Science Links

Sock Thief points to an interesting (but brief) Steven Pinker article, How To Think About The Mind:

The disconnect between our common sense and our best science is not an academic curiosity. Neuroscience is putting us in unfamiliar predicaments, and if we continue to think of ourselves as shadowy users of our brains we will be needlessly befuddled. [...] In Galileo's time, the counter-intuitive discovery that the Earth moved around the sun was laden with moral danger. Now it seems obvious that the motion of rock and gas in space has nothing to do with right and wrong. Yet to many people, the discovery that the soul is the activity of the brain is just as fraught, with pernicious implications for everything from criminal responsibility to our image of ourselves as a species. Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside childlike intuitions and traditional dogmas, and thinking afresh about what makes people better off and worse off.

Panda's Thumb exhibits a cool photo from the Cassini Mission:

"In a splendid portrait created by light and gravity, Saturn’s lonely moon Mimas is seen against the cool, blue-streaked backdrop of Saturn’s northern hemisphere. Delicate shadows cast by the rings arc gracefully across the planet, fading into darkness on Saturn’s night side."

ScienceBlog relates how MRI could be used for lie detection:

When people lie, they use different parts of their brains than when they tell the truth, and these brain changes can be measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The results suggest that fMRI may one day prove a more accurate lie detector than the polygraph.

Ophelia Benson pulls apart some of John Gray's odd claims about science and atheism, including the following one:

[Science] is an immensely powerful social institution in which authority is as important as critical discussion, if not more so. As the ultimate arbiter of our beliefs about the world, contemporary science has more than a passing resemblance to the Church in its heyday.

Such hyperbole is addressed in Phil Mole's excellent article, Nurturing Suspicion: what college students learn about science:

What happens when students never learn about the historical development of science--when they never comprehend the significance of the scientific method? They leave their science classes with a highly idealized, intellectually impoverished view of science that is highly vulnerable to attack. When they encounter modern cultural criticisms of science in "science and society" classes, they have no larger perspective to balance against these claims. They never learned that great scientists have often been fantastically wrong and never learned about the role of bias in developing scientific theories. As a result, any evidence that scientists do have bias, or that they sometimes make mistakes, causes them to question the validity of the entire scientific enterprise. In Christopher Hitchens's memorable phrase, "utopia becomes the subconscious enabler of cynicism." If students initially learned anything about the complex social history of science, they would have some intellectual armor against the ideologically charged claims of modern science critics.

Update 2/12: I've just got to include a link to Fafblog's latest:

Yknow science hasn't been real popular lately. What with Congress cuttin the National Science Foundation budget an nobody believin in evolution anymore an the president not carin about global warming, maybe it's time we switched to a New Science that everyone will like better! [...]

# ASTRONOMY! In older times scientists thought that the stars an planets rotated around the earth on fixed spheres in the sky. Silly scientists! Now New Scientists know the stars an planets rotate around the earth on fixed spheres in the sky pushed by angels. The rotation of these stars an planets determines critical elements of your destiny, such as whether today is a lucky day for love, or whether you will attract interest in yourself and your ideas.

# CLIMATOLOGY! Is the earth gettin warmer? Maybe but it sure isn't the fault a greenhouse gases! The earth just has a fever caused by an imbalance of the four humours. Pump a little more yellow bile into the atmosphere an it should be all set.

The Asan Heresy

Jason Kuznicki has just completed his blog-novel, The Asan Heresy. As Jason aptly describes it, "Mostly it's a mess, but in places it's a beautiful mess--like a train wreck scattering diamonds." I especially enjoyed the middle section, roughly chapters XV through XXI.

A few highlights (I hope Jason doesn't mind me stealing his diamonds)...

Candles and Soap is perhaps my favourite chapter. I'm a fairly strident atheist myself, but I found Jason's take on religion and spirituality very thought-provoking:

The images of religion, from the graven idols all the way up to the One True God--They're all a lot of shadows on the wall of the soul, traceries with which we try to manipulate the things inside of us, the things that science, technology, medication, and therapy can touch but clumsily. Art does a better job than any of these. And religion does it best of all.
...
That would be spirituality at its best. [...] It would mean burning a candle not to the wax-hungry goddess, but to the ineffable faculty within me that perceives something peaceful, centering, and life-affirming about the ebb and flow of the flame, the impermanence of the wax, and the air of sanctity that generations of experience have pressed into that image. [...] It would mean an answer to the question: Which one of these is going to speak to the part inside of me that could be reached in no other way?

(Reminds me of the Unitarians, come to think of it.)

Curves makes a nice point about how most 'believers' don't really act like they fully believe their dogmas: "if you sincerely believed in the Christian God--I mean, really, sincerely believed in Him--then why would you ever skip out on Church, even once?" It goes on to discuss the (lack of) connection between religious affiliation and personal morality.

Tic Tac Toe is another good one. Not so quotable though - you should just go and read the whole thing. (Even if you don't want to go through the whole novel, this is one chapter that retains its sense even in isolation.)

Chills has one section I particularly liked:

"Philosophy is not the greatest pursuit, but the vainest."

"But philosophers teach people how to think," I replied. "They challenge preconceived notions and help build up knowledge on a sounder, more rational footing."

"Nonsense. Scientists advance human thought; philosophers argue about figments of their own imaginations. Admit it: You too have experienced that guilty rush of pleasure that comes when you consider that the philosopher is the king of all thinkers. It's damn near the only thing that all philosophies agree upon: 'Philosophy is the best.' If shoemakers went prattling about like that, we'd lock them up, and with good reason. Can you imagine anything more transparently self-serving?"

It's funny because it's true. There's also a nice paragraph about socks and intentions, but I've already quoted enough, you can go read that from the original.

Lastly, perhaps the most blatantly philosophical chapter is Imperatives, which contains a wonderful discussion about Kant's categorical imperative. Highly recommended!

Publishing Philosophy

Here's a few useful links about publishing papers in philosophy journals:

• Where to begin? - philosophers at Leiter Reports offer advice to graduate students.


• "Getting Published" - Peter Smith's helpful overview.


• "The Ethical Obligations of Journals Vis-a-Vis Authors" - Seven proposals to improve how journals treat authors. (And some interesting discussion about multiple submissions.)


• Which journals treat authors the best? - Another great discussion at the Leiter Reports. The consensus seems to be that Analysis and Nous (among others) are great, whereas Mind is particularly atrocious.


• Publications & Hiring Practices, also at Leiter Reports.


• Breakdown of journals by topic, at Fake Barn Country.


• Time Out of Joint - John Holbo asks why multiple concurrent submissions are not allowed, and offers some proposals for an online journal.


• Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy - detailed. (Found via Ratiocination.)


• Journals and Political Philosophy - See the comments for discussion of whether publishing can be bad for philosophy graduate students.

Does the Past Matter?

Does the past matter for reasons beyond the present effects it brought about? If some alternative past had identical effects, so the present in each case would be indiscernible, would there be any philosophically relevant differences between this hypothesised "present" and the actual one?

Also, does the past retain any causal powers? (I'm guessing not, but I'd like to make sure.) Assuming determinism, must the state of the universe at time t+1 be entirely determined by the universal snapshot at time t, or is it possible that a combination of times (say t and t-1) together bring about a future state of affairs? If the former, then it would seem that the past becomes entirely irrelevant - the universe could be created ex nihilo in its present form, and the future would unfold in the exact same way. So, for all practical purposes, the past seems entirely irrelevant.

What got me thinking about all this was an issue in Artificial Life. Some have suggested that having evolved is an essential feature of 'life'. That is, to be counted as a 'living' organism, one must belong to a species that has evolved. But if this were true, then Creationism would be not merely false (which it is), but incoherent (which it surely is not). We can imagine God creating human beings in their present form. Such beings would surely still count as alive, despite not having evolved. The past just doesn't seem that crucial here. Perhaps what matters is the future. So a more plausible essential feature of life would be Ray's suggestion, i.e. that the species be "capable of open-ended evolution". (Though even that may admit of counterexamples. Imagine if God created Adam and Eve sterile. Then their species could not evolve. But I'm still inclined to describe them as being alive. Or, for a simpler example: mules!)

Could this dismissal of the past be universalised? Does it ever matter (philosophically) how the present was brought about? I'd quite like to say "no" (to the latter question, i.e. "yes" to the former), but I suspect that's a very radical position. I've heard of several "causal theories of X", for various X (though I don't know much about any of them). A consequence of my position here would be that every such theory is false (since I'm basically saying: "causes don't matter, only effects do".)

