Month: November 2011

A Diversity Paradox for Immigration Expansionists

Liberals love 'diversity' even at the expense of such obvious goods as unity, assimilation, and comity. So it is something of a paradox that their refusal to take seriously the enforcement of immigration laws has led to a most undiverse stream of immigrants. "While espousing a fervent belief in diversity, immigrant advocates and their allies have presided over a policy regime that has produced one of the least diverse migration streams in our history." Here

In the once golden and great state of California, the Left's diversity fetishism has led to a letting-go of academics in the Cal State university system with a concomitant retention of administrative 'diversity officers.'   Unbelievable but true.  Heather McDonald reports and comments in Less Academics, More Narcissism. 

My only quibble is her failure to observe the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer.'  Use 'fewer' with count nouns; 'less' with mass terms.  I don't have less shovels than you; I have fewer shovels.  I need fewer shovels because I have less manure.

Short Views, Long Views, and the Feel for the Real

The long views of philosophy are not to everyone's taste.  If not bored, many are depressed by the contemplation of death and pain, God and the soul, the meaning or meaninglessness of our lives.  They prefer not to think of such things and consider it best to take short views.

Is it best to take short views? Sometimes it is. When the going gets tough, it is best to pull in one’s horns, hunker down, and just try to get through the next week, the next day, the next hour. One can always meet the challenge of the next hour. Be here now and deal with what is on your plate at the moment. Most likely you will find a way forward.

But, speaking for myself, a life without long views would not be worth living. I thrill at the passage in Plato’s Republic, Book Six (486a), where the philosopher is described as a "spectator of all time and existence." And then there is this beautiful formulation by  William James:

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man. (Pragmatism, Harvard UP, 1975, p. 56)

I wrote above, "speaking for myself." The expression was not used redundantly inasmuch as it conveys that my philosopher’s preference for the long view is not one that I would want to or try to urge on anyone else. In my experience, one cannot argue with another man’s sensibility. And much of life comes down to precisely that — sensibility. If people share a sensibility, then argument is useful for its articulation and refinement. But I am none too sanguine about the possibility of arguing someone into, or out of, a sensibility.

How argue the atheist out of his abiding sense that the univere is godless, or the radical out of his conviction of human perfectibility? If the passages I cited from Plato and James leave you cold, how could I change your mind? If you sneer at my being thrilled, what then? Argument comes too late. Or if you prefer, sensibility comes too early.

One might also speak of a person’s sense of life, view of what is important, or ‘feel for the real.’ James’ phrase, "feel seriously," is apt. To the superior mind, ultimate questions "feel real," whereas to the shallow mind they appear pointless, unimportant, silly. It is equally true that the superior mind is made such by its wrestling with these questions.

Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.

Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great. (Augustine, Contra Academicos 1. 2. 6.)

Of course, with his talk of the superior and the shallow, James is making a value judgment. I myself have no problem making value judgments, and in particular this one.

Although prospects are dim for arguing the other out of his sensibility, civil discussion is not pointless. One comes to understand one’s own view by contrast with another. One learns to respect the sources of the other’s view. This may lead to toleration, which is good within limits.  For someone with a theoretical bent, the sheer diversity of approaches to life is fascinating and provides endless grist for the theoretical mill.

As for the problem of how to get along with people with wildly different views, I recommend voluntary segregation.

Caesar, the Rubicon, Tenseless Truth, Determinism, and Fatalism

In a post the point of which was merely to underscore the difference between absolute and necessary truth, I wrote, somewhat incautiously:

Let our example be the proposition p expressed by 'Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 44 B.C.' Given that p is true, it is true in all actual circumstances. That is, its truth-value does not vary from time to time, place to place, person to person, or relative to any other parameter in the actual world. P is true now, was true yesterday, and will be true tomorrow. P is true in Los Angeles, in Bangkok, and on Alpha Centauri. It is true whether Joe Blow affirms it, denies it, or has never even thought about it. And what goes for Blow goes for Jane Schmoe.

