of the British Isles article runs to a whopping 39 archives. Among the protagonists was user ‘Sarah777’, accustomed to saying things like “I'm staggered (not) at how ill-informed some British Nationalist editors are in relation to the history and symbolism of the Union Jack. It is akin to Germans still using the Swastika to represent Germany”. was banned in May 2012 for “total failure to adhere to the most basic principles of editing in a collaborative environment”.

Bad music: so boot if at all

Not that bad, actually, but a necessarily preliminary if we are to tackle the difficult subject of jazz rock.  Here is Kahimi Karie singing Good Morning World.  I first heard this in 1995 somewhere over the Atlantic, and was intrigued by the sampling from 1960s Soft Machine.

Move to Sweden?

Stephen Law has a post here about the Swedish economic model. His argument could be expressed in syllogistic form as follows.

Sweden has not suffered badly in the economic crisis
Sweden is a high taxing, high public spending, highly redistributive, bank-and-finance-regulating country
Not all high taxing, high public spending, highly redistributive, bank-and-finance-regulating countries have suffered badly in the economic crisis

Reading the proper name ‘Sweden’ as a universal term, this is a valid syllogism of the form EAO, Felapton. Thus disproving the proposition “All high taxing, high public spending, highly redistributive, bank-and-finance-regulating countries have suffered badly in the economic crisis”, which was what Stephen wanted to prove.

I don’t dispute the second premiss, but it is misleading, as it mixes together a number of different and logically independent subjects.

The first is ‘redistribution’. Redistribution and public spending are not the same, as a simple thought experiment proves.Calculate an average national gross income then substract all earnings above that and pay it proportionally to those earning under the average. This need involve no public sector, and no public debt. Think of Robin Hood. There was a survey years ago* asking economists whether this was a good model, and the consensus that it was not, because lower gross earners would not spend the surplus on worthy things like education and theatre and art but rather on cigarettes and beer and cars and TV’s etc. (Actually high-cost things like opera and ballet and art would be completely impossible on this model, but that's a different subject).

Then there is ‘public sector’. This is where people are forced to pay a certain amount in return for state-provided services. This need not have to involve redistribution – there could be the same flat fee paid by everyone. (Although it would be hard to provide high-cost services, as noted above). It certainly would not have to involve public debt.

Finally there is public debt. This is the state issuing debt, either to its citizens or (more usually in the case of the Western countries) to people and corporate or state entities outside the country. The current mess is complex, but essentially due to over-borrowing. On Sweden, this had a massive, and famous, debt crisis in the 1990s, caused by an out of control property boom and much over-borrowing. There is something about this here. (Yes, a Wikipedia article).

* Brittan, S. Is there an economic consensus?: an attitude survey. London: Macmillan, 1973.

Collective wisdom

There was a huge burst of traffic yesterday from Crooked Timber discussing the wisdom of crowds.  Someone linked to my Wikipedia posts here, so I return the favour.  As well as the posts on this blog, there is an article I wrote for the Skeptical Adversaria, of which a copy is on the web here. I have argued many times that crowdsourcing can work well for items of 'hard' knowledge - easily verifiable facts of the sort you would find in an almanac, scientific constants, domains subject to clear proof, such as mathematics.  For the humanities, and in general for any abstract subject that requires thoughtful summarisation, it is a disaster.  Enough said.

There is an entertaining discussion of relativism about truth on Stephen Law’s blog, with a fascinating and irritating quotation about ’truth’ taken from a ‘psychic’ website, as follows.

I was told that there is no absolute truth. I was told that ‘truth’ is a very personal, subjective thing. Something that is ‘true’ = a perception or a belief that serves us personally.

My guides then explained this, using the law of attraction to illustrate it. They said:
“You know that your beliefs create your reality and that you can create any reality you want by changing your beliefs. If you focus your attention on something and hold it as a belief, whether you like it or not, you will begin to see evidence of it being true, all around you. Therefore, you must only believe things which feel good to you. Truth is that which feels good to you; that which serves you.”
So, according to my guides:
Truth = something you have focused on, something you decided you want to experience = it shows up in your reality.
Untruth = something you reject, something you don’t want to experience = it doesn’t show up in your reality. – from Psychic but Sane.