From the little I know of this stuff, a causal theory of reference / intentionality might be among the most pressing of these. The idea (if I understand it correctly) is that the meanings of representations (e.g. words, beliefs, etc.) derives, in part, from their causal history.

An example I once heard (I forget who from) is that of a "Swampman" who is miraculously created when a bolt of lightning zaps a swamp and forms an atom-for-atom replica of me. (Alternatively, just imagine God creating Adam.) Is this creature a person? Would their words (which, recall, would not be 'grounded' in past experience in any way) have any meaning?

Or imagine a pile of stones that is carefully arranged by someone to spell out a word. Those stones are then symbols, and have semantic content (i.e. meaning). But imagine if instead they had by chance been blown by the wind into those exact same positions. It seems in the latter case there is no real 'word', no meaning. It's just an appearance. But in each case the present effects are identical, the only difference is in their past causes. So, one might argue, the past clearly does matter.

That seems a quite compelling argument, but I'm still reluctant to accept it. Instead, I want to say that meaning is something we (as observers) attach to things, rather than something instrinsic to the thing itself. If I can have an intelligible discussion with the swampman, then his words have meaning (to me). If you see the windswept stone pattern and interpret it as a word, then those stones contain a meaning (to you). It makes no difference how these things were caused in actual fact; what matters is how we treat them. If we treat them as having meaning, then they (ipso facto) do have meaning (to us). That's all 'meaning' is - something we read into the world, that otherwise would not be there at all.

Does that sound at all plausible?

(I plan to read Dennett's The Intentional Stance soon, which from what I've heard might suggest a similar treatment of meaning to that which I've sketched here. I'm not sure though.)

Also, do you think there any other compelling reasons to accept the past as philosophically relevant? I'm fairly confused (but very interested!) by all this, so any feedback would be much appreciated.

Update: here.

Clean Slate

This sounds like a bad idea:

From midnight Sunday, hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders with a criminal past will be able to officially deny it.

That is when the so-called clean slate act comes into force. [...] To qualify offenders need to have stayed out of trouble for at least seven years, and it only applies if the offence did not result in a prison term.

There are exceptions to the law: police, prison officers, judges and childcare workers will still have to come clean. [...] Act MP Stephen Franks is opposed to the change. He says people are being instructed to lie, and that employers now fact a $10,000 fine if they try to find out about a person's criminal history.

Franks also thinks the law will promote discrimination.

"Young Maori are four times more likely to have an offence. An employer won't just accept that they're not allowed to ask, they'll use stereotypes."

But Green MP Nandor Tanczos says people feel inhibited by their previous convictions and have been actively discriminated against because of them.

Do we really want to use the word "discrimination" to describe judging others based on their own past actions? People might get the impression that discrimination isn't such a bad thing after all.

I have to agree with David Farrar:

I have some sympathy for the problems an old and minor conviction can cause people, but I think the vast majority of people and employers will look on old convictions in their context and judge accordingly. This law removes the right of people to be told the truth and encourages lying.

He goes on to suggest that someone could start up an internet database to circumvent this law. But if Franks is right that employers face a $10000 fine "if they try to find out about a person's criminal history", then presumably checking the database for a job applicant's name would count as an offence here. (Unless "find out" in that context is restricted to asking people directly; perhaps external research is permitted?)

I hope that most employers would be reasonable in their assessments of old convictions. But it is possible that they often are not, and that the stigma of a criminal record is unfairly impeding the lives of good people who made some minor mistakes many years ago. If that is indeed the case, would this new legislation be justified?

Even then, I'm not convinced. Call me old-fashioned, but I really don't like the idea of our government encouraging people to lie. Honesty should be recognised as an important civic virtue, and treated as such (i.e. encouraged) by our officials. There must be better answers to the 'stigma' problem.

One option would be to wipe those criminal records altogether. That would seem especially sensible for people with but a single conviction for some trivial offence in their distant past. If they deserve it, then give them a real "clean slate", don't tell them to lie about it. (And if they don't deserve it, then why shouldn't potential employers know about that?)

Alternatively, one could try to overcome the stigma by way of a public education campaign. (It's worked wonders for mental illness, after all. "Know me before you judge me," and all that.) Trot out ex-"criminals" made good, like that Shaw fellow mentioned in the article. If you highlight just how trivial some convictions are, then employers might become less likely to jump to conclusions when hearing that an applicant has a record. If you can show that even people with more serious criminal records can turn their lives around and become trustworthy citizens, then that'd help too.

Let employers make informed decisions. If you don't trust them to do that, then educate them so that they (more likely) will. But enforcing ignorance and encouraging deceit? Not in any society I want to live in, thankyou very much.

Foundations of Music

This is interesting:

Why is Elgar's music for Land of Hope and Glory so quintessentially English, while Debussy sounds so French? It is all because the music mimics the composer's native language, say scientists.
...
They found that English had more of a swing than French, a rhythm produced by a tendency in English to cut some vowels short while stressing others. The melodies of the two languages also differed, with pitch varying far more in spoken English than French.

The team then did the same kind of analysis on music, comparing the rhythm and melody of English classical music from composers such as Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams, with that of French composers including Debussy, Fauré and Roussel. "The music differs in just the same way as the languages," said Dr Patel. "It is as if the music carries an imprint of the composer's language."

I would have expected the answer to be more generally 'cultural' in nature - rather like one can hear the optimism of the sixties in the Beatles (say), whereas today's rock music tends to be a lot darker. Music reflects the cultural climate of the composer. So, I always figured, Pomp and Circumstance sounds British because Brits are, well... pompous. Our music doesn't just reflect our language, it reflects us - our cultural attitudes, values, and so forth. But it is interesting that when comparing national languages and music, they found "just the same" differences. This would seem to suggest that language plays quite a significant role here, at least.

I wonder if it would be possible to isolate language and culture somehow. Perhaps one could compare the music of multi-lingual composers who are nevertheless quite culturally isolated, with that of monolingual yet broadly multicultural (well-travelled and worldly, say) composers. It would probably be difficult to find people who clearly fit these categories, but oh well. I'll just have to wonder: does cultural or linguistic exposure have a greater influence on composers?

But enough rambling. What I really meant to be posting about was an old article I was reminded of, about how the chromatic scale may be based on the frequencies most common to human speech. After much googling, I managed to dig up this. It discusses how music has traditionally been viewed as resting upon a mathematical foundation, but recent research has opened up a new possibility:

[M]usicologists have long emphasized that while each culture stamps a special identity onto its music, music itself has some universal qualities. For example, in virtually all cultures sound is divided into some or all of the 12 intervals that make up the chromatic scale -- that is, the scale represented by the keys on a piano. For centuries, observers have attributed this preference for certain combinations of tones to the mathematical properties of sound itself.
...
Schwartz, Howe, and Purves analyzed a vast selection of speech sounds from a variety of languages to reveal the underlying patterns common to all utterances. In order to focus only on the raw sound, they discarded all theories about speech and meaning and sliced sentences into random bites. Using a database of over 100,000 brief segments of speech, they noted which frequency had the greatest emphasis in each sound. The resulting set of frequencies, they discovered, corresponded closely to the chromatic scale. In short, the building blocks of music are to be found in speech.

Far from being abstract, music presents a strange analog to the patterns created by the sounds of speech. "Music, like the visual arts, is rooted in our experience of the natural world," says Schwartz. "It emulates our sound environment in the way that visual arts emulate the visual environment." In music we hear the echo of our basic sound-making instrument -- the vocal tract. The explanation for human music is simpler still than Pythagoras's mathematical equations: We like the sounds that are familiar to us -- specifically, we like sounds that remind us of us.

I found it especially interesting when they discussed the implications of this view, as it relates to musical appreciation in other species:

Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don't create or perceive music the way we do. [...] But what's been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do -- based upon the soundscape in which they live -- then their "music" would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales derive from human utterances, a cat's idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don't appreciate sounds the way we do, we'd need evidence that they don't respond to "music" constructed from their own sound environment.

I guess that makes sense. I suspect I wouldn't be very appreciative of a cat-based musical scale either.

Resentment

It would appear that Keith Burgess-Jackson resents me for daring to criticise one of his arguments. He has quietly removed me from his blogroll. (This google-cache highlights where the link used to be, on his sidebar.)

