I came back from Africa just in time for the new school term. To my pleasant surprise, we have returned uneaten by the wildlife, and (apparently) uninfected by any of the various diseases that the guidebooks said were rampant in sub-Saharan Africa.
I had hoped that spending over a month working in (first) rural schools and (second) refugee camps, that I would have some sort of insight or revelation about circumstances in the developing world, or the proper relationship affluent Western people and countries should have with developing areas. Or some epiphany about globalization etc. No such luck. I met many people who were very smart, very kind and generous, and very funny. I worked on some very small projects with some of these folks. I miss them now. But no deep enlightenment about the difficult conditions of the majority of the world's inhabitants.
I also didn't have any real thoughts about philosophical stuff; just one little note that I might try to incorporate into an intro to political philosophy class. So one issue that comes up in political philosophy 101 in the debate between Hobbes and Locke is whether it is worse to live in the state of nature, or under a dictator. Hobbes says the former is worse, Locke the latter. I always thought this was an important question in the dialectic between the two, but answering it seemed difficult to impossible -- how could you really decide?
Well, during the 50 hours or so I spent riding travel buses in Zambia, I read a great book by Martin Meredith, called The State of Africa: A History of 50 Years of Independence. It was perfect for an ignoramus like me: not too much detail, but still plenty of concrete material. And the history of the last several decades in Africa makes Locke's answer to the above question look prima facie pretty good. The large majority of the strongmen were absolutely brutal to citizens, and not just people who "got on the dictator's bad side" -- you could be from the wrong tribe; you could have starvation-inducing taxes levied upon you; as we see in Zimbabwe today, your currency could be massively devalued to the point of worthlessness. If you have a problem, then you are killed -- horrifically -- along with your friends and family. In the state of nature, you at least have a chance of overpowering your neighbor; but imagine if, in a Hobbesian state of nature, God gave one person the power of throwing deadly lightning bolts at will... that's what a strongman's presence is like. And as e.g. Mobutu's power in the DRC waned, and his paramilitary power dwindled, you no longer have a capricious and wrathful Zeus hanging over your head. (Though then another strongman, Kabila, fills the void, backed by neighboring countries, and horrors continue.)
I say this is prima facie evidence, because I think a Hobbesian could conceivably retort that as the strongman's ability to throw thunderbolts decreases, some other social entity steps in to take his place, so that the people are not in the state of nature. But this is all just my amateurish speculation; I am certainly not an expert in early modern British political philosophy.
9/14/2007
7/02/2007
Off to Africa, and 2nd birthday
This blog turns two years old today. I'm only averaging about two and a half posts per month, and certainly fewer than that this year. I'm finding myself spending more time on polishing up articles (and a book), and less on writing about brand-new, half-baked ideas better suited for a blog dedicated to obscurity and confusion.
Posting will be even lighter over the next 7 weeks or so, since my wife and I are headed to Zambia under the auspices of a couple of non-profits that she works with: FORGE, which works in refugee camps, and Project Educate, which aims to improve educational, medical, and other infrastructure in western Zambia. We're looking forward to the trip with a lot of anticipation, but a bit of trepidation too, since neither of us have ever been to Africa.
And many, many thanks to the folks who have provided feedback on the book manuscript. I am in your debt. If anyone wants a copy WITH the archival material appendix, please email me. I can't put it on the web, because the Archive from which it comes maintains control over it. This updated version also was my first sustained undertaking with LaTeX, so there are still typographic kinks in it.
Posting will be even lighter over the next 7 weeks or so, since my wife and I are headed to Zambia under the auspices of a couple of non-profits that she works with: FORGE, which works in refugee camps, and Project Educate, which aims to improve educational, medical, and other infrastructure in western Zambia. We're looking forward to the trip with a lot of anticipation, but a bit of trepidation too, since neither of us have ever been to Africa.
And many, many thanks to the folks who have provided feedback on the book manuscript. I am in your debt. If anyone wants a copy WITH the archival material appendix, please email me. I can't put it on the web, because the Archive from which it comes maintains control over it. This updated version also was my first sustained undertaking with LaTeX, so there are still typographic kinks in it.
5/10/2007
Help me write a book
This post falls under the category of "shameless begging." I am in the later stages of writing a book (based on my dissertation) called Carnap, Quine, and Tarski's Year Together. The plan is to send the manuscript to the publisher in about two months, i.e. very early July. Between then and now, the only thing I'm working on is the book.
I need your help with this. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, large or small, on the manuscript. It definitely needs to be looked at by a fresh set of eyes (preferably attached to a clever mind, but I'll take what I can get). The manuscript can be downloaded, as a 1MB Word file, here.
Thanks in advance to anyone who lends a hand. In my limited experience, the greater the number of people who tear apart something I've written, the better the final product is.
I need your help with this. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, large or small, on the manuscript. It definitely needs to be looked at by a fresh set of eyes (preferably attached to a clever mind, but I'll take what I can get). The manuscript can be downloaded, as a 1MB Word file, here.
Thanks in advance to anyone who lends a hand. In my limited experience, the greater the number of people who tear apart something I've written, the better the final product is.
4/19/2007
Can a sentence without a truth-value ever be approximately true?
I am curious to hear people's thoughts on the question in the title. There has been a lot of philosophical work done on the idea that a sentence can be strictly speaking false, yet nonetheless approximately true (or 'truthlike' or 'verisimilar'). For example: I am 5'11", but if someone said 'Greg is 6 feet tall,' we want to say that that claim is approximately true or something like that. But what if the claim was (strictly speaking) neither true nor false? (Readers may insert their own favorite truth-valueless sentence here.)
I ask because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm toying with the idea that the Pessimistic Induction over the history of science plus something like Kuhnian incommensurability (esp. untranslatability) will lead us not to the conclusion that current science is likely to be false, but rather is likely to lack a truth-value. For if we cannot translate the claims of a pre-revolutionary language into the post-revolutionary one, then the pre-revolutionary language (from our current point of view) is truth-valueless, not false.
I ask the question in the title because one common realist response to the Pessimistic induction is: "Well, yes, our current scientific theories are probably not exactly true, but they are approximately true." If truth-valueless sentences cannot be approximately true, then this response is not available to the realist.
I ask because, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm toying with the idea that the Pessimistic Induction over the history of science plus something like Kuhnian incommensurability (esp. untranslatability) will lead us not to the conclusion that current science is likely to be false, but rather is likely to lack a truth-value. For if we cannot translate the claims of a pre-revolutionary language into the post-revolutionary one, then the pre-revolutionary language (from our current point of view) is truth-valueless, not false.
I ask the question in the title because one common realist response to the Pessimistic induction is: "Well, yes, our current scientific theories are probably not exactly true, but they are approximately true." If truth-valueless sentences cannot be approximately true, then this response is not available to the realist.
4/13/2007
APA wrap-up: Kyle Stanford's "New Induction"
My time at the APA last weekend was pretty good: I learned a few new things, met some new people I've been wanting to meet, and got to catch up with a couple old friends. Particularly helpful/ enlightening presentations included Angela Potochnick on how the context of inquiry shapes explanation, Ken Waters (plus commenters Jay Odenbaugh and Michael Strevens) on causes that make a difference (not, I learned, to be confused with the conception of causes as 'difference-makers'), and the Author-Meets-Critics session on Kyle Stanford's Exceeding Our Grasp.
Stanford's basic claim is that current scientific theories are underdetermined -- not because we can generate empircially equivalent rivals to our currently accepted theories, but rather because at many, many times in the past, the scientific community has been unable to conceive of good alternatives to the then-current theory. The evidence that such alternatives exist is the fact that they are proposed and accepted centuries later: thus, Newton's mechanics did not consider special relativity as an alternative hypothesis; Newton's, when he proposed his gravitation theory, did not consider the general theory of relativity as an alternative; no classical physicists before 1900 considered quantum mechanics as an alternative explanation of the data, and so on. This is what Stanford calls the "New Induction" over the history of science.
The idea, as just presented, strikes me as a promising line to take. But there is one aspect of Stanford's presentation of the problem that I don't understand. Fiona Cowie asked (in part) about this in the question and answer session, but I still didn't follow the answer. Stanford says that (e.g.) in 1700, the special theory of relativity and Newtonian mechanics were "(roughly) equally well-confirmed". Similarly for the other cases: the future theory is supposedly just as confirmed as the old one -- even in the past.
I don't understand why Stanford says this for two reasons: (1) He doesn't need the theories to be equally well-confirmed for his point to hold (viz., scientists aren't even conceiving of a hypothesis that will later be accepted as superior), and (2) it seems false to me, on any reasonable (i.e., not hardcore hypothetico-deductive)notion of confirmation. In 1700, it is true that special relativity and Newtonian mechanics agreed on all the consequences that could then be observed. But someone who, in 1700, said "Newton is approximately right, yet when something goes really, really fast its length will contract and its local time will dilate from the point of view of slower-moving observers" -- there is NO evidence at all for postulating that further bit of theory. And it's the same with GTR (what evidence would there've been for gravitation being a 10-component tensor instead of a scalar?) and especially QM (what evidence was there for thinking a body cannot have a determinate position and momentum simultaneously?). In 1700, these now-accepted alternatives were consistent with the data, but they were not equally well-confirmed.
Note: a very similar line of objection is pushed at the end of P.D. Magnus's "What's New about the New Induction?" (Synthese, 2006), though he develops it slightly differently, I think. (As I understand him, P.D. claims that in 1700, STR, GTR and QM would look like 'gruesome' hypotheses.)
Stanford's basic claim is that current scientific theories are underdetermined -- not because we can generate empircially equivalent rivals to our currently accepted theories, but rather because at many, many times in the past, the scientific community has been unable to conceive of good alternatives to the then-current theory. The evidence that such alternatives exist is the fact that they are proposed and accepted centuries later: thus, Newton's mechanics did not consider special relativity as an alternative hypothesis; Newton's, when he proposed his gravitation theory, did not consider the general theory of relativity as an alternative; no classical physicists before 1900 considered quantum mechanics as an alternative explanation of the data, and so on. This is what Stanford calls the "New Induction" over the history of science.
The idea, as just presented, strikes me as a promising line to take. But there is one aspect of Stanford's presentation of the problem that I don't understand. Fiona Cowie asked (in part) about this in the question and answer session, but I still didn't follow the answer. Stanford says that (e.g.) in 1700, the special theory of relativity and Newtonian mechanics were "(roughly) equally well-confirmed". Similarly for the other cases: the future theory is supposedly just as confirmed as the old one -- even in the past.
I don't understand why Stanford says this for two reasons: (1) He doesn't need the theories to be equally well-confirmed for his point to hold (viz., scientists aren't even conceiving of a hypothesis that will later be accepted as superior), and (2) it seems false to me, on any reasonable (i.e., not hardcore hypothetico-deductive)notion of confirmation. In 1700, it is true that special relativity and Newtonian mechanics agreed on all the consequences that could then be observed. But someone who, in 1700, said "Newton is approximately right, yet when something goes really, really fast its length will contract and its local time will dilate from the point of view of slower-moving observers" -- there is NO evidence at all for postulating that further bit of theory. And it's the same with GTR (what evidence would there've been for gravitation being a 10-component tensor instead of a scalar?) and especially QM (what evidence was there for thinking a body cannot have a determinate position and momentum simultaneously?). In 1700, these now-accepted alternatives were consistent with the data, but they were not equally well-confirmed.
Note: a very similar line of objection is pushed at the end of P.D. Magnus's "What's New about the New Induction?" (Synthese, 2006), though he develops it slightly differently, I think. (As I understand him, P.D. claims that in 1700, STR, GTR and QM would look like 'gruesome' hypotheses.)
4/03/2007
Off to the Pacfic APA
I'll be at the APA in San Francisco from this Wednesday til Saturday afternoon; I'm be commenting on a paper by Barry Ward on the paradox of confirmation (a.k.a. the Ravens paradox).
So if you're there, and you want to catch up/ chat/ harrass me etc., please track me down.
So if you're there, and you want to catch up/ chat/ harrass me etc., please track me down.
