Coincident objects

In an earlier post I said that I did not think it strictly correct to say that persons are or identical to their functional brains (more specifically, their cerebrums). My reasoning is as follows:

There is a principle of metaphysics that seems correct and I think most metaphysicians would agree. It is Liebniz's law of identity or the indiscernibility of identicals. Expressed in 2nd order logic, it says



Basically, it just says that an object has all the properties it has. That seems so true to be trivial and it is. There is a stronger principle of identity that is the converse of that principle which says that if objects a and b has all (both genuine and "mere-cambridge") properties in common then they are identical. This later principle is a little more controversial as a famous paper by Max Black but this last principle is not relevant to this case.

Since the first principle thus cannot be faulted. But consider this example by Gibbard: Let's say that there is a lump of clay called "Lumpl" which is created at exactly the same time as a statue which is made out of that clay. We will call this statue "Goliath." They are also destroyed at a same later time. Now both the statue and the lump of clay exists at exactly the same time and occupy the same region of space. Thus are they the very same object or alternatively, does Lumpl=Goliath?

If you say "yes" then there seems to be properties which each has that the other does not have. Lumpl, for example, has the modal property that it can survive being stepped on but if Goliath is stepped on, he will be destroyed. Goliath has the property that it can survive the loss of one of its arms but Lumpl will not survive that loss of clay. Thus this seems to be a case where we either say that they are not the same object even though they occupy the same region of space and time or we say that the Leibniz's principle is false, i.e., that something can have properties it does not have. I think the later is nonsensical and so we should accept the former.

For similar considerations, I think persons are coincident with their functional cerebrums but are not strictly speaking, identical with them much as Goliath is coincident with Lumpl but not strictly speaking identical with it. There seems to me to be good metaphysical and practical ethical reasons not to identify persons with their brains but to see them as coincident together.

But it has occurred to me that one possible way to flesh this out better is to view Lumpl and Goliath (or other coincident objects) as having different essential properties. We know that one can have different inessential properties and still be the same thing. You may have been taller or shorter than you are in some possible scenario and still be you. You might have liked the color blue instead of hating it and you'd still be you. But your essential properties will remain. Changing them will change the truth of the identity conditions.

Thus for Lumpl, called it now "l," it may have a set of essential conditions which we can express as a conjunction of sentences ascribing its essential properties: [P1(l) & P2(l) & P3(l)...] with P1, P2, P3... all being essential properties of Lumpl. This conjunction we can call "E." It will include the property of survival after being stepped on among one of its conjuncts. E will be disjunctive with some string of sentences call it "In" with In itself just a string of disjunctive sentences of its inessential properties, Q1, Q2, Q3.... Thus In=[(Q1(l) v Q2(l) v Q3(l)...]. Thus E v In will be all the properties, essential and inessential, Lumpl has and will identify it in this world and all possible worlds (complete description of Lumpl) while E by itself will identify it in all possible worlds (essential description). Some properties may be indefinite whether it is or is not essential, however.

When we look at it like this, coincident objects don't seem to be that counter-intuitive and odd. Two coincident objects have different essential properties so for Lumpl, the property of survival after getting stepped on will be in its essential sentential conjunctive string but for Goliath, it will not be. Descriptively, they are thus different. I don't see there to be any more difficulties when viewed this way than mereological objects. A car's tires are part of the car but the tires are not identical with the whole car. They share overlapping regions of space. The only difference in coincident objects is that they share all their occupied space instead of partially as in mereological objects.

Moral absolutism

Judith Jarvis Thomson has once given this example of a moral absolute truth: "It is wrong to torture babies for fun." She claims that in no possible world is this false and hence, not culturally or even possible world relative. Anyone that disagrees simply don't know what "moral" or "torture" or "babies" mean. In fact, I suspect she thinks that this is tantamount to an analytic truth much like squares have four sides is true in all possible worlds. Anyone that disagrees with that don't seem to understand "square" or "sides" or maybe "four" the intended way.

However, there may be possible but highly unlikely conditions where it is acceptable or permitted to infringe a baby's right in such a way. Consider some scenario much like that told by short story (can't remember the name) by Ursula LeGuin in which a people on some planet tortures an innocent child for fun. Now consider that these people know that by some weird set of circumstances and obtaining conditions that their fun in such a way is the only cause of their own existence. Or alternatively, by having fun in such a way, it leads to (by some weird causal mechanism in their world, say) their only way of avoiding an eternity of damnation and horrendous suffering for all of them.

