Socially Subjective Facts

Philosophical realism is the idea that there is an objective reality that exists independently of our beliefs. I think philosophical realism is obviously true, and it always surprises me to find out there are people who don't (which includes nearly 20% of professional philosophers).

However, there is a sense in which non-realism actually makes sense.

For example, money. There is almost nothing useful you can do with a dollar bill. What few things you can do with it (like burning it for heat) can be better achieved with other, more readily available materials (like wood). The only reason money is valuable, is because people believe it's valuable. We're willing to trade useful items for money, because we know everyone else is also willing to trade useful items for money, not because the money itself is useful.

Many things in society are like that. The leader of a organization is the person whose orders are followed, and people follow the orders of the person they believe is the leader of the organization. Laws are what police and judges enforce, and police and judges enforce what they believe the laws are. Art is whatever people believe art is.

I'd go so far as to say that most people's experiences are shaped more by these socially subjective facts, than by physically objective facts. Maybe that has something to do with some people's rejection of even physical realism.

The Sun of God

Do you believe in the sun? Do you think that the sun exists?

I certainly do. I've never doubted the sun's existence, even when it was out of sight. And I don't think anyone else has either. Certainly, I've never heard of anyone who claimed that the sun doesn't exist. Even solipsists, I'd be willing to bet, would admit that they perceive the sun, even if they deny that their perceptions are indicative of reality.

People even agree on details about the sun, even when those details change, and vary from place to place. Someone in China will say the sun is up at the same time someone in America will say the sun is down, but both will agree that the other is correct for their location.

Why are people in such unanimous agreement about the sun? Is a supernatural entity using telepathy to mind-control us? No, the reason we agree about it, is because we can see it. The evidence for its existence is right there, clear as day.

Some people say that the evidence for god is clear and obvious, but it's clearly not as obvious as the evidence for the sun. If it were, there wouldn't be such disparate religions. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists... People can't even agree on whether god exists, let alone specific details about him.

Some people say that god wants us to believe in him. But surely an omnipotent would be capable of performing a feat that an inanimate object has managed. If god wants us to believe in him, he must not want it very much.

Utilitarianism, Capitalism and Utility Monsters

A common criticism of utilitarianism is the idea of a utility monster. Suppose you had some extra ice cream, and you decided to give it away, so as to maximize utility. You only have enough to give to one person, and there are only two people available for you to give it to: Alice and Bob. If Alice likes ice cream, and Bob does not, then obviously you should give your ice cream to Alice. Giving it to Bob wouldn't increase his utility. What if Bob did like ice cream, but Alice like it more? Then, you should still give your ice cream to Alice, because that maximizes utility. What if Alice likes everything more than Bob does? Then you should take Bob's stuff and give it to Alice, because that will maximize total utility.

On a separate note, utilitarianism and capitalism go really well together.

Utilitarianism says you should try to maximize utility. When you buy something, you do so because it will make you happier, or help you achieve your goals, in other words, increase your utility. And you're trying to get best deal, you don't want to pay any more money than you have to. So money works as a not too bad proxy for utility. Which is good, because it's hard enough to get people to agree what utility is, let alone measure it in any meaningful way.

Before, I talked about the spherical cows of economics, that is, the conditions under which the free market is maximally efficient. One of those spherical cows in economic equality. A rich person can outbid a poor person, not because they value what they're buying more, but simply because they have more money to spend.

But if money is a proxy for utility, then maybe the rich person really does value it more. Maybe the rich person, in fact, has a greater capacity to value things at all. In other words, maybe rich people are utility monsters.

Can't Touch This

A surprisingly common notion that comes up in science popularization is that nothing ever touches. This comes up things from youtube videos to the remake of Cosmos. As far as the scientific facts go, they're right. When you touch something, say when you pick up a ball, the electrons in the atoms of your fingers repel the electrons in the atoms of the ball, so the atoms in your fingers never come near the atoms in the ball. Near, that is, relative to the size of an atom.