I must say I'm surprised by his pettiness. It would be understandable if I had been excessively rude or insulting towards him, but I think I was reasonably civil. I attacked his arguments, not him personally, just as he asks. I then emailed him, politely inviting him to respond to my criticisms. He never even replied.

Instead, he seems to be trying his best to pretend my criticisms don't exist. Despite this, he has so far written five posts about how horrible the folks at Crooked Timber are for agreeing with my criticism - which, remember, we're trying to pretend doesn't exist. That's sure to cause some serious cognitive dissonance, but maybe we can drown it out if we try really hard (and shout really loud). Let's call the CT folks "liberal punks" and complain about how they're being nasty and not engaging with his argument, because, after all, if we manage to convince ourselves that my blog doesn't exist, then how could it be 'engaging his argument' to link to a non-existent counterargument? Oh yes, we have the strength of a bear, the voice of a lion, and the logic of an ostrich.

Seriously though, I'm not sure how he managed to become a philosophy professor if he cannot cope with people challenging his arguments. I know I wouldn't want such an insecure and irrational teacher.

Shame on you, Prof. Burgess-Jackson.

Artificial Life

From a paper on Artificial Life I read recently:

Ideally, the science of biology should embrace all forms of life. However, in practice, it has been restricted to the study of a single instance of life, life on earth. Because biology is based on a sample size of one, we cannot know what features of life are peculiar to earth, and what features are general, characteristic of all life. A truly comparative natural biology would require interplanetary travel, which is light-years away. The ideal experimental evolutionary biology would involve creation of multiple planetary systems, some essentially identical, others varying by a parameter of interest, and observing them for billions of years. A practical alternative to an inter-planetary or mythical biology is to create synthetic life in a computer. 'Evolution in a bottle' provides a valuable tool for the experimental study of evolution and ecology.

-- Thomas Ray, 'An Approach to the Synthesis of Life', in M. Boden (ed.), The Philosophy of Artificial Life, p.111.

In that same anthology, Christopher Langton characterises traditional biology as an analytic endeavour, starting with the whole organism and breaking it down into its component parts. Artificial Life takes the opposite (synthetic) approach, trying to "put living things together".

One of A-Life's core concepts is that of emergence: complicated global behaviour can arise from simple local behaviour. For example, artificial "Boids" have been invented which imitate the flocking behaviour of birds and fish. The behaviour of individual Boids is based on three simple rules (e.g. "move toward the average position of local flockmates"). But a group of Boids will exhibit quite complicated 'flocking' behaviour, such as breaking into sub-flocks to flow around an obstacle, then seamlessly merging together again afterwards.

More interesting A-Life research involves virtual populations that evolve. Ray's Tierra system is a remarkable example of this. He started off with a basic self-replicating program, and set it in a virtual environment which allowed random 'mutations' to arise by way of occasional copying errors and such. All sorts of fascinating new programs evolved, simply through these random mutations and the 'natural selection' of having to compete for CPU time in order to reproduce. Parasites arose which were much smaller because they had no 'reproductive' code of their own, but instead found a full program and hijacked its reproductive routines! In light of this new selection pressure, new programs evolved which were immune to the parasites, or could even utilise the parasites to their own ends (and eventually drive them to extinction).

Fascinating stuff, I reckon. A simple introduction to A-Life, by the way, can be found here. If you want to see the power of selection for yourself, try out the fun (if slightly silly) Biomorphs game, where you select which of several randomly-mutated 'organisms' makes it into each successive generation. You can quickly 'evolve' something that looks like a bird, or a person, or pretty much whatever you want.

An interesting philosophical question which arises from all this is: Could a computer program ever be truly alive? Ray says, "I would consider a system to be living if it is self-replicating, and capable of open-ended evolution." His Tierra programs qualify, by those criteria.

It seems odd to call a computer program 'alive', but then again, there seems little reason for us to insist that life must be carbon-based. As Langton points out (Boden, p.53):

Life is a property of form, not matter, a result of the organization of matter rather than something that inheres in the matter itself. Neither nucleotides nor amino acids nor any other carbon-chain molecule is alive - yet put them together in the right way, and the dynamic behaviour that emerges out of their interactions is what we call life. It is effects, not things, upon which life is based - life is a kind of behaviour, not a kind of stuff - and as such, it is constituted of simpler behaviours, not simpler stuff.

So, if a computer program can exhibit all the behaviour we associate with living organisms, perhaps we really ought to say that it too is alive?

Update: Carl Zimmer has a great article on the topic.

The Physics of Free Will

According to this article, mathematicians have proved a theorem linking particle physics to human decision-making:

It says that given three assumptions, if particles' behavior is truly predetermined, then people cannot have free will. In other words, if the behavior of a particle is fully determined by its past, so too are all the so-called decisions people believe they are making.

Conversely, if even one experimenter in the universe can make decisions that are not fully determined by the past, then every particle in the universe must be indeterminate as well, the theorem states.

Best make that four assumptions - it sounds like these researchers have never heard of compatibilism.

The most controversial aspect of the new theorem is likely to be the use of the term "free will" to describe a particular choice an experimenter can make. To many, the term belongs more to philosophy than to physics.

"If you bring up free will [in this context] in certain societies, people will say, 'Oh, you're a nut' straight away," Conway said. "Many will prefer a more mealymouthed term, like 'indeterminacy.'"

Well, there's a good reason for that. Namely, 'free will' and 'indeterminacy' are not the same thing. Treating them as if they were is an open invitation to conceptual confusion - as we see when the article starts talking about the "free will" of particles! (I take it they were being metaphorical, but still...)

Terminological quibbles aside, I'm not too sure what the big deal is here. (Perhaps a reader can explain it to me?) Isn't it generally accepted that if determinism is true of particles then it is also true of our brains? After all, the former constitute the latter. That could hardly amount to an "unexpected link" between physics and human decisions.

Rather, I take it that the interesting claim here is that the indeterminacy of a single decision requires the indeterminacy of "every particle in the universe". That's quite unexpected (to me, anyway). I would have thought that an indeterminate decision would merely require some indeterminate particles among those which constitute the person's brain. If this isn't so, then I guess that's of some (academic) interest.

But is it of any real significance to the free will debate? Has anybody ever suggested the indeterminacy of some particles but not others? Because that seems to be the only scenario that this theorem sheds any new light on. If I've understood it correctly, the theorem shows that partial particle indeterminacy is insufficient to produce indeterminate decisions. And that's the only new finding here (I take it everyone agrees about scenarios involving determinism or universal indeterminacy). So if nobody was suggesting partial indeterminacy to begin with, it all seems a bit irrelevant.

So, as I see it, framing the theorem as a breakthrough in the "free will" debate serves only to distract attention from its actual point of interest.

Have I missed something here? (It's entirely possible that I've misunderstood the article, in which case I'd very much appreciate any corrections!)

Tim-berrr...

Checking my site meter, I find a couple hundred more visitors than usual have dropped by so far today. Turns out I've been linked to by Crooked Timber. CT was the first blog I ever read (unless you count Arts & Letters Daily or Butterflies & Wheels as blogs), and is still among my favourites, so a link from them is quite gratifying.

Now I just need to sneak my way into their philosophy blogroll somehow... ;)

Update 28/11: That latest wish just came true.
It's been a good week.

Constructing Spider Silk

I was told as a kid that spider silk is stronger than steel, and I remember marvelling at how cool it would be if we could mass produce the stuff. Looks like the wait is nearly over:

For the first time anywhere, scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from Germany have succeeded in producing self-assembled spider web fibers under laboratory conditions, outside of the bodies of spiders. This fiber is significantly stronger than the silk fiber made by silkworms. Silk has been in use by mankind for thousands of years. However, unlike silkworms, spiders are territorial in nature and thus not subject to domestication and commercial growth in quantities.
...
"The research enabled us to determine the close connection that exists between the sequence, structure and functions of the proteins,'' said Dr. Gat. ''From a practical viewpoint, mass production of fibers, whose diameter is one-thousandth of a millimeter, is likely to be useful in the future for manufacture of bulletproof vests, surgical thread, micro-conductors, optical fibers and fishing rods; even new types of clothing may be envisioned."

No mention of constructing huge nets to trap jumbo jets, or Spiderman-style contraptions. So much for my childhood dreams, eh?

Sensory Substitution

This is fascinating stuff:

Ms. Schiltz and other patients like her are the beneficiaries of an astonishing new technology that allows one set of sensory information to substitute for another in the brain.

