Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Online learning and the future of universities in the digital age

I am helping to organise a talk in Edinburgh for Oxford alumni and anyone else who is interested in the topic:

Details:
Friday 22nd November 2013, at The Royal Scots Club
A talk by Melissa Highton, Director of Academic IT and Head of Learning Technologies at Oxford University
Venue: The Royal Scots Club, 29 - 31 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh , EH3 6QE
Time: 6-8pm
 
Please let me know if you are interested in attending.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Update

Apologies for the radio silence. Work got in the way of updating the blog, but I did successfully complete the course and received a credit for my final assignment:

Non-cognitivists believe that when we act morally we must act to satisfy a desire of our own. Can such an action be truly moral?

 
Non-cognitivists argue that there are no such things as moral ‘properties’ or moral ‘facts’; moral statements do not have truth conditions that we can establish through objective processes, all statements of moral value involve subjective attitudes or desires. Non-cognitivists therefore believe that when people make moral statements they do not express states of mind which are ‘cognitive’ in the way that beliefs are, instead they express ‘non-cognitive’ attitudes. For many philosophers, this view seems counter-intuitive, how can morality be based on what we subjectively ‘want’ rather than what we objectively ‘should do’?

 
As an early proponent of a form of moral non-cognitivism, Hume argued that moral distinctions are not derived from reason. Hume divided the processes of the mind into two distinct (and complementary) categories - passions and reason; “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”1

 
Other forms of non-cognitivism also hold that when we act morally we must act to satisfy a desire. For example, emotivism is the theory that a judgment that some action is right is based on subjective approval of that action.

 
An analogy which supports the non-cognitivist approach is that of mechanical robot. A robot can be programmed to have highly advanced powers of reason - it’s CPU could perform millions of calculations per second - but it cannot be ‘passionate’ in the way that a human can, it cannot desire something to be the case. Robots cannot be moral agents. To reason is to follow rules, but morality answers the question ‘which rules should we follow?’ A non-cognitivist argues that it is our passions that are the source of those moral rules.
 

There are a number of objections to non-cognitivist moral theories. Amoralists might argue that non-cognitivism cannot be correct since there are many examples where we accept moral judgments as being correct without being motivated to do what they recommend. They would therefore reject emotivism on the basis that it does not account for the nature of moral truth in real-world situations.
 

Another rejection of non-cognitivism is derived from the altruistic nature of morality. If we accept that humans are essentially selfish, how can this be a basis for a moral framework? Moral behaviour, some argue, is that type of behaviour which suppresses selfish motives and promotes altruistic behaviour. Emotivism is therefore rejected by those who believe that it cannot account for the altruistic nature of moral behaviour.

 
However, Darwinian evolutionary biology can provide a defence of altruism based on non-cognitivist lines. Darwin argued that self-sacrificial behavior, though disadvantageous for the individual, might still be beneficial at the group level: “a tribe including many members who...were always ready to give aid to each other and sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.”2 In this sense we can argue that humans may desire to act in a non-selfish way. Further, we can defend some actions as moral without selfishly desiring them if, at an underlying genetic level, it is in our interests to act in such a way. In this sense morality could be based on instinctive or sub-conscious behaviour that creates desire or approbation in us, whilst not based on a cognitive process.

 
Deontologists reject non-cognitivism as they believe that there are moral truths that are based on moral rules. For example, Kant argued that morality is founded on categorical imperatives which in turn are derived from our human rationality. Kant entirely rejects a non-cognitivist account of morality based on desires: “To preserve one’s life is a duty, and besides everyone has an immediate inclination to do so. But on this account the often anxious care that most people take of it still has no inner worth and their maxim has no moral content.”3


I believe that a non-cognitivist approach is more likely to explain moral values than a cognitivist one. I agree with Hume that we cannot derive ‘ought’ from ‘is’. No set of premises consisting entirely of non-moral descriptive statements is sufficient to entail a moral conclusion. GE Moore also argues in a similar vein that where moral issues are ‘open questions’, their truth remains indefinable and their normative value is not something that can be established through a cognitivist process. I agree with Moore that any attempt to solve the problems of morality cognitively is inherently problematic.
 

References

1 David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1737), Book III

2 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), p166

3 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), trans Mary J. Gregor

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Darwin and morality

I'm aware there has been quite a bit of research and debate about how it is that humans and other animals have developed a propensity to altruism. I think this is tackled to some extent in The Selfish Gene and Dawkins' subsequent books. I do have a copy somewhere so if I get the chance I'll dig it out.

If the tribe is successful then it is likely that an individual's genes will be propagated, since presumably there was a lot of shared family history within each tribe (maybe that's what you were getting at?).

It is amazing how Darwin's work so accurately corresponds with what we now know about DNA. There was a fascinating TV programme about Alfred Russell Wallace a few weeks ago (hosted by Bill Bailey) which pointed out how unfair it is that he is almost forgotten whereas Darwin is given all of the credit. It does seem that evolution was an idea waiting to be discovered, I find it quite bizarre - not to say a little scary - that there are so many people (particularly in the US) who claim not to believe in evolution.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Why are we moral?

