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Cartesian Free Will and Knowledge

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Cartesian Free Will and Knowledge

oag
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Posted 06/26/09 - 03:01 PM:	#41
Hanover wrote: For the purposes of absolute accuracy in philosophy forums, fine, the earth is football shaped (actually American football shaped) and not round, like a marble. My point remains that in a determined world I will not "decide" the world is round or oblong; I will just believe whatever the casual chain requires me to. My point was that the causal chain might be requiring you to believe something that is not entirely accurate if you let it. And, your comment about what the earth actually is like in reality isn't entirely consistent with your prior posts questioning actuality and reality. I disagree. My comment about what the Earth is actually like is based entirely on observation of it. It is consistent with my prior points about statements of truth. The example was given that the truth of the Earth being round is unavoidable. I was making the point that it was entirely avoidable, by choice. We could argue that it must be supplanted with another truth, one more accurate, more correct, whatever. That is beside the point though. The truth is what we say it is as the universe, reality, doesn't present us with truth, it merely presents us with itself and we decide what to say about it.

jtoma
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Posted 06/27/09 - 02:23 PM:	#42
Hanover wrote: If we are to say that a computer has knowledge (where truth is a necessary element of knowlege), then we have to stipulate that the computer was programmed in such a way that it would lead to the truth. To apply this computer analogy to the universe, you could have knowledge if determinism were true, but you would have to stipulate that the deterministic forces for some reason lead us to the truth. To claim that the laws of nature lead us to the truth seems to posit a guiding hand that presents us with knowledge. Such a claim appears to be overly faith based, and if you're going to posit faith, then it seems more reasonable to have faith in the common sense notion of free will. Is truth an element of knowledge? You say that one could 'know' the world is flat? Increasing human understanding of nature, from your 'non-solopsist' POV, via formulation and explication of laws of nature, is guided only by utility of prediction. If a prediction is useful, then we say we 'know' what it predicts: e.g. 'I know the sun will rise tomorrow' comes from my prediction that the sun will rise tomorrow given by the formulation of a law purporting to describe nature. Anyway, I feel the knowledge, at least in the scientific community is guided in its growth by its utility, and I don't understand why you think it needs to be guided by truth. Hanover wrote: If we accept determinism as a premise, then when I ask you why you believe that the world is round, you may provide me various reasons for your beliefs, but, those reasons are nothing other than rationalizations implanted in you by the deterministic world. In truth, the reason you believe the world is round (if you were a determinist) would be because you must. You may think that your opinion is the result of rational thought and observation, but what you take to be rational thought and observation is simply that which the causal chain has caused you to think is rational thought and observation. I use determinism as a premise only insofar as 'mechanistic' or 'physical' are appropriate substitutes for 'deterministic'. I mean determinism to oppose the extra-physical found in ambitious readings of 'free will'. Hanover wrote: I think for you to have a proper judgment, you must be able to freely decide. Using an example of a judge, he reviews the evidence, he considers the facts, and he then freely decides guilt or innocence. Certainly the judge had some biases and some preconceived notions, but to the extent those biases were relevant and to the extent he couldn't set them aside, his judgment was not valid. If a judge is not controlled by his reasons, but is controlled by other external forces, then his jugment cannot be said to be correct. A determinist must therefore claim that the deterministic forces compelled the judge to follow logic and reason when he reached his decision. My question this is: what requires that the amoral causal chain of the universe be fair, and what requries that it lead us to the truth? I did not understand that to be your question, sorry. Since I don't know how to answer, you might take a look at one of Donald Davidson's paper's, I think it is called "Actions, Reason, and Causes". Otherwise, Davidson was refuting the view that reasons are, alone, causes for action. His theory of action, roughly, is that for every action there is a primary reason consisting of a pro-attitude (loosely, a desire) towards the believed result of that action and a secondary reason that is a belief that the action will bring about a specific result. So, Davidson would say that a reason is a cause for action only if 'reason' includes a belief-desire pair--the only thing sufficient to caused an action, according to Davidson. As I recall, in his discussion about what constitutes 'action', he appeals to a certain degree of voluntariness, that you would take interest in. Hanover wrote: I think a determinist must stipulate that reasons (i.e. valid, logical explanations correlating to reality) are causes, but I think that's a huge leap of faith. For me to say that I went to work today for a reason (to make money), assumes that the reason was the cause. I think that if we want to get into '-ism's' and '-ist's' then something like a physicalist might be distinguished from determinist on the grounds that to him, the jury is out as to whether there is a 'valid, logical explanation correlating to reality' for every action. A Davidsonian determinist might say that there is a belief-desire pair causing every action and each such pair can be put in a description of a 'causal' chain' ending in action that uses purely physical language. I don't know how either the word 'physicalist' or 'determinist' is used by philosophers; I am just proposing a distinction that would suit our discussion. Hanover would be a physicalist accusing oag of being a determinist, perhaps due to his solipsism. It remains to be determined though, whether oag is presenting a determinist or a solipsist POV. Someone can be a Davidsonian physicalist without prima facie contradiction. oag wrote: This is where determinism fails too. In a picture the world is round. In reality the world is actually slightly football shaped because it bulges at the equator. Also the moon pulls it slightly out of round due to the majority of the surface being water. The element of free will comes in when you decide how you want to see it and what exactly you are talking about. If you feel compelled to declare that the world is round based on the evidence and I come along and remind you that it is actually a globe in 3 dimensions (and not exactly a perfect globe either) you can reassert that it is (undeniably) round in 2 dimensions and remain correct about that. I think this is a good point but I am a little confused about the context right now. I am wayy out of my comfort zone with these ideas. Anyway, that the world is round when evaluated in 2 dimensions and is an oblate spheroid when evaluated in 3 dimensions hints at the relativity of truth. The picture I have is that a set of propositions is given truth by comparison with another set of propositions. I think this is how they prove coherence in math. The second set of propositions lends some kernel of objectivity to the first one via representing different ideas by being a different set of propositions. Its odd to think something can be true independent of a frame of reference: 'I am sitting' is true if uttered by me now but not true if uttered me me when I go on a run in 15 minutes. Edited by jtoma on 06/28/09 - 12:05 AM

