Philosophy - Science.

Predicting future sense data

It seems that there is a past, present and future. Unlike the obvious irresistible truth of there being perceptions this sense is not sure. It is perfectly consistent to believe that there is only the present instant, that all perceptions of the past in the form of memories are simply perceptions without any past for them to reflect. I can find no argument quite strong enough to cover the purpose I'm about to put it to, this will need more thought.

We have the present, we can be certain of these perceptions, (they are all we can be certain of). We have the past, we have some memories of these (the memories are present perceptions so are certain, their relation if any to past perceptions is a question for science). There is also the future, and predicting that is the task of science.

Science

Science is the only way to get beyond perceptions. This allows us to synthesize ideas, perceptions, memories etc and predict new things.

The scientific method is simple. First, generate several theories, a theory is a model or set of ideas that allow us to make as many future predictions as we like about perceptions of a particular kind. Then observe some perceptions. The theory with the predictions that best fit the perceptions is the best theory. This is the best approximation we have to the perceptions of the future. This does not give us knowledge in the sure and certain sense of the last post. We have to extend our epistemology (study or discussion of knowledge) and add a realm for scientific theories.

We can see clearly that this domain of scientific knowledge must be some kind of continuum. Predictions of future perceptions can be fulfilled more or less well, for example, if my best theory predicts the reading from some dial will be 1.5 and the true (observed) reading is 1.4 then my knowledge of the future movement of the dial is clearly good, but not nearly as good as it would be were my best theory to predict 1.37. Note also I've picked a numerical example for convenience, we might just as well predict seeing something blue or round. All that matters is that it should be possible to tell how well our prediction has come true. But we see that the notion of “correct” in science cannot be binary. If it were then we would consider the 1.5 theory to be just as wrong as the 1.37 theory, we cannot have improved theories, only the binary right and wrong.

Time

The fact that this is a prediction and not a postdiction is important. We can gain nothing from knowing that a postdiction has come right. For instance, we can simply come up with the theory that all our prior observations will happen, with any prediction for the future, this will always be perfectly right. So, we require at least that the prediction not be influenced by the thing it is trying to predict.

Science as I have described it rests on the assumption that there is an arrow of time, I need a solution to this problem. I have not yet proved (at least, not to my satisfaction) that we are entitled to believe that there is a past and a future. There are two solutions to this.

Can I separate the idea of a prediction from the idea of time? In order to have science we must be able to test predictions, so we must have a notion of prediction, but can I rigorously construct an idea of predicting without having a safe idea of time? Or secondly: Can I defend the idea of time? I've no idea. If anyone can help me here please comment.


The past

It's not a big point, but a clarification. History is part of science, we can have predictions of the past as opposed to postdictions. A postdiction is a statement about past sense data, a statement about the past is a statement about future sense data that are best interpreted by talking about objects that existed in the past. For instance, I may put forward the theory that there was a Roman burial site in some location. This can make predictions, say that we could in future observe documents that refer to this site, or we could observe remains when digging there. Predictions are always about future sense data, but the best explanation for these may well be the past universe.

The world

Science gives us the world. All we can know for certain is our own perceptions, we need to construct the world “out there” based on this. The most fundamental kind of theory in science is the idea of an object. I see in front of me a black oblong shape with a large irregular patch of light in the middle. I construct the theory that this perception is caused by me seeing an object. In this case, my laptop. Please note, this is a theory, we can have sure and certain knowledge of no objects. (Brain in vat, illusion, hologram etc). But we can (and almost always do find) that this is the best explanation. The idea of an object is a theory as I described it above, because it makes predictions. For instance, an object continues to exist until something dramatic happens, and the perceptions I have “of” my laptop are reasonably constant. There is also the fact that objects continue to exist in much the same way if I move, so I predict that moving to the left will produce a different but related set of perceptions in a predictable way. And this works. The theory that objects exists is an extremely good one.

This gives an outline idea of what science gives us as good and accurate theories. I'll try and hash out in a bit more detail things like the limits of science, metaphysics, heuristics behind generating good scientific theories etc next time. But for now I'd like to suggest something that I'll try and develop later. The idea we have of science commonly is that it deals with objective things, where objective means what I identified before as perceptions of sense data or of the external world. I've deliberately defined this idea of science in a more general way, I have not mentioned other people or peer review, but I have included in "things we can have scientific theories about" such perceptions as our thoughts, imaginations, memories, emotions etc. I'm going to try and suggest later that the normal processes of science, peer review, arbitration by independent experimenters etc can be shown to be fitting with my definition. But I'm going to say from the outset that this is true for physical sciences, for a more broad idea of this second rank of knowledge we must allow for psychology, logic and other ways of predicting future mental perceptions a real place in the tent of science.

