Cartesian blues

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I was thinking of trying to merge ethics and epistemology, sort of, like if there was a way you might do it or whatever, very strongly and precisely. The argument I'm working on is:

• 1. I ought to know whether the external world is actually real (axiom).
  2. If I ought to know this, I can know it (ought-implies-can in traditional ethical reasoning).
  3. If the external world is not actually real, I can't know whether it is (so far unproven assertion, but seems intuitive to me).
  C. Therefore, the external world is actually real.

This would also sort of be "the first commandment" in this system, if you will, or I mean the axiom would be, as a way to refine the idea that, "I ought to know what I ought to do," is axiomatic. Now the weakerish inference is just the immediate one encoded into (2), to wit, even if I never managed to figure it out, it will always have been true that I could have figured it out by trying in the correct way, i.e. even if skepticism is not totally defeated (so to speak), it would be known a priori that a lack of knowledge was always contingent, here. And until the search is ended (by death or else, if ever it is), skepticism per se is no more a viable option, if you will.

Another domain in which this logic might be apropos (if anywhere!) would be with respect to the theistic question, namely:

• 1. I ought to know whether God exists.
  2. Therefore I can.
  3. If God does not exist, then I could never know this.
  C. Therefore God exists.

Which looks weird and again (3) is where it's at (or not).

[Zarathustra]

1. I ought to know whether the external world is actually real (axiom).

Saying that this is something we should be able to do is entirely different from saying we're morally obligated to do it. I see absolutely no moral connection to epistemology--which you seem merely to assume from the beginning.

2. If I ought to know this, I can know it (ought-implies-can in traditional ethical reasoning).

While it's true that ought implies can, this is really only useful in inferring the contrapositive case, i.e. that if we can't do something, we're not morally obligated to do it and can't be held responsible for failing to do so. It's not a way to derive "cans," it's instead a way to rule out "oughts." Because ought implies can, you can only obligate me for things that I can first do. (It's also a way to draw a distinction from the opposite inference, i.e. just because you can doesn't mean you should.)

3. If the external world is not actually real, I can't know whether it is (so far unproven assertion, but seems intuitive to me).

This doesn't seem intuitive to me. For instance, scientists say there is a way to test if the universe is a hologram. We also wake daily from our dreams. And we have lots of ways to detect and eliminate illusion.

C. Therefore, the external world is actually real.

Even if your argument was valid, logical necessity does not necessitate existence. With this conclusion, your argument has moved from ethics to ontology, not ethics to epistemology. The problem of the justification and means of our knowledge isn't the same as whether or not the world is real (though of course they are related).

I think a better argument for how we know that the external world is real is a historical account for our own being. By a close examination of the (apparent) external world, it seems highly probable that we came into being through a detailed, painstaking, evolutionary process that presupposes an external world that works by principles which link together in so many ways that the idea of it being an illusion is untenable. If the external world were an illusion, it would be one of such mind-boggling consistency, that the present moment would have a "backup illusion" going back billions of years ... an illusion of (literally) astronomically unnecessary depth. Accounting for such an illusion is an even harder problem than accounting for reality. Thus, the illusion hypothesis is the most problematic.

Since our very existence is dependent upon an explanation rooted in an external, material world, our own existence becomes a kind of justification for belief in a material world.

There is at least one sense in which it is useful to wonder whether or not we ought to (or "should be able to") know this. Indeed, there is nothing about physical creatures arising through evolution that would predispose us to expect that knowledge of our own origins was necessary or even probable. As I argue in my thread about how does evolution produce consciousness and intelligence, the ability to fathom the world to the depth that we do is entirely unnecessary from the perspective of our survival/reproductive context. Far from the expectation that we ought to be able to plumb the depths of reality, it is instead a wonder that we can at all. In other words, the very theory that accounts for our being here (i.e. arising through time in a material world)--and which therefore justifies knowledge of the material world--still has yet to explain why we're intelligent enough to be able to comprehend such a theory in the first place.

Without a crucial missing piece to this puzzle, we ought not to be able to know the reality of the world ... and yet we do.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

I don't mean this as snide, and it may sound facile, but if you would simply ditch the res extensa/cogitans thing, your problem would go away.

That is, unless this is just a thought-experiment to see if Cartesianism can be corrected from the inside. In which case, and though I see it to be futile, carry on.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

While it's true that ought implies can, this is really only useful in inferring the contrapositive case, i.e. that if we can't do something, we're not morally obligated to do it and can't be held responsible for failing to do so. It's not a way to derive "cans," it's instead a way to rule out "oughts." Because ought implies can, you can only obligate me for things that I can first do. (It's also a way to draw a distinction from the opposite inference, i.e. just because you can doesn't mean you should.)

