They still annoy me.
Author: Bill Vallicella
Presumption and Suspension of Judgment
I continue my Pyrrhonian ponderings.
What is exercising me at the moment is the question of how suspending judgment as to the truth or falsity of a proposition p is related to presuming that p. I will propose that there are two forms of suspension of judgment. There is suspension in the service of cognition and suspension in the service of ataraxia (mental tranquillity). I will float the suggestion that presumption necessarily involves suspension in the service of cognition but excludes suspension in the service of ataraxia.
Presumption
Firearms instructors sometimes say that every gun is loaded. That is plainly false as a statement of fact, but a wise saying nonetheless if interpreted to mean: every gun is to be presumed loaded until proven unloaded. Note that it makes no sense to say that a gun is loaded until proven unloaded. For it it is loaded, then it cannot be proven to be unloaded. Likewise, it makes no sense to say a man is innocent until proven guilty; for if he is innocent, then he cannot be proven guilty. A man charged with a crime is presumed to be innocent; a gun is presumed to be unloaded.
Presumptions are procedural rules. To presume every gun to be loaded is to adopt a procedural rule to treat every gun as if it is loaded regardless of how likely it is that it is loaded. Suppose the likelihood is near zero: the gun is 'right out of the box' or is placed on the counter by a responsible gun dealer. Nevertheless, the presumption that it is loaded remains in force.
Suppose the likelihood is not near zero but is zero: I remove the magazine of a semi-auto pistol and do both a visual and tactile check of the chamber. The chamber is empty. I now know — hyperbolic doubt aside — that the gun is unloaded. The presumption that the gun is loaded has now been defeated. I will assume that all presumptions are defeasible.
Presumption is not belief. If I presume a gun to be loaded, I do not thereby believe that it is loaded, or affirm or accept or assert that it is loaded.
To presume that p is not to affirm that p is true, nor to affirm that p is probably true, nor to assume that p is true, but to decide to act as if p is true. When I presume that a gun is loaded I do not affirm that it is loaded, deny that it is loaded, take a position on the probability of its being loaded, or even assume that it is loaded. Assumption is a theoretical attitude toward a proposition. My mental attitude of presumption is not theoretical but practical: I decide to comport myself as if the gun is loaded.
A presumption is not like a belief in the following important respect. To presume that a gun is loaded or that a man is innocent of a crime is not to believe that it is or that he is. To believe that p is to believe that p is true. But to presume that p is not to presume that p is true; it is to act as if p is true without either accepting or rejecting p. To presume that Jones is innocent until proven guilty is not to believe that he is innocent until proven guilty; it is to suspend judgment as to guilt or innocence until sufficient evidence is presented by the prosecution to warrant a verdict one way or the other. When I presume that p, I take no stand as to the truth-value of p, or even the probability of p — I neither accept nor reject p — what I do is decide to act as if p is true.
Two Forms of Suspension of Judgment
To presume that a gun is loaded until proven unloaded is not to believe that the gun is loaded until proven unloaded; it is to suspend judgment as to whether it is loaded or unloaded until a decision can be made on the basis of empirical evidence. The suspension in this example is pro tempore and is in the service of getting at the truth. This form of presumption necessarily involves suspension of judgment at least for a time.
But suppose I suspend judgment from a state of evidential equipoise. I am in a state of evidential equipoise when it appears to me that the evidence for a thesis T and the evidence for its negation ~T are equal: the considerations on either side of the question balance and cancel out. Suppose I now move from a state of evidential equipoise to a state of suspension of judgment. Before suspension I was in a state of inquiry and mental turmoil trying to resolve a seemingly important question. But then, seeing that there is no rational resolution of the question — say, whether or not justice demands capital punishment in some cases — I enter upon the state of suspension. There follows ataraxia and the removal of mental turmoil, both within my own mind, and with intellectual opponents. This peace of mind is not the "peace that surpasses all understanding," (Phillipians 4:7) but an arguably paltry peace that comes from acquiescing in a failure of understanding. I give up up the search for the truth of the matter. Inquiry having led me to an impasse, I abandon inquiry and cease troubling my head over an apparently insoluble problem.
So we have two forms of suspension of judgment. The first form is for the time being and is oriented toward uncovering the truth of the matter. Is the gun loaded or not? Is the defendant guilty as charged? The suspension ends when a verdict has been reached. The second form remains in place once evidential equipoise is reached. The suspension is not for the sake of inquiry into the truth, but for the sake of mental calm. Inquiry issues in the abandonment of inquiry. Suspension in its second form has nothing to do with presumption.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Street Songs
Rolling Stones, Street Fighting Man
Gerry Rafferty, Baker Street. From the far-off and fabulous summer of '78.
