The ABCs of epistomology

I posted a blog about the alief/belief distinction. But it seems that many philosophers would want to see faith as a separate phenomenon with distinguishing characteristics from alief and belief. Hence, perhaps we can term faith , "celief" (pronounced 'seeleef')? Now we'll have the ABCs of epistomological states.

There ain't nothin' about Mary

The knowledge argument purports to show that physicalism is false. The arguments exploits our intuition that Mary learns something new when she sees red for the first time for its rhetorical force. But if we can show that that intuition may not shared for a group with different native linguistic-conceptual color scheme the argument may lose much of its persuasiveness. The linguistic color scheme one employs is a historical contingency. It may have been that one was born into a society that employs a different scheme. If one's intuitions on philosophical issues turn out to be different based on that contingency, that would cast some doubt as to the substantiveness of findings based on that intuition. The argument goes something like this:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had allthe physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. (From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article “The Knowledge Argument)

Before I turn to my basic argument, I need to give a little primer on linguistic relativism. It has been known to linguists that many language groups have different color terms than ours. For example, native English and modern Chinese speakers both have the same number of basic color terms and both languages partition the color spectrum in essentially the same way but other languages do not partition the color spectrum the same way.

Similarly, languages are selective when deciding which hues are split into different colors on the basis of how light or dark they are. English splits some hues into several distinct colors according to lightness: such as red and pink or orange and brown. To English speakers, these pairs of colors, which are objectively no more different from one another than light green and dark green, are conceived of as belonging to different categories.[1] A Russian will make the same red-pink and orange-brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between sinii and goluboi, which English speakers would simply call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, sinii and goluboi are as separate as red and pink or orange and brown. (wiki article on color terms. See also wiki article “linguistic relativity and the color naming debate” and “linguistic relativity”)

Some languages such as certain Trans-New Guinea languages only have two basic color terms (dark and light!) and all colors are considered a shade of those two basic colors. Likewise, some languages have more than we do and native speakers tend to speak of, and presumably think of, more basic colors concepts. Keep in mind that it has been shown by anthropologists and cognitive psychologists that people all over the world can see and make color distinctions the same way we do (unless they are colorblind of course). It's the way that they partition and group the colors on the spectrum that is culturally/linguistically distinctive. It should be noted that "color relativism," that is, this notion that color term differences reflect differences in cognitive differences in color concept classification and that this classification is in turn a function of cultural/linguistic norms is still a controversial thesis among linguists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists. But if the relativists are correct, even partially, my argument follows.

My skeptical question as relating to the issue of color qualia is this: let's say that there is someone, call him Larry, who has lived an otherwise normal life except that for whatever reason, Larry has never seen a particular shade of yellow before. This shade only spans one nanometer on the color spectrum and may be a rare shade of yellow so it may not be a big deal that Larry has yet seen such a shade. One day he comes across this shade which we will call 'mellow.' Has Larry learned anything new by perceiving mellow for the first time? Has he learned anything new much as Mary presumably learns upon seeing red?

It seems that most folks would say "no.” If mellow is similar enough to a shade of yellow Larry is familiar with, Larry may not even realize he is seeing a shade of yellow he has never encountered before. It would be a wholly uneventful event for Larry. The “no” answer seems plausible for assume that the answer is yes. Larry gains a new color concept corresponding to the qualia associated with mellow. He has a new color experience analogous to the first experience of seeing red in the original knowledge argument. The color segment of the color spectrum may be divided into shades and these shades may be further divided into sub-shades of those sub-shades further divided and so on perhaps ad infinitum (I'm assuming that the color spectrum is continuous but even if it is not but divisible into very fine sub-shades, my reductio argument follows). So ex hypothesi knowing and experiencing a segment of the color spectrum for the first time, even if a tiny segment corresponding to a shade of some familiar basic color as Larry presumably has in my scenario is to know and grasp a new color concept, then we can ask what happens when instead of seeing mellow, Larry sees a shade of yellow that is also a shade of mellow perhaps occupying half the length on the color spectrum as mellow. If he also learns a new color in this scenario (we will call this sub-shade 'sub-mellow') then we may reiterate the question mutatis mutandis of whether he learns a new color concept and so on. There seems to be no clear line to draw when Larry does not learn of a new color concept from ever so fine divisions of shades of yellow. But if there is no line to draw and the color spectrum is continuous then seeing any shade for the first time of arbitrary spectrum span implies learning an (uncountable) infinite number of new color concepts. That I think is absurd.

Each of us normally sighted individuals may see many new shades of familiar colors everyday. And each of those shades may be divided into sub-shades. But it is preposterous to say that we learn an infinite number of new color concepts on a daily basis. So Larry does not learn a new color concept simply by seeing that shade of yellow for the first time. He simply sees yellow, not gain a new “mellow” color concept.

Now imagine that a tribe of people that makes only the two dark-light basic color distinction and their possible reaction to the Mary though experiment. Will they say that Mary learned anything new by seeing red which presumably they think is just a shade of their super-color "dark"? It may be that they would say "no" much as we do to the hypothetical case of mellow I gave above and for the same reasons we give. For them, red is just some shade in the basic super-color dark. Our intuitions about the knowledge argument seem to be sensitive to the linguistic color scheme we actually employ. If accidents of our birth influences the direction our intuitions point regarding some thought experiment, there may be good reason to be suspicious of insights those intuitions are supposed to offer us.

This so far of course, a limited application of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for color terms to explain qualia. Much as many think that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a skeptical hypothesis regarding realism of natural properties or kinds, my attempt has been to use the hypothesis as a skeptical attack on qualia. Thus, if my skeptical attack is correct we, under another color schemes may not agree that Mary would learn anything new upon seeing red. She may simply dismiss it at most simply as a perhaps odd shade of "dark" or "black" much we under our color conceptual scheme presumably view the person first seeing the uneventful mellow for the first time.

One possible response to my argument thus far is that it only shows that red qualia (or any color qualia not light or dark since all known linguistic communities have at least these two basic color concepts/terms) does not have the epistemic properties ascribed to it by the knowledge argument and thus it is not effective as an argument against physicalism in whole. Though there are no red qualia, there are still white and black qualia for no known linguistic communities lack these basic color concepts and thus all communities presumably concede that there are qualia corresponding to white and black qua basic colors.

The argument I made is meant to show that the quintessential example of color qualia red can be doubted that it has the private epistemic property it is alleged to have by culturally relativising red. If red qualia goes by way of this kind of relativism, what is to stop all color qualia including light or dark qualia going with it? What makes these more special as qualia that red is not? Now the burden is at least shifted. This is the main rhetorical point of my argument.

