Monday, January 10, 2011
According to Bloomberg Magazine
The manager of the top performing hedge fund in 2010 was an ex philosophy prof. Interesting article and accompanied video interview. See here.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Did morality "evolve"?
I've seen several scientists answer this (ambiguous and vague inquiry) in the affirmative before such as the physicist Leonard Susskind, the evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser, and the primatologist Frans de Waal and even the philosopher Richard Joyce. But what can such a claim really mean? There is an ambiguity in the question (and its bald affirmation or denial) that is the worst form of ambiguity. It may be construed as either trivially true or outright false.
They might mean that our sense of morality or right or wrong is the way it is through evolution. Certainly that has some truth to it but just as certainly, many of our moral intuitions and sensibilities do not come from evolution but from cultural, personal or other conditioning processes. So not all of our moral senses we are imbued with are a result of evolutionary forces. So there is some truth to this claim when it is qualified to mean something like, "some moral senses have evolutionarily influences." But interpreted this (charitable) way, this is so trivial as to be not worth much attention. Yes, some of our senses of right and wrong etc (but not all) are likely the result of evolutionary forces.
Also, morality does not end when our moral intuitions give us no direction. Much of the moral problems we face extends to areas where we have no clear intuitions in any direction. But we still ponder what is the right thing to do in those situations and sometimes arrive at plausible or implausible answers which can be scrutinized by the light of of our rational faculties.
Many of the most interesting moral problems are conflicts in our moral intuitions either within some individual or between individual's of the same culture or between those of different cultures. When this occurs, we have the further question of which way is th right way to follow. Such questions can only be settled through reasoned rational deliberation. Obviously, evolutionary instilled instincts, sensibilities and intuitions will not help us here because they may be partially responsible for the conflicting problems to be resolved. So evolution cannot explain what we do when we resolve or mediate these problems.
Many moral problems today are novel. In our evolutionary history, we likely inhabited social and environmental niches which were far different than modern society and thus our evolutionary moral sense will not help us (and in many case hinder) rational moral deliberation. Thus rational deliberation takes up the slack where our natural moral sense falls short. I suspect that almost all questions in medical and business ethics extends to areas outside of anything our ancestors ever experienced but that doesn't mean that philosophers are not working to resolve these issues; they are, they are just using their rational faculties instead of their evolutionary endowed moral senses to guide them towards a resolution.
Take our likely evolutionary instincts to be distrustful of strangers and to like those more similar to ourselves. Now tens of thousands of years ago this instinct might have been advantageous and thus naturally selected for. The members of your rival tribes are competing against your tribe for valuable resources and may be trying to deceive you or take advantage of you in some other way and those who are similar to you may be more trustworthy, and since have your genes, caring about their welfare may contribute to the spread of your genes. In other words, our natural moral senses of trust, compassion, cooperation, kindness, etc may be naturally limited or attenuated outside of our own small group of similar individuals. But such relative biases and mistrust towards those of the out group in many instances are detrimental in modern global society where we all are interconnected and must cooperate. Biases may contribute to racism, xenophobia, centrism, many kinds of other isms and preferential treatment that is counter to global distributive justice. Times have changed and our evolutionary instilled moral senses may be obsolete. Again, in order to solve these problems we must rely on a guide outside of that provided by evolution.
But saying that morality evolved in this sense may be no more informative than saying that "physics evolved" because physics involves observation and since our senses have evolved through millions of years of adaptation, our sense of physical laws through observing things have "evolved." Our natural moral senses may guide us towards morality but it should not be mistaken for morality itself for it can always be itself questioned whether it has led us to the morally correct conclusions.
OTOH, morality may have "evolved" in the sense that because morality deals with the goods and bads, right and wrongs, these things are particular to humans through our evolutionary history and thus morality specific to humans have in some sense evolved. What is good and bad for our wellbeing may be particular to humans and even differ amongst individuals. Our values are species and even individual specific and part of that may be due to evolutionary forces. Perhaps other creatures (on this and maybe other planets) have different desires, needs for their wellbeing, and even rights. But this seems like a misleading and needlessly arbitrary restriction of the word 'moral.' We can certainly speak of moral behavior towards aliens or non human animals (or even inanimate things) who may have different desires, needs for their wellbeing and rights than we do. And we can speak of respect for their rights and fairness and justice towards them. We can speak of kindness, etc towards them. We can also speak of meanness and cruelty and so forth in our relations with them. These are all moral topics.
