06.26.09
mj
via plump plum
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06.07.09
it runs
Although there really isn’t much to tell, I have successfully created a program that implements my theory of evolution. It ran for the first time on Friday, and after some diagnostics on Monday, I’ll set it to automatically run and merely monitor progress (if any).
On a separate note, learning how to program something non-trivial was a good experience. Being able to take my theory and create something from it was heartening.
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05.22.09
The Non-Reducibility & Scientific Explanation Problem
Q: What is a multiple star system?
A: More than one star in a non-reducible mutual relationship spinning around each other.
Q: How did it begin?
A: Well, I guess, the stars were out in space and at some point they became close in proximity. Then their gravitations caused each other to alter their course and become intertwined.
Q: How did the gravitations cause the courses of the stars to become intertwined? Gravity does one thing: it changes the shape of space-time; it does not intertwine things.
A: That seems right. It is not only the gravities that cause this to happen. It is both the trajectory and mass (gravity) of the stars in relation to each other that caused them to form a multiple star system.
Q: Saying that it is both the trajectories and the masses in relation to each other is not an answer. That is what is in need of being explained.
A: You are asking the impossible. I have already said that the relation is non-reducible. I am not going to go back upon my word in order to reduce the relation into some other relation to explain it to you. The best that can be done is to describe it as best we can.
Here is the problem: If you have a non-reducible relation (e.g., a 3-body problem or a logical mutual interdependence) then you cannot explain how it came to exist. Explaining such things would mean that the relation was reducible. But being unable to explain some scientific phenomenon violates the principle of science: we should be able to explain physical phenomenon. Then the relation must not be non-reducible or it must have been a preexisting condition going all the way back to the origin of the universe. Either you have a contradiction or it is unexplainable by definition.
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What can we do? You can hold out for a solution to the 3-body-problem or, alternatively, you can change what counts as explanation. The latter option is the way to go, though, I am not going into this now.
For now I just want to illustrate that this problem of non-reducibility and explanation is pervasive:
Q: What is a biological symbiotic relationship?
A: More than one organism living in a non-reducible relationship together.
Q: How did it begin?
A: Well, I guess, the organisms were out in nature and at some point they became close in proximity. Then their features caused each other to alter their evolution and become intertwined.
Q: How did the features cause the courses of their evolution to become intertwined? Physical features do one thing: they enable an organism to reproduce; they do not intertwine things.
A: That seems right. It is not only the features that cause this to happen. It is both the ecosystem and the features of the organisms in relation to each other that caused them to form a symbiosis.
Q: Saying that it is both the place the organisms are living in and their features in relation to each other is not an answer. That is what is in need of being explained.
A: You are asking the impossible. I have already said that the relation is non-reducible. I am not going to go back upon my word in order to reduce the relation into some other relation to explain it to you. The best that can be done is to describe it as best we can.
As you can see, I am drawing a parallel between a multiple body problem and multiple organisms that live together. Like the star example above, there is no way to explain the origins of organisms living together. Even in the most basic case it is impossible.
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05.21.09
Relevance
Apropos my previous post, it was suggested that the single most confusing aspect of philosophy explaining why philosophy is relevant. Can we justify ourselves?
I figure that no one is worrying about medical ethics. What about metaphysics, obscure logic, and all the other good stuff that us philosophers call our own? If we can justify that stuff to the general public, then I figure we’re OK for everything else too.
The things people care about here and now are generally the basics of life: food, water, safety, and, if their lucky, to have some sort of opportunity for a better life for themselves and their family. For something to be relevant means that it has to directly affect someone along these lines.
I suppose there are a few ways to try to connect philosophy with the basics of life. Perhaps the shortest is through fear. If someone is nervous about something, then it is relevant to that person. Philosophy can be some scary stuff: You have some core beliefs? Let me show you how they aren’t worth a damn. You think you are a good person? Here’s why you’re not. You think you are sane? Don’t be so sure about it…
Basically we have to get mean.
It’s not that people’s core beliefs are worthless or that they actually are bad people or anything else. It’s just that with enough obscure argumentation skill, you can take things away from people that most people don’t think can be taken away. (And then also teach how to protect oneself from such attacks. ) This would solve questions about relevance.
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05.16.09
What is the Single Worst Understood Philosophical Concept?
I’d like to get anyone’s opinion about what he or she believes to be the single worst understood philosophical concept. Feel free to mention why you think so if you want. Also feel free to interpret the meaning of ‘worst’: across the general public, academia, grad students, old codgers, whatever (but do identify your target, please).
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04.26.09
Of Duckrabbits and Identity
Of late I’ve become increasingly concerned with the meaning of identity. When we say, ‘x = x,’ we don’t mean that the x on the left is exactly identical to the x on the right because the x on the left is just that, on the left, and the x on the right is on the right, not the left. Since equality would be useless without having 2 different objects (try to imagine the use of a reflexive identity symbol, i.e., one that for whatever object it is applies to, indicates that the object is identical with itself), there is something mysterious about the use of identity.
But what is the mystery? It cannot be anything to do with the subjects being declared identical: these objects are arbitrary to the particular topic being discussed. For example if I say ‘the morning star = the evening star’ then we are talking about planets, and if I say that ‘3 = y’ then I am talking about numbers. The identity sign is the same in both, even though the objects being discussed are rather different.
It is easy enough to believe that by paying attention to the different objects being declared identical we can know how to act (some sort of context principle *cringe*). But this doesn’t address the question specifically: although we can know how to use the identity symbol in specific instances, this tells us nothing about how identity works or what it means.
Take a look at this:
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= | |
The picture is the same save for location on the webpage.
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But what if we call the one on the left a duck and the one on the right a rabbit: what is different? The features obviously don’t change, only the way we are seeing (perceiving? apprehending? looking at? interpreting?) the two images.
(Triple bonus points to anyone who can look at the two pictures at once and see one as a duck and the other as a rabbit. Hint- it is easier for me to do it if I try to see the one on the left as a rabbit and the one on the right as a duck… focus on the mouths.)
In this example, as opposed to the others discussed above, a decision was required to be made - to see one picture one way and the other another way - before the differences even existed. Now, in the above examples it appeared that there was a difference of knowledge: at one point we didn’t know that the evening star and morning star were one and the same, or that y was equal to 3. This isn’t the case when looking at identical duckrabbit pictures because there is nothing about the two pictures that is different; the difference is entirely in the mind.
Let me make a suggestion about how to describe the phenomenon of being able to see one image two different ways: the image can be instantiated in two different ways, i.e. it has an associated universe with a population of two. There are two possible descriptions associated with this image and until we make a decision about how to describe it, the image is like an uninstantiated formula.
Identity, then, is an indication that the two associated objects are things that can be generalized to the same formula. The picture of the duck and the picture of the rabbit can be called identical because they both have a single general formula (the duckrabbit picture) that can be instantiated into either. The identity symbol indicates that the two associated objects are two instantiations of the same general thing, be it a number, planet or image (but not objects in space-time because that would be self-contradictory… space-time and instantiation, a topic for another day).
How identity works can now be identified: it is to instantiate and generalize. Consider the mystery of how we see the duckrabbit one way or the other: no one can tell you how you are able to see the image one way or the other. However, you are able to instantiate the image in one way and then another, and recognize that both the duck and rabbit are shown by the same image.
Instantiation and generalization are skills and the identity symbol between the two images above indicates that you have to use that skill to generalized both to one formula. Most of the time it is non-trivial to instantiate or generalize in order to show two things (formulas) to be equal. In the case of the duckrabbit it is trivial because the work went into the instantiation process (to see the images one way or the other); in the other examples the situation is reversed, such that we had the instantiations but not the general formula. In all cases, though, only when we can go back and forth between different instantiations and a single generalization do we claim two things identical.
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04.24.09
What in the world have I been up to?
I’m sure the dearth of posts here has not gone completely unnoticed. So what in the world have I been up to? While it is possible that I had decided to forgo my normal practice of just making up philosophy as I see fit, this, of course, is ridiculous.
I do not know if any of my readers have been around since the beginning, but this blog started out with a good deal of my philosophy of biology. The one-sentence description of my philosophy of biology is: I have relativized the theory of fitness within evolution and comported the rest of evolutionary theory to make it work.
In the last few months I’ve been teaching myself to program and, as of today, I have incorporated as much of my theory of evolution into a simulation as I can possibly hope to accomplish (at the moment). All that is left is to get all the bugs out.
It is not every day that I can say that I have created something that is a direct result of a theory of philosophy, moreover a theory that I have personally developed. I’m pretty stoked. There is still a good amount of work getting the thing to actually run from this point forward, but at least none of the issues will be theoretical, just technical.
And of course there is no guarantee that things will go the way I want them to, but at least I gave it a shot.
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03.27.09
Aether Propeller?
I was trying to figure out how planes stay in the sky.
So this is what I came up with.
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As the plane moves forward, a small vacuum is created above the wing. The vacuum is a low pressure zone which pulls the wing up and the air down to fill itself in (because Nature HATES a vacuum). This upward pull that the low pressure zone creates we call lift.
I thought, “Hooray. This isn’t so complicated! Planes stay up because they create small vacuums above their wings as they move forward, creating an upward force.”
Then I thought, “And this is why planes can’t fly in outer space, because there is no air to displace and create a vacuum.”
Then I thought, “But if there is an aether theory, why not?”
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So as a wing moves through a vacuum, generally we don’t think there is anything to cause lift or drag. But if we have an aether theory of a vacuum, i.e. there is some substance below what we can observe that our matter exists within, then why can’t we create a vacuum in that substance?
My line of thought was: Air is to Vacuum as Vacuum is to Black Hole.
Can’t we just spin a propeller fast enough in outer space to create lift? As the prop turns small vacuums in the aether will be created, and, insofar as Nature hates vacuums, a force will be created to fill in this vacuum, pulling the propeller in that direction.
(Someone please tell me how this is nonsense so I won’t go around thinking I’ve come up with a new model of space flight.)
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03.20.09
Dismantling Fodor’s Argument
Fodor argued that the theory of evolution is not a legitimate theory of science because it is either vacuously true or wrong. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy. (synopsis here)
Insofar as he made no logical mistakes in his reasoning, we need a different strategy to defend the theory of evolution. In this post I will argue that his argument is an instance of gerneral underdetermination, and hence not a problem of evolution but of philosophy of science.
Underdetermination means that we can’t specifically identify the exact cause of scientific phenomena. For example, given some phenomenon, say darkness during the day, there can be many possible explanations: an eclipse, an exploding volcano shooting ash into the air, the sun has gone out, the electric company has blocked the sun to make more money, it was the work of Claw Vipers, etc. The exact cause of the darkness is underdetermined; sure we can research the problem and eliminate some of the possible explanations, but because of our limitations we will never be able to check everything. So the cause of the darkness can be said to be underdetermined, i.e. there is just not enough determining evidence.
Fodor argues that the theory of evolution is vacuous becuase given any trait we identify as benficial to the fitness of the organism is arbitrarily selected. Since there are too many factors to identify within an ecosystem or organism acting within that ecosystem, any hypothesis we propose about the fitness of that organism in that ecosystem will be trivially compatible with evolution.
For example assume there is an argument that having a certain trait, say longer legs, increases a zebra’s fitness. We can recognize that this argument could be unfounded because it might not be the longer legs but something else that increases the zebra’s fitness. It just happened that increased leg length was a harmless side affect of this truly beneficial trait. Either way, if it is the longer legs or some other unidentified trait, evolution is always compatible with our theories, and so it is trivially vacuously true.
In short I would say that he is arguing the cause of natural selection is underdetermined. The task is to identify whether this is a unique case of underdetermination or an instance of general underdetermination. I will now show that this sort of underdetermination can exist in physics*:
Imagine we are doing physics and we want to know which of two metal ingots is the more massive. We pull out our scale, place each object on one of the trays and wait for the scale to indicate which is the more massive.
Why does the scale tip in the direction of object A? We could argue that object A has a trait, it is composed of iron, and that trait makes it more massive than some other object. However, maybe object B is connected to a helium balloon. Maybe there is a gravitational anomaly in the location where we are doing our experiment. Maybe the iron is magnetized and there is another ingot with the opposite polarity under the table. Maybe a God is tampering with our experiment with a noodly appendage. Feel free to make up as many of these as you want. There any number of reasons why one object could tip the scale in its favor, and being more massive is among them, though selecting this as the reason is arbitrary.
(One of the things that is wrong here is that we don’t expect General Relativity to predict which objects are more massive. The mass of an object is the result of the history of its creation and ‘life’ up till the point we measure it. We do expect Relativity to suggest methods for testing such claims, which it does. Likewise Evolution should not be expected to predict which organism is fitter, but to suggest methods for testing fitness.)
If I now recast Fodor’s criticism into physical terms, in reference to the above thought experiment, this is the result: The theory of General Relativity (gravity) is vacuous because any given trait we identify as increasing the mass of an object is arbitrarily selected. Since there are too many factors to identify within a physical system, any hypothesis we propose about mass of the object in that physical system will be trivially compatible with General Relativity.
Therefore physics suffers from the same kind of underdetermination that Fodor accused of evolution. Anyone who persists in disbelieving evolution on these grounds should also deny General Relativity. Of course this is excessive: since the underdetermination criticism goes to the heart of our scientific theories in general, it is a problem of philosophy of science and not a problem of biology or physics specifically. Insofar as underdetermination remains an issue within the philosophy of science we still have to take it into consideration, but this should not be seen as a reason to think our current scientific theories are wrong.
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* This is the argument I presented Fodor with during our brief conversation after his talk at CUNY. He tried to block it by saying that Natural Selection is statistical, whereas General Relativity is not. In my previous post, What Fodor Got Wrong, I argued that this position begs the question or is just wrong.
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03.18.09
What Fodor Got Wrong
Jerry Fodor recently (4 March) gave a talk entitled “What Darwin Got Wrong” at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He accused Darwin of committing the intentional fallacy and hence said, straight out, that he didn’t believe in the theory of evolution.
So what exactly does Fodor think Darwin got wrong?
He believes that the theory of evolution is vacuously true (or just wrong) and hence not a worthwhile theory of science.
You can sink your teeth into the argument in this synopsis, but be forewarned, the argument is good: you may, depending upon your convictions, be forced to disbelieve the theory of evolution. However, it doesn’t identify all the critical presuppositions that Fodor uses (this is no fault of the synopsis; it is accurate to the argument), and these are what are really necessary to show where Fodor is mistaken.
[The one day, the ONE DAY, a year that there is a talk specifically having to do with my work on philosophy of science and biology and I have an international plane flight to catch only a few hours after the talk. I happily was able to catch the whole talk but I couldn't stay for the question and answer session. So I did the only thing I could think of and asked my questions during the break and ran out of the building (literally). The following quote is accurate as far as I can remember, and, as far as I know, I am the only one who heard him say it.]
Fodor said,
“Natural Selection is statistical. It just is.”
What does this mean?
In my world Natural Selection is a force. It is a force that changes species over time. For example lets take some species of bacteria. A few of the bacteria in that species adapt to be able to eat a novel sort of food and this gives them an advantage over the others. Eventually these bacteria are able to replicate more often and eventually most of the overall bacteria population has this trait. Hence the species has changed from not having a certain property to having a certain property. If you ask me what caused this change in the bacteria population, I would say that Natural Selection was the cause or force behind the change in the species.
There are two ways I can think of interpreting Fodor’s statement: 1) Natural Selection is statistical and not a force. 2) Natural Selection is statistical and a force.
Taking the first interpretation that Natural Selection is statistical and not a force, how are we to understand my little story about the bacteria above? Perhaps: “The change in the physiology of certain bacteria statistically increased their fitness over the other bacteria. Hence those bacteria were able to replicate more readily and eventually outnumber bacteria without that trait.” The thing that changed the species was the increased fitness, which was caused by the physiological change. Natural Selection was the result of this change and can be observed statistically by seeing how individual organisms with that trait were able to fair better than their compatriots. Therefore Natural Selection is a non-causal description or explanation of how species change.
This is immediately problematic because a description or explanation is always describing or explaining something that already exists: it will always be vacuously true, e.g. snow is white if(f) snow is white, or it will just be wrong, e.g. snow is blue. Therefore, by assuming that Natural Selection is statistical and not a force, we have begged the question against Natural Selection.
Now let’s take a look at option 2: Natural Selection is statistical and a force.
As a force Natural Selection is the cause of things. Causes can work directly, such as one object striking another and causing it to change direction, or as a field does, by creating an environmental disturbance of some sort which affects the object. Natural Selection falls (more or less) into the latter category: the environment changes and this causes species to change, to adapt.
Is Natural Selection statistical under this interpretation? No. If Natural Selection acts in the way a field does, by changing the environment which then affects things in that environment, then at every point there is some local interaction between the field and the object. Otherwise we have a theory of action-at-a-distance, i.e. one thing is causing something to happen without any way for us to identify the underlying process: a theory of magic. If something is acting statistically, then it is acting at different places with no known connection between them. However, evolution comes with a ready made theory of local interactions: every organism is constantly struggling for survival. The struggle for survival ensures that there is a connection between Natural Selection and the environment. Therefore if Natural Selection is a force, it cannot also be statistical.
[I can confirm that Fodor believed that the struggle for survival was not critical because earlier in our brief conversation he said that the struggle for survival was merely a metaphor. I responded by saying that Natural Selection is a metaphor then too, but he disagreed.]
In conclusion, by assuming that Natural Selection is statistical and ignoring the local interactions in the struggle for survival, Fodor has begged the question against evolution. As a statistical non-causal explanation, Natural Selection cannot act as a force in evolution. Once evolution has lost it’s driving force, it no longer can function as a working scientific theory. However, believing that Natural Selection is a non-causal explanation is unfounded. The theory of evolution provides a method - the struggle for survival - that explains how Natural Selection causes change in species via the environment, and ignoring this is what Fodor got wrong.
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See a continuation of the argument against Fodor in my next post, Dismantling Fodor’s Argument.
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