OUTLINES OF ASSIGNED ARTICLES
EPISTEMOLOGY ARTICLE (Matthias Steup, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
1. What is Knowledge?
1.1 Knowledge as Justified True Belief
Uses of the term “knowledge”
Propositional knowledge: knowledge of some proposition P
Procedural knowledge: knowledge of how to do something
Traditional knowledge (TK): knowledge is justified belief
The role of justification is to ensure that S's belief is not true merely because of luck
Non-traditional knowledge (NTK)
Agrees with TK about truth and belief
Agrees with TK that the role of justification is to ensure that S's belief is not true merely because of luck
Disagrees with TK about other aspects of justification
Ensures that S's belief has a high objective probability of truth and therefore, if true, is not true merely because of luck
1.2 The Gettier Problem
There are cases of JTB that do not qualify as cases of knowledge
e.g., Henry drives through a rural area in which what appear to be barns are, with the exception of just one, mere barn facades. From the road Henry is driving on, these facades look exactly like real barns. Henry happens to be looking at the one and only real barn in the area and believes that there's a barn over there.
Henry has JTB, but it doesn’t count as real knowledge
TK solution: we need a fourth condition [e.g., a no-defeater condition e.g., “There is no additional fact that would make my belief unjustified”]
NTK solution: Some NTK theorists bypass the justification condition altogether. They would say that, if we conceive of knowledge as reliably produced true belief, there is no need for justification.
2. What is Justification?
Two issues:
What do we mean when we use the word ‘justification’
What makes beliefs justified
2.1 Deontological and Non-Deontological justification (what we mean by “justification”)
Deontological justification (DJ), the traditional view
Deontological justification in morality: S is justified in doing x if and only if S is not obliged to refrain from doing x
Deontological justification in knowledge: S is justified in believing that p if and only if S believes that p while it is not the case that S is obliged to refrain from believing that p
Rejection of DJ
Rejection dominant view is that the deontological understanding of justification is unsuitable for the purposes of epistemology
Argument 1: DJ presupposes that we can have a sufficiently high degree of control over our beliefs. But beliefs are akin not to actions but rather things such as digestive processes, sneezes, or involuntary blinkings of the eye
Argument 2: subjects are not obliged to believe otherwise since they are either cognitively deficient or live in a benighted (i.e., barbaric) and isolated community
Non-deontological justification (NDJ)
Df: S is justified in believing that p if and only if S believes that p on a basis that properly probabilifies S's belief that p
It's possible for a belief to be deontologically justified without being properly probabilified (e.g., in benighted cultures or cognitively deficient subjects)
2.2 Evidence vs. Reliability (what makes beliefs justified)
Evidentialism: the possession of evidence makes a belief justifiable, where “possessing evidence” means to be in a mental state that represents p as being true (e.g., experiences of perception, introspection, memory, and rational intuition)
Reliablism: a belief is justified if, and only if, it results from a cognitive origin that is reliable (e.g., reliable processes such as perception, introspection, memory, and rational intuition)
2.3 Internal vs. External
J-factors: things that make a belief justified or unjustified
Internalism: justification hinges on mental experiences (associated with evidentialism)
Accessibility internalism: J-factors: they are always recognizable on reflection
Mentalist internalism: J-factors are always mental states
Two claims of TK evidentialists
Luminosity: One's own mind is cognitively luminous: Relying on introspection, one can always recognize on reflection what mental states one is in
Necessity: a priori recognizable, necessary principles say what is evidence for what. Relying on a priori insight, one can therefore always recognize on reflection whether one's mental states are evidence for p.
Externalism: (associated with reliablism)
Reliabilism rejects reject accessibility internalism: justification will not always be recognizable on reflection
Reliabilism rejects reject mentalist internalism: mental states (e.g. perception) may not always be reliable
Radical deception example
Evidentialism: a subject who is radically deceived will be mislead about what is actually the case, but not about what he is justified in believing.
Reliabilism: then such a subject will be misled about both what is actually the case and what he is justified in believing.
Mentalism (held by internalism)
If two subjects, S and S*, are alike mentally, then the justificational status of their beliefs is alike as well: the same beliefs are justified or unjustified for them to the same extent.
2.4 Why Internalism?
Argument 1: Justification is deontological: it is a matter of duty-fulfillment. But duty-fulfillment is internal. Therefore, justification is internal
Argument 2: brain-in-the-vat scenario
Argument 3: internalism can be supported by way of making a case for evidentialism
2.5 Why Externalism?
Argument 1: that animals and small children have knowledge and thus have justified beliefs
Argument 2: what we want from justification is the kind of objective probability needed for knowledge
3. The Structure of Knowledge and Justification
3.1 Foundationalism
Building metaphor: our justified beliefs are structured like a building: they are divided into a foundation and a superstructure, the latter resting upon the former
Beliefs belonging to the foundation are basic. Beliefs belonging to the superstructure are nonbasic and receive justification from the justified beliefs in the foundation
Doxastic Basicality (DB): S's justified belief that p is basic if and only if S's belief that p is justified without owing its justification to any of S's other beliefs
e.g., It appears to me that that hat is blue, having a headache, being tired, feeling pleasure, or having a desire for a cup of coffee
These are beliefs about how things appear to or are perceived by me
Two views of how basics beliefs are justified
Privileged foundationalism: Basic beliefs are justified because they carry with them an epistemic privilege such as infallibility, indubitability, or incorrigibility
Experiential foundationalism: Basic beliefs are justified because of some other (non-belief) mental experience, such as the perceptual experience of the hat’s appearing blue
Experiential foundationalism might justify my belief that “The hat is blue”, whereas privileged foundationalism would only justify the belief that “it appears to me that the hat is blue”
Epistemic Basicality (EB): S's justified belief that p is basic if and only if S's justification for believing that p does not depend on any justification S possesses for believing a further proposition, q
The J-Question: Why are perceptual experiences a source of justification?
Coherentist answer: perceptual experiences are a source of justification because we are justified in believing them to be reliable
EB compromise answer: perceptual experiences are a source of justification because we have justification for taking them to be reliable (does not mean you actually believe them)
What justifies “the hat is blue” is the conjunction of “it appears to me that the hat is blue” and a track record of memories regarding reliable visual experiences
Transferring justification from basic to non-basic beliefs
Deductive approach: basic belief entails a non-basic belief
Non-deductive approach: given a basic belief, it is likely that a non-basic belief is true
3.2 Coherentism
Knowledge and justification are structured like a web where the strength of any given area depends on the strength of the surrounding areas
Denies basic beliefs
Doxastic Coherentism: Every justified belief receives its justification from other beliefs in its epistemic neighborhood (denies doxastic basicality)
Which beliefs might make up this set of justification-conferring neighborhood beliefs?
Explanatory coherentism: inference to the best explanation:
(1) I am having a visual experience (E): the hat looks blue to me.
(2) My having (E) is best explained by assuming that (H) is true (i.e., the hat is blue).
Alternative explanations of why you have (E): evil demon
Reliability coherentism:
(1) I am having a visual experience (E): the hat looks blue to me.
(3) Experiences like (E) are reliable.
Criticism: that these two versions of coherentism make excessive intellectual demands of ordinary subjects who are unlikely to have the background beliefs that, according to these versions of coherentism, are needed for justification
Dependence Coherentism: whenever one is justified in believing a proposition p1, one's justification for believing p1 depends on justification one has for believing some further propositions, p1, p2, … pn.
