All switching does is change which envelope is picked; the switcher is thus committed both to thinking that switching is advantageous and indifferent. — Snakes Alive

That's clever.

Not going to get dragged into some other scenario with you.

You are in effect demanding that I figure out what's wrong with your analysis and explain it to you. I'd love to. I'd love to have your help doing just that, once you admit that my analysis shows yours is wrong, even if we're neither of us quite sure why.

It is a simple fact that what's in the other envelope does not change, and that each envelope has one of two values.

That doesn't model the case we're considering, which is that we know we have £10. — Michael

It models it precisely. Your knowing what's in one envelope does not change what's in the other envelope.

Here's an example.

Suppose for a given trial, X = 12. There's an envelope with 12 in it and another with 24.

Suppose you pick the one with 12 and look at it. Y = 12. We'll call the amount in the other envelope Z. You reason, quite correctly, that

(1) Y = 12 → . Z = 6 ⊻ Z = 24

This is absolutely true because Z = 24.

Suppose you picked the 24 envelope. Y = 24. You reason, quite correctly, that

(2) Y = 24 → . Z = 12 ⊻ Z = 48

This is absolutely true because Z = 12.

What you have to accept is that for each trial there are only 2 values in the space. In the example above, Z = 6 = X/2 is not actually a possibility; Z = 48 = 4X is not actually a possibility. You can choose between 12 and 24 as many times as you like and you will never, ever get either 6 or 48. Your thinking they are possibilities does not make them so.

I modified your simulation.


Run it here.

Heh - the $choice line is funny. I've never written PHP before.

So you're saying that before I look I can say that there's a 50% chance that my envelope is envelope X but after looking I can't? — Michael

Suppose X = 1.

You pick an envelope. On opening it, you find $2. You have chosen the 2X envelope but you don't know it.

Does that mean there is a 1/2 chance that X = 2?

No. X = 1. It's just not true that half the time 2 = 1 and half the time it doesn't.

Your not knowing whether you have the X or the 2X envelope doesn't change anything.

If you could prove that always switching is the best strategy over the long term, doesn't that amount to proving that you are more likely to have chosen the smaller envelope? Why doesn't that bother you?

4. From 2 and 3, there's a 50% chance that my £10 envelope is the X envelope and a 50% chance that my £10 envelope is the 2X envelope. — Michael

This is false. Whether the amount in your envelope is the smaller or the larger of the pair offered you is not a matter of chance. Whether you choose that envelope is.

Think I'll have time today to do the picture theory post, and then we can talk.

I'm not convinced, but I'll think about it.

While I'm thinking, I'd ask that you think about your use of words like "direct", "directly experienced", "immediacy". I think you're making a mistake, imagining that here at last, when something out there whacks me or I whack it, there is actual, unmediated contact with, well, something.

I can experience the effect a baseball has on me when it hits me in the face. I can experience the effect a baseball has on me when it's flying through the air at my face. Both, as I understand it, are the effects of electromagnetic forces, but one I experience as feeling the impact of the ball, and one I experience as seeing the ball.

The answer to that seems quite simple; we feel forces, but we do not see them — Janus

You feel the actual electromagnetic force itself, rather than its effects on you? That is a surprising claim. (So far as effects on you go, seeing is just as good.)

What does my version of the argument look like with a specific example?

(1A) We can only think about apples if we have experience of apples.
(2A) We only have experience of particular apples.
Therefore (3A) We can only think about particular apples.

What does (2A) mean exactly? It looks like the apple class is already here. We can experience particular objects as apples, but we cannot experience a generic apple? But apples are apples. Experiencing something as an apple is also always experiencing an apple, a generic one.

(1A) now looks like a claim that to use the concept [apple], you must be familiar with members of the class it picks out, and that's at least prima facie unobjectionable.

And (3A) looks like a non sequitur, and a comment about how our visual imagination works. (Imagining an apple is imagining a particular apple. On the other hand, if the analysis of (2A) is right, that's exactly what imagining a generic apple is.)

(2A) is certainly the interesting bit. I don't have it quite right yet.

If proprioception is good enough to establish the experience of causality, why isn't visual perception?

