Outsourcing Torture

Via Crooked Timber, I heard about this:

The Republican leadership of Congress is attempting to legalize extraordinary rendition. "Extraordinary rendition" is the euphemism we use for sending terrorism suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. As one intelligence official described it in the Washington Post, "We don't kick the sh*t out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the sh*t out of them.” [...]

The provision would put the burden of proof on the person being deported or rendered to establish "by clear and convincing evidence that he or she would be tortured," would bar the courts from having jurisdiction to review the Secretary's regulations, and would free the Secretary to deport or remove terrorist suspects to any country in the world at will - even countries other than the person's home country or the country in which they were born.

Scary. Go read the whole thing.

Update: For a lighter view of things, go read Fafblog:

[H]ow can any red-blooded pro-torture Congressman justify outsourcing our nation's torture work when American torturers are losing their jobs every day? [...] Giblets knows that there are some out there who will say, "Oh, but countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria can do torture cheaper and better than we can, why should we try to compete?" Well, Giblets is holding a little something in the thumbscrews of his heart called patriotism, and Giblets thinks American workers can compete with anyone else in the world! [...]

Torture is as American as baseball, apple pie, preventive war, the equating of dissent with treason, and the principle of a commander-in-chief who stands above the law. So stand proud, Americans, and write your congressmen to tell them you don't want your country outsourcing torture.

Philosophers' Carnival Update

Andrew Nichols of Philosophical Poetry has kindly volunteered to host the third Philosophers' Carnival, which is set to take place next Monday, 4th October.

The Philosophers' Carnival project is at a critical stage right now. Having just taken its first tentative steps, it still isn't quite sure of its footing. More specifically, the project depends upon three areas of blogospheric support: publicity, participation, and hosting.

1) Publicity:
This is particularly important during the project's infancy. Some philosophy bloggers may still be unaware of the carnival's existence, whilst others will have forgotten about it. Fortunately, this problem is extremely easy to solve. All you have to do is:
(i) Link to the carnival homepage, reminding your readers of each upcoming carnival; and
(ii) Link to each carnival after it is published.

Update: You can now receive automatic notification of these events, by subscribing to the newsletter.

2) Participation:
This is absolutely crucial. The Philosophers' Carnival is a community project, and simply cannot survive without widespread participation from the rest of the blogging community.

To help get the project underway, I actually added some extra 'nominations' to both previous carnivals, so that some posts from major philosophy blogs were included even if their authors never explicited submitted them. I would like to wean the carnival off this practice, if possible.

Philosophy bloggers: I am relying on you to submit your own posts to each carnival. The form only takes a few seconds to fill out, so it's not a big ask.

3) Hosting:
We need some more volunteers to host future carnivals. Basically what this involves is compiling all the submitted links together into one post, and quoting a brief excerpt from each. (Brandon's hosting of the second carnival was nothing short of a work of art. This is not required, however; cf. my more "no frills" approach to the first carnival.) Email me [r.chappell AT gmail.com] for further details.

(I'm actually surprised that more people haven't volunteered for this - smaller blogs especially. You'll receive a lot of inbound links and extra visitors. It's an excellent way to promote your blog and expand your readership!)

Group Blogs: With regard to the second point ('participation'), I think the core of the carnival could best be provided by the various university and topical group blogs (in addition to prominent individual blogs like TAR). These sites regularly produce some of the best philosophy the blogosphere has to offer - and this is precisely what the carnival aims to capture. Such a solid core would then support the forays of lesser-known bloggers - the other aim of the project.

I'd also like to point out that the restriction is one submission per author. That is, group blogs may make multiple submissions. It is up to each individual contributor to choose and submit their own post; but they need not worry about 'poaching' their co-blogger's place.

Conclusion:
What this really all comes down to is that you (I'm talking to all my fellow philosophy bloggers here) should:
1) Submit a post to the carnival
2) Tell everyone else to do likewise.

It'll only take a minute of your time. I hope you'll agree that this project is well worth it.

Observing Morality

Kiwi Pundit argues that "Absolute moral truths exist and can be inferred from observation, in the same way that physical truths can":

To test hypothesis B [that it is morally acceptable to murder innocent children], a bunch of terrorist scum seize a school and murder 300 children. Observers note feelings of revulsion and a strong desire to punish the perpetrators. The experiment is reproducible (let's hope only in theory). Therefore hypothesis B must be rejected.

That is how objective moral truths are inferred from observation. We have a moral sense that we use to make moral observations, in the same way as we use our physical senses to make physical observations.

I don't find this sort of moral intuitionism very plausible. I've previously argued that value is best understood in terms of the relations between desires and states of affairs. But such complicated relations are of course not directly observable. So KP's view implies that value is instead some sort of property that is intrinsic to objects or actions.

Even supposing moral properties really were that superficial, and that we had some "moral sense" capable of perceiving those properties, it seems highly unlikely that we would interpret them appropriately. As Alonzo Fyfe (chapter 12) points out, any such faculty of perception would soon be hijacked by evolutionary forces.

We would evolve to be attracted to objects or actions that promote evolutionary success, regardless of their 'intended' (by who?) moral status. Moral properties would be just another bit of data (alongside photons and soundwaves) for us to work with and interpret for evolutionary ends. Again, there's no reason at all to think that we would learn to distinguish which properties were intended to mean 'good' and which 'bad'. If intrinsically 'bad' things increased our evolutionary fitness, then we would come to (mistakenly) interpret them as 'good'.

So unless one wants to conflate 'good for my genes' with 'morally good' (not a good idea!), we must deny that objective moral properties exist independently, 'out there' in the world, waiting to be perceived by humans.

But in that case, the intuitionist seems left with a hollow subjectivism. The intuitionist thinks that he can just 'see' moral properties, but in fact the object of his observation is merely his own psychological response. Instead of working out the real relations between various actions and human wellbeing, the intuitionist makes unsupported assertions based on his emotional reactions and prejudices. If something makes him feel 'icky', then he calls it 'wrong'. But this yuk factor is morally arbitrary.

Appealing to intersubjective corroboration will not help. That will merely tell us what prejudices and norms are prevalent within the given society (as opposed to what norms they should have). This then implies cultural relativism. After all, it wasn't that long ago that most people felt "feelings of revulsion and a strong desire to punish" homosexuals, interracial marriages, and so forth.

So quite apart from the evolutionary argument, the diversity (cultural and historical) of mainstream values also spells doom for intuitionists' hopes for objectivity. But given the obvious influence of socialisation on our moral intuitions, it was probably a hopeless project from the start.

It's actually a bit more complex than that because moral facts are partly dependent on physical facts, but the converse is not true. So I should qualify the above claim by saying that it applies only where the relevant physical facts are known to all observers.

As a naturalist, I would submit that moral facts are (ultimately) entirely dependent on physical facts - specifically, facts about states of affairs, human desires, and the relations between them.

The problem (for KP) here is that the relevant physical facts are not ones that can be learnt simply by observing the event in question. Rather, we requires all sorts of background knowledge, and even some basic predictive abilities (to see the likely consequences of the action). Then we need to reason well enough to draw accurate inferences from all these empirical facts. It's no simple matter.

Now, as I've said before, the method of consulting our emotional responses might be a useful shortcut, as they should at least correlate with the moral facts to some degree if we have been well socialised. But it's a very unreliable heuristic.

