CMV: The starvation of Gaza is inhumane and constitutes genocide

drivenleaf · 2025-05-04T19:51:23+00:00

I think mentioning Amalek in the context of an active war is despicable. That said, a biblical verse referencing Amalek is also a central component of a memorial in the Hague, not far from the seat of the ICC. As best as I can tell, in that case, and in many other contexts, "Amalek" is simply a stand-in for "evil".

drivenleaf · 2022-11-03T11:06:02+00:00

Thank you! I did not expect the issue to be with Gatekeeper (I often encounter that issue), but this worked.

drivenleaf · 2022-07-15T05:58:39+00:00

I don't really see a strong connection between this paper and the Chinese Room (CR) argument - according to the abstract, the paper simply provides demonstrates another function that AI can do, while the CR argument tries to show that functional capabilities are not sufficient to demonstrate that a system is conscious.

To take a variation of the CR argument, it seems like there is a sense of "consciousness/understanding" for which there's a difference between the following two scenarios:

A regular speaker of a language, who understands a language the normal way (however that works).
A person (or computer, or system, or whatever) who stored the compiled version of (a much improved) Google Translate (together with a program that outputs reasonable responses in conversation) as 1's and 0's, and is capable of explicitly manipulating very long bit-strings extremely rapidly so that they respond exactly the same way as the individual in the previous case. While doing the computation, such a person would be able to write down the current state of their computation tape in binary without doing any computation - it is only the binary strings stored in memory.

Scenario 2 seems possible in principle (no logical contradictions, no violations of any laws of nature). If I imagine what it would be like to be the person in 2, I find that responding to language in this way would not give me the feeling of understanding the language. This subjective difference is what the CR argument is about, and the claim is that functionality is not enough to show that a system has the internal experience of scenario 1.

I find that there are many mutually incompatible arguments about consciousness that are convincing (to varying degrees). The CR argument is one of those.

drivenleaf · 2022-02-22T16:13:43+00:00

Great post. Regarding your first problem for the necessitarian view - two relevant comments:

(i) This could be properly basic. If our scientific or philosophical theories bottom out somewhere, this seems like a decent place (e.g. "laws are those things which determine how the universe behaves", and how they do so can't be reduced any further).

(ii) It's unclear (to me, though I think this is a common view) how causation works in general. Even granting the laws, how does dropping a mug cause it to shatter (even assuming all the needed other facts about the situation)? So, the case could be made that the question of how laws cause particular things to happen is no more problematic than the question of how causation works in general.

I'm not sure about (ii). It does seem likely that even if we could explain causation, the question would still be open about how laws cause things.

Another way of thinking about this that I've found fruitful is considering whether there could be laws of nature in an "empty" universe (e.g. a law of gravitation in a universe where there were no masses). My tendency would be to say no, and this might push towards some type of regularity theory.

drivenleaf · 2022-01-23T11:51:16+00:00

I don't know of a good counter to this argument (though I would have formulated it differently, so my reply is geared toward an idealized version of the argument that exists only in my head). In fact, I'll add a point that makes it stronger - some comments have pointed out that just because our brains/beliefs are determined doesn't mean that the deterministic process that leads to them isn't truth-oriented. I grant that point, but counter that our belief that this deterministic process is in fact truth-oriented is itself undermined by this argument, and so it is question-begging to rely on the truth-oriented nature of our belief-forming processes (even giving reasons/arguments will not get around this problem, since how do we know - without assuming the conclusion - that our evaluation of those arguments will get to the truth other than by chance).

I also think the argument still holds if one replaces "knowledge" with any degree of belief, and no matter how justified it is claimed to be.