As a couple of astute readers have pointed out, the usual date given for Caesar's crossing of the river Rubicon  is January 10, 49 B.C. and not 44 B. C. as stated above.  If only the detection and correction of philosophical erors were as easy as this!

The erudite proprietor of Finem Respicem, who calls herself 'Equity Private' and describes herself as a "Armchair Philosophy Fangirl and Failed Theoretical Physicist Turned Finance Troublemaker," writes, "Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10, 49 B.C., reportedly (though perhaps fancifully) prompting Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus to comment Alea iacta est ('The die is cast.')"  And Philoponus the Erudite has this to say: 

I'm not sure whether you are deliberately testing the faithful readers of The Maverick, but the accepted date for Caesar and Legio XIII Gem. wading across fl. Rubico is 49 BCE, on or about Jan 10th. That's what is inferred from Suetonius' acct of Divus Caesar at the beginning of De Vita Caesarum (written 160 years after the fact) and some other latter sources like Plutarch.

So I stand corrected on the factual point.  Both correspondents go on to raise philosophical points.  I have space to respond to only one of them.

Equity Private asks, concerning the proposition expressed by 'Caesar crosses the Rubicon in 49 B.C.,' "But is it true in 50 BC?  In a deterministic universe, I think it is. In a non-deterministic universe I think it isn't. Are you a determinist?"

To discuss this properly we need to back up a bit.   I distinguish declarative sentences from the propositions they are used to express, and in the post in question I was construing propositions along the lines of Gottlob Frege's Gedanken.  Accordingly, a  proposition is the sense of a context-free declarative sentence.  A context-free sentence is one from which all indexical elements have been extruded, including verb tenses.  Propositions so construed are a species of abstract object.  This will elicit howls of outrage from some, but it is a view that is quite defensible.  If you accept this (and if you don't I will ask what your theory of the proposition is), then the proposition expressed by 'Caesar crosses the Rubicon in 49 B.C.' exists at all times and is true at all times.  (Bear in mind that, given the extrusion of all indexical elements, including verb tenses, the occurrence of 'crosses' is not present-tensed but tenseless.)  From this it follows that the truth-value of the proposition does not vary with one's temporal perspective.  So, to answer my correspondent's question, the proposition is true in 50 B.C. and is thus true before the fateful crossing occurred!

I am assuming both Bivalence and Excluded Middle.    Bivalence says that there are exactly two truth-values, true and false, as opposed to three or more.  If Bivalence holds, then 'not true' is logically equivalent to 'false.'  Excluded Middle says that, for every proposition p, either p is true or it is not the case that p is true.   Note that Bivalence and Excluded Middle are not the same. Suppose that Bivalence is false and that there are three truth-values. It could still be the case that every proposition is either true or not true. (In a 3-valued logic, 'not true' is not the same as 'false.') So Excluded Middle does not entail Bivalence. Therefore Excluded Middle is not the same as Bivalence.  Bivalence does, however, entail Excluded Middle.

Here is a simpler and more direct way to answer my correspondent's question.  Suppose some prescient Roman utters in 50 B.C. the Latin equivalent of 'Julius Caesar will cross the Rubicon next year.'  Given Bivalence and Excluded Middle, what the Roman says is either true, or if not true, then false.  Given that Caesar did cross in 49 B.C., what the prescient Roman said was true.  Hence it was true before the crossing occurred.

Let's now consider how this relates to the determinism question.   Determinism is the view that whatever happens in nature is determined by antecedent causal conditions under the aegis of the laws of nature. Equivalently, past facts, together with the laws of nature, entail all future facts. It follows that facts before one's birth, via the laws of nature, necessitate what one does now. The necessitation here is conditional, not absolute.  It is conditional upon the laws of nature (which might have been otherwise) and the prior causal conditions (which might have been otherwise).