Most importantly, it doesn't really say anything about the event (since we can't directly perceive moral properties). Rather, it just tells us about ourselves. So the moral 'experiments' outlined by KP really wouldn't support any moral conclusions at all. Ethics isn't that easy.

Update: More here.

An Analysis of Value

I think that value derives from desire fulfillment. We can use this to provide a naturalistic account of normativity, or so I argued in my earlier post on bridging the is-ought gap.

In this post, I want to explore Alonzo Fyfe's analysis of value. (The appropriate section of that lengthy page can be identified by the phrase "A Robust Theory". I recommend using your browser's 'find' feature!) For the sake of simplicity, I'll concentrate on non-moral value here, leaving the extension to morality for a future post.

From my overview of Desire Utilitarianism (with some minor editing):

There is no value without a valuer; no intrinsic value in the universe - no 'goodons' and 'badons' to complement protons and electrons. Fortunately, however, there are valuers (us!), so it is possible for objects or states of affairs to be assigned subjective value.

Value is a relationship between an object (or action or state of affairs) and a specific set of desires.

There are 4 dimensions to all value statements:
(1) A class of objects (or whatever) to be evaluated.

(2) A set of desires to evaluate them against.

(3) Whether the relationship between them is direct ("pleasing") or indirect ("useful").

(4) Whether the object to be evaluated thwarts ("bad") or fulfills ("good") the desires.

As an example, the value tasty evaluates objects put in one's mouth against the desires of the individual doing the tasting. The relationship is a direct one (cf. the value nutritious would be 'indirect' here instead) and the desires in question are fulfilled - i.e. it tastes 'good'.

Beautiful is analysed similarly, except that we instead evaluate 'things seen and heard'. This seems a bit incomplete to me - I would have thought that we were not only evaluating different objects, but evaluating them in a different way. So perhaps the key difference here is really along dimension (2), rather than (1) as Alonzo originally suggested.

Alonzo's example of illness is also illustrative:

We only call something an 'illness' if there is a reason to recommend avoiding it. If we discover that there is no reason to avoid it, we cease to classify it as an illness. If you have a bunch of microbes running around inside of you that give you added strength, you're not 'ill'. Only if they make you weaker are you called 'ill.' This shows that 'illness' is a value-laden concept. Now, let's break 'illness' down into its four components.

The class of objects to be evaluated is mental or physical functioning of the person to whom illness is being ascribed. This, of course, distinguishes mental and physical illness (though the line between these two is becoming increasingly fuzzy).

The set of desires that functioning is evaluated against are those of the being to whom the illness is ascribed. I am not sick in virtue of suffering symptoms that you don't like; I am sick in virtue of feeling symptoms that I do not like. Those who might want to call homosexual desires an illness might want to take note of this.

Which relationships are relevant? Again, just like with harm, both direct and indirect relationships are relevant here. If it causes one great pain, or if it merely makes one weak or tire easily, it can qualify as an illness.

And, of course, illnesses thwart desires. That is to say, they are bad things.

That should be enough to give you the basic idea of how this 4-dimensional analysis is supposed to work. I particularly like how it sheds light on the relational aspects of value. We all know that a single object can be simultaneously 'good' for some purposes, and 'bad' for others. This is explained because various different desires can be plugged in for the second parameter. It's also interesting to see the similarities and differences between various forms of value that this formal treatment highlights.

So, I think this analysis is both powerful and flexible. Though perhaps a little vague in some respects. I would be very interested to hear what others think of it, particularly with regard to the following:

1) Are there any counter-examples? That is, are there any (real) values that cannot be analysed within this framework, such as desire-independent values?

2) Could it be improved upon (e.g. by adding another dimension, thus allowing another level of analysis)?

Also, it's not immediately clear how to reconcile this with my thesis that value-judgements are made relative to some framework of standards. I guess we would need to re-describe those standards in terms of desire fulfillment. A topic for a future post, perhaps...?

Academic Blogging

Starting this website has got to be one of the best things I've done this year. Blogging is fun, intellectually stimulating, and unimpeded by geographic boundaries. I really can't recommend it enough. If you enjoy discussions, thinking, and writing, then go to Blogger.com and create your own weblog - it's quick, easy, and entirely free.

The Guardian has more on the topic of academic blogging (via Crooked Timber):

Academic researchers are drawn to blogs because they're useful knowledge management tools. MacCallum-Stewart says that her site quickly became a kind of "mind gym", a place to test out and develop ideas and to hone her prose style. The social networking side of blogging became very important here, she says. Her blog helped her build links and share ideas with researchers in the area at other universities.

There's also an old post at Crooked Timber that suggests some uses for blogs in the classroom:

(1) Standard class web pages. This is the least exciting way of using blogging software, but also, for many purposes, the most practical.[...]

(2) Professor-written blogs which cover interesting developments that relate to the theme of the course.[...]

(3) Organization of in-class discussion... Set a discussion question every week, and have people debate it in comments.[...]

(4) Organization of intensive seminars where students have to provide weekly summaries of the readings. [...] By making them authors of a group blog - and posting their summaries on the blog - it becomes much easier for the professor and students to access the readings for a particular week - and if you make sure that people are organized about how they do it, the summaries will effectively file themselves.[...]

(5) Requiring students to write their own blogs as part of their grade. [...] This would obviously involve a moderate chunk of technical assistance at the beginning - but would have a relatively quick and easy payoff for the students.

I think the most exciting use of blogs though is to facilitate extra-curricular, general-interest, philosophical discussion. Group blogs are especially useful here; examples of which can be found on my Links page. For instance, Brown and Arizona have very interesting and successful philosophy blogs for their graduate students.

But group blogs are not just for students either. Perhaps the most promising recent development in philosophy blogging has been the advent of topical group blogs, authored by experts in their respective fields. Again, my links page has the full list, but it includes specialised blogs for ethics, epistemology, and several others.

I look forward to new group blogs arising to fill the following gaps: metaphysics, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, phil of science, logic / phil of mathematics, and perhaps phil of language (though there are many linguistics-focussed blogs that I don't know much about).

Update: Crooked Timber has more, suggesting that blogs will eventually displace courseware systems (such as Blackboard and WebCT).

Update #2: Jason Kuznicki discusses what bloggers and historians could learn from each other:

Imagine, for instance, a historians' wiki, modeled on Wikipedia... No longer would a historian go into the archives, get something wrong, and let it stand for twenty to thirty years. In the wiki future, historians would be rewarded--this part is crucial--on the basis of their fact-checking, not merely on how many articles they manage to turn out in a given time...

It would be an enormous task, of course. But I suspect it would prevent a lot of errors from cropping up in history to begin with and would mercilessly prune out the ones that are already there.

Update 19/11/04: Another interesting post from Crooked Timber on this topic:

There are two main points I want to address and thought I’d discuss here a bit. I welcome your feedback. First, I want to talk about blogs as a great medium for debate of all sorts that does not always seem possible in one’s immediate physical surroundings. Second, I would like to consider how the material posted and discussed on blogs relates to published material and whether there is any potential for such contributions to count toward one’s academic achievements and service.

1/12: Tyler Cowen has more: "Don't focus on the single post. Rather a good blog provides you a whole vision of what a field is about, what the interesting questions are, and how you might answer them."

