Does the "pan" part of pancomputationalism provide a response to Jha et al.'s objection? That is, are the background assumptions which Jha et al. call "the very facts that make a purely mathematical result applicable" also generated computationally? I'm out of my depth here, but is there meant to be a beginning to this process of entailment -- some first premises?

That's a tough question because it really varies. Tegmark thinks the multiverse is just an abstract object that exists necessarily. This is ontic structural realism; things just are the math that describes them, so there is no separation as Jha supposes. The cleverly titled book "Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized," by Ross and co. is a somewhat similar project.

Being "first" would just be in reference to the time dimension of some universe (most of these guys are eternalists, but not all). The problem of "if stuff can just start existing for 'no reason at all' at T0 and it existed in no prior state, shouldn't things just start to exist at random?" is still considered relevant in cosmology, and so the idea that the universe is "without beginning or end," (e.g. Aristotle) continues to be popular speculation.

Some forms of "It From Bit" (John Wheeler) are participatory and have mind built into them from the outset. Thought doesn't "mirror" reality because thought and intelligibility (quiddity) is essential to reality. If "being" or "reality" are to mean anything, it has to be what is given to thought. (Another old idea, maybe better expressed in ancient philosophy TBH, but new stuff makes an empirical case for it as well). Henery Strapp is an example here.

Yet in either case, I think the separation between mathematics and "the world" is blurred from the get go. Sure, the universe isn't all mathematics. But isn't it necessary that the universe (or its contents) be something and not everything?

Where there is similarity is in the view that the world can be viewed as a giant quantum computer, perhaps a lattice of cellular automata. I do think this answers Hume's argument against causality to some degree, because here cause is intrinsic to "what the universe is," rather than natural laws somehow "causing" things "like a headmaster shuffling the planets around like school children," (as Hegel puts his objection).




-----------

Anyhow, for those interested, this is the Sokolowski explanation. For those familiar with phenomenology, it might not be as interesting. It was big for me because I hadn't even considered analyzing the emergence of logical reasoning in terms of the content and properties of experience before, just a total blind spot.

[Husserl] tries to show how the formal, logical structures of thinking arise from perception; the subtitle of Experience and Judgment is Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. The “genealogy” of logic is to be located not in something we are born with but in the way experience becomes transformed. Husserl describes the origin of syntactic form as follows.

When we perceive an object, we run through a manifold of aspects and profiles: we see the thing first from this side and then from that; we concentrate on the color; we pay attention to the hardness or softness; we turn the thing around and see other sides and aspects, and so on. In this manifold of appearances, however, we continuously experience all the aspects and profiles, all the views, as being “of” one and the same object. The multiple appearances are not single separate beads following one another; they are “threaded” by the identity continuing within them all. As Husserl puts it, “Each single percept in this series is already a percept of the thing. Whether I look at this book from above or below, from inside or outside, I always see this book. It is always one and the same thing.” The identity of the thing is implicitly presented in and through the manifold. We do not focus on this identity; rather, we focus on some aspects or profiles, but all of them are experienced, not as isolated flashes or pressures, but as belonging to a single entity. As Husserl puts it, “An identification is performed, but no identity is meant.” The identity itself never shows up as one of these aspects or profiles; its way of being present is more implicit, but it does truly present itself. We do not have just color patches succeeding one another, but the blue and the gray of the object as we perceive it continuously. In fact, if we run into dissonances in the course of our experience – I saw the thing as green, and now the same area is showing up as blue – we recognize them as dissonant precisely because we assume that all the appearances belong to one and the same thing and that it cannot show up in such divergent ways if it is to remain identifiable as itself. [It's worth noting the experiments on animals show they are sensitive to these same sorts of dissonances].

[Such experience is pre-syntactical, nevertheless] such continuous perception can, however, become a platform for the constitution of syntax and logic. What happens, according to Husserl, is that the continuous perception can come to an arrest as one particular feature of the thing attracts our attention and holds it. We focus, say, on the color of the thing. When we do this, the identity of the object, as well as the totality of the other aspects and profiles, still remain in the background. At this point of arrest, we have not yet moved into categoriality and logic, but we are on the verge of doing so; we are balanced between perception and thinking. This is a philosophically interesting state. We feel the form about to come into play, but it is not there yet. Thinking is about to be born, and an assertion is about to be made…

We, therefore, in our experience and thoughtful activity, have moved from a perception to an articulated opinion or position; we have reached something that enters into logic and the space of reasons. We achieve a proposition or a meaning, something that can be communicated and shared as the very same with other people (in contrast with a perception, which cannot be conveyed to others). We achieve something that can be confirmed, disconfirmed, adjusted, brought to greater distinctness, shown to be vague and contradictory, and the like. All the issues that logic deals with now come into play. According to Husserl, therefore, the proposition or the state of affairs, as a categorial object, does not come about when we impose an a priori form on experience; rather, it emerges from and within experience as a formal structure of parts and wholes...

This is how Husserl describes the genealogy of logic and logical form. He shows how logical and syntactic structures arise when things are presented to us. We are relatively passive when we perceive – but even in perception there is an active dimension, since we have to be alert, direct our attention this way and that, and perceive carefully. Just “being awake (Wachsein)” is a cognitive accomplishment of the ego. We are much more active, however, and active in a new way, when we rise to the level of categoriality, where we articulate a subject and predicate and state them publicly in a sentence. We are more engaged. We constitute something more energetically, and we take a position in the human conversation, a position for which we are responsible. At this point, a higher-level objectivity is established, which can remain an “abiding possession (ein bleibender Besitz).” It can be detached from this situation and made present again in others. It becomes something like a piece of property or real estate, which can be transferred from one owner to another. Correlatively, I become more actualized in my cognitive life and hence more real. I become something like a property owner (I was not elevated to that status by mere perception); I now have my own opinions and have been able to document the way things are, and these opinions can be communicated to others. This higher status is reached through “the active position-takings of the ego [die aktiven Stellungnahmen des Ich] in the act of predicative judgment.”

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind. It arises through an enhancement of perception, a lifting of perception into thought, by a new way of making things present to us. Of course, neurological structures are necessary as a condition for this to happen, but these neural structures do not simply provide a template that we impose on the thing we are experiencing...

-Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person

I see what you mean, but we can construct an infinite number of worlds with different abstract entities highlighted (see "grue and bleen", Sider, p. 16) and most of them won't "work" at all, if by "work" you mean "give us a useful conceptual basis for navigating the world." Yet there is nothing wrong, logically, with the way these abstractions are being matched to reality. So can you expand on what it is to "perceive an identity"? -- that seems crucial.

Well, first I'd say that a great number of constructs seem "wrong" logically. For example, logics where one can prove anything and its negation dont seem to have anything directly to do with truth-preservation or inference.

Grue and bleen are a bit different. Here is where the appeal to "the logic of the world," shaping "the logic of natural selection," and thus "the logic of cognition," comes in. I'd add that we should not be tempted to reduce everything to evolution here either. Developmental biology is also key; the fact is that if there is a "logic of the world," our own growth and development as individuals is constantly being shaped by this, e.g. that we experience touch isn't just "evolution," but also due to our touching things and the properties of the things we touch.

Sokolowski has a great explanation (via Husserl) of how predication emerges from phenomenology (which of course is underlied by physical processes, but perhaps not "reducible" to them). This explanation sits anterior to the Kantian and biological ones, rather than conflicting with them, which is what makes it so interesting to me.

Our natural faculties, perhaps our "form of life," precludes certain abstractions that might be "valid" in a sense. Grue and bleen might be examples. People will never use them because people cannot see, touch, taste, etc. how old something is. I say "might" be valid because "how old is something," is also a fraught question. On one view, everything is about 14 billion years old, no variation. Or, "how old is the Ship of Theseus, rebuilt in whole 20 times since it first set sail?"

Likewise, while Wittgenstein notes that pointing "could" refer to what is directly behind our shoulder, it doesn't in any culture because our eyes are not on the back of our head and we could not see what we were pointing at in this manner. This isn't just about evolution, but also about the properties of light. One sees nothing to point at in a dark room. In the same way, human cultures distinguish colors with some small variation, but absolutely none developed names for colors in the ultraviolet spectrum. Presumably, this is because, while insects can distinguish these, we cannot.

So we come fixed with a starting point, with biases. This isn't a bad thing. I buy Gadamer's argument that it's quite impossible to make any inferences without begining with some biases. We can always question these biases later.

But I guess what this topic often seems to boil down to is "either we are equipped to know the world or we aren't." One can always throw up road blocks, denying the validity of reason, or claiming we only ever experience ideas not the world, etc. My take is that the tremendous success of our efforts to understand the world, which has translated into the causal mastery embodied in techne, represents strong evidence that we do come equipped to know the world and that the world is intelligible.

Interesting post there, I'll have to check it out.

The current volume of Philosophy of Science has a paper on mathematical explanations in the sciences that I realize is talking about something very similar. The paper is “Are Mathematical Explanations Causal Explanations in Disguise?” by Aditya Jha et al. The question raised is whether a distinctively mathematical explanation (DME) for physical facts truly exists – whether “the facts under question arise from a degree of mathematical necessity considered stronger than that of contingent causal laws.”

On a related topic, I've seen information processing and computational theories of causation. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Information had a good one but I forget who wrote it. It might be a bit dated now.

It's worth noting that a great many physicists embrace pancomputationalism to some degree, which would make cause (i.e. how past states determine future states) a sort of stepwise logical entailment. Off the top of my head I can think of Vedral, Davies, Landaeur, Lloyd, Tegmark — although they have quite different views in some ways, Tegmark's "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis," (the universe just "is" a mathematical object) probably being the most divergent and most open to criticism. But this position is open to a number of critiques, in particular that it requires that the universe be computable and not contain true continua, which is an open question.

Not all pancomputationalist literature really brings out how different it actually is from the "everything is little balls of stuff, building blocks," 19th century metaphysics that somehow remains the "default" in many of the special sciences. It would be wrong to say such a view implies things are "made of bits," for instance, and the necessarily relational character of information and the inability to carry out reductionism, at least in the manner of corpuscularism (i.e., parts defined in terms of wholes instead of whole being just a sum of their building blocks) makes for a different framing of causality.

Just for an example, in the process of computing PRIME(7) (the functions spits out 1 for prime, 0 for not-prime) we might say there is a sense in which "what 7 is," determines the output of the whole, even though it's also true that if a thing "is what it does," "7" is not some sort of atomic entity here.

Does it matter, for this parallel, whether math is a branch of logic, as many philosophers (and scientists) believe?

IDK, it seems to me like a great deal of math and logic is fairly irrelevant to our knowledge of the world. There is uninteresting math. There are logics that let you show anything expressible is true. So either way, it seems we have to be selective using epistemic criteria.

The extensional difference between all of these different formalisms are the scope of what counts as a circle. A pluralist could claim that some definitions work for some purposes but not others, a monist could not.

Do we need different accounts of logical consequence to have different geometries, etc.? Wouldn't pluralism be more something like: "we start with Euclid's postulates and end up with differing geometric propositions that can be deduced as true?"

I agree more with the second quote I provided (albeit the "mind and language independent" part is not unproblematic), but it's worth noting that G&P allow for multiple true logics, what they argue for is one logical consequence relationship consistent with natural language, and the justification of the "one true logic" will be broadly epistemic. The "one true logic," is in a sense the "least true logic," that covers logical consequence.

The reason I thought of it though is because I think their focus on application is likely to be relevant across many forms of monism. Of course, there are a dazzling number of systems to consider, but I think the intuition is that "truth in this system" sometimes has a status akin to fiction. It doesn't have to do with how we get true inferences at all.

I don't dislike formalism, I just think it is frequently called on to do things it is ill-suited for or retreated into to avoid difficulties that should rather be brought front and center. That said, I don't agree with the framing here (I haven't made it far anyhow), but it seems to me like it captures the intuition that monism is going to be about correct logics.

Their target is a natural language (or "cleaned up natural language"), or maximally, all natural and scientific languages. The analogy they draw is to physical geometry. The physicist is interested in physical geometry, not any and all geometries. They are only even potentially interested in a few of the geometries that might be dreamed up. Likewise, the applied logician is interested in logical consequence in the languages we actually use to discuss meaningful truths. Which I think is a useful analogy.

