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This is an excerpt from a report on the Sensory Substitution and Augmentation Conference at the British Academy in March of 2013, written by Kevin Connolly, Diana Acosta Navas, Umut Baysan, Janiv Paulsberg, and David Suarez, available at http://networksensoryresearch.utoronto.ca/Events_%26_Discussion.html 5. What are the limitations of sensory substitution? Many speakers and commentators in the conference mentioned the limitations of sensory substitution, emphasizing in particular that sensory substitution is not the substitution of an entire sensory modality, but rather the replication of several features of that modality. Since sensory modalities carry information about a range of properties, an important feature that sensory substitution attempts to replicate is the feature of conveying information. But questions arise: About what sorts of properties can and cannot sensory substitution convey information? If information about some properties cannot be conveyed by sensory substitution, then does this mean that sensory substitution has serious limitations? Can the information that is conveyed be rich enough to replicate other features of sensory modalities? As several speakers at the conference pointed out (most notably Charles Spence), the focus of the sensory substitution research has been vision. Vision allows us to gather rich information about our environments. Since the early days of sensory substitution research, sensory substitution devices have been able to convey a fair amount of information about environment. Subjects using sensory substitution devices are reported to recognize objects, point to objects accurately, judge the distances and the sizes of objects, and even make complex pattern discriminations. Based on these, it might be suggested that sensory substitution devices can carry information about, at least, the common sensible: namely, motion, shape and size properties of the objects in the environment. However, there seems to be some limitations even in such cases. As Laurent Renier discussed, some sorts of experiences that are related to depth and distance perception cannot be generated with sensory substitution devices in congenitally 2 blind subjects. If these show that depth perception can only be replicated in late-blind and sighted subjects, then there is a problem that sensory substitution researchers should resolve. Even if information about common sensibles were to be properly conveyed by these devices, there would still be a limitation with respect to the substitution of the experience of proper sensibles such as the color, smell and taste properties of objects. Whether this limitation results from the impossibility of replicating the properly perceptual aspects of proper sensibles, or from technical or design-related problems is a question that remains to be settled. Here, a lot hinges on what theories about perceptual experience are true. If one believes, as Jonathan Cohen argued in his talk, that there are good reasons to think that some features of visual experience are emergent, and so do not supervene on the information that is conveyed by sensory substitution devices, then one might think that sensory substitution cannot restore those emergent features simply by delivering the right information. Moreover, this or a similar reason might also explain why there are no well-known examples of the substitution of senses like taste and smell. If this point generalizes across many of the proper sensibles, then it seems that sensory substitution faces a serious limitation. Even if we assume that it is possible to convey very rich information to subjects by sensory substitution devices, we might still ask whether sensory substitution has other limitations. Malika Auvray and Ophelia Deroy mentioned that sensory substitution research has not yet been able to generate a typical profile of emotional and hedonic responses. Additionally, as Jerome Dokic noted, there are some reasons to think that non-sensory perceptual feelings of familiarity and presence do not supervene on the conveyed sensory content, suggesting that such feelings may not be reliably generated by sensory substitution. As Renier pointed out, however, the absence of hedonic aspects might be due to the very basic nature of the stimuli used (lines, 3 shapes, simple patterns etc.). Although such perceptual feelings do not supervene on the sensory content, Dokic suggested that they might be the result of a post-perceptual process which can be transferred to sensory substitution subjects. If these considerations are correct, then some limitations might only be technical ones that can be overcome in principle. A very important feature of sensory experience is its phenomenology, and there seems to be a significant limitation with respect to the generation of perceptual phenomenology through sensory substitution. Several people pointed out that even if sensory substitution devices can convey a rich array of information, the feel of seeing something might not be transferred to other modalities. As pointed out by Macpherson, however, such worries may be motivated by an antirepresentationalist assumption according to which the content of perception leaves out phenomenology. If so, then sensory substitution's limitations with respect to generating phenomenology will depend on which theories of perceptual experience are true. | {
