Induction is absurd

The term “induction” is used in a variety of ways. For example, it is sometime applied to statistical inference. I do not find anything absurd with statistical inference, if it is done properly.

The absurdity that I am posting about, is with respect to what is sometimes called “philosophical induction.” Here’s an example of that kind of induction:

All the many crows that I have seen are black. Therefore all crows are black.

That’s the example that David Stove used in his book “The Rationality of Induction.”

We are born into a world where there are no crows. As a child grows, she eventually learns to carve that world up into parts and to name the parts. What we call “crows” comes from that carving up operation (or that categorizing operation). For that matter, we are born into a world without black. We later learn to categorize into colors such as black, green, red, blue, yellow. That we have black things depends on our categorizing into colors. That we see crows depends on our categorizing into things.

Are there laws of nature?

This post is partly a reaction to a recent post that I saw at Erraticus.

• So You Think There Are Laws in Nature?

That blog post is mostly a discussion (or disagreement) between two people, David and Margaret, about whether there are laws of nature. David thinks that there are, while Margaret is a skeptic.

As best I can tell, both David and Margaret are fictional. The author, Eleni Angelou, is using them to bring out some of the controversy involved with that topic.

I’ll start with my answer. No, there aren’t laws of nature. There are laws of physics, but those are not laws of nature. The distinction here is that I see laws of physics as human constructs, while I understand “laws of nature” to refer to things that are said to be independent of humans.

That puts me on the side of the skeptic. If anything, I am even more skeptical than Margaret.

On the EAAN

The EAAN, or Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, is an argument by Plantinga.  The Wikipedia entry provides a reasonable summary.

In a recent post at the Uncommon Descent blog, Barry Arrington gives an argument based on the EAAN.  This will mostly be a response to Arrington.

What is the EAAN?

Here’s a short quote from the Wikipedia article.

The EAAN argues that the combined belief in both evolutionary theory and naturalism is epistemically self-defeating. The reason for this is that if both evolution and naturalism are true, then the probability of having reliable cognitive faculties are low.

Personally, I’m inclined to see the EAAN as a reductio ad absurdum of a traditional account of epistemology.  Traditionally, it is said that knowledge is justified true belief.  I’ve disagreed with that in the past, and I continue to disagree.

That Wikipedia quote talks of both evolution and naturalism as being true.  I have never subscribed to naturalism (nor to materialism), because I don’t know what it would mean to say that naturalism is true.  And evolution, as used in that quote, refers to the theory of evolution.  I tend to think of scientific theories as neither true nor false.  Rather, I see a theory as a set of pragmatic conventions that provide a guide to how we should talk about the world.  As such a framework, the theory sets standards, in this case for biology and related fields.  Those standards give as ways of coming up with factual (true) statements about reality.  But whether or not we see the theory as true does not seem important.

What does truth have to do with knowledge?

Nothing.  Nothing at all.

Well, that’s the quick answer.  But now some more detail.

Commenting on my previous post, Philomath asked:

If everyone agrees on something do that make it true?

He clearly saw this question as relevant to my posts on knowledge.  My title question arises from this.  My own view of knowledge is such that there are no truth criteria for having knowledge.

There’s an old  saying:

• if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

The version of this for philosophy is:

• if the only tool you have is logic, then every problem looks like a proposition.

Philosophers — or, at least, analytic philosophers, attempt to discuss everything in terms of propositions and the truth values for those propositions.  I see that as a mistake.

Knowledge vs. belief

[I seem to have taken a long vacation from blogging.  It’s time to get back into the swing.]

I’ve posted before about my dislike for the view that knowledge is justified true belief.  I have recently seen a couple of blog posts that are related, so I’ll comment about those.

Infinite worlds

The first is:

• Absolute knowledge v absolute ignorance

The author begins with:

In an infinite universe we would be absolutely ignorant, if my calculation is right.

The author does not give an argument to support that assertion.  He seems to take it as self-evident.  And I guess I’m not quite sure what he means by “absolute” here, as that qualifier does not seem to fit.  I presume him to be going by the assumption that knowledge is justified true belief.  And, with that assumption, presumably knowledge of an infinite world would require infinitely many beliefs.