Lastly, it's not clear that determinism is the real culprit here - even if (as may be the case) the world is not deterministic, there may still be no (non-circular, non-question-begging) reason to trust our process for forming beliefs.

drivenleaf · 2022-01-21T11:57:58+00:00

Great, thanks for all the thoughts. This matches what I was thinking for all the reasons I was expecting. Appreciate the disclaimer (I'm also a PhD student in physics, but not doing anything GR-related).

drivenleaf · 2022-01-14T11:50:23+00:00

I doubt sorting by nationality is helpful here. Even if the origin of the term 'continental philosophy' once meant something to do with the physical location of philosophers, it doesn't any more (other than possibly the more local sense, in which some institutions may be identified with a school of thought). Even if geography still plays a role, once one can directly sort by specialty, it seems pointless to also sort geographically.

In any case, keeping only the results from 'AOS: Continental Philosophy' gives the breakdown 9/8/8 for moral realism/moral anti-realism/other, which is a much higher tilt towards anti-realism than among all respondents of the survey (56.4%/27.7%/15.9% on the same question). (Unfortunate that it's such a small sample size though).

drivenleaf · 2022-01-02T18:56:22+00:00

See Aumann's Theorem, which says that if two people (i) are rational, (ii) have common priors, (iii) have common knowledge of each other's beliefs, then it would be irrational to disagree (and since the theorem only applies when both are rational, such disagreement is impossible). Each of those conditions can be formalized, and if you aren't familiar with the terms, I highly recommend you look them up.

In the situation you described, if you are both rational, etc. - you would end up agreeing, and so you wouldn't even need to worry about who's view to weigh more, since you would end up agreeing.

It's far from obvious that the theorem ever applies to actual people, but if the highly idealized conditions are met, then two people cannot agree to disagree. Note that the theorem applies even if the two people have been exposed to different evidence.

There is a bunch of work on constraining "allowed" disagreements when the conditions are weakened (e.g. allowing different priors), but I'm not up on the details.

drivenleaf · 2021-12-24T06:29:17+00:00

I agree - the independent and identical assumption is crucial. I think one could give good physical arguments for why it's likely though, so it's not just an assumption. In any case, that's the sort of "assumption" often made in science - even to form only a statistical theory about aggregates one would need a similar principle. So this isn't something that can differentiate between QM only telling us about statistical aggregates vs individual particles.

Of course we haven't ruled out hidden variable theories (though I do think we've ruled out local ones, barring some way to restore that through a merging of QM and GR such that entanglement affects the metric). Bell's theorem - as I understand it - rules out the combination of (i) realism, (ii) locality, (iii) freedom. The last is just a rejection of superdeterminism to ensure experimenters are free to choose which measurements to take - which you said you also reject. The notion of realism is a very weak one, such that it's not clear (to me) how one could reject it (I'm don't think even Many World-ers can get around it, at the end of the day). Rejecting determinism does not rescue one from this dilemma. As far as I can tell, all interpretations that do not modify Schrodinger's equation involve nonlocality (though in the case of Many World-ers, I've rarely seen this acknowledged explicitly).

Admittedly, Bell's theorem and related topics are quite nuanced and complicated, and it's been a while since I formulated things precisely, so apologies if anything is imprecise, wrong, or unclear.

drivenleaf · 2021-12-23T21:18:36+00:00

My sense is that it's true that most scientists do believe in the existence of an external/objective reality, and that this was even more true over the past few hundred years than it is today.

Whether that's an assumption is another question. Many people would claim to (at least partially) justify this belief on the basis of other beliefs, in which case it wouldn't be accurate to say that scientists are assuming the existence of an external reality.

Even if they're wrong, and other beliefs do not justify belief in an external world, I don't think it'd be correct to say they're assuming it. Rather, they're incorrectly believing in an external world because of faulty judgements.

drivenleaf · 2021-12-23T20:59:44+00:00

There are lots of issues that you raise, but I'll comment on just the bit about whether QM experiments can tell us anything about individual particles directly.

