(...) To remove that option, I recast the problem with the envelopes containing IOUs rather than cash, for an amount that is a real number of cents, with an arbitrary but large number of decimal places shown. The amount is only rounded to the nearest cent (or dollar) when the IOU is cashed in. — andrewk

That's clever.

Yes. You learn something about the distribution when you open an envelope (namely, that it had an envelope with that seen amount). But not enough to calculate anything useful. It's like getting a bicycle with one wheel. You might wonder whether you could get somewhere with it, but you probably can't. — Andrew M

I disagree. Suppose you were to engage in one million iterations of that game and find that the seen envelope contents converge on a specific and roughly uniform distribution of amounts all belonging in the discrete range ($1,$2,$4,$8,$16), with deviations from 1/5 frequencies that aren't very statistically significant. (I am assuming that the game only allows for amounts in whole dollars, for simplicity). Wouldn't that information be useful? I would argue that the useful knowledge that you thus gain is being accrued progressively, one little bit at a time, and could be represented by the successive updating from an allegedly very tentative long tailed initial prior distribution that represents your initial expectation that the dealer likely doesn't have access to an amount of money in excess of one million dollars, say, with the peak of the distribution somewhere around $50, say. This initial prior could be very wrong, but through (Bayesian) updating it after each iteration of the game, will lead to a prior that converges towards the 'real' distribution. Hence, each envelope that you look at provides some useful information since it is more likely than not to lead you, at each step, to updating your initial prior in the direction of a more reliable one.

I did wonder -- maybe a week ago? it's somewhere in the thread -- if there isn't an inherent bias in the problem toward switching because of the space being bounded to the left, where the potential losses are also getting smaller and smaller, but unbounded to the right, where the potential gains keep getting bigger and bigger. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, you can have a uniform discrete distribution that is bounded between 0 and M such that the possible values are M, M/2, M/4, ... In that limit case also, if the player takes M as the cutoff for not-switching (that is, she only switches when she sees a value lower than M) her expectation is 1.25X whenever she switches and her expectation is X=M when she is dealt M (and therefore doesn't switch). Her overall expectation if she were rather to always switch would only be X. The limit case where M tends towards infinity also yields an always switching strategy (with M=infinity being the cutoff) with an expectation that is both X (=infinity) and 1.25X (=infinity).

The argument is sound, so I probably won't spend any more time trying to figure out how to simulate knowing nothing about the sample space and its PDF. — Srap Tasmaner

One way to represent "knowing nothing" might be to take the limit of an initial distribution that is uniform between 0 and M, where M tends towards infinity. In that case, the cutoff value that you can rely on to maximise your gain also tends towards infinity. In practice, that means always switching; and the expected added value from switching tends towards 0.25X, where X is the value of the envelope that you were initially dealt. This still appears to give rise to the same paradox whereby switching increases your expectation by 1.25 even though switching doesn't change anything to the probabilistic distribution of the value of the envelope that you end up holding. But the paradox only is apparent since your expectation from the non-switching strategy tends towards infinity and 1.25 times infinity (or aleph-zero) still is infinity. It is thus both true that your expectation from switching remains the same and is increased by a 1.25 factor. In this limiting case, though, it is infinitely unlikely that you will be dealt an envelope containing an amount smaller than M, however large M might be. This also explains why, in this limiting case, you should always switch.

But it is still false that you have an expected gain of 1/4 the value of your envelope. You really don't. All these justifications for assigning 50% to more possibilities than two envelopes can hold are mistaken. You picked from one pair of envelopes. This is the only pair that matters. You either have the bigger or the smaller. Trading the bigger is a loss, trading the smaller is a gain, and it's the same amount each way. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree that in the context of any real world instantiation of this problem, what you say is true (because there is no real world instantiation of this problem, with finite stocks of money, that satisfies the condition of equiprobability tacitly assumed in the original formulation). The challenge that @Michael would have to answer is this: Why is it, on his view, that it isn't rationally mandatory for him to switch his choice even before he has looked into his envelope? And if it is rationally mandatory for him to switch without even looking -- because whatever the content X of his envelope might be, the expected gain from switching is 0.25X -- then why isn't it also rationally mandatory for him to switch yet again, if given the opportunity, without even looking?

Sorry, I'm a bit confused by your response. Did you read me as saying "this isn't the same as"? — Michael

Indeed! I misread you precisely in this way. We agree then.

... Isn't this the same as: ... — Michael

Why are they not the same? In the case where the unseen envelope M is the smaller one, its content is indeed S = a/2.

If you right-click on a TeX formula and select 'Show Math As...' then 'TeX commands', then you can copy and paste the code for that in between ... — andrewk

Thanks so much. I'll do this from now on.