Hanover
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Posted 06/28/09 - 07:52 AM:	#43
oag wrote: My point was that the causal chain might be requiring you to believe something that is not entirely accurate if you let it. That seems to be a summation of my thesis, so perhaps we are agreeing. Specifically, (1) the causal chain does not necessarily lead us to the truth, but (2) it might if you let it. Your reference to "if you let it" seems to allow the agent some authority in deciding (or willing) what he believes. That is, the final act of judgment rests in the will and that without this ability to will, there will be no way to attain accurate knowlege, but we will be left with causally determined beliefs that may or may not relate to reality.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House" "I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them." G.W. Bush

Hanover
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Posted 06/28/09 - 08:10 AM:	#44
jtoma wrote: Is truth an element of knowledge? You say that one could 'know' the world is flat? I'm not assigning an epistimological theory to you, so you are free to describe your own, but knowledge is often defined as "justified true belief." So, yes, truth is an element of knowledge. If you remove truth from the equation, then you are left with opinions or items of faith I would think. That is, if I can say to know X simply because I believe X to be true and I have a subjective belief that X is true, then we would say that I know X even if X is not true. By example, if I believe the earth is flat and I have a convoluted but subjectively sincere justification for why I believe that the earth is flat, then I can say that I know the earth is flat, despite the fact that it isn't. I'm not willing to discard the truth element, but I have heard it argued (although I believe unpersuasively so). Anyway, I feel the knowledge, at least in the scientific community is guided in its growth by its utility, and I don't understand why you think it needs to be guided by truth. I don't know that those in the applied sciences actually spend time wondering whether there is a distinction between utility and truth, but there's probably an implicit acceptance that the two are interrelated. That is, by adopting the truth, we achieve predictable and useful results. As an example, Newtonian physics may provide useful results up to a point, but reliance upon quantum mechanics is required once a certain level of analysis is needed. I think it's generally accepted in the scientific community that quantum mechanics is more accurate because it is more correlated to the truth (i.e. the way things actually are). I did not understand that to be your question, sorry. Since I don't know how to answer, you might take a look at one of Donald Davidson's paper's, I think it is called "Actions, Reason, and Causes". The distinction that I was drawing was between causes and reasons. A cause is a physical event in the causal chain that explains conduct. It is non-teleological in nature. To ask why I went to the store and to provide every cause in the universe explaining the physical causes for why I went to the store would provide an incomplete explanation for why I went to the store, namely because I wanted some milk for my cereal.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House" "I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them." G.W. Bush

