metaphysicist

The mean­ing of “ex­is­tence”: Les­sons from infinity

• metaphysicist 6 Jan 2013 21:30 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: prase’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  You’ve got quite a lot of negative responses to your formatting, not a single positive response (correct me if I am wrong), yet you still persist and speculate about status reasons.

  I just found it curious: I’ve addressed typography issues in a blog posting, “Emphasis by Typography.”

  I have to say I’m surprised by your tone; like you’re accusing me of some form of immorality for not being attentive to readers. This all strikes me as very curious. I read Hanson’s blog and so have gotten attuned to status issues. I’m not plotting a revolution over font choice; I’m only curious about why people find Verdana objectionable just because other postings use a different font.

  If infinite sets and brutely distinguishable elements exist, infinite sets with brutely distinguishable elements should exist. Why? It doesn’t follow.

  The argument concerns conceptual possibility, not empirical existence. If actually existing sets can consist of brutely distinguishable elements and of infinite elements, there’s nothing to stop it conceptually from being both.

  You have located a place for a counter-argument: supplying the conceptual basis. But it seems unlikely that a conceptual argument would successfully undermine brutely distinguishable infinite elements without undermining brutely distinguishable elements in general.

  Then we have a predicate P(Z) = “Z is a subset of X”, and P(X) holds while P(Y) doesn’t. What’s wrong here?

  You can distinguish the cardinality of finite sets with brutely distinguishable points. That is, if a set contains 7 points, you can know there are seven different points, and that’s all you can know about them.

• metaphysicist 6 Jan 2013 1:39 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: prase’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  Thank your for the astute response.

  1.You say that the points are brutely distinguishable and later you say that they are indistinguishable, which nevertheless you hold to be different properties.

  The points are brutely distinguishable, but the sets aren’t.

  2.Why are the sets indistinguishable? Although I don’t particularly understand what predicates you allow for brutely distinguishable entities, it seems possible to have X = set of all brutely distinguishable points (from some class) and Y = set of all brutely distinguishable points except one. It is, of course, not a definition of Y unless you point out which of the points is missing (which you presumably can’t), but even if you don’t have a definition of Y, Y may still exist and be distinguishable from X by the property that X contains all the points while Y doesn’t.

  No predicates besides brute distinguishability govern it. Entities that are brutely distinguishable are different only by virtue of being different.

  The sets that differ but for one element differ because their cardinality is different. This is how they differ from the infinite case.

  3.If the argument were true, haven’t you just shown only that you can’t define an infinite set of brutely distinguishable entities, rather than that infinite sets can’t be defined at all?

  If infinite sets and brutely distinguishable elements exist, infinite sets with brutely distinguishable elements should exist.

  4.What is your opinion about the set of all natural numbers? Is it finite or can’t it be defined?

  It is infinite, but it isn’t “actually realized.” (They don’t exist; we employ them as useful fictions.)

  1. And how does the argument depend on infiniteness, after all? Assume there is a class of eleven brutely distinguishable points. Now, can you define a set containing seven of them? If you can’t, since there is no property to distinguish those seven from the remaining four, doesn’t it equally well prove that sets of cardinality seven don’t exist?

  To make the cases parallel (which I hope doesn’t miss the point): take 7 brutely distinguishable points; 4 more pop into existence. The former and latter sets are distinguishable by their cardinality. When the sets are infinite, the cardinality is identical.

  The frequentist definition of probability says that probability is the limit of relative frequencies, which is the limit of (the number of occurrences divided by the number of trials), which is not equal to (limit of the number of occurrences) divided by (limit of the number of trials).

  This doesn’t seem relevant to actually realized infinities, since the limit becomes inclusive rather than exclusive (of infinity). The relative frequency of heads to tails with an actually existing infinity of tosses is undefined. (Or would you contend it is .5?)

  And emphasis is usually marked by italics, not red.

