Very Unique

Some people object to using a modifier like "very" or "a little" with the adjective "unique". They say that "unique" means "one of a kind", and that is a strict binary.

Well, they're wrong. "Unique" is not a strict binary. As with most other things, it's a continuum, and things can be more or less unique.

For example, consider the Wright brothers. They built bicycles. At first, their bicycles we made using the same designs as any other bicycle. It would be safe to say they weren't unique. But the Wright brothers were inventive fellows, and they came up with ways to improve the design of their bicycles. At that point, their bicycles were unique. There were no other bicycles like them. Then they built an even more unique machine. A machine that did something no previous machine had done. The bicycles were unique, but they were still bicycles. The airplane was a whole new thing.

Another example. Consider two books. One is full of old tropes and tired clichés. Utterly predictable, but not plagiarized. It's not unique in that it mimics other books, but it is unique in that it consists of a sequence of words that had never been written before. The other book is more original. It's unique in that no other book has a similar plot, but it's not unique in that it still consists of words printed on paper. The latter book is more unique than the first.

There are many ways something can be one of kind, and the more ways that apply, the more unique a thing is.

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.

Prescriptivism and Descriptivism

On the internet and in newspapers, it's not uncommon to see rants about how our language is deteriorating. Words that meant one thing fifty years ago are used completely differently today. New words are made up and used as if they were cromulent. Kids these days speak grammatically uncorrectly.

And generally there will be responses to those about how that's a prescriptivist way of thinking, and prescriptivism is linguistically incorrect. Descriptivism is the only correct way of talking about language. Language is always changing, and words have no inherent meaning.

While in this context, the prescriptivists are usually completely wrong, I can't completely agree with descriptivists.

It's true that linguistics is descriptive. As a science, it has to be. The goal of linguistics is to study language to learn about how it works, and you can't learn about how something works by telling it to work differently. Kepler didn't discover the laws of planetary motion by insisting that they ought to orbit the sun in perfect circles.

But the scientific study of language is not the only way to interact with it. It's not even the most common way. The most common way of using language is the way we're using it right now - to communicate. Reading, writing, speaking, listening. And when you actually use a language, not just to study, but to communicate, you can't avoid being at least a little bit prescriptivist.

If you're trying to use words to communicate, you have to ascribe meaning to them. And if the meanings you ascribe to your words are different than the meanings the people you're trying to communicate with do, then you'll have a very hard time communicating. If you want to communicate with a large group of people, you have to get them to all use the same meanings for the same words. Words don't have inherent meaning, but it's a very useful fiction.

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.

Reclaim Socialism

I know someone who, despite having socialist tendencies, refuses to be called a socialist because, she says, it would mark her as being on the fringe. I suspect this is a rather common sentiment.

But I say it is for exactly that reason that we should embrace rather than avoid the term.

Universal health care is attacked as being a socialist idea. You know what? Universal health care is a socialist idea. And that's a good thing. You know what else are socialist ideas? Public education, police departments, fire departments, roads...

We need to reclaim the word socialism so it isn't perceived as being on the fringe, because it's not and shouldn't be considered to be. We need to reclaim the word socialism so it can't be used as a thoughtless insult. We need to reclaim the word socialism because we live in a society, and that's a good thing.

"Alright" is Alright

Pedantic prescriptivists claim that "alright" is not a word. That it's merely a misspelling of "all right". I disagree. I claim that "alright" is a word with a meaning distinct from "all right".

The distinction is similar to the differences between "already" and "all ready", and "all together" and "altogether". In each case, when "all" is a separate word it means just that, all. If a group of something is all ready, then all the members of that group are ready. As a single word, the "al" doesn't mean anything separate from the rest of the word.

It's the same with "all right" and "alright". "All right" means everything is correct. "Alright" is synonymous with OK.

Here's another blog on the same issue. Oddly, it says that "alright" isn't a word, and then goes on to describe the difference between the two.

Justified True Belief?

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy interested in the study of knowledge. One of the foundational questions of epistemology is "What does it mean to know something?". A common answer is that knowledge is justified true belief. In order to know something, you have to believe it, have a good reason for believing it and it has to actually be true.

That sounds pretty good, but there are problems with it. It's possible to construct scenarios in which all three conditions are apparently met, but it doesn't seem like anything was "known".

There's also the question of what counts as justification. But I think there's another, more fundamental, problem with this definition. One I don't think I've ever seen anyone else point out.

No definition of knowledge should include the condition of being true.