But taking it at face value, how can we be sure that only one logic will "capture all and only consequences that obtain among meaningful sentences." If one logic has "Γ ⊨ φ" and another has Γ' ⊭ φ, what is our basis for choosing which is the One, True? Not either Γ or Γ', without circularity. Some third logic? And again, Which? Does the monograph address this? Are we faced with an explosion of logics?

I'm sure they do in the second half, but I haven't made it that far (in part because I'm not sure about the project, but it's quite readable and got good reviews). The first half is objections to pluralism. They do foreshadow this a bit, because it is going to be a problem for pluralists too, since they generally don't want to say that all logics are legitimate either. Additionally, presumably pluralists will want to convince others to be pluralists by making a valid argument for pluralism. But they're going to likely to find this impossible to do in all the logics they accept as correct (at least per popular formulations of pluralism). Yet if they work with just one correct logic then inconsistency issues arise in the metalogic. That and the choice of a metalogic will be arbitrary (which Shapiro's account owns up to).

As they put it:

"In fact, it would be quite odd to suppose that there isn’t a single underlying argument for pluralism, but that it must be recast in different ways from different perspectives. By far the most natural thing to say is that if there is a good argument for pluralism, then that same argument should be frameable in any true logic—and so much the worse for any logic that does not allow for its expression."

If logical monism is the view that all logical systems are commensurable, then there is presumably some notion of translation that works between them all.

I don't think this would be the way to put it. Presumably some systems are not commensurable unless we have some criteria for what will count as a correct logic.

From Griffiths and Paseau:

The intuitive concept of logical consequence has many different, incompatible, strands. One reaction to this situation is logical pluralism: roughly, the pluralist endorses different logics as capturing different precisifications of the rough intuitive conception. In this chapter, we define logical pluralism and its contrary logical monism.

The target notion is logical consequence in meaningful discourse and its possible extensions. But the model-theoretic definition is of course defined for formal languages. A crucial component of any account of logical consequence is therefore formalization: the process by which we move between meaningful and formal (meaningless) sentences and arguments. We define a logic as a true logic, roughly, when formalizations into it capture all and only consequences that obtain among meaningful sentences.
Logical monists claim that there is one true logic. Logical pluralists claim that there are many. We define logical pluralism more precisely as the claim that at least two logics provide extensionally different but equally acceptable accounts of consequence between meaningful statements. Logical monism, in contrast, claims that a single logic provides this account

But I think there are multiple forms here,

e.g. "McSweeney: ‘[T]he One True Logic is made true by the mind-and-language-independent world…[which]…makes it the case that the One True Logic is better than any other logic at capturing the structure of reality [2018, Abstract].’ So, the logical pluralist denies that any one consequence relation is metaphysically privileged,"

I suppose there's a distinction between "having the same underlying concepts of truth and meaning and law" and "having different laws", maybe all the systems we've created, despite proving different theorems, have proof and truth as analogous family-resemblance style concepts in them. Maybe they have a discoverable essence.

Not that I'm persuaded.

:up: This is what I was getting at with the reference to historical philosophy, although I think, in general, most thinkers I can think of would say that truth itself is the unifying and generating principle (genus vs species).

I suppose the flip-side would be that there is no relationship between concepts of truth. I can't help but think this would make truth arbitrary, or at least have major philosophical ramifications, maybe not.

But there is also a moral component if the immigrant is also a supplicant. And the matter of refugees who arguably have no choice even a separate matter. Your views (near as I can tell) are reductionist, legalistic, amoral, and inhuman. Which to be sure the law in part has to be. But not entirely.

I am curious, have you revised your position that goodness or "this is good" is just a way of saying "I approve of this," and that morality is just personal preference derived from social norms?

If not, what exactly is this statement supposed to amount to? If one doesn't approve of welcoming refugees then it seems like it should simply be good and moral to deny them entry, and this would seem to come down to emotion.

It may be bias on my part, but I believe the concepts of guest and stranger are the most highly developed in Arab lands. That is, both the guest and the stranger are treated with respect and courtesy, in ways that do not exist in most western countries. And partner with that is the expectation that the guest and the stranger will themselves meet certain standards of behavior. I would like to see something like that employed at the US Southern border: respect, courtesy, concern and care, and the possibility of entry on meeting certain conditions.

Like Jewish refugees in Palestine? Or Palestinians in Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, etc.?

Logical nihilism is not a claim about what is true in classical extensional logic. It is presumably a claim about all truth preserving arguments.

Likewise, if truth can be defined arbitrarily, if we follow Carnap in the claim that: "in logic there are no morals. Everyone is at liberty to build his own logic, i.e. his own language, as he wishes. All that is required of him is that, if he wishes to discuss it, he must state his methods clearly, and give syntactical rules instead of philosophical arguments," it seems logical nihilism is trivial, but the question is effectively begged.

As for deflation: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-deflationary/

But... P & P => Q entails Q in propositional logic, who is denying this?

No one. But logical nihilism is not a position about "what is true in propositional logic." It seems like you're still presupposing deflation here, truth has to be "truth relative to this formalism."

I don't think that's an issue at stake at all.

IDK, that's how I've often seen nihilism defined. Per Russell it is "the claim that there are no laws of logic, i.e., no pairs of premise sets and conclusions such that premises logically entail the conclusion."

It could be, and I believe Gillian Russel lectures as if, there are valid arguments even if there are no principles which hold in complete generality. Because she specifies what context she's speaking in

Yes, and this makes sense if deflation vis-á-vis truth is presupposed. You can have nihilism and truth preservation via entailment because truth is just defined in terms of the formal context.

And it might make sense in other contexts as well. Just thinking back to philosophical history, there is certainly a long history of concepts of vertical reality—some things being "more real," or "more true." True might be predicated analogously like being and might not be fully captured by language and discursive human reason (e.g. Plato's Seventh Letter).

I'd have to think about it more but my intuition it would play havoc with other theories of truth. For example, in simple correspondence theories, X is true just in case X actually is the case. Now I'm not sure what it means for "truth preservation" if it is possible to have valid arguments that persevere truth while variously affirming and denying that "X is actually the case." I suppose people might counter that logic is now properly the study of formalism, not truth qua truth, or even natural language, to which I would disagree, the former will always sneak in the back door if left unacknowledged.

