Help! I am Being Assailed by a Bizarre and Shocking Notion Involved in a Theory of History!

Few things can shock the worldly epistemologist. Even those folks who insist the Red Herring is not a proper fallacy of logic must fail to scandalize the man or woman who has seen it all.

Seen the careless confusion of analytic and synthetic propositions. Seen operational definitions rise and fall in faddish favor.  Seen whole and entire epistemologies come and go.

No, the most experienced epistemologists are very much like old sailors who have been to nearly every major port: Not many sights are left to shock either one of those old hands.

Yet, I must confess to being horrified by Hans-Hermann Hoppe's notions of historical truth.  Horrified!

• Hoppe begins his argument by asserting that history "reveals nothing about causes and effects" since "each sequence of empirical events is compatible with any number of rival, mutually incompatible interpretations." 
• He then goes on, "To make a decision regarding such incompatible interpretations, we need a theory. By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori."
• And then he follows up his strange argument by reasserting that, "Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it."

If you're like me, you must now -- despite your worldliness -- feel significantly more shocked than if someone were to suggest to you that you might someday wake up with a hang-over in a South China Sea whorehouse to find yourself in bed with a grinning orangutang -- and not a truth-table in sight!  That's to say, Hoppe has suggested a notion of history no less bizarre! 

So, let's put Hoppe's notion in perspective.  Every science in one way or another makes use of experience to test and collaborate its hypotheses. But Hoppe is insisting that experience cannot be used to test and collaborate hypotheses in history.  Why?

Well, Hoppe argues that any sequence of historical events is open to multiple, mutually exclusive interpretations, and that historical experience cannot provide a way to chose between those interpretations.

Now, if that is true -- genuinely true -- then history can tell us nothing beyond mere fact. "In the centuries following Columbus' arrival, many native Americans died from diseases of Old World origin."  Presumably, Hoppe would allow that history could establish the die-off as fact.

But suppose we had an hypothesis: "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a flourishing of native American well-being."  According to Hoppe, no set of facts -- no matter how great their number, nor how relevant their meaning -- could ever establish that hypothesis or refute it.

That's because, for Hoppe, historical facts are always compatible with mutually exclusive interpretations of them.  In other words, for his notion to be more than mere noise, Hoppe must argue that the die-off of native Americans is a fact that is just as compatible with the hypothesis, "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a flourishing of native American well-being", as it is compatible with the competing hypothesis, "The presence of Europeans in the Americas brought about a decrease in native American well-being."

If he cannot show the fact of the die-off is just as compatible with the one hypothesis as it is with the other, then he cannot logically demonstrate his notion that historical experience is unable to provide a means to choose between mutually exclusive interpretations.

For that, and for other reasons, I submit that Hoppe's bizarre notion of history is mere noise.

Yet, why, if it is mere noise, does Hoppe advance his notion of history in the first place?  I am largely speculating here, but I suspect Hoppe does it in order to support his political, social, and economic theories.

You see, Hoppe wants to argue that the "natural order" of humanity is a stateless society of private property owners.  But what we know of history renders that notion absurd -- even more bizarre than the notion we've just discussed.  So -- and here is my speculation -- Hoppe decided to redefine how hypotheses are tested in history, rather than admit his "natural order" is a joke.

Bottom Line: Regardless of his motives for them, Hoppe's ideas are bad enough that, like McDonald's "hamburgers" and Ayn Rand's "philosophy", they are bound to become popular.

Sex and Fallacious Reasoning

Like most people, I am keenly aware the reason you do not often see "sex" and "logical fallacies of relevance" in the same sentence together is because logical fallacies of relevance are intrinsically so exciting they do not need sex to sell them.

Merely mention one of the numerous fallacies of relevance -- say, the Ad Hominem Fallacy, the Red Herring Fallacy, or the Naturalistic Fallacy -- and you create an atmosphere of tingling anticipation.  To toss "sex" into the mix would only be overkill.
  
