I'm no economist, which explains why I attempted to describe the economy using "deadlocks" and "local minima/maxima". And I suspect that many other commentators aren't economists either, which explains why their preferred analysis also comes from a different domain: morality. Within that frame, economic decisions are moral decisions; decisions in the context of efficient markets result in swift and appropriate moral consequences. Personal responsibility is a synonym for the level of economic success.
Like many perspectives, this one has an unsurprising problem: its implications aren't a perfect fit for all reality. For example, market shifts in the unit price of fossil-based fuel have unavoidable consequences on anyone who has no substitute method of transportation to and from the workplace, yet the sole cause of these shifts isn't their personal decisions. Nor are they personally responsible for drastic adjustments in the market price of their largest assets. Nor are the downsized employees of a company responsible for the new competing product that decimated the company's number of customers. In an actual massive economy, relatively tiny participants might not have meaningful personal responsibility for their current level of economic success. (Although they decide how to adapt to the changes, of course.) Poetically, transactions link the fates of many, whether temporary or ongoing, whether material or contractual.
Hence, while the moralistic interpretation is sometimes accurate and instructive, it also has pragmatic limits. To prescribe grave and unrestricted consequences is to affect the "innocent" as well as the "wrongdoer". To permit a woeful decision to ricochet is to watch escalating damage to the bystanders. It's paradoxical. Market "punishment" can be effectively unjust. The perpetrator might be able to absorb the fall in wealth without much harm but the same loss eliminates the net worth of multiple others.
I agree that personal responsibility is a vital principle for a realistic free market. I agree that an economy without risks is an economy without a brighter future. But I disagree that the entire thing must be left sick whenever a slob sneezes, in order to ensure the slob's maximum pain.
Sunday, July 01, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Nick Burns the Client Object
In 2009 I compared a lack of data encapsulation to a nudist community. Not long ago another metaphor struck me, but this one applies to the interactions among objects within that anti-pattern: Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy. If translated to the form of skit dialogue, it might be like the following.
- Nick Burns, Client Object: (impatient) You're the Customer object, right? Tell me the average number of purchases per month, year-to-date.
- Customer Object: (confused) Er...but...I don't have a method for doing that. I know the customer inside and out, but you're asking for statistics about the orders. I suppose I have the ability to fetch all customer purchases for a time range...
- Client Object: (annoyed) Don't know much, do you? Give me all your data and MOVE! The Client Object .gets() all the information from the Customer Object, filters it, and finally calculates. THERE! Was that so hard?
- Customer Object: (defensive) Well, if someone had given me the capability to do what you were asking, or if you had gone to the right Object in the first place...
- Client Object: (dismissive) Don't worry about it. You're just one more do-nothing data container like all the objects in the hierarchy. I'm here to do your thinking for you. The Client Object starts to return to its caller, then hesitates and turns back to the Customer Object for one last bit of sarcasm. Oh, by the way, you're welcome!
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Google Translate met my challenge?
In the last footnote of the previous entry, I wondered if the infamous ambiguity of natural language would easily defeat algorithms that don't have deep comprehension of the symbols. I contrived two different English sentences with distinct meanings despite sharing many words: 1) "I'm quitting my run because I can't stand the sun directly overhead," and 2)"Too much overhead is required to run a stand".
I'm feeling chagrin after I stuck the two into Google Translate. It produced French translations that don't appear to have grievous errors. Then again, my first language is English and my French is...limited. But my consultations of online French-to-English dictionaries haven't shown any serious problems. For an English speaker who doesn't know any French, the words' discernible resemblances aren't hard to see.
UPDATE later: And...here's a counterexample of GT not working as well. "The child put the toy in the pen" is a classic conundrum for machine translation. "Stylo" is not the appropriate French word in this case. Changing "pen" to "playpen" works better, though. L'enfant mis le jouet dans le stylo.
- J'arrête ma course parce que je ne peux pas supporter le soleil directement au-dessus.
- Trop de frais généraux est nécessaire pour faire fonctionner un stand.
UPDATE later: And...here's a counterexample of GT not working as well. "The child put the toy in the pen" is a classic conundrum for machine translation. "Stylo" is not the appropriate French word in this case. Changing "pen" to "playpen" works better, though. L'enfant mis le jouet dans le stylo.
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
the renovated Chinese Room
I have already posted about the Chinese Room two times. But after reading some comments in The Symbolic Species by Terrence W. Deacon, I think I can offer some more clarification or express the same perspective in a different way. Although Deacon states his belief that artificial intelligence is possible, he also opines that the Chinese Room casts doubt on the equivalency of sentience and algorithms for manipulating dissociated symbol tokens. These algorithms belong to systems of logical deductions, which function well in many domains but not as realistic models of brain computations. I agree with him. In fact, I shall renovate the Room around his observation.
As always, the bemused human alone in the closed room receives a sequence of unknown1 tokens (i.e. symbolic representations), applies a preexisting set of manipulation rules onto that sequence to form a response sequence, and finally sends back the response. However, this time, the testers outside the room are shrewd in their determination to detect the presence or absence of a sentient conversationalist. They carefully note the close correspondences of questions and responses. Gradually the growing collection of notes resembles the collection of originating rules in the room, which the unknowing manipulator can neither disobey nor adjust.
Eventually, the testers select and "combine" two suitable questions from out of the notes. By "suitable" I mean that via the syntactic and semantic structure of the unknown language, one of the selected questions modifies the meaning of the second. The meaning of the combined question isn't a "lossless sum" of the two questions' independent meanings2. Therefore an appropriate and believable response to the combined question isn't in the set of acceptable responses to either of the two independent questions. If the testers receive a believable response, then they may try combining two other questions. Or combine the combined question with a third. Or combine it with another combined question. For mischievous testers, the possibilities multiply.
For instance, since the algorithm in the room is intended to mimic a human3, it surely has a prepared response to the question, "What food does your father like to eat?" The alleged algorithm somehow uses the tokens of that question to produce the tokens of a response like "Licorice". Again, the algorithm surely has a prepared response to a distinct question of the same general category, "What food do you like to eat for breakfast?" Will the algorithm produce a reasonable response to the modified question, "What food does your father like to eat for breakfast?" Or, "What food does the father of your father like to eat for breakfast?" Or, "What food does your father not like to eat and you like to eat for breakfast?"
Regardless of the questions' triviality, the interpretive complexity can increase dramatically through tweaks that are rather simple (for humans!). As always, the Chinese Room asks, "Assuming that the fraud in the room achieves a perfect outcome from the testers' perspective, isn't it a self-contradiction for them to claim that anything in the room understands?" But after my renovation of the testers' methods, successful deception is much more difficult for the proposed algorithm! No matter how long the algorithm's finite list of prearranged question and responses, the testers can still escape it through valid combinations of any suitable questions in the list. And recall that the tokens of the right responses for the combinations aren't derivable from the tokens for the responses for the independent questions. If the algorithm is one big list of token transformations, then the testers can confound it by constructing an explosive quantity of more and more questions. It cannot yield passable words in response to the combined question by transforming passable words of the responses to independent questions4.
Thus the algorithm cannot successfully defeat the challenge unless it consists of more than a preset list of token manipulations. Instead it must think of the tokens as symbols (and qualify as Deacon's second "Symbolic Species"). It must expand and condense information. It must translate: 1) from the source sequence to reconstituted isomorphic reference "content", 2) from the restored "content" to an appropriate response, 3) from the response content to an adequate sequence of symbolic tokens to represent it.
My own past reactions to the Chinese Room have assumed that the algorithm in the room was doing these tasks in order to work convincingly: hence my view that the meanings, i.e. isomorphisms, of the unknown language simply resided in the smart algorithm as opposed to the algorithm's human "scribe". With a renovated Chinese Room in which the testers exploit the tireless elaboration permitted by language, the algorithm is forced to take the form of symbolic thought which I assumed; direct token transformation is a hopeless strategy5.
1 As other commentators have remarked, the unknown characters are "Chinese" in order to emphasize mystery for native speakers who use Latin-derived alphabets, so Aurebesh and Tengwar would fill the role too. In any case, with the right talent, tools, and educated skills, a linguist in the Room might speculate accurately about the unknown language itself after study of the algorithm and a large quantity of sample sequences. Nevertheless, the experience of archaeologists demonstrates that lack of context would prevent discovery of the majority of the tokens' meanings.
2 Grammatical modification is a significant characteristic of natural/unbounded language. Changes to tense, mood, gender and so forth are less like addition or multiplication and more like shifting ("rotating" or "translating") a vector's direction along many axes. The testers outside the room can certainly perform these language operations because they're fluent humans without the restriction of pure token manipulations. Unfortunately, they couldn't mechanize this type of processing until AI has a long-sought breakthrough: guided re-combination of old ideas is one of the leading definitions of creativity.