I would like propose that morality is a human attribute that has evolved through the process of natural selection and survival of the fittest. To quote from Darwin's 'Descent of Man':

"When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if the one tribe included…a greater number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would without doubt succeed best and conquer the other….A tribe possessing the above qualities in a high degree would spread and be victorious over other tribes; but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other and still more highly endowed tribe. Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world."

Rawls' Theory of Justice

I do think that Rawls' hypothetical original position is a reasonably good basis for conducting the thought experiment.

By hypothetically placing all agents in a completely equal position behind a "veil of ignorance", we can agree on principles that are reasonably fair. I believe that fairness is fundamental to any conception of justice.

Rawls chooses equal basic liberties for all and social and economic equality as the two principles which would emerge from this hypothetical contract. I'm not sure I agree with the second principle because there is a risk that an entitlement culture embeds itself in society and this ultimately leads to another form of injustice.

I think there should be protection for the genuinely disabled and destitute but, for example, I don't think it is fair that 70% of my income is taken away from me by force to give it to people who cannot be bothered to work for a living (economic equality). I also don't think that social equality is always a good thing if it means that it holds back the genuinely talented members of society by dumbing everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Monday, May 27, 2013

Moral knowledge and moral scepticism

I think there are a number of possible methods by which we can justify having moral knowledge. I will firstly clarify that I think to have knowledge of something you need to have justified true belief (JTB theory). As I have posted previously, I'm also a moral generalist and not a moral sceptic, in that I do think there are moral principles.

So the question is how do we justify moral beliefs?

I subscribe to multiple forms of justification, I don't believe we have to just pick one. Some moral truths are self-evident in certain circumstances. Others are justified by their coherence with other beliefs - we form a web of support. And finally I think we can have intuitional justification. So I'll opt for a full house of justification theories!

There are a number of problems with moral scepticism:
  • It is an intellectual dead-end
  • It doesn't correspond with common-sense
  • It is an immoral position to hold IMO

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Free Will revisited

Module 2 has a lot of content - it includes Moral Truth, Justice and Free Will. This is probably too much for one week, but I have done my best to keep up.

I covered Free Will in the Introduction to Philosophy and the Metaphysics courses (although each looked at different philosophers' views). My views about Free Will have not changed significantly having done some more reading and thinking. In summary, I am a libertarian and believe that intellectually mature humans have free will.

I do not believe that compatibilism is logically consistent, I think compatibilists should get off the fence and choose.

I don't believe that determinism is consistent with our understanding of what it is to be human. I don't fully "understand" what determinism is because it does not explain the way the world is. Determinism is not an explanation of how humans behave, it is a reductio ad absurdum based on false premises. I believe that the arguments in favour of determinism are often confused, and do not take into account the role of rationality and consciousness. Everybody behaves as though libertarianism is true, without free will there can be no moral responsibility and in fact there can be no morality. Given that, for me, morality exists, I have to conclude that libertarianism is true.

Moral Truth

I would like to recommend WD Ross's essay 'What Makes Right Acts Right'.

Ross is spot on in explaining what we mean by moral principles.

Ross argues that the principles of morality are in some way similar to the truths of nature (such as the universal law of gravitation). The law of gravity says that the force of gravity acts on all bodies universally - it is an absolute truth (excluding the quantum scale) but the actual movement of any given body depends on all of the forces acting on it.

Moral truths differ from universal laws of nature in that there is no causal relationship, instead there is a prima facie relationship which is self-evident, although this self-evidence does not appear from the beginning of our lives, it develops as we mature.

I particularly like the section where Ross says "The moral order expressed in these propositions is just as much part of the fundamental nature of the universe (and, we may add, of any possible universe in which there are moral agents) as is the spacial or numerical structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic. In our confidence that these propositions are true there is involved the same trust in our reason that is involved in our confidence in mathematics."

Ross goes on to make a very valid point which I think gets to the nub of where Dancy is wrong:
"Our judgement about our actual duty in concrete situations have none of the certainty that attaches to our recognition of the general principles of duty".

Monday, May 20, 2013

End of module 1 - final thoughts on particularism

I was challenged to respond to two possible sets of circumstances in which we might say that infant torture is not morally bad:
  • where the agent is not morally competent
  • where the degree of "torture" is disputed
This is my response:

On the question of the moral 'competence' of the perpetrator, often in heinous crimes the accused will use a defence that they had "no choice", either because they were coerced (e.g. the Nuremburg defence) or they suffer from a mental illness / deficiency. I personally don't think this overcomes the generalist position that torture is wrong, but it does seem to support the particularist point of view that context is always an issue when deciding on moral issues.

When I started typing my response I began by thinking your second argument is less of a problem for the generalist but, on reflection, it seems also to be a good one. One could argue that the moral principle still stands - any argument about whether an act constitutes torture is separate from the argument about whether torture is morally bad, but I can see that there could be significant disagreement.