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A Probabilistic Defense of Proper De Jure Objections to Theism1 Brian C. Barnett St. John Fisher College 2017 Abstract: A common view among nontheists combines the de jure objection that theism is epistemically unacceptable with agnosticism about the de facto objection that theism is false. Following Plantinga, we can call this a "proper" de jure objection-a de jure objection that does not depend on any de facto objection. In his Warranted Christian Belief, Plantinga has produced general arguments against all proper de jure objections. Here I first show that this argument is logically fallacious (it makes subtle probabilistic fallacies disguised by scope ambiguities), and proceed to lay the groundwork for the construction of actual proper de jure objections. 1. Introduction Theism is often the target of two main objections: (i) the de facto objection, according to which theism is false and (ii) the de jure objection, according to which theism is, for some relevant group of persons (e.g., typical, reasonably well-educated adult human beings in the contemporary world), unreasonable, irrational, unjustified, evidentially unsupported, or in some other way epistemically unsatisfactory.2 These two objections are prima facie independent of one another-independent in the sense that the success of one would not guarantee (or make probable) the success of the other. And if they are indeed independent of one another in this sense, this fact would seem to be of significant benefit to nontheists, including both atheists and agnostics. It would benefit agnostics by making it possible for them to consistently endorse the de jure objection (thereby supporting their position over theism) without simultaneously committing themselves to the success of the de facto objection (thereby maintaining their distance from atheism). Of course, this benefit would not accrue to atheists, since they, unlike agnostics, will need to endorse the de facto objection whether or not they also endorse the de jure objection. However, independence would benefit atheists for at least two other reasons: first, it legitimates a bracketing strategy whereby the de facto objection is set aside in order to focus exclusively on the de jure objection for those who might be more likely convinced by the latter than the former; second, having two good independent objections to a competing view on any issue is preferable to having just one. Theists, of course, would like to dispense will all objections to theism. It would appear to be a significant step in this direction if one could reduce the two major classes of objections to a single class by establishing that the de jure objection would have to be dependent on the de facto objection, i.e., that there can be no proper de jure objections to theism, thereby precluding the aforementioned benefits of independence from accruing to nontheism. My primary aim in this paper is to establish that this strategy fails. For the most part, I will focus specifically on the arguments in Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief (hereafter WCB), since it is there that 2 Plantinga originally devises the strategy in question (in terms of Christian belief as the particular type of theism and warrant as the particular type of positive epistemic status) and provides the only sustained defense of it to date. I will argue that one version of Plantinga's widely discussed argument has gone largely ignored in the literature and potentially bypasses the existing objections to the other versions. But I will also argue that once we resolve various ambiguities in the argument, it can be proven fallacious on purely formal, probabilistic grounds. After removing this major roadblock to the possibility of proper de jure objections, it is still up to nontheists to actually provide such objections. I will end by laying the groundwork for proceeding with this project. In particular, I will outline various available strategies, discuss their comparative promise, make some concrete proposals, and address final objections. 