I don't think logical pluralists are committed to that.

Not necessarily, as I noted before, many "weak" versions of logical pluralism start to look indistinguishable from weak forms of monism (something Russell discusses as well). And I would imagine most don't want to be committed to this view. It's a different question whether is this essentially presupposed as a background assumption though.

I mean, in your response to the question of: "in virtue of what are logics to be considered correct," you presented a textbook deflationary account of truth. Now I understand that you might not advocate that view as absolute. But if we "roll with it for the purposes of analysis," it seems like it will play a key role in seemingly deciding the issue.

Everyone agrees what follows from what stipulations.

Do they? Isn't one of the questions at issue whether anything follows from anything else?

To quote Russell:


arguments are often said to be neither true nor false, but
rather valid or invalid. This is correct as far as it goes, but a principle containing a turnstile as its main predicate can be regarded as a sentence making claim about the relevant argument. Such a claim will be true if the argument is valid, false if it is not. Hence the nihilist can be said to believe that there are no true atomic claims attributing logical consequence.

In effect this is a way of massaging the "complete generality" predicate in the OP's argument. You can restore a sense of "complete generality" by using lemmas, by speaking about something ultra specific and formalised you can guarantee that it works in that way for that system, the latter applies without exception. Applies without exception in the sense that "fdrake is sitting drinking tea now" is true at time of writing, and thus applies at that time without exception forever. Only "now" for those refined systems is a new lemma, allowing them to better specify their intended conceptual content.

An interesting practical approach, to be sure.

Everyday intuitions about moral agency are also limited by the status of a person. Children (especially) and young adults are treated with more lenience for behaving in a socially unacceptable manner and for committing moral wrongs, children's legal status is also different. People's status as an agent may change if they go into a permanent coma, we have next of kin rules, waivers, and even (arguably) the ability to extend our capacity for consent after our death with organ donation and wills. Moreover, unfertilised gametes and severed limbs are recognisably of the species homo sapiens and are not treated as moral persons - unless one is willing to admit that shagging, the normal functioning of fertilised ovums, menstruation and masturbation are each a peculiar brand of industrial slaughter.

:up:

Yes. And I'd add that from the standpoint of apologetics a a pro-choice argument that has to rely on the claim that "fetuses are not human," seems to have set it self up for descending down all sorts of metaphysical rabbit holes regarding nominalism, essence, substantial change, etc.

I think it's probably not relevant. We also conscript adults and at times command then to engage in suicidal behavior on the battlefield. Hence, it simply isn't the case that we never force innocent adults towards (almost certain) death either (e.g. I recall one US company—about 150 members—in the Korean War in which just three members were left alive by the end of the night after being ordered not to retreat because it would collapse the entire front).

Alright, forget New York because we're just talking past each other. There is no disagreement there and clearly the example is not making what I intended clear

And there is a formalistic definition of truth, a statement is true in a theory when that statement holds in every model of that theory. Like "swans are birds" is true because there are no swans which are not birds, but "swans are white" is false because there are swans which are not white.

And you don't think assuming that this definition is what is meant by "truth preserving," is question begging? Don't logical monists generally claim that their position is true tout court?

I would posit that axioms can be considered to be correct when they entail the intended theorems about the object you've conceived.

I don't see how these two together don't presuppose a deflationary theory of truth. We could debate the merits of deflation, but its presupposition seems to be very relevant.

Whether you have true premises is a different issue. When you stipulate axioms, you treat them as true. Are they true? Upon what basis can they be considered as such?

An excellent question for a field that revolves around truth, no?

I have no qualms with setting aside metaphysical considerations of truth for formal analysis. And this is perhaps rightly the norm for cases. But it seems inappropriate in this case.

How would you compare Peano Arithmetic and Robinson Arithmetic, for example? Which one is true? Is one "more true" than another? What about propositional logic and predicate calculus? These aren't rhetorical questions btw.

I'm not sure we have to choose between these. We're talking about truth relative to some stipulated sign system. There are multiple stories about what happened to Luke Skywalker after the original films. Are any of these more true than any other? However, it seems to be something quite different to claim that allclaims are true only relative to stipulated systems and that none are more true than any other.

Yes, I suppose you could look at the average change in safety, education, health, etc. across the relevant populations. However, the issue is that migration itself changes the landscape of our analysis. Political economy is filled with complex systems that have tipping points.

Just for an example, suppose we find the following premise probable: "Donald Trump wouldn't have the huge level of influence he has if Americans weren't widely dissatisfied with migration."

And suppose Donald Trump provokes a full blown constitutional crisis in the US by overturning the upcoming election (this seems unnervingly possible, even if not likely). This in turn tanks future economic growth, health, safety, etc.

In this case, it seems like migration levels are a key (perhaps the key) factor in crossing a tipping point that craters metrics of well-being. Brexit might be a similar issue.

It seems to me that a lot of disagreement about migration is actually disagreement about how close we are to these tipping points. And it doesn't help that large scale racist and xenophobic fear mongering probably bring us closer to those tipping points, all else equal. There seem to be a lot of positive feedback loops on play here too because xenophobia itself is a function of migration levels.

For example, I would imagine even people who embrace very open immigration levels would allow that if the US has 150 million people migrate to it over a few years there would be a crisis.

Now, people often respond that people should just not be racist and xenophobic. This likely moves the tipping point much higher. Fair enough, I agree. But people ARE racist and xenophobic. So this is like saying that the solution to gun policy is for people not to murder or recommending that drug policy be handled by people only using drugs responsibly.

Ok, so you want a rational way to compare logical systems, an I think this is not the way to talk about the issue. I'll try again.

I guess I wasn't sure what this meant. You don't think it is appropriate to judge logics based on whether or not they are truth preserving? If not, what is the measure of appropriateness? The rest of your post doesn't really help me figure out what this is supposed to be. A definition of logical consequence helps us determine the appropriateness of logic how? Just in case the relation isn't empty?

