A criticism of some consequence arguments

The standard consequence argument for incompatibilism makes use of the operator Np which abbreviates "p and no one has or has ever had a choice about whether p". Abbreviating the second conjunct as N^*p, we have Np equivalent to "p and N^*p". The argument then makes use of a transfer principle, like:

• beta-2: If Np and p entails q, then Nq.

When I think about beta-2, it seems quite intuitive. The way I tend to think about it is this: "Well, if I have no choice about p, and p entails q, then how can I have a choice about q?" But this line of reasoning commits me not just to beta-2, but to the stronger principle:

• beta-2*: If N^*p and p entails q, then N^*q.

But beta-2* is simply false. For instance, let p be any necessary falsehood. Then clearly N^*p. But if p is a necessary falsehood, then p entails q for every q, and so we conclude—without any assumptions about determinism, freedom and the like—that no one has a choice about anything. And that's unacceptable.

This may be what Mike Almeida is getting at in this interesting discussion which inspired this post.

Of course, this counterexample to beta-2* is not a counterexample to beta-2, since although we have N^*p, we do not have Np, as we do not have p. But if the intuition driving one to beta-2 commits one also to beta-2*, then that undercuts the intuitive justification for beta-2. And that's a problem. One might still say: "Well, yes, we have a counterexample to beta-2*. But beta-2 captures most of the intuitive content of beta-2*, and is not subject to this counterexample." But I think such arguments are not very strong.

This is not, however, a problem if instead of accepting beta-2 on the basis of sheer intuition, one accepts it because it provably follows from a reasonable counterfactual rendering of the N^*p operator.

A possible limitation of explicitly probabilistic reasoning

Bayesian reasoners will have their credences converge to the truth at different rates depending on their prior probabilities. But it's not as if there is one set of prior probabilities that will always lead to optimal convergence. Rather, some sets of priors lead to truth faster in some worlds and some lead to truth faster in others. This is trivially obvious: for any world w, one can have priors that are uniquely tuned for w, say by assigning a probability extremely close to 1 to every contingent proposition true at w and a probability extremely close to 0 to every contingent proposition false at w. Of course, there is the question of how one could get to have such priors, but one might just have got lucky!

So, a Bayesian reasoner's credence converges to the truth at rates depending on her priors and what kind of a world she is in. For instance, if she is in a very messy world, she will get to the truth faster if she has lower prior credences for elegant universal generalizations, while if she is in a more elegant world (like ours!), higher prior credences for such generalizations will lead her to truth more readily.

Now suppose that our ordinary rational ampliative reasoning processes are not explicitly probabilistic but can be to a good approximation modeled by a Bayesian system with a prior probability assigment P₀. It is tempting to think that then we would do better to explicitly reason probabilistically according to this Bayesian system. That may be the case. But unless we have a good guess as to what the prior probability assignment P₀ is, this is not an option. Sure, let's suppose that our rational processes can be modeled quite well with a Bayesian system with priors P₀. But we won't be able to ditch our native reasoning processes in favor of the Bayesian system if we do not have a good guess as to what the priors P₀ are. And we have no direct introspective access to the priors P₀ implicit in our reasoning processes, while our indirect access to them (e.g., through psychological experiments about people's responses to evidence) is pretty crude and inaccurate.

Imagine now that, due to God and/or natural selection, we have ampliative reasoning processes that are tuned for a world like ours. These processes can be modeled by Bayesian reasoning with priors P₀, which priors P₀ would then be tuned well for a world like ours. But it may be that our best informed guess Q₀ as to the priors will be much more poorly tuned to our world than the priors P₀ actually implicit in our reasoning. In that case, switching from our ordinary reasoning processes to something explicitly probabilistic will throw away the information contained in the implicit priors P₀, information placed there by the divine and/or evolutionary tuning process.

If this is right, then sometimes or often when trying to do a formal probabilistic reconstruction of an intuitive inductive argument we will do less well than simply by sticking to the inductive argument. For our ordinary intuitive inductive reasoning is, on this hypothesis, tuned well for our world. But our probabilistic reconstruction may not benefit from this tuning.

On this tuning hypothesis, experimental philosophy is actually a good path to epistemological research. For how people reason carries implicit information as to what priors fit our world well.

Induction over brute facts, and the initial state of the universe

Suppose that we've observed a dozen randomly chosen ravens and they're all black. We (cautiously) make the obvious inference that all ravens are black. But then we find out that regardless of parental color, newly conceived raven embryos have a 50% chance of being black and a 50% chance of being white, and that they have equal life expectancy in the two cases. When we find this out, we thereby also find out that it was just a fluke that our dozen ravens were all black. Thus, finding out that it's random with probability 1/2 that a given raven will be black defeats the obvious inference that all ravens are black, and even defeats the inference that the next raven we will see will be black. The probability that the next raven we observe will be black is 1/2.

Next, suppose that instead of finding out about probabilities, we find out that there is no propensity either way of a conception resulting in a black raven or its resulting in a white raven. Perhaps an alien uniformly randomly tosses a perfectly sharp dart at a target, and makes a new raven be black whenever the dart lands in a maximally nonmeasurable subset S of the target and makes the raven be white if it lands outside S. (A subset S of a probability space Ω is maximally nonmeasurable provided that every measurable subset of S has probability zero and every measurable superset of S has probability one.) This is just as much a defeater as finding out that the event was random with probability 1/2. It's still just a fluke that the dozen ravens we observed were all black. We still have a defeater for the claim that all ravens are black, or even that the next raven is black.

Finally, suppose instead that we find out that ravens come into existence with no cause, for no reason, stochastic or otherwise, and their colors are likewise brute and unexplained. This surely is just as good a defeater for inferences about the colors of ravens. It's just a fluke that all the ones we saw so far were black.

Now suppose that the initial state of the universe is a brute fact, something with no explanation, stochastic or otherwise. We have (indirect) observations of a portion of that initial state: for instance, we find the parts of the state that have evolved into the observed parts of the universe to have had very low entropy. And science appropriately makes inferences from the parts of the initial state that have been observed by us to the parts that have not been observed, and even to the parts that are not observable. Thus, it is widely accepted that the whole of the initial state had very low entropy, not just the part of it that has formed the basis of our observations. But if the initial state and all of its features are brute facts, then this bruteness is a defeater for inductive inferences from the observed to the unobserved portions of the initial state.

So some cosmological inductive inferences require that the initial state of the universe not be entirely brute.

Baylor - Georgetown - Notre Dame 2014 conference

The 2014 Baylor/Georgetown/Notre Dame Philosophy of Religion Conference will be held at Georgetown University October 9 through October 11.  All sessions will be held in New North 204.  Below is the schedule.  Please contact Mark Murphy (mark.murphy@georgetown.edu) if you plan to attend.  Please also let him know if you need conference hotel information.  And if it would help you to get funding to attend the conference if you served as a chair for one of the sessions, let him know that, also.

Thursday, October 9

7-8:30 PM   Karen Stohr (Georgetown), “Hope for the Hopeless” (Commentator: Micah Lott, Boston College)

8:30 PM

Reception in New North 204

Friday, October 10

9:00-10:25 Kathryn Pogin (Northwestern), "Redemptive or Corruptive? The Atonement and Hermeneutical Injustice" (Commentator: Katherin Rogers, Delaware)

10:35-12  Neal Judisch (Oklahoma), “Redemptive Suffering” (Commentator: Siobhan Nash-Marshall, Manhattanville)

12-2:30   Lunch on own

2:30-3:55  Christian Miller (Wake Forest), “Should Christians be Worried about Situationist Claims in Psychology and Philosophy?” (Commentator: Dan Moller, Maryland)

4:05-5:30  Chris Tucker (William and Mary), “Satisficing and Motivated Submaximization (in the Philosophy of Religion)” (Commentator: Kelly Heuer, Georgetown)

Saturday, October 11

9:00-10:25 Julia Jorati (Ohio State), "Special Agents: Leibniz on the Similarity between Divine and Human Agency" (Commentator: Kristin Primus, Georgetown/NYU)

10:35-12  Kris McDaniel (Syracuse), “Being and Essence” (Commentator: Trenton Merricks, UVA)

12-2:30 Lunch on own

2:30-3:55  Meghan Page (Loyola (MD)/Baylor), “The Posture of Faith: Leaning in to Belief” (Commentator: Mark Lance, Georgetown)

4:05-5:30  Charity Anderson (Baylor), “Defeat, Testimony, and Miracle Reports” (Commentator: Andy Cullison, SUNY-Fredonia)

BGND2014 is organized by Mark Murphy (Georgetown), Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor), and Michael Rea (Notre Dame). 

The start of meaning

The first meaningful performance did not gets its meaning from earlier meaningful performances. So it seems that meaning preceded meaningful performances. Let's say the first meaningful performance was a pointing to a distant lion. Then pointing had a meaning before anybody meaningfully pointed.

Well, things aren't quite so simple. Maybe there is no "before" before the first meaningful performance, since maybe the first meaningful performance is an eternal divine meaningful performance (perhaps the generation of the Logos?). Or maybe the first meaningful performance got its meaning from later meaningful performances (Sellars seems to think something in this vicinity with respect to the relationship between thoughts and concepts) in some sort of virtuous circularity.

The theistic move seems just right to me. The virtuous circularity move is, however, not going to work. For the circle of performances then had a meaning independently of itself, and so we still get a meaningful performance—perhaps by a community—that doesn't get its meaning from anywhere else.

One may have vagueness worries about the idea of a "first meaningful performance". Still, in a supervaluatist framework we can fix a precisification of "meaningful performance", and then the argument will go through.

Mercenary motives

A stranger is drowning in a crocodile-infested river. To pull him out, you'd need to go in the water yourself, and there is a moderate chance (say, 25%) that you would be eaten. You have no dependents to whom you owe it not to risk your life, but of course you don't like being eaten by a crocodile. It would be praiseworthy for you to engage in this heroic act. But if you don't do it, you aren't doing anything morally wrong. I want the story to be set up so this is clearly a case of supererogatoriness.

You have decided not to do it. But then the stranger offers you a million dollars. And so you leap in and pull him to safety.

You're not particularly morally praiseworthy. But have you done anything morally wrong in acting on the mercenary motive? Nothing wrong would have been done had you refused to take the risk at all. Why would it be wrong to do it for money? Indeed, is your case any different from that of someone who becomes a firefighter for monetary reasons? But wouldn't it be odd if it were permissible to be a businessman for profit but wrong to be a firefighter for profit?

So the mere presence of a mercenary motive, even when this motive is a difference-maker, does not make an action wrong. Nor does this constitute the agent as vicious.

But what if the mercenary motive were the only operative motive? That would be constitutive of vice. There need be no vice if the decision whether to save another at significant risk to self is decided in favor of caution, and there need be no vice if money overrides the caution. But if the mercenary motive were the only motive, then that suggests that had there been neither danger to you nor promise of payment, you wouldn't have pulled out the stranger, because you simply don't care about the stranger's life. And that's vicious.

It is morally important, thus, that care for the stranger's life be among your motives, even if the mercenary motive is necessary (or even if it is necessary and sufficient) for the decision to save. Likewise, if you decide not to save, the motive of care for the stranger's life had better be operative. The decision had better be a conflicted one. Only for a vicious person would the decision not to save be a shoo-in.

Deciding to marry

Consider this line of thought.

1. To decide to marry y for no reason is unreasonable.
2. To decide to marry y on the grounds that y will make one happy is selfish.
3. To decide to marry y on the grounds that one will make y happy is arrogant.
4. To decide to marry y on the grounds that it will make the world a better place is to be full of oneself.
5. To decide to marry y on the grounds that God is calling one to it is unavailable to atheists and claims an implausibly good understanding of God's designs.

So on what grounds can one decide to marry y?

I am inclined to think that (5) can be rejected: I think atheists can do something because God calls them to it, but they won't formulate the reason in that way. I also think we can have some understanding of what God calls us to. And while (3) and (4) may be true, perhaps all one needs as grounds is the thought that likely one will in a small way contribute to y's happiness and make the world a better place, and one need not be arrogant to think that.