A belief is justified, not by receiving any of its justification from other beliefs, but solely by suitable perceptual experiences and memory content
3.3 Why Foundationalism?
Regress argument: With regard to every justified belief, B1, the question arises of where B1's justification comes from; Unless the ensuing regress terminates in a basic belief, we get two unacceptable possibilities: the regress will either loop back to B1 or continue ad infinitum
Criticism: regress and back looping are not so bad: we may make use of the input our faculties deliver
No-contact-with-reality argument: coherentism fails to ensure that a justified belief system is in contact with reality (e.g., fiction can be perfectly coherent)
Criticism: foundationalists can’t guarantee a contact with reality
3.4 Why Coherentism?
Contrary to foundationalalsm, perceptual experiences don't have propositional content. Therefore, the relation between a perceptual belief and the perceptual experience that gives rise to it can only be causal.
4. Sources of Knowledge and Justification (i.e., sources we have good reason to consider reliable)
4.1 Perception (five senses)
perceiving that p
Perceptual seeming: it seems to us as though p, but where p might be false
Direct realism, we can acquire such knowledge because we can directly perceive such objects
Knowledge of the object is foundational
Indirect realism, we acquire knowledge of external objects by virtue of perceiving something else, namely appearances or sense-data
knowledge of sense data is foundational, not knowledge of the object
Circularity problem of reliability of perception
The only way of acquiring knowledge about the reliability of our perceptual faculties is through memory
If we claim memory is reliable, then we need reason to view my memory and my perceptual experiences as reliable
4.2 Introspection
Introspection is the capacity to inspect the, metaphorically speaking, "inside" of one's mind
Special status: introspection seems to be privileged by virtue of being less error prone (can’t be wrong about having a headache)
Infallibility: , introspective seemings are necessarily successful introspections (appearance is reality)
Certainty: an introspective experience of p eliminates all possible doubt as to whether p is true
Incorrigible: we do not correct first-person reports of one's own mental states.
Criticism: it does not seem to be in general an infallible (e.g., confuse an unpleasant itch for a pain), yet when looking at appropriately described specific cases, error does seem impossible (e.g., having a headache)
4.3 Memory
Memory is the capacity to retain knowledge acquired in the past
Two distinctions
Remembering that p (which entails the truth of p)
Seeming to remember that p (which does not entail the truth of p).
What makes memorial seemings a source of justification?
Coherentists: one has reason to think that one's memory is reliable
Externalists: memory is in fact reliable?
How can we respond to skepticism about knowledge of the past?
4.5 Reason
A Priori Justification: S is justified a priori in believing that p if and only if S's justification for believing that p does not depend on any experience.
Excludes perceptual, introspective, and memorial experiences
e.g., "All bachelors are unmarried", truths of mathematics, geometry and logic.
Contrasted with a posteriori justification, which involves experience
Skepticism about a priori knowledge
Argument 1: all knowledge is empirical and a priori knowledge doesn’t exist
Argument 2: it’s not clear what makes a priori knowledge justified solely on the basis of reason
Is it an unmediated grasp of the truth of this proposition?
Does it consist of grasping that the proposition is necessarily true?
Argument 3: a priori knowledge is limited to the realm of the analytic, consisting of propositions of a somehow inferior status because they are not really "about the world"
Argument 4: rationalists hold that whatever is known a priori is necessarily true; some empiricists disagree
4.6 Testimony
Df.: to acquire knowledge of p through testimony is to come to know that p on the basis of someone's saying that p
Why is testimony a source of knowledge?
Externalist answer: testimony is a source of knowledge if and only if it comes from a reliable source
Testimony has accumulated a long track record that can be taken as a sign of reliability
5. The Limits of Knowledge and Justification
5.1 The Case for Skepticism
Skeptical hypothesis: things are radically different from what you take them to be
I'm lying in my bed dreaming.
I'm deceived by an evil demon.
I'm a mere brain-in-a-vat (a BIV).
I'm in the matrix world
The BIV Argument
(1) I don't know that I'm not a BIV.
(2) If I don't know that I'm not a BIV, then I don't know that I have hands.
(3) Therefore, I don't know that I have hands.
5.2 Skepticism and Closure
The Closure Principle: If I know that p, and I know that p entails q, then I know that q.
Application to skeptical argument,
p=I have hands; q=I am not a BIV
But, you don’t know q, so you don’t know p
5.3 Relevant Alternatives response (denies premise two)
Your being a BIV is not a relevant alternative to your having hands
A relevant alternative would be your arms ending in stumps rather than hands
Relevant alternativists deny the closure principle
Criticism 1: denouncing the BIV alternative as irrelevant is ad hoc unless it is supplemented with a principled account of what makes one alternative relevant and another irrelevant.
Criticism 2: the closure principle enjoys a high degree of intrinsic plausibility.
Denying it generates so-called abominable conjunctions, e.g., “I know that I have hands but I do not know that I am not a (handless) BIV”
5.4 The Moorean Response (denies premise 1)
Counter BIV argument
(1) I know that I have hands.
(2) If I don't know that I'm not a BIV, then I don't know that I have hands.
(3) I know that I am not a BIV.
Criticism: What needs to be accomplished is more than a mere assertion of (3), based on knowledge of one's hands. What we need to have explained to us is how one can know that one is not a BIV
5.5 The Contextualist Response
BIV equivocates on “know”
First, what are these various meanings of the word ‘know’?
What changes is the standards that we think must be met if someone is to have knowledge of something (low to high)
Second, why and how does what we mean by ‘know’ change from one context to another?
The salience of error-possibilities (i.e., the importance of guarding against errors)
In an ordinary, low-standard context, you don't worry about being a BIV; upon thinking about skepticism, though, he BIV alternative is now relevant to you
Third, how does the context-sensitivity of ‘know’ help us respond to the BIV argument?
Low standards of contexts: premise 1 and conclusion of BIV argument are false
High standards contexts: premise 1 and conclusion are true
Benefits of contextualist response
Preserves closure principle (within low and high standards contexts respectively)
Agrees with Moore in low standards contexts
Criticism 1: overemphasizes the importance of the context sensitivity of the word ‘know’
5.6 The Ambiguity Response
Two standards of knowledge
High-standards or infallible knowledge of p requires p-entailing evidence
Low-standards of fallible knowledge of p requires adequate evidence for p, where evidence for p can be adequate without entailing p
Ambiguity: a "knowledge"-attributing sentence is ambiguous unless we can tell whether the word ‘know’refers to fallible or infallible knowledge
Three sense of “know” in BIV argument
The Mixed Version: In the premises, the word ‘know’ refers to infallible knowledge, whereas in the conclusion, it refers to fallible knowledge.
Invalid because it equivocates
The High-Standards Version: The word ‘know’ refers to infallible knowledge in both the premises and the conclusion.
Sound but uninteresting. Its conclusion asserts that we don't have infallible knowledge of our hands
The Low-Standards Version: The word ‘know’ refers to fallible knowledge in both the premises and the conclusion.
Interesting but unsound, but first premise is false since we have fallible knowledge of one's not being a BIV.
Difference between ambiguity response and contextualism: Whereas according to contextualism, whether we reject or endorse the conclusion of the BIV argument is a function of which context we are in, the ambiguity response makes context irrelevant.
5.7 Knowing One Isn't a BIV
If we know that a-c are false, then BIV is false
(a) At least one BIV exists.
