Who is your favourite villain?

Moriarty? Blofeld? Darth Vader? Reviewer 2?

Let me know yours!

The Transparency of Conceptual Entailment?

 “A is sufficient for a condition that is necessary for B” implies “B is sufficient for a condition that is necessary for A”.

Does this seem transparent to you? I mean by that, is the truth of the statement obvious? Does it seem true?

A long time ago, someone called Achilles Grytpype-Thynne (a riff on a Goonshow character?) responded to this statement after I posted it on a message board as an example of an implication that isn't immediately obvious. But to Achilles it was, and he explained why. It remains one of the few examples of a fast, non-googleable and marvellously modest yet intelligent responses I've had in all of my dialogues.

Let me know what you think.

Determinism and Predicatability

I think that determinism doesn't entail predictability, even in principle, unless you are going to help yourself to some principles that are so outlandish that you might as well invoke the supernatural.

Roughly speaking, a system is deterministic if every event necessarily follows as a result of prior events. Or, to put it another way, every future state of the system is completely determined by the initial conditions of that system.

I think intuitively, it seems to follow that every future state of such a system could be predicted, albeit perhaps only in principle. For example, imagine a snooker table at the beginning of a game and suppose the precise location, mass and other physical variables of all the balls are known. Then given the laws of physics and the momentum and path of the cue ball after cueing off, we might suppose that some supercomputer could show us a picture of where every ball would be on the table for any future time.

 So if the whole natural world were considered as a deterministic system, we might conclude that the future is completely predictable. But there seem to be limits on predictability by any methods of computation conceived of so far. 

First, we'd need precise measurements, or the error in our predictions would grow so fast as to make them uselessly inaccurate. Suppose that one such measurement had a value that turned out to be a non computable irrational number? If it is truncated anywhere, that introduces error. But if it is not truncated, we have an infinite amount of information.

Second, even if the supercomputer is as computationally powerful as we like, it is still part of the natural world, so the information state of the computer is manifest physically, which itself would perturb the system leading to an infinite regress. Supposing the computer is outside the natural world doesn't help either, as we then have the classic dualist problem of how it could interact with the world to take measurements whilst remaining completely separate.

These are reasons why, although we might have a strong intuition that with enough information, time and computing power, every subsequent state of a deterministic system can be precisely specified within a given margin of error, this is not the case. Even given a classical deterministic physics model of the world, a precise prediction of the future state of the system is not possible, even in principle.

This thought experiment predates modern computing by a long way. As far back as 1814 Pierre-Simon LaPlace, in his introduction to Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, postulated what would later be known as LaPlace's Demon: an intellect with enough calculating ability and knowledge to predict the future.

Perhaps a demon is more apt a characterization than a supercomputer. Given the arguments considered above, any such entity looks like it would have to be a supernatural agent, which is ironic given this is one thought experiment that hard determinists use to deny free will.

I have reposted this as the previous version was appearing as a draft on my dashboard, so apologies if it appears to duplicate!

The Necessity of Contingency

First, a confession: I haven't read Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude. I have chewed through Hyperstucteralism's necessity of Contingency (Chiesa, 2015) and The necessity of contingency or contingent necessity: Meillassoux, Hegel, and the subject (Van Houdt, 2011) though. This wasn't just to remind myself how opaque Continental philosophy can be; I had a nagging sense that Meillassoux had over-egged things, but couldn't quite put my finger on exactly why. So thanks to Peter Wolfendale for the following encapsulation: "The question that remains for critics of Meillassoux’s thesis is thus whether it conflates the epistemic contingency of nomological necessity with the logical necessity of nomological contingency." Superb!

Empowerment Ethics: A criticism.

'Empowerment Ethics' is philosopher Dan Fincke's attempt at an objective naturalistic ethics. I offer a criticism here.

If it could be shown that ethics could be grounded within a naturalistic framework in such a way as to supply objective principles of moral conduct, what would follow? One thing is that we would have a way to counter potentially socially corrosive views of morality such as moral relativism, whilst retaining naturalism. 

For example, suppose an atheist who also rejects the concept of the 'supernatural', wants to assert that torture for fun is wrong. What account can they give of 'wrong'? Can they offer a counter to challenges like: 'that's just your subjective opinion', or 'that's just what your culture at this time has led you to think, other cultures at different times have had different moral standards that were valid for them'.

I think Finke's Empowerment Ethics (EE) does well in drawing distinctions between concepts that can get muddled, for example 'subjective' and 'relative'. It also goes a long way in explaining how there can be objective aspects to value judgements and hence to morality.

