There's an interesting discussion of 'agent causation' accounts of free will at "OrangePhilosophy" (yet another philosophy weblog) by Jeremy (the last name isn't given at that point, but I'm fairly sure it's Pierce). The problem proposed is an interesting one. The most reasonable move by the 'agent causation' people, I think, would be to deny that events, properly speaking, are either causes or effects. In other words, causation is not a relation between events; the only relations between events are relations like spatial and temporal contiguity (before, after, overlapping, etc.).
Nor would this be an unreasonable move. This whole 'event causation is the only causation' fad was, one could argue, started (unintentionally) by Malebranche in the 17th century. He did it in order to attack what he considered to be the idolatrous notion that creaturely substances could be true causes. To put it in other words: event-based accounts of causation come into their own when people starting denying that the earlier (largely scholastic) accounts of causation in the created world. Malebranche still held that this older account of causation was the account of true or real causes; creatures were not true causes but occasional causes, i.e., 'causation' for creatures consists of events organized by laws governing God's activity. He gives a number of arguments to supplement his conclusion, the most famous being the case of billiard balls hitting each other on a table. (Malebranche, we are told, was very good at billiards.)
Berkeley takes up something similar, but extends true causality to all spirits (he is very explicit about this move). I suspect it is from Berkeley that Reid originally picks up his notion of an agent, although I don't know for sure. (This would be a good thing to research; I'll have to think about it more.)
Hume does away with what Malebranche and Berkeley considered true causation, and just keeps what they considered to be the derivative causation of creatures (Malebranche) or sensible objects (Berkeley). (Hume, of course, is closer to Berkeley's version, but he uses a number of Malebranche's arguments, including the billiard ball argument.) He also, I suspect (there needs to be more research on this), is the one responsible for the rise of popularity in discussions of causation in terms of events (although he wouldn't have been the only one). Analytic philosophers tend to accept the event causation = causation view because they are uncritically Humean on this point. Unlike Hume, however, they don't realize how limited the set of kinds of relations events can have to each other really is. Hume's recognition of this is the key to the entire Humean account of causation. What makes the Humean account of causation so strong is that, if you once start thinking of causation entirely in terms of events, you are pretty much committed to the path Hume takes, unless you inconsistently splice your 'event causation' with elements of (e.g.) an 'agent causation' account.
People who advocate what are commonly called 'agent causation' accounts of free will usually don't take this road; they more or less accept the event causation orthodoxy but add another kind of causation on top of it. This need not be inconsistent; it can only be inconsistent (to return to the author's argument) if event causation is fundamentally deterministic. This is another issue with which I have problems for related reasons, but I'll leave those out. [[LATER NOTE: I just realized that the first sentence is vague; "this road" is the alternative of denying that 'causation' actually applies to events.]]
Jeremy has a closely related post at "Parableman," also worth reading. Actually, I find I like a lot of Jeremy's posts, so I'll probably put his weblogs up on my weblog list, as soon as I get around to it.
Sunday, June 27, 2004
Practical Doubts about Reason
I'm a bit surprised people interested in the practical applications of epistemological issues haven't spent more time looking at Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. The running theme of the play is the difficulty of distinguishing true perception from self-deception in the case of romantic love. Consider the following speech by Lysander in the second act:
The irony, of course, is that Lysander loved Hermia but has been addled by the flower "love in idleness". But this is not quite the whole story, because the flower turns things to right as well. The point, of course, is not magic flowers but rationality and irrationality in love.
Content with Hermia? No, I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia but Helena I love.
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
The will of man is by his reason swayed,
And reason says you are the worthier maid.
Things growing are not ripe until their season;
So I, being young, till now ripe not to reason.
And touching now the point of human skill,
Reason becomes the marshal to my will,
And leads me to your eyes,where I o'erlook
Love's stories written in love's richest book.
The irony, of course, is that Lysander loved Hermia but has been addled by the flower "love in idleness". But this is not quite the whole story, because the flower turns things to right as well. The point, of course, is not magic flowers but rationality and irrationality in love.
Non-violent Punishment
There is a fascinating discussion at "Ruthless Precision" suggesting a "Society for the Non-Violent Punishment of Rapists". The name is a bit misleading, since the society would not be concerned with what sort of punishment the state should dole out in response to rape, but would instead be "a grass-roots association that will include all people who care about the horror of rape and are willing to live like it is truly evil." The goal of the society would be to make rape unthinkable.