So to defend my generalist position I need to frame the principle carefully - i.e. "a clear and undisputed case of a fully competent person torturing a baby purely for fun is bad". On the whole I don't feel it is necessary to do this because the vast majority of people know what is meant by "torturing babies for fun is bad" and the arguments are around the facts of the case and not the moral principle behind it.

I think quite a lot of moral principles are generally true, and the debate is mainly over the facts of the case and not the validity of the principle.

A lot of Dancy's variable 'context' will determine the facts of the case (i.e. did the person make a free choice, how much damage is being caused) and not the validity of the moral principle.
I mentioned earlier that a lot of moral principles are tautologous - such as "injustice is bad". Surely it is part of the definition of injustice that we think it is morally bad - take the OED definition for example: "The opposite of justice; unjust action; wrong; want of equity, unfairness. With an and pl., An instance of this; an unjust act."

How can anyone defend the position that injustice is good without contradicting themselves? I don't believe there are circumstances or contexts when we can say that injustice is good (in itself).

Friday, May 17, 2013

When is torturing infants for kicks good?

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, moral particularism, at its most trenchant, is the claim that there are no defensible moral principles, that moral thought does not consist in the application of moral principles to cases, and that the morally perfect person should not be conceived as the person of principle.

So under what circumstances is torturing babies for fun morally good?

Are moral principles just generalisations?

It seems to me that sometimes moral rules are generalizations that guide moral thinking and action and sometimes they are universal/absolute principles applicable in all situations. The distinction between the two may well be related to the distinction between high-order and low-order moral judgements, I'm still trying to work through this distinction.

I need to clarify what I mean by universal/absolute. I think that morality is a human construct. As an atheist I do not think that my morality is derived from a supernatural being but that moral facts exist by virtue of human nature and human rationality.

We naturally tend to agree (perhaps it is fairly self evident or maybe it is through many years of debate and experience) that we are in favour of certain moral principles and against others. Principles such as justice, avoiding pain, putting right our mistakes, being grateful for assistance, treating everyone as valuable, equality etc. are the outcome of this process.

I think that as societies have 'matured', they have tended to adopt these moral principles more widely (e.g. abolishing slavery, treating men and women more equally etc.) but because human beings are flawed (our adrenal glands are too big) and politics is involved, there are always going to be conflicts and disagreements.

I do therefore think that it is a feature of a moral truth that it is universal. If it isn't universally true for all mankind then it isn't a moral truth but a political or cultural point of view.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

The Golden Rule as a high-order moral principle

The Golden Rule says that we should treat others as we would like to be treated. I think this is a candidate for an absolute moral principle.

The clever thing about the Golden Rule is that in a sense it makes every action altruistic while at the same time being selfish. If we are obliged to treat other people as we would like to be treated, the distinction between altruism and selfishness seems to dissolve away.

It is true as you suggest that application of the Golden Rule effectively leads us to impose our morals on other people and I think this is a valid criticism. I can envisage a situation where for example a doctor is against abortion on moral grounds and therefore refuses to help patients who chose to have an abortion.

Some people might think it is not a bad thing if we impose our morals on others (absolutists) whereas others would find this abhorrent (relativists).

In this example I think you would still want to say that the doctor believed himself to be acting morally. Perhaps the Golden Rule inevitably results in moral absolutism. For me this is not a problem as I voted for high order absolutism in the course poll smile. The choices were:

I am an individual relativist.I am a cultural relativist.I am a lower order moral absolutist.I am a higher order moral absolutist.I am a particularist absolutist.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Denial of moral particularism

If it were true that there are no moral principles then I'm not sure how society would function. It seems to me that we need moral rules in order to help us to learn how to behave and to attribute praise or blame on others' behaviour. Moral principles function in the realm of moral behaviour in the same way that rules of the road function for drivers. Would Dancy argue that there are no rules of the road, and in every instance the choices are context specific?

Attempting another analogy, could it be the case that our moral code is a bit like a recipe - if we follow the recipe then we end up with the outcome that we seek. In the case of cooking, we end up with a meal. In the case of normative behaviour, we end up with a functioning society.
No recipe should ever be followed in every circumstance, we have to allow for many factors such as the preferences of the guests, the temperature of the oven, the nature of the ingredients. The fact that we have to use judgement in the way we follow the recipe clearly can't lead us to conclude that the recipe doesn't exist.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Generalism v particularism

Our first assignment is to read an article written by Jonathan Dancy in which it is argued that there are no moral principles, everything in morality is situation or context dependant.

My response to this challenge is as follows:

I agree with Dancy that it's difficult to formulate moral principles that apply in all circumstances, but I do not think that we must conclude that there are no moral principles just because it is not easy to formulate them.

There are two possible solutions to this problem:
1. We need to formulate the rules in a way that allows for exceptions and special pleading
2. There are in fact rules which are universal

Approach 1, might say that for every rule we add an addendum which states "unless to follow the rule would lead to more harm than not following the rule". I do not think it is unreasonable to develop a rule which allows for exceptions in certain circumstances and by doing so I don't think this means that the rule isn't a rule. Alternatively, we could make the rule more complex and thereby allow for unusual situations.

