Friday, June 26, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
This raises the question of thought's relation to language. Can one have a thought which is not framed in a language of some sort, be that language English, Algebra, the diatonic scale, etc? It would seem that one could, otherwise pre-verbal children and our ancestral forbearers never had a thought. What's more, if thought never existed before language, then what was the impetus for language? While it seems to me that thoughts must be possible without a language to frame them I cannot think of ever having had a thought without it being in a language. Thinking within a language would seem to put up a fence around one's thoughts*.
If something cannot be expressed with the languages one uses, can it still be thought?
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* Albeit a very, very large fence. At it's 1st publication the Oxford English Dictionary had 414,825 entries. So what language can express is infinite but bounded - infinite, because, as German demonstrates sometimes beautifully, but often quite cumbersomely, we can combine preexisting words to form new words, and there is no end to this. Yet it is bounded, because language can only express what can be said with words and syntax. Words such as indescribable clearly show that we are aware of this.
If something cannot be expressed with the languages one uses, can it still be thought?
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* Albeit a very, very large fence. At it's 1st publication the Oxford English Dictionary had 414,825 entries. So what language can express is infinite but bounded - infinite, because, as German demonstrates sometimes beautifully, but often quite cumbersomely, we can combine preexisting words to form new words, and there is no end to this. Yet it is bounded, because language can only express what can be said with words and syntax. Words such as indescribable clearly show that we are aware of this.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Here I am trying to consider the nature of knowledge (thinking about thinking) and in doing so I discuss the limitations and meaning of discussing such matters (talk about talking about it). So it's no wonder that I often trip over the shoestrings these thoughts hang from. A considerable source of difficulty (SOD)* is that I can say but one thing at a time, but each idea that I want to express has other thoughts branching from it, and those tangents have tangents with tangents. To try to write the one thought without giving attention to its florescence is like stripping a beautiful plant to its trunk so that it can be fit through a trunk-sized hole (not to overstate the appeal of my ramblings by using words such as beautiful).
So, on the nature of knowledge:
"Know" is a word which, for my tastes, is used entirely too casually by most people. It can mean to be familiar with, and in that sense I don't object to its daily use. However in the sense, "to apprehend clearly and with certainty" the word has almost no place in any quotidian experience except to mention its absence. In this sense, to know implies not just an acquaintance with fact or truth, but also the existence of "facts" or "truths".** What does it take to be acquainted with unquestionable truth?*** Here faith or mysticism and science or logic seem to diverge. Faith and mysticism seek to behold truth while science seeks to know truth. I would argue that this is a fool's errand, or at least one for Xeno's Achiles****. Since to know requires the removal of all doubt one must discard any assumptions(, for the veracity of these assumptions can always serve as a source of doubt. Even the exhaustive empericist would be forced to admit that at the base of his or her epistemological scaffolding lays the Principle of Induction (PoI). The PoI is a principle that we use so often most of us don't even consider it. Basically, the PoI states that if something has happened a certain way many times before then it will happen that same way the next time. To borrow an example from David Foster Wallace*****, you exercise the PoI every time you get out of bed. You assume that the floor will be there to hold you up, but how do you know that it will? Simply because it has every other time you've stepped out of bed. Is this an unquestionably valid assumption? Is it inconceivable that your floor has rotted and will give way under your feet, or that your bed has been secretly moved to a precipice, or that a knowledge gnome who seeks to undercut the PoI has secretly cut a hole in your floor while you slept? It may be a safe assumption, but it is not an unquestionable one. It's an assumption that most of us make not just daily, but with nearly every decision we make. Doubting this assumption can literally drive you crazy (see the quote on paranoia from a few days back), so I don’t recommend doing so. However, if absolute certainty is what you seek, doubt it you must.
This is why to seek to know, in it's truest sense, is a fool's errand, it can never be done unequivocally.
But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that my dog Carl produced a simple, eloquent, assumptionless and irrefutable proof of the PoI. We now have firm ground to start with, but if we intend to use observation and deduction to proceed, we must consider both of these activities******.
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*I intend to use S.O.D. repeatedly here, for these sources of difficulty can be rather demonstrative of other philosophies and the one that I am trying to understand/develop here, so please keep the acronym SOD in mind.
**I must table this question for later. To discuss it here would be to derail the post before it got anywhere. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting question indeed.
