If a Philosopher Falls in the Forest …

I thought that I might pursue a doctorate here at the University of Texas because the school will pay for up to 5 credit hours per semester for an employee. The plan died aborning. I sent a letter to the philosophy department and they never answered. While I was waiting, I checked out some books from the library to read over Christmas. Among them were two from the department chair, David Sosa, and an anthology on epistemology by a group of Objectivists. I cannot see myself engaged in such meaningless discussions based on unstated, arbitrary assertions. I actually think well of philosophy and invest time in it and if this is the best that they can do, then I confess to hubris here: It is not that I know more than they do but that I think more clearly.

The Mantis Shrimp sees things that you do not.
It is the same universe for all of us.

When I say “red” and you say “red” are we talking about the same thing? People who are color blind adapt to the world around them. It is only by the application of a special visual test—given to aircraft pilots, medical doctors, and others—that we can establish that a person is color blind. These philosophers seem to be disengaged from the experiential world. Their limiting cases are people with eyeglasses. And they gloss over the problem of what it means for tree to appear “fuzzy” as if bark were made of acrylic sheets. 

Microscopes at right reveal details not visible to
the naked eye. It is the same universe.

Is Perception Infallible?

Consider Salmieri’s instructive example of the myopic man looking at a tree without his glasses. While he sees the same tree he would see if he was wearing them, he sees it blurrily, and this blurriness is part of the way or form by which he sees the tree. As Salmieri notes in his section, “Epistemology and the Nature of Awareness,” “An especially naïve realist would take the blurriness to be a feature of the very tree in front of which the man is standing.” Such a naïve realist is, of course, mistaken, for he mistakes a way he perceives an object for a feature of the perceived object. -- Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology, Allan Gotthelf, Editor; James G. Lennox, Associate Editor; Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies, University of Pittsburgh Press; 2013; page 217, “In Defense of the Theory of Appearing: Comments on Ghate and Salmieri,” by Pierre Le Morvan.

 Onkar Ghate is resident expert in Objectivism at the Ayn Rand Institute. He received his doctorate in philosophy in 1998 from the University of Calgary. Gregory Salmieri completed his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. Pierre Yves Le Morvan earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Syracuse University in 2000.

Orion Nebula (Messier 42) and the Moon and the 
consumer goods that bring them to your iPhone camera.

Spectroscopy kits for amateur astronomers and other
citizen-scientists.

Data available to anyone who wants to explore the 
Universe otherwise unrevealed to the naked eye
(Image at right from "The Revival of Amateur Spectroscopy"
by Maurice V. Gavin. Sky & Telescope, July 2006.

It is not only my Objectivist comrades who are lost in the woods. This passage starts off sounding very technical, promising close analysis. In the end, though, it comes down to a sophomoric failure. It is well known that so-called “natural language” allows nonsense. And this is an example of it.

If philosophers were pursuing new knowledge, they would be formalizing the integration of perception across many transducers from your own senses to the most sophisticated instruments. How and why do all of these outputs describe the same objects? 

“A simple account teaches us that argument validity is a matter of truth-preservation: roughly, an argument is valid just in case the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. A bit more precisely, a set of sentences G of a language L entails a sentence s of L just in case, (for any model M), whenever all elements of G evaluate to the truth (in L, and M) so does s. Then we can say that an argument is valid, just in case (for all models), the premises entail the conclusion(s). On this account, then, entailment is characterized as a relation between sets of sentences and a sentence (a conclusion); and arguments are individualized as sets of premises and conclusion(s).

“But this simple account becomes instantly more complex once we are dealing with inference patterns in natural languages. One immediate problem is ambiguity. For instance, consider the following:

(1)   Ambiguity

a.     If John is at the bank, he will deposit a check

b.     John is at the bank.

c.     He will deposit a check.

“Suppose that ‘the bank’ in the big premise, (1-a) refers to a financial institution and in the small one, (1-b), to the bank of a local river.”

Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language (2 vols), edited by Ernie Lepore and David Sosa; Oxford University Press, 2022. Vol 2. 7; “The Anatomy of Arguments in Natural Language Discourse,” by Una Stojnic, page 184.

Ole Miss journalism interns working for ESPN use
parabolic reflectors to capture voices on the field.
If a tree falls in the forest, they will hear it.

The failure of so-called “natural language” to explain the truly supernatural is an old lesson.  To hang an argument on a pun--bank versus bank; and no mention of turning an aircraft-- seems frivolous. 

(ii) Yet sometimes men are led by a natural tendency to think and speak of God as if He were a magnified creature — more especially a magnified man — and this is known as anthropomorphism. Thus God is said to see or hear, as if He had physical organs, or to be angry or sorry, as if subject to human passions: and this perfectly legitimate and more or less unavoidable use of metaphor is often quite unfairly alleged to prove that the strictly Infinite is unthinkable and unknowable, and that it is really a finite anthropomorphic God that men worship. But whatever truth there may be in this charge as applied to Polytheistic religions, or even to the Theistic beliefs of rude and uncultured minds, it is untrue and unjust when directed against philosophical Theism. The same reasons that justify and recommend the use of metaphorical language in other connections justify and recommended it here, but no Theist of average intelligence ever thinks of understanding literally the metaphors he applies, or hears applied by others, to God, any more than he means to speak literally when he calls a brave man a lion, or a cunning one a fox. 

“The Nature and Attributes of God”

New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06612a.htm

It is a fact that if all of the boulders, rocks, and stones between Mars and Jupiter were gathered into a single body, it would be the size of our Moon, hardly a planet, and yet we still call them “asteroids” as if they were star-like. The first quasar was identified as a pulsar. And Pluto is no longer a planet. And that is just one science. 

I have several books from the library on genetics. As much as we know, we still describe basic knowledge with footnotes and exceptions. Just for one fun fact: sometimes for a gene to be replicated the transcription RNA must “read” the molecule backwards. And yet here we all are, even if we do not know everything about how and why. 

Science proceeds by accepting ambiguity. Philosophers want to argue it away—in English. If you want to fall down the rabbit hole of analytic philosophy, read what many philosophers think that Immanuel Kant meant by “Das Ding an sich.” The problem is the word “an.” It sounds like “on” but it means “next to” or “nearby. “ Hans ist an den Wandtafel. (John is at the blackboard.) And it could be “in” “of” “with” and so on, depending on the context and the acceptance of idiomatic expressions. 

  

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On Second Thought

 

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Impossible Usually is Not

Oil at $100 a barrel is “impossible” the headlines said. But I remember Tom Peters in the early 1990s warning us that we would never again see oil at $35 a barrel. And today’s dollars are even smaller than they were in 1992. In terms of 1992 purchasing power, we are living with oil at about $15 a barrel right now.

 “If true, that could also eliminate the threat of $3 a gallon gas. In an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey, an oil industry newsletter, Ali al-Naimi responded "we may not" when asked if oil markets would ever lift prices to $100 a barrel again.”  (The Middle East Economic Survey website requires a login. The news was widely reported on CNN, Reuters, CNBC, etc.)

“Impossible” is an absolute claim. Physical absolutes are primaries. As Ayn Rand pointed out in Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged whether you have your cake or eat it – or whether your neighbor eats it – is an absolute. Either-or, the excluded middle of logic, is an absolute. Whether the price of crude oil can never again be below $35 or above $100 is not an absolute. 

Calculators at Walmart cost
a fifth or a tenth of their prices
in 1976 when the dollar was
three times as large as ours.

It is pretty easy and common to create a list of statements of impossible outcomes that are now integral to our lives. No steamship could carry enough coal to cross the Atlantic. Heavier-than-air transport was a pipe dream. The world only needs five computers.