(b) The know-how needed for envatting people exists.
(c) The technology needed for envatting people exists.
We know that a-c are false in the same way that we know d-f are false
(d) At least one spaceship exists that can be used for traveling to another galaxy and coming back within a couple of months.
(e) The know-how needed for building such a spaceship exists.
(f) The technology needed for building such a spaceship exists.
6. Additional Issues
6.1 Virtue Epistemology
We need to begin with the subject herself and assess her epistemic virtues and vices: her "good" and her "bad" ways of forming beliefs
Careful and attentive reasoning would be an example of an epistemic virtue
Jumping to conclusions would be an example of an epistemic vice.
It is only after we have determined which ways of forming beliefs count as epistemic virtues that we can, as a second step, determine the epistemic quality of particular beliefs
Reliabilist version: epistemic virtues are those that are reliable
6.2 Naturalistic Epistemology
Epistemology must be made a part of the natural sciences and become cognitive psychology
Extreme version: replace traditional epistemology with an altogether new and redefined project
Moderate version: identify how knowledge and justification are anchored in the natural world
6.3 Religious Epistemology
Whether arguments can constitute a rational foundation of faith, give us knowledge of God, or disprove God’s existence
6.4 Moral Epistemology
What makes right actions right, and whether moral knowledge is at all possible.
6.5 Social Epistemology
Social epistemology is the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information
Traditional approach: there are objective norms of rationality that social epistemologists should aspire to articulate (e.g., jtb)
Radical approach: there are no objective norms of rationality
6.6 Feminist Epistemology
Different theories
Issues having to do with fair and equal access of women to, and their participation in, the institutions and processes through which knowledge is generated and transmitted
Studying and legitimizing special ways in which only women can acquire knowledge
Aims at the political goal of opposing and rectifying oppression in general and the oppression of women in particular
METAPHYSICS ARTICLE (Peter Van Inwagen, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
[Warning: this article is flawed by an over-concern for how to define metaphysics and why an issue does or doesn’t count “metaphysical”; discussions of the metaphysical issues themselves are secondary to that agenda]
1. The word ‘metaphysics’ and the concept of metaphysics.
No clear definition
Goes beyond” physics: mistaken
The name “metaphysics” derives from a Latin editor of Aristotle’s works, designating one book as that which appears after his physics
Physics: the natural world of change
Metaphysics: the world of non-change (being as such, the first causes of things)
Greek: ‘ta meta ta phusika’
Latin: ‘metaphysica’
17th century: metaphysics a repository of philosophical problems that could not be otherwise classified
‘physics’ was coming to be a name for a new, quantitative science, and many problems (mind/body, free will) were reclassified as metaphysics
The word “ontology” was invented—to be a name for the science of being as such, an office that the word ‘metaphysics’ could no longer fill
2. The problems of metaphysics: the “old” metaphysics
2.1 The categories of being
We human beings sort things into various classes
In most cases these are “natural” classes
Two views:
Natural class cannot survive philosophical scrutiny
Things do fall into various natural classes
A most comprehensive class: the class of things, the class of things that can be sorted into classes
Less comprehensive classes: categories of being or the ontological categories
Universals: one of the categories of being
Things like “whiteness” or “ductility” (properties or qualities or attributes),
Things supposedly universally “present in” the members of classes of things (things like “being to the north of” (relations) that are supposedly universally present in the members of classes of sequences of things.)
Realism: universals exist
Plato: universals exist ante res (prior to objects)
Aristotle: universals exist in rebus (in objects)
Nominalism: universals do not exist
Quine: our best scientific theories (expressed in quantificational logic) “carry ontological commitment” to objects whose existence is denied by nominalism
e.g., the existence of sets or numbers
Two issues of universals:
About the existence and nature of universals
About how universals are related to the particulars that fall under them
Particulars fall under universals by somehow incorporating them into their ontological structure
The ontological structure of a particular incorporates individual properties or accidents (and that an accident is an accident of a certain particular just in virtue of being a constituent of that particular)
Some philosophers thing that ontological structure is the key issue in metaphysics
Range of universals
Broad range view (typical of Platonic ante res view)
Includes universals like “being both white and round and either shiny or not made of silver.”
Narrow range view (typical of Aristotelian in rebus view)
Doesn’t include the above universal
2.2 Substance
Things that exist in their own right ‘substances’
Aristotle:
Primary beings (‘protai ousiai’)
They are subjects of predication that cannot themselves be predicated of things (they are not universals);
Things exist “in” them, but they do not exist “in” things (they are not accidents like Socrates' wisdom or his ironic smile);
They have determinate identities (essences).
Some primary beings are “underlying things” (ta hupokeimena)
Whether there in fact are substances
How, precisely, should the concept of substance be understood?;
Which of the items (if any of them) among those we encounter in everyday life are substances?; If there are substances at all, how many of them are there?
What kinds of substances are there? (immaterial substances, eternal substances, necessarily existent substances)
Things that are not substances
Universals and other abstract objects. Events, processes, or changes.
Stuffs, such as flesh or iron or butter. (Aristotle criticized “the natural philosophers” for supposing that the primary beings could be a stuff—water or air or fire or matter.)
3. The problems of metaphysics: the “new” metaphysics
3.1 Modality (possibility and necessity)
Modality: short for modes of contingency and necessity
Types of modality
Contingently true: True propositions that might have been false
Necessarily true: True propositions that could not be false
Contingently false: False propositions that might have been true
Necessarily false: False propositions that could not be true
De re, de dicto
Modality de re—the modality of things (a metaphysical issue)
Modality de dicto: modality of propositions (a logical issue)
Necessary and contingent beings
Contingent being: “I might not have existed”
It’s natural to ask about necessary beings (even if none exist)
Necessary and contingent properties of people
Contingent property: “I might have spoken only French”
Necessary property: A thing has a property essentially if it could not exist without having that property
Controversial, but might include things like “I am a physical object” (assuming materialism)
Quine’s critique of modality
Modality de dicto can be understood only in terms of the concept of analyticity (a problematical concept in his view)
Modality de re cannot be understood in terms of analyticity and therefore cannot be understood at all.
Possible worlds ontology
A necessarily true proposition is a proposition that would be true no matter what possible world was actual
Socrates is a contingent being if there is some possible world such that he would not exist if that world were actual, and he has the property “being human” essentially if every possible world that includes his existence also includes his being human (Kripke-Plantinga de re view of possible worlds)
Although Socrates is in only the actual world, Lewis holds, he has “counterparts” in some other worlds, objects that play the role in those worlds that he plays in this world. If all Socrates' counterparts are human, then we may say that he is essentially human. (Lewis’s de re view of possible worlds)
3.2 Problems of space and time
Philosophers have traditionally connected space and time
The same questions can be asked about both:
Does it extend in both directions
Is it bounded or unbounded (or perhaps finite and circular)
Does it exist without its inhabitants?
Questions unique to time
Why is our knowledge of the past better than our knowledge of the future?
Whether the past and the future are “real” in the same sense as that in which the present is real
Metaphysical questions
Are temporal things extended in time in a way that is at all like the way in which they are extended in space?—and if they are, does their being temporally extended imply they have “temporal parts”?
Whether space and time are real at all
Whether it is possible for there to be a being—not a universal or an abstract object of some other sort, but an active substance—that is everlasting or non-temporal.