jtoma
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Posted 06/28/09 - 10:28 AM:	#45
Hanover wrote: I'm not assigning an epistimological theory to you, so you are free to describe your own, but knowledge is often defined as "justified true belief." So, yes, truth is an element of knowledge. If you remove truth from the equation, then you are left with opinions or items of faith I would think. That is, if I can say to know X simply because I believe X to be true and I have a subjective belief that X is true, then we would say that I know X even if X is not true. By example, if I believe the earth is flat and I have a convoluted but subjectively sincere justification for why I believe that the earth is flat, then I can say that I know the earth is flat, despite the fact that it isn't. I'm not willing to discard the truth element, but I have heard it argued (although I believe unpersuasively so). So do you want to say that the distinction between belief and knowledge is founded on knowledge's incorporation of truth? That is a weird way to use 'knowledge' because then you take away much of the 'knowing' from a lot of people who think at certain times that they are doing it. Galileo twice took Neptune to be a Star. If someone had asked him pointing at Neptune on a map of the solar system, "What's this?" Galileo would have responded, "A star." You think that Galileo did not know Neptune to be a star, that maybe he just believed it. Perhaps that right, but I think the father of modern observational astronomy needs a bit more credit. If he said, pointing at Neptune, "this is a star", to his lab helper or someone who is no astronomer, then that person would say, trusting such an influential teacher, that he/she knows that the thing you and me now call Neptune is a star. If you want to deprive them of that knowledge, then you ought to be ready to posit an alternative way to express the lab helper's epistemological status. I am not sure which of the following types of truth requirement you have in mind to express the lab helper's epistemological status. The first: knowledge of P requires knowledge concerning P's truth. This says that you can't come to know something, call it P, without also coming to know something about the truth of P. This first way of helping the lab helper who thinks he 'knows' something does not make requisite that knowledge concerning P's truth is knowledge that P is true, it could simply be a knowledge of a probability--even a low one. The second: knowledge of P requires knowledge of the truth of P. This says that you can't know something without knowing it is true. This way of helping the lab helper is to inform him that because his utterance about Neptune is false, it is not a star, he/she cannot know the propositional content of the utterance "This (pointing at Neptune on a map) is a star." Which do you mean?

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Posted 06/28/09 - 02:53 PM:	#46
jtoma wrote: So do you want to say that the distinction between belief and knowledge is founded on knowledge's incorporation of truth? The equation is Knowledge = Justified True Belief. So, belief is an element of knowledge. If you don't believe something, then it's not knowledge to you. Put simply, if I believe (that it is my opinion) that neptune is a star, and that justification is based upon my incorrect observation or my trust in the authority of Galileo , then I do not have knowledge that neptune is a star. Why? Because neptune is NOT a star; it's a planet. That is, my view was not true, and since truth is a requirement for knowledge, then you cannot say that I know something if it is false. Your discussion draws no distinction between justified true beliefs and justified false beliefs. I refer to the former as knowledge and the latter as false beliefs. I do think there are problems with the JTB theory, but the truth requirement I do not believe is one of them.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House" "I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them." G.W. Bush

oag
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Posted 06/28/09 - 10:57 PM:	#47
Hanover wrote: That seems to be a summation of my thesis, so perhaps we are agreeing. Specifically, (1) the causal chain does not necessarily lead us to the truth, but (2) it might if you let it. Your reference to "if you let it" seems to allow the agent some authority in deciding (or willing) what he believes. That is, the final act of judgment rests in the will and that without this ability to will, there will be no way to attain accurate knowlege, but we will be left with causally determined beliefs that may or may not relate to reality. I do believe that we are in agreement. It was a fun chat. Thanks.

