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By gzt (Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 05:51:25 PM EST) (all tags)

when i was rather little, i didn't realize ghostbusters was a comedy.

so i was writing my little paper about hume and causality and i was going on popper-like lines about induction, and then i was like, "waitaminute, sir karl is a wanker." and he is, though i wasn't quite following his thought in my writings, it was sufficiently similar that i was wary.

Which reminds me, I know this pregnant woman and she got out her ultrasounds or whatever they are and was like, "The technician was showing us the baby and was like, 'Ah, it's a boy, there's his wanker.'" Indeed!

So, now I have to rethink my paper a little. It's a short paper, so it shouldn't be too hard, but it'll take a little time: time which I don't have [namely, 14 minutes]. Bah!

And so hey: I'm hungry right about now.

Anyways, I think Hume is totally spot-on about the logical side of induction, but his psychological account seems to fail. But, in what way? I'm not convinced by Popper, but, if not his way, how? Perhaps not at all, it certainly seems that people rely on induction. And surely our past experience of it has to count for something. Bah. Such, after all, is life. I'll conjure something up.

Why are they so many that rise up against me?

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ghostbusters! | 25 comments (25 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

hume's attack on human reasoning by 256 (2.00 / 0) #1 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 06:36:33 PM EST

is strictly correct but fails on a pragmatic level.

our past experience can cast absolutely know objective, logical, deductive light upon anything related to the present or future. however, acting AS THOUGH there is reason to expect the future to resemble the past is a necessary leap for interacting with the universe. it can not be proven to be right, but any other way lies insanity.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}

he addresses that. by gzt (2.00 / 0) #2 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 07:02:20 PM EST

and agrees, pretty much. there's just no rational basis for it. which is quite disturbing to philosophers after him.

[ Parent ]

well i see no escape from it by 256 (2.00 / 0) #3 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 07:19:05 PM EST

you can either reject logic or reject your certainty that the universe exists.

if you reject logic you have nothing. if you reject certainty you still have something, so i recommend the latter.

it's not that hard to come to terms with
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

kant, popper, et.c by gzt (2.00 / 0) #4 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 08:08:43 PM EST

Not so much your certainty that the universe exists, but that the future will be conformable to the past. What Popper does is deny induction lies at the core of our knowledge. What Kant does is postulate the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge. I think Kant's a huge wanker and so do a lot of people. Russell was before Popper and was thus horribly put out by Hume's arguments, but he trudged on otherwise.

oh fock, my roommating infidel just came home with that woman. i can't think or capitalize anymore. this conversation will be carried on later!

[ Parent ]

You're missing the point on Popper by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #5 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 08:34:21 PM EST

Popper was trying to rescue a formal methodology (empirical science) from the assertions of the logical positivists. Wittgenstein said, "Whereof we cannot speak thereof we mast pass over in silence". This, according to the fairly bullet-proof work on induction by Hume and others, is quite true. Popper was trying to leverage the uncertainty of induction by asserting that, in the instances where something was falsifiable, that, until something actually was falsified it was reasonable to place it on a sounder logical and philosophical footing than pure gibberish (which is what the Positivists were asserting). He was simply trying to do enough to budge the burden of proof slightly and buy scientific reasoning some breathing room in the face of the problem of induction.

Yes, on one level it's sketchy as hell, but it's a valiant rescue attempt - a nifty hack - and I can't help but rate him for it.

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Done.
[ Parent ]

except that, at its root by 256 (2.00 / 0) #7 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 08:53:58 PM EST

it was a lot of hand waving and an attempt to obscure the fact that he had not eliminated the need for induction but rather hidden it in the falsification stage.

hume never tried to dismantle the scientific project, he simply showed that we must view the findings thereof as utilitarian tools and never as verified truths.

i don't think that popper really added anything worthwhile.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

I think there's a crucial difference in Popper. by gzt (2.00 / 0) #9 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 09:35:45 PM EST

Popper claims that he's not inferring inductively his hypotheses, but putting them out like trial balloons and shooting them down as counter-examples come up. Popper, at the least, thinks there's a major difference. He might be right, I'm not certain his views assume the future will be conformable to the past. If that were the case, then his hypotheses would be wrong, and he's quite willing to live with that.

Russell and Popper both agree that Hume, in thinking that there is no logical basis for induction and that the human mind has a habit of induction anyway implies irrationalism, which is precisely not what Hume wants. The argument is stronger than Hume's project.

[ Parent ]

the assumption that a single observation-- by 256 (2.00 / 0) #10 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 10:40:30 PM EST

in this case the one that falsifies a theory-- can be abstracted to a larger case (i.e. the general falsification) strictly requires induction.

I do not believe Hume was looking for not looking to condemn irrationalism. I believe he was looking to redefine rationalism in utilitarian terms, removing any truth-value judgements.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

hmm. by gzt (2.00 / 0) #11 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 11:52:51 PM EST

okay, here's the deal with Popper. he treats Hume's attack on induction as something like this statement: "it is impossible to justify a law [scientific statement or whatever] by experience". he treats empiricism as something like this statement: "scientific statements can only be rejected or accepted based on experiments and observations". so Popper slips by, claiming he never justifies his hypotheses, he only discards them and holds the rest as only tentative or conjectural. i think you do have a point about general falsification being an induction, though. i'll mull it over and try to think whether Popper said anything about it, i'm sure he did.