So it may astonish my readers that I am about to bring up both the Naturalistic Fallacy and the subject of biological reproduction -- together.

Make no mistake about it, though:  I am not mixing sex with pleasure logic merely in order to titillate you, my beloved readers.  Nor am I mixing sex with logic merely because I am a  man of passions -- strong, huge, even alarming passions.  No, there is nothing gratuitous about this.  Instead, it has simply become necessary to mention the two together.

And why is that?  Because someone -- someone! -- has made a mistake on the internet!  That is, they have committed the Naturalistic Fallacy in the all but certain presence of impressionable children. Children who might now grow up to promiscuously introduce fallacies into the very core of their reasoning.  Children who might one day run large multinational corporations, huge NGOs, entire governments, or even departments of philosophy.   DOESN'T ANYONE THINK OF THE FUTURE OF OUR SPECIES BEFORE THEY COMMIT FALLACIES OF RELEVANCE ANYMORE?

The person in question -- let us call him the "perpetrator" -- committed the fallacy in the course of arguing that we should derive our morals from "evolutionary biology".  Allow me to quote:

My position is that evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes. These are adaptations brought on by natural selection to make us functioning social beings. It is in this sense that I claim that morality is not subjective. [bracketed material mine]

As it happens, there is more than one way to lay out his argument. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, I shall now lay out the perpetrator's argument in the strongest possible manner I can come up with, despite the risk of giving us all the vapours:

• We evolved various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.
• Because the evolved behaviors ("adaptations") make us functioning social beings, they are moral absolutes.
• We ought to behave according to moral absolutes.
• Therefore, we ought to behave according to the various behaviors ("adaptations") that make us functioning social beings.

As you see, the second premiss is the offending one.  It constitutes a mini-argument within the larger argument, for it has the form of a premiss ("our evolved behaviors make us functioning social beings") and a conclusion ("our evolved behaviors are therefore moral absolutes"). 

But that is precisely the form of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which can be described as, "An argument whose premises merely describe the way that the world is, but whose conclusion describes the way that the world ought to be...."  The Naturalistic Fallacy is a fallacy because you cannot reason from an "is" to an "ought".

If you could reason from an "is" to an "ought", you could reason all sorts of ridiculous things. "There is theft, therefore there ought to be theft." "There are wars, therefore there ought to be wars."  Even, "There are murderous fallacies of logic, therefore there ought to be murderous fallacies of logic."

Yet, for the moment, let us accept the perpetrator's reasoning, despite it's power to shock us.  What, then, might happen if we were to buy into his notion that "evolutionary biology lays on us certain [moral] absolutes?

Would not any behavior with a genetic basis that increased someone's reproductive success then become moral? I cannot see why it would not.

For instance, it appears that war has a genetic basis in territorial instincts and other such things.  But if that is so, then wars would be moral if they increased someone's reproductive success.  Again, there is a hypothesis that rape has a genetic basis.  But if that is so, then rape would be moral if it increased someone's reproductive success.

Such implications must disturb even the calmest of men and women.  To permit the notion that evolutionary biology lays on us moral absolutes seems to invite a deluge of undesirable consequences.  Fortunately we need not permit it, for sound logic does not compel us to permit it. For that, and for other reasons, men and women of conscience may justifiably and emphatically wag their fingers while saying to the perpetrator in the most passionate terms, "Buffoonery! Mr. Perpetrator, your notion is buffoonery!"

What Causes Us to Think Immodest Women are the Downfall of Men?

Perhaps we can discuss once more the curious notion that immodest women are the downfall of men?  But I am not so concerned today with refuting the notion.  It seems to me an irrational notion -- and, as a friend likes to remind me, you cannot reason a person out of a notion they did not reason themselves into in the first place. So, instead of discussing its reasonableness, I would like to take a guess at its possible origins or causes.