jtoma
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Posted 06/29/09 - 02:06 AM:	#48
JTOMA: A determinist thinks computers are determined. A computer is programmed, receives inputs, then executes programming. A human acquires knowledge, receives sensory stimulation, then acts. A determinist would relate a human to a computer, a non-determinist would not. Hanover: To say that computer's have knowledge requires stipulation that computers are programmed 'toward truth'. (I am a non-determinist!) What requires the amoral chain of the universe be fair, and what requires that it lead us to the truth? JTOMA: Truth in science, and presumably computer science, is constituted of facts which compose theories which sustain themselves in the community by being useful in the prediction of events. I don't need computers to have knowledge anyway. No one is saying that the amoral chain of the universe is fair, but whether it is or not some things are perceived to be more useful that others. Some methods of describing empirical phenomena lead to better predictions of events. The amoral chain doesn't need to lead us to truth, because we wouldn't know it if we had it. To know P and that P be true is to say that free will confers truth in its judgments. Because the amoral chain need not lead us to truth we have no way to know that P be true. Hanover(oag): The amoral causal chain might be requiring you to believe something that is not entirely accurate if you let it. JTOMA: That's true and that's why science grounds truth in utility of prediction because utility brings pleasure which trumps accuracy. As there are doubts about the morality of the causal chain, truth ought not be hung on the accuracy of our beliefs about the chain itself, but rather on the utility of a belief in predicting its events/ A more plausible distinction between belief and knowledge is that knowledge is acquired via understanding and belief via faith (leap of understanding). I think I understand you when you say that belief is an element of knowledge because it takes a certain amount of belief to acquire knowledge due to the misrepresentation inherent in all forms of expression. "I abstain from judging of a thing when I do not conceive it with sufficient clearness and distinctness...wrong use of the freedom of the will [contains] the privation that constitutes the form of error" Does it makes sense to say you know something if you lack free will? If your judgment contains free will, then you cannot know without free will. If your judgment is just judgement (determined by the amoral causal chain) without free will, then you can know without free will. Is there free will in judgement? Descartes doesn't mention it being there in the quoted passage, but he does mention that if you don't clearly and distinctly perceive something then you ought not judge it. Clear and distinct perceptions are useful for the acquisition of good descriptions with which to make theories to predict empirical phenomena. Edited by jtoma on 06/29/09 - 06:59 PM

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Posted 06/30/09 - 07:05 AM:	#49
jtoma wrote: A more plausible distinction between belief and knowledge is that knowledge is acquired via understanding and belief via faith (leap of understanding). I think I understand you when you say that belief is an element of knowledge because it takes a certain amount of belief to acquire knowledge due to the misrepresentation inherent in all forms of expression. My reference to belief being an element of knowledge is based upon the standard definition of knowledge as being "justified true belief." All that means is that you are not considered to possess "knowledge" unless you have a belief, you have justification for that belief, and that belief is true. So, if you believe there are dogs, and your justification is that you've seen many dogs, and there are actually dogs, then you have knowledge. Faith would be a belief that one has without an adequate justification. Even if the item of faith happens to be true, it would not be considered knowledge due to the lack of proper justification.
"Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason." John Belushi, "Animal House" "I have opinions of my own --strong opinions-- but I don't always agree with them." G.W. Bush

jtoma
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Posted 06/30/09 - 02:16 PM:	#50
Now, I understand that. Thanks for chatting.

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