Paul Mawdsley's view of causality in re Objectivism

[Dragonfly]

Lower your guns. Let's stay with what we say, not start taking offense at what we imagine is implied. (What we say is already difficult enough to communicate

I'm not taking offense, just wondering if I'm misunderstood that badly.

[Roger Bissell]

All -- my main computer is in for diagnosis and possible repairs, so I have an ergonomically unsatisfying setup for the time being with my laptop. I'll do the best I can, but my posts will be more of a patchwork than I'd like.

Michael -- I'll reply shortly to your questions about consciousness and life from several posts back. You ask some good questions, and I started a reply to them when my desktop crashed earlier today. Too many "hardware failure" messages to suit me. So, it's in the "garage."

Dragonfly -- My understanding is the Objectivism does not buy into the "prediction" model of scientific theorizing, but the "explanation" model. Circumstances and facts may indeed be too complex for our present (perhaps even future) abilities to predict what will happen next. But that does not mean that what happens next did not have to happen when it did -- speaking particularly now in terms of physical events. (History, involving human choice, is even harder to reconcile with causality, so I'm setting that aside.)

Consider this: suppose two physicists are feeling their oats and are both engaging in theorizing and a good dollop of philosophy of science on top of it. They are positing and arguing for competing explanations of the atom decay event you referred to. One says there is no cause of its decay, it just happens when it happens, and that's it. The other says it had to happen when it did, because it's in the nature of the atom and its relationship to the surrounding world that, when the conditions were just right, it would decay. Both of them agree that, given current understanding and ability to observe and measure, there is no way to predict exactly when that decay happens. But one of them is throwing out the Law of Identity and the Law of Causality ("it just happens when it happens for no reason" -- not no currently detectable reason, but no reason). The other is acknowledging the Law of Identity and the Law of Causality and the limits of human observation and measurement ("it happens when it does because it HAS to, by the LOI and the LOC, although we are not able to predict when it will, except approximately and statistically, because we have no precise way to observe and measure exactly what is happening to it that brings it to the point of decay -- though such things must indeed be happening, because events do not occur when they do without cause).

Objectivism, with a metaphysics stripped down to the bare bones of Identity and Causality, does not even try to explain what is going on inside the atom, let alone to predict or hypothesize what is going on, so it makes no positive theories about atom decay. All it does is endorses physicist #1, who is retaining the bedrock ontological principles that must be true of everything that exist and of everything that happens; it endorses him as being consistent with Identity and Causality. It says that his interpretation of the situation is correct: there is a real causal situation, but we cannot predict the atom's decay, because we cannot observe and measure the real causal situation. And it exercises its "metaphysical veto," i.e., its observation that the other guy's interpretation (we cannot predict because there is no real causal situation, it just happens when it happens)bcannot be correct, because it flies in the face of the most basic facts about everything that is and that occurs (Identity and Causality.

I think that the Popperian focus on predictability is fine, until the illegitimate step is taken of trying to cosmologize or do metaphysics on it. It is illicit to infer from unpredictability of precise details of cause the non-existence of precise details of cause. This is what Mortimer Adler, a renowned Aristotelian, has referred to as "suicidal epistemologizing." When you try to elevate your current epistemic limits (in this case, unmeasurability and unpredictability of precise cause) into ontological claims (non-existence of precise cause), you not only commit a logical error (and contravene Identity and Non-Contradiction that way), but you also throw aside the basic guiding principles we have for navigating among theories and facts and sorting out the impossible assertions from the possible hypotheses.

I'm sorry that you have had unpleasant dealings with Objectivists who take a dogmatic stance about all this. It is not easy stuff, and what seems obvious to some of us must seem like warmed-over religion to folks like Popperians who are staunch Empiricists. But as Michael is trying to convey without lapsing into Randroid mode, axioms are necessary identifications of basic facts about reality, and they most certainly DO place limitations on what can count as a valid theory or explanation. They are not principles of prediction, however, so a large part of your critique of them from the Popperian direction is simply...misdirected.

You cannot legitimately take Heisenberg's epistemic principle about inability to simultaneously observe precise position and momentum, and elevate it to a metaphysical claim about their non-coexistence -- any more than you can legitimately take agreed-on present-day limitations on precisely predicting atomic decay and elevate them into a metaphysical claim about the non-existence of precisely determined atomic decay. It also violates the principle of Occam's Razor, unnecessarily multiplying or complicating the explanation of something: in these cases, taking a known epistemic fact that would cause measurements and predictions on that scale to be imprecise -- and trying to add on an ad hoc, metaphysical explanation (there is no precisely timed cause of decay or no simultanous position and momentum) that flies in the face of Identity and Causality, which are the very principles relied on, countless times in one's past cognitive development and in the very statement of the ad hoc metaphysical theory, that one is trying to deny apply in this case. This is surely a case of Empiricism reaching beyond its epistemic warrant -- suicidal epistemologizing, as Adler said.