Using novel electronic aids, vision can be represented on the skin, tongue or through the ears. If the sense of touch is gone from one part of the body, it can be routed to an area where touch sensations are intact.
...
[T]he brain does not seem to care if patterns come from the eye, ear or skin. Given the proper context, it will interpret and understand them. "For me, it happened automatically, within a few minutes," said Erik Weihenmayer, who has been blind since he was 13.
...
He found doorways, caught balls rolling toward him and with his small daughter played a game of rock, paper and scissors for the first time in more than 20 years. Mr. Weihenmayer said that, with practice, the substituted sense gets better, "as if the brain were rewiring itself."
...
Dr. Ptito is scanning the brains of congenitally blind people who, wearing the BrainPort, have learned to make out the shapes, learned from Braille, of capital letters like T, B or E. The first few times they wore the device, he said, their visual areas remained dark and inactive - not surprising since they had been blind since birth. But after training, he said, their visual areas lighted up when they used the tongue device.

I find this to be an incredibly exciting topic. It's a pity the NY Times article doesn't tackle some of the most interesting questions raised by such research. E.g. What do these new sensations seem like, in the subject's consciousness? Are these people actually seeing? Are they just receiving information about visible things (size, motion, distance, etc) in tactile form? Or it is some new conscious quality altogether?

Fortunately, these questions are discussed by Dennett in his book Consciousness Explained. For example, he describes how the subject's "awareness of the tingles on their skin dropped out", and their 'point of view' shifts from the area of tactile stimulation to the position of the camera.

The array of tinglers was on [the subject's] back, and the camera was mounted on the side of his head. When the experimenter without warning touched the zoom button, causing the image on the subject's back to expand or "loom" suddenly, the subject instinctively lurched backward, raising his arms to protect his head. (p.341, original emphasis)

Although suggestive, there's still room to doubt whether these subjects experience genuine visual qualia. Even if scans show activity in the visual regions of their brains, that might just be because they're (subconsciously) processing visual information (size, motion, etc.). I'm inclined to think that, ultimately, the subject is the only expert regarding their own subjectivity. If we want to know what substituted sensations seem like, we need to ask the subjects who are experiencing them. That's why I'm disappointed the article didn't probe a bit deeper regarding this point. The closest they come is with the following comment:

Mr. Weihenmayer said the device at first felt like candy pop rocks on his tongue. But that sensation quickly gave way to perceptions of size, movement and recognition.

But did they seem (qualitatively speaking) just like normal visual perceptions? We're not told. They're clearly not as accurate or detailed as usual - Mr W. once confused his wife with a tree! So that might affect their subjective quality. It would be especially interesting to hear from someone using a "higher-resolution" device, capable of transmitting as much information as our eyes usually do.

I wonder what would happen if you had two cameras, facing in opposite directions, each wired up to a different tactile area? Could you be trained to develop 360 degree vision? Would you see the images superimposed atop each other (like when you can see a reflection in a glass window)? Or would it just be too confusing to make any sense of at all?

This may be similar to a normal-sighted subject receiving a single sensory substitution. Such a situation is (all too briefly) described in the article:

Dr. Raj said the tongue unit had already been tried out in a game that involved shooting villains. "In two minutes you stop feeling the buzz on your tongue and get a visual representation of the bad guy," he said. "You feel like you have X-ray vision. Unfortunately it makes the game boring."

Is it superimposed - is that what he means by "like... X-ray vision"? How is that boring? Argh, so many unanswered questions...

Drug Legalisation

Bill Vallicella of Maverick Philosopher writes:

Is it not clear that drug legalization would lead to increased usage, to more addiction, to more driving under the influence? To deny this is to be a knee-jerk oppositionalist.

I'm not convinced that the issue is as clear-cut as he makes out. His argument consists of identifying four groups of people that would be more likely to use drugs if they were legalised: (A) those who respect the law, (B) those who fear legal punishment, (C) those who fear associating with criminals, and (D) those with health concerns "about the quality and strength of illegal drugs, the dangers of overdosing, etc."

This establishes that legalising drugs would cause some people to try them, who otherwise would not have done so. But that is not sufficient to establish BV's point. He must also show that this group is larger than its opposite: those who would not take drugs if legalised, who otherwise would have.

Is it plausible that some people would take drugs (if illegal), but not if they were legalised? I think so. People (especially teenagers) can be motivated by rebelliousness, or the temptation of 'forbidden fruit'. I suspect this group is indeed outnumbered by those BV describes, but I'm not sure. It's an empirical question, after all, and not immediately "clear" from the vantagepoint of our armchairs. BV's failure to even consider the alternative possibility is a glaring omission on his part - one which (to borrow a phrase) "undercuts his own credibility".

Another mistake BV makes is that increased usage does not necessarily imply "more addiction" or "more driving under the influence". It could be that removing the criminal taint from drug use would result in more responsible consumption. Greater regulation (including, say, compulsory warnings of the sort found on cigarette boxes) might well lead to more informed and cautious use of these substances. Or it might not, I don't know, but at the very least these are matters that warrant some consideration. That would surely be a better idea than making dubious assumptions and then calling your opponents names.

Reform reform

Fafblog is great:

The word is out an the word is reform! It is the hot new trend in government today an everybody's doin it! "But Fafnir how do I know what reform is I do not know anythin" you say because you are a literary device.

Heh, literary devices say the darndest things.

In the ol days when you wanted to reform somethin you had to actually make it better. But with new reformed reform, you can just change it so it's different, or so it benefits you to the detriment of everyone else! This way, corrupt people are no longer cruelly excluded from the reform process.

Ignoring the wonderful humour for just a moment, it strikes me that there's something a bit fishy (logically speaking) about the origin of this new "reformed reform".

We're told that improvement was an essential feature of the original 'reform' concept, until someone came along and reformed the 'reform' concept, ruining it. But that can't be, because to reform the original 'reform' concept would require improving it, whereas what Fafnir describes is clearly the opposite. So the 'reform' concept couldn't have been reformed after all. It was just degraded, after which we can then describe other things as being 'reformed' (according to the new, degraded, definition).

There is another way of looking at it, but this involves some nasty circularities. We could say that the original 'reform' concept was reformed according to the new definition of "reformed". Now that's sneaky. Too sneaky, I reckon. Rather like going back in time and giving your past self a million dollars - the very same money originally given to you by your future self. Where did it come from originally?

Carnival Hosting

The Philosophers' Carnival is always on the lookout for new hosts. If you have a philosophy blog, you should consider volunteering. All it involves is collecting together all the submitted links, along with a brief description of each post. This can be done in a variety of ways, as you can see by comparing the styles of past hosts.

This is a great opportunity for some of the lesser-known blogs out there to get some publicity - you'll find that hosting a carnival can bring you a large influx of links and visitors.

The next carnival is just two weeks away now. If you're interested in hosting it (or a later one), send me an email at:

r DOT chappell AT gmail DOT com

Buridan's Ass

Joe at Oohlah's Blogspace recently mentioned Buridan's ass: caught between two equally-tempting piles of hay, the ass starves to death because it cannot choose between them. This is supposed to be a paradox. I may be missing something (as always, if I am then let me know!), but it strikes me as problematic only if we adopt an overly-abstract model of rationality. The supposed problem, I take it, is that absent any reason to prefer one option over another, it is irrational to choose either. The solution, I think, is to flesh out our abstractions with a little more practical detail.

Firstly, note that cognition comes at a cost - in terms of time, energy, and opportunity costs. So a rational agent should only cognize when the benefits of doing so outweigh these costs. Eventually one will reach a stage when further deliberation is no longer worth it, and one should engage in action instead. Thus grounding Buridan's Ass in an ecological context readily demonstrates its irrationality, for it continues to waste its resources assessing a choice that makes no difference.

Normally, once we realise that further deliberation is unproductive, we simply go ahead with our presently-favoured choice. The difficulty in this case is that, ex hypothesi, the ass has no favoured choice. One obvious solution would be to employ a random device, say, flip a coin. But I think even this is too much unnecessary effort. The ass should just pick one.

I think only a reasoner that had been abstracted away to the point of absurdity would find itself utterly 'frozen' in the situation of Buridan's ass. Any more realistic reasoner would be capable of making arbitrary decisions at ease (we certainly are!). Perhaps the sun shone more brightly on one side, or a bird was singing pleasantly to the other, or the agent was right-handed (hooved?). These are silly little things, of course, but any one would be enough to tip the scales and allow a decision to be made one way rather than the other.