Lastly I'd like to see an X-PHI experiment comparing survey responses of two linguistic groups: a group composed of native language speakers of a language that does not recognize the color red as a unique primary color but a shade of some supercolor such as "dark." The other group does recognize red as a primary color such as native English speakers. The speakers of the language that doesn't recognize red should be from a group that also has not had much influence from western culture or any cultures that partitions the color spectrum in a different way. Of course that will be hard and in practice no culture is so discrete from the linguistic and cultural influence of others but there still are some cultures that are relatively isolated. Many speakers of the Trans-New Guinea languages are so isolated even today. They would be a good group to sample because as I've mentioned, they only recognize two basic primary colors (dark and light). They would serve as a good comparison group with Native English speakers, e.g. To test the intuitions on the knowledge argument compared to the control group of native English speakers would be a good way, in my view, to see if there is anything substantive and sound about it. Let's say that the non control group doesn't think that Mary learns anything new once she sees the apple for the first time, that would go in some ways in showing that it is conceivable Mary learns nothing new when she sees red for the first time contrary to Jackson's original claim in his argument.

Induction and the Axiom of Choice

In this short but strange paper, Alexander George gives a mathematical "proof" justifying induction. The problem of (Humean) induction basically is:

Now as concerns the argument, its conclusion is that in induction (causal inference) experience does not produce the idea of an effect from an impression of its cause by means of the understanding or reason, but by the imagination, by “a certain association and relation of perceptions.” The center of the argument is a dilemma: If inductive conclusions were produced by the understanding, inductive reasoning would be based upon the premise that nature is uniform; “that instances of which we have had no experience, must resemble those of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same.” (Hume THN, 89) And were this premise to be established by reasoning, that reasoning would be either deductive or probabilistic (i.e. causal). The principle can't be proved deductively, for whatever can be proved deductively is a necessary truth, and the principle is not necessary; its antecedent is consistent with the denial of its consequent. Nor can the principle be proved by causal reasoning, for it is presupposed by all such reasoning and any such proof would be a petitio principii.

George's proof uses the axiom of choice and a recent result called the Hardin-Taylor theorem. George's proof requires the axiom of choice. However, it seems to me that this would not make induction any less problematic because the grounds for skepticism on which the problem of induction is formed is analogous, indeed, very similar, to the grounds for doubting the truth of the axiom of choice. Consider the axiom of choice which basically states:

For it amounts to nothing more than the claim that, given any collection of mutually disjoint nonempty sets, it is possible to assemble a new set — a transversal or choice set — containing exactly one element from each member of the given collection.

This axiom presupposes the existence of a choice function for any collection of non empty sets, even infinite collections and even if we cannot specify the details of that function (for example by specifying a selection rule or the distinguishing property of the elements to be picked out). The function is assumed to exist under that axiom. Likewise the reason the problem of induction does not bother scientists, common folks and philosophers alike (who actually doubts the sun will rise tomorrow?) is because we assume that nature has principles of uniformity such as laws, etc even if we cannot directly observe such laws or discover them by deductive reasoning reason as Hume insisted. Hume suggest that we arrive at the principle of uniformity for any series of past events to continue to hold into the future by acts of "imagination" and inference through that imagining. To claim that we can discover the principles through observation is to beg the question, or worse, to get into a vicious circle (what would justify the principle?). To claim that we can discover them through deductive reasoning is to commit a category error.

Similarly, assuming the existence of choice functions is assuming that there is some regularity in any collection of items from a collection of non empty sets even when we cannot specify what that regularity is. We cannot prove it from the axioms (it is an axiom after all). In the case of induction we are not bothered by the "problem" of induction because we assume that our imagination in conjoining repeated contiguous events have some basis in a natural uniformity that is existing independently outside of our imagination (such as some natural law). We assume the existence of some law e.g., which we cannot directly observe but must infer the existence.

So "proving" induction from the axiom of choice seems to do no anti-skeptical work at all. It throws the problem in the lap of mathematics when the foundations of such reasoning can be put under a very similar skeptical lens as the foundations of our everyday inductive reasoning. This is made especially salient when we consider the reasons why mathematicians have accepted the axiom of choice. First, let's consider what George says about his proof:

But might there be some feature of the proof that compromises its ability to offer the kind of justification we are after? One aspect of the proof that suggests itself is its reliance on the Axiom of Choice....

But then he goes on:

Where a condition on conceptual coherence is consistency with ZFC, Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory plus the Axiom of Choice, a theory most mathematicians believe to be true and indispensable for the formal development of mathematics.

If this is the justification then it would render the whole proof implausible because as Penelope Maddy has correctly pointed out, mathematicians have "accepted" the axiom of choice largely because of pragmatic reasons (for ease of proving some theorems like Zorn's lemma). They haven't accepted it because of its philosophically sound obviousness (in fact, many of them and logicians and philosophers have skeptically questioned its truth much as the later have inductive reasoning). Given these pragmatic historical considerations, they seem to mirror the pragmatic considerations of why people accept inductive reasoning as generally true (how will we live without assuming natural regularity and uniformity?).

Many mathematicians are equally adept and comfortable working with axioms that are inconsistent with choice (such as the axiom of determinacy). Maddy's experience with mathematicians on the philosophical aspects of their discipline is similar to my own experience in asking them about foundational issues. They are, almost unanimously in my experience, far more pragmatic and anti-platonist than philosophers would believe and are in general less likely to have platonist intuitions than philosophers of math in my experience. When asked if they think the axiom of choice (or the Continuum Hypothesis) is true they will usually say something like "well, it's true under some models but not others." This is not them being flippant but stems from their general pragmatic outlook. So George's appeal to the authority of the mathematician in his reliance on that axiom for his proof of induction seems odd and rather unconvincing.

Puzzle of the self-torturer?

Look at this passage from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on dynamic choice.

Suppose someone — who, for reasons that will become apparent, Quinn calls the self-torturer — has a special electric device attached to him. The device has 1001 settings: 0, 1, 2, 3, …, 1000 and works as follows: moving up a setting raises, by a tiny increment, the amount of electric current applied to the self-torturer's body. The increments in current are so small that the self-torturer cannot tell the difference between adjacent settings. He can, however, tell the difference between settings that are far apart. And, in fact, there are settings at which the self-torturer would experience excruciating pain. Once a week, the self-torturer can compare all the different settings. He must then go back to the setting he was at and decide if he wants to move up a setting. If he does so, he gets $10,000, but he can never permanently return to a lower setting. Like most of us, the self-torturer would like to increase his fortune but also cares about feeling well. Since the self-torturer cannot feel any difference in comfort between adjacent settings but gets $10,000 at each advance, he prefers, for any two consecutive settings s and s+1, stopping at s+1 to stopping at s. But, since he does not want to live in excruciating pain, even for a great fortune, he also prefers stopping at a low setting, such as 0, over stopping at a high setting, such as 1000

This passage as stated states that the increments to be increased are of the devices settings (i.e. amount of electric current). But the "puzzle" seem to arise when we consider increments of degrees of pain.

But pain is dependent not simply on one factor such as external stimulation from electric currents. It is a function also of psychological factors. Psychological experiments over the years have shown that individual's pain tolerance and subjective evaluation of the degree of pain vary considerably based on the individual's state of mind at the time. People may experience more pain and tolerate more pain such as electric shocks or having their hand immersed in ice water simply by changing a state of mind either self-induced or by the experimenter or through some uninduced capricious change of the state of the mind. Thus the agent may experience two shocks with very small differences in electric current as drastically different in subjective pain.

