Image: Photograph by Zachary Zavislak
In Brief
- The classic image of the philosopher pictures an ethereal type who is lost in thought and detached from the pedestrian concerns of everyday realities.
- A new breed of thinker is now bringing to bear the cognitive sciences to probe why people perceive the world in the particular way that they do.
- The tenets of experimental philosophy can elucidate whether free will really exists and whether morality is just a relative construct.
More In This Article
Think of the discipline of philosophy, and a certain sort of image springs to mind. Perhaps you visualize a person sitting comfortably in an armchair, lost in thought, perusing a few old books. Maybe you imagine a field that is scholarly, abstruse by nature and untethered to any grounding in real science. At any rate, you probably do not think of people going out and running experiments.
Yet oddly enough, a cadre of young philosophers have begun doing just that. These “experimental philosophers” argue that inquiry into the most profound questions of philosophy can be informed by actual investigations into why people think and feel as they do. To make progress on these questions, they use all the methods of contemporary cognitive science. They conduct experiments, team up with psychologists and publish in journals that had previously been reserved primarily for scientists. The result has been something of a revolution. Although the movement began only a few years ago, it has already spawned hundreds of papers, a steady stream of surprising results and some very strong opinions on every side.
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64 Comments
Add CommentI find the concept that philosophy has given way to science and excuse me if I use the phrase 'Thank God'. As a student at Penn State in the early 70's I studied philosophy as a way to find what truth is. I had two positive things to say about that time. First of all we had to learn logic which came in very handy when I made a career move into computer science, in fact I think because of the philosophic back ground I had an edge over the mathematical based engineers. And secondly I discovered pragmatic truth which is still the only truth I buy into.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAside from the two benefits I found that the rest was as one English teacher once so eloquently said a masturbation of the pen. I started to go back to my Scientific Americans which I had been collecting since 1967 and by learning about physics and that became a never ending pursuit I found a way to focus on what may be true again with a pragmatic slant to it. I also studied Buddhism for a while and I have to say Siddhartha had a lot of it right in his thoughts and teachings.
If philosophers are willing to look at science as the way to verify or at least classify their questions then perhaps the period of masturbation has come to an end and the semantics and other issues each school of thought had will fade to a true search for what is true. My fear and Lee Smolin discussed it well in his 'the Trouble with Physics' is the presence of group thought that pervasive in all studies both science and humanity based. That may help if it can bring morality and ethics into the search for truth which seems to be still missing.
Still this is a big and meaningful step for philosophy and even some religion is starting to get the same ideal that science is not the enemy just another way to approach what is real.
Sometimes a blending of perspectives gives a more accurate picture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs man an instruments of the fates or is a man an instrument of his own?
An examination of cause and effect will often point one way or the other but neither is aways true.
A philosopher who looks for relative truth may be better suited to find answers then a pholosopher who seeks the one and only truth.
I think that is why I went multidisciplinary. As a child I thought very hard at being a priest because I sensed there is more than just us but after studying religion as a whole I saw more evil than good and a lot of manipulation instead of investigation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI tried philosophy and as I dug in deeper it became a contest of semantics not a search for truth. In fact of all the philosophies the original Buddha was and I still think the original quantum theory master.
I ended up with physics and to some degree art and I still find Escher's ideal of collapsible space and Manderbolt's theory of fractals the closest thing to a singularity I could describe so there I sit and am happy about this as a reality but still both eyes open and same with the ears.
David, I'm not so sure that "experimental philosophy" is a means to discovering philosophical/religous truth. That, at least, is what I gathered from your comment; perhaps I've read you wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead, I think what's being presented here is a new subdiscipline of philosophy that has set out to explain and discribe why people may hold the philosophical views that they do through scientific experimentation. Moreover, that certain psychological/cognitive processes could be the underlying bases for one's "philosophical intuitions."
In this sense, experimental philosophy still leaves open the debate over fundemental questions/issues of philosophy. But tries to explain and describe why people may lean one way or the other.
It sounds like the "masturbation of the pen" is likely to continue for now. We'll just know why they masturbate the way they do :)
(This is how I read the article, at least)
I should have expanded a bit to make more sense of the answer. What I found in the philosophic world were two useful tools. The first was pragmatic truth as put forth by James where something is true as long as it stays true and based on how the question is formed meaning in some cases there is no right answer. And secondly I found the rules of logic magical in dissecting the arguments put forth into coherent modules that could be addressed based on empirical evidence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat that lacks is things that approach metaphysical thus the religious foundation and to be direct science and religion are both based on the search for the truth. What I read in the article posted was what Eric Hoffer, Science Magazine and Lee Smolin warn of and that is group thought. Yes man can create his own reality and the last great example would be Hitler and his rise of the Third Reich and the superior race and possibly the rise of Christian, Jewish and Islamic theocracies replacing secular governments because of the overwhelming power of ideology.
The true believer is a scary person and especially at the fringes of each of the ism's as Hoffer so eloquently described them. So I was basically stating that blind belief or group thought can lead to some nasty results and truth is only as good as it holds up. I referenced religion and science because originally they had the same goal but as power and bureaucracy took hold ideology replaced logic and those that questioned the ruling power were dealt with as them instead of us.
A hypothetical cause should lead to a logical conclusion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid the authors manipulate the group to get a different answer so that they could write this article or does the group reason differently then expected. If the latter, the explanation is missing.
I still think manipulation comes into every study and as the author states there are polarizing answers on all sides. As an example I took a psychology of English literature course while at Penn State and in each book the professor found some association with the mothers breast. At the end of the course when he asked what we got out of the course I had to answer that he was infatuated with his mothers breast. (got an A)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmolin in his book the trouble with physics describes it as group thought and that is similar to what Hoffer described in the true believer. In Science magazine some where in the 60's or 70's they did a study to as to why certain types of people would commit horrendous acts in the name of a ism (I prefer that than being specific because each belief creates these) and it appeared based on empirical evidence that 60% of the people want to be told what to believe.