Here one might complain that I have ignored the requirement that the agent (or ass) has no reason - not even a silly reason - to prefer one choice over the other. To this I would respond with a second appeal against abstraction, namely, to recognize that real-world cognition is a process in flux. Even if at one moment all its preferences perfectly balance out and the ass cannot choose one side over the other, we need only wait a moment for the next fluctuation to give rise to a slight imbalance.

The ass would not be constantly feeling exactly equal temptation for each pile of hay. That's just not how thinking works. Rather, the ass would be continually flickering back and forth in its preferences, as the equally-deserving bales of hay vied for its fickle favour. This more realistic view of cognition makes the problem disappear - for once our ass realises it's time to stop deliberating, it could simply go with whatever option happened to be favoured at that particular moment.

Update: Joe has more at Third Floor.

If Squares Were Circles

In the Semantics class I took last semester, we were taught to analyze counterfactuals in terms of possible worlds, so that the counterfactual "If X were true then Y would be" (for false 'X') is true iff the following truth condition is met:

(w) ('X' is true in w and w is otherwise similar to the actual world -> 'Y' is true in w)

Simply put, the counterfactual is true iff 'Y' is true in all those close possible worlds where 'X' is true.

Now, one problem with this analysis is that it implies that any counterfactual with a necessarily false antecedent will be vacuously true. (Consider: there won't be any falsifying cases where 'X' is true but 'Y' isn't, because 'X' is never true.) But it doesn't quite seem right to say it's true that "if there were a largest prime number then Kerry would be president".

Incidentally, a fun way to deal with this could be to extend our ontology to impossible worlds, and proceeding in an analogous way to that described in the linked-to post (see also here). But that's not really what this post is about.

Perhaps counterfactuals involving necessary falsehoods aren't usually meant as counterfactuals at all. (The above example sounds very unnatural, after all. I can only imagine someone saying it for rhetorical effect, with the implicature "stop wishing for the impossible, it's time to move on!") The notion of putting apparent 'counterfactuals' to factual use is discussed at Siris and Mixing Memory. Anyway, I just want to discuss a particular example I find interesting, which was originally brought up in our Semantics tutorials. The question is, which (if either) of the following two sentences is true?

(1) If squares were circles then cubes would be spheres.
(2) If squares were circles then cubes would be cylinders.

Despite appearances, these statements probably shouldn't be interpreted as counterfactuals. For one thing, according to the previously mentioned 'truth conditions', they'd both be vacuously true. We don't want that, as on any sensible reading they are clearly incompatible! (Though we could just reject the earlier analysis as a flawed or incomplete semantic theory of counterfactuals.)

They seem to me to just be a fancy way of expressing a sort of 'ratio' or comparison. We're effectively being asked: "square is to cube as circle is to ____?"

So what's the answer?

I think almost everyone in our class chose 'sphere'. From a mathematical point of view though, 'cylinder' is probably the better option. It all depends, of course, on how you get from square to cube. The simplest construction is to just take the 2-dimensional object and 'raise' it through the third dimension. Layer a whole bunch of squares atop each other (just pretend they have some small amount of 'thickness' to them) and you eventually get a cube. Do the same with circles and you get a cylinder.

So why do most of use choose 'sphere'? I'd guess it's because we weren't really thinking about how to (geometrically) construct a cube out of squares. Instead, we were comparing our geometric concepts, looking for salient similarities. Now, a cube is the most 'regular' 3-d analog of a square (all sides being of equal length), and something similar can be said of spheres in relation to circles: a sphere has constant radius, just like circles do, whereas the length from the centre of a cylinder to its surface will vary depending on which point of the surface you choose.

For another point in favour of 'sphere', consider working backwards, 'compressing' a 3-d object into its 2-d silhouette. Note that a cube is such that from every side it looks like a square (if looked at front-on, that is - I exclude 'diagonal' or rotated views). And of course the silhouette of a sphere is always a circle (no matter how you rotate it - even better!). But a cylinder? From the wrong side it looks more like a rectangle.

So, overall, I would say that "square is to cube as circle is to sphere". Nevertheless, I think (2) above is true, and (1) is false. So I have to abandon my 'ratio' analysis of the counterfactuals (huh, I didn't see that coming until I actually wrote this post!).

I think the difference is that the 'ratio' question invites us to compare concepts, and the concept of a 'sphere' is the circular analog of our 'cube' concept in a way that 'cylinder' is not. However, the original counterfactual formulations seem more objective, somehow. They're less concerned with our own subjective understanding of geometric concepts, and are instead more concerned with geometric reality - and that means constructions. (Despite our mistaken shortcut of comparing our concepts instead.) If you applied the general "build a cube" method using a circle for your base template instead of a square, the end result would be a cylinder, rather than a sphere. Hence, if squares were circles, then cubes would be cylinders.

Maybe it's a genuine counterfactual after all?

Are Evolved Perceptions Reliable?

Here's something I've been meaning to comment on for ages. A while ago I argued that moral properties mustn't be directly observable, for evolutionary reasons:

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.

To which Brandon of Siris made the interesting response:

But suppose someone were to substitute 'perceived properties' for 'moral properties' and modify everything else accordingly? The conclusion would be that, while there are real facts of the matter, and while our cognitive functions are such as to promote evolutionary success, we have no reason to think our cognitive abilities map the world.

But note that I never suggested we wouldn't be able to accurately perceive (the existence of) moral properties. Perceiving them would be a prerequisite for our being able to use them as information for evolutionary ends. Rather, what we must be blind to is their 'intended' status.

Evolution implies that we should be skilled at perceiving various 'descriptive' properties out there in the world, but utterly blind to any normative ones. Or, to put it another way, we should have fairly reliable 'existence detectors', capable of distinguishing various physical phenomena, but any deeper 'meanings' should be inaccessible to us (at least by direct observation). If there were intrinsic moral properties out there, we might detect their existence (being a descriptive aspect), but not their goodness (the normative/'meaningful' aspect). We instead 'attach' the normative attitudes ourselves, having developed pro-attitudes towards objects that improve our evolutionary fitness, and con-attitudes towards predictors of evolutionary harm. (Thus the relevance of evolution to aesthetics - why we love a lush countryside but are repulsed by mould and faeces.)

What Brandon calls our 'perceived properties' (I assume he means things like colour, shape, distance, etc.) don't have any 'intended' normative status. (Or if they do, then we can't directly perceive it). But we should be able to detect the purely descriptive aspects of these properties just fine, according to my argument. So I don't think there's a slippery slope to skepticism here after all.

Perhaps Brandon is pointing out that what we see must not be what things "really" look like. (Qualia would seem to be a deeper 'meaning', rather like normativity.) To which I would entirely agree - the universe doesn't have any mind-independent visual properties. It doesn't intrinsically "look" like anything. But we can detect the existence of various wavelengths of light, and then interpret this in an evolutionarily beneficial way - giving us the appearance of colours (for example).

So yes, my argument implies that our qualia will not map to the objective reality - the way things ought to seem (look/taste/smell etc). But that's okay, because there is no "way things ought to seem". There's just the way things are - the detection of which is surely in our evolutionary interests.

Philosophers' Carnival #5

The fifth Philosophers' Carnival is now available at Ciceronian Review. Many of the posts are related to philosophy of science, which we haven't seen much of in previous carnivals.

It's also good to see so many new (first-time) contributors. But a pity some of my old favourites were missing! Maybe they'll submit something next time...

One more thing: If you have a philosophy blog of your own, you may wish to consider hosting a future carnival. Let me know if you're interested.

Update: I just want to second the following comment made by the carnival host:

I note as well an unfortunate taste among some of our contributors for small white text on black backgrounds. Philosophy may be hard, but it should not for that be hard to read.

I've noticed the effect of this varies depending on which computer I'm reading them from. It's fine on some, but on others it's damn near impossible to read white-on-black writing.

Gay Marriage Arguments

In light of my previous post, I'm now wondering: are there any reasonable arguments against gay marriage? I'm not aware of any, but I'd certainly be curious to hear one - so if anyone reading this disagrees, please do leave a comment and let me know why.

Probably the most common argument is that homosexuality is 'unnatural', and thus immoral. Of course, the same could be said of heart transplants and automobiles, so this seems a pretty bad argument to make (as I've pointed out previously; see also No Right Turn).

