From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Fri Aug 09 2002 - 21:13:47 MDT
On Tuesday, August 06, 2002 4:42 PM Lee Corbin lcorbin@tsoft.com wrote:
>> ...then why not stick with critical rationalism?:)
>
> If it had been up to me, then I suppose we might have. But it
> doesn't matter. PCR is what this set of ideas and approaches
> goes by now.
Fair enough, though you seemed to get uppity about any philosophizing
and, I suspect, any of what you believe to be extra theoretical
baggage.:)
>>>> First of all, how do you know of an
>>>> outside world? How do you know conjectures match against it?
>>>
>>> Because I have common sense, because I'm practiced getting results
>>> from the outside world just like any auto mechanic, hair stylist,
>>> farmer, detective, teacher, newspaper delivery boy, and
>>> finger-painting
>>> five year old. The little kid tries some colors, gets some effects,
>>> tries other things, gets yelled at.
>>
>> Then you implicitly accept my foundation of sense perception.:)
>
> No.
Yes.:) Look, you can claim whatever you want, but your passage above
belies the fact. And the common sense view is "There's stuff out there
like chairs and trees because I can see, smell, touch, and lick them."
>> The eight year old got his knowledge through using sense perception.
If
>> sense perception did not work, then she or he could not even read and
>> trust what was read. So, this knowledge does presuppose that.
>> [They] think that heavier objects fall faster, and often believe
>> Mom and Dad to be near omniscient.
>
> I *do* believe in the existence of a priori knowledge, (which
> fails to fit your tidy scheme).
Okay, give some examples of a priori knowledge. (You might also want to
read up on Philip Kitcher's demolition of a prioristic knowledge in his
_The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge_. For a recent defense of the a
priori, see Laurence BonJour's _In Defense of Pure Reason_.) Tell me
also what it is knowledge of and how you know this.
> Why should evolution present
> homo sapiens with a tabula rasa? It's been found that newborn
> babies have mathematical knowledge, for example.
See my reply to Rafal elsewhere on stuff similar to this. Yes, I'm
aware of the infants counting -- or that interpretation of it. (This
doesn't really require mathematical knowledge per se, just that the baby
be able to hold a certain number of percepts in memory and then compare
her or his memory to what she or he is now seeing.)
> But even without that, your point is nearly a tautology. I
> confess that I'm afraid to grant your point because it will
> only reinforce your unfortunate foundationalist tendencies.
> Recall my point about "math envy". Where does this urge to
> *base* everything on something prior come from? It's a bad
> idea most of the time.
Not really. The idea doesn't come from Mars. It's mainly just
re-examining your ideas and thoughts and seeing where they come from.
It's also important because ultimately we test ideas against reality --
or at least we should do this. (This doesn't mean it's always easy or
that deciding between, say, two or three or n rival views, that there's
always a simple empirical test, but that is the gold standard in science
when it can be used.)
>>> Back in the 20th century it wasn't moronic to question the
>>> existence of an "outside world"
>>
>> Actually, the questioning of such started long before
>> the 20th century and continues to this day.
>
> 8-D Perhaps you missed my point that while ill-advised as
> recently as the 20th century, it's definitely moronic now.
I would disagree. I think it was a bad idea 2300 years ago as well as
now. But you only speak from feelings here, since you want to go
against your common sense above.
>> My point in bringing this up was that I thought you were more
familiar
>> with the pancritical rationalist material I've read, such as
Bartley's
>> works or the collection _Evolutionary Epistemology, Rationality, and
the
>> Sociology of Knowledge_, edited by Radnitzky and Bartley.
>
> Funny you mention that book. I have had it next to my computer
> while replying to your last couple of emails!
:)
>> Why would this matter? Well, most evolutionary epistemologists
>> and pancritical rationalists are representationalists.
>
> One of the passages I underlines is on page 359, where Peter Munz
> "explains" why knowledge cannot represent. I've never understood
> that. So, yes, I am guilty as charged with being a representionalist.
Then I ask the judge to be lenient, since you've admitted guilt.:)
>> This means that accept a radical split between the mind and
>> reality, seeing the mind as a sort of inner theater that may
>> or may not be related to anything outside it.
