Cataloguing Categories

All this talk of conceptual categories left me wondering if I could catalogue them. Here's what I came up with:

1) Objective: Verifiable, testable statements about the physical world. e.g. Objects accelerate at x rate due to gravity. Virus A causes disease B through mechanism C.
2) Subjective: Experiential statements. I feel cold. I chose to go to the store. I love you.
3) Descriptive: Statements of value about something. She's pretty. Good job. This town is boring.
4) A priori: Definitions. A dog is a living organism with X characteristics; Blue is light of these wavelengths.

There may be more, but this is all I could come up with on the way back from Taco Bell.

The first thing I noticed was that the first three types all come down to a priori concepts in the end. That is to say, "This worm is 2 cm long" is an objective statement -- but it depends on an a priori definition of what a worm is, what a centimeter is, and what the word "2" means.

The second thing I noticed was that you can retranslate just about every sentence among the first three. For instance, "Ouch! I'm in pain" (subjective) Ouch! That hurts! (descriptive) and "The contact between your elbow and my chest caused X reaction in my nervous system." (objective). Each of them looks at the event from a fundamentally different vantage point. The first expresses feeling. The second expresses judgment. The third describes reality.

And then I wondered, "if we can state things from all three angles, I wonder if we can examine them from all three angles." Obviously, you study objective reality through the scientific method. Subjective reality must be studied through introspection -- looking into your own experience. Descriptive reality must be studied with respect to a purpose. That is to say, "This is the perfect car" presumes a set of criteria in the mind of the speaker for what a car is intended for -- criteria that exist independently of the characteristics of the car, but which the characteristics of the car happen to match.

The next thing I noticed was that you can't study one category with another category's means. For instance, you can't study the characteristics of a frog through introspection or determining what the frog is useful for. You can't study why you're afraid of the dark with a microscope, or say it's not useful . And you can't determine whether a woman is beautiful or not with a ruler, or hour of meditation. Each type of statement has to be evaluated in its own way.

And then I thought, seems like most philosophical disputes come down to a failure to place concepts in their proper category. Scientists, for instance, seem to want everything to be studied in an objective manner. That works for some things, like chemicals in a test-tube. But it doesn't work for philosophy, interpersonal relationships, or self-awareness. Little wonder so many masters of the lab are failures in their own mind and life. Similarly, subjectivists seem to want everything to be an extension of their feelings. If they feel a thing, it is true. They argue that science is just a rationalization for the emotional biases of the scientist. And surely it often is -- but not when science is properly applied through its proper tools, and in its proper scope. Finally, the religious tend to see everything in terms of its inherent "value." Man is "evil." God is "good." sex is "only for marriage." The purpose of life is to serve God. Always judgment, evaluation, and purpose. And surely sometimes that is good. But they often neglect simply understanding what is (objective world) or what they are actually feeling (subjective world), constantly evaluating, and never understanding.

Is it any wonder that groups looking at the world through such radically different epistemological glasses would come into conflict? They literally look at the same event, person, or phenomenon, and see something completely different. No wonder the bickering never ends.

I think I might be onto something here.

Categories applied to determinism + free will

A few months ago, I wrote about categories of concepts, and how it's important to keep them straight. Thus "Dog" is a word we use to describe an object with certain characteristics, while "two" is a word we use to describe a grouping of objects, but not an object itself (you can never see a 'two'.) Seems like a lot of philosophical errors come down to crossing these categories -- for instance, the platonic forms treating describers (like "beauty") as real -- more real, in fact, than the things they are used to describe.

Then yesterday, it occurred to me that free will and determinism come down to a similar error. The two are in different categories. Free will is a subjective experience we have in the world -- similar to "pain" or "love." Free will is the experience we all have of choosing a ham or salami sandwich -- of deciding whether or not to give a bum a dime. You cannot see "Free will." There is no "free will box" in the body. You cannot observe an animal and see "free will" at work -- all you see is bodies in motion. Free will is an experience -- a feeling -- a knowledge that you can make your body go either way, depending on what you decide to do.