Unfortunately I find this holds true in too many cases. So I think the study directs the subject to the desired conclusion. Ask any ideologue and they will argue their side to the death and hardly listen to yours.
Here is an example of what I was trying to say concerning pragmatism and James. It was one of the reasons I left philosophy but happily not out of frustration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSOME YEARS AGO, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel – a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree’s opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Every one had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: “Which party is right,” I said, “depends on what you practically mean by ‘going round’ the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these successive positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind him, then on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb ‘to go round’ in one practical fashion or the other.”
I hope that helps clarify my position and I could not have said it better.
Like you I understand both sides of the squirrel situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand the authors do not seem to be saying that a group of judges have two legitimate perspectives in a murder case.
I would think that in a determinist world, someone stop a murderer from committing a murder. But even more than that, why would a determinist get married and have children that he would ultimately kill?
If we are discussing free will versus deterministic behavior welcome to the beehive. My take is that quantum wins out and because of that it allows for all possibilities which favors free will when the event is observed but which decision is the outcome will depend on the observer of the out come.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat should be taken into account is the fact that their are some 5 billion neurons in a human brain and some of the wiring is there to start with while most is based on experience which is subjective and if one was to measure the inputs the results would approach infinity.
I have studied at a peripheral view some murders committed by both mother or father of their off spring and the causes are not the same but can be grouped into one) if I can't have them no one can; two) They cannot survive in this world without me so I must take them with me; three) the world is so terrible a place that I am doing them a favor and four) they are a member of a cult and truly believe that by surrendering the human body the result will be a religious experience.
I thank God that this is not normal behavior but on the other hand I do get why a male Lion, Bear or other animal will kill offspring of a female that is not their's as part of a way of extending the gene pool and that would definitely be a deterministic behavior. So in the first case it is free will gone wrong but in the second case it is a natural reaction of life and procreation with the female often going into heat after the death of the offspring. This can occur after a violent attempt on the females part to defend her offspring.
I wonder if this is really a philosophic issue or just an attempt to make psychology more than a study of statistics? But you do see the issue in an interesting way. My take has always been with 5 billion factors it is impossible to predict out come unless there is a history of other behavior to base the conclusion on.
Looking forward in a non-deterministic reality, probabilities are meaningful but looking backwards what happened can now be seen as 100% likely.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoesn't this perspective change in a deterministic reality?
Actually looking back is more subjective based on the laws of relativity. There is no absolute time or space in our universe and even gravity is being questioned as a form of geometry more than a force that pervades M planes. So determinism has no merit in any reality except a subjective viewers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I read was that there was polarization in the answers and that can be done by how the question is asked, who is being asked, how that audience is found and what the question is. If we ask how many people have deviant thoughts the answer will be skewed because a person may have deviant thoughts but does not want to share that knowledge with any audience. If I ask callers to call in to a poll on a tv or radio show I will have an answer that is skewed by the audience that participates in that show. If I ask will you go to heaven even though your religion is not the same as mine I will probably either wish you luck in hell or try to convert you.
The universe and even the individual are so dynamic and the observer so subjective that anything approaching determinism is close to an ideologue type of interpretation and cannot be objectively looked at. I find that free will reigns because we have too many inputs at any time to say that is what I am going to do right now.
The article lends a little light onto the "why" of how we judge events, but brings us no closer to actually answering the questions of free will, determinism, or morality. All of the thought experiments show us how we judge between events and, in essence, choose our judgment, but not if that "choice" is mine or the "final step in a chain that could be traced back to certain facts" about genes and environment. Also, the discussion of moral relativism seems to lend itself to a liberal agenda, claiming that those who tend to choose relativistic beliefs have a higher "openness to experience." Thus by negation, claiming those who hold to moral responsibility and ethical standards are hence, "closed minded." An individual can fully take into account the views of others, see them as valid, yet reject their premises on moral grounds without being closed to experiences. I did find the time distance factor interesting when considered within the experiment. I would expect such a result considering the findings of the Milgram experiment in 1962.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the end of the day we chose what we think will enhance our situation. A saint will become a thief if it means food on the table for his gene pool. Free will is a gift to those who can make life or death decisions that do not directly affect them. For empirical proof look at what is happening in Africa where mineral wealth is fought over, often in the name of religion but really a more visceral level of tribal affiliations.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMorality and ethics are great in a civilized society that is balanced meaning a bottom, middle and top class but remove the middle class and law and order break down and you or I would do what ever it takes to feed, shelter and protect our gene pool (law of nature rules). That may involve grouping together with a clan for more coverage or moving to what appears to be more isolation but that becomes a problem when it becomes time to procreate. (another rule of life) So I think free will is a device that can be allowed while civilization is at work but remove it and determinism raises its ugly head.
The article: Thought Experiments (Nov. 11) by Joshua Kobs
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn a test of our attitude to "free will" Kobs describe an experiment where the participants must assume a fictitious universe in which everything is causal and where he then asks them whether a murderer can be considered responsible. The test persons different attitude based on the way the question is posed may, to my opinion, more reflect their ability to imagine the consequences of such a causal world. In such a world everything, even the thinking of the people living in the world and their evaluation of different moral attitudes will be predetermined. With other words: If the time is rolled back and then repeated then every action and every thought will be carried out exactly the same way as before. It's as if you replayed a movie film again and again. How can anybody really be responsible in such a world where nothing can be changed?