I like the idea, although I have a few quibbles with the way it is set up here. What seems to be covered by "non-violent punishment" is shaming and spurning as a response to (alleged) rape. I don't see how this would do much towards the goal of the society. We already do, to some extent, shame and spurn rapists and alleged rapists; we could definitely use shaming and spurning to a greater extent, but I'm not convinced that this would do all that much to deter rape, which should be the great priority. For one thing, how many people actually have much warrant for thinking anyone they know to be a possible rapist? Some, perhaps, but in general rape is a clandestine wrong; most of us are only put in a situation of this sort by accident. There needs to be something more systematic and more preemptive than just appeals to people in this sort of situation to use social punishment ('social punishment' is, I think, a better label than 'non-violent punishment'). The most obvious point, I think, is to come up with a way to deal, systematically, with cases where the media (music, movies, and the like) are ambiguous about rape. There needs to be a stronger anti-rape message in our culture generally. But there are probably other possibilities, less obvious, that could be part of the approach.
I like the idea, although I have a few quibbles with the way it is set up here. What seems to be covered by "non-violent punishment" is shaming and spurning as a response to (alleged) rape. I don't see how this would do much towards the goal of the society. We already do, to some extent, shame and spurn rapists and alleged rapists; we could definitely use shaming and spurning to a greater extent, but I'm not convinced that this would do all that much to deter rape, which should be the great priority. For one thing, how many people actually have much warrant for thinking anyone they know to be a possible rapist? Some, perhaps, but in general rape is a clandestine wrong; most of us are only put in a situation of this sort by accident. There needs to be something more systematic and more preemptive than just appeals to people in this sort of situation to use social punishment ('social punishment' is, I think, a better label than 'non-violent punishment'). The most obvious point, I think, is to come up with a way to deal, systematically, with cases where the media (music, movies, and the like) are ambiguous about rape. There needs to be a stronger anti-rape message in our culture generally. But there are probably other possibilities, less obvious, that could be part of the approach.
The Reporting Trees (LFPA)
Citation: John King-Farlow. "Two Dogmas of Linguistic Empiricism." Dialogue vol. XI, no. 3 (1972) 325-336.
Summary: (General Overview) Taking his start from comments by Hampshire and Quine, King-Farlow identifies two 'dogmas' about what it is to speak or to be a speaker:
I. If we have a case of a rational speaker we must then have a being with a self-concept (or something similar).
II. If we have a case of a rational speaker of a rule-governed language learnable by others, then this being must have learned it from others and must use it primarily or almost entirely in interaction with others whom he knows to be fellow-speakers of the language.
King-Farlow's article is an attempt to show that these dogmas are "confusedly anthropocentric" (326); in particular, they contribute to confusing [a] the truth that typical human speakers are typical human speakers with [b] the falsehood that typically rational speakers must closely resemble typical human speakers. He will do this by arguing that "a description of possible beings that would be rational speakers" (326) satisfy almost all the requirements for rational speech noted by Bennett in Rationality. ("The idea of rationality is that of the ability, given certain present and particular data, to unite or relate them wit other data in certain appropriate ways..." - Bennett, quoted p. 327).
(The Parable of the Reporting Trees) The "description of possible beings that would be rational speakers" opens with this:
Long story short, the appendages of the trees turns out to be sufficiently analogous to a nervous system to make the explorers think they should look into leaf-rustlings of The Reporting Trees as a matter of linguistic research. The (tentative) conclusion of their work: 1) The trees can respond to visual and auditory stimuli if they occur between about 400 and 600 yards away. 2) Within this field the trees can correctly a)discriminate relative distances; b) state the number of objects of certain kinds; c) state the number of times a 'thing of a sort' is seen within a 10-second 'now' or within the previous period of up to 50 time units (where a time-unit is 21/53 of a minute). 3) If one tree gives a statement the same tree or another tree sometimes gives something like a correction, indicating the truth value of the statement and the reasons for assigning the truth values. 4) The trees do not appear to distinguish in any way their own statements and the statements of other trees. Further research suggests that, while a certain amount of contact with the trees is possible, they seem to be equipped only for the types of statements indicated in (1) - (4).
King-Farlow then considers a handful of minor protestations and argues against them. I pass over to the conclusions drawn.
(Moral of the Parable) King-Farlow draws several conclusions from his parable.
(C1) "Speaking what dserves to be called a language requires no concept of Self, no concept of myself-versus-others, no Cogito ergo sum, no Transcendental Unity of Apperception." (p. 333)
(C2) "Unfortunately for Strawson's anthropocentrism, we have seen that there is no need for our Reporting Trees to think of themselves as having a point of reference within the spatiotemporal network which interests them. They just do identify and reidentify things like crows well enough for them to count and state accurately the numbers of birds of various kinds that appear in the network within anything up to fifty of their time units, to make meta-stateemtns about such calculations, to give reasons, referring only to what goes on in a spatial framework in which they do not participate, etc. More important, human beings just do understand a tale about such hypothetical organisms. Humans just are capable of analogical thinking about language, meaning, identification, vision and much else. And this precious human capacity for analogical thinking seems to have been better appreciated by alleged obscurantists of the Middle Ages than by Renaissance humanists or our modern anthropo-eccentrics." (p. 334) Strictly speaking, the last sentence isn't essential to the argument, but I love it too much to let it go.
