Polly asked:

I was wondering if there is any other way of thinking besides deduction and induction, and I want an example. 

I understand by “thinking” the action of being able to comprehend smthg, and explain it. I know that by “comprehend” you could think about many things (the same for explaining) but what I want to grasp is if there is any other method besides the ones named above but parallel to them. 

Could be an example from mathematics or chemistry or.. well…

Answer by Craig Skinner

There is indeed, namely abduction.

Put simply, the essential features of each are as follows.

Deduction: a conclusion necessarily follows from (is entailed by; is a logical consequence of) the premises. So, if premises are true, conclusion must be true. But deduction tells us nothing new, because the conclusion is implicit in, is already contained in, the premises.

eg  Premise 1.    All Scots are drunks

Premise 2.    Craig is a Scot

Conclusion: Craig is a drunk

Induction:  from “expect more of the same” or “the future will resemble the past” we infer a likely, but not guaranteed conclusion. Unlike deduction this is not logically watertight, it is only probabilistic, but on the other hand it tells us something about the world.

eg   Premise: the sun has risen every morning for as long as we can remember.

Conclusion: the sun will rise tomorrow morning.

Because the world has exhibited regularities for eons, evolution has hardwired induction into sentient species. My dog for instance, is right now looking expectantly for her walk because she has had one around this time of day for years.

Induction notes regularities but doesnt explain them eg why the sun rises.

Abduction: here we infer the best explanation for the facts, so that abduction is also called “inference to the best explanation (IBE)”. It may not always be the right explanation, so that the conclusion, as with induction, and unlike deduction, is not guaranteed. However, unlike deduction and induction, it explains things, and is widely used in everyday life, in science, in medical diagnosis. Most of Sherlock Holmes’s “deductions” are actually abduction eg

Premise 1: the dog didnt bark in the night

Premise 2: dogs dont bark at friends

Best explanation: the intruder was known to the dog

We can update our estimate of the likelihood of our explanation in light of new evidence, and this iterated process can be systematized using Bayesian analysis. Abduction and Bayesian analysis are widely used in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

 

Robert asked:

Why does an infinite regress have to be terminated?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I’m guessing that what you mean by your question is what is so bad about a regress that is NOT terminated, and hence infinite.

An infinite regress which is considered bad is sometimes called a ‘vicious regress’.

An example of an argument that uses the idea of an infinite regress is the Cosmological argument for the existence of God. If we trace chains of cause and effect back far enough we either get to a Big Bang (the beginning of the universe) or the causes and effects go back for ever.

If the series terminates with the Big Bang, then that would be an event without a cause, contrary to the belief that every event has a cause. If the series doesn’t terminate but just keeps going back further and further in time, that would be an infinite regress.

But why is the regress vicious?

First, I need to explain the difference between an infinite regress — for example, a regress of causes and effects, or of explanations — and an infinite series.

In mathematics, there are examples of an infinite series that is terminated at one end and and not the other, e.g. the series 0, 1, 2, 3… which terminates at 0, or the series 0, -1, -2, -3… which also terminates at 0. Or you can have a series that is infinite in both directions, e.g. … -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3… . It doesn’t terminate anywhere. Nothing bad or vicious about that at all.

What is infinity? In mathematical terms,

“An infinite set is a set whose members can be put into a 1-1 correlation with a proper subset of itself.”

What that means in layman’s terms is that if you remove half of an infinite series, you still have the same ‘number’ of items. E.g. 0, 1, 2, 3… can paired off with 0, 2, 4, 6… That’s just one of the weird properties of the infinite.

In mathematician David Hilbert’s story of the Grand Hotel (cited by George Gamov in his book One Two Three Infinity, 1947 — the inspiration for 123infinity.com) there is still room for an infinite number of new guests even though each one of the infinitely many rooms is occupied — the old guests are simply asked to move to the room which was double the number of the room they were in before, leaving an infinite number of empty rooms. Job done.

Back to the cosmological argument. We have a problem — or so it is alleged. Identifying the cause of an event is supposed to supply a reason or explanation why that event happened. The event occurred because of the cause. Going back in time, that cause occurred because of another cause and so on.

Here’s an example that illustrates the problem. In an empty field, you discover a magnificent chandelier on a chain going up into the sky and through the clouds. Each link in the chain holds the link immediately below it. Then you are told that there’s no ‘ceiling’ the chain is attached to, no first link. The chain just goes up for ever to infinity. But if there isn’t a first link then what’s holding the entire chain up?!

The problem of a vicious regress, in short, is a problem of dependency. A required explanation is indefinitely deferred. An indefinitely deferred explanation is no explanation at all.

Theists hold that God from a vantage point outside time is responsible for the entire physical series of causes and effects — the entire ‘chain’ — which is either finite or infinite, depending on whether or not the Big Bang theory is true. God is the ultimate, non-temporal ’cause’. If the series of ‘links in the chain’ is infinite, God can still be there outside of space and time to ‘hold it up’.

