Sex and Plato

The November 30 issue of the New Yorker has an interesting article about the case of Caster Semenya, the phenomenal South African runner who won the 800 meter title at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. Semenya's victory has since been overshadowed by a controversy over the runner's identity. Semenya competed in the women's race but there are many who claim that she is not a woman. She possesses many of the features normally associated with males. As a result Semenya has been subject to humiliating scrutiny and examination in an attempt to verify her sex. Add to the mix racial and class issues (Semenya is black and from one of the poorest regions of South Africa) and we have the makings of a very complicated and sensitive story.

The New Yorker article poses some questions about philosophy and the metaphysics of sex categorization as well. Dr. Alice Dreger, a bioethcs professor at Northwestern University, is quoted as saying that there is no solution to the question of what the difference is between a man and a woman: "Science is making it more difficult [to solve], because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that's what it means to be male." And Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, who teaches biology at Brown University, is reported to say "there are philosophers of science who argue that when scientists make categories in the natural world--shapes, species--they are simply making a list of things that exist: natural kinds. It's a scientist as discoverer. The phrase that people use is 'cutting nature at its joint.' There are other people, myself included, who think that, almost always, what we're doing in biology is creating categories that work pretty well for certain things that we want to do with them. But there is no joint."

The metaphor of carving at the joints comes from Plato's Phaedrus, and raises the specter of Platonic realism. On the allegedly Platonic view, biologists and other scientists are discovering categories like "male" and "female" or "mammal" and "virus." The contrasting view, often called "nominalism" says that the categories are created by humans based on their own interests and needs. A pragmatic view of this sort is defended in the American philosopher W.V. Quine's paper "Natural Kinds."

While recognizing that a brief quotation in a magazine intended for a lay audience cannot capture the nuances of Fausto-Sterling's thought, I nevertheless feel compelled to point out that the dichotomy drawn in the article oversimplifies matters. First, the existence of "problem cases" of people who are difficult to categorize by sex does not entail that the concept of maleness or femaleness is a human creation. Among the responses available to the realist are epistemicism (our inability to categorize is the result of our own cognitive limitations) and anti-dualism (there is at least a third category of "intersexual" people). But also Fausto-Sterling seems to set up a false dichotomy. It is doubtless true that people categorize according to their needs and interests. It does not follow that the resulting categories are more like inventions than discovered features of reality.

Neverthless, the case of Caster Semenya raises important issues about the nature of identity and scientific understanding. Philosophers of science are well placed to contribute constructively to the discussion of these issues.

Ontological Arguments for the Existence of God: Overview

Greetings,

With the topic of Monday's meeting turning to ontological arguments for the existence of God, I though it would be helpful to provide a little bit of background and explain what is meant by such arguments. I'll number the things I say in case people want to address or take issue with specific parts. As always, if I got something wrong, please let me know.

What Is an Ontological Argument for God's Existence?
1. Such arguments seek to show one of two things: either that God necessarily exists, or it is impossible that God does not exist (which is slightly different, but often sufficient to establish that God exists).
2. "Ontology" refers to "being" or "existence". Such arguments do not necessarily need to show that one knows God exists or believes in God; this is an "Ontological" argument, not an "Epistemological" argument.
3. Ontological arguments are, when argued correctly, deductively valid. This means that, in all possible outcomes, if the premises are true, then the conclusion (the existence of God) is necessarily true. There is no possible way that the premises could all be true at the same time and yet the conclusion be false. Thus, to attack an ontological argument you must deny one of the premises. Part of the goal is to make the premises as noncontroversial as possible, which strengthens the argument.

What Are Some Historical Examples of Ontological Arguments?*
1. Dr. Papazian has actually done what I believe is some fairly novel research on Diogenes of Babylon's ontological argument. This is not typically considered the earliest ontological argument, and I know relatively little about it, but it certainly deserves mentioning. If Dr. Papazian wants to share a bit, I'll certainly edit this point.
2. The earliest commonly-accepted ontological argument was given by St. Anselm in Proslogion. His argument was one of "reductio ad absurdum"-- that is, one would derive a contradiction if God does not exist; thus, God exists.
3. Descartes took the next major leap forward; I believe that he put forward three ontological arguments in his Meditations on First Philosophy. It's been awhile, but I'm fairly certain that he did not argue that it is is impossible that God not exist; he actually argued for the "positive" existence of God.
4. Leibniz thought that Descartes did a good job, but failed to show that the idea of a being with all possible perfections (i.e. God) was necessarily non-contradictory. He didn't establish any new ontological arguments, but he thought that he filled in a whole in Descartes' arguments.