3.3 Problems about the mental and the physical
The natural stance of dualism
Identity theory does not represent a natural tendency of the human mind
It seems to be natural to infer that the objects of the one sort of awareness are radically different kinds of object from the objects of the other
Problems with dualism
If thoughts and sensations belong to an immaterial or non-physical portion of reality, how can they have effects in the physical world?
Mind-body causation violates the closed causal system of the world (conservation of energy)
Versions of Dualism
Broad: the mind affects the body by momentarily changing the electrical resistance of certain synapses in the brain
Interactive dualism, occasionalism, parallelism
Versions of monism (physicalism)
Physical preferred about material
3.4 The problem of free will
The Problem: If determinism is true, there is only one physically possible future. But then how can anyone ever have acted otherwise?
If determinism does not hold, if there are alternative physically possible futures, then which one comes to pass must be a mere matter of chance
3.5 Problems of material constitution
Mereology: the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole
Is parthood the fundamental concept, and constitution to be defined in terms of parthood, or are the two concepts logically independent?
The problem of spatially coincident material objects that share their momentary non-modal properties
The statue and the lump: The two are not identical
There is a material object that is spatially coextensive with the statue
Although they exist at exactly the same times, have different modal properties: the lump has the property “can survive radical deformation” and the statue does not
Tib and Tibbles:
Tibbles is a cat. Call his tail ‘Tail’. Call “all of him but his tail” ‘Tib’.
Annihilate Tail: both Tibbles and Tib survive
But they are not identical since Tibbles is shorter than he was before, but Tib is the same size
Problem of the Ship of Theseus:
4. The Nature of Metaphysics
No clear definition of metaphysics
Van Inwagen’s definition: the essence of metaphysics consists in an attempt to describe (in a sufficiently general way) ultimate reality
5. Is Metaphysics Possible?
The strong form: all metaphysical statements are meaningless
Logical positivism: meaningful statements are either analytical or empirically verifiable; metaphysical statements are neither of these
Criticism: logical positivism itself is meaningless based on its own test for meaning
Metaphysical anti-realism: any text that fails some specified test represents an attempt to use language in a way in which language cannot be used
The weak form: metaphysical statements are meaningful, but human beings can never discover whether any metaphysical statement is true or false
Kant: there is something about the human mind that unfits it for reaching metaphysical conclusions in any reliable way
TIME ARTICLE (Bradley Dowden, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
1. What Should a Philosophical Theory of Time Do?
Priorities of the philosophical theory
We need to build a comprehensive, philosophical theory of time from among a constellation of issues
We don't want to start building this theory by adopting a definition of time that prejudices the project from the beginning
Problems to address
Clarify the relationship between time and the mind
It is easy to confuse time itself with the perception of time
Decide which of our intuitions about time should be retained (e.g., that time flows)
Clarify what physical science presupposes and implies about time
Examples of issues
Should describe the relationship between instants and events
The question of time's apparent direction
The arrow appears to be very basic for understanding nature, yet it is odd that asymmetries in time don't appear in the principal, basic dynamical laws of physics
Could the arrow of time reverse some day?
Whether the future and past are as real as the present
Is time a fundamental feature of nature, or does it emerge from more basic features
2. How is Time Related to Mind?
Two kinds of time
Physical time is public time, the time that clocks are designed to measure (more important for doing science)
Psychological time is private time. It is perhaps best understood as awareness of physical time (important for understanding the human thought process)
Psychological time
We wants to know what are the neural mechanisms that account not only for our experience of time's flow, but also for our ability to place events into the proper time order
Can we speed up our minds relative to physical time (e.g., to make us more productive)
Objectivity of time
The agreement on time order for so many phenomena (e.g., Einstein was born, then he went to school, then he died)
Our universe has a large number of different processes that bear consistent time relations, or frequency of occurrence relations, to each other (e.g., the frequency of a fixed-length pendulum is a constant multiple of the half life of a specific radioactive uranium isotope)
If there were no minds, would physical time be absent, too?
Augustine: time is nothing in reality but exists only in the mind's apprehension of that reality
Duns Scotus: recognized both physical and psychological time
Kant: our mind actually structures our perceptions so that we know a priori that time is like a mathematical line
Idealism: nothing exists independently of the mind
3. What is Time?
Some definitions of time
What accurate clocks measure
Grünbaum: A special system of relations among instantaneous events
Whitehead: Time is the form of becoming
Dummett: Time is a composition of intervals rather than of durationless instants
If physical time and psychological time are two different kinds of time, then two answers are required to the question "What is time?"
Time is whatever the time variable t is denoting in the best-confirmed and most fundamental theories of current science
Some theories about the nature of time
Wittgenstein called the "language game" of discourse about time
By drawing attention to ordinary ways of speaking about time we will dissolve rather than answer our philosophical question
Aristotle: "that time is not change [itself]" because a change "may be faster or slower, but not time..."
Descartes: that a material body has the property of spatial extension but no inherent capacity for temporal endurance, and that God by his continual action sustains (or re-creates) the body at each successive instant
Newton: time and space are an infinitely large container for all events, and that the container exists with or without the events
Leibniz: time is not an entity existing independently of actual events
Kant: space are forms that the mind projects upon the external things-in-themselves. He spoke of our mind structuring our perceptions so that space always has a Euclidean geometry, and time has the structure of the mathematical line
Reichenbach: defined time order in terms of possible cause. Event A happens before event B if A could have caused B but B couldn't have caused A
Undermined by Hume’s account of causality: it's just a matter of convention that we use the terms "cause" and "effect" to distinguish the earlier and later members of a pair of events which are related by constant conjunction
Circular vs. Linear time
Circular time (ancient Greek view)
causal loops or closed curves in spacetime allow you to go forward continuously in time until you arrive back into your past
Linear time (Christian view)
Time as an emergent entity from more basic entities
View 1: both space and time emerge from some micro-substrate
View 2: space emerges but time does not
David Gross: space is doomed, but physics seems to presuppose time
4. What does Science Require of Time?
a. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
Leading scientific theories: general relativity, quantum mechanics, big bang
Quantum mechanics: study of the relationship between energy and matter, in particular that between valence shell electrons and photons
General relativity: unifies Newton’s universal gravity with the curvature of spacetime
Within these theories, duration has a point-like structure similar to the structure of an interval of real numbers; between any two instants there is another instant, and there are no gaps in the sequence of instants
Quantum gravity may replace quantum mechanics, and this impact notions of time in science
Frame-independent duration
View before Enistein: there is frame-independent duration
If the time interval between two lightning flashes is 100 seconds on someone's accurate clock, then the interval also is 100 seconds on your accurate clock, even if you are flying by at an incredible speed
Einstein: "Every reference-body has its own particular time; unless we are told the reference-body to which the statement of time refers, there is no meaning in a statement of the time of an event."
Minkowski: spacetime is more fundamental than time or space alone; It's their "union," what we now call "spacetime," that doesn't vary.