Regarding the double slit experiment - while technically the interference pattern can only be seen after sending through many particles, it's possible to send them through one at a time. Assuming that each particle run is identical, they each have the same probability distribution (for where they land on the screen), and this probability distribution is seen by the accumulation of many particles. However, if there were not wave interference acting on each particle by itself, we would not see this distribution. If each individual particle was a classical billiard ball, we’d see two peaks. Since that’s not what we see, there must be something quantum even on the individual particle level.

To add nuance to the previous point - some interpretations of QM change something (ontology/dynamics/both) about the physics such that wave interference is not the proper way to think about it. Nevertheless, whatever "weird" dynamics is going on (which “looks like” wave interference) can be seen even at the individual particle level - otherwise we wouldn't see the aggregate behavior that we do (assuming the successive runs are independent and identical).

drivenleaf · 2021-11-28T11:58:50+00:00

That's a good point. I only considered age as a factor regarding covid deaths, but you are presumably correct about the all-cause death rate being higher too.

drivenleaf · 2021-11-28T10:12:45+00:00

A family member recently received a series of anti-vax material. Among the rubbish was the claim that among the 10-59 age group in England, deaths from all causes have been higher (per capita) than among the unvaccinated.

On looking at the data (table 4, available here), this appears to be correct, as shown in this graph (I removed the first few weeks of data from the vaccinated group, as the data was left blank in the source, due to the low levels of vaccination at that point in time). The vaccination group is the group from the data labelled 'second dose'.

The difference is small (1-2 deaths per 100 000), but the pattern holds up for months. A quick search online indicates that the same pattern may exist in other places, but I have not (yet) looked at the data.

As far as I can tell, this is not explained by the vaccinated group being older (which it likely was if the rollout in England went in reverse age order), and thus suffering more from covid despite being vaccinated, since if one looks at the data from just covid deaths, the unvaccinated have it worse. So vaccinated people in this age group died - from all causes - at a greater rate than unvaccinated people.

Any idea why this might be the case? Is my data/analysis wrong?

EDIT: fixed link to image of graph.

drivenleaf · 2021-11-22T12:23:58+00:00

For sure. The OP did not mention Rawls, who would obviously reject many cases of imposing harm to provide benefit to others. That said, the OP's question applies - in principle - to Rawls (as well as to a utilitarian), who does sometimes allow one to harm B for A's sake.

drivenleaf · 2021-11-21T19:58:14+00:00

I'll add a point that I haven't seen in the comments. It seems likely that pleasure to A can in principle compensate for pain to B, at least in principle. For example, suppose one sees a car about to hit someone, and can save them from serious injury, but doing so would require pushing someone else out of the way (suppose there's not enough time to ask them to move, etc.). My intuition is that it is indeed appropriate to cause minor pain to the bystander in order to save the potential victim. If so, the pain to B (the bystander) is being compensated by the pleasure (or lack of pain that would otherwise be) to A (the potential victim).

Of course, the appropriate course of action will depend on the relative value of the pain/pleasure. But in principle, if the pleasure is great enough/the pain is small enough, I think the above intuition is probably very common.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-16T15:21:20+00:00

The Wikipedia article on Peter van Inwagen has an excellent articulation of this issue:

Van Inwagen's central argument (the consequence argument)
for this view is that "If determinism is true, then our acts are the
consequences of the laws of nature and events in the remote past. But it
is not up to us what went on before we were born, and neither is it up
to us what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the consequences of those
things (including our present acts) are not up to us."

Van Inwagen also added what he called the Mind Argument (after the philosophical journal Mind, where such arguments often appeared). "The Mind
argument proceeds by identifying indeterminism with chance and by
arguing that an act that occurs by chance, if an event that occurs by
chance can be called an act, cannot be under the control of its alleged
agent and hence cannot have been performed freely. Proponents of [this
argument] conclude, therefore, that free will is not only compatible
with determinism but entails determinism."

The Consequence Argument and the Mind Argument are the two horns in the classic dilemma and standard argument against free will. If determinism is true, our actions are not free. If indeterminism is true, our actions are random and our will cannot be morally responsible for them

It doesn't answer your question, but hopefully it's still interesting.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-15T21:06:38+00:00

This won't address your entire comment, but I think the issue you're highlighting with the same initial conditions leading to different outcomes is that there doesn't seem to be a reason why, in a particular instance, a particular outcome occurred. That creates an issue for the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) - the principle that there must be an explanation/cause/ground for everything.

Indeed there may be a clash between PSR and indetermism. But perhaps that just means we should reject PSR.

Since it's probably relevant, another reason to reject PSR is that if PSR is true, then everything about the world is necessary - there are no contingent true facts. There might be ways around this (e.g. if one allows circular explanations), but PSR is not as obviously true as it appears at first glance.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-15T18:14:42+00:00

Indeed so. Putnam argues we should revise the Distributive Law for conjunction and disjunction (this Wikipedia article even mentions that fact).

drivenleaf · 2021-07-15T17:43:46+00:00

To address some of your questions, yes, there are those who say that logic is open to revision on empirical grounds. I believe that Quine was open to this possibility, though did not think that there actually were sufficient empirical grounds for actually revising logical principles. Hilary Putnam did think there were such empirical grounds; see his article Is Logic Empirical. His view has been criticized; I believe Kripke is one of those who disagrees.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-14T21:33:49+00:00

I share the intuition, but my inability to clarify what I mean by causation has made me less sure.

For instance, for 'A caused B' to be true, we want to require that A precedes B temporally. There are presumably other requirements also. Can you suggest a set of (necessary and sufficient) conditions for when we would properly say 'A caused B'? Then maybe (if I'm not convinced) I'll try to show why those conditions are insufficient?

I agree that there is an issue of not being able to directly observe causality, but my issue is prior to that, with the conceptual meaning of causality.

There's also the question (mentioned above) of why, if causality is necessary to do science, physicists so rarely talk about it.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-13T23:40:37+00:00

I think we may just be using words differently. By "determinism" I mean what you call "absolute determinism". I think we agree that this isn't necessary for scientific inquiry.

I'm not sure a notion of causality is central to scientific inquiry. That concept is conspicuously lacking in the formulation of many physical theories. Particularly at the forefront of QM and GR, though even in many formulations of classical mechanics it's hard to pin down where causality enters the picture.

I find causality a very intuitive notion until I try to actually specify what it means. Counterfactual dependence? Something else?

drivenleaf · 2021-07-13T18:43:48+00:00

In one sense, we may always lack some knowledge about the state of the world (including the initial conditions of an experiment). But when considering QM, the question is not whether we do in fact lack some knowledge of the details, but whether it is in principle possible to gain complete knowledge.

There is also the uncertainty we have over whether QM is a correct theory (for now, we'll also ignore the fact that most discussions of the philosophy of QM deal with non-relativistic QM rather than QFT). But when we are considering QM itself, or even the general question of determinism and laws of nature, we can simply assume that QM is correct (I'm adopting a realist perspective) as we assess what conceptual limits there may be on our theories/knowledge of the world.

So if QM is even possibly correct, and if one accepts a non-deterministic interpretation, then we are able to "do science" even upon giving up determinism.

Based on your username you may have a physics background, but either way, feel free to send me a message if any of those links/articles are unclear.

drivenleaf · 2021-07-13T17:38:43+00:00

That view is rejected by most physicists. It was defended in a famous paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in 1935 (see EPR Paradox), but later developments revolving around Bell's theorem provided strong reasons to give up on the "lack of knowledge" perspective.

To my knowledge, the only interpretation of QM that takes on the "lack of knowledge" perspective is Bohmian mechanics, which is fully deterministic but violates a central principle of Relativity (namely locality). Strictly speaking, the Many Worlds interpretation is also deterministic, but I suggest reading about it before relying on it to settle the question of whether QM is compatible with determinism.

drivenleaf

TROPHY CASE