[lit-ideas]
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2011 17:33:47 +0200
** For Your Eyes Only **
** High Priority **
** Reply Requested by 9/10/2011 (Saturday) **
It is just most unfortunate that you're confused on so many points that
it is hopeless, as it generally the case with those who affected by
idiotic philosophy (in this case, as I gather 'popperianism' whatever
the hell that is) tend to impute their inability to understand to
"philosophy"
consider mcevoy, s/he/it has the property of being called "Donal"
s/he/it has the modal property of "being possibly called [karl]"
as ms mcevoy may notice there is no obfuscation, properties are
satisfied ro not, modal properties are not to be satisfied by the same
models
Best of luck
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ξε ν’, γγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀ ὅτι τ δε
κείμεθα, το ς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
/begin/read__>sig.file: postal address
palma
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>>> Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> 9/10/2011 5:16 PM >>>
A "necessity" works as a prohibition on what can happen. If it 'logical
necessity', and an example is 'If A, then A', this 'necessity' prohibits
it ever being the case as a matter of logic that A can be true and its
negation, non-A, also true. If it is 'physical necessity' as in a law of
nature, and an example is 'E=mc2', this 'necessity' prohibits it ever
being the case as a matter of physics that there can ever be 'E' such
that it equals something other than 'mc2'.
The prohibitive effect of a physical law reflects the fact that the
logical form of a universal generalisation ['UG'], which may be given as
"All As are Bs", has no 'existential import' but merely asserts that
there cannot be an instance of 'A' that is 'non-B'. This also means that
events may be the product of physical necessity, i.e. of some level of
law-like prohibition such that they could not be to some extent
otherwise (i.e. to the extent prohibited by some law), without being
fully determined to every extent. For example, if we try to suspend a
car from an ordinary cotton thread, physical laws may prohibit as
impossible that the cotton thread will not snap, but this prohibitive
effect of physical laws may not suffice to mean there is no leeway as to
when the thread will snap (to the smallest possible measurement) or no
leeway to where exactly the falling car will land (to the smallest
possible measurement).
It is quite simple to say, a la Tarski, that a physical necessity of
the above kind is a 'fact' if the UGs used to express such a necessity
are true and if their truth is not merely coincidental but reflects a
necessity in nature. And we can test the truth of such a set of UGs by
obervation. There is nothing "utterly unclear" about this.
What is "utterly unclear" (at least to me) is why we need obfuscatory
and high-sounding talk of things like "a modal property (hence a
property)" to understand this. This is the kind of philosopher's talk
that makes careful people check they still have their wallet.
Donal
Checking his wallet
London
From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, 9 September 2011, 8:23
Subject: [lit-ideas] as for 'fact'
if necessity is a modal property (hence a property) it is utterly
unclear what it would be for a property to 'be' a fact, is that a
statement of identity? if so, it is very similar to claims of the
laughable idiocy of truth is beauty und so weiter
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Λακεδαιμονίοις
ἀ ὅτι τ δεκείμεθα, το ς κείνων ῥήμασι
πειθόμενοι./begin/read__>sig.file: postal
addresspalmaUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal Philosophy3rd floor of Memorial
Tower BuildingHoward College CampusDurban 4041South AfricaTel off: [+27]
031 2601591 (sec: Mrs. Yolanda Hordyk) [+27] 031-2602292Fax [+27]
031-2603031mobile 07 62 36 23 91 calling from overseas +[27] 76
2362391EMAIL: palma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx: palma@xxxxxxxxxxxx OFFICE # IS
290@Mtb *only when in Europe*: inst. J. Nicod29 rue d'Ulmf-75005 paris
franceemail me for details if needed at
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>>> Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> 9/8/2011 8:01 PM >>>
A week and a half ago I wrote this response in the above thread (which
explains for example why, logically, from one set of initial conditions,
A, nothing may be inferred as to another set of "initial conditions", B)
only to be met by a barrage of silence and the comparative analytical
spaghetti of sharia law. I do not ask much, a simple "Popper is of
course correct" would do. From the whole list please.
Donal
London
From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, 28 August 2011, 2:05
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Necessity is not an established fact, but an
interpretation
--- On Sun, 28/8/11, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Necessity is not an established fact, but an
interpretation
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, 28 August, 2011, 0:18
On 8/27/11 4:12 PM, Robert Paul wrote:
Donal wrote
...
Cannot "necessity" be both a fact [e.g. it is the case that there is a
universal law such that "All Xs are Ys"] and also an interpretation
[i.e. we interpret, or theorise, the correlation between X and Y as one
of 'necessity', as opposed to contingency]. If neither excludes the
other, then the fact 'necessity' can be regarded as an interpretative
device does not exclude it being also regarded as a fact, and indeed
being a fact. When we ask whether interpreting a relation in terms of
'necessity' is correct, we are asking whether it is true that such a
relation holds, and if it is true it holds then it is a fact that there
is such a relation.
I don't know what it would mean for necessity to be a fact or not be a
fact. I'd always thought that 'necessity,' and questions about its use
arose when one was confronted with expressions like, 'the conclusion of
a valid argument follows necessarily (i.e., it doesn't just happen to
follow) from its premises,' or "'x is is identical with x' is
necessarily true." Facts usually hide in 'that clauses' (where they
really do no work, e.g. 'It is a fact that the earth has two magnetic
poles,' just means 'The earth has two magnetic poles.' If I were asked
to give some examples of facts, I'd give examples like the foregoing,
along with the fact that if I touch my nose with my right index finger,
my right elbow will be bent. If someone replies she didn't mean facts
that so-and-so, but just plain unadorned facts,
I wouldn't understand what she meant.
Donal gives this account:
This leaves open in what way is 'necessity' "established". Taking the
"necessity" in a 'universal law' or, better perhaps, 'universal
generalisation' ['UG']:- such a UG as "All swans are white" cannot be
established by induction though it may, conjecturally and
non-inductively, be falsified by a counter-example such as a black swan.
But even if we had empirical omniscience, so that we could survey the
whole universe and observe that the only colour swans came in was white,
this would not be enough to establish "necessity" in the sense of law:
it would not show that a non-white swan was not a physical possibility.
So there is a further sense in which "necessity" cannot be
"established": to assert "necessity" as a relation between phenomena is
to assert something beyond a universal but contingent link between
phenomena - yet what we observe, even if it were the whole universe, is
consistent with any UG that holds being only contingently true.
As far as I can tell, scientific 'laws' are empirical generalizations;
they are not necessary truths or true 'of necessity.' That is, if
they're falsifiable, they can't be true necessariy. My first cousin is
so necessarily, in virtue of our sharing at least one set of
grandparents, which entails that at least at least one of my cousin's
parents is a sibling of at least one of my cousin's parents. Maybe I
should
draw a diagram... In any event, that Alice is my first cousin is a
contingent fact, but what makes her my first cousin is a relation which
would make anyone who stands in that relation to me,
my first cousin. I'm not clear about what an omniscient being's
all-knowing would have to do with the contingency or necessity of
things: this being is said to be empirically omniscient (although
it might know a few logical truths), which means, I think, that what it
knows is what happens, what is the case, here and now. Otherwise, we
might be faced, as Medieval theologians were,
with the problem of God's knowledge of 'future contingents.' If God,
who does not exist in time, knows everything (and if what he knows
cannot be otherwise) then what we see as the contingency
of the future is an illusion. Everything that happens, happens
necessarily. God, who has his whole being at once knows everything at
once; his knowing it makes it true, and necessarily true.
So, the omniscient observer sees only time slices in which things are
this way or that way, and its seeing that all swans are black at t, does
not make 'All swans are black,' a necessary truth,
for at t+1, it may observe a white one.
Donal:
Thus Popper rightly claims that the whether there exists even one
natural law, or natural "necessity", is a metaphysical question. It
cannot be "established" empirically. All that can be "established"
empirically, and then only conjecturally and non-inductively, is the
non-existence of a claimed 'natural law' by adducing a falsifying
counter-example.There are no logical relations (necessity being a
logical or mathematical notion) between objects or states of affairs.
'The only possibility is logical possibility; the only impossibility is
logical impossibility.' I'm not clear whether Popper believes this or
not.
Can we establish the existence of natural laws by metaphysical
argument? Not conclusively, but the balance of the argument favours it
as Popper sees things. In any case, the search for UGs would be fruitful
even if their truth were contingent, for it would still be universal.
And so the absence of a clear metaphysical proof of the existence of any
natural laws (which is not a disproof of their existence), does not
affect the rationality of searching for such invariants. This argument
can be reworked even for 'propensities', that is probabilistic relations
between phenomena that fall short of necessity. As to whether the search
for some kind of "regularity" is itself a 'necessity' of some kind,
Popper would affirm for Kantian reasons: without being oriented to
interpret the world as forming patterns we would be lost. But this does
not mean we are lost because our world lacks _complete_ regularity; only
that it is necessary that we search for some degree of it and that there
appears [contingent or not] to be some degree of it.These last three
paragraphs are extremely interesting.
Robert Paul,
somewhere south of Reed College
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