Approach 2 - what about the 'golden rule' that we should always treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves? I am struggling to think of a situation where this doesn't apply.

I have been thinking about how we apply rules in other circumstances and came up with the example of the rules of golf. When we agree to play a game by a set of agreed rules, those rules apply in all circumstances. There is no special pleading. Maybe the problem is that often the way we frame moral rules is too simplistic - the rules of golf run to many pages and thereby try and take account of special circumstances, such allowing for inclement weather and lightning.

Monday, May 13, 2013

Ethics: An Introduction

My latest online philosophy course begins today and runs for 10 weeks.

The subject this time is an introduction to ethics. From the OUDCE Philosophy website:

"In this introduction to ethics, the philosophy of morality, we shall be considering questions of both practice (is lying wrong? Must we keep our promises?) and theory (what makes an action wrong? Is it only human who worry about morality? How do we apply moral theory to society?). We shall examine four important ethical theories (Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s deontologiy, Hume’s expressivism and Mill’s utilitarianism) and we shall apply them to two practical questions: the rights of animals and euthanasia. There will be plenty of opportunity to engage in debate and to test your own moral theories."

I will try and post regularly. Comments are welcome.

Monday, March 25, 2013

Metaphysics course concludes

I have reached the end of the 3rd course. The final module was on the subject of the reality of space and time. I found the arguments somewhat artificial, and didn't manage to contribute much to the final module due partly to work commitments. My final assessment was submitted on the subject of Plato, I will upload a copy once it has been marked.

I've signed up for Ethics, starting in May. I can't promise to post before then, but will try my best.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Leibniz and the principle of the identity of indiscernibles

I agree that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) doesn't seem, initially, to "do any work" in Leibniz's argument. I've been trying to get my head around what L. means and am beginning to understand what he is saying (I think). At first I thought PII was tautologous but on reflection my view has changed.

L. is using PII to argue that two indiscernible things could only be 'separated' by space and time, hence if there were indiscernible things separated by space and time then the properties of space and time become properties of the objects. L. doesn't want this argument to succeed, therefore he argues that there are no indiscernible things, in terms of all of their non space time properties.

I'm not sure I agree that L. doesn't use the Principle of Sufficient Reason. He is arguing that were the universe to be created earlier or in a different place, there would need to be a reason, and there couldn't be such a reason, therefore it couldn't happen? Again, if the universe were to be created in a different space or at a different time then space an time become properties of the objects and therefore have some absolute existence and are not merely relational.

Both arguments certainly stretch the thinking, but I was wrong to rush to judgement.

I do think however, that L.'s philosophy is driven by his Theology. I also agree with him that there probably aren't two indiscernible things (excluding their position in space and time) at the macro level but I'm not sure this achieves what L. wants.

It could be possible that space and time are both absolute and relative. I'm not sure whether it is fair to argue that these two views are mutually exclusive.

Are space and time absolute?

I suspect there may be some confusion (at least on my part!) regarding what we mean when we say space and time are absolute for the Leibniz type philosophical argument and the meaning of absolute used in the Einstein space/time sense. I think we possibly have two different types of absolute / relative distinctions going on.

For Einstein the argument is whether time is "fixed" and this sense of absolute is different. Einstein says no, time is relative to the observer.

For Leibniz the argument is whether time is absolute, i.e. exists independently of events that happen.
I don't think these two meanings of absolute relative are quite the same, but am happy to stand corrected as it is a fairly mind boggling subject!

If time is relative to the speed of light (which I accept) then could we not still say that time is absolute as far as Leibniz debate is concerned? If the speed of light is fixed, then in one sense time is also fixed in relation to the speed of light. Time is therefore the same everywhere, allowing for its relativity to the speed of light. Time is not something which is imposed by the mind, it is a real "thing" and depends on the speed of light and distance (i.e. not on events).

Similarly for space. Space may be able to bend, but it is still and absolute "thing" in one sense, again relative to the speed of light and time.

One interesting question, which I don't profess to know how to answer, would be will space still exist if there is nothing in the universe (i.e. the heat death of the universe). Once entropy has worked its wicked way to total finality, could we still talk about space?

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Hume and causation

My post today are my initial thoughts on the question as to whether two things that are distinct and separate could be necessarily connected, taking the premises of an argument and its conclusion as the  example of two distinct and separate things.

So, the question becomes, is the conclusion of an argument necessarily connected with its premises?

My thoughts on this example, is that arguments which take the form of premises and a conclusion are not, in themselves, "matters of fact" as Hume defines them, but are "relations of ideas". The argument may be about a matter of fact, but the nature of the argument itself is a relation of ideas and depends on the logical structure of the argument and the meanings of the words used. I therefore think that Hume would say that the form of an argument can be known a priori, but the conclusion of an argument about a matter of fact can never be known a priori.

I will try and clarify this with an example. Take the argument "if the water in the glass is freezing then the temperature must be at or below zero degrees centigrade".