3 It's questionable whether mimicry of humanity is an essential proof of intelligence. I chose this instance to highlight that aspect. "Thinking like me" is a narrow and shallow definition of intelligence. Deacon acknowledges that this definition is already applied to answer the similar and basic question, "How do I know any human besides me has the same intelligence, sentience, and consciousness?"
4 In more formalized language, if the algorithm requires an explicit individualized mapping from every source sequence of tokens to a response sequence of tokens, then the algorithm is not computable. The combinatorial capability to create new meaningful source sequences implies that no theoretical algorithm can enumerate or count all the source sequences or contain a novel response sequence for each. (Nobody really speculates that human brains handle natural language in this way.)
5 Perhaps ambiguity would stymie direct token transformation sooner than I suggest. Without deep information about all the numerous definitions, the initial categorization of words as "nouns" or "verbs" could be problematic. For example, what if the question were to guess the speakers of the following quotations? 1) "Too much overhead is required to run a stand." 2) "I'm quitting my run because I can't stand the sun directly overhead." The first is an entrepreneur pondering where to sell, and the second is a dehydrated athlete.
As always, the bemused human alone in the closed room receives a sequence of unknown1 tokens (i.e. symbolic representations), applies a preexisting set of manipulation rules onto that sequence to form a response sequence, and finally sends back the response. However, this time, the testers outside the room are shrewd in their determination to detect the presence or absence of a sentient conversationalist. They carefully note the close correspondences of questions and responses. Gradually the growing collection of notes resembles the collection of originating rules in the room, which the unknowing manipulator can neither disobey nor adjust.
Eventually, the testers select and "combine" two suitable questions from out of the notes. By "suitable" I mean that via the syntactic and semantic structure of the unknown language, one of the selected questions modifies the meaning of the second. The meaning of the combined question isn't a "lossless sum" of the two questions' independent meanings2. Therefore an appropriate and believable response to the combined question isn't in the set of acceptable responses to either of the two independent questions. If the testers receive a believable response, then they may try combining two other questions. Or combine the combined question with a third. Or combine it with another combined question. For mischievous testers, the possibilities multiply.
For instance, since the algorithm in the room is intended to mimic a human3, it surely has a prepared response to the question, "What food does your father like to eat?" The alleged algorithm somehow uses the tokens of that question to produce the tokens of a response like "Licorice". Again, the algorithm surely has a prepared response to a distinct question of the same general category, "What food do you like to eat for breakfast?" Will the algorithm produce a reasonable response to the modified question, "What food does your father like to eat for breakfast?" Or, "What food does the father of your father like to eat for breakfast?" Or, "What food does your father not like to eat and you like to eat for breakfast?"
Regardless of the questions' triviality, the interpretive complexity can increase dramatically through tweaks that are rather simple (for humans!). As always, the Chinese Room asks, "Assuming that the fraud in the room achieves a perfect outcome from the testers' perspective, isn't it a self-contradiction for them to claim that anything in the room understands?" But after my renovation of the testers' methods, successful deception is much more difficult for the proposed algorithm! No matter how long the algorithm's finite list of prearranged question and responses, the testers can still escape it through valid combinations of any suitable questions in the list. And recall that the tokens of the right responses for the combinations aren't derivable from the tokens for the responses for the independent questions. If the algorithm is one big list of token transformations, then the testers can confound it by constructing an explosive quantity of more and more questions. It cannot yield passable words in response to the combined question by transforming passable words of the responses to independent questions4.
Thus the algorithm cannot successfully defeat the challenge unless it consists of more than a preset list of token manipulations. Instead it must think of the tokens as symbols (and qualify as Deacon's second "Symbolic Species"). It must expand and condense information. It must translate: 1) from the source sequence to reconstituted isomorphic reference "content", 2) from the restored "content" to an appropriate response, 3) from the response content to an adequate sequence of symbolic tokens to represent it.
My own past reactions to the Chinese Room have assumed that the algorithm in the room was doing these tasks in order to work convincingly: hence my view that the meanings, i.e. isomorphisms, of the unknown language simply resided in the smart algorithm as opposed to the algorithm's human "scribe". With a renovated Chinese Room in which the testers exploit the tireless elaboration permitted by language, the algorithm is forced to take the form of symbolic thought which I assumed; direct token transformation is a hopeless strategy5.
1 As other commentators have remarked, the unknown characters are "Chinese" in order to emphasize mystery for native speakers who use Latin-derived alphabets, so Aurebesh and Tengwar would fill the role too. In any case, with the right talent, tools, and educated skills, a linguist in the Room might speculate accurately about the unknown language itself after study of the algorithm and a large quantity of sample sequences. Nevertheless, the experience of archaeologists demonstrates that lack of context would prevent discovery of the majority of the tokens' meanings.
2 Grammatical modification is a significant characteristic of natural/unbounded language. Changes to tense, mood, gender and so forth are less like addition or multiplication and more like shifting ("rotating" or "translating") a vector's direction along many axes. The testers outside the room can certainly perform these language operations because they're fluent humans without the restriction of pure token manipulations. Unfortunately, they couldn't mechanize this type of processing until AI has a long-sought breakthrough: guided re-combination of old ideas is one of the leading definitions of creativity.
3 It's questionable whether mimicry of humanity is an essential proof of intelligence. I chose this instance to highlight that aspect. "Thinking like me" is a narrow and shallow definition of intelligence. Deacon acknowledges that this definition is already applied to answer the similar and basic question, "How do I know any human besides me has the same intelligence, sentience, and consciousness?"
4 In more formalized language, if the algorithm requires an explicit individualized mapping from every source sequence of tokens to a response sequence of tokens, then the algorithm is not computable. The combinatorial capability to create new meaningful source sequences implies that no theoretical algorithm can enumerate or count all the source sequences or contain a novel response sequence for each. (Nobody really speculates that human brains handle natural language in this way.)
5 Perhaps ambiguity would stymie direct token transformation sooner than I suggest. Without deep information about all the numerous definitions, the initial categorization of words as "nouns" or "verbs" could be problematic. For example, what if the question were to guess the speakers of the following quotations? 1) "Too much overhead is required to run a stand." 2) "I'm quitting my run because I can't stand the sun directly overhead." The first is an entrepreneur pondering where to sell, and the second is a dehydrated athlete.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
immediacy gaps
The quest continues to defend materialistic naturalism from malicious distortions. This entry is a natural extension to its predecessor, which was a natural extension of its predecessor. Where I last left off, I suggested that it's no loss of information to relinquish the philosophical idea of "real" minds. The tangled contents and events of consciousness correlate precisely (albeit cryptically) to the tangled contents and events of the brain. Ultimately, the set of physical operations that the brain performs to compute the "inner world" will certainly turn out to be at least as bewildering as the apparent experience of consciousness. My guess is that the set of brain operations will be far more bewildering; one vexing question among many is how exactly the summarized and sanitized "window" of mentality is synthesized out of the glaring discord of myriad neuron firings.
Unfortunately, the advance of knowledge about the brain's functioning has an intrinsic credibility problem, which is an immediacy gap. Within pure experience, not all parts are equally immediate. The coldness of ice water has great immediacy. Planning when to go buy more envelopes has less immediacy - the need might be urgent but the planning itself is not engrossing. A phone in my hand has great immediacy. A phone that I remember using several years ago has less immediacy.
Differences in immediacy motivate differing instinctual reactions. Parts of pure experience that have immediacy provoke rapid evaluation and firm belief in the parts' existence. Immediacy implies difficulty to ignore. It depends on few conceptual intermediates, unlike the lengthy chains of reasoning which link abstruse logical statements. Sparse intermediates are consistent with nonverbal character. Symbolic communication only comes "later", after suitable descriptions and metaphors are chosen. The nonverbal character is in turn consistent with frequent idiosyncrasy. For instance, individuals experience varying degrees of favor for particular smells or tastes.
Hence, humans cope constantly with substantial gaps of immediacy. It's a factor in good psychological health. Intellectual labor and social cooperation help to disentangle raw immediacy from "true" importance and/or reality. Maturity includes the recognition that experiences with immediacy often have in-depth impersonal causes, which by comparison have little if any immediacy. An empty blue sky is certainly of greater immediacy than envisioning the divergent molecular scattering of electromagnetic wavelengths. A typically effective strategy is to split pure experience into subjective and objective domains and reconcile the two in ways that can be...uh...complicated.
Yet this two-part organizational scheme collides with all propositions about the real origin of the subjective domain. By definition, everything that's categorized into the subjective domain has great immediacy, but propositions belong in the objective domain with less immediacy. Whenever the topic has greater immediacy than the proposition itself, it crosses the immediacy gap. The challenge is convincing someone that propositions about objects can be satisfactory explanations for experiences which have greater immediacy than propositions or objects.
For example, what quantities of what things add up to the "sensation" of an emotion like contentment? None of the possible answers to that question (serotonin?) evoke intuitive satisfaction because of a gap of immediacy between the answer and the question. Humans simply don't experience emotions as sums of quantities of things, so they struggle to equate emotions with even the most thorough analysis. This communication obstacle is quite irrevocable. Crudely put, even if a meticulous teacher in plain view took out the working brain of a determined dissenter and then presented exhaustive and lucid observations of the diligent exertions taking place in direct present correspondence with ongoing thoughts, the exasperated retort might just be, " 'Brain' and 'brain'! What is 'brain'? How can that pulsing ugly thing have any relevance to the vivid beautiful images in my mind's eye?"
Of course, the dissenter's insistence on an "objective" immediacy gap has a cost of assorted systemic brainteasers (so to speak). If origins aren't expressible in propositions about objects, then how does the subjective domain originate? How do real stimuli landing on the real senses enter into the subjective domain? How do intentions in the subjective domain exit to voluntary muscle movements in the objective domain, and how do severed nerves intercept those intentions? How can head trauma affect the content of the subjective domain so drastically? Upon consideration of all these practical facts illustrating the pervasive domination of the objective domain over the subjective domain, on what basis could someone persist in the notion that the two are either independent or that the mere immediacy of the subjective domain implies its superiority?
Immediacy is a consequence of a brain-based point of view. In other words, greater immediacy is no more than greater prominence in the egocentric "universe", constructed by an object called the "brain", using data that arrived via mediated contact with surroundings. It's the preeminent bias. "I think, therefore I am" belongs with a counterpart, "I am what my brain thinks."
Consciousness is a brainy action. The immediacy of some parts of pure experience doesn't falsify this principle. I could construe it as subtle supporting evidence: if the immediacy is meant to be a clue that I have a mind independent of my body, then why is it so rare to have immediate experience of stuff outside my body? Why isn't overt clairvoyance/ESP a common practice? (Vague sensations, probable educated guesses, and unverified fictional explorations like dreams, don't qualify.)
Unfortunately, the advance of knowledge about the brain's functioning has an intrinsic credibility problem, which is an immediacy gap. Within pure experience, not all parts are equally immediate. The coldness of ice water has great immediacy. Planning when to go buy more envelopes has less immediacy - the need might be urgent but the planning itself is not engrossing. A phone in my hand has great immediacy. A phone that I remember using several years ago has less immediacy.
Differences in immediacy motivate differing instinctual reactions. Parts of pure experience that have immediacy provoke rapid evaluation and firm belief in the parts' existence. Immediacy implies difficulty to ignore. It depends on few conceptual intermediates, unlike the lengthy chains of reasoning which link abstruse logical statements. Sparse intermediates are consistent with nonverbal character. Symbolic communication only comes "later", after suitable descriptions and metaphors are chosen. The nonverbal character is in turn consistent with frequent idiosyncrasy. For instance, individuals experience varying degrees of favor for particular smells or tastes.
Hence, humans cope constantly with substantial gaps of immediacy. It's a factor in good psychological health. Intellectual labor and social cooperation help to disentangle raw immediacy from "true" importance and/or reality. Maturity includes the recognition that experiences with immediacy often have in-depth impersonal causes, which by comparison have little if any immediacy. An empty blue sky is certainly of greater immediacy than envisioning the divergent molecular scattering of electromagnetic wavelengths. A typically effective strategy is to split pure experience into subjective and objective domains and reconcile the two in ways that can be...uh...complicated.
Yet this two-part organizational scheme collides with all propositions about the real origin of the subjective domain. By definition, everything that's categorized into the subjective domain has great immediacy, but propositions belong in the objective domain with less immediacy. Whenever the topic has greater immediacy than the proposition itself, it crosses the immediacy gap. The challenge is convincing someone that propositions about objects can be satisfactory explanations for experiences which have greater immediacy than propositions or objects.
For example, what quantities of what things add up to the "sensation" of an emotion like contentment? None of the possible answers to that question (serotonin?) evoke intuitive satisfaction because of a gap of immediacy between the answer and the question. Humans simply don't experience emotions as sums of quantities of things, so they struggle to equate emotions with even the most thorough analysis. This communication obstacle is quite irrevocable. Crudely put, even if a meticulous teacher in plain view took out the working brain of a determined dissenter and then presented exhaustive and lucid observations of the diligent exertions taking place in direct present correspondence with ongoing thoughts, the exasperated retort might just be, " 'Brain' and 'brain'! What is 'brain'? How can that pulsing ugly thing have any relevance to the vivid beautiful images in my mind's eye?"
Of course, the dissenter's insistence on an "objective" immediacy gap has a cost of assorted systemic brainteasers (so to speak). If origins aren't expressible in propositions about objects, then how does the subjective domain originate? How do real stimuli landing on the real senses enter into the subjective domain? How do intentions in the subjective domain exit to voluntary muscle movements in the objective domain, and how do severed nerves intercept those intentions? How can head trauma affect the content of the subjective domain so drastically? Upon consideration of all these practical facts illustrating the pervasive domination of the objective domain over the subjective domain, on what basis could someone persist in the notion that the two are either independent or that the mere immediacy of the subjective domain implies its superiority?
Immediacy is a consequence of a brain-based point of view. In other words, greater immediacy is no more than greater prominence in the egocentric "universe", constructed by an object called the "brain", using data that arrived via mediated contact with surroundings. It's the preeminent bias. "I think, therefore I am" belongs with a counterpart, "I am what my brain thinks."
Consciousness is a brainy action. The immediacy of some parts of pure experience doesn't falsify this principle. I could construe it as subtle supporting evidence: if the immediacy is meant to be a clue that I have a mind independent of my body, then why is it so rare to have immediate experience of stuff outside my body? Why isn't overt clairvoyance/ESP a common practice? (Vague sensations, probable educated guesses, and unverified fictional explorations like dreams, don't qualify.)
Monday, April 23, 2012
materialistic naturalism is not behaviorism either
This is an addendum to the preceding entry. I tried to draw distinctions between comprehensive materialistic naturalism and the simplistic forms of reductionism or relativism. Materialistic naturalism is the stance that all of reality is natural, and all of it consists of variants of the same material/physical stuff. In particular, if materialistic naturalism is true then it casts doubt on the reality of a ghostly mind, because the usual concept of minds is much too poorly-integrated with proven physical theories. Compared to minds, dark matter's effect on observable parts of reality has more concrete definition and substantiation.
Materialistic naturalism's incompatibility with minds may inspire opponents to equate it to an unappealing philosophical stance known as ("radical") behaviorism. Behaviorism in the bogeyman sense is the proposition that accurate analysis of human thought and decision-making doesn't require any knowledge beyond the plainly-seen external interactions between the human and everything else. In this alleged caricature, minds aren't necessary at all. Most of the proposed attributes of minds aren't easily analyzed or predicted through manifest behavior, so the behaviorist assumes that the attributes are pointless distractions. Humans may assert complex reasons, but their claims are post hoc rationalizations to cover up the real rationales. Behaviors are either inborn or shaped through training. Even a free-will-like rejection of a specific training regimen in the present is probably due to the direct opposing influence of past training regimens which are more strongly ingrained.
Thus bogeyman behaviorism is portrayed as a dehumanizing stance which is self-evidently inadequate to explain the entire range of human experience. Opponents of materialistic naturalism present the dilemma of embracing either the full reality of the mind or the distasteful alternative of behaviorism. I deny the dilemma altogether. Once again the universe is not simple enough to accommodate the old debates.
Indeed, the same detailed evidence that discredits shadowy minds also supports an astoundingly intricate chain of causes for both humans' behavior and inner "mentality". I'm alluding to ongoing research about the brain. The more that we learn and decode what happens in this dense internal space, the less plausible it becomes to revert to either mind-based or behavior-based explanations. Knowledge isn't anywhere near complete, but the trend is suggestive. Brain-based explanations are the future. Minds explain human behavior from the inside-out. Behaviorism explains human behavior from the outside-in. By contrast, brains inside human bodies inside environments are a unitary system of physical behavior.
Having said that, the pragmatic status of these competing explanations is a tricky mixture of qualities. Unlike brains, devices or surgical procedures cannot verify the presence or absence of minds. In that way, minds cannot be as real. Nevertheless, whether the context is the interpretation of another human's behavior or the "location" of conscious sensations, minds work well enough as approximations for the casual purposes of communication and introspection. In that way, the usefulness of the idea of minds is like the usefulness of "real" stuff, i.e. stuff that's verifiable by the multitudinous methods that don't work for minds.
To be more specific, minds are useful to serving the function of intangible inferences. A companion's expressed drowsiness may provoke the comment, "You're feeling sleepy." The comment is an inference about the companion's fictional mind as opposed to a measurement of the quantity of melatonin in the companion's nonfictional body. As long as the state of the "mind" corresponds closely to "real" stuff, it suffices for some aims. The intangibility of drowsiness doesn't destroy its meaningfulness.
Furthermore, within the category of pure human consciousness, other phenomena have similar meaningfulness. "Subjective" thoughts have been shown to have correlates in brain activity. Stimulation of the brain is reflected by occurrences in a subject's "mind", and the currently-predominant factors in a subject's "mind" are reflected by patterns of brain activation. As I mentioned earlier, the amazing mind's material replacement isn't an organic switchboard of behaviorism's straightforward inputs and outputs. It's an equally amazing brain packed with mind-correlates.
Materialistic naturalism's incompatibility with minds may inspire opponents to equate it to an unappealing philosophical stance known as ("radical") behaviorism. Behaviorism in the bogeyman sense is the proposition that accurate analysis of human thought and decision-making doesn't require any knowledge beyond the plainly-seen external interactions between the human and everything else. In this alleged caricature, minds aren't necessary at all. Most of the proposed attributes of minds aren't easily analyzed or predicted through manifest behavior, so the behaviorist assumes that the attributes are pointless distractions. Humans may assert complex reasons, but their claims are post hoc rationalizations to cover up the real rationales. Behaviors are either inborn or shaped through training. Even a free-will-like rejection of a specific training regimen in the present is probably due to the direct opposing influence of past training regimens which are more strongly ingrained.
Thus bogeyman behaviorism is portrayed as a dehumanizing stance which is self-evidently inadequate to explain the entire range of human experience. Opponents of materialistic naturalism present the dilemma of embracing either the full reality of the mind or the distasteful alternative of behaviorism. I deny the dilemma altogether. Once again the universe is not simple enough to accommodate the old debates.
Indeed, the same detailed evidence that discredits shadowy minds also supports an astoundingly intricate chain of causes for both humans' behavior and inner "mentality". I'm alluding to ongoing research about the brain. The more that we learn and decode what happens in this dense internal space, the less plausible it becomes to revert to either mind-based or behavior-based explanations. Knowledge isn't anywhere near complete, but the trend is suggestive. Brain-based explanations are the future. Minds explain human behavior from the inside-out. Behaviorism explains human behavior from the outside-in. By contrast, brains inside human bodies inside environments are a unitary system of physical behavior.
Having said that, the pragmatic status of these competing explanations is a tricky mixture of qualities. Unlike brains, devices or surgical procedures cannot verify the presence or absence of minds. In that way, minds cannot be as real. Nevertheless, whether the context is the interpretation of another human's behavior or the "location" of conscious sensations, minds work well enough as approximations for the casual purposes of communication and introspection. In that way, the usefulness of the idea of minds is like the usefulness of "real" stuff, i.e. stuff that's verifiable by the multitudinous methods that don't work for minds.
To be more specific, minds are useful to serving the function of intangible inferences. A companion's expressed drowsiness may provoke the comment, "You're feeling sleepy." The comment is an inference about the companion's fictional mind as opposed to a measurement of the quantity of melatonin in the companion's nonfictional body. As long as the state of the "mind" corresponds closely to "real" stuff, it suffices for some aims. The intangibility of drowsiness doesn't destroy its meaningfulness.
Furthermore, within the category of pure human consciousness, other phenomena have similar meaningfulness. "Subjective" thoughts have been shown to have correlates in brain activity. Stimulation of the brain is reflected by occurrences in a subject's "mind", and the currently-predominant factors in a subject's "mind" are reflected by patterns of brain activation. As I mentioned earlier, the amazing mind's material replacement isn't an organic switchboard of behaviorism's straightforward inputs and outputs. It's an equally amazing brain packed with mind-correlates.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
what materialistic naturalism is not
- Naturalism is the broad and simple stance that anything real is not supernatural and anything supernatural is not real.
- Since naturalism describes the borders of reality rather than its interior, I pair it with materialism, which is the presumptive stance that the fundamental contents of reality are material (i.e. physical, particulate, and either observable or deducible from observation). My relationship with materialism is more complicated than pure agreement. But stepping over those numerous semantic pitfalls for a moment1, the most salient point of materialism is that (real) humans are solely composed of the same stuff as anything (real). I see materialism constraining the broad and simple stance of naturalism, so I say "materialistic naturalism" and not "naturalistic materialism"2.
- Reductionism is the stance that a whole thing can be understood by understanding all of its parts. Furthermore, no knowledge is lost by examining all of its parts in isolation.
- Relativism is the stance that all truth is relative to other truths. For instance, one human's statements about reality may be "true" relative to their own experiences yet "false" relative to some other human's experiences.
I'll start with reductionism. I assume that the charge of philosophical reductionism stems from the frequent usefulness of reductionism as one methodology of many. "Information overload" receives more than its due share of press coverage, but it's quite accurate for many complex things approached as raw wholes. In many cases reducing the whole to a set of parts is an indispensable first step for facilitating comprehension. And over time, the success of this approach has in fact produced more and more reliable knowledge about the parts of complex materials, not to mention the surprisingly complex parts of homogeneous materials.
However, these discoveries could lead to the mistaken overall impression that reality can be fully known just by dividing it up through analysis. It's mistaken because it ignores the essential companion of analysis: synthesis, which is recombining the analyzed parts. Synthesis requires an understanding of how the parts interact in order to give form to the whole. Interactions among parts might be of equal or greater complexity than the parts, and of equal or greater importance. The lack of that knowledge often imposes a practical limit on the applicability and accuracy of idealized calculations, simulations, and predictions. That's why reductionism is most effective in the context of controlled and repeated experiments, which systematically minimize the amount and effect of interfering interactions3.
Hence, solitary reductionism is an incomplete stance. Full knowledge about reality cannot be obtained by first dividing it into separate independent subsets and then knowing the subsets. An investigator must uncover the various interconnections among the subsets to explain the whole.
But for the purpose of frivolous argument, I'll comment on the curious fictional story which is sometimes associated with the reductionist stance: the omniscient materialist (Laplace's demon), who by assumption knows all the material information in all reality. That information includes every bit about every particle as well as every applicable rule for how each one acts and how it interacts with its counterparts4. Does the hypothetical omniscient materialist have all information? Answering "yes" is said to indicate belief in philosophical reductionism, along with determinism.
Of course my answer is "yes"; I'm a professing materialist. I can agree to this peculiar all-encompassing "reductionism" because it's far different from the less grandiose specimens of actual reductionism, which I've already criticized. My belief that my decisions are natural physical phenomena doesn't force me to think that detailed knowledge of individual physical phenomena X/Y/Z is enough to predict my decisions with certainty. What if the measurements are significantly inexact? What if the effects of X/Y/Z are overwhelmed by a positive feedback loop in physical phenomena N/M/O? What if my brain is running low on nutrients? What if a set of mysterious neurons, which has no verbal expression, "tips" the decision in a strange creative direction that avoids the original dilemma altogether? "Reducing" something into mere matter might yield more questions than insights.
On to relativism. Its alleged connection to materialistic naturalism comes from the central inquiry of how to obtain truth: given the premise that humans are nothing but matter, how can any human claims to truth be trusted? If I'm a jumble of cells (or atoms or anything else diminutive), and so is everyone else, what makes their propositions, or even mine, objectively true5? And if we disagree, don't all those other jumbles of cells have as much "authority" as the jumble of cells called "me"? The most any of us can say is that our conflicting truths seem to be real relative to each of us individually.
The reasoning may seem stretched, but I encountered it multiple times prior to the culmination of my gradual intellectual anti-conversion. Clearly it's intended as a reductio ad absurdum, where to stop believing in absolutist supernatural souls or gods is to irrevocably destroy the justification for absolutist truth itself. Outsiders can easily spot the logical flaw, though. If the duty of sacred truths to underpin every other truth, then what underpins the sacred truths? Moreover, how can humans uncover new truths that have no connection whatsoever to the finite list of sacred truths? And on what basis shall they resolve quarrels about the sacred truths? Or select from among the many contradictory groups and subgroups of sacred truths? I imagine that devout thinkers have their own nuanced replies to these questions.
Laying aside the dubious solution of arbitrarily canonizing chosen beliefs into absolutist sainthood, I answer the change of relativism in my usual fashion. Relativism can't have a neat categorization into true or false (i.e. it's not compatible with "binary thinking"). Propositions have varying qualities due to varying content and varying techniques for verification. Humans, viewed through a microscope or not, cope with the demands of propositions as best they can. They may judge that some propositions are relative to the speaker. And relative propositions may work for some purposes. For instance, propositions about monetary value are relative to a buyer, yet every other market participant may find that proposition to be useful.
Nevertheless, relativism isn't thereby an automatic judgment for all propositions. Humans may judge that some propositions are not relative. It's pragmatic to do so. I've mentioned the two "meta-truths of objectivity": 1) it works for an individual human to think that some parts of reality exist independently of that individual, 2) it works for an individual human to think that some other individuals also interact with some identical parts of reality. For any isolated proposition, it's uncertain at the outset whether both meta-truths apply to it. That's for the human to evaluate/verify/judge. Objectivity per se is a conclusion, not an axiom. (Someone may choose to adopt the tactic of "objective until proven subjective" from time to time.)
I forgive skeptics who are unconvinced by the proposal that individual humans are responsible for judging the degree of relativism case by case. Am I not assuming what I wish to prove? At first hearing it sounds like I'm advocating verification by bluster. If the proposition "I'm telling the truth" isn't adequate proof that the speaker is telling the truth, then how is the proposition "I'm telling you something that isn't relative" adequate proof that the speaker is telling me something that isn't relative? The short response is that no, it isn't adequate proof on its own. Humans can err, and humans can be wrong about how much relativism is embedded in the truth of a proposition.
The longer convoluted response, appropriate for a convoluted reality, is that I can't present universal guidelines or procedures. When the proposition is about obvious objects, the proposition is less likely to be relative. When the proposition fits well with other propositions which I judge to be true, the proposition is less likely to be relative. When the proposition comes with a straightforward method for anyone to test it, the proposition is less likely to be relative. When the proposition is expressed by many, the proposition is less likely to be relative. When the proposition is expressed by a dispassionate expert, the proposition is less likely to be relative. And on and on.
It may feel uncomfortable that fallible humans play a central messy role in the dialogue about truth, but as long as propositions continue to be messages between humans it's unavoidable albeit manageable6. Unfortunately, sublime emotional comfort isn't a mark of truth. If anything a comforting proposition should invite suspicions about its level of convenience. Building and attacking an uncomfortably-itchy straw man out of simpleminded reductionism/relativism doesn't discredit materialistic naturalism with facts. It shows that the debater has chosen to urge the reality of ideas based on attractiveness, as opposed to urging the reality of ideas based on verified implications7. Desiring standalone/easy truth doesn't cause it to materialize (it's like ice cream in that aspect).
Within materialistic naturalism, truths are laborious and valuable. Humans try hard to purge the extreme elements of reductionism/relativism. They attempt to eliminate both oversimplification of internal structure or personal bias. To ask that truths never have the least inkling of reductionism/relativism is to ask the impossible8.
Much more proof should be demanded of those who posit an alternate reality which allows that possibility. In that alternate reality, materials have no parts and humans don't have any individual frames of reference. It's a realm with many approximate similarities to ours and a beautiful place to visit. But when we need to accomplish anything, we return home, confounding though it may be.
1 "Semantic pitfalls" refers to the fraught complications which arise during long discussions about "Reality", the philosophical idea. To a pragmatist's eye, those complications appear to amount to nothing more than disagreements about ideological preferences. Which labels communicate the "best" emphasis? No matter how argumentative a pair of philosophers is, the specific question "Is ____ 'real'?" may not yield the same disputes...until they go on to say "And by 'real' in general I mean..."
2 Materialistic naturalism is different from "supernatural materialism". Supernatural materialists blur the lines by proposing that supernatural stuff is also built solely from matter. Thus the supernatural stuff cannot violate physical laws and it isn't different in kind from natural stuff...in which case "supernatural" becomes a confusing term. It customarily stands for "phenomena beyond nature". But for the supernatural materialist it stands for "natural phenomena which happen to be beyond current human explanation or understanding". For example, they may refuse to believe in the traditional concepts of gods/spirits yet believe in "paranormal soul powers" (they may use the words "mind" and "soul" interchangeably).
Other examples of supernatural materialism veer closer to understated pantheism. Its most abstract forms don't need anything beyond materialism. Instead there's the worship of cosmic unknown knowledge: combining a belief in a "god of the gaps" with the observation that the inherent limitations of puny humans imply that everything in toto is mostly a knowledge "gap" to us upstart primates. I respond by admitting readily that a human's inability to grasp all reality is humbling, but that emotion isn't a sufficient reason to cultivate misunderstanding by applying the figurative name "god" to it. If it's only phrased as worship of the "order" displayed by materialistic reality, then I still question the merit for those warm feelings. The impersonal flow of natural laws will utterly demolish us into our constituent pieces eventually whether we respect it or not. On the other hand, if everyone agrees to completely restrict "god" to a colorful synonym for "awe-inspiring", then I'll join in on the harmless metaphorical fun: a well-done blend of lemonade and iced tea inspires me to call it the spittle of god. The experience of the drink doesn't qualify as "numinous" but the all-consuming enjoyment is somewhat like an altered state of consciousness...
3 The same problem of too many interactions arises in the abstract domains of theory and mathematics. Many variables, whose rates of change are mutually defined in interdependent functions, quickly become formidable obstacles to finding solutions analytically, i.e. proving that a related simpler equation is a solution. The present era of calculating machines has been a great aid in finding solutions numerically, i.e. swiftly calculating and retrying better and better estimates of a solution.
4 I realize the vast breadth and depth of this statement's absurdity. If it helps, imagine seeing it during a tour through Willy Wonka's factory. Wonka: "Next up, here's the Candy Know-It-All Machine. It detects everything which is detectable, and also many things that aren't." (Wonka demonstrates by dropping in a red Everlasting Gobstopper and grabbing the resulting printout of small text.) Guest: "But that's self-evidently preposterous!" Wonka: "No, it's cherry." (Wonka lifts up the printout. It contains lines of letters and punctuation in the rough shape of a cherry.)
5 In passing, note the argument's purposeful usage of "jumble" here. Although it's a caricature, it's one more excellent illustration of the problem with reductionism. Body cells are extremely fine-grained subsets of the whole reality of a human body. To ignore the interactions among these subsets is to ignore the vital structures formed by cells. By doing so the argument is casting the body as a "linear sum" of the effects of its cell parts, whereas the totality of the cell parts' inherent cooperation is more accurately characterized as an "exponential growth" of emergent/network effects. A page of randomly arranged letters is of far smaller total effect than a page with the same quantity of letters arranged into words and grammatical sentences. Unlike a jumble of cells like a colony of bacteria, it's more plausible that a highly-structured body and brain is an effective processor of highly-structured information.
6 It seems to me that nobody seriously wants to remove the human role anyhow. One of the surest ways to provoke a rebellious reaction is to perform all of someone's thinking. Preventing others from thinking the wrong thoughts generally gathers more support than preventing me from thinking the wrong thoughts.
7 In practice, the distinction could be subtle between a proposition's attractiveness and its verified implications, depending on the rationale for its attractiveness. Maybe its degree of intuitive attractiveness, verified by seeking the opinion of a wise mentor, is a "reasonable" implication to ponder...corroborated with more verified implications. Wise mentors who verify a proposition's attractiveness may be insufficient evidence (the proposition could be ugly but true!).
8 Regardless, I confess happily that the specters of reductionism and relativism are virtually nonexistent in a good number of the truths which I acknowledge. Here's a short non-exhaustive listing: the age of my automobile, the value of the Plank constant, the scar on my left thumb, the cash in my wallet, the formula for the area of a circle with radius measurement r. These truths' verifiable implications are quite free from interferences of reductionism and relativism.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
other economic fellows
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -Mark TwainThe above is a popular quip nowadays. Let me suggest some others.
- A deadbeat is a fellow who asks for a bushel of apples now, and pays back a bushel of cores later.
- A market victim is a fellow who waited to buy a snowshovel until the snowstorm, and now needs to sell it during the middle of summer.
- An insurer is a fellow who offers you a life jacket on the road, and offers you a spare tire on the ocean.
- A nation undergoing "quantitative easing" is a fellow who promises that his wares are popular, and demonstrates it by buying up a quarter of the merchandise himself.
- A central banker in a time of crisis is a fellow who buys everyone's lit dynamite, and extinguishes all of it by unleashing a flood.
explanations à la David Deutsch
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch contains some intriguing philosophy. One of its central propositions is that good explanations are essential to human knowledge; in fact, Deutsch redefines "knowledge" and many other words accordingly. He musters arguments to tear down competitors with relish: empiricism, positivism, inductivism, instrumentalism, postmodernism, justificationism, anything supernatural. Instead he aligns with general fallibilism and the outlook of Karl Popper.
My interpretation of pragmatism takes a similarly dim view of those competitors but via a more roundabout way. As I see it, a datum is never alone and objective meaning lies in isomorphism. In short, the importance of context shouldn't be underestimated. Information becomes meaningful for a human because the brain is the defining data structure. It verifies, validates, cross-checks, computes, tests, trusts. Information that passes through these filters of diverse physical and/or mental processes can be said to "work"1. The brain is the singular agent throughout who initiates, performs, and finally evaluates. Of course, in practice humans augment the brain all the time. Total self-reliance is too constricting to seek "truth that works, every truth that works, and nothing except truth that works" 2. It's fine that theorists and philosophers and mathematicians can sit in quiet rooms and ponder, but that approach has its limits! Calculating the circumference of Earth doesn't reveal what's on the opposite side...
Deutsch defines the quality of a good explanation: "hard to vary". My version is not as pithy: "good explanatory information permits many isomorphisms to other good information". This appears to be circular because it really is circular. The circularity is largely the point. It implies that there aren't any Ultimate Bits of information with inherent and infallible meanings3. Yet a suitably advanced and knowledgeable information processor can certainly derive meaning from an aggregate of pieces. For information, to be meaningful is to be codependent.
For example, it's a good explanation that matter is composed of elemental atoms. This explanation is good because it's isomorphic to an impressively vast group of experimental results in chemistry and physics. If someone proposes an alternative explanatory material, e.g. mana, then it's fair to ask how isomorphic that explanation is to the same experiments, and if not then why not. Note that my definition of "isomorphic" isn't intended to be mysterious. In some cases it could just mean "closely matching reliable facts". Explanations with many, small, tight isomorphisms are more firmly locked into a greater context of solid information than explanations with few, grandiose, loose isomorphisms. In Deutsch's language, the former are hard to vary and the latter are easy to vary. A single chemical equation is isomorphic to substances and quantities that are measurable and unambiguous. A single mana explanation is not4. Additionally, a chemical equation has isomorphisms to atoms and electrons, i.e. complicated orbitals that correspond to the rows and columns of the periodic table. An explanation based on mana doesn't.
Other than preferring different wording of the definition of a good explanation, I sense that I'm not as keen as Deutsch to emphasize a starring role for Reason with a capital R, especially if it's construed as a synonym for mere logic. I'd rather claim that applied reason is one of the important mental tools that humans use to tame reality or at least interpret it. It works alongside nonlogical guidelines like the human delight in mental economy, which is the strong preference for a minimal quantity of concepts with wide if not universal reach, as opposed to a myriad quantity of conflicting concepts with sharply constrained applicability for each. (Deutsch has much to say about explanations with expressive reach, but I may be more eager to acknowledge that reach is also a human craving.)
Fortunately, parts of the book seem to agree with me. It dismantles the famous Zeno paradoxes, and the dismantling amounts to the general principle, "Reality isn't held hostage to entire logical/mathematical conclusions." And that principle is well-known to anyone who applies complicated science because models must be used with care and understanding. Whenever a function is fit to a discovered set of data points, the function might or might not accurately predict every other data point; outside of the data set, there could be "phase changes" in reality that don't fit the function well. That outcome isn't a violation of reason. It's a reminder that good explanations are bounded by a data context. In a battle with good data outside those bounds, obsolete explanations should lose.
But which data is "good", and obtained by which "measurements"? Deutsch's answer is unsurprising: explanations must underpin data-gathering, too. A measuring device is presumed to be reliable because it was built using good explanations. A handful of "outlying" readings can be disregarded as errors because good explanations of statistics show that those readings are truly anomalous. Data is simply unable to "speak" on its own. Explanations are necessary. Better and better explanations, which are sought iteratively and recursively, are the stepping stones to the titular "infinity" of knowledge.
That proposal is front and center in Deutsch's imagined Socrates dialogue, which holds up explanations as the fundamental units of understanding. And those fundamental units come with a fundamental method, criticism. Criticism is the evolutionary/progressive attempt to continually probe explanations for weaknesses, with the goal of then replacing the failures. Deutsch takes special care to contrast criticism with its opposite method, a catch-all called "justified truth". The latter is the misguided attempt to identify and defend truths that are surely true and cannot be false. Fallible explanations are confirmed or falsified, but in any case never are off-limits from attacks by critics. Some of the more self-congratulatory sections of the book are detailed praises for the societies/cultures which have more tolerance for the clamor of diverse ideas, especially the iconoclastic ideas that challenge authority or convention.
While I find that line of thought convincing, once again I'd analyze and state it differently with clarifications. Pragmatic philosophizing asks what purpose is served by the intellectual construct called "justified truth". And the pragmatic answer is that its purpose is to distinguish which truths have the greatest certainty. In short, its intent is the same as the intent of criticism: separating the truth from "fooling oneself". The relationship isn't antagonistic at its core. It's playing "good cop/bad cop" in the interrogation of truth. Criticism eliminates the unworthy candidate truths, so justification can select from the possibly infinite number of remaining creative candidates. Far from tossing out "justification" altogether, the (infamous) pragmatic definition of justification/verification is simple reliability of the candidate truth in accomplishing corresponding endeavors. One pertinent endeavor has been previously mentioned: modeling reality in ways which are isomorphic to good information.
Perhaps that answer verges on evasive wordplay. My suggestion is to roll both "relentless criticism" and a shrunken version of the notion of "philosophical justification" into the big ball of conceptual mud called "verification". By doing so, am I questioning the superior value of dynamic evolutionary criticism over static repressive dogma5? That's not my desire. Au contraire, to be a conscientious pragmatist is to be an active skeptic. I'll repeat my earlier axiom: individual bits of information cannot be meaningful nor accurate without isomorphic links to other bits. In response to this axiom, a human must probe the links of an assertion to establish its meaning and accuracy. They may judge that the links are dubious or logically incompatible; that is in the category of criticism. They may introduce creative new links, or devise ingenious experiments, to increase the estimation of confidence; that is in the category of justification. Hence, no matter what category applies to the action under discussion, critical thinking and trial-and-error are in effect.
Nevertheless, I doubt that Deutsch would find this alternative scheme to be acceptable. It's much too reminiscent of what the book calls "instrumentalism", i.e. valuing a theory solely or primarily for useful predictions and more or less disregarding its explanatory claims about reality. It differs, though. Unlike instrumentalism it judges the reality of explanations as eagerly as all statements. But explanations must pass the same methodological rules. The grand inquiry is always "How do we know?" If an explanation is real, then by what actions would we detect it? Pragmatic reality consists of the answers to these questions. "Theoretical" explanations with discernible verified effects can certainly be as real as "empirical" observations or measurements or numerical predictions. Arguably, a pragmatist could flip instrumentalism around and claim that specific theoretical explanations are more real than a single empirical item of interest, because the explanation had been verified countless times by countless experts in countless procedures but the single empirical item might come with reasonable doubts (oops, gunk on the lens, or oops, I forgot to carry the 1).
However, to someone who insists on the immutable reality of explanations, such a cure may seem worse than the disease. What's the benefit in calling explanations "real" if the cost is redefining, weakening, or stretching what we mean by "real"? After all, when a human uses an explanation to comprehend a phenomenon, their earnest motivation is to uncover the real stuff responsible for it6. They wouldn't frame it as inventing or imagining ideas for some subjective purpose. They see the explanation as having an existence independent of foolish capricious humans, including nonsense-talking pragmatists7.
And round and round it goes, for the pragmatist then responds by noting that a real existence independent of all physical or mental human activity is worthless, and even worse unsubstantiated. Moreover, to pair this insistence with a strong emphasis on fallibilism leads to the troubling consequence that explanations are independently real yet changing constantly, because explanations evolve, as Deutsch cogently recommends. So were the past and disproven explanations real? If so, then the human accumulation of the evidence, which disproved the past explanations, must have somehow shifted reality itself. If one starts to admit that the reality of explanations can vary by degree depending on verification, and that humans' current complete picture of reality depends jointly on the explanations that they actively construct and the information that they collect over time, then one may be not far off from a pragmatist.
Given his unmistakable powers of reasoning and debate, I'm sure that Deutsch could trample these thoughts at his leisure. Still, his long and deep book was thought-provoking reading, for which I'm grateful. Although I'm incredulous about whether the human progress of explanations is as all-powerful as hypothesized, his confidence is undeniably touching.
1 "Work" is intentionally left vague in order to cover the wide scope of all knowledge. Contrary to the common misrepresentation, it isn't synonymous with "profitability" or "convenience". False information could possibly "work" for some selfish purpose but not "work" for understanding reality; for instance, paranoia can be excellent at keeping you safe regardless of how incorrect it is at pinpointing the foremost motives of everyone around you.
2 Someone who had that strategy might say, "I reject your reality and substitute my own." Or less humorously, "Reality moves in step with the dictates of my beliefs. I can trust my deductions because my small simple-minded set of fundamental axioms is complete, flawless, and impervious to all criticism."
3 I have enough self-awareness to recognize that I therefore cannot claim that my own philosophical ideas, including the words in this very blog entry, are self-evidently true. All I can attempt is to convince readers of the "reasonableness" of the ideas, where "reasonableness" is a pragmatic judgment of whether the ideas "work", naturally.
4 I don't wish to seem biased. I suppose that an imaginary mana explanation could have similar isomorphisms. It could describe kinds of mana, which are capable of recombination, and it could allow proportions of mana to change in formulaic ways. Thus the mana believer could say that normal water is "two-parts ephemeral mana to one part airy mana". If explanation A has many isomorphisms to C and explanation B has many isomorphisms to C, then A is more likely to have many isomorphisms to B. "Different names for the same thing" is a folksy description of an intense isomorphism. In any case, plausibility certainly isn't tied to how "scientific" that words sound, regardless of the custom/preference for Greek/Latin. Despite its laughable sound, "'charm' is a 'flavor' of 'quark'" is a weighty statement because of its isomorphisms to experiments as well as other experimentally-verified statements.
5 Dogmas can come in endless forms, varying by the source authority and the severity of imposition. Propositions about the supernatural are some of the purest examples, but other domains aren't immune either. Sometimes the dogmas assume the innocent shape of, "Everyone knows that, so proof isn't necessary."
6 I wholeheartedly agree with Deutsch's warning against level-based prejudice of the reality of an explanation. A concise overall explanation, when correctly understood, can be as real and meaningful as hundreds of minuscule details that explain the same occurrence. That means the "real stuff" in the explanation could be relatively abstract or broad. Any time that the orchestration of many parts achieves a total effect greater than every part working independently, higher-level explanations are mandatory. I'm nothing except for a biological group of multitudinous cells, but all those microscopic facts communicate virtually nothing of significance about me.
7 Some relevant sections of the book contain excellent critiques of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Deutsch is good at that.
My interpretation of pragmatism takes a similarly dim view of those competitors but via a more roundabout way. As I see it, a datum is never alone and objective meaning lies in isomorphism. In short, the importance of context shouldn't be underestimated. Information becomes meaningful for a human because the brain is the defining data structure. It verifies, validates, cross-checks, computes, tests, trusts. Information that passes through these filters of diverse physical and/or mental processes can be said to "work"1. The brain is the singular agent throughout who initiates, performs, and finally evaluates. Of course, in practice humans augment the brain all the time. Total self-reliance is too constricting to seek "truth that works, every truth that works, and nothing except truth that works" 2. It's fine that theorists and philosophers and mathematicians can sit in quiet rooms and ponder, but that approach has its limits! Calculating the circumference of Earth doesn't reveal what's on the opposite side...
Deutsch defines the quality of a good explanation: "hard to vary". My version is not as pithy: "good explanatory information permits many isomorphisms to other good information". This appears to be circular because it really is circular. The circularity is largely the point. It implies that there aren't any Ultimate Bits of information with inherent and infallible meanings3. Yet a suitably advanced and knowledgeable information processor can certainly derive meaning from an aggregate of pieces. For information, to be meaningful is to be codependent.
For example, it's a good explanation that matter is composed of elemental atoms. This explanation is good because it's isomorphic to an impressively vast group of experimental results in chemistry and physics. If someone proposes an alternative explanatory material, e.g. mana, then it's fair to ask how isomorphic that explanation is to the same experiments, and if not then why not. Note that my definition of "isomorphic" isn't intended to be mysterious. In some cases it could just mean "closely matching reliable facts". Explanations with many, small, tight isomorphisms are more firmly locked into a greater context of solid information than explanations with few, grandiose, loose isomorphisms. In Deutsch's language, the former are hard to vary and the latter are easy to vary. A single chemical equation is isomorphic to substances and quantities that are measurable and unambiguous. A single mana explanation is not4. Additionally, a chemical equation has isomorphisms to atoms and electrons, i.e. complicated orbitals that correspond to the rows and columns of the periodic table. An explanation based on mana doesn't.
Other than preferring different wording of the definition of a good explanation, I sense that I'm not as keen as Deutsch to emphasize a starring role for Reason with a capital R, especially if it's construed as a synonym for mere logic. I'd rather claim that applied reason is one of the important mental tools that humans use to tame reality or at least interpret it. It works alongside nonlogical guidelines like the human delight in mental economy, which is the strong preference for a minimal quantity of concepts with wide if not universal reach, as opposed to a myriad quantity of conflicting concepts with sharply constrained applicability for each. (Deutsch has much to say about explanations with expressive reach, but I may be more eager to acknowledge that reach is also a human craving.)
Fortunately, parts of the book seem to agree with me. It dismantles the famous Zeno paradoxes, and the dismantling amounts to the general principle, "Reality isn't held hostage to entire logical/mathematical conclusions." And that principle is well-known to anyone who applies complicated science because models must be used with care and understanding. Whenever a function is fit to a discovered set of data points, the function might or might not accurately predict every other data point; outside of the data set, there could be "phase changes" in reality that don't fit the function well. That outcome isn't a violation of reason. It's a reminder that good explanations are bounded by a data context. In a battle with good data outside those bounds, obsolete explanations should lose.
But which data is "good", and obtained by which "measurements"? Deutsch's answer is unsurprising: explanations must underpin data-gathering, too. A measuring device is presumed to be reliable because it was built using good explanations. A handful of "outlying" readings can be disregarded as errors because good explanations of statistics show that those readings are truly anomalous. Data is simply unable to "speak" on its own. Explanations are necessary. Better and better explanations, which are sought iteratively and recursively, are the stepping stones to the titular "infinity" of knowledge.
That proposal is front and center in Deutsch's imagined Socrates dialogue, which holds up explanations as the fundamental units of understanding. And those fundamental units come with a fundamental method, criticism. Criticism is the evolutionary/progressive attempt to continually probe explanations for weaknesses, with the goal of then replacing the failures. Deutsch takes special care to contrast criticism with its opposite method, a catch-all called "justified truth". The latter is the misguided attempt to identify and defend truths that are surely true and cannot be false. Fallible explanations are confirmed or falsified, but in any case never are off-limits from attacks by critics. Some of the more self-congratulatory sections of the book are detailed praises for the societies/cultures which have more tolerance for the clamor of diverse ideas, especially the iconoclastic ideas that challenge authority or convention.
While I find that line of thought convincing, once again I'd analyze and state it differently with clarifications. Pragmatic philosophizing asks what purpose is served by the intellectual construct called "justified truth". And the pragmatic answer is that its purpose is to distinguish which truths have the greatest certainty. In short, its intent is the same as the intent of criticism: separating the truth from "fooling oneself". The relationship isn't antagonistic at its core. It's playing "good cop/bad cop" in the interrogation of truth. Criticism eliminates the unworthy candidate truths, so justification can select from the possibly infinite number of remaining creative candidates. Far from tossing out "justification" altogether, the (infamous) pragmatic definition of justification/verification is simple reliability of the candidate truth in accomplishing corresponding endeavors. One pertinent endeavor has been previously mentioned: modeling reality in ways which are isomorphic to good information.
Perhaps that answer verges on evasive wordplay. My suggestion is to roll both "relentless criticism" and a shrunken version of the notion of "philosophical justification" into the big ball of conceptual mud called "verification". By doing so, am I questioning the superior value of dynamic evolutionary criticism over static repressive dogma5? That's not my desire. Au contraire, to be a conscientious pragmatist is to be an active skeptic. I'll repeat my earlier axiom: individual bits of information cannot be meaningful nor accurate without isomorphic links to other bits. In response to this axiom, a human must probe the links of an assertion to establish its meaning and accuracy. They may judge that the links are dubious or logically incompatible; that is in the category of criticism. They may introduce creative new links, or devise ingenious experiments, to increase the estimation of confidence; that is in the category of justification. Hence, no matter what category applies to the action under discussion, critical thinking and trial-and-error are in effect.
Nevertheless, I doubt that Deutsch would find this alternative scheme to be acceptable. It's much too reminiscent of what the book calls "instrumentalism", i.e. valuing a theory solely or primarily for useful predictions and more or less disregarding its explanatory claims about reality. It differs, though. Unlike instrumentalism it judges the reality of explanations as eagerly as all statements. But explanations must pass the same methodological rules. The grand inquiry is always "How do we know?" If an explanation is real, then by what actions would we detect it? Pragmatic reality consists of the answers to these questions. "Theoretical" explanations with discernible verified effects can certainly be as real as "empirical" observations or measurements or numerical predictions. Arguably, a pragmatist could flip instrumentalism around and claim that specific theoretical explanations are more real than a single empirical item of interest, because the explanation had been verified countless times by countless experts in countless procedures but the single empirical item might come with reasonable doubts (oops, gunk on the lens, or oops, I forgot to carry the 1).
However, to someone who insists on the immutable reality of explanations, such a cure may seem worse than the disease. What's the benefit in calling explanations "real" if the cost is redefining, weakening, or stretching what we mean by "real"? After all, when a human uses an explanation to comprehend a phenomenon, their earnest motivation is to uncover the real stuff responsible for it6. They wouldn't frame it as inventing or imagining ideas for some subjective purpose. They see the explanation as having an existence independent of foolish capricious humans, including nonsense-talking pragmatists7.
And round and round it goes, for the pragmatist then responds by noting that a real existence independent of all physical or mental human activity is worthless, and even worse unsubstantiated. Moreover, to pair this insistence with a strong emphasis on fallibilism leads to the troubling consequence that explanations are independently real yet changing constantly, because explanations evolve, as Deutsch cogently recommends. So were the past and disproven explanations real? If so, then the human accumulation of the evidence, which disproved the past explanations, must have somehow shifted reality itself. If one starts to admit that the reality of explanations can vary by degree depending on verification, and that humans' current complete picture of reality depends jointly on the explanations that they actively construct and the information that they collect over time, then one may be not far off from a pragmatist.
Given his unmistakable powers of reasoning and debate, I'm sure that Deutsch could trample these thoughts at his leisure. Still, his long and deep book was thought-provoking reading, for which I'm grateful. Although I'm incredulous about whether the human progress of explanations is as all-powerful as hypothesized, his confidence is undeniably touching.
1 "Work" is intentionally left vague in order to cover the wide scope of all knowledge. Contrary to the common misrepresentation, it isn't synonymous with "profitability" or "convenience". False information could possibly "work" for some selfish purpose but not "work" for understanding reality; for instance, paranoia can be excellent at keeping you safe regardless of how incorrect it is at pinpointing the foremost motives of everyone around you.
2 Someone who had that strategy might say, "I reject your reality and substitute my own." Or less humorously, "Reality moves in step with the dictates of my beliefs. I can trust my deductions because my small simple-minded set of fundamental axioms is complete, flawless, and impervious to all criticism."
3 I have enough self-awareness to recognize that I therefore cannot claim that my own philosophical ideas, including the words in this very blog entry, are self-evidently true. All I can attempt is to convince readers of the "reasonableness" of the ideas, where "reasonableness" is a pragmatic judgment of whether the ideas "work", naturally.
4 I don't wish to seem biased. I suppose that an imaginary mana explanation could have similar isomorphisms. It could describe kinds of mana, which are capable of recombination, and it could allow proportions of mana to change in formulaic ways. Thus the mana believer could say that normal water is "two-parts ephemeral mana to one part airy mana". If explanation A has many isomorphisms to C and explanation B has many isomorphisms to C, then A is more likely to have many isomorphisms to B. "Different names for the same thing" is a folksy description of an intense isomorphism. In any case, plausibility certainly isn't tied to how "scientific" that words sound, regardless of the custom/preference for Greek/Latin. Despite its laughable sound, "'charm' is a 'flavor' of 'quark'" is a weighty statement because of its isomorphisms to experiments as well as other experimentally-verified statements.
5 Dogmas can come in endless forms, varying by the source authority and the severity of imposition. Propositions about the supernatural are some of the purest examples, but other domains aren't immune either. Sometimes the dogmas assume the innocent shape of, "Everyone knows that, so proof isn't necessary."
6 I wholeheartedly agree with Deutsch's warning against level-based prejudice of the reality of an explanation. A concise overall explanation, when correctly understood, can be as real and meaningful as hundreds of minuscule details that explain the same occurrence. That means the "real stuff" in the explanation could be relatively abstract or broad. Any time that the orchestration of many parts achieves a total effect greater than every part working independently, higher-level explanations are mandatory. I'm nothing except for a biological group of multitudinous cells, but all those microscopic facts communicate virtually nothing of significance about me.
7 Some relevant sections of the book contain excellent critiques of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. Deutsch is good at that.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
trigger words
Sometimes I like to select words that I know to be "triggers" for particular thoughts and emotions. My purpose isn't to follow the basic communications proverb "consider your audience" 1 but to provoke internal contradiction and confusion. It's fun to watch the reaction. I'll concede that it isn't constructive or respectful.
For instance, imagine a hypothetical conversation with someone who's angered by Wall Street yet who also has a fanatic attachment to free markets2.
"We need to do something about those thieves and gamblers on Wall Street."
"Who is we? Are you suggesting 'government intervention'?"
"No! Government intervention is always bad. I just mean that Wall Street should play fair."
"Are you proposing better 'regulation' to define and enforce fair play?"
"No! Regulations are always bad. But what if all the money that's currently sunk into finance was in manufacturing instead?"
"You mean a 'redistribution' of that money? Or 'public investment'?"
"No! Redistribution is always bad, and so is when the government tries to pick winners by investing. Forget that. What the individual worker needs is more power and a greater share of the overall pie. Despite their hard work they earn so little compared to company executives."
"As individuals, workers don't exert much power. As a group, they could. They could 'bargain collectively' to argue their case for a greater share."
"No! Collective bargaining is always bad. Really, the cause of the crisis was too much debt. I wish Wall Street hadn't swindled people by providing them with mortgages."
"Those mortgages were voluntary. So the underlying problem was the 'free exchange' of credit?"
"No! Free exchange is always good. The problem was that the people who took out those mortgages weren't knowledgeable about adjustable rates, so they were at an information disadvantage compared to the lenders."
"A market in which any participants have incomplete information isn't an ideal well-functioning market. Are you asserting that the market therefore failed to 'self-regulate' or act 'rationally' or 'efficiently'?"
"No! Markets always adjust rapidly to compensate for every weakness or eventuality. Therefore the problem must have been the government. The government has a monopoly on the money supply, hence its mismanagement of the money supply must be the culprit."
"That makes sense if excessive money forced people to take stupid actions. Would that the opposite is true: that it's better to cut off the majority of credit and speculative loans altogether? That would certainly restrict the generation of 'start-ups' and 'small business' to the 'independently wealthy', who can finance their own risks."
"No! I greatly like start-ups, small business, and self-made men who started out, um, independently poor. Talking to you is so frustrating. You keep stating things the wrong way."
1By quoting the proverb, I'm not implying that I'm effective at observing it. For instance, I'm spectacularly uncertain who the audience of this blog is. (According to the redone Blogger interface for posts, "nobody" isn't too far off!)
2The key word is "fanatic". In my opinion, that's distinct from believing in the macroeconomic truism that, in practice, decentralized experimenting actors in a well-functioning market are better at adapting to information and change than a centralized stagnant authority. Someone can have principles without being blind to the complexity and limitations inherent to applying those principles.
For instance, imagine a hypothetical conversation with someone who's angered by Wall Street yet who also has a fanatic attachment to free markets2.
"We need to do something about those thieves and gamblers on Wall Street."
"Who is we? Are you suggesting 'government intervention'?"
"No! Government intervention is always bad. I just mean that Wall Street should play fair."
"Are you proposing better 'regulation' to define and enforce fair play?"
"No! Regulations are always bad. But what if all the money that's currently sunk into finance was in manufacturing instead?"
"You mean a 'redistribution' of that money? Or 'public investment'?"
"No! Redistribution is always bad, and so is when the government tries to pick winners by investing. Forget that. What the individual worker needs is more power and a greater share of the overall pie. Despite their hard work they earn so little compared to company executives."
"As individuals, workers don't exert much power. As a group, they could. They could 'bargain collectively' to argue their case for a greater share."
"No! Collective bargaining is always bad. Really, the cause of the crisis was too much debt. I wish Wall Street hadn't swindled people by providing them with mortgages."
"Those mortgages were voluntary. So the underlying problem was the 'free exchange' of credit?"
"No! Free exchange is always good. The problem was that the people who took out those mortgages weren't knowledgeable about adjustable rates, so they were at an information disadvantage compared to the lenders."
"A market in which any participants have incomplete information isn't an ideal well-functioning market. Are you asserting that the market therefore failed to 'self-regulate' or act 'rationally' or 'efficiently'?"
"No! Markets always adjust rapidly to compensate for every weakness or eventuality. Therefore the problem must have been the government. The government has a monopoly on the money supply, hence its mismanagement of the money supply must be the culprit."
"That makes sense if excessive money forced people to take stupid actions. Would that the opposite is true: that it's better to cut off the majority of credit and speculative loans altogether? That would certainly restrict the generation of 'start-ups' and 'small business' to the 'independently wealthy', who can finance their own risks."
"No! I greatly like start-ups, small business, and self-made men who started out, um, independently poor. Talking to you is so frustrating. You keep stating things the wrong way."
1By quoting the proverb, I'm not implying that I'm effective at observing it. For instance, I'm spectacularly uncertain who the audience of this blog is. (According to the redone Blogger interface for posts, "nobody" isn't too far off!)
2The key word is "fanatic". In my opinion, that's distinct from believing in the macroeconomic truism that, in practice, decentralized experimenting actors in a well-functioning market are better at adapting to information and change than a centralized stagnant authority. Someone can have principles without being blind to the complexity and limitations inherent to applying those principles.
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