As for appeals to tradition, if they weren't fallacious enough already, Carl Zimmer informs us that there's some scientific evidence that our ancestors were moderately polygynous, which makes things "a little sticky for the 'one-man-one-woman-is-traditional-and-natural' camp", as he puts it. (And then of course there's all the polygamy in the Old Testament!)

Some people say they're not opposed to gay marriage as such, but think it needs to be approved democratically, rather than imposed through the courts. (Anal-"Philosopher" made some comments to this effect, if you follow the link in my previous post.) I could understand this if it were merely practical advice to gay-rights advocates, suggesting they'd have more success if they pursued other methods. But I don't see how anyone could use this to justify actively opposing gay marriage in the meantime. If others are unjustly having their freedom restricted, then this is wrong no matter what the mob thinks. Liberty trumps democracy. Besides, as legal scholar Steve Sanders points out, so-called "judicial activism" to ensure the constitution is upheld is precisely how the separation of powers is supposed to work. The judges are supposed to protect the civil rights of minorities from being trampled on by 'majority rule'. That's what they're there for.

Another common argument is that "children should be raised by a mum and a dad". There are several problems with this. The first is that there's no evidence to suggest being raised by same-sex parents actually harms children (see NewScientist). Secondly, even if it did slightly, that would not justify imposing a greater harm on adults. Thirdly, even if that were justified, prohibiting gay marriage has little effect on gay parenting, as pointed out at Alas, a Blog:

All over the country, and (outside of Massachusetts) without legal marriage, same-sex couples are raising children. They are not waiting for legal marriage, nor will banning legal marriage give the government a new right to take children away from same-sex couples. The policy marriage-equality opponents propose - banning same-sex marriage - does not in any way solve the problem they claim to be responding to, which is children growing up in homes without two biological parents.

They go on to point out that to overcome this gap in their argument, some object that "we can't allow marriage equality because that sends a message that moms and dads are unnecessary":

One problem is that it's factually wrong; equal, neutral treatment sends no message. [The full argument for this is given earlier in the post.] The second problem is that the anti-equality logic treats the lives and rights of lesbians, gays and their children as tools to be used to benefit heterosexuals.

The lives of same-sex families aren't post-it notes! If marriage equality opponents wish to send a message, they should by all means write opinion pieces, or agitate for more healthy heterosexual families on TV. But don't use lesbian and gay lives for your op-ed statement. Same-sex families are human beings, as precious as any heterosexual family; injustice to them cannot be justified by saying injustice sends a valuable message.

So far as I can tell, that only leaves the generic "gays will destroy the institution of marriage and all of society too!" objection. Such doomsday predictions have an unconvincing history, of course - similar fears were raised about women voting, women in the workforce, gays in the military, etc, but society adapted and is the better for it. What good does it do to 'protect' marriage from people who want to get married? Shouldn't those with genuine family values (as opposed to simple bigotry) be pleased that these couples are wanting to settle down in a life-long monogamous relationship?

Perhaps the best response I've seen to this objection is that of Amanda Doerty:

You have to have pretty much no belief in individual freedom to make these kinds of arguments against same-sex marriage. If same-sex marriage did have any actual connection to increases in crime, poverty, and the like, and that connection was enough reason for same-sex marriage to be outlawed, then the same reason could serve to outlaw just about anything. Divorce? That's obvious. In fact, it's almost absurd to think that someone would speak out against same-sex marriage on these grounds instead of divorce. Actually supporting divorce would be flat out hypocritical for someone making these arguments.

Besides, I would expect that legalising gay marriage could only be good for society in the long term, as with all the other progress that has been made in the past century to extend civil rights and create a more tolerant and liberal society. If you really doubt the utility of a more liberal society, go have a read of Ed Brayton's comparison of red vs blue states. It appears that those who preach about 'family values' aren't so good at living by them:

The lowest rate of divorce in the nation? That would be none other than that haven of liberal political correctness, and beacon of gay marriage to the world, Massachusetts. Must just be an anomoly, right? Well, not exactly. In fact, 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are in blue states, especially in the Northeast, allegedly the hotbed of pagan immorality. And the 10 highest divorce rates in the nation, with averages nearly 3 times higher than the 10 lowest? 8 of them are red states. And let's not forget that these are led primarily by what is referred to as the Bible Belt. As a recent National Center for Policy Analysis noted, "Nearly half of all marriages break up, but the divorce rates in these southern states are roughly 50 percent above the national average." Boy, I'm sure glad we've got these people to lecture us on family values, but one wonders how they get the time in between breaking up their own families!

So... are there any other (rational) arguments I've missed?

If there's anyone reading this who opposes gay marriage, I ask you: how do you justify your position? (And how do you sleep at night?)

Update: I added some more detail to the 'children' argument. (See also my new post on marriage and childrearing.) Several other arguments (including 'slippery slopes', 'opposing all state-sanctioned marriage', and the ever-present 'but I find it icky!' objection) are addressed in the comments section. The silly "marriage is defined as man + woman, so gay marriage is a contradiction" objection was discussed in my previous post.

Is there anything else?

Gay Marriage Analogies

Keith Burgess-Jackson of AnalPhilosopher explains why he is opposed to gay marriage:

I have said in this blog many times that the very idea of homosexual marriage is incoherent, which is why I put the word “marriage” in quotation marks. I do the same for dog “voting.” If we took our dogs to the polls and got them to push levers with their paws, they would not be voting. They would be going through the motions of voting. It would be a charade. Voting is not made for dogs. They lack the capacity to participate in the institution. The same is true of homosexuals and marriage.

This is the closest I've ever seen him get to providing an actual argument to supplement his anti-gay marriage rhetoric. It's a pity he doesn't provide a bit more detail, since as it stands it really isn't much of an argument. We have a bald assertion that homosexuals "lack the capacity to participate in" marriage, but no reasons are provided to back up this claim. All we have is the analogy. So let's examine that.

Chris at Mixing Memory has written a good post about this analogy already, noting that it has a quite powerful rhetorical effect despite being entirely groundless:

Gay people can marry. However, they can't marry members of the same sex. Dogs, on the other hand, can't vote for humans but not dogs. Furthermore, the difference in sexual orientation is hardly analogous to the difference in species. They are entirely different types of relations.

I'd like to add a few other crucial differences. The most obvious reason why dogs "lack the capacity" to vote is because they don't have the cognitive capabilities to even understand the concept. But of course gay people understanding what marriage is just as well as anybody else. A second reason might be that voting is a political institution and dogs don't engage in politics. To apply the analogy, I suppose we would say that marriage is a civil/social institution concerned with family relationships. Yet gay people do engage in civil society, relationships, and (if the bigots let them) families. So it seems clear that this is a strikingly inept analogy. About the only thing I can see in common here is that neither dog 'voting' nor gay marriage are currently permitted. I see no reason at all to think that these two prohibitions are equally justified.

But not all analogies are this bad. I'm sure we could do better than KBJ does in this case. Think about it. We have a traditionally persecuted minority group demanding to receive the same civil rights accorded to everyone else in the society. Frightened reactionaries proclaim such a break from tradition would spell doom for society. Ring any bells?

So how about this then: Gay "marriage" is like women "voting" (or, say, black people "not being slaves"). No doubt if KBJ had been around a century ago he would have argued that "Voting is not made for women. They lack the capacity to participate in the institution." Voting is defined as being between a male citizen and his polity. For females to 'vote' would be a contradiction in terms - "incoherent".

This analogy is far more useful, since the various relations within the two domains actually match up (always a good start). It has the added bonus of emphasising (in case it wasn't already obvious) just why KBJ's reaction here is unreasonable: Just because an institution has traditionally barred the participation of some group, it does not follow that it ought to do so. Perhaps the old 'definition' is unjust, and in need of revision.

KBJ's various comments about gay marriage are more fitting to a rhetorician than a philosopher. Unless he's willing to supplement his misleading rhetoric with something more closely approximating a coherent argument, perhaps it would be fitting for the rest of us to instead refer to his site as Anal-"Philosopher".

Update: To discuss the arguments against gay marriage, see my subsequent post.

Elsewhere, Ophelia Benson highlights how downright nasty KBJ's analogy is. Chris at Crooked Timber offers a (tongue-in-cheek) mention of recent research into animal voting behaviour. Upword has more on the analogy, and KBJ reacts badly.

True Contradictions

In a previous post I suggested that there might exist true contradictions. At least, I was not willing to rule out the possibility. Now I'm reconsidering my position. In order to do so, I want to consider the question: what would it mean for a true contradiction to exist? (How would the world have to be for us to describe it in such a way?) And to answer this I think we will need to delve into even murkier waters, addressing that perennial favourite, 'What is truth?'

I won't pretend to know all the answers to those questions. But I'm hoping that by exploring them here, I can sort out my thoughts a bit, and perhaps come to a better understanding of them. (This is one of those unplanned, 'off the top of my head' posts, where I'm making it up as I go along. You'll just have to bear with me. I should also mention that I'm woefully ignorant of the philosophical literature on this topic. Comments are especially welcome from those who know more about this stuff!)

Truth and Reality
I've always been a fan of the good old 'correspondence theory' of truth. A proposition is true if it corresponds to reality, and false otherwise. Fairly common-sensical stuff, it seems. Well, until you start to dwell on it a bit longer. For what, exactly, is the nature of this 'correspondence'? I understand this in terms of representations. A proposition represents some state of affairs. A proposition is true if the representation is an accurate one - that is, if the 'state of affairs' it describes actually exists in reality.

But here's the tricky thing: representations are incomplete. As discussed here, reality in its entirety is too much for us to deal with. To avoid information overload, we must abstract away the details and focus on just a few properties we deem 'important'. A single 'something' can be analysed in many different ways, all of which capture different aspects of it, and all of which we may wish to deem 'true'. Using the analytic knife, there is no limit to the ways in which we can cut up our handful of sand.

So there's no simple one-one correspondence here. A representation may highlight some aspect of reality, but it never fully captures "the whole thing". This makes me wonder if there is a problem with my above suggestion that a represented state of affairs can actually exist as reality. The represented SoA is ambiguous, vague and incomplete; what exists is not. Perhaps we can say that the SoA is a part of reality, and we need not be concerned about its incompleteness. But I think there is a more fruitful path we can take, and that is to admit that although no representation can perfectly describe reality, nevertheless some can describe it well enough for our purposes. Down this road lies Pragmatism, but let's see how far we can comfortably travel.

True or False?
By this view, something is true if it describes reality accurately enough for our purposes, and false otherwise. The standards required to fulfill that 'enough' will vary according to context. I could truly describe someone as 100kg, while their boxing coach - mindful of a tournment open only to those under 101kg - would consider my statement false, because they're actually closer to 102kg. There's not really any conflict here, it just depends what level of accuracy you're after. We can dispel the appearance of relativism by specifying the missing parameter: in this case, the degree of 'rounding' involved.

True and False?
Could there ever be a case of a true contradiction - that is, a sentence for which, once all the parameters are specified, we would still consider it both true and false?

I previously suggested that there might be. One reason for thinking this would be if we thought of truth as an independently-existing property which attaches to propositions. For if you think of falsity likewise (rather than as the mere absence of truth), then it would seem that we could attach both these properties at once. It may not be our usual way of thinking about things, but it could be done, and sense can be made of it all by way of paraconsistent logics. It's not entirely unmotivated either, since it's one way to resolve the notorious Liar Paradox.

But this may no longer hold up if we instead understand truth and reality in the way I described above. If representations are always incomplete approximations of reality, then you can never have a sentence with "all the parameters specified". We can always add more detail. So why would we ever stick with a contradiction?

It's just not useful to say that something is both true and false - both 'accurate enough' and yet not. If there's a real dispute over whether a representation is accurate enough, then that would seem to indicate that we're using the wrong representation. We should pull out our knives and make another cut.

Conclusion:
I guess what I'm really saying here is that if we ever found ourselves in a situation which we were tempted to describe in contradictory terms, then we should redescribe it in such a way that the contradiction goes away. Truth isn't something magical that exists out there in the world (though it is dependent upon physical reality - I'm not a total relativist!). Instead, it's something we apply to judge our models of the world. It's a property of our representations, not of concrete objects. So, since truth and falsity don't exist 'out there' in the world, nor do contradictions. Contradictions are merely properties of bad descriptions. Bad descriptions are not useful; they are not 'accurate enough for our purposes'. So, by this view, a contradiction cannot be true.

Upcoming Carnival

Don't forget, the 5th Philosophers' Carnival will be held on Monday. So start sending those submissions in!

[Updated to move to front.]

Re-Update: There's still time to make a last-minute submission if you haven't done so already. If you've got a recent post you like (that's relevant to philosophy - broadly understood), then let us know about it!

Representing Time

I recently posted about Dennett's attack on Cartesian Materialism in his book Consciousness Explained. An important consequence of rejecting the "theatre" metaphor of consciousness is that our subjective experience of time may not match up with the objective temporal order of our cognitive discriminations. If you perceive (i.e. mentally process) stimulus B after stimulus A in objective time, it could nevertheless pan out that in your conscious awareness you see B before A. And indeed several experiments have been conducted which demonstrate this bizarre effect.

One is the Colour Phi Phenomenon, where two different coloured dots (with some space between them) are flashed in rapid succession. It appears as if there is just a single moving dot which abruptly changes colour as it passes the midpoint. That is, it seems to us as if we see the second colour before the second dot is even displayed! (If you follow the link you can try it yourself. It does not seem to work on me - or perhaps it is my computer's fault - all I see is the two coloured dots which I would describe as flickering back and forth. But I think that is best understood as a theoretical construct on my part - I only infer movement, I don't observe it. I don't actually see a dot in any intermediate position, so I can't see any early colour change either. But this is a well-confirmed phenomenon, I am told.)

Another remarkable result is known as the "cutaneous rabbit". Here the subject receives a series of taps on the wrist followed by taps at a position higher up the arm - with up to 200 msec between each tap. Remarkably, it seems to the subject as if the taps were spatially spread out across a sequence of equidistant points, "as if a little animal were hopping along the arm" (p.143). Of course, if they received only the wrist taps then there would be no such effect. But then how is it that we are conscious of the moving 'hops' before [it seems that] the upper-arm taps have even occurred? It must be that the later discriminations somehow influence our subjective experience of the seemingly-earlier time.

The most striking example of all (though also quite controversial, as it has never been successfully replicated) is an experiment by Libet. Recall that: (1) it takes time for sensory messages to travel from the nerves in our left hand to the neurons in our brain's right hemisphere; and (2) stimulating your left cortex appropriately can produce the feeling of a tingle in your right hand. Now, Libet stimulated a patient's left cortex before their left hand, so we would expect that they would feel a tingle in their right hand first, followed by their left. But apparently some gave the opposite answer, demonstrating a significant incongruity between the objective sequence of brain events and the subjectively experienced order.



Although these results at first seem very bizarre, the mystery disappears once we distinguish between the 'vehicle' and 'content' of a representation. Dennett points out that we can represent time using a medium other than time itself. You can say "B occurs after A", and it represents the ordering (A,B) even though the sentence mentions them in the order (B,A). Similarly, the brain can represent time using something other than time itself. You can have a represented order of events (A,B) in your consciousness, even if the brain regions doing the representing processed the events in the opposite order.

What matters for the brain is not necessarily when individual representing events happen in various parts of the brain (as long as they happen in time to control the things that need controlling!) but their temporal content. That is, what matters is that the brain can proceed to control events "under the assumption that A happened before B" whether or not the information that A has happened enters the relevant system of the brain and gets recognised as such before or after the information that B has happened. (p.149)

This explains how an incongruence between objective and subjective time could occur, but we are still left wondering why. Dennett suggests the answer is found by reflecting on the brain's "fundamental task":

The brain's task is to guide the body it controls through a world of shifting conditions and sudden surprises, so it must gather information from that world and use it swiftly to "produce future" - to extract anticipations in order to stay one step ahead of disaster. (p.144)

Given the time pressure the brain is under, it could well be economical to represent temporal information using something less valuable than time itself.

But what? Some form of "date stamps" would be one (theoretical) possibility, but Dennett points out an even cheaper (and more biologically plausible) method, which he calls "content-sensitive settling". The basic idea is that various representations are 'jiggled' around together until their contents cohere - Dennett uses the analogy of a film studio 'synchronising' the sound track with the film.

Lastly: an important consequence of this view is that internal representations have no exact 'moment' of occurrence - they are both spatially and temporally 'smeared' through the brain. An object's colour might be represented in some places and times, its location and motion in others. There is no instant when it 'all comes together' in consciousness.

Moa

This is interesting:

Skeletal remains and other clues had previously put the moa population in New Zealand at around 159,000 at the time humans arrived, one thousand years ago. But the latest research suggests that there were between 3 and 12 million moa. If both numbers are correct, that means something else decimated the bird population before humans finished it off some 500 years ago.
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Few people doubt that New Zealand’s first human settlers drove the moa to extinction in record time by destroying their habitat with fire and hunting them for food. But something else must have driven the population down from millions to a mere 159,000.

Among the chief suspects, says Gemmell, are disease brought by migrating birds or birds that had been blown off course, and a traumatic geological event.
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The ancient forests are believed to have been impenetrable before foreign herbivores invaded them, thinning the vegetation. But if the new study is correct, then such vast numbers of moa could have had a similar impact on the forest, says Paul Scofield, curator of vertebrate zoology at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch.

“If they are right then a deer-infested forest would be closer to the original New Zealand forests,” he says.

Typing Slips

On the off chance that a linguist happens to fall across this blog...

I've heard that psycholinguists are interested in verbal slips, and what they can tell us about language cognition. Now, I originally (and accidentally, I swear!) typed "call" instead of "can" in that previous sentence, and had to go back and change it. In fact, I make typing slips like that quite often - especially if I'm tired and blogging late at night (both of which apply right now). So I was wondering... has there been any psycholinguistic research into typographical errors?

I would think that there's potential here for some interesting avenues of research. For example, do we make similar sorts of typing slips as we do verbal slips? Do people ever mistakenly type spoonerisms? Does phonology play a less crucial role in typing slips? Perhaps instead of saying a word that sounds similar to our intended one, we might type one that has a similar keyboard layout? (That would be interesting - suggesting that typists might develop a kinesthetic representation of words to complement the usual aural ones. Though I've never heard of anyone who 'types to themself' in their head instead of talking to themselves! Subconscious representations, perhaps?) Do semantic considerations play a greater role in verbal or typing slips? How about when we mistakenly jump ahead of ourselves and merge two words together (as would seem the most obvious explanation of my slip mentioned above) - is this more likely when typing?

That's just a few questions off the top of my head, there are surely many others worth pursuing. Do you know if anybody has pursued them yet?

The New Freedom

The traditional understanding of 'freedom' seems to involve merely a lack of external constraints. It rests on an implausible metaphysical foundation, whereby the free 'souls' of agents exert their transcendent/uncaused influence upon the material world. To obstruct the 'will' of such a free soul is, by this understanding, an intrinsic evil. Thus there is, I think, a link of sorts between metaphysical and political libertarianisms.

The metaphysical libertarians I have in mind view freedom as an all-or-nothing, permanent, internal trait. You've either got it (as an ensouled human being), or you're just a complex clockwork toy. Political libertarianism presupposes this picture of metaphysical freedom, and seeks to complement it with a laissez faire conception of political freedom. Their ideal is to allow each free soul to act as it pleases, with minimal intervention on the part of the State. Metaphysical freedom is internal, perfect, and inviolable. Political freedom is understood to be purely external (the internal 'soul' is off-limits) and purely negative: external influences are to be minimised - you cannot add freedom, you can only take it away.

(This is a somewhat exaggerated caricature, of course, but you get the basic idea.)

I don't think this is a good way to think about freedom. A better approach, I think, is to start off with a more moderate, compatibilist account of freedom. We should focus on making a variety of choices available to people, and overcoming the barriers (whether external or internal) to making rational and well-informed decisions. We should no longer consider the 'soul' as sacred and inviolable. Nor should we consider the external environment as irrelevant to the realisation of metaphysical freedom. (In fact, I wonder if it might be worthwhile to break down the barrier between so-called 'metaphysical' and 'political' freedoms, replacing them with one, unified concept.)

In any case, Laissez faire is not enough; sometimes positive action needs to be taken to maximize freedom. Rousseau was right to note the possibility, paradoxical though it sounds, of being "forced to be free".

This new conception of freedom has some interesting and important consequences. First of all, it implies - as I've previously argued - that considerations of free will do not alleviate the problem of evil; instead, they make it even worse for the theist!

But I'm more interested in the political consequences. I explored this a bit in my previous post on Liberty & Independence. I later came across a wonderful article by Julian Baggini which makes a similar point:

We should accept that our power to choose freely is more subtly affected by the pressures society puts on us. We can only choose what is on offer, and we are all too susceptible to persuasion by people who conceal their own vested interests and don't have our best ones at heart.

To maximise our freedom, therefore, we should be interested in creating a society in which we have the maximum power to make choices for ourselves. That may require us to limit the extent to which influences that are corrosive to freedom are allowed to operate.

This is where the language of paternalism and the nanny state misleads us. It reflects an old-fashioned, deferential view of political power in which there is a great divide between the governed and the government.

'Liberal' parties might do well to emphasise this fact, highlighting why they are deserving of the name. For example, The Enlightenment Project proposes that Democrats frame themselves as the 'freedom' party:

Some conservatives think that liberals fail to recognize that people are responsible for their actions. The opposite is the case. Liberals distinguish between the consequences of individual's choices for which they are responsible and the consequences of conditions that they did not choose for which they are not responsible. Liberalism is not about care and compassion--it is about fighting against Nature (red in tooth and claw) which deals out people's hands arbitrarily and limits their options. It is about making the world a more rational place by fighting against the arbitrary constraints imposed by dumb luck, in the interest of expanding individual freedom so that individuals, insofar as possible, can live the kinds of lives they choose. [Emphasis added]

(Belle Waring is also trying to sell the Democratic party to Libertarians, though I think she more or less sticks to their traditional understanding of freedom.)

What I find really fascinating about all this is that it overturns the traditional concerns about transhumanism (using technology to enhance human abilities - including our cognitive abilities). Kip Werking at the Garden of Forking Paths has a radical and thought-provoking post which makes just this point:

[Suppose] I can press a button and create a human whose every choice I already know to be good... Indeed, I have the ability to create a society in which no crime every happens, yet the citizens satisfy the most stringent requirements for (hard) compatibilist freedom.

I do not think concerns about freedom should prevent me from pressing that button. My feeling is that, if we must choose between paradise and freedom, so much the less for freedom. I feel confident in this position not just because I would be reducing evil in the world, but also because the alternative does not seem to offer in any more freedom. That nature randomly or blindly created a person does not seem to enhance the freedom that we already grant them. Indeed, the only advantage that resisting such manipulation would seem to have is disguising the degree to which we are already un-free.
...
Although any freedom agents have cannot be greater than if their lives were created by design, we might have more freedom than we do now. Some manipulated agents enjoy more freedom than other manipulated agents. We can imagine how posthumans would be able to satisfy even stricter requirements for free will (more elaborate hierarchies, more sophisticated mechanisms, etc.) than we do today. Their superhuman mental abilities would give them greater freedom of choice and more opportunities than we have now. Perhaps these benefits of future technologies would compensate, somewhat, for any adverse impact they have upon our conventional sense of freedom.

Update: One way to summarize my point in this post would be to say that freedom should be understood as quantitative, rather than merely qualitative. Once we have a plausible theory of just what freedom is, in (meta)physical and quantifiable terms, we can then seek to devise a political system which will allow us to maximize that freedom.

To put it in ethical terms, we no longer need to treat freedom 'deontologically', as if the very act of impeding a free soul's 'will' is an intrinsic evil. One can take a more nuanced view instead, a sort of consequentialism, where you compare various possible states of affairs and judge that one is better (contains more freedom) than the other. One could perhaps devise a utilitarian-style theory from this, but with the 'utiles' measuring degrees of freedom rather than the usual pleasure/happiness.

Of course, as with all consequentialist theories, we must still be cautious of those who claim "the ends justify the means". It's fine if their ends really do justify their means. But it seems to me that most times this maxim is brought up, the 'ends' in question actually fail to counterbalance all the terrible (often unforeseen) consequences of their 'means'. So that's my pre-emptive response to concerns that the view of freedom I've advocated here could be used to justify totalitarian dystopias. If it's really that bad, then it probably doesn't contain the large amount of freedom that would be needed to justify it on this view.

2nd Update: I note with interest a paper by Sunstein & Thaler on Libertarian Paternalism - I've only read the abstract so far, but it sounds like it could tie in nicely with my discussion here.