The Appeal to Regulative Assumptions

Contrary to what you might expect, pragmatists don't typically try to undermine the argument presented in my last post (i.e. the problem of lost facts). Instead, a fairly common reply - what I call the Appeal to Regulative Assumptions, or ARA for short - involves making a concession of sorts. (see esp. Misak's book Truth & The End of Inquiry). This runs as follows (this is a very rough paraphrase - not Misak's words):

We pragmatists do not assert (T), nor are we committed to saying there is any justification to do so. Our claim is that (T) is a regulative assumption of inquiry. This is to say that one must assume (T) in order to inquire rationally into the truth of any hypothesis. If one did not assume that properly conducted inquiry would lead one to the truth*, there would be no point inquiring.

There is a caveat to this, as indicated by 'truth*'. We have to bear in mind that the Peircean thinks of truth (esp. qua aim of inquiry) in a unique way, a way which Peirce discusses in The Fixation of Belief. Peirce maintains that what we aim for when we inquire is stable belief (n.b. this is a descriptive, not a normative claim). Crucially, this does not mean we are dogmatic, that we wish to cling to any old belief come hell or high water (the so-called 'method of tenacity'). Rather, Peirce is saying that in seeking truth we seek a belief that will remain stable even in the face of the very best future inquiries, even in the face of all future evidence. (Several commentators have likened this to the notion of superassertibility found in Crispin Wright's Truth & Objectivity, which is ironic, given that Wright is highly critical of (what he takes to be) the Peircean conception of truth in that book).

So the claim involved in the ARA is that if one does not assume that properly conducted inquiry will yield truth*, that is, yield a stable or superassertible belief, there would be no point inquiring.

Now this seems to me a very risky move for the pragmatist to make. The ARA involves invoking a new technical notion (the 'regulative assumption') which requires a good deal of unpacking and explanation, as well as some intuitive or at least theoretical precedents. (We find the latter in Kant's first critique, but the relevant (rather obscure) passages provide scant reason to endorse or deploy the notion without the confines of Kant's architectonic). The ARA also relies on the controversial claim that truth* is our only possible aim in inquiry, when most people nowadays have abandoned this idea. (see e.g. in philosophy of science, where in the face of arguments like the pessimistic meta-induction, many consider empirical adequacy or warranted assertibility the most we can sensibly aim for).

We should also perhaps acknowledge that fans of the problem of lost facts might find this unsatisfying on a more basic level. The problem seems to show that even merely assuming T is true leads to a contradiction (in cases of lost facts). Why isn't this a good enough reason to abandon (T)? Shouldn't we eschew assuming things that lead to contradictions, even if that means revising our cognitive goals (or lowering our logical expectations)?

Thus, the direction I'm leaning at the moment is that the pragmatist's best defence is to provide two things:

1. A demonstration that either (T) does not lead to contradictions concerning lost facts, or (T) does generate such contradictions, but this is non-problematic.
   
2. An explanation and defence of the notion of a 'regulative assumption' which establishes (what Wright calls) an entitlement to expect that suitably diligent inquiry will yield the truth*, that is, an entitlement to assume T.
   

This Morning's Musings

An hour's worth of sketchy ideas for a possible paper on the Problem of Lost Facts...

Charles Sanders Peirce was the founder of ‘pragmatism’ - a view about the appropriate method for settling intellectual and metaphysical disputes. Peirce aspired to use this method to elucidate the ‘pragmatic meaning’ of important concepts such as truth. Specifically, the purpose of the method is to describe the role those concepts (in this case truth) play in our practices (in this case inquiry). Many Peirceans consider a claim such as the following to be part of a pragmatist conception of truth (n.b. the nested nature of the beast is marked by parentheses)

(T) If a hypothesis H is true, then (if inquiry into H were pursued long enough and well enough, then H would be believed).

(T) faces a standard objection, which is often called the ‘problem of lost facts’. (There are other objections of course, about triviality in particular, but I'm not tackling them here). I propose to defend (T) against this counter-argument, which begins with the putative lost fact that “Churchill sneezed 59 times in 1945” - a hypothesis we’ll call H1:

1. If a hypothesis H is true, then (if inquiry into H were pursued long enough and well enough, then H would be believed). (i.e. we assume (T) for reductio)
   
2. H1 is true. (Supported by the broadly realist intuition that there is some definite number of times Churchill sneezed in 1945. Prima facie it does not matter that we are unable to determine the correct number.)
   
3. If H1 is true, then (if inquiry concerning H1 were pursued long enough and well enough then H1 would be believed).
   
4. It is not the case that (if inquiry concerning H1 were pursued long enough and well enough then H1 would be believed). (i.e. the relevant fact is ‘lost’)
   
5. So H1 is not true.
   
6. H1 is true and H1 is not true. (i.e assuming T generates a contradiction.)
   
7. So it is not the case that if a hypothesis H is true, then (if inquiry into H were pursued long enough and well enough, then H would be believed). (i.e. by RAA the Peircean conception of truth is false.)
   

My attempts to render this formally suggest it is valid...