So far so good. But we cannot do this:

$\small p=\cfrac12\to E(N\mid M=a)=\cfrac{5a}{4}$ — Srap Tasmaner

(How should I proceed in order to quote your formulas correctly?)

Why couldn't you do that? If the initial set up calls for randomly assigning values for the two envelopes in the finite range ((1,2),(2,4),(4,8)) for instance, then, in that case, assuming the player knows this to be the initial set up (and hence uses it as his prior) then the posterior probability conditionally on observing any value of M that isn't either 1 or 8 (that is, conditionally on values 2 or 4 being observed) p will indeed be 1/2.

I was arguing that it can't be 1/2 regardless of the value being observed in the first envelope unless the prior being assumed is an infinite and uniform (and hence non-normalisable) distribution.

Random selection, which means equal probability, mitigates observational bias by treating each n in a population the same. — Jeremiah

The equiprobability that I am talking about is the posterior equiprobability between the two possible contents of the second envelope: either X/2 or 2*X. This posterior equiprobability only is guaranteed by an unbounded prior distribution. If one rather assumes a prior distribution that assigns the same probability to a finite population of possible envelope contents, then such a prior isn't uniform since it assigns a zero probability (or zero probability density) to all the conceivable envelope contents that fall outside of this finite discrete (or continuous albeit bounded) range. (One might also consider the case of unbounded albeit convergent, and hence normalisable, probability density functions. And those aren't uniform either).

1. If the player does not know the amount in the chosen envelope then the expected gain from switching is zero. — Andrew M

You might not find that everyone agrees on this first claim since, under conditions of equiprobability, the paradox arises whereby (1) acquiring knowledge of the content X of the first envelope yields and expected value of 1.25*X for switching and (2) merely acquiring knowledge of the content of the first envelope ought not to change anything to the already determined expectation of switching. This is what makes the assumption of equiprobability so problematical (since (2) can be inferred from it).

On edit: I looked at earlier posts of yours in this thread, such as this one, and I see that we are on the same page.

By this do you just mean that if we know that the value of X is to be chosen from a distribution of 1 - 100 then if we open our envelope to find 150 then we know not to switch? — Michael

That's one particular case of a prior probability distribution (bounded, in this case) such that the posterior probability distribution (after one envelope was opened) doesn't satisfy the (posterior) equiprobability condition on the basis of which you had derived the positive expected value of the switching strategy. But I would conjecture that any non-uniform or bounded (prior) probability distribution whatsoever would likewise yield the violation of this equiprobability condition.

It absolutely makes sense to ask if it is correct, and that should be the first question you ask yourself whenever you model something. — Jeremiah

You may call one interpretation the correct one in the sense that it provides a rational guide to behavior given a sufficient set of initial assumptions. But it this case, as is the case with most mathematical or logical paradoxes, the initial set of assumptions is incomplete, inconsistent, or some assumptions (and/or goals) are ambiguously stated.

Indeed, and that's where utility curves come in. If a parent has a child who will die unless she can get medicine costing M, and the parent can only access amount F, the parent should switch if the observed amount is less than M-F and not switch otherwise. — andrewk

Agreed. Alternatively, some player's goal might merely be to maximise the expected value of her monetary reward. In that case, her choice to stick with the initial choice, or to switch, will depend on the updated probabilities of the two possible contents of the second envelope conditional on both the observed content of the first envelope and on some reasonable guess regarding the prior probability distribution of the possible contents of the first envelope (as assessed prior to opening it). My main argument rests on the conjecture (possibly easily proven, if correct) that the only way to characterize the problem such that the (posterior) equiprobability of the two possibilities (e.g. ($10, $20) and ($10, $5)) is guaranteed regardless of the value being observed in the first envelope ($10 only in this case) is to assume something like a (prior) uniform probability distribution for an infinite set of possible envelope contents such as (... , $0.5, $1, $2, ...).

If my £10 envelope is Envelope X then switching to Envelope 2X gains me £10 and if my £10 envelope is Envelope 2X then switching to Envelope X loses me £5. — Michael

(This was Michael's response to a post by Baden on p.3 of this thread)

I just wanted to note that, as Michael may have realized by now, the higher expected value of the choice of switching, as compared with the choice of not switching, only is larger than zero if the act of opening the first envelope is assumed not to yield any additional (probabilistic) knowledge regarding the content of the second envelope. But if we assume any knowledge of the prior joint probability distribution of the contents of the two envelopes whatsoever, then, in that case, applying Bayes' Theorem in order to calculate the posterior probability distribution of the content of the second envelope yields an expected value of zero for the act of switching (as compared with not-switching).