Learning and knowledge

Here’s a recent youtube video about attempts to revolutionize education (h/t Larry Moran).

There wasn’t anything that I found surprising in this video.  Over the years, I’ve been in several discussions of a similar nature.  Those discussions have also mentioned correspondence classes which did not seem to get a mention in the video.

This does relate to the nature of knowledge.  If knowledge were really justified true belief, then the methods which failed to revolutionize education should have worked.  For those are the methods that would provide the student with a large accumulation of true beliefs.

This is why I often express disagreement with “knowledge = justified true belief”.  That characterization of knowledge is not compatible with how we actually become knowledgeable.

On vjtorley on ways of knowing

Recently, in a post at the Uncommon Descent blog, vjtorley made a post critical of Jason Rosenhouse:

• Why science cannot be the only way of knowing: A reply to Jason Rosenhouse

Here, I shall comment on part of vjtorley’s post.

I’m actually a bit puzzled by the whole post.  I read Jason’s blog often enough to doubt that he is claiming that science is the only way of knowing.  I guess I’m also a bit troubled by the expression “ways of knowing” which seems a bit too vague.

Torley begins with:

People who hold the view that “there is a non-scientific source of knowledge about the natural world, such as divine revelation or the historical teachings of a church, that trumps all other claims to knowledge,” are a menace to science. That’s the claim made by mathematician Jason Rosenhouse, in his latest post over at his Evolution Blog.

As I see it, the significant part is “that trumps all other claims to knowledge.”  I don’t see Jason as saying that science is the only way of knowing about the the natural world.  I only see him as denying that what comes from religion can trump science.

From nihilism to knowledge

I’ve been planning to post this for a while.  However, I have been struggling with exactly how to present it.  So I guess I should just blurt it out, and not worry.  The reason for my hesitation, is that I know it will be misunderstood by some readers.

This is related to earlier posts on convention and posts on categorization.

I shall be quoting two short segments from Genesis 1.  There is no religious reason for this, and I will be giving a non-standard reading of what I quote.  My reason for quoting is that the quoted text will be familiar to many.  And it happens to fit with the topic.

Epistemic nihilism

There’s a kind of epistemic nihilism, in which a person’s head is full of facts but he does not believe any of them.  This sometimes explored as a way of investigating the extremes of skepticism.

Science works; ergo God

I obviously do not believe what is suggested by the title.  That title is my simplified way of describing what vjtorley has recently posted at the Uncommon Descent blog.  The tl;dr form of the title, as used by vjtorley, is:

• Does scientific knowledge presuppose God? A reply to Carroll, Coyne, Dawkins and Loftus

The UD post uses a method of argument that we mathematicians refer to as Proof By Exhaustion.

There are actually two different versions of “proof by exhaustion”.  The main version is where one proves a result by exhausting all possibilities.  It is much like a case statement in a computer program.  That’s the version that is defined by the linked Wikipedia page.

The other version of “proof by exhaustion” is the one used by vjtorley.  That is where the argument is so tediously long, that you are exhausted by the time that you have finished reading it.  In fact, you are so exhausted, that you were too tired to notice all of the glaring holes in the argument.

Convention (7) – Relativism

When I mention my ideas about the role of conventions in science, I am often accused of being a relativist or a social constructionist or a post-modernist.  Those seem to all be related.  I am not any of those.  Today’s post will look at why my ideas about conventions do not have any relativist implication.

What am I

I’ve just said that I am  not a relativist or a social constructivist or a post-modernist.  So perhaps I should say something about what I am.  It’s not easy to say what I am, because my views don’t fit any of the standard labels.

In his book “Science and Relativism“, Larry Laudan presents a discussion between four philosophers of science, whom he labels as a positivist, a realist, a pragmatist and a relativist.  I disagree with all four of them.  For each of them, there are places where I agree with what they say.  But, overall, I do not see science the way that any of them see it.