>
> I didn't know that it means that. To me, it's merely obvious
> that if one were to, say, memorize the geography of the Grand
> Canyon (perhaps merely by living in it a few years), then one's
> brain obviously contains an encoded representation of same.
> ("Bah, I speak baby stuff." -Count Alfred Korzybski)
Not exactly. It could be that you don't understand representationalism.
The fundamental problem with [Western philosophy's] epistemology since
Plato at least is that it adopts what David Kelley calls a "diaphonous
model" of awareness. In this view, to be aware of anything requires
that the awareness be immediate -- literally, "without mediation" -- or,
put another way, there can be nothing between consciousness and its
object. In other words, no causal links and no possibility of error or
distortion.
Now, if you accept that as a model of awareness, you immediately -- no
pun intended -- come upon many problems with sense perception. For
example -- and this example is Berkeley's -- if you move away from a
house, it appears to get smaller. The house isn't literally shrinking,
but it appears to shrink. If you move closer to it, it appears to grow
larger. Other examples abound. A piece of white paper in a dark room
looks light, while a piece of dark paper in direct sunlight looks dark
depending on its surrounding -- even if the white paper actually
reflects less light in the darkened room than the dark paper in the
direct sun. Things taste different depending on what you've eaten or
drank beforehand. For example, brush your teeth with some strong
toothpaste, then eat something -- as opposed to eating the same thing
hours after you've brushed your teeth.
Now, the solution here would seem simple enough. The senses have
specific characteristics and are effected by many different things. All
of this influences what we perceive and must be taken into account.
These effects don't nullify sense perception, but they do show it has
limits and that it's mediated. In other words, give up the diaphonous
model of awareness and admit awareness is causal.
What representationalists do, however, is reject any form of mediated
awareness. So, by their lights, we can't be aware of the house, the
pieces of paper, or the food. Instead, according to them, we only aware
of the end products -- usually sensations or pure qualities -- and these
we're directly aware of. This doesn't solve the problem and really only
pushes it back. How are we aware, after all, of sensations and
qualities or the tingling in our nerves? It's sort of like an inner
theater where a little you or me is sitting while the senses deliver
stuff to the stage. How are we aware of the stage? (In a way, it's
kind of like thinking bricks are made up a little brick-like atoms and
trees are made of little tree-like atoms.)
Moreover, this already distances awareness from reality, since you
cannot examine how the representations are related to the outside world.
To do so would require some other means of direct -- and if you still
assume the diaphonous model as _the_ model of direct awareness -- and
immediate awareness. Since none is forthcoming, the representationalist
usually has to fall back on a priorism (as Descartes did) or some other
argument that somehow gets us to trust a link between the inner theater
and the outer world. (Malebranche, e.g., favored occasionalism -- the
view that some divine intervention made sure, on a moment by moment
basis, that the mind and the world matched up. That won't work because
there's no way to know according to representationalism. You can't step
outside the inner theater and say, "Hey that stage prop in there looks
kind of like the skyline out here." (If you could, you would hardly
need to pay attention to the stage. You could just stay outside!) Some
Popperians try to use falsification, but that won't work unless you have
an independent way of matching the inner to the outer. Sans that,
you're still stuck with not knowing anything about the outer world.)
Once you take this representationalist step, the next step, radical
skepticism is natural. After all, since you can't tell if the stuff on
stage in the inner theater has any relation to the world -- that the
representations even represent, since they are the representationalist's
primaries -- the link between reality and awareness is severed.
Historically, this is the path mainstream Western philosophy took from
Berkeley to Hume and on. (This doesn't mean it's all that simple.
Perceptual realism has been revived time and again and even nonrealists
in this area have come up with fruitful and even valid ideas. Kant's
work in politics and Hegel's in dialectic come to mind.)
>> I was _not_ presenting it as an argument against pancritical
>> rationalism, but as one of its shaky presumptions. (I don't mean an
>> essential one, but ditching it would involve either becoming a
complete
>> skeptic or embracing some form of perceptual realism. If the latter,
>> we're back to foundationalism.)
>
> YOU are back to "foundationism". I couldn't care less. Such arcanery
> keeps intruding on what's important in philosophy.