If determinism is true, then Caesar could not have done otherwise  than cross the Rubicon when he  did given the (logically contingent) laws of nature and the (logically contingent) conditions antecedent to his crossing.  If determinism is not true, then the laws plus the prior causal conditions did not necessitate his crossing.  Equity Private says  that the Caesar proposition is not true in 50 B.C. in a non-deterministic universe.  But I don't think this is right.  For there are at least two other ways the proposition might be true before the crossing occurred, two other ways which reflect two other forms of determination.  Besides causal determination (determination via the laws of nature and the antecedent causal conditions), there is also theological determination (determination via divine foreknowledge) and logical determination (determination via the law of excluded middle in conjunction with a certain view of propositions).  Logical determinism is called fatalism.  (See the earlier post on the difference between determinism and fatalism.) 

Someone who is both a fatalist and an indeterminist could easily hold that the Caesar proposition is true at times before the crossing.  Equity Private asked whether I am a determinist.  She should have asked me whether I am a fatalist.  For it looks as if I have supplied the materials for a fatalist argument. Here is a quick and dirty version of an ancient argument known as 'the idle argument' or 'the lazy argument':

1. Either I will be killed tomorrow or I will not. 
2. If I will be killed, I will be killed no matter what precautions I take.
3. If I will not be killed, then I will be killed no matter what precautions I neglect.
Therefore
4. It is pointless to take precautions.

This certainly smacks of sophistry!  But where exactly does the argument go wrong?  The first premise is an instance of LEM on the assumption of Bivalence.  (2) looks to be a tautology of the form p –> (q –>p), and (3) appears to be a tautology of the form ~p –>(q –>~p).  Or think of it this way.  If it is true that I will killed tomorrow, then this is true regardless of what other propositions are true.  And similarly for (3).

Some will say that the mistake is to think that LEM applies to propositions about future events:  in advance of an event's occurrence it is neither true nor not true that it will occur.  This way out is problematic, however.  'JFK was assassinated in 1963' is true now.  How then can the prediction, made in 1962, 'JFK will be assassinated in 1963,' lack a truth-value?  Had someone made that prediction in 1962, he would have made a true prediction, not a prediction lacking a truth-value.  Indeed, the past-tensed and the future tensed sentences express the same proposition, a proposition that could be put using the tenseless sentence 'JFK is assassinated in 1963.'  Of course, no one could know in 1962 the truth-value of this proposition, but that is not to say that it did not have a truth-value in 1962.  Don't confuse the knowledge of truth with truth. 

Suppose I predict today that such-and-such will happen next year, and what I predict comes to pass.  You would say to me, "You were right!"  You would not say to me, "What you predicted has acquired the truth-value, true."  I can be proven right in my prediction only if I was right, i.e., only if my prediction was true in advance of the event's occurrence.

So the facile restriction of LEM to present and past is a dubious move.  And yet the 'lazy argument' is surely invalid!   

Global Warmism as Ersatz Religion

Here.  Excerpt:

As with religion, it is presided over by a caste of spectacularly unattractive people [you mean, like, Al Gore?] pretending to an obscure form of knowledge that promises to make the seas retreat and the winds abate. As with religion, it comes with an elaborate list of virtues, vices and indulgences. As with religion, its claims are often non-falsifiable, hence the convenience of the term "climate change" when thermometers don't oblige the expected trend lines. As with religion, it is harsh toward skeptics, heretics and other "deniers." And as with religion, it is susceptible to the earthly temptations of money, power, politics, arrogance and deceit.

The terminological shift is what really kicked my skepticism into high gear.  Global climate change is a genus of which global warming is but a species, global cooling being another species.  And of course none of this much matters practically speaking if it is not anthropogenic.  Are we now being asked to believe that burning fossil fuels causes climate change whether or not the change is a warming?  That would be curious: contrary effects having the same cause.

Gingrich and the Kama Sutra

"Newt has more positions than the Kama Sutra." I just heard Michael Medved say this on the Dennis Prager show.  Medved intends it in the best possible sense.

Medved thinks that both Romney and Gingrich would make good presidents.  I agree.  Indeed, any of the Republican candidates would be better than Obama the Incompetent. And I agree with Medved that Gingrich is preferrable to Romney.  But is he more electable than Romney?  He's an intellectual with a funny name.  The average schlep of a voter looks for a regular guy he can relate to.  Like Bill 'Bubba' Clinton.