I will guess that most people (in our actual world) feel that their thinking is their own and not predetermined. If this is the case then the test participants may feel that they, themselves, - and all other people -therefore can be hold responsible for how they evaluate moral questions and consequently always allocate some level of responsibility to the murderer in question.
However, the given example with Sven from one culture and Xiex from another culture having different moral norms indicates indirectly that we may be living in a more causal world than we like to acknowledge. Our moral norms are to some extent based on previous experiences - at least the opinions of our parents or the like. But even if there is such a causality we may still have the choice to whether to ignore given laws or not independently of whether we agree to the law or not and so we may have a responsibility in all worlds not being total causal.
Henrik Josephsen, Copenhagen, Denmark
The people may be suspicious of the motivation for the test.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is similar to a child's trick. In a world where there is no devil would you sell your soul to me for $100?
The fact that it would take a fictitious world reeks of why I dropped philosophy as a meaningful way of describing reality after giving up on religion. I thought physics might offer some direction and to a greater degree it does. We understand 2 to 4% of what makes up the universe and the rest we address as dark matter and dark energy with battles for unknown and probably unreal particles that can explain string theory, m theory, particle theory or gee it is starting to sound a lot like philosophy and religion again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know this for sure life will fight tooth and nail to exist while at the same time create its future demise. And if you can put enough civilization into its interactions we can fool our selves with ideals of free will versus determinism and suicidal actions like we saw with Japanese Kamikaze pilots, radical terrorist and other fringe groups or what appears to be altruistic behavior in a species will continue to amaze us and make us think that we have free will.
I am also sure that as long as there are 5 billion some neurons in a human brain we will never be able to do any better than statistically predict behavior. But the will to survive is part of what makes something alive and if it comes at the cost of other life that is a secondary issue and we will chose to survive unless there is an overwhelming reason to do otherwise or if life is so miserable that death is preferred.
Re quantum mechanics and free-will. Check the literature. There are a few quick and easy responses to dismiss this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Quantum effects are subatomic, and do not apply significantly to non-radioactive chemicals such as those that make up the brain.
2. You've not answered the question of the relationship between the mental and the physical (problem of consciousness), and hence, not provided a mechanism for quantum effects to effect a choice.
3. Choice that was quantum-determined would be random, spurious, and not caused by ME as a person, by my reasons for acting, but by a random quantum event, ergo, it would not be my choice, but a random event. Hence I'd not be responsible for it, since I could not be responsible for a random quantum event.
4. Pereboom has a strong argument in favour of deterministic incompatibilism. IE denies free-will.
5. Dennett has compelling arguments for epiphenomenalism or eliminativism. But he himself is compatibilist - ie that the causal relationships do not strip us of free-will.
6. Libet, 1985 and implications. If our decisions are preconscious, what then for free-will?
Etc.
Basing philosophy on rigorous observations, even measurements, about the world is hardly new, though I approve strongly of this evolving trend in philosohy. But there is at least one question I strongly suspect experimental philosophy or cognitive science or any science will be able to profitably address: whether humans have free will. Indeed, it doesn't qualify as a scientific question at all. Can it be ever falsified? Would we ever be able to tell the difference between a world in which we have free will, no free will, or partial free will? Can we imagine an experiment that, even in principle, would at least diminish the possibilities. Here, I am thinking about Alain Aspect's beautiful work investigating Bell's Inequality. The issue raised by Bell's Inequality cannot be said to be settled, but certainly Aspect's experiments did much to shift the probability of local hidden variables in the direction predicted by quantum mechanics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd be more than satisfied with a similar experimental approach for attacking the free will problem, even if just as a thought experiment. But, to do that, the world has to behave differently if we have free will than if we don't. Only then can we measure something. I have not read a single description of how the world would change depending on the assumption of either state. So I am pessimistic we will ever profitably address the free will problem at all.
In fact, as is usually the case in the science, when we encounter this sort of situation, I suspect we are formulating the question improperly.
Kenneth Watman
If I give my life to save another, I gave my self determination to extend another's. How is this 'self' determination?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy point is this: No matter how pragmatic one fancies himself, one should take into account external factors. Just because religion is questionable does not mean deity, angles and elves are questionable. We are linked in the ways of deep mystery, as deep as life itself. Which remains undefined I might add.
When science invades such realms, science turns to military rather mysteriously. I do not wish to be probed so deeply that I become someones controllable resource.
How is morality science? If I kill my neighbors kid, I'm immoral. If I let him grow up and he become Adolph Hitler, I can't go to Jerusalem safely.
Here's a moral dilemma: Where does one find an unbiased test maker? Especially in matters of morality.
Anyway, it makes good sciphi.
I have no training or reading of philosophy, so those who have should indulge my impertinence. I like hjo240641's simile of the movie reel for a deterministic universe,though some of you may illuminate it's flaws. If it is indeed correct, I have a problem with events of low probability, such as tunneling diodes and Josephson junctions. It would then appear that their low probability would have to manifest itself not just with the same frequency, but individually at the same times and places in the sequence of events. Does this not mean that randomness is real and absolute determinism is convenient editing. Real experiments, as opposed to thought experiments are couched in the real world so unknown influencies can affect the outcome, but in a thought experiment, apart from unusual combinations of the parameters, what is not known will not be included.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually this is not particularly new. Perceptual psychology got its start as a blend of philosophy and measurement (star magnitudes). Look up Helmholtz & Wundt. Read a book called "Psychological Thought from Pythagorus to Freud". William James (Henry James' brother) conducted experiments -- mostly on himself, but very artfully done -- in the 19th century. Then there is the nature (Descartes) versus nurture (Berkeley) debate which goes back hundreds of years and was not masturbatory at all but quite well thought out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI got bored after reading the first page of comments so if this has been dealt with please excuse me. When ever I see a discussion that centers on 2 options I know that I am not dealing with people in touch with reality. There are not 2 sides to every story or situation. There are infinite sides to every situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe narrow minded stand in an open field with a shovel and step ladder and ask if they should go right or left. They could go in any direction including climbing the ladder or digging a hole. Unfortunately they assume that left and right are the only options.