2. Plantinga's Arguments and Unsatisfactory Objections For those unfamiliar with Plantinga's WCB, a brief overview will be helpful. After setting up the book's central questions in the preface and spending Part I on clearing away preliminary objections to there being a "sensible" de jure question about theistic belief to be asked in the first place (one that is coherent and not worthy of immediate dismissal), Plantinga devotes Part II to a survey of the various potential types of positive epistemic status in terms of which the de jure objection might be interpreted. He considers various types of rationality and justification, dismissing each as making for a poor version of the objection, until in the last chapter of the section he finally arrives at his own preferred interpretation in terms of warrant, which Plantinga defines as "that further quality or quantity (perhaps it comes in degrees), whatever precisely it may be, enough of which distinguishes knowledge from mere true belief" (153).3 At that stage, Plantinga outlines and tweaks the proper-functionalist account of warrant developed and defended in his two previous books in the trilogy of which WCB is the third (though the details of this account of warrant need not concern us here). With a full understanding of the de jure objection in hand, Part III develops and defends the coherence of a model of theistic (and specifically Christian) belief formation and regulation, built on Biblical scripture, as well as on the work of Aquinas and Calvin-a model which, together with his account of warrant, implies (or makes probable) that theistic (specifically Christian) belief is warranted, at least if there are no convincing defeaters for it.4 Plantinga then spends Part IV, the final part of the book, responding to alleged defeaters for theistic (Christian) belief. If successful, it follows that if theistic (Christian) belief is true, then it is probably warranted. Call this conditional the Bridge Claim, since it claims to bridge the gap between the ontological claim that God exists (or that Christianity is true) and the epistemological claim that theism (or some specific version thereof) is warranted. If the Bridge Claim correct, it supposedly follows that the denial of its consequent (which is to be equated with the only sensible understanding of the de jure objection) implies the denial of its antecedent (which is to be equated with the de facto objection). Hence, the de jure objection (at least any sensible version of it) entails the de facto objection. In other words, there is no such thing as a successful proper de jure objection. This argument has a number of potential vulnerabilities. It is possible to resist by claiming that Plantinga's discussion of the various possible interpretations of the de jure objection overlooks some legitimate interpretations.5 It is possible to agree that the de jure objection is best understood in terms of warrant yet deny Plantinga's proper-functionalist account of it, on which he relies to argue that the Aquinas/Calvin model entails (or makes 3 probable) that Christian belief is (probably) warranted if true, which in turn is needed to establish the Bridge Claim (or the Christian version of it).6 It is possible to accept Plantinga's account of warrant yet reject the Aquinas/Calvin model.7 Even granting Plantinga everything up to and including the Aquinas/Calvin model, it is still possible to accept that theism (Christian belief) is probably warranted in the absence of defeaters but maintain that plausible defeaters exist (either because Plantinga skipped over some worthy candidates or gave fallacious reasons for dismissing the defeaters he did discuss).8 I think there is something to all of these criticisms. However, they are ultimately unsatisfactory in the sense that Plantinga's argument generalizes in a way that bypasses them entirely. In fact, Plantinga himself suggests such a generalization (2003: 186-191). He points out that if God exists and created us in his image and loves us and desires us to know him and so on, then he would want theism (at least for certain theists, e.g., Christians or some subset thereof) to be warranted, and being all-powerful, could make that happen. So, if theism is true, it is warranted (at least for some special group of theists). To argue that theism is unwarranted is in effect to argue that theism is false. Hence, any warrant version of the de jure criticism entails the de facto objection. This version of the argument does not depend on Plantinga's specific account of warrant. Neither does it depend on the Aquinas/Calvin model. Moreover, it is plausible that the argument can be further generalized to eliminate the exclusive focus on warrant simply by replacing "warrant" with "positive epistemic status" throughout, leaving it open to interpretation.9 I'll call this more general version of Plantinga's argument the "Generalized Reduction Argument" (since it purports to reduce the de jure criticism to the de facto criticism). Even the Generalized Reduction Argument remains vulnerable to a different sort of objection-namely, the objection that a positive epistemic status for theism is something that God does not have the ability to guarantee without thereby interfering with the something of equal or greater value, such as free will or faith.10 Whether