This whole approach is wrong though, isn't it? You know that you had a 1/2 chance of picking the envelope with the larger amount. That's just not the same as the amount in the envelope, which you will know once you open it, having a 1/2 chance of being the larger amount.

But Hume says we don't see causality — Janus

Change it to "sense". Are you certain proprioception bypasses Hume?

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars — Srap Tasmaner

I'd say this is really a question for phenomenology, not for psychology, or at least, only secondarily for psychology. — Janus

I would say they are claims about epistemology. Can epistemological claims be settled by psychology (or neuroscience)? I don't know. Not yet, anyway. — Marchesk

How would you go about establishing that (1) is true or false, or convincing someone to assent to (1) or its negation? On its face, (1) has kind of an empirical look to it. You can imagine falsifying it by producing a counterexample. But I think it's far too vague, or at least underdetermined, to do much with.

How would you go about establishing that (2) is true or false, or convincing someone to assent to (2) or its negation? Is this the same? Maybe we can imagine falsifying this with a counterexample -- I'll bet Wayfarer thinks it can be. But it doesn't feel empirical to me. It feels more like a metaphysical claim, in which case the connecting concept here, experience, probably means something quite different from what it means in (1).

That's my gut, anyway. Anyone else feel the same? (Gut feelings all I have time fit at the moment, sadly.)

What sorts of claims are (1) and (2)? Are they empirical? If empirical, is one or both a question a question for psychology? What exactly do we mean by "experience" here? Does "experience" mean the same thing in (1) and (2)?

What's still missing is something like this:

(1) We can only think about what we have experience of.
(2) We only have experience of particulars.
∴ (3) We can only think about particulars.

You want to argue that (3) is false, therefore one of (1) and (2) is false. Either we also have experience of non-particulars -- they are really out there in the world -- or we have the capacity to form non-particulars to think about all on our own. If it turns out (1) is false, then you are inclined to ask further why we resort to thinking about non-particulars, and how exactly we do that.

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

You need to spell out why these two conditions give rise to a problem. What problem?

Why is an absolute guarantee necessary? — Bliss

The issue of guarantee arises when it is suggested that explicit prior agreement solves such problems. It doesn't.

(What's more, in the case of language we need to be able to bootstrap. The main obstacle to explaining the conventional nature of language is that it would be impossible to agree to such conventions until you had a language in which to negotiate an agreement.)

If acquiring the stag is only possible by killing it, then killing it is the action which allows for acquiring it, and is therefore the goal. — Bliss

But I can imagine scenarios in which you kill the stag but do not acquire it. Suppose you drive it into a box canyon and one of your group has the bright idea of rolling a boulder down on it. Picture the boulder with hooves sticking out from under it and imagine the reception this bright idea gets from the rest of the group.

Using my example, even if there's no explicit agreement about one person shooting first, they both need know to shoot if the other does, and that understanding is itself the agreement. — Bliss

The question is whether such an arrangement is adequately described as each transferring some of their wealth (or "capacity for action" I suppose) to the other.

Thanks for spelling it all out. I think I've got it now.

We also want to get such coordination without explicit agreements.

I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement betwixt us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition, that something is to be performed on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other. Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less derived from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteemed sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value. — Hume, Treatise 3.2.2

erroneous possibilities that lead to imaginary gains — Baden

Ah, philosophy, your generosity is but an illusion!

So the way to do cases here goes:
If Y = X, then ...
If Y = 2X, then ...
and it's okay to treat each of these as having a 1/2 chance. Then we get @Jeremiah's simple algebra.

the two people need to agree upon a way to coordinate their efforts — Bliss

But that's the whole issue, just pushed back. Even if there is such an agreement, and even if it is explicit, what guarantee does any member of the group have that any other member will keep to the agreement?

As for the rest, you are focusing on the killing of the stag. Each role in the hunt is a sine qua non of acquiring a stag. Acquiring the stag is the goal, not killing it, so it does not matter who gets to do the killing.

(This is reminiscent of the eternal conflict in FPS games of playing the objective vs. padding your KDR!)

The other way to put this is that after learning the envelope has Y in it, we know that either Y/2 or 2Y are in the distribution, but we cannot know which, and this is no different from learning that we have either X or 2X.

I already did. — Jeremiah

So you did.