In terms of the relatively modest goals of elucidating rational objective components to morality and pointing out formal constraints such as consistency and conditions for fairness, I think Empowerment Ethics succeeds. Fincke seems to pursue a more ambitious goal however, which is to show that given his naturalistic definition of 'good' an agent would be rationally compelled to behave morally. I think this is where EE over-reaches.

According to EE, 'good' is defined as a kind of effectiveness which is an objective relation in the world, so to say that 'x is good at bringing about y' is to say that x is effective in the bringing about of y. The next important premise is that a human agent not only has powers, such as social, technological, creative and many other powers, but that the human agent is these powers. An agent acting in such a way as to diminish their own effectiveness in instantiating their powers is therefore not being 'good' at being human. The move EE then makes is to say that the way for anyone to make the most of their powers is to empower others. Hence moral good is equated with a kind of instrumental good, in which agents behave optimally to be themselves, and realise their own potential via facilitating other agents to realise their own powers.

Although some of the obvious objections are dealt with, such as the impossibility of reconciling competing powers, I do not think the attempt to bridge the is/ought gap is successful. The premise that the way to flourish is to empower others is either circular or supported by cherry-picked evidence. You might want to argue that the stereotype of a powerful individual, say a dictator, isn't really flourishing despite all the power and lavish lifestyle, but then again how can the charge of sour grapes be met without circular reasoning?

On a more fundamental level, equating moral good with an instrumental good that preserves bundles of powers (humans) by the happy by-product of empowering other humans fails in much the same way as any of the categorical imperatives yet devised have: it fails to track our use of 'good' in the moral sense. Consider what is of value in the bundle of powers that comprises a human within the EE paradigm. If it is the set of powers for it's own sake, and maximising these is taken to be 'good', then EE seems to have the following counter-intuitive result. If a posthuman entity came about that could maximise its powers and those of its progeny by eliminating humans, and these sets of powers were greater than those of humans, it is difficult to see how EE could do other than endorse this.

Determinism and Predictability

Determinism doesn't entail predictability, even in principle, unless you are going to help yourself to some principles so outlandish that you might as well invoke the supernatural.

To a first approximation, a system is deterministic if every event necessarily follows as a result of prior events. Or, to put it another way, every future state of the system is completely determined by the initial conditions of that system. 

It would seem to follow that every future state of such a system could be predicted, albeit perhaps only in principle. For example, imagine a snooker table at the beginning of a game and suppose the precise location, mass and other physical variables of all the balls are known. Then, given the laws of physics and the momentum and path of the cue ball after cueing off, we might think that some supercomputer could show us a picture of where every ball would be on the table at any future time.

So if the natural world as a whole is considered to be a deterministic system, we might conclude that the future is completely predictable. But there seem to be limits on predictability by any known methods of computation yet devised. 

First, we'd need precise measurements of all of the physical variables, or the error in our predictions would grow so fast as to make them uselessly inaccurate. Suppose that one such measurement had a value that turned out to be a non-computable irrational number? If it is truncated anywhere, that introduces error. But if it is not truncated, we have an infinite amount of information.

Second, even if the supercomputer is as computationally powerful as we like, it is still part of the natural world, so the information state of the computer is manifest physically, which itself would perturb the system leading to an infinite regress. Supposing the computer to be outside the natural world doesn't help either, as we then have the classic dualist problem of how it could interact with the world to take measurements whilst remaining completely separate. 

These reasons suggest that, although we might intuit that with enough information, time and computing power, every subsequent state of a deterministic system can be precisely specified within a given margin of error, this is not the case. Even given a classical deterministic physics model of the world, a precise prediction of the future state of the system is not possible, even in principle. 

This thought experiment predates modern computing by a long way. As far back as 1814 Pierre-Simon LaPlace, in his introduction to Essai philosophique sur les probabilités, postulated what would later be known as LaPlace's Demon: an intellect with enough calculating ability and knowledge to predict the future. 

Perhaps a demon is more apt a characterization than a supercomputer. Given the arguments considered above, any such entity looks like it would have to be a supernatural agent, able to flout the physical laws which both limit how much information it can store and prevent measurement without interaction. There is an irony here given this is one thought experiment that some hard determinists use to deny free will.


Their argument is that free will is incompatible with a predictable future, unless it is somehow supernatural and able to escape the constraints of a deterministic universe. Since the supernatural is anathema to them, these hard determinists conclude that free will does not exist. Yet in order to establish predictability they have invoked the very thing they deny, something supernatural.  

End of the World

Suppose you knew that you'd live to a reasonable old age, but that 30 days after your death, the earth was going to be destroyed with no escape possible for its inhabitants. Would you live any differently? If so, how?