To do so is to make the term inapplicable in any situation remotely resembling real life. The reason for that is because of the answer to another fundamental question of epistemology: "Is it possible to be absolutely certain of something?". The answer to that is no. (Of course, others disagree, and I should probably write another post explaining why I think that.) All we can do is get more and more evidence for something, getting closer and closer to 100% certainty, but never actually reaching it.

In toy examples, whether a given fact is true or not is simply assumed/given. So if a hypothetical character has a justified belief, we can say whether that character knows it or not, because of our god-like omniscience. But in real life, no one has that omniscience.

Consider the same question - Is a belief knowledge or not - applied to yourself. Do I know the sun will rise tomorrow, or do I just believe it? Well, I certainly think it's true that the sun will come up. I wouldn't believe it if it I didn't think that, tautologically. But if that's the standard, then I ought to consider every belief I have to be knowledge. If I didn't believe they were true, I wouldn't believe them.

And if we apply that standard to other people, then our evaluations of whether someone else knows something or merely believes it, simply becomes a question of whether they agree with you or not.

I propose a simpler definition: Knowledge is belief that is held with a high degree of confidence.

This definition fits very well into a Bayesian framework. Degree of confidence is simply probability. If you believe something is true with a probability greater than, say, 99.9%, you can be said to know it. This also handily deals with the question of what counts as justification - that's just Bayesian evidence.

Literally Misused Words

Words have no inherent meaning. They mean only what they are understood to mean.Of course the intention of words and language is to communicate, so words ought to aid that endeavor. Commonly used and unambiguous words do that. Words that no one can agree what they mean do exactly the opposite. Which is why I partially agree, and partially disagree with this.

I agree with their usage of ambivalent. There's no other word that closely matches it, and if you want to say indifferent, you can say indifferent (or apathetic).

As far as literally goes, I've never seen it used it to mean figuratively. Never. It's used as an intensifier. Frequently used in the same way as really. But never figuratively. At best, it's used in a figurative sense, but that's not the same as saying it's used in the place of figuratively. That would mean you could replace the one word with the other, and the phrase would mean the same thing. That doesn't work. Though I do think, for the sake of clarity, that literally should retain its literal meaning, rather than being used as an intensifier.

Funnily enough, enormous used to also mean wicked. You don't see anyone complaining about people misusing that anymore...

And by my authority as a blogger, I officially remove the word nonplussed from the English language. No one knows what the word means. Even if they do, they don't know that people they're communicating with understand it the same way they do. It fails to communicate clearly, and should not be used. Besides, look at it - nonplussed. Clearly neither definition given is correct: It means subtracted.

Tautologies and Rhetoric

Today, I read PZ Myers's response to this argument against evolution. PZ does a fine job of taking it down, but there is one point I'd like to make, and this is something that shows up in many places. Egnor says that evolution is a tautology and is therefore false or fallacious. The problem is that a tautology is not a fallacy. In fact, by definition, a tautology is always true.

That's what a tautology is. Something that's always true, no matter what. For example, if x is true, then x is true. That statement is always true whether or not x is. It's just not interesting. There's no real claim or anything there. A tautology is only interesting when it gets combined with something else, which is what Darwin did with evolution by combining the tautology of "survivors survive" with variation and heritability.

And of course that doesn't mean that tautologies can't be used fallaciously. They're frequently used to sneak in a fallacy such as begging the question. But pointing out a tautology doesn't in and of itself show an argument to be fallacious.

Chance vs. Luck

Chance exists. Luck does not.

What's the difference?

Chance is merely unpredictability. Things happening for little or no reason. Bad things happening to good people. Winning the lottery, or getting cancer.

Luck is chance that takes sides. Chance that can be swayed by a charm, or a ritual or that's just attracted to some people over others.

It's more complicated in that people can get lucky, but they can't be lucky. Getting lucky just means that, by chance, something fortunate happened to you. You pulled the lever and got the jackpot. But being lucky would mean that you would actually be more likely to get the jackpot than other people who are not lucky.

Belief

The English language (and all natural languages) are sloppy, ambiguous and vague. But they still tend to work surprisingly well. It doesn't work very well when a specific, technical meaning needs to be discussed. That's why scientific, engineering and medical fields have all sorts of specialized words that mean something different from the way they're frequently used in everyday speech.

This also applies to philosophy. It's hard to have a deep philosophical discussion when you use a word to mean one thing and someone else uses the same word to mean something different. So, here's my small contribution. My take on what the word "belief" should mean in a philosophical context.