But if we try to model this from the participant's point of view, we don't use X at all; we use Y. Then the expected gain loss sample spaces are [-Y/2, 0] and [2Y, 0], aren't they? That's @Michael's problem.

I'm tempted to think @andrewk's point is relevant here: how do we know Y/2 and 2Y are even in the distribution? We know that Y is, and that Y is either X or 2X, but we have no way of knowing which, and we don't know anything about the distribution of X.

I agree that the algebra works and is correct. Is the objection to Michael's approach not the assignment of the prior but simply that he is using sample spaces he cannot justify using?

How do you feel about changing "can acquire" to "can independently acquire"? — Bliss

Sure. This is the whole point of the stag hunt, that no individual can be independently acquire a stag.

my argument is that the action is taken by individuals in the group, not "the group" itself, and that the individuals entrusted with taking the action are the representatives of the group — Bliss

Okay, agreed. Individuals act, not groups, yes.

The stag hunt is a case where every member of the group is a representative of the group, in your sense. What is not clear though is whether it can properly be described in your terms. What individual acquires the wealth of another in the stag hunt? You could say all of them; that is, each divides all (or maybe only some?) of his wealth among all the others in helping them each achieve their individual goal of acquiring the stag. But then the net change in wealth of each is zero, as each receives as much as they give -- assuming they start as equals. (Maybe it's worth looking at possible imbalances in the starting conditions. Perhaps for some it is not a net-zero change.) By effecting this net-zero transfer of wealth, they have a chance to effect a non-zero increase in wealth of all, by acquiring the stag.

Consequently, the actions an individual can take are limited by the wealth an individual can acquire. — Bliss

such that at least one member has the wealth required to take the desired action, every group necessarily redistributes its collective wealth among its members. — Bliss

Something's amiss here. In the first quote you do not include the possibility of wealth transfer from others. If you do not change "can acquire" to "can acquire entirely through reconfiguring their own wealth" then representation is simply impossible.

Might be worthwhile comparing your scenario to the stag hunt. That only individuals can take action may not imply that a desired result can only be achieved by an individual acting alone.

Or does it make a difference if he knows beforehand that the experimenter has flipped a fair coin to determine which of {1, 2} and {2, 4} is to be used? — Michael

If you know this is the procedure, then you know the distribution. You don't, so you don't.

Surely in lieu of any evidence to suggest that one of {1, 2} and {2, 4} is more likely he should consider their probabilities equal? — Michael

I wish I could answer this question. Does the principle of indifference justify the use of uninformative priors like this? I have a hunch that someone really good at this sort of thing could show why even the uninformative prior does not lead directly to your conclusion. I am not that person.

All I can say is that in this case it leads to a mistaken belief that switching is better.

Is there a sort of de dicto/de re problem here in how we think about the probabilities? That is, is there a difference between these?

(1) In repeated trials, about half the time participants pick the larger envelope.
(2) In repeated trials, about half the time the envelope participants pick is the larger.

Suppose the experiment in fact only has envelopes containing $2 and $4. Participants will pick each about half the time, averaging a take of $3.

Your approach is to reason from (2) once the envelope is open. Thus, seeing $2, you reason that half the time this value is the smaller and half the time it is the larger. But this is just false. About half the time participants pick $2 and half the time they pick $4; there is no case in which $2 is the larger value.

You're right that seeing $2 tells you the possibilities are {1,2} and {2,4}. But on what basis would you conclude that about half the time a participant sees $2 they are in {1,2}, and half the time they are in {2,4}? That is the step that needs to be justified. I think you're imagining a table something like this:
and those are your chances of being in each situation. But there are not two random events or choices here; there is only one. You are re-using the choice between larger and smaller as the relative frequency of {1,2} and {2,4}. For all you know, {1,2} could be a hundred times more likely than {2,4}. In my version here, {1,2} has a chance of 0, and {2,4} a chance of 1.

So you would have voted

(4) Not just Western civilization, but all of them, son, all of them!

Haven't done Diamond, though I've heard him intone the title of his book on PBS in that Boston accent of his.