Thus, it may now seem that they may torture the baby for fun if only ultimately to avoid some even far worse calamity.

But since this will be their ultimate and not immediate aim, we may be able to save that absolutist claim by tacking on to it the additional clause that the "fun" must be their ultimate aim instead of some instrumental aim or means to some further aim.

Perhaps there are other moral absolutist claims but just because there are does not mean that there are no relativist claims as well which are true only relative to some moral group and if there are some of these kinds of relativist claims, it does not mean that morality even in these cases are not objective.

Review of Genetics and Reductionism

By Sahotra Sarkar. Here.

Lies

I mentioned in earlier posts that two major problems with the traditional (and all non traditional definitions ASAIK) of lying are problematic when it comes to cases of equivocation and implicature. My intuition strongly tells me that equivocations are lies when they are told with the intent to deceive but I am not so sure about implicature. My intuitions does not seem to be against implicatures with the intent to deceive as being lies. It may be a case by case thing with some cases being more intuitively lies than others.

There seems to be a way to get past the problems with a slight tweak of the definition. One can define lying (a modification of the traditional definition) thus:

X lies iff X expects (or believes) his interlocuter Y to interpret X's expression "P" to be expressing a proposition which X does not actually believe (or believes to be false) and for the purpose of deceiving Y into believing that P.

This definition may be adapted mutatis mutandis to other definitions of lies such as Fallis' which does not have a deception criterion but replaces it with a (intentional) violation of a Gricean linguistic norm to speak truthfully.

Under my definition, both equivocation and implicature are classified as lies. Why? The difference is in the reflective and psychologically transparent nature of the definition because it reflects what someone expects his interlocuter to be interpreting what he said.

To see this definition in action, here is a scenario involving equivocation.

John owes Jill $800 and has no intention to pay her back. Ever. He also has no cash on him now but has enough in his bank account to pay her. Jill sees John walking down the street and asks to be remunerated for the loan. John says "I have no money on me, but I will go to the bank". Jill agrees to wait for him. Instead of going to The People's Bank of Kentucky, John's bank (qua financial institution), John goes sun-bathing by the river bank and thus reneges on his obligations to pay Jill back once again.

Has John lied? Yes according to my definition. Under the traditional definition or the non traditional ones, it is indeterminate if John lied. Other definitions focus on what proposition was expressed which is ambiguous in the case of equivocation. But since John expected and intentionally made it so that Jill would interpret "bank" as John's financial institution and not some other meaning of that term for the purpose of deception, he lies. In other words, since John believes that Jill interprets "I will go to the bank" as the proposition I will go to my financial institution [presumably to get her money] (which John does not believe he will be doing) and not "I will go to the river bank" [to sunbathe] and for the purpose of deceiving her, he has lied.

Now take implicature. Consider our scenario above with a slight twist. John goes to his bank [financial institution] but instead of withdrawing money to pay Jill, he stands around the lounge for a bit and returns home. John implied that he is going to the bank to get money to pay Jill but what he said explicitly to her did not make mention of the rest. Under my definition, John is lying because he expects Jill to interpret what he says as "I will go to the bank to get the money to pay you back" and not as "I will go to the bank and do nothing but lounge around."

I thought of this definition when I remembered the reading of David Lewis's seminal book on linguistic conventions called "Convention: A Philosophical Study". In this work, Lewis uses the work done by the theoretical economist Thomas Schelling on focal point equilibria to solve for game theoretic "coordination problems" in socio-economic conventions. Lewis used it to analyse linguistic and other kinds of social conventions. In Lewis's work, he came up with the idea of "common knowledge" which employs the kind of reflective and psychologically transparent expectations and beliefs required for establishing linguistic/social conventions. His idea of common knowledge, however, has a theoretically possible indefinite number of iterations (I expect my interlocutor to expect that I expect that he expects that I expect and so on). Theoretically this could go on forever (and nothing will thus be accomplished) but rarely in actual socio-linguistic circumstances it goes beyond a few iterations. My definition stops at the second iteration. X expects or believes that his interlocuter Y believes X to be expressing some proposition P.