(C3) "Having to learn language from older members of one's linguistic community and mainly using language to interact with other members in societal ways may be essential to men as linguistic beings. But neither is essential for a language user qua language user." (p. 334)
(C4) "Insofar as Wittgenstein in his so influential Philosophical Investigations or Norman Malcolm in commentary seems to suggest that the rule-governed use of language can only be ascribed either to human beings or to what look and behave very like humans as they behave in interacting groups, intending to influence each otehr, they are wrong." (p. 335)
(C5) With respect to (Gricean/Searlean) attempts to link meaning qua meaning and language qua language to intentions, performative intention, etc.: "The Reptorting Trees have no such intentions, ahving no concept of Self-versus-Others, but they speak much and mean plenty. It just conceivably might be objected that a Reporting Tree intends to influence itself: but since, ex hypothesi, it has no concept of Self, it has no concept of me-affecting myself either." (pp. 335-336)
(Conclusion) King-Farlow concludes:
I will give my thoughts on this interesting article in the comments section.
Summary: (General Overview) Taking his start from comments by Hampshire and Quine, King-Farlow identifies two 'dogmas' about what it is to speak or to be a speaker:
I. If we have a case of a rational speaker we must then have a being with a self-concept (or something similar).
II. If we have a case of a rational speaker of a rule-governed language learnable by others, then this being must have learned it from others and must use it primarily or almost entirely in interaction with others whom he knows to be fellow-speakers of the language.
King-Farlow's article is an attempt to show that these dogmas are "confusedly anthropocentric" (326); in particular, they contribute to confusing [a] the truth that typical human speakers are typical human speakers with [b] the falsehood that typically rational speakers must closely resemble typical human speakers. He will do this by arguing that "a description of possible beings that would be rational speakers" (326) satisfy almost all the requirements for rational speech noted by Bennett in Rationality. ("The idea of rationality is that of the ability, given certain present and particular data, to unite or relate them wit other data in certain appropriate ways..." - Bennett, quoted p. 327).
(The Parable of the Reporting Trees) The "description of possible beings that would be rational speakers" opens with this:
Neo-Quinean linguistic explorers lost deep in the Amazon jungle try to take refuge from irate, rabbit-worshipping tribesmen, who consider it blasphemous for aliens to utter their sacred sound "Gavagai." An ecumenical witch-doctor, sympathetic even to Skinnerian Scripture, directs the fugitives to an invariably respected sanctuary which, he truthfully tells them, is called by the tribe The Inviolable Wood of The Reporting Trees. Twenty closely bunched and meagre trees, forming a slightly curved line, remind one newcomer a little of a William Blake illustration for Dante's Wood of the Self-Murderers: are they not equipped with what appear to be eyes and ears? This interpretation of the arboric appendages is held in scorn by most of our long confined and bored field-linguists until statistical analyses are applied (initially as a joke) to certain rustle-regularities of the trees' leaves, sounding in motion. There is hardly any wind which could even begin to account for this motion.
Long story short, the appendages of the trees turns out to be sufficiently analogous to a nervous system to make the explorers think they should look into leaf-rustlings of The Reporting Trees as a matter of linguistic research. The (tentative) conclusion of their work: 1) The trees can respond to visual and auditory stimuli if they occur between about 400 and 600 yards away. 2) Within this field the trees can correctly a)discriminate relative distances; b) state the number of objects of certain kinds; c) state the number of times a 'thing of a sort' is seen within a 10-second 'now' or within the previous period of up to 50 time units (where a time-unit is 21/53 of a minute). 3) If one tree gives a statement the same tree or another tree sometimes gives something like a correction, indicating the truth value of the statement and the reasons for assigning the truth values. 4) The trees do not appear to distinguish in any way their own statements and the statements of other trees. Further research suggests that, while a certain amount of contact with the trees is possible, they seem to be equipped only for the types of statements indicated in (1) - (4).
King-Farlow then considers a handful of minor protestations and argues against them. I pass over to the conclusions drawn.
(Moral of the Parable) King-Farlow draws several conclusions from his parable.