I'd like to make a suggestion I'm slightly horrified by: suppose this is all growing pains. Even chimps have something like war, sad to say. You settle down, develop science, create social institutions and structures, and if you haven't destroyed yourselves or your planet after a hundred millennia or so, then maybe you've got a shot at actual civilization, a Star Trek future of science and democracy.

In a way, this is not so far from my question: is the barbarism and cruelty we witness, the reckless destruction of our own home, is all of this going on because of "Western civilization" or in spite of it? Maybe eventually the Enlightenment will have its day. Are we sure the horrors of our time are its fault, rather than a measure of just how much more work there is to do, how uncivilized we still remain?

I'd like to hear more from you on this argument. While I don't think there is a single point at which basic reasoning becomes philosophy, I would be interested in hearing what you believe philosophy to be as opposed to what the philosophy of is such that it seems ridiculous to claim that those engaged in some activity obviously do not have philosophical beliefs. — Moliere

I think you begin to do philosophy not when you think about things, but when you think about how thinking about things is done, could be done, should be done. Not even all use of reason need be philosophy, but reasoning about reasoning is probably where it starts.

If I tell you I think that girl in our homeroom likes you, am I doing philosophy? No. If you ask why I think that, are you doing philosophy? No. If I give my reasons for so thinking and why I count them as
reasons? Still no. But if, at this point, you stare off into space and say aloud, "How can you ever be sure what another person is thinking or feeling?" Ho ho! Now the world's in danger of acquiring another philosopher. (The staring off into space and talking to yourself out loud is a dead give away.)

I want to contrast that with how someone might say, "You never can tell what someone else is thinking." That's just a ready conclusion from experience, not much different from saying, the peaches you buy at a roadside stand are always better.

Figuring out whether a girl likes you is not a philosophical exercise. Figuring out how people figure out things like that -- hard to say. We're at least in the circle of psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, behavioral economics, all that sort of thing. We're edging into philosophical territory, and that's good enough for me most of the time. I'm interested in all these ways of thinking about reasoning. I'm tempted to say that once there's a normative dimension to your reflections -- here's how people should figure these sorts of things out -- then we're definitely doing philosophy. I'm not sure that's a good enough answer though, because you can always instrumentalize: if you want to get the right answer more often than not, then you'll reason this way.

Honestly, I'm pretty conflicted about this. Sometimes I'm inclined to take reason to be the subject matter of philosophy. Other times I've thought philosophy is not defined by subject matter at all, but by approach. (Ryle has a line about this somewhere, to the effect that people think philosophy is ordinary thinking about quite peculiar stuff -- minds, free wills, essences, meanings, and other such will'o'wisps -- but in fact it's peculiar ways of thinking about quite ordinary stuff.)

How do you see things?

Btw -- and this is me still uncertain whether I've offended you -- the idea that a certain way of doing philosophy is a kind of localized imperialism doesn't strike me as crazy at all. It's what @csalisbury noted a while back about apo's insatiable dialectic. There's no problem it does not hunger to solve, and then declare solved, no opposing position it can't incorporate. It's a system designed to endlessly expand and absorb everything else, overcoming all the pitiful rebel groups that might put up a bit of a fight here and there.

For me, this is right in line with my vaguely economic approach to philosophy these days.

Not trying to oversimplify you. Just thought there might be an underlying allegiance to your thoughts on philosophy and politics.

Finally getting to the latter. Here's what I don't quite understand about your position. If the original sin is settlement, agriculture, etc., then all such civilizations have gone wrong. Is there something especially wrong with European civilization?

Will come back to the other stuff.

I was starting to see something like an aggressive/pacifist divide. Philosophically, on one side there would be the Imperialist Metaphysical System Builders, with their water-cooled rapid-fire logical systems and advanced institutional defense subsystems, and on the other hand there are the Quiestist Therapists, who just want everyone to enjoy playing however they enjoy playing or not play at all and enjoy doing something else instead.

The problem then is not just the force multipliers, but the environment in which our children are raised which promotes this version of 'human nature' and not any other, more desirable version. — Pseudonym

It's not clear to me whether this puts you in the "it's how we think" camp. Is there only the one way of raising children in the European tradition -- and it's the wrong one -- or is the problem that at least two ways are available, at least one of them is the wrong one, and children raised one of the wrong ways "automatically" have a disproportionate impact on their environments (human and otherwise) and giving them force multipliers only makes the problem worse?