Should a murderer be set free under any circumstances?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSetting him free is counter-intuitive. That was the point.
Should a murderer be set free under any circumstances?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSetting him free is counter-intuitive. That was the point.
What came from the James's brothers was hardly masturbatory and Henry was the one philosopher who got the point of it is how the question is formed. But on the whole I stand by most of philosophy got hung up on structure not reality and resemble the act described. I did enjoy your comment but I hope this clarifies not all people do this in public.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If philosophers are willing to look at science as the way to verify or at least classify their questions then perhaps the period of masturbation has come to an end"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophers had not always been at odds with science. Some ancient philosophers like Thales, Democritus, Epicurus, Aristotle, etc. had a scientific inclination. This was continued later by Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Hume, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell.
"That may help if it can bring morality and ethics into the search for truth which seems to be still missing."
Why do you think that? Morality and ethics have always been part of philosophy. From Buddha to Aristotle to Aquinas to Spinoza to Hume to Ayn Rand. Of course they did not always agree with each other.
"even some religion is starting to get the same ideal that science is not the enemy just another way to approach what is real."
To Christianity, science is an enemy if it contradicts its doctrines, and an ally if it supports its teachings. That's why the Church persecuted Galileo and opposed Darwin but likes the Big Bang theory because it is reckoned as the moment of creation by god.
Adherents of Hinduism and Buddhism like quantum mechanics because its weirdness resonates with their mysticism. But I doubt they like evolutionary psychology or Newtonian mechanics.
While Joshua Knobe’s proposition ‘people feel drawn to relativism to the extent that they can open themselves to other perspectives’ certainly appears attractive – at least to a liberal-minded reader like myself – I would suggest that the ‘Sven’/’Xiex’ test does not support the proposition to the degree Knobe supposes. [Thought Experiments: Scientific American November 2011]
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Cokely/Feltz test, put simply, set out to measure the moral acceptability of the exercise of force in individual encounters – i.e. Sven’s approach versus that of Xiex – in two test groups; those measured as being ‘more open to experience’ and those measured as being ‘more closed to experience’.
To begin with, the experimenters’ choice of fictional names – ‘Sven’ and ‘Xiex’ – introduces, for test subjects whose cultural context is North American/Western European, a hidden bias. While ‘Sven’ would almost certainly be assumed to be Scandinavian, ‘Xiex’ is unlikely to be perceived as an individual whose cultural roots lie within the North American/Western European context.
For the ‘more closed to experience’ group, this name bias would act to reinforce any existing predisposition to regard the exercise of force in individual encounters as morally unacceptable as the aggressive agent [‘Xiex’] would unconsciously be perceived as ‘other’, while the passive agent [‘Sven’] would be perceived as ‘one of us’. It would likewise act to dilute any predisposition in the opposite direction.
For the ‘more open to experience’ group, this name bias would deflect consideration away from the ‘exercise of force’ issue and onto the ‘cultural difference’ issue. A test subject classified as ‘more open to experience’ would, ipso facto, be more reluctant to apply a negative value judgement to an individual perceived as being from another culture whatever the test subject’s views might be on the moral acceptability of the exercise of force in individual encounters.
Thus, the experimenter’s choice of names acts to skew the test results – both for the ‘more open’ and the ‘more closed’ groups – away from the issue of the acceptability of the exercise of force in individual encounters and onto the issue of cultural difference. I suspect that this skewing effect would prove to be more pronounced in the ‘more open’ group whose sensibilities are more fully attuned to cultural difference than it would be in the ‘more closed’ group.
It would be interesting to see if the moral relativism effect would survive an experiment in which the names ‘Sven’ and ‘Xiex’ were substituted with ‘Smith’ and ‘Jones’ or ‘Binh’ and ‘Duong’. Binh is a Vietnamese male first name meaning ‘peace’ and Duong is a Vietnamese male first name meaning ‘virile’.
Further, if in the statements attributed to ‘Sven’ and ‘Xiex’ were re-framed so that the phrase ‘hitting other people’ were replaced with ‘inflicting pain on other people’, emphasising the consequences upon the recipient of the exercise of force rather than on non-actions/actions of the individuals making the statements, I suspect that the test outcomes might have proved different. After all, as members of a social species, our framing of most moral issues has to do with the effect of our actions upon others rather than the actions themselves in some sort of isolation.
Finally, I would feel more comfortable accepting the conclusions of the Goodwin/Darley logic puzzle experiment if Knobe had reported the presence in the experiment of a robust control for socio-economic and educational effect – as well, I might add, of urban versus rural effect. There would seem to be a strong correlation between being ‘more open to experience’ or ‘more closed to experience’ and these factors.
Knobe’s pursuit of ‘experimental philosophy’ is certain to generate much debate and, as such, can only be warmly welcomed whatever controversies it may throw up in the process.
Michael J. Reynolds
Milverton, Somerset
United Kingdom
Free will vs. determinism is a philosophical debate. It's quite obvious from psychology and everyday experience that free will exists. You don't need quantum mechanics to prove that. Though it's a good philosophical exercise to those interested in "consciousness."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFree will exists but the macro universe is deterministic. Laplace was correct. Newtonian mechanics is deterministic. However, the complexity and chaotic nature of some physical systems make predictions nearly impossible. They are amenable only to statistical analysis. For instance, tossing of coin is completely deterministic yet we think it's random.
