Levy's Program for Philosophy

(Note: This is the first post in a series of posts on restructuring the natural sciences, which I introduced in a previous post)

As I mentioned in the introductory post, I recognize that philosophy is not a physical science. That said, philosophy (particularly metaphysics and epistemology) forms the foundation of all work in physical sciences, so it must be included in an overall sweep of that field. This post will be more about the tools that should be used for the project than about examining the foundations of philosophy itself, although I will make some suggestions for progress.

Since this project is intended to take place within an Objectivist framework, the vast majority of this part of the plan will amount to "listen to Ayn Rand" (this does not make me a dogmatist; rather, I am acknowledging the context of these posts and the fact that I can't prove the entirety of a philosophy in a blog post, especially since others have already done the proving for me). In what follows, I divide philosophy up into the standard 5 fields:

Metaphysics: The best place I know of for a complete, in-depth presentation of a proper metaphysics would be the first few chapters of Dr. Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (or OPAR). Some essential points for scientists are that:

• Existence exists. In other words, there is a world external to our consciousness, this world is real, and it is primary to and independent of our consciousness
• Everything that exists has a definite, specific identity. Unlike many Objectivists, however, I don't think this necessarily implies a universe with "finite" size or that the vacuum can be excluded on philosophical grounds. Similarly, as I expect to discuss in the physics part of this series, I don't think this necessarily rules out so-called "action at a distance".
  
• The purpose of consciousness is identification of reality. This is in contrast with creation (or destruction) of reality.
• Men have free will.

Epistemology: Primarily, an objective theory of concepts needs to be fully formulated. Using terms with an objective meaning would be a great boon to scientists and clear up much confusion for scientests and laypeople alike. The meat of this work has already been completed in Ayn Rand's masterful Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. That being said, however, I think the theory would benefit greatly from an in-depth fleshing-out, something like what Tara Smith's Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics did for Rand's theory of ethics. Additionally, certain principles such as "Rand's Razor" and the classifications of certainty as found in OPAR need to be accepted.

Second, induction needs to be seen as the primary process in gaining knowledge (moving deduction to a secondary role). This is an implication of the fact that existence is primary: in essence, deduction is the process of applying ideas to concrete facts, while induction is the process of forming ideas from concrete facts (an oversimplification, but essentially correct). This requires a full theory of induction, an incomplete form of which is given in Dr. Peikoff's Induction in Physics and Philosophy lectures, which are currently being turned into book form (and hopefully expanded) in David Harriman's upcoming book The Inductive Method in Physics. Until the book is finished, I'll withhold further advice on this front.

Finally, since no one person can observe all the relevant data first-hand, a full theory of indirect knowledge needs to be developed. While the totality of my thoughts on this issue could take up a whole post (and may, in the future), for now I will include two principles that I think should apply:

• The rigor required in evaluating knowledge presented by others is dependent on how important the truth of that information is to your work/life
• Directly observed facts should be treated as innocent until proven guilty and the interpretation of those facts should be treated as guilty until proven innocent.

Ethics: Science should, in the larger scheme of things, be directed toward enhancing human life. An important implication of this is that theoretical science is not in any way "purer" than applied science. Any science which cannot be applied to something is ultimately meaningless (that application may be very indirect, however). This is not to say that an individual scientist can't devote his work to only theoretical science, but it does mean that that scientist should not look upon the applications of his work with disdain.

Another implication of the principle of enhancing human life is that science should not impose limits on itself that are not motivated by making life better for man. Examples of this include bans on stem-cell research, onerous restrictions on animal research, and conservationist limits that aren't motivated by the value of the nature being conserved to human life.

Politics: The role of politics in science boils down to two facts: people have rights to their own lives and property, and nothing else has a right to its own life or property. The first fact has two implications: on the positive side, anyone willing to participate in human research should be allowed to if the researcher wants the person in the study, and on the negative side, no one can be experimented on or have their property damaged by research without their permission. The second fact implies that non-human research should have no legal restrictions (although it would have moral ones) beyond the fact that the owners of affected entities (such as animals) give permission.

Aesthetics: While I do think there is a role for aesthetics in science, I currently don't have a basis for many suggestions. I will say that the general statement of what I consider the proper fundamental concepts and principles in art is laid out in Ayn Rand's The Romantic Manifesto, and that I think the concept of "elegance" has some role in proper physical theories, though I'm not sure how to put this in objective terms.

I recognize that the preceding was very abstract, but this was by design. The primary purpose of this post was to outline the philosophy that will inform the following posts, not to discuss a restructuring of that philosophy (though I did make a few suggestions for progress). Therefore, the concrete examples will have to wait until I apply that philosophy to the next subject, mathematics.