Coordinate system of time: a way of representing space and time using numbers to represent spacetime points
Science confidently assigns numbers to times where each number designates an instant of time
A duration is an ordered set of instants, not a whole or sum of instants; any duration is infinitely divisible
The ordered instants are so densely packed that between any two there is a third, so that no instant has a next instant; there is a nondenumerable infinity of instants between any two instants
Problem: for times shorter than about 10-43 seconds, the so-called Planck time, science has no experimental grounds for the claim that between any two events there is a third
Time and relativity
Time dilation shows itself when a speeding twin returns to find that his (or her) Earth-bound twin has aged more rapidly (Twin paradox)
Time and black holes: as a clock falls toward a black hole, time slows on approach to the event horizon, and it completely stops at the horizon
Gödelian spacetime: as one progresses forward in time along one of these curves one arrives back at one's starting point
b. The Big Bang
Time before the big bang
Asking what happened before the Big Bang was like asking what on Earth is north of the North Pole
Problem with the knowing about the origin of the big bang:
The projection back to the beginning of the big bang must fail in the Planck era, that is, for all times less than 10-43 seconds after "the" Big Bang
"Cosmic landscape" or "multiverse" theory: there are multiple Big Bangs in parallel universes and an infinite amount of time before our Big Bang
c. Infinite Time
(a) Was there an infinite amount of time in the universe's past?
Aristotle: yes
Augustine: God created time, so time had a finite past
Cosmic landscape: Big Bang was actually an expansion from a pre-existing physical state
(b) Is time infinitely divisible?
General relativity and quantum mechanics require time to be a continuum
(c) Will there be an infinite amount of time in the future?
Yes: the expansion of the universe is accelerating and will continue forever
d. Atoms of Time
Classical theories of relativity and quantum mechanics: time is a continuum, thus there are no atoms of time
Unification theories: time will come in discrete pieces or atoms lasting about 10-43 second
5. What Kinds of Time Travel are Possible?
Physically realistic time travel doesn't allow the external time lapse to be zero; there is no "poofing" into the past or "poofing" into the future
Relativity theory:
Travel into the future: by moving at high speed or by taking advantage of an intense gravitational field; you can affect the future
Traveling back in time: you cannot affect the past
Arguments against time travel
If it were possible we should have seen a lot of time travelers by now
When time travelers go back and attempt to change history they must always botch their attempts to change anything; we’ve never seen this conspiracy of nature against them
Wormhole time travel: manipulating one mouth of the wormhole to be at a different time than the other mouth
Criticism: the beam of vacuum fluctuations circulating in and out of the two mouths of the wormhole will explode the wormhole and prevent its becoming a time machine
Other problems
Getting information for free: e.g., giving an author a copy of his book before he writes it
Earman's paradox:
6. Is the Relational Theory of Time Preferable to the Absolute Theory?
Definitions
Absolute theories are theories that imply time exists independently of the spacetime relations exhibited by physical events (a container that exists without contents)
Relational theories imply it does not (like citizenship: take away the citizens, and you have no citizenship left)
Two notions of absolute:
Independent of events
Independent of observer or reference frame (Einstein)
Leibniz (relationist) vs. Newton (Absolute)
Criticism of Newton: Suppose Newton's absolute space and time were to exist. But one could then imagine a universe just like ours except with everything shifted five miles east and five minutes earlier. However, there'd be no reason why this shifted universe does not exist and ours does (this violates PSR)
Response 1: there don't have to be knowable reasons for humans; God might have had His own sufficient reason for creating the universe at a given place and time even though mere mortals cannot comprehend His reasons
Response 2: the presence of centrifugal force is a sign of rotation relative to absolute space (spinning a bucket of water makes the surface of the water concave; relational space can’t explain that)
Special relativity (relationist)
Reply of Newton: According to general relativity, if you hold the bucket still but spin the background stars, the water will creep up the side of the bucket
Criticism: special relativity confuses the above two notions of “absolute”
Shoemaker (absolutist): time can exist without change
It is conceivable that events in one region of space could freeze while time still moved on (i.e., time would move on in an unfrozen region of space)
7. Does Time Flow?
Myth-of-passage theory: he passage of time "appears" to us humans to flow, but the flow is an illusion, the product of a faulty metaphor
Dynamic theory: the flow is a feature of our mind-independent reality
Criticism: the change is not a real change in the event's essential, intrinsic properties, but only in the event's relationship to the observer
Defense: the flow is reflected in the change over time of truth values of a sentence
Non-context-dependent sentences don't change their truth values ("It is raining at midnight on April 1, 2007 in Sacramento.")
8. What Gives Time its Direction or "Arrow"?
a. What Needs to be Explained?
The amalgamation of the universe's irreversible processes produces the cosmic arrow of time, the master arrow
Irreversible physical processes (e.g., the pricking of a balloon starts an irreversible process of air leaving it)
Issues
Why this arrow exists
Why the arrow is apparent in macro processes but not micro processes
What it would be like for the arrow to reverse direction
What the relationships are among the various more specific arrows of time
Physical laws are insensitive to the laws of time
e.g., Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism can be used to predict that television signals can exist, but the equations don't tell us whether those signals arrive before or arrive after they are transmitted
Time's arrow isn't revealed in microscopic processes
e.g., film a movie of electron movement, run it backwards; it would show an equally probable process
b. Explanations or Theories of the Arrow
Discussions of time direction and entropy
c. Multiple Arrows
For a process to be classified as one of many arrows of time, it must work differently or not at all if time were reversed
The basis of possible multiple arrows
a. There are records of the past but not of the future.
b. It is easier to know the past than to know the future.
c. Light and radio waves spread out from, but never converge into, a point.
d. The universe expands rather than shrinks.
e. Causes precede their effects.
f. We see black holes but never white holes.
g. Conscious actions affect the future but not the past.
h. B meson decay, neutral kaon decay, and Higgs boson decay are each different in a time reversed world.
i. Quantum mechanical measurement collapses the wave function.
j. Possibilities decrease as time goes on.
d. Reversing Time
Most physicists suspect that time could have been reversed if the initial conditions of the universe at the Big Bang had been different
Suppose the cosmic arrow of time were someday to reverse in a distant, populated region far away from Earth
Consider communication between the two regions
9. Is only the Present Real?
Possible theories
Presentist: viewpoint maintains that the past and the future are not real, and that only the present is real,
Growing past: in addition to the present, the past is also real
Block universe theory because it regards reality as a single block of spacetime
Criticism: this misses the special "open" character of the future and the vividness of the past
Response: only the block universe can make sense of relativity's implication that, if people are in certain relative motions, an event in person A's present can be in person B's future and in person C's past.
Are predictions true or false at the time they are uttered?
Yes (block universe theory): "Is true" is a tenseless predicate, not one that merely says "is true now."
Criticism: this undermines free will
No (Aristotle): is not true until it's known to be true, namely at the time at which the event occurs
Criticism: undermines our moral obligation to the unborn
Criticism: having fixed truth values is crucial for the logical system used to clarify science
10. Are There Essentially Tensed Facts?
The primary function of tensed facts is to make tensed sentences true
Tensed theory of time: tenses regarding past, present and future represent objective features of reality that aren't captured by the popular "block universe" approach
e.g., The sentence "Custer died in Montana" is true because it corresponds to the tensed fact that Custer died in Montana.
Tenseless theory of time: talk about the past is really talk about our own relation to events (e.g., the birth event of George Washington happened before the writing of this sentence)
e.g., The sentence "Custer died in Montana" is true because it corresponds to the tenseless fact that there is a time t such that Custer dies in Montana at time t, and time t is before the time of the utterance of the sentence "Custer died in Montana" by me here.