You raised valid concerns about the level and impacts of migration. However you are pinpointing negatives about them where I believe if you look at a broader picture, the benefits often outweigh the challenges:

Fair enough, I was just responding to the claim that no one can have valid concerns about legal immigration. One can even have valid concerns about natives moving within their own country, e.g. the population booms in areas that we predict will be below sea level in the medium term.

The question of if the benefits outweigh the costs is very fraught because the question will be "benefits for who?"

The levels of migration that benefit potential migrants will almost always be much higher than the levels of migration that would most benefit the poorest individuals already within a state, and so questions of distributive justice arise.

Thanks for the attempted clarification, but this seems to entirely miss the context of the quoted part of my post, which is not about Russell's thesis.

To clarify, for Russell (and I would suppose most) a "correct logic," is one that is truth-preserving, where true premises lead to a true conclusion.

If it is the case that different "correct (truth preserving) logics" contradict one another, what exactly are they preserving?

If it is assumed that truth is relative, with many unrelated types of truth, this seems to come close to begging the question re logical monism. There will not be a single set of valid, truth-preserving arguments, but many sets that vary according to what "truth is" or "which truth" we are using.

The problem here is that questions regarding logical monism are questions about what is true tout court, analyzed in a discipline that tries to avoid discussions about what exactly truth is. But ignoring this just seems to allow people to talk past each other or engage in less than obvious question begging.


I can't think of any other context where a conversation like this would be considered good philosophy:

Jack: My thesis is that the relationship between these two sets is empty.
Jill: Interesting, how are the two sets defined?
Jack: Hey, stop trying to do metaphysics!

Or alternatively:

Jack: I don't know. We know a member when we see one... except lots of people disagree about membership.

You don't need to look at the counter example to see how she answers the question, in the opening paragraph she lays it out in that paper: "Logic is the study of validity and validity is a property of arguments... We say an argument is valid just in case it is truth-preserving."

So, again, if two "valid" logics contradict one another, what are they preserving? Can something be true and not true tout court? Or does the truth and validity depend on the system being used? If the latter, how is this position not the very definition of deflationism?

I fail to even see the relevance of the counterexample for the question I asked for this question.

That looks like a stripe of logical pluralism.

Of the sort that basically fails to allow for any substantial difference between pluralism and monism (a "weak" pluralism), sure. Same with the claim that the existence of multiple truth-preserving logics might be taken as evidence for pluralism. But this is obviously a far cry from a strong pluralism where:

-Gillian is in New York
-I am Gillian
-Therefore, I am in New York

Can be used to construct equally "truth-perserving" arguments that prove that the conclusion is true and false.

And in virtue of what is a logic appropriate?

I'm not sure how the proposed interpretation of logical consequence is supposed to answer this question.

Anyhow, I would assume the default answer (the one Russell seems to assume as well) is that logics are correct if they are truth preserving, i e., true premises will lead to true conclusions.

Now, if there are multiple correct logics, and they contradict each other, what exactly are they both preserving? (Earlier you said pluralism has nothing to do with deflation. This question is precisely why I think the two are related. If one correct logic affirms PNC and is contradicted by another correct logic, then it seems that "truth" has to be deflated and relativized.)

Russell leads with intuitionists' and the denial of LEM for a reason, and presumably it is because there are good arguments, reasons in virtue of which, one might think it is true that some propositions might lack a truth value. But if truth is allowed to be defined entirely arbitrarily, it seems trivial to generate counter examples to modus ponens, disjunctive syllogism, LEM, you name it. We could have a "Protagoras logic," where every premise and conclusion always has the value true for instance; its truth tables would be very easy to develop.

This is what I mean by saying that refusing to allow any metaphysical notion of truth in logic (presumably something all about truth and its preservation) comes close to begging the question re nihilism, or at the very least it makes things very opaque. We wouldn't want to say it's a matter of democratization, but it seems easy for it to head in that direction (e.g. the removal of LEM is introduced by noting that "many philosophers" think it is plausible.)

I have come across the paper before and Russell's other stuff. I'm not sure exactly how what you've quoted is supposed to address the question.

support

So replace it with "affirm." I assume you understand what I meant.

Leon seems guilty of making a strong assertion in favor of the PNC being conclusive

I don't see it. It doesn't say "pluralism implies a contradiction, thus not-pluralism" but rather "if pluralism then not-PNC.*" How does this give priority to PNC? One might affirm pluralism here and just deny PNC.

And then "if PNC, then not-pluralism." (But this seems irrelevant, and would seem to depend on how pluralism is defined.)

* Whether this premise is true is another question.

Well, on that consequence it seems possible that logical pluralism, nihilism, monism, whatever have you, could be both true and false. So everyone wins... and loses.

I'm curious, if you support that position, in virtue of what would true/correct logics be true/correct and false/incorrect ones not be?

but that it doesn't map neatly onto the sensible world

Causal analysis maps neatly enough for us to cure many diseases, fly around the world, travel to space, etc. Medicine is a prime example where a large focus of research is separating causation mere correlation, and here causal explanations (e.g. how antibiotics cure infections, how pseudoexfoliative glaucoma is caused by irregular elastin, etc.) can be pretty damn detailed. I guess it just depends on what you mean by "neat" here, but calling these "stories" or "useful fictions" seems to like demanding that one know everything before being able to claim one knows anything.

I'm curious, though what would be examples of postulates in the sciences, say economics or physics, that do not involve causation (material, formal, or efficient?) Or, to put it another way, do not involve "reasons why" vis-á-vis phenomena?

And I'd be curious if any of these postulates could avoid the same exact sort of criticism re incompleteness and the relevance of perspective. For example, if we want to say "water is H2O," (material cause) we could eventually drill down into quantum foundations and find a great deal of uncertainty about what exactly this means. Does this mean science only tells a story here?

It ought be the person carrying the blastocyst who has the main say in what to do with it.

BTW, it seems possible to affirm this and that abortion should be legal without having to claim that it is morally unproblematic. People have a right to divorce for instance, but it isn't always unproblematic. An Uber driver I was talking to the other week had a stroke in his mid-40s and his wife divorced him shortly after when he could no longer earn as much and required care for instance.