Levy's Program for the Natural Sciences

In the 1920s, David Hilbert set out a challenge to himself and his fellow mathematicians that would become known as "Hilbert's Program". In essence, Hilbert's goal was metamathematical: to examine the whole of mathematics, from the base up, and to ensure the entire system had a logical, consistent foundation. While Hilbert's grand plan was a failure, and may have actually set mathematics back (I may explain why I think this is the case in a later post), thinking about it has inspired me to set out a similar plan. Being an ambitious man, however, my plan will encompass all of the theoretical natural sciences (of which I consider mathematics to be a particular example), and of course my plan will attempt to take an Objectivist approach at the issue, rather than a formalist approach as Hilbert took. Over my next few posts, I'll outline the specifics of my plan for each of the following fields, and may add more to each post as I gain more in-depth knowledge of the field:

Philosophy, particularly epistemology (not a physical science, but the foundation thereof)

Mathematics (as the science of measurement, definitely a member of the physical sciences)

Physics

Astronomy

Chemistry

Earth Sciences (geology, meterology, etc.)

Life sciences (general biology, neuroscience, theoretical medicine, epidemeology, etc.)

EDIT: I realize I forgot to say why I'm doing this. In essence, I think that scientists and mathematicians are putting a lot of effort into dead-ends (or at least inefficient ends). Additionally, I think a lot of what's put out as science isn't really science, and a lot of people (particularly laypeople) are being misled because this information has the prestige of SCIENCE.

Two Valuable Insights

I return to blogging with the following two realizations, which pertain not just to blogging but to life in general:

• Failure to realize perfect execution of a plan does not imply the necessity of abandoning that plan. I've tried to restart my blogging with a regular schedule of Monday-Wednesday-Friday, but in the past as soon as I've slipped at all I've abandoned the plan. No longer.
• Viewing your day-to-day assignments/plans/appointments as things to just get through rather than as things to enjoy, both for themselves and for their eventual results, is a sure-fire way to kill motivation. I've always restarted blogging because I remember I like the outlet for ideas, but I've been looking at the "write a blog post" time slot in my calendar as a burden to just get through. My goal with respect to this realization is to eventually approach everything I do, whether it be getting up with my alarm, doing the laundry, or writing a dissertation, with as much (if not more) excitement and enjoyment as I have when I watch a new episode of House or curl up with a good book. I know this is possible because I know that I like these activities when I'm not thinking about how pressing it is that I do them.

These insights come to you via a combination of intense introspection of motives, extrospection of the actions and motivations of productive men, and a few choice statements by my wonderful girlfriend which allowed me to put all of the pieces together.

The Consequences of Greed

Here's a question for those who harp on about the consequences of greed to the greedy: if a certain path leads to long-term negative repercussions for the person pursuing it, doesn't it stand to reason that a greedy person would avoid that path?

Determinism Versus Causality: Frozen Abstractions

The first three weeks of my first semester of my first year of the OAC have made conscious an idea of mine that had been brewing subconsciously for some time: that the vast majority of people today, including many Objectivists, engage in what is known as the fallacy of the frozen abstraction, especially in regard to quantum mechanics (from the online Ayn Rand Lexicon):

A fallacy which may be termed “the fallacy of the frozen abstraction” . . . consists of substituting some one particular concrete for the wider abstract class to which it belongs—[e.g.,] substituting a specific ethics (altruism) for the wider abstraction of “ethics.” Thus, a man may reject the theory of altruism and assert that he has accepted a rational code—but, failing to integrate his ideas, he continues unthinkingly to approach ethical questions in terms established by altruism.

In this case, a specific form of causality, determinism, is substituted for the wider abstraction of causality. Now, most people don't even recognize that there can be a difference between determinism, the idea that the (fully determined) state of a system at any given time necessitates completely both all future states and all past states, from causality, the idea that an entity can only act in accordance with its nature, so when a quantum physicist observes a decaying atom behaving in a non-deterministic way, he states that it behaves in an acausal (and therefore without identity) way. Objectivism, however, does recognize a distinction between causality: it rejects determinism, yet demands causality. For example, within Objectivism man has a non-deterministic-yet-causal free will: the nature of his consciousness is such that it can make non-determined choices. My goal here isn't to defend or attack that particular view, only to point out a contradiction that many Objectivists maintain: when presented with a claim that, for example, an atom decays non-deterministically, they reject it out of hand on the grounds that it violates causality and/or identity. Now, I haven't looked at the evidence for this claim well enough to say that it is true or false, but I can say that, within the framework of Objectivism, it cannot be dismissed on philosophical grounds. Yet, many Objectivists do.

When Miss Rand identified the freezing of "ethics" at the specific type of ethics, "altruism", her response was to explicitly identify altruisim as merely a type of ethics, and then to go on to explicitly identify an alternative. I will attempt to do the same for causality and determinism here.