The verb dies is logically tenseless
Criticism: It can work only for utterances, but a sentence can be true even if never uttered by anyone
Criticism (Chisholm): true sentences using the temporal indexical terms "now," "before now," and "happened yesterday" are part of the facts of the world that science should account for, and science fails to do this because it doesn't recognize them as being real facts
Criticism (Prior): doesn’t account for utterances after painful events
"Thank goodness the conclusion of that thing is contemporaneous with this utterance." (Why should anyone thank goodness for that?)
Defense (Mellor): tensed facts were presumed to be needed to account for the truth of tensed talk; but the analysis shows that ordinary tenseless facts are adequate
11. What is Temporal Logic?
Temporal logic: the representation of information about time by using the methods of symbolic logic
Classical approach (Prior)
Adds tense operators to an existing system of symbolic logic ("now," "happens before," "afterwards," "always," and "sometimes")
Logicians still disagree about what axioms are needed to capture correct beliefs about time as theorems
e.g., where P is the operator means "at some past time it was the case that."
P(p v q) iff Pp v Pq
For any two present-tensed propositions p and q, at some past time it was the case that p or q if and only if either at some past time it was the case that p or at some past time it was the case that q
First-order logic approach: no modal-like tense operators, but adds an additional variable, a time argument, to any predicate involving time in order to indicate how its satisfaction depends on time
e.g., Where “n” is the present, the statement that “Q has always been true” may be translated into first-order temporal logic as
(
t)[(t
< n) → Q(t)]
Three-valued logic (Lukasiewicz): future contingent sentences don't yet have truth values
True, False, or else Indeterminate [T, F, or I]
BEYOND DUALISM, John Searle (Lecture at IBM Almaden Institute Conference, 2006)
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=200924984898632631
Introduction
Old fashioned materialists just reduced consciousness to brain activity (get rid of consciousness)
Cognitive scientists a few decades ago didn’t care about brain structure
Cognitive scientists today respect the brain and the details in the “plumbing
But, dualism is becoming respectable
Definition of consciousness:
Those states of feeling sent that begin in the morning when you awake from dreamless sleep and continues until you go to sleep again or die
Four defining features of consciousness
Qualitative feel: our conscious states feel different from each other
Not merely qualia (some conscious states are qualitative, and others not); all conscious states are qualitative
Ontologically Subjective: originates within a human subject
However, consciousness could be epistemically objective from the standpoint of scientific investigation
Conscious states are part of a larger unified conscious field
Kant: transcendental unity of apperception
Intentionality: aboutness
Four other things about consciousness
Can't be eliminated or reduced: can't get rid of it
There is no illusion in consciousness that can be reduced to another reality
Can do a compositional reduction by saying that consciousness is neurons firing, since it leaves out the qualitative feeling
All conscious processes result from lower-state neuronal firing
Consciousness is realized in the brain at a higher level feature of brain system caused by lower level features
Consciousness functions causally in causing our behavior (not just epiphenomenal)
Failure of computationalism (strong artificial intelligence):
Based on Turing test, based on only syntactic structure (needs semantics)
Chinese room criticism: such computer programs deals just with syntactic, not semantics
Observer relative criticism: need to distinguish between (1) programs in the brain that have intrinsic psychological reality (observer independent; e.g. doing addition) and (2) those that don't intrinsic psychological reality (observer relative to our interests) that are just machinery
Problems with the term “artificial intelligence”:
Ambiguous, e.g., artificial dye (real dye produced artificially) vs. artificial cream (not real cream)
Contemporary brain/consciousness research:
Three steps: (1) find neuronal correlate for consciousness (NCC); (2) determine whether it is causal; (3) get a theory
Building block approach: find out how this works with a phenomenon like “red” and this will apply to other conscious experiences
Duck-rabbit approach: determine where our brain switches from one experience to another; this supposedly tells us where the NCC
Track stimulus approach: track the stimulus through a brain to see where it ends
Problem: ignores the unified field component of consciousness;
The above experiments are done on subjects that are already conscious
This just involves modifying the conscious field
Avoiding the problem of dualism
Argument for dualism: the above four features of consciousness are not part of the material world
Plus, consciousness is non-spatial and has no physical force
Response: begin by simply assigning those features to the material realm
Grant that they are part of ordinary biological reality
We can accept the reality of consciousness without accepting dualism
How consciousness can function causally:
Argument
1. Some conscious events cause physical events
2. Such events involve electro-chemical properties
3. Conclusion: some conscious events have electro-chemical properties
Some conscious events are material
They exist at a higher level of brain activity
We can accept the facts of consciousness while being true to physics
Q&A
Limitations of current AI:
They most that current AI could seem to accomplish now is the creation of zombies (appear to be conscious, but aren’t)
In theory we could build a conscious machine; however, we don’t yet know how the brain produces consciousness
Spit brain problem: split the hemispheres of the brain; are both conscious?
Both have to be conscious since their design is the same
Why is consciousness any more interesting than other emergent things like culture is (as it emerges from society)
Consciousness is a precondition of all things that are important
Is the issue too complex
Some parts may be simple
Why do all conscious states require intentionality
Some conscious states are not about anything (undirected nervousness)
How would know if a machine is consciousness
Best way to know that is to be that system (which have limitations)
Test for other minds:
Not from behavior
Relevantly similar causes produce relevantly similar effects
The causal mechanisms are in an organism are like mine
Consciousness may depend on something that is unique to neurochemistry, and cannot be duplicated in a silicon mechanism
What about free will
Problem (Spinoza): If a falling stone had consciousness, it would say that it’s falling from its own free will
We are stuck with the presupposition of free will, even if it is an illusion
Regarding the half-second experiment: you can veto the decisions after detected brain activity
THE MAGIC OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Daniel Dennett
Problem: how can a collection of 100 trillion mindless cells work together to create human consciousness
Many people think that consciousness cannot be explained, and if you do explain it, it really isn’t consciousness
Indian rope trick: an impossible trick that people claim that the trick has been performed
There are various explanations of these reported claims (e.g., audience in a hypnotic state), but all of these are disappointing
Analogy to consciousness: account for the illusion of consciousness
Examples of “magical” conscious experience
Déjà vu: there is a mechanical hypothesis that explains the phenomenon, but it disappointing (e.g., familiarity detector gives a false indication that we’ve seen something before)
Visual illusions: after image of the American flag; you can refer to it, but it’s not there
Painting made of blobs that from a distance look like people
Maximally bland computationalism
Trillions of memory registers (an address with content and a number)
The mind is a massively parallel set of registers; the values of some registers change depends on others nearby
The content of each register is some magnitude that can change as some function of the contents of other registers
The brain’s job is to get the body to
Computational explanations of the above “magical” conscious experiences: accounts for why it seems that the thing appears that way (e.g., red stripe after image of the American flag)
Points
Can’t trust your own conscious introspective experience of these magical events
It’s the job of cognitive neural science to explain these things (by reverse engineering the phenomena)
Cartesian Theatre
There is no Cartesian theatre in the brain where all perceptual experiences comes together
We need to break up the cartesean theature; all the work done by the homulus needs to be assigned to several other factors
Dilemma of the subject: (a) if you leave the subject in your theory, you haven’t begun; (b) if you do leave the subject in your theory, then you evade the hard problem
Option B is the correct one, but is a little frightening (it’s like entering a factory where there’s no one there)
The problem of consciousness:
Card trick example: the tuned deck
There was no single trick, but a collection of several; the word “the” is misdirecting
The audience expected a single hard trick, but it was a series of easy problems
The hard problem of consciousness: there is no single problem of consciousness (the word “the” is misdirecting)
Explain all the easy problems of consciousness, and that’s all you need to do
Many people want consciousness to be a hard problem (like “real” magic), not a series of easy problems (like illusory magic)
HIERARCHICAL TEMPORAL MEMORY: THEORY AND IMPLEMENTATION, Jeff Hawkins
Video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2500845581503718756
Powerpoint presentation: www.almaden.ibm.com/institute/resources/2006/Almaden%20Institute%20Jeff%20Hawkins.ppt#303
Cognitive science indicator today
Not in our lifetime
Decades of effort, not much success
e.g., AI neural networks, fuzzy logic, fifth generation project; decade of he brain)
No machine understands language, no real robotics
Brain is very complex
Any moment now
Impressive features of the brain
Neo cortex is fast, solves problems quickly;
Extremely flexible speaks to simplicity
Extremely robust, adapts to damage
100 years of data
Similar structures and layers in the neocortex
There’s a common cortical algorithm underlying all functions (vision, sensation)
HTM (hierarchical temporal memory)
What does an HTM do?