Issues like mass abortions of girls because of a preference for boys, etc. It's not like eugenicists designs vis-á-vis selective abortion lack moral valence, like it's the equivalent of getting a hair cut. Nor is it without social import, in some societies, e.g. Eastern Europe in the 90s, 50% or even 70+% of human conceptions in some states ended in abortion.

I don't think having some level of clarity implies essentialism. Considering this is one of the more fraught moral dilemmas of our time, I am not sure if "it just is, and if you don't agree there is nothing to say," is a particularly good argument.

Also, a blastocyst becomes an embryo at around 10 days, which is before women generally have any idea they are pregnant and thus before most abortions (aside from abortions that are accidental side effects). Most abortions do occur early though. And most people have problems with very late abortions. That's why some level of clarity is important, since "it just is," does not seem to close the door on infanctide or distinguish between early and very late abortions.

All this is insubstantial in the argument I presented to you. We have on the one hand a woman, perhaps a nurse, perhaps a CEO, perhaps a sister, mother, daughter, perhaps a care giver or volunteer. Someone who can express their needs, who makes plans and seeks to fulfil them and who has a place in our world.

We have on the other hand, a group of cells.

That you value those cells over the person who must carry them is heinous.

What exactly is the argument? Adult humans are also a "group of cells."

An unborn child can be a sister or daughter, unless we want to say that passage through the birth canal turns us into sisters and sons.

They cannot be a caregiver, CEO, etc., true. Is being these things relevant to a right not to be euthanized? Or the ability to express one's needs or "have a place in the world?"

Infants are also largely incapable of these things (temporarily at least). So are those with serve developmental disabilities, dementia, etc. The severely injured also become temporarily unable to do many of those things. In the case of those with dementia, etc., it is pretty much impossible that they will ever be/be able to do any of these things, whereas the unborn child or infant can at least eventually become/do these things.

The need to rely heavily on others is also there in all cases (fetuses, infants, the severely disabled, etc.) In general, taking care of infants is more difficult and time consuming than having them in the womb, and taking care of adults with dementia, severe brain damage, etc. is significantly more difficult (and expensive) than taking care of infants.

Now, people will often claim that pregnancy is different because there isn't a way to transfer the responsibility until birth. I do think this is relevant, but we have to be careful here lest we lapse into assuming that, in the real world, it is in any way easy (or even in many cases possible) to pass off relatives with dementia or brain injuries to others' care. This is often far from easy, and whereas pregnancy and infancy end relatively quickly, care for someone with a brain injury can last decades, precluding any involvement in the workforce or public life. This is why I think arguments about "burden" are generally going to "allow too much." It's far easier to find people willing to adopt children than 30-year-old men with severe brain damage, and the former also tax society much more.

I don't really know if, given our society, those with brain injuries or dementia "have a place in the world." Certainly not much of one. And they might be quite unable to voice their desires as well.

lol, yes that's the issue, my inability to comprehend "categorical" not your addition to it in a statement that clearly does not imply it. When people say "smoking causes lung disease," they do not mean "anyone who smokes will necessarily develop lung disease." :roll:

Then again, "good faith" is only good if one finds it useful, right?

Utility in the eye of the beholder.

And it's entirely arbitrary? Can anyone ever be wrong about what is useful for them?

If I think drinking mercury will help my arthritis, and then develop heavy metal poisoning from drinking mercury and regret doing it, was the original story useful for me when I thought it was useful? Seems to me this story would not be useful for me, even when I thought it was useful, and the reason it isn't useful has to do with the truth about how mercury interacts with the body.

But on the view that truth and cause are just about stories that are affirmed on the basis of an arbitrary personal ranking of utility, science and philosophy are entirely useless and pointless, since it is impossible for anyone to ever be wrong about what is good or true.

Of course, the deflationary approach to the above problems might be just to say: "well, 'Albany, New York is in Mongolia,' is simply true in some systems. Truth depends on your theory. If you want to talk about the absurdity of that statement then you won't be talking about logic."

I think it should be obvious though that this begs the question on logical nihilism, since it deflates truth and the realist is trying to make a claim about what is true universally.

We might try to get around this by divorcing "truth in logic" from "metaphysical truth," but I am not sure how effective this will be if the topic of debate is logic itself, as in the context of this thread, lol.

The actual truth-value of these sentences isn't in question when talking about logic. It's the form between the sentences under the assumption that if the premises are true that the conclusion follows. But since the moon is not made of green cheese the question of being -- what is -- differs from the question of validity, and logic is this study of validity.

But this isn't how logic is studied. For instance, take Curry's paradox as an example. The problem is that the common idea that "valid arguments with true premises yield true conclusions," results in absolute absurdities like "if this sentence is true then Albany, New York is in Mongolia," being used to prove "Albany, New York is in Mongolia." Harty Field and J.C. Beall have written a lot on this one. Yet if we totally abstracted all content away from "truth" (something I'd argue we aren't even mentally capable of) it seems impossible to recognize these sorts of problems. If you don't consider content at all, how do you even recognize when you're able to prove the absolutely absurd and have a problem? Sure, we could recognize triviality (i.e. when we can affirm every claim that is expressible in the language of the theory) in some abstract sense, but we wouldn't have any idea why this is problematic (and paradoxes of absurdity exist in non-trivial contexts anyhow). Hemple's ravens, and probably a lot of stuff involving logic and induction would be other examples where there will be similar issues. Or accounts of implication.

That said, I get the distinction, and I think it's a useful one to some extent. Nevertheless, when logicians want to discuss truth, and validity as "truth preserving," one has to understand what is meant by "truth." One can declare one's logic "pure" and free from metaphysics, but honestly it seems that all this accomplishes is making one's presuppositions opaque and immune to scrutiny (and, relevant to this topic, does so in a way that I think is often question begging re logical nihilism).

If "truth" is just left as an empty lable, "existence" in existential quantification likewise just a symbol with rules attached to it, etc. what exactly are we preserving? An AI can spit out systems without any regard to truth. Would it be doing the purest form of logic by jettisoning all metaphysical baggage? But then why even say it has anything at all to do with truth preservation; logic is just reduced to computation.

Pick up a length of pipe. Look at it from the side and it's rectangular. Look at it straight on, it's circular. Done.