Yeah, I agree Hume was not looking to condemn irrationalism, but he and most of his followers, I don't think, would be comfortable with it. Russell certainly wasn't and he didn't see a way out: he thought Hume's argument led to that rather than skepticism. Anyways, I don't think 'utilitarian' is the best word, perhaps 'pragmatic', though that is even more [oh good God, I've just forgotten the word for 'out of place in time']. Anyways, I think a lot of early Enlightenment thinkers' problems with 'is the world there or not' could have been solved by tossing out that silly peripatetic principle of sufficient reason.

[ Parent ]

Those are not the same form of induction by Dr H0ffm4n (2.00 / 0) #15 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 04:18:47 AM EST

Induction of the form that the future is comformable to the past (I-time) is an inherent assumption necessary to the empirical method. There is no empirical method without it. Your justification is that you are using the empirical method. Induction of the form that limited cases can be used to justify the general case (I-spec) is only logically valid when applied to affirm existentially qualified propositions by the existence clause being specifically satisfied (I-exist). Otherwise you are using incomplete induction (I-incomp). Assertions of the form of I-time are not of the I-exist form, but rather I-incomp. They are not logically tautologies, but then neither are any axioms you might choose for any logical system. If you don't like I-time, then don't use the empirical method. And get run over by a bus while trying to find a better method.

[ Parent ]

certainly ther are different forms of induction by 256 (2.00 / 0) #18 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 08:23:13 AM EST

but they all fall to hume's broad stroke.

what i was trying to say in the botched second paragraph of the grandparent post is that: of course we shall all carry on as though we had reason to believe that the future will resemble the past because it would be impossible to live without doing so. but that practical observation is far from being a proof.

hume was quite clear on the idea (and i agree with him) that radical skepticism is airtight but is a pragmatically null project.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

My point is subtler by Dr H0ffm4n (4.00 / 1) #20 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 08:42:57 AM EST

In pointing out the differing types of induction, I am offering that induction is a property of your method of obtaining descriptions of the world and not of the world itself. One can abandon the idea that the world always continues as it always has. One doesn't need it. One just makes the assumption that there is some description that one may not have yet that fits both the past and the future. If my current description fails to account for new phenomena, I just adjust or replace it. It's always possible to generate such a description. The world may have changed in some fundamental way (whatever that means) but I cannot know that, nor do I need to. I assume induction applies to any useful description of the world, not the world itself. This is a pragmatically useful skepticism. Of course it has no need of objective truth.

[ Parent ]

: pragmatic by gzt (4.00 / 1) #25 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 04:25:01 PM EST

If any description of the world works, then induction works on that description of the world. So you don't need to assume induction works on any useful description of the world. I believe some German whose name started with R said that. Reichenbach?

[ Parent ]

Oh: OK by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #16 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 06:25:13 AM EST

Get to back to me when you've actually read it. It's a good job that your ignorance protects you from just how embarrassing that is. It's not even wrong.

For bonus points, 'Utilitarianism' is a philosophy propounded by John Stuart Mill. I don't believe it's remotely connected to what you meant.

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Done.
[ Parent ]

did i capitalise "utilitarian"? by 256 (2.00 / 0) #17 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 08:07:46 AM EST

perhaps you would have preferred "pragmatic" or "instrumental".

i stand by what i said.

in "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Hume shows with philosophical rigour that the idea that knowledge about the world gained directly can lead to further indirect knowledge about the world is fundamentally flawed. And it is exactly this idea that science is based on.

But the entire last chapter of "An Enquiry" is devoted to explaining that, despite the problem of induction and the inescapability of radical skepticism, there is a natural human imperative to treat the world as though it exists and to treat the future as though it necessarily resembles the past.

No "durable good" can come, says Hume, from truly embracing skepticism (if such a thing is even possible). And so the scientific project rumbles on, much as it should, and everyone pretends that it has an epistemological leg to stand on.

we are talking about David Hume, the scottish philosopher, right? cause that would be embarrasing if we weren't.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

I don't disagree about Hume by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #19 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 08:32:19 AM EST

But you are off your trolley about Popper.