On edit: The assumption that no additional knowledge regarding the content of the second envelope would be gained by opening the first only would valid in the case where the two distributions (prior probabilities) were independent, which they aren't.

I'm having trouble imagining what the source of this knowledge might be. — Srap Tasmaner

Since it's incomplete knowledge, or probabilistic knowledge, that is at issue, all that is needed is the lack of total ignorance. Total ignorance might (per impossibile) be represented by a constant probability density for all finite values, and hence a zero probability for all finite value intervals. The prior probability that the content of the first envelope (which represents your knowledge before opening it) is smaller than ten billion times the whole UK GDP would be zero, for instance. Any other (reasonable) expectation that you might have in a real world instantiation of this game would yield some probabilistic knowledge and then, therefore, lend itself to a Bayesian analysis whereby the paradox doesn't arise.

I just came upon this thread and didn't read though all of it. I did read the first few and the last few pages. It seems to me that @andrewk and @JeffJo have a correct understanding of the problem, broadly consistent with mine.

The paradox seems to me to stem a vacillation between assuming that the player possesses (and can thereafter make use of) some knowledge of the bounded probability distribution of the possible contents of the two envelopes, which can be represented by a joint prior probability distribution, and the alternative assumption (inconsistent with the first) that after opening up one envelope the posterior probability distribution of the content of the unopened envelope necessarily remains equal to 0.5 for the two remaining possible values of its content. This can only occur if the player disregards his prior knowledge (or happens by cheer luck upon a value such that the posterior probabilities for the two remaining possible values or the content of the unopened envelope are 0.5).

The value of relational QM, I think, is that it gives us a language for talking about the familiar world that we observe from our individual point-of-view rather than an idealized view-from-nowhere. — Andrew M

Let me just note that Rovelli and Bitbol both endorse relational approaches that share some features with Everett's interpretation. But they don't reify the multiverse anymore than they do its branches.

The value of relational QM, I think, is that it gives us a language for talking about the familiar world that we observe from our individual point-of-view rather than an idealized view-from-nowhere. Which is to say, we are each participants in a localized part of a much larger quantum universe that evolves unitarily. — Andrew M

Thanks for the reference to Wallace on Everett's interpretation. I just looked up his book The Emergent Multiverse: Quantum Theory According to the Everett Interpretation. The second part of the book, entitled Probability in a Branching Universe is of much interest to me. There is a short discussion on pp. 135-137 on the (pseudo-)problem of free will in the context of Everett's interpretation that I'm heartened to see appears consistent with my prior take on it in this thread. There is some discussion of the preferred basis problem that I will also look into. I'll postpone the task of making more explicit the grounds for my dissatisfaction with the metaphysical underpinnings of the multiverse approaches to quantum theory. I still have much ongoing readings to finish.

... Does that make freewill now a quasi-classical phenomenon? Well no. As I argued earlier, freewill is a much higher level socially constructed deal. It is about the construction of a "thinking self" that negotiates between a set of established cultural norms around behaviour, and some set of needs and feelings that represent "our selves" as a biological and psychological individual within that wider framework. — apokrisis

Yes, I quite agree; and so do I with most of the rest of your excellent post, with only minor reservations...

Which is also why a quantum interpretation that focuses on the observer rather than the observables, the complex epistemic relation rather than the simple ontic facts or events, would be the way forward.

Indeed!

Quantum Mechanics Unscrambled.
Just read it. Overly complicated - one suspects that at some points he is just showing off that he's technically proficient with QM formalism and complex analysis - and it is almost entirely devoid of any metaphysics, so I wouldn't bother wasting your time, unless you are interested in the technical idea that QM theory can be reshaped as a new kind of probability theory. At a couple of points he touches on the idea that what these "novel" approaches are proposing is just some kind of instrumentalism/operationalism, but he does nothing to actually argue that they should not be taken in precisely that kind of way. — jkg20

(We are veering a bit off-topic...)

I've now read about two thirds of it and let me demur. It seems to be an excellent paper. Rather than it being devoid of metaphysics I would rather say that it targets with great accuracy the metaphysical prejudices that sustain some of the most popular interpretations of QM. From what I see, he also is rather careful to distinguish his own pragmatist account from the cruder forms of positivism that it now has become fashionable to ascribe to Bohr and to Heisenberg. It is not entirely unfair to charge Bohr himself with operationalism but Delhôtel (just like Bitbol before him) also is careful to disclaim the idea of reducing quantum phenomena to classical 'observables'. He rather deflates the metaphysical implication of the quantum formalism through displaying how the generality and empirical adequacy of this formalism derives (and, indeed, can be mathematically derived) from principles that apply to classes of experimental contexts that obey some very general pragmatic requirements (such as the necessity to account for phenomena that are partially constituted and/or produced by the very circumstances of their observation) and simple norms of logical consistency.