*** "[U]nquestionable" it must be, or else it is not "known".
**** Zeno's paradoxes are well-known to most middle schoolers, even if not by name. "In a race, the quickest runner [Achilles] can never overtake the slowest [the tortoise], since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead." (Aristotle) Zeno was a Greek who confounded many of the basic concepts of the time such as motion. His paradoxes characteristically involved infinities or their converse, infinitesimals, and in discussing epistemology I often find myself in my own race with the tortoise of expression or clarity - it seems that each step towards my goal introduces another step to be taken. Some consider paradoxes to be a product of the assumptions we make or the meanings we affix to concepts that would be better served to be discussed with meaningless formalism (purely syntactical). I disagree. I think paradoxes arise by asking senseless questions that only appear sensible because of unrecognized assumptions or false syllogisms. For more on this see my yet-unwritten post on "Reality" and its own SODs (I guess that the plural of SOD should be SsOD, eh?).
*****
1-RIP
2-A DFW footnote, how appropriate.
3-This example is borrowed from DFW's Everything and More, a book on infinity, which is fantastic, but also difficult, and is the book that started me down the path that led to this blog. Really, you should probably just read that book and its suggested readings instead of this blog, as most of what's here is a dumbing-down of what's there.
******w/r/t Observation we will need to consider Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (another S.O.D.) and this certainly deserves more than a footnote, so stay tuned. Deduction, well I may get to that next, or not, but if I wait until I’ve tackled deduction to post this then you’ll all have stopped checking back by the time I do…so once again, stay tuned.
So, on the nature of knowledge:
"Know" is a word which, for my tastes, is used entirely too casually by most people. It can mean to be familiar with, and in that sense I don't object to its daily use. However in the sense, "to apprehend clearly and with certainty" the word has almost no place in any quotidian experience except to mention its absence. In this sense, to know implies not just an acquaintance with fact or truth, but also the existence of "facts" or "truths".** What does it take to be acquainted with unquestionable truth?*** Here faith or mysticism and science or logic seem to diverge. Faith and mysticism seek to behold truth while science seeks to know truth. I would argue that this is a fool's errand, or at least one for Xeno's Achiles****. Since to know requires the removal of all doubt one must discard any assumptions(, for the veracity of these assumptions can always serve as a source of doubt. Even the exhaustive empericist would be forced to admit that at the base of his or her epistemological scaffolding lays the Principle of Induction (PoI). The PoI is a principle that we use so often most of us don't even consider it. Basically, the PoI states that if something has happened a certain way many times before then it will happen that same way the next time. To borrow an example from David Foster Wallace*****, you exercise the PoI every time you get out of bed. You assume that the floor will be there to hold you up, but how do you know that it will? Simply because it has every other time you've stepped out of bed. Is this an unquestionably valid assumption? Is it inconceivable that your floor has rotted and will give way under your feet, or that your bed has been secretly moved to a precipice, or that a knowledge gnome who seeks to undercut the PoI has secretly cut a hole in your floor while you slept? It may be a safe assumption, but it is not an unquestionable one. It's an assumption that most of us make not just daily, but with nearly every decision we make. Doubting this assumption can literally drive you crazy (see the quote on paranoia from a few days back), so I don’t recommend doing so. However, if absolute certainty is what you seek, doubt it you must.
This is why to seek to know, in it's truest sense, is a fool's errand, it can never be done unequivocally.
But for the sake of discussion, let's assume that my dog Carl produced a simple, eloquent, assumptionless and irrefutable proof of the PoI. We now have firm ground to start with, but if we intend to use observation and deduction to proceed, we must consider both of these activities******.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*I intend to use S.O.D. repeatedly here, for these sources of difficulty can be rather demonstrative of other philosophies and the one that I am trying to understand/develop here, so please keep the acronym SOD in mind.
**I must table this question for later. To discuss it here would be to derail the post before it got anywhere. Nonetheless, it is a very interesting question indeed.
*** "[U]nquestionable" it must be, or else it is not "known".
**** Zeno's paradoxes are well-known to most middle schoolers, even if not by name. "In a race, the quickest runner [Achilles] can never overtake the slowest [the tortoise], since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead." (Aristotle) Zeno was a Greek who confounded many of the basic concepts of the time such as motion. His paradoxes characteristically involved infinities or their converse, infinitesimals, and in discussing epistemology I often find myself in my own race with the tortoise of expression or clarity - it seems that each step towards my goal introduces another step to be taken. Some consider paradoxes to be a product of the assumptions we make or the meanings we affix to concepts that would be better served to be discussed with meaningless formalism (purely syntactical). I disagree. I think paradoxes arise by asking senseless questions that only appear sensible because of unrecognized assumptions or false syllogisms. For more on this see my yet-unwritten post on "Reality" and its own SODs (I guess that the plural of SOD should be SsOD, eh?).