To quote from Galt's speech a bit, "The law of causality is the law of identity applied to action. All actions are caused by entities. The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act; a thing cannot act in contradiction to its nature." So a ball rolls because it is round, a computer processes because of the arrangement of its wires, and a brain leads to consciousness because... Well, we don't know, but because of the nature of brains. Conversely, a brain can't roll (well), a ball can't compute, and a computer doesn't lead to consciousness. Note that it need not be known which aspect of an entities nature leads to the nature of its actions, it merely need be that there is some aspect which leads to the action. Moreover, it may be that at some fundamental level the only answer possible to the question "which attribute" is "it is, therefore it does", i.e. "why does an electron have charge? An electron is, and therefore does have charge" (this is not to say that an electron is necessarily one of those fundamental cases, but it might be.)

What, then, is determinism? Determinism takes causality and specifies: it says that the relationship between the nature of entities acting and the actions they take is of the very specific form of "a certain set of fully-definable characteristics completely set the exact action taken at any point in the future, and is could only have arisen from a specific set of circumstances at any given point in the past." So the kinetic theory of gasses specifies a deterministic model for the action of gases in a container: the positions and momenta of every particle in the container at any given point will fully determine the future positions and momenta of those particles (assuming there is no influence from outside of the container).

So is there anything that can be described as causal but not deterministic? Certainly; free will is the prime example of such a phenomenon. It is certain that nature of a healthy human brain leads to the ability to make choices; all such brains are capable of making such choices and things that aren't such brains cannot make such choices, and anyway to deny causality would be to embrace a contradiction (Dr. Peikoff's Objectivism:The Philosophy of Ayn Rand can answer why better than I). But free will is just as certainly not deterministic: there is no set of characteristics (not even the values of the person in question) that will fully and eternally determine the outcome of choices made; a person can and does choose. Just as egoism is an alternative to altruism in ethics, free action is an alternative to determinism in causality.

One important difference between the ethics case and the causality case is that, while there is only one correct type of ethics for man, there is not necessarily only one correct type of causality for entities. Gases may behave deterministically alongside humans behaving freely with no contradiction. This leaves open an important question: are there any other types of causality? While an assertion of a new type of causality would require stringent proof, there is no way to philosophically dismiss all such claims out of hand.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November...

Last Wednesday was November the fifth, also known as Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night. In tribute, my girlfriend and I rewatched V for Vendetta, for her second time and my 42nd time. I must say, I absolutely love this movie and I could watch again and again without getting tired of it. But there are two flaws that jump out at me every single time I watch it, and I want to discuss them here (note: spoilers to follow)









First is the fact that while V certainly identifies an evil that exists in his Britain and works to destroy it, he doesn't have any good with which to replace it. Aside from a brief reference to vox populi in his opening alliterative speech, V says absolutely nothing about what should be, politically. In a sense he recognizes this himself, when he gives the choice to Evey about whether to blow up parliament, but even then it is not made explicit nor does he give a reason why we should care about Evey's choice more than his. Luckily, the movie doesn't explicitly offer nothing in response to what currently exists, it just doesn't explicitly offer anything, which allows room for you to substitute your own desired system, which is not ideal but isn't terrible.

The other part which bothers me on a visceral level every single time I watch it is when V leaves Evey at the train to go die and achieve justice against "his maker". While justice is in fact a virtue, it is only such because it is a fundamental part of having a full and happy life. If justice must come at the cost of one's life and there won't be a world worth living in if it isn't achieved, then V would have been justified in doing what he did. But at this point in the movie, V had already won. He had almost the entirety of Britain on his side and had Creedy and Sutler distracted so they couldn't give the firing order, and, more importantly, he had something to live for: Evey. There was absolutely no reason he had to die, since, as even he himself realized, he no longer existed only to exact justice; he was now in love.

Although these are somewhat major flaws, I must emphasize that all in all this is an amazing film, and if you haven't seen it this month (or worse, this lifetime), then I demand you drop everything you're doing right now and go rent it.

Post-election Madness

This is not a political blog. While I have definite views on many things politics, I don't find political discussion very interesting. So this post has nothing to do with political parties, candidates, ideas, or anything like that. It has a lot to do with the way politics is viewed, however.

When your favorite football team wins the superbowl, that's a pretty good time to run around, celebrating and shouting the name of your team at the top of your lungs, maybe pumping your chest a few times. When your favored political candidate wins the presidential election, that's an awful time to run around, shouting the name of your political candidate at the top of your lungs, and maybe pumping your chest a few times. Why? Because politics, unlike football, is about ideas. You can bet that there was no running around and screaming "Washington! Washington!" after the first presidential election was announced. Elections are not a game, and the consequences thereof are much more significant than a fancy ring and fancier endorsements. When you have the equivalent of a tail-gating party before an election (the huge party for Obama was said to be like a carnival atmosphere) and primal cheering afterwards, you know something is wrong with how the electorate views politics.