It occurs to me that you (you, Pseudonym, not "one") might write a history of philosophy that looks exactly like this. Coincidence?

I'm still here too. I thought I would get up something about the picture theory to finish off prop 2. Then we could spend some time reviewing and talking about 1-2 as a unit. Do you want me to hold off on that?

it seems to me that in practicing such-and-such we already have some philosophical notions being put into practice — Moliere

Am I alone in having a viscerally negative reaction to this sort of thinking?

On the one hand, I think philosophy, much like science, begins in everyday efforts at reasoning in everyday situations. Do this more reflectively, more systematically, and you're doing something else, despite the origin, because you've changed the context, the goals, all sorts of things.

I've also thought it ridiculous for philosophers to claim everyone is always taking philosophical positions, or that they're implied. It seems like an attempt at self aggrandizement, like the undergraduate who comes home for Christmas break and lectures his parents on their metaphysical assumptions.

(Are philosophers more prone than other sorts of scholars to worry that what they do is pointless? Do they feel more need than others to assert the importance of what they do?)

I hope this doesn't sound like a personal attack. It's not remotely. Just something I think about now and then. I'm hoping you can make such claims seem more reasonable than they seem to me now.

Maybe some of you can help me with this.

Here's an argument, statement really, I've always found specious:

• Guns don't kill people; people do.

I find it specious not because it's false; it's obviously true. But given human frailty, making force multipliers like guns readily available is a bad idea. What might have been a fistfight with some asshole becomes manslaughter.

Here's my problem. Western culture produces lots of force multipliers. Once you can build resilient ships, reliable clocks and other navigational aids, better still fund it all with a joint stock company and insure it through an underwriter, you can unleash your tendency to greed, cruelty, and arrogance upon populations an ocean away. (Fast forward to colonialism, genocide, climate change, etc, etc, et bloody cetera.)

Do we blame the force multipliers? In this case I'm hesitant to. Am I being inconsistent?

One obvious difference is that handguns, let's say, have few other uses, and those uses are derivative. It's a tool whose sole purpose is the perpetration of violence.

Does it matter whether the sole purpose of sturdy ships was the transport of stolen silver and stolen people? Or whether it was the primary or the original purpose? I'm honestly not sure.

Many years ago, I read a splendid little book I'll bet some of you know called Medieval Technology and Social Change . One of its most famous arguments is that the invention of the stirrup "gave rise to" feudalism. Not "caused" exactly. Enabled? Made inevitable? (I honestly don't remember!) Feudalism of course is spectacularly unjust. What would it mean to blame the inventors of the stirrup for centuries of sophisticated barbarism?

I think of the question I posed here in these terms, technology and responsibility. Within technology I'd include social structures and institutions, it should be clear. I agree with the claim that many civilizations, though not all, have done as much exploiting and subjugating as they could given their technology. "We" have had more and better of the latter, and managed still more of the former.

Thoughts?

I'd also like to hear arguments that my whole approach is wrong and the culprit is how we think, the Western worldview, an instrumental view of the world, that sort of thing. A "culprit" in guiding the behavior of Europeans into immorality. Perhaps also a culprit -- has anyone claimed this here? Rich is gone -- in deforming science. Perhaps "the West" takes a fundamentally mistaken approach to understanding, well, everything.

Do we think the Quine-Duhem thesis shows that no particular theoretical entity is "absolutely" necessary? (I.e., necessity is theory relative.)

The thing about the universals debate that always strikes me as a little odd is how hard it seems to be to show that any theory on offer (I guess we should really be comparing posits) is even sufficient.

So much for the benefits of theft over honest toil.

Actually, I don't think we have to be able to in principle determine the truth of a proposition to say it's meaningful. — Marchesk

And that just looks like choosing not to engage with the verificationist position at all. (I would add a caveat about "determining" the truth: a verificationist would at least like to know what would count as evidence, whether obtainable or not, whether dispositive or not.)

You assert that Carnap is wrong, and give what you consider counterexamples.
You assert that these counterexamples have a property M that Carnap says they don't.
Carnap asks how you know your examples have the property M?
What's your next move?