Europe Stares into the Abyss

Here.  Excerpt:

From the foreign perspective, the situation is clear: Rescuing the euro depends on Germany, which merely has to abandon its resistance to pooling debt. But this sort of "liability union" would not only contradict the so-called no-bailout clause of the European treaties, under which no euro-zone country can be held liable for the debts of another, but it would also be particularly dangerous for the Germans. As Europe's largest economy, Germany would shoulder the biggest burden and, in the end, could even be plunged into ruin with the rest of the euro zone.

 

What is Fatalism? How Does it Differ from Determinism?

Robert Kane (A Contemporary Introduction to Free Will, Oxford 2005, p. 19) rightly bids us not confuse determinism with fatalism:

     This is one of the most common confusions in free will debates.
     Fatalism is the view that whatever is going to happen, is going to
     happen, no matter what we do. Determinism alone does not imply such
     a consequence. What we decide and what we do would make a
     difference in how things turn out — often an enormous difference
     — even if determinism should be true.

Although it is true that determinism ought not be confused with fatalism, Kane here presents an uncharitable definition of 'fatalism.' No sophisticated contemporary defender of fatalism would recognize his position in this definition. Indeed, as Richard Taylor points out in a well-known discussion (Metaphysics, Ch. 6), it is logically incoherent  to suppose that what will happen will happen no matter what. If I am fated to die in a car crash, then I am fated to die in that manner –  but it is absurd to append 'no matter what I do.' For I cannot die in a car crash if I flee to a Tibetan monastery and swear off automobiles.  There are certain things I must do if I am to die in a car crash.  As Taylor says,
 
     The expression 'no matter what,' by means of which some
     philosophers have sought an easy and even childish refutation of
     fatalism, is accordingly highly inappropriate in any description of
     the fatalist conviction. (Metaphysics, 3rd ed., p. 57)

Kane's contrast is therefore bogus: no sophisticated contemporary is a fatalist in Kane's sense. Should we conclude that fatalism and determinism are the same? No. I suggest we adopt Peter van Inwagen's definition: "Fatalism . . . is the thesis that that it is a logical or conceptual truth that no one is able to act otherwise than he in fact does; that the very idea of an agent to whom alternative courses of   action are open is self-contradictory." (An Essay on Free Will, p. 23.)

As I understand the matter, fatalism differs from determinism since the determinist does not say that it is a logical or conceptual truth that no one is able to act otherwise than he in fact does. What the determinist says is that the actual past together with the actual laws of nature render nomologically possible only one future. The determinist must therefore deny that the future is open. But his claim is not that it is logically self-contradictory that the future be open, but only that it is not open given the facts of the past, which are logically contingent, together with the laws of nature, which are also logically contingent.

Perhaps we can focus the difference as follows. Suppose A is a logically contingent action of mine, the action, say, of phoning Harry. Suppose I perform A. Both fatalist and determinist say that I  could not have done otherwise. They agree that my doing A is necessitated. But they disagree about the source of the necessitation.

The fatalist holds that the source is logical: the Law of Excluded Middle together with a certain view of truth and of propositions. The determinist holds that the source is the contingent laws of nature
together with the contingent actual past.

Against Irrationalism

The problem is not that we conceptualize things, but that we conceptualize them wrongly, hastily, superficially. The problem is not that we draw distinctions, but that we draw too few distinctions or   improper distinctions. Perhaps in the end one must learn to trace all distinctions back to the ONE whence they spring; but that is in the end. In the beginning people must be taught to conceptualize, discriminate, and distinguish.

A superficial Zen training that attacks the discursive intellect in those who have never properly developed it does a great disservice.

Against Functionalism in the Philosophy of Mind: Argument One

In my last philosophy of mind post on property dualism I posed a problem:

My problem, roughly, is that I don't understand how a physical particular (a brain, a region of a brain, a brain event, or state, or process) can instantiate one or more irreducibly mental properties. Why should there be a problem? Well, if a physical particular is exhaustively understandable in terms of physics (and the sciences based on it) then there is just nothing irreducibly mental about it, in which case it cannot instantiate an irreducibly mental property.