Given that the key to understanding (the local construct of) reality, how we come to know stuff and the origin of ideas (and understanding, the phenomenon itself), is through intimate access to living nature's phenomena, it seems, on the one hand, that it is audacious even to think that a philosopher should be allowed to operate outside of his/her naval-gazing zone.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, that the light of philosophy's limited utility is beginning to bathe the neurons of some of its practitioners likely is reflected in this extended, if self-contradictory, definition of the field. Or is it simply a transient mutation in an inflamed neuronal circuit owing to repeated vicious cycles of frustrated mental effort?
Regardless, do these neophytes to the real world of experimentation realize that their hands might actually get dirty or will they be wearing latex gloves?
The present is a function of(is determined by)the most recent past and the realization of the closet potential from the future. If the future is a function of only the past then determinism holds true. If the future is not a function of only the past then determinism does not hold true.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe present is not a function of earlier pasts except indirectly. The present isn't a function of the past from 100 years ago. The present is only a function of what the past was one nano-second ago.
The real world is more complex than the simplistic mutually exclusive two options of philosophy. The motions of planets and stars are deterministic and can be predicted in principle hundreds of years into the past and future. Though chaotic the system is still deterministic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, subatomic particles and human behavior are not deterministic due to the uncertainty principle and free will respectively. But both are amenable to statistical analysis of varying degrees.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't subscribe to this distinction. The motion of planets and stars can only be predicted with a finite precision when some simplifications are made. In fact, we cannot even describe in a mathematically correct way the interaction between three idealized particles. Nowadays, we can use computers to simulate the movement of a certain number of particles (idealized to various degrees) with a certain spatial and temporal accuracy. By no means can we simulate any substantial portion of the universe this way. Instead, we use a statistical description. All of a sudden, the complex interaction between billions of particles, each with its own parameters like position and speed, collapses into a few global parameters like temperature, density, and pressure. From there on, a new realm unfolds: gasses, stars, star clusters, galaxies, cluster of galaxies, etc. that we describe with yet other sets of parameters.
Just because we vaguely understand that all these levels of description are somehow linked to each other, some people conclude that everything is determined. It is quite the contrary: in a world of complex interactions, we, poor humans with a primitive consciousness (*), we are desperately holding on to whatever regularity we see in the world to try to predict the future. But the future always surprises us, as every weather forecaster knows. When a mere flap of a butterfly wing can change the course of a hurricane thousands of miles away, why are we surprised by our own ability to make decisions that change the course of the world?
There should really be no such debate as "free will and determinism": it is all a misconception. The whole universe is moving toward an undetermined future through an infinity of bifurcations at every scale: will this bacteria eat up this cell, will this galaxy collide with that one? When such a bifurcation occurs in somebody's mind, we call it free will.
(*) After all, this is only the first known attempt at consciousness, call it version 1.0!
One might think in terms of gates. At any one time some gates are open, some are closed and some have yet to be determined.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople who think in terms of determinism pretend that there is no such thing as an indeterminate gate.
If you look at the past one nano-second before the present, (all) gates relevant to the next present are determined.
However, there are future gates which may still be indeterminate. For this reason, I can agree with you.
That's a good philosophical reflection. Reality check. If all phenomena in the universe are indeterminate, how can astronomers predict the future positions of the planets or determine if an asteriod will hit earth sometime in the future? How do engineers know if they compress the gas in an engine it will ignite and produce a certain amount of power?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems some phenomena are determinate within some margin of error. If the error is small, it is negligible. For instance, an athelete doesn't worry that the wave nature of his body might affect his atheletic performance. It's too small it's not even detectable. But an electron cannot ignore the wave-particle duality.
Mathematically, the value of an error can be as small as you want it to be and you can claim that a non-zero error proves that a system is indeterminate. But in reality there is a limit to measurement within which physical quantities have meaning. That is the realm of science. Beyond that you are in the realm of mathematics and philosophy.
If we subscribe to the philosophical argument that the whole universe is undeterminable, we should reject science and technology because they are just an illusion. Philosophical reflection is the only way to discover the Truth. At one point in history, this was the prevailing paradigm. It is called the Dark Ages.
Many, many years ago, some apes started to change and some did not. As a determinist I might say there was two different cause and effects. But that's an assumption.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the other hand, a non-determinist might say that probability played a role. But that's also an assumption.
A determinist might say that hydrogen and oxygen had to form water. A non-determinist might say "that is some lucky coincident".
Evolution is not deterministic. Yes it will occur but we cannot say with full certainty it will lead to intelligent life or any particular form of life. Probability will play a role. That is not merely an assumption.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChemistry is deterministic. A chemical reaction between particular atoms always produce the same set of molecules given similar conditions. That is not merely an assumption.
Deterministic and non-deterministic are not merely a distinction of human beliefs but a description of natural phenomena.
I am a non-determinist so I agree with you about evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChemistry says that H20 is water therefore H2O must be water. Most chemists will not say that they don't know why H2O is water. It just is. Some things have no explanation.
Your concern is semantics. What should H2O be? It is meaningless. Wittgenstein's great contribution to philosophy is the analysis of language and he said most of it is nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe laws of nature are the explanation to all physical processes, deterministic or not. Why are there laws of nature? The anthropic principle states if there were none you wouldn't be here to ask the question. It is self-evident therefore it explains itself. Wittgenstein would say it's nonsense.
Scientists observe, classify, test, analyze, explain and innovate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat H2O is water is merely an observation. It is also a miracle that the big bang could create two such useful elements that just happened to bind into water. How could that possibly happen?