(C1) "Speaking what dserves to be called a language requires no concept of Self, no concept of myself-versus-others, no Cogito ergo sum, no Transcendental Unity of Apperception." (p. 333)
(C2) "Unfortunately for Strawson's anthropocentrism, we have seen that there is no need for our Reporting Trees to think of themselves as having a point of reference within the spatiotemporal network which interests them. They just do identify and reidentify things like crows well enough for them to count and state accurately the numbers of birds of various kinds that appear in the network within anything up to fifty of their time units, to make meta-stateemtns about such calculations, to give reasons, referring only to what goes on in a spatial framework in which they do not participate, etc. More important, human beings just do understand a tale about such hypothetical organisms. Humans just are capable of analogical thinking about language, meaning, identification, vision and much else. And this precious human capacity for analogical thinking seems to have been better appreciated by alleged obscurantists of the Middle Ages than by Renaissance humanists or our modern anthropo-eccentrics." (p. 334) Strictly speaking, the last sentence isn't essential to the argument, but I love it too much to let it go.
(C3) "Having to learn language from older members of one's linguistic community and mainly using language to interact with other members in societal ways may be essential to men as linguistic beings. But neither is essential for a language user qua language user." (p. 334)
(C4) "Insofar as Wittgenstein in his so influential Philosophical Investigations or Norman Malcolm in commentary seems to suggest that the rule-governed use of language can only be ascribed either to human beings or to what look and behave very like humans as they behave in interacting groups, intending to influence each otehr, they are wrong." (p. 335)
(C5) With respect to (Gricean/Searlean) attempts to link meaning qua meaning and language qua language to intentions, performative intention, etc.: "The Reptorting Trees have no such intentions, ahving no concept of Self-versus-Others, but they speak much and mean plenty. It just conceivably might be objected that a Reporting Tree intends to influence itself: but since, ex hypothesi, it has no concept of Self, it has no concept of me-affecting myself either." (pp. 335-336)
(Conclusion) King-Farlow concludes:
Man already has a broader concept of language and of meaning than many terrestrially land-locked 'naturalists' are predisposed to allow. Man has the intelligence and conceptual fertility to grow much further in wisdom (scientifically as well as philosophically) about language and meaning. If or whenman meets linguistic organisms very different from himself, he should nto be handicapped by parocial apriorities. Philosophers should not try to sell their intellectual birthright for a mess of stale, anthropocentric pottage.
I will give my thoughts on this interesting article in the comments section.
The Writing on the Wall
Insular Majuscule- You are spiritual and well
rounded. People look to you for advice, but
sometimes find you difficult to understand.
What Calligraphy Hand Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
The script never lies....
The Land of Forgotten Philosophy Articles (LFPA)
One of the flaws of the journal-article system is that if a journal article doesn't catch people's interests immediately, it fades away - or, rather, molders away - lost in some library stack no one ever sees, never unearthed, rarely if ever cited. There are (unfortunately) a lot of journal articles for which this is probably best, but there are articles that get lost in the shuffle that are interesting and worth reading. Now, I have a stack of old journals, especially Dialogue and Philosophy of Science, that need to be put to some sort of use if I'm to justify keeping them, so I'm thinking about starting a series of posts on precisely this. In these posts I'll be citing, summarizing, and evaluating journal articles that I think should be more widely considered. Some of them will be very lost, some might be recognizable but rarely given much attention any more, some might be fairly well known but rarely actually read; but I'll be doing my little bit for them all. The series will be marked by the letters "LFPA" in the headline.
Philosophy (&c.) Weblogs
I'm still sorting out what weblogs I want to put on my sidebar; here are the philosophy weblogs I am currently considering. They're all good, but I really only want to put on my sidebar weblogs I'll actually look at regularly, so they are, as it were, in the testing phase.
Experimental Philosophy
Certain Doubts
Prosblogion
Fake Barn Country
Personal Knowledge
They're all good; but several of them are analytic epistemology, and so have discussions that, while interesting in themselves, are not my cup of tea, i.e., discussions to which I would be unlikely to have any response save my usual cynical skepticism about analytic approaches - which is certainly not the most constructive sort of participation for me or anyone else. So I'll still mostly be doing my own thing, and will just see if I find any of these turn out to be more than just occasional reads.
Other (broader interest) weblogs I'm looking at include
Ruthless Precision
God of the Machine
as well as the Ravishing Light website noted in an earlier post.
Experimental Philosophy
Certain Doubts
Prosblogion
Fake Barn Country
Personal Knowledge
They're all good; but several of them are analytic epistemology, and so have discussions that, while interesting in themselves, are not my cup of tea, i.e., discussions to which I would be unlikely to have any response save my usual cynical skepticism about analytic approaches - which is certainly not the most constructive sort of participation for me or anyone else. So I'll still mostly be doing my own thing, and will just see if I find any of these turn out to be more than just occasional reads.
Other (broader interest) weblogs I'm looking at include
Ruthless Precision
God of the Machine
as well as the Ravishing Light website noted in an earlier post.
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