There may be cases where my definition draws the line too far and includes implicature scenarios as involving lies when they intuitively clearly should not be. I can't think of any off the top of my head but I suspect it so.

"flourishing metric"

In the previous post I suggested that what I called a "flourishing metric" be used to compare when something is over or under valued in the market outside of the value or price set by supply and demand forces in the market. I realized that one way to do with may be to work off of Martha Nussdaum's "capabilities approach" which is built on original Sen's idea. Both Nussbaum and Sen are influenced by the Aristotelian notion of flourishing.

So I decided to look up Nussbaum's capabilities approach to refresh my memory after having been years since I've read her "Frontiers of Justice." Nussbaum has a open list of ten or so "capabilities" that defines human flourishing. I wikied "capabilities approach" and it turns out that economists are actively trying to obtain such a metric.

Perhaps things like housing can be assessed to their objective quantifiable value based on the contribution they contribute to flourishing or, relatedly, our "capabilities". Any value over and above that value may be construed as over evaluation (such as due to greedy profiteering, etc)

Homo Economicus (Rational Man?) and the 2007 economic collapse

In this Nova special, economists talk about what led up to the global economic melt down. Two major economic schools of thought are at each other. One school which posits as one of its fundamental principles is that Man is essentially rational and that almost all his decisions behave as if they are rationally calculated based on the evidence given him and for the benefit of his self interests. This school of thought is most prominently associated with the Chicago School. The contending school works on 50 years of behavioral economics posits that much of human behavior and decision making is irrational.

At one point in the film, one of the Chicago School guys tried to defend the thesis in regards to the housing bubble. When that bubble burst, many economists thought that it burst because housing was over valued and it became that way when greed got a hold of individual private investors and banking professionals. There was a hysteria of greed and people bought houses or properties not based on rational deliberation of carefully calculating the risks of buying houses measured against the potential profits of the investment but on motives stemming from competition with other investors and greed.

Well, the Chicago guy basically called the collapse a "shift in value." That is, he thought that the collapse was simply a market regularity that reflected a change in interests/desire of buyers and sellers.

That seems preposterous to me. But it also seems that his justification is based on the idea that value of things like property is market relative. They lack a value outside of the supply and demand of particular markets at particular times. This is a kind of relativism. There's no such thing as being over priced or under priced in the market in such a scheme because the market always determines the proper price. Its value simply is its price as determined by such market forces.

For those like me, it seems that there is such a thing as over/under-valuation of things like houses. What determines their worth or value "objectively" outside of market forces? I think it is their relative contribution to human flourishing. This idea of flourishing is originally Aristotelian but developed also by the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. Houses are valuable for living in but do they have any value beyond that? Some values are not potentially valuable to flourishing. Some things are desired by society and thus have high market value but do not contribute to human flourishing. Take cocaine. Or maybe IPODs. I don't know.

The basic idea behind flourishing is that human beings are embodied beings which have a natural (thus evolutionary) history. Some circumstances are good for our wellbeing and others not so. Which determines what is largely determined by our physical and psychological constitution which is largely (though not completely since some psychological elements are culturally or individually particular) fixed by our basic human nature.

Things like education has value outside of their worth in the market place. We can imagine a society of philistines who do not value education but does value fancy shoes. In their market, good shoes are very valuable but books are nearly worthless. A Chicago guy might say that books are of little value in that market and thus worth only what they are willing to pay for them which in their case means very little. But it seems to me that these philistines are paying too little for their books. That is, they have under-valued their books, both monetarily and in more familiar senses. Their shoes do not contribute much to their wellbeing but their books has tremendous potential to do so. Moreover, they have made an irrational decision to value their shoes more than their books.

I'm not an economist but it seems to me that this is the way to go but the next part will be how we could obtain a quantitative science of valuation according to the notion of flourishing so that accurate measures of value can be assessed on some flourishing metric (a flourishing dollar standard perhaps). Certainly, psychology, medical science, sociology, economics and anthropology has a thing or two to say about what contributes to human wellbeing but there needs to be something more robust and concrete so that this will be applicable in economics. I don't know how to develop this metric but it's worth thinking about.

Movie: Possible Worlds

If you haven't gotten a chance to see this movie, I highly suggest it. It concerns modal realism and the brain-in-the-vat thought experiment. How unusual is that in a fictional film?