But I wouldn't say that means nothing ever touches. Rather, it's a microscopic description of the macroscopic phenomenon of touch.

As an analogy, consider temperature. You can feel temperature as things feel hot or cold. You can measure temperature with thermometers. You can come up with laws that describe how heat flows from hot things to cold things. But on a microscopic scale, temperature is just speed. When atoms and molecules vibrate faster, they're hot. When they vibrate slower, they're cold.

But that doesn't mean that temperature doesn't exist. Rather, that's what temperature is. Thermometers still work, and the laws of thermodynamics are still accurate. They just refer to an emergent property of a complex system, rather than fundamental property.

I would argue the same applies to touch. Electrons repelling each other is what touching is.

Admittedly, this is entirely an argument over semantics. It's just about the definition of the word "touch", rather than any actual facts. But I think this definition is better and more useful. Because if nothing ever touches (except maybe where fusion occurs, like in the heart of a star), then the word "touch" never makes any useful distinctions, which is the purpose of a word.

Folk Morality

Folk science is pre-scientific ideas about how the world works. For example, a common idea in folk physics is that an object in motion requires a constant force to stay in motion, and if the force stops being applied, the object will soon come to a halt.

Now, folk science is not always wrong. It actually tends to be very good at predicting what happens in everyday circumstances. If you're pushing a cart, the carts stops moving when you stop pushing. It's when you leave everyday circumstances that folk science fails.

I think the same idea applies to morality. Folk morality is what people generally use when making moral decisions. It doesn't have any kind of rigor or theory behind it, but in everyday circumstances, it works alright. Don't lie, don't steal, don't kill.

The biggest problem with this idea is that folk science is based on things that can be directly observed. Folk morality doesn't seem to be. As a result, it's much more prone to differ between cultures and eras. For example, two hundred years ago, slavery was common and accepted, but it isn't today.

What Goals Should You Have?

Last time, I ended with the question, "What goals should we have?". Before, I said that "should" only makes sense in reference to goals, so how can this question be answered?

Obviously, using a goal to justify itself is circular reasoning. But you could justify a goal using other goals. If a goal helps you achieve your other goals, you should have it, in the same way you should do anything else that furthers your goals. Conversely, if a goal hinders your other goals, you shouldn't have it, in the same way you shouldn't do anything else that hinders your goals.

But then, what about the other goals? How do you determine whether or not you should have them? In the same way, referring to each other. This will form an infinite regress of self-reference, but that's not necessarily insurmountable. It could probably be represented similarly to Google's PageRank algorithm, which determines the importance of a website based on the number and importance of websites that link to it.

But doesn't that end up being just as circular as before? Well... Yes. And given two or more sets of goals which support each other equally well, and the unlimited ability to modify your goals, I don't know how you could determine which set of goals you "should" adopt. For that matter, I don't know what "should" means in that context.

But as it happens, I don't think we do have the unlimited ability to modify our goals. I think our goals are at least partially constrained by our biological nature. We need to eat. You can deliberately refrain from doing so, but I think that's more acting on a conflicting goal rather than not having the goal to eat.

And if that is the case, then the goals you can't change give you a starting point to base the goals you can change around.

The Fundamental Question of Morality

The more I think about my last post, the more I think that "What should we do?" is the most fundamental question of morality. Should you kill one person to save five? Should you ever lie under any circumstance? It seems all moral dilemmas boil down to questions of action and decision.

But this alone doesn't really clarify matters much. It just pushes the ambiguity onto the word "should". What does it mean to say that you "should" do something?

Well, I came up with a partial answer here. As far as I can tell, for a "should" question to make sense, a goal is required. And I think in practice, whenever you make a decision, you do so for reasons, which can be described as goals.

But morality isn't just about how to achieve your goals. I think most people would say it's immoral for a sociopath to kill, even if that's his goal. In fact, I think most people would say it's immoral for someone to have such a goal.