At the end of that post I provided an answer to that question:

Mental properties are functional properties. So when we say that x, a brain event say, has a mental property, all we mean is that it stands in certain causal relations to sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and intervening brain events. So what makes the brain event mental is simply the relations in which it stands to inputs, outputs and other brain events. Once you grasp this, then you grasp that the brain event can be wholly physical in nature despite its having a mental property. Mental properties are not intrinsic but relational.

The answer, in short, is that mental properties are not intrinsic properties.  But then I wrote,

Unfortunately, this won't do. Felt sadness has an intrinsically mental nature that cannot be functionally characterized. A subsequent post will spell this out in detail.

This is the subsequent post.

Suppose Socrates Jones is in some such state as that of perceiving a tree. The state is classifiable as mental as opposed to a physical state like that of his lying beneath a tree. What makes a mental state
mental? That is the question.

The functionalist answer is that what makes a mental state mental is just the causal role it plays in mediating between the sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other internal states of the subject in question. The idea is not the banality that mental states typically (or even always) have causes and effects, but that it is causal role occupancy, nothing more and nothing less, that constitutes the
mentality of a mental state. The intrinsic nature of what plays the role is relevant only to its fitness for instantiating mental causal  roles, but not at all relevant to its being a mental state.

Consider a piston in an engine. You can't make a piston out of chewing gum, but being made of steel is no part of what makes a piston a piston. A piston is what it does within the 'economy' of the engine. Similarly, on functionalism, a mental state is what it does. This allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a brain or CNS state. It also allows, but does not entail, that a mental state be a state of a  computing machine.

To illustrate, suppose my cat Zeno and I are startled out of our respective reveries by a loud noise at time t. Given the differences  between human and feline brains, presumably man and cat are not in type-identical brain states at t.  (One of the motivations for functionalism was the breakdown of the old type-type identity theory of Herbert Feigl, U. T. Place. J. J. C. Smart, et al.)  Yet both man and cat are startled: both are in some sense in the same mental state, even though the states they are in are neither token- nor type-identical. The   functionalist will hold that we are in functionally the same mental state in virtue of the fact that Zeno's brain state plays the same  role in him as my brain state plays in me. It does the same  mediatorial job vis-a-vis sensory inputs, other internal states, and  behavioral outputs in me as the cat's brain state does in him.

On functionalism, then, the mentality of the mental is wholly relational. And as David Armstrong points out, "If the essence of the mental is purely relational, purely a matter of what causal role is played, then the logical possibility remains that whatever in fact plays the causal role is not material." This implies that "Mental states might be states of a spiritual substance." Thus the very feature of functionalism that allows mentality to be realized in computers and nonhuman brains generally, also allows it to be realized in spiritual substances if there are any.

Whether this latitudinarianism is thought to be good or bad, functionalism is a monumentally implausible theory of mind. There are the technical objections that have spawned a pelagic literature: absent qualia, inverted qualia, the 'Chinese nation,' etc. Thrusting these aside, I go for the throat, Searle-style.

Functionalism is threatened by a fundamental incoherence. The theory states that what makes a state mental is nothing intrinsic to the state, but purely relational: a matter of its causes and effects. In us, these happen to be neural. (I am assuming physicalism for the time being.)  Now every mental state is a neural state, but not every neural state is a mental state. So the distinction between mental and nonmental neural states must be accounted for in terms of a distinction between two different sets of causes and effects, those that contribute to mentality and those that do not. But how make this distinction? How do the causes/effects of mental neural events differ from the causes/effects of nonmental neural events? Equivalently, how do psychologically salient input/output events differ from those that lack such salience?

Suppose the display on my monitor is too bright for comfort and I decide to do something about it. Why is it that photons entering my retina are psychologically salient inputs but those striking the back of my head are not? Why is it that the moving of my hand to to adjust the brightness and contrast controls is a salient output event, while unnoticed perspiration is not?