This is hardly arcane. The groundings of all knowledge has implications
for, well, all knowledge.:)
>> Why does one need a foundation is a good question. Since humans are
>> fallible -- as you point out below - -they can make mistakes in their
>> knowledge. They can build on the wrong ideas, which is especially
easy
>> to do when relying on ideas and information supplied by others.
(Think
>> about, e.g., the division of intellectual labor today....
>
> Okay. So??? Surely you're not suggesting that by attending to
> fine details of foundationism or having his head up his ass in
> some other way will help a scientist avoid error?
Huh? If you read, e.g., something like Newton's _Principia_ -- read the
sections entitled "Defintions" and "Axioms, or Laws of Motion" -- you'll
see he starts off with definitions based on things that are clearly
defined perceptually. A lot of scientific progress has come from
removing things that could not be grounded in observation from
consideration. In fact, it was the turn from the old texts to
observation and experiment in the late Middle Ages that gave birth to
modern science and all that sprang from it.
> Or a detective
> to solve a case sooner? Remember that some of the greatest
> scientists who ever lived were extremely clueless about philosophy.
> So, no, you're probably not saying this. But where are you going
> here?
See above. I'm not saying that anyone has to have a PhD in philosophy
to do science, solve crimes, or make lunch. I by no means mean that
everyone has to be a scholar of philosophy and be keenly aware of its
history and read all the journals from _Mind_ on down. However, sloppy
thinking usually doesn't help with science or making lunch.
(Also, for what it's worth, pancritical rationalism is a philosophy.
It's not outside philosophy. Also, there is bad philosophy and good
philosophy -- or worse and better, just as there are worse and better
theories in science and worse or better methods.)
>>> (2) All we can do is ask if an assertion is true in that it agrees
>>> with the facts (Cp. Tarski's Correspondence Theory of Truth).
>>
>> Which means? Sense perception, no? So the ultimate authority here
is
>> agreement with the facts, which means agreement with experience. Am
I
>> right here?
>
> Actually, clinging to the simple Correspondence Theory is only
> a way of seeking refuge from all the other silly theories out
> there. (At least it is for me.)
Correspondence to what? For Tarski, this meant correspondence between
expressions (sentences, propositions) and the objects to which they
refer. (See p128-30 of his _Introduction to Logic and to the
Methodology of the Deductive Sciences_ 4/e.) In the case of natural
science, what are the objects that science is about? Usually, it's
taken to be stuff that has some external reality and can, in some
manner, be sensed -- if only mediated by some physical apparatus. (If
your senses don't work, then you can't rely on information from scanning
tunneling microscopes, supercolliders, the Hubble Space Telescope, or
the latest fossil finds in Australia.)
> Since you brought up a lot of
> math in some of your examples, you might be interested in the
> very clean way that truth and validity are handled in mathematical
> logic (if you aren't already familiar with it). It accords very
> well with common sense.
And with the evidence of the senses. In fact, the way we generally find
out if an idea or proposition "accords well" with reality is by
experimenting and observing. If someone says, "The sky is green" for
example, do you run to a window to check it if the claim corresponds to
reality or do you sit back in your armchair and come up with a series of
critiques on why the sky could never be green?
>>> (5) Knowledge cannot start from nothing (i.e., not from tabula rasa)
>>> and knowledge cannot start from observation. The advancement of
>>> knowledge comes from modification and correction of earlier
knowledge
>>> (the basis for traditional beliefs).
>>
>> Knowledge of what, I would ask?:)
>
> Of course, I grant your point. Knowledge to me means that the
structures
> in one's brain are good maps of some part of the universe. But
> only having good taste will, IMNSHO, keep one from jumping from there
> into a lot of silliness, such as "is unjustified belief true
knowledge?",
> or "how can the knower know itself?", etc.
I think you've packaged all types of philosophy together under
"philosophy" including the good and the bad, the valid and the invalid,
and are reacting here as if it's all the same. This would be no
different than packaging together chemistry with alchemy and rejecting
both because you can't turn lead into gold with a bunsen burner and some
incantations.
> A good chess program, for
> example, has a fair amount of knowledge about the chess tree. Bah,
> I speak baby stuff.
I doubt that. That's like saying a steam engine knows thermodynamics or
a calculating knows arithmetic. If this is the case, then we can tell
Eliezer and the others to stop working on AI. We've already got it!