The argument is about a matter of fact, but we cannot tell from the premise that the conclusion necessarily follows. Even where the argument employs a law of nature such as 'water freezes at or below zero degrees centigrade', Hume would argue that conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise if it is a contingent fact, and it could just as easily be otherwise (logically speaking).

If we assume that the law of nature in question is universal, then the conclusion does follow. Hume would say that this assumption is just that, a contingent idea which results from the constant conjunction of freezing temperatures with frozen water.

I am struggling to formulate why I think Hume may not be right in the instance of laws of nature, because my personal view is that when they are employed in arguments, there is some form of necessary connection between the premises and the conclusion - either because language has petrified certain truths (as Wittgenstein might say) or because the connection is innate (as Descartes might say), or because reason has super-imposed the necessary connection of cause and effect (as Kant would say).

Sunday, February 24, 2013

The distinction between particulars and universals


The philosophical ‘problem of universals’ is an ancient one, which continues to be debated in the modern-day. The problem concerns the ontological status of properties and relations. To solve the problem we need to address a fundamental question about universals: do they ‘exist’ as mind independent entities, and if so, what is their nature? In order to examine this problem, we need to be clear about the distinction between particulars and universals.

A ‘particular’ is an individual entity such as a specific blade of grass or a specific tree. Particulars are (in most cases) things we can point to, or that can be observed by at least one of the senses.  Particulars can exist over time, but they can only be in one place at a time, they are ‘non-repeatable’ entities.

It is necessarily true that all particulars must have at least some properties (or qualities), for example the colour of a blade of grass or the smell of a piece of bark. Particulars also stand in relation to other particulars, for example one tree is to the left of another tree, or one specific tree is taller or older than another specific tree. These properties (e.g. green-ness) and relations (e.g. to the left of) can be seen to be in more than one place at one time, they are repeatable. The abstract noun ‘tree’ can be used to describe many items and is also repeatable.

The philosophical question is how can properties exist in more than one place at one time? If lots of things are green do they all share in the same green-ness? What is green-ness? Does green-ness exist independently of the particular items that are green? These questions extend to relations and abstract nouns. If one tree is taller than another tree, what is the nature of tall-ness? When we talk about ‘trees’ in general (i.e. abstract as opposed to concrete noun) what are we referring to? We can also extend the investigation to cover non-physical abstract nouns such as ‘justice’ and ‘goodness’.

These questions - how individual properties can be shared, how one quality or relation can be the same as another and what it is that we refer to when we use abstract nouns, are referred to as the problems of qualitative identity and resemblance. The solution, at least for some, is to posit entities called ‘universals’.

Linguistically, proper names stand for particulars whereas adjectives, verbs and prepositions stand for universals. Thus ‘London’ (proper noun) is a particular, whereas the adjective ‘green’ in the phrase ‘the green apple’ and the verb ‘like’ in the phrase ‘I like apples’ and the preposition ‘on’ in the phrase ‘the apple on the table’ are all universals. We know what the proper name London stands for, but what do universals stand for?

Universals, if they exist as entities, may be thought to be mind-independent. For Plato, they are immaterial ‘Forms’ which are transcendent, they exist in an abstract realm and can only be known by reason. For others, such as Aristotle, they are in the world, they reside in individual items. For Armstrong, universals are features of the world that are instantiated by particulars.

There are therefore a number of competing theories which attempt to solve the problem of universals. By no means all philosophers believe that universals do in fact exist as distinguishable entities, for them the world is made up only of particulars.

Laws of nature

I have been reading the Stanford Encyclopædia article on the subject of laws of nature. The concept of universal laws is relevant to the philosophical problem of induction, and also comes into other metaphysical problems including epistemology and the philosophy of propositions.

It is interesting to try and define what "makes" a universal law. The account which I particularly like explains universal laws in terms of deductive systems, with strength and simplicity being the key characteristics of a universal law.

Another approach employs the philosophical concept of universals to analyse laws of nature. This view was set out by Armstrong as follows:
"Suppose it to be a law that Fs are Gs.F-ness and G-ness are taken to be universals. A certain relation, a relation of non-logical or contingent necessitation, holds between F-ness and G-ness. This state of affairs may be symbolized as‘N(F,G)’"

According to Stanford, the majority of contemporary philosophers are realists about laws; they believe that some reports of what the laws are succeed in describing reality. There are, however, some antirealists who disagree. More on that later.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Sam Harris on free will


Harris presents his arguments fairly well, but on this topic I don't agree with him at all.
His basic argument is hard determinism re-hashed. He says every event is either caused by a prior chain of cause and effect, or it's random.

I am still intrigued by why a determinist would believe in randomness, it seems completely contradictory to me. And he gives no justification in the lecture for why the only other option is physical cause and effect. He just accepts this as a given, missing the entire point of the argument for free will. Harris seems to look upon the brain as merely a physical machine, taking no account of consciousness and the power of reason at all.

It's a shame that Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us, he could point us in the direction to the most intelligent way of looking at the problem....

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Free will vs. determinism

What I believe (is obviously true) is that there is interaction between the mental world, where we have free will and the physical world, where the mental act leads us to influence the physical world. Once the physical world starts "moving", then laws of causation apply.