There may be other meanings of the claim which are sometimes intended but I think that these other meanings can be shown equally trivial or false. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins seems to be commendably more careful with his words and seem to only claim the first of my disambiguations here (i.e., that it is our moral sense that has evolved, not morality itself which I don't even think makes sense if that was the intended meaning).
They might mean that our sense of morality or right or wrong is the way it is through evolution. Certainly that has some truth to it but just as certainly, many of our moral intuitions and sensibilities do not come from evolution but from cultural, personal or other conditioning processes. So not all of our moral senses we are imbued with are a result of evolutionary forces. So there is some truth to this claim when it is qualified to mean something like, "some moral senses have evolutionarily influences." But interpreted this (charitable) way, this is so trivial as to be not worth much attention. Yes, some of our senses of right and wrong etc (but not all) are likely the result of evolutionary forces.
Also, morality does not end when our moral intuitions give us no direction. Much of the moral problems we face extends to areas where we have no clear intuitions in any direction. But we still ponder what is the right thing to do in those situations and sometimes arrive at plausible or implausible answers which can be scrutinized by the light of of our rational faculties.
Many of the most interesting moral problems are conflicts in our moral intuitions either within some individual or between individual's of the same culture or between those of different cultures. When this occurs, we have the further question of which way is th right way to follow. Such questions can only be settled through reasoned rational deliberation. Obviously, evolutionary instilled instincts, sensibilities and intuitions will not help us here because they may be partially responsible for the conflicting problems to be resolved. So evolution cannot explain what we do when we resolve or mediate these problems.
Many moral problems today are novel. In our evolutionary history, we likely inhabited social and environmental niches which were far different than modern society and thus our evolutionary moral sense will not help us (and in many case hinder) rational moral deliberation. Thus rational deliberation takes up the slack where our natural moral sense falls short. I suspect that almost all questions in medical and business ethics extends to areas outside of anything our ancestors ever experienced but that doesn't mean that philosophers are not working to resolve these issues; they are, they are just using their rational faculties instead of their evolutionary endowed moral senses to guide them towards a resolution.
Take our likely evolutionary instincts to be distrustful of strangers and to like those more similar to ourselves. Now tens of thousands of years ago this instinct might have been advantageous and thus naturally selected for. The members of your rival tribes are competing against your tribe for valuable resources and may be trying to deceive you or take advantage of you in some other way and those who are similar to you may be more trustworthy, and since have your genes, caring about their welfare may contribute to the spread of your genes. In other words, our natural moral senses of trust, compassion, cooperation, kindness, etc may be naturally limited or attenuated outside of our own small group of similar individuals. But such relative biases and mistrust towards those of the out group in many instances are detrimental in modern global society where we all are interconnected and must cooperate. Biases may contribute to racism, xenophobia, centrism, many kinds of other isms and preferential treatment that is counter to global distributive justice. Times have changed and our evolutionary instilled moral senses may be obsolete. Again, in order to solve these problems we must rely on a guide outside of that provided by evolution.
But saying that morality evolved in this sense may be no more informative than saying that "physics evolved" because physics involves observation and since our senses have evolved through millions of years of adaptation, our sense of physical laws through observing things have "evolved." Our natural moral senses may guide us towards morality but it should not be mistaken for morality itself for it can always be itself questioned whether it has led us to the morally correct conclusions.
OTOH, morality may have "evolved" in the sense that because morality deals with the goods and bads, right and wrongs, these things are particular to humans through our evolutionary history and thus morality specific to humans have in some sense evolved. What is good and bad for our wellbeing may be particular to humans and even differ amongst individuals. Our values are species and even individual specific and part of that may be due to evolutionary forces. Perhaps other creatures (on this and maybe other planets) have different desires, needs for their wellbeing, and even rights. But this seems like a misleading and needlessly arbitrary restriction of the word 'moral.' We can certainly speak of moral behavior towards aliens or non human animals (or even inanimate things) who may have different desires, needs for their wellbeing and rights than we do. And we can speak of respect for their rights and fairness and justice towards them. We can speak of kindness, etc towards them. We can also speak of meanness and cruelty and so forth in our relations with them. These are all moral topics.
There may be other meanings of the claim which are sometimes intended but I think that these other meanings can be shown equally trivial or false. The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins seems to be commendably more careful with his words and seem to only claim the first of my disambiguations here (i.e., that it is our moral sense that has evolved, not morality itself which I don't even think makes sense if that was the intended meaning).
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Does ought imply can?