4/02/2007
semantic pathology spotted in the wild
Perhaps the most famous instance of a sentence that exhibits semantic pathology is the Liar: 'This sentence is false'; if the 'this' strikes you as problematic --
(1) (1) is false.
But there are many other types of semantic pathology, such as the 'heterological' paradox and the so-called 'truth-teller': 'This sentence is true.' My colleague James Woodbridge is doing a lot of interesting research in this area; check out his work if you are interested.
This is not a serious post about semantic pathology, but rather just a field report. I sometimes wonder whether these examples like the truth-teller are all that important, since it's hard to imagine circumstances under which speakers might utter it. But I think I may have found a couple of instances of something akin to the truth-teller "in the wild":
(i) A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Spamalot, the musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. One of the songs contained (something close to) the following line: "This is the song that goes like this."
(ii) In the instructions for the Pennsylvania state tax forms, I found (something like) the following:
"You are eligible for the Tax Forgiveness credit if you meet the following requirements:
1. ...
2. ...
3. You meet the eligibility requirements for the Tax Forgiveness Credit.
4. ..."
(1) (1) is false.
But there are many other types of semantic pathology, such as the 'heterological' paradox and the so-called 'truth-teller': 'This sentence is true.' My colleague James Woodbridge is doing a lot of interesting research in this area; check out his work if you are interested.
This is not a serious post about semantic pathology, but rather just a field report. I sometimes wonder whether these examples like the truth-teller are all that important, since it's hard to imagine circumstances under which speakers might utter it. But I think I may have found a couple of instances of something akin to the truth-teller "in the wild":
(i) A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Spamalot, the musical adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. One of the songs contained (something close to) the following line: "This is the song that goes like this."
(ii) In the instructions for the Pennsylvania state tax forms, I found (something like) the following:
"You are eligible for the Tax Forgiveness credit if you meet the following requirements:
1. ...
2. ...
3. You meet the eligibility requirements for the Tax Forgiveness Credit.
4. ..."
3/29/2007
Carnap on what's 'really wrong with the Aufbau'
When I was going through some of the photocopied material I have from the Rudolf Carnap archive, I found the following interesting (to me) remark. Carnap is discussing with Nelson Goodman a draft of Goodman's dissertation (A Study of Qualities, which much later became The Structure of Appearance). Goodman points out various supposed technical defects with Carnap's method of quasi-analysis presented in the Aufbau, and Carnap says roughly the following:
The real problem with my Aufbau is not the various counter-examples that can be constructed against my particular version of quasi-analysis (which I already knew about), but rather the assumption of extensionality.
(I haven't quoted, because I don't think it's allowed.) I like this because (a) it's a really smart philosopher saying 'My book rests on a mistake,' and (b) it fits with my pet theory that the real break between Carnap and Quine stems in large part from Carnap moving away from the extensional languages he espoused in Logical Syntax, while Quine held fast to the extensional standard throughout his life (see the posthumous "Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist").
The real problem with my Aufbau is not the various counter-examples that can be constructed against my particular version of quasi-analysis (which I already knew about), but rather the assumption of extensionality.
(I haven't quoted, because I don't think it's allowed.) I like this because (a) it's a really smart philosopher saying 'My book rests on a mistake,' and (b) it fits with my pet theory that the real break between Carnap and Quine stems in large part from Carnap moving away from the extensional languages he espoused in Logical Syntax, while Quine held fast to the extensional standard throughout his life (see the posthumous "Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist").
3/15/2007
confusion and prokaryotes
One of my recurrent interests is confusion, especially in science. The way I understand this concept is as follows: a term or concept is confused = that term or concept takes 2 or more entities to be one entity (where 'entity' covers individual objects, properties, relations, etc.). In other words, a confused concept or term conflates distinct things. I think the phenomenon of confusion is important in science because part of what happens in many scientific revolutions is that, from the point of view of the new scientific framework, the old scientific framework is confused -- or vice versa. (Re: 'vice versa': Einstein's principle of equivalence, for example, would be seen as an unjustified conflation from the viewpoint of a classical physicist: gravitation and inertia are two separate things, and running them together as Einstein does is an unjustified conflation.)