6/12: From The Becker-Posner Blog:

Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. It is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge. The powerful mechanism that was the focus of Hayek’s work, as as of economists generally, is the price system (the market). The newest mechanism is the “blogosphere.” There are 4 million blogs. The internet enables the instantaneous pooling (and hence correction, refinement, and amplification) of the ideas and opinions, facts and images, reportage and scholarship, generated by bloggers.

I'd also like to highlight an excellent old post at Fake Barn Country, where John Turri suggests that blogging fosters "Greater productivity and circumspection in our written work, increased interaction with our professors and fellow graduate students, an additional forum to interact with philosophers and graduate students from other institutions — that all sounds pretty good from the perspective of the discipline as a whole."

What I personally find to be most helpful about blogging is that it encourages me to follow through on stray thoughts that would otherwise likely just evaporate. So I very much agree with John's comments about improved "productivity". The same goes for "increased interaction": I've had many interesting and enjoyable discussions develop in the 'comments' to my posts here - many involving philosophers and students from the other side of the world! Overall, I've found blogging to be extremely worthwhile and rewarding.

Naming and Necessity

I really enjoyed reading Kripke's Naming and Necessity. In this post I'll try to describe (what I found to be) the most interesting ideas in the book. But first, I need to explain some terminological distinctions.

1) A priori vs. Empirical: This is an epistemic distinction. A proposition is said to be 'a priori' if we can know it on the basis of reason alone, without appeal to experience. My knowledge that '2 + 2 = 4' is an example of a priori knowledge. Scientific knowledge, by contrast, is empirical (or 'a posteriori').

2) Necessary vs. Contingent: a metaphysical distinction. A proposition is necessarily true if it could not have been false (e.g. 2+2=4, again). Contingent propositions are ones that could (in principle) have had different truth values. For example, it is merely contingently true that you are reading this right now. We can imagine some other possible world where you are instead watching T.V., so a karma-faerie comes along and turns you into an elephant, then kills you for your ivory tusks. (Hey, it's possible.)

3) Analytic vs. Synthetic: a linguistic distinction. Analytic sentences are true merely in virtue of the meanings of the words ("All bachelors are unmarried" is the usual example). The 'truthmaker' of synthetic statements, by contrast, is the external world (at least to some degree).

When I first learnt of these distinctions, I thought they were all equivalent - that any proposition must either line up with the first of every column, or the second of every column, with no mixing. Kripke denies this. Although analytic truths are both necessary and a priori, it is possible to identify statements that are a priori yet contingent, and others that are empirical but necessary.

This seems odd at first. After all, if we can know something a priori, without appealing to our worldly experience at all, then how could it be false in any other possible world? Conversely, if we must rely upon our experience (of this world) to know X, then how could we ever know it to be true in all other possible worlds? To answer this, we must first highlight another distinction:

4) Sense vs. Reference:
The reference of a word or phrase is the actual (real-world) object(s) denoted by that word, without any further connotations. 'Sense', however, encompasses the full meaning of a phrase, and so extends beyond the merely actual.

A 'rigid designator' is some phrase that refers to the same object throughout all possible worlds (and so lacks any deeper 'sense'). Names are the typical examples of rigid designators, whereas descriptions are the opposite.

As an example, compare the name 'George W. Bush' to the description 'President of the United States'. The phrases have identical reference (since both refer to the same actual person). However, they have a very different meaning (or 'sense'), since we can imagine other possible worlds where Al Gore (for example) is president instead. Note that 'George W. Bush' refers to the same person in all possible worlds where he exists, whereas the referent of 'President of the United States' will vary from world to world.

Now, when we define a new word X in terms of a known Y, we can do so in two ways. We can define X to be synonymous with Y (i.e. define it to have the same sense). Or we can merely use Y to fix the reference of X - in which case X then becomes a rigid designator, and so X and Y have different meanings in just the same way that 'George W. Bush' and 'President of the United States' have different meanings.

(Incidentally, I think sense/reference mirrors the de dicto/de re distinction that is crucial to the 'longer than it is' puzzle.)

Now on to the main point...

An example of the contingent a priori:
Kripke asks us to consider that particular stick or bar in Paris that is used to define the standard length of one meter. Let's call that stick 'S'. Now, let's consider the proposition that "S is one meter long". We can know this a priori, since it is true by definition. But is it a necessary truth? Presumably not - the stick could have been longer or shorter, after all, in which case it would no longer be one meter long. (We might still call it "one meter", but those words would have a different meaning from 'one meter' as we mean it.)

It is tempting to think of definitions as giving the meaning of a phrase, but this is not always the case. Kripke argues that S merely fixes the reference of "one meter", at which point the phrase becomes a rigid designator, and so differs in meaning from 'the length of S'.

So, strange though it may seem, the statement "S is one meter long" is both contingent and a priori. More generally, this sort of mix will occur whenever we use an object (e.g. S) to fix our reference to a property (e.g. one meter) that it has only contingently. As another example, if I were to define the rigid designator 'byellow' by fixing the referent as the (actual) colour of bananas, then the claim "Bananas are byellow" would similarly be contingent yet a priori. If (in some other possible world) bananas were instead purple then they would no longer be byellow, despite the fact that "bananas are byellow" is true by definition in our own world.

To state the underlying principle in the most general way possible, I think we're considering propositions roughly of the form: "X has a property that X has actually". The claim is clearly knowable a priori (since it is true by definition), yet it is also clear that it could be false in other possible worlds (where the properties of X will differ from those it has actually).

An example of the necessary a posteriori:
This mix is slightly trickier. Stated loosely, it depends upon the idea that we might use a rigid designator X to refer to whatever Y (actually) is, where Y requires empirical knowledge. Thus, a priori, we wouldn't yet know what X is, but we would at least know that whatever it is, it is that necessarily (being 'rigid' and all).

Kripke borrows Putnam's example of "cats are animals". Of course, we all think that cats are animals, and with good reason. But it might turn out that we were mistaken, and they are actually strange demons. If we were to discover such a thing, would you say "oh, cats don't exist after all", or "oh, so cats aren't what we thought they were"? Surely the latter, I would think. So, contrary to my initial expectation, 'animality' is not an essential part of our 'cat' concept. So we cannot know a priori that cats are animals, we must discover this empirically.

But suppose that the cats we know and love really are animals. (That shouldn't be too difficult to imagine.) Would "cats are animals" then be a merely contingent fact? Well, imagine a possible world where there are entities that look and behave just like our cats, but in fact are strange demons. Surely we would say "those aren't really cats!". (Again, the world's inhabitants might call them "cats", but we are only concerned with our language here.)

I should emphasise that there is no contradiction here. As Kripke put it, "The original concept of cat is: that kind of thing, where the kind can be identified by paradigmatic instances". As in the earlier examples, our contingent pointing works to fix the reference of 'cat' in a rigid way; the pointing is not the meaning of the word. I could point at something different in other possible worlds, but that does not mean that the meaning of 'cat' varies from world to world. The meaning of 'cat' is fixed by whatever those creatures happen to be in OUR world. If they happen to be animals, then "cats are animals" is a necessary truth. (If they happen to be demons, then "cats are demons" would instead be the necessary truth.)

So whether cats are animals or demons is a matter for empirical discovery. (I do feel silly saying that. I'm not really suggesting there's any doubt here.) But either way, the result is a property that is necessary to cats. If some other entity were of a different nature to our cats (whatever that nature might be), then it would not be a cat. So "cats are animals" is an empirical yet necessary truth.

Crazy, huh.

