Facilitated Communications

[_Runtu]

That's fine, but you should be open that Runtu statement was not meant as a cheap shot either.

I accept Mark's apology and hope he accepts mine. I've started another thread about this notion that Mormonism teaches "self-determination" and following your conscience. I have my doubts.

[_MrStakhanovite]

My philosophy background is limited to a couple of classes in college and the books I have voluntarily read since. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind explaining the proof you gave above and how it responds to MFB's proposed worldview?

Alright Honor,

I’ll try to be clearer this time around. I’d like to thank mfbukowski for re-posting his views again, it’s made writing this a much easier process. I’ll start from the beginning and try to give people some context to the discussion as I’ve seen it. A comment was made by mfbukowski early on this thread and I want to reproduce it:

My view can be called "Pragmatism". If you want to criticize my view- THAT is what to criticize! Look it up if you want- check out the counter arguments and when you are ready, let's talk.

The final court of appeals when it comes to mfbukowski is mfbukowski himself, so if his views are inaccurately represented, I’ll bear the sole responsibility for those errors. In an effort to reduce error, I’m going to quote heavily from mfbukowski. All statements attributed to him have been made in this thread and this thread alone.

I’ll start first by explaining induction and the two relevant issues that stem from inductive inferences, then I’ll reconstruct mfbukowski’s beliefs from his own words, and finally I will explain my criticism.


PART 1
At the heart of the matter lies the method of “Induction”. Induction is a method of inference that is used by modern science, to draw conclusions from observations about the unobserved (typically, the future). Unlike deduction (think math and logic), induction leads us to conclusions which are not entailed by the premises: conclusions which might be false, when the premises are true. There are two important questions about induction that separate mfbukowski and myself.

First, inductive inference does not merely pass from the observed to the unobserved: it does so, as a rule, by postulating a law. From a general law, I can then deduce conclusions from that law. The general law does have a bad short coming, it has to cover indefinitely many instances, so evidence from induction will always fall far short. What kind of validity could such reasoning aspire to?

Second is a question about the quality of evidence and this will lead us into “confirmation theory”. Trying to articulate general principles about determining the quality of evidence is actually a tricky business. It seems here that mfbukowski grasps this issue as well:

Is that at the present state of scientific knowledge? What qualifies as "evidence"? There is a thread right now on MADB offering reams of "evidence" for Book of Mormon- does that qualify as evidence for you?

PART 2
We need to focus on induction because mfbukowski comes from a school of Philosophy called “Pragmatism” that depends almost entirely on empirical evidence (or data gained from human senses) as the source of human knowledge. According to this school, we should study induction in terms of it’s utility. He expresses the idea well here:

What science does, in a very detailed way, chronicle human experience about the world so that anyone anywhere can do the same thing and get the same results. And the fact that it is so reliable means that anyone anywhere can USE that information- "knowledge"- to DO THINGS. In other words- science "works" to allow us to build buildings and make medicine and fly to the moon and make the atom bomb.

Ultimately what makes any proposition in science "true" is that it always "works". Combining Na to Cl will give you NaCl every time you want to make some NaCl. Doing this and this and this will give you an atom bomb every time. If you want to harden steel, you do this and this.

Science gives us knowledge which I would call "objective" because once we have the recipe, anyone anywhere can make the cake.

This is often called “verification” in other jargon terms. The more something “works” the more it verified, and at some point, it works so often that it becomes “Truth.” A lot of this is unobjectionable, but mfbukowski doesn’t stop there. Consider this comment:

So you take a proposition like "Nephites existed" and see what value- what importance- what a difference that proposition makes in the world.

One would look at how such a statement would be verified.

To most archaeologists in the world- frankly if probably has little if any significance as of today.

Yet millions of people believe that, and it has great significance in their lives, and for them it is "true" because that belief has made a difference in their lives. Believing that has practical consequences in their lives.

It’s important to understand that mfbukowski draws a sharp distinction that we must observe if we are going to examine his Pragmatism. While above, he mentions the utility of religious beliefs having positive impact on people’s lives, we should also keep this comment in mind:

But notice there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between an alleged "scientific truth" as presented by FC and a religious belief, and how one views the "truth" of either claim. Religious "truths" are verifiable only through subjective experience, while scientific "truths" are objectively verifiable through experiments which can be replicated.

We shouldn’t hold “religious truths” to the same verification standards as we do the natural sciences. One is objective and the other is subjective.

The boldest claim that mfbukowski makes has to do with the sovereignty that empiricism holds in his worldview:

I would say that something "real" is something for which I have experiential evidence.

That which is "real" is verifiable by experience, either subjectively or objectively. I would say that I have had (subjective) experiences which have verified (for me) the expression "God is real", but I have had no experiences verifying that Santa is real.