The apes that changed were reacting to a change in the environment which had gone from tropical to savannah and knuckle walking and tree climbing became less of a survival tool than bipedal walking, harvesting and learning to hunt or scavenge the left over of things that could kill them also.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would imagine that fires were a new influence on a savannah because as a rule rain forest don't have fires. So the bipedal ape would also be exposed and have to deal with fire and probably found collateral damage *dead animals that were some what cooked but edible and and less likely to leave the diner sick. Once the primate started eating more meat the brain grew and hunting strategies became stimulating.
It has been shown that there were several branches of this type of primate and we happen to be the ones who understood the concepts of working together, building better weapons and desiring more territory. Was the savannah deterministic or did it have free will because from my perspective the rest was a result of the savannah deciding it was no longer a jungle.
The big bang did not create oxygen atoms. They were created by the stars like other naturally ocurring elements after the big bang. It is not a miracle. It is physics and chemistry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOxygen was created (in a non-deterministic way) before man created physics and chemistry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOxygen is simply one element that was observed by early chemists. How it came to have the properties that it has is unknown.
The stars may have been the factory but not the chemist.
When I say that I am a non-determinist, I don't mean that I reject cause and effect. What I mean is that I accept free will and probability as 2 plausible causes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's not that I reject all determinants. Just the strict exclusion of free will and probability.
Perhaps its semantics.
The determinants for evolution are understood except there is probably a determinant for the tendency to evolve and the tendency not to evolve. That's just a supposition on my part. I can make observations but I don't have an explanation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe laws of nature are embodied in physics and chemistry. Man did not create the laws of nature. He merely discovered them and called them physics and chemistry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can create oxygen in a deterministic way through electrolysis of water. The properties of oxygen are well-known and due to its atomic structure. Elements can be created in stars as well as in laboratories. Since the 1930s, physicists had even created artificial elements not found in nature and they can predict the properties before the elements are made.
You must be a philosopher not a scientist. You're digging but you have not yet gotten to the bottom of things. In the end, your inquiry will amount to why is there something rather than nothing. Why is there a universe at all? I already answered that previously with the anthropic principle and Wittgenstein's critism that such questions are meaningless and any answer is nonsense. But of course you don't have to agree with me or Wittgenstein. Otherwise philosophy would be dead.
Priest and scientist are similar in one respect. They are averse to saying "I don't know".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMust be semantics.
I beg to disagree. I say what exist are the known and the mysteries yet to be known. It is the philosopher who is averse to saying "I know" and obsessed with the unknowable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMay I add the unknowable and the non-existent are indistinguishable.
This whole discussion about free will is ridiculous. What is, is. I'm not going to stop making decision because someone says there is no such thing as free will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think your more pragmatic than I am. There is nothing wrong with that. Your going to accomplish something. I am going to think about something. I'd like to find some common ground.
Will the mathematician (that's me) and the scientist learn that both have value?
And they both created the concept of infinity and fear it because they cannot conceive what it is. Maybe it isn't and we are in a singularity that is bored and likes to ask questions. That would give us purpose if we are the vehicle of the ask and answer tools. But that is a metaphysical issue which transcends both science and to some degree religion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like to think people created the words perfect, infinity, God and perfection because they wanted to think there is more than just life and death.
Of course both have value. Who said there is no free will? Read my posts. Determinism and free will are not mutually exclusive as philosophers want to believe. They co-exist. Look at the human brain. Its physiology is deterministic. The electrical signals and neurochemical transmitters in the brain are governed by physics and chemistry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut psychology admits free will. There is plenty of empirical evidence for it. How can a deterministic system exhibit free will? The same way tossing a coin is both deterministic and random, or the weather is both deterministic and chaotic. The world is more complex than philosophers imagine.
Mathematicians should have no problem accepting both. Mathematical logic is certain and deterministic, subject to conditions of the Incompleteness theorem. But mathematics also admits statistics, probability and chaos.
Very well said. Infinity is both the best and the worst invention of the human mind. For infinity doesn't exist: even the entire universe has a finite amount of energy. Yet, the concept of infinity gave us many answers from geometry to algebra, from physics to chemistry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, for one, think the most important discovery of mathematics is not infinity but the logarithm. The log scale gives one the ability to change scale, to examine phenomena that are otherwise beyond human intuition. It condenses astronomical distances and stretches microscopic dimensions to everyday measures. We first thought the world was invariant with scale, that we could glide the scale left and right like a slide rule and always see the same thing. But at the beginning of the 20th century, we started to see a changing landscape: quantum mechanics on the left, general relativity on the right. The scale didn't seem to be infinite, after all. Not only was it harder and harder to slide the rule further, there appeared to be a hard stop on both ends.
Are we back in the Dark Ages? Do we think that, again, nothing is predictable? No, we just know how to put things in perspective. Many things can be predicted to a certain degree of accuracy. Certain things cannot: they lie near a singularity where things diverge wildly from the most minute difference. Is it a matter of size, quantum mechanics vs. classical mechanics? No, think of Schrödinger's cat: the smallest quantum effect can be amplified to apply to macroscopic objects, given the right apparatus. At the end of the day, quantum phenomena underlie everything in the universe and the effect of the uncertainty principle can appear at any scale.
This is why I say there is no simple dichotomy between deterministic and non-deterministic phenomena: it is all a matter of the degree of accuracy we demand. Statistics is a tool we use when things are not predictable at a certain scale and we need to move on to a larger scale. Free will is the name we give to unpredictable phenomena when they originate in someone's mind.
Size matters in quantum mechanics. The equivalent of Schrodinger's cat experiment was conducted in the 1990s. No, quantum superposition does not occur in large objects. The jostling of atoms of large objects collapses the state of superposition. If this were not true, we would have detected the wave property of a cannon ball. Newtonian mechanics which treats it as a particle would have produced detectable error.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW I think the greatest invention in mathematics is zero. We take it for granted but without zero our base number system will not work whether it's base 10 (decimal)or base 2 (binary) or any base. Simple calculations will be difficult to perform.