I am getting to the point where Delhôtel seemingly is going to distinguish his approach from Bitbol's own approach (developed in Quantum Mechanics as Generalised Theory of Probabilities). This is quite interesting. I'll comment later.

I'm over my head here. But I've seen MWI described as superdeterministic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism
The future of all measurements is already known it's just that you happen to be in the one where the train of thought has completed. — JupiterJess

My argument, which was relying on the partial acceptance of the compatibilist notion of free will, addresses the sort of challenge posed by superdeterminism. What it is that evolves superdeterministically, on such a conception of the 'multiverse', never is, as you note, the trajectory of a conscious observer but rather the state vector which represents the 'state' of the whole multiverse. The effect from the manifold 'spitting' of observers over time ought not to be anymore troublesome to a compatibilist conception of free will than is the fact that, within any determinate history of a single observer, there are unlikely events that occasionally occur as the outcome of the uncontrolled amplification of quantum fluctuations. This is not sufficient to remove the agent's control where it matters, except in very restricted and artificial situations, since not all features of the emergent classical domain are subject to such uncontrollable fluctuations.

Presumably the worlds where your train of thought gets completed are the ones that are relatively normal with the illusion of the higher level regularities (breathable atmosphere ect). In that sense notions of identity and control are eliminable or instrumental.
I understand some say that it is not true and the state of things are that there are more (normal) worlds which is why when you think: "I raise my arm" the arm does go up rather than say your leg because there are more of the former than the latter. But I'm not sure why that is (more worlds of a certain kind than others).

To be honest, I am not sure either in what way, exactly, many-worlders account for the empirical verification of the Born rule in the individual 'worlds' (or individual splitting world-lines) of the agents/obervers (and it is a problem that used to trouble me greatly when I was myself a fan of David Deutsch and of many-world interpretation) but that is a problem that is quite distinct from the problem of superdeterminism (as it allegedly relates to the free will debate).

The constraint based physics being posted by Apokrisis here makes more intuitive sense to me but what seems intuitive might not be true

I am quite sympathetic also with the main drift of Apokrisis's constraint-based approach. But I think is it quite congenial to the pragmatist (or relational) interpretation of QM that I also favor over the alternative metaphysically 'realist' interpretations. It is indeed thanks to thermodynamical constraints that the structured and controllable 'classical world' emerges at all from the chaos of the homogeneous gas of the early expanding universe.

↪apokrisis
This would be a good starting point - https://www.nature.com/news/physics-quantum-quest-1.13711 — jkg20

@apokrisis By the way, there is a paper, which I haven't yet read, by Jean-Michel Delhôtel, discussing both Hardy's and Bitbol's approaches to the intepretation quantum mechanics: Quantum Mechanics Unscrambled.

Under GR gravity is not a force at all, it is the manifestation of the structure of spacetime, and is thus not something that can be transmitted from one body to another via particles like gravitons. — jkg20

Under GR the gravitational effects still are attributed to a field and to disturbances of this field by matter. This field just happens to be the structure of space-time in this case. The fundamental equations of GR are Einstein's field equations. They relate the metric tensor (characterizing the geometrical structure of space-time) to the source of the field (characterized by the stress-energy tensor, which registers the distribution of energy and momentum throughout space-time). So, the idea of a quantum theory of gravity is to quantize the field of gravity (that is, the perturbations in the structure of space-time) just as all the other fields are being quatized in quantum field theory. This is easier said than done, of course.

You can thus think of the graviton as a quantum of excitation of the metric of space-time roughly in the same way as you can think of the photon as a quantum of excitation of the electromagnetic field. Of course, your intuition is correct that the graviton can't be correctly conceived as a point particle that is traveling through space-time and somehow interacting with it. But this naive picture wouldn't be correct as applied the the photon's relation to the electromagnetic field either!

Under MWI, there will be infinitely many worlds in which all the bands are composed of the least likely events. So the bands will be exactly where they shouldn't be for an infinity of observers. — apokrisis

The MWI is a metaphysical gloss on Everett's relative-state interpretation. Everett's own interpretation is somewhat anti-metaphysical inasmuch as its main philosophical import is negative. It consists in denying the metaphysical reality (local realism) with respect the alleged collapse of the wave function. It is still somewhat 'realistic' inasmuch as it achieves this denial though reifying the state vector associated with the observer and then accounts for the singularity of the measurement result though relativising (one-to-one) the projected states of the observed system to the corresponding projected states of the observer that it is interacting with. This yields the problem of the determination of the privileged basis for the projections of the combined 'oberver+system' super-system. Decoherence theories seek to solve this privileged basis problem by means of an appeal to the interactions with the environment but run into other problems while attempting to factor out the quantum mechanical descriptions of the composite 'system + observer + environment' in a principled way. (This problem is intractable and ill-conceived, it seems to me, mainly owing to its reliance on the possibility of an un-situated God-eye-view on the whole universe (or its state vector) as a theoretically 'pure' standpoint from which to effect the factoring out of this universe onto the three components: oberved-system, observer and environment.)

The problem that you are raising for the MWI also arises within the framework of decoherence theories, but it seems to be mostly technical and relatively minor. If we don't reify the many-worlds as metaphysically real entities then we could account for the probability densities of potential quantum measurement (relative to 'observers') by means of coarse-grained descriptions of them. The main trouble with such interpretations, on my view, isn't so much the difficulty in accounting for the empirical verification of the probabilities derived from the Born rule so much as the ad hoc character of the definition of 'observers' (or or the 'worlds' of the MWI) seemingly devised for the sole purpose of rescuing metaphysical realism from the challenges posed to is by the profoundly relational character of the observables associated with quantum mechanical micro-physical 'states'. The realist interpretations seek to make QM palatable to the philosophically prejudiced theorist, with her 'classical' intuitions, but, in the process, obscure its most radically pragmatist implications.

But I think the many worlds stuff renews it though. Since that is completely (super?) deterministic and people have no will over which worlds they find themselves in. — JupiterJess

That is true, but somewhat misleading in the context of the free will debate, even granting, for the sake of the argument, the dubious metaphysical picture that underlies the 'many-worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics. While an agent can't determine, prior to a quantum measurement, which 'world' it is that she would find herself into -- in which a single determinate measurement result is actualized -- from the set of all all the potential results (or 'worlds'') that had a finite probability of occurrence (or that she could find herself into) -- she can still control those probabilities by means of the prior set up. If she sets up Young's double-slit experiment, for instance, she can ensure that a photon (almost) never will strike the vicinity of a region of zero-amplitude on the receiving screen even though she will not control which one of the several bands with large amplitude the photon will strike.

The more germaine question, then, is whether the agent can control the probabilities of the event that are occurring causally upstream of her own practical deliberative process. Libertarian philosophers are likely to demand that she ought to be able to do so. But it seems to me that compatibilist philosophers are right to deny there to be any need for an agent to be able to fully control such processes in order that her actions can be deemed free, and her own, in most of their relevant respects.

The indeterminacy of QM offers nothing in explaining the contradictory nature of free will. Free will asserts both something occurring outside the causal chain as well as the agent's control, and therefore responsibility, over that event, which is to suggest a God-like property that defies explanation. — Hanover

I think this is a problem that afflict some libertarian (so-called) 'contra-causal' conceptions of free will. According to such conceptions, while most natural events are governed by universal laws, acts of the will interfere with the working of those laws such that, in the case where an agent did something, if the history of the universe were to be rolled-back to its initial state before the person acted, then, in those exact same 'circumstances', the possibility that she could have done otherwise remains open; and the counterfactual actualization of this possibility also is being construed as the manifestation of an act of the agent's will. (This is one possible construal of the principle of alternative possibilities, of PAP).

The main trouble with this conception relates to what Robert Kane has called 'the problem of intelligibility'. If in the exact same 'circumstances' where an agent might equally give expression to the state of her will though doing A or doing B, where A and B are two incompatible actions that satisfy incompatible rationales, then how do we account for such acts of the will that are thereby insensitive to reasons that may favor A over B (or vice versa)? We would have to imagine that the 'state the will' of the agent -- which presumably includes some degree of awareness of, or sensitivity to, the reasons that the agent has for acting -- resides outside of the 'circumstances' of the agent, where those 'circumstances' are construed by the contra-causal libertarian as to includes the agent's whole history down to the exact neurophysiological state of her brain.

On my view, compatibilists are right to object to such a thin (and likely incoherent) conception of the agent and of her will such that they are not only free from the constraints that natural laws put on material processes but such that they can also act against them. Compatibilists rather (and more plausibly) seek to account for the features of the will in such a manner that, while it isn't so much as partially free from natural constraints, many of those 'constraints' aren't best construed as constrains on the agent's freedom but rather as rational or motivational constraints that the agent herself exerts on her own actions. She doesn't exercise them from outside of her 'circumstances', as the contra-causal libertarian would have it, but rather while still being subjected to the 'internal' circumstances that are partially constitutive of who she is as an embodied rational agent. Such 'internal circumstances' include some features of her history that have led to her acquiring practical rational deliberative abilities and some contingent set of motivations.