And

Independent of my experience and language usage, we have nothing.

What this means is that experience is king when it comes to obtaining knowledge, and the only way we can reason from this body of knowledge is to make use of induction. So let’s recap:

1: Almost all knowledge comes from experience.
2: Our collective and personal experiences are what we use to judge the utility of an idea.
3: A scientific or religious idea gains more utility every time “it works” to a person(s) benefit
4: The only effective way to reason from all this knowledge is by the method of induction.

PART 3

Induction works off this main principle:


P1: A generalization is confirmed by any of it’s instances.


And since mfbukowski has acknowledged a priori in language use, we can also affirm this:

P2: If two hypotheses can be known a priori to be equivalent, then any data that confirms one confirms the other.

What I contend is that P1 and P2 force induction into something that is counterintuitive and useless. Let’s take this statement for example:

R1: All ravens are black.

Now R1 is logically a equivalent to this:

R2: Everything non-black is non-raven.

As P2 states, anything that supports R1 a priori supports R2, and anything that supports R2 also supports R1. What this does is set us up for some absurd conclusions. Let’s suppose that mfbukowski and I are rival scientists and mfbukowski asserts R1, and I assert this:

M1: All ravens are magenta

M2: Everything non-magenta is non-raven.

Lets say that mfbukowski and I happen to be pragmatists as well, so we decide to head to the local park and put our assertions to the test, to find out “What works for us.” We spend all day at the park cataloguing every thing we see, but unfortunately, we found no ravens. At the end of the day, I declare that my assertion (M1) gathered far more evidence than mfbukowski’s (R1) and that my idea clearly works better.

Of course, that conclusion is absurd and would be rejected by everybody, but if you accept P1 and P2, you are forced to accept that conclusion. Every non-black thing that is a non-raven (R2) is affirmed for every tree we see, blade of grass, etc, etc. If R2 is affirmed, so must R1. Same thing goes for M1, and given that the color black occurs in nature and in human artifacts far more often than the color magenta, it’s safe to assume that we found more non-magenta non-ravens in the park than non-black non-ravens. Even though we didn’t see raven number one, we logically found more evidence for M1 over R1. The problems don’t stop there, and begin to compound.

Let’s say mfbukowski and I are joined by Runtu and we spend the next month combing public parks looking for ravens and cataloguing every thing we find. At the end of the month, we’ve discovered 65 individual ravens who were black and mfbukowski celebrates! M1 has clearly been disconfirmed and R1 stands vindicated, but Runtu interrupts mfbukowski’s celebrations by showing him his hypothesis, which states that the majority of Ravens are in fact purple, but the first 150 ravens we’ll find will be black. This puts mfbukowski’s celebrations to an early end because Runtu’s prediction is far stronger and easily more confirmed than R1, even if we know it is wildly absurd.

My examples are very basic and simplified to get my point across, but I’m fairly confident that any inductive situation that mfbukowski can conceive, there is a counter example that is much stronger, even if it is more absurd.

I haven't seen much evidence that you understand my "world view" in the first place, and secondly, the Hempel proof has little to do the central attitude of Pragmatism.

But go ahead- let's see how it goes if you like.

Just to recap mfbukowski’s views as derived from his comments on this thread:

1: Almost all knowledge comes from experience.
2: Our collective and personal experiences are what we use to judge the utility of an idea.
3: A scientific or religious idea gains more utility every time “it works” to a person(s) benefit
4: The only effective way to reason from all this knowledge is by the method of induction.

He has the follow options:

A: He can reject P1, which leave’s his worldview crippled with no ability to draw good inferences.

B: He can reject P2, which would discount most if not all forms of logic and cripple his ability to draw good inferences.

C: Accept the problem as is and cripple his ability to draw any inferences what so ever.

D: Solve Hempel’s problem without appealing to anything outside his strict empiricism.

I feel that A-C is unacceptable for mfbukowski and his only recourse is D. How this issue does not effect the “central attitude of Pragmatism” is beyond me, since Pragmatism wouldn’t have an intelligible attitude to begin with until a solution is found.

[_mfbukowski]

Where did you get assumption 4?

4: The only effective way to reason from all this knowledge is by the method of induction.

I certainly don't believe that.

That's crazy! That I throw out deduction? Is that what you are saying?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Where did you get assumption 4?

modern forms of deduction, abduction and probability (as it relates to philosophy) cannot stand on strict empricism alone. W.V.O Quine was a self described pragmatist, but he acknowledges many things that you would reject (Numbers are real, possible worlds,etc,etc) due to your empricism.

More liberal naturalists like Nagel and Chalmers go even further than that (like type F monism).