REB

[Roger Bissell]

Michael, some brief comments on this. You wrote:

Roger, you stated:

 

> It's OK to say that "a life" (meaning: a living being)  

> is an entity. But don't say "life is an entity."  

And you stated that only entities have attributes (did I get that right?). If so, do you consider reproduction, birth, growth, aging, metabolism and death to be attributes? These are present in all life. Accepting that they have been present in all single living entities up to now, but that is only because of random coincidence, really stretches the concept for me.  

There is a reason the concept "life" exists. This concept is formed by the same manner as all concepts, isolating distinguishing characteristics (attributes) and eliminating the measurements. Am I missing something here?

Correction: I didn't say "only entities have attributes." I think what you may be thinking of is that I said: consciousness and matter and life are not entities, but only attributes of entities.

These three are examples of complex attributes, cluster of capacities of an entity to do certain things. When a capacity are actualized, an entity is engaged in some kind of action/process.

That is why we can talk of consciousness, mind, volition, life, and matter as being both attributes (capacities) and actions (actualizations of capacities). This is basic Aristotle stuff, and Peikoff lectured about it in his first history of philosophy course.

All the things you listed (reproduction, birth, growth, aging, metabolism and death) -- with the partial exception of reproduction and aging (some creatures don't reproduce or live long enough to age) -- are essential to all living organisms. They are components or aspects (arguable which) of life -- just as thinking, perceiving, memory, imagination &c are aspects of consciousness. They are both attributes (capacities) and actions (actualizations of capacities).

Rand's definition of life is in terms of actualization of capacity or action. But an entity without the capacity to take such actions would not be alive, any more than would an entity that didn't engage in those actions. So far, it seems that only humans are able to intentionally short-circuit this built-in nature of all living things. (Another debatable point -- among many others, I'm sure.)

So, what is it you want to know? Or did I answer your question?

REB

[Dragonfly]

Both of them agree that, given current understanding and ability to observe and measure, there is no way to predict exactly when that decay happens. But one of them is throwing out the Law of Identity and the Law of Causality ("it just happens when it happens for no reason" -- not no currently detectable reason, but no reason).

But that is the fallacy: the law of identity and the law of causality - as formulated by Rand - do not imply that there must be a reason for the specific moment of decay. As I've argued in my previous post, it doesn't follow from her formulation of those laws that the world must be deterministic, this notion is silently smuggled into the argument. You could of course define the law of causality as a law of determinism, but that would be an arbitrary assertion. Whether determinism is true or not has to be established empirically; it cannot be determined by logical reasoning alone.

And as I said before, from this assumption of determinism automatically follows that the human brain is a deterministic system, which Rand denies, so there is a big contradiction in her theory.

You cannot legitimately take Heisenberg's epistemic principle about inability to simultaneously observe precise position and momentum, and elevate it to a metaphysical claim about their non-coexistence

I think you have a false impression of what Heisenbergs principle implies, it is not just some measurement problem, it goes much deeper than that. It's not easy to explain in simple terms, but let me try (with some oversimplification): you still seem to have the idea that an atomic particle is a particle in the classical sense, something like a very small ball. But in fact a particle is something wave-like, and a wave doesn't have a sharply defined position and a sharply defined momentum at the same time. A pure plane wave (not to be confused with a single wave length) does have a sharply defined momentum, but its position is completely undetermined (in theory it's infinitely long). Particles are more like wave packets, localized combinations of waves, to which we can assign an approximate position and momentum, but the product of the uncertainties in both does have a lower limit (the Heisenberg relation), so the notion of an exact position combined with an exact momentum is meaningless and not just some technical difficulty.

It also violates the principle of Occam's Razor, unnecessarily multiplying or complicating the explanation of something

On the contrary: Occam's Razor tells us that we shouldn't make unnecessary assumptions. From the wikipedia article about Occam's Razor: The classic application of the Razor is in the case of a theory which sufficiently accounts for all the data being burdened with superflous elements which do not affect the predictions it makes. Quantum mechanics makes perfect predictions while accepting the brute fact that subatomic systems are not deterministic in the classical sense. Any extra assumptions are superfluous if not contradictory.