This is an extreme example of the kind of things you come across in teaching beginners in philosophy, which I mentioned earlier here. The standard reply is that in claiming that truth is relative, or that truth can differ from person to person, you yourself are making a statement which can be denied by others. You say that we can both be right about contradictory propositions. I say that we cannot both be right. According to you, we are both right. Therefore I am right, ergo we cannot both be right.

The argument from beauty

I just discovered the ‘argument from beauty’. There is a brief description in Wikipedia, and a more detailed one here. The argument may be summarised as follows:

Beauty exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations
According to materialism, nothing exists in a way that transcends its material manifestations
Therefore, materialism is false

I wonder if there is a fallacy here similar to the one about trees being made high enough so that giraffes did not have to lean down, or the sun moving the way it does in order for crops to be harvested at the right time.

Perhaps objects are beautiful in the way that food tastes good. It would be obviously fallacious to argue that God made food taste that way in order that we would enjoy it, would want to eat it, and so would not starve. Clearly, our nervous system has adapted that way. Are there similar reasons for things looking beautiful to us?

Adamson on Anaxgoras

I just listened again to Peter Adamson's podcast about Anaxagoras.  Entertaining and improving, and an interesting characterisation of the argument from design.

There is a grand tradition, in both philosophy and religion, of invoking God, or the gods, to explain the fact that the world looks so well designed. Think about how the sun moves in just the right way to give us the seasons, so that we can plant and harvest food to keep ourselves alive.  Think of the giraffe with its long neck - just the thing for reaching those tasty leaves in the trees.  Think even of how much it hurts when you step on something sharp. Sure, you don't feel grateful when it happens, but if not for the pain, you would be a lot less careful in the future, and you would probably wind up with cuts all over your feet and then where would you be? So, even the bad things in life seem designed to make things better. Socrates assumed that is was roughly where Anaxagoras was heading when he put mind in charge of the cosmos.

The argument about the sun moving in just the right way is not exactly parallel to the argument about giraffes.  For them to be parallel, it would have to be argued that God created trees at just the right height so that giraffes, with their long necks, would not have to be constantly be leaning over and getting backache, or toppling over.

There is more to be said about arguments from design generally.  What are they?  What do they argue from?  What are they arguing for?

Wikipedian logic

An interesting syllogism on Jimbo Wales' talk page here.

Wikipedia is not intended to be an academic encyclopedia, mainly because the stated goal is to provide a free encyclopedia to every human being. Most human beings are not academics, so it follows this is not an academic encyclopedia.

Anachronism and infinity

William Connolley (aka our commenter 'Belette') is discussing the problems of characterising early scientific thinking - in this case, Galileo's thinking about infinity. Everyone who has tried this is familiar with the problem of anachronism: mistakenly characterising the thoughts and ideas of early thinkers in a way that they would not have recognised or understood. This is particularly difficult when, as usually happens you are translating their work from another language. Clearly you cannot use exactly the terms  they would have used, since they were writing a different language. So you have to use terms with the same meaning, while avoiding meanings they may not have understood. For example 'one to one correspondence' or 'set'.

A further wrinkle is terms in modern mathematical and scientific and philosophical language that are directly inherited from early writers. Most scientific language before the twentieth century was imported from Latin or Greek. Thus, we have the word 'continuum'. In Latin this just means 'the continuous'. Do you translate it as 'continuum' - running the risk of connoting ideas probably alien to medieval and early modern writers on mathematics? Or 'the continuous', which may wrongly imply that the Latin word had no technical meaning. Similarly 'vacuum', which would be wrongly translated as the modern 'vacuum', i.e. airless, when the Latin writers didn't just mean without air, but without anything at all, 'the void'. On other hand, it is clearly correct to ascribe concepts like 'concentric', which simply means 'having the same centre', and is derived from 'concentricus' which entered the Latin language in about 1260.