A belief is something that is held to be true.

Not something that is held to be true without evidence. That's faith. It's common in ordinary speech to use the two interchangeably. But I feel when precision matters, these definitions are the best readily available.

The biggest reason for that is that frequently, it doesn't matter why something is believed, only that it is believed. In such a situation, a more general definition is better. As far as I know, there's no better word for "something held to be true" than belief. Faith, trust, knowledge, etc. are similar but all more specific. Belief is good for it's generality.

Another reason is that it's not always so cut and dried if a belief is faith, trust, etc. What if the belief is held for a reason, but a bad one? What if there is evidence supporting the belief, but more evidence against it? Is it faith, is it trust? Well, either way, it's still a belief.

Today is the First Day of Autumn

Why? Because I say so and I really like autumn. That's why.

There are those who say that solstices and equinoxes mark the beginning of each season. In which case we're still three weeks away from autumn. Others say that solstices and equinoxes mark the midpoint of each season.

Nonsense, I say! Solstices and equinoxes have to do with the alignment of Earth's tilt to the Sun. Seasons have to do with the weather and the temperature. The two are related, but not the same.

If you say solstices mark the beginning of seasons, then a week before Christmas isn't winter yet, which seems kind of ridiculous. If you say equinoxes mark the midpoint, then Valentine's Day is already spring, which is even more ridiculous.

And more importantly, there is no first day of any season. As my brother and I were discussing on Facebook, everything is continuous, and seasons are a prime example of that. It's not like there is one single day where the temperature drops from 30°C to 20°C and all the trees change color. It's a gradual transition, like red turning to orange in a rainbow. Any line of demarcation is going to have to be arbitrary.

And since it has to be arbitrary, it might as well line up with another, well established arbitrary date-point. In this case, the first of the month.

And so, I decree: The first day of autumn is September 1st. By extension, the first day of winter is December 1st, the first day of spring is March 1st and the first day of summer is June 1st. And it lines up much better with the weather that way.

Atheism and Agnosticism

I consider myself to be both an atheist and an agnostic. Most people would consider that to be a contradiction - that atheism and agnosticism are mutually exclusive. They're going by definitions that are something like "Atheism is being sure there is no god" and "Agnosticism is not knowing whether or not there is a god." I don't like those definitions. I don't think they're useful, for two main reasons.

1. From a practical standpoint, they're the same. Neither the atheist nor the agnostic pray or go to church, or do anything religious like that. In terms of how they live their lives, there's no significant difference between the two. But internal belief can be just as important as external behavior, which leads to point 2.
2. It excludes a middle ground. Under this scheme, it seems there are two options of non-belief. Atheists think there is absolutely no possibility that god exists, and agnostics think it's fifty-fifty between there being a god, and there not being a god. Some people are somewhat more inclusive and consider any uncertainty to be agnosticism, so if you think there's a 10% chance of god existing, or a 1% chance, or a 0.0000001% chance, you're an agnostic. But then, virtually no one is actually an atheist, and it's a pointless distinction.

So, here are the definitions I prefer. Atheism is not believing in god, not necessarily being sure he doesn't exist, just probably. Agnosticism is believing that it is not possible to know for sure either way. Atheism is about ontology - what exists. Agnosticism is about epistemology - what we can know.

My reason for being an atheist is simple: I don't see any evidence for god, and the logical default is to conclude non-existence, unless there's reason not to.

My reason for being an agnostic is somewhat more complicated. First off, I'm talking about gods that are supposed to be omnipotent. Most everyone will agree that an omnipotent god can't be disproven. It's possible that he could just be hiding. Using his unlimited power to evade any attempt at detection. I also contend that it is impossible to prove that god does exist. Suppose god did reveal himself, and to prove it, switched the positions of Earth and Jupiter, but preventing any adverse effects on the Earth. Astronomers could verify that in fact the Earth and Jupiter had been switched. But this could merely be the work of some super-powerful alien. Not enough to prove god's omnipotence. So, god moves the whole solar system to another place in the galaxy, an even more powerful feat. But that again doesn't prove that he's all-powerful. So, he moves the galaxy, or a hundred galaxies or a billion galaxies. No matter how powerful a miracle was performed, there is always another one just a little bit more so. Now, all this would of course prove that there is some super-powerful entity, who from our perspective, is effectively omnipotent, but there's no way to show actual omnipotence, and if it's not omnipotent, it's not god.