I don't think this must be so, I suppose. I mean, I think sometimes we can rule out an obligation due to impossibility, and some other times we can rule out an impossibility due to an obligation.

EDIT: I mean the two most famous (as far as I know) instances of OIC aren't contrapositive. Anselm's argument for the possibility of the Incarnation goes, "Only God can, and only humankind should, atone for sin; therefore, there can be an entity that is both God and man." Kant's argument for free will is, "When I do what I ought not to do, I ought to have done otherwise; therefore, I could have done otherwise," which adverts to the ability-to-do-otherwise idea about what free will/choice/w/e is.

Now to go out of order in my reply...

Saying that this is something we should be able to do is entirely different from saying we're morally obligated to do it. I see absolutely no moral connection to epistemology--which you seem merely to assume from the beginning.

I'm using a super-general take on "morality," i.e. whatever is normative/rational/ethical/etc. Now I would wish to move from an ethics of knowledge to an ethics of everyday life, I suppose, but that involves a lot of other stuff...

This doesn't seem intuitive to me. For instance, scientists say there is a way to test if the universe is a hologram. We also wake daily from our dreams. And we have lots of ways to detect and eliminate illusion.

To some extent I think this is because we have comparison classes to match hallucinatory states to/against. If we really were always hallucinating, though, IDK...

[Zarathustra]

I don't think this must be so, I suppose. I mean, I think sometimes we can rule out an obligation due to impossibility, and some other times we can rule out an impossibility due to an obligation.

I disagree. I think this is closely related to Hume's distinction between ought/is. You can't derive what is from what you think ought to be. The latter is reality, the former is wishful thinking, prejudice, habit, or convention.

Kant's argument for free will is, "When I do what I ought not to do, I ought to have done otherwise; therefore, I could have done otherwise," which adverts to the ability-to-do-otherwise idea about what free will/choice/w/e is.

I think this only works if there are moral absolutes (which I reject). Who is to say what you ought not do? I think we only define moral "truths" after the fact--or after all facts. Moral quandaries are essentially nothing more than choices between alternate (possible) acts. Therefore, it's only a contingent fact that I could have done otherwise, rather than a necessary truth, because we've already decided what we should and shouldn't do by choosing from among what's possible in the first place. No one has ever developed a moral system where we're obligated to violate the laws of physics, for instance, even though we could undo and prevent great evils if this were possible. The reason no one has ever invented such a moral code is because we instinctively choose between what's possible ... we instinctively know it's unfair--not to mention absurd--to obligate people to do things they can't possibly do.

Therefore, the validity of "ought implies can" is already built into the system, but only contingently.

Ditto the idea of free will. Its existence assumed from the beginning, and not derivable in this way. That's just circular reasoning.

[Avatar]

Can you derive what ought to be from what is?

--A

[Zarathustra]

Av, I don't see how. There are lots of things that exist that we might call evil. The mere fact that something exists doesn't mean that we view it as good. And since all that exists is contingent upon previous facts (e.g. initial conditions and the laws of nature that describe changing states), nothing necessarily exists. We can't say that something ought to exist in any moral sense, only in the sense of, "According to X law of nature, condition Y ought to happen." In that sense, it's only an expectation, not a prescription for being.

However, if there is telos in nature, the situation might change. Humans certainly engage in goal-oriented behavior (and we're part of nature), and there is a sense in which we can say humans ought to do things in order to achieve certain goals. If nature in general has "goals," (for instance, producing life and consciousness), then there could be said to be behaviors which ought to enacted in order to further those goals.

I'm starting to come around to the idea that there might be a telos to nature. See my consciousness thread and F&F's freewill thread for more.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Actually, there is a question as to how deontic logic relates to modal logic, e.g. sometimes technical writers in these fields categorize DL as a subform of ML overall. ML pertains in itself to the concepts of necessity and possibility, so underscores the notion of logical validity as "the conclusions necessarily following from the premises."

But...