One may be tempted to say that the psychologically salient inputs are those that contribute to the production of the uncomfortable glare sensation, and the psychologically salient outputs are those that manifest the concomitant intention to make an adjustment. But then the salient input/output events are being picked out by reference to mental events taken precisely NOT as causal role occupants, but as exhibiting intrinsic features that are neither causal nor neural: the glare quale has an intrinsic nature that cannot be resolved into relations to other items, and cannot be identified with any brain state. The functionalist would then be invoking the very thing he is at pains to deny, namely, mental events as having more than neural and causal features.

Clearly, one moves in a circle of embarrassingly short diameter if one says: (i) mental events are mental because of the mental causal roles they play; and (ii) mental causal roles are those whose occupants are mental events.

The failure of functionalism is particularly evident in the case of qualia.  Examples of qualia: felt pain, a twinge of nostalgia, the smell of burnt garlic, the taste of avocado.  Is it plausible to say that such qualia can be exhaustively factored into a neural component and a causal/functional component?  It is the exact opposite of plausible.  It is not as loony as the eliminativist denial of quali, but it is close.  The intrinsic nature of qualitative mental states is essential to them. It is that intrinsic qualitative nature that dooms functionalism.

I conclude that if the only way to render property dualism coherent is by construing mental properties as functional properties, then property dualism is untenable.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Tim Hardin

What ever happened to Tim Hardin? Well, he died, in 1980, of a heroin overdose.  But he left us some memorable songs. These are my favorites.

Lady Came From Baltimore

Reason to Believe

Black Sheep Boy  If you love me, let me live in peace/Please understand/ That the black sheep can wear the golden fleece/And hold a winning hand.

If I Were a Carpenter

Red Balloon This is a Small Faces cover, but good.

Justifying ‘No Problem of Philosophy is Soluble’

Earlier, I presented the following antilogism:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.
2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.
3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.

I claimed that "(2) is a good induction based on two and one half millenia of philosophical experience." The inductive inference, which I am claiming is good, is not merely from 'No problem has been solved' to 'No problem will be solved'; but from the former to the modal 'No problem can  be solved.'  From a deductive point of view, this is of course doubly invalid.  I use 'valid' and 'invalid' only in connection with deductive arguments.  No inductive argument is valid.  No news there.

Peter Lupu's objection, which he elaborated as best he could after I stuffed him with L-tryptophan-rich turkey and fixin's, was along the following lines.   If the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then so is the problem of induction.  This is the problem of justifying induction, of showing it to be rational.  So if all the problems are insoluble, then we cannot ever know that inductive inference is rational.  But if we cannot ever know this, then we cannot ever know that the inductive inference to (2) is rational.  Peter concludes that this is fatal to my metaphilosophical argument which proceeds from (2) and (3) to the negation of (1).  What he is maintaining, I believe, is that my argument is not rationally acceptable, contrary to what I stated, because (2) is not rationally acceptable.

Perhaps Peter's objection can be given the following sharper formulation.

(2) is either true or false. If (2) is true, then (2) is not rationally justifiable, hence not rationally acceptable, in which case the argument one of whose premises it is is not rationally acceptable.  If, on the other hand, (2) is false, then the argument is unsound.  So  my metaphilosophical argument is either rationally unacceptable or unsound.  Ouch!

I concede that my position implies that we cannot know that the inductive inference to (2) is rationally justified. But it might be rationally justified nonetheless.  Induction can be a rational procedure even if we cannot know that it is or prove that it is.  Induction is not the same as the problem of induction.  If I am right, the latter is insoluble.  But surely failure to solve the problem of induction does not show that induction is not rationally justified.  Peter seems to be assuming the following principle:

If S comes to believe that p on the basis of some cognitive procedure CP, then S is rationally justified in believing that p on the basis of CP only if S has solved all the philosophical problems pertaining to CP.

I don't see why one must accept the italicized principle.  It seems to me that I am rationally justified in believing that Peter is an Other Mind on the basis of my social interaction with him despite my not having solved the problem of Other Minds.  It seems to me that I am rationally justified, on the basis of memory, that he ate at my table on Thursday night despite my not having solved all the problems thrown up by memory.  And so on.