"the Truth at any cost"

Saturday, January 12, 2008

...And now for something completely different.








I have thought about doing this since I started this blog. And I'm in a particularly strange mood today, which means I may remove this post when I come to my senses. Here are some samples of writing I've done in the past 5 years. Notice how it gets increasingly worse over time? Whats up with that? I am old and uncreative.
Don't mind the editing on that first one. Its just too recent to be public at this point (if interpreted correctly)

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Thursday, January 10, 2008

Making Political Philosophy a Science

Ok, so I have an idea, which, though technically possible, is not feasible or plausible. But what the hell, why don't I just throw it out there?
People disagree widely on political philosophies. And I'm talking about the broad picture here, not just republicans and democrats. We've got communists, socialists, fascists, capitalists, anarchists, and many subsets of each of these. Now, despite what you may self-righteously believe, I think there are essentially high quality intelligent arguments for each of these philosophies. I believe, though I'm not certain, that these philosophies ultimately rest on different views of human nature. To take one striking example, capitalists believe humans achieve the most in a competitive society, whereas communists believe humans achieve most when contributing to the greater good. Now that is just one example, of many fundamentally different worldviews. And to my mind, there doesn't seem to be any way to test 'human nature'. But I do have this idea to solve, or at least provide a great amount of evidence for certain political philosophies.
So here is the plan:
We get a bunch of philanthropists and angel investors to give us a TON of money. Billions and billions of dollars. Plus a TON of land. I suppose we could buy northern Canada, where very few people live. Then we get about 100,000 volunteers. Now in my mind, this part would be easy (I'll explain why in a moment). So we divide up the volunteers by their political philosophies, and create like 30 sovereign 'countries' up there in northern Canada. They all start out with the same amount of money; everything else is left up to them. Then we stand back and watch. Give them 50-75 years, and see which societies end up prosperous and which ones fail. Barring any huge oil or other resource find in one of the societies, it seems like a fair deal. Now the volunteer thing would be easy. For the communist country we'd find communists, for the libertarian country we'd throw all the Ron Paul supporters in there, etc.
Again, not feasible. But what better way can you think of to put some science behind our political views? Put real people in a real culture with those policies, and see what happens. Makes enough sense to me.

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Saturday, January 05, 2008

What is Modal Logic good for?

Over this break I have been attempting to learn modal logic. Modal logic is the symbolic logic of necessity and possibility. So, for example, its possible that a Republican will win the White House this year. Anything that doesn't entail a contradiction is a possibility. Something is necessary when its denial produces a contradiction--for example: A square necessarily has 4 sides.
So, what is Modal Logic good for? Is it just some garbage made up by philosophers to keep the publishing going and get some professors tenure? Well, yes and no. Modal logic is important to philosophers because a large chunk of the last 100 years of philosophy has been something called conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis is the attempted defining of a difficult term by its necessary and sufficient properties.
For example, one huge area of this type of work is the conceptual analysis of 'knowledge'. Modal logic helps us to precisely ask questions like "Is it (logically) possible for a person to have knowledge without being justified?", "Is it (logically) possible for a person to have knowledge by accident?" etc. etc.
This work also has certain implications for philosophy of science--are laws of nature necessary? etc.
So I would whole-heartedly agree that modal logic is very important for conceptual analysis. But modal logic is also used for at least one other purpose. Philosophers of mind have been using modal logic in the past 40 years or so to make metaphysical arguments. At first, I didn't even question. Probably the most famous metaphysical modal arguments are Kripke's in "Naming and Necessity". He argues against physicalism in that lecture. I don't want to get into the argument, though its very interesting (and to this day, I am undecided whether I accept it or not. I've gone back and forth for the last couple years). My point is--can modal logic tell us anything about the way the world is? Its hard to believe it could. Modal logic is seemingly a priori. So all bizarre and controversial exceptions aside, Kripke's argument seems to be saying that physicalism is necessarily false in any world with consciousness. And that is a tough argument to make when you put it that way. For I see no inherent contradiction in a physicalist world with consciousness. And I am a dualist, so it isn't just dogmatism going on.
So here is my challenge, to myself, and to anyone who wants to do some preliminary research on modal logic: Give me a simple modal argument which proves something metaphysical. If someone can prove that metaphysics is possible using modality, then I will be more open to the more controversial arguments.

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