this type of objection succeeds depends on several highly contentious matters, such as the nature and value of free will and faith, how such values stack up against the allegedly competing value of positive epistemic status, and the scope of omnipotence. I think most of us can agree that the objection has enough potential to at least justify a hedge in the Bridge Claim: if God exists, then theism probably has positive epistemic status (for the relevant group of theists). In fact, Plantinga himself adds this hedge, though for reasons peculiar to his understanding of positive epistemic status in terms of warrant in combination with his account of warrant. But the issues here (free will, the value of faith, the scope of omniscience, etc.) are too controversial to convince all parties to the discussion to go further than a mere hedge by opting for an outright denial of (or even agnosticism with respect to) the Bridge Claim. Ideally, a stronger objection would bypass such controversial matters. And this stronger sort of objection is precisely what I intend to provide. I will argue that the flaw in the Generalized Reduction Argument runs deeper-at a logical level. Specifically, the argument makes a fallacious probability inference subtly disguised by a scope ambiguity in the Bridge Claim. 3. An Analysis of Plantinga's Logic Begin with a closer look at the logic of the Generalized Reduction Argument. Here's a rough, informal characterization of the argument: 4 The Generalized Reduction Argument (Informal Version) P1. The Bridge Claim: If theism (or some specific version thereof) is true, then it probably has positive epistemic status (for some relevant group of individuals). P2. The De Jure Objection: Theism (or whatever version of it is specified in the Bridge Claim) does not have positive epistemic status (for the relevant group). ∴ C. The De Facto Objection: Theism is false. The logic of this informal version is puzzling. First, note that the Bridge Claim includes a probability qualification. This is because Plantinga admits that there is at least some very small chance that theism fails to be warranted given God's existence. Second, note that there is no probability qualification in P2. This means that P2 is not quite the consequent of P1. Nor does P2 entail the consequent of P1, since contingent claims, such as the claim that theism is warranted, can be probable yet turn out to be false. In fact, for this same reason, the premises are consistent with the falsity of the conclusion and the argument is therefore deductively invalid. Of course, we could interpret it as an inductive argument, but it will do just as well to keep it deductive and add a probability qualification to P2, since the de jure arguer had better not claim P2 with certainty anyway. Now, once we add a probability operator to P2, this invites the question of whether the negation in P2 should take wide or narrow scope. In order to see the distinction, it will help to introduce some symbolization. First, let S be the proposition that theism has some particular positive epistemic status for some specified group, and let P[x] be the probability of any proposition x. Let's also agree to express the claim that x is probable as the claim that P[x] > P[~x], which is equivalent to the claim that P[x] > 1⁄2. (However, if you prefer, you are welcome to replace P[x] > P[~x] and P[x] > 1⁄2 with P[x] >> P[~x] and P[x] >> 1⁄2.11) Given these stipulations, we have the choice between revising (2) to say that P[~S] > 1⁄2 or to say that ~(P[S] > 1⁄2). But note that the latter is not strong enough to plausibly count as a de jure objection. It simply says that S isn't probable, which leaves open the possibility that S isn't improbable either, whereas the de jure arguer wants to say more strongly that theism does not have positive epistemic status, or at least probably does not. So, P[~S] > 1⁄2 is the better choice. To complete our symbolization of the Generalized Reduction Argument, let G be the proposition that God exists (and let's use the wedge "v" for inclusive disjunction, the tilde "~" for negation, and the arrow "→" for the ordinary English indicative conditional). We then get the following: The Generalized Reduction Argument (Narrow Scope Reading) P1. G→(P[S] > 1⁄2) P2. P[~S] > 1⁄2 ∴ C. ~G This is not quite an instance of modus tollens, since the second premise is not identical to the denial of the consequent of the first premise. However, the second premise does entail the denial 5 of the consequent. So, we still get a valid argument. Unfortunately, it isn't the only possible interpretation. The problem is that the language Plantinga uses to express the Bridge Claim is ambiguous. In cases in which an English sentence contains an operator (such as the probability operator) in the consequent of what appears to be a conditional, the sentence is often ambiguous between a wide and narrow scope reading. So, it is somewhat unclear whether Plantinga