More generally, this sort of mix can arise when attempting to subsume one natural kind under another (e.g. Cats as animals, etc.). It can also arise when questioning whether two rigid designators name identical objects. Consider, for example, Elton John = Reggie Dwight. This is a necessary truth - someone couldn't be Elton John without also being Reggie Dwight (they're the same person!). Yet if you hadn't been told about their identity, it is not something you could deduce a priori - rather, it is an empirical fact; one that you would have to learn by experience. (Hmm, that's a lot simpler than the cat example. Not so fun though!)

Update: See this article for Soames' argument that propositions (as opposed to sentences) asserting true identities are actually knowable a priori after all. The 'natural kind' examples still work fine, however.

Civil Freedom vs. Political Power

My recent post on Illiberal Democracy generated some interesting comments. In particular, I was accused of being "illiberal" for opposing the right of the masses to run society however they please. I think that accusation is quite misguided. What I want to pursue here is the distinction between civil liberty and political power.

First of all, let me reassure you all that I'm a big fan of personal liberty. Some commentators seemed to think I was advocating some kind of extreme paternalism. That would be a gross misunderstanding of my position. I entirely agree that individuals have the right to make their own decisions and live their lives as they please (so long as they don't harm others, etc.). Nothing in my post suggested otherwise.

But individual liberty is an entirely separate matter from political power. Supporting the former does not imply that "the people" should be free to impose whatever laws they please on the rest of society. (Bear in mind that "the people" really just means the majority of citizens, tacitly excluding those who do not conform to the norms of the mob.)

Again, I must emphasise, the form of government entails nothing about the degree of civil liberty in a society. A benevolent autocrat could allow freedom of speech, association, and the press (etc.), whereas a direct democracy might vote to outlaw homosexuality, burn the atheists, and deport all the 'coloured folk'.

I think some of the outraged comments arose from a failure to recognise this important distinction. Consider the following, from 'Idiot' of NRT:

The real difference is not that I am more democrat than liberal, but that I think that freedom is not just the freedom to be intelligent, rational, and well-informed, but also the freedom to be stupid, irrational, and flat-out wrong - even about what's in your own best interest.

So long as we're talking about an individual's "private sphere", I would agree. But freedom to make mistakes in my private life does not extend to imposing those mistakes on the rest of society through the use of political power.

NRT also claims that "Democracy is not about making good decisions - it's about making our decisions".

I strongly disagree. As far as I'm concerned, the only justification for government is utilitarian: it has good consequences. The mere fact that it expresses the will of the majority ("our decisions") is irrelevant. As J.S. Mill put it, If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he [...] would be justified in silencing mankind.

To the greatest extent possible, each individual should rule over themselves. That's liberalism. Democracy, by contrast, suggests that the majority should rule over the minority. There's nothing intrinsically virtuous about that, and anyone who claims otherwise is indeed "more democrat than liberal".

I do agree that, overall, democracy is the best form of government - but only because it has the best consequences. Democracies are more likely (than dictatorships or oligarchies, etc.) to make "good decisions" and produce a liberal society. But perhaps if the voters were required to meet some basic threshold of competency, then the resulting decisions might be even better. 

I'm not certain of that - it's an empirical question after all. And, as discussed in my earlier post, there are certainly some risks we would need to watch out for. But if it really would result in a better government, then I think my proposal would be eminently justified. It might be (mildly) 'undemocratic' of me to suggest such a thing, but as I said, I don't much care about that. The proposal in itself entails nothing about 'liberalism', however, so to fault it on those grounds would be to mistakenly conflate two quite separate matters.

Ten Central Reasons

Via KiwiPundit, I found someone offering their Top Ten Reasons I'm Neither a Liberal Nor a Conservative. Good stuff, though I'm not entirely sure that everything on the 'liberal' list is actually a bad thing (I guess I'm "guilty" of #1 and #6, and to a lesser extent #8 and #9).

The conservative list is excellent - "Conservatives would try suppressing astronomy if the telescope had just been invented". Hehe...

Moral Emotions: the 'yuk factor'

Paul Bloom observes that people often confuse the disgusting with the immoral:

What, precisely, is so bad about sex between adult siblings, bestiality, and the eating of corpses? Most people insist such acts are morally wrong, but when psychologists ask why, the answers make little sense. For instance, people often say incestuous sex is immoral because it runs the risk of begetting a deformed child, but if this was their real reason, they should be happy if the siblings were to use birth control -- and most people are not. One finds what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt called "moral dumbfounding," a gut feeling that something is wrong combined with an inability to explain why.

Haidt suggests we are dumbfounded because, despite what we might say to others and perhaps believe ourselves, our moral responses are not based on reason. They are instead rooted in revulsion: incest, bestiality and cannibalism disgust us, and our disgust gives rise to moral outrage.

You can test your own moral intuitions with the Taboo game at Butterflies & Wheels. (Yeah, I know I've been linking to them a lot recently, but what can I say - it's just a damn good site!)

The game is followed by an excellent essay by Ophelia Benson:

But this business of repugnance we can't quite articulate should give us pause - should make us come to a screeching halt, in fact. Why can't we articulate it? Could it be because there is nothing to articulate? [...]

Especially since people have always 'just somehow known' in their guts or their hearts or their gluteus maximus, without being able to say why, all sorts of things that the world would be better off if they hadn't just known. That Africans should be slaves, that Jews were polluting Germany, that women should be kept under house arrest at all times, that witches should be burnt, that the races must never mix. We're all too adept at thinking what we're not used to is inherently disgusting.

I suspect that this is a major cause of conservative opposition to gay marriage (and homosexuality generally). I find it rather ironic how they accuse liberals of 'relativism', when much of conservative "morality" is little more than knee-jerk emotivism, followed by feeble rationalisations ("Uh, it's unnatural! Spreads disease! Is bad for families!", etc.). Of course, the loony left is no better, especially when it comes to biotechnology. But I digress.

Moral facts are determined by reasons, not emotions. Still, it is undeniable that emotion plays a huge role in our moral lives. Sometimes this can lead to unreflective prejudice, as mentioned above. But it can also help motivate us in a way that pure reason cannot. Although disgust can cause us to dismiss others from moral consideration, sympathy and empathy can play the opposite role, encouraging us to reach out to those we might otherwise have ignored.

I think that morality is fundamentally about character. It's not just about what you do, but rather, who you are. Thus, I think that emotion is important not as an 'input' to the moral calculus, but as an 'output'. That is, our emotional responses do not determine morality. Rather, morality informs us what our emotional responses ought to be.

An ideal moral agent, by this view, would always have an appropriate emotional response to any given situation. He would thus be able to rely upon his emotions as a sort of 'moral barometer' - he would feel appalled by immoral acts, but unconcerned by permissible ones. But it is important to note the direction of fit: he is good because his emotions correlate well with the moral facts of the situation. It is not the case that the situation is good/bad merely because of his (or our) emotional response to it.

We are hopefully good enough that our consciences reliably correlate with the moral facts, as a general rule. So our emotions are a useful shortcut which can serve us well in our daily lives, when we haven't the time to reason carefully. But in controversial cases, we should remember that these heuristics are far from infallible. Ultimately, if something is wrong, then it's wrong for a reason. And "yuk" is not a reason.

Related links:

The Chronicle - Danger to Human Dignity

Reason - Discussing Disgust

And, for an opposing view, The New Criterion - Does shame have a future?