Still, I think that even with these qualifications, something important is being left out of the story. Love, I guess. Love directly justifies the pursuit of a union appropriate to the love, and marriage is the union appropriate to certain forms of love.

Against the viability of the a priori

1. If the notion of the a priori is viable, there is a recursive logical system S, whose soundness is a priori, such that all a priori mathematical truths are provable in S.
2. If the notion of the a priori is viable, then the truth of Peano Arithmetic (PA) is a priori.
3. If the notion of the a priori is viable, then it is a priori that whatever is true is consistent in every sound logical system.

Assume the notion of the a priori is viable. By (1) and (2), PA is provable in S. By (3), the consistency in S of PA is a priori, and hence the consistency of S of PA is provable in S by (1). These conclusions contradict the soundness of S by Goedel's Second Incompeteness Theorem.

There are two ways of taking the above argument. One can take it as concerning the a priori as such, or the a priori for humans. Either way, the premises are plausible.

I think the main controversy is going to be about (1). To deny (1) would be to hold that there are infinitely many mathematical truths, not a priori reducible to a finite number of a priori assumptions, but that are nonetheless a priori. This is particularly weird if the a priori is a priori for us: Do we really have some mysterious inner capacity to cognize irreducibly infinitely many mathematical truths a priori? But even if the a priori is not relativized to humans, it's weird. In just what sense are all these mathematical claims a priori?

Let me sharpen the last point. We can restrict our attention to those mathematical truths that are formulable in our mathematical vocabulary, since these are the only ones that come up in the argument. But the a priori truths formulable in a given vocabulary seem to be basically the analytic ones. Are there really infinitely many independent analytic truths formulable in our mathematical vocabulary? Are we that rich that so much is implicit in what we say?

I think this does serious damage to the Chalmers project.

Two models of mathematics

I've been thinking lately about high-level parallels between three activities I engage in on a regular basis: philosophy, mathematics and computer programming. One of the obvious things that all of these have in common is that abstraction has a role, though what role it has differs between the three and within each, depending on what one is doing.

One model of mathematics is the abstractive model. "Aristotelian" is a label that comes to mind. Natural numbers abstract from pluralities, ratios abstract from pairs of natural numbers, fields abstract from arithmetic, morphisms abstract from homomorphisms, categories abstract from just about everything. There is an old category theory joke that mathematicians are so absent-minded because mathematics is all about the application of forgetful functors. Taking the joke's thesis literally probably isn't going to give an adequate picture of, say, the number theorist or harmonic analyst are doing, but the basic picture is clear: mathematicians abstract away, or forget, structure. Pluralities have all sorts of structure: these four cows have legs, spots, give milk, and have one dominant cow, but we forget about everything but the "four" to get numbers. When we go from pairs to ratio, we forget everything but the multiplicative relationship. And so on up.

The other model of mathematics is the constructive model (using the term very loosely, and without a commitment to constructivism). Here, we build our way up to more complex structures out of simpler ones. The most impressive example is just how much of mathematics can be seen as about sets and membership.

The abstractive model makes one think of very high level programming languages, of paradigms like functional programming or object-oriented programming. The constructive model makes one think of assembly language programming (some will lump C in here, and I guess that's not unfair). The models can be thought of as models of practice. If so, then they are complementary. Both with computers and mathematics, we need both the abstractive and the constructive practices. We need Java and assembly programmers; we need category theorists and real analysts. Different solutions are appropriate to different problems. You are unlikely to do a lot of abstraction when producing hand-optimized code for an 8-bit microcontroller, but you won't want to produce a banking system in this way. The abstractive approach ("abstract nonsense", as it is fondly called) is just the right thing for many (but not all) problems in algebra, but a constructive approach is likely to be the better solution for many (but not all) problems in harmonic analysis. And of course really good work can involve both, and a well-rounded programmer and mathematician can work in both modalities.

But besides thinking of the two models as models of practice, one can think of them as models of ontology. There is an abstractive ontology of mathematics. Mathematical facts are simply abstractions from facts about concrete things. And there is a constructive ontology, the most prominent starting with sets and showing how the mathematics we care about can be made to be about sets.

