i'm declaring peace on terror. we could say, "there are a bunch of people in the world that hate us, they hate us so much that they want us to die, they would be willing to kill us, they want to kill us, they would even be willing to sacrifice their lives to harm us. how can we stop this? i know, let's go over to where they are, and kill them! that way, they won't be able to hate us any more, because they'll be dead. problem solved."
i would like to make a different statement. it may start out the same way (although it would probably explain certain elements a little more clearly), but it would drastically different after "how can we stop this?" i might go something like this, "i know, let's go over to where they are, and help them! that way, they won't hate us anymore. instead of spending our money on destroying that which they cherish, let us provide for them. let us teach them how to provide for themselves, such that they will no longer be at the mercy of hunger and poverty."
while the first response may be called "waging a war on terror", the second may be called "waging a peace on terror." somebody must have thought of this before. it seems like it would be pretty easy to get the UN to approve such a waging. further, it seems even some of the more radical dictators would be hard-pressed to forbid other countries from providing aid (they all do already, to my knowledge). so, some practical concerns seem relatively easy to deal with. building love is a pretty easy thing to do: determine the needs of the other, and satisfy those needs, while simultaneously helping the other to satisfy those needs without the help of others. let's do it...
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
the opposite of war...
the opposite of love is hate. what's the opposite of war? one might be inclined to say peace, but i think that is not correct. rather, peace can be to war as apathy is to hate - the absense of war, not the opposite of it. war is the decision of a nation-state to contribute a huge fraction of its gdp and emotional energy to destroying something. in that sense, foreign aid might be the opposite of war. but again, not really. foreign aid is more like the opposite of minor skirmishes, like when clinton dropped some bombs on iraq. so, i'm still stuck. i think english hasn't yet thought of a word that means the opposite of war. more importantly, it is not clear to me whether any country has even engaged in such an act (which, incidentally, explains the lack of such a word). engaging in this act would entail things like a draft to get people into something like peace corp, where many tens or hundreds of thousands of people from one country flock to another to build things. a good example would be something like what happens after a major natural disaster. instead of just sending money, we send people, goods, money, services. we stay for years helping rebuild their society (as they see fit). people who aren't drafted stay back to help build things to send over there. this could be a multilateral effect, we could form a coalition, etc. as war might be considered a great national expression of fear or hatred, this would be a great national expression of love and compassion. what should we call such a thing?
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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