  Are my aesthetics off? I’ve decided that unbolded red is best for emphasizing text sentences, the reason being that it is more legible than bolding, centainly than italics. If you don’t use many pictures or diagrams, I think helps maintain interest to include some color whenever you can justify it.

  Color seems increasingly used in textbooks. Perhaps its a status thing, as the research journals don’t use it. But blog writing should usually be more succinct than research-journal writing, and this makes typographical emphasis more valuable because there’s less opportunity to imply emphasis textually.

• metaphysicist 5 Jan 2013 22:06 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  What makes you think there’s some equivocation in my usage of “exists”? (Which is where taboo is useful.) If I were pushing the boundaries of the concept, that would be one thing. I’m not taking any position on whether abstract entities exist; what I mean by exist is straightforward. If the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time, the infinity is “actually realized,” that is, infinite duration is more than an abstract entity or an idealization. If I say, the universe is terribly old, so old we can approximate it by regarding it as infinitely old, then I am not making a claim about the actual realization of infinity.

• metaphysicist 5 Jan 2013 21:56 UTC

  0 points

  in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  some quite smart people disagree on the meaning of this term

  We have an apparently very deep philosophical difference here. Some “quite smart people” have offered different accounts of existence: Quine’s, that we are committed to the existence of those variables we quantify over in our best theory, comes to mind. My use of “exists” is ordinary enough that most any reasonable account will serve. I think the intuition of “existence” is really extremely clear, and we argue about accounts, not concepts. Existence is very simple

  Maybe addressing your specific examples will clarify. “Can infinite quantities be observed?” as a meaning of existing. Clearly doesn’t mean the same thing. Whether something exists or it can be observed are two different questions, existence being a necessary but insufficient condition for observability. “Can models with infinities in them fit the observations better than those without?” Still not existence. There are instrumentalist models and realist models. (Realists will agree; some intrumentalists will consider all theory instrumental, but that’s another question.) There’s a difference between saying something predicts the data and saying that the model describes reality (what exists) even if the latter claim is justified by the former. “Do numbers exist?” There the dispute isn’t about existence but about numbers, and it’s only because we do have a clear intuition of “existence” that the question about numbers can arise. So, we get different theories about numbers, which imply that numbers exist or don’t.

  So, even when it comes to numbers, I don’t think there’s much problem with the concept of existence. Sometimes one sees an unphilosophical tendency to treat problems regarding concepts as though they could be resolved by a mere choice of definition. Such flaws so easily corrected rarely arise in sophisticated thought. The question here is whether our intuition of existence implies that only the finite can exist. In analyzing an intuition, it rarely helps to start with a definition.

Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

• metaphysicist 3 Jan 2013 22:02 UTC

  −5 points

  in reply to: ygert’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  Thank you for the criticism. I will indeed consider it. It may be that we have different theories of writing. Regarding our likely differences considering how to write, see my “Plain-talk writing: The new literary obfuscation.”

  I don’t see how it can be accused of meandering. I’d be pleased to receive a personal note explaining.

• metaphysicist 3 Jan 2013 21:56 UTC

  −12 points

  in reply to: shminux’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  Something’s got to be primitive, and I can’t think of a candidate better than existence.

• metaphysicist 3 Jan 2013 21:56 UTC

  −2 points

  in reply to: Kawoomba’s comment on: Can in­finite quan­tities ex­ist? A philo­soph­i­cal approach

  If you’re not sure of the “brute distinguishability” concept, I’ve conveyed something, because it is the main novelty in my argument.

The deeper solu­tion to the mys­tery of moral­ism—Believ­ing in moral­ity and free will are haz­ardous to your men­tal health

• metaphysicist 5 Oct 2012 16:51 UTC

  9 points

  in reply to: t-E’s comment on: The non­cen­tral fal­lacy—the worst ar­gu­ment in the world?

  Where can i find out what “near-type” means here?

  It refers to “near-mode,” which is jargon in construal-level theory for “construed concretely.” So in context, it means direct and involving personal experience, as opposed to reading or discussing abstractly.