And, after Leibniz, things go in all sorts of different directions.

Who Attacked Ontological Arguments?
1. Hume thought that he could negate the possibility of an ontological argument by asserting that a priori truths are necessarily trivial/analytic. As ontological arguments depend on a priori truths, they were therefore trivial and did not tell anything new about reality.
2. Kant had a particularly scathing critique of ontological arguments. He asserted that existence is not a predicate, not a "simple property" as Leibniz might have stated. I'm actually going to leave that alone for now-- to explain it would be another whole blog post. However, as far as I'm aware, his is the only objection to ontological arguments which is universally accepted to be problematic for ontological arguments by philosophers, even if it might be surmountable.

So, there you go. Interested? Shoot me (Zach Sherwin) an email and come to the meeting on Monday evening at a local restaurant! I can send you details, if you're interested. Lastly, if you want to read my own rendition of the ontological argument, check out my post here.

Have a great day!

*Please note that I am no expert on any philosophical subject, and do not claim any sort of authoritative knowledge. I wouldn't cite this post in a paper, if I were you. I'm sure that my posts are filled with minor errors and oversights. If there's anything blatant or particularly malicious in nature, let me know and I'll do my best to resolve it. Thanks!

Hobbes in Hebrew

Interesting discussion at the New York Times website about the recent publication of the first complete translation of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan into Hebrew.

Who Says Philosophy is Useless?

My favorite part of newspapers are the obituaries. It is, of course, sad to read about deaths, but at the same time one learns about the accomplishments of lives that otherwise do not make the news. Such was my experience this morning when I read the obituary of Dr. Amir Pnueli, a professor of computer science at New York University. Born in Israel in 1941, Dr. Pnueli was a pioneer in the field of temporal logic, the branch of logic that studies inferences that involve propositions that change their truth values over time. Dr. Pnueli was interested in solving a very practical problem: as computers have become more complex, it has also become harder to verify that the calculations that the programs are performing were correct. To solve this problem, Dr. Pnueli drew on the work of a twentieth-century philosopher and logician, Arthur Prior. Prior was the founder of what at the time was called tense logic, though Prior was interested in using the logic to answer philosophical questions about free will and the metaphysics of time. But Dr. Pnueli realized that Prior's system can be applied to solve the problems facing computer scientists. He published his results first in a 1977 paper and his work earned him the prestigious Turing Award in 1996. As Kenneth Chang, the New York Times obituary writer, notes, "chip makers now use software employing temporal logic to verify that millions of transistors are calculating as designed, and programmers use temporal logic to minimize the number of bugs in their software." So your reading of this blog ultimately depends on work that a philosopher did in the middle of the last century.

I extend my condolences to Dr. Pnueli's family and colleagues. Perhaps an appropriate tribute will be for me to answer the question, "What is philosophy good for?" with his name.

Logic and the Rules of the Internet

Greetings,

While there not, of course, official rules of the internet, there exists a set of unofficial rules; not all of them originated on the internet, but many are constantly referenced. I'm not going to post the full list here-- not all of them are likely to be appropriate for a blog post-- but some of them are at least mildly philosophically interesting.

The first rule we'll look at is the Danth's Law. This law states, "if you have to insist that you've won an internet argument, you've probably lost badly.” In other words, if it is not obvious and noncontroversial that you have proven your point, and yet you state that you have proven your point, the odds are good that you have already shown the weakness of your argument, and are past the point of no return. If the validity of your argument is not obvious from the argument itself, it is invalid; if your argument's form and content is insufficient to have achieved validity, asserting that it is valid will make it necessarily invalid.