really intended to assert a conditional with a probability operator in the consequent, or the probability of an entire conditional. In our symbolization, the ambiguity is between G→P[S] > 1⁄2 (as we have it in the narrow scope reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument) and P[G→S] > 1⁄2. However, if we instead adopt this alternative interpretation of the Bridge Claim, G is now in the scope of the probability operator, which means that we can only get a good inference if we revise the conclusion by placing G within the scope of the probability operator there as well. But since a negation is involved, we again have a choice between P[~G] > 1⁄2 and ~(P[G] > 1⁄2). However, only the former expresses a genuine de facto objection. So, our second potential interpretation of the Generalized Reduction Argument is as follows: The Generalized Reduction Argument (Wide Scope Reading) P1. P[G→S] > 1⁄2 P2. P[~S] > 1⁄2 ∴ C. P[~G] > 1⁄2 Unfortunately, there is another ambiguity in Plantinga. Although in some places Plantinga uses "if.., then..." language to express the Bridge Claim, which suggests an indicative conditional (whatever the scope of the probability operator), whereas in other places he instead uses "given that" language, which in probabilistic contexts usually expresses conditional (relative) probability-the probability of some proposition x given (or on, or relative to) some proposition y, written P[x|y], as opposed to the absolute (i.e., nonconditional or nonrelative) probability of x, which does not take its relation to y into account. So, perhaps the Bridge Claim does not involve an indicative conditional at all. Perhaps we should interpret it as a claim about a conditional probability (P[S|G]) rather than as a claim about the absolute probability of the corresponding conditional (P[G→S]). If so, this yields a third interpretation of the Generalized Reduction Argument: The Generalized Reduction Argument (Conditionalized Reading) P1. P[S|G] > 1⁄2 P2. P[~S] > 1⁄2 ∴ C. P[~G] > 1⁄2 Now that we've sorted out the structural ambiguities, there are other interpretational issues to address before we can proceed to the evaluatory stage. First, there is the question of how to understand the claim that God exists, primarily dependent upon which conception of God we adopt. Popular among philosophers is the Anselmian conception, according to which God is a perfect being.12 Plantinga himself seems to opt for the strong version of this, according to which God exists necessarily, if at all, and 6 possesses his perfections essentially.13 We will keep this strong Anselmian conception in mind in what follows, but will not restrict ourselves to it. Second, there is also the question of how to interpret the probability operator.14 Probabilities can be divided into three kinds: (i) objective probability (which measures certain features of the mind-independent world), (ii) epistemic probability (which measures the strength to which a given person possesses a given epistemic status toward a given proposition), and (iii) subjective probability (which measures a person's credences, i.e., degrees of belief or levels of confidence). There are also various views about how each kind of probability is fixed, e.g., by some frequency (whether actual or hypothetical), the mathematical limit of some sequence of hypothetical frequencies, propensity, causal laws, modality, or some other standard. For what it's worth, Plantinga explicitly indicates that his intended interpretation of probability in the context of the Generalized Reduction Argument is epistemic (2003: 190). But to preempt potential confusion here, it should be added that, although in the same passage Plantinga also appeals to objective probability (for which he maintains a modal view (2003: 188)), this is only because his account of epistemic probability is cashed out in terms of his proper-functionalist account of warrant (1993: Chapters 8 and 9), according to which warrant requires reliability in (the relevant segment of) our belief-forming faculties (when operating in the environment for which they are designed), and Plantinga in turn understands such reliability in terms of objective probability. So, ultimately, Plantinga's concern is with epistemic probability, though objective probability plays a role. It will be helpful to keep this in mind as we proceed. However, there will be no need to restrict ourselves to any particular interpretation of probability, as we shall see. Although I will not presuppose any particular interpretation of probability, I will assume that the probability operator obeys the standard probability calculus. This is relatively uncontroversial for objective probability. But it is questionable given an epistemic or subjective interpretation, since agents can fail (even rationally) to notice certain logical inconsistencies or logical deductions that the standard probability calculus reflects. However, we can at least assume