So, when QM is being construed as providing some leeway into the broadly deterministic laws of nature, such that if the 'state of the universe' (or the 'state' of an embodied agent and of her 'circumstances') were to be rolled-back to some fixed earlier state, then, in that case, the agent might have acted differently, no satisfactory account is thereby provided of the freedom of the agent. And that's because of the aforementioned 'problem of intelligibility'.

On the other hand, another feature of QM could have some relevance -- analogical rather than explanatory -- to the problem of free-will and determinism. And this feature has very little to do with the fundamental indeterminacy of the potential outcomes of measurement processes effected on quantum mechanical 'systems'. It rather has to do with the radical inseparability of the physical phenomena from the embodied and situated context within which those phenomena are being teased out from a determinate experimental set-up. It is because of this fundamental inseparability that it makes no sense to inquire about the actual position of an electron in the circumstances where the experimental set up has been established so as to measure its momentum. On that view, the very idea of the position of an electron (which is called an 'observable' in QM) is essentially relational rather than being a characterization of the intrinsic state of an individual electron. The position of an electron characterizes possible interactions of the electron with an observer which are only possible in a range of set-ups that are inconsistent with the observation of its (precise) momentum, and vice versa. So, attempts to characterize the electron's behavior deterministically, such that prior to having been observed it would already be disposed to manifest determinate positions and momenta, are attempts to separate the phenomenon from the circumstances of its constitution. This can't be achieved according to Bohr's or Heisenberg's interpretation of QM. On my view, hidden-variable or many-worlds interpretations of QM can be construed as attempts to rescue the metaphysical view from nowhere of physical reality such that quantum phenomena can be given non-relational descriptions that, however weird, still comport somewhat with our intuitions of the classical-mechanical universe: an universe that is populated with items that have the kinds of determinations that they have quite independently from the nature of our interactions with them. Both of those classes of interpretations seek to dispense with the essentially relational nature of quantum phenomena. They reflect attempts by the theorist to radically separate herself from the universe which she seeks to describe and explain from a point of view that abstracts (per impossibile) from her constitutive relations with the phenomena that she observes.

I'd like to propose that both contra-causal libertarian accounts of free-will and most compatibilist accounts of free-will suffer from a defect that is deeply analogical to the 'metaphysical' (or 'realist') interpretations of QM. In the case of free-will accounts, though, the impossible task that is being attempted is the task of separating the agent from her world rather than the task of separating the observer/theorist from her world. Most compatibilist philosophers, on my view, only recognize partially the essentially relational character of agency since, unlike contra-causal libertarians, they acknowledge that parts of the 'circumstances' of an agent really are constitutive of who she is, as a radically embodied agent, rather than representing constraints on her agency which only operate 'from without'. On the other hand, they tend to theorize this separation between internal 'circumstances' (e.g. desires, values, reason) and external circumstances (knowledge, coercitions, physical limitations) from a point of view that is still a view from nowhere, and hence that allows from a deterministic psychology of the 'internal circumstances' of an agent. Because of that, I think, most compatibilists miss out on the nature of rational-causation, and of the autonomy of practical reason, as a neo-Kantian might conceive of them in irreducibly relational terms.

I just bought the kindle edition of Joseph Rouse's recent Sellarsian book: Articulating the World: Conceptual Understanding and the Scientific Image. Here is Robert Nola's review.

@StreetlightX is likely to find the free sample of the book interesting. One of the three stands that Rouse weaves together appeals to Jablonka and fellow 'top-down integrative Darwinians', as I might dub them. StreetlightX may already know Rouse as the posthumous editor of Haugeland's projected book on Heidegger: Dasein Disclosed. I know him also because of his excellent How Scientific Practices Matter: Reclaiming Philosophical Naturalism. (Here is a review).

I had said earlier that I wanted to comment more on left-wing Sellarsians versus right-wing Sellarsians (also sometimes called simply 'left-' or 'right-Sellarsians'. But I'm still busy reading a paper by Michael Williams (on Sellars) and another one by Bitbol (on the Kantian boundaries of the conceptual/undestanding. Are they absolute or relative to a conceptual scheme?). So, I'll keep postponing my comment. Meanwhile, here is a useful summary from one of the footnotes in Rouse's recent book:

"The distinction between left- and right-Sellarsians tracks two loosely defined groups of philosophers, each strongly influenced by the work of Wilfrid Sellars. Right-Sellarsians (exemplified by Ruth Millikan, Daniel Dennett, Paul Churchland, William Lycan, or Jay Rosenberg) draw especially upon Sellars’s commitment to scientific realism, his thoroughgoing naturalism, his insistence upon accommodating a more sophisticated empiricism and a prominent role for conceptual rationality within a broadly reductionist conception of the scientific image, and in some cases, his retention of a role for representational “picturing.” Left-Sellarsians (exemplified by Richard Rorty, Robert Brandom, John McDowell, or John Haugeland) emphasize his rejection of the empiricist Myth of the Given, the irreducibility of the logical space of reasons to causal or law-governed relations, his emphasis upon inferential roles as determinative of conceptual content, and the role of social practice in interpreting and justifying conceptual content while downplaying or rejecting his naturalism, scientific realism, and pictorial representationalism." -- Joseph Rouse, Articulating the World, 2015