Determinism, on the other hand, is an unfalsifiable claim about the objective world. It is the claim that everything is invariably caused by something else. But of course this can't be tested at present, because we cannot identify every cause of everything that occurs in the universe. It's not an experience. We don't experience the alleged genes and childhood traumas that force us to select a cheese or salami sandwich. Now don't get me wrong -- we experience the CONDITIONING of our choices -- primarily through habit, but also through compulsive behavior -- but that is different from determinism. Determinism says that everything is decided in advance. Conditioned choices, on the other hand, are our experience that certain choices are more DIFFICULT to make than others, because we experience them as SCARY or UNFAMILIAR or something else. Again, that's experiential. Not deterministic.

Defined this way, free will and determinism do not conflict. If determinism is true, our subjective experience of free will is still true. If determinism is not true, our subjective experience of free will is still true. Demanding that free will be demonstrated in the objective world is just as silly as expecting a child to find the "Two" sitting on the table between two apples, or expecting a doctor to remove the "pain" from my broken arm and place it on the examination bench. Nonsense.

This is compatibilism of a sort, but less rigidly defined than classic compatibilism. Classic compatibilism defines "free will" as "things that are done without external compulsion," despite the fact that they are internally compelled. I don't need to define things that rigidly. My compatibilism holds that determinism is an open question about the objective facts of nature, and free will is a settled question about the universal human experience. They seek to answer two different questions, and are therefore not incompatible with each other.

The key, I think, lies in defining what mean mean by "Free will" and "determinism" as clearly as possible. Within a moment or two, it becomes apparent that what we mean by "free will" is not something that can be observed in the physical sciences -- it is something we know because we feel it. Similarly, determinism is something that could potentially be known through the sciences -- if we were able to compile all facts about the universe into a computer and predict all future outcomes -- but of course we can't yet.

As always appears to be the case, age-old philosophical debates stem from a failure to adequately define our terms.

And I think this modified definition of free will is adequate to serve all its necessary purposes. One of the necessary purposes of free will is in support of moral responsibility. Our sense of justice is offended at the prospect of being punished for actions that were determined, rather than chosen. Free will is significant insofar as it supports a system grounded on moral responsibility -- on reward for good bahavior, and punishment for bad behavior. Without a meaningful free will, there really is no basis for differential treatment for different behaviors. But because we DO actually choose what to do, a world in which bad behavior was rewarded rather than punished would lead people to CHOOSE to engage in much more bad behavior.

But if we acknowledge that free will exists as an experience, if not a physical reality, then it retains its place in our social organization. Whatever the physical reasons, we experience choice. Because we experience it, we must structure our lives and our society around that experience. Good behaviors should be incentivized, so that people are more likely to choose them. Bad behaviors should be disincentivized, so that people are less likely to choose them.

By analogy, "Pain" does not exist in the physical world -- you can't point to it or touch it. It is merely our subjective experience of certain nerve reactions in our system. But that doesn't make it any less real. And medicine needs to take it into account, if it wants to function properly. You can't say, "Well pain isn't a physical entity, so it doesn't exist, and we shouldn't take it into account." It's very real -- but SUBJECTIVELY real. And we ignore it at our peril.

So it is with choice. Whether or not it's one day discovered that all things are ultimately caused by some other physical cause, the fact will remain: we all feel like we have choices, and so our lives and societies will have to take that universal human experience into account.

Reductionism

Recently been listening to a book entitled "The Female Brain." Some valuable information, but also the same old reductionism that always bothers me -- foremost, the idea that we are motivated to do things by the chemical response we get from them. Falling in love, for instance, is described as a desire for the euphoric chemicals that surge into our system when we see the person.

On closer inspection, though, this view looks a little silly to me.

The main question is, "why do we like those chemicals?" At first glance, the answer might seem self-evident. But I don't think it is. The chemicals themselves are value-neutral. Our bodies might as well not like them as like them. Why shouldn't we prefer chemicals that make us sad to chemicals that make us happy, unless something else, something deeper than the chemicals, causes us to seek the feelings they give us?

What in us makes us decide to seek "happiness" instead of sadness? Why do we prefer euphoria to depression?