This gives the best theory

Just one last thought because I like it a lot. To the objection that science may not be the only way to gain knowledge about the world. Let us first say that we can never directly experience any object or have any form of knowledge of them except by means of perceptions. Now, suppose that some other means of discovering truth exists (be it tea leaves, holy texts, marxism or whatever), and claims that it does a better job of generating knowledge than science. Now to tell us anything that we dont already know this must make predictions about future perceptions. But, the understanding we get from science is the best prediction we have out of all the theories we have tried. Why cant we then just have as a theory "the predictions of marxism (or whatever) are correct". This is a scientific theory, if the other means really can give us knowledge then it must predict perceptions, because that is all we can ever experience that we dont already know. So then the best scientific theory must logically be at least as good as (if not better than) the tea leaves. So we can conclude (unless I've messed up this "proof") that science *must* generate the most accurate predictions that it is possible to make and that the correct way to gain knowledge is through science.

Philosophy - starting out

Before you start philosophy, or indeed any chain of deductions¹ you need a firm place to start. For some this is obvious, it's God, or pure reason, or the spirit or some other such thing. I'm not so sure we can assume a starting point so easily without thinking about it. Others have tried to methodically produce such a starting point. Descartes starts out by trying to doubt everything, not because he wants to destroy knowledge but because he wants to find some indisputable fact, some indestructible nugget of truth from which he can base a chain of reasoning. Descartes takes his own existence, not as a body but as a collection of thoughts. He says that thinking implies the existence of the person doing the thinking.

I would like to borrow his idea of imagining there is a daemon trying to confuse and deceive us. Can we then allow ourselves to be certain about things like the existence of atoms? No, clearly not. What about the laptop in front of me? No, that is just as unsure. However, there seems to be a laptop in front of me. More accurately I can say that I experience a pattern of white and black patches of light. I dont see any way I can doubt that I experience this. For sure there may be no laptop, the demon may make me see white and black patches where I “should” see orange and purple, or the shapes may be changed. But stubbornly no matter how much I doubt the experience I am having the raw fact of its appearance cannot be doubted. Perceptions themselves, my experiences cannot be doubted.² So I'd like to take as the raw atoms of truth not thoughts but perceptions, the totality of all I experience right this instant. ³ Descartes argues that the demon cannot deceive me unless there is a me to deceive, to me this rests too much on language to be quite convincing, I would prefer to argue that the demon cannot convince us that we are experiencing something that we are not, because in order to trick us, he would have to make us experience the thing.

This nugget of sure and certain existence is quite large, so I'd like to take a while talking about all the things I perceive. There are certain intuitions I have about my perceptions. The first an most important is the internal/external distinction. I perceive some shapes that I think of as being external objects and some that I think of as imagined objects. I perceive some sounds as being external things, some of being songs stuck in my head, and some (in the form of sounds identical to my spoken voice) that I regard as being my thoughts. For everything I think of as a sense there are imagined forms of them. However, there are other internal perceptions. Some imagined shapes that I “see” are identified as being “memories”, some imaginations of the future, some are imaginations of fantastic things.

The senses give us a lot of data to work with about this instant in "external" terms. But there a far greater depth in the "internal". I experience thoughts, emotions etc in a spectrum, going from the very concrete digital information of exactly reproducible "wordy" thoughts, to clear and sharp images, to fuzzy images, to fleeting impressions, to things just at the edge of awareness. There are many layers of internal thoughts and impressions just as there are many forms represented in many senses in the external.

We can "know" in the classical sense of sure and certain knowledge everything up to here. Beyond this point there can be no certainty about anything, we should not expect any, for if we do, we will be disappointed. Note, I cant even have totally sure knowledge of this kind about logic and maths. The statement "the square on the hypotenuse of a Euclidean right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides" requires some steps of deduction to be accepted, it is at least conceivable that I could have made an error every time I have proved it. This is not a very serious concern and one I will deal with later in its proper place, but it is enough for me to banish logic from the foundation and restrict it to the next few levels of deduction.

Questions

• Can anyone think of a way that this foundation can be doubted?
• Is it possible for me to doubt some of my perceptions?
• Are there any things that I can also believe in with total certainty.

Notes

¹I'm a mathematician, I think philosophy should be as deductive as possible, so sue me.

