About Rationally Speaking


Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Friday, April 05, 2013

Bow ties are cool


by Massimo Pigliucci

If you follow the British scifi series Doctor Who you’ll know where the title of this post comes from. As it turns out, bow ties are indeed making a come back, just visit the appropriate isle at the main Macy’s store in Manhattan and prepare to be bewildered by the huge variety of colors and patterns!

So, naturally, I bought a bow tie (actually, several) some time ago. Which immediately led to the problem of how to, well, tie them! I have known how to deal with regular ties since I was a, ahem, significantly younger man, but I’d never dealt with the bow variety before.

So the first thing I did was to head toYouTube and search for a video that would teach me how to accomplish the trick. Sure enough, a quick search brought up exactly what I was looking for. After a bit of practice, I got pretty good at it (see accompanying photo). Still, it often takes more than one attempt, and it doesn’t always come out perfectly.

Which is why I became intrigued when I discovered that there is a short cut. Hey, this is America! We like immediate gratification, and in the easiest way possible (and if it’s cheap, better yet, though there are often trade-offs among those requirements — think fast food, for instance). Enter the pre-tied bow tie!

Now, here comes the interesting part: while I was tempted to switch to pre-tied bows, I also felt like that would be cheating, suddenly transforming a mere issue of fashion into one of ethics. Sure enough, my girlfriend immediately registered her disapproval for the easy path, an attitude that store owner Ben Silver summarized in the New York Times thus: “A bow tie makes a statement of individuality, and nothing contradicts that statement more readily than having it pre-tied.”

Of course, there are counterpoints to Mr. Silver’s position (read the above-linked article for an amusing sampler), but I think he has a point. Wearing a pre-tied bow tie would be like having someone else tie your shoes. Or driving an automatic transmission car (an absolute no-no for any self-respecting Italian!).

But I could, if I wanted to, get away with it. From the outside, you can’t really tell that easily whether a bow tie is pre-tied or of the “T.I.Y.” (tie your own) variety. But even if I could negotiate tolerance from my girlfriend, the problem is that I would know it’s a fake, and that would make me uncomfortable.

The reason I’m bringing all this up, of course, is not to bother you with my fashion-related issues, but because of the parallel between the bow tie problem and ethical decision making. (No, I’m not saying that the bow tie in itself presents an ethical dilemma, only that there is a parallel!). After all, the same two mechanisms I described above are the ones that make ethics work: pressure from without (my girlfriend, the opinion of fashionistas like Mr. Silver) and pressure from within (my conscience).

Of course, the two sources of pressure shape each other. As a virtue ethicist I recognize that a nurturing family and social environment are crucial for one’s eudaimonic development, so that clearly, and to a large extent, what we come to think of as moral (or, even more so, fashionable) is the result of whatever society we live in. Aristotle, for instance, had some pretty sophisticated ideas about ethics (so much so that we still take them seriously 24 centuries later), but he also had a low opinion of women and accepted slavery — just like most of his compatriots did in ancient Athens.

Then again, society itself is shaped — over the long run — by the novel ideas of some of its most influential members. Plato, for instance, even though he grew up in the same society that Aristotle experienced, made the leap forward to take women's equality seriously (in Book V of The Republic). That idea, of course, was still far from being implemented when John Stuart Mill wrote about it more than two millennia later, and it hasn’t reached full maturity even today, especially in many non-Western societies. Cultural evolution, it seems, can be painfully slow despite its multiple, very efficient, mechanisms of transmission of information!

The big difference between my bow tie (or any other fashion-related) problem and ethics is that the first one is ruled by arbitrary conventions, while the latter is not. I am not arguing that there are cosmic moral laws “out there” for us to discover. Ethics is a human invention, and it serves human, not cosmic purposes. But it isn’t arbitrary in the sense that ethics is a way of thinking about societal problems that helps us to live cooperatively together (qua intelligent, self-reflecting social primates) and at the same time pursue our own goals and ways to flourish. It is in this sense that, say, wearing or not wearing a bow tie is an entirely capricious decision, while granting or not granting equal rights to gay couples isn’t. Though gay marriage is cool too.

33 comments:

  1. Not to get all evolutionarily reductionist on you, but a large part of the reason that ethics are grounded rather than "arbitrary" is the physical relationship of the human species to the rest of the world. That is, our ethical creations arise from both our inheritance of selected personality traits, such as sociability and aggression. That it is common to restrict agression within social groups but promote it against other social groups shows that at base ethics come not simply from "decisions" but from our environment and our history.

    That said, of course, we now live in an ideological world as well. The question might arise...Does ending racial or sexual discrimination amount to more than a matter of taste, like choosing a tie style? Many societies have flourished without having current tastes in acceptance. I think acceptance is a good thing, but how well is it grounded in necessity?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I must disagree. Bow ties are not cool. That conservative pundit fellow, Tucker something, wears them. "Tucker", forsooth. Q.E.D. Granted, he wears a grown-up tie now and then, but not enough.

    Sorry, but I associate bow ties with short-sleeve white dress shirts and first holy communions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seconding that. Bow ties ain't cool Maasimo and that's a fact. Lol.

      Delete
    2. According to Wikipedia (yes, they have a page on bow tie wearers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bow_tie_wearers) since Jon Stewart's epic takedown of Tucker Carlson on CNN Crossfire, which included zingers to his bow tie, Tucker seldom wears bow ties anymore. Another thing we should thank Jon Stewart for.

      Delete
  3. Massimo,
    I think you might be overstating the difference - it seems to be more one of degrees than of kind. Fashion is more cyclical (I would like to believe some things never come back, though ;-) ) - not sure how much ethical views cycle back. When you look at it from a cultural anthropolists view, culture is constituted of layers. Hofstede identifies four: values, rituals, heroes and symbols. Fashion is part of the top layer (symbols), ethics part of the bottom (values). The value layer changes extremely slowly (as you say, cultural evolution is slow). The others change quickly, which fools most people into the impression of fast cultural change.

    Cheers
    Chris

    P.S. I thought 90% of bow ties were pre-tied... (that's all I ever owned, anyway ;-) )

    ReplyDelete
  4. On "Ethics is a human invention", Chris Mooney has an interview in Mother Jones of Frans de Waal ("The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates"). What de Waal may be missing is that humans create new moral codes whereas other primates seem pretty much stuck with theirs.

    On bow ties, I can't help but think bow tie wearers may deep down be wanting to emulate a famous bow tie wearer. (OK perhaps, as long as its not someone awful like George Will.)

    http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/6-amazing-ways-animals-show-compassion
    http://www.pointofinquiry.org/frans_de_waal_the_bonobo_and_the_atheist/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bow_tie_wearers

    ReplyDelete
  5. Massimo,

    Looks great but now (per the belle Manhattan ordinance) you must wear large round-framed glasses and refer to famous people with cute diminutives, as in, "Barry (Obama) has the most wonderful Cuban cigar collection," or "Dusty's (Dustin Hoffman's) villa in Tuscany is simply marvelous. The house staff is absolutely delightful." ;) More seriously, the bow tie does require larger, dark-framed, glasses. There's a clash of sensibilities with the small wire-frames. Good luck and keep us posted!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Interesting post, and I find much that I agree with. It does seem to be a false dichotomy to suggest that if morality is not written in the stars (i.e. absolute, and usually God-given), then morality becomes equivalent to a fashion statement (i.e. entirely subjective).

    I do wonder, however, if you would extend your bow-tie argument to the whole of aesthetics. Is aesthetics wholly ruled by arbitrary conventions, or might there be some non-arbitrary factors that should inform our aesthetic reasoning in the same way that there are non-arbitrary factors that inform our moral reasoning?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Leaving aside the question of whether bow ties are cool (they seem to suit you, Massimo, which is the main thing), I only have one quibble here. And that is about the 'equal rights' talk. You can argue that we should allow gay marriage because it enhances social harmony and the individual pursuit of happiness and fulfilment or whatever, but talk of 'equal rights' introduces what I see as unnecessary abstraction and even, possibly, metaphysical presuppositions.

