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In late May 2013, I had the great pleasure of taking part in the workshop ''David Chalmers, Constructing the World. Author meets critics''. |
| The workshop was organized by the Emma Noether Research group ''Understanding and the A Priori'' and took place in the Stucksaal, Poppelsdorfer Schloss, Bonn. |
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The title of the book is a homage to Carnap's 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, usually translated as either The Logical Construction of the World or The Logical Structure of the World.* Carnap originally wanted to call the book ''The logical constructs of concepts''.
The title (Like Carnap's) should be heard as self-consciously absurd.
I am not really constructing the world. But one can see the current book as trying to carry off a version of Carnap's project in the Aufbau: Roughly, constructing a blueprint for a blueprint, by providing a vocabulary in which such a blueprint can be given.
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More specificly, the aim is to specify the structure of the world in the form of certain truths from which all truths can be arrived...
An intellect which a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future, just like the past, would be present before its eyes.According to Chalmers, Laplaces thesis says that the world is in a certain sense comprehensible.
In his manuscript "De Alphabeto Cogitationum Humanarum" Leibniz suggest that there is a level of concepts so simple that they make up an alphabet from which all thoughts can be composed:Chalmers goes on (p.2) to talk about contemporary cognitive science:
The alphabet of human thoughts is a primitive catalog of concepts, that is, of those that cannot reduce to any clearer definitions.
The linguist Anna Wierzbicka, for example, has argued that every expression in every human language can be analyzed in terms of a limited number of ''semantic primes'' that occur in every language.Carnap introduces a similar construction (see section 3):
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Her 2009 book ''Experience, Evidence and Sense'' listed the following 63 primes:
Substantives: I, you, someone, something, people, body.
Relation substantives: Kind, part.
Determines: This, the same, other/else.
Quantifiers: One, two, some, all, much/many.
Evaluators: Good, bad.
Descriptors: Big, small.
Mental predicates: Think, know, want, feel, see, hear.
Speech: Say, words, true.
Actions and events: Do, happen, move, touch.
Existence, possession: To be (somewhere), there is, to have, to be.
Life and death: Live, die.
Time: When/time. now, before, after, a long time, a short time. for some time, in a moment.
Space: Where, place, here, above, below, far. near, side, inside.
Logic: Not, maybe, can, because, if.
Augmentors: Very,more.
Similiarity: Like.
- Carnap defines qualia in terms of phenomenal similarity.Still,
- He defines spacetime in terms of qualia.
- He defines other minds in terms of behavior.
- He defines culture in terms of behavior and other minds.
The Aufbau is widely held to be a failure. It is also widely held that no project like it can succeed [p. 7].
Knowability and skepticism: In the Aufbau, Carnap uses his construction to argue that there is no question, whose answer is in principle unattainable by science. This is a version of the notorious Knowability Thesis in epistemology...But, in the book, ''Constructing the World'', Chalmers argues that it is possible to revive Carnaps framework (with some alterations).
This thesis is now widely rejected, for both formal and intutive reasons [p. 26].
In particular it contains:A really cool device for philosophical purposes:
(i) A supercomputer to store the information and to perform any necessary calculations;
(ii) Tools that use P to zoom in on arbitrary regions of the world, and to deliver information about the distribution of matter in those regions;
(iii) A virtual reality device to produce direct knowledge of any phenomenal states described in Q;
(iv) A ''you are here'' marker to convey the information in I; and
(v) Simulation devices that deliver information about counterfactuals, exhibiting the physical and phenomenal states that will be produced under various counterfactual circumstances specified in PQI above.
The Cosmoscope Argument [p. 114 -120].
Say a subject utters S. They could then in principle use a Cosmoscope to investigate the truth of S. One could use this to come to know very many ordinary truths: Who shot Kennedy, did a comet kill the dinosaurs, is there life on other planets?But, obviously, there are problems. According to Chalmers:
This might require a supercomputer with infinite storage, at least if our universe is infinite. It seems likely that a physical Cosmoscope that accurately describes our world (Infinite capacity, infinitary reasoning) could not exist in our world...Youtube: David Chalmers on the Cosmoscope.
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Another worry about a complete Cosmoscope in empirical mode is that it must enable one to monitor one's own current and future states, leading to potential paradoxes.
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etc.
We lose almost all sense of the applicational struggles we face in real life employments, if we too readily idealize away our inherent epistemological limitations through appeals to cosmoscopes, carnapian tests and ''pie in the sky''- bayesianism.
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(It) Under-estimates the delicacy and irregularities of arguments.
In science: We now say that Laplace confused determinism with predictability.Mark Wilson ended his talk by saying that ''Nothing is that easy'',
Quine's view in 2D, spelled out:Take home:
1. There is not a single rational way to respond to experience, recalcitrant or otherwise.
2. Pragmatic factors determine the choice among strategies for belief revision.
3. So, Bayesianism is at best a first approximation to the right story about confirmation and rational belief revision.
What is rational to think is a joint function of the variety of ways we can see to make sense of the evidence and practical contraints on theorizing given interests and abilities. Whatever view of meaning we adopt should reflect this. Quine's view accomodates this better than the rigid Bayesianism needed to get Chalmers' project going.
1. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral self-discipline.We did become a little wiser on epistemology:
2. Investigation of the nature, causes, or principles of reality, knowledge, or values, based on logical reasoning rather than empirical methods.
Epistemology (Episteme, meaning ''knowledge, understanding'', and logos, meaning ''study of'') is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge. It questions what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and the possible extent to which a given subject or entity can be known. Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.Perhaps, it all fitted nicely within the tradition of ''analytic philosophy'':
- A broad philosophical tradition characterized by an emphasis on clarity and argument (often achieved via modern formal logic and analysis of language) and a respect for the natural sciences.(And) It certainly fitted within the tradition of ''metaphysics'':
(Sometimes: The more specific set of developments of early 20th-century philosophy. E.g. the work of Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, G. E. Moore, Gottlob Frege, and logical positivists).
Metaphysics is a traditional branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined.
Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:
1. What is there?
2. What is it like?
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Constructing the World. David Chalmers Workshop. 24 - 26 May 2013, Bonn. |
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3 days in the Speisesaal des Kurfursten. Poppelsdorfer Schloss, Bonn. |
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Ask him, if he came to this conclusion rationally?
With this follow up:
- If he says ''Yes'' -> But there are no decisions along the way?
- If he says ''No'' -> Makes his argumentation nonsense!
For all our complex ideas are ultimately resolvable into simple ideas, of which they are compounded and originally made up, though perhaps their immediate ingredients, as I may say so, are also complex ideas.Centuries later, the ''Definability Thesis'' states:
John Locke, 1690.
There is a compact class of primitive expressions such that all expressions are definable in terms of expressions in that class.A program, which is associated with people like Bertrand Russell.
- Carnap defines qualia in terms of phenomenal similarity.Over the years, Carnaps ideas have received a lot of criticism.
- He defines spacetime in terms of qualia.
- He defines other minds in terms of behavior.
- He defines culture in terms of behavior and other minds.
Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings are created by the activities of the mind.
While the surroundings created by the Buddha are pure and free from defilement, those created by ordinary people are not.
Both life and death arises from the mind and exist within the mind.
Hence, when the mind that concerns itself with life and death passes on, the world of life and death passes with it.
The five faculties of power are:A german book (that I looked in) also had a few quotable lines:
First, the faith to believe. Second, the will to make the endeavor. Third, the faculty of alertness. Fourth, the ability to concentrate ones mind. And fifth, the ability to maintain a clear vision.
These are the five faculties necessary to obtain enlightenment.
Der alter ist unwichtig, es andert sich doch jeden tag.
Zwichen dich und deinem Ziel steht nur einem person: Du.Indeed, life is philosophy or philosophy is life.
Der wille in dir.
-Simon
Simon Laub
www.simonlaub.net