I don't think we necessarily have a clear answer. But chalking all our impulses up to different euphoric chemicals just begs the real question -- because "i seek hot girls" and "i seek the chemicals that my body gives me when I see a hot girl" leave the same open question -- why do we want anything at all? And why is it more reasonable to believe the mysterious unknown cause makes us want seratonin which makes us want hot girls than to believe that the mysterious unknown cause just makes us want hot girls?

I don't think it is -- but I think that reductionism of this type is nothing more than question begging.

And until scientists are able to figure out what in us makes us want things and causally prove it by giving someone the chemical that makes them want a cheese sandwich, I'm still willing to describe it as I subjectively experience it -- as free choice.

Kant

“The empiricist will never allow himself to accept any epoch of nature for the first–the absolutely primal state; he will not believe that there can be limits to his outlook into her wide domains, nor pass from the objects of nature, which he can satisfactorily explain by means of observation and mathematical thought–which he can
determine synthetically in intuition, to those which neither sense nor imagination can ever present in concreto; he will not concede the existence of a faculty in nature, operating independently of the laws of nature–a concession which would introduce uncertainty into the procedure of the understanding, which is guided by necessary laws to the observation of phenomena; nor, finally, will he permit himself to seek a cause beyond nature, inasmuch as we know nothing but it, and from it alone receive an objective basis for all our conceptions and instruction in the unvarying laws of things.

In truth, if the empirical philosopher had no other purpose in the establishment of his antithesis than to check the presumption of a reason which mistakes its true destination, which boasts of its insight and its knowledge, just where all insight and knowledge cease to exist, and regards that which is valid only in relation to a practical interest, as an advancement of the speculative interests of the mind (in order, when it is convenient for itself, to break the thread of our physical investigations, and, under pretence of extending our cognition, connect them with transcendental ideas, by
means of which we really know only that we know nothing)–if, I say, the empiricist rested satisfied with this benefit, the principle advanced by him would be a maxim recommending moderation in the pretensions of reason and modesty in its affirmations, and at the same time would direct us to the right mode of extending the province of the understanding, by the help of the only true teacher, experience.

In obedience to this advice, intellectual hypotheses and faith would not be called in aid of our practical interests; nor should we introduce them under the pompous titles of science and insight. For speculative cognition cannot find an objective basis any other where than in experience; and, when we overstep its limits our synthesis, which requires ever new cognitions independent of experience, has no substratum of intuition upon which to build.

But if–as often happens–empiricism, in relation to ideas,
becomes itself dogmatic and boldly denies that which is above the sphere of its phenomenal cognition, it falls itself into the error of intemperance–an error which is here all the more reprehensible, as thereby the practical interest of reason receives an irreparable injury.

And this constitutes the opposition between Epicureanism and Platonism.”

Mind and reality.

Seems to me there exists a spectrum of philosophical belief regarding the relationship between mind and reality. On the one extreme you have solipsists who believe the mind manufactures reality. On the other extreme you have materialistic reductionists who want to reduce every feeling and thought to a chemical configuration, and ultimately to equate the mind with the physical brain. In the middle there are those (like me) who believe that the mind and reality both exist, but in different categories -- mind being a subjective experience, and reality being objective.

Concepts that fit into the category of subjective experience:

Pain. It has no physical reality. Yet we experience it. We know what it is. We know what to do when we feel it. Its causes and effects can be observed in the objective world -- a slap in the face, or a brain-scan at the time the pain is initiated to see which portions of the brain are lit up. But you can't ever point to "pain."

Similarly, the mind is a subjective experience. It has no physical reality. Yet we experience it. We all know what it's like when our "mind" is "groggy." We all know what it's like when a new idea flashes into our mind. We speak of these things are real -- and they are -- albeit not physically real.

Philosophically, and experientially, we treat these subjective experiences as real. And rightly so. We experienced ideas long before we had any idea of how the brain actually functions. In fact, today, we still don't know what the physical manifestations or causes of an "idea" are. Yet we have them from the earliest age.