The ancient Greeks invented axiomatic geometry, solid geometry, algebra, trigonometry and calculus but they had no zero in their number system. They couldn't do simple arithmetic calculations that Grade 3 pupils routinely do today. Our procedures for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division are like mechanical calculations in an abacus. This is only possible because we have zero in our number system.
Yes, I know zero is usually considered the greatest invention in mathematics. It certainly was very important for the development of number theory. However, with the development of more advanced algebra, zero has become "infinitely small" rather than "nothing". It is the limit of 1/x when x tends to infinity. It has therefore become an idealized concept too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs for the laws of Quantum Mechanics, I know also that "it doesn't apply to large objects". However, this is again an idealized thought experiment. You can only try to apply the laws of QM to large objects if you consider them as indivisible particles, solid objects only characterized by their position, momentum and mass.
A cold planet could seem like a good approximation but it is only because you look at it from very far away. If you look close enough, you would see a lot of non-deterministic things happening: clouds of dust lifting from the surface and getting lost into space, cracks penetrating inside the core under the repeated effect of tides due to an orbiting moon and thermal cycling due to a star at the center of the orbit. In due time, the planet could crumble, sending all its constituent rocks, grains, molecules, particles into unpredictable trajectories. It is all a matter of distance and time scales you are looking at. No zero or infinity involved though: this is the real world.
Sorry, I should have said "analysis" instead of "more advanced algebra". Algebra, however advanced, doesn't really deal with infinity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Schrodinger's cat experiment in the 1990s wasn't a thought experiment. It was a real experiment to test the original thought experiment. It is a common mistake of philosophers (sometimes scientists) to apply a reductionist approach - what constitutes a thing define its character. Since subatomic particles have quantum effects, therefore all large objects are "quantum" because everything is made up of subatomic particles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a fallacy. Following this logic, a human is no different from an atom or a rock since they are all made up of subatomic particles. The fact is it is not the constituents that define a thing. It is how the constituents are organized. That's how a human is different from an atom and a rock. Therefore, scale matters because it follows how the constituents are organized.
You are oversimplifying. There are zeros in the real world. Discrete quantities have zero. Arithmetic started with counting. How many apples did you eat? None. How many votes did Bush get in New York? None.
I must say the Turing machine is equal to zero as my greatest math invention. The Turing machine is the basis of modern computers. In it lies the key to the mystery of intelligence, consciousness and free will because the human brain is a Turing machine (according to computer scientists).
I am not sure which experiment you are referring to. To my knowledge, the Schrodinger's cat thought experiment is still "unresolved", i.e., subject to controversies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, it seems like we all agree that non-deterministic phenomena exist; the point of divergence is where we draw the line with deterministic phenomena, or whether there is a line at all. I do agree that there is much less degree of freedom inside a rock or a cold planet than in a human brain, but it is not zero: it just takes much longer for things to happen. When they happen, they can appear as non-deterministic as any thought you can have.
So, does zero not exist? Is there always a tiny bit of probability that things happen, if an experiment is repeated enough times? Here is another classical thought experiment: if we give a monkey a typewriter and let it type randomly, could it ever output the entire text of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet? Such a probability can be calculated and gives a number very close to zero. How close? So close that if we took all the matter in the Universe, made it into monkeys with typewriters and let them type away for the entire time since the Universe exists, we would still be very far from having the event happen with reasonable probability. This, as a friend pointed out, should satisfy any definition of "impossible". So, below a certain threshold, probabilities should be truncated to zero, i.e., multiplying them by whatever great number of repetitions possible in the Universe, there is no way we can get non-zero occurrence.
You see, I do hope the importance of zero will be restored sometime, in the name of the finite nature of the Universe. But in the meantime, I contend the log scale is the greatest scientific tool ever invented ;-)
The "controveries" you are referring to are largely in the minds of philosophers. To scientists, its pretty clear from observations and experiments which phenomena are deterministic and which are not, as well as how to transition from random to deterministic and vice versa.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you pointed out in your thought experiment, zero may not exist in the minds of philosophers. But zero exists in everyday life. How many apples did I eat yesterday? Zero. I don't have to do a thought experiment to know that.
Einstein was one of the first to be confronted to the Schrodinger cat controversy. Was he a philosopher or a scientist? Admittedly, he was just a patent examiner when he took on shaping the nascent theory of quantum physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy is at the forefront of science. It deals with issues that are not yet fully defined. After things have settled a bit, a new science is spawn. That is how mathematics, astronomy, physics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. all started. So, you should never underestimate philosophy. Philosophy can make something out of practically everything and even out of nothing.
Case in point: You ate zero apple yesterday, you say? How can you be sure, with all these things they put now in our food? You didn't say soy or corn, but I am sure apples are in many unexpected places. Suppose now you didn't even eat yesterday. Are you safe then? Well, didn't you pass next to some apples anyway? Didn't you, at some point, smell some fresh apples, some apple sauce, an apple pastry, a salad dressing with apple cider vinegar? If you smelled apple, some molecules from an apple have entered your body. Can you distinguish that from the act of eating some apple?
But I am just teasing you. Let me get back to your first point. I am an engineer, or an "applied scientist". Indeed, in many cases, I know how to describe things, either in deterministic terms or using statistics. However, there are many cases that are not so clear-cut.
Take the example of the flow of a fluid in some conduit. At low flow rate, the stream is gentle, laminar, and can be described with a few global parameters. At high rate, the flow becomes turbulent, highly variable in space and time. Between the two regimes, there is a transition region that depends on the history of the system. If you start with a low flow rate, you can maintain a laminar flow while you increase the rate. However, the system becomes gradually unstable and a turbulence can eventually start randomly. Once a turbulent flow has started, you have to reduce the rate to much lower values to regain control and return to a laminar flow.