    Ethics is not about abstraction and nor, as you say, are moral rules somehow 'out there' in a cosmic or metaphysical sense.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Chris,

    > Fashion is more cyclical (I would like to believe some things never come back, though ;-) ) - not sure how much ethical views cycle back. <

    I see your point, but I doubt it. On the contrary, roughly speaking morality seems to make progress while fashion is definitely more recurring (and even that, within limits: do you think we’ll see a return of togas any time soon? ;-)

    Think of slavery: once abolished in a society, as a result of that society arriving at the moral decision that slavery is wrong, I don’t think there is any going back.

    Björn,

    > Is aesthetics wholly ruled by arbitrary conventions, or might there be some non-arbitrary factors that should inform our aesthetic reasoning in the same way that there are non-arbitrary factors that inform our moral reasoning? <

    Good question. I don’t think aesthetics either is entirely arbitrary. For instance, I see how studies on the physiology of human perception may explain — very broadly speaking — why we like paintings with symmetrical features, or (most of us, anyway) dislike atonal music. But I don’t think those explanations go very far. As philosophers say, they drastically underdetermined our aesthetic preferences.

    Mark,

    > I only have one quibble here. And that is about the 'equal rights' talk. <

    Oh yes, let me clarify: like Bentham, I think that talk of “natural rights” is, as he put it, nonsense on stilts. For me rights are entirely human constructions, reflecting certain agreements we have reached within a society about morality. Even so, it makes perfect sense to say that a society that gives the right to marry to heterosexuals should give it also to homosexual, because to do so would be to discriminate against a group of people on the basis of their sexual orientation. And that is something we have already decided is not acceptable in other areas, like employment.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Bow ties, cosmic law, ethics, and gay marriage,
    Have you lost your Way?

    =

    ReplyDelete
  10. chbieck, Björn, Mark, Massimo,

    To me it seems all of you, in your own ways, conflate or identify ethical understanding with ethical truth and thereby are more or less unwitting ethical skeptics.

    If there is nothing to ethics but evolving understandings of a certain kind, then ethics is as arbitrary as tie fashion. The only thing that can elevate ethical statements above statements about fashion and other sorts of statements that we would regard as more or less subjective, is appeal to objective truth. There's no way around this fact and ignoring it doesn't help either.

    To illustrate, the statement that women should have equal rights is not coherently defensible unless it is objectively true. If one does not think this statement is objectively true, asserting it is a nonsensical or empty act, as it claiming that someone who disagrees is wrong.

    I know that most people here have studied enough ethics to know that I'm talking about classic issue in ethics, so it seems to me there is a sort of slippage into something that only seems non-skeptical due to avoiding the difficult questions.

    I would agree that our ethical understanding is a cultural construct. But so are physics and math, yet they manage to pick-out objective truths. So talk of "human invention" or "layer of culture" etc. as a way to try to limit the possible veracity or objectivity of ethics is misguided. Personally, I don't think there's any general logical difference between ethics and physics. Truths of physics aren't "out there" any more than truths of ethics are; both are constructs (understandings) that allow us to capture objective truths.

    As a final point, that our ethical understandings are in some sense and degree contingent and arbitrary doesn't mean that our understandings do not capture some domain of objective truth.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Paul,

    > The only thing that can elevate ethical statements above statements about fashion and other sorts of statements that we would regard as more or less subjective, is appeal to objective truth. <

    I disagree, this seems to me a false dichotomy. Ethics can also be a human construct and yet not being arbitrary, because connected to human needs and to the unique ability of humans to reflect on those needs.

    > the statement that women should have equal rights is not coherently defensible unless it is objectively true. <

    Why not? Unless you are a mathematical Platonist (a position that, as you know, I actually take seriously) you should say that there are no objective mathematical truths either, only non-arbitrary statements that follow logically from certain premises. Change the premises, and different statements will follow. Why can that not be the case in ethics, where I think the case for moral realism is far weaker than the one for mathematical realism?

    > I don't think there's any general logical difference between ethics and physics. Truths of physics aren't "out there" any more than truths of ethics are; both are constructs (understandings) that allow us to capture objective truths. <

    I agree with the first part, but I don’t see any good reason to believe that ethical truths are “out there” in the same sense as physical truths. (On math, as I said, I’m agnostic with a sympathy for objectivity...)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Massimo,

    >Ethics can also be a human construct and yet not being arbitrary, because connected to human needs and to the unique ability of humans to reflect on those needs.<

    I don't disagree with this point, in fact I think I made it in my post.