So if I decide to scratch my nose, I send signals to the muscles in my arm which raise my hand to my nose. If my hand then brushes a fly away, it's flight path is subject to the laws of cause and effect.
My free decision to scratch my nose was not pre-determined, it is not random, and it is the result of a free choice which is the origin of a string of cause and effect.

Hard determinists must find it impossible to discipline their children. If they have no free will then how can they blame them for bad behaviour?

The truth is that no-one really believes in hard determinism, they can't. That I think is why Peter Strawson starts his essay with the admission that he does not really understand what determinism is.
Philosophers who defend determinism often resort to a fallacious argument along the lines of "everything must have a physical cause" and then use a regress argument to show that free will cannot be the original cause. They come across like Berkeley did arguing for idealism, using rules they make up themselves (B.'s ideas must resemble their cause) to justify their chain of reasoning and ending up with a result which is contrary to common sense and denies the very nature of humanity.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Strawson and compatibilism

P.F. Strawson makes a case for a kind of compatibilism in his 1962 essay 'Freedom and Resentment". Strawson argues that, for any discussion of human morality, determinism is in effect not significant.
In order to be treated as moral agents, we need to be said to have free will, otherwise we remain blameless for our bad actions and gain no credit for good actions.This is in fact how we all behave (unless we are mentally abnormal).

Strawson admits that he does not understand exactly what is meant by determinism, but takes the view that if it is true, it is not significant for any debate about human freedom. Hence he is in effect taking a psuedo-compatibilist stance.

One of Strawson's key points is that there are reasons for regarding praise or blame as inappropriate attitudes for people to hold about other people, but the truth of determinism is not one of those reasons and hence determinism is not significant. Determinism is never a reason for suspending our "reactive attitudes" and we cannot imagine having no reactive attitudes at all.

So in effect Strawson's approach is not to attempt to prove or disprove determinism, but to show that it is irrelevant to the discussion of human behaviour.

I agree with the thrust of Strawson's argument but he is only a psuedo-compatibilist. He does not reject determinism, he bypasses it.

Free Will

My initial view is that as humans we (effectively) have free will. Having free will is part of the core definition of a human, so if I voted otherwise I would be claiming that we are not in fact human.
I do believe in universal laws, such as gravity and the speed of light in a vacuum. But there is a point where the human brain can decide to act in a certain way that is not predetermined.
I accept that the choices we make (the vast majority of which are subconscious) are influenced by our environment, but we are not machines subject to the absolute rule of causality. The brain is much much too complicated for this, and the influence of random events is influential in deciding the way we behave.

Berkeley and idealism contd.

I have been re-reading the extract from Berkeley to try and pick out some of the flaws in his arguments.

B. states that to reject the principles and theorems of science is not equivalent to denying the existence of a material world, since the theorems of science are "intellectual notions, and consequently independent of matter". B. has misunderstood what it means to deny a theorem. It is not the same to deny that theorems exist as it is to deny the conclusion of a theorem. The theorems of science posit things about the natural (real or external) world and to deny them is exactly to deny the existence of the external world. B. cannot claim the "common sense" position without absurdity.

When talking about secondary qualities, B. moves from the argument that "To exist is one thing, and to be perceived is another" to the position that whatever we perceive cannot be the same as what exists (in the case of different temperatures being felt by two hands and in the case of pain) and from this to the rejection of material things existing at all. What B. is missing is the explanation that things appear differently at different times and under different circumstances. All B. has proved by the hands in water example is that we have a point of view of reality.

B. uses the example of the same objects appearing to be different sizes at the same time to different animals as an argument to reject primary qualities as existing in objects. I don't really follow B.'s argument unless he is suggesting that for something to exist it must appear exactly the same under every point of view, which is the argument he used for secondary qualities and is false.
B.'s mis-step then is to knock down the straw man that he puts up, but the straw man is not a good one. In order for there to be an external world it is not necessary that existence is exactly the same as perception.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Berkeley and idealism

I think Dr Johnson has a point, and agree with him, perhaps this is because I am a direct (or naive) realist. Admittedly, Dr Johnson makes the point with some theatrics and unlike Berkeley doesn't take many pages to do it, but he is still making a philosophical point.

Berkeley's argument is clever, but flawed. The key sign that he is not onto a winner is when he appeals to the existence of a supernatural being that we can never experience, or even form a clear idea of, to support his metaphysics. Being a Bishop will do that to people smile I will try and pick apart his argument in a slightly more sophisticated manner in a different post, but there is so much wrong with it that I want to marshal my thoughts first.

I think we are entitled to start from the assumption that the world is real, it is an abductive argument perhaps, but it fits so well compared to Berkeley's fantasy.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Dr Johnson and Bishop Berkeley

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of
Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and
that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are
satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall
forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty
force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it
thus."


Dr Johnson's argument is a very good one, and puts philosophers in their place. A more sophisticated argument for common sense is 'Here is a hand" by GE Moore.

I often wonder if a 'Moorean Shift' is in order with all of this discussion of qualia and epiphenomenalism?