>>> (7) Absolute precision is impossible. Definitions and meanings lead
>>> to the fallacy of infinite regress, therefore cannot be important.
>>
>> Not so. Absolute precision might be impossible
>> (how would you know this?)
>
> It's like, just a *conjecture*, you know
You didn't make a conjecture above. You wrote "Absolute precision is
impossible" -- not "I conjecture absolute precision is impossible."
Even so, this was a minor ribbing.:)
>> but definition and meaning are not -- unless one assumes
>> definition and meaning can only be absolutely precise. You're
>> cardstacking here. You're loading all sorts of bad traits into the
>> views your argue against to make your case.
>
> No, I happen to agree with you here. **SOMETIMES** definitions
> are very important. Especially in math, as your examples belabor.
> It's even important to agree what we mean by "profiling". I should
> have caught that (7) is pretty dubious.
Oh. I'm glad you agree.
>> The point Saum was making is that Rand's question forces us
>> to see if our ideas are grounded in facts or if they're just
>> floating abstractions. This is kind of like forming a concept
>> of something, including giving it a working definition, then
>> afterward making sure you have not erred by seeing if it picks out
real
>> things on some level and makes the proper distinctions. (Of the
latter,
>> defining 'whale' as a 'swimming animal' places it in the same
category
>> as shrimp, shark, squid, and water snake. Thus, such a definition
needs
>> revision given our knowledge of such other swimming animals.)
>
> This is where IMO you are wasting a lot of effort. "Forces us
> to see if our ideas are grounded in facts or they're just
> floating abstractions."
>
> Well, that sounds very nice, but few humans outside academia
> and mental institutions do much of that. :-) Perhaps you can
> give some examples of scientists, bricklayers, teachers, policemen,
> computer scientists, sensible philosophers, or real estate agents
> are guilty of that. (Yes, I suspect that some art historians,
> psychoanalysts, alternative medicine practitioners, and most post-
> moderns probably are guilty, but what examples are you thinking of?)
Okay, let's see. How about belief in God or other supernatural
entities? How about accepting views because they are traditional --
meaning just because parents or important peers hold them? I, sadly,
personally know a few scientists and many computer "scientists" who do
just this. (I mean it's sad to see them holding the ideas - not sad to
know them.:) I work with people like this everyday. In fact, I know
few atheists at work and most people I run into are not interested in
having ideas that correspond to the facts when it comes to many matters,
from religion to what to have for lunch. (Noting all the overweight,
unhealthy people in the computer field who rationalize their life style,
for example, seems to show lots of people who should know better don't
care a whit about making sure their ideas really are true.)
I also, like another list member play poker and most people sitting down
at a poker table -- even ones who have read Sklansky and should know
better -- live in denial. Heck, in this one area of my life, I kind of
like people around me to have ideas that don't correspond to reality,
such as "I must always see the flop" or "I'll never fold with an ace in
the hole" or "It's all chance.":)
>>> Perhaps here we have our basic disagreement: I don't think
>>> it's wise to regard anything as "primary". And you do, eh?
>>
>> My point is not that I'm a foundationalist -- something I've never
had a
>> problem with -- but that pancritical rationalism is also covertly
>> foundational. Foundations by any other name...
>
> All I care about is that PCR appears to me much better grounded
> in reality, to use a foundation metaphor 8-), than its competitors.
What are its competitors here that you find wanting?
Again, too, we are back to how would you know that pancritical
rationalism works at all? If you don't have access to reality, you
can't independently assess it -- especially assess it against its
competitors.
I don't believe nor have I argued pancritical rationalism is garbage and
must be reject in toto. Instead, I see its method as something that
must be part of a wider project -- not the whole project. Pancritical
rationalism would benefit, I maintain, from not rejecting the very
foundations on which it rests.
> The list we discussed has many good points, and in addition, as
> I said, PCR appears to speak against foundationism (even if you
> are right and some practitioners fall into that trap), and
> explains why the rough, pragmatic way 99% of humans operate
> works and is adequate.
The question to ask is Why does it work at all? The follow up should
then be How can we improve it? -- especially since it doesn't always
work.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See my review of Paul Thagard's _Conceptual Revolutions_ at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Concept.html
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