²This “argument from brute force of experience” is hardly stated here in a logically rigorous way, but I dont see any way to doubt it short of total insanity, so I'm going to accept it.

³Note I cant quite argue that “I“ exist. Descartes and many since regard it as obvious that because we say “I think” or “I perceive” that there must be an "I" to do it. This doesn't automatically follow, at least, it does not logically imply that the perceiver and the perception are real distinct entities. I will however talk about I, because it's grammatically much less cumbersome, however this "I" is a rather ill-defined idea, so I'll try not to argue about it.

Philosophy - Introduction

I'm going to try and take a bit of advice from the essays of Paul Graham (a brilliant essayist, do look him up). I'm trying here to produce a substantial work of philosophy, and I'm going to do that by the method of “Launch fast and iterate”. This is a first draft of a complete body of philosophy as written by someone who is very young and as such almost everything I propose will eventually be changed for something more rigorous. So please bear with the more foolish elements and help me make this better if you would by suggesting where exactly the error lies. I've read a lot of philosophic ideas, but by no means systematically or thoroughly. If you happen to know that a thesis of mine if refuted an obscure chapter of Hegel please dont assume I'm aware of this fact but bring it to my attention.

Before I start, my biases: I have lots. Anything in this that is anti-clerical, liberal, scientific, atheistic, opposed to strict rules, mathematical, philosophically linguistic or elitist should be treated with extreme suspicion and generally regarded as proving merely that I am a British mathematician at Cambridge.

A quick note on interpretation, all my ideas are to be understood as broadly as possible. When I say perception I dont just mean things like sight and sound, I mean mental perceptions too, imagination, intuitions, emotions, everything that can be described as being experienced. Also, I almost never have absolute or discreet ideas in mind, almost all the concepts I employ are fuzzy around the edges, for example, to say something is good doesn't mean it belongs to a firm category of things that are good, it simply means that it is towards the good end of a continuous good-bad spectrum.

I'm going to try and post one blog a week, each one on a new topic, hopefully every Friday but bear with me. I would really appreciate comments, even if it's just to say "I dont understand" because it's important to me that this is understandable, the aim of this document is that it should be a way to think about morality. It's important (if I'm right of course) that as many people read and understand it as possible. So if something is unclear please tell me.

Sections I cant guarantee I'll have exactly one post for each heading but here's a rough outline.

• Starting out - sure and certain knowledge
• Expanding to the future - science, the problem of time, the world, other people
• Limits and extent of science - metaphysics, the past, religion
• Morality - basic ideas, action desire, should
• Morality in the real world - some moral debates as an example
• Moral progress - conventional morality, expanding spheres of moral interest

Would anyone be interested in this? I'll try and put the first chapter up today.

Scientology is a cult.

Scientology is a cult. I'd like to work out why it is that this is considered to be defamatory. Scientology as the organisation responsible for a set of beliefs about the afterlife and spirituality ¹. They are often and accurately described as a cult.

I think it's fair to describe them as a cult and not as a religion as they are really quite small. Small in this sense means a few things. Firstly membership, there are tens of thousands of Sceientologists² compared to millions of even the smallest religions, (there are estimated to be almost 1 million Wiccans). Secondly this is a set of beliefs that is very young, L. Ron Hubbard made it up in 1952, compared to Islam, a very young religion at a merger 1400 years old. There's another factor too, it's a question of clubs. Micronations like Sealand or the Kingdom of Lovely are micronations because they are small, but also and more importantly, because real countries say they are. There are dozens of self-declared micronations out there that are larger in land and in population than Vatican City. Nationhood is about being a member of a club (in practice, of the UN) likewise being a religion means being respected as such and being invited to interfaith talks. (This is one possible argument why we could choose to not call atheism a religion). To me this is what we mean when we say a cult, we are thinking of a small, young, unaccepted religious group

So, I think it's fair to say that Scientology is a cult. But Sceientologists dont. Many have claimed that this is defamatory, and the word cult is derogatory in not uncertain terms. I want to work out why. The word cult is used about many strange and dangerous groups, the Jonestown Cult killed 400 of its own members, the branch Davidian cult fought a pitched battle with the American military during which 80 were killed. This image of the cult as having strange beliefs and an unhelpful obsession with violence etc is interesting. Because we know well that violence of the kind mentioned above is not unique or even more common in smaller faith groups, we also know that strange beliefs are not unique to such groups. (Look at it from an outsider's perspective, is it really more implausible that a galactic dictator brought billions of his people to volcanoes on earth and destroyed them with hydrogen bombs that that there are people alive who can cast a spell and literaly turn bread into the flesh of a 2000 year old dead jew).