Concerning Galileo's problem, of explaining how the points of a circle can be put into 'one to one correspondence' with a smaller concentric circle, here is a chapter from Ockham I am working on, which addresses a similar issue.  He writes (my translation)

Likewise, it is of the thinking of Aristotle (as is clear in Physics IV) that air can be condensed without all or some of its qualities, changing. Hence, when air is condensed, it does not have to lose any quality, or at least it does not have to lose every quality which it had before. From which I argue that when air is condensed, either the whole preceding quantity remains, and precisely that which [was there] before, or not. If so, then the same quantity is now less than before only because the parts of quantity lie closer now than before. Therefore since the parts of the substance are in the same way lying closer now than before, and quantity is not supposed to exist for any other reason, it seems quantity is superfluous. But if the whole quantity which was there before does not remain, therefore some part is lost, and since from the corruption of the immediate subject there some accident of it is corrupted, it follows that not every quality remains, which is against Aristotle.

This clearly has an affinity with Galileo's problem of "a small ball of gold expanded into a very large space without the introduction of a finite number of empty spaces, always provided the gold is made up of an infinite number of indivisible parts".

The definition of philosophy

A new page in the Logic Museum today: the first chapter of the oxymoronically titled Modern Thomistic Philosophy (R.P. Phillips, 1934), concerning the definition of philosophy.  Phillips rightly draws on the history of philosophy, taking us through all the early Greek philosophers as Thales, Heracleitus, Pythagoras, the Sophists, ending with Plato and Aristotle.  He concludes by saying

None of these men, it is to be noted, tried to answer these questions [about the nature of the universe] by an appeal to any revelation, to myth, or religious knowledge of any kind; but attempted to extract the answer by using their reason; and they used it almost without reference to sensible observation and experiments. Why was this ? Clearly because they were convinced that the thing they sought lay deeper in the heart of the world than the superficial aspect of things, of which alone the senses could tell them. They were seeking the underlying causes of things, and this is the special point of view from which philosophy discusses its multifarious objects, which are dealt with from another aspect, by special sciences, such as chemistry, biology, zoology, and so on.  It intends to go further into their nature than these do, and not to rest content until it has uncovered the absolutely fundamental reasons of them all [my emphasis].

Thus we define philosophy: the attempt to uncover the fundamental reason of everything, without (like religion) appealing to revelation, myth or other forms of authority, but without (like natural science) the use of observation of experiment.  Approaching the world by pure unaided reason.

Also just out in the Logic Museum, the commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics by Albertus Magnus.  I have corrected the scan up to book I tract 3, the rest is a bit of a mess.  And of course it is only in Latin.  Tract 3 is Aristotle's own account of the history of philosophy before him.

Henry of Ghent on dying without baptism

While uploading some texts by Henry of Ghent I noticed three questions that are pertinent to the current discussion (see e.g. here) on our fallen state, and original sin.  So I had a go at translating them. First, Henry asks whether a child who dies before baptism is damned.  Against: in Matthew 9, Jesus heals a man brought to him on account of the faith of others.  For: John 3 says that unless we are born again through baptism, we cannot enter the kingdom of God.  Henry upholds John - without baptism, we cannot be saved.  In reply to the argument he distinguishes between 'first grace' and 'second grace'. (I do not understand this distinction, perhaps a theologian can help me out here).  Through the faith of others, a man can deserve first grace.  But he could not receive second grace unless, through being aroused to action by the first, he elects to receive second grace by his own free will.  Since a child cannot choose to do this, he or she cannot be cleansed of original sin.  So the cases of the man healed by Jesus through the faith of others, and that of the child dying without baptism, are not the same.  Although Henry adds that perhaps this could happen by 'special grace'.

In the next question, Henry asks whether the punishment for original sin will be the same for that child, as for the child of a 'Saracen' (i.e. a muslim).  He replies that it will be the same, because original sin is the same in all humans, and so the punishment will be the same.  He qualifies this by saying that this punishment is simply being deprived of the vision of God, and is a sort of nothingness.  By implication, it will not be the sort of horrific, eternal torment described here.