Materialists would like to reduce those experiences to mere chemical components. How many times have I read articles about how "love" has been proven by "science" to be "dopamine." But when you read the article, you discover that the basis for this conclusion is only that dopamine is associated with love. But dopamine is also associated with all good feelings -- it's a feel-good drug. It explains why one feels high, but it does not select why one loves one person or another -- or how that love is reflected in the physical reality of the brain. It basically reduces love to "feeling good" -- which is, of course, nonsense to anyone who has ever experienced love.

We experience love, mind, and pain as real, not as their physical manifestations. There's no sense denying what we all experience, every day.

And the mind, while subjective, also has the power to directly impact reality. The placebo effect is real, and it is documented. People act and manipulate objective reality based on these IDEAS, FEELINGS, HOPES, CHOICES, and DREAMS, which, although we cannot see, touch, or measure them, are nevertheless very real to us in our experience.

Then on the other hand, there are the dualists who insist that the mind has some substantive reality. Like the mind isn't just an experience, but "something" that could conceivably be found "somewhere." They do this without any evidence. And a substantial argument to the contrary: the fact that you can fiddle with someone's mind by fiddling with the physical components of their brain.

The key is to keep categories separate. Treat the subjective as real, and subjective. Treat the objective as real, and objective. Don't treat the subjective as objective. Don't treat the objective as subjective. Everything in its right place.

Label and object

Recently, I've been realizing more and more the importance of differentiating between objects and our linguistic labels for them. In fact, there are many words that we use for things that have no corresponding physical reality.

The number 2, for instance. You can't point to it. You can't touch it. You can't see it. 2 is a word we use to describe a particular grouping, real or imagined, of other objects.

Infinity, also. You can't point to it, touch it, more memorize it. It's defined as something that doesn't end. But because of our inherently limited nature, we can't measure or see anything without end.

Random. Many things we think of as random are not in fact random, but determined by variables we don't know. Randomness, then, would be better understood as "Something I can't put into a pattern."

Imaginary numbers. Not really any more imaginary than real numbers. Again, just a label we use to stick in our formulas. There are no "square roots" in reality, much less any "negative numbers." These are linguistic labels we use to manipulate algebraic formulae.

An idea. We have ideas all the time, and speak of them as though they are real. But you can't touch or feel an idea.

Dimensions. You can't touch or see dimensions. They are just labels we use to describe the universe in which we live. And the big X,Y, and Z are not the only, nor even the best means of describing reality. Non-Euclidean geometries can also describe the universe equally effectively, if not more effectively. Dimensions are just language, not reality.

Seems like the most viscious philosophical arguments are usually over the definitions of these words without any physical correspondending reality.

And what's REALLY weird are the folks (like Pythagoras, Plato, Anselm, and Descartes) who treat these labels as though they are real -- or even, more real than reality. Pythagoros went as far as to worship numbers. Plato thought the form of "greenness" was more real than anything green on the Earth. Anselm thought that because God was defined as the being than which no greater can be conceived, that he must, therefore, exist in reality. And Descartes had his own ontological argument.

All these people made the same fundamental mistake -- treating a label as though it were real -- and in some cases, more real than reality itself.

The ambiguity between label and reality caused a lot of unnecessary struggles more me, particularly in the area of math. As I got higher in math, it seemed more and more like the teachers and books were treating things like probability and integrals like they were something real -- and I was trying to conceptualize them that way. But they're not. Probability is just a label we put on our degrees of ignorance. If we knew all the variables that went into determining the outcome, there wouldn't be any probability. The same problem with calculus. You can't point to or touch an "integral." It's a mathematical game we play to bridge ourselves from physical reality to physical reality quickly and conveniently.

My math and stats teachers, I think, didn't get that. They insisted on treating math as though it were something real -- as though it had some corresponding REALITY to it -- which, of course, it does not. They were just making the same mistake Pythagorus did.

It also caused me to struggle with philosophical discussions about "essence." Philosophers spoke (and speak) of "essence" as though it has some reality it it. But "essence" is really just a definition we put on what we see.

I come to realize that all this means is that I'm thoroughly nominalist and existentialist in my philosophy without knowing it. But now by knowing it, I'm much better able to understand what they meant with all that "essence" stuff.

I wonder what it is about people that makes some of them want to treat labels like reality.