So, maybe the most fundamental question of morality isn't "What should we do?" but rather, "What goals should we have?". But I just said "should" requires goals. How can you say what goals you should have without referring to goals? Is it even possible? If not, how can you answer the question?

Wait, What's This Morality Stuff Again?

It turns out that building meta-ethics from the ground up is somewhat difficult. So I'm going to take a step back, and explicitly describe some fundamental ideas about what morality is. Hopefully this will help point in the right direction to look.

Morality is about answering the question, "What should we do?"

This implies that morality is about willful actions. Morality doesn't apply to things that can't act, and can't make choices.

But morality isn't just about how to achieve your goals. It has more to do with what your goals should be.

Who is left unspecified. Usually, that's interpreted to mean that the answer should be universal, that it should apply to everyone in the same way. I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it just means the question needs more detail to have an answer.

However, morality does seem to be concerned with controlling others' actions. It's frequently used to justify doing something "bad" to someone else if they did something "bad" to you. But then again maybe that's a misapplication...

So, that's not a lot, but it's something. Maybe it will be helpful.

Hypothetical Imperatives

In my last few posts about morality, I've been pretty confident about my conclusions. From here on out, it will start getting more speculative. Some of my ideas may have merit, some may not. Please, tell me what you think about what I got right, and what should be changed.

In my last post, I asked how you could derive "ought" from "is". For a certain type of "ought" that's not hard at all. That type of "ought" that is a course of action to accomplish a given goal. For example, if  your goal is to lose weight, you ought to eat less fat. It is possible to empirically observe and test that to see if it effectively achieves the goal. This type of "ought" is called a hypothetical imperative and it's existence is the logical consequence of the existence of goals.

But is that the type of "ought" we're interested in? If we're talking about morality, shouldn't we be talking about something that's objective, and independent of individual goals?

One way of being independent of individual goals is to relate to all goals. If there were such a course of action, you would clearly want to follow it, because it would be a way to achieve your goals, regardless of what your goals are. But it's clear that there is no course of action to accomplish any goal. No matter what course of action you propose, you can come up with a goal counter to it. For example. you can't say that you should never steal to accomplish any goal, because that doesn't effectively achieve the goal of stealing.

Another way of being independent of individual goals is to not relate to goals at all. But in that case, why should you follow such a course of action? That approach seems to fall headlong back into the problem we're trying to answer. There's no apparent way to derive such an "ought" from an "is".

So are we back where we started? Unable to connect morality to reality? Well, not necessarily. We failed to find a special kind of "ought" that in independent on individual goals. But we did find the hypothetical imperative, which is a kind of "ought". Maybe it's the only "ought" we need. Maybe morality can be built entirely out of hypothetical imperatives. Again the question remains: How?

The Is-Ought Problem

In my last post, I asked what empirical observations you would be able to make that would be different if morality existed than if it did not. Some of you may have objected that that defies the is-ought problem.

Hume said that you can't derive "ought" statements from "is" statements alone. That is, you cannot determine what is moral or how the world should be just from how the world is. For example, suppose a runaway trolley is heading toward people who are tied to the track. There is a lever, which if pulled will divert the trolley onto another track, where it will cause no harm. Those facts alone are not enough to conclude that you ought to pull the lever. You can only conclude that if you add another "ought" statement to the premise, such as, "You ought to save lives.".

If Hume is correct, then morality is not observable in any way. Which would mean either that morality does not exist, or that morality is meaningless. Either way, it would be completely pointless to talk about morality.

So why are we talking about it? For that matter, why would anyone ever talk about it? No one ever talks about unobservable flergamarms, why would they talk about unobservable morality? Why would they even come up with the idea? Maybe people are just hopelessly confused. Or maybe Hume is wrong. Maybe ought can be derived from is. The question remains: How?

Does Morality Exist?

Does morality exist?

Well, what do you mean by morality? Keep in mind that an answer like "Morality is what is good." or "Morality is what is right." don't really answer the question. That just shoves the ambiguity onto another word. What you need is an explanation that breaks it down and really clarifies it.

If you're not sure how to answer that (and I'm not), the next thing to do is look at what you can observe. What empirical observations would you be able to make that would be different if morality did exist than if it did not?

So, what do you think?

Meaning

Do flergamarms exist?

Well, what do you mean by "flergamarms"? Or to put it more precisely, what empirical observations would you be able to make that would be different if flergamarms did exist than if they did not?

Flergamarms are invisible, intangible, and in fact, cannot be observed in any way. They have no observable effects, nor are they a logical consequence of something observable. As such, there is no such observation that would be different depending on the existence of flergamarms. So, do they exist?

Well, I wouldn't say they exist, but I'm also wouldn't say that they don't exist. Rather, I'd say that the question is meaningless. I would say that something can only have meaning if it's in some way connected to reality, and to be connected to reality, it has to be observable, or the logical consequence of something observable.

I'm not completely certain about that. Maybe there is some sense in which the term "flergamarm" is meaningful. I can't think of anything that could be though. And even if there is, there's still not much point in discussing such entities.

Free Will

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Alice says yes, because it would produce a pressure wave through the air. Bob says no, because it wouldn't be perceived by anyone.

Alice and Bob aren't disagreeing about what happens when a tree falls down, they're disagreeing about the meaning of the word "sound".

Do we have free will?

Well, what do you mean by "free will"?

One notion of free will is that it is the ability to make decisions that are neither deterministically caused, nor random. This concept is called libertarian free will (unrelated to the political party), and it doesn't make much sense to me. To start off with, what's the middle ground there? How can something be neither determined, nor random?

Further, a non-determined decision wouldn't resemble a decision at all. Consider this scenario: you're in a building when a fire alarm goes off. So, you make a decision to evacuate the building. The only reason to evacuate the building was because the alarm went off. If the alarm hadn't played a role in determining your decision, then you wouldn't have made it.

So, that means we don't have free will, right? Well, it certainly means we don't have libertarian free will. But when you say things like "Free will doesn't exist.", people tend to react by saying things like "That means we can't make decisions!".

Which isn't true. Things that are completely physically determined can still make decisions. Consider a simple thermostat. If the temperature is below 18°C turn the heater on, otherwise, turn the heater off. Admittedly, that's in the fuzzy area between "decision" and "reaction", but I don't think it's fundamentally different than an undeniable decision, just simpler. (Which leads to another question of definition. What exactly is a decision?)

The fact that people tend to react that way implies that the libertarian notion of free will isn't the concept most people mean by the term "free will". So, we should find another definition that more closely matches people's free will. Here's my suggestion - Free will is the ability to make very complicated decisions that are determined by a very large number of factors and is very difficult to predict in advance.

Under this definition, we obviously do have free will. This doesn't resolve the issue. I'm still not certain exactly what a decision is. But I think it's a good step forward that helps avoid common misconceptions.

Consciousness

What is consciousness? Where does it come from?

I don't know. But I do firmly believe that it is not magic. Whatever it is, it is purely physical.

And I do know a story about how it may have arisen. Don't take it as a scientific explanation. It's not. It's just a story, which might have a hint of validity about it, but then again, might not.

It begins with life. Living organisms capable of reproducing and reacting to stimuli. Organisms that react to stimuli appropriately would be more likely to survive and reproduce than organisms that didn't.

But what response is appropriate can be hard to determine. Is that a predator, or a mate? Should I go towards it, or away from it, or play dead? And so the brain evolved. An organic computer to make decisions.

For a brain to make good decisions, it needs to model the world around it, and predict consequences of different possible actions. If I jump over this hole, can I make it to the other side? If I chase that prey, will I be able to catch it? The more accurately the brain models the world, the better the decisions it can make.

Then a species of social primates evolved. For social creatures, it's helpful to model the others in your group with more detail than other animals, because you interact with them more often. The better your model of them, the more likely you can get them to share their food with you.

But since you're all the same species, they're modelling you too. So the most accurate model of them is to recursively model them modelling you. In other words your brain has to have a model of itself. And that's essentially what consciousness is. It's the brain thinking about itself, trying to predict its own actions before it makes them.

This story doesn't answer everything. Particularly not the hard problem of consciousness. But I think it does a decent job of addressing the easy ones. Assuming, of course, that's it's even remotely true, which it might not be.

An Abortion Hypothetical

People opposed to the right to get an abortion like to make the argument that a fetus is alive, has a heartbeat, can feel pain, etc. It's obvious that these features are not sufficient to make the case. After all, cows have all those things, but the same people who complain about abortions don't usually have problems with eating meat.

But there's a related feature (well, more of a complex conglomeration of features) that isn't so obviously irrelevant. Is a fetus a person? That's a more reasonable question. But I still don't think it's relevant. Even if a fetus were undeniably a person, I'd still be in favor of the right to get an abortion. I'll illustrate with a hypothetical.

Suppose one winter's day, you accidentally leave your door unlocked. When you get home, you find that a homeless man has taken up residence. He doesn't pose any direct threat to you. He just takes up space, eats your food, and is generally inconvenient.

So, you decide to kick him out. "But", the homeless man protests, "It's freezing out there, and I have nowhere else to go! If you kick me out, I'll surely die!"

Is it morally prohibited to kick him out? Should you be required to provide him with food and shelter?

Now obviously, this hypothetical has a lot of differences from abortion. Here are the two I find most important.

One, homeless man is most definitely a person. A fetus may have a heartbeat, but this guy can talk. In the case of abortion, the status of the fetus is, at best, ambiguous.

Two, the homeless man is only taking shelter in your house, not your body. If you're allowed to decide who may or may not be in your property, surely you should be allowed to decide who may or may not be in your body.

And that's the important point of the abortion debate. It's not whether or not the fetus is a person. It's about whether women have the right to control their own bodies.

Moral Intuition

We usually judge moral theories with our intuition. We see what a moral theory says about a hypothetical scenario and see if that agrees with our intuition. People arguing for a particular moral theory frequently give examples of situations in which that moral theory gives an answer that most people's intuitions agree with. People arguing against a particular moral theory frequently give examples of situations in which that moral theory gives an answer the most people's intuitions disagree with.

But a lot of times the examples used are very unlikely situations. That's not a problem for the moral theory. A good moral theory should work in any situation, likely or unlikely. But it is a problem for our intuition.

Intuition is only useful in circumstances it evolved in.

Consider physics. Humans have pretty good intuition with regards to running, jumping, throwing and other things we've been doing for millions of years. But outside our relatively limited experience, our intuition is virtually useless. There's nothing intuitive about general relativity or quantum mechanics.

Which is why I don't think hypothetical problems like the Trolley Problem are useful in determining what makes a good moral theory (though they can be useful in helping us examine our intuitions). Because such hypothetical scenarios rarely reflect our normal experience, so our intuitions don't necessarily apply.

So then, the question is, if we can't trust our moral intuition, then how should we judge a moral theory?

How Can You Be Moral Without God?

Some theists claim that god is needed for morality. They ask, "How can you be moral without God?"

They might as well ask "How can you be moral with God?" Or better yet, "How can you be moral?", or "What is morality?"

I don't claim to have the answers to those questions. Philosophers have been debating that for thousands of years, and have come up with many contradictory answers, so most of them have to have been wrong.

But bringing god into the question doesn't make it any better. If you say that god's commands are good, you run into the Euthyphro dilemma. Does god command what is good because it is good, or is what is good good, because god commands it?