I am a direct realist - I think that what we see is real, and it just appears to us the way it appears to us. The fact that appearances are not consistent is not an argument against realism, it is actually an argument in support of direct realism. To say that we can't perceive the real object behind the appearance of the object is, to me, unhelpful and confusing.
If we make the assumption that the world is real and we are independent of it, and we accept the common sense and scientific explanation of the world, then we would expect the world to appear different to different people. So realism is coherent, common sense, justified by our experiences and the best explanation we have.

Being wrong about colour

I think there can be two ways in which we can be wrong about a colour. One is if we subsequently realise that we were experiencing an optical illusion. The other is if other people convince us that we were experiencing an illusion.

In both cases what matters is coherence - a yardstick by which we can establish objective truth. Other people can only convince us that we were mistaken if their account is more coherent than our initial account.

So objective truth for me does not depend on the existence of an external world at all, but on the coherence of our views about the world.

Objectivity

Apologies but I am a bit behind this week due to workload in my day job. I'm intending to catch up over the next few days.
 
My initial thoughts about objective truth, without having read anything on this week's topic other than the introduction, is that in order for something to be capable of being objectively true there could be two scenarios:

1. There is only one consciousness. Under this scenario then 'states of affairs' which are coherent and justified by 'evidence' become objectively if they indicate the existence of an external (to the single consciousness) world that is governed by universal laws. Whether or not there is in fact a world that is external to the single consciousness is perhaps uncertain, but from the point of view of the single consciousness it probably doesn't matter so long as it seems that way.
2. There are multiple conscious entities and they agree on certain states of affairs (at least by their apparent behaviour). Again, the existence of an external physical world is probably not important. What is important is that the beliefs are coherent and indicate the existence of universal laws or at least apparent consistency in the way that the external world is.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Epiphenominalsim

Epiphenomenalism is the view that some ideas are epiphenomenal - that some ideas come about in the brain but have no effect on the physical world. This is closely related to the debate between materialists and idealists.

According to Stanford, "The central motivation for epiphenomenalism lies in the premise that anything that can causally contribute to a physical event must itself be a physical event. If a mental event is something other than a physical event, then for it to make any causal contribution of its own in the physical world would require a violation of physical law."
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epiphenomenalism/

The original argument that Jackson devised in Mary's room (explained in the Philosophy Bites podcast 'What Mary Knew') to show that materialism is inadequate to explain the way the world is concerned Mary, who even though she knew everything about the colour red in physical terms without actually having perceived it, would in effect not know what seeing red was actually like.
So the perception of red, or at least the qualia red, is a mental activity which is unrelated to physics in a sense.

So the red rose isn't really red at all (under a physicalist view), it is only when we perceive it that we get the qualia red in our mind (the idea). To tie this into Locke, under an epiphenomenalist view the rose doesn't cause the perception of red as Locke argued.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

More on universals

One major idea behind medieval nominalism is that universals are not entities but concepts or general names (lat. nomina) that we use to pick out certain features of particulars.

I am in favour of the medieval approach smile

I see universals such as "red", "hot" and "north" as concepts which tie together the common properties of particulars, which are then named. So "north" becomes the concept which means closest to the north pole (of a magnet or of the Earth). I can't get my head round how north could be an entity in any other manner than a concept which describes a spacial relation or a rule for help in navigating. It may then acquire other meanings in language, but the first people to use the term north must have used it as a rule to describe that spacial relation, or perhaps to point to a particular place that is north of another place.

I have been trying to imagine a world without any people, to think through what implications that might have on my opinion about particulars and universals. In such a world I think we would still have particulars, but I'm not sure if we would have universals. As soon as we bring sentient beings into the world I think they must create universals, which implies to me that they must be man made.

However, picking up on Armstrong's view about scientific laws, I then thought that perhaps I am wrong! In a world without people we would still have "gravity" as a universal law, and so I switched back to thinking that universals are things which are, quite literally "universal". This may sound naive, it certainly does as I type it.

My only conclusion is that we can probably define "universal" to mean whatever we want. Since it is not an object we can point at, no-one can truly (or perhaps helpfully) say "No, your wrong, you don't actually mean what you just said".

From my previous course, I came down on the side of believing that there is some form of contradiction when we reject a universal law. Whether this contradiction is imposed by our understanding (Kant) or by our language (Wittgenstein) or is innate, I'm not sure. Perhaps it is all three.

I want to come down on the side of a simplistic approach, and say that universals apply to universal "things" such as either laws of nature, or concepts which apply everywhere and at every time (such as north, red, hot and even horse).

I like Armstrong's focus on truth-makers, but I think this allows for a large number of universals.
Whether these universals are man-made or "in" nature is still up for grabs. Hume would argue that we can never know whether they are "in" nature, and it does seem to be that you have to have an omniscient point of view in order to know the truth. This becomes an epistemological question.
From a metaphysical standpoint I want to say that universals exist as concepts, but I'm not sure whether we can say more about their ontological status.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Particulars and Universals

A few initial thoughts, as this is a new topic to me.