As an engineer, I have learned to avoid unpredictable situations -safety factors are common tools of the trade. It certainly doesn't mean that I have a good handle on how the system transitions from random to deterministic and vice versa. An engineer's life is a constant battle against random events. Well, everybody's life, I guess: there is so little we can predict!
Philosophy is important because it asks big questions. But IMO philosophers need a better method of finding answers than pure speculation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's strange for an engineer to say there's little we can predict. Engineering is all about predictions. When you build a bridge, you predict it will not collapse under a certain load. When you build a car, you predict it will have this speed, this power, this fuel consumption, etc. When you build a power plant, you predict it will produce this amount of power at this energy efficiency, etc. If things aren't predictable, there wouldn't be engineers, only philosophers saying things are unpredictable.
Einstein was both scientist and philosopher. The various interpretations of quantum mechanics is a philosophical issue. The scientific issue is the equations of quantum mechanics are consistent with each other, the experimental results agree with one another, theoretical calculations and experimental results agree with each other. The scientific issue is settled. The philosophical issue may not be. Philosophical issues are rarely settled anyway.
We are (finally) back to our subject matter: philosophical methods.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhilosophy is going beyond everything that is known to humanity. That is why I said philosophy is at the forefront of science. That is why philosophy never settles. But I don't think it is true that individual philosophical issues are never settled: it is just that when they are, they cease to be of the domain of philosophy and become part of a new science that has emerged. Early mental constructs about the edges of a flat Earth and planets describing complex patterns in the sky were shattered with the advent of astronomy. The search for the philosopher's stone was abandoned with the advent of chemistry.
To counter the article's introduction, philosophers normally don't run experiments because they use the science that already exists, while the experiments for the science that doesn't exist haven't been defined yet. So, are these "experimental philosophers" philosophers that are doing science or scientists that are doing philosophy? I don't think there is much difference: a good philosopher needs a deep knowledge of all the existing sciences and their methods, as well as the curiosity to go beyond.
Psychology, neuroscience, and quantum physics are three of the most recent sciences that have emerged, and therefore are still very much involved with philosophy. Is the application of psychology to philosophy new? Probably not, but I understand the author's point. There is something unsettling about applying psychology to philosophy. It is too easy to fall into a war of "ad hominem" arguments: "you propose that this is immoral because you had that thing with your Mom when you were a child" or "you don't understand this argument because you are so narrow-minded." So, philosophers normally avoid the subject.
I always thought philosophy had to come to grips with the question "are our brain evolved enough to answer the questions it asks itself?" However, the author here seems to limit his investigation to the field of ethics, which we haven't discussed much. To me, it still looks more like psychology than philosophy. The studies are probing why certain people have certain philosophical points of view (the ad hominem part I mentioned) but that will not tell who is right or wrong. In the case of the free will debate, the experiments were about the interpretations of a deterministic world, not whether our decisions are deterministic or not. Similarly, understanding how different people react to a certain moral decision will not settle the decision itself.
If you impose quantum physics on philosophy then we are stuck with what was coined fuzzy logic which again fits well with James's ideal of pragmatic truth or that what is true is based on how the question is framed and some questions cannot be answered. The bottom line truth is subjective no matter who is looking for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with all academic departments in the west is that they think one area of human research, one small area, is best learned in relative isolation from the others. Philosophy is not well understood by most as critical to understanding science and other areas of research as it lets you see the problems and limitations inherent in observational data, which is obtained by science. Philosophy that does experiments in the world is not really philosophy at all. But, philosophers doing science is precisely how most scientific revolutions took place. Most people are unaware of Einstein's writings on philosophical topics because he wasn't an amazing philosopher but more of a conceptual genius. When people say "thank god philosophy is doing experimentation in the real world" they neither understand the domain of the subject nor got a good understanding of what it is in the first place. I imagine many philosophy classes are boring and without much rigor, but this is just a feature of our now horrendous education system and the rotting collegiate depth in courses that is an expected result from the last five or six decades of dumbing down the American population for various reasons. The result is people who think philosophers, in their department, should examine evidence in the world for their theories whereas it should be more like the Russian academic system that has traditionally done better with a tenth the funding and a tenth the humans by having professors with various disparate areas of interest rather than departments. Departments create ignorance of the whole, fighting, and a general sense that the work done in other departments is not as important. The quest for funding keeps each department touting itself as critical yet without a broad understanding of philosophy, most scientists and historians and even mathematicians may not see a wide range of ways to reformulate or reconceptualize their data. Assumptions abound as if they are true necessarily in science, like the "Big Bang" theory. "Laws" in science are directly antithetical to what science is supposed to do: have revolutions that fundamentally alter the current scheme of thinking by incorporating anomalies that otherwise would not fit. Having a "law" and having some data that won't fit will result in a permanent paralysis of the field where people attempt to squeeze square blocks into round holes because it is the only option they see possible. Learn everything and remember all institutions are skewed by money and hierarchy and censorship.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust for fun and because I love Freeman Dyson and we really are a cog in a Gaia Wheel. Then the fact that we think, ask these esoteric questions are a side affect of our level of resolution and what really matters is what we take out of the total Gaia and what we put back or (pollute it for lack of a better word). That means that thinking is separate from the universe and not necessary but it is a gift to have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt beats being a stone, an amoeba or a sloth and although we lack the canines, muscle mass of a baboon, we have traveled to the moon. But again, this is but a side effect and not our purpose. I think we use what we call intelligence to be no more than resolution of our ecosystem. It probably resembles how neurons communicate with other neurons which create hormones or other reactions.
But in the end, what we call intelligence is unimportant to the whole. It matters more what we eat or destroy.