This was Mandelbrot's key insight in coming up with fractional geometry. What is "smooth" at one scale is not at others, etc.

Likewise, a miter saw cutting wood is not generally considered a "chaotic" process. It's results are extremely regular on the scales we tend to care about for carpentry. Yet at a fine enough grain, it becomes extremely susceptible to strong variance due to minor changes in initial conditions.

Personally, I love C.S. Peirce on this issue. He's a big forerunner on these sorts of insights.

However, an I may have lost track of the point of the conversation, these do not seem like instances of contradictions to me, nor of particularly difficult cases for either logical realism or logical monism. TBH though, once they are properly caveated I find a lot of "logical monisms," and "logical pluralism" to be pretty much indistinguishable. If there is a material difference it goes over my head.

I guess a "strong" pluralism would declare that there are multiple equally valid/applicable logics but no morphisms between them? I just find it hard to imagine how this could be the case, since it seems that, by definition, they must have similarities in virtue of the fact that they are equally applicable to the same things.

And then a "strong monism," would presuppose a "one true formal system?" But that doesn't seem particularly plausible either.

Just to add an example, you routinely see claims that it is "meaningless" to inquire as to the causes of the Big Bang. It's a brute fact, unopen to inquiry. The naturalistic tool kit fails here.

Of course, popular opinion in cosmology is now that a period of cosmic inflation lies prior to and is the source of the Big Bang. It was not meaningless to make such inquiries.

Such "brute fact" prohibitions on inquiry have a habit of dissolving whenever a better answer can be provided.

To the extent that "methodological naturalism," allows for such responses, it seems not far off from supernaturalism. What is the key difference? In one case we have the inscrutable and untinelligible "just happening," and in the other we posit some sort of mind, purpose, or moral force lying behind the inscrutable. But if we're going to say something is inscrutable, we might as well plead ignorance as to why it is, rather than make assertions as to its purpose or lack thereof.

Great OP. I tend to agree on most fronts so I will note the two places where I disagree.

First, "methodological naturalism," seems equally open to Hemple's Dilemma. If we discovered good empirical evidence for immaterial souls or ghosts, these would be considered "natural phenomena " Likewise, if a proper sort of magical ritual could reliably get spirits to manifest, this would also be considered natural, and so "methodological naturalism," would include seances.

"Naturalism" is probably best defined in terms of opposition to the "supernatural," but it's not readily obvious what this entails either. Sometimes "naturalism" is pulled out to imply that no concious intent or intentionality exists outside the "mind," but such a presupposition seems to go beyond method, and in any event wouldn't rule out mindless supernatural forces like karma. This problem seems particularly acute when it is extended into blanket presuppositions prohibiting teleology, etc.

The problem I see here is that it is actually quite difficult to disentangle intentionality and the intelligibility of the world. Moreover, many physicalists and naturalists will claim that certain aspects of nature are just uncaused "brute facts" (e.g. "why does Cosmic Inflation occur?" or "why was the starting entropy of the universe so low?"). But allowing "there is no explanation, it just is," seems every bit as open to abuse as "God did it and God's will is inscrutable." The key difference seems to be the reduce to the presence of some sort of intentionality being involved, things can "just be" but they cannot "just be" according to some will. I fail to see how this really makes a methodological difference though, either way we seem to allow for explanation to bottom out in the unintelligible and inscrutable.

Second, I object to the hard separation of "science" versus "philosophy." This is a relatively recent distinction and seems to me to have a lot of baggage associated with it (chiefly the dogmatic enforcement of the particular philosophy of the anti-metaphysical movement). I think it's an unhelpful distinction in general. Work in the "philosophy of physics," or "philosophy of biology," overlaps significantly with what physicists and biologists do, and theoretical science, particularly paradigm defining work, almost always involves a great deal of philosophical analysis.

Hence, I am not sure if I would necessarily criticize physicalism for being "unscientific." I think your point has merit though, in that physicalism very often ambiguously spreads itself across discrete fields (e.g. natural philosophy/physics and metaphysics), and uses this equivocation to advocate for its position.

Just looking at some of the replies, this has already come up. "Physicalism is metaphysics, not science," (e.g., ) of course presupposes that metaphysics is not a science (historically it was considered one) and that science is not philosophy (historically they were considered to overlap). I'd argue that the fire wall between these is illusory, and people routinely slide between them. This, to me, says the distinction is simply not a good one. We don't mistake botany for chemistry or psychology for physics in this way, and I'd argue that's because those distinctions are less ambiguous and arbitrary.

What you'll be paid for is tracking patterns which people like to track, which usually involves manipulating the world in some way which we perceive as regular.

And why do we perceive it as regular? That's the key problem I see here. If the answer is "for no reason at all," that's a problem. If "it just is," is acceptable some places, it seems acceptable any place. Yet people almost always give up on "it just is," when they feel they have a good explanation for something, making it simply a catch-all to fill gaps and end discussions.

I'm also not sure what "being" is supposed to be if it isn't what is given to thought.

As for the quote, the same problem seems to remain. It defines logic in terms of truth, "truth-preserving," etc. I don't think these are terms are unproblematic or explainable solely in terms of formalism. And it certainly seems that logic cannot be the study of non-being either.

I don't exactly object to classical logic, though -- I'm saying it has limitations, not that it's wrong in every case.

Just a helpful point of clarification, "classical logic," is confusingly the logic developed by Frege and co. relatively recently. There is no good catch-all term for logic before the late 19th century. People call it "Aristotlean," but then this tends to miss everything between Aristotle and 1850 or so.

There was a Stoic logic distinct from Aristotle's, but it disappeared. The big difference I recall is that Artistotle primarily saw logic as an instrument of science/philosophy whereas the Stoics thought it was a proper field of study. The dominant modern view seems to blend these two.

BTW, the argument that an explanation of causes will lead to an infinite (or practically infinite) number of other explanations applies equally to all fact claims about the natural world. Consider:

"Why is Albany the capital of New York?"
"Why are deer called mammals?"
"Why do people vacation near the equator in winter months?"

