On 14 Nov 2010, at 19:39, 1Z wrote:
On Nov 11, 12:54 am, Rex Allen <[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 3:53 PM, 1Z <[email protected]> wrote:
On Nov 4, 4:40 am, Rex Allen <[email protected]> wrote:
If an entity exists in a universe that is subject to unchanging
causal
laws, how can it have justified true beliefs (a.k.a. knowledge)
either?
If the entity's beliefs are the result of some more fundamental
underlying process, then those beliefs aren't held for reasons of
logic or rationality.
That doesn't follow.
It follows by definition.
1. IF a universe governed by causal laws -
2. THEN everything that occurs within that universe is a result of
those laws acting on the universe's state. Every change of state
happens according to some law.
3. The entity's holding of some belief occurs within that universe.
4. Therefore the entity's holding of some belief (whether rational
*or* irrational) is a result of causal laws acting on the entity's
state, and nothing else.
What else could account for the entity's holding of some particular
belief?
"Logical" and "rational" are adjectives. You're confusing
descriptive
labels with causal forces.
Your argument still doesn't work. You re tacitly assuming that
being the result of causal laws is exclusive of being the result
of logic/.reason. But that is , to say the least, not obvioius.
OTOH, it *is* obvious that being the result of causal
laws is exclusive of being freely chosen.
? Are you saying that it is obvious that compatibilism is false?
Either you throw the notion of person, or you ask for a 'magical'
notion of person.
Free will is the free choice between 2+2=4,and 2+2=5. Something well
illustrated by Orwell.
Like freedom is the right to cross the ocean in a sieve.
We cannot get the whole picture when observing oneself, so free will
is the ability to suggest local "reasonable" alternatives. It is what
makes sense for defending "more freedom", and it is made possible by
self-acceleration relative to our (most probable) neighborhood
(brains, paper and computers are usually used for that relative
speeding-up).
You need, but
don't have, an argument to the effect that free choice is essential
to rationality.
====
A. "Bob believes X" - True.
B. "Bob believes that believing X is rational" - True.
C. "Bob believes that he believes X because it is rational" - True.
D. "Bob believes X because believing X is rational" - FALSE
Saying it doesn't make it so. If Bob goes fishing because of
causal laws, he still goes fishing. If Bob is rational because of
causal laws, he is still rational.
I follow you here.
(Whether he *chooses* to go
fishing is another matter...)
The problem is as much in defining "he" than in defining "choose".
E. "Bob believes X, and believing X is rational" - may or may not
be true.
====
Maybe we need to define our terms.
What definition are you using for "belief"? What is a belief? Is
belief fundamental or does it reduce to something more basic?
If belief just reduces to physical brain states, then option D above
is *still* false.
Not established.
Agreed. "D" is ambiguous, also. It can be trivially true in some
context, and trivially false in others.
In our entity's universe the brain being in state Y isn't caused by
it
having previously been in state X. Rather, the governing laws cause
the transition from X to Y.
It would make more sense to include both in your account..the state
and the transition rules
The number and the universal number.
In reality the numbers are confronted with infinities of universal
numbers. Governing laws, transition laws are local first person
(plural) bets.
Under different causal laws, the brain might instead have
transitioned
from state X to an irrational state like Z.
Yeah. That doesn';t mean he wasn't actually rational when
he was. It *does* mean he can't choose to be
rational if the rules and previous state conspire against him...
Right.
And here mechanism gives the assurance of the solidity of laws, given
that they emerge from a mean on all rational laws (amenable to some
universal numbers, or equivalently, executed by the universal
dovetailer (which executes all universal numbers), or equivalently,
proved (infinitely often) in Robinson Arithmetic.
Rather, the entity holds the beliefs that are necessitated by the
initial conditions and causal laws of it's universe.
That doens;t stop them being logical or rational.
It only stops them being the result of a free choice
to adopt logic or rationality
Once you give up free choice, you're left with skepticism.
That needs demonstration
I think so.
Bryan Caplan had an interesting comment on this:
"Now it is a fact that people disagree on many questions; this leads
us to wonder if on any given issue we are correct. How is the
determinist to come to grips with this? If the content of my mind is
determined entirely on the level of micro-particles, how would I ever
double-check my views? I would be determined to believe them; and if
arguments convinced me, then they would be determined to convince me.
The crucial point is that my views -- correct and incorrect alike --
would be the result of inexorable causal forces. And these forces
determine people to error just as inexorably as they determine them
to
truth. Of course, I might be correct by coincidence. But knowledge
is _justified_ true belief; and when we are pre-determined to believe
whatever we happen to believe no matter what, it is hard to see what
the justification of our beliefs is.
If double checking is unmiraculous, it can be caused as well
as anything else.
Yes. It might even be statistically justified, but if it applies to
reality, double checking is not enough to convince of truth, there is
a need of an infinite-checking which can be justified for first person
only. But science, reason, public demonstrations don't need that
infinite checking, and your answer goes through (if I get it correctly).
Put succinctly, if we have knowledge we must accept beliefs only
because we understand them to be true; but if determinism is correct,
then we automatically accept whatever beliefs that our constituent
micro-particles impose on us.
But there is nothing to stop them imposing understanding
and justification too. Our beliefs aren't necessarily true
or justified under determinism, but they aren't anyway.
What would be the difference between the deterministic
universe and the free will universe? Are you seriously
assrting that in the FW universe, our beliefs would be more
universally true and justified? But FW wouldn't force that on us.
Are you saying that in a deterministic universe they would
be less true and justified? But determinism doesn't force any
particular
level of error on us. We could be determined to be 0% right.
10% right, up to 100% right. (Although evolutionary considerations
would indicate a higher figure).
Evolutionary considerations, sure, but more generally relative
consistency considerations, relative depth of computational states
considerations.
We might be determined to be 100% right on something, and 0% right on
something else, like if some illusions are necessary.
It might be the case that those
micro-particles coincidentally make me believe true things, but the
truth would not be the ultimate causal agent acting upon me.
Or it might be the case that you have FW and freelly choose
to make mistakes. How would that look different? FW
can't force people to be correct and justified and right
all the time -- where's the freedom in that?
Determinism, then, leads to skepticism, the denial of the possibility
of justified true belief. "
That's a non-sequitut. THat it isn't necessary(under either
assumption!)
doesn't make it impossible.
Define or represent belief by provability of PA (or provability in
PA). (Bp). Knowledge by Bp & p, p being an arithmetical proposition
asserting some case (like "it exists a number which multiplied by two
give six"). That provides counter-examples. A machine can belief
(prove, assert and justify) that 1+1=2, and that might be true.
And probabilistic laws aren't any better.
Those initial conditions and causal laws *may* be such that the
entity
holds true beliefs, but there is no requirement that this be the
case
(for example, our own universe produces a fair number of delusional
schizophrenics).
OTOH, it;s more likely than not. Organisms with delusional
beliefs would have trouble surviving and reproducing,
Again, you're confusing descriptive labels with a causal forces.
Some organisms are caused to hold delusional beliefs by the same
forces that cause others to hold rational beliefs.
Further, those same causal forces also determine the fates of both
delusional and rational organisms.
That schizophrenia hasn't been observed to vastly increase
reproductive success is merely a contingent outcome of the our
universe's particular initial conditions and causal laws.
So? Under determinism AND evolution one could reasonably assume
that most of one's beliefs are correct. So the sceptical conclusion
doesn't follow.
I would have said "locally plausible" instead of "correct", except for
a part of math, perhaps.
this, since there is no way to
step outside of the universe's control of one's beliefs to
independently verify the "reasonableness" of the beliefs it
generates.
Again...schizophrenics are generally pretty convinced of the
truth of
their delusions.
Even in a lawful universe how do you justify your beliefs? And
then
how do you justify your justifications of your beliefs? And then
how
do you justify the justifications of the justifications of your
beliefs? And so on. Agrippa's Trilemma.
Would apply to a non-causal universe
Correct. It applies everywhere.
So? EIther you have all-embracing scepticism , or
you admit that the trilemma doesn't lead to
scepticism in any universe.
We cannot distinguish our states of belief from our states of
knowledge, except for one uncommunicable and unexpressible fixed point
(consciousness). To know p is to believe in p, luckily or
deterministically in a universe u where it is the case that p.
(Although to be precise we have to nuance this for each notion of
person views and add the case of the truth of p in the universes
belonging to some neighborhood of u).
We have to be sufficiently self-referentially correct relatively to
our most probable universe. It is the basic choice between to eat and
to be eaten.
We have to be able to distinguish between the prey and the predator.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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