So then if we can expect a cult to have violent elements and strange beliefs in ways similar to established religions, why is cult derogatory. There is a question of the club aspect of religions, many religious people (whilst clearly not agreeing with them) will respect the religion of another, but not of a cult member. I think there is an impression that cult beliefs are not very serious things. We dont think that anyone in their right mind can accept the beliefs of a cult. Tom Cruise is an international joke for being stupid enough to be part of a cult, often mocked by people whose own religion (if interpreted as literally as most interpret Scientology) contains elements just as foolish. Now, I must be clear that I dont want to dismiss thousands of years over very good theology by many of the greatest minds produced by humanity in explaining the strange beliefs in religions to make them more reasonable. There are great systems of thought around the great religions that are far more impressive intellectual achievements than the science fiction written by one guy that makes up Scientology's corpus. But is is fair for me to say that the beliefs of the average belier are made better by a more impressive theology? No, theology is not religion. Most religious people do not accept the version of religion presented by theology.

Is there a case for talking about liberal verses orthodox? For example, most Christians (in the UK at least) dont accept transubstantiation to be literally true (many do of course). But we expect that all Scientologist accept the Xenu story to be literally true. This is of course utterly false, for a start, the Xenu story is not told to the lower ranks at all, only the high level Tetans are expected to believe this, and how many of them believe it to be literally true and how many a good metaphor we cannot know. It's also important to consider how much the dogmas matter in a cult (matter of course to an outsider as we are considering defamation), it is assumed that pointing out how utterly insane one would have to be to believe in Xenu is enough to dismiss Scientology, if we do the same with transubstantiation then we are swiftly told "that's not the point". We think that ethics, or a relationship with God, or a sense of community are the key aspects of a religion, cults are often dismissed by pointing out that they hold insane doctrines.

There may well be a case that cult is simply a derogatory term because it contains all the negative qualities of religion without the implied respect for belief. After all, religions have a long track record of good deeds that we should (I mean this genuinely) respect and admire and it is assumed that cults do not. Religions help people out in times of trouble, and it is assumed that the beliefs of a cult cannot do this. Religions also present a strong tie to a community with shared heritage, this is not to say of course that cults cannot link us to a community, but the link to cultural heritage does not exist in a cult.

Scientology is a cult. We think this is a bad thing because the word cult presents a religion with all the stupidity and evil implied by religion but which we assume cannot have the redeeming qualities that religions have. I'm not sure the word really deserves the defamatory sting it has acquired. There are many cults (like Scientology) that are dangerous and evil, but the fact that they are cults does not imply this any more than is implied by being part of a religion.


1) What that word means is utterly beyond me, can anyone help? I've never seen a definition that wasn't “stuff that's ultimate or beyond reality”, well, like what for instance?

2) This is disputed by Scientologist who claim there are anything up to 10 million of them, but if so they're very reluctant to say so in surveys of religious belief and on the census.

Punishment or bribery?

See these figures? See how they prove that the evil Tories with the treacherous Lib Dem sidekicks are punishing people for voting labour? You can clearly see that most of the schools with cancelled building projects are in labour areas, even if we take into account the number of labour seat more labour areas are affected than conservative ones as a percentage.

Convinced? Ok, now look at this table that I made in 10 minutes from the data on the same page. (Note many projects are still open or otherwise undecided).

	stopped	unaffected	total including undecided open and academies
lab	293	235	655
con	152	61	270
lib	23	28	75

To me this doesn't look like the stopped projects are being targeted at labour areas. To me this looks a lot more like there were a lot more projects in labour areas anyway. If anything the fact that the majority of decided cases in Tory areas have been cancelled and the majority of decided cases in Labour areas haven't suggests the Labour areas are receiving positive treatment. To me this doesn't look, as some commentators have described it, like children being punished for their parents voting labour. This looks a lot more like the old government was engaged in bribery in labour seats on a massive scale. To me this looks like more than twice as many projects were started in Labour seats than Tory ones. To me, I think labour look like the bad guys here.

Human life is not infinitely valuable

Hi, thought I'd spark some life into the blog, been slow to update recently because I'm working on something rather large. (That's what he said, I know, way to raise the tone). But I thought I'd just jot out this idea.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of ethical maxims that are taken as read by all civilised people (including me) that are just flat wrong. I'm going to take a couple of quick examples.

• Human life is infinitely valuable.

