To Prof. Ganson

[Ed Oscuro]

A viewpoint of a world that is completely rational and mechanistic doesn't imply sufficient knowledge to translate that into good decision making. As a result, I have to admit that simply believing in what is accepted is not certain to prevent the commission of travesties in the name of science. All the same, that viewpoint is the starting point for all modern scientific inquiry.

Hume is a good guy. I looked him up on Wikipedia (I hope y'all don't mind like a certain somebody would) and come up with this:

Hume's most famous sentence occurs at Treatise, II, III, iii, Of the influencing motives of the will: "Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."

I still feel this is true in a way (bordering on it anyhow). Our "rational" sense of things is determined by how our minds works; dispassionate thought isolated from a survey of the wider world has led at times to strange beliefs. Rational thought is nevertheless the best tool we have to interpret observation, and the best possible.

Following up that thread, the "passions" Hume mentions are not separate from everything else. They have an explainable origin and are dependent on reality (of course, the absurd has its origins here as a result of the mind's ability to adapt itself to many worldviews, including nonsensical ones).

"Of the Standard of Taste," one of his lesser known works, states this on the matter:

This great unanimity [amongst men about morals] is usually ascribed to the influence of plain reason; which, in all these cases, maintains similar sentiments in all men, and prevents those controversies, to which the abstract sciences are so much exposed. So far as the unanimity is real, this account may be admitted as satisfactory: But we must also allow that some part of the seeming harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very nature of language.

Natural morality doesn't arise from reason in men (although I tend to think it can be better explained through rationality, and that it may even be improved through reasoning).

Hume seems to get into some deep water with the second major claim here (I'm passing over "controversies, to which the astract sciences are so much exposed," as gibberish) that language is one of the causes of morals. As best I make out from the rest of the passage, he seems to be saying that things that are generally accepted tend to receive uncritical praise in the common language.

I need to look into that some more.

[Rob]

This thread gave me heartburn.

[Randorama]

I had meant to refer to a more general tendency to value logic above all else;

One note in passing (I am in a pestering mood).

"Logic" is a formal tool which allows you to compute abstract symbols. Those symbols are in the head, unless one is a mathematical platonist and thinks that they are things in the world (and that's magic, as I always tell to the delight of my math friends who are platonists) (Dawkins is a poor mathematician and a wild platonist, case in point).

If on the other hand one is a more sober 'internalist', those symbols show how you process information. If that information represents or mispresents 'facts', that's irrelevant (GIGO=Garbage in, garbage out) (say, David Marr, to quote someone out of my parochy).

The latter approach is perfect at capturing thingies like hallucinations: the eye will put pieces of information in a rigorous way, and if you feed him 'fake information' (stuff which is not 'there', whatever 'there' is), it will still build up an image.

Translate this process e.g. to the 'moral domain', and you can guess how you can come up with horrible conclusions via a perfect logic and completely unfounded information states. Logic is not unlike Dawkins' blind watchmaker: it puts things together, regardless of what they are, insofar they match. If they are hopeful monsters, that's another matter.

[Ed Oscuro]

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks

[it290]

I want to reiterate that I am not pointing a finger at Dawkins or any other individual. And I agree, Rando, that science is (and should be) about constantly adjusting one's viewpoint. However, there is no denying that science is also political. We receive knowledge in such a way that it cannot be free of a 'moral' taint. It's not about being told to go follow one person (group, party, nation) or another, but rather about the information you receive in the first place. The processing of said information is of equal or greater importance, but this is informed cyclically by the information itself.

Raving rubbish about the above points is quite irrational and, to quote uncle Noam (Chomsky)*, a pre-requisite for higher positions of power in Academia (the more educated=the more irrational).

I don't know if Chomsky is fit to be throwing stones in this case; I have great respect for the man, and have seen him speak a few times, but he does a good bit of raving himself, often on matters outside his immediate area of expertise.

This great unanimity [amongst men about morals] is usually ascribed to the influence of plain reason; which, in all these cases, maintains similar sentiments in all men, and prevents those controversies, to which the abstract sciences are so much exposed. So far as the unanimity is real, this account may be admitted as satisfactory: But we must also allow that some part of the seeming harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very nature of language.

To me the 'accounted for from the very nature of language' bit is not very contentious. However, if I had to assess 'so far as the unanimity is real', I would say not very far- unless he is talking about some more specific case.

Translate this process e.g. to the 'moral domain', and you can guess how you can come up with horrible conclusions via a perfect logic and completely unfounded information states. Logic is not unlike Dawkins' blind watchmaker: it puts things together, regardless of what they are, insofar they match. If they are hopeful monsters, that's another matter.

This is what I was getting at earlier. I would also add that it's far more common to come up with horrible conclusions via what seems (to the person in question) like perfect logic and well-established information states.

From what I can tell, both yourself and Ed seem to be implying that philosophy can be separated from ideology. I would say that this is an idealistic claim.

[Ed Oscuro]

To me the 'accounted for from the very nature of language' bit is not very contentious.

I don't completely understand his point yet, plus I've got some reading to do before 9:20 tomorrow and also sleep. I'll try to return to this later.

From what I can tell, both yourself and Ed seem to be implying that philosophy can be separated from ideology. I would say that this is an idealistic claim.

Hmm. I wasn't thinking along those lines, but this does seem to be possible, if not probable (as you say).

Even if my conclusion that it is possible (in the future) that science can create a theory and test it for, say, the existence of God, there would still be basis for ideology - we would be left with simply a description of the universe, but probably still no "why" and more to the point "what should we be doing?"

Personally, I think we're acting purely on genetic programming (and everything else biological), which suggests (to me) some directions for ideology, but doesn't offer any hard answers, unfortunately.

[Randorama]

This great unanimity [amongst men about morals] is usually ascribed to the influence of plain reason; which, in all these cases, maintains similar sentiments in all men, and prevents those controversies, to which the abstract sciences are so much exposed. So far as the unanimity is real, this account may be admitted as satisfactory: But we must also allow that some part of the seeming harmony in morals may be accounted for from the very nature of language.

Just on this point to make it clear: I can't trace back the reference you report, but in general anyone who claims for "Language" to tell something about the way we reason in a given domain tends to overstate this type of window onto the human mind.

Suppose that we have 'Logic' (really, a general information-processing/computing faculty) in the brain. We may have a specific sub-set of this system for Language, a partially overlapping sub-set for the moral domain, etc. It could look like this:

"Logic" written as L, then Lx is written as the set of rules, plus its possible sub-sets. This notation is gibberish, but it should also be easily to get.

L:={{a},{b},{c},Llan={a,b,c},Lmor={a,b,d},Lvis={a,d,c}}

In practice one could have a certain set of rules and, depending on a single domain, one could have a certain possible sub-set that does the necessary job. Let's look at the Logic of Language (Llan) and the Logic of Vision (Lvis): they share two rules, defined as the sub-set (of L) Lshare:={a,c}.

Then one can say that they look similar, but they are not effectively the same. Important thing: nobody has a clue on how to even make this comparison because in both domains we are in the:

Llan:={b,?}
Lvis:={a,?}

i.e. We know something, but we don't really know the rest (how much else there is, etc.). In general, if someone comes and tell me that he has a clear list of what's inside those sets, I simply smell a wannabe "writer for soccer moms". That is, some guy that puts random bits together, glues them with a lot of mellow (and incredibly shallow) prose and sells a placebo for the masses unsatisfied with classical stuff as Religion, Politics, Sports, etc. (e.g. Dawkins, Pinker, etc.).

In general, the kind of waffle aforementioned comes from little knowledge of Logic and a lot of processing of impartial (or damn wrong states), and a boorish pretense that 'I am getting the facts straight!'. Personally, I have the advantage of doing something in which I mix very 'young' sciences into something even 'younger', so I do not have much to waffle about. And I am still not looking for tenure

As per politics: the post-modernist waffles are irrelevant, but in practice it is easy to spot attitudes that can be labeled as 'conservative' vs. 'progressist'. It is just that if you apply a property like 'conservative' in one domain (science) you get something similar (but not the same!) that in politics, and so on. Someone made a similar point (and study!) on this, if I happen to remember who, I'll update the post.

Personally I try to be fair and balanced*, like Fox tv

One point of my posts: am I reasonably clear about what I am saying? I confess that I am trying to practice my expository skills (no "I am lecturing you"! non-sense entailed, cross my heart!).

[it290]

As per politics: the post-modernist waffles are irrelevant, but in practice it is easy to spot attitudes that can be labeled as 'conservative' vs. 'progressist'. It is just that if you apply a property like 'conservative' in one domain (science) you get something similar (but not the same!) that in politics, and so on. Someone made a similar point (and study!) on this, if I happen to remember who, I'll update the post.

Personally I try to be fair and balanced*, like Fox tv Wink

One point of my posts: am I reasonably clear about what I am saying? I confess that I am trying to practice my expository skills (no "I am lecturing you"! non-sense entailed, cross my heart!).

I concur that attitudes are generally easy to label one way or the other, but I think the more important modification/exclusion/addition/filtration generally occurs to knowledge before it ever gets handed down to us, and so what we perceive as one attitude or another may have originally been something quite different. Firsthand knowledge is an increasingly rare commodity these days.

As far as decrypting your posts goes: the hardest bit for me is the humor - either because it's often referential and I don't get the reference or because the construction doesn't always work for me. However, dry wit is always appreciated.

[Randorama]

As far as decrypting your posts goes: the hardest bit for me is the humor - either because it's often referential and I don't get the reference or because the construction doesn't always work for me. However, dry wit is always appreciated.

Ok, after all wry humor is quite post-modern

As for 'knowledge': to cut a long story short, one could start from a 'popular' book to get a quite propagandistic view of some topic, then figure out which technical skills are required to go further, and then look at the references in that book. Critical thinking and some skepticism, with some good handling of the theory at hand, can give some good means to understand perspectives and make up one's own (perspective, of course).

[Ed Oscuro]

Ok, after all wry humor is quite post-modern :lol:

Feh, it's modern too!

I have to admit the implication of the term "post-modernist" riles me up a little because in my view the post-modernists have contributed relatively little to the artistic world compared to modernism.

The last modernist work I read is available (unfortunately the translation makes the writing seem sloppy; I prefer another) here. Not so much humor in this one, damn good read all the same.