Tag: a priori

Reason – The Business of Philosophy

Britton William Frost1 Comment

“To say that a stone falls to Earth because it is obeying a law makes it a man and even a citizen.”  -C. S. Lewis

People who believe in science as a worldview rather than a method of inquiry – I call them scientismists – are fascinated by science because they cannot grasp it, just like all people who are not magicians are fascinated by magic. What little understanding they do have of it, in principle, is superficial. The difference between people’s perception of science and that of magic is that magic can always be explained. Magic plays a trick on one’s perception. That is magic’s nature as well as its goal. Science, on the other hand, cannot always be figured out. There simply is not a scientific explanation for everything (or of most things). Nor is it science’s goal to explain everything! Science is an incremental process of collecting empirical data, interpreting it, and attempting to manipulate aspects of the environment accordingly for (mostly) human benefit. It is experimental and observable. It is, as I will explain, inductive. Unfortunately, sometimes unknowingly, human subjectivity intervenes in at least one of these three steps, exposing its limits through ours. So, where does reason fit in to this process?

What “Reason” is NOT

One problem with scientism is that it equates science and reason. This is incorrect. Although philosophers of science, most of whom are scientists themselves, have debated the definition of science since it was called ‘Natural Philosophy’, there is one thing that we do know about it and the difference between it and reason. Science deals with questions of ‘how’. It describes the inner-workings, the technicalities, of observable processes and states of affairs. Reason deals with questions of ‘why’. It explores lines of thinking – fundamental goals, purposes, and meanings – for those processes and states of affairs as well those for many other non-scientific processes and states of affairs. Having said that, reason is necessary for science, but it is immeasurably more broad.

Science cannot alone answer why-questions. Claiming that it can is a mark of scientism. Why is that?

I will now give reasons for that by using an example from Dr. Wes Cecil’s 2014 lecture about scientism at Peninsula College:

Engineering, which is a type of science that has its foundations in calculus, can tell us how to build a bridge. Engineering can build the biggest, longest, strongest bridge one could possibly imagine. How will the bridge look? We marry science and art to make the bridge beautiful as well as functional. So, even at this first stage of building a bridge – design – science cannot stand independent from even art, which seems so much more abstract.

Furthermore, why do we need to build a bridge? This is a question of reason, not of science. The answer seems to be “to get to the other side of the river”. But what the engineer (who is also a business man who wants to land the deal for this highly-lucrative project) might neglect is that building a bridge is not the only way to get to the other side of the river. Perhaps a ferry would be an easier, more cost-effective option. The engineer can tell us how to build a ferry too, but making the decision between the bridge and the ferry, ultimately, is not the engineer’s business.

Even once the decision has been made to build the bridge, several more questions arise: who will pay for the bridge?; how will they pay for it?; where exactly will the bridge be?; who will be allowed to use the bridge? Motorized vehicles only? Bikes? Pedestrians?; etc. These are not scientific questions, and nor are most questions in our everyday lives. They are economic, ethical, and political questions that, much like the scientific question of how to build the bridge, require some application of reason, but they cannot themselves be equated with reason. Reason is something as different as it is important to these goals, processes, and states of affairs.

What is Reason?

Reason is a skill and a tool. It is the byproduct of logic. Logic is a subfield of philosophy that deals with reasoning in its purest forms. So, if someone wants to believe that science and reason are the same thing, then they are clearly admitting that science is merely a byproduct of a subfield of philosophy. I am sure that most scientismists egos would not be willing to live with that. Although some similar claim could still otherwise be the case, that is not what I am attempting to prove here. Let’s focus on reasoning.

We say that an argument is valid when the truth of the claim follows from the truth of its evidence. There is a symbolic way to express this. For example:

If p, then q; p; Therefore q.

What we have here is not a statement, but rather, a statement form called Modus Ponens. It is a formula in which we can plug anything for variables p and q, and whether or not the statement is true, it will be valid according to the rules of logic. Try it for yourself! But remember, ‘validity’ and ‘truth’ are not the same thing.

The example above describes deductive reasoning; it is conceptual. Immanuel Kant called the knowledge we gain from this process a priori – knowledge which is self-justifiable. Mathematics is a classic example of deductive reasoning. It is a highly systematic construction that seems to work independent from our own experience of it, that we can also apply to processes like building a bridge.

There is another type of reasoning called inductive reasoning. It is the process of reasoning based on past events and evidence collected from those events. The type of knowledge that one gains from inductive reasoning, according to Kant, is called a posteriori. This is knowledge that is justified by experience rather than a conceptual system. For example: We reason that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has everyday for all of recorded human history. We also have empirical evidence to explain how the sun rises. However, the prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow is only a prediction, not a certainty, despite all the evidence we have that it will rise. The prediction presupposes that not one of countless possible events (Sun burns out, asteroid knocks Earth out of orbit, Earth stops rotating, etc.) will occur to prevent that from happening.

Illusions of Scientism

The mistake that scientism makes is that it claims that the methods of science are deductive when they are actually inductive. Reductive science (that which seeks to explain larger phenomena by reducing matter down to smaller parts) most commonly makes this mistake. More often than not, those “smallest parts” are laws or theories defined by mathematical formulas. Scientismists believe that the deductions made by mathematical approaches to science produce philosophically true results. They do not. The results are simply valid because they work within a strict, self-justifiable framework – mathematics. But, how applicable are mathematics to the sciences, and how strong is this validity?

“The excellent beginning made by quantum mechanics with the hydrogen atom peters out slowly in the sands of approximation in as much as we move toward more complex situations… This decline in the efficiency of mathematical algorithms accelerates when we go into chemistry. The interactions between two molecules of any degree of complexity evades mathematical description… In biology, if we make exceptions of the theory of population and of formal genetics, the use of mathematics is confined to modelling a few local situations (transmission of nerve impulses, blood flow in the arteries, etc.) of slight theoretical interest and limited practical value… The relatively rapid degeneration in the possible uses of mathematics when one moves from physics to biology is certainly known among specialists, but there is a reluctance to reveal it to the public at large… The feeling of security given by the reductionist approach is in fact illusory.”

-Rene Thom, Mathemetician

Deductive reasoning and its systems, such as mathematics, are human constructs. However, how they came to be should be accurately described. They were not merely created, because that would imply that they came from nothing. Mathematics are very logical and can be applied in important ways. However, the fact that mathematics works in so many ways should not cause us the delusion that they were discovered either, for that would imply that there is some observable, fundamental, empirical truth to them. This is not the case either. Mathematics and the laws they describe are found nowhere in nature. There are no obvious examples of perfect circles or right angles anywhere in the universe. There are also no numbers. We can count objects, yes, but no two objects, from stars to particles of dust, are exactly the same. What does it mean when we say “here are two firs” when the trees, though of the same species, have so many obvious differences?

What a statement about a number asserts, according to Gottlob Frege, is a concept, because any application of it is deductive. So, I prefer to say of such systems that they were developed. They are constructed from logic for a purpose, but without that purpose – without an answer to the question ‘why do we use them?’ – they are nonexistent. Therefore, there is a strong sense in which the application of such systems is limited to our belief in them. Because we see them work in so many ways, it is difficult to not believe in them.

Physics attempts to act as the reason, the governing body of all science, but it cannot account for all of the uncertainty that scientific problems face. Its mathematical foundations are rigid, and so are the laws that they describe. However, occurrences in the universe are not rigid at all. They are random and unpredictable and constantly evolving. Therefore, such “laws” are only guidelines, albeit rather useful ones.

As Thom states, “the public at large” is unaware of the lack of practical applications of mathematics to science, and it is precisely that illusion of efficiency that scientism, which is comprised of both specialists and non-specialists, takes for granted. It is anthropocentric to believe that, because we understand mathematics, a system we developed, we can understand everything. Humans are not at the center of the universe. We’re merely an immeasurably small part of it.

The Solution

In the same way Rene Thom explains mathematical formulas do not directly translate to chemistry and biology, deductive reasoning, more generally, has very limited application in most aspects of our everyday lives. Kids in school ask, “I’ll never use algebra; why am I learning it?” It turns out, they are absolutely right. Learning math beyond basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division is a waste of time for most. What they should be learning instead are the basics of reasoning. Deduction only proves validity, not truth, and induction has even greater limits, as David Hume and many others have pointed out. People, especially young children, are truth-seekers by nature, which is to say they are little philosophers.

There is a solution: informal logic, the study of logical fallacies – the most basic errors in reasoning. Informal logic is widely accessible and universally applicable. If people are to reason well, informal logic is the most fundamental way to start, and start young we should. Children, in fact, have a natural tendency to do this extremely well.

To be continued…

Where Is Meaning?

Britton William Frost1 Comment

Indeed, to deny that Wittgenstein’s later work improves on his early work is to commit two errors: 1) to overlook or submit to the intellectualist nature of Tractatus; 2) to fail to grasp the crucial insight that his later work provides. Tractatus claims that the better one masters the syntax of a language, the broader his experience and understanding of the world. This is a misled intellectualist view because it values the skill of applying language (as a priori) over and above all other skills and, more importantly, the matters themselves to which language is applied (i.e. any set of circumstances in the world that we attempt to describe). I have only seen shallow and insufficient evidence to support this view. After all, it is the things to which language is applied that matter, not the language itself.

Because there are no limits to how one can experience the world, we should never be misled into believing there are strict boundaries that limit our usage of a word. Our statements are an expression of our understanding. Our statements do not dictate understanding, as early-Wittgenstein thought. In fact, by this notion, we should even be allowed to take a word completely out of context, and just as long as we are able to communicate to at least one other person whatever idea is present to us by using that word, even if it is definitively unrelated, then we would not be using that word incorrectly. In fact, whether we realize it or not, we do this very often.

Whether true or untrue, contemporary schools of thought take for granted that meanings are not in the head. However, it seems clear that anyone’s interpretation of meaning is. It would seem that the most we can agree on is that communication occurs when two or more parties agree on meaning, but they could very well be using identical statements to assert two different things.

Perhaps “where is meaning?” is the wrong question to ask. There is nothing out there in the universe that we can observe in any fashion that dictates meaning. There are no dictionary definitions so precise that, from that definition, we are able to connote everything that is included in the word’s realm of possible references. If definitions were this way, i.e. if they served as rules of meaning, then such a dictionary would be so incredibly large, that it could never be printed. Perhaps it would have to be stored online for anyone to access and edit at a moment’s notice, much like Wikipedia. But still, usage among speakers would be dictating the definitions, so what good would these rules be at all? Definitions would begin to overlap more and more until every word would have so many connotations that it would be virtually indistinguishable from several other words. Is this not already the case?

Usage of phrases and words is in a constant state of flux. We collectively, and often unknowingly, adapt to these constant changes so there remains enough continuity for us to effectively communicate what we mean. Since this adaptation process is often subconscious, we need not think about it; we presume meaning by our usage, and we are almost always correct provided we, and those receiving our message, are fluent in that language.

If Tractatus were more accurate than P.I. in describing the fundamental nature of language, then to learn language would require a lot of memorization, much like one “learns” a foreign language in a classroom. This may allow us to learn something about the concepts of a language, but it does not teach us to effectively use the language within societal contexts, so, learning, in this case, would be much more difficult, and for many, impossible.

So, how to we actually learn language? We’ll have to go back to a time that we do not remember, so we must forget everything we now misunderstand about language. I’ll use the most parallel analogy I can think of:

When parents are teaching a child to walk, they do not simply explain to the child how to walk and expect him to be able to do it without practice. Obviously, the child is not yet proficient in grasping such a concept. Nor does a parent grab one of the child’s legs, put it in front of the other, then do the same with the other leg repeatedly, because the child has not yet developed the practical skill of walking, and one cannot learn such a skill in such a forced manner. The child needs a reason to walk, so the parents teach the child to walk by working toward a goal. One parent (let’s say, the father) stands the child up, and the other parent (the mother) kneels down a few feet away, holding her hands out to the child. The father acts as the spotter, and the mother acts as the goal. The child sees his mother, desires to reach her, and he has to walk to get there in the same way that he learned to crawl (or at least his parents will condition him to believe this based on their training methods). The same is true of language. It is the tool we use to communicate because we need to communicate to get what we want or need. We start out, as babies learning language, by blurting out the word ‘bear’ and pointing to our teddy bear in order to achieve the goal of the teddy bear itself. The child says ‘bear’ to express the general idea “I want that teddy bear” or the command “give that teddy bear to me”. He is communicating with the parent in this sense. He is expressing a desire to achieve a goal. He is not merely making a statement (that would be impossible). Language is the road, not the end of the road. There is no language for language’s sake just as there is no walking for walking’s sake. Language is used for a purpose – a goal – in any given situation.

How each person achieves his goal varies greatly. Not all children walk the same. Some are bowlegged, some are pigeon-toed, some drag their feet and trip on their shoelaces, and some cannot walk at all, so they utilize other tools such as wheelchairs. But they each adapt to their handicaps to get what they need – to get from A to B. Likewise, not everyone speaks the same. Some slur their ‘r’s, some pronounce their ‘s’s with a ‘th’ sound, some use poor grammar, and some cannot speak at all, so they learn sign language. Regardless, each adapts to their handicaps and uses language for the same purpose – to communicate.

Language in general is meant to be used practically, not to be merely understood conceptually. Of course, there are logical concepts to understand which will help us be more precise, but the understanding of those concepts is something like our understanding of how to walk: put one foot in front of the other. As long as you practice walking, you will learn the concept of walking to some extent, but it is the act of walking that is fruitful for the individual. Likewise, one learns the concepts of language to the extents that they need to, but only to the extent that they need to. This is why some children (and adults) in school grasp grammar well, and others do not, though they are able to orally communicate to much of the same effect in social and professional circles. Some are more conceptually-minded. Those prefer to master grammar in order to be as precise as possible both in writing and in speech. They will also make better teachers because they can adapt their language usage to a wide range of listeners. Others prefer to stick to practice and master other types of skills, and perhaps they will become better doers. Either way, practice comes prior to understanding in this case (but not necessarily in the case of everything).

And this is the point: It is only in the case that we look to the world that one might be able to explain language. The world is untamed, and so is the way we understand it and attempt to describe it – i.e. so is language itself. We play language games to adapt the meanings of utterances to our world. Otherwise meaning would be of no use to us, and that is certainly not the case.

Logical Reductionism

Britton William FrostLeave a comment

One similarity between Wittgenstein’s two main works, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, is that, in both, he concerned himself with this very question: “How are we to say what we mean?” However, the reasons for this concern were different in each work, so the question itself changed over time (and this is an example of how meaning changes; the same sentence can mean two different things under different circumstances).

Tractatus took for granted two fundamental assumptions about language: that it has a quantifiable logical construction and that it is causally related to our perception of the world. The latter assumption seems undoubtedly true, but the former, not so much, even though the latter seems to be contingent on the former. He says in 1.1 of Tractatus, “The world is the totality of facts, not things.”, and then in 4.001, “The totality of propositions is the language.” In other  words, if Wittgenstein remains consistent, reality is comprised of all states of affairs about which propositions can be made (in case this is not already clear from my previous description). Language is a puzzle that one must figure out if he is to communicate effectively. One may only think and speak according to those factual states of affairs in the world. That is to say, because language is something of a logical system, one may only think and speak logically. This brings me to the minor concept of this essay: logical reductionism.

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.” -Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

Logical reductionism can be broadly defined as “rigid belief in an a priori system, even in contexts which it is inapplicable”. This term is very broad, for it includes any case where a dogmatic ideology guides understanding without exception. Logical reductionism is, in many cases but very generally, similar to the single-cause fallacy. The single-cause fallacy is also called false-dilemma, false cause, correlation-causation, or black-and-white fallacy. It states: because y follows x, then x must have caused y. For example, if a man who is known to have a heart condition dies in his sleep, his family members might conclude that the death was due to a heart attack. The pathologist may or may not be able to confirm this. Regardless, the family have come to an agreement on what the cause of death was, assuming that there was only one cause, when in fact there were probably multiple necessary contributing factors.

The main difference between the single-cause fallacy and logical reductionism is that the former deals with a one’s lack of ability to use a specific type of reasoning, and the latter deals broadly with one’s rigid belief in a system. The latter, as I will explain, is much more problematic.

The type of reasoning that is hindered by the single-cause fallacy is not one that warrants an immediate judgment. Rather, it is a mode of perception that allows one to see multiple possibilities and make connections in an unfamiliar situation. Proponents of Jungian psychology call this mode of perception extroverted intuition (or Ne). The tendency to neglect this perception is called, in some circles of psychology, explanation freeze. Anyone can fall victim to explanation freeze (i.e. get fixated on a singular explanation of a problem), no matter their ability to use Ne, but Jung would suggest that only half of the human population possesses the natural ability to exercise Ne at all, and a only very small percentage can exercise it consciously and effectively. Everyone else is only able to use it to a very small degree or merely act as if they use it. Upon close observation of one’s social environment, this actually seems to be true. Based on the limited formal research that has been done on this by Julia Galef and other contributors at clearthinking.org, it also has great potential to be confirmed. However, I am not making a case for that at this time.

If the ability to use Ne is indeed innate, one cannot have any difficulty in achieving that which he has no potential to achieve (i.e. overcoming single-cause). On the other hand, one’s ability to use extroverted thinking may not be innate, and everyone might have the potential to improve the skill. If this is the case, then everyone would have the potential to exercise Ne with practice. In fact, there are outlets online that can help with this: wi-phi; ClearThinking; YLFI. Either way one should be able to hold the position that it is generally more difficult to overcome logical reductionism than the single-cause fallacy.

A further description of Ne: (People who have a strong tendency for extroverted intuition have been found to naturally exhibit brain activity that is similar to that of someone who is under the influence of a hallucinogen like psilocybin, ayahuasca, or LSD. Despite the public’s general negative attitude toward the use of hallucinogens, they can have some very positive long-term effects. They can broaden one’s scope of the world, allow him to see multiple possibilities in any situation, make him realize the interconnection of humans and nature, etc. This is no delusion, but rather, a unique type of clarity which can, albeit more difficultly, be achieved without the use of such substances. I do not promote the use of hallucinogens mainly because their effects can be achieved through other means (intensive meditation, introspection, etc.). I have only used this example to further explain what it is like to have Ne “brain wiring”. Take it however you prefer.)

Logical Reductionism is more broad than single-cause, but as stated earlier, it is closely related to it. I used the example of the family of the man who died. It should now be clear why their assessment of the death is guided by poor reasoning: They are not medical professionals and do not realize the broad range of issues that normally contribute to an unexpected death. In such a moment of stress, their perception becomes narrow. More generally, they may not have the natural tendency to use Ne to a large extent to begin with. This is fine.

The pathologist, on the other hand, has no excuse (even if he no more possesses the natural ability to use Ne). If he outright agrees that heart attack was the cause of the man’s death, he likely does so for one of two reasons: because he simply wants to satisfy the family so he no longer has to continue the conversation, or because he believes so dogmatically in the practices of pathology that it can provide all of the answers on a strictly biological basis. It is in the latter case that he is being ideological, and therefore committing logical reductionism, whether he is aware of it or not. Either approach to the question is not very professional in my view, especially the latter because it is founded in ignorance. (This is a common problem in medical practice that I may address after further research at some other time.)

Logical reductionism is a widespread epidemic which epitomizes the naivety of human perception. There are no matters in the universe (medical, scientific, philosophical, religious, political, etc.) that can be absolutely confirmed or refuted by the application of an a priori system. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of logical reductionism. It is incredibly arrogant to claim that we humans have the potential to understand the nature of anything via systems that we have created for the sole purpose of making it easier for us to relate to those very states of affairs that we previously accepted as unfathomable. Language is not one of those systems. This is precisely what Tractatus gets wrong.

(In Philosophical Investigations, that assumption was done away with. Wittgenstein realized that language is not a puzzle; it is a tool. The challenge to say what we mean is not to figure out something fundamental about the language, but rather to work with others to communicate what we mean on a more holistic, interpersonal level. We use language; we need not deconstruct it.)

In reductive biology, researchers tend to look for specific genes to explain traits, birth deficiencies, and mutations. Genes are thought to be the most elementary autonomous anatomical units. The line of reasoning is that by reducing the condition down to its fundamental parts (simples), then we might gain a fundamental understanding of the whole being (composite). (This line of reasoning commits the fallacy of composition. Composition seeks to prove that the whole is merely the sum of all of its parts. Division seeks to prove the opposite.) The extent of their findings have been merely correlative. The only thing we absolutely know genes to do are to guide the synthesis of proteins. These proteins make up only a portion of DNA and RNA construction. DNA then provides a home base for storage and transmission of “genetic information”. RNA is then required to carry out functions of that information (e.g. traits and maintaining genetic stability of the organism). So, the gene’s role in developing traits is indirect and not very clear. It is something like: If A and X, then B; if B and Y, then C; if C and Z, then D. A (genes), therefore D (traits). It is becoming increasingly clear that reducing a composite to a simple does not help us to explain the broader functions of the composite, and vise-versa.

I’ll use a less complicated example from biology. Different types of cells carry out different and specific types of functions: Red blood cells distribute oxygen throughout the body, white blood cells fight infection, nerve cells transmit sensory impulses to the brain, skin cells shed and regenerate to protect the inside of the body from the outside world, etc. But, do the sum of all of these basic components equate to a human? The answer is ‘no’ because the range of functions that the organism can perform is much more extensive and diverse than that of the sum of all of its constituent parts. The human being (especially the brain) is so complex and mysterious because it cannot be quantified in this way. Any use of mathematics in biology is simply an estimation, and at best, a guideline. To believe otherwise is to commit logical reductionism.

The same is the case with language. Wittgenstein states in Philosophical Investigations:

47. But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed? – What are the simple constituent parts of a chair? – The pieces of wood from which it is assembled? Or the molecules, or the atoms? ‘Simple’ means: not composite. And here is the point: in what sense ‘composite’? It makes no sense at all to speak absolutely of the ‘simple parts of a chair’.

48. …We use the word ‘composite’ (and therefore the word ‘simple’) in an enormous number of different and differently related ways. To the philosophical question ‘Is the visual image of this (chair) composite, and what are its constituent parts?’ the correct answer is ‘That depends on what you understand to be composite. (And that, of course, is not an answer to, but a rejection of, the question.)”

In this later work, Wittgenstein came to deny the existence of simples and composites in the way we describe reality. It would be because of the logic-contingent construction by which we might misunderstand language that we might disagree with him. Language no longer dictates one’s understanding of the world. Rather, the world controls the fluidity of language because the world controls us, whether we are able to admit it or not. Any attempt for us to control the world will have horrific ramifications (e.g. effects of agriculture on climate change). We adapt our language to our world out of necessity.

To be continued…