Specter of Reason

I would like to distinguish between the form of a valid deduction and the validity of an argument. Formal logic deals with the forms of our inferences, and not the validity of our arguments. For example, appealing to the masses is not a valid form of argument, though it could be expressed as a valid syllogism. A valid argument must have a valid logical form; or, at least, it must be expressible in such a form. But having a valid logical form is not enough. Admittedly, I haven't thought about this distinction before, and I would not be surprised if I suddenly reversed or qualified my position. This might be better discussed by focusing on examples of logical fallacies. Example 1: Begging the Question 1) If X, then ~~X 2) X 3) ~~X This is begging the question by any account. Yet, it is a valid syllogism. Example 2: Appeal to the Masses This is also a logical fallacy, but it can be expressed as a valid syllogism: 1) If everybody knows that X, then X. 2) Everybody knows that X 3...

Context: A woman calling herself "Mom" has made the following claim: Original Sin can only be understood from the heart, not the head. And understood it must be, she says, or else . . . well, I'm not sure how she would have me end that sentence. But apparently it's very important I understand Original Sin with my heart. The problem is, I can't get it past those darn censors in my head. Here's what I wrote: God thinks I deserve to be punished for being born, but God is punishing Himself instead. Since God created me, God is responsible for my birth. It seems only right that God would punish Himself. If God punishes Himself, it is because He wants to. He makes the rules, and he could give Himself a break. He could decide that nobody needs to be punished for sin. But He doesn't. He punishes Himself. That's His choice. God wants to suffer. But let's consider this suffering. God punishes Himself by killing His son. Though that's not quite righ...

[ In July and August, 2010, I made some significant revisions and deleted some questionable portions of this post. ] In " Knowing How " (2001), Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson (S&W) defend intellectualism against Gilbert Ryle. Their paper was selected by The Philosopher's Annual as one of the ten best papers of 2001. Yet, as I will argue, they profoundly misrepresent Ryle (and so fail to make a sound critique of his project). This suggests that there has been a widespread and severe misunderstanding of Ryle among academic philosophers. Despite the problems with their response to Ryle, S&W's formulation of knowledge-how as a species of knowledge-that is a stand-alone argument and invites criticism of its own. As I aim to show, a clarification of some relevant issues makes it difficult to fully accept their analysis. In section I, I present intellectualism. In section II, I correct S&W's misrepresentation of Ryle's argument against intell...

I want to better explain why I reject the idea that logic refers to something, such as abstractions or Platonic forms. Words and sentences, of themselves, do not refer to anything. Rather, people can use words and sentences to refer to things. (This should be clear when we remember that the same words and sentences can refer to different things, depending on the context of utterance.) Furthermore, the meaning of a sentence is not always its referent; for we can understand sentences even when a referent is unspecified, and also in cases where the referent is non-existant. (E.g., "The King of France is bald.") From these points it follows, first, that the referent of a sentence depends on how it is used in a particular context; and, second, that sentences can be meaningful even if they have no known referent. When we look at the meaning of a syllogism, we may easily find referents. For example, All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Taken by...

There is no good definition of "consciousness"--at least, not in any rigorous philosophical or scientific sense. There are just lots of ways we use the term in everyday life. For example, we use it to distinguish between sleep and wakefulness, or to indicate that we are focusing our attention on something, or that we remember something, or that we know something. These aren't all the same, or even necessarily similar, processes. So the idea that there is some unique thing called "consciousness" is perhaps an error. And so the idea that there are "conscious processes" in the brain is also perhaps an error. The word "consciousness" does not pick out anything specific, but has meaning only in so far as it provides some structure to our discourse--specifically, our discourse about ourselves. It is a grammatical construction without extra-linguistic referent. * Once we've understood the language, we've understood consciousness. Th...

I. Procedure and Representation We can use numbers to perform calculations without having to stipulate that each number refers to anything outside of our mathematical operations. Number systems are tools for counting and performing other arithmetical functions. We can define arithmetic procedurally, and avoid wondering what sort of existence numbers might have on their own, perhaps in some Platonic realm. Numbers are symbols used to represent mathematical procedures. I used to think that the existence of irrational numbers posed a problem for this view. To define rational numbers, we say they can be represented as a fraction between m and n (where m and n are not both divisible by two). Irrational numbers are defined as numbers which cannot be represented as fractions in this way. They seem to point to something beyond comprehension, beyond the possibility of finite containment. Indeed, the fact is, we have symbols for irrational numbers; the numbers themselves are the referent...

A few days ago I posted the following in a discussion at PhilPapers : Not far into Consciousness Explained (paperback, p. 23), Dennett writes: "Today we talk about our conscious decisions and unconscious habits, about the conscious experience we enjoy (in contrast to, say, automatic cash machines, which have no such experiences) -- but we are no longer quite sure we know what we mean when we say these things. While there are still thinkers who gamely hold out for consciousness being some one genuine precious thing (like love, like gold), a thing that is just 'obvious' and very, very special, the suspicion is growing that this is an illusion. Perhaps the various phenomena that conspire to create the sense of a single mysterious phenomenon have no more ultimate or essential unity than the various phenomena that contribute to the sense that love is a simple thing." I think understanding this passage is critical to understanding Dennett's approach. Our talk of co...