Some philosophers think so. After all, what would be the point of demanding someone ought to do something if he can't? But it seems to me that the story of Sisyphus at least interpreted by Camus challenges this. There are somethings you ought to do even if it is doomed to failure. Perhaps building a perfectly just society or becoming a moral sage are two of these impossible ends.
A bit of chauvinism
Philosophers often face the peculiar position in any discussion with another academic that they will understand far more about their interlocutor's discipline than their interlocutor will understand anything about philosophy. However, I see many philosophers of science be quite diffident in dealing with scientists even when the topic is more philosophical in nature in regards to some science. I will be advocating more confidence and maybe a kind of chauvinism. I do think philosophers of science often understand their respective sciences more than the scientists themselves. Scientists do understand what they do obviously quite well, but they often are mired in the details and do not have a comparative and general overview of just exactly what the fundamental nature of what they are doing consists in. Philosophers of science do have this overview and should not feel presumptuous when talking about the more philosophical aspects of some scientific domain as they are usually well informed about the discipline itself and the body of philosophical literature about the philosophical aspects of it.
I've seen interviews with many physicists such as Feynman and Susskind who shamelessly will pontificate on all sorts of scientific matters outside of their area of specialization. Feynman talking about social science, Susskind about morality and evolution etc. They clearly have no clue. Physicists generally seem to have fewer qualms about discussing things outside of their expertise proclaiming all sorts of nutty things about them. Philosophers of science should do the same but the difference now is that at least philosophers of science are usually well-read and competent in the science they philosophize about.
Here's an interesting related story: Once Feynman supposedly said (paraphrasing) of the philosophy of physics "a physicist needs the philosophy of physics like a bird needs ornithology." A well known philosopher of science famously responded "If a bird could understand ornithology, it would come very handy to him.
I've seen interviews with many physicists such as Feynman and Susskind who shamelessly will pontificate on all sorts of scientific matters outside of their area of specialization. Feynman talking about social science, Susskind about morality and evolution etc. They clearly have no clue. Physicists generally seem to have fewer qualms about discussing things outside of their expertise proclaiming all sorts of nutty things about them. Philosophers of science should do the same but the difference now is that at least philosophers of science are usually well-read and competent in the science they philosophize about.
Here's an interesting related story: Once Feynman supposedly said (paraphrasing) of the philosophy of physics "a physicist needs the philosophy of physics like a bird needs ornithology." A well known philosopher of science famously responded "If a bird could understand ornithology, it would come very handy to him.
Consent
Julian Assange is charged with several sex crimes in Sweden one of which is a very serious charge of rape. He allegedly had sex with a woman while she was asleep. This constitutes rape in Sweden and I believe in the US (and other civilized places). One of the debates within current feminist theory is what constitutes (informed) consent. The classical definition is that someone consents if they are capable of denying consent but does not do so or explicitly does so. If she is incapable of rendering consent such as if she is asleep, underage or drugged, e.g., and a man takes advantage of her, that is de jure rape. But there are varying degrees of capability for rendering consent. Someone may be semi-conscious etc. In such a state, the perpetrator's intent (whether he is justified in an expectation of her to consent if she had been conscious) may play a role in whether or not it is rape. His expectations may be justified on a pattern of previous behavior from from their relationship or from explicit consent such as if she willingly tells him to drug her and render her unconscious to have her way with her. Why she would do this is something altogether irrelevant; perhaps she has a weird fetish but if she chose to give consent to this, it seems to me to be not rape even though she would be unconscious and unable to stop the act before it starts or mid coitus. This is because he would be given reasonable expectations that she would consent had she been conscious. This, of course, doesn't mean he could do anything he likes to her sexually, just what he has reasonable expectations that she would consent to.
In certain cases it may be better to have an intermediate category for crimes that are not as serious as rape but still sex crimes (such as sexual assault) which border vague cases may be classified as.
I think the charges very serious and I had always been angry at the "progressives" like The Young Turks, Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann demeaning these charges and dismissing them when the facts are not yet available. If true under the right circumstances, it is rape, it wouldn't even be a vague instance of rape in this case if she had been completely asleep, and Assange need to pay for that if that had occurred.
In certain cases it may be better to have an intermediate category for crimes that are not as serious as rape but still sex crimes (such as sexual assault) which border vague cases may be classified as.
I think the charges very serious and I had always been angry at the "progressives" like The Young Turks, Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann demeaning these charges and dismissing them when the facts are not yet available. If true under the right circumstances, it is rape, it wouldn't even be a vague instance of rape in this case if she had been completely asleep, and Assange need to pay for that if that had occurred.
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