*****
1-RIP
2-A DFW footnote, how appropriate.
3-This example is borrowed from DFW's Everything and More, a book on infinity, which is fantastic, but also difficult, and is the book that started me down the path that led to this blog. Really, you should probably just read that book and its suggested readings instead of this blog, as most of what's here is a dumbing-down of what's there.
******w/r/t Observation we will need to consider Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (another S.O.D.) and this certainly deserves more than a footnote, so stay tuned. Deduction, well I may get to that next, or not, but if I wait until I’ve tackled deduction to post this then you’ll all have stopped checking back by the time I do…so once again, stay tuned.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
To understand Carnap's quote requires a bit of background:
Carnap was among a group of influential thinkers known as the Vienna Circle. This group met on Thursday nights in post-WWI, pre-WWII Vienna where they discussed ways of knowing and developed the school of thought known as Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism claims that in order for a statement to have meaning it must be able to be shown to be true or false. What's more, the meaning of a statement is essentially the way in which its truth or falsity can be demonstrated. As such, abstract, or metaphysical claims which can not be related to any means of verifiability are literally meaningless. To speak of such things is to say nothing.
The Vienna Circle (VC) (and much of subsequent Western Philosophy) was heavily influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's (LW)* work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Tractatus is written as a series of propositions which culminate with the seventh and final proposition, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."** My interpretation of this is as follows; If something can not be articulated clearly with the language one is using then it should not be said. To approximate things is to do them a greater injustice than to simply pass over them in silence.
So, the VC took LW's work and developed from it Logical Positivism. Metaphysics concerns itself with that beyond the physical (meta = beyond, physics = the physical) and thus with things that can not always be demonstrably true or false or subjected to sensory-related tests of validity. The metaphysical is thus better left unsaid. However, music may evoke the such unsayable things, and do a better job of communicating them than language. Hence, the quote from Carnap.
Hopefully my choice of a new nom de blog makes it clear that I do not fully agree with the Logical Positivists.
So I ask you, the reader; Does precision in language elucidate or obscure communication?***
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*Ludwig Wittgenstein was a thinker who will likely come up a lot on this blog, so I will tell you a bit about him here. LW published only one work during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He wrote it while fighting in the trenches of WWI and managed to protect the manuscript from his captors during his time as a prisoner. In this slim volume of fewer than 100 pages he intended to say all that was to be said on Philosophy. LW was invited to join the Vienna Circle, and he attended several meetings. Apparently unhappy with what the VC was concluding from his work, LW was reported to sometimes stand up, face the wall, and read poetry during the meetings he attended. After inspiring this major philosophical movement LW went on to renounce Tractatus and to inspire post-modern philosophers, which he also subsequently renounced.
**This is immediately preceded by proposition 6.54 which begins, "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: He who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless..." Thanks, LW.
***Answers needn't, and probably shouldn't, adhere to the either/or framing of the question.
Carnap was among a group of influential thinkers known as the Vienna Circle. This group met on Thursday nights in post-WWI, pre-WWII Vienna where they discussed ways of knowing and developed the school of thought known as Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism claims that in order for a statement to have meaning it must be able to be shown to be true or false. What's more, the meaning of a statement is essentially the way in which its truth or falsity can be demonstrated. As such, abstract, or metaphysical claims which can not be related to any means of verifiability are literally meaningless. To speak of such things is to say nothing.
The Vienna Circle (VC) (and much of subsequent Western Philosophy) was heavily influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein's (LW)* work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Tractatus is written as a series of propositions which culminate with the seventh and final proposition, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."** My interpretation of this is as follows; If something can not be articulated clearly with the language one is using then it should not be said. To approximate things is to do them a greater injustice than to simply pass over them in silence.
So, the VC took LW's work and developed from it Logical Positivism. Metaphysics concerns itself with that beyond the physical (meta = beyond, physics = the physical) and thus with things that can not always be demonstrably true or false or subjected to sensory-related tests of validity. The metaphysical is thus better left unsaid. However, music may evoke the such unsayable things, and do a better job of communicating them than language. Hence, the quote from Carnap.
Hopefully my choice of a new nom de blog makes it clear that I do not fully agree with the Logical Positivists.
