paper-machine comments on Train Philosophers with Pearl and Kahneman, not Plato and Kant - Less Wrong

65 Post author: lukeprog 06 December 2012 12:42AM

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Comment author: RobbBB 05 December 2012 02:15:15PM 10 points [-]

Let's add some data. Noûs is the second-highest rated general philosophy journal. Here are its 2012 articles, with abstracts/introductions:

Dorsey. "Weak Anti-Rationalism and the Demands of Morality." The demandingness of act consequentialism (AC) is well-known and has received much sophisticated treatment. Few have been content to defend AC's demands. Much of the response has been to jettison AC in favor of a similar, though significantly less demanding view. [...] Given that AC requires agents to promote goodneess, and given that "goodness" here is most often construed as impartial and aggregative between persons, were I in a position to save others from death by sacrificing myself or my most important interests, I am morally required, on AC, to do so. More rare, however, is the suggestion that we should reconsider whether excessive demandingness is a true objection to any moral theory. [...] I argue here that the demandingness objection requires an unstated premise: the overriding rational authority of moral demands. I shall further argue that there is good reason to reject this premise.

Portmore. "Imperfect Reasons and Rational Options." Agents often face a choice of what to do. And it seems that, in most of these choice situations, the relevant reasons do not require performing some particular act, but instead permit performing any of numerous act alternatives. This is known as the basic belief. Below, I argue that the best explanation for the basic belief is not that the relevant reasons are incommensurable (Raz) or that their justifying strength exceeds the requiring strength of opposing reasons (Gert), but that they are imperfect reasons—reasons that do not support performing any particular act, but instead support choosing any of the numerous alternatives that would each achieve the same worthy end. In the process, I develop and defend a novel theory of objective rationality, arguing that it is superior to its two most notable rivals.

Gauker. "What Tipper is Ready for: A Semantics for Incomplete Predicates." This paper presents a precise semantics for incomplete predicates such as “ready”. Incomplete predicates have distinctive logical properties that a semantic theory needs to accommodate. [...] The account offered here defines contexts as structures containing an element called a proposition set, which contains atomic propositions and negations of atomic propositions. The condition under which “Tipper is ready” is true in a context is defined in terms of the contents of the proposition set for the context. On this account, the content of the context pertinent to a conversation must be determined not by what speakers have in mind but by relations of objective relevance.

Dunlop. "Kant and Strawson on the Content of Geometrical Concepts." This paper considers Kant's understanding of conceptual representation in light of his view of geometry. [...] While conceding that Kant confuses pure and applied geometry, P. F. Strawson tries to preserve the interest of his view. Strawson seeks to explain how the application of geometry can be independent of experience. [...] I sketch a way of reconciling Strawson's interpretation of "pure intuition” (on which it represents objects as we imagine, or are prepared to picture, them) with Kant's view that it proves the applicability of concepts independently of experience. Pure intuition can be taken, in the spirit of Strawson's interpretation, to represent procedures for constructing objects that fall under the concepts. I argue that on Kant's view, the representation of such procedures indeed yields a priori knowledge of the applicability of concepts.

Ichikawa & Jarvis. "Rational Imagination and Modal Knowledge." How do we know what's (metaphysically) possible and impossible? Arguments from Kripke and Putnam suggest that possibility is not merely a matter of (coherent) conceivability/imaginability. For example, we can coherently imagine that Hesperus and Phosphorus are distinct objects even though they are not possibly distinct. Despite this apparent problem, we suggest, nevertheless, that imagination plays an important role in an adequate modal epistemology. When we discover what is possible or what is impossible, we generally exploit important connections between what is possible and what we can coherently imagine. We can often come to knowledge of metaphysical modality a priori.

Glüer & Pagin. "General Terms and Relational Modality." [N]atural language natural kind terms are associated with two properties: a manifest, stereotypical property, and an underlying physical property realizing, instantiating, and (in many cases) explaining the manifest qualities of its instances. Natural kind terms are peculiar in that their modal profile is governed by the underlying property. To implement this idea formally, we shall extend the ‘evaluation switcher semantics’ we have earlier suggested for proper names and modal operators.

Siegel. "Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification." It is sometimes said that in depression, everything looks grey. If this is true, then mood can influence the character of perceptual experience: depending only on whether a viewer is depressed or not, how a scene looks to that viewer can differ even if all other conditions stay the same. This would be an example of cognitive penetration of visual experience by another mental state. [...] This paper [concentrates] on a simple and popular theory of perceptual justification known as dogmatism. I will argue that there are cases in which dogmatism predicts that a cognitively penetrated visual experience can elevate the subject from an epistemically bad situation to an epistemically better one, yet in which it is implausible to suppose that such epistemic elevation takes place.