the standard laws of mathematical probability capture probability for agents who are sufficiently logically competent. Given this point, which Plantinga himself makes elsewhere (1993: 173), my argument will still show that sufficiently logically competent de jure arguers can consistently agree with the Bridge Claim and simultaneously refuse the de facto objection. Although my argument may not apply to de jure arguers who are logically incompetent in some respect, it should already be clear that there is some sense in which such agents can be consistent in agreeing to the Bridge Claim yet refusing the de facto objection precisely due to their logical incompetence.15 In any case, sufficiently logically competent de jure arguers are probably the only ones theists are (or should be) worried about anyway. As part of the standard probability calculus, I'll be assuming the so-called Ratio Formula, which gives us the classical means by which to relate conditional probabilities to corresponding absolute probabilities: The Ratio Formula: P[x|y] = P[x&y]/P[y], for all x and y such that P[y] ≠ 0, and undefined otherwise.16 7 Although this formula is no longer universally accepted (see Hajek 2003), there are several things to be said in favor of adopting it here. First, my own view is that the standard justifications for the formula (which can be found in most decent probability primers) are convincing (at least given my earlier idealized assumption of agential logical competence), whereas the arguments against it are either fallacious or infringe upon idealization. But I cannot take the time to press these points here. More important for current purposes is that Plantinga himself seems to accept the formula (see, for example, Plantinga (2000: 231), where he simply stipulates the Ratio Formula as the definition of conditional probability).17 In any case, the Ratio Formula turns out to be a necessary assumption for the conditionalized reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument to get off the ground. Those who deny the Ratio Formula do not offer an alternative formula. They instead view P[x|y] as primitive, not calculable in terms of absolute probabilities. So, on their view, there is no systematic means by which to relate P[S|G] to P[~G] and P[~S], and therefore no reliable way to determine whether the narrow scope reading is valid.18 Also as part of the backdrop of the standard probability calculus, I will be assuming classical logic, in particular the Law of Excluded Middle and the Law of Noncontradiction. If we were to abandon these assumptions, we'd need to adjust the probability calculus in various ways (e.g., to allow nonzero probabilities for contradictions and nonmaximal probabilities for disjunctions of contradictories). While this might be troublesome in certain contexts (though I doubt it), it seems no harm here, since the usual motivations for denying classical logic (stemming from alleged paradoxes, future contingent propositions, and the like) don't seem to apply to propositions like S or G or logical constructions thereof. More substantively, by endorsing classical logic, I also mean to adopt its usual treatment of the indicative conditional: The Horseshoe Analysis: For all propositions, x and y, the indicative conditional, x→y, is truth-functionally equivalent to the corresponding material conditional, x ⊃ y, which is defined as ~x v y.19 At this point matters become contentious, since the Horseshoe Analysis is controversial. However, as with the previous assumptions, there are several things to be said in favor of adopting it here. For one, I think that the analysis is true (though not adequately defended in the existing literature).20 But again, I won't try to press this point here. Second, although I cannot find in print any clear indication that Plantinga agrees, I also cannot find any reason to think that he disagrees. Third, and most important here, if we do not adopt the Horseshoe Analysis, the wide and narrow scope versions of the Generalized Reduction Argument run into immediate trouble. They do not get footing unless we have a reliable means to determine how the absolute probability of a conditional relates to the absolute probabilities of its antecedent and consequent. (This is obvious for the wide scope reading, but we shall see later that it is likewise necessary for the narrow scope reading.) The Horseshoe Analysis gives us such a means, unlike any plausible alternative analysis. This is to be expected, since those who deny the Horseshoe Analysis deny that the indicative conditional is truth-functional, and if we cannot determine the truth value of the indicative conditional by determining the truth values of its antecedent and consequent, then it is hard to see how we could determine how likely the conditional is to be true by determining how likely its antecedent and consequent are. 8 There is one prominent thesis in the literature on conditionals that might