• As long as you've got your heath nothing else matters.

These ideas are accepted without thought by almost everyone, I cant imagine anyone would say they disagree. The problem is nobody at all believes them. You dont for a start. You're reading this on the internet, so I assume you have access to at least a small amount of cash above the level at which you would literally starve to death.

If this is true, then by no means do you believe human life is of infinite value. Or even of particularly great value. At least in a concrete sense you dont. If it was true that you really acted like every life was worth more than any other thing, then you would not have any money. Consider the UN vaccination program going on right now across Africa to eliminate malaria. This will finish at some point due to lack of funding, and at the point where it does there will be that one last child who could have been helped if they had had just a little more money, the money that you didn't donate. I'm not trying to guilt trip you here, I'm simply stating a contradiction.

This isn't a situation where a really believed maxim isn't really followed through with. We dont, on the whole, feel guilty about not giving all our money to charities. We feel we should give something, but if pressed we would say frankly that we dont think it's reasonable to expect that we would give up even a slight level of comfort. It's not true that we feel we have to donate but it's only a temporary failing on our part that makes us not, we really dont feel ourselves as having committed the infinite moral failing that the maxim suggests.

As for health. Quite apart from how selfish this maxim seems on the most natural interpretation it is not true. None of us look after our health as if it was the only thing that matters. Because at a fundamental level it isn't. We all of us eat food that isn't good for us, we dont work out as much as we feel we ought to, we dont go to the doctor for every single little thing. Some of us go very far down this line, but nobody totally commits, everyone thinks about something else as well. We all have things that we enjoy doing in the time we dont spend working on our health.

Why do I point this out? Firstly because these maxims are annoying. In a discussion you can easily win points by connecting your thesis to some such rule and win the argument on the basis of a moral idea that nobody accepts. Secondly, it's important I feel to appreciate the gulf between theoretical moralities and how people actually make decisions. I'm not pointing out that people fail to live up to their own ethical standards, this much is obvious, everyone feels guilty about something. I'm pointing out something else, that people's real intuition about what they should do, what makes them feel guilty or satisfied, is very very far from what they claim to believe.

And this is important I feel. If we're arguing with a friend about some moral issue, the aim (at least in theory) should be to make the world better, (if we let “world” include the entire universe of moral relevance, including gods, afterlives, karma, the universal life force or whatever else). Each side in a moral dispute must by definition think the other is damaging the world with their immorality. If we really think our choices matter then, we should work hard in the field of morals, it's really important what point wins the argument. And I want to argue that as part of this we should be honest with ourselves. If we're arguing about Kantianism verses Aristotelianism we're not having a discussion about the moral decisions that change people's lives, we're engaged in what Dawkins might colourfully call “intellectual masturbation”, not that there's anything wrong with masturbation, it's great fun. But it's important not to confuse it for the real thing. There are moral debates about vaccination in Africa, about torture and the war on terror, about war and peace, good and evil, life and death. And we owe it to ourselves as a species to actually make progress in those debates. To get better answers to what things will make the world better and how we make people do them once we've worked that out. And ideas that nobody believes dont help forward these discussions.

Sometimes I love the internet

Not just because @floopily yesterday went shopping from a punt on the Cam via his iPhone. That's an incredible kind of magic. But not what really amazes me. What I love is that today I tweeted my MP (the wonderful @julianhuppert) about a high court case I'd found out about via twitter. He sent me a message back to say he would ask the Secretary of State a question on the subject. I passed this on to one of the eminent lawyers involved with the case (the truly great @JackOfKent), who has just now contacted my MP to see what more can be done on the issue.

The internet makes this kind of democracy possible. The press have a great history of telling the world what has happened. But they dont have the power to listen, only to talk. The old model of the minister making a speech that is re-packaged and discussed within the media before being re-broadcast to everyone else has competition. Now communication with MPs and ministers is instant and more importantly, public. If I write a letter, or even an email to my MP they can fob me off with a non-answer. But in the public forum of social media, everything you say will be picked up by someone. On the internet the skeptical community, the pro-Palestinian community, the LGBT community, to name but a few, can be far more powerfully united and speak as a connected voice much more clearly than single individuals.

The world of twitter is fantastically interconnected. We can now really speak to MPs as a community in a much more direct and powerful way that was ever possible before. Not of course that there's anything wrong with going to a constituency office or writing a letter. But the ability to unite behind an idea, twitter's ability to generate hashtags to form what are essentially ad hoc lobbying groups, whilst potentially dangerous, is a fantastic tool for good if used right.