Skow. "Why Does Time Pass?" According to the moving spotlight theory of time, the property of being present moves from earlier times to later times, like a spotlight shone on spacetime by God. [...] My main goal in this paper is to present a new version of the moving spotlight theory (though in some respects the theory I present also resembles the growing block universe theory of time). This version makes a connection between the passage of time (the motion of the NOW) and change. In fact, it uses facts about change to explain facts about the passage of time. [...] It explains both why the NOW moves, and why it moves at a constant rate.

Button. "Spotty Scope and Our Relation to Fictions." Whatever the attractions of Tolkein's world, irrealists about fictions do not believe literally that Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit. Instead, irrealists believe that, according to The Lord of the Rings {Bilbo is a hobbit}. But when irrealists want to say something like “I am taller than Bilbo”, there is nowhere good for them to insert the operator “according to The Lord of the Rings”. This is an instance of the operator problem. In this paper, I outline and criticise Sainsbury's (2006) spotty scope approach to the operator problem. Sainsbury treats the problem as syntactic, but the problem is ultimately metaphysical.

Uzquiano. "Before-Effect without Zeno Causality." José Bernardete presented a family of puzzles in which an open-ended series of events, whose limit is a point earlier than each event in the series, necessitates a before-effect. The more radical cases involve an open-ended series of hypothetical events[....] The purpose of this note is, first, to argue that not every “before-effect” is caused by the events in the open-ended series that follows, and, second, to raise the question of when, if ever, is a “before-effect” causally influenced by the open ended sequence of actual or hypothetical events that follow.

Smithies. "The Normative Role of Knowledge." I argue that knowledge plays an important normative role in assertion and action, which is explained and unified by its more fundamental normative role in belief. Moreover, I propose a distinctive account of what this normative role consists in. I argue that knowledge is the aim of belief, which sets a normative standard of correctness and a corresponding normative standard of justification. According to my proposal, it is correct to believe, assert and act on a proposition if and only if one is in a position to know it. By contrast, one has justification to believe, assert and act on a proposition if and only if one has justification to believe that one is in a position to know it.

Choi. "Intrinsic Finks and Dispositional/Categorical Distinction." I will first develop from my semantic account of dispositions what I think the correct formulation of the dispositional/categorical distinction in terms of counterfactual conditionals. It will be argued that my formulation does not have the shortcomings that have plagued previously proposed ones. Then I will turn my attention to one of its consequences, the thesis that dispositional properties are not susceptible to intrinsic finks. [...] I will remedy my defense of the impossibility of intrinsically finkable dispositions and then refute some of apparently powerful criticisms of it.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 05 December 2012 02:48:55PM 3 points [-]

So the only one of these that jumps out at me as being really unhelpful is

"Kant and Strawson on the Content of Geometrical Concepts." This paper considers Kant's understanding of conceptual representation in light of his view of geometry. [...] While conceding that Kant confuses pure and applied geometry, P. F. Strawson tries to preserve the interest of his view. Strawson seeks to explain how the application of geometry can be independent of experience. [...] I sketch a way of reconciling Strawson's interpretation of "pure intuition” (on which it represents objects as we imagine, or are prepared to picture, them) with Kant's view that it proves the applicability of concepts independently of experience. Pure intuition can be taken, in the spirit of Strawson's interpretation, to represent procedures for constructing objects that fall under the concepts. I argue that on Kant's view, the representation of such procedures indeed yields a priori knowledge of the applicability of concepts.

This fails at multiple levels. First it fails, because pretty much everything Kant wrote about geometry runs into the serious problem that his whole idea is deeply connected to Euclidean geometry being the one, true correct geometry. Second, this runs into the earlier discussed problem of trying to discuss what major philosophers meant, as if that had intrinsic interest. Third, a glance strongly suggests that they are ignoring the large body of actual developmental psych data about how children actually do and do not demonstrate intuitions for their surrounding geometry.

I don't know enough about the subjects to say much about the Skow, Uzquiano, and Button although I suspect that the third is confusing linguistic with metaphysical issues.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 December 2012 03:19:42PM *  2 points [-]

First it fails, because pretty much everything Kant wrote about geometry runs into the serious problem that his whole idea is deeply connected to Euclidean geometry being the one, true correct geometry.