Karen Armstrong is an advocate for NOMA, the principle which says that science and religion involve unique, non-overlapping domains of human interest. In Armstrong's view, each offers a distinct way of finding truth. Science comes from logos , the path of logic, reason, and evidence. Religion, on the other hand, comes from mythos , tapping into the mythological, emotional, intuitive path to wisdom. She believes that religion and science are both necessary for humanity, but that problems arise when either one attempts to invade the other's epistemological territory. Anyone familiar with my views on religion will know that I find this point of view highly problematic. For one thing, it romanticizes both science and religion. More importantly, the distinction is without practical sense. It cannot be justified by appeal to either logos or mythos, and so any disputes cannot be resolved by common agreement. Here are two clever responses to her latest book, The Case for God . ...

In this post I argue that enumerative, or "simple" induction (henceforth "induction") * does not play a significant role in scientific discovery. I construct this argument within a framework of epistemological behaviorism. I. The Meaning and Value of Science As I understand it, knowledge is another word for ability. Scientific knowledge is predictive ability, which is the ability to organize our behavior in accordance with the unfolding of nature. ** In other words, science is the process of learning how to predict what is going to happen in new situations. Scientific knowledge is demonstrable in so far as the abilities it engenders are demonstrable and reliable. Science is not the process of describing what has already happened, nor is it the process of describing what is happening at any given moment. Of course, science can help us understand what has already happened and what is happening right now. But the focus of science is always on the future, not o...

A friend of mine recently gave me some advice: Don't let your philosophical pursuits get side-tracked by the atheism-vs.-religion debate. I pointed out that the history of modern science and modern philosophy is inextricably tied to the debate between atheism and religion. The philosophy of science has, since Descartes and Bacon, developed in explicit reaction to religious practice. The pursuit of scientific foundations has partly been the pursuit of intellectual liberation from religious dogma. Around 1600, many rapid advancements in philosophy and science began to change the way people understood themselves and their relationship to the world. For example, Copernicus challenged conceptions of humanity by suggesting that the earth was not at the center of the universe. Galileo challenged conceptions of nature by reducing it to mathematical terms. The philosophy of science became a central issue in intellectual life. There is a widespread misconception that science itself began dur...

A blogger name John Pieret has also criticized Sean Carroll 's article about naturalism, though I think his criticisms are somewhat misguided. I just left the following comment on his blog : I have major problems with Carroll's treatment of naturalism and supernaturalism. (See here: Discovery, Demonstration, and Naturalism .) However, I don't agree with all of your points; specifically about Ockam's Razor and the so-called "problem of induction." Ockam's Razor is an indispensable explanatory tool. Consider the situation with ID again. IDers might claim that ID is simpler than natural evolution, that Ockam's Razor weighs in their favor. The question is, are they right? The answer is: of course not. Natural evolution does not postulate any entities beyond our explanatory framework, and it does not postulate anything superfluous. It does not postulate entities beyond necessity. ID, on the other hand, postulates an "intelligent designer"...

Over the past several months or so, I've approached discussions of science by focusing on the concept of discovery. Science is the formalization of discovery. There are as many scientific methods as there are formal methods for discovering phenomena. Accidental discoveries can be utilized by science, in so far as they can lead to formal methods of discovery. It occurs to me that this view of science, while essentially valid, might be easier to communicate if I adopt another term: demonstration. Science deals in what is demonstrable. A method of discovery is a set of rules or procedures for demonstrating facts. A scientific method is defined by its rules and procedures for demonstrating facts about the world. We might ask, what is being discovered here? Is it the rules, or is it the facts? The answer is: both. A scientific discovery is defined in terms of the facts discovered as well as the rules/procedures for demonstrating those facts. It is the relationship between rul...

In my last post , I suggested there might be a paradox regarding personal identity. Specifically, it seems that our ability to refer to ourselves is undeniable, and yet we cannot specify what, exactly, we are referring to. Not even a purely abstract mind-stuff would seem to get the job done. So, what are we talking about, when we talk about personal identity? If there is a paradox here, it is probably the same as the classic Ship of Theseus paradox. (There are other related paradoxes and philosophical arguments covered in the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on relative identity . I haven't reviewed that entry yet, so I'm not sure how similar or dissimilar my points here will be to anything on that site. I'm only offering the link as a suggestion--to myself as well as to others--for further research.) The issue comes down to this: that we use different methods or standards for deciding on questions of identity depending on the circumstances. In some cases, the identity ...

I say "possible paradox" because I am not ready to commit to the idea that there is a paradox here at all. I only want to suggest that there might be a legitimate paradox implicit in the notion of personal identity. It does not require an extreme amount of philosophical sophistication to recognize that personal identity is somewhat elusive. It is easy to see how the notion of identity breaks down when we think of it in terms of the body. For, we would still call ourselves by the same name were we to lose any or all limbs, organs, or bodily functions, so long as we had a set of memories or perceptions which defined ourselves as such. We are thus tempted to locate the essence of personal identity in the brain, in those processes which ground our memories and perceptions. Yet, even here we realize the notion of identity lacks foundation. For we can imagine our memories and perceptions being simulated by something other than our brain, a biological clone or computerized twi...