Is that a good argument? If you don’t believe in God, then the alternative is to say that there is no ‘ultimate cause’. Things just are the way they are rather than some other way. The existence of the universe is contingent, but it is not contingent ON anything. It just IS.

Say that if you like, but there is still a question, a problem. Maybe a singular event without a cause, or alternatively an infinite regress of effects and prior causes is bearable, but there is some discomfort there that indicates that there is something that we do not fully understand about the nature of our world.

That’s not a problem for physics but for metaphysics.

 

Francis Rose asked:

I am taking an introductory metaphysics course in which our first unit is entitled “Who is God?”. One point in my textbook that stood out to me was the author’s statement that “indisputably” if God truly exists in both understanding and reality, then God “must be invisible”. Given how much is questioned in the discipline of metaphysics, why must we blindly accept God as being invisible? What formal proof or logic do we have that indicates that God cannot be a visible entity in reality? Perhaps if God exists, God is visible, and part of our struggle as humans is to be open to seeing God. As an aside, I am not religiously persuaded either for or against the existence of God. I am simply curious about how to approach this question from a philosophical standpoint.

Answer by Gideon Smith-Jones

It’s 23:30 here in the UK but I don’t want to let International Blasphemy Day pass without something being said against God.

Of course God is invisible. What you mean by ‘seeing’ God is something like religious revelation which isn’t literal seeing. Your author means literal seeing. If you could literally see God — not just see God in the sense of seeing some physical event that God has caused but see God as God then God would have to be an entity in the physical world.

If God is an entity in the physical world then a whole load of things that are believed about God can’t be true — being infinite, for example, or omniscient (a physical entity’s knowledge of other physical entities depends on cause and effect, which involves forming hypotheses that are increasingly difficult to verify with certainty).

But isn’t Christ God according to Christian doctrine? Only if you mean something weirdly peculiar by ‘is’, which no theologian to date has successfully explained. ‘I believe because I don’t understand’ (I believe because it’s nonsense) just about sums it up.

If I said I believed in invisible aliens who were with me all the time, observing me, giving an undetectable ‘push’ every now and then to help things along, I would be considered a candidate for a lunatic asylum. Yet this is exactly what millions, or billions, believe about the entity they call ‘God’. So strong is this belief that in some countries you can be put to death for expressing opposition to it.

‘Lots of things we justifiably believe in are invisible,’ a believer may say. The number five. Justice. Gravity or magnetism (you can only see their effects). Well if you’re saying that God is a concept or an abstract object then forget about any notion of God having any physical effect on the world (least of all being able to ‘create’ it). If you are saying that God is like a physical force, that would be fine if you have a testable theory to back it up — including proof of God’s alleged properties. Oh, but I forgot, bang goes infinitude, etc.

The God hypothesis is a crackpot theory which no reasonable human being ought to believe in. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what millions and billions continue to do. Unreason still rules — and will continue to rule until we blasphemers do something effective about it.

 

Plum Asked:

Did Marx think that the Polynesians living on islands in the Pacific were part of history?

Why was Marx convinced that capitalism would fail? Why did Marxism fail instead?

Answer by Paul Fagan

When answering questions concerning Karl Marx it should be borne in mind that although many persons and publications may purport to expound his viewpoints, Marx’s actual thought on many situations may remain unknown. It may therefore be necessary to carefully extrapolate some of Marx’s definite opinions. And this is how I would attempt to answer your questions.

Polynesians would almost certainly be part of any historical process but their society, in Marx’s time, would not be considered by him to be at the same stage of development as the industrialised societies; which had reached a stage of ghastly capitalism that should be replaced.

With regard to Karl Marx’s conviction that capitalism would fail, Marx witnessed the means of production being privately owned but operated by employees. This inherent clash of interests in the arrangement would cause the status quo to be overthrown: a class of persons owning the means of production and protecting their interests would be pitted against an increasingly organised working class also protecting their interests; and this would inevitably result in workers revolting and taking power. After this, the aim of the workers would be to collectivise and control production; and such cooperation would eventually lead to a state of shared material abundance where work became desirable and not a necessity to survive. In the end, society would distribute resources by the maxim ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’

Two underlying causes of dissatisfaction may be expected to fuel the above process, namely exploitation and alienation. Exploitation may be identified when workers have been paid for less than the value of their work; which may be found to be irksome depending upon how much value they fail to gain. And alienation is manifested when, in order to earn a living, persons work in roles, or produce goods, that are of little use or interest to them. (The major events in Marx’s life that helped to forge his viewpoints are detailed, in a very readable manner, in Francis Wheen’s biography of Marx).

Now it should be noted that during the industrial revolution other commentators had their misgivings over society’s progression: Marx was not alone. For instance, Robert Owen felt that society must change course in order to maintain stability and suggested a communitarian way of avoiding capitalism’s pitfalls; whereby persons would live in communities owning the means of production to avoid exploitation and alienation.

With regards to the failure of Marxism, capitalism has proved to be malleable and tenacious; (Alan Ryan gave a view of Marx’s oversights in Property and Political Theory). For instance, persons are prepared to suffer alienation provided that it gives the material comforts of the modern world. Also, he noted that work is not purely an exploitative process: the amount of opportunities to socialise, offered by the workplace are numerous.

However, it should be noted that there are many who feel that Marxism has not failed. For instance, many political theorists feel that Marx has successfully provided the tools whereby modern capitalism may be criticised and its purported success gauged: tools such as historical materialism and class-based analyses. Furthermore, for many, Marxism has not yet been tried: not in the form that Marx prescribed. Certainly, the recent ‘credit crunch’ and subsequent recession has caused many to rethink their political viewpoints and seek other ideologies. Hence, some may await the time when the conditions are right, for Marxism to enjoy a resurgence in popularity.

 

Mason asked:

Why isn’t death something one suffers from?

Helena asked:

Is it for the best that people eventually die?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I’m going to answer Mason’s and Helena’s questions together because they both concern the problem of our fear of death. (See my article Is it rational to fear death? and my YouTube video What is death?)

The short and boring answer to Mason’s question comes from from the Greek philosopher Epicurus: ‘Death is nothing to us … It does not concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.’ To ‘suffer’ from something (e.g. a bee sting, an amputation) you need to be alive. Death as such, as opposed to the process — possibly long and agonizing — of dying isn’t something you suffer because at the very point where death begins, ‘you’ are no more.

So far as the danger that Malthus predicted of the world population increasing at a geometric rate is concerned, it is very definitely a good thing that people eventually die — good for everyone else on the planet! But how can it be ‘good’ for you? Wouldn’t you prefer to live forever if you had the choice? That’s Helena’s question.

Thomas Nagel has written a very good essay on this in his book Mortal Questions, 1979: ‘Death’ (posted at stoa.org.uk).

One question that Nagel considers that has gripped me is the seeming paradox of the unappealingness of the thought that I might just go on for ever and ever, and the desire, at any given time, to go on living. Let’s say I’m convinced by the argument that life would get extremely boring and repetitive after, say, a thousand years. I would not want to live as long as that. And yet, as each new day begins, I sincerely hope that I do not die today.

In practice, as the centuries wear on, and you become increasingly aware of your miserable finitude and the limits of what you are able to achieve given your limited powers, the depression would increase to the point where you felt impelled to kill yourself. The maths of this situation (which is parallel to a thunder clap, or tearing a piece of paper) has been well researched: it’s called catastrophe theory. The point is that when you do finally turn the gun on yourself, you don’t do so for a ‘reason’ (which has existed possibly for hundreds of years). You just finally snap.

But what about this claim — possibly contentious — that even granted immortality, I am a limited being with limited possibilities? Surely (this is a point that has been made to me) if we are going into the realms of magic, and immortality is a magical notion (you even survive the death of the universe and the birth of a new universe!) then why couldn’t you magically acquire greater and greater intellectual powers, so that you were fully able to make use of your indefinitely extended life span?

Imagine what you like. The question is, are you imagining YOU? Are you still there, or has something over time taken your place (and perhaps fondly preserves your memories, as one keeps faded photographs in a family album). The god-lie entity that exists now, after hundreds of thousands of years, isn’t you. ‘It’ merely remembers another being’s ‘memories’, the being that you were.

 

Ngole asked:

How can human beings marries animals or marry fellow man?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

An intriguing question. First, we have to ask, What is marriage for?

Two individuals take a solemn vow to one another to be partners throughout their lives — ‘until death do us part’.

Marriage is typically consummated by sexual relations, but it need not be. According to www.gov.uk, ‘You can annul a marriage if… it wasn’t consummated — you haven’t had sex with the person you married since the wedding (doesn’t apply for same sex couples).’

The parenthetical qualification seems to introduce two concepts of ‘marriage’, which may be acceptable in law in terms of the legal consequences of marriage for inheritance or tax purposes, but seems wrong in principle. The idea that consummation is essential to ‘real’ marriage (i.e. between a man and a woman) is archaic and has no place in a modern legal system.

The exception also gives the lie to the claim that gay couples in the UK can now call themselves ‘married’. They can use the word. The legal benefits are sorted out. Yet the law still states, archaically, that there are two kinds of ‘marriage’, not one, those that can and those that can’t be annulled on the grounds of non-consummation.

Marriage may be for the sake of having children, or at least conducted with the prospect of children, but again this is not necessary, for various reasons which we need not go into. In the UK, you can’t annul a marriage on grounds of infertility, whether or not this was known in advance.

So why is it necessary that one marries another human being? Let’s say that I am a hunter, and I am in love with my seven year old mare whom I have owned since she was a yearling. We’ve been together through thick and thin. I want to get married and I think she would be happy with the idea — if only she could talk and understood my marriage proposal.

But there’s the rub. Marriage is a vow undertaken by two individuals to one another. You can’t make a vow if you lack the mental capacity to grasp what that means. My mare will never comprehend my feelings for her, even though I know in some way she appreciates the loving way in which I groom and feed her.

Of course this is ridiculous. But I sense, from the tone of your question, that you think that a man marrying another man is in the same category as a man marrying a horse.

If that is the case, poor you.