  Robin Hanson applies construal-level theory speculatively in numerous posts at Overcoming Bias. A concise summary of construal-level theory can be found in my posting “Construal-level theory: Matching linguistic register to the case’s granularity.”.

• metaphysicist 29 Sep 2012 2:07 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  What state of affairs is “correspondence theory is true” congruent with?

  The concept of scientific truth—the concept used by scientists—is the state of affairs some correspondence theories purport to be congruent with.

• metaphysicist 28 Sep 2012 20:53 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: TheOtherDave’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  That’s an excellent argument if it’s the case that correspondence theory is not the sort of thing allowed to have truth values under correspondence theory. Why do you say it’s not?

• metaphysicist 28 Sep 2012 20:51 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Cthulhoo’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  Theories using Piercian concepts are today usually termed antirealist or instrumentalist.

• metaphysicist 27 Sep 2012 21:49 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Cthulhoo’s comment on: [Poll] Less Wrong and Main­stream Philos­o­phy: How Differ­ent are We?

  Tabooing “truth”, one can see that the theories really speak about (slightly) different concepts.

  Then, you would merely choose which of the concepts is the one needed for a particular theoretical purpose. Right?

  Wrong! The arguments go to the concepts’ coherence. This is why it’s philosophy, not lexicography.

  For example, a correspondence theorist generally argues that the notion of an epistemological limit to which scientific findings converge need not exist and can never be established empirically. If correspondence theory is true, you aren’t allowed to use the Piercian limit. It’s a vacuous concept.

  Or, the correspondence theorist argues that the epistemological limit of scientific investigation can’t even be defined without assuming a correspondence variety of truth (which the Piercian, in turn, argues can’t exist). The correspondentist argues that if you define truth at a limit, then you have to define the truth that science is converging as itself the result of a scientific investigation at an endpoint, and similarly for the concepts you use to define scientific investigation, etc. Thus, a Piercian view, it’s contended, produces an infinite regress.

  It’s possible that both concepts are coherent, but that too would require a philosophical argument—and it’s an unlikely result here, at least in my opinion: it’s probably more likely that both concepts are incoherent than that both are coherent.

  These kinds of conclusions, philosophical and lacking in direct application, help inform the priors one assigns to just about every scientific controversy.

• metaphysicist 24 Sep 2012 4:05 UTC

  6 points

  in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: The raw-ex­pe­rience dogma: Dis­solv­ing the “qualia” problem

  me: A “p-zombie” “behaves” the same way we do, but does a p-zombie believe it has qualitative awareness?

  To be precise about the value of the belief/​intuition concept in accounting for the illusion that qualia exist—one defect in the zombie thought experiment is that it prompts the attitude: maybe I can’t prove that you’re not a zombie, but I sure as hell know I’m not one!

  The zombie experiment imposes a consistent outside view; it seems to deny the evidence of “personal experience” by fiat—because it simply doesn’t address what it would feel like to be a zombie.

  So, the zombie experiment seems to show that people might not be able to distinguish zombies from humans; but invoking the beliefs held by the “zombie” shows from the inside that being a zombie can be no different from being a human: the two are subjectively indistinguishable.

  To address your question directly: the ordinary zombie thought experiments purport to show that without qualia humans would be zombies; whereas when you allow zombies’ (false) beliefs (in ineffable perceptual essences), the thought experiment shows that zombies are really humans.

• metaphysicist 23 Sep 2012 20:03 UTC

  3 points

  in reply to: Mitchell_Porter’s comment on: The raw-ex­pe­rience dogma: Dis­solv­ing the “qualia” problem

  Sophistry. It’s madness to say that the blue isn’t actually there. But this is tempting for people who like the science we have, because the blue isn’t there in that model of reality.

