h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Chunk 5


//One distinction I drew which seems absent from the above is that between product and process. Whether a given belief at
time t is causally implicated in adaptive behaviour is not the issue, nor is the percentage so implicated in modern living.//

Sorry you have rather lost me here. Since text (a) (and my and Churchland's variants thereof) are /specifically/ about
beliefs that /are/ implicated in a causal chain leading to an adaptive behavior. Nor have I suggested that the adaptive
behaviour is a 'product' of the causal chain. I would see any element (event) in the causal as an effect of a previous cause
and the cause of a subsequent effect. So the notion of an individual event as 'product' is wholly consistent with the notion
of the causal chain as process.

I agree hat it is meaningless to try to put a value on the number of beliefs that are part of a an adaptive causal chain
expressed as a percentage of /all/ beliefs that are part of 'modern living' but as this forms no part of my argument the
relevance of your comment is somewhat obscure.

//The issue is the development of our /processes/ via evolution, where adaptive behaviour is part of the mechanism, and I
have also drawn attention to the cultural prostheses we employ to compensate for ensuing glitches and biases, for example the
scientific method.//

I have no problem with seeing evolution as a process indeed if we take as a high level statement like:

(1) Descent with modification from a common ancestor or gene pool.

Then this usefully describes a causal process produces 'endless forms most beautiful'.

Where I disagree with you is that I would not characterise a cognitive bias like neglect of probability as a 'glitch' when
it leads to adaptive behaviour with results in consequential reproductive success.

For example, in my gedanken, the chance of the stimulus being due to a tiger is only 10% whereas the chance of it being a
kudu is 90%. However, a cognitive bias that leads one always to behave as if it were tiger is more likely to result in
reproductive that to behave as if it were a kudu. My version of text (a):

'The common element is that evolution selects for adaptive behaviour that promotes reproductive fitness and if beliefs are
implicated in the adaptive behaviour then in evolutionary terms it is their contribution, in a given context, to the
promotion of reproductive fitness rather than their truth value that is important.'

is saying that.

Final chunk:


//That wasn't my point, rather I was pointing out that if her utterance admits of more than one interpretation then it is
ambiguous, and it clearly does since truth in the form of bumping into reality could be what takes the hindmost in the race
for accurate beliefs.//

Surely in Churchland's version the race is for success in feeding, fighting and 'reproducing' and from the point of view of the
prey establishing truth of whether the stimulus was due to a tiger or a kudu seems contraindicated because there is a 1 in 10
chance that all any possibility of success in three Fs would be abruptly terminated.

//I don't see why her shift from the imperative clears up the ambiguity, but as you say, we are unlikely to agree.//

Unlike you I don't see an ambiguity simply because 'hindmost' occurs in the idiom a Churchland's text. The use of the
imperative implies that the 'Devil is an agent/actor with respect to those fleeing. Whereas Churchland's text 'takes' is
consistent with the reflexive 'takes the hindmost position with respect to the three Fs. But as you say we almost certainly
won't agree there seems little point in pursuing the matter.

//I just lost the first attempt when posting. It just disappeared. I had pasted some of it to a document but I might have
missed some where I agreed that I'd come round to your view on meaning vs truth value, I'm frustrated with this platform so
apologies for typos etc. //

It is quite frustrating which is why a I now compose in Notepad and use the 'select all' then copy and paste selection.

If you know a 'better hole' quite happy to migrate

Any typos in the due to a lackadaisical proofreading.

Had to bowdlerise third f in original text in to 'reproductng' as original blocked because 'offensive to some'

Problem seems to have been caused by something embedded in original chunk 2.

Must away

bs

Hi Bx4,

I've been a bit busy but will reply.

ttfn

hi psi

me too. So no need to rush.

bs

Hi Bx4,

Am working on a reply.

Am I missing a 'chunk 4'?

ttfn

Hi psi

I'll have to check but original version was composed in Notepad so if there is omitted 'chunk4' it should still be there.

bs

hi psi

No 'chunk 4' mea culpa.

No hurry for reply as we are biking to Berlin for weekend then I will be somewhat busy at work until lthe following weekend.

Read an odd article in NS about 'Boltzmann Brains'. If they exist the 'ultraDarwinian fundamentalists' would seem to be Uscwp.

bs

Hi Bx4,

Sorry for the long delay, I've been preoccupied by gigs and rehearsals and the like.

I'll reply in short bursts as the system still seems erratic:

"It was not intended as such but a comment on the (subordinate) discussion about whether one can legitimately assert that
scientific theories are true if they contain sentence which may prove to be false or unverifiable."
The issue is whether they are truth-apt. I have been arguing for taking the proposition E as unspecified but for the sake of argument a truth-apt rump of the MES.