Discover the causes in the world
Infer causes of novel input
Predict future
Direct motor behavior; the whole neo cortex is involved in motor control
HTMs use a hierarchy of memory nodes
Each node discovers causes, passes beliefs up, passes predictions down
The top line stores
Why does hierarchy make a difference
It allows for shared representations, which leads to generalization and efficiency
HTM hierarchy matches spatial and temporal hierarchy of causes in the world
Belief propagation techniques ensure all nodes quickly reach mutually compatible beliefs
Affords mechanism for attention
How does each node discover and infer causes
Learn common spatial pattern
Learn common sequences of spatial patterns (things that happen at the same time have common causes)
Use context from above in hierarchy
Does HTM really work
Example of successful basic shape recognition
Numenta plan (i.e., Hawkin’s company)
Develop a detailed computational theory of neocortical function (HTM)
Develop a software platform for HTM
Test HTM with a machine vision system
HTM applications
What humans find easy and computers hard
Vision, language, robotics
Discovering causes in unusual worlds
Geology, markets, weather, physics, genetics
As long as the data is hierarchical, it can recognize patterns and discover high-level causes
Conclusion:
HTM Capabilities
Discover causes
Inference
Prediction
Behavior
Beyond biology
Faster
Larger
Exotic senses
ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY Aaron Preston (www.iep.utm.edu)
Introduction
History: analytic philosophy emerged in early 20th century with Russell and Moore and their reaction against 19th century British Idealism
Methodology: the grammar of natural language often is philosophically misleading, and that the way to dispel the illusion is to re-express propositions in the ideal formal language of symbolic logic, thereby revealing their true logical form
Five phases:
1900 to 1910: propositional realism (Moore, Russell)
1910-1930: logical atomism (Russell, Wittgenstein), common sense (Moore)
1930-1945: logical positivism (Ayer, Vienna Circle)
1945-1965: ordinary-language analysis (Wittgenstein, Wisdom, Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Grice)
1965-present: eclecticism (emphasize precision and thoroughness about a narrow topic and to deemphasize the imprecise or cavalier discussion of broad topics)
Contrasts with other traditions: British idealism, traditional philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, postmodernism
1. The Revolution of Moore and Russell: Cambridge Realism and The Linguistic Turn
British Idealism (F.H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and J.M.E. McTaggart):
Metaphysical monism: the world is really a single indivisible whole whose nature is mental, or spiritual, or Ideal rather than material
Anti-realism: the world of naïve or ordinary experience is something of an illusion
Doctrine of internal relations: every object exists and is what it is at least partly in virtue of the relations it bears to other things—more precisely, to all other things
The only thing that exists simpliciter is the whole—the entire network of necessarily related objects
Moore:
Many things that exist simpliciter
Two aspects of Moore’s approach
Articulates his realism in the idiom of “propositions” and “meanings” (emphasis on language)
Rejects system-building and focused on narrowly defined philosophical problems held in isolation (rejection of traditional philosophy)
Principia Ethica (1903) open Question argument
It is a mistake to define “good” in terms of anything other than itself (every purported definition fails to capture the meaning of “good.”)
E.g., regarding “goodness is pleasure,” it makes sense to ask whether goodness really is pleasure
“The Refutation of Idealism” (1903)
Critique of idealist position that Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived)
According to idealism, “to exist” has the same meaning as “to be cognized”; however, if the two really had the same meaning, the idealist wouldn’t need to assert the formula
“A Defense of Common Sense” (1925)
Common sense propositions: my body exists
Each common sense proposition has an “ordinary meaning” that specifies exactly what it is that one knows when one knows that proposition to be true
The task of the philosopher is not to question the truth of common sense propositions, but to provide their correct analyses or explanations
“Proof of an External World” (Moore 1939)
(1) “Here is one hand” is a common sense proposition with an ordinary meaning
(2) Presenting the hand for inspection is sufficient proof that the proposition is true
(3) The hand is an external object
(4) Thus, there is an external world
Moore’s contribution
Traditional philosophy: philosophy is the practice of giving a rationally coherent account of the world at its most general level
Moore: philosophy is recast as the practice of linguistic analysis applied to isolated issues
2. Russell and the Early Wittgenstein: Ideal Language and Logical Atomism
Introduction
Emphasis on ideal language analysis and logical atomism
a. The Theory of Descriptions
Appeal of realism for Russell
Idealism open to the charge of endorsing psychologism—the view that apparently objective truths are to be accounted for in terms of the operations of subjective cognitive or “psychological” faculties
Russell was attracted to the objective certainty of mathematical and logical truths, and realism supported this
Object theory of meaning: the meaning of a sentence is the object or state of affairs to which it refers
e.g., “that leaf is green” is meaningful in virtue of bearing a special relationship to the state of affairs it is about, namely, a certain leaf’s being green.
Criticism: fictional characters and negative existential statements do not have empirical objects
e.g., “The golden mountain does not exist,” we seem to refer to a golden mountain—a nonexistent object—in the very act of denying its existence.
Dilemma: dilemma: either give-up the object theory of meaning or postulate a realm of non-empirical objects that stand as the meanings of these apparently objectless sentences
Meinong’s solution: postulate a realm of non-existent objects
Russell’s theory of descriptions “On Denoting”
Denoting phrases are incomplete symbols
Phrases that involve a noun preceded by “a,” “an,” “some,” “any,” “every,” “all,” or “the”
These have no meaning on their own, but only in the context of a complete sentence that expresses a proposition
e.g., “The golden mountain does not exist” is really just a misleading way of saying “It is not the case that there is exactly one thing that is a mountain and is golden.”
This proposition does not refer to anything, but simply denies an existential claim
One dispels the grammatical illusion in the original by making the grammatical form match the true logical form, and this is done through logical analysis
b. Ideal-Language Philosophy vs. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
Analysis involves rephrasing of a sentence into another sentence semantically equivalent but grammatically different
Moorean analysis: analyses are given in ordinary language
Russellian analysis: analyses are given in symbolic logic with a quasi-mathematical structure
Example: where Mx as “x is a mountain” and Gx as “x is golden,”
~((∃x)(Mx & Gx) & ∀y((My & Gy) → y=x))
i.e., it is not the case that there is some object such that (1) it is a mountain, (2) it is golden, and (3) all objects that are mountains and golden are identical to it.