Religion, Past and Present

Jason Kuznicki's Positive Liberty is the best new blog I've come across in a long time. (The blog itself is not new. I simply mean that it is new to me.) I especially recommend his posts on the Reformation and Enlightenment:

It is a common platitude that Islam needs a Reformation, a Martin Luther to modernize and shake things up a bit. Whenever you hear this platitude, you may rest assured that the speaker is wholly ignorant of history. Reformation is probably the last thing that Islam needs--and a Reformation in Islam is certainly the last thing that we need.

In 1500, Christianity lay unconsidered and rather lightly upon the shoulders of Europe. It was gaudy, more than a little superstitious, perhaps a bit mildewed at the edges--but above all, the Christianity of 1500 was not nearly so violent as it had been in earlier times. [...] The Reformation was a ghastly atrocity from start to finish, full of fanaticism and cruelty.

Arguably, Osama bin Laden is the Martin Luther of Islam. But what Islam needs instead... is a Voltaire.

It needs science, skepticism, satire, and subversion. It needs a militant tolerance, one that is determined to stamp out fanaticism wherever it may lie.

Another great post on religion is from The Enlightenment Project:

Almost 10 years ago a committee of Episcopal Bishops produced a "teaching document" [...] I circulated this document amongst some of my colleagues for comment. All of us had taught ethics courses required of all students which most take as sophomores. We agreed that by the standards we set for students in these classes, the bishop's study document should get a C+, and that purely for basic literacy and spelling. [...]

I agreed with the bishops' conclusion [...] It was the poor quality of the bishops' arguments that that set my teeth on edge. [...]

The Church has gotten into trouble repeatedly by making claims that competed with the results of secular experts including notoriously Galileo and Darwin. Most clergy now recognize that they have no expertise in the hard sciences and no business issuing teachings about the age of the earth, the structure of the solar system or the origin of species. Still, they assume, with no more justification, that they have expertise in ethics.

So true, and so annoying! It's commonly asserted that science answers the 'how' questions, and religion answers the 'why' questions. But, as the editors at B&W ask, why should we take the latter's made-up answers seriously? Priests are no more experts in ethics than they are in cosmology. They've acknowledged the superior expertise of scientists, at least. Now it's about time they did the same for philosophers...

Illiberal Democracy

I'm not a huge fan of democracy. Sure, all the alternatives are worse, but still... I do find myself wistfully thinking that there must be some way to improve it.

Don't get me wrong, I think New Zealand's political system is about as good as you could hope for. I'm very happy to be living in a 'liberal democracy'. But it's the first of those two words that's the important one. Democracy is only valuable to the extent that it tends to produce and preserve a liberal society. Call me 'elitist', but there's nothing intrinsically virtuous about majority verdicts. I'd much prefer a wise and benevolent dictator (were such a creature ever to exist) to ignorant mob-rule.

Maverick Philosopher has an excellent post on the principle of 'one man, one vote'. In an ideal system, the opinions of those who are more intelligent and well-informed would count for more than those who haven't got a clue.

The problem, however, is that there is no obvious criterion that one could employ to segregate those who are worthy of voting from those who are not. [...] Once we exclude educational credentials, sex, race, property-ownership, and age as criteria, what do we have left? Nothing that I can see apart from the standard criteria of voter eligibility. ‘One man, one vote’ though certainly a flawed principle, may be the best we can do.

Why not require would-be voters to pass a basic competency test before they vote? Or perhaps weigh their votes according to how well they do in it? It shouldn't contain anything overly difficult - just some basic questions to assess whether they actually understand each party's policies. Perhaps it could even include further questions about the likely effects of some of those policies (so long as the appropriate experts are in unanimous agreement over the facts - obviously this would be inappropriate for scientifically controversial issues!).

Of course, any such restrictions would run a huge risk of abuse (there's already accusations that Republicans are trying to disenfranchise black voters). But perhaps ways could be found to protect against this. For example, the test questions (and perhaps even the answers) should be openly available and accessible to everyone who wishes to see them. And the questions themselves might require approval from a non-partisan committee of experts in the appropriate fields. And so forth.

The point would not be to exclude anybody, but rather, to make sure that the voters are as well-informed as possible. It should be organised so that anyone who wants to ace the test can do so easily enough. But those who cannot be bothered to learn even the most basic facts about what is at stake, should have less influence in deciding the outcome of the election.

Successful democracy depends upon an informed citizenry. I think New Zealand isn't bad in that respect, fortunately for us. But most Americans, by contrast, are woefully ignorant:

When people are asked whether they favor Bush’s policy of repealing the estate tax, two-thirds say yes — even though the estate tax affects only the wealthiest one or two per cent of the population. Ninety-eight per cent of Americans do not leave estates large enough for the tax to kick in. But people have some notion — Bartels refers to it as “unenlightened self-interest” — that they will be better off if the tax is repealed. What is most remarkable about this opinion is that it is unconstrained by other beliefs. Repeal is supported by sixty-six per cent of people who believe that the income gap between the richest and the poorest Americans has increased in recent decades, and that this is a bad thing. And it’s supported by sixty-eight per cent of people who say that the rich pay too little in taxes. Most Americans simply do not make a connection between tax policy and the over-all economic condition of the country.

Majikthise, commenting on the same article, argues that the average (American) voter simply lacks political beliefs entirely:

Maybe it's unfair to say that the average voter lacks political beliefs. Some will insist that the average voter has beliefs, just not the kind that are stable, well-supported by evidence, or mutually consistent. These are beliefs that flicker into existence when a pollster asks for an opinion but subside just as rapidly, leaving no behavioral residue. They shift shape depending on the phrasing of the question or the color of the interlocutors tie.

These ephemeral mental events wouldn't count as beliefs if their ostensible object were anything other than politics. Imagine a guy with a very tenuous conceptual grasp of weather-related issues. The weather just doesn't affect him in any predictable way. He's as likely to bundle up when it's cold as when it's hot. He's as likely to say that galoshes go with tank tops as with rain slickers. He opens his umbrella at random. When asked point blank, he will sometimes affirm that it is raining. Sometimes he's right. Every so often, he'll toss off phrases like "It's not the heat, it's the humidity," but he looks at you blankly if you ask him what he means. We would hesitate to say that this guy has any beliefs about weather at all.

Brian Leiter has an extremely disturbing post exposing the nascent fascism in Bush's America. There's something seriously wrong with American democracy at the moment. But perhaps it should come as no surprise that incompetent voters would elect incompetent leaders.

Whether anything can be done about this situation, I'm not sure. The 'competency test' approach I've advocated here is probably hopelessly idealistic, impractical, and perhaps downright dangerous. Maybe all we can do is weather the storm and hope for the best.

P.S. Can anyone explain why it is that the winning candidate in a state is awarded all of the votes? That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me.

Update: The Lazy Logician also suggests we test voters (though some of his details differ from my proposal), which White Poet Warlord then picks up on and discusses in more detail. See also E.G., and my sequel post (in response to comments): Civil Freedom vs. Political Power

Doing Things With Words

...is a new philosophy blog I noticed thanks to the recent carnival. He's got some interesting posts about philosopher-kings (er, presidents, rather) and gay marriage and such. Well worth a read.