I don't recall him ever restricting himself to only Euclidean geometry. In Critique of Pure Reason, "geometry" is mentioned twenty times (each paragraph a separate quote; Markdown is being dumb):

Just as little is any principle of pure geometry analytical. "A straight line between two points is the shortest," is a synthetical proposition.

Thus, moreover, the principles of geometry--for example, that "in a triangle, two sides together are greater than the third," are never deduced from general conceptions of line and triangle, but from intuition, and this a priori, with apodeictic certainty.

Geometry is a science which determines the properties of space synthetically, and yet a priori. What, then, must be our representation of space, in order that such a cognition of it may be possible? It must be originally intuition, for from a mere conception, no propositions can be deduced which go out beyond the conception, and yet this happens in geometry.

Thus it is only by means of our explanation that the possibility of geometry, as a synthetical science a priori, becomes comprehensible.

Take, for example, the proposition: "Two straight lines cannot enclose a space, and with these alone no figure is possible," and try to deduce it from the conception of a straight line and the number two; or take the proposition: "It is possible to construct a figure with three straight lines," and endeavour, in like manner, to deduce it from the mere conception of a straight line and the number three. All your endeavours are in vain, and you find yourself forced to have recourse to intuition, as, in fact, geometry always does.

Geometry, nevertheless, advances steadily and securely in the province of pure a priori cognitions, without needing to ask from philosophy any certificate as to the pure and legitimate origin of its fundamental conception of space.

Footnote: Motion of an object in space does not belong to a pure science, consequently not to geometry; because, that a thing is movable cannot be known a priori, but only from experience.

On the other hand, the self-evident propositions as to the relation of numbers, are certainly synthetical but not universal, like those of geometry, and for this reason cannot be called axioms, but numerical formulae.

Empirical intuition is possible only through pure intuition (of space and time); consequently, what geometry affirms of the latter, is indisputably valid of the former.

But in this case, no a priori synthetical cognition of them could be possible, consequently not through pure conceptions of space and the science which determines these conceptions, that is to say, geometry, would itself be impossible.

But mathematics does not confine itself to the construction of quantities (quanta), as in the case of geometry; it occupies itself with pure quantity also (quantitas), as in the case of algebra, where complete abstraction is made of the properties of the object indicated by the conception of quantity.

Thus, when one quantity is to be divided by another, the signs which denote both are placed in the form peculiar to the operation of division; and thus algebra, by means of a symbolical construction of quantity, just as geometry, with its ostensive or geometrical construction (a construction of the objects themselves), arrives at results which discursive cognition cannot hope to reach by the aid of mere conceptions.

We shall, accordingly, show that the mathematical method is unattended in the sphere of philosophy by the least advantage--except, perhaps, that it more plainly exhibits its own inadequacy--that geometry and philosophy are two quite different things, although they go band in hand in hand in the field of natural science, and, consequently, that the procedure of the one can never be imitated by the other.

Of the two kinds of a priori synthetical propositions above mentioned, only those which are employed in philosophy can, according to the general mode of speech, bear this name; those of arithmetic or geometry would not be rightly so denominated.

For the assertion that the reality of such ideas is probable is as absurd as a proof of the probability of a proposition in geometry.

Other than this last quote (which is simply wrong), all of the other mentions consider geometry either as 1) a mere example or 2) in the context of phenomenal experience, which is predominately Euclidean for standard human beings on Earth. One could easily take it as a partial statement of the psychological unity of humankind.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 05 December 2012 03:24:17PM 0 points [-]

He doesn't discuss it that much, but there's a strong argument that it is operating the background 1 (pdf). The same author as linked wrote an essay about this, but I can't find it right now.

Comment author: [deleted] 05 December 2012 03:54:10PM *  2 points [-]

This is strange, because your link is about Kant disagreeing with other philosophers on the nature of Euclid's parallel postulate. I took your claim to be that because Kant was seemingly only aware of Euclidean geometry, he used properties specific to only Euclidean geometry in his discussion of geometry.

Show me explicitly where this "operating in the background" is, and I'd be more convinced.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 05 December 2012 03:57:31PM 3 points [-]

Hmm, ok. Rereading the link and thinking about this more, it looks like I'm either strongly misremembering what it said or am just hopelessly confused. I'll need to think about this more.

Comment author: thomblake 05 December 2012 04:23:13PM 2 points [-]

I'll need to think about this more.

Thinking about this less and something else more is also a good option.