Blogosophy

The Moebius Matrix

I remember seeing The Matrix for the first time, having no prior knowledge of the movie, and coming out of it thinking: "A big budget Hollywood movie about epistemology! How cool is that?!" Now the image of the Matrix is such a commonplace that philosophers have started using it, at least as a pedagogical tool, as in this game on the Philosophers Magazine website, and on Thoughts, Arguments, and Rants (look at the entry for Sunday). There are even two different books on the subject: The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real and Taking the Red Pill: Science, Philosophy and Religion in The Matrix. Apparently there was also a post on the 617 blog about multi-level Matrices, but unfortunately as I write this their archives are unavailable, so I don't know if it has anything to do with what I'm going to talk about.

The basic Matrix argument is that a) you cannot be sure that every experience you have is not a perfect computer simulation and b) this is a live possibility in a way that , say, pure solipsism or the theory that there's an intangible invisible imp on your shoulder is not, in that there is a possible experience you could have which would tend to confirm it: to whit, being unplugged from the Matrix. Of course, the same argument applies to the world outside of the Matrix: the people who unplugged you face the same possibility that they and you are in a higher-level Matrix, which could be confirmed by being unplugged. Obviously this leads to an infinite regress of suppositions, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

What I would like to consider is the Matrix scenario with a twist: Upon being unplugged from the Matrix, when the unpluggers tell you "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," you respond:
"What do you mean, real? This world that you call real is itself a computer simulation. When you attempt to look in on the Matrix, you're actually being fed images from the real world, where I come from; when you decided to 'unplug' me, I was plugged into your Matrix. Of course, they gave me a drug to erase my short term memory of the experience of being plugged in, so that there's no difference between my memories and what you think my memories ought to be, but there is an experience that either of us could have which would tend to confirm the truth of what I say: being unplugged."
The question about this account is not whether it is plausible (I should hope not), but whether the unpluggers would have any better reason to discount the possibility than we have of discounting the possibility of the Matrix? I don't think so; it has what appear to me to be the same salient features: it perfectly explains what experiences we do have, while suggesting an experience that we could conceivably have which would tend to confirm the theory that they were merely simulated (granted, without closing down the possibility of further experiences that might modify the conclusion). I call this the Moebius matrix because it's (very loosely) a one-sided loop: there's only one reality, despite the two apparent sides, and if you accept the argument then the "real" world is always the one that your consciousness is not currently aware of.

Imaginative Resistance and Cognitive DistanceThe

Imaginative Resistance and Cognitive Distance

The following is a comment that I posted to Brian Weatherson's Thoughts Arguments and Rants blog on the topic of imaginative resistance that he posted Monday 6/16. I figured that I'd post it here as well, just so I can refer back to it later if I like, but you really need to refer to Thoughts, Arguments and Rants, Brian's original paper Virtuous Resistance  and Wo's weblog entry In Defense of the Impossibility Hypothesis for the context:

I think you can probably add Bertrand Russell to the list of smart people like Wo who would have problems with the Tower of Goldbach case. I stumbled across this in The Problems of Philosophy this morning (Oxford Univ. Press edition, p.79):
"When Swift invites us to consider the race of Struldbugs who never die, we are able to acquiesce in imagination. But a world where two and two make five seems quite on a different level. We feel that such a world, if there were one, would upset the whole fabric of our knowledge and reduce us to utter doubt."

My guess (it doesn't really amount to a theory) is that something like Wo's concept of distance in belief space applies, except that distance shouldn't be measured in degree of credence but something like degree to which it enters into our daily working set of beliefs (which is some function of how long/how much effort it takes to recall and reassure ourselves of its truth). E.g., my credence in Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is quite high, having learned two different proofs of it in my undergraduate days, but my imaginative resistance to a fiction where it's not true is rather low--lower, anyway, than my imaginative resistance to 7 plus 5 does not make 12--I think because it takes some time and effort to recall the proofs to mind and deriving the consequences of its falsity are similarly "distant" and difficult. If this idea is right, I'd predict two things: that imaginative resistance would (ceteris paribus) be lower towards stories that only imply the impossible without outright stating it (because it takes work to tease out the implication, making the impossibility more distant); that people who deal with and rely on certain concepts more frequently and heavily will have greater imaginative resistance to impossibilities regarding them, so that e.g. my complexity theorist friends might have imaginative resistance towards a story that makes Godel's Incompleteness Theorem false that approaches mine towards the Tower of Goldbach.

I think that the conceptual effort/distance idea goes some way towards explaining why time-travel paradox stories don't meet much imaginative resistance, but it does have a problem with the lack of resistance you and Tamar have towards the Tower of Goldbach. I find it hard to believe that you and Tamar don't rely on arithmetic enough to find 5+7=12 virtually effortless and immediate, so there has to be some other explanation. Maybe that's where metaphysical theories about mathematics come in: maybe for some people metaphysical theories that would permit its negation are "close" enough to the daily working set of beliefs to overcome the resistance.

Proper Names as DescriptionsThere's something

Proper Names as Descriptions

There's something that strikes me as a little odd about Bertrand Russell's theory (in The Problems of Philosophy) that proper names are really descriptions of the object in question. For example (at least for people who didn't know Julius Caesar personally), according to Russell if you have a thought involving Julius Caesar, the name Julius Caesar really stands for a description along the lines of 'the founder of the Roman Empire', 'the man who was assassinated on the Ides of March' or 'the man whose name was Julius Caesar ', although the exact content of the description will vary from person to person. The only constant is that the object described will be the same object for everyone using the name correctly.
What strikes me as odd is this: almost without exception, any and all of the individual pieces of that description could be wrong as a matter of empirical fact--and yet we would still intend in using the name that it stand for that particular person, and moreover would be understood by others as doing so. For instance, one could easily imagine the following conversation:
Trurl: "I was wondering whether I should read one of Bertrand Russell's books the other day, and I was thinking about starting with the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding ; what do you think?"
Klapaucias: "Who?"
Trurl: "You know, Bertrand Russell, the French philosopher who wrote Prologomena to Any Future Metaphysic  and Ecce Homo "
Klapaucias: "Bertrand Rusell was English, and he didn't write either of those. He did  write The Problems of Philosophy  and the Principia Mathematica ."
Trurl: "Right, him. So do you think I should read his books or not?"
Klapaucias: "Definitely."
I think the above exchange makes perfect sense (although it would also make sense if Klapaucias asked whether Bertrand Russell was really the philosopher whom Trurl meant, and not Kant, Nietzche, Hume, or someone else entirely) and the reason that it makes sense is because of the single exception--the one that we can't be wrong about. Of all the descriptions that might come to mind when we think of Russell, the one that we really mean in most cases is 'the man whose name was Bertrand Russell.' Everything else that we might believe about him can easily be amended in the light of new information, but that Bertrand Russell's name was not really Bertrand Russell is impossible to understand except in a context something like Bertrand Russell's name used to be something different before he changed it, or the man known as Bertrand Russell to some people was known as George Smith to others (and in either case one could maintain that whatever else his name was, it was also Bertrand Russell).

Recent ReadingThe Problems of Philosophy

Recent Reading

The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
I Think, Therefore I Laugh by John Allen Paulos
The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life by Robert C. Solomon
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy by Roger Scruton
The View from Nowhere by Thomas Nagel
Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist by Walter Kaufman

Academics and IntellectualsTHREE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN

Academics and Intellectuals

THREE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AN ACADEMIC AND AN INTELLECTUAL: WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LIBERAL ARTS WHEN THEY ARE KICKED OFF CAMPUS?by Jack Miles One of the things I find interesting about this paper is that rather than just bemoaning (or hailing) changes in academia, it attempts to analyze and speculate about possible consequences and ways in which the problems might be mitigated. I find the distinction drawn between academics and intellectuals to be interesting, particularly sinceby Miles's definition I'm so clearly in the latter category by both life-history and temperament.

Sorites, ShmoritesI was discussing Sorites

Sorites, Shmorites

I was discussing Sorites paradoxes with my friend RI, the computer scientist, and he impatiently dismissed the reasoning as fallacious. According to RI, you can easily demonstrate sequences of sets such that each set and its immediate neighbors are computationally indistinguishable (no efficient algorithm can tell them apart), but where the endpoints of the sequence are computationally distinguishable. He regards it as obvious that vague predicates like "is a heap" are such sets: although the number of grains in the heap is of course efficiently computable, the distinction between heaps with n and n+1 grains in terms of "is a heap" is not. I'm not sure it's quite that easy. For one thing, it assumes that the identification of heaps is probabilistic; I think that's true empirically (for any group of grains there is some probability that a competent speaker will assent that it's a heap), but as a theory of meaning I suspect it's controversial. I certainly think, though, that as an example it completely undermines the intuition that justifies the sorites induction: namely that because the difference seems too small to matter, the sum of successive differences should still be too small to matter. Given the existence of a counter-example to the general principle, the burden of proof should rest with those trying to justify the intuition.

On the other hand, I never thought that intuition particularly sound; it would seem to rely on the imperceptibility of the individual difference. If we were confident in our ability to discern a single grain's difference in the size of two heaps would it still seem true that "if n grains is a heap, n-1 grains is a heap?" Suppose we made perceptibility explicit: If group of grains X is a heap, then a visibly smaller group of grains Y is still a heap. Does that even seem plausible, much less obviously true? Yet if we could always perceive one grain's difference, they would be equivalent.

One might object that of course sorites predicates rely on imperceptibility, that's what makes them vague, and if one grain was a perceptible difference you could always rescue the original intuition by proposing a smaller, imperceptible change, e.g. removing a fraction of a grain. I don't think that works, because you can calculate empirically how many imperceptible changes of a given size amount to a perceptible change.

Sorites and EldredSeems like the

Sorites and Eldred

Seems like the Supreme Court can't recognize a Sorites Paradox when presented with one. (Sorites describes a class of "little-by-little" paradoxes, along the lines of "One grain of corn isn't a heap; if n grains aren't a heap, then n+1 grains aren't a heap; ergo no number of grains is a heap." I'll have more to say on this later.) In Eldred v. Ashcroft, the plaintiff asked the Court to strike down the retroactive portion of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension act. Briefly, the Constitution grants Congress the power to create a monopoly on the distribution of a work in order to promote the public good, but only for a limited time. In the beginning that was 14 years, renewable once, but over time Congress has kept expanding that time (11 times in the past 40 years). The Sonny Bono Act extends it to the author's lifetime + 75 years, or 95 years for a corporation and makes it retroactively apply to copyrights that were about to expire under the old limits. Lawrence Lessig, for the plaintiff, argued that allowing Congress to retroactively extend the limit made it effectively unlimited, contrary to the Constitutional clause establishing the power in the first place. The Court sided with the government, apparently buying (albeit with greater or lesser degrees of unease among the 7 justices who voted against Eldred) the argument that if a term is limited, extending it by another finite term makes the new term still limited, and so within the power of Congress to grant.