The point is that Objectivists don't realize that their metaphysical world view is not axiomatic. It is the result of living in a macroscopic world in which quantum effects are not visible. This has so strongly influenced our intuition that we tend to think that this world view has a metaphysical status, not realizing that it is ultimately founded by empirical observation. Our intuition has never been formed by the world of subatomic particles, however, and when we discover that this subatomic world has characteristics that are essentially different from those in the macroscopic world, many people, Objectivists in particular, feel so threatened by a world view that doesn't fit into the intuitive macroscopic world view, that they try by all means to fit the description of the subatomic world into the procrustes bed of their classical world view (claiming that only the latter is metaphysically "correct"). But the world of QM has exactly the same rights to a metaphysical status as the classical world view, only in a different domain. The fact that we are all too familiar with the one is no reason to exclude the other one.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I still wrapping my brain around all this because I essentially agree with both of you. (Now how's that for a contradiction? Call it Quantum Epistemology. //;-)) )

I have a nit to pick, however. Do you really perceive that Objectivists feel threatened? And that fear is their motivation for their thinking? I know some do because they are emotionally problematic, but I certainly don't feel threatened at all.

For instance, I understand Roger's argument to mean that just because we have not discovered the cause of something, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have one. If a subatomic particle expired at a certain time, there was a cause, however minuscule. Trying to apply that cause to all similar atoms might not work since other unknown factors are still involved.

I can also understand your view of saying let's wait and see what something is before saying what it must be.

The terms "unknown cause" and "random" tie into knots in my mind on this.

Michael

[Roger Bissell]

Dragonfly, you wrote:

from this assumption of determinism automatically follows that the human brain is a deterministic system, which Rand denies, so there is a big contradiction in her theory.

I agree. That is one of my criticisms of Objectivism. What is you view of the determinism of lack of the same of animal and human nervous systems? Do you buy into the theory that there is quantum indeterminism in microtubules in the brain, or some such idea? I don't.

REB

Sorry for the glitches in my third sentence above. I meant to write:

What is your view of the determinism or lack of the same of animal and human nervous systems?

I.e., are their nervous systems deterministic, or not, in your view?

REB

[Dragonfly]

I have a nit to pick, however. Do you really perceive that Objectivists feel threatened? And that fear is their motivation for their thinking?

Well, that was a bit of psychologizing of course, but I was looking for an explanation of the enormous resistance I nearly always seem to feel when this subject comes up, an unwillingness to discuss the argument at all.

I know some do because they are emotionally problematic, but I certainly don't feel threatened at all.

I hadn't expected anything else. There are places were angels fear to tread, but you're apparently no angel!

[Dragonfly]

What is you view of the determinism of lack of the same of animal and human nervous systems?

Sorry, I read this sentence many times, but I don't understand it.

Do you buy into the theory that there is quantum indeterminism in microtubules in the brain, or some such idea? I don't.

Neither do I. It seems enormously contrived to me, like some miracle solution, and there are also very serious theoretical objections to that theory. I find it strange that someone like Penrose, whose contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics are beyond dispute, today is proposing such very dubious theories, making rather elementary errors, as in his Gödel argument against AI. The microtubule theory seems to be a desperate attempt to keep the monster of determinism at bay by looking for a solution in QM (Searle does that too, BTW).

[Roger Bissell]

Sorry for the glitches in my third sentence above. I meant to write:

What is your view of the determinism, or lack of the same, of animal and human nervous systems?

I.e., are their nervous systems deterministic, or not, in your view?

[Ellen Stuttle]

Roger replying to Dragonfly:

Dragonfly, you wrote:  

"from this assumption of determinism automatically follows that the human brain is a deterministic system, which Rand denies, so there is a big contradiction in her theory."

I agree. That is one of my criticisms of Objectivism.

Except that, insofar as I'm aware, the two of you don't have the same definition of "determinism." Dragonfly, I believe, would sign on to the Van Inwagen definition -- see below -- adopted by Dennett (see pg. 25 of Freedom Evolves), whereas you, Roger -- or so I understood from some posts of yours awhile back on RoR -- want to change the meaning to allow for more than one physically possible future.

Van Inwagen, in An Essay on Free Will, 1983, via Dennett: "Determinism is the thesis that 'there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.'"

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

What is your view of the determinism, or lack of the same, of animal and human nervous systems?  