All of these could lead through a seemingly endless series of why questions. But this only makes sense if the order of becoming is the order of contingent being. In any case, on this view, one can only ever know facts about self-enclosed axiomitized systems, and even here there are plenty of arguments (e.g. Quine) against even this sort of knowledge.

I'd argue that part of the solution here lies in Aristotle's criticism of Anaxagoras in the Physics, namely that he confuses causes and principles. There can be infinite causes because a single principle can manifest at many times and in many places. However, there is only a finite number of principles, else the world would be unknowable, since we could never come to know the principles at work in the world (one cannot traverse an infinite space in a finite time or come to know an infinite multitude in a finite time). Were there infinite principles at work in all things our understanding of them would also be infinitesimal, n/∞.

Unfortunately, Anaxagoras’ mistake is still alive and well in his reductive physicalist descendants. Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape is a prime example here. Throughout the book, Harris points out that feelings of suffering or challenges to human flourishing can be correlated with changes in the brain. For instance, children in foster care show elevated stress hormone levels when compared to children from unseparated families. From this he draws the conclusion that “neuroscience” and “knowledge of the brain,” is the key to understanding morality, since morality relates to human well-being, and our experience of well-being relates to neuronal activity.

Harris would do well to reflect on Aristotle’s dictum that the “specific and concrete will be 'better known to us,' whereas what is more general will be that which is 'better known in itself.'"6 To be sure, Harris is correct that there are things we can learn about human flourishing and the human good from studying the brain (pace the common post-modern claim that the Good is simply arbitrary social convention). And it is certainly in some ways easier to study concrete phenomena, such as hormone levels, rather than general principles. However, Harris’ reductive account of morality is akin to claiming that we are best able to understand flight (the principles of lift, etc.), by looking at the individual cells making up the wings of all the animals that fly (i.e. a focus on the "many," to the exclusion of any unifying "one.")

Yet this is demonstrably not the best way to understand flight or lift. We did not learn to build machines that would let us fly through an intensive study of the chemistry at work in insect or bird wings. Rather we mastered the more general generating principles at work across all instances of heavier than air flight in nature. The fact that “the cells in insects' wings are necessary for flight” need not compel us to conclude that flight is best understood through a study of these cells, just as the fact that we need our brains to “know the Good” need not suggest that the Good is itself something that can be best known through studying neurons.

And yes, the endocrine system is not "in the brain." Harris has a habit of ignoring that brains do not produce concious experience when removed from bodies

I take it you are saying something very different from Tim Wood here. It's one thing to say that "everything is causally connected," thus causes are not discrete in the way our speech is, and to say that causes can be described in many different ways, and that our considerations may vary according to our purposes. It's another thing to claim that talk of causes is "fiction" (not my word choice), and deny them or truth any existence outside of "stories/fictions."

In most cases, sense experience is prior to the stories we tell (e.g. I would not say that airliners crashing into the Twin Towers is what caused them to fall had I not seen airliners crash into the Twin Towers). But if causes only exist in stories, then are our sense experiences uncaused, occuring as they do for "no reason at all?" Certainly they cannot have "causes" that are prior to our storytelling on this view. Nor could anything in nature have been caused prior to the emergence of language.

I would just ask the same question I asked Tim several times, which he refuses to answer, if it were just "stories all the way down," why exactly are some stories more useful than others?

Now, on you're view, it would seem that some stories are more useful than other because they are true, e.g. bullets do cause death in some cases, even if we might expand our analysis to ever more causes (e.g. the source of the bullet, damage to the heart, etc.). But then I would simply object to the term "fiction" here or "story." Story is less objectionable, but it seems like it is very easy to fall into equivocal usage here, such that "story" is deployed to try to push deflationary theories of truth and causality while avoiding having to own up to the dubious claims like "it is not true in any metaphysical sense that Caesar died because he was stabbed on the Senate floor, that is just a way of storytelling," or a denial that "fire causes burns" without qualification.

So the categorical statement that "asbestos causes disease" is categorically false. And this, really, isn't about asbestos or any thing else. It is about the usage and understanding of language and the traps and rabbit holes that people can fall into or walk into eyes wide shut.

This is just sophistry and bad faith lol. I obviously didn't not mean something like "all adults who smoke cigarettes develop lung disease." Nonetheless, smoking is responsible for some cases of lung disease. Same with asbestos. Unless your point is to deny this?

BTW, you still have yet to attempt any explanation for why some fictions are more useful than others? Is this inexplicable or arbitrary? Why is it useful to believe the fiction that one should not inhale asbestos or plutonium but not useful to believe the fiction that drinking mercury will cure your syphilis?

The difference I intend between pure (as such) logic and applied (transcendental) logic is that we can do logic without addressing questions of being, whereas the latter gets into the weeds of various philosophical questions (but simultaneously presupposes a logic to get there). Logic is an epistemic endeavor dealing with validity whereas the question of the relationship of logic to being is getting more into metaphysics rather than logic.

I agree that you can study logic in total abstraction from content.

I am not sure if you can have an "epistemic endeavour," that is unrelated to being though. What is our knowledge of in this case? Non-being?

I also don't think we can have such an abstract study without the concepts provided by experience and sense awareness. For if we had no experience of the world, of encountering falsity, how would we even know what terms like "truth-preserving" meant? Likewise, how does one even have a concept of existential quantification without a concept of existence? That is, we can only abstract away the world so much.

Which is a good thing IMO. If we totally leave the world behind we'd have an infinite number of systems and no way to judge between them vis-á-vis which are deserving of study.

And simultaneously hold that there is no relationship between logic and being -- i.e. that the One True Logic is the result of the structure of knowledge requiring this or that axiom, but could still be anti-realist projections which have no relationship to being.

Suppose we had a formal system that answered all our questions about physics, or maybe some area of it like fluid dynamics. How could it have "no relation" to being? At the very least, it would have a relation to our experiences, which are surely part of being.

The purpose and scope of logic is certainly being considered by logicians, it's just that these are different questions. (also -- I, for one, am all for a socialist feminist biology for the winter months :D )

I want to do leap year physics. You get a nice three year break.

Then it seems we're more or less in agreement. :up:

I would also tend to suppose that there may indeed be many ways to "skin a cat," different systems that are equally good for x purpose, but then these systems will have similarities, mappings to one another.