EDIT to add:

That's crazy! That I throw out deduction? Is that what you are saying?

Not at all, you allow deduction totally a priori based on language (like tautologies) and I'm sure you move from inductive generalizations to deductive propositions, but these things are pretty limited in what they can accomplish.


EDIT #2:

Perhaps you can explain how you would draw proper inferences from a body of data that was collected empirically? If not inductively, how would you proceed?

[_MrStakhanovite]

This is where I got #4. I'm not sure what other interpetation could be gotten from it.

The boldest claim that mfbukowski makes has to do with the sovereignty that empiricism holds in his worldview:

I would say that something "real" is something for which I have experiential evidence.

That which is "real" is verifiable by experience, either subjectively or objectively. I would say that I have had (subjective) experiences which have verified (for me) the expression "God is real", but I have had no experiences verifying that Santa is real.

And

Independent of my experience and language usage, we have nothing.

What this means is that experience is king when it comes to obtaining knowledge, and the only way we can reason from this body of knowledge is to make use of induction.

[_mfbukowski]

Well Stak I appreciate all the work that went into this, and I am not saying this is necessarily my last post, but there is so much to talk about it could take weeks that I don't have.

I started making some notes before I gave up and will just throw them out here if you don't mind- but as I feared, I think the bottom line is that you are assuming what I believe in detail from some very general level statements which I feel do not imply some of the inferences you are making.

That's really the bottom line.

Again, the notion that such an argument would somehow destroy Pragmatism is, well, not so.

Let me put these notes up for now- again they are notes- some might be accurate some not- but these were first reactions.

First let's look at P1


"P1: A generalization is confirmed by any of it’s instances."

So if I see a pink elephant, the generalization "Pink elephants exist" is now confirmed?

Or if there is one albino white raven, the generalization that ravens are white is confirmed?

Now P2

"P2: If two hypotheses can be known a priori to be equivalent, then any data that confirms one confirms the other."

What does that even mean? How do we know that two hypotheses can be known a priori to be equivalent? Does that mean deductively? Logically equivalent?

Attitude:
A pragmatist would never state that anything is always anything else. What good does it do to state that all ravens are black? What is the purpose of that statement? All it would take is one albino raven to destroy the hypothesis. What does it get us? It's just a game!

Who says I disagree with Quine???

Sounds like "But Mormons don't believe that"!

Pragmatism is a way of thinking

Boersma article on Peirce and Hempel

Confusing inductive a priori with philsophical?

No problem with logic- eveything else a mess.

Popper- hypotheses and deduction. Absolutely "true".

[_mfbukowski]

An excellent discussion of Quine on the problem the analytic/synthetic distinction which impacts directly on how experience interacts with logic.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/

He sees the relationship as a web of interaction with ordinary language and observation and logic all in interaction, much as Whitehead would see it.

As Stak points out, Quine is a Pragmatist.

This is far, far from the idea that

What this means is that experience is king when it comes to obtaining knowledge, and the only way we can reason from this body of knowledge is to make use of induction.

Saying that only those things we experience are "real" does not imply to me at all that the only way we can gain "knowledge" is empirically.

I would even say that we can "experience" mathematics- and for anyone who is into logic and math, you know exactly the sense of beauty and completeness which can be found by working through a complex problem.

I have many times (perhaps even on this thread) affirmed the notion of the Kantian synthetic a priori, and indeed Quine's conception is a more complete development of that notion- at the base of both is that both experience and logic are interactive. I would never deny that and never have.

But if anything, hopefully this has brought about a better understanding for the both of us, Stak, if nothing else.

I really do appreciate the discussion- it is clearly the best and most substantive I have had here.

[_mfbukowski]

Perhaps you can explain how you would draw proper inferences from a body of data that was collected empirically? If not inductively, how would you proceed?

The Duhem-Quine Thesis

Not surprisingly, Duhem was a theist, but I would lean more toward Quine philosophically.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis

[_MrStakhanovite]

Hello mfbukowski,

Thanks for the replies, I won’t comment on your notes because they were more of your first reactions, but I’d like to hone in on your ideas about Quine. I’m not sure how your remarks about Quine go about answering the questions I posed, but that is probably due to me mixing your and Quine’s views up. I’m going to reproduce Quine’s main ideas from his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (as I understand them, at least) and maybe you can tell me where you break away from Quine. I’ll try to keep this summary as non-technical as possible:

(1) Analyticity. What do we mean by this? To say that the sentence ‘All bachelors are unmarried” is analytically true, is to say that it is made true by the meaning of the words that compose it. What words? Well “bachelor,” for start. This surely means unmarried man. So the sentence reduces to “All unmarried men are unmarried” which is a logical truth. However, why are we so sure that “bachelor” and “unmarried man” are synonymous? What is our criterion of synonymy? The answer is that “All bachelors are unmarried” is analytic. In which case our definition of analyticity goes in a circle.

(2) Necessity. What does this mean? What is my criterion of necessity? One suggestion is that a necessary truth is one that we are prepared to affirm, whatever the course of experience. But, Quine argues, we can affirm the truth of any sentence in our total system, in the face of whatever experience, just so long as we are prepared to make adjustments elsewhere. No sentence is tested against experience on its own: I can test the truth of “Blixa is a cat” only by testing the truth of “Blixa is a mammal” or “Blixa is a predator” and so on. And since experience is proof of nothing until described, I can always adjust the evidence, in order to hold on to my sacrosanct ideas. Of course, someone will reply that I cannot hold on to the sentence “Blixa is a cat” in the face of all the evidence that he is a badger, without changing the meaning of what I say: “cat” will become synonymous with “badger”. But then I must rely on the notion of meaning and synonymy, in order to make the distinction between those sentences that are really necessary, and those which are not. And that, in turn, will require us to lean on the notion of analyticity. We are beginning to go round in a circle again.

(3) The same can be said about a priori. We can define analyticity, necessity, a priori, and synonymy, but only in terms of one another. They form what Quine calls a “Circle of intensional terms”, whose utility remains in doubt until we can give some clear and independent criterion for their application. Since, Quine argues, we do not need these terms, we ought to throw them out altogether. All we can say, and all we need to say, is that our language forms a single system or “conceptual scheme”, which faces “the tribunal of experience” as a whole. We have no need to refer to meanings (ghostly metaphysical entities whose conditions of identity can never be defined). For the dimension of sense is not required in order to relate our language to the world: reference alone suffices. And when we consider our conceptual scheme as a whole, we see that there is no distinction that we could possibly make between those items in it that are necessarily true, and those that are merely contingent.

So, the only distinction that we could make (and the only one that we need to make) is between sentences that we are reluctant to give up in the face of recalcitrant experience, and sentences which can be jettisoned without compunction.

I have many times (perhaps even on this thread) affirmed the notion of the Kantian synthetic a priori, and indeed Quine's conception is a more complete development of that notion- at the base of both is that both experience and logic are interactive. I would never deny that and never have.

I’m not sure what you mean here, since a large part of Quine’s project was to get rid of distinctions like the Kantian synthetic a priori. At any rate, this still seems to say that logic is still dependent on experience.

Perhaps you can explain how you would draw proper inferences from a body of data that was collected empirically? If not inductively, how would you proceed?

The Duhem-Quine Thesis

Could you explain this with more detail?

To me it seems like you are conceding to the underdetermination of Hempel’s problem, but I’m curious as to how you deal with it. In Duhem’s example (which was just in physics) he just preferred to bundle a theory up with it’s background beliefs, in which case we can just take away the ravens and use variable to represent a bundle and achieve the same result.

If you went more with Quine, it seems to me that you are saying all knowledge is just one giant bundle and you use conformational holism to parse data, but Quine pretty much reduced that to psychology, which I’m not sure is the route you wanted to go.

Looking forward to a response, take care!

[_mfbukowski]

If you went more with Quine, it seems to me that you are saying all knowledge is just one giant bundle and you use conformational holism to parse data, but Quine pretty much reduced that to psychology, which I’m not sure is the route you wanted to go.

Well I guess I failed to mention I have a bachelor's in psych because I think it all ultimately comes down to psychology anyway - I know you love to make fun of my educational history which you actually know nothing about.

I've got no problem with conformational holism. And the traditional reply on this board would be to make some crack about Zeus being just as real as physics and chemistry followed by a line about "Mormons don't believe that"- so if that is your "gotcha" I am ready for it.

But one thing I really like are Quine's views on translation- I find those very helpful for an understanding of the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham.

As far as Kant and the synthetic a priori- you are not looking at the big picture.

The bottom line is that the synthetic a prior opened the window to experience being part of logic- not that Kant got it perfectly right.

Which brings us to just another observation about this conversation- I think you are still looking for "gotchas", but you won't find any, not because I am so brilliant- but because Pragmatism itself by its nature always comes down to what is practical and ultimately common sense in a lot of ways.

It's really the perfect philosophy for the "man from Missouri" who believes nothing until you show him, and if it's too high falootin' then it's probably wrong because it won't work anyway.

I have an uncle from Maine who is the quintessential Yankee- flannel shirt, straw hat and overalls, and he'll look you in the eye, spit, and give you a piece of his mind that will be exactly right on the money every time.

THAT is Pragmatism.