I.e., are their nervous systems deterministic, or not, in your view?

I think they're deterministic. Although the cellular structure which forms the functional building blocks of living beings is of microscopic dimensions, it's still much larger than the atom, and in view of the ambient temperature it's highly unlikely that quantum effects will play any significant role in the functioning of living beings, in particular in their brains. So we may safely conclude that the brain is a classical, deterministic system. The big problem for Objectivists is of course to reconcile the notion of a deterministic world with their notion of free will (or "volition" in Ellen's terms). I've already written a lot about this supposed problem, mainly on the Nathan forums (Nathaniel Branden and Nathan Hawking). I've also tried to start a discussion on this forum (the thread compatibility), but that discussion got sidetracked and has petered out. But I'm always willing to tell Objectivists why they don't have to worry about this so-called problem...

[Roger Bissell]

Dragonfly, it's interesting that, with all the other disagreement between us, you and I both appear to be among the minority in Objectivist-leaning folks. I am a compatibilist -- and it appears that you are one, too.

I maintain that we are free to choose that which we most value, and that we have to choose that which we most value. I call this conditional free will and value determinism. It is conditional free will, in the sense that, if we wanted to choose something else more than what we in fact most wanted to choose, we could have (and would have) chosen that other thing instead. It is value determinism, in the sense that what we most value determines what we will choose and do. This is my version of compatibilism, and it sounds a whole lot like what Thomas Hobbes (materialistic determinist) and John Locke (psychological determinist) said so many years ago. Not surprisingly, I have gotten a great deal of flack from Objectivists about this. Another Objectivist-learning person who takes this same general stance is Bill Dwyer. He used to be here on O-L, but I don't know if he takes part any more.

REB

[Paul Mawdsley]

Dragonfly,

Is your first name Peter?

Paul

[Roger Bissell]

Ellen, I'm sorry I didn't see your post earlier.

I don't know what to make of the Imwagen/Dennett definition of determinism. And I'm not sure I think there is more than one physically possible future at any given instant.

I definitely want to distinguish between what is possible according to our context of knowledge -- i.e., our limited knowledge of existing conditions -- and what is possible metaphysically (or physically?). I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that, from what we know of the nature of the things involved, that there is more than one thing that might happen. But as I have argued similarly in another context, I don't think we can necessarily argue from the epistemic possibility (evidence-based) of what might happen to the ontological possibility that more than one thing can happen. There is just too big a gap between these two kinds of possibility for me to comfortably embrace (meta)physical indeterminism, even in human beings.

Of course, Objectivists (and others) say that determinism and indeterminism constitute a false alternative. Hard to figure, unless they are defined in a way that they fail to be logically mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive of the possibilities.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here is a Rand quote from Ayn Rand Answers, The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew (2005, New York, New American Library), pp. 151-152. Food for thought - and it is pertinent to this discussion.

Doesn't free will contradict the idea that man has a specific nature?

It is almost blindingly self-evident that the philosophical fundamental being ignored here is the Law of Identity. This is a good example of what questions you need not bother answering, since they contradict philosophical fundamentals. The guideline for anyone tempted to ask such a question is: Do not rewrite reality. On what grounds did someone decide that choice contradicts identity? That is an arbitrary construct of determinism.

(...)

You must ask on what grounds do we decide what reality has to be. You know that reality cannot contain contradictions, and you know that one of the first things you learn, after infancy, is that there are inanimate objects and conscious entities. You know yourself - that you have a body and a consciousness. That is the empirical self-evident proof that there is both matter and consciousness in the universe. All your knowledge of man's nature rests on these primaries - that existence exists and consciousness exists. If you drop either of these axioms, you'll encounter contradictions everywhere. And you'll be guilty of using a stolen concept if you claim that the universe is all consciousness or all matter. That is the attempt to prescribe what you think in logic should be the nature of reality. But you have no right to any concept of reality or logic unless the material of your concepts came from reality - from the evidence of your senses.

By what reasoning does anyone claim that identity means only material identity, and that human consciousness contradicts the Law of Identity because it operates by choice? Free will is self-evident through observation. Further, it can be demonstrated by as many arguments as you care to muster. Everything you observe about human consciousness tell you that it operates by choice: not only your introspection, but also your observation of other people. So you put yourself in this position: You observe that matter exists and that consciousness exists, and that consciousness operates by choice. Is it a contradiction to hold that we have firm identities and the capacity for choice? Ask yourself, "Choice for what?" We don't have a choice about our own nature - its identity is firm - but about our action. There are no grounds in reality for claiming that freedom of action contradicts the Law of Identity.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

Paul: excellent, my dear Watson!