Logical possibility would normally be interpreted off the "law of noncontradiction." However, I think this law's fundamental correctly expressed form is not, "No contradictions are ever true," so much as, "No one ought to ever infer to a contradiction." That is, the normative form of the law is entangled with the factual one, and precedes it, perhaps, because deontic logic (or so it seems to me) is the system that encompasses all the other forms (though this too is a question, how ML and so on all tie together semantically or whatever).*

*However, I also have a quixotic (as far as I know) belief about the semantics of ML. The quasi-mainstreamish view is that the concept of a possible world is the base concept in ML (even though the necessity operator is usually first used, I think!). Some people think this is circular, but I think it's just not informative, so to speak. The way it's said leads to theories like "modal realism" which is sort of like an attempt to prove parallel universes a priori. Which might not be so bad of an idea, but if I don't want to unnecessarily(!) multiply entities, if I'm going to slit my theory's wrists with Occam's Razor(!!!), well, I think it's possible to reprocess basic propositional/sentential logic's "if"-operator as the concept from which the possibility operator (and so on) would be derived. That is, the idea of something being "iffy" (so to say) is close to, or identical to, that of something be "possible."**

**Which is not a given, perhaps, since supposedly Aristotle apparently believed that something was possible only if it would be actual eventually, so that things that never happen are impossible...

Or, in similar words with a different rationale, I have this ambitious idea of ought-implies-can being the metaphysically fundamental principle of possibility, that is OIC is the bridge between deontic logic in itself and modal logic in itself, in the realm of concrete objects.

EDIT: Basically, deriving "can" from "ought" doesn't seem the same as deriving "ought" from "is," but almost the reverse even. And for sure there are "is" sentences that can be translated as "ought" or "should" ones (i.e. "It is my duty/I am obligated to do this" = "I ought to do this"). Too much can be made of the grammatical largesse of English, methinks...

[Avatar]

Av, I don't see how. There are lots of things that exist that we might call evil. The mere fact that something exists doesn't mean that we view it as good. And since all that exists is contingent upon previous facts (e.g. initial conditions and the laws of nature that describe changing states), nothing necessarily exists. We can't say that something ought to exist in any moral sense, only in the sense of, "According to X law of nature, condition Y ought to happen." In that sense, it's only an expectation, not a prescription for being.

Pretty much agree, in the sense that we assume nothing is moral. If we were to accept (or implement) a given morality, then the opposite would be true I think. "X happens, therefore X is. If X is immoral, then X ought not to be."

I'm starting to come around to the idea that there might be a telos to nature. See my consciousness thread and F&F's freewill thread for more.

The only purpose of "nature" is to be. The meaning of life is to strive for life.

--A

[Zarathustra]

The only purpose of "nature" is to be. The meaning of life is to strive for life.

--A

I don't want to hijack MS's thread, so if you want to continue this we can do it in my consciousness thread. However, I'll just say that your statement can't possibly be true. If there is no purpose in nature, then how is it possible for purposeful creatures to evolve through natural processes? If our minds are nothing more than the products of physical laws, then it's simply a fact that physical laws produce purpose (because we act purposefully). If purpose is not initially present in the universe, then at the very least it has evolved in the universe. However, anything that happens has to first be possible, and that possibility is "written into" the laws of nature. Thus, there is something intrinsic to the universe that makes the emergence of purpose possible--indeed, an inevitability, given the right conditions.

The universe is a thing that can come to life and act purposefully. That's what we are, the parts of the universe that have done this. So either we've violated/transcended the laws of nature in doing this, or we've merely expressed/manifested the laws of nature in doing this.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

Another remark or two or so on the ought/is problem:

The deeper significance of Hume's analysis is that what an object is, by itself, does not as such determine what it ought to do. That is, Hume is not making a point about English syntax but metaphysics, such that he(seemingly at least) denies the commonplace, "It's wrong to do something unnatural," for instance.

[Wosbald]

+JMJ+

The universe is a thing that can come to life and act purposefully. That's what we are, the parts of the universe that have done this. So either we've violated/transcended the laws of nature in doing this …

As an aside, that's Speculative Realist philosopher Ray Brassier's position in Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction, viz., Transcendental Nihilism.

Man, in becoming self-aware, has been ejected from the order of Nature through some wrong-turn of evolution. The ability to contemplate our own being/non-being (i.e. Enlightenment) is a curse, not a gift. And the only "always-already" is the always-already of the Extinction of intellect though ineluctable cosmic entropy.

He's a ball o' fun, that 'un.

[Avatar]

The universe is a thing that can come to life and act purposefully.

The universe doesn't act purposefully, any more than it cares what happens or intends for anything to happen.

Life can act purposefully, (and yes, it evolved in/from the universe) but its purpose is to live, nothing else.

We have other purposes, but they all arose from (and indeed in some sense serve) that fundamental purpose.

--A