...at which time it may no longer be relevant. Oh, well... — Janus

Don't worry. I also often postpone responses for a long time because I want to think things though first or do some more readings about the topic. There is no harm done in resurrecting dormant threads, or revisiting an old point within a thread, with the statement of some new thought. In fact, it's better than keeping up with the flow of the discussion while expressing half-baked or knee-jerk opinions. Also, truly philosophical questions tend to retain most of their relevance for two and a half millennia or more.

Sellars's own students Paul Churchland and Alex Rosenberg appear to have inherited the scientistic foundationalist strand of his thinking. — Pierre-Normand

Oops... I now realize that I had Jay Rosenberg and Alex Rosenberg confused in my mind. Jay, who unfortunately passed away 10 years ago, was Sellars's student, not Alex.

I had them both correctly pegged as 'scientistic foundationalists', though. I'll say more about 'left-wing' Sellarsians (Rorty, Brandom, McDowell, Williams) versus 'right-wing' Sellarsians (Millikan, Churchland, Jay Rosenberg, Dennett, and also, I thinks, Brassier!) in another post.

Just some general reflections to feel my way back into this thread — StreetlightX

Thanks for those! I'll read chapter 3 in Naturalism and Ontology, to get a better grasp of Sellars's motivation in dispensing specifically with the idea of references of predicates but not with the references of singular terms. It's hard for me to understand the rationale for that. I'll comment later.

And this is one of his best papers. — Banno

I quite enjoyed it although it doesn't top Three Ways of Spilling Ink. Austin wittily savages Mr. Mackinnon's and Mr. Maclagan's musings on the alleged non-sensuous acquaintance with universals. He doesn't propose any positive pragmatist account of the mastery of general concepts, though, but he makes suggestive comments that are reminiscent on Wittgenstein (regarding the unintelligibility of private languages) and Anscombe (regarding the intrinsically causal character of several concepts of action). He guards in one early footnote against the general-specific and particular-universal confusion of distinctions. Later on, Richard Hare and, following him, David Wiggins have also been insistent about the philosophical perils that lay in the wake of failures to attend to this distinction among two quite different distinctions. It's interesting to see Austin bringing this to bear to philosophers's troubles with the metaphysics and epistemology of universals.

I don't know how I feel about the idea that Humanities purpose was always to create a courtoisie class, or even that Humanities value cannot be expressed outside of an adherence to the curriculum of said Humanities. — Akanthinos

Maybe Stover meant to put it in a rather provocative way. But if we bracket out the rather modern Marxist connotation of a class and rather hold on to the more 'conservative' idea of a guild, tradition, art, craft, tradition of excellence, etc., then maybe we can get at the idea that what is valuable in the humanities is nothing else than the historically situated social practices in which they are embodied rather then their instrumental values for individual or societal needs that are external to those practices.

Sometimes when I am being asked about the value that I find in philosophy, the question takes the form 'A quoi ça sert?' (what is it useful for) and my provocative reply is that philosophy is utterly useless, which is why it's so valuable. But what is valuable isn't so much the activity (though it is) as the fact that engagement in this activity maintain alive the intrinsically valuable tradition in which it is embodied. And this, I think, Stover's piece conveys well, although, as he acknowledges, it may not make for a convincing argument in the current cultural context. But he also is cautiously optimistic that the humanities will withstand the attacks that they are being subjected to from left and right not because they are 'defensible' but precisely because people are drawn to them in spite of them being indefensible from the outside (and maybe because of it).

But here we have Sellars saying that there are no facts, only objects. — Banno

Yes, I don't buy that. Ordinary facts, objects and properties come as a package, on my view (but not "events"). But Sellars is such a deep and brilliant thinker that, even when he's wrong, it's worthwhile figuring out why it is that he's asserting something.

Are there a priori[/i] concepts?[/i]

The argument proceeds by showing that understanding a concept is no more than understanding how to use the associated terms. So understanding the concept red is just being able to use the word "red". — Banno

Thanks! I see it's the second chapter in his Philosophical Papers, and only 22 pages long. I'll read it. Austin is one of my favorite philosophers.