In the final question, he asks whether such a child should be buried in a cemetery.  He argues that it should not.  A cemetery is simply a resting place for the children of the church until the final judgment.  But, just as the excommunicated cannot be buried there because separated from the church, so a child dying before baptism cannot, because in the absence of baptism it never was a member of the church.

Bad philosophy of mathematics

Maverick has a nice post here about dubious philosophy of mathematics.  Numbers are not physical objects, therefore they are in the mind, goes the argument. Valid or not?  Read his post.

Anyone who has taught first year undergraduate students has a box of arguments ready for the common arguments that all beginners in philosophy seem to make.  For example, the confusion between epistemological questions (how can we ever know the truth?) and semantic ones (what exactly is truth).

My favourite is the one I mentioned in the comments section somewhat earlier.  It is argued that fictional names (or names for numbers or abstract objects), since they cannot name anything real, must name ideas in our mind.  Thus, 'Pegasus' is a name for my idea of Pegasus.   For this, we reach in our box and reply "But the phrase 'my idea of Pegasus' names my idea of Pegasus, surely?".  They think for a bit and then see the point.  The reply is mentioned in Quine's *Methods of Logic*, but is much older than that.

Brandon (at Siris) had a nice post a year or so back about the difficulties philosophers encounter in arguing with non-philosophers.  I can't find it, however.

Friday night is bad music night

Following the unexpected success of my last music post, I investigated the attic and found enough vinyl and shellac to justify a regular weekly slot.  That is, bad music.  Maverick has a slot for good music.  Why discriminate?

Some ground rules.  We should try and avoid the obvious, for too much has been written about that.  E.g. one commenter wrote last week "in my personal view there is no aspect of this song which is not bad", and he (or she) is absolutely right.  But a little too obvious.  Likewise, practically anything from the Eurovision song contest.  Or this, which is infamously bad, but not in a way that is news to anyone.

No.  We must explore music which has seeds of badness, or which is clearly bad, but whose toxic characterisation eludes us.  We must explore the world of Youtube of 200 views or less, or (better) the world of music that has not even reached Youtube. 

We must explore even the fantastically popular, and I want to start with the other one our commenter suggested was much better, namely this. 65 million people watched it.

Is it bad?  If it is bad, why?  I don't know. It is manifest that something is badly wrong with it.  I had forgotten, or never noticed, it was the Black Eyed Peas who made it, and now I think of them differently.  In the way that, when someone years ago suggested that all wine tastes faintly of vinegar, I realised that all wine really does taste faintly of vinegar.

For more vinegar, here is Alanis' version which gets us closer to why it is horrible, but without any precise, definitive answer that would be philosophically satisfying.

Cantor's proof

As we are close to the subject, and because it is beautiful and remarkable, here is Cantor's proof of the uncountability of the reals*.

1. For all s, for some n, s = f(n).
2. f(n) = {m: x not in f(m)} (from 1).
3. If n in f(n) then n not in f(n), and if n not in f(n) then n in f(n) (from 2).
4. Contradiction.

It is beautiful because it is short, and all short things are beautiful.  It is remarkable because the scholastic philosophers never produced anything close to it.  In nearly all matters of logic, the culture of the renaissance and early modern period never approached the heights that logic attained in the early 14th century.  But not this.
 
It needs a little explanation, of course.  The first statement follows from the claim that sets of natural numbers are 'countable', i.e. to do this, to any set s of natural numbers, there must correspond some natural number n.
 
The second follows from the first.  There must be some natural number corresponding to the set of natural numbers that are not in the set corresponding to them.  The third draws a simple conclusion from that.  The fourth states that the third is a contradiction.  We can therefore infer that one of the first two statements is false.
 
To forestall impudent hairsplitters, I should add that (as far as I know) Cantor never gave a proof in precisely that form.  His actual proof is in the Logic Museum, with my English translation. 
 
To any other quibblers, I reply that I am not a mathematician.

*Modified this evening o/a of Belette's complaint of sloppiness.