Saturday, May 07, 2016

Rebranding Philosophy

In order to survive the current and future rounds of purges in the arts and sciences, it would seem that philosophy needs some serious rebranding.

When most people think of 'philosophy', they think of one's general attitude towards life, or other such fuzzy, airy-fairy ideas.

My proposal: When selling philosophy to our administrative, political, and corporate overlords, characterize philosophy as THE discipline of logic and critical thinking.

The evidence is somewhat equivocal, but after reading Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's Aspiring Adults Adrift: Tentative Transitions of College Graduates, one of their general findings is the importance of student gains in critical thinking and complex reasoning ability when it comes to predicting their success post-graduation on numerous measures (including employment, income, financial independence, marriage, and civic engagement, among others).

Because of its intense focus on formal and informal logic, philosophy is uniquely suited to help train students in these important skills.

Sunday, May 01, 2016

Student Rape and the Incentives of University Administrators

"Two Kansas State University students say the university, in apparent violation of federal guidelines, refused to investigate their rape complaints."  This seems to be a common story when it comes to students seeking redress through a university for on-campus or off-campus rapes. (In this case, the rape occurred at an off-campus frat house.) Let's get the word out: If you're raped by another student on or off-campus, don't seek redress through the university. They have an incentive to ignore your complaint, both to avoid the expense and hassle of an investigation, and to protect their public image. Report the rape to the police immediately, and hire an attorney. Be prepared to bring civil suits against the perpetrator, the fraternity (if relevant), and the university. Then things might start to change.

"The Case Against Reality"


That is the title of an Atlantic interview with professor of cognitive science Donald D. Hoffman. The interview seems to conflate three different issues: (1) whether reality is observer-dependent; (2) the entanglement of quantum states; (3) whether living creatures have accurate perceptions or adaptive perceptions.

I don't know much about quantum mechanics, but evidently quantum entanglement does not entail an observer-dependent reality, despite this widespread belief (at least among the public and among purveyors of popular science). An easy way to see the difference is that quantum entanglement happened even before there were biological organisms observing the world. Macro-level observations of phenomena are not required by quantum entanglement. (Quantum entanglement is about the mutual dependence of the states of different quantum particles, such that the state of each particle cannot be described independently of the states of the others.)

Secondly, the issue of whether humans and other organisms that evolved through natural selection have adaptive perceptions rather than accurate perceptions is fascinating, but it seems irrelevant to quantum entanglement. It's true that human perception of objects as independent realities does not correspond to the quantum mechanics picture of reality, but then again neither does it correspond to the general relativity, nor even to Newtonian physics (e.g., inertial motion).

Even when we discuss the narrow issue of whether ordinary objects really exist, it would seem that classical physics also undermines realism about ordinary objects, because of the view that such objects are completely reducible to atoms or other constituent particles, and so have no independent causal powers or other real-making features. Quantum mechanics does pose special challenges or realism about ordinary objects, but it is by no means unique in this regard.

The issue of realism about ordinary objects has been discussed for a long time in philosophy, and I think cognitive scientists and popular science writers would benefit by examining this literature before holding forth about the metaphysical implications of quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and so on.

In addition, at the end of the interview, Hoffman posits conscious experiences as ontological primitives (i.e., the basic constituents of reality). It's true that conscious experiences could be distinct from our perceptions of ordinary objects, and thus realism about the former does not imply realism about the latter, although presumably this would require that conscious experiences not include experiences of real objects (such as if the conscious experiences are constituents of perceptions of real objects).

But there are two confusing things about this proposed ontology. The first is that the ontology of conscious experiences is incompatible with the initial argument given for the claim that we don't perceive reality. The initial argument was that our perceptions of real objects do not accurately reflect quantum entanglement. The presumption was that quantum phenomena are the basic constituents of reality. But now Hoffman is saying that conscious experiences, not quantum phenomena, are ontologically primitive.

The second confusing thing with Hoffman's proposed ontology is that it doesn't seem to fit with his claim that our perceptions are adaptive but not accurate. Assuming that our perceptions are composed of conscious experiences, how could they fail to be accurate (at least in some sense), if they include the fundamental constituents of reality? Technically, the perceptions would not be accurate as representations of reality, because they themselves contain reality. But still, this is a different picture which makes the initial claim look like a bait and switch.

I am left wondering if I am the one who is fundamentally confused here, or if it is Hoffman, or the interviewer, or all of the above. But this sort of confusion is typical when non-philosophers try to talk about metaphysics or other philosophical questions (ahem), which makes me realize the value of philosophy as a discipline (even if we maybe we do have more philosophers than we need and could do with more doctors or nurses, for example :) ). I am left almost happy about the terrible conceptual muddle that seems to be contained in this article, because at least it shows that there is a need for philosophy to help untangle the conceptual knots or unclog our conceptual plumbing.