It is a serious question why such an unwholesome notion is spread over several cultures and why it can be found in countries as diverse as India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America.  Taking its strangely ubiquitous nature into account, is there any universal root for the notion that would explain why it appears in both India and Israel, in both Saudi Arabia and America, and -- apparently -- in most other countries?

I know of very little science on this issue, but I seem to recall one hypotheses: At root, the notion that immodest women are the downfall of men is part of a male strategy -- a tactic, if you will -- to put men in control of women's reproductive choices.

Sometimes the hypothesis is reasoned this way: 

(1) Women, when they have the freedom to choose their own mates, typically go about that task by a process of attraction and selection.  Basically, they make themselves as attractive to men as needed -- especially as physically attractive as needed -- and then they select a mate from among the men who are attracted to them.

(2) Given that women most frequently exercise choice by a process of attraction and selection, men have a number of options if they want to control women's reproductive choices.  Those options include placing restrictions on a woman's freedom to make herself attractive.  Such restrictions might include requiring her to dress in a manner that hides her physical attractiveness; requiring her to walk with eyes downcast; requiring her to speak of herself "modestly" or dismissively; prohibiting her from asking a man for a date; etc.

(3) The notion that immodest women cause a man's downfall is thus seen to be a cover, mask, or rationalization for controlling women's reproductive choices by restricting their ability to attract mates.

(4) Men who succeed in controlling women's reproductive choices thus place themselves in a better position to make those choices for women.  And if they can make those choices for women, they will presumably make them most frequently for their (the men's) own benefit.

For the sake of discussion, let's now assume the hypothesis is sound.  That is, the notion immodest women cause the downfall of men is a tactic men employ to assist them in controlling women's reproductive choices.  Does that mean that every time we hear some man encourage some woman to "be more modest" we can be confident he is doing so to control her reproductive choices?

I don't think so.  I think the hypothesis, if it is sound at all, would at best explain why the notion ever caught on, why it persists, and why it became nearly ubiquitous in its distribution. That is, it might explain the majority of cases.  But as for explaining the behavior of any one person, I think it's quite likely that a significant minority of people who encourage women to be modest do so for reasons having nothing to do with the hypothesis.

For instance, I came across a comment left on a blog yesterday by a teenager that asked women to dress modestly for two reasons.  First, to help the comment's author avoid masturbation.  Second, to help its author avoid objectifying women.

Now, you might grin at that (as did I), but if we take his two reasons at face value, we have there a male who is asking women to "be more modest" for reasons other than to restrict women's reproductive choices.  So, I think it would take a lot of work to sort out all the reasons people might have for the belief that immodest women are the downfall of men. But what do you yourself think might be the reasons or causes of such a heavy, gloomy, and unhealthy notion?

Do You Have Any Idea How Pissed Off I Am?

Do you know how pissed off I am?

As it happens, I am at this very moment pissed off enough to say, "intersubjective verifiability is the core of the empirical sciences" -- say it and mean it!

That's how pissed off I am.

I have just come from a kerfuffle.  Someone (the nerve of that person! The Nerve!) at this very moment is -- despite my protests -- asserting that "objectivity is the core of the empirical sciences".  And they are saying it on the internet -- on the internet, where impressionable children might see it and thus have warped their tender, young epistemologies!

Please allow me to quote the fool: "The basis for science is objectivity, yet the foundational premise for science is based on an assumption (existence of objects)."


DOESN'T ANYONE THINK THROUGH THEIR TERMS THESE DAYS?

I humbly apologize if the sheer emotional violence of my response to that person has caused you to reach for the smelling salts.  I realize I am a man of passions. Strong passions.  And that sometimes my passions might be a tad overwhelming, especially when an epistemology is involved.  But please bear with me while I say this: It is a myth -- it is only a myth -- that in order to do science I must believe in an objective reality.  I am, of course, permitted to believe in an objective reality.  But my belief in an objective reality is not necessary because I can do science even if I do not believe in an objective reality.