Certain rules are numbered, due to their longstanding solidarity with message-board subculture, such as "Rule 14": "Do not argue with trolls-- it means they win". A "troll" is one who posts intentionally inflammatory material and/or responses, often ignoring basic logical principles such as validity, coherency, and relevancy. No logical argument, no matter how carefully constructed, can be valid if one denies the basic axioms of the logical system one works in. Trolls, who often make fallacious arguments such as Reductio ad Hitlerum (described below), do not hold the philosophical motivations of the pursuit of truth or even coherency; rather, they seek either to win or to create a reaction. Thus, do not engage in a philosophical debate with one who does not act in good faith; you won't be productive, and will probably just end up frustrated.

Another rule is Godwin's Law, originally stated by Mike Godwin in 1990, which claims that, "as a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." The reason? Across the internet, people are less personally accountable for their statements, and thus are less likely to concede to their opponents' arguments. Thus, a universal absolute is difficult to find. While individuals certainly exist who, online, would deny that the Nazis were in fact "evil", it is one of the few relatively non-controversial premises in an online argument. Therefore, it is likely to be used when there is no common ground.

A closely related rule was actually stated by Leo Strauss in the 1950's, which is Reductio ad Hitlerum, which argues that, "If Hitler liked P, then P is bad, because the Nazi's were bad", or, "If Nazis liked P, then P is bad, because the Nazis were bad." This actually seems to be a problem with the "is" function-- the "is of identity" versus the "is of predication. "Bachelors are unmarried men" is an example of the "is of identity"-- A is the same as B. "Nazi's are bad", however, is the "is of predication"-- B is merely a property of A. The Reductio ad Hitlerum argument states, [Nazis=Bad], [Nazis=(One who likes P)], therefore [(One who likes P)=Bad]. The arguer is mistaking the "is of predication" to be the "is of predication" (and vice versa). Some philosophical training on the differences between the two should be sufficient to show why such arguments are fallacious.


I want to credit an excellent article by the Telegraph for compiling many of these "laws", as well as several others I did not talk about. If you're interested, definitely worth a read. As well, a simple search for "rules of the internet" will yield a fairly solid list, with some minor variations depending on whose list it is.

Freedom is Not Free

Thus far this semester, we have written a couple posts that have made a few cracks in the surface of the free will/ fatalism debate. The first post was Zach Sherwin’s Ontological Argument Against Fatalism, and then a few weeks ago I presented Chrysippus’ views on Free Will and Responsibility. While we’ve by no stretch been exhaustive here of course, perhaps we’ve piqued your interest a bit with what we have covered. If so, I’d like to continue the discussion here with something that’s been rattling around in my brain for a while, so let’s ensue on a separate and all-new branch with an aspect of the quandary that’s yet to be mentioned.

Throughout the rest of the post, I’ll refer to God – for the sake of argument and of brevity for this blog, assume I mean the traditional Judeo-Christian God. Here’s the question: Is human free will incompatible with God? If humans have complete free will, meaning that they have real freedom in choice and action all the time, then God would necessarily not interfere with human will. But does it follow that God then can’t influence free will? Even if we say, he could but he chooses not to, does his ability there, even as just an option, mean freedom is somehow diminished? In the ultimate and complete free will scenario, would God’s mere ability to alter, influence, or affect our decisions mean that, really, we’re only as free as long as he allows, that freedom is more dependent, then shadowy and illusory, than we think it is? Humans then have freedom when God chooses not to exercise his ability, meaning that he could, at his choosing, decide to step in and affect human free will as soon as he wants to. He is all-powerful, so of course God has every ability to affect (and remove) free will; even if he has decided not to do so, especially in respect to human choice in salvation, he, in theory, could, right?

This poses problems for some – they would say that we then cannot have free will at all. Consider their argument: At that moment when we say God can affect human free will, it no longer exists. More deductively: If there exists the possibility that humans have free will – that what and how humans choose or decide is not able to be influenced, altered, or changed by God – then God can’t affect human free will. But God is all-powerful, so he can affect free will. Therefore, free will is incompatible with God and his omnipotence.