If the answer is the former, then we're back where we started. If god doesn't determine what's good, then what does?

The alternative has some implications that don't agree with what most people would consider morality. For example, god could change what is moral on a whim, and it wouldn't be wrong. After all, if god determines morality, and it said "It's moral for me to change the laws of morality", well, it couldn't be wrong, now could it?

And consider this analogy (adapted from this). Suppose aliens came to Earth, with overwhelming technological powers. It's impossible for us to fight them, they just vaporize our weapons as soon as we try to use them. And they impose on us some rules that seem quite arbitrary. For example, no one is allowed to wear blue shirts on Tuesday. They reward people who follow their rules, and punish people who don't. Further suppose, that after some time, they eventually leave. Which do you think would be the more common reaction to their departure? "But who will stop us from wearing blue shirts on Tuesdays?" or "Thank god those terrible aliens are gone!"

If what is good is determined solely by god, then his commands would appear to us to be arbitrary. We wouldn't consider a command against murder any more important than a command against blue shirts, and we wouldn't be worried that god is needed to give such a command.

Self-Consciousness and Existential Angst

I was watching this video, and a thought occurred to me. Self-consciousness, by that I mean not simply the feeling of being overdressed for a social event, but more generally being aware of your state of being, reflecting on your own existence, is generally an unpleasant feeling.

It's not exactly an original thought. Buddhism came up with it 2500 years ago. In order to achieve enlightenment and hence nirvana, you have to let go of your ego. It's also a fundamental part of existentialism, the idea of angst.

It's odd that one of the few things that seems to be uniquely human is so apparently negative. It makes you wonder why that is. I have a couple wild ass guesses, but they aren't worth mentioning without further research.

It also makes you wonder what you can do about it. The simplest answer I can think of is to maintain a state of flow as much as possible, to do things that are engaging and challenging, so you can think more about it than yourself. (And it is apparently possible to achieve a state of flow by philosophizing about angst, paradoxically enough)

Can You Choose What You Believe?

It's a simple yes or no question, right? Either you can choose what you believe in the same way you can choose what to have for breakfast, or you can't in the same way you can't choose to obey the law of gravity.

Well, no. Whether or not something is a choice is not a simple binary yes or no. It is, as nearly everything else is, a continuum. We don't normally notice it, because we usually only encounter examples at extreme ends of the continuum, like breakfast or gravity.

But there are examples of in-betweens. Consider a person with OCD. Does such a person choose to wash their hands over and over? To a degree, they do, but to a degree they don't.

It's the same with choosing what to believe. You form beliefs based on what you see and hear, and you can't really change that. But you can choose what to look at and who to listen to. And even when beliefs are deliberately chosen, it still takes a long time to really convince yourself of it.

Inferential Distance

Suppose you're trying to teach someone calculus. Before they can learn calculus, they have to learn algebra. Before they can learn algebra, they have to learn arithmetic. This is the basic idea of inferential distance - background knowledge needed the understand the matter at hand.

Put this way, it looks simple, maybe not even worth talking about. But it's more subtle than that. To start with, arithmetic, algebra and calculus aren't single subjects. They're a whole bunch of related but still different subjects, which need to be learned independently. The learn integration, you have to learn differentiation, before that you have to learn limits, before that functions, variables, division, mulitplication, subtraction, addition... And don't forget the really fundamental things like what a number is.

And that's the really tricky part of inferential distance. There are a lot of things you know that you don't know you know. That is to say, you know them so well, it doesn't even occur to you to that someone else might not know it. Things that are so fundamental to your point of view that they're invisible to it. And so when you try to explain something to someone, you accidentally skip over a bunch of inferential steps, resulting in misunderstanding and each party will walk away thinking the other is stupid or crazy.

Consider a biologist talking to a creationist. They might try to explain the evidence for evolution, but before the creationist can understand that, they have to understand what evidence means, how science works, maybe even something as simple as why truth is important...