  If by blue you mean—as you do—the purely subjective aspect of perceiving the color blue (call that “blue”), then it’s only madness to deny it exists if you insist on confusing blue with “blue.” No one but a madman would say blue doesn’t exist; no philosopher should be caught saying “blue” exists.

  If you can show a causal role for pure experience, that would be something else, but instead you speak of the “causal role they appear to play.” But we don’t want a theory where things play the role they “appear” to play; the illusion of conscious experience includes the seemingness that qualia play a causal role (Added: as I explain in my account of the related illusion of “free will.”

  In short, it just won’t do to call qualia nihilism “madness,” when you offer no arguments, only exasperation.

  But modern physics is mathematical and operational, there is plenty of opportunity for something to actually be a conscious experience, while appearing in the formal theory as a state or entity with certain abstractly characterized structural and algebraic properties.

  This simply doesn’t solve the problem; not in the least. If you posit abstractly characterized structural entities, you are still left with the problem regarding what makes that configuration give the appearance “blue.” You’re also left with the problem of explaining why evolution would have provided a means of registering these “abstractly characterized structural and algebraic properties” when they make no difference for adaptation.

  My guess, you espouse an epistemology that makes sense data necessary. Completely freeing epistemology from sensationalism is virtue rather than vice: philosophers have been looking for a way out of sensationalism since Karl Popper’s failed falsificationism.

  You need an argument better than alleging madness. Many things seem blatantly wrong before one reflects on them.

• metaphysicist 23 Sep 2012 19:40 UTC

  2 points

  in reply to: Kaj_Sotala’s comment on: The raw-ex­pe­rience dogma: Dis­solv­ing the “qualia” problem

  You may be omitting or misunderstanding the role of the concept of belief in my account. The role of that concept is original in this account (and novel, to the best of my less-than-comprehensive knowledge).

  A “p-zombie” “behaves” the same way we do, but does a p-zombie believe it has qualitative awareness? If it does, then there’s no distinction between humans and p-zombies, but the antimaterialists who came up with the p-zombie thought experiment were of the persuasion that belief is as meaningless a concept for materialists as is qualia; both were then derogated by the reigning behaviorists as “mentalistic” concepts, hence illicit. The Churchlands are eliminitivist about all “folk psychological” concepts like belief; Dennett doesn’t apply the concept of belief to the problem of qualia. But qualia proponents make belief dependent on qualitative awareness: eliminating qualia does preclude deriving knowledge (a kind of belief) from conscious sensation.

  On my account, what dissolves the problem of qualia is recognizing that the only “evidence” favoring their existence is our sense of certainty favoring our sequestered belief that they exist. (See 3.C. in OP.)

• metaphysicist 19 Sep 2012 19:37 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Trevor_Caverly’s comment on: The raw-ex­pe­rience dogma: Dis­solv­ing the “qualia” problem

  Is your position the same as Dennett’s position (summarized in the second paragraph of synopsis here)?

  Let me try to answer more succinctly. Dennett and I are concerned with different problems; Dennett’s is a problem within science proper, while mine is traditionally philosophical. Dennett’s conclusion is that “qualia” don’t provide introspective access to the functioning of the brain; my conclusion is that our common intuition concerning the existence of qualia is incoherent.

• metaphysicist 18 Sep 2012 9:05 UTC

  4 points

  in reply to: Trevor_Caverly’s comment on: The raw-ex­pe­rience dogma: Dis­solv­ing the “qualia” problem

  Is your position the same as Dennett’s position (summarized in the second paragraph of synopsis here) ?

  I agree with Dennett that qualia don’t exist. I disagree that the concept of qualia is basically a remnant of an outmoded psychological doctrine; I think it’s an innate idea.

  Dennett can be criticized for ignoring the subjective nature of qualia. He shows, for example, that reported phenomenal awareness is empirically bogus in that it doesn’t correspond to the contents of working memory. I’m concerned with accounting for the subjective nature of the qualia concept.

  Dennett basically thinks qualia are empirically falsifiable; I think the concept is incoherent.