[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical points

Phil Enns writes, in response to Robert Paul: 

"I probably have not been as charitable as I should be.  So let me try again: 
If 'All men are mortal' means nothing more than 'every man will someday die' 
then the sentence strikes me as being fundamental for some parts of the 
actuarial sciences, ergo it has at least one context where it is scientific."

(a) The sentence can certainly mean much more than 'every man will someday 
die', but it *does* also mean (or at least entail) that every man will someday 
die.

(b) As an assertion an actuary might make, 'every man will someday die' is a 
statistical proposition -- something like this: "The rates of return will be 
better, all things being equal, for investments made on the assumption that 
every man will someday die than they will be on a contrary assumption."  
Actually, I suspect it'd be something more like: "there is a number n such that 
for any given sample of men, all of them will have died before they reach the 
age of n years."

This is pointedly *not* the sense in which Quine and Popper were using the 
sentence.  Moreover, the actuary's assertion is clearly falsifiable -- if it is 
false, then there will be an investment on a contrary assumption that has a 
better rate of return than a comparable investment on the mortality assumption, 
and that return will be achieved in a finite amount of time after the 
investment is made, so if the assertion is false, then the search for 
falsifying evidence will be completed in a finite amount of time.  Similarly, 
if someone can live longer than n years, then if a particular sample is going 
to falsify the assertion, we'll know it in at most n+1 years.

Not so the apodictic (i.e. non-statistical) sense in which Quine and Popper 
were using the sentence -- to find out if some man *is* immortal, you have to 
wait around an infinite amount of time.

Quine & Popper, if I understand their position right, think that things which 
could only be proved false at the end of eternity don't qualify as scientific 
hypotheses. 

Personally, I'm not sure whether or not I think all legitimate scientific 
hypotheses must be falsifiable in that strong sense, but I can understand the 
caution behind asserting that they do.  I am also very comfortable with the 
idea that disciplines labeled as 'science' are not the only sources of insight 
worth the bother.  

Moreover, I am put off by Quine's rhetorical coyness in using this sentence to 
make his point.  There's a sort of sanctimonious, in-crowd-pleasing arrogance 
in using this obvious truth to demonstrate that not every obvious truth is a 
legitimate scientific hypothesis.  I see Quine, in my mind's eye, winking over 
his shoulder at his pals in the special reserved seats behind him on the stage, 
while he lectures us rubes, freshman in his elements of logic course.  "Watch 
this", I can imagine him whispering, "they fall for it every time."

But just because Quine stoops to such manipulative rhetoric doesn't mean the 
point is wrong.  On the other hand, just because the point is right doesn't 
seem to me to have much force either.  As I said earlier on this thread, if 
such an obvious truth is not a scientific truth, so much the worse for 
science's ability to contribute to understanding the human condition.  In other 
words, it seems to me that accepting Quine's point allows one to see that it 
actually backfires by reducing rather than enhancing the worth of science.  
That amuses me much more than thinking Quine just blew a basic bit of logical 
manipulation.

Regards to one and all,
Eric Dean
Washington DC

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