But is this necessarily true? Isn’t it sufficient that he doesn’t routinely affect free will, even though he can? I would argue that their claim assumes too much. Free will isn’t necessarily defined as only holding true if God can’t affect free will. He may have chosen not to, to preserve free will and free choice, to let human beings choose what they will, including sin and salvation. But God is still omnipotent; he could interfere and may and may have, or he may not. In any case, the mere fact that he can affect free will doesn’t mean it necessarily cannot exist. Here I’m not arguing for or against free will per say, or addressing free choice in terms of salvation in the Calvinism v. Arminianism predestination realm (though this does bear worthy and interesting implications in apologetics), but I’ve attempted to prove that at least the one claim above that’s put forward by some is too weak to be accepted, being flawed by definition, and that it does not conclusively or deductively prove free will’s incompatibility with God’s sovereignty.

So there you have part three of this semester’s posts on fatalism and free will. Whether this is all really for naught, you may be the judge (if you can). Perhaps this is truly a “timeless” dilemma, one flawed from before its beginning. But give us your thoughts, if you so choose.

Kiekegaard, Art, and the Aesthete

Greetings,

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher and, perhaps, theologian from the 19th century. I'm going to present a view of art contained in one of his works, "Either/Or". While this view may or may not actually represent Kierkegaard's own view, it is interesting in its own right, and I believe that it can stand on its own, regardless of whether or not its author would actually endorse such a position. Note that, using the Hongs' translation, what I refer to here shall occur within pages 47 and 134. I would cite everything, but I'll be using so many references that it would plague readability; however, I can back up any specifics as requested. So, here goes.

One can refer to the form of art and the subject of art, and neither of these should be overemphasized (as is often done, be believes). Furthermore, the form can permeate the subject matter, and the subject matter can permeate the form. Aesthetically, for a work to be a classic, the form of work must be the same as the subject of that work. What does this mean? When we talk about a work of art, we can talk about its form (such as that of a poem) and its subject (not only the content of the poem, but what is actually communicated about in the poem). In order for a work to be a "classic" its form must be the same as its subject. As an example, Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" is pointed to. The subject matter of "Don Giovanni" is an individual who lives as if his spirit existed in a state of pure immediacy, which is the form of the music-- the movement of the spirit through immediacy, as music cannot be abstracted outside of the performance or the moment it is heard/imagined/etcetera (entailing immediacy), and yet it serves as a language, which qualifies it in the realm of spirit.

Another distinction made in this work is the relationship between media (the plural of "medium") and ideas. The more abstract an idea is, the more impoverished it becomes. However, such abstraction is inversely correlated with the likelihood of its being repeated. One might talk of abstraction and concreteness as opposites. Keeping in mind the distinction between media and ideas, in some forms of art, the medium has a high degree of abstraction but a high concreteness in terms of idea, such as in architecture. Homer's use of a concrete idea (history) and a concrete form/medium (natural language) thus created an epic (considering the coherency between the two) that could often be repeated (due to the use of a concrete medium and a concrete idea).

According to this account, sculpture, architecture, painting, and music have abstract media (with sculpture being the most abstract), whereas language is the most concrete of media. Mozart, with "Don Giovanni", managed to find a subject matter that was as abstract as his medium, allowing him to generate an epic.

One can thus speak of the "theme proper" of a medium; for an abstract medium one's "theme proper" is an abstract idea, and one's work cannot be truly great-- cannot be a "classic"-- unless one's medium correlates to one's idea in terms of abstraction/concreteness. Sculpture, the most abstract medium, would thus be inadequate for creating a truly great work about language, the most concrete idea.

So, what do you think? Is there merit to this account? Immediately apparent problems? There's obviously a bit more to it, but hopefully this'll work as an introductory post.

The Paradox of the Unexpected Hanging, Part II

Zach and Anonymous commented on my last post on the paradox of the unexpected hanging. While their thinking is interesting, I doubt that they are on the right track toward a solution. Let me present an alternative version of the paradox (also drawn from Martin Gardner's article) and challenge them to see if their attempt at a solution applies to this form.

So a man is presented with ten boxes, each one numbered and all empty except for one, which contains an egg. He is told to open each box in sequence. He is also told that he will not know before opening the box that contains the egg that it contains the egg. So once again, the same reasoning applies. The egg cannot be in box 10 because if the man opens box 9 without having discovered the egg, he will know that it is in box 10. Elimination of the other boxes proceeds as before.

Maybe this less sinister and more basic formulation of the paradox will help in their search for a solution.