Russell and Whitehead published this complete system of formal logic in Principia Mathematica (1910-1913)
Provides an ideal language, capable of elucidating all sorts of ordinary-language confusions
This created a rift in analytical philosophy between ideal-language philosophy and ordinary-language philosophy
c. Frege: Influence or Instigator?
Frege predates Russell and provided his own system of symbolic logic; like Russell he tried to show that mathematics is reducible to logic
However, Frege was not interested in reforming philosophy like Moore and Russell were
d. Logical Atomism and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Logical atomism: propositions are built out of elements corresponding to the basic constituents of the world, just as sentences are built out of words
Atomic facts: the basic constituents of the world
Atomic propositions: the basic constituents of language
Complex propositions representing more complex facts are called molecular propositions and molecular facts
These link atomic propositions together with truth-functional connectives, such as “and,” “or” and “not.”
Russell:
“Given all true atomic propositions, together with the fact that they are all, every other true proposition can theoretically be deduced by logical methods”
Structure of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
1. The world is everything that is the case.
2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)
6. The general form of a truth-function is.... This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Explanation:
Propositions 1 and 2: the world is nothing but a complex of atomic facts. Propositions 3 and 4: a significant (meaningful) proposition is a "logical picture" of the facts that constitute some possible or actual state of affairs.
Proposition 5: all complex propositions are built out of atomic propositions joined by truth-functional connectives
Proposition 6: gives the general form of a truth-function (a minimalist system using only the “nand” connective, i.e., “not both x and y”)
Proposition 7: the propositions of logic and mathematics are purely structural and therefore meaningless
They show the form of all possible propositions/states of affairs, but they do not themselves picture any particular state of affairs, thus they do not say anything
3. Logical Positivism, the Vienna Circle, and Quine
a. Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle
Logical positivism: combines the central aspects of the positivisms of Auguste Comte and Ernst Mach with the meta-philosophical and methodological views of the analytic movement
Holds to Scientism: the view that all knowledge is scientific knowledge
Metaphysics, religious knowledge, common sense beliefs are not fields of knowledge
Verification theory of meaning: any non-tautological statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified.
Vienna Circle: organized by Moritz Schlick in 1922
Included Otto Neurath, Herbert Feigl, Freidrich Waismann, Rudolph Carnap
Ayer: visited Vienna Circle in 1936, popularized the views in Language, Truth and Logic (1936)
Problems:
Self-refuting: the verification principle itself is non-tautological but cannot be empirically verified. Consequently, it renders itself meaningless
Eliminates important scientific concepts, e.g., theoretical entities (e.g., atoms, the Mendelian gene)
b. W. V. Quine
Carnap’s reductionist project: reduce scientific statements into so-called protocol statements having to do with empirical observations
Show that every apparently unverifiable claim in science (e.g., theoretical entities) could be analyzed into a small set of observation-sentences
Quine’s Two Dogmas of Empiricism
Modern empiricism (i.e., logical positivism) is grounded on two faulty assumptions (1) Analytic/synthetic distinction, and (2) Reductionism
Analytic/synthetic distinction: there are two distinct kinds of truths, analytic and synthetic
Analytic are grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and seem to be necessary
Related notions of analytic truth, a priori truth, and necessary truth
e.g., 2+2=4, nor logical truths such as If ((a=b) &(b=c)) then (a=c), nor semantic truths such as All bachelors are unmarried men
Seem to be necessary, and historically explained in terms of
Synthetic are grounded in fact and seem to be contingent
Related notions of a posteriori, contingent, and synthetic truths
e.g., mundane truths such as The cat is on the mat and scientific truths such as Bodies in free-fall accelerate at 9.8 m/s2
Analytic necessity was historically explained in terms of Platonic forms or Aristotelean essences; scientific naturalism explains it linguistically (synonymy or the interchangeability of terms)
Quine rejects the distinctions between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori, necessary and contingent
Criticism of the synonymy foundation of analyticity
Synonymy must have been established by fiat or stipulative definition; however, “who defined it thus, or when?”
Thus, synonymy is an unverifiable theory
Analyticity, synonymy, necessity and related concepts seem to contribute to each other’s meaning/definition in a way that “is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space”
Reductionism:
Logical positivism’s reductionism: Every and any scientific statement could be reduced to/analyzed into a small set of observational statements that constitutes that claim’s verification and meaning
Quine’s criticism: scientific verification, falsification and meaning are holistic; they are parts of large networks of claims that are “worldviews”
Verification is never absolute; any constitutive claim can be saved by making adjustments elsewhere in the theory-network
Implications on traditional analytic-synthetic distinction: analytic statements such as those of mathematics and logic, can be revised or rejected in order to preserve other claims to which one is more deeply committed
4. The Later Wittgenstein and Ordinary-Language Philosophy
a. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
1945-1965: Wittgenstein, Wisdom, Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Grice
Associated with Oxford University
b. The Later Wittgenstein
Rejects early ideal language view
Language has no universally correct structure
Developed his new views the 1920s and 30s; were published posthumously in 1953 _Philosophical Investigations_
Languages games and forms of life
Each language-system is like a game that functions according to its own rules
Includes full-fledged languages, a dialect, or a specialized technical language used by some body of experts
Real linguistic rules cannot be stated, but are rather shown in the complex intertwining of linguistic and non-linguistic practices that make up the “form of life” of any linguistic community
Language systems, or language games, are unanalyzable wholes whose parts (utterances sanctioned by the rules of the language) have meaning in virtue of having a role to play—a use—within the total form of life of a linguistic community
Solving philosophical problems:
Traditional philosophical problems arise from linguistic error, and that true philosophy is about analyzing language so as to grasp the limits of meaning
We don’t do this by using an ideal language
We solve philosophical problems by looking at how language is ordinarily used and seeing that traditional philosophical problems arise only as we depart from that use
Use of examples
“The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose”
We should look at examples of how the parts of language are ordinarily used in the language game out of which the philosopher has tried to step
5. The 1960s and After: The Era of Eclecticism
a. The Demise of Linguistic Philosophy
Problems
Deep divisions within the analytic movement, especially between the ordinary-language and ideal-language camps
Linguistic meaning was turning out to be a very puzzling phenomenon, itself in need of deep, philosophical treatment
The ordinary-language approach fell far short of serious, philosophical work
The emphasis on clarity was retained, either with the application of formal techniques or with ordinary language
Post-linguistic analytic philosophy partitioned itself into an ever-increasing number of specialized sub-fields
On account of its eclecticism, contemporary analytic philosophy defies summary or general description
b. The Renaissance in Metaphysics
Contemporary analytic philosophy rejects traditional metaphysics, but embraces the piecemeal pursuit of metaphysical questions
Strawson’s “descriptive metaphysics”: a matter of looking to the structure and content of natural languages to illuminate the contours of different metaphysical worldviews or “conceptual schemes.”
Lewis’s possible worlds semantics: understanding possibility and necessity in terms of total descriptions of a way that some worlds or all worlds might be/have been
Kripke’s direct reference theory: some words, particularly proper names, have no meaning, but simply serve as “rigid designators” for the things they name
c. The Renaissance in History
The old approach to the history of philosophy:
Focus on an extremely narrow group of figures,
Focus on just a few works at the exclusion of others
Work exclusively from translations
Ignore secondary work that was not originally written in English
Treat the philosophical positions as if they were those presented by contemporaries
The new approach
Opposes all of the above practices