I myself favor throwing the concept of objectivity out the door.  We don't need it.  It is unnecessary baggage, and it reeks of the Middle Ages.  Moreover, the concept of objectivity is quite easily and very soundly replaced by the concept of intersubjective verifiability. 

All of us intersubjectively verify things -- even if we do not call it "intersubjective verification".  Someone tells us something is true and we say, "Show me!"  In a nutshell, that's the principle behind intersubjective verification.

Suppose I say to you, "It is snowing outside."  You look out the window, see snow, and say, "So it is!"  You have just intersubjectively verified my statement, "It is snowing outside." 

Again, you say to me, "If you run an electric spark through a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, the mixture will explode, after which, you will be left with some water."  I don't believe you.  So I experiment by running an electric spark through a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.  The mixture explodes, after which I notice some water.  I have just intersubjectively verified your claim.

Imagine thousands of people do the same experiment and almost all of them get significantly the same results.  Would we not have considerable evidence -- a weight of evidence -- that we can rely on a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to produce water when a spark is passed through it?  I think so.  But have we in any way demonstrated there is some objective world out there -- a world separate from our awareness -- in which hydrogen and oxygen are real things that produce real water when a real spark is passed through them?

Strictly speaking, we have not.

Yet -- and this has a certain beauty to it -- we don't need to.  We do not need to figure out with absolute certainty what the ultimate nature of reality is before we can arrive at reliable facts through processes of intersubjective verification. For example, we can discover that a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen reliably produces water when a spark is passed through it without ever needing to speculate about metaphysics.

In short, science does not crucially rest upon the metaphysical notion that objects really exist.

So take that, Mr. Internet-Child-Corrupting-"The-Basis-For-Science-Is-Objectivity"-Poo-Poo-Head-Man!

Once again, I must apologize to you, my dear readers, on the chance that my strong, vigorous language has caused you to reach for your smelling salts.

My High School Math Teacher Was A Space Alien!

I am fascinated -- I have long been fascinated -- that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.

If I were a scientist with an adequate research budget, I would probably want to study human intelligence just to find out what I could about that one unexpected fact. (Of course, if I were a scientist and I had an adequate research budget, that, too, would be an unexpected fact.)  How can the same person be both smart and stupid?

I don't know a reliable answer to that question, but I do think many of us -- perhaps even most of us -- more or less fit the description of being smart in some ways and stupid in others.  And those of us who do not fit that description seem more often stupid in everything than smart in everything.

I'm aware of Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences. And his theory would seem to explain why the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in other ways.  Yet, so far as I know, Gardner's theory is as yet unsupported by much in the way of hard evidence.  Consequently, I remain an agnostic about it.

Often, when I think of the people in my life who have most deeply -- some might say "most traumatically" -- impressed me as smart in some ways and stupid in others, I think of my high school math teacher, Mr. B.

No one -- not even I -- questioned Mr. B's competence as a mathematician.  I will submit, however, that Mr. B, despite his smarts in math, was twenty years ahead of his time in some kinds of stupid.


I had Mr. B as a teacher in the early 1970s.  William F. Buckley was alive, and Buckley was frequently a very smart man.  He also had the clout to be the intellectual guardian of the Republican Party.  That is, if he decided someone or some group was too stupid to fit in as a Republican, Buckley would use his considerable influence to exile them from the Party.  The Republicans have no one like him today. Today,. the crazies have become the Party.

The John Birch Society was one of the groups Buckley succeeded in kicking out of the Party.  The "Birchers" believed -- in the way stupid people fanatically believe things -- all sorts of nonsense.  For instance, they thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was a willing tool of the Soviet Union and a deliberate traitor to America.  Buckley thought the Birchers were in danger of sliding into fascism.  Perhaps he was right.

My math teacher subscribed to the John Birch Society, and perhaps to other Radical Right organizations as well. We knew whenever he had received in the mail another one of their newsletters -- he would put aside teaching mathematics for the day and instead lecture us on themes that were rarely enough heard in the early 1970s outside of certain circles.

I can still recall a few of his more memorable pronouncements: "Pollution never killed anyone".  "Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Communist out to destroy America. Don't let anyone tell you different."  "The Soviets will invade us any year now. Maybe any day now."  "Women don't need equal rights.  Men do!  Women are smarter than men."  "Negroes are shameless whiners. They haven't been discriminated against since the end of the Civil War."

I am a strong believer in the notion that, although everyone has a right to his or her opinions, not all opinions are created equal.  Some opinions are forged of sound logic and a weight of evidence.  Some other opinions are forged of logical fallacies and bullshit.  Many people believe that differences of opinion never reflect differences of intellect.  I disagree.  Some opinions are so stupid their owners, if not merely ignorant, must be stupid.

Yet, it is simply true that -- often enough -- the same one of us who is so stupid as to believe the Theory of Evolution is a conspiracy of the world's 500,000 biologists, is nevertheless a brilliant (or at least competent) engineer.  How can we account for that?

Mr. B once said something that I think is about half true: “No matter how good you get at math, you will never cease to make mistakes. But if you practice, you will catch your mistakes as you make them, and then correct them yourself, instead of needing someone else to correct them for you.”

I think it sometimes happens that way.  But I also think very few -- if any -- of us ever get so good that we catch and correct every one of our own mistakes, whether in math or in any other field.  We will always need the help of others.  Indeed, it seems one reason the sciences have been so successful at establishing reliable facts and producing predictive theories is because they employ methods of inquiry that encourage people to correct each other's mistakes.  That is, science is a profoundly cooperative endeavor.

Buckley once described some of the notions of the John Birch society as "paranoid and idiotic".  To some extent, those two things go together.  A "paranoid" person is typically unwilling to accept anyone correcting his ideas.  Quite often, the result is his ideas drift into idiocy.  That's to say, it seems one of the best ways to become stupid is to systematically reject or ignore the efforts of others to correct us when we are wrong.

But why are we humans so often wrong in the first place?

Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have come up with a rather interesting theory that could go far to explain why our species of great ape seems prone to cognitive errors.  It's called "The Argumentative Theory", and it is well worth reading up on.

The gist of it is that our ability to reason evolved -- not to figure out what is true or false -- but to win arguments, or to persuade others to do what we want them to do.  Consequently, our ability to think logically and evidentially is imperfect -- one might even say, "somewhat remedial".

Part of the evidence for the Argumentative Theory is our species built in cognitive biases.  By "built in", I mean that the biases seem hereditary.  The fact our thinking is inherently biased is strong evidence our thinking evolved for some other function than to merely figure out what is true or false.  Mercier and Sperber would say that function was to persuade people.

Regardless of whether the function of reason is to discern reality or to win arguments, the fact our species is so prone to cognitive error might go far in explaining how it happens that the same person can be smart in some ways and stupid in others.  That is, perhaps we are smartest -- or at least, we tend to act smartest -- when we have some corrective feedback.

That feedback might come in the form of ourselves "checking our work" -- as when we check a mathematical solution.  It might come in the form of  whether we achieve our intended outcome -- as when we fix a car so that it runs again.  Or the corrective feedback might come in the form of constructive criticism from others.

Perhaps the less corrective feedback we have, the more likely we are to adopt stupid opinions.  Or, in other words, we should not expect our own reason alone to take us where we want to go.  Rather, we should expect our reason plus some form of corrective feedback to take us there.

I think my high school math teacher, if he were alive to read this essay, would be appalled by my suggestion that -- no matter how good we get -- we are still wise to listen to the critiques of others.  It seems to me Mr. B cared so little to hear the opinions of others that he might as well have been a space alien orbiting his own little planet and all but totally out of touch with earth.  He seemed to think he was his own sufficient critic.  And perhaps his lack of concern for the input of others explains why he found it so easy to harbor so many "paranoid and idiotic" notions.  Notions that, in a sense, were more stupid than he was.

Bio-luminescent Cats and Other New-Fangled Pets

Have you ever wondered whether someday your pussy will glow in the dark? No, not that pussy. I mean the pussy in your lap.  Er...that didn't work either.  Let me start over again...

By all accounts, genetic engineering is upon us. And while -- so far as I've heard -- it's commercial use is currently limited mostly to the agricultural and medical fields, it seems probable that it will expand into other fields. Thus it might be only a matter of time before companies are selling genetically engineered farm animals.  For instance, cattle that are immune to the worse diseases and that grow faster on less food than today's breeds.

Yet, if you can genetically engineer a cow, you can genetically engineer a cat. Or a dog.  Or any other pet. So I'm wondering today whether the future might hold for us "designer pets".  Perhaps even bizarre designer pets.

For instance: You might -- might -- be able to engineer a cat whose skin or fur glows in the dark.  After all, there are bio-luminescent organisms from which you could presumably take the genes for bio-luminescence and then insert those genes into a cat's genetic code.  The result might give a whole new meaning to pets named, "Sparkles" and "Wildfire".

Of course, a crucial issue here is whether there would be much of a market for designer pets.  Would people line up to buy cats that glowed in dark?  Or if not precisely cats that glowed in the dark, other bizarre creations.  Such as dogs that lived as long as their masters?  Rabbits with pink fur? Talking chimpanzees?

I have no idea whether designer pets would ever take off.  I assume if they became available, they would appeal to at least some people, if only for the sake of novelty. But would they appeal to enough people to fuel an industry?

Genetic engineering raises many questions and most of those questions are more important than the ones I've raised here. If the world ever creates cats that glow in the dark, the cats will surely be controversial, but in the grand scheme of things, they are unlikely to be all that important.  However, given how crazy our species is, I would not entirely dismiss the possibility we will someday create such bizarre animals.

So what do you think? Will the future hold for us genetically engineered pets?  And if so, what will those pets be like?

(Hat Tip for the idea to The Wise Fool who blogs here and here.)

Can Insects be Happy?

Like most sensible folk, I occasionally spend my afternoons wondering whether life forms other than my own can experience feelings of happiness.  After all, I have only to look out my window to notice that four or five dogs are currently playing in the yards neighboring mine.  And those dogs appear to be happy.

Beyond the simple appearance of happiness, it would not at all surprise me if those dogs now and then actually felt happy.  That's because dogs and humans are related to each other through evolution and, consequently, we share some of the same neurochemistry.  It's certainly not hard to imagine the possibility that similar -- or even identical -- neurochemical processes occur in both humans and dogs.

Besides, if, as some scientists now suspect, the same neurochemical processes can produced feelings of happiness in both humans and politicians, then how much more likely is it that the same neurochemical processes can produce feelings of happiness in both humans and dogs?

It seems, though, that thinking about happiness in dogs naturally leads one to wonder what is the simplest animal that can feel happy?  Can birds feel happy?  What about frogs and salamanders?  Spiders?  Insects?  Worms?

To me, the cool thing is that it seems we are able -- at least in theory -- to somewhat answer those questions. In theory, we could establish the precise neurological processes that are associated with feelings of happiness in us.  We could then check if those exact processes were ever present in other animals.  And if we discovered that they sometimes were, then we would have a clue suggesting other animals might sometimes feel happiness.

Of course, even then, it would be extremely problematic to assert that many other animals do in fact feel happiness in much the same way we do.  There are simply too many variables for any conclusive answer.

All the same: Some might find it an interesting question if only because answering it might shed some light on human happiness.  And, as for myself, I would love out of simple curiosity to better understand the evolution of feelings of happiness.