The sceptic's round

Another day, another go at the sceptic. I have covered scepticism enough in my blog for you to already know what it is. Let's use the argument from ignorance

I do not know that I am not living in the matrix
If I do not know I am not living in the matrix I do not know anything
Therefore I do not know anything

There are large numbers of arguments for an against that deductive argument (it is valid by the way). I have touched on some before.

The normal sceptic position is that any claim to know something cannot be true because it could be the matrix giving you that information and therefore it is not reality and therefore false.

Last night I was thinking there is a type of knowledge though that does not suffer from the sceptic objection (I think).

I am sitting in the pub, the sceptic would say it is not a real pub but the matrix and I could not know otherwise. I will give him that one for now.

All the guys in the pub take turns to buy the drinks until only I am left.

I know it is my round (or if it was a mate's turn I know its his round). Regardless of whether I am in the matrix or not I know its his round. So I do know something.

So I know something, the conclusion of the argument is false.

True or False

I managed to get back to uni and Philosophy studies last night for the first time in many many weeks. I have to say that these moments are a light in an otherwise dark world for me at the moment. It always gives me great pleasure to spend just a few hours thinking about thinking.

Last night's lecture on apriori justification was fascinating and got me thinking. The discussion was around whether apriori knowledge is defeasible. It is somewhat like science. If a theory in science is not falsifiable then it is considered not to be a valid theory. Same for apriori knowledge. If it not possible to falsify a piece of apriori belief then where does it stand in the scheme of things epistemically?

So here is the problem. Lets look at a scientific theory. If it is only a good theory if it is falsifiable then we have a paradox. The falsification argument is used against the creationists who relentlessly adjust their theory to accommodate all evidence against it. Fair enough.

But if a theory is falsifiable (and it being defeasible is a condition of it being a valid theory) then we have an issue. For it to be possible to be defeasible requires a scenario which would actually make it false. Be clear here, I am not saying we know what that is, just that there must something out there that makes it false. See where this is going? Yep, if there is something out there that would make this false then it is already false. I.e. by nature of it being a theory, if making it a worthwhile theory includes the rule it must be falsifiable then it is already false. We may not know what makes it false but it is nevertheless false.

So by definition all theories are wrong. If they are not then it is only because they are not defeasible and therefore not theories that deserve the claim to scientific credibility.

Apology not accepted

The times this weekend had an interesting column by Professor Anthony Grayling. He was writing about apologies and what they mean. He observed that an effective apology is one shows true regret not just for the consequences of ones actions but also the motivation for those actions. An apology that is only made due to being caught is a hollow one.

This is an interesting point and it occurred to me that gratitude works in a slightly different way. To show that you are truly sorry you must be sorry for the consequences of your actions (a first order event) and also that you are sorry for having done something which you recognize as bad (a second order event).

But gratitude appears only to work at a first order level. When I thank you for, say, helping me lift something I am only grateful for the action and consequences. We have little concern of whether the action or help was motivated by the right intentions. Why is this? Why do we only care about intentions and motivations when things go wrong?

That said, it is not uncommon to thanks someone who is incapable of helping but is not in a position to fulfill their intention. For example, I ask you for help lifting something and the response is yes, I would love to but my back will not allow it. In that case the normal polite response is to thank the helper anyway. I.e. we recognize their motivation and desire to help even if it cannot be fulfilled.

This appears to contradict my earlier claim that we are not concerned with their motivations for helping, only the consequences. Their seems to be an order of precedent appearing in the way these things work.

1) If you do good and help me (actually perform the action) I will thank you for your first order event and leave it at that.
2) If you are unable to help but willing only then will I look at your second order motivation to do good and help and recognize that (and thank you).

But apologies do seem to work this way. One does not tend to have a second chance at apologizing. If an apology is deemed hollow then a repeat of the apology tends not to be accepted. You have to get it right first time. You have to show regret for the second order event as well as the first order event whereas in gratitude you accept the first order thanks and leave it at that.

This fits nicely with the views outlined in Plato's Republic. There was a debate about the being good and bad. A bad person does not want to get caught at being bad and the best way to do this is to appear good while achieving your evil aims. In fact the better you are at being bad, the more good you appear. So the really bad people in the world can appear to be really really good. Why does this work? Well we do not look into the second order motivations behind good actions. We take them at face value. We do not tend to question the moral character of the people who do us good. But we do for the people who do bad.

And so the truly bad amongst us rise to power all the while appearing to do good and achieving their terrible aims.

Maybe we should rebalance the world and start looking more carefully at the motivations of the good for it is there that the bad men hide.

Planned if you do, planned if you don't

The newspapers today are full of opinion about a set of leaked documents regarding the Iraq war. All guns blazing for Blair. It raises an interesting dilemma for politicians and the media. In the article in the Telegraph the government comes under heavy criticism for denying they were planning to invade Iraq as early as 2002. Later in the article they accuse the government of not having any plans for the rebuilding of the nation post arrival and defeat of Baghdad.

If we take what the media are saying at face value then the government looks like it cannot win. Let's all be sensible and assume that our defense department has plans for many occasions, all theoretical. Not unreasonable to assume that high probability targets have more advanced and detailed plans than others. On that basis we would assume that theoretical plans for invading Zimbabwe are available. This must be the case as the PM will want to know, when deciding what to do about this or that dictator, what the options are. One assumes that one does not decide to go to war and then worry about plans and chances of success. One would hope.

So the media accusation that Blair told parliament that there were no plans to invade Iraq is not really a surprise. It depends what you mean by plans. On the one hand you can have plans (in the strict sense of the word) but have no 'intention' of using them. This may have been the case for Blair. The question could legitimately have been asked about 'plans' and not intentions and it is the PM's right to interpret the question and answer about 'intentions'.

The second aspect of this is also a bit strange. Lets assume Blair did have the 'intention' to invade Iraq (for whatever reason) when asked the question. This question was raised some time prior to the actual invasion in PM question time. How should he respond? It would seem bloody foolish to answer anything other than no unless you assume that Iraq cannot pick up PM question time on the parliament channel.

I think Blair, while guilty of many many things in this event, is clean in his handling of these questions.

What is worrying is the lack of plans for the rebuilding of Iraq after victory. Maybe something for the defense dept to worry about for the future. Clearly a need for end to end life-cycle of a war and not just the military bit is needed. If the plans for the economy were carried out in the same theoretical way as the military plans then maybe things would turn out differently.

For a start military campaigns of any type are tightly financially controlled. Can you imagine the effect on the ground.

Commander: "Emergency, we need 2 choppers to airlift out wounded and an apache to take out the two tanks pinning us down on the ridge".

Controller: "No problem commander, just complete the business case documentation and submit to central command, copy twice to the treasury and only after sign off from the health and safety officer"

But there may be some advantages to financial controls. Now wars are not about territory (nobody wins resources of enough value to cover the costs these days) but about ideology (although prevention of resource control by perceived enemies and keeping open free trade is noted) or trade. One can start to see the costs of war (especially under end to end planning) starting to look ridiculous. The idea that we go to war over right or wrong is long gone, the world simply is not that black and white.

Eventually the cost benefits of war will be such that negotiation and sanctions will be more likely. As the bean counters arm themselves with the latest versions of Excel and supercomputers to model the effects of global price rises in corn the battles will be fought in the grey rooms of the accountants. Lives will be lost still, but mostly from the stresses on middle age accountants.

Making a meal of things

Is it just me or is the concept of a main course turning into a meat choice plus a set of sides. It seems to be an increasing trend in some restaurants to offer some kind of main part of a dish (duck, beef etc etc) with some form of sauce and then say 'would you like sides, your main course does not come with vegetables'.

Please stop.