when interacting with another human being, i think a useful guiding principle is: "do that which maximizes the expected connection between oneself and the other." i do not mean here immediate connection, but rather long term. if one analogizes with dynamics or kinetics equations, we are interested in maximizing the expected value of the steady-state of the system. in game-theoretic terms, this may be akin to the pareto optimal solution (but i don't understand that stuff well enough just yet). in buddhist thought, this may be related to the idea of searching to unify oneself with the other, to the point that one does not even consider oneself different from another (again, i'm not sure i get this stuff yet). bob marley may have referred to this idea as "one love. one heart. let's get together and feel alright," again referring to breaking down the barriers between us and just coming together. so, clearly, this is not a novel or unique idea. nonetheless, it does not seem to be central to many contemporary moral or ethical systems (at least western ones). i came to this thought because i used to act according to a very similar principle: "do that which maximizes the immediate connection between oneself and the other." sadly, this often leads to suffering, as immediate gains often come at the cost of long term suffering.
i find that i am able to act according to this new principle in a way that is not at all paternalistic. this is somewhat in contrast to: "do unto others that which you would like done unto you." i think the appropriate way to understand this thought lies in considering *psychological impact*, not actions. if i like eating cake, but you don't, then i shouldn't get you cake. if i only consider actions, then i would want cake, so i should get cake for others. instead, the important point is i would want things that *i* like, so when getting presents for others i should get them things that they like. however, acting according to this principle, even upon the interpretation that i prefer (a psychological impact emphasis rather then the "act" itself emphasis), leads me to paternalistic behavior or controversy. for instance, a woman wants to sleep with me. she says she'll like it and feels good about the decision. assuming i want to as well, i could go with it, and hope everything would be cool. or i could not go with it, the rationale being that i don't believe it is what she really wants deep down, or i think it would be better for her not to in the long run. either one of those rationales is somewhat dissatisfactory. however, if i consider our long term connection, i would concur only if i believed that it was beneficial for our relationship. this thought process somehow side steps the issue of considering her, or myself, of being paternalistic or selfish. the point is our interaction (which is really the thing at stake).
so, i'm pretty happy with this approach so far. if anybody has some qualms about it, i'd love to hear it. of course, it is not a complete theory of ethical behavior (eg, how might i consider interactions with people i've never met, such as sudanese refugees), nor does it solve all interpersonal relationship problems, but i think its a pretty good place to start.
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Friday, April 4, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
doubt on knowledge
some posit that "to have knowledge is to know something, and that something is true." i have some problems with that. for trivial statements such as, "it is snowing outside," while i don't have a well formed argument against it, i am somewhat uncomfortable with saying that it is true. however, for less trivial statements, such as "there is gravity," i think it is pretty easy to form an argument. the statement "there is gravity" can only be a summary for stating
"there is a large body of empirical observations that are all expected on the basis of positing the existence of some inexplicable force pulling all objects together. in particular, various physicists have concocted a precise formula that quantitatively characterizes this force for many cases."
i'm inclined to acknowledge that the first sentence is approximately true. however, the second sentence implies that the current model of gravity is imperfect, in that certain cases are not accurately characterized by even our best gravitational models. in that sense, the gravity that we posit to exist in correct, and so the statement "there is gravity" is also incorrect. furthermore, it is unlikely that we will ever have a comprehensive model of gravity, so the statement, "there is gravity" will never be strictly true.
mathematically, one could imagine that gravity is an "ill-posed problem", meaning there is no unique solution. thus, even if one could construct a comprehensive model of gravity, it would by no means by the only possible model; rather, it would be the only one we've thought of so far. aside from trivial changes in the model (like renaming something), in general, i see no reason to believe that all the observations relating to gravitational forces should only be explicable in a single way. therefore, there could be many equally good models of gravity. are they all correct? maybe. alternately, they may all be useful descriptions of the same phenomena. probably, some descriptions would be more useful than others (at the least, in some cases this should be true). in that case, we would prefer certain models at certain times. then, talking about whether a model is true becomes less important, and talking about whether it is useful is more important. so the question of truth vanishes in favor of the question of utility. i guess this makes me some what of a pragmatist.
this argument holds generally for any model of any feature(s) of the world. if one posits that all descriptions are really just linguistic models of the world, then the appropriate question to ask is which are useful. those models/descriptions that are useful are tho ones that should be kept and refined, others should be discarded. since we probably will never get a completely true model, i think this is the only reasonable desirate: utility.
"there is a large body of empirical observations that are all expected on the basis of positing the existence of some inexplicable force pulling all objects together. in particular, various physicists have concocted a precise formula that quantitatively characterizes this force for many cases."
i'm inclined to acknowledge that the first sentence is approximately true. however, the second sentence implies that the current model of gravity is imperfect, in that certain cases are not accurately characterized by even our best gravitational models. in that sense, the gravity that we posit to exist in correct, and so the statement "there is gravity" is also incorrect. furthermore, it is unlikely that we will ever have a comprehensive model of gravity, so the statement, "there is gravity" will never be strictly true.
mathematically, one could imagine that gravity is an "ill-posed problem", meaning there is no unique solution. thus, even if one could construct a comprehensive model of gravity, it would by no means by the only possible model; rather, it would be the only one we've thought of so far. aside from trivial changes in the model (like renaming something), in general, i see no reason to believe that all the observations relating to gravitational forces should only be explicable in a single way. therefore, there could be many equally good models of gravity. are they all correct? maybe. alternately, they may all be useful descriptions of the same phenomena. probably, some descriptions would be more useful than others (at the least, in some cases this should be true). in that case, we would prefer certain models at certain times. then, talking about whether a model is true becomes less important, and talking about whether it is useful is more important. so the question of truth vanishes in favor of the question of utility. i guess this makes me some what of a pragmatist.
this argument holds generally for any model of any feature(s) of the world. if one posits that all descriptions are really just linguistic models of the world, then the appropriate question to ask is which are useful. those models/descriptions that are useful are tho ones that should be kept and refined, others should be discarded. since we probably will never get a completely true model, i think this is the only reasonable desirate: utility.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
furnishing the mind, by jesse prinz
jesse starts with the premise that concepts are essentially the constituents of our mental lives, and therefore, any satisfactory explanation of mentality should incorporate a satisfactory of concepts. to date, however, upon his estimation (and my own), no such account of concepts exists. he therefore sets up a list of desirata that an account of concepts should satisfy, including things like acquisition, publicity, intentionality, etc. then, he presents the current leading theories of concepts, providing both the positive and negative elements of each. he then combines the desirable features of each to develop a novel theory, called proxytype theory.
proxytype theory essentially posits that concepts are mechanisms of detection (used by minds) of statistical regularities in the world. they are "couched in representational codes that are specific to our perceptual systems," ie, the concept of G# is couched in our auditory system, whereas the concept BLUE is couched in our visual system. while i think this nicely accounts for any "perceptually available concept", which i loosely define here as concepts that not that concrete, it is harder to understand how such a theory could account for the concept JUSTICE. in which modality is such a concept stored?
that being said, i think he is on to something. brains seem to act largely as repositories of statistical regularities of the environment. their purpose is often considered to be twofold: (1) information processing, and (2) information storage. i argue that the feature that makes brains cool, and enables them to do such cool stuff that even the worlds most advanced computers aren't even close to (eg, laugh, recognize a face, etc.), is their incredible information storage capacity. in that sense, one could think of concepts as fuzzy blobs in neural activity space corresponding to some sort of environmental regularity. in other words, for any given concept C, there should be some pattern of neural activity A, corresponding to that concept. if one analyzed the neural activity of some subject S upon being presented with an object that has property C, assuming that S has concept C, then A should be present. furthermore, A should also be present in some other subject S2. something such as this must be true if both S and S2 share the concept C.
in light of that argument, of course modality specific concepts should evoke modality specific neural activities - there is no way to avoid this. this can also alleviate some of our fears about more abstract concepts, such as JUSTICE. some pattern of neural activity corresponds to that concept.
note that these patterns of neural activity need not be identical in each person. rather, some feature(s) of those patterns should be consistent for any instantiation of concept C, regardless of which person observes something with property C, and is "conscious" of observing C.