I've recently started looking at another potential case of confusion in science, but I'm a bit uncertain about it, and would like to air it to get reactions.
In high-school biology class, we are told that the highest/ most basic division among life on Earth is between 2 kingdoms: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are all those organisms whose genetic material is encapsulated within a nucleus; Prokaryotes are organisms whose genetic material is not. In other words, Prokaryote=df not-Eukaryote.
However, in the last 2-3 decades, the highest taxonomic level has slowly switched to a three-group classification: Eukaryotes, Archaebacteria, and (Eu)bacteria. Why? The short answer is: "on the molecular level, [archaebacteria] resemble other procaryotes, the eubacteria, no more (probably less) than they do the eukaryotes" (C. Woese et al., PNAS 1990 p.4577).
The upshot for present purposes is that there are actually two distinct highest taxa whose genetic material is not enclosed within a nucleus, viz. the archaebacteria and the eubacteria. From this point of view, it appears that 'prokaryote' conflates the archaebacteria and the eubacteria. But if we recall the earlier characterization of 'prokaryote' as simply 'not-eukaryote,' then 'prokaryote' does not appear to be a confused term. So the question is: Is 'prokaryote' confused, or not? (And why?) I'm happy to hear just intuitions, as well as intuitions backed up with some sort of argument or evidence.
P.s. -- For some readers, this discussion will immediately call to mind Quine's solution to the 'grue' paradox in his paper "Natural Kinds" (in Ontological Relativity and other essays). There, Quine notes that if the predicate P picks out a natural kind, then not-P usually doesn't. A hackneyed example: 'gold' picks out a natural kind (any matter with atomic number 79), but 'not-gold' does not, because it covers many, many completely disparate things -- there are too many ways to be not gold for 'not-gold' to refer to a natural kind.
This might make us think that many/ most predicates of the form not-P are, in fact, confused, since such predicates most often apply to many different natural kinds. All I can say at this point is: that sounds counterintuitive to me... it doesn't feel to me like 'not-gold' conflates distinct things.
I've recently started looking at another potential case of confusion in science, but I'm a bit uncertain about it, and would like to air it to get reactions.
In high-school biology class, we are told that the highest/ most basic division among life on Earth is between 2 kingdoms: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Eukaryotes are all those organisms whose genetic material is encapsulated within a nucleus; Prokaryotes are organisms whose genetic material is not. In other words, Prokaryote=df not-Eukaryote.
However, in the last 2-3 decades, the highest taxonomic level has slowly switched to a three-group classification: Eukaryotes, Archaebacteria, and (Eu)bacteria. Why? The short answer is: "on the molecular level, [archaebacteria] resemble other procaryotes, the eubacteria, no more (probably less) than they do the eukaryotes" (C. Woese et al., PNAS 1990 p.4577).
The upshot for present purposes is that there are actually two distinct highest taxa whose genetic material is not enclosed within a nucleus, viz. the archaebacteria and the eubacteria. From this point of view, it appears that 'prokaryote' conflates the archaebacteria and the eubacteria. But if we recall the earlier characterization of 'prokaryote' as simply 'not-eukaryote,' then 'prokaryote' does not appear to be a confused term. So the question is: Is 'prokaryote' confused, or not? (And why?) I'm happy to hear just intuitions, as well as intuitions backed up with some sort of argument or evidence.
P.s. -- For some readers, this discussion will immediately call to mind Quine's solution to the 'grue' paradox in his paper "Natural Kinds" (in Ontological Relativity and other essays). There, Quine notes that if the predicate P picks out a natural kind, then not-P usually doesn't. A hackneyed example: 'gold' picks out a natural kind (any matter with atomic number 79), but 'not-gold' does not, because it covers many, many completely disparate things -- there are too many ways to be not gold for 'not-gold' to refer to a natural kind.
This might make us think that many/ most predicates of the form not-P are, in fact, confused, since such predicates most often apply to many different natural kinds. All I can say at this point is: that sounds counterintuitive to me... it doesn't feel to me like 'not-gold' conflates distinct things.