I am inclined to agree that universals do not have any kind of supernatural existence in a non physical / temporal realm. They also don't "exist" in time and space in terms of being something we can point to, because if that were the case they would be particulars.

But, as we saw in the previous modules, we can talk about things that don't exist in space and time in a meaningful way, and so they must have some kind of subsistence.

My initial reaction, having thought about how I would describe universals, is that they seem to be (or at least have their origin in) some kind of "rule" for describing things (either properties or relations).
We can all understand what someone means by "higher" or "redder". These are terms which help us to talk about particulars, and to understand what we mean when we want to convey complex ideas. So the universal "red" is a rule which allows us to ascribe a subjective sense experience (or perhaps a particular wavelength of light).

The universal "red" only seems to be of use in communication of some form. Without communication I'm not sure that universals serve much purpose.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Before the Big Bang

I have picked as an example of an ontological dispute the argument over whether there was something before the Big Bang. I am not a scientist and therefore my post will focus on the ways we might approach the question.

There are a number of competing theories about what happened before the Big Bang. It is unlikely (impossible?) that all of them are true. I conclude from this that we can formulate concepts which don't exist, if by exist we mean exist in space and time. But the concepts which turn out to be non-existent are not necessarily meaningless.

To be given serious (scientific) consideration, each hypothesis needs to be coherent and not contradicted (falsified) by experimental evidence. It is this coherence which allows the concept to have meaning, an incoherent or self-contradictory theory is either false or meaningless.
Many scientists believe that the Universe began at the Big Bang, estimated to have taken place 14 billion years ago. Was it at that point that space and time began? Some argue that there was nothing before the Big Bang. But it seems odd (incoherent?) to describe a scenario where there is no "before" (just as it is odd to think of no "after"). Kant would argue that our ideas of space and time are essential to our understanding of reality, I am inclined to agree with this view. I therefore instinctively reject the idea of a beginning of space and time as incoherent.

But is our idea of the existence of space and time dependent on the existence of light? If there was no energy before the Big Bang, and no light to travel at lightspeed, would there still be time? Does our idea of time require distance and speed to have meaning?

Modern science has developed theories about the "time" before the Big Bang by using quantum physics. But even if we devise a theory which gains widespread acceptance, does this mean we would regard it as "true". In the absence of time travel how would we know?

My final comment is that some people prefer a supernatural explanation; for them, some questions are not answerable scientifically.

Plato's cave

The analogy of the cave is used by Plato to point the way to towards a new discipline - the discipline of metaphysics.

By pointing out that a higher level of understanding is attainable, and by drawing a distinction with a life lived in ignorance of this higher level, Plato is making a case for allowing philosophers to pursue their interest in metaphysics, for the good of everyone.

The prisoners in the cave have a limited understanding of their world, this is not because they are not intelligent or perceptive enough to achieve that understanding, but because they are (literally) chained. The analogy with philosophy is that philosophers are chained by their failure to ask the right questions and look in the right direction. If they were to think about the right things (e.g. Forms) they would be freed from their metaphorical chains and thereby have access to a whole new level of understanding about the world.

Plato's Forms

Plato develops his theory of Forms in order to try and explain how things that we experience are the way they are.

Plato's theory has an extremely wide scope - it is aimed at addressing a number of fundamental metaphysical questions including:
  • how do we explain resemblance?
  • the problem of universals (the question of whether properties exist, and if so, what they are)?
  • what do we mean by matter and substance?
  • what is change?
Plato's answer to these questions is a concept he calls "Forms". Forms transcend experience, are permanent and never changing. It is "from" Forms that the material world is the way it is. Forms therefore help explain the material world. The process by which this takes place is very obscure, necessarily so since the Forms are not objects of experience.
The argument for the existence of Forms seems to be abductive, inference to the best explanation.
The key issue for me in debating Forms is to try and understand what Plato actually thinks they are, this is not an easy question!

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Change

I have started 'Reality, Being and Existence: An Introduction to Metaphysics'. There are 36 people on the course, which is a good number and considerably more than on my previous two courses. Students come from all around the World, including DRC, which I think must be a first.

As part of the introduction I have been contemplating the concept of change.

Firstly, there seems to be a very close relationship between the idea of change and the idea of time. It seems that any definition of change needs to refer to or utilise the idea of time. I can't see any way of explaining change other than by using the concept of time. 'States of affairs being different at different times' is a simplistic way of defining change, but captures the essence of the concept.
I also think that the idea that time is bi-directional, we can talk about time moving forwards and time moving backwards. Times arrow shows us that time moves in one direction in the physical universe. This idea seems to be related to entropy. It is generally accepted that the universe displays entropy as a universal law, and that this entropy shows us the direction in which times arrow points.
The status of the arrow of time seems to be a fundamental metaphysical question. This leads to some fascinating ideas such as time travel and whether time has a beginning or end.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Personal website now moved to bravenet

I've finally got round to setting up a new website now that btinternet are no longer providing a free hosting service:

http://losenotaminute.bravesites.com/