Mr. Grouchypants

The Economist has a surprising article on how people communicate. A cognitive scientist at Yale, Bruno Galantucci, developed an experiment which has two participants attempt to find each other in a virtual bungalow. They could only interact via a couple of networked computers using a device that allowed them to scrawl out symbols but not words.

Most of the groups were able to successfully communicate enough information to solve the game, some doing so in a manner of minutes. What caught my interest was the following excerpt:

One strength of Dr Galantucci’s experiment that does not exist in the real world, however, is that he is able to interview his subjects afterwards. What is striking, he says, is that a pair can be successful even if a symbol represents something quite different in the virtual world to each player—as long as they agree on what they should do when confronted by it. In other words, people only need to convey a small amount of information to communicate effectively, and they can do so while holding fundamentally different ideas about how their language describes the world.

When I read this, I immediately though of Searle’s Chinese Room argument which emphasizes semantics over syntax. In the Yale experiment, semantics did not seem as important as syntax judging from the quoted passage. The participants could have at least a rudimentary understanding of their messages without agreeing on the semantics of the particular symbols. I’m not sure that this has any important implications for Searle’s argument, but I found it interesting nonetheless.

(Via GeekPress)

Update: Added clever-ish title.

Professor John Silber has an insightful article about “scientism” and the troubles that it causes. He rightly criticizes scientists for making assertions that cannot be bolstered by science. I don’t think I can completely agree with his remarks about diminishing of humanity, but I think he is dead on with his comparison of adherents to scientism and fundamentalist religious believers.

I have no problems with people claiming that the scientific method is the most reliable tool we have for learning about the world around us. That assertion can be supported by appealing to the success of various physical sciences. However, claims that science is the only way to learn about the world seem to me to be self-referentially incoherent. You can’t, after all, show scientifically that science is the only way to gain knowledge.

What I find particularly annoying, however, is the notion that science will eventually provide an explanation for everything. That is just hubris, especially since we can’t be certain that we are even capable of asking all the necessary questions required for an understanding of the universe. We are finite creatures with finite capacities, just like other animals. Chimps don’t understand algebra. They aren’t even aware that they don’t understand algebra. What reason do we have to assume that our brains are not limited in a similar fashion?

I can’t think of any, but I suppose that could just be due to the inherent limitations of my finite brain.

(Article via AnalPhilosopher)

Tech Central Station has an interesting article on Intelligent Design by Douglas Kern. Mr. Kern argues that Intelligent Design will supplant Darwinism in our lifetime. I’m not sure he is correct, but he does make some interesting points.

The first reason he gives is:

“ID will win because it’s a religion-friendly, conservative-friendly, red-state kind of theory, and no one will lose money betting on the success of red-state theories in the next fifty to one hundred years.”

This is the most persuasive of his points. Given a choice between a religion-friendly and a religion-hostile theory, most people will choose the religion-friendly one since most people are religion-friendly themselves. Now one could argue (and many do) that Darwinism isn’t religion-hostile. However, many of the most vocal proponents of Darwinism are quite hostile to religion.
Which brings us to Mr. Kern’s second argument, which is “ID will win because the pro-Darwin crowd is acting like a bunch of losers.” He summarizes most responses to ID theory as follows:

“Ewww…intelligent design people! They’re just buck-toothed Bible-pushing nincompoops with community-college degrees who’re trying to sell a gussied-up creationism to a cretinous public! No need to address their concerns or respond to their arguments. They are Not Science. They are poopy-heads.”

Sadly, this characterization isn’t all that far from the truth. Arrogance and condescension are not reliable methods for winning friends and influencing others. Plus there are some very intelligent people in the ID camp. And, as Mr. Kern points out, some of their criticisms have been echoed by pro-Darwinian scientists. So simple dismissals of ID proponents makes the Darwinian side seem far too defensive, not the position one would expect from a group confident in their theory. And the attacks seem to be coming more frequently these days. I take this to be a sign that the Darwinists are bothered by the progress the ID camp has made in acceptance of their views.

While I’m sympathetic to the argument, I’m not convinced that ID will win out. There are an awful lot of politics involved in the scientific community. And ID theory doesn’t have a great deal of political clout at the moment. But they do have the advantage of opponents who seem to have a tin ear when it comes to selling their view to the public.

(Article via email from my brother)

Here is the last article of the late philosopher, Richard Taylor, to appear in Philosophy Now magazine. It deals with Stoic philosophy as it relates to self-determination. Taylor concludes with the following:

From this the Stoics concluded that, just as no external is of value to you, so also nothing can hurt you, except you yourself. What you are is entirely up to you.

It has been a while since I looked at Taylor’s Metaphysics, but if the quote reflects his feelings, then I must have misunderstood his discussion of fatalism. I will probably revisit the book to check on that since it is such an interesting piece of work. It is a bit of a downer in places since Taylor seemed to have a low opinion of people in some regards. If I remember correctly, he felt that you were wasting your life in some way if you weren’t creating something. That jarred me when I read it and probably acted as part of the impetus for me to start this site. Generating blog posts here and there isn’t much, but it is a start. I’ll try to post some thoughts on the book as I read sections of it. (Sort of an online book report)

A few years ago, I was reading an article in Rolling Stone about singer, Marilyn Manson. Manson made a comment which basically stated that intelligence isn’t mentioned as a virtue anywhere in the bible. I’m not sure that is entirely correct given the “be wise as serpents” passage, but let’s assume that Manson was correct. Should the bible be faulted if it doesn’t count intelligence among the virtues? I don’t think so, and the reason for this is simple. Intelligence isn’t a virtue.

Intelligence is a trait which can be used for a variety of actions. And not all of those actions are virtuous. Serial killers illustrate this point quite well. In this regard, intelligence is no different than physical strength and charisma. All three are good traits to have, and all three can be used for good actions. But they can just as easily be used for nefarious goals. So, at best, intelligence is neutral when it comes to virtue.

The Problem of Evil is a powerful (I would say convincing) argument against the existence of God. For this reason, one frequently will see atheists challenge theists with it. What I often don’t see is atheists dealing with the consequences of the argument. If you argue that there is too much suffering in the world for there to be a God, aren’t you committed to taking a rather bleak view of the world? Shouldn’t one conclude that the world is a bad place after accepting the argument from evil? If not, why not? How can there be enough suffering in the world to negate the idea of God but not enough to make the world a bad place? I suspect that most atheists deal with this issue the same way that most theists deal with the argument itself: they ignore it.

How do I deal with it you ask? Ok, even if you don’t ask I’ll still give an answer. Well, I can’t really give much in the way of an answer, because I don’t really have one. That’s probably why part of me can’t completely shake the idea of theism. Because of the suffering I see in the world, I want theism to be true even with all the logical difficulties that come with it. Theism provides the possibility for some recompense for the suffering in this world. Without that, I don’t see any realistic reaction to the problem of evil other than concluding that the world as a whole is a bad place. So for the time being, all I can do is hope that I am wrong about God.