"I searched using 'cognitive bias' which you have used here. I don't think that an 'over sensitive agent detector bias' is
not synonymous with 'cognitive bias'. "
I'm not sure what you mean here. I think an over sensitive agent detector is a kind of cognitive bias.

"In an case the last iteration of my tiger gedanken does not presuppose an 'over active
agent detector' but rather one cannot distinguish between the aural sinature of a kudu or a tiger moving through heavy
jungle."
Fair enough. I'd run away too, but if I do so just in case then I'm unclear as to how this shows my belief forming systems to be unreliable.

"However, I think in terms of beliefs implicated in the causal chain leading to adaptive behaviour the idea that it is a
violation of 'the normative rules for making decisions' is problematic. A decision that a particular stimulus is probably due
to a kudu and flight is unnecessary is less of a survival behaviour than a decision to flee whenever an ambiguous tige/kudu
stimulus is experienced. "
That is in itself a belief which seems to be true and useful and so seems to support our belief forming systems being reliable.

Fingers crossed this works.

ttfn

Hi Bx4,
"Since instrumentalism (and, more generally, conventionalism) explicitly excludes reference to concepts lie truth and reality, I am somewhat unclear how this is compatible with your earlier comment ''...the we have no warrant for our beliefs (including' the theory of evolution itself). ' given:

'Warrant is that "whatever precisely it it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. S knows that p, therefore, if an only if, S's belief that P is warranted and that p is true.'

[Taken from a paper' Warrant Entails Truth'; Trenton Merricks; Philosophy and Phenomenological Research55 (1995): 841-
855. Original link omitted as this might be what caused posting problem]

So in this sense any epistemic grounds which presuppose some notion of truth would seem to be quite distinct from and
incompatible with those which don't."

I enjoyed Merricks' paper, thanks!

My point is that even if we don't talk of truth we still have to decide whether a theory is useful. So I don't see how epistemic concerns can be waved away by instrumentalism, how do we know the MES is useful?

ttfn
I

Hi psi

Been sailing up the Gulf of Bothnia to to visit the nereids including a stop over in Pori for a bit of enjoyable windsurfing in Pori and a some less successful kitesurfing .

Unfortunatel, my. SO had accidentally (?) forgotten her magic 3G dongle access limited to moorings/towns with wifi access as my iPad 2 not the model with 3G.

Fortunately, Oulu being one of the most hi-tech cities in Finland has the superb panOULU free public access wi-fi network

Arrived in Oulu at start of the 18th annual Air Guitar World Championships:

http://www.airguitarworldchampionships.com/

So mind mind is not focused on the intricacies of truth, warrant and instrumentalism at the moment.


bs

hi psi

'warrant': Sorry I appear inadvertently to have sent you down a blind alley on this one. I was using 'warrant' in the /ordinary/ language sense:

'Warrant: n. Justification for an action or a belief; grounds'

rather than some recondite filosfickal humptydumptyish redefinition.


'Merrick' I have not yet managed to read it. However. the quote 'Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.” seems to echo Plantinga and seems to have more than a whiff of the petitio principio about it since it seems to presuppose that some distinction between true belief and knowledge exists.

'Epistemic concerns': I suppose it depends how one defines 'epistemic concerns'. Given that:


'//Instrumentalism// is the methodological view in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science that concepts and theories are merely //useful instruments//, and their //worth// is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are //true// or //false// (Instrumentalism denies that theories are //truth-evaluable//), or whether they //correctly depict reality//, but by how effective they are in //explaining// and/or //predicting// phenomena.'
(adapted slightly from the entry in 'The Basics of Philosophy' website)

So an instrumentalist approach would not need to make any assumptions about 'truth' whatever that means) and reality (whatever that is). I take the view that it is simply the extension of Ockham's Razor to scientific method which eliminates unnecessary philosophical entities.

'useful': From the above definition the MES is useful precisely insofar as it explains and/or predicts observed evolutionary phenomena.


bs

Hi Bx4,
I missed this on the first series of replies:

"Unlike you I don't see an ambiguity simply because 'hindmost' occurs in the idiom a Churchland's text. The use of the
imperative implies that the 'Devil is an agent/actor with respect to those fleeing. Whereas Churchland's text 'takes' is
consistent with the reflexive 'takes the hindmost position with respect to the three Fs. But as you say we almost certainly
won't agree there seems little point in pursuing the matter. "
No I don't think so, the imperative exhorts the hearer of the adage to get a move on but the context is different here. If Churchland had used a phrase like "takes a back seat" there would have been no ambiguity.

Hi Bx4,

Glad you've been having some lovely trips.

"'Merrick' I have not yet managed to read it. However. the quote 'Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.” seems to echo Plantinga and seems to have more than a whiff of the petitio principio about it since it seems to presuppose that some distinction between true belief and knowledge exists."
I think that there are other reasons to suppose a distinction between knowledge and JTB, so I suspect you might have an over zealous petitio detector

"'Epistemic concerns': I suppose it depends how one defines 'epistemic concerns'. "
How do we know the MES is useful? How do we know its explanations or predictions are any good?

ttfn

hi psi

'lovely trips': I am a fan of Oulu (in summer at least) but I am afraid the Air Guitar Festival palled and I did not bother to attend the finals. Not being of the 'airist' tendency I began to wonder about the point. of it all.

'other reasons': There may well be but this does not preclude there being more than a whiff of the petitio principii in:

'Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.”

Since if one treats this a premiss then it presupposes that 'warrant' (whatever that is) exists and that is all that is required for petitio principii:

'I. Petitio Principii: (circular reasoning, circular argument, begging the question) in general, the fallacy of assuming as a premiss a statement which has the same meaning as the conclusion.' (Lander: Philosophy 103: Introduction to Logic )

So surely to avoid the whiff the premiss should be couched as a conditional?

'a distinction between knowledge and JTB': Just to note the premiss does not mention JTB but rather '/mere/ true belief' (emphasis added).

'useful...any good': By the efficacy of with which it explains and (albeit to a lesser extent) predicts the phenomena. I'm not persuaded that adding 'truth' (whatever that means) or 'truth + warrant' (whatever that means) or that using either to link the phenomena to some notion of 'reality' (whatever that means) adds anything useful.

'epistemic concerns': I'm still not clear what you mean by this and what relevance it has in terms of an instrumentatlist/conventionailst mode of scientific theories.

bs

Hi Bx4,


>>'other reasons': There may well be but this does not preclude there being more than a whiff of the petitio principii in:

'Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.”

Since if one treats this a premiss then it presupposes that 'warrant' (whatever that is) exists and that is all that is required for petitio principii:

'I. Petitio Principii: (circular reasoning, circular argument, begging the question) in general, the fallacy of assuming as a premiss a statement which has the same meaning as the conclusion.' (Lander: Philosophy 103: Introduction to Logic )

So surely to avoid the whiff the premiss should be couched as a conditional?

'a distinction between knowledge and JTB': Just to note the premiss does not mention JTB but rather '/mere/ true belief' (emphasis added).<<
I disagree. If this were a premiss in a formal argument seeking to prove the existence of warrant then you'd have a point, but it is an informal definition of 'warrant' near the beginning of a paper discussing the issue. There is no petitio principii here.

>>'useful...any good': By the efficacy of with which it explains and (albeit to a lesser extent) predicts the phenomena. I'm not persuaded that adding 'truth' (whatever that means) or 'truth + warrant' (whatever that means) or that using either to link the phenomena to some notion of 'reality' (whatever that means) adds anything useful.

'epistemic concerns': I'm still not clear what you mean by this and what relevance it has in terms of an instrumentatlist/conventionailst mode of scientific theories.<<
An epistemic concern is: how do we know that theory X is useful?

ttfn

hi psi

//I disagree. If this were a premiss in a formal argument seeking to prove the existence of warrant then you'd have a point, but it is an informal definition of 'warrant' near the beginning of a paper discussing the issue. There is no petitio principii here.//

I am not clear as to why you think a premiss only occurs in a 'formal argument' since:

'Informal logic is an attempt to develop a logic that can assess and analyze the arguments that occur in natural language (“everyday,” “ordinary language”) discourse.'

and:

'Like classical logic, most work in informal logic has understood an argument as an attempt to present evidence for a conclusion. /It does so by providing premises (“propositions” or claims or some sort) that support the conclusion./ [emphasis added] Hitchcock 2006 provides a precise account of this conception, defining an argument as “a claim-reason complex” consisting of (i) an act of concluding, (ii) one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favour of the conclusion), and (iii) a stated or implicit inference word that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises.'

('Informal Logic'; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-informal/ )

So it seems perfectly reasonable to treat the sentence:

''Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.”'

is a premise in an informal argument and since the conclusion of Merrick's argument seems to be that knowledge exists because warrant exists I do not think it unreasonable to consider that the premise which seems to presuppose the conclusion is a cse of has more than a whiff of the petitio principii about it.

//An epistemic concern is: how do we know that theory X is useful? //

I still don't see how the qualifier 'epistemic' is relevant here since the instrumentalist is interested in the /pragmatic concern/ of how well a theory explains and/or predicts the phenemomen. From the instrumentlist perspective, the more successfully a theory does then the more useful it is.

However, since:

'epistemic; adj. of or relating to knowledge or epistemology'
(Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition 2009)

and

'instrumentalism; n. In the philosophy of science, the view that concepts and theories are merely useful /instruments/ whose worth is measured not by whether the /concepts/ and /theories/ are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but how effective they are in explaining and predicting '(Wiktionary)[Emphases in the original]

Now since we have Merrick claiming that warrant entails truth and knowledge entails warrant then since instrumentalism is not concerned with the notion of truth (whatever that is) in respect of scientific theories then yit cannot either be concerned with warrant or knowledge with respect to them then I still don't think you have explained why you consider the usefulness of a theory a matter of epistemic rather than pragmatic concern.
bs

place holder

Hi Bx4,

>>I am not clear as to why you think a premiss only occurs in a 'formal argument' since<<
I don't. It is possible that you'd have a point if this were a premiss in an informal argument if said argument had the conclusion and structure that you are claiming it does.

>>So it seems perfectly reasonable to treat the sentence:

''Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.”'

is a premise in an informal argument and since the conclusion of Merrick's argument seems to be that knowledge exists because warrant exists I do not think it unreasonable to consider that the premise which seems to presuppose the conclusion is a cse of has more than a whiff of the petitio principii about it.<<
No, the conclusion is that warrant entails truth. So if this is an informal argument, as you say, it is not necessary to state the existence of knowledge as a premiss. Merrick's argument does not say that knowledge exists /because/ warrant exists. It says that necessarily, /given/ the definition of warrant and given a warranted belief p, it follows that p (is true).

>>I still don't see how the qualifier 'epistemic' is relevant here since the instrumentalist is interested in the /pragmatic concern/ of how well a theory explains and/or predicts the phenemomen. From the instrumentlist perspective, the more successfully a theory does then the more useful it is.<<
The instrumentalist might claim that deciding how well a theory explains and/or predicts phenomena is a /pragmatic/ affair but to me this has more than a whiff of Humpty Dumptyism about it

>>Now since we have Merrick claiming that warrant entails truth and knowledge entails warrant then since instrumentalism is not concerned with the notion of truth (whatever that is) in respect of scientific theories then yit cannot either be concerned with warrant or knowledge with respect to them then I still don't think you have explained why you consider the usefulness of a theory a matter of epistemic rather than pragmatic concern.<<
I just don't buy the elimination of the epistemic aspect by fiat which seems to characterize your instrumentalist stance.

ttfn

hi psi

>>No, the conclusion is that warrant entails truth. So if this is an informal argument, as you say, it is not necessary to state the existence of knowledge as a premiss. Merrick's argument does not say that knowledge exists /because/ warrant exists. It says that necessarily, /given/ the definition of warrant and given a warranted belief p, it follows that p (is true)<<

I think you have misunderstood my argument somewhat. Given:

(a)'Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.”'

Then it follows, tautologically, that the concept of 'mere true belief'(whatever that means) entails the concept of truth (whatever that means) and if the concept of 'warrant' (whatever that means) is what distinguishes the concept of knowledge (whatever that means) then the concept of warrant entails the concept truth hence my whiff of the petitio principii.

Moreover, your claim that the above is 'definition' of 'warrant' also is problematic:

'A given proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known independent of any experience other than the experience of learning the language in which the proposition is expressed' (Internet Encyclopedia of philosophy)

It seems to me that while a statement like:

(b) 'All bachelors are unmarried.'

is true by definition. Statement (a) seems more like:

(c) 'The soul, whatever precisely it is, is that which makes the difference between the human and the animal.'

and I am not persuaded that (a) is an a priori definition of 'warrant' any more than (c) is an a priori definition of the soul.

>>The instrumentalist might claim that deciding how well a theory explains and/or predicts phenomena is a /pragmatic/ affair but to me this has more than a whiff of Humpty Dumptyism about it.<<

Only presumably if the statement involves some obvious redefinition of one or more of its terms which it doesn't seem to.

>>I just don't buy the elimination of the epistemic aspect by fiat which seems to characterize your instrumentalist stance.<<

This seems to be somewhat of a change of stance since you argued (post 33) that

'Our assessment of the epistemic grounds for the MES is not incompatible with an instrumentalist stance in my view'

which suggests your original position was that the instrumentalist stance did not lead to the elimination of epistemic grounds.

Clearly you are wedded to the notion that a theory must have epistemic aspect presumably involving some notions of truth (whatever that means), knowledge (whatever that means) and possibly reality (whatever) that means.

While you accuse me of eliminating epistemic grounds by fiat you seem to be introducing them by fiat.

Perhaps the essential difference between our stances is that whereas I extend Ockham's Razor to the concept of a scientific theory so that epistemological and ontological concepts are unnecessary you take stance that these concepts are, in some sense necessary.

bs

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