    >Why not? Unless you are a mathematical Platonist (a position that, as you know, I actually take seriously) you should say that there are no objective mathematical truths either, only non-arbitrary statements that follow logically from certain premises. Change the premises, and different statements will follow. Why can that not be the case in ethics, where I think the case for moral realism is far weaker than the one for mathematical realism?<

    I'm not claiming (here at least) to know how ethical statements can be true. My point really centers the coherence of our language regarding ethical statements: we cannot believe ethical statements without believing they are true; we cannot believe that someone else is wrong in denying an ethical claim without believing that the ethical claim is true. These are just general logical facts about ethical language. I believe therefore that if ethical language is coherent at all, there must be a way in which ethical claims have truth values. Btw, after writing my post I realized that I've come to view that any view of ethics other than (not-necessarily-Platonic) moral realism is a kind of moral skepticism.

    On the matter of whether mathematics requires Platonism for objectivity, I think not. If one thinks of mathematical statements such that mathematical definitions, axioms, and premises are parts of full mathematical statements, the arbitrariness you allude to goes away, I think.



    ReplyDelete
  13. Paul,
    from your post and Massimo's answer, it seems that you and he (and me, I'm with Massimo here) are using different meanings for the word arbitrary. Checking Merriam-Webster, you are using the third meaning while we are using the first.

    By the definition you are using, you'd have to say that all laws and customs are arbitrary, even when they are based on solid principles that every member of a given society agrees on, simply because they are not determined by the intrinsic nature of anything.

    In that sense, yes, human ethics are arbitrary, and they can hardly be anything else, because they are based on our individual preferences and reasoning as humans. The Daleks probably have a system of ethics, too, only that includes consideration for humans in a way that ours includes consideration for trees. Can we "discover" a system of ethics that includes both? No, we'd have to agree on it - starting with updating our premises (assuming the goal is still some form of flourishing: what does that mean and for whom?)

    Cheers
    Chris

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Chris,

      Interesting observation about the senses of 'arbitrary'. Yes, I was using 'arbitrary' to mean roughly a lack of necessity as opposed to open to choice.

      My main point has been that while ethical *understandings* - e.g. our particular concerns, terms, and framings of issues - is at least to some extent arbitrary (in both relevant senses), ethical *truth* is not at all arbitrary in either sense. I began my criticism here with the charge that ethical understanding and ethical truth are here (in comments prior to mine) being conflated.

      This conflation is a special case of conflating what is believed with what is true, i.e. between ways of thinking and the reality as it bears on that way of thinking. There are many different ways we could have thought about ethics, but in each case there's a reality that distinguishes truth and falsity in that way of thinking.

      My other main point was that if we don't acknowledge a non-arbitrary ethical truth above and beyond particular ways of understanding, then ethics as a whole collapses into complete arbitrariness, in the sense that no ethical view is any more right than any other. It becomes like tie fashion.

      In recent history, the notion of absolute truth has been derided as cultural imperialism in disguise and based on the metaphysically dubious view that etched into reality is one and only one correct way of thinking. I think this is an unfortunate confusion. That there are many different ways that our understanding of the world has been, or could have been, validly constructed is not ruled out by the notion of a single reality that bears on whatever way we think. So, to emphasize my main point, I think it's important to maintain a clear distinction between how we have come to think about ethics, on the one hand, and ethical truth or reality, on the other. Without that latter, we're just talking about bow ties.

      Delete
    2. Paul,
      now I really don't know what you mean with ethical truth. Are you saying there is an objective set of ethics that "exists" (whatever that means) beyond the context of us being human? I.e. that Daleks (highly intelligent non-benign non-humans aliens), paperclips and humans would agree on as true? I seriously doubt that - and I also don't see why it's necessary. Just because bow ties and ethics are degrees of "arbitrariness" doesn't mean that talking about ethics is "just talking about bow ties". Humans aren't just amoebe just because both are life form, are we?

      Cheers
      Chris

      Delete
    3. Chris,

      No, I don't mean to claim that there's a completed ethical code floating about in Plato's heaven. I mean to say only that there must be some reality that ethical claims are about or else anything goes.

      Delete
    4. Yes, but then nobody was disputing that, were they (we)?

      Delete
  14. This last discussion inspired me to collect all I've written about or referenced regarding intentionalism (Jan Mycielski: "The term intentionalism is chosen for its contrast with extensionalism which accepts actually infinite sets and leads naturally to Platonism.") in one page (or "bow tie!"):

    poesophicalbits.blogspot.com/2013/04/intentionalism.html

    ReplyDelete
  15. Massimo,

    > I see your point, but I doubt it. On the contrary, roughly speaking morality seems to make progress while fashion is definitely more recurring (and even that, within limits: do you think we’ll see a return of togas any time soon? ;-)

    Think of slavery: once abolished in a society, as a result of that society arriving at the moral decision that slavery is wrong, I don’t think there is any going back. <

    @Togas - that's what I meant when I said _more_ cyclical ;-)

    I hope you are right that slavery will never come back (I probably read too much dystopian SF). Still, I was referring more to the bigger schools of thought - your own position of virtue ethics seems to me to be an example of a cyclical recurrence in ethics. (Sure it never went away, but neither did bow ties.)

    Cheers
    Chris

    ReplyDelete
  16. Paul,

    > we cannot believe ethical statements without believing they are true; we cannot believe that someone else is wrong in denying an ethical claim without believing that the ethical claim is true. These are just general logical facts about ethical language. <

    But my point is that it isn’t clear what you mean by “true” here. Again, consider the analogy with math: the Pythagorean theorem is true IF we begin with the axioms of plane geometry. It would be better to be that it is a logical entailment of those axions. So for ethical systems: IF (for instance) we agree that whatever increases the happiness of the majority of people is good THEN certain things follow logically. But these things are not *true* in anywhere near the same sense that it is true that the speed of light is approximately 299 792 458 m/s.

    > I've come to view that any view of ethics other than (not-necessarily-Platonic) moral realism is a kind of moral skepticism. <

    And I think you are wrong about that, see example above.

    > If one thinks of mathematical statements such that mathematical definitions, axioms, and premises are parts of full mathematical statements, the arbitrariness you allude to goes away, I think. <

    No, it doesn’t, because there are infinite combinations of axioms, premises, and so forth, and no way to really establish that any particular subset is true in the strong sense above.

    Chris,

    > I hope you are right that slavery will never come back (I probably read too much dystopian SF). Still, I was referring more to the bigger schools of thought - your own position of virtue ethics seems to me to be an example of a cyclical recurrence in ethics. <

    Ah, but now we are talking meta-ethics, which I do think is a different kettle of fish. And as you point out, virtue ethics never really went away. Even so, I wouldn’t call fluctuations in meta-ethical preferences “fashion.” There is genuine disagreement based on good reasoning about which framework is better, and ultimately I do think that there are multiple defensible positions in the vast logical landscape that describes meta-ethical stands.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Massimo,

      >But my point is that it isn’t clear what you mean by “true” here. <

      I mentioned that I'm not claiming to know exactly *how* ethical claims are true. My point has been that we must regard ethical statements as having the properties of truth/falsity and objectivity if ethics is to be a coherent concern. I was reacting to a sense I got from earlier comments that ethics is just a matter of conventions that are best looked at e.g. anthropologically, as opposed to as a domain of truth that can be approached as such. I took the claims by you, Mark, Chis, and perhaps others, that it doesn't make sense to think of "ethical rules" as "out there" in some "cosmic" sense to be a denial of ethical objectivity (and hence truth) in slightly mocking way. My point regarding this was that ethics must be "out there" at least in the sense that there's a language independent reality that ethics is about and which makes ethical statements true/false.

      But regarding truth, I think any analogy between math and ethics on the matter is very limited. My view is that mathematical truths are true simply definitionally, tautologically, or in virtue of the meanings of words. I think the Platonist idea that such truths are "about" a mind-independent reality is a confusion (to put is mildly). At any rate, while a view of ethics might be developed in the style of a deductive system, this doesn't mean that ethical definitions and "axioms" are logically akin to mathematical definitions and axioms. The main difference is that while extra-linguistic reality bears on ethical statements (including ethical axioms) it does not bear on mathematic statements.

      >> (my statement) If one thinks of mathematical statements such that mathematical definitions, axioms, and premises are parts of full mathematical statements, the arbitrariness you allude to goes away, I think. <<

      > (your statement) No, it doesn’t, because there are infinite combinations of axioms, premises, and so forth, and no way to really establish that any particular subset is true in the strong sense above.<

      It seems you assume that there's a distinction between math that is merely play with symbols/meanings and math that captures some feature of extralinguistic reality (a la the speed of light). I think the latter idea is a confusion. While math can be used to model reality, external reality does not bear in a true/false sense on math at all.



      Delete
    2. p.s. Above I should have said 'error' rather than 'confusion' as the latter has a needless ad hominem quality and harshness to it. That said, I think Platonism is involved in confusions of the kind Wittgenstein tried to clarify.

      Delete
    3. Paul, I'm sympathetic to your argument in this way: I think it's a problem that, given two contradictory ethical systems, it's unclear how to adjudicate between them unless we adopt some higher standard that "trumps" both of them. And given a chain of such disagreements, we seem to keep seeking higher and higher standards, so it seems reasonable to posit some hypothetical "highest" standard. I think we're accustomed to thinking about "objective truth" as that highest standard in many disciplines (even if our knowledge of that objective truth will always be partial, and so we will never finally reach that standard).

      But Massimo's point seems to be (and correct me if I'm wrong, Massimo) that in the case of morality, that highest standard may not be the kind of objective truth that follows from realism. It seems reasonable to suggest that we could continue seeking higher standards in a way that doesn't necessarily reach towards a final objective truth, but that leads to a set of standards that resolves our disagreements effectively. In this sense the highest standard is simply the highest standard that we have reached so far. There's still a universalizing impulse in this way of thinking about morality -- it still entails a kind of truth-seeking behavior -- but I don't think it's necessarily moral realism.

      A last note: you say "my view is that mathematical truths are true simply definitionally, tautologically, or in virtue of the meanings of words." But it seems that this view makes you an anti-realist about mathematics. Is that what you intend?

      Delete
    4. Scott,

      Regarding the notion of objective truth - in whatever sense of 'objective' - I think of this less as the highest standard of knowledge than as an indispensable concern of workaday linguistic communication. The notion of truth arises from the capacity of language to represent the world accurately or inaccurately and 'objectivity' is used to make ontological or epistemological points about truth.

      Historically philosophical ethics has had two levels of discourse: ethics proper, i.e. actual questions about what is ethical and unethical; and metaethics, i.e. concern with fleshing-out the meanings of ethical concepts. One kind of skepticism arose from metaethical concerns; e.g. that it isn't coherent to say that ethic predicates are true or false of anything.

      With the maturing of scientism, it seems a new kind of discourse is entering philosophy. This is the discourse of philosophers who think that it has become primarily the task of science (brain science, evolutionary biology) to tell us the nature of ethics. We need to find out our ethical wiring and discover the "moral molecule."

      An second kind of skepticism is built-in to this third discourse, think. This exists in the implied view that the best vantage point to understand ethics is a third-person empirical one - i.e., treating ethics as a feature of certain evolving organisms - as opposed to that of an ethical subject or agent. The idea seems to be that ethics from the agent's point of view is unscientific and no longer worthy of taking seriously. This is effectively the elimination of philosophical ethics in favor of new areas of science and hence new areas of philosophy of science. What is lost - or at least at risk of being lost - is the sense that ethical concerns are real concerns, i.e. about something real.

      While some might praise philosophy's newfound scientificness, all I see is ideology that is easing the collapse of philosophical culture into the pharmaceutical industry. In the future rather than sharp ethical thinkers like Michael Sandel and Peter Singer, we'll simply have Walmart, endless Walmarts.

      Okay - I know I'm being way over the top, but hopefully interestingly so ;)

      Regarding the position I intended about math, I suppose I am an anti-realist about math if this means denying the mind-independent existence of mathematic entities.

      I think mathematic entities exist but I think they exist in virtue of being stipulated to exist. My view of existence is that it is not incompatible with a univocal notion of existence to say that some sorts of entities are such that they exist simple because we say they do. I think what confuses Platonists is the assumption that we must be able to figure out how e.g. numbers fit in with broad philosophical reality. Arguments I have heard (ostensibly intelligent) Platonists give include noting that if each person has the number 7 in their minds, that's too many 7s! Hence the number 7 can't be in our minds. I think the flaw of such thinking is the assumption that it makes sense to talk about where the number 7 is, or how many there are. When we read a development of fundamental math where math entities are put forth to exist, it's just silly to as where it is. Math entities have and only have the properties they are stipulated to have and those that follow logically from relevant definitions.

      Delete
  17. I like bowties... so i'm as bad as a conservative pundit?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On the other side, liberal pundit Jonathan Capehart is noted for occasionally wearing bow ties.

      www.mediaite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jonathan-capehart-cain.jpg

      Delete
    2. now i'm as bad as a liberal pundit? make up your minds! ;)

      funny thing: i was on campus one day, and i happened to be wearing a bowtie. someone with a petition walked up to me and asked me to sign it. after i learned what cause i would be signing a petition for, the person said to me: "i thought you'd be a good person to ask to sign this petition, because you're wearing a bowtie. bowties are very serious." i was a little surprised by this, as i kind of view bowties as a rather silly piece of clothing, especially in contrast to much of menswear offerings today.

      Delete
  18. Paul,

    > My point has been that we must regard ethical statements as having the properties of truth/falsity and objectivity if ethics is to be a coherent concern. <

    I understand, I think, and I was arguing that you are constraining the options too much.

    > I was reacting to a sense I got from earlier comments that ethics is just a matter of conventions <

    Which I’m pretty sure I never argued for.

    > that it doesn't make sense to think of "ethical rules" as "out there" in some "cosmic" sense to be a denial of ethical objectivity <

    If by objectivity you mean that ethical truths are on par with, say, truths about physics, yes. But I was also arguing that the objective-subjective dichotomy is too strict. I think ethics is, to a point, non-arbitrary, in a sense similar to (but not identical) the way in which mathematics is non-arbitrary, and yet mathematical truths are also not on par with physical ones.

    > I think the Platonist idea that such truths are "about" a mind-independent reality is a confusion <

    I think that’s an open question, really, and as you know there is an interesting literature on mathematical Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.

    > The main difference is that while extra-linguistic reality bears on ethical statements (including ethical axioms) it does not bear on mathematic statements. <

    Yes, which is why the analogy is partial. But that extra-linguistic reality is made of the facts of human evolution as a social species, it’s not “cosmic” in the sense of being independent of the only contingent beings (that we know of) to which ethical reasoning applies at all.

    > It seems you assume that there's a distinction between math that is merely play with symbols/meanings and math that captures some feature of extralinguistic reality (a la the speed of light). <

    No, I don’t, sorry for the confusion. The speed of light example was to differentiate physical from mathematical truths.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Some years ago, while giving a lecture to an international audience of elite mathematicians in Berkeley, I asked how many of them were Platonists. About three-quarters raised their hands." (Jim Holt, NYTimes)

      That sounds about right. I would have believed even higher. (I, of course, am not.)

      query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E7D7133DF930A25752C0A96E9C8B63

      Delete
  19. Okay, so I just wonder what you meant by "true in the strong sense" in the statement below.

    >No, it doesn’t, because there are infinite combinations of axioms, premises, and so forth, and no way to really establish that any particular subset is true in the strong sense above.<

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Paul,

      all I'm trying to establish is that the word "true" has significantly different meanings in math and in science, because the former is grounded in logic, the latter in empirical evidence. I see ethical "truths" (no, I'm not using the scare quotes to invoke relativism!) as somewhere in between: empirical facts (about human nature) are crucial, but they underdetermine ethical conclusions, which is why we need to deploy philosophical resources and ethics is a branch of philosophy, not science. I hope this helps.

      Delete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.