1. ∀x (Fx ⊃ (Gx ⊃ Hx)) Premise
   
2. ∃x (Fx) Premise
   
3. ∃x (Fx ⊃ (Gx ⊃ Hx)) From 1 & 2
   
4. ∃x ¬ (Gx ⊃ Hx) Premise
   
5. ¬ (∃x (Fx)) From 1-4
   
6. ∃x (Fx) ∧ ¬ (∃x (Fx)) From 1-5
   
7. ¬ ∀x (Fx ⊃ (Gx ⊃ Hx)) From 1-6
   

...since it relies on fairly safe logical moves such as the universal-particular syllogism, modus tollens and RAA. My current suspicion is that the fault with this argument lies in premise 4. Specifically, I’m not sure the opponent of pragmatism can get away with straight up asserting that H1 is lost. Isn’t the most they can assert that it is possible or perhaps likely that H1 is lost - that no amount of inquiry will lead us to the relevant sort of belief? If so, does this substantially weaken the argument (or am I being overly optimistic?)

Premise 2 is also a bit fishy though. Perhaps its prima facie harmlessness is only prima facie.

Petition & Impact

I think it's well worth all UK academics thinking about whether or not they wish to sign this petition. I did.

Feminist Metaphysics

These are some thoughts I had recently after a meeting of my reading group at Sheffield on Feminism. I should make it clear from the outset that I consider myself a feminist, though some of what follows will no doubt strike some as somehow antithetical to contemporary philosophical feminism. I don't see it that way, but as ever I welcome comments and criticism...

Is there such a thing as ‘feminist metaphysics’? I don’t think so. Sally Haslanger (in her piece on Feminism & Metaphysics in Cambridge Companion to Feminism in Philosophy) rightly observes that whether you’re a realist or anti-realist is essentially irrelevant to central feminist concerns about how women are treated. Sure, sexist individuals may try to appeal to some ‘essential features of’ or ‘biological facts about’ women in order to justify treating them differently. Those people make a very familiar error – trying to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’. One can believe in a fixed essence for women and still consider that essence quite irrelevant to questions of social policy, just as one can admit to various biological facts about the difference between people of African and Caucasian descent without thinking it has any moral or political significance for how we should treat the two groups. Once that’s been conceded, we can recognise that one’s stance on metaphysical issues has nothing to do with one’s stance on feminist issues.

In our reading group on this article, someone suggested the following responses to this line of thought. First, ordinary metaphysicians do not, by and large, concern themselves with analysing the concept ‘woman’, nor with any other concepts generally of most interest to feminists (they’re usually too busy worrying about time, causation, dispositions, etc.). Whilst it may not matter to questions of social policy what constitutes a ‘woman’, it MAY matter, and even if it doesn’t, what makes a person a woman will certainly be interesting for feminists investigating (e.g.) issues about gender identity, trans-sexuality, etc. Thus, feminism has a role to play in metaphysics in the following sense: feminists should start working on those neglected areas of metaphysics that are interesting to and relevant for feminists. In doing so, the thought goes, they are doing ‘feminist metaphysics’, since there is a clear political agenda in the offing (to draw attention to feminist issues and if possible get them to command some respect among ‘ordinary’ metaphysicians).

This is clearly a laudable enterprise. Nevertheless, I remains unconvinced that it shows there is such a thing as feminist metaphysics.

If Sally is doing a scientific investigation into the nature of a virus, she is doing virology. Sally is still doing virology if her motivation is to save the lives of millions of innocent people. Just as Sally is still doing virology if her motivation is that she thinks that viruses are neat. Motivation does not define an area of inquiry.

If the results of Sally’s inquiry are of interest to terrorists who want to manufacture biological weapons, that does not mean that Sally is doing Terrorist Virology. Sally is still doing plain old Virology. The people to whom the results of an inquiry are relevant also does not define the area of inquiry in question, since any inquiry may be relevant to any number of different groups.

My intuition is that what defines an area of inquiry is most likely to be its subject-matter, perhaps combined with the methods employed. If that’s right, then feminists doing metaphysics are, to the best of my knowledge, doing plain old metaphysics, regardless of their motives and regardless of whether their results are interesting or important for feminist philosophy.

So, the only sense I can make of the idea of ‘feminist metaphysics’ is that it is ordinary metaphysics that is (a) motivated by feminist concerns, (b) relevant or interesting to feminists or (c) done by someone who happens to be a feminist. All of those things still seem to be plain old metaphysics to me, though I don’t dispute that having a label for those areas of inquiry might be rather useful (though I wonder if such a label could possibly have a determinate extension).

Hiatus

From tomorrow onwards and for the next few months, I'm mounting a big push in the interest of furthering my academic career (perhaps I should say, in the interest of acquiring an academic career). In doing so I'm trimming down my life to its bare essentials, which will mean no posts on here for at least a month or two. Wish me luck.

At Last... A Fellow TED Addict!

Phew. I am not alone. It turns out Virginia Heffernan is also addicted to the inspirational website hosting talks given at TED (the annual Technology, Education and Design conference).

Once you start watching TED talks, ordinary life falls away. The corridor from Silicon Alley to Valley seems to crackle, and a new in-crowd emerges: the one that loves Linux, organic produce, behavioral economics, transhistorical theories and “An Inconvenient Truth.” Even though there are certain TED poses that I don’t warm to — the dour atheist, the environmental scold — the crowd as a whole glows with charisma. I love their greed for hope, their confidence in ingenuity, their organized but goofy ways of talking and thinking.

Thanks again to Richard.

Belated Photo of the Day

Yesterday's photos were a disappointment, so I'm offering you something by someone much more talented. Check out this extraordinary 100 meter long photograph by Simon Hoegsberg. Truly inspired. (Thanks Richard!)