But the main purpose of this post is to describe the remarkable coincidence he's involved in. Earlier today, I was reading Kripke's Naming and Necessity, and laughed out loud at a particularly witty section. Then, soon afterwards, I went on the computer and found DTWW posting the exact same passage:

"It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong. You may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place, but I hope not, because I'm sure it's wrong too if it is a theory." (p.64)

It's a strange world.

Philosophers' Carnival #2

The second Philosophers' Carnival has arrived. Brandon has done a remarkable job as host, complementing each post with a cool little picture, and tying it all together with a playful Lewis Carroll theme. And there's plenty of substance behind the splendour (my favourite post probably being the one from Garden of Forking Paths). Anyway, mere descriptions will never do it justice... so go see for yourself.

P.S. We need a volunteer to host the next carnival (in early October). Do let me know if you're interested.

All stock must go!

I hate those ads.

Anyway, final reminder that the 2nd Philosophers' Carnival is coming up on Monday, so if you want to submit a post, you'd better do so soon. Like, say, now.

Correlation is not Causation

It's an extremely common mistake for laypeople to make, but scientists should know better:

Keeping a diary is bad for your health, say UK psychologists. They found that regular diarists were more likely than non-diarists to suffer from headaches, sleeplessness, digestive problems and social awkwardness.

Now surely this is pointing out the obvious: but maybe their suffering is what caused these people to start writing, rather than the other way around?

She claims that her study is the first to investigate subjects who write of their own free will. In most other studies, volunteers are actually asked to write about traumatic experiences in a systematic way.

Yeah, there's a reason for that: controlling the variables. If you take your sample population, and randomly assign them to experimental vs control groups, then the only consistent difference between the two groups will be that variable which the experiment is testing. So any difference in results can be put down to just that variable. However, if you do a broad correlational study, rather than a proper experiment, there are all sorts of other variables that could interfere with the results. In this case, those who are most traumatised might feel the most need to write about their experiences.

Statistically, the diarists scored much worse on health measures than the non-diarists. And worst affected of all were those who had written about trauma. “They were most susceptible to headaches and the like,” says Duncan.

Let me get this straight: We have a bunch of diarists who are also trauma victims. They were found to be more likely to have headaches (etc) than your average student. And the psychologists are blaming this on the writing?

Perhaps New Scientist has misrepresented the study, but as it stands, these psychologists sound downright stupid. At least they show a glimmer of sense towards the end of the article:

But she acknowledges that her experiment could not demonstrate which came first - the diary writing or the health problems.

In a forthcoming experiment, she hopes to explore this by asking volunteers new to diary writing to report exclusively positive or negative things, to see if the health of the two groups diverges.

And here I thought she was going to go on to prove that wet pavements cause rain, or ice cream causes drownings.

And by 'morality' you mean...?

I've complained before about how conservatives hijack moral language, but I didn't go into much detail. Now I don't have to, thanks to Philosoraptor's excellent post on Morality vs. Sexual Morality:

Even though our hypothetical tele-preacher purports to be concerned about and discussing morality, he is, in fact, not at all concerned with any of the most important moral problems. He is, rather, concerned with a rather narrow and peripheral set of moral issues that no serious thinker has ever considered central to moral action or moral theorizing. He is concerned only with sexual morality.

[...] The right sometimes seems to own the words “moral” and “morality” like they sometimes seem to own the flag. But that has happened only because of a confluence of two factors: first, the fact that ‘moral’ and ‘morality’ have come to carry sexual overtones, and second the fact that it is the right that is perversely fixated on other people’s sexuality. The unfortunate result of this is that Republicans can say things like “we are the party of morality” with a straight face, playing on the ambiguity between “we are the party that emphasizes doing what is right” and “we are the party that thinks that sex is dirty.”

Ha, nicely put. Anyway, read the whole thing...

Bunch o' stuff

First of all, a reminder that the next Philosophers' Carnival will be one week from now. (It was originally planned for today, but given the disappointing lack of response so far, we decided on an extension so you have some more time to get your entries in.) The carnival relies upon your participation; if you have a philosophy blog, then you should submit a post.

In other news, John Tamihere is standing up for the downtrodden:

Asked why there were ministries for women, youth, families, even horse racing, but no ministry for men, he said: "(We) men have let ourselves down by not raising topics like this."

He was worried that young men had higher suicide and crime rates and poorer educational performance than young women, he said.

"If it was an ethnic minority suffering these difficulties, we would be moving pretty rapidly."

Can't argue with that.
Zipping over to the other side of the world now, Noumenon has an excellent post on western culture and values:

We need a secular movement with substance. We need a unified vision of the good life that actually contributes in a meaningful way to people's lives and it needs to be sold as a way of life. It needs to give a coherence and sense of community to people's lives and it needs to encourage us to be the kinds of people that might get respect from those in other parts of the world.

Venturing into the conservative blogosphere, I found cause for concern regarding the Analphilosopher's short-term memory. First he notes that "[w]ords are interpreted in light of practice", but then, later that same day, he writes:

The word "momentarily" means "for a moment," not "in a moment." Thus, it’s incorrect to say, "I’ll be back momentarily." That means "I’ll be back for a moment," which is nonsensical. If you mean that you’ll be back in a moment, you’ll have to say that you’ll be back in a moment.

Though not an outright contradiction, there's at least some tension between the two posts. (I'd stick with the first one, myself. Languages aren't static; if enough people use a phrase it can become part of the language. Here it's Joe Bloggs, not Michael Jordan, who decides the rules.)

Lastly, I found (via Raving Atheist) the following NY Times article:

We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common, we call them 'religious'; otherwise, they are likely to be called 'mad,' 'psychotic' or 'delusional.' [...] Criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture. On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not.

It's refreshing to hear, to say the least.

More Modality

I'm enjoying this little to-and-fro with Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher. His responses force me to clarify and explain ideas that I might otherwise have taken for granted. I had hoped that my previous post on Logic & Possibility had clarified matters, but the misunderstandings in Bill's latest response demonstrate that I still have not explained myself clearly enough. So let me try to remedy that with this post.

Overview:
Bill argues that the laws of logic cannot be mere empirical generalisations, because if they were, then they would be logically contingent. But in fact they are logically necessary (by definition, there is no logically possible world containing a true contradiction). Hence, he concludes, the laws of logic are not empirical generalisations.

In response, I suggested that by defining empirical generalisations as logically contingent, BV was begging the question. Instead, I argue, we should say that empirical generalisations are metaphysically contingent - that is, contingent in the broadest sense - contingent, 'period'.  

Some Corrections:

I am afraid that RC is not engaging the precise question that I raised in my original post, namely, could LNC be an empirical generalization, as John Stuart Mill thought? [...] Mill questions the necessity of logical laws, period, not their metaphysical necessity as opposed to some other sort of necessity.

It should be clear from the above overview that I am indeed engaging his precise question. As Bill says, the empiricist "questions the necessity of logical laws, period". Bill has assumed that plain necessity ("period") means logical necessity. This is the crux of our disagreement - this is where I see him as begging the question. I say that "necessity, period" means metaphysical necessity.

Part of the problem here is that RC does not tell us exactly what he means by 'metaphysical necessity.' This is not a term I used in my original post; yet he brings it in to criticize my post.

As previously mentioned, I use 'metaphysical necessity' to mean "necessity in the broadest sense", i.e. "necessity, period". To say something is metaphysically possible is to say reality could have been like that. I think this is fairly standard usage, but do correct me if I'm wrong. Now, Bill may not have used the term in his original post, but I say he should have. Because as was noted above, an empirical generalisation is contingent (i.e. not necessary), period. And that means "not metaphysically necessary". 