Most events and circumstances that are open to human action are objective. “Objective” means rational-empirical: at the same time both logically consistent and evidentiary to the senses. 

A better explanation, a better theory, is better logic. Cartesian geometry is an example. It does not contradict Euclidean geometry, but subsumes it under a wider set of truths. Epigenetics improved upon Darwinian evolution. Statistical mechanics completely replaced phlogiston as an explanation of “heat.” 

New discoveries  – the atom, the chromosome, distant planets, accelerating galaxies – lead to new inventions: stainless steel, Kevlar, rayon. Those are the new facts that require and validate new theories.

I forget where I read it, but it has been pointed out that physicists have no Journal of Phlogiston, but philosophers still have peer-reviewed periodicals for Aristotleanism, Platonism, and other archaic collections. Another expression is, "The news is always the same. It just happens to different people." Researching 19th century America from newspapers in order to write about numismatics, I found many stories that could be reprinted (almost) verbatim today. 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

Harriman’s Logical Leap 

Greg Browne’s Necessary Factual Truths 

Browne on Kuhn 

Numismatics: the Standard of Proof in Economics

Absolutes and Objectives

The law of identity is an absolute. Your right to trial by jury is not an absolute.  That humans have a nature is absolute. Existence is identity. To be is to be something.  However, not every claim about "human nature" is absolute (or even true).  

Absolutes are not contextual.  Some people claim that taking a human life is absolutely wrong.  Immanel Kant's deontology ethics were absolute, to be carried out whether any one benefited or not - in his words, to be carried out even if they caused harm.  

Contextual truths are objective: based in physical reality, we know them through reason. But they are not immutable, eternal, or intrinsic. Is gold the best money?  It depends on the context. 

 

Not everyone wants to be a collector.
Not every collector is interested in coins.
Not every numismatist pursues US federal.
Only some care about Mint errors.
Those errors have special value --
to some people.

"Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter’s stomach, is an absolute." -- Galt's Speech.

The law of identity is absolute. This lamp in my office is not. I could paint it blue. I could disassemble it, and some point, it would cease to be a lamp qua lamp. I could use the bulb screw sockets to mount relays and use it as a switch for a model railroad. In fact, I could mount photocells on it, leaving the bulbs in, but rendering it unusable as a lamp qua lamp, while it is a switch. That would be its identity: a switching mechanism made from a lamp. That the lamp has some nature is absolute. Existence is identity. Although the nature of the lamp is mutable, I can do nothing to change the law of identity.  

Some people claim that it is absolutely wrong to take a human life. Libertarians typically offer self-protection and defense of your rights as contexts to allow killing.  The moral absolutists disagree. For them, the wrongfulness of homicide is like the law of identity. They are wrong, of course, and it is because context matters. Taking a life may be wrong, or may not. It depends on the context. Knowing the context requires an objective understanding: perceived evidence explained by reason.    

“Engineers will tell you that the sound barrier is an absolute, like the firmness of the Earth.” – Slick Goodlin in The Right Stuff.
“If you ask me, the damn thing doesn’t even exist.” – Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.

Ayn Rand said that the choice to think is the fundamental choice. But do you not need to be thinking in order to choose to think? You do not. The choice to think is avoided by evasion. Rather than focus – rather than think – the mind goes blank, or switches to some other non-threatening stream of consciousness. The choice to think must be made consciously.  So, too, is the decision to discover and apply context, a choice. That choice is one that absolutists seek to avoid. Once something is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong, there it must remain forever, never to be re-examined.

And, indeed, absolutes do exist. Existence itself is absolute. Your need to choose your values is absolute. If you ignore that, it is no less destructive than ignoring the laws of physics while driving your car. But not every truth is absolute. Absolutes are the deepest and broadest of truths. Mid-range truths are often contextual: they are objectively true, i.e, empirically perceived and rationally explained. The perception might change. The nature of the event might change. Understanding – the theoretical model of explanation – could be improved.

Humans could not hold abstractions in their minds until we had language. By “language,” I mean something conceptually different from animal calls.  By language I mean the expression of a mental state with no external stimulus, i.e., with an internal motivation only.  In other words, the event that triggered the communication was not the presence of a predator or the calling to a mate. It was not the feeling of hunger or thirst. It began within the mind of the creator.

The making of a stone hand axe was taught by demonstration for perhaps one million years across three species of hominids. But the communication by demonstration was necessarily limited. Our modern languages are no more than 10,000 years old. Language itself is no more than 100,000 years old. You began to learn language before you were born when you heard (felt) your mother's voice.  And yet, creators and inventors were (and remain) difficult to understand. We do not share their mental states, the way our ancestors shared the demonstration of how to make a hand axe.

Moral absolutes do exist. They are very basic and very broad. The fact that we must choose our actions is the basis of morality. The fact of choice is morality. Whatever is objectively in your best interest is not of necessity in my best interest. Those truths are objective, not absolute.

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"The gray cotton, which was neither quite fog nor clouds, hung in sloppy wads between sky and mountains, making the sky look like an old mattress spilling its stuffings down the sides of the peaks.  A crusted snow covered the ground, belonging neither to winter nor to spring. An icy moisture hung in the air, and she felt an icy pinprick once in a while, which was neither raindrop nor snowflake. The weather seemed unwilling to take a stand and hung noncommittably to some sort of road's middle; Board of Directors weather, she thought." -- Atlas Shrugged, page 486.

“All thinking is a process of identification and integration. Man perceives a blob of color; by integrating the evidence of his sight and his touch, he learns to identify it as a solid object; he learns to identify the object as a table; he learns that the table is made of wood; he learns that the wood consists of cells, that the cells consist of molecules, that the molecules consist of atoms. All through this process, the work of his mind consists of answers to a single question: What is it? His means to establish the truth of his answers is logic, and logic rests on the axiom that existence exists. Logic is the art of non-contradictory identification. ...  Truth is the recognition of reality; reason, man’s only means of knowledge, is his only standard of truth."  -- John Galt's Speech.

More on Necessary Factual Truths

Greg Browne writes:

The big question is:
How can we know the truth of universal generalizations (All S is P) about kinds (such as "All triangles have angles that had add up to 180 degrees" and "All water is H20") with certainty?
To know them with certainty, or even with probability, requires that they be necessary.

Some, such as Hume, deny that any factual truths are necessary, but they are wrong.
Some who admit that they factual truths can be necessary will still say that we need innate ideas or other a priori aides to know them, that experience is not enough, but they are wrong, too.
So how can we know necessary factual truths empirically (through experience)?

I saw that it is my discovering and analyzing patterns.   For example, we encounter several things with triangular surfaces and realize that there is a pattern here, the pattern of being a triangle, or we encounter several cases of water and realize that there is a pattern here, the patter of being water.

Now of course the process is different in these 2 cases.   In the case of triangles, we can do it in our armchair (more geometrico).   In the case of water, it is much more complex and difficult--and so many don't even think it is possible.   Indeed, while we can deduce from the basic concept of a triangle many truths, such as having angles add up to 180 degrees, in the case of water we cannot easily, if it all, deduce the superficial qualities from any one of those superficial qualities: rather, the quality that we can deduce the superficial qualities from--namely, the atomic structure--required a lot of effort and time to discover.   Nonetheless, once we have this fundamental quality, we can deduce the other qualities from them.

So in both cases we deduce from concepts, though in the case of water the concepts require a lot more work to discover.

So forming the concept, by discovering the pattern, is key.

And it Aristotle would agree, and call the process by which we discover it "induction".   It sounds like Harriman is going to say the same thing.

Note: I do believe that this process can take place by analyzing just one example.  For example, if you know that a key does not fit in a lock, then you know that all keys of that shape and size will not fit in that lock--indeed, that they will not fit in any lock of that size and shape.   As to the example you gave of Galileo (I am going only by what you said, since I am that familiar with methodology), you said that he tried many tests of hypothesis--but you also added that he tried them in many variations--many different substances and/or many different sizes of ball, etc.

In general, I give the "Continental Rationalists" such as Descartes more credit than do most Randians (or most Aristotelians).

Note: though I think that this demonstrative method works in a much wider range of fields than most do, I admit that sometimes we can only have probabilistic knowledge.   For example, we may say that a correlation is so strong that there is probably a necessary causal connection even though we do not yet know what the causal connection is (e.g. aspirin use and pain relief for a century, until recent decades.)

Also, I got the Harriman book today, but I have just started reading it, and these thoughts are from before I got it.

Greg

Gregory M Browne's Necessary Factual Truths

This blog is named for Dr. Gregory M. Browne's work bridging metaphysics and epistemology.  In the Introduction to Necessary Factual Truths, Browne explains that his work was inspired by Leonard Peikoff's essay, "The Analytic-Synthetic Dichotomy."  This book goes further to uniting inductive and deductive truths.  Inductive truths are factual (empirical; evidentiary), while deductive truths are necessary (logical, rational).  As an Objectivist, Browne expects that there is no dichotomy between the factual and the necessary, the empirical and the rational. 

According to Browne, the historical difficulty derives from the fact that not everything essential to identification and definition is immediately perceptible.  He delineates "shallow" truths from "deep" truths.  Mathematics and logic are "shallow" because everything you need to know is immediately provided.  On the other hand, the internal structures of atoms and stars, the mechanisms of life, and the panorama of human history are "deep" because they are less tractable.  They do have natures. Existence is identity: to be is to be something.  However, we just have not always known -- and may not yet know -- much about these more complicated entities.  When such things are first discovered, we know that they are, but we do not know what they are.  Eventually, we learn more.  According to Dr. Browne, historically, Aristotle followed a unified inductive-deductive methodology.  Over the centuries, philosophers narrowed their certainties, eventually abandoning the empirical, evidentiary, experimental, realistic aspects of knowledge for those that could be argued like geometry.

"...I say that some kinds are such that a description that is logically equivalent to the name - which would be a definition by necessary and sufficient conditions - is not always available. ... This is because some some kinds have attributes which are unknown when they are first discovered, as we shall see, and so it takes work to discover the attributes, and thus come up with a definition by necessary and sufficient attributes, and at any given time we may not have discovered them all." (168-169) 

Browne opens his treatise by discussing why philosophers denied necessary factual truths and created dichotomies.  He then goes on to define categories, classes and kinds, necessity and causality, explaining extension (breadth and narrowness of definition) and intension (depth and shallowness of meaning).  The book argues for three broad claims. First, "some admittedly factual truths - including truths in chemistry and biology - are indeed necessary..."  He achieves this by his explanation of Deep Kinds, entities whose nature is complex and not entirely known.  He ties this to other side of the equation by investigating Narrow Classes and the necessary truths about individuals.  His second claim is that certain factual truths - such as Newton's Three Laws of Motion - are necessary.  Finally, Browne demonstrates why the necessary truths are more than conventions, but factual: they are true because of how the world is.


Gregory M. Browne completed a dual major in political philosophy and political science at Michigan State University's James Madison College in 1979.  Continuing his studies at the University of Michigan in history and philosophy, he returned to MSU, completing a master's degree in political science in 1984 and another in philosophy in 1988 before earning a doctorate in philosophy in 1994.  He taught at Yorktown University in Denver and at community colleges in Michigan before coming to Eastern Michigan University.  In the fall semester 2007, waiting for a class in police operations, I was walking the halls and heard him lecturing about Ayn Rand. His essay on reference and neccesity (in reply to Roderick Long) appeared in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol 8, No 1.

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