This is described as a pragmatic approach, but looks to me more like a redundant approach - "P is true" just means P. — Banno

In the wake of Davidson't work on truth and 'radical' interpretation, disquotational theories of truth have come to acquire quite a bit more substance than the redundancy theory of truth. That's because while the claim of redundancy still applies to individual instances of Tarski's T-schema, the whole theory that generates the schemata, and which rest on a substantive (and pragmatic) interpretation of the language as a whole, has a richer content than could accrues from merely providing any finite bunch of those schemata in extension.

Roughly, that there is nothing had in common by, say, red things, but instead we just use the word "red" in a way that suits our purposes. The meaning of "red" is nothing more than it's use to refer to those sorts of things. To pick the red sports car from the yellow one; the red of the sunset from the grey of the associated clouds. — Banno

In what text did Austin express that?

Earlier in this thread, @Nagase and @fdrake had an interesting exchange regarding the the sorts of constraint that the references of our predicates might have on our predicative judgements. Nagase was focusing on the case of so called natural kind terms (while appealing to the sort of semantics developed by Kripke and Putnam), while fdrake was stressing than even in the case where we may appear to have cut nature (or the quasi-Platonic realm of mathematical entities) at its joints, there always remain the liability that may arise unforeseen particulars that aren't neatly sorted by our extent predicates. So, it would seem that the sort of pragmatism advocated by fdrake is close to the form of pragmatism that you are attributing to Austin.

However, while I like my pragmatism to be "radical" in the sense that it doesn't leave any room for a residual core of self-individuated natural kinds (entities, that is, that are individuated as they are in themselves quite appart from our interests in sorting them out and reidentifying them in specific ways), I also seek to resist the sort of linguistic-idealism that attends to some forms of social constructivism. The trouble with this idealism, on my view, isn't that it's too radical but rather that it is not radical enough. Through picturing us as being entirely free to sort out bare particulars into whatever kinds we might deem useful to sort them into, it tends to portray us as purely intellectual subjects who are encountering them passively in experience rather than as embodied agents who are dealing with them in our Umwelt and our social worlds. Hence, a truly radical pragmatism must seek, in my view, to account for the efficacy of the concrete practices of individuating objects and their properties in such a way that the issue of capturing us in the process of individuating them from sideways on (to use McDowell's phrase) -- that is in such a way that we can make sense of the separate existence of (material) objects, on the one side, and of (intellectual) subjects, on the other, prior to the existence of embodied practices of individuation -- is entirely dispensed with as an unintelligible possibility.

Cheers. I'll keep reading — Banno

I actually meant that primarily as a self-admonition since there appears to be some good contributions that I either skipped or only read very obliquely.

So - and I've just started catching up on this thread, so this might have become apparent in other posts - his point is that predication is something we do, and hence predicates are not something we find but something we use?

As Austin? — Banno

Here is a relevant paragraph from the SEP article on Wilfrid Sellars:

"Platonic realists are often moved by the belief that the most basic linguistic structure, predication itself, involves a commitment to abstracta, for common explications of predication make essential mention of properties, relations, and such. Sellars argues that this gets the order of explication exactly wrong: apparently purely descriptive claims about property instantiation are, in fact, misleading ways of communicating norms of linguistic correctness. Sellars offers a different explication of predication, according to which the focus is not on any relation between an object and some abstract entity, but qualifying and arranging names to suit them for certain linguistic purposes. So understood, the Platonist’s treatment of predication seems, again, to be an elaborate and misleading way to make a simpler, more pragmatic point. At the most basic, atomic level, predication is a matter of endowing the names with counterpart characteristics of the objects they purport to name, enabling some true atomic sentences to ‘map’ or ‘picture’ objects in the world. Predication thus commits one only to natural objects potentially correlated with each other. See NAO, chapter 3, for the most complete statement of this view."

This is a bit of a head scratcher since, although it betrays a clear resistance to the reification of abstracta, it still seems to express a commitment to "real" material objects ('substances' or 'continuants',) seemingly individuated quite appart from our individuating practices. I guess there is no shortcut but to delve into chapter three of Naturalism and Ontology (or pay closer attention to the excellent earlier contributions in this thread ;-)

I don't know what Austin's view on predicates or properties is.

But here is a counter- argument in favour of obscure, pedantic overspecialisation 'for its own sake'. — unenlightened

Thanks for uncovering that. It's a real gem. I read the piece mentioned in the OP a couple days ago when it was suggested in my Google feed. This other piece by Justin Stover constitutes the best possible counterpoint to Rachel William's own, and locates the source of the alleged problem within the much larger debate regarding the continued relevance (or alleged irrelevance) of the traditional fields of the humanities. I nevertheless concur, with many reservations, with some of William's complaints directed specifically at academic philosophy, or some tendencies within it.