proxytype theory essentially posits that concepts are mechanisms of detection (used by minds) of statistical regularities in the world. they are "couched in representational codes that are specific to our perceptual systems," ie, the concept of G# is couched in our auditory system, whereas the concept BLUE is couched in our visual system. while i think this nicely accounts for any "perceptually available concept", which i loosely define here as concepts that not that concrete, it is harder to understand how such a theory could account for the concept JUSTICE. in which modality is such a concept stored?
that being said, i think he is on to something. brains seem to act largely as repositories of statistical regularities of the environment. their purpose is often considered to be twofold: (1) information processing, and (2) information storage. i argue that the feature that makes brains cool, and enables them to do such cool stuff that even the worlds most advanced computers aren't even close to (eg, laugh, recognize a face, etc.), is their incredible information storage capacity. in that sense, one could think of concepts as fuzzy blobs in neural activity space corresponding to some sort of environmental regularity. in other words, for any given concept C, there should be some pattern of neural activity A, corresponding to that concept. if one analyzed the neural activity of some subject S upon being presented with an object that has property C, assuming that S has concept C, then A should be present. furthermore, A should also be present in some other subject S2. something such as this must be true if both S and S2 share the concept C.
in light of that argument, of course modality specific concepts should evoke modality specific neural activities - there is no way to avoid this. this can also alleviate some of our fears about more abstract concepts, such as JUSTICE. some pattern of neural activity corresponds to that concept.
note that these patterns of neural activity need not be identical in each person. rather, some feature(s) of those patterns should be consistent for any instantiation of concept C, regardless of which person observes something with property C, and is "conscious" of observing C.
explaining the brain, by carl craver
craver's central hypothesis is that adequate explanations of how brain stuff is causally related to mental stuff are mechanistic in nature. apparently, philosophers have had some debate over similar issues in the past, and others have suggested other arguments (eg, the"covering law model" posits that "explanations explain...by showing that the phenomenon was to have been expected on the basis of the laws of nature". anyway, that explanations should incorporate mechanisms is fairly obvious to nearly all the good neuroscientists i know. this is clear upon reading any of their webpages, where they describe their research goals. for instance, the title of my thesis is something like, "inferring the neural mechanisms of..." (the ellipsis indicates that i think you don't care about the details). craver does however make a compelling argument to those people who haven't reached that conclusion just yet.
a central component of his argument is that these mechanisms must span multiple levels. for instance, if changes in neural circuitry are necessary for storing new information, then an adequate explanation should explain the relationship between spatiotemporal patterns of activity and synaptic plasticity, which are arguably different levels of explanation already. although this may again seem somewhat trivial, i think this is a valuable insight, even for those neuroscientists who agree about the mechanisms, as there is a significant "level-bias" in neuroscience research (ie, many investigators believe that explanations should lie at a particular level of description, eg, spatiotemporal patterns of spiking, versus across levels).
overall, i think he reaches a good conclusion, and makes a strong argument in support of it, so if you ask yourself, "what kind of explanations are adequate in (neuro)science" and your answer is not "mechanistic", i highly recommend this book. if, on the other hand, your answer is "mechanistic", it is somewhat less pertinent, but still an interesting read.
a central component of his argument is that these mechanisms must span multiple levels. for instance, if changes in neural circuitry are necessary for storing new information, then an adequate explanation should explain the relationship between spatiotemporal patterns of activity and synaptic plasticity, which are arguably different levels of explanation already. although this may again seem somewhat trivial, i think this is a valuable insight, even for those neuroscientists who agree about the mechanisms, as there is a significant "level-bias" in neuroscience research (ie, many investigators believe that explanations should lie at a particular level of description, eg, spatiotemporal patterns of spiking, versus across levels).
overall, i think he reaches a good conclusion, and makes a strong argument in support of it, so if you ask yourself, "what kind of explanations are adequate in (neuro)science" and your answer is not "mechanistic", i highly recommend this book. if, on the other hand, your answer is "mechanistic", it is somewhat less pertinent, but still an interesting read.
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