Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Why science (and empiricism) is not well placed to answer questions about foundations.

In a response to a comment by me to his blog, Alan Forrester said:

Your blog seems to indicate that you think we should start from secure foundations and build everything up from them. The particular foundation you pick is an innate idea that some things are the same and some things are different. This doesn’t seem likely to get us very far. Also it doesn’t seem to me that it matters whether an idea is innate. Innate ideas are just ideas created by biological evolution, which doesn’t guarantee the truth of its products. Also the idea of foundations is itself irrational since you are saying there is something you cannot prove and do not leave open to argument.

The move Popper made is far better. No idea is ever proven, or made more probable and we should stop trying to do this. Instead we should seek to notice problems with our current ideas, propose solutions and then criticise them according to non-justificational criteria, like whether they solve the problems they are meant to solve, whether they conflict with other theories, whether they conflict with experimental results and so on.

This post responds to his issues, as the answering makes my argument both clearer, and stronger. I would say that my dog's nickname is Popper, as a mark of affection. Equally I am not seeking to shoot Forrester, for one should begin with skepticism, as Descartes has urged. Recall that Cartesian skepticism is generally regarded as the higher form of skepticism - indeed the endpoint of the skeptical view - at first one must doubt all that can be doubted.

The bother is, the view expressed by Forrester suggests that he is nowhere near skeptical enough, for the first part, and also he, like most of us, carries a great number of presuppositions about the way the world is. He holds a scientific view, but, at present all science and mathematics is just description. As Popper himself argues, there is no verification in science, only falsification. The same goes for contemporary mathematics. Where we differ, Forrester and I (at present anyway - I hope to call him over to the dark side) is that he assumes that in some way our present theories are right, or at least closer and closer to being right (see Oddie's article on Truthlikeness in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). But I say this is not knowledge at all. It is belief, and belief does not make you right (see my introduction). I do not follow Plato's Justified True Belief idea of knowledge (see Analysis of Knowledge (by Steup I think) on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for a discussion of JTB). Rather, I advocate a justified truth worthy of belief form of knowledge, and in particular the view of Skeptical Commitment as explained in my post on the subject.

NOW TO ANSWER FORRESTER:
He says:
Your blog seems to indicate that you think we should start from secure foundations and build everything up from them.
Yes, my blog indicates that I think we should start from secure foundations. Are you suggesting that we ought to begin with insecure foundations? No, of course you are not, and let us remember that Critical Rationalism is the endpoint of a long philosophical analysis that arose only because a secure foundation had not been identified, from which a rich ontology - meaning a rich world view - could be developed. It is this which my efforts aim to fix, after which, empiricism, to which critical rationalism is bonded, becomes second philosophy, and metaphysics returns to its state of first philosophy. This must surely be what philosophers want, though they argue against it. This is what Shapiro calls the 'philosophy last if at all' principle. Here I am using Armstrong's sneering quotes, because sarcastic font is not available just yet.

Indeed, since Parmenides and Zeno (may they live forever in our minds), thorough rationalist analysis has always shown that the world at it appears to be to us does not accord with how it ought to be if it accords with reason. Parmenides argued so, Zeno backed this up, Aristotle admitted that Zeno had a valid argument that must be answered (and never has - until my blog of course, but it is very incomplete, so keep watching). Berkeley said so to, and so did Descartes, among others. Fortunately, so long as you are prepared to work through the reasoning, the world finally is returned to us in good order. But my blog is not that far ahead yet.

Forrester then says:

The particular foundation you pick is an innate idea that some things are the same and some things are different. This doesn’t seem likely to get us very far.

This is not exactly what I say. I say that the foundations for thinking about anything is our innate idea of equivalence and difference. By then expressing this as a general principle of equivalence that applies to all that is, and is also immune to doubt (this post is not yet posted) then one is obliged to accept that the principle is a proper model of a necessary condition of all possible worlds. I have written a very rough exposition of this in my post 'An every-person's guide to the origin of the universe'. It says, let the term 'omnet' stand in for anything (concrete, abstract, nothingness, even that which we have no ability to have cognizance of); let an asset be what an omnet has; then

Every omnet, that has all the assets of that omnet, is that omnet.
This is the General Principle of Equivalence. Be very sure you understand what it means before commenting. Some philosophers have said it is just Leibniz Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, which is regarded with some suspicion. Other philosophers have said it is a just a global tautology, and so 'does not seem likely to get us very far.' But the PII is a meaty proposition, and a tautology as a particular is thought to be no more than an observation of the obvious. Indeed it is neither, or at least, in being a global tautology takes on a life of its own, if it is indefeasible (it is indefeasible exactly because any doubt that might be raised against it, relies on it being true, if that doubt is to be that doubt. But I will tackle that more rigorously elsewhere).

Forrester said:

Also it doesn’t seem to me that it matters whether an idea is innate. Innate ideas are just ideas created by biological evolution, which doesn’t guarantee the truth of its products.

Firstly, your comment 'Innate ideas are just ideas created by biological evolution' is sophistry, of no greater force than Thales pronouncement that the world comes from water. Comments like this are the hallmark of Hume, who makes imperious comments like this from beginning to end, and we were stupid enough to believe it. If this seems harsh, that is not my intention. Rather, remember your own quotation from Whitehead:

The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, (the) common and unquestioningly accepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds

There are many presuppositions implied by your comment, and I'm sure you can see them immediately. Nevertheless:

Firstly, Broughton (2002) identifies correctly that if philosophical discourse is to be rational, then any doubt expressed needs to be based on some rational reason, even if these are hyperbolic doubt, such as Descartes dream argument or his evil genius argument. Your reason for doubt is actually circular. You found your doubt on evolution, but evolution (while likely correct) reduces to belief. Any thoroughgoing philosopher is aware of the tenuous nature of relying on empiricism as a foundation for one's ideas. Like him or hate him, Descartes arguments against empiricism as a foundation for argument are generally regarded as valid. Indeed this is one of the motivating factors for Popper's critical rationalism, though this is almost lost in the mists of time (as Whitehead's comment implies). To put this criticism to bed, let me point out that your criticism, if it is to be that criticism, and not some other (hence a straw man) requires that its import refers to an actual condition of the world, else it might be properly considered false. Whether it is true or not is not important here. Rather, there is no way that you can justify it to be true, unless you first identify a proper foundation. That proper foundation, in the end, will end up being the General Principle of Equivalence, and it, later, implies that there is a unique origin of the universe.

Forrester said:

Also the idea of foundations is itself irrational since you are saying there is something you cannot prove and do not leave open to argument.

I don't actually understand what you are saying here. I didn't say this. Perhaps you could point it out to me. Maybe you mean that all propositions ought to be always open to argument. Not if there they are immune to Cartesian doubt. For example 'I think therefore I am' is immune to doubt, for to doubt it, requires the existence of the doubter. This is not true or false because of any principle (i.e. Principle of Non-Contradiction) but because the existence of the doubter is ontologically prior to the doubt, the doubt is ontologically dependent on the existence of the doubter. This is no longer open to argument, at least within the bounds of rational discourse. The same thing applies to the General Principle of Equivalence.

Forrester says:

The move Popper made is far better. No idea is ever proven, or made more probable and we should stop trying to do this. Instead we should seek to notice problems with our current ideas, propose solutions and then criticise them according to non-justificational criteria, like whether they solve the problems they are meant to solve, whether they conflict with other theories, whether they conflict with experimental results and so on.

I certainly am very respectful of Popper, who, at least, recognized that his program had challenges. As you will already be aware, Popper's efforts are an endpoint of an essentially negative program that began with Hume, more or less - Hume to Kant to Popper. Popper never proved this point, but, rather, put forward some convincing argument. But convincing argument must step aside when indefeasibility arrives. Regardless of the cognitive dissonance that floods the mind when the evidence of the senses demands that the world derived from unshakable principles seem contradictory to the way the world seems to be, yet the true skeptic is bound by skeptical commitment to indefeasible propositions, exactly because they are indefeasible, yet the world as it presents to us, is not. That said, if the skeptic can hold true, the world as it must be, eventually coincides with the world of our experience, contrary to the argument of Parmenides.

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