As I said before: "Logic, [the empiricist] suggests, is generalised from our experience of reality, but that reality could have been different, and so our logical systems could have been different". Each of the ways reality could be different, represents a different possibility ('period'). It may or may not be the case that being possible (period) implies being logically possible. That all depends on whether a true contradiction could exist - which is, I think, an open question. (See 'more detail' below.) [Update: I change my mind here.]

RC is saying that 'The laws of logic are logically necessary' is an "empty tautology." This is simply false. The refutation of psychologism cannot be this easy! A statement of the form Every F is a G cannot possibly be a tautology. The easiest way to see this is to consider the negation of 'Every law of logic is logically necessary,' namely, 'Some laws of logic are not logically necessary.' Is this latter statement a contradiction? No, since it is not contradictory in virtue of its logical form.

Perhaps I should have said 'analytic'. I mean that it is an empty truth in the same sense that "all bachelors are unmarried" is empty - it is true by definition; true in virtue of how we use the words, rather than in virtue of facts about the world; stipulatively true. I will say more on this below. Also let me repeat my point that the mere logical necessity of logical laws does not refute psychologism. What must be established is their necessity, period (i.e. metaphysical necessity).

RC also confuses logically true with stipulatively true. What we stipulate to be true cannot fail to be true for the simple reason that we so stipulate it. Thus I might stipulate that a fred is anything both fat and red.

Again, BV has missed my point. I am not saying that LNC is stipulatively true. Rather, I am saying the claim that "LNC is logically necessary" is stipulatively true. The necessity of LNC is stipulated. (It may not be actually true at all.) See my "more detail" section, below.

That's not the question I posed. RC is further confusing the issue by bringing in the question of alternative logics. I didn't mention that. My argument assumes classical logic, with its LNC, and then asks whether its laws could be laws of psychology as Mill and others have maintained.

Within paraconsistent logics, it is possible to violate LNC. That is, there are (according to such alternative logics) possible worlds where LNC is false - the laws of classical logic become merely contingent. It is no wonder BV didn't mention that, for it is devastating to his argument.

The basic problem with RC's attempted critique is that it foists upon my argument extraneous distinctions and questions.

On the contrary, I would submit that the distinctions I've raised are highly relevant ones, and their omission by BV was a serious oversight.

More Detail:
Since my previous posts have been so thoroughly misunderstood, I think I had better go back and clarify the general understanding of modality that I'm working with, as outlined in my original modality post. I don't think the following is crucial to my rebuttal of BV's "reductio" (all that that requires is the recognition that empirical generalisations are claims of metaphysical, rather than logical, contingency), but it may help in understanding where I'm coming from. Here was my conclusion:

Modal notions seem to arise from a certain sort of counter-factual thinking. We establish some particular limitations, and then we consider what states of affairs are allowed within our chosen framework. But divorced of any such framework, modal notions strike me as meaningless. If you take away the limitations, then we're stuck with the empty truism: "anything is possible".

According to my theory, there are an infinite number of (arbitrary) modal frameworks (or 'systems', I use the words interchangably). One way to understand them, is to say that you stipulate various limitations on what is 'allowed' within the system, and then consider all and only those 'worlds'* that comply with the limitations. The usual definitions of possibility and necessity then apply (e.g. X is F-possible if there exists some world within framework F where X is true.)

* = (I can't say "possible worlds" yet, because their possibility is determined by the chosen limitations. So take these base 'worlds' as a broader and more basic concept, that may include what are normally understood as "impossible worlds" also.)

Now, it should be clear that all the limitations of a framework are "necessary" when considered within that system (i.e. they are all F-necessary). They could not possibly be broken, for they define what is allowed within the system. (E.g. as Bill said, "LNC is the criterion of logical possibility".)

For example, consider the framework of "classical plogic", which is limited by the laws of classical logic, plus the "Law of Non-Flying" (LNF) which asserts that pigs don't fly. LNF is a necessary truth within this system. For any world where pigs do fly breaks the limitations, and so is excluded from consideration. LNF will hold in every possible world within the framework. So it is "plogically necessary". Of course, that doesn't tell us very much; it's a pretty empty sort of 'necessity'.

Classical logic is a similar system. In fact, it's exactly like classical plogic but without the silly pig law. Now, clearly all the logical laws, such as LNC, are going to be "logically necessary", in just the same way that LNF is "plogically necessary". Pretty empty stuff still, I say.

(Note that even false claims can be necessary within a system. Take a framework including the law that pigs DO fly. Of course this system excludes the actual world. But the law is still necessarily true within its own framework, for it is true of all the possible worlds that are included in the - somewhat limited - system.)

Now, let's suppose an empiricist comes along and makes the shocking claim that LNF is merely an empirical generalisation, rather than a necessary truth. Suppose I then respond by pointing out that there is no plogically possible world where pigs do fly, hence the law cannot be a mere generalisation!

That's clearly an inadequate response. After all, what if there are (metaphysically) possible worlds that are plogically impossible? This is a serious objection, and I cannot avoid it by complaining about "extraneous distinctions", or asserting that "my argument assumes classical plogic".

Anyway, enough with the analogy, I'm sure you get the idea now. What this argument all hinges on is the claim that there is no (metaphysically) possible world where LNC is broken. The empiricist says that for all we know there is such a possible world. The Maverick Philosopher simply assumes that there isn't, and from there constructs a reductio to "refute" the empiricist.

Now, I don't know whether the laws of classical logic are metaphysically necessary or not. Perhaps Bill is right that they are. But he can't just assume it, as he did in his reductio. There's reason for doubt (including some apparent cases of actual contradictions!), as I spent much of my original modality post arguing. Again, from our epistemic position, I'm not sure how we can rule out anything as impossible in the broadest sense.

I thank Bill for taking the time to discuss these issues with me, thereby forcing me to clarify my thoughts. I hope that I have explained my position more clearly this time around.

Post-script: Just a quick thought... does being an empirical generalisation actually entail anything about its modal status? Isn't the former just a matter of the idea's genesis? It seems that we could learn a necessary truth (though we would not know it was necessary) via the method of empirical generalisation - which suggests that they mustn't be mutually exclusive after all. But I will assume the empiricist's claim is stronger than that: let him say that the laws of logic are "merely" empirical generalisations (understood as implying the further claim that they are metaphysically contingent). Then my defence above becomes relevant.

P.P.S. I think it might be standard practice for philosophers to take logical impossibility as being genuinely (metaphysically) impossible. If the Maverick Philosopher is deeply embedded in that tradition then that might explain his difficulty in understanding my objection. Basically, I'm asking for a justification of this (perhaps common?) assumption. If there is one, then that's well and good, I would benefit greatly from learning it.

Given my theory of modality described above, 'metaphysical possibility' is difficult to pin down. (Well, I think it always is, but my theory highlights this fact!) If simply understood as possibility with no limitations, it would exclude nothing and thus be a pretty useless concept. (That was one of the major points of my first post on this topic.) I guess what we really want to do is limit it according to the ultimate metaphysical principles that govern reality. Whatever they are.