3/02/2007
Scott Soames' "Actually" in Vegas
One of my favorite philosophers, Scott Soames, was in Vegas last weekend; he gave a great talk entitled "Actually", and he and his wife Martha took a trip with some of the folks in my department out to the beautiful Valley of Fire state park.
One of the main points Soames pushed was that "actually" plays two very different roles in philosophical semantics. 'Actually p', spoken in a given world W1, means 'p is true in world W1' (sorry, I can't do corner-quotes in Blogger). Now, Soames says there are two ways to specify this world W1:
(1) by picking it out purely indexically, in the way 'I' picks out the speaker of the token, 'now' picks out the moment of utterance, etc. -- so on this way, 'actually p' means 'p is true in THIS world' (or '...in OUR world').
(2) by (roughly- see Soames' paper for the gory details) giving the proposition associated with the Carnapian state-description of W1. (A state-description assigns a value of true or false to every atomic sentence in a language.)
Scott pointed out that if we pick out world W1 in the second way, then 'Actually p' is a priori: once you have a state-description of the world in which that sentence is uttered, then you have all the information you need to figure out its truth-value. This runs contra the conventional wisdom that says 'Actually p' is a posteriori, since we only learn whether p is true in this world via experience; Soames's point was that 'Actually p' is learned via experience when we use way (1) of picking out the world W1, but since there is this other way (2), 'Actually p' is in fact knowABLE a priori, if not knowN a priori in practical cases.
This is very clever, and I need to think more about it, but I think my esteemed colleague James Woodbridge had the best question/ objection of the afternoon. He said 'Actually p' does not just mean 'p is true at world W1,' but rather 'p is true at W1 AND W1 is actual/ instantiated.' Someone could give me the entire state-description of the world we currently inhabit, and then I could calculate from that description that p is true in a world satisfying such a description -- but I still wouldn't know that 'Actually p' is true, because I wouldn't know that the state-description matched this world. (And I was too slow on the uptake to grasp Soames's reply to James.)
My favorite part of Soames's whole talk, though, was the following approximate quotation:
"Perhaps the contingent a priori is just an old wives' tale."
I know I can't get my grandmother to stop talking about Kripke...
One of the main points Soames pushed was that "actually" plays two very different roles in philosophical semantics. 'Actually p', spoken in a given world W1, means 'p is true in world W1' (sorry, I can't do corner-quotes in Blogger). Now, Soames says there are two ways to specify this world W1:
(1) by picking it out purely indexically, in the way 'I' picks out the speaker of the token, 'now' picks out the moment of utterance, etc. -- so on this way, 'actually p' means 'p is true in THIS world' (or '...in OUR world').
(2) by (roughly- see Soames' paper for the gory details) giving the proposition associated with the Carnapian state-description of W1. (A state-description assigns a value of true or false to every atomic sentence in a language.)
Scott pointed out that if we pick out world W1 in the second way, then 'Actually p' is a priori: once you have a state-description of the world in which that sentence is uttered, then you have all the information you need to figure out its truth-value. This runs contra the conventional wisdom that says 'Actually p' is a posteriori, since we only learn whether p is true in this world via experience; Soames's point was that 'Actually p' is learned via experience when we use way (1) of picking out the world W1, but since there is this other way (2), 'Actually p' is in fact knowABLE a priori, if not knowN a priori in practical cases.
This is very clever, and I need to think more about it, but I think my esteemed colleague James Woodbridge had the best question/ objection of the afternoon. He said 'Actually p' does not just mean 'p is true at world W1,' but rather 'p is true at W1 AND W1 is actual/ instantiated.' Someone could give me the entire state-description of the world we currently inhabit, and then I could calculate from that description that p is true in a world satisfying such a description -- but I still wouldn't know that 'Actually p' is true, because I wouldn't know that the state-description matched this world. (And I was too slow on the uptake to grasp Soames's reply to James.)
My favorite part of Soames's whole talk, though, was the following approximate quotation:
"Perhaps the contingent a priori is just an old wives' tale."
I know I can't get my grandmother to stop talking about Kripke...
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