So I ask you, the reader; Does precision in language elucidate or obscure communication?***
-------------------------------------------------------------------
*Ludwig Wittgenstein was a thinker who will likely come up a lot on this blog, so I will tell you a bit about him here. LW published only one work during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He wrote it while fighting in the trenches of WWI and managed to protect the manuscript from his captors during his time as a prisoner. In this slim volume of fewer than 100 pages he intended to say all that was to be said on Philosophy. LW was invited to join the Vienna Circle, and he attended several meetings. Apparently unhappy with what the VC was concluding from his work, LW was reported to sometimes stand up, face the wall, and read poetry during the meetings he attended. After inspiring this major philosophical movement LW went on to renounce Tractatus and to inspire post-modern philosophers, which he also subsequently renounced.
**This is immediately preceded by proposition 6.54 which begins, "My propositions are elucidatory in this way: He who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless..." Thanks, LW.
***Answers needn't, and probably shouldn't, adhere to the either/or framing of the question.
Monday, June 8, 2009
We are but waves
A wave is a perturbation of matter. The waves on a body of water are not made of that water, they are the pattern of the water's displacement. The molecules of water that go up one moment and down the next are not the same molecules that will rise and fall in subsequent moments. The wave moves along while the water stays behind. Should that wave have a name, say, Larry, then Larry can be identified by his amplitude, frequency, wavelength, velocity, position, but not by the water molecules that appear to compose Larry at any given time.
The atoms and molecules that reside within your brain as you read this are different atoms than those that occupied it a decade ago, a year ago, even a week ago. There is very likely a molecule of water within your body at this very moment that was in the Indian Ocean quite recently, and millions of water molecules formerly of your body that are now lapping the shores of Sri Lanka. The stuff which you comprise is transient and ever-changing. The carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus that make the neurons that store your memories are all different atoms then the ones that were there when those memories were formed. If that doesn't blow your mind, then you've either heard it before, or you need to read it again.
"You" are simply the disturbance that is perturbing the environment through which you currently pass.
If that's the case, and it certainly is, then how can we consider our "selves" as being something apart from our environment?
The atoms and molecules that reside within your brain as you read this are different atoms than those that occupied it a decade ago, a year ago, even a week ago. There is very likely a molecule of water within your body at this very moment that was in the Indian Ocean quite recently, and millions of water molecules formerly of your body that are now lapping the shores of Sri Lanka. The stuff which you comprise is transient and ever-changing. The carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorus that make the neurons that store your memories are all different atoms then the ones that were there when those memories were formed. If that doesn't blow your mind, then you've either heard it before, or you need to read it again.
"You" are simply the disturbance that is perturbing the environment through which you currently pass.
If that's the case, and it certainly is, then how can we consider our "selves" as being something apart from our environment?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
topics for future consideration
Objective reality - a yardstick or an illusion?
Logic - it's appeal and limitations.
Decidability - what role should this have in our ontology?
Uncertainty - a consequence of our limitations or a basic property of the universe?
Language - can it be meaningfully discussed with language?
Completeness - is it attainable or even desirable?
Logic - it's appeal and limitations.
Decidability - what role should this have in our ontology?
Uncertainty - a consequence of our limitations or a basic property of the universe?
Language - can it be meaningfully discussed with language?
Completeness - is it attainable or even desirable?
I know, I know - this blog is sort of schizophrenic - that's the only way I can do it though.
I need to first break a lot of things down before I can start building anything up. The assumptions that must be overcome are so widespread as to be all but unnoticeable, and that makes them incredibly difficult to free oneself from.
I need to first break a lot of things down before I can start building anything up. The assumptions that must be overcome are so widespread as to be all but unnoticeable, and that makes them incredibly difficult to free oneself from.
the reality generation game
(The above phrase is lifted from John L. Casti)
The less you've thought about it, the more likely you are to believe in Reality. Thinking more about it wont necessarily relieve you of that belief, but it will certainly burden it with qualifications.
Science seems to many to be the clear path to understanding Reality. Not only is its (initial) presentation unambiguous and free of unseemly appeals to mysticism, but it works. It allows for startlingly accurate predictions and agreements with experience. However, with some scrutiny science soon looses much of its appeal in the rigorous search for truth. I wont mention in this post just how much Quantum Physics and Relativity smack of mysticism (and it'll be another post besides those to discuss just how unemperical String Theory is), but allow me to expose the circular nature of arguing for Science's hegemony in the reality generation game by citing its predictive ability:
The Scientific Method:
-Observe a phenomena
-Develop a model to explain that phenomena
-Design an experiment to test if your model (theory) will predict the phenomena you observed
-If your experiment gives you the results you were looking for, your theory is supported.
(that should already start sounding circular)
-If one develops a theory and it disagrees with observation completely - the theory is discarded, but if it disagrees slightly, the theory will often be modified. The modifications are intended to allow the theory to more closely approximate the previous measurements, if they dovetail with what we already think we know, great - if they don't, then we'll change what we think we know to fit the new theory and return to step 3 above.
So, we design Science to agree with observation, modify our preexisting "Science" (which is ever-changing) to agree with observation, and then commend it for its ability to agree with observation. Circle complete.
Science is beautiful, powerful, useful, and many other -fuls. It's arguably the best reality generation game in town (and it's likely that it'll be a philosopher of science who is making that argument). But none of those mean it will allow one to grasp "Reality". (I suppose that to defend that I should discuss "Reality" - stay tuned)
The less you've thought about it, the more likely you are to believe in Reality. Thinking more about it wont necessarily relieve you of that belief, but it will certainly burden it with qualifications.
Science seems to many to be the clear path to understanding Reality. Not only is its (initial) presentation unambiguous and free of unseemly appeals to mysticism, but it works. It allows for startlingly accurate predictions and agreements with experience. However, with some scrutiny science soon looses much of its appeal in the rigorous search for truth. I wont mention in this post just how much Quantum Physics and Relativity smack of mysticism (and it'll be another post besides those to discuss just how unemperical String Theory is), but allow me to expose the circular nature of arguing for Science's hegemony in the reality generation game by citing its predictive ability:
The Scientific Method:
-Observe a phenomena
-Develop a model to explain that phenomena
-Design an experiment to test if your model (theory) will predict the phenomena you observed
-If your experiment gives you the results you were looking for, your theory is supported.
(that should already start sounding circular)
-If one develops a theory and it disagrees with observation completely - the theory is discarded, but if it disagrees slightly, the theory will often be modified. The modifications are intended to allow the theory to more closely approximate the previous measurements, if they dovetail with what we already think we know, great - if they don't, then we'll change what we think we know to fit the new theory and return to step 3 above.
So, we design Science to agree with observation, modify our preexisting "Science" (which is ever-changing) to agree with observation, and then commend it for its ability to agree with observation. Circle complete.
Science is beautiful, powerful, useful, and many other -fuls. It's arguably the best reality generation game in town (and it's likely that it'll be a philosopher of science who is making that argument). But none of those mean it will allow one to grasp "Reality". (I suppose that to defend that I should discuss "Reality" - stay tuned)
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Welcome
This is the blog of a reformed hyper-rationalist. Please understand that I do not fancy myself especially erudite nor articulate. Rather, I am confounded. The threads of arguments have tied me up in nots, and the harder I work to untangle them the more entwined and numerous the knots of nots become.
I have noticed that my thoughts seem to flow much more freely, and perhaps productively, when girdled by conversation. Left to my own thought processes the gaps in my epistemology become black holes that devour all the thoughts they neighbor. However, when I converse with others we seem to have different gaps. And our different experiences and perspectives act as lilly-pads for the other person's thoughts to merrily skip across. It is my hope that this blog will allow me to engage some others in such conversations.
Why choose a blog for this? Well, blogs are perhaps the most voluntary means of conversing I know of. If one doesn't want to, one does not need to comment nor read. I have tried to engage many people in conversations on the nature of knowledge and it is clear that most people would prefer to not think about such things. I don't judge them for this. In fact, in some sense I envy them. This is not an enterprise I enter into entirely willfully - I am drawn to it, and I beg you to distract me from it.
If you would like to help me quilt together a worldview on this blog then please comment, or even better - send me an email to join, and post here.
I have noticed that my thoughts seem to flow much more freely, and perhaps productively, when girdled by conversation. Left to my own thought processes the gaps in my epistemology become black holes that devour all the thoughts they neighbor. However, when I converse with others we seem to have different gaps. And our different experiences and perspectives act as lilly-pads for the other person's thoughts to merrily skip across. It is my hope that this blog will allow me to engage some others in such conversations.
Why choose a blog for this? Well, blogs are perhaps the most voluntary means of conversing I know of. If one doesn't want to, one does not need to comment nor read. I have tried to engage many people in conversations on the nature of knowledge and it is clear that most people would prefer to not think about such things. I don't judge them for this. In fact, in some sense I envy them. This is not an enterprise I enter into entirely willfully - I am drawn to it, and I beg you to distract me from it.
If you would like to help me quilt together a worldview on this blog then please comment, or even better - send me an email to join, and post here.
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