[JennaW]

someone like Penrose, whose contributions to theoretical physics and mathematics are beyond dispute, today is proposing such very dubious theories, making rather elementary errors, as in his Gödel argument against AI. The microtubule theory seems to be a desperate attempt to keep the monster of determinism at bay by looking for a solution in QM (Searle does that too, BTW).

I think it's because they think it's an either-or situation (determinism or indeterminism-- never, ever both). To an extent, humans *are* determined by human genes (show me a human without human genes), but the interaction of genes are so complex anyway that to understand the entirety of every gene's interaction with another (or multiple) is just like drawing out all connections that make the internet. I've read the microtubule-QM theory but it doesn't fly with me. QM may underlie everything, but given a micro-microscopic level. Microtubules are small, but not that small. I'm more inclined to see the macroscopic as grand additive properties of QM where probability "evens out". Of course, Penrose *might* be right... but that's something that future evidence has to bring. And, of course, I'm a biologist and not a physicist, so this post might be completely irrelevant!

[Dragonfly]

It is value determinism, in the sense that what we most value determines what we will choose and do.

But that's not what I mean by determinism. Ellen quotes Van Inwagen: "Determinism is the thesis that 'there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future.'" reliable (otherwise the computer wouldn't work at all). We see that it is of crucial importance to define accurately how the state of a system is measured and that's why I use the term "functional building blocks", as the fact whether a system is deterministic or not may depend on the definition of those building blocks.

For any specific state of the computer in terms of its memory content there is an enormous number of different states of the computer in terms of atoms and electrons, all resulting in the same "memory state", which is in fact a description at a higher level of abstraction than the atomic description. The interesting thing is that we can extend this process of abstraction further. A good example is a chess computer. A chess match can also be described as a system with certain states that are a function of the time (in discrete units defined by the moves). Any state of such a match is completely described by the chess position at a certain moment. It's obvious however that this is not a deterministic system: for most chess positions at t1 there are several if not many positions at t2 (t2 > t1). It doesn't matter in this regard whether the player is a human being or a computer. So we see that the "chess states" of a computer are neither part of a deterministic system (supposing that the chess program is sophisticated enough to avoid playing every time exactly the same moves for a given position). In other words: a computer can realize a non-deterministic system, even while it's in terms of its memory building blocks a deterministic system. The point is that we can't deduce from a given position what the next move will be (it may be guessed sometimes of course, but that is not relevant). As far as we can see the computer is free to choose between different possibilities, in other words, it has got free will. Sure, it's only an extremely limited kind of free will, a "chessy free will" and nothing else, but it can be good enough to beat the world champion in a match. Note that there is no contradiction between the fact that the chess computer has a certain "free will" and the fact that it is based on a deterministic system. Why can't we see the deterministic element that somehow must determine the moves of the computer? This is due to our ignorance of what happens exactly inside the computer. If we hide the fact that the "chess player" is a computer (for example by playing via remote terminals), there is no way we can distinguish the free will of a human player from that of the chess player (while the field is limited to chess only). It's significant that Kasparov at a certain moment thought there was foul play in his match against Deep Blue, the moves were so humanlike that he suspected that a human player was involved. We may say that in the (extremely) limited world of chess the computer has passed the Turing test.

We see that one single physical system (a computer) can be described as different kind of systems depending on the level of abstraction:

[low abstraction, physical] indeterministic (random events) → deterministic → indeterministic ("free will") [high abstraction, intentional]

I've chosen the computer as an example, while we know how it works and its different kind of states can easily be defined and demarcated. Human beings are of course much more complex systems and there is still a lot unknown about what happens in our brain and how that is related to our thoughts. But there is no reason to believe that there is a fundamental difference. The brain is a much more complex system that is still poorly understood in the details. But I'm not talking about the specific details, but about the general principle: we don't talk about a software-hardware problem, so why should there be a mind-body problem? The mind corresponds to the software, the body to the hardware. I think it's not meaningful to say that the software and the hardware are both manifestations of an underlying reality. The software can be seen as the dynamic organization or structure of the hardware. Now the demarcation of the different levels of abstraction is quite difficult for the brain/mind of human beings. At the highest level we have conscious thoughts that can perform abstract reasoning, but there are also many levels of less conscious or unconcsious thinking processes, feelings, instincts, etc. When we talk about "free will" we're talking in effect about conscious thoughts and reasoning. If we define this system as "consciousness" there may be discussion about what still belongs to that system and what not, but that is here not really important. It's clear that this system is not deterministic - even if we can identify every thought and every feeling we can't be sure that the same thoughts at a certain moment will always have the same results (like the same choice from a number of possible choices, for example).