The difficulties there make me skeptical about whether modality actually corresponds to anything real - or at least whether we can know anything about this real modality. Instead, I suggest, it's a useful mode of counter-factual thinking that we can engage in. This justifies philosophers' preoccupation with logical possibility, since I would agree that, generally, classical logic is the most useful framework for philosophers to work within. There's nothing absolute about it though - for example, I imagine that what I call 'natural possibility' could be more useful for many scientific matters. Perhaps alternative logics might have their uses for philosophers and metaphysicians too?

Multiplicities

In this post I explore the idea of 'multiplicity' - i.e. the multi-faceted nature of reality. In order to comprehend the world, we must draw crude generalisations, abstracting away from the infinite variability and complexity of what's really there. Sometimes important details may be lost in the process, however, as the psychological phenomenon of 'functional fixedness' demonstrates. This can be especially costly when analogous mistakes are made of people, rather than mere objects.

Via B&W, I noticed the following manifesto:

We are women and men of Muslim culture. Some of us are believers, others are agnostics or atheists. We all condemn firmly the declarations and acts of misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism that we have heard and witnessed for a while now here in France and that are carried out in the name of Islam. These three characteristics typify the political Islamism that has been forceful for so long in several of our countries of origin. We fought against them there, and we are committed to fighting against them again - here.

This is great stuff, and deserves more publicity. Some of my fellow lefties are fond of diversity, but they only see it at the macro level - they espouse "cultural diversity", yet ignore the diversity within cultures. But unquestioning tolerance of the former can have grevious costs for the latter, as many Muslim women can, no doubt, attest. Excessive focus on a single feature of individuals can also have harmful effects within our own society:

There are parameters around our work not defined by us. Thus, I am expected to write basic derivates of 'Bollywood', or plays that deal with 'the family'. What I can't write about (as no venue will produce it) are plays that could be about anyone, but just happen to have British Asians in the leading roles, with no saris, somosas and silly songs. What I certainly CANNOT write about, are issues that may interest me but have no 'ethnic component'. [...] Putting it bluntly, artistically, I am a Paki, I should 'know my place' and write about the world of being 'a Paki'.

Ophelia Benson tackled this problem late last year:

What is this impulse to try to limit each other to being just one thing? What is this need to see everything in terms of one category - identity, or parenthood, or religion, or politics? It would be all right if we were ants, but since we're not, let's try not to think like ants.

As I commented back then, this tendency for blinkered thinking reminds me of the psychological phenomenon of functional fixedness, whereby we tend to see objects in terms of their usual function, which blinds us to alternative, novel uses of them. For example:

[W]hen shown a box with tools, and getting the assignment: "solve problem A with help of what you see here", the people did not see the box that contained the tools as [itself] a tool to be used for the solving of A. They saw the box only as a container of the tools.

I think it was Hegel who defied conventional wisdom by suggesting that it is actually the uneducated who live and think most abstractly, whereas philosophers try to grasp the concrete reality underlying our superficial concepts. There might be something to what he says, though I think abstraction is probably a fundamental part of human nature. We all abstract away the (sometimes crucial) details of things, attempting to pigeonhole the objects of our experiences into nice familiar boxes. And this isn't an entirely bad thing either - we need generalisations in order to make sense of the world. (I suspect that abstraction is part of nature's solution to the Frame Problem.) This was one of Pirsig's key ideas in the quoted passage of my previous post:

We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think.[...]Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. [...] You'd think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn't. It just goes on and on.

I think that last point is another fascinating one. The way we classify we the world is, in a sense, somewhat arbitrary. (Not entirely so, of course, there are pragmatic reasons behind our evolved tendencies no doubt. I mean arbitrary from a theoretical or metaphysical viewpoint. For example, I don't see any reason to think that what we call a "chair" is metaphysically priviledged over, say, the object defined by "that chair combined with the square of carpet it is sitting on". I plan to write more on this in a future post.) There are infinitely many ways the raw data could be interpreted, by identifying 'objects' and classifying them into groups.

As an example (adapted from Quine, I think), consider an alien who says "plog!", pointing to a white rabbit hopping around in the meadow. Now think of all the different possible meanings of "plog!": there are obvious ones (intuitive to humans) like "white", "rabbit", "hopping", or any combination of those ideas, etc. But it could just as well mean something intuitively bizarre like "moving object containing red blood", or "an event illuminated by sunlight", etc. There's no purely logical reason why such concepts couldn't be legitimate ways of discrimating and categorising events.

I hope that this synthesis of seemingly unrelated sources and ideas may help to highlight the common thread which runs through them all: namely, multiplicity. The world is full of it. Everyone and everything is so incredibly complex - so much more than "just one thing" - that we cannot even begin to understand them without employing some degree of abstraction. But we inevitably lose something in the process: the potential to consider something from a different perspective, and so attain an alternative understanding of it. The moral, I suppose, is that we need to recognise our cognitive shortcomings in this regard. We define objects in terms of the general categories we feel they 'fit' in to. It is both useful and necessary to do so. But we should never forget that such descriptions are incomplete; there are always further properties that have gone unnoticed. So we should beware of focussing on a single feature as if it exhaustively defined the object - a mistake we are all too prone to make.

The Analytic Knife

Earlier this year, I read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (available online here). Thankfully, the subject matter is neither of the title's conjuncts. It's actually a really good read. I particularly like the passage where he describes philosophical analysis through the metaphor of a 'knife': (The following is quoted from Part I, chapter 7, pp. 69-71.)

The application of this knife, the division of the world into parts and the building of this structure, is something everybody does. All the time we are aware of millions of things around us - these changing shapes, these burning hills, the sound of the engine, the feel of the throttle, each rock and weed and fence post and piece of debris beside the road - aware of these things but not really conscious of them unless there is something unusual or unless they reflect something we are predisposed to see. We could not possibly be conscious of these things and remember all of them because our mind would be so full of useless details we would be unable to think. From all this awareness we must select, and what we select and call consciousness is never the same as the awareness because the process of selection mutates it. We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

Once we have the handful of sand, the world of which we are conscious, a process of discrimination goes to work on it. This is the knife. We divide the sand into parts. This and that. Here and there. Black and white. Now and then. The discrimination is the division of the conscious universe into parts.

The handful of sand looks uniform at first, but the longer we look at it the more diverse we find it to be. Each grain of sand is different. No two are alike. Some are similar in one way, some are similar in another way, and we can form the sand into separate piles on the basis of this similarity and dissimilarity. Shades of color in different piles - sizes in different piles - grain shapes in different piles - subtypes of grain shapes in different piles - grades of opacity in different piles - and so on, and on, and on. You'd think the process of subdivision and classification would come to an end somewhere, but it doesn't. It just goes on and on.

Classical understanding is concerned with the piles and the basis for sorting and interrelating them. Romantic understanding is directed toward the handful of sand before the sorting begins. Both are valid ways of looking at the world although irreconcilable with each other.

What has become an urgent necessity is a way of looking at the world that does violence to neither of these two kinds of understanding and unites them into one. Such an understanding will not reject sand-sorting or contemplation of unsorted sand for its own sake. Such an understanding will instead seek to direct attention to the endless landscape from which the sand is taken. That is what Phædrus, the poor surgeon, was trying to do.

To understand what he was trying to do it's necessary to see that part of the landscape, inseparable from it, which must be understood, is a figure in the middle of it, sorting sand into piles. To see the landscape without seeing this figure is not to see the landscape at all. [...]

When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts - something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it's important also to see what's created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.

Though I'm inclined to agree with Douglas Adams that "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day".