[lit-ideas] Re: Mineral Philosophy
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2013 23:01:12 +0000 (GMT)
>And, yes, I assume JTB theory for my purposes here. So those amongst us who
pretend to be replying to my questions, and yet insist on hijacking the
discussion in order to cast sticks and stones against the theory, and engaging
in crass ad hominem argument, let me just say that your epistemic and moral
virtues are not showing. If we want a lecture on JTB theory, I'm sure most of
us can find someone reasonably well-informed on it, and one possessing the tact,
the basic manners, and respect for others that genuine philosophical discussion
requires. >
Perhaps I should wait for confirmation that it is me that Walter is criticising
here, but as Walter assumes JTB theory perhaps I can also assume.
Walter went silent when I explained why a previous 'suggestion' of his, that I
was offering a stipulative argument, was not true. He was silent when I further
explained why his own 'argument' was either false or stipulative. Another way
of putting my explanation on that occasion would be that Walter's criticism on
that occasion was hypocritical rubbish.
This quoted paragraph from Walter is also hypocritical rubbish. Walter is
entitled to assume a JTB theory, but not everyone has to assume it with him. If
Walter takes people who do not share this assumed theory to be "hi-jacking the
discussion" then it is clear he has hi-jacked the discussion in his own head so
as to count out any dissenters from JTB. Hurrah for that being made clear. But
there is no "epistemic and moral" virtue in this kind of hi-jacking by Walter:
there is not even the basic intellectual honesty of making clear that only JTB
theorists need apply as far as discussion with Walter is concerned. Walter's
claiming some moral and intellectual highground here is empty grandstanding
that should fool no one.
If Walter knows something about JTB theory that actually rebuts my arguments,
he can "lecture" on that: something, perhaps, that shows those arguments
misunderstand or misrepresent JTB theory (as my arguments suggest JTB theory
misunderstands and misrepresents "knowledge"). I think he will find that
insofar as my arguments rehearse arguments of Popper's, those arguments are
from a late "Professor of Logic and Scientific Method" whose understanding of
JTB theory at least matches Walter's. Until such flaws are identified, Walter's
protest is simply so much hot air and an attempt to foreclose full discussion
on the pretence that Walter has set 'terms of reference' that limit pemissible
discussion, so that those who do not stick to Walter's 'terms of reference' may
be accused of "hi-jacking the discussion." It's an old, old trick; and also an
intellectually and morally disgraceful suggestion, from someone who should
really know better*.
Dnl
*Whether 'know = JTB', or not.
On Thursday, 19 December 2013, 19:51, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Well, what if I believe something because I read it in a presumably reliable
encyclopedia, is that a good reason for belief ? For example, I believe in the
existence of pulsars and quasars, even though I have no way of verifying it on
my own.
O.K.
On Thursday, December 19, 2013 8:44 PM, Donal McEvoy
<donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>It seems McEvoy is relying on a semantic argument to disallow minerals to
> hold 'knowledge'. Or not.>
In this case, "Or not".
We can, if we like, call whatever dispositional properties that atoms and
molecules have, their 'knowledge' (or call a subset of these dispositions
'knowledge)'. That is semantics. But, if we do, what is our model of their
'knowledge'? Substantively, theirs is not 'knowledge' formed by 'natural
selection' and nor is it 'knowledge' of any purposeful sort or which may be
part of an adaptive strategy in Darwinian terms. So even if we call such
physical or chemical dispositions 'knowledge' we will have to differentiate
this from a tree's 'knowledge', as the correct model of a tree's 'knowledge' is
very different to the correct model of an atom's (so-called).
The idea that my post relies on semantic argument is purely in the eye of the
beholder (not so long ago Walter wrongly suggested an argument of mine was
stipulative, when in truth his own was: is this an occupational disease of
philosophers? It is certainly tiresome after a while.)
But a model of the atom's 'knowledge' is so threadbare, one wonders what the
agenda is in insisting we refer to an atom having 'knowledge' at all? In
particular, an atom or molecule is not in a feedback loop involving information
such as we might think necessary to any model of knowledge, whereas a tree is -
a tree can detect the moisture in the soil and react to this information. Atoms
do not process information from their environment as organisms do, never mind
react to it - and this gives substantive reason to deny that atoms have
knowledge.
D
On Thursday, 19 December 2013, 19:02, Walter C. Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Those amongst us who
1) read carefully my intial question about the appropriateness of attributing
"believing - that" to a person who has no reasons for her belief-that P (never
mind good ones) and claims she doesn't need to have reasons for believing-that
P, and claims to believe-that P and
2)have followed attentively subsequent discussions,
will concur that the matter of "knowing," "knowledge" etc is not relevant to my
question. My comment was on "knowledge-*that*", as in a statement/proposition
that "P is the case," in its relation to believing-that. Whether
"knowing"/"knowledge" can legitimately be applied to trees, minerals, sticks
and stones, spiders and snakes, DNA,
Adam and Eve's mutual relations, etc is
irrelevant to my question, as such "knowledge" is not propositional knowledge.
My sole point regarding knowledge-that P was that if we
legitimately deny that
Alice knows-that P if she does not believe-that P, then I don't see why we
cannot legitimately deny that Alice believes-that P under the described
conditions. A subsidiary question is then what is Alice doing if not believing?
Or, if preferred, how are we to characterize her mental state?
And, yes, I assume JTB theory for my purposes here. So those amongst us who
pretend to be replying to my questions, and yet insist on hijacking the
discussion in order to cast sticks and stones against the theory, and engaging
in crass ad hominem argument, let me just say that your epistemic and moral
virtues are not showing. If we want a lecture on JTB theory, I'm sure most of
us can find someone reasonably well-informed on it, and one possessing the tact,
the basic manners, and respect for others that genuine philosophical discussion
requires.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx:
> McEvoy was extending the use of 'know' to plants (notably trees as they
> extend their roots, but stop when they find a table of water). However, he
> refuses the extend the use of 'know' to 'minerals'.
>
> His reasons below (in ps).
>
> I wonder, however, if the arguments he offers against those who would NOT
> extend the use of 'know' to a tree may not be applied to his own
arguments
> against the use of 'know' as applied to minerals.
>
> McEvoy had previously said:
>
> "To rebut this by stipulation as what 'knowledge' means is facile and
> beside the point: and will amount, perhaps unwittingly, to substituting a
> verbal
> problem for a substantive one."
>
> It seems McEvoy is relying on a semantic argument to disallow minerals to
> hold 'knowledge'. Or not. I should revise his cases.
>
> Keywords here should be:
>
> PANPSYCHISM
> and of course
> DAWKINS
>
> Oddly, one note in the Grice Collection, now
at UC/Berkeley
(Bancroft
> Library), written on an airlplane, reads, "Read Dawkins". And I would not be
>
> surprised if Grice would end up agreeing (or, for that case, disagreeing)
> with
> Dawkins.
>
> We have had on previous discussions covered with McEvoy the idea of a
> mechanist vs. a teleological (or as he might prefer, 'adaptive') explanation,
>
> and I appreciate his examples of 'mineral' or inorganic matter as displaying
>
> what McEvoy sees as 'pseudo-adaptive'.
>
> Panpsychism seems the right keyword. Animism, too, perhaps -- which we know
> is a feature of primitive thinking (so-called -- not by me). Grice for
> example noted that some uses of 'mean' still carry this feature of animism:
>
> Smoke means fire.
>
> Surely smoke cannot 'mean'. "Mean" is cognate with "mind", which is the
> Anglo-Saxon way to express the idea of a 'soul' (hence McEvoy's Hellenistic
>
> term, 'Panpsychism', from psyche, Greek for soul, or my Animism, from Latin
>
> Anima, and animus).
>
> R. Paul wonders:
>
> >What do sticks and stones know, if anything?
>
> and goes on to
>
> >thank [McEvoy] for this [his post on pseudo-adaptive strategies in
> minerals].
>
> from which I gather the implicature:
>
> >what do sticks and stones know, if anything?
>
> is
>
> "Nichts",
>
> as the Austrian engineer would say.
>
> I'm glad to hear from A. Palma that he admires G. Kreisel, of the former
> Habsburg Empire, too.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
> In a message dated 12/19/2013 3:31:21 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> For a number of reasons, I do take this disagreement seriously but find
> the examples unconvincing. ... No, the point at which no more sugar is
> soluble is purely a matter of physics and chemistry: there is no strategy to
> it,
> no purposeful activity. Of course, a panpsychist may disagree, and we can
> have this argument, but no. The same with volcanic eruption: no purposeful
> strategy, simply the physics and chemistry. However, there is an issue here
>
> where physical and chemical states and reactions may appear to be
> 'adaptive' in that they have features that ensure their own stability or
> continued
> existence. But this appearance is deceptive. It is
true that we could use
> talk of 'adaptive strategy' to explain many things within physics and
> chemistry - for example, that if steam is put in a container with ice the
> two will
> react until an equilibrium state is reached which may (depending on the
> variables involved) mean that eventually the container holds neither steam
> nor ice but liquid water. And we may say that water molecules owe their
> 'survival' to this kind of adaptive strategy and so on. We may say steam is
>
> water's adaptive strategy to high temperature or that ice is water's adaptive
>
> strategy to low temperature, and so on. But we are simply taking a Darwinian
>
> kind of
logic too far (Dawkins does so near the outset of "The Selfish
> Gene" and it is one of his mis-steps, which ties in with Dawkins mistaking
> natural selection for a kind of tautology that applies to everything). For
> the
> ice/steam/water interaction is not a product of natural selection, still
> less of purposeful behaviour. We do not trace the evolution of different
> kinds of water molecule from a common ancestor, and explain how the
> different
> kinds evolved different adaptive strategies for the physical and chemical
> challenges of their existence. The behaviour of any water molecule will be
> identical to any other identical molecule and its behaviour involves no
> activity or
selection from within a possible repertoire of behaviour: nor is
>
> there any possiblity of a water molecule mutation that changes, for better
> or
> worse, its adaptivity. There is much that notions like 'equilibrium' can
> explain in terms of physics and chemistry and biology. We may say the tree
> searching for water is trying to maintain its 'equilibrium'. But only in the
>
> case of living things can we say the organism itself has knowledge built
> in by 'natural selection': atoms and molecules do not. Only the organism may
>
> have adaptive strategies tied in with this built-in 'knowledge', atoms and
> molecules do not. So tea and volcanoes may be explained in
terms of
> 'equilibrium' states and even adaptive strategies, but this talk of
> 'adaptive
> strategies' is here a mistake: a transfer of ideas from where they belong in
>
> the case of entities that are products of and subject to 'natural selection'
>
> to entities that are not. A more interesting example perhaps is the memory
> that appears to be shown by some inanimate matter. This may be linked to
> panpsychism. There is a worthwhile discussion of this in TSAIB: "Steel
> 'remembers' that it has been magnetized. A growing crystal 'remembers' a
> fault
> in its structure. But this is something new, something emergent: atoms and
> elementary particles do
not 'remember', if present physical theory is
> correct." But, as indicated, this is not enough to bring even those
> memory-like
> cases within cases of adaptive strategy via natural selection.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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