Also here it is our ignorance that prevents us from seeing the deterministic machinery behind the indeterministic, intentional system. That's not only true when we observe the consciousness of someone else, but also when we try to analyze our own thought processes. Despite the naive and exaggerated claims of some people, introspection can learn us only something about the thin layer of the very upper level of abstraction that is represented by conscious thinking. Everything under the hood is hidden to us: we cannot predict our own thinking. There is therefore nothing mysterious about the fact that we seem to be free to choose between different options: we don't know in advance what our choice will be and therefore the future seems to be open, there seems to be more than one choice possible. That feeling, which is extremely convincing, we call "free will". But in fact our choice is forced, only we never can experience the "forcing factor", as it is inherent in every thought we have. It's somewhat like the the fact that we can't "feel" the movement of the earth around the sun, as we're all part of that movement (not a very good metaphor, but at the moment I can't think of a better one). The thoughts we can discern don't give us enough information to make predictions, as there are a large number of different underlying states that correspond to the same conscious thoughts, and different underlying states may with the same set of thoughts at the beginning quickly diverge to different lines of thought and different choices, all in a rigidly deterministic manner. Only we don't know those processes, so in a sense ignorance is freedom (but please don't quote me out of context...).

One last remark: when I call a system deterministic, I don't mean that it has to be perfectly deterministic, it's always possible that some quantum effect may have macroscopic effects, introducing an indeterministic factor. But I think this is not really relevant to the discussion as long as the system is largely deterministic and we don't have to explain its properties by referring to those occasional random events.

[Dragonfly]

Michael:

Here is a Rand quote from Ayn Rand Answers, The Best of Her Q&A, edited by Robert Mayhew (2005, New York, New American Library), pp. 151-152. Food for thought - and it is pertinent to this discussion.

My problem with this Rand quote that it is so annoyingly vague. There are no contradictions and everything is self-evident and the law of identity is like a magic wand that makes all problems disappear. But the fact is that Rand's theory is contradictory, as I've shown in an earlier post. The only way out of this contradiction is to assume that Rand's followers have misunderstood her and that she does not imply with her law of causality that physical world is deterministic. The problem with her formulation is that it is so vague that both interpretations are possible. But if she doesn't imply determinism, then her definition of the law of causality becomes empty, as it is always true (a thing behaves like it behaves, duh).

Now I know that this will be seen as swearing in the church, but I think that Rand was not a deep thinker. She was no doubt very sharp in a rather superficial sense, and she had an uncanny ability to see the errors in the thinking of other people and to find the right solutions to many practical problems. But as soon as it comes to real abstract reasoning she failed. Like many people, I hadn't realized this at first, as her style is quite convincing and her conclusions are so to the point. But when I (rather recently) started to have a closer look at her philosophic arguments, I was struck by the poor quality of them; I found many glaring holes, so large that you could drive whole armies of trucks through them. Now I understand why she isn't taken seriously by professional philosophers (sure, no doubt some of these are idiots, but that's not true for all of them). The fact that she wasn't a professional philosopher but a popular writer with unconventional notions may have been a drawback for being accepted, but it isn't the real reason that she's being rejected. The real reason is the paucity of her argument. So, in spite of the optimistic sounds I hear sometimes, I think she will never be taken seriously by the philosophic community.

[JennaW]

The software can be seen as the dynamic organization or structure of the hardware. Now the demarcation of the different levels of abstraction is quite difficult for the brain/mind of human beings. At the highest level we have conscious thoughts that can perform abstract reasoning, but there are also many levels of less conscious or unconcsious thinking processes, feelings, instincts, etc. When we talk about "free will" we're talking in effect about conscious thoughts and reasoning. If we define this system as "consciousness" there may be discussion about what still belongs to that system and what not, but that is here not really important. It's clear that this system is not deterministic - even if we can identify every thought and every feeling we can't be sure that the same thoughts at a certain moment will always have the same results (like the same choice from a number of possible choices, for example).

Also here it is our ignorance that prevents us from seeing the deterministic machinery behind the indeterministic, intentional system.

DF, I (think I) have been trying to say this *forever*. Determinism & indeterminism: causality, contingency, emergence, and stochastic processes. Do I understand what you're saying clearly? I think I do, but let me know.

[Ellen Stuttle]

[...] of course, I'm a biologist and not a physicist, so this post might be completely irrelevant!

I signed on because I was listening to music in my back room where a couple times a week I pace and "think" -- a strange process, what goes on in the "thinking" involved -- while drinking a couple beers. I was remembering scenes from my own early love of the theory of evolution (which I became alerted to by some pictures of the evolution of the horse in one of my horse books) and other complex remembrances. So I went to the computer to write a note to Jenna. I'll post that note. It was/is:

"Jenna, Just a quick note to say once again that I am SO glad you're here. That website you linked yesterday (or the day before) on one of your RoR posts: Yeah! Wow, yeah, electrified me too. I also "see" processes in such patterns as were shown. Sometimes I feel that all the talk on these issues isn't couched in my "language" at all, since that "language" is visualization in terms of biology. But how to express this (a) in words; (B) in terms of physics. I think there is a disjunct with core physics theory. I'm attempting to track down my sense of that "disjunct," but my progress is slow -- for one thing, it's requiring learning more of the details of physics than I'd previously explored myself, despite years of a romantic relationship with a physicist, and a long-standing interest (but it was more a side interest not a focused-upon interest) in understanding exactly how modern physics fits together -- or doesn't."

Meanwhile, I see that Dragonfly has posted some long comments which I can't read at the moment -- tomorrow. However, my eye caught amidst those remarks, again, Dragonfly's usage "levels of abstraction." Dragonfly, could you possibly try to spell out a bit what that usage means to you? It just about freezes my comprehension every time I read it, since to me it's like assuming some sort of conceptual mentality already there before one explains how it got there. So I wonder if maybe you could elucidate what you mean by the verb "abstract."

Ellen

___

[Dragonfly]

Ellen:

Dragonfly, could you possibly try to spell out a bit what that usage means to you? It just about freezes my comprehension every time I read it, since to me it's like assuming some sort of conceptual mentality already there before one explains how it got there. So I wonder if maybe you could elucidate what you mean by the verb "abstract."

First: I don't use the verb "abstract", I use the noun "abstraction" and the adjective "abstract", but that won't probably solve your problem.

My impression is that you think that when I use the term "levels of abstraction" that it refers to something the system that I describe is doing itself. That is not the case, however. It refers to the the way an observer of that system describes the system. The system itself doesn't have to do anything, you can even use different levels of abstraction to describe a stone, although systems that "do" something are of course more interesting and make more levels of abstraction possible.

I'll try to explain it with the computer example. At the lowest level of abstraction we can (well in theory, in practice this is of course an impossible task) give a physical description a computer in terms of the positions of all the atoms that are part of the computer system: a silicon atom at position x1, y1, z1, etc. For all purposes this is a complete description which can in principle explain all the actions of the computer. But even if there were no limitations in time and space for this enormous amount of data, we would be helpless if we tried to deduce the general characteristics of the computer - we could start at a given configuration and determine how the complete system develops in time. But then we've studied only one start configuration. We should then do that for all possible configurations which in its turn would be an enormous task.

We can use a higher level of description however, in which certain information in the lower description is abstracted by sorting and organizing the data. At this level we describe the computer in terms of logic gates and similar functional structures. In this description one single logic gate corresponds to an enormous amount of different atomic descriptions that all result in the same logic gate (in terms of its function as a logic gate). If you want to use the verb "abstract": we have abstracted (in the sense: summarized) the (for us) essential features of certain configurations ("this configuration of atoms corresponds to a thing we call a logic gate, which has the following characteristics... etc."). This amounts to an enormous data reduction, as we ingore all the detailed information about the positions of the atoms that is not relevant to the functioning of the logic gate.

Nevertheless, we have at this level of abstraction still too many trees to see the wood, so we can move to a still higher level of abstraction, by combining and finding the patterns in all those logic gates and their content to derive a program. The description of the program itself can be done at different levels of abstraction: machine instructions, low-level subroutines, higher-level programming languages.

We're still not at the end of our trip to increasingly higher abstractions, however. If we take for example a chess program, we can abstract from the information of calculating positions and moves information that can be described in terms of tactics and strategy. The interesting thing is that this kind of information doesn't have to be programmed - the program could be a brute force program which simply calculates as many moves as possible. Nevertheless the single end goal that has been programmed - to get the best position at the end - imposes a structure on the moves that can be described in tactical and strategic terms. There is here a parallel with the mechanism of evolution: the driving force of evolution is to find configurations that continue to exist, i.e. to propagate the genes to a next generation. This simple mechanistic system results in the most fantastic, intricate and complex mechanisms which automatically evolve by following the simple rule of gene survival. (Sorry, now I got sidetracked, but I found this parallel fascinating; that's the result of "thinking aloud", which I often do with these posts.)

Now I'm afraid this has again become a rather long post, but I wanted to try to leave no doubt with regard to what I mean.

[Dragonfly]

Jenna:

DF, I (think I) have been trying to say this *forever*. Determinism & indeterminism: causality, contingency, emergence, and stochastic processes. Do I understand what you're saying clearly? I think I do, but let me know.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but how can I know if you understand what I'm saying?

[Paul Mawdsley]

Dragonfly,

I think some of my best thoughts have come from side-tracking. I've always given myself permission to stray on tangents. It did cause some problems when I was studying for exams.

Quite frankly, I'd read your side-tracks any day. I may disagree with some of the details of what you write (and I'll write about that soon), but I love the spirit. Our side-tracks exercise our creative selves in the generation of our unique personal perspectives.

One more note: I'm really impressed with how little response you received from your Rand comments. While I am sympathetic to much of what you said, I think Rand was a deep thinker. I just think her deepest thoughts were more right-brained than left-brained. Her deepest thoughts came from her fiction writing.

Philosophical formalism is very left-brained. I know it put me to sleep. If my brain can't connect the symbols to something more experiential, I have a hard time following. As I've said before, I tend to apply a mode of thinking that is a right-brained causal reasoning. Despite the fact that she didn't identify this approach in her epistemology, I think this is what Rand did also through her fiction. She created characters with specific identities in her imagination; she connected those identities to their actions; she set the context in which they would interact; and she set the characters in motion. I think this is where her greatest insights came from. It's certainly where her enhanced concept of causality was "smuggled" in from.

P...Dragonfly, I value your perspective greatly. It's good to have a physicist in the house.

Paul Mawdsley

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly, you wrote:

My problem with this Rand quote that it is so annoyingly vague.  

(...)

... the law of identity is like a magic wand that makes all problems disappear.

(...)

(a thing behaves like it behaves, duh).

This is a reaction to axioms that I see a lot, but I don't understand the cause (really). All fundamental axioms are supposed to do is set the initial rules for the mind interacting with reality, not anything further.

Why the hostility to them? Of course the law of identity is not a magic wand, but then nobody ever claimed it was. Well, you just did. The jargon calls that a strawman (and I REALLY don't like standard Objectivist jargon - the words and phrases get in the way of understanding the concepts behind them).

As I wrote earlier, all an axiom is supposed to do is establish the validity of the mind and reality. Nothing more. Something like causality, for instance. If things that happen do not have causes, then they cannot be known by reason and logic. To postulate that some things happen without any cause at all would signal that another method of knowing would have to be devised. Logic and reason are out because their validity rests on the axiom of causality.

(The following is not asked aggressively - I am genuinely curious) When you write something like "(a thing behaves like it behaves, duh)," what is the reason to belittle that axiom? It is obvious, I'll grant you that, but is it a mere detail? If things have no identity, how can they be known since the validity of reason-based knowledge rests on the axiom of identity?

I don't belittle the soles of my feet and I use them everyday. All they do is connect me with the ground, nothing more. They don't operate my knees or leg muscles, but, still, I can't walk without them.

The reason I see Rand so bombastic is that she was arguing against people who claimed that these starting points (axioms) do not exist or are not valid. Her main dragon to slay was faith - not the Rich Engle type of quest to add to his reason-based mental experience. The faith she railed against claimed superiority over reason to do the things reason was supposed to do. It claimed the power to make miracles.

I believe her basic approach is that the axiom is the first thing you look at in what someone says. If a person states that the fundamentals of knowledge are not valid, it really doesn't matter what follows (unless it is a new method of knowing - and that is one hell of a thing to communicate by an invalid method of knowledge). Something the person says then might be interesting, but the base will be flawed and you have to recheck everything in light of a proper standard before it is really valuable as knowledge.

I also admit that there are a number of obnoxious individuals who use axioms in an inappropriately arrogant manner for more than they are designed. But I don't think this is the root of the degree of hostility I see against axioms. I do not mean this as an insinuation of anything sinister like Rand's famous "death premise," but something keeps nagging at me...

Michael