initially appear to bypass this problem. Whereas some alternatives to the Horseshoe Analysis propose a nontruth-functional set of truth conditions (e.g., by going modal), there is one alternative that refuses to give any such conditions. It simply gives a probabilistic condition for the degree of acceptability of a conditional (where probability is to be understood as subjective or epistemic): The Formalized Ramsey Thesis: P(x→y) = P[y|x], for all x and y such that P[x] ≠ 0.21 If we combine this with the Ratio Formula, then by the Transitivity of Identity, we get the following result: The Ramsified Ratio Formula: P[x→y] = P[x&y]/P[y], for all x and y such that P[x] ≠ 0. We could then perform the necessary calculations to evaluate the wide scope and conditionalized readings of the Generalized Reduction Argument. But there are intractable problems for this approach. First, the triviality proofs of Hajek (1989 and 1994) (building on earlier triviality proofs of Lewis 1976, Stalnaker 1976, and Carlstrom and Hill 1978, et al.), convincingly show that the Ramsified Ratio Formula cannot be true as long as we take indicative conditionals to be propositions (i.e., bearers of truth). This has led some (e.g., Bennett 2003) to keep the Ramsified Ratio Formula and opt for Adams's NTV ("No Truth Value") theory (1975: 1-42; 1981), according to which indicative conditionals lack truth values (despite having probabilities).22 But those like me who find this implausible are forced to reject the Ramsified Ratio Formula (and therefore reject either the Formalized Ramsey Thesis or the Ratio Formula). Even if we accept the Ramsified Ratio Formula, the wide scope reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument collapses into the conditionalized reading, and the former will therefore inherit all of the problems I will later raise for the latter.23 The narrow scope reading will not similarly collapse, but there I will show that the criticisms I shall offer using the Horseshoe Analysis apply equally well if we drop the analysis and instead adopt the Ramsified Ratio Formula. This shows that the assumptions I have outlined above, though controversial, are well motivated in the current context: if they fail, Plantinga's logic is already unconvincing for other reasons. So, I shall hereafter take these assumptions for granted. 4. A Critique of Plantinga's Logic Supposing that the above three formal interpretations of the Generalized Reduction Argument are the only three plausible disambiguations of the informal version, I will now argue that there is no interpretation on which the Generalized Reduction Argument is convincing (given the assumptions developed in the previous section). I will take the interpretations in reverse order, since the latter two are easiest to refute. 4.1 Critique of the Conditionalized Reading On the conditionalized reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument, the inference is to P[~G] > 1⁄2 from P[S|G] > 1⁄2 and P[~S] > 1⁄2. However, assuming the standard mathematical 9 laws for probability operators, we can easily demonstrate that the inference is invalid. To prove this, we need to show that there are possible values for P[S|G] and P[~S] greater than 1⁄2 that are consistent with ~(P[~G] > 1⁄2), i.e., consistent with P[G] ≥ 1⁄2. For example, let P[~S] = 5⁄9 and P[S|G] = 7⁄9. Now we can calculate P[G] to prove that it's ≥ 1⁄2. To do so, we will also need a value for P[S&G]. It will be consistent with our stipulations as long as it takes a value 0 ≤ P[S&G] ≤ P[S] and 0 ≤ P[S&G] ≤ P[G]. It will do to suppose that P[S&G] = 7⁄18. Then P[G] = P[S&G]/ P[S|G] = (7⁄18)/( 7⁄9) = 1⁄2. In order to resist this argument, one will need to hold that, even though the general argument form of the conditionalized reading is invalid, it nevertheless holds for propositions of a certain kind, among which are S and G. I can only think of two ways in which this might be argued. First, one might argue that P[S|G] = 7⁄9 is too low. In fact, if we increase it slightly to P[S|G] = 8⁄9, then P[G] = P[S&G]/ P[S|G] = ( 7⁄18)/( 8⁄9) = 7⁄16 < 1⁄2, yielding Plantinga's conclusion. However, the problem with this type of strategy is the coarseness of our probabilistic judgments on topics such as this. They are not so precise as to discriminate between 7⁄9 and 8⁄9. Second, on modal understandings of probability, necessary propositions have probability 1 and their negations have probability 0.24 Suppose we combine such a view with a strong Anselmian conception of God, according to which God is essentially perfect and necessarily exists, if at all. On this combination of views, it turns out that P[G] = 0 or 1; it cannot possibly take any intermediate value. In particular, it cannot possibly be 1⁄2-the value I earlier proved it would take if my starting values for P[~S], P[S|G], and P[S&G] were correct. So, those starting values are impossible and the proof does not succeed.25 There are three plausible