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Done.
[ Parent ]

here's the thing by 256 (4.00 / 1) #21 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 09:05:14 AM EST

Popper accepted hume's critique of induction. His philosophy of science purports to not require induction. and yet, the statement that a given observation qualifies as a falsification of a theory is itself an inductive statement.

that being said, there is a certain value i think to attending to the different rigours required for proof versus disproof. certainly in our day to day life we require less rigour to falsify a proposition than to verify it. but that is a statement about the shape of human belief structure, not about the validity of the scientific project.

perhaps i should not discard popper out of hand, his work was an important stepping stone in the philosophy of science. but he was much too quick to say that the problem of induction could be sidestepped.

admittedly it has been much longer since i read The Logic of Scientific Discovery than it has been since i read An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

oh, and also, JS Mill's Utilitarianism is a direct philosophical descendant of Hume's moral philosophy.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

You should listen to Dr Hoffman by yicky yacky (4.00 / 1) #22 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 09:23:58 AM EST

He and I have done this particular dance before, more than once. ;)

What Popper thinks of Hume is actually almost irrelevant. Popper accepts the problem of induction and spends a good deal of time outlining just how much of a roadblock it is. There's no real issue between Popper and Hume, as boringly dismissive as that sounds, and, if there is, it's the equivalent of debating paper napkins versus fabric serviettes - it's trivial.

The fight, the juice, the rumble is between Popper and Wittgenstein (cf. the entire Vienna school). Popper really doesn't make much sense, beyond being something of a curiosity, in Wittgenstein's absence. The doctrine of falsifiability doesn't seek to dismiss induction; it intends to rescue meaning from Wittgenstein's destruction of large swathes of accepted truth (including inductive truth). Popper was trying to demonstrate that some of what the positivists considered meaningless (partly due to induction) wasn't.

Whether he succeeded or not is a different debate. Wittgenstein's 'PI', which wasn't released until later, kind of moved the argument on further and, after that, it all goes a bit French and we drown in the morass of deconstruction where we live today.

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Done.
[ Parent ]

this i grant you by 256 (4.00 / 1) #23 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 01:53:21 PM EST

but i never really found popper to be that satisfying or even particularly entertaining on the subject of meaning.

i derived enjoyment from wittgenstein, but found quine to be a more worthy counterpoint.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

: Yeah, Quine slots into this as well by yicky yacky (2.00 / 0) #24 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 02:25:00 PM EST

His "Two Dogmas" was the longest, but most worthwhile 70-odd pages I ever read on a train. Then you have to deal with Kant. Kant's a kant. He writes in long, accumulative stacks which get continually pushed and popped until his thirty-line sentence completes and you spend a lot of time trying to figure-out the most pertinent sub-point. It's the only one so far that I ducked-out of half-way through. I've since re-read it, but certainly wouldn't claim to have "got it" much beyond that which can be got from page-long summaries.

I've currently got as far as Kuhn, which is more informal, but no less interesting.

On the one hand, he seems reluctant to dismiss the scientific method as formalized / re-made respectable by Popper and is just pointing out the reality of coal-face science as opposed to its philosophical ideals. On the other, he seems to be intent on doing a comprehensive (and somewhat French) destruction of it. This schizotypical approach kind of imparts an air of philosophical dishonesty ("Which is it, Kuhn?!" etc.), which I find vaguely disconcerting, but he makes some extremely good points (and using a less list-like rhetoric than Popper). Recommended (if you're into that kind of thing ...)

I've got Lakatos in the bag too, but I seem to be taking longer and longer to get around to reading, and then finishing, each one. I've also got a whole Fodor, Pinker, Dennett argument going on, which is more specialized and to do with some of my work, but no less philosophical, really.

It's good stuff, though, the whole argument.

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Done.
[ Parent ]

oh, i'm missing no points. by gzt (2.00 / 0) #8 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 09:00:59 PM EST

I just didn't comment further because I was cut off by the presence of roommating infidel. You're quite right about him in re: logical positivists. What Popper does is claim that Hume's destruction of the logical basis for induction says nothing about empiricism, since the hypotheses of an empiricist are always hypothetical and not, in fact, inferred from the evidence, so there is neither logical or psychological induction. Hence, he disagrees with Hume's assertion that induction is a fact [in the sense the humans naturally induct whether there is a rational basis for it or not] and is needed to live and function.

[ Parent ]

the thing is that having eliminated induction by 256 (2.00 / 0) #6 Mon Mar 13, 2006 at 08:48:22 PM EST

one is forced into a sort of acceptance of descartes' demon. for in exactly the same way that you can not prove that the past will resemble the future, there is no way to prove that the world must in any way resemble our qualia.

you can argue, with a certain degree of strength, that your perceptions exist, but any universe that is larger than a simple summation of your perceptions (and in that i do NOT include the subjects of those perceptions; for who is to say that perceptions need subjects?) can not be rigorously shown to exist.
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_{I don't think anyone's ever really died from smoking. --ni}
[ Parent ]

Peter Stormare as Neitzsche by Weapon of Pack Destruction (2.00 / 0) #12 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 12:15:07 AM EST

Listen up, Neitzsche in the Haus! Immanuel, this is your a priori synthetic.

You get an F

You know what we gonna do now?

No.

Unpimp your Eingebung!

[ Parent ]

heh, that book's on my desktop as we speak by gzt (2.00 / 0) #13 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 12:21:42 AM EST

Ah, Nietzsche.

[ Parent ]

: I've read it, you'd think I could spell his name by Weapon of Pack Destruction (2.00 / 0) #14 Tue Mar 14, 2006 at 12:35:45 AM EST

Nietzsche

[ Parent ]

ghostbusters! | 25 comments (25 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback