[Wittrs] Re: Following a Rule
- From: Rob de Villiers <robbitgrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:45:08 -0400
Josh,
This is more stuff concerning my previous post
and was written prior to seeing your interesting
response to which I will turn now and respond as
soon as possible ... work and other commitments
do beckon and might intervene....
Concerning:
> At the lowest level, the computer hardware implements
> a causal structure, that I agree is non-rule-following.
....
> Second, there are some things we *do* recognize as
> rules. What are they, exactly? Interesting problem.
Well, we *do* recognise them, as you say. So what is
the problem? - "What are they, exactly?" Well, what
exactly do you want? It sounds like you want an
exact merkmal or categorical "necessary and sufficient
contitions" type *definition*. But what if our notions
of rules and rule-following are "family-resemblance" type
concepts (as indeed they are!) - then not only is the
merkmal definition approach useless to getting clear
about these matters but trying to force the concept into
the mould of any assumed paradigmatic archetype is even
more doomed to failure and confusion. The only option
is piecemeal, detailed conceptual investigation and
clarification a-la Wittgenstein. In fact Wittgenstein
has already answered your questions and disolved you
problems regarding rules and rule-following and he does
so primarily from round about PI $180 to $242... but
contributions to this particular issue as scattered
all over the place elswhere too.
> Exercising my particular-based nominalism, let's say that
> if someone writes some rules down, and we can see that
> some agency operates by checking the rules and acting
> on them, then we have rule-following. The computer is
> the archetype of rule-following.
Why? "Who says? Where does this suddenly come from?
It most certainly does not *follow* from your previous
sentences. It is just a bald assertion... which I and
many others, including evidently Neil, completely reject.
Is it simply axiomatic? ... for YOU?
What a computer does is no more THE archetype or paradigm
of rule-following than What PaintBox Pro does is THE
(or even an) arhetype of painting pictures, or than a
Formula 1 car is THE (or even a) paradigm of athletic
prowess.
And you preceed this by what you describe as an exercise
in "particular-based nominalism" ... just introduce some
totally abstract notion of someone "writing down rules"
and "some ageny" "checking" them.
You seem to find it deeply problematic (above) as to
what rules even are let alone as to what they "exactly"
are (above) and so what are you saying, meaning, thinking,
"seeing" or imagining when you say: "let's say that if
someone writes some rules down, and we can see that some
agency operates by checking the rules and acting on them,
then we have rule-following" ! Good grief! This is utter
and complete confusion! How do we "see" that some "agency"
"operates" by checking the rules?
What if the sentence ("rule") that your imagined person
wrote down was "No smoking in my car"? or "the bishop
moves diagonally"? Is that even a rule? or is it an order?
A command? Or even just a statement of fact? What makes the
sentences an expression of a rule? That some agent "checks"
them and then does something, "acts on them"? What must the
agent check? The spelling? The syntax? Is checking spelling
and the syntax the same as checking the *rule*? What makes
whatever the "agent" then does "rule-following" how do you
"see" that it is rule following? with your eyes? Is what
the agent then does to have *correctly* followed the rule?
How do you see this correctness?
Lord alone knows who this abstract "agency" is - Big
Brother? or how and why he/she/it would "check" the rules
written down! or "act upon them"? It is up to the author
of the rules to check them? Check them against what?
For what? Check them in accordance with what other rules?
What makes the sentence(s) that were written down
expressions of rules at all rather orders or
instructions (which are not necessarily rules at all)
Where did these come from? Where did he get the rules
that he wrote down from? Just plucked them out of thin
air? Presumably they are his rules? Who were the rules
for? Himself, his children or membbers of a club? What
were the rules for? behaviour at the dinner table?
Playing a new game he was inventing? What? Why must
some abstract "agency" act upon the rules? ..... No
particulars at all, no specifics at all, all just
complete empty abstraction! - the diametric oposite
of what I might have called "particular-based nominalism"!
Disaster is bound to ensue.
> Now, what about people? Do people ever follow rules?
So you are in deep doubt that people ever follow rules
and, what is more, you are (above) deeply unresolved
in your own mind about what "exactly" rules even are!
AND YET you utterly convinced that computers not only
do *follow* rules, but are THE paradigmatic *archetype*
of rule-following! In which case it is clear that you
are simply *defining* rule-following as whatever it is
that computers ("paradigmatically") "do"! - and "rules"
as whatever that type of thing is that they allegedly
(you say) "follow" or react to! Rather question begging,
to say the very least.
Is it not bizarrely strange then that the very
word "rule", notions of rules and rule-following pre-
dated computers by some millennia! Did humanity have
to wait for computers appear in the world to
find out the meaning of what it had been doing and
talking about for centuries? I have a feeling that
something is seriously awry here. All you have done
is *decided* in your own mind to ignore everything
else and simply *define* "rule-following" as whatever
it is that computers now do and now you are wracking
your brains trying to work out whether people ever do
what computers do or whether we are justified in
describing anything they do as rule-following
according to your new and highly presumptive
definition. The philosopher having tied himself
in all sorts of knots about the concepts of rules and
rule-following looks at the latest toy to grab his
fancy and tries to understand everything in terms
of that!
> They don't seem to do so as a causal necessity,
though one could argue the case.
How? Examples?
Would the fact that one can, for example, do
arithmetic, check one's change at the shop, by
pure rote habit be a case for arguing that we
sometimes simply follow rules "mechanically"
... if not "causally"? Do rules that we have,
as it were, internalised, to the point of making
them habits or "second-nature" (telling expression
that) thereby become "causal mechanisms"?
> If they follow a rule by choice, well, is that even
> rule-following as such?"
Evidently, yes. The premise of you question is that
they follow a rule. That, in addition, they do so "by
choice" makes no diffrence: they have followed a rule.
That is an *instance* of rule-following "as such", no
matter whatever that additional epithet "as such" is
supposed to signify. Not very much I would have thought,
unless, though an avowed nominalist, you are in fact a
closet Platonist. I would have thought that the last
thing a self-respecting nominalist would countenance
is that there is any significant difference between
"rule-following" and "rule-following as such"!
(Platonist habits of thought die very hard, the
tendency is endemic and takes all sorts of
disguised forms - despite one's best intentions!)
ON THE OTHER HAND if they had had NO choice in the
matter would whatever they then did (or whatever
happened) have even been "rule-FOLLOWING" AT ALL,
in the first place?! Could it then be intelligibly
so described? If I pull your hat off when we go
into a church have *YOU* thereby *FOLLOWED* the
rule: "No hats to be worn in church"? Sure, I know
you are now *compliant* with the rule, that is
why I snatched it off your head, but did you, or
are you now, *following* the rule. Maybe you don't
even know *why* I snatched you hat of your head,
think it was just a joke and are happy to go along
with it. Are you still *following* the rule in that
case?
All this makes me wonder whether you are capable of
distinguishing between a cyclist turning right at
a T-junction because the rules of the road there
require him to do so and a tram turning right at
the same place because the rails it runs on constrain
it to do so! It would seem that by your lights the
latter would be a paradigmatic archetype of rule-
following but that you would have all sorts of deep
philosophical doubts about the former being rule-
following at all! Bizarre. Totally bizarre.
> Some of this may have been behind LW's skepticism
> about rules."
What? What skepticism did Wittgenstein have about
rules? I have never come across any hint that *LW*
was skeptical about rules in anything he wrote. If
anything quite the contrary. Certainly not the major
published works ... I don't have much access to the
"nachlass" ....
> Other parts remain problematic."
Indeed. But Wittgenstein resolved/disolved the
problems, or at least pointed the way to so doing.
> Going back to computers, I went to recognize two
> levels, the hardware level that is causal, and the
> program level that is the paradigm case for rule-following.
> So, when you (Neil) say that the computer "just"
> is a machine that doesn't know symbols, at the low
> level, I agree with you. However, at the high level,
> I see symbolic programs being executed, and must see this
> as rule-based systems being done by machines.
> How do you like that?
Nope. Not much. Why *must* you "see" it thus? Under what
what compulsion? Wittgenstein remarked to the effect
that all too often when a philosopher uses the word
"must", thinking that he is under some unshakeable
logical constraint, he is in fact under the sway
of a *picture*, a deep psychological presupposition,
a presupposed mental image or picture, or subliminal
image perhaps embedded in our language itself.
"A picture held us captive. And we could not get
outside it, for it lay in our language and language
seemed to repeat it to us inexorably."
It would seem that one picture that holds you
captive is precisely that of the computer as the
paradigm and archetype of rule-*following*.
Computer programs do not *follow*
rules, only people writing them do. And when the
hardware "runs" the program what rules is it
"followng"? None. It is hardwired binary logic
and machine code ticking over. But it seems you
want to say that the combined h/w - s/w is
*following* the rules "it" was "given". No so?
ANY program, or even set of programs, can in
principle, be realised in hardware - i.e.
essentially arrays of two-state devices,
switches, logic-gates, relays &c. In the early
days of computers, programing them *consisted* in
manually setting hundreds upon hundreds of on-off
switchces - and that is in fact what programming
a computer still is - until we have "computers"
that are NOT Turing machines. And so I suspect
your argument here does not work. You will have to
find some other way of making your case, assuming
that it can intelligibly be made.
Appart from that, sure - pocket calculators also
provide a rule-based system "being done" by machines.
So too does an automated railway points switching
system. That does not mean that these are paradigms
of rule-*following* rather than ingenious machines
that simulate the results of (correct) rule-
following.
So, come clean, forget about trying to draw some
line between hardware and software because I suspect
your real problem now is, and always has been:
then why are not people just ingenious machines that
simulate the results of (correct) rule following!
... If that now is a meaningful question. Where
do we get the notion of correct rule following from?
Rob.
--
Rob
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