responses to this objection. First, the de jure arguer need not commit to the strong Anselmian conception. Second, the de jure arguer need not commit to a modal interpretation of probability. In fact, Plantinga's aim is to undercut all proper de jure arguments, not just those proposed by strong Anselmians with a modal understanding of probability. So, I will hereafter assume that we can allow 0 < P[G] < 1 as a possible value in de jure arguments. In any case, even if we cannot make sense of P[G] = 1⁄2, we can still make sense of neutrality about whether P[G] = 0 or 1. This leads us to our third and final response. Suppose we grant a modal interpretation of probability and the strong Anselmian conception. On this combination of views, Plantinga's first premise (P[S|G] > 1⁄2) requires that P[G] = 1- independently of the value for P[S]. Therefore, Plantinga's first premise would beg the question against de jure arguers. 4.2 Critique of the Wide Scope Reading On the wide scope reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument, the inference is to P[~G] > 1⁄2 from P[G→S] > 1⁄2 and P[~S] > 1⁄2. Again, we can easily demonstrate that this inference is invalid. To prove this, we need to show that there are possible values for P[G→S] and P[~S] greater than 1⁄2 and that are consistent with ~(P[~G] > 1⁄2), i.e., consistent with P[G] ≥ 1⁄2. For example, let P[G→S] = 7⁄9 and P[~S] = 11⁄18. Now we can calculate P[G] to prove that it's ≥ 1⁄2. To do so, we will also need a value for P[~G&S]. It will be consistent with our stipulations 10 as long as it takes a value 0 ≤ P[~G&S] ≤ P[S] and 0 ≤ P[~G&S] ≤ P[~G]. It will do to suppose that P[~G&S] = 1⁄9. Now, notice that P[G→S] = P[G ⊃ S] = P[~G v S] = P[~G] + P[S] – P[~G&S], which implies that P[~G] = P[G→S] – P[S] + P[~G&S] = 7⁄9 – 7⁄18 + 1⁄9 = 1⁄2. For the same reasons given in the previous subsection, it will not do to fuss with the values chosen as counterexamples for the proof. We do not have sufficiently fine-grained probabilistic intuitions to differentiate the values chosen for the proof and values required to entail the de facto objection that P[~G] > 1⁄2. The de jure arguer need not operate on the strong Anselmian conception. She need not operate on a modal interpretation of probability. And if she does operate on both the modal interpretation and strong Anselmian conception, then Plantinga's premises will beg the question. However, this last reason holds for a different reason in this context than in the previous subsection. To see this, note that Plantinga's first premise (P[G→S] > 1⁄2) depends on the value of P[G]: if P[G] = 0, then P[G→S] = P[G ⊃ S] = P[~G v S] = P[~G] + P[S] – P[~G&S] = 1 + P[S] – P[S] = 1 > 1⁄2; but if P[G] = 1, then P[G→S] = P[G ⊃ S] = P[~G v S] = P[~G] + P[S] – P[~G&S] = P[S], which might or might not be > 1⁄2. So, on the strong Anselmian conception combined with a modal interpretation of probability, whether or not Plantinga's first premise is true depends on whether or not God actually exists. So, it is legitimate for the de jure arguer to be neutral about this premise. 4.3 Critique of the Narrow Scope Reading And we now arrive at the first and most literal reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument, which infers ~G from G→(P[S] > 1⁄2) and P[~S] > 1⁄2. Unfortunately, this interpretation is complicated by numerous difficulties, primarily because it mixes graded probabilistic judgments concerning S with all-or-nothing alethic judgments about G, and it is difficult to know how to relate the two. For example, in probabilistic contexts, some take absolute assertions as a lazy way of expressing maximal probability (certainty). If so, the narrow scope reading of the Bridge Claim will be taken to mean (P[G] = 1) →(P[S] > 1⁄2), in which case the conclusion of the narrow scope reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument (~G) will need to be understood as ~(P[G] = 1). Alternatively, in probabilistic contexts, some take absolute assertions as a lazy way of expressing that the claim in question is probable. If so, the narrow scope reading of the Bridge Claim will be taken to mean (P[G] > 1⁄2)→(P[S] > 1⁄2), in which case the conclusion of the narrow scope reading of the Generalized Reduction Argument will need to be understood as ~( P[G] > 1⁄2). However, if we interpret the conditional in either of these two ways, the Generalized Reduction Argument is automatically ruined because both conclusions (~(P[G] = 1) and ~( P[G] > 1⁄2)) are compatible with P[G] = 1⁄2, which means that the de jure arguer will be consistent in maintaining neutrality about G, even while agreeing with the Bridge Claim. However, it would be a mistake to interpret the antecedent of the narrow scope reading of the Bridge Claim probabilistically. Generally speaking, assertions of truth should not be reinterpreted probabilistically, since truths do not generally entail their own probabilities: truths can be improbable, just as falