Now this has to be explained. — Antony Latham

Why? Can you explain your reasoning? This is one of the things I would like to clear up in this discussion. Is this fine-tuning surprising? Is it unexpected? If so, what are your expectations and what are they based on?

Occam's razor leads me more to the more parsimonious solution - design. — Antony Latham

How do you figure?

The probability of all the needed conditions is on the order of 52! — Rank Amateur

How do you calculate the probability - not of the card deck permutation, of course, but of the universe being life-supporting? Show your work, please.

As an example - in the classic thought experiment: — Rank Amateur

Explain your reasoning in this thought experiment. What if the card order was not the canonical order - would your answer be different? Why?

Despite the mathematical rigor that the argument requires (i.e. the Universe needs a specific set of constants, each of which need to "tweaked" to a specific number), the argument rests on the probabilistic absurdity of using a sample size of one. — Maw

Yes, when considering the probability of fine-tuning we clearly cannot appeal either to observed statistics (we just have one sample), nor to theory (theory gives us fixed values, not distributions). Probability in this context is usually understood as epistemic probability. The modal reasoning goes something like this: for all we know, the constants could have been different, and since we have no reason for favoring any one value over another, we end up with a uniform probability distribution (principle of indifference).

I guess I don't see much difference between FTA and other forms of the teleological argument -- is that an unfair characterization, in your view? — Moliere

It's a type of teleological argument, or argument from design. Among other examples probably the best-known are those having to do with biological design (e.g. Paley's watch analogy). And like with other teleological arguments, it seems to have a lot of intuitive appeal with some people, and yet when the argument is viewed skeptically, it turns out surprisingly hard to even give it a rigorous formulation, and few even try.

In the book Just Six Numbers, Martin Rees offers the argument that six numbers have to be what they are in this universe so that we can live in it. But there's more. If those numbers were other than they are, then the universe itself would probably be short-lived. Stepping into very plausible conjecture, he argues that perhaps there have been lots (and lots (and lots...)...) of Universes that weren't quite right for us that came and went, until one came along that would support us.

Conjectural but reasonable physics, or a super natural being that presides over it all. What seems most reasonable to you? — tim wood

Depending on the level of modeling and level of detail, there may be other "fine-tuned" numbers - some are briefly discussed in the SEP article referenced in the OP, more can be found elsewhere. (There are 20-30 constants in the Standard Model of particle physics, and then there are relativistic constants and cosmological initial conditions.)

But before we go looking for a solution, we need to establish motivation: is there a problem to be solved? Is there something that cries out for an explanation? That is far from obvious. That the universe is suited for life is a truism. That the universe could have been otherwise (at least as a conceivable possibility) is also pretty uncontroversial. The only sticking point is this alleged fine-tuning - sensitive dependence of life-permitting conditions on certain parameters of fundamental physics.

Strictly speaking, they are not parameters - in the theories where these numbers are found they are givens, brute facts that go along with equations and other postulates of those theories. But if we treat them as free parameters, as knobs that we can turn this way and that (and why should we?), then there is a sensitive dependence - although just how sensitive is also not so clear - see above.

In physical cosmology and particle physics (Inflational cosmology, String theories, quantum field theory), where the problem to be solved is theory choice, anthropic reasoning and (no-)fine-tuning considerations appear in the context of typicality and naturalness (see chapters 4.4 and 5 in the SEP article for an overview). These are rather controversial epistemic criteria, but at least here we understand what the stakes are and what the reasoning is. Whereas when the problem of fine-tuning is stated out of such context, it is not even clear why it is a problem in the first place.

Fair enough, but my point still stands, since @StreetlightX insists that the rot of Plato's political and social ideology and the historical context that supposedly shaped his views infects all varieties of modern Platonism-so-called.

If perchance you could lay out their 'Platonic take on humanity', perhaps we might go from there. — StreetlightX

Why should I? And who are you quoting? Just a bit earlier you were telling us how all Platonists, even modern Platonists-about-this-or-that, were all thoroughly compromised at their metaphysical foundation by Plato's "shitstain" (now that is an actual quotation). Well, I am not seeing how that comes about. Perhaps you could make an argument that Frege's mathematical Platonism is really crypto-Fascism?

When you take, say, Bigelow and Pargetter's arguments for structural universals and demonstrate convincingly how they have a maleficent apology of the nationalistic slave-owning patriarchy of Classical Greece built into them, then perhaps we will have something to talk about. Until then it's just so much sophistry.

No argument from me.

I don't really believe that these ideas are separable from 'Plato's views' — StreetlightX

I do, and apparently so do other philosophers who took up the idea. I am not buying this primordial taint line.

*PD: "The social conflicts of the fourth century, the greater dependence on slavery, after a decline at the end of the Peloponnesian War, made [Plato's] attempt to justify and rationalize the social relationships of the polis comprehensible. Difference had invaded and disrupted the city, and was acknowledged and almost despaired of by Euripides. Plato's response to the presence of difference was to look even more deeply inward and to justify the differences within the city in terms of an attribute of the citizen, logos. The Greek male human being thus reconstructed his notion of the world; the dominance of the citizen, the philosopher, was justified not in terms of autarkeia, but rather in terms of inevitable and natural superiority. The contradictory position of women, in which they were both objects of exchange necessary for the reproduction of the city, and outsiders, bestial and irrational, was also rationalized in a new way. Women were associated with the body, which was inferior to the mind; thus they, like the body, served the soul, the head, the philosopher, the male". — StreetlightX

Or perhaps Plato's attitude towards women was simply due to his preference for boys. You know, I have little regard for such speculative sociopsychology.

One may, but then one has no adequate plan for creating an individual. Where does the other information (the things you wish to abstract away) come from? Remember, the role of the ideal is to explain the intelligibility of the individuals we observe. — Dfpolis

The role of the ideal is to identify an essence of an individual thing, separating it from other, inessential qualities, but what that essence is in any particular case is arguable. One may claim that the essence of humankind is not bound up with race or gender, just as when we identify some object as a chair, say, we abstract away a lot of the things that would be required to create the individual chair, like its precise shape and size and material and manufacturer. Or something like this. You should rather take this up with a competent Platonist.

Again, I have no interest in defending Plato's own views (I am, frankly, not all that interested in what his views were, although I do have some idea along the lines of the gloss that you give here). Progenitors and namesakes of ideas don't own the ideas. Newton, who by all accounts was a very disagreeable person and had some wacky ideas, doesn't own Newtonian mechanics. And Plato doesn't own Platonism, which is what was originally at issue here. And although, again, I have little sympathy with the philosophy, I also dislike this uncharitable smear. You literally Godwined the discussion!

If there is an ideal, an exemplar human being, then that exemplar is male or female, of some particular race, introverted or extroverted, attracted to men or women, masculine or feminine in demeanor, etc. — Dfpolis

Not necessarily. One can abstract all these details, leaving only essentials. Whatever those essential may be, they may reasonably exclude all the things that you list here. I am not going to play Plato's advocate here - there are plenty of good ones out there (present company excluded, unfortunately); I am only calling for charity and intellectual honesty.

Positing a Platonic idea or exemplar implies, for example, that some individuals are more human (better reflect the exemplar) than others. This can only foster prejudice and injustice. — Dfpolis

Well now, I am not a Platonist by any stretch, but this is unfair. The most obvious Platonic take on humanity would be that some individuals are closer to the human ideal (which, I suppose, would be Christ in Christian neo-Platonic philosophy). That's not so "fascist," is it?

And I would say it gives you more of a problem admitting the principle of least action does reduce to a holistic position which takes finality seriously as part of the fundamental workings of the Cosmos. — apokrisis

I don't really see a problem here. A time-reversible, deterministic system (which is the context in which the principle of least action is operative) can equivalently be evolved forward from the initial state or backwards from the final state using instantaneous laws of motion. We are more used to thinking in terms of unfolding forward in time, but there is no time asymmetry in such systems. So if you think that this feature is remarkable, you don't even need to appeal to the "holistic" principle of least action (PLA)* - it is already evident in the "atomistic" differential formulation.

The PLA is not really about the "finality" (the final state determines the path in the differential formulation as well). And it has least to do with Aristotelian final cause, which is bound up with anthropomorphic, psychological categories of goals and intentions. The PLA is made possible by the particular nomological structure that describes the system. Such structures - constraints - are characterized by redundancies where knowing some limited information about the system, such as the boundary conditions and the laws of motion or the action, allows one to determine everything else about that system.**

If there is tension here, it is the tension between the perspective of individual causal powers and dispositions on the one hand, and the nomological/covering-law perspective on the other. The former, "atomistic" perspective has its attractions, but it can obscure the global structure. Indeed, all this talk about a particle or a ray knowing, feeling, wanting, this recourse to anthropomorphic teleology comes from assuming the local dispositional perspective and losing sight of the global nomological one. Ironically, I think that the dispositional view is more closely associated with the classical, pre-scientific philosophy, whereas the nomological view mainly emerges during the Enlightenment and the following scientific revolution, which is when the PLA was first formulated and developed.

* Or, more accurately, stationary or extremal action.

** Another, mathematically related example is the Gauss theorem, which relates the distribution of a vector field on a closed surface to the distribution inside the volume bounded by the surface; I remember being mildly surprised by this result as an undergraduate - it's as if the surface "knows" about what is inside. Of course, as one gets a better feel for mathematics - and the mathematical structure of physical laws - such results become less surprising.

Again, I thought you were arguing against four causes modelling. And now you are championing it under the permissive banner of pluralism. — apokrisis

Not really. I mean, if you have to dig up that antique, you may as well derive this lesson from it. It's not such a good fit though: as I understand, Aristotelian causes are supposed to be complementary, rather than alternative, they all have their roles to play, with the final cause taking the center stage.

Interesting? Or entirely paradoxical for reductionist meaphysics? — apokrisis

Scientific and other analytic explanations tend to be reductionist, in the sense that they fit phenomena or concepts into some theoretical framework. In that they reduce, demonstrate that one thing is nothing other than another, presumably simpler or more tractable or more familiar or otherwise more theoretically attractive thing. In that sense Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of classical mechanics are equally reductionist, and the same goes for alternate formulations of quantum mechanics.

If there is a lesson to derive from the four causes it is this pluralism of explanations - and that would be a genuine counter to reductionism. Rather than arguing for one framework as the only metaphysically correct one, the emphasis can be placed on the fact that there are these alternate frameworks that are sometimes exactly equivalent (and the interesting question to consider is how that comes about), but in any event offer different instrumental and conceptual possibilities.

This. It's irritating how much time in philosophy is spent looking backwards, trying to give an "Aristotelian" or "Kantian" or whatever gloss to every idea, even if it means doing ridiculous mental contortions and completely emptying the idea of any substance. And it looks about as convincing as the efforts of the Bible Code cranks. It's as if they fear that without establishing such a noble pedigree they won't be taken seriously. And yet if you look at the really interesting and relevant discussions of causation, for example, during the last half-century or so, you will hardly find a mention of the famous four causes.

Desire? Selects? Maybe my memory is off, but I think Feynman described the "quantum event" as taking all possible paths, all but the shortest cancelling each other out. If you've got space for "desire" or something "selecting" please make clear how that can be: where it is, how it is, how it works — tim wood

This is typical stone soup. Nothing whatever is gained by appeals to "desire" or "foreknowledge." Yes, variational approaches in physics have this interesting property that the path taken appears to be explained by the final state, rather than the other way around. But superficial anthropomorphism only gives the appearance of an explanation, all the more so because it is equally (and just as ineffectually) applicable to any situation. There are deeper and more interesting ways to make sense of such alternate explanatory frameworks.

What do you think? — Marchesk

I think you should more critically evaluate your sources and not lump together science-fiction and actual science.

In natural language, as opposed to formal logic, when we say "it's either this or that" we usually imply that all presented alternatives are live possibilities. Interpreted this way, the statement mentioning a unicorn is simply false, since (we assume) a unicorn is never a live possibility. But if you interpret "or" as a formal disjunction, then there is nothing wrong with the statement. It's just not how people usually talk (if they are being serious*). So I think your unease comes from conflating these two senses of "or."

* Imagine a scene: you and a friend come across a horsebox and wonder who is inside: a horse, a cow, a donkey... You decide to have a friendly wager: you bet on a cow and your friend bets on a horse. At this point you both clearly hear neighing from inside the box. Your friend smirks and says: "Well, it's either a horse or a unicorn!"

My instinct is that this is an elementary philosphical problem, but I've not so far succeeded in finding any treatment of this question. — Rupert

It's either an elementary misunderstanding of disjunction or a lack of the sense of humor.

My point is not that he'll care, it's that I don't get why you feel the need to protect him. As far as I remember, you supported Kasich who despised Trump and certainly isn't defending him now. This is not necessarily a progressive vs conservative issue. Many traditional conservatives are as critical of him as anyone else. So, why have his back? — Baden

To right-wingers supporting the power takes priority over conscientious reflection - that is what makes them right-wingers. That is why 90% Republicans support Trump. I would like to think that all those people don't really approve what he says and does, because that would be just too sad. They stand behind him because he is the leader.

So in this experiment, a decision to raise a screen effects whether a particle goes through a double slit as a particle or a wave IN THE PAST. — Devans99

Did you actually read the article?

Most physicists think the answer is a resounding "no." No, we cannot kick back with retrocausality. Or, at the very least, the experiment, whether conducted across a lab or across galaxies, doesn't support the idea of time travel. — gizmodo.com

The article is written at a very basic layman level and with lots of journalistic flourish, but there are links to more in-depth explanations at the bottom.

Thank you for your patient explanations. It will take me more work to completely follow your Hilbert system derivation, but I trust that it is sound.

However... I am compelled to resist some more. So we can formally derive the variable swapping rule in at least some formal systems. This is all well and good, but I don't think that this is relevant. Because before we can interpret the formulas in the OP in any system, we have to do some preliminary interpretation, which includes parsing the symbols x and y as arbitrary (fungible) variable names. So that variable swapping rule? We have already helped ourselves to it before we even settled on a formal system for interpreting the expressions. To then prove what we already assumed using the axioms and rules of a particular system is unnecessary and question-begging.

What do you think?

By meta-language I mean the implicit convention, under which, among other things, the strings x and y are interpreted as the names of variables. The meta-language is what enables us to parse the formulas in the OP without knowing anything about the particular logical system in use; without the implicit assumption of the meta-language convention andrewk's own reply to the OP would not make sense.

Why are they not identical? It is a commonly accepted rule of the meta-language, i.e. the formal or semi-formal language that is used to write logical expressions, regardless of the particular logical system being used, that variable substitution can be used sensu veritate. The LHS of the above formula can be transformed into the RHS using only the rules of the meta-language, with no reference to any logical axioms or theorems.

Syntactically equivalent, as opposed to logically equivalent - thank you, that is what I was getting at. The premise and the conclusion in the OP problem are syntactically equivalent, unless I am missing something.

∀x.∀y.p(x,y) ≡ ∀y.∀x.p(y,x)

The fact that notation has no bearing on meaning doesn't seem like something you would need to prove, no? Postulate maybe, but not as an axiom but as a meta-rule.

How is the conclusion different from the premise (other then lexically)? What am I missing?

A meaningless debate might go something like this

"of shcrik in the water too"

"gavagai"

I have no idea what those terms mean. It is purely nonsense.

So given that standard I'd likely say there isn't such a thing, insofar that the words have meaning. — Moliere

It is true that accusations of "meaninglessness" (as well as some others, such as "incoherency") are often thrown around rather loosely. But, returning to the topic of the thread, you need to remember that Carnap was a positivist, and so he had stringent and, perhaps to our ear, rather idiosyncratic criteria of meaningfulness.

But let's not nitpick vocabulary. I think the idea in this particular instance is that some debates just lack substance and worth. Some - in fact, probably many - questions that have been mainstays of philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, are pseudo-questions.

My own approach when it comes to questions of ontology, debates over realism vs. nominalism, etc. is to ask, What is at stake? Why is this important? What difference in our worldview would one position make vs. the other? If it seems to me that nothing substantial is at stake, except perhaps minor differences in language, then I judge such questions to be - let's say "worthless," if you don't like "meaningless."

You did so on the grounds that anti-metaphysical statements are meaningless. You even stated as much in the first sentence of the previous post. — Marchesk

Well, no, not unless you believe that metaphysical questions are necessarily as vague and pointless as the one I was criticizing. My most charitable take on metaphysics is that it is a search for and a critical analysis of framing - and that is not meaningless.

what motivates the questioning — SophistiCat

The difference between the individual things we perceive, and our universal talk about them. — Marchesk

That makes no sense, no matter how many times you say this. Come on, Marchesk, you are not even trying.

(2) what it is that you actually want explained, and (3) what kind of an explanation you require. — SophistiCat

(2) Whether there is something in the world which matches or supports our universal talk.

(3) An argument for something in the world or in our concepts that explain the universal talk. — Marchesk

That is still much too vague. There are many ways in which such a question could be cached out: we could analyze our language, starting with universal talk and perhaps going on to causal talk (which is one of the directions this conversation has taken). We could analyze our psychology/cognition - and here there is also a variety of approaches. We could talk about "the world" (i.e. the intended objects of our universal talk) - and here the possibilities are too many to number. We could also talk about the interrelationship between all these spheres, which broadens the scope to a truly unmanageable size.

(4) There have been at least 4 possible answers given to this question: nominalism, conceptualism, moderate realism (Aristotle), and realism (Platonism). — Marchesk

There are so, so many more ways to address the general topic "universals" - at least until you frame the question better than you have done so far. But in any case, to paraphrase Crispin Wright, identifying your position with one of the above labels accomplishes about as much as clearing one's throat.


I was wondering, by the way, what it is that you were trying for with your programming analogy. A class in object-oriented programming (OOP) is not a good analogy for the general idea of universals. In OOP two objects with the same functional properties are not necessarily instances of the same class. Indeed, being an instance of a particular class is itself a property, which can be directly queried in languages that support reflection. That would not make sense with universals: being a member of a class is not a property that is distinct from the sum of properties that defines that class. Being a member of the class of blue things is exactly the same as being blue (which is the point that @Snakes Alive already made).

I guess you were looking for some causal, generative account of differences and similarities between things. But I am afraid that such an overly general approach is not going to be a productive direction for inquiry; you need to bring more focus to it. (And turning back to OOP for a moment, a slightly better but still imperfect analogy for universals would be an interface or a completely abstract class, which defines "phenomenal" properties of objects. But interfaces are not generative: conceptually, they are used to abstract properties from existing things or describe hypothetical properties that may or may not exist.)

Well, I explained why your question makes no sense, but alas, all you can think of is poisoning the well. Never mind, I think others here make a much better job of making this discussion substantive and interesting than you do.

That we can directly experience/feel/perceive causation is one of the positions that has been staked and defended by philosophers such as Ducasse, Armstrong, Anscombe among others - but it is by no means uncontroversial. However, I think that disagreements here are more about the conceptualization of causality in general than about empirical facts of cognition.

You might be interested in this article though: The Psychology of Causal Perception and Reasoning (PDF) by David Danks from Oxford Handbook of Causation.

The question and proposed answers can be boiled down to this observation:

We perceive a world of individuals, yet our language is full of universal categories of properties and relations. So how do we reconcile the two? — Marchesk

See, right away you show me right. What you came up with is a pseudo-question: although it has the grammatical form of a question, it is actually quite senseless. It is not clear what motivates the questioning, what it is that you actually want explained, and what kind of an explanation you require. And of course there is no answer either, despite your insistence otherwise - and how could there be when there is no real question?

In the subsequent discussion @Srap Tasmaner has to do all the work for you so as to come up with some more sensible questions to ask. But are the questions of psychology, cognition and causality that @Janus then picks up upon what you had in mind for this discussion?

How our language comes to have universal concepts when the world is full of individuals. What is it about the individual things that leads us to form universal properties and relations such that we can group them into categories?

One possible answer is that universal properties and relations exist in the world in some manner. — Marchesk

Such fragmentary thoughts dispersed throughout your posts hint at other kinds of questions, but they are too undeveloped to make much sense of.

Why do you assume that neuroscience has to account for things like the "subconscious mind?" The subconscious is not something that is truly and undeniably known to us from experience - it is a posit of some rather old-fashioned psychological theories. Other, more modern and more scientifically-oriented theories of mind may not even have a use for such a concept.

While I largely agree that the question of universals is more or less rubbish, it seems to me that its no less a jumping of the gun to say that the question is psychological. — StreetlightX

The point isn't that similarity is a psychological issue – I don't think that makes any sense. But the question of how people come to recognize similarities surely is. — Snakes Alive

The point, I think, is that any good, meaningful question already presupposes, if not a particular answer, then a particular kind of answer. Simply asking "Why this?" makes as much sense as the babbling of a baby. Snakes Alive is right in that a psychological question would be a suitable question to ask, but StreetlightX is right in that this is a question, not the one and only question - at least we should not assume that it is without some reflection. And that is what philosophy is good for: looking for good questions to ask and dissolving bad, pseudo-question. (Of course, most often good questions occur to us as a matter of course, as we learn new facts and develop our conceptual tools, e.g. via scientific theories.)

And that is the root of @Marchesk's problem: after so many pages of discussion, not only can he not explain the answer and how it actually answers the question, he cannot even explain what the question is and why it needs to be answered.

You are not offering a counter-argument, you are denying the premise - two premises in fact: that time is infinite and that infinite time provides sufficient probabilistic resources for Boltzmann brains to dominate the set of observers.

But this is rather beside the point anyway, because the Boltzmann brain scenario gets most of its probabilistic resources not from infinite time but from infinite space.

To be clear, I have no problem with abstractions or relations etc... they are usefull to be sure, as long as we don't forget they are abstractions. — ChatteringMonkey

Well, anything we contemplate becomes an abstraction in our mind. This goes for "things" as well as not-"things".

What is the difference you ask? The idea of timetravel for instance is nonsensical if time is not real. — ChatteringMonkey

Why not? We travel forward in time, obviously, and that makes perfect sense. We also can orient and move in space in any directions, and space is just as "abstract" as time, isn't it? The question of why we cannot (easily) travel backwards in time both makes sense to ask and not trivial to answer.

If time is just the measurement of change, and not some kind of 'thing' that literally exists, or that 'flows' or has an arrow or what have you.... would it still make sense in Einsteins special relativity? — ChatteringMonkey

I am not sure I understand what tension you see here. So there are "things" that "literally exist" - what are those things? Tangible things that you see, touch, smell? And then anything that does not "literally exist" - it does not make sense at all? So relations, for example, do not make sense? But how do we make sense of the world without relations?

I'm looking to do away with what might be a mistaken metaphysical notion of time, as a thing... — ChatteringMonkey

What would "time as a thing" or conversely "time as not a thing" imply metaphysically or otherwise? What difference would drawing such a distinction make to anything?

We all understand that time is not a thing in the same way that cat or a mat are things, for example. But... what of it?

Are you saying that manipulation and deception are morally neutral? It does not seem possible that you think truth and falsehood are morally equivalent, for then indeed there is nothing to be said worth anything. But if not, then deception must be justified by an utilitarian argument of greater good. — unenlightened

I think at that point we'd have to ask -- what makes it ethically acceptable? — Moliere

I want to challenge this presumption that an action can only be given an ethical valuation by sorting it into some preexisting categories - or more generally, reducing it to something else. And if I answer Moliere's question, i.e. point to something else as a reason for my moral valuation, wouldn't the next question be "What justifies the valuation of that thing?" And why choose this reduction and not some other? Now I admit that reductive ethical analysis of particular situations is a very practical thing to do, and in many cases the analysis can be made straightforward by making use of heuristic shortcuts (e.g. "do no harm"), but in contentious cases we should not just blindly assume things.

And we should be especially wary of simplistic formalism, such as two legs deception = bad.

I am skeptical of all formalism when it comes to ethics, i.e. I am skeptical about a priori ethical theories and principles, be they based on utility or virtue or something else. As descriptions of our ethical reasoning they can work more-or-less well, but not as justifications in themselves.

The way we often approach ethical problems is by finding resemblance with iconic cases, about which we have strong moral opinions. But this reduction base of iconic cases is itself not given to us at birth, once and for all. It grows and evolves, and a case that was once in question can in time join the store of iconic cases, while another iconic case may be judged to be insufficiently indicative or altogether deprecated. Thus I am not being flippant when I say that the argument that says that the Asch experiment (say) is unethical because it looks suspiciously like gaslighting can be turned around. If I take the Asch experiment as a paradigmatic example of an ethical experiment that nonetheless has some parallels with the nightmarish scenario described in the play "Gaslight," then my takeaway is that not every case that can be loosely characterized as gaslighting is ethically unacceptable.

I'll meet @unenlightened half-way in conceding that deception and manipulation is prima facie ethically suspect, so we should take particular care in such cases. But that's as far as I'll go. How can we take care? Well, if the case is not obvious, we can try weighing the good against the bad (whether utilitarian or otherwise). For example, many competitive games involve deception and manipulation and other adversarial tactics, and if that was all there was to such games, then playing them would be hard to justify to oneself. But many people see some good in playing games (with certain reservations, obviously), and that must outweigh whatever qualms they might have about tactics. (For a more controversial example listen to this This American Life story about one man's experience playing Diplomacy.)

I don't know if I buy that science is a justification. Science doesn't lead to progress. It leads to knowledge. And knowledge is value-neutral -- it can be used for good or ill. — Moliere

In my book seeking knowledge is a good in and of itself, irregardless of whether it leads to progress and whether progress itself is good. It is not such good that can override any other consideration, but it is good. I generally approve of science, although not being an expert, I cannot really gauge the quality of psychological theories and experiments qua science.

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT, SS troops didn't guard Auschwitz for the same reasons American troops killed peasants at Mai Lai, and American college students didn't participate in Milgram's experiments for the same reasons that Germans calmly watched Jews being shipped off "to the east". — Bitter Crank

Well, that is what motivates studies (or "demonstrations") like Zimbardo's and Milgrams on the one hand, and serves as the main target for criticism on the other: the idea that there are some elements, some psychological mechanisms that these seemingly very different actions have in common, and that those elements are key to understanding them (and perhaps for affecting positive changes).

It beggars belief — unenlightened

That kind of describes my reaction to your posts here, U. I don't know what to think of your exaggerated slippery-slope appeals. I am afraid there is not a sufficient common ground for us to have a discussion.

I take your point about honesty, or what you call authenticity in relationships. At the end of the day it all boils down not to formal, factual criteria, like whether some deception or some manipulation is taking place, but to an ethical valuation of the entire action, which is itself not reducible to any matters of fact or to any labels. The question thus posed becomes simple to formulate but not always simple to answer.

Is a researcher conducting a psychological experiment on other people acting ethically? That was the actual question behind this side discussion. And after all is said the answer does not become any more obvious than it was at the beginning of the discussion. If I feel that a psychological experiment is ethically acceptable, then pointing out that this experiment involves manipulation and deception won't change my mind. Without even appealing to counter-examples, like I did before, I could just turn the argument around and say that, since clearly this experiment is ethically acceptable, then some manipulation and deception can be ethically acceptable.

I was surprised to find that by the end of the paragraph I was writing about Snyder I was once again addressing the issue supposedly raised by Zimbardo, the responsibility of individuals in situations. Snyder is not a psychologist, but he works as an anti-Zimbardo. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I think I understand what you mean. It's hard to say just what Zimbardo aimed to prove - his 'experiment' was a mess and the legacy of his activism appears to be mixed. There is this view that he and the likes of him attempted to shift the responsibility from individuals to situations, circumstances. I don't know. The question of responsibility is a difficult one, and the answer won't come from facts alone. Like with all ethical questions, ought does not follow from is.

A different question about Milgram and Zimbardo: By the time they began their research, we had been through 2 world wars, a brutal regional war in Korea, and were in the middle of a second brutal regional war in Vietnam. Much research has been published on the behavior of the SS, the Gestapo, Jews, Aryans, et al in Germany during the years of National Socialism. Was there something that history wasn't telling Milgram, Simbardo, et al about manipulation, brutality, dehumanization, submission, studied ignorance, and so forth that wasn't available in the histories? — Bitter Crank

As a side-note, while reading the SPE article in particular, as well as some of the others, I was struck by the choice of historical examples that journalists used to illustrate the relevance of their stories: the Nazis, the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion. (The choice was not entirely subjective: the latter two events also marked a spike in the public interest in the SPE study with its promise of rationalization.) OK, so Nazi crimes are a common reference. But why the My Lai massacre and not any of the atrocities perpetrated by other sides of the conflict? Why Abu Ghraib abuses and not the torture and abuse in Iraqi-ran prisons that went on since well before the US invasion, and continues uninterrupted to this day (not to mention numerous other places around the world)?

There is, of course, the famous American insularity, obliviousness to anything that does not directly concern them. But I suspect that there is also a kind of racism at work: it is one thing when some swarthy Orientals do something horrible - that's the sort of thing they would do, wouldn't they? It is only when our American boys are doing it that the incidents cry out for an explanation. And the effect of this attitude is that such incidents appear to be very rare and atypical, and can after all be dismissed as freak occurrences, while the people involved can be dismissed as a few bad apples that just need to be sorted out. That is probably why experiments like Milgram's are found to be so disconcerting, as if the facts themselves, rather than their interpretations, were something new and unexpected.

I want to circle back on a point made in the OP article:

The appeal of the Stanford prison experiment seems to go deeper than its scientific validity, perhaps because it tells us a story about ourselves that we desperately want to believe: that we, as individuals, cannot really be held accountable for the sometimes reprehensible things we do. As troubling as it might seem to accept Zimbardo’s fallen vision of human nature, it is also profoundly liberating. It means we’re off the hook. Our actions are determined by circumstance.

“You have a vertigo when you look into it,” Le Texier explained. “It’s like, ‘Oh my god, I could be a Nazi myself. I thought I was a good guy, and now I discover that I could be this monster.’ And in the meantime, it’s quite reassuring, because if I become a monster, it’s not because deep inside me I am the devil, it’s because of the situation. I think that’s why the experiment was so famous in Germany and Eastern Europe. You don’t feel guilty. ‘Oh, okay, it was the situation. We are all good guys. No problem. It’s just the situation made us do it.’ So it’s shocking, but at the same time it’s reassuring. I think these two messages of the experiment made it famous.” — Ben Blum

I rather see a danger in a different kind of self-satisfied complacency: Such terrible things happen rarely, and with people that are not like us. Surely, I am not capable of this, people I know are not capable of this. It can't happen here!

Open your eyes! It has been happening everywhere, all the time! That's not a reason to put all the blame on the situation, of course. But neither should we delude ourselves in thinking that we and the people around us are immune, that we have progressed, learned our lessons, became finer, kinder creatures. The fuck we did.

The philosophers of science, Isabelle Stengers and Bruno Latour, have long been writing about the insufficiency of the Milgram 'experiments' - which themselves made me suspicious of the Prison experiment - for quite some time. — StreetlightX

I don't really understand your or Latour's point here. Insufficiency for what? Milgram himself had certain psychological models in mind that he wanted to test with his experiments; he also believed that the experiments provided clues to the psychology of willing collaborators in Nazi atrocities. I am aware that, in light of those models and those examples, his experiments have been criticized for various infidelities, and alternative interpretations have been proposed. His data has been reanalyzed and criticized (but there have also been successful replications). And of course, there are grave ethical problems with those experiments. But I don't understand what this criticism is about:

Only in the name of science is Stanley Milgram’s experiment possible ... In any other situation, the students would have punched Milgram in the face… — Latour

For me the larger lesson is that ordinary people are quite capable of doing horrible things in circumstances that are not even that extraordinary - the banality of evil, as Arendt famously put it. Of course, as @Bitter Crank points out, we already know this, or should know, if we pay attention to what has been going on around us. A scientific experiment is intended not to prove the point, but to tease out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, and that is what Milgram attempted to do. Whether or not he was successful, that is a matter for careful analysis and replication, not breathy rhetoric. It is easy for Latour to sit there and speculate about what the students would have done "in any other situation." Milgram meanwhile conducted a number of variations of the experiment to see just what they would do in which situations. And indeed, in some setups he saw "obedience rate" plunge all the way to zero (the widely circulated figure of 66% was obtained in only one of the experiments).

Firstly, a small dispute: sure we all lie and manipulate, we are all sinners, but not all our lives. — unenlightened

I don't think you have to resort to hermitude. (is that a word?) to avoid playing games. It's just a matter of having an authentic relationship with someone. — Moliere

Deceptive and manipulative behavior isn't always a sin, and when it is, it isn't necessarily a big deal - that's my point. We do it all the time, even unconsciously, and often for good reasons: when we try to look our best, when we try to be persuasive, when we are being tactful, when we try to make someone feel good (or bad), when we avoid giving "too much information." And then there are different degrees and modes of candidness that are appropriate to different relationships: with your spouse, with your child, with a friend, with a colleague, with a shop clerk, with a police officer, etc. Someone who is absolutely candid with everyone at all times would be rightly considered a sociopath. (I know someone who says that he despises movies and theater, because he values truth and honesty. I think he is a douche.)

There are tolerable and even desirable levels of "dishonesty," and I don't see why all of experimental psychology should be put into a zero-tolerance category. What was so distasteful or harmful about, say, Asch conformity experiments, in which an unsuspecting subject was placed among a group of actors who attempted to influence his or her judgment of the relative lengths of lines drawn on a piece of paper? (Here is another example of a psychology experiment that is as well-known as it is widely misrepresented - but in this case not by the author but by popular media and even textbooks!)


Will reply later, sorry.