Bob Dylan, Positively 4th Street. This isn't Dylan, but a creditable cover. Johnny Rivers' version, endorsed by Dylan in his Chronicles, vol. I.
Simon and Garfunkel, 59th Street Bridge Song
Martha and the Vandellas, Dancing in the Street
Buck Owens, Streets of Bakersfield. This one goes out to Jean H.
And now a couple from the Great American Songbook:
Dean Martin, On the Street Where You Live
Rod Stewart, On the Sunny Side of the Street
You guessed it:
James Carr, The Dark End of the Street. Eva Cassidy's effort. Ry Cooder's inimitable instrumental version.
Johnny Cash, Streets of Laredo
Bob Seger, Main Street
Patsy Cline, Lonely Street
Patsy Cline, "Today I passed you on the street . . . ."
Camille Paglia on Pussy Hats
She approved — of all things — of the Women’s March. “I think it’s important that women rediscover solidarity with themselves,” she said. “It really wasn’t about feminism. It’s really not about Trump. It’s not about any of that. It was all of a sudden, Oh, wow, to be with all the women.”
Still, the pussy hats: She buried her face in her hands as she discussed them. “I was horrified, horrified by the pink pussy hats,” she said; the pink pussy hats were “a major embarrassment to contemporary feminism.”
“I want dignity and authority for women,” she said. “My code is Amazonism. I want weapons.”
Advice on Sex from Epicurus
Robert Blake is back in the news, which fact justifies, as if justification is needed, a re-post from 18 May 2011.
…………………………….
Epicurus (circa 341-271 B.C.) wrote the following to a disciple:
I understand from you that your natural disposition is too much
inclined toward sexual passion. Follow your inclinations as you
will provided only that you neither violate the laws, disturb
well-established customs, harm any one of your neighbors, injure
your own body, nor waste your possessions. That you be not checked
by some one of these provisos is impossible; for a man never gets
any good from sexual passion, and he is fortunate if he does not
receive harm. (Italics added, Letters, Principal Doctrines, Vatican
Sayings, trans. R. M. Geer, Macmillan, 1987, pp. 69-70)
Had Bill Clinton heeded this advice, kept his penis in harness, and his paws off the overweight intern, he might have left office with an impressive legacy indeed. But instead he will schlep down the centuries tied to Monica like Abelard to Heloise — except for the fact that he got off a lot easier than poor Abelard.
Closer to home is the case of Robert Blake whose lust led him into a tender trap that turned deadly. He was very lucky to be acquitted of the murder of Bonnie Lee Bakeley. Then there was the case of the dentist whose extramural activities provoked his dentist wife to run him down with the family Mercedes. The Bard had it right: "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."
Most recently, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has secured himself a place in the annals of libertinage while wrecking his career. Ah, those sophisticated Frenchmen.
This litany of woe can be lengthened ad libitum. My motive is not Schadenfreude, but a humble desire to learn from the mistakes of others. Better that they rather than I should pay my tuition in the school of Hard Knocks. Heed me, muchachos, there is no more delusive power on the face of the earth than sex. Or as a Turkish proverb has it, Erkegin sheytani kadindir, "Man's devil is woman." And conversely.
“Tookie” Williams Executed
From the Powerblogs archive. Originally posted 13 December 2005.
As you all know by now, Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed at San Quentin, California at 12:35 AM PT. I take no pleasure in this man's or any man's death; but I do take satisfaction from justice's being served. I simply do not understand how anyone who is not morally obtuse can fail to see that justice demands capital punishment in cases like this.
Not only did this fellow brutally murder four people, three of them members of a Chinese family, "Buddha-heads" in the miscreant's lingo, but he also helped found the Crips gang. So he is indirectly and partially responsible for hundreds and perhaps thousands of other crimes including rapes, carjackings, murders, you name it. Not only that, he failed to show any remorse, failed to take responsibility for his deeds, and played the predator right to the end, attempting to stare down the press there to witness his last moments.
But no fact and no argument I or anyone adduces will make any impression on liberal gush-heads like Bill Press, Ed Asner, Mike Farrell and their ilk. Bill Press the other day opined that capital punishment is "cruel and unusual." To say something so stupid, and so typical of a liberal, is to empty that phrase of all meaning. Williams died by lethal injection, painlessly. He wasn't broken on the wheel, drawn and quartered — or cut in half by a blast from a 12-gauge shotgun, which is how he murdered one of his victims.
So there is cause to celebrate: not the death of a man, nor the awesome power of the state, but that justice was done and the Left was handed a stinging rebuke.
O. J. Trial NOT the Trial of the Century
How soon they forget, and what paucity of historical sense! Or perhaps journalists just don't care to get things right. Chalk it up to truth decay. The O. J. Simpson murder trial was not the trial of the century.
Pyrrhonism and Buddhism
Anyone familiar with both will have noticed the similarities between Pyrrhonism and Buddhism. The theme is explored in an on-line book I just discovered but haven't read: Adrian Kuzminski, Pyrrhonism: How the Ancient Greeks Reinvented Buddhism.
Political Burden of Proof
As contemporary 'liberals' become ever more extreme, they increasingly assume what I call the political burden of proof. The onus is now on them to defeat the presumption that they are so morally and intellectually obtuse as not to be worth talking to.
Lawlessness and Obstructionism Among Beltway Elites
Sanctuary cities and marijuana legalization statutes are examples of local and state governments ignoring federal law. But federal authorities and elected officials who vent about those subjects should look to their own disregard of the law. Two recent instances of the lawlessness of Beltway elites concern the U.S.-Mexico border barrier and the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im).
The Secure Fence Act of 2006 called for the construction of 700 miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. Not even the most shameless sophist will argue that anything like that happened. Far fewer than even 100 miles of high fencing followed. The feds did lay down vehicle barriers and counted those as “miles” toward compliance, but it’s laughable to contend that the law was implemented in any meaningful way.
It was conservative inaction that gave Trump traction. On this issue as on others.
Friday Cat Blogging! Purr-honian Cat
Sore Losers
Manhattan Contrarian
Trump Stacks Up Well Against His Presidential Predecessors
Douglas MacKinnon makes the case. After a stinging assessment of George W. Bush, MacKinnon has this to say about Obama:
Next, the American people got a president who was inserted in the protective and unquestioning bubble of political correctness at about twenty years of age, who kept his grades, his transcripts, his SAT scores, his IQ and much of his early life a state secret, and who had virtually no real-world work experience. At least none that was not handed to him on a silver platter.
Purely because of his lack of real-world experience, coupled with his socialist views on life, he proceeded to decimate our health care system, force millions of Americans into poverty and onto food stamps, create more debt than the combined debt of every president before him, weaken our military to the breaking point, and cause our allies to no longer trust us. All while playing over 300 rounds of golf and squeezing in more vacation time than most Americans will take in a lifetime.
Fortunately for this president who was schooled by some truly reprehensible socialists, Marxists and haters, he and his wife begin their new lives as a former president and former first lady with a book deal valued somewhere between $30 million to $60 million.
As someone who spouts socialism and the redistribution of wealth, maybe he can be convinced to give most of those tens of millions of dollars to the families of the approximately 4,000 murder victims (about equal to U.S. losses in Iraq and more than U.S. losses in Afghanistan) in his hometown of Chicago. Surely he won't forget that he once lectured a hardworking plumber that "when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."
Is it Sometimes Rational to Believe on Insufficient Evidence?
I should think so.
The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one would not act as one must to live well.
When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence. And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success. There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it. In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient.
As a young man observing my professors, I said to myself, "I can do this and I can do it better!" (It can be advantageous to have mediocre teachers!) My belief in myself was not without evidence but surely was not grounded in sufficient evidence. (Suppose we agree that sufficient evidence for proposition p renders p more likely than not.) My believing in myself was a believing well beyond the evidence. But my belief in self, even unto cockiness, was sine qua non for my success. Effort follows belief. In cases like these, belief is a matter of the will: one chooses to believe that a certain good is attainable despite the insufficiency of the evidence the intellect can gather at the time.
This strikes me as a good maxim: Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing.
Let's consider another example.
The New Neighbors
What evidence do I have that my new neighbors are morally decent people? Since they have just moved in, my evidence base is exiguous indeed and far from sufficient to establish that they are decent people. (Assume that some precisifying definition of 'decent' is on the table.) Should I suspend judgment and behave in a cold, skeptical, stand-offish way toward them? ("Prove that you are not a scumbag, and then I'll talk to you.") Should I demand of them 'credentials' and letters of recommendation before having anything to do with them? Either of these approaches would be irrational. A rational being wants good relations with those with whom he must live in close proximity and whose help he may need. Wanting good relations, he must choose means that are conducive to that end. Knowing something about human nature, he knows that 'giving the benefit of the doubt' is the wise course when it comes to establishing relations with other people. If you begin by impugning the integrity of the other guy, he won't like you. One must assume the best about others at the outset and adjust downwards only later and on the basis of evidence to the contrary. But note that my initial belief that my neighbors are decent people — a belief that I must have if I am to act neighborly toward them — is not warranted by anything that could be called sufficient evidence. Holding that belief, I believe way beyond the evidence. And yet that is the rational course.
So again we see that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. A theory of rationality adequate for the kind of beings we are cannot require that belief be always and everywhere apportioned to evidence.
It can also be shown that there are cases in which believing, not beyond, but against the evidence is sometimes rational.
Later.