With computers, it's clear that the analogue to the constructive ontology is simply the truth of the matter. Computers are built up of transistors, the transistors run microcode, the microcode runs higher level machine code, and all the way up to Java, Haskell and the like. That elegant Haskell one-liner will eventually need to be implemented with microcode. And we have tools to bridge all the levels of abstraction. The proponent of the set-theoretic ontology in mathematics says that the analogy here is perfect. But that is far from clear. We need to take seriously the idea that mathematical abstractions are not built up out of simpler mathematical entities, but are either fundamental or are grounded in non-mathematical entities and pluralities (and their powers, I will say).

Nothing new here. Just laying out the territory for myself.

Nonpropositional views of conditionals, and lying

1. Some conditional claims are lies. ("If you show this car to any mechanic in town, he'll tell you it's a great deal.")
2. Conditional claims do not express propositions (but, say, conditional probabilities).
3. Assertions express propositions.
4. So, not all lies are assertions.

Of course, (2) is a quite controversial theory of conditionals. And one can turn the argument around: All lies are assertions, so conditional claims express propositions (at least in those cases; but one can generalize from them). But if one thinks that the argument should be turned around in this way, then one must make the same move for every non-cognitivist theory, since it takes only one non-cognitivist theory in whose domain lies can be made to yield conclusion (4). For instance, one must reject non-cognitivism in metaethics and aesthetics. So far so good. One probably doesn't need to reject non-cognitivism about requests, on the other hand, since one doesn't lie with requests: "I'll have fries with that" isn't a lie when you don't want fries.

Are there domains where one can lie but where non-cognitivism is clearly right? I am not sure. Maybe something like talk of the spooky? One certainly can lie in something is spooky (e.g., to scare off a competing house buyer). But even there I am not convinced that the right conclusion is that not all lies are assertions. The right conclusion there may still be that we do in fact make assertions when we attribute spookiness.

Vagueness cases are another case to think about. I think propositions are always sharp, but we lie with claims that clearly do not express sharp propositions ("He was bald two days ago, but washed his hair with this shampoo, and now he's not"). But I don't think vagueness cases give one reason to accept (4). Rather, they lead to a refinement of (3): assertions don't express individual propositions, but something like a vague assignment of weights to propositions.

So overall, I don't know what to make of the argument.

Leibniz and the Gaifman-Hales Theorem

The basic idea behind Leibniz's characteristique is that all concepts are generated out of simple concepts, and there are no non-trivial logical relations between the simple concepts.

Today I was thinking about how to model this mathematically. Concepts presumably form a Boolean algebra. But infinities are very important to Leibniz. For instance, to each individual there corresponds a complete individual concept, which is an infinite concept specifying everything the individual does. So an ordinary Boolean algebra with binary conjunction and disjunction won't be good enough for Leibniz. We need concepts to form a complete Boolean algebra, one where an arbitrary set of elements has a conjunction and a disjunction.

So we want the space of concepts to be a complete Boolean algebra. We also want it to be generated by—built up out of—the set of simple concepts. Finally, we don't want there to be any nontrivial logical relations between the simple concepts. We want the theory to be entirely formal. This is one of Leibniz's basic intuitions. It seems to me that the way to formalize this condition is to say that the complete Boolean algebra is freely generated by the simple concepts.

Pity, though. The Gaifman-Hales Theorem implies that if there are infinitely many simple concepts, there is no complete Boolean algebra generated by them (this assumes a quite weak version of the Axiom of Choice, namely that every infinite set contains a countably infinite subset).

It looks, thus, like the Leibniz project is provably a failure.

Perhaps not, though. Apparently if one relaxes the requirement that the complete Boolean algebra be a set and allows it to be a proper class, but keeps the idea that the simple concepts form a set, one can get a complete Boolean algebra freely generated by the simple concepts.

Still, it's interesting that from an infinite set of simple concepts, one generates a proper class of concepts.

Current task

In case anybody is interested, these days I'm working on a book with Josh Rasmussen arguing there is at least one necessary being (definition: an entity that is concrete and exists necessarily; an entity is concrete if and only if it is possibly a cause), based in part on the arguments on necessarybeing.net. We've got about 40000 words so far:

$ wc -w chapter?.tex
3019 chapter1.tex
7945 chapter2.tex
12295 chapter3.tex
9255 chapter4.tex
435 chapter5.tex
6676 chapter7.tex
4547 chapter8.tex
44172 total

I'm in the middle of chapter 8, which is a variant of my Goedelian ontological argument, with a special focus on the negative formulation.

A practical liar paradox in two words

I saw a woman with a tattoo that said only: CAVEAT LECTOR.

Randomness and freedom

Consider cases where your decision is counterfactually dependent on some factor X that is not a part of your reasons and is outside of your (present or past) rational control. The kind of dependence that interests me is this:

• In the presence of X, you decided on A, but had X been absent, you would have decided on B on the basis of the same set of reasons.

It's important here that X isn't just an enabler of your making a decision, nor is it one of the reasons—your reasons are the same whether X is present or not—but is an extrarational difference-maker for your action.

As far as rationality is concerned, these are cases of randomness. It doesn't matter whether X's influence is deterministic or not: the cases are random vis-à-vis reason.

In these cases, the best contrastive explanation of your decision is in terms of your reasons and X. And the counterfactual dependence on X, which is outside of your control, puts your freedom into question.

I think many cases of conflicted decisions have the following property:

1. If determinism is true, then the case involves such counterfactual dependence on a factor outside of one's reasons and rational control.

But I also think that:

2. Some of these cases are also cases of responsibility.

It follows that:

3. Responsibility is compatible with such counterfactual dependence

or:

4. Determinism is false.

If (3) is true, then a fortiori the kind of causal undeterdetermination that is posited by event-causal libertarians does not challenge freedom.

I think the right conclusion to draw is (4). I think the counterfactual dependence here does indeed remove freedom. But I do not think the mere absence of a determiner like X is enough for freedom. Something needs to be put in the place of X. What? The agent! The problem with X is that it usurps the place of the agent. Thus I am inclined to think that freedom requires agent causation. I didn't see this until now.

Apart from Christ there is no hope

The deep realization that Christ is our only hope has significant existential force for a lot of people in motivating Christian faith. It is interesting that there need be nothing irrational here. In fact, a clearly valid argument can be given:

1. Apart from Christ there is no hope.
2. There is hope.
3. If there is hope but apart from x there is no hope, then there is hope with x.
4. If there is hope with Christ, the central doctrines of Christianity are true.
5. So, there is hope with Christ. (1-3)
6. So, the central doctrines of Christianity are true. (4-5)

Clichéd as that sounds, premise (1) really is something that I come to realize more and more deeply the longer I live. (See also this book by one of my distinguished colleagues.) Premise (3) is some kind of "logical truth'. Premise (4) would, I think, take some defending. I think the central thought here is something like the idea that Christ is Lord, liar or lunatic, and in the latter two cases there is no hope with Christ.

Premise (2) is the crucial one. I suspect that accepting (2) in the relevant deep existential sense of "There is hope" usually, perhaps always, is a fruit of grace. There is darkness, but one sees that there is light shining in it even if one cannot identify the light.

One can perhaps, though this very rare, argue oneself by the light of natural reason into accepting that the central doctrines of Christianity are true. But without grace one cannot argue oneself into accepting the central doctrines of Christianity (it is one thing to think something is true and another to accept it; I think the latest theorem proved by my colleagues at the Mathematics Department is true, but I don't accept it—if only because I don't know what it is!), much less into having faith in them.

It may be that for some people the point where grace enters the process of gaining faith is precisely at premise (2). If grace enters the process at accpetance of (2), this is quite interesting. For (2) is not overtly Christian. Yet when someone comes to faith in this way, with grace entering the process in conjunction with an existentially rich acceptance of (2), it plausibly follows that at that stage they already have faith. For, plausibly, there is no way to get to faith from something that isn't faith without grace. So that means that a deep existential acceptance of (2) (and that's not just a light and breezy optimism) could itself be faith.

The reflections on grace and faith are simply speculation. But the argument I stand by.