So the agent may not be able to predict when his state of mind changes for the worse making him vulnerable to experience an intransitive and unbearable rise in pain in that incremental series of electric current. When it does happen it will be experienced as a pain that is noticeably greater than the pain resulting from the shock administered immediately before.

I think that many philosophical puzzles of rational choice such as Slote's "Satisficing maximizer" can also be solved by appealing to principles of unpredictability and context instability like I have here.

The Abyss and the Tao

After Cantor recovered from a stint in the insane asylum for mental breakdowns suffered while trying to prove some (we now know) intractable problems in set theory, he had a stroll with his good friend and colleague Dedekind. Dedekind asked Cantor what he pictured in his mind when he thought of sets. Dedekind remarked that when he thought about a set, he pictured a clear bag containing objects inside which are the set's elements. Cantor responded that when he thought about a set, he pictured an abyss.

In a previous post I remarked that some abstract objects occupy space and have relevant properties of concrete material objects and thus there may not be any philosophical (epistemological or otherwise) problems in dealing with them such as knowing them or having them cause and be caused by physical phenomenon. In mathematics, we have pure sets built from the null set from iterative or otherwise “mental operations.” The old joke that the mathematical universe is an entire infinite universe begotten from nothing (the contents of the null set) is illustrative of the counter-intuitiveness of this idea.

Thus, as the story goes, from the null set, we have everything we need for mathematics. But since these objects of math are all purely abstract without concrete properties (as opposed to abstract objects with concrete elements) which may take part in the causal epistemological chain, how do we know them if e.g., the causal theory of knowledge is correct? If mathematics is built on such foundations, we cannot appeal to impure sets such as sets built on singletons of everyday objects to resolve these epistemological lacunae. Mathematics foundationally built in such a way thus may be metaphysically and epistemologically counter-intuitive to many precisely because of the knowledge problem or some other problems with causally inert properties of pure sets or the begetting of things from nothing. Metaphysically, it is problematic as the old joke suggests, it is a infinitely high house of cards built on top the foundations of an abyss. I want to ask here if there is another alternative system that is built on firmer and more intuitive metaphysical foundations.

Now consider the classical Chinese conception of numbers. Many philosophers of the school of names and the neo-Taoist school inspired by the I-Ching (such as Wang Bi) thought that from some object, we may, by some mental operation, form the class (they did not have a modern notion of set obviously but did have a notion of what we would term 'class') containing that object. Now we have two objects, namely the object and its singleton class. One can go on forming more and more objects this way until one has all the objects needed for one's numbers and thus to furnish one's mathematical universe. This would generate the positive integers instead of the natural numbers including zero as modern mathematics would have it. There is something to be said about the Chinese system; it is iterative like the modern conception of numbers but it starts off from one (the singleton set of some concrete object) instead of zero (the null set). This system is ontologically well-founded on something as opposed to nothing and is concrete "from the start." Specifically, what the Taoist founds his theory of numbers on, the original object on which all his classes are built on, is just the Tao.

More formally, we have according to the Taoist conception: Tao, {Tao}, {Tao, {Tao}}, {Tao, {Tao}, {Tao, {Tao}}}. Now, either the Tao or {Tao} may be arbitrarily designated as the number one.

Let's say that we choose the former. One is unlike the other numbers in that 1. it is not a class (set). 2. for all numbers n other than one contains n elements while one, not being a set contains no elements.

Or one can designate the Tao's singleton {Tao} as the number one. But then all subsequent numbers will contain the Tao which is not a number to generate all successive numbers.

Alternatively, one may have 1=Tao, 2={Tao}, 3={Tao, {Tao}}.

This last interpretation seems to be the one Wang Bi favored.

Significantly, as Wang Bi makes the point in both his Yijing and Laozi commentaries, in this sense “one” is not a number but that which makes possible all numbers and functions. In the latter (commentary to Laozi 39), Wang defines “one” as “the beginning of numbers and the ultimate of things.” In the former (commentary to Appended Remarks, Part I), he writes, “In the amplification of the numbers of heaven and earth [in Yijing divination] … ‘one’ is not used. Because it is not used, use [of the others] is made possible; because it is not a number, numbers are made complete. This indeed is the great ultimate of change.”

However, here, each number will contain n-1 elements instead of the Von Neumann formulation of modern mathematics which has for each number n, n elements.

Thus Chinese mathematics can be impure and would have no problems with the epistemological problem of knowing abstract objects built on the singleton of some concrete object. Everything that can be proven in the modern system of mathematics can be proven in the Chinese system per Lowenheim-Skolem theorem or one of its corollary theorems (since the two number systems are equinumorous and isomorphic). Zero thus is redundant for mathematics. There remains only orthographic problems of how to write numbers and mathematical formula down and the technique the classical Chinese used was to use a non referential “placeholder” in place of '0' or the cipher.

But this system is just as counter-intuitive as the modern for there are problems of its own. If I start off from the singleton set containing my computer and you start off from the singleton set containing your right foot, we would have two different notions of the numbers one and thus all subsequent numbers built on it. But 1=1 is true and it is necessarily true. Modern mathematics does not have this problem because it is easy to prove that there is one and only one null set and thus it and all numbers built on it are identical.

We may be able to obstruct this problem by introducing a single “arbitrary object” which can stand in for any object and starting from the singleton of it and define it as the number one. However, is this arbitrary object concrete or abstract? It might make sense to say of an arbitrary object that it is concrete or abstract with causal properties. I don't know. But if concrete where is this object? It may not have a specific location but since it could “stand in” for any concrete object, it may make some sense to ascribe to it causal properties even if it may be abstract much as the singletons of concrete objects. Kit Fine has defended arbitrary objects has having such common properties of concrete objects.

Alternatively, as pointed out above, Wang Bi and some of the other classical Chinese philosophers thought that the original object which one is is just the Tao, which in turn is itself not strictly definable and may be a ineffable "primitive" (I guess maybe like the term 'nothing' or perhaps 'arbitrary object') or its singleton. The Tao certainly seems to have causal properties and may certainly be said to influence causally the world on their conception whatever it may be.

Still, the Chinese system may not wholly escape some of the counter-intuitiveness associated modern math. It is only slightly less counter-intuitive than the modern system because instead of begetting the whole mathematical universe from nothing, it begets it from one thing. An infinitely high house of cards is built on the flimsiest of foundations instead of on an abyss.

Wagering for one's soul and the possibility of Divine Evil

In the previous post, I mentioned that the “God” of the Bible is at least a possible, if not actual being that is very evil. If the description of him is empty, he is a possible being of some possible world (closest to ours with relevant changes) that fits the description. If he is an actual being and “God” of the Bible denotes him, the description may or may not be accurate. The Bible may be wrong about his attributes. He may not be the evil being he is described. In which case it may be that people have mistaken his attributes or it may be that he is actually an omnibenevolent being that has constructed the Bible as a kind of moral test for us. If we resist the Biblical version of him which is on many philosophical accounts is a description of an evil being, we “pass” and if we fall for it by worshiping the Biblical description, we “fail.” What is the consequence of these possibilities?

Consider these four possibilities. Either there is at least one evil being that fits the Biblical bill (henceforth, I will refer to this possible being as "Dog") or there is not. Additionally, either there is at least one omnibenevolent and omnipotent being or there is not (I will call this being just "God" not to be confused, of course, with the Dog which is the Biblical God). There are four total possibilities and they are mutually exclusive: there are at least one Dog that fits the Biblical bill but no God. That both exists. That God exists but Dog does not and that neither exists. In what follows, I will simply ignore the possibility of more than one of each kind of being (it will not affect the argument).

Many philosophers since Augustine have made maltheistic arguments against the Biblical (Abrahamic) God. If we are to interpret the Bible literally, we find that it's inescapable the conclusion, if we are rational, that the being called 'God' there is actually something monstrously evil. His actions in the Bible of causing/inciting/endorsing/ordering genocides, mass murder, "natural" catastrophes, child and wife killings, etc are well known. Even some of our Founding Fathers have remarked how despicable and evil the Abrahamic god is. Jefferson once said (paraphrasing) that a unbiased and reasonable man would have to conclude that the Biblical god is evil or a demon after reading it.

David Lewis in his paper, “Divine Evil” has gone even further in suggesting that the evils perpetrated in these well known examples from the Old and New Testament pale in comparison to the infinite evil of Divine Evil (for all former evils are finite while Divine Evil is infinite). Divine evil is the evil of punishing those to an eternity of suffering (damnation) for facile reasons such as vanity. Yet it is precisely for reasons such as vanity that the Biblical God has given in the Bible (and Koran) for sending people (many of whom presumably lived very virtuous lives) to an eternity of suffering. Making someone suffer infinite torment for an infinite amount of time for facile reasons constitute evil par excellence. It is hard to even imagine what could be more evil. It is infinite Divine Evil. I wholeheartedly agree with this Divine Evil hypothesis, that is, that the being described as the God of the Bible appears to be very evil.

Lewis uses the hypothetical example of a Nazi named "Fritz" to argue his case and who does not act in an evil manner but wholeheartedly supports the Nazi cause of invasion, aggressive wars, and genocide. He admires Hitler very much. Now most of us I think will consider Fritz very evil even if he has not done acts of evil. He is evil simply in virtue of endorsing and advocating those evil acts. He is vicariously evil. That was Lewis's main argument, that people can be vicariously evil in regards to obeying the Biblical commends to worship the evil Biblical being that sends people to torment for eternity for vain reasons much as Fritz can be evil just by admiring and endorsing Hitler. Notice that this vicarious evil need no real object to imbue it with its evil; even if Fritz is a brain-in-the-vat and the Nazi leaders and desired world he endorses is an illusion created by some neuroscientists, he would still seem to be evil in endorsing such evil illusions. Fritz, after all, has no control over whether his world is real or an illusion and if he is guilty of evil in a real world, he is so in a illusory world which is phenomenally identical to that real world. Whether he lives in a real world or an imaginary but phenomenologically identical world is a matter of luck outside of his control and which he presumable is not responsible for.

Assuming that Lewis's argument for the Divine Evil of the Abrahamic God is true, what has this got to do with us? Other than what it has to our moral status there seems to be prudential concerns we must also deal with analogous to Pascal's prudential arguments for believing (or trying to cultivate a belief) in his god.

If the the Abrahamic God is such an infinitely evil being, what prudential arguments analogous to Pascal's wager can we devise to take into account such a conclusion?

In the following table, I will argue in similar decision theoretic terms for what we should believe or disbelieve and maybe be against (that is, cultivate a antipathy or something like it) so that we may avoid eternal damnation and end up with the best chances at getting into heaven.

I have also avoided tricky technical issues with interpretation of the wager and with issues between infinite and finitary decision theory. Alan Hajek employs interesting methods using kinds of ordinal infinite numbers called surreals to remedy the usual problems associated with infinitary decision theory such as problems with mixed strategies (i.e., since run of the mill infinity is reflexive under multiplication of finite probabilities, any mixed strategy will yield infinite utility thereby making a mockery of Pascal's wager), and infinitesimal degrees of beliefs and Roy Sorensen uses more traditional conceptions of (cardinal) infinity to make the wager as fitting as possible to the tasks at hand.

One may also employ very large finite utilities to stand for heaven (and inversely, large negative utilities for hell) but I prefer the infinite strategies as it is closer to our religious and philosophical notion of the utility of heaven and hell but other problems with the nature of non standard uses of infinite numbers inevitably rear their heads making trouble for Pascal's interpretation of the wager as Hajek shows. Since juggling infinite utilities seems to cause technical trouble (tractable or intractable is a matter of dispute) so I will try to avoid such technical issues with the ambiguous utilities of -H (which is hell and may or may not be infinite negative utility) and +H will mean heaven (which may or may not be infinitely positive utility). I think the wager can still be analyzed rationally using just the notion of dominance from decision theory.

-H and +H, even if finite, will likely be under any plausible interpretation, very, very large utilities in opposite directions. One is to be avoided at nearly all costs and the other, desired at equally far reaching costs. I will use “Indeterminate” to be somewhere between these utilities as it is indeterminate what our reward/punishment will be under some such scenario. However, indeterminate leaning towards some direction (such as -H or +H) as it may be will lean towards that direction. So we have the current utility spectrum from least desirable to most (for us).

(-H) is less than (Indeterminate) is less than (+H)

I will use the palindrome "Dog" to denote the Biblical god and assuming that Lewis's argument for its evil is true (and in fact, it may be a sort of analytical truth that a being displaying those qualities are evil as I think Lewis would agree). I will also use "God" to denote a possibly existing being who really is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc; this is the being with the properties traditionally thought to belong to God's. Thus my terms are:

Dog=Abrahamic/Biblical god=Devil

God=Omnibenevolent, creator...etc

I have assumed (much as Pascal and Hajek's versions of the wager) that your subjective probability for all these possibilities are positive (or all >0). The first three columns of this table denotes the possible situation when God is all powerful with ability to send people to heaven/hell but Dog does not have such powers, and this would correspond with many of our understanding of God and the devil. Dog may claim to hold such powers to be able to send people to heaven/hell as he does in the Bible (if the Divine Evil conclusion is true as we are assuming). The fourth and fifth columns represents possible scenarios where both God and Dog have powers to send us to -H or +H. We have the following 2 by 6 decision matrix:

	God & Dog exists	Dog only	God only	God & Dog exists (both equally powerful)	Dog only (Dog has power to send people to -H)	Neither exists
Wager for Dog	-H	Indeterminate	-H	Indeterminate (but leans towards -H)	Indeterminate (lean towards -H)	Indeterminate
Against Dog	+H	Indeterminate	+H	indeterminate	-H	Indeterminate

The columns represent these exhaustive possibilities. Either both God and Dog exists, or Dog exists but God does not or God does and Dog does not or neither exists (last column).

When God and Dog exists but Dog lacks powers to send us to -H (first column), it is prudent to wager against Dog. When Dog exists without God but Dog lacks the requisite powers to send us to -H (merely bluffing to, e.g.) as is the case in the second column, the results are indeterminate much as what happens when we die in an atheist's world. When both God and Dog exists and both are equally powerful, it is indeterminate who will get our souls but I am leaning towards -H for those who wager for Dog as both God may want to punish us for our vicarious evil in wagering for Dog and Dog may want to punish us just because he is Dog. He may repay our good turn for our wagering for him with an evil turn. He is evil after all! In that case, both God and Dog will agree on our fate. But he may also wish to reward us for our wagering for him but God may have other ideas as he may wish to punish us. Anyway, I am leaning towards Against Dog as the rational choice in this scenario even though I have labeled it indeterminate what our fate is if we so choose for that reason.

In the fifth column, only Dog exists and he has the power to send us to -H. If we wager for him, he may show us some good will and not send us to -H. But he may also lie (again, he is evil after all!) and decide to send us there anyway against his promises in the Bible to send all faithful to +H. If we wager against him he will certainly send us there.

The last column is where neither God nor Dog exists and in which case we just die and what happens to us is indeterminate or likely we just get a utility of nothing.

Notice the asymmetry. If we ignore the fifth column where Dog has the power to send people to -H and there is no God to check his powers, we have a decision matrix that is dominant for “Against Dog”. That is, if we ignore the possibility that Dog is the only power in the heavens without God to check his evil ways, we would be irrational not to wager against Dog. Even if that columns is true, we may only have little prudential reason to choose to wager for Dog as he might deceive us and send us to -H anyway. It makes sense that the devil pays a good turn with a bad one so given this there is little reason we should decide to wager for him even if this column is in fact the case. This (especially combined with the moral reasons) suggests we should wager against Dog.

My review of Epistemic Injustice

By Miranda Fricker here.

Beliefs and Aliefs

In this video between Eric Schwitzgebel and Tamar Gendler, we have Gendler arguing for her famed distinction between beliefs and aliefs. Schwitzgebel argues that the distinction if a false dichotomy and that real beliefs are too complex, nuanced, and that there are too many gray areas between Gendler's beliefs and her aliefs to be so analysed. I am convinced that Gendler's analysis is insightful and useful to epistemology. But Schwitzgebel does make some interesting points. One thought experiment that I thought up that may help his case is the following:

Regina is a scientist who knows all about zombies in her post apocalyptic zombie infested world. She has a sister whom she loves dearly called Clair. Clair is bitten by a zombie and will turn into one herself soon (as the virus causing zombihood is highly contagious). Regina knows all about this and knows (a fortiori believes) that Clair will turn to a zombie. Clair does and Regina is faced with a harrowing moment where her sister is coming after her to eat her brains. Regina can either shoot the zombie that was at one time her sister knowing full well that that is not her sister but a zombie. She is not not under a delusion nor is she suffering from any other form of psychological pathology but she can not shoot the zombie because of the zombies likeness to her sister. The zombie kills and eats Regina's brain.

When a dramatic example like this is given, it would seem to my intuitions (and I would imagine many others) that it is indeterminate whether Regina believes in a robust sense of the word whether her sister is a zombie even though Regina is a scientist of zombies and knows all about them.

Though Gendler's examples are cherry-picked or "idealized" in her own words (and this example does seem to show a cherry-picked example on the other extreme), I still think that the belief-alief distinction is insightful.

Possibility does not entail any degree of probability

In the previous post I noted that I think Wittgenstein was trying to make the point that the mere raising of a possibility counter to common sense does not offer us a justified reason to put that common sense into real doubt of any degree. Real doubt requires more than mere raising of alternative (logical or otherwise) possibilities or the feelings of uncertainty which may result from it. One example of possibility not entailing any probability is this:

Consider the unit line (length of 1). It contains a continuum of numbers from 0 to 1, inclusive. Choose any arbitrary number on that line, say, .333.... There certainly is a possibility that a random selection of any number from that continuum will be .333...; after all, .333...is a number between 0 and 1. But what is the probability that it will be that number? The answer is literally, 0.

So in this case, even though there is a possibility of it landing on that number, there is no probability of it ever doing so. Our confidence in it landing on it, if it is to be rational, to to assign it 0 confidence.

Wittgenstein's examples, I believe, used real life possibilities instead of this mathematical example.

My reply on a blog

Here's my reply to a blog's post about Wittgenstein's On Certainty.

I think it quite a naive reading of W’s On Certainty to say that the Moon Landing was a refutation of his views. Keep in mind that, as a young man, W was a year away from his doctorate in aeronautical engineering and he probably was well aware that someday, maybe even in the near future, people would walk on the moon.

Let me just say that I believe W’s work on doubt to be very insightful and even correct. I may be taking some exegetical liberties in my interpretations but such liberties are justified when dealing with W because he was such a horrendous writer. Horrendous writer may be but I still find many of his ideas quite profound though, as with you, I also think that much of his esteem among many philosophers to be from his “bewitching” personality as opposed to the quality of his views.

This is how I interpret those passages. W was making an analogous move to Gettier in his seminal work on knowledge. As Gettier showed that justified true belief (JTB) is not necessarily a well defined and philosophically robust definition of knowledge but may be loosely termed such, W showed that just by raising possibilities counter to some forms of common sense is not a philosophically relevant form of doubting.

Gettier showed that it takes more than just JTB because the justification criterion must occur in a certain way. It can’t just be any ol’ sort of justification because one can be justified in some belief coincidentally. W’s example of being correct about dreaming and being on the moon, I believe, is meant to show that same point as it relates to doubt.

Mere raising of possibilities such as the possibility that one is now dreaming or being on the moon yesterday when one doesn’t believe oneself to be does not destroy one’s belief or even certainty in such beliefs. W’s reasoning for this conclusion as is detailed is by several examples and arguments.

He argues that raising odd possibilities tend to cancel out. For example, the possibility of someone being on the moon in 1949 (when On Certainty was written) when he tells you that he was is more than canceled out by the possibility of his being crazy or by him using those words in a way that you have misunderstood him. He could be in a different linguistic context than what you presume him to be in of speaking truthfully (such as sarcasm, telling a fictional story, etc) or he could be speaking in a language you don’t even understand. These unlikely possibilities cancel out any such *even more* unlikely possibilities of someone being on the moon in 1949 (which was impossible given the technology of the time). Raising of mere (logical) counter possibilities does not entail one should justifiably lower the probability of any belief as doubt would require. This was, I think, W’s point.

I think W was also making some kind of distinguishing remark about raising a counter possibility and the *feeling* of being doubtful and being doubtful itself. Think of this example (mine, not W’s but I think captures what he meant). Imagine a drug that is able to induce a *feeling* of doubt even in your most confidently held beliefs (maybe in logic or math). Now just because you feel doubtful doesn’t make it’s doubtful that that belief is false. Consider W’s quote:

“From its seeming to me – or to everyone – to be so, it doesn’t follow that it is so.”

I think W was making the point that true doubt requires justified reasons (and not just coincidentally justified) and not just a feeling of doubt or a mere possibility. That may have been an analytic truth to him as Gettier’s point that it is just an analytic truth (“built in the very meaning”)that knowledge requires more than JTB. Hence someone who claimed to doubt based on some mere possibility and a “doubtful feeling” simply don’t know what to doubt means (though they may in a philosophically irrelevant sense be correct in that usage much as JTB may be correct in some common usage).

To be doubtful you would have to be justified in the doubt in just the right way (just like you would have to be justified in just the right way for a belief to be knowledge). And that would entail you being able to answer a host of questions to which all our common sense beliefs may be connected in some way to that belief. See W’s quote:

“For this demands answers to the questions “How did he overcome the force of gravity?” “How could he live without an atmosphere?” and a thousand others which could not be answered.”

The more certain and “common sense” the belief, the more questions you’d have to answer which are connected to it. Compare this view with Quine’s web of beliefs and I think there’s quite a similarity. With Quine’s web, the closer it is to the center of the web, the more it will disturb the outer edges of that web and more of the whole web will have to be replaced by a more justified system or web of coherent beliefs.

W also notes that normal doubt requires some standard of weight to measure certitude or confidence. We doubt some belief X by using a stronger standard Y. Y provides the standards to put X into question. Even if X ultimately ends up being correct, if we had a stronger standard in a “common sense” Y to justifiably put X into doubt, X would only end up being correct *by coincidence* much like someone who says in his dream “it is raining” may be only coincidentally correct about the status of the non dream world.

Someone who doubted Y without good reason to by holding fast to some contradictory belief X would not be in fact correct to doubt Y in favor of X (compare with the Matrix where we are told that we don’t live in a real world but a dream world where evil robots are controlling our dream environment). He would not have an epistemic right to doubt Y because he could not provide a stronger standard to do so (which would entail coherently and justifiably answering a host of questions related to common sense Y).

I am now convinced that raising mere possibilities cannot justify loss in certainty in some belief as W claimed for much of the same reasons he argued. Doing so would be more akin to artificially inducing a feeling of doubt rather than real doubting. Lowering of confidence in our common sense beliefs (or any belief) has to occur in just the right way much as justification has to occur in just the right way for knowledge. This would still allow for the normative claim that it is still good practice to question all our beliefs but just that when that is done without good justification, it is not real doubt.

Conciliationism

This debate with Roy Sorenson and David Christensen is about the topic of conciliationism which Christensen defends. This is simply the view that if you hold the belief P and you also believe that another person who is your epistemic equal holds the belief ~P, you should update your belief so that it now has half the confidence it had before. I once read another quite good paper defending this view too I think by Adam Elga.

Many philosophers found this position hard to swallow as there are many philosophical views on any subject. Philosophers may rationally (with good justification) hold the mutually exclusive views P, Q, R, S,...on the same issue. Does that mean they should dilute their confidence by as many folds since presumably all their peers are equally (or roughly so) capable?

The position is very attractive to me but it has dawned on me that there is one way to make the position in practice not as hard to swallow. One mitigating effect which in practice will not reduce one's confidence as much even in the face of contrary points of views from one's epistemic peers is especially relevant to philosophical topics.

Many philosophical points of views though prima facie contradictory are not really so under close scrutiny because it is often shown that there was a subtle difference in underlying understanding of terms. In other words, many times two (or more) opposing sides are not really at odds at all but had been "talking past one another." Both sides could have been right all along; it's just that they had been right along different lines. The debate, for example, between evidentialism and some other contradictory view on epistemology might stem from different underlying conceptions of what a belief is. Therefore, on some conception of what beliefs are, evidentialism may be more accurate a view and on another slightly different understanding (which are not first apparent to the sides arguing) the other side's version is more accurate.

It would take conceptual analysis to expose the subtle differences responsible for the confusion and pseudo-debate. In practice, I would expect that the lessening of confidence may be mitigated somewhat by this but whether enough so to satisfy many of conciliationism's criticisms is doubtful. I do think that if this is so then they would just have to lessen their confidence in their beliefs in all their philosophical ideas including their stance against conciliationism.

The contingency problem

I've always thought about the contingency of my beliefs. Would I believe the things I do had I been raised differently or some other life circumstance had turned out differently? Would I deny my current beliefs? I think thinking about the contingency of one's epistemic status is a valuable exercise. It undermines the epistemic hubris from which many of us think somehow we have privileged epistemic access (whether be it from natural intellectual endowments or cultural or ethnic centricity etc) that is so common today and I think, contributes to a unbelievable amount of evil in the world.

This is a debate from Adam Elga, Joshua Schecter, and Roger White on this problem.

I liked the way that Roger White framed the problem. At times it seems that Elga is completely confused about what White and Schecter are talking about and seem to give examples that are irrelevant to the problem.

For example, Elga's proposed analogy of being hungry at some time and buying more food at the market when one is hungry does not seem to be wholly relevant to the contingency problem at all. One subjective state of not being hungry at time t does not conflict with one's status as being hungry at some later time t' however, one's belief that P is most certainly in epistemic conflict with one's belief that ~P had some contingent circumstance turned out differently in one's past upbringing. Elga seemed to have wholly missed the issue.

Elga's other example of someone telling another person who has done a math calculation that the result of said calculation is dependent on the color of the pad used in doing it is also seemingly irrelevant. Schecter I think hit it on the head when he mentioned that the correct response is not one of doubting or even lessening the degree of confidence in one's belief when that (absurd) response is given to one's belief that calculations are accurate on purely formulaic procedures and not to the color of paper used in that calculation. Rather it raises an appropriate Wittgensteinian uncertainty of the linguistic context or sanity of the person who raised the claim. If someone said that to me, I would not put into doubt my or even his belief about what determines the reliability of calculations but rather, whether or not he even understand the words "calculation" or "color" etc, as I do. His mental wellbeing is also up for questioning, not my beliefs of the reliability of calculation being independent of the color of the pad. In such a case, it may very well be, literally, crazy talk. In other words, my doubt in such cases are blocked from being epistemically transparent; it shifts its focus from judging my and his beliefs to one of a disorientation concerning the psycho-linguistic context in which I find myself. This shift in focus from that of transparency to opacity is I think wholly epistemically justified. (Wittgenstein's actual example (given in 1949) was that of someone who insists that he was "on the moon" yesterday.)

As you can see middle into the discussion when Elga raised his (objections?) points, Schecter and White seem visibly puzzled by them. Perhaps this is an instance of such epistemic opacity!

It is true that evidence can be conflicting and that contingent factors can determine whether we are given one set of evidence affirming some belief or some other set of relevant evidence denying them. I think Elga at one point makes this claim. But if P is true (when P is like most non philosophical claims which can be settled by science or other relatively definitive methods), evidence for P will more likely be found than evidence for ~P so that is not really an instance of contingency especially when you notice that the example isn't focused on people differing opinions and beliefs per se but the confidence that they hold their own belief to or their tendency to see their own views as somehow privileged.

Though I don't think the issue of contingency philosophically that interesting itself (though it does have interesting philosophical implications especially with virtue epistemology I would imagine), it is important that people contemplate that they may be wrong and should thus be open to alternative viewpoints and change their views if better supported beliefs are given. I also think that the problem does not affect philosophers's beliefs on philosophical topics as much as most people because philosophers tend to argue about issues which very often can be very well supported on a variety of perspectives at odds with each other. That's one reason why philosophy so difficult; there's plenty of evidence to support different perspectives roughly equally.

And many philosophers realize this and are comfortable in discussing with each other the issues and questioning how well supported their beliefs are and whether or not to change their own views, etc. Like Kripke's introduction to his Naming and Necessity famously said that his view expressed in the work is most certainly wrong like most views in the philosophy of language but he still believes it is the best supported view given so far. I think many philosophers have this open attitude to much of their philosophical beliefs viz a viz those of their colleagues. So I think philosophers, in general, already have this epistemic virtue of humility but that might not be so of most people who do not form, hold (sometimes in the face of overwhelming counter proof) and change their beliefs on support from evidence given them but on those irrelevant contingent factors.

Book review of Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge

This book is arguing against relativism, anti-realism and post modernist conceptions of knowledge. I found it clear but did not go far enough into the contemporary literature on the subjects in question.

A string theorists gets his ass handed to him

Luboš Motl is a string theorist who was involved in the infamous "string wars" and a prodigious blogger. I had a debate with him on his blog about the aim of science journalism quite recently. Motl is a avowed conservative (and even more obnoxious than the average), global warming skeptic and champion of string theory. He has recently made a post regarding what he believes should be the role of science journalism in response to a Sean Carrol (also a string theorist and blogger) post. That post argued (in support of Ed Yong's article) that journalist should take an active role towards seeking scientific truth. Their goal, like the scientists they report on, should be to seek truth instead of just reporting whatever the scientists say.

Motl's response was overacting and ridiculous arguing that since journalists are too incompetent and lacking in resources to take sides in scientific disputes, they should just report whatever they are told. He relies on some pretty idiotic reasons for this claim such as anecdotal evidence of journalistic incompetence and the supposed intellectual limitations of journalists (based on a website which "converts" GRE scores to IQs). Of course, I agree with his low opinion of journalists' competency in their work but that obviously is not the issue. The issue is what should be the goal of science journalism and whether or not journalists at least have the capability to do that job (not whether most or the average can do it).

Motl doesn't seem to understand the basic mistake he is making: he assumes that all sides can be represented. The fact is that media space is a finite resource, limited by financial, energy, labor resources among journalists and public attention span, education and other cognitive resources in the public and that there is no way to represent all views due to these limitations. Some views will have to be left behind and not reported. Some views will be represented more than others and given more credibility. There's no way to avoid this. Journalists have a duty to only report those sources that are credible enough to warrant attention and give representative coverage and give credibility where its due. The only way to do that is by investigating the different sides of the story and gauging the plausibility of the sides with the available evidence. I responded with my views to his blog. Not surprisingly, Motl responds with the same irrational gibberish bordering on hysteria as usual. You can read the dialog here in the comments section.

I responded to his unfounded rants (replete with strawperson arguments and other fallacies) but he has not posted the responses. I'm not surprised as my responses completely demolishes his naive, and I would argue, fascist and extremely dangerous view of journalism. But since I have saved my responses all my posts are shown below including the ones he does not wish to display on his blog.


Nan said:

I'd never thought I defend a journalist but those advocates of truth-seeking in science journalism should be defended here. Granted, most science journalists are morons and consistently get the facts wrong or misleads the public.

On the other hand, your examples are in general, not appropriate. Of course the vast majority of journalists cannot decide the scientific merits of string theory and other complex problems. But there certainly are many kinds of issues they are or at least should be qualified to judge. Instances of scientific bias, of junk science or bad science which goes against a consensus, or instances of widely accepted misinterpretations of science, etc. That's what seems to be the kind of advocacy of a truth directed approach to science journalism Carrol is suggesting.

Not all science is good science and some are obviously bad science and a competent journalist (or even laymen) should be able to expose it as such. Cranks working at the margins of science often do so with obvious ulterior motivations or other bad reasons reasons even when they happen to be scientists. Financial, political, religious, psychological factors impact scientific integrity because scientists are also humans. A competent journalist should be able to discover many instances of scientific misconduct or bias or incompetence using the resources available to him or her.

So while controversial instances within science regarding complex matters are often outside of the scope of the resources available to journalists to make substantive criticisms and take informed sides, that's not always the case. In fact, a journalists most important job in scientific reporting may be to find the cases where there is relatively obvious bias/incompetence or the misreporting and common misconception regarding some scientific area and taking a stand. This can be done by reporting the landscape of current research in that area and offering the audience the reasons why a particular incorrect view is rejected (ID theory?). They do this with a goal towards truth. They do this with the *help* of the scientific community, by standing on the shoulders of giants, they have the resources to find the truth in many cases especially in the cases of exposing junk, biased, incompetent or misconstrued science. Many issues especially in medical or social science can be evaluated on their scientific merits using resources available to almost anyone.

Nobody is saying that journalists should do experiments etc to settle scientific controversies, including, I think, Carrol. Just that the journalist should be motivated and actively seek to find the truth, not just agree and report whatever he or she is told.

On the IQ issue of journalists, it's their educational resources that should be the issue, not their IQs.

Though I think it ironic that some of the least qualified people are the very people doing this terribly important job of bringing us the news, that doesn't mar the normative claim of Carrol and Yong that journalists *should* get the qualifications to do minimal scientific investigation and evaluation of the available data. Yes, most journalists are probably scientifically illiterate and innumerate but that is due to their lack of training in those areas. There is room for improvement there.

Besides, the data you used is from a website which uses combined GRE verbal and quantitative subtest scores. Adding raw scores like that is not very accurate to gauge intelligence simply for the fact (among others) that the two subtest are normed differently. A 700 verbal means something very different from a 700 quantitative. Due to where that norming falls on the GRE's subtests, liberal arts majors are at a decided disadvantage. You could even make a case that the verbal section is even more g-loaded than the quantitative section (because of the analogies section). Thus a deviational comparison is probably more appropriate. I once did such a comparison adding the z scores for fun and got something like

1. Physics majors
2. philosophy majors
3. math majors
4. comp science majors.
5. mechanical engineering majors

Also, be aware that the data is for those who take the GRE test, not those who have gotten their respective grad degrees. Many don't make it into grad school because they weren't accepted, etc. Many of the humanities grad departments are much more selective than the science and engineering departments (due to a lack of funding for liberal arts) in potential applicants.

Motl said:

NChen, our basic moral principles and our understandings of what is the truth and how it may be looked for are so dramatically incompatible that I don't think it's possible that we will ever agree on anything.

Hi Lubos,

I wouldn't say that they are moral principles that are at issue here; more like epistemic ones.

Motl said:

What does the consensus have to do with science or the truth? The journalists have no business to uncritically parrot a "consensus" or the official opinions of some institutions.

The consensus opinion of the scientific community is what the community considers to be true (and I think with good reason). Opinions that fall outside usually do so due to bias, incompetence, etc. Of course, that's not always the case and small minority views sometimes win out in the end and are eventually proven correct over the consensus but that is very rare.


Motl said:

The media overtaken by official institutions haven't led to anything good in the past. The tight Catholic Church's control over the communication 500 years ago or so delayed the scientific revolution by a century if not more so.

I'd probably agree with that and I never advocated for such “official institutions” to oversee either science or journalism. That would obviously be a bad idea.


Motl said:

In the modern Western society, the very kind of censorship of the scientific journalism that you have advocated has led to the support of the scientifically nonsensical hysterical waves about overpopulation, global warming, climate change, global climate disruption, and many other things that the institutions (and their mindless supporters) use to justify their thirst for more power.

What?! I never advocated censorship of anything. I advocated that journalist should

1. be more competent in science and 2. should seek the truth as opposed to just blindly report what people say. I think they have the resources to do that in many cases even in science though not in all cases. I think you have completely misunderstood my post.

Motl said:

These are no "unfortunate exceptions" in a system that otherwise work. These devastating and destructive pressures on science are pretty much the rule that follows from the dishonest standards for the science media that you defend - the framework in which you want to downgrade the journalists to uncritical parrots repeating and improving news according to the consensus of the most aggressive political movement of their era.

I think you've completely misunderstood my post. In fact, you seem to understand it in ways that are even opposite of what I intended. I think you've also misunderstood Carrol's views as well.


Motl said:

They don't have a clue about inflation, string theory, but they don't know much about the origin of species or healthy food, either. Any attempt to report something else than what the average readers would report (or find relevant) assuming their access to the same data is guaranteed to be a distortion in the longer run.

This is a blanket statement and false for all journalists. There are many science journalists who do know a thing or two about science. I simply said that all journalists should be scientifically literate and should seek the truth with what is available to them. But you seem to be against that and want them to parrot whatever is told them. I'm not sure how just by seeking the truth is making oneself an "activist".


Motl said:

You wrote: "Nobody is saying that journalists should do experiments etc to settle scientific controversies, including, I think, Carrol." Well, I surely am. Anyone who wants to "settle" empirical controversies has to do experiments (or careful theoretical work). That's my main point. If he doesn't do it, he simply cannot ever settle any controversies. Journalists can do experiments for free in their free time.

Surely you are not. Journalists cannot do those experiment because they will never have the training or equipment. But of course he can settle controversies. If a bunch of crank scientists say, e.g., that the LHC will produce small black holes which will destroy the earth and thus we should not fund such a project, a journalist does not have to do any experiments to find out the truth for him or herself. It's already there, been done. The consensus view among physicists (though I'm not a physicist but I do know that most will give you excellent reasons for why this view is absurd) is that the LHC will not cause any such disaster. Such an event is beyond what the science tells us is capable of happening. A journalist can and should find that out for himself and report it to the public why such doomsday worries are unfounded.

As for the GRE scores, all I did was subtract the respective scores of the majors from the mean and divide by the standard deviation to get the z-scores. I added the z-scores to get an additive z-score and compared them. A 700 on the verbal is far more impressive than a 700 on the quantitative subtest. It would be in the 97th percentile while a 700 on the quantitative is only in the 72nd percentile. But if you add the raw scores from the two subtests, a 700 is just a 700, no matter which subtest you get it from.


Motl said:

sorry, it's both an epistemic and moral gap that I see in between us. If someone is deliberately hiding some data that the other person would consider relevant, because of his position determined by a majority of a group or because of any other reason, then he is manipulating him, and I think it is a moral and not just epistemic defect to fool others.

That may be so but I have never advocated for “deliberately hiding data that the other person would consider relevant, because of his position determined by a majority of a group or because of any other reason”. I have no idea where you are getting this from. Maybe you have confused me with some other poster?


Motl said:

Not at all. If someone is a legitimate member of the scientific community, i.e. a scientist, then he is totally well aware of the fact that the scientific truth has nothing whatsoever to do with some majorities in polls. The scientific truth is completely independent of the humans, and if humans can get close to it, they get close to it by the amount, strength, relevance, and accuracy of the scientific arguments, not by forcing majorities to subscribe to something.

I think you have managed to say this one thing correctly. I agree that the scientific truth is “completely independent of humans.” But this has nothing whatsoever to do with what I and what Carrol and what Yong was advocating. So I think you have misunderstood what our claims are.


Motl said:

What you say may be true for political parties or advocacy groups but it is simply not true for the scientific community.

It's true of all the things above. I really think that (perhaps because of your English skills) that you have misread just about everything I mean to say. Though I think I have expressed clearly what I meant, I hope this post makes things clearer. You claim that I “advocate censorship of the statements, opinions, and findings that contradict the "scientific consensus".” Wrong. Can you quote where I alegedly said this? I simply said that the consensus is usually correct and for good reasons. I also said that that was sometimes not the case. The job of journalists should be to report why the consensus feels the way it does and why some contrary view is wrong. In other words, the journalists must give a representative overview based on where the evidence already falls. Their reporting must reflect what scientists actually say and not give obvious cranks for more than their fair share of publicity and credibility. They can only do this with a goal towards the truth. It seems that it is you that is advocating for a blind, and wholly unethical journalistic standard without such a goal. To say that journalists should only blindly accept and report whatever they are told is ridiculous and dangerous. It is fascism.

Blind acceptance by the ignorant journalistic masses is why there is so much public confusion these days regarding things like evolution. People think that the theory of evolution is controversial (“just a theory” meaning just an opinion) in biology when it is not. That's because journalist give cranks more than their fair share of time and credibility without looking into why mainstream biologists have rejected ID or creationists pseudoscience. No fair and accurate overview of the evidence for and against evolution is given, just blind testimony from whomever with a say in the matter.

On your advice, quackery like ID and creationism would be taught in schools along with the theory of eviolution. That's very dangerous and unethical. You are being agnostic about truth. I am being a realist. Journalists do have the capability, once they have been trained and scrutinized enough by the general public, experts, and their colleagues, to do competent reporting of science. They shouldn't just report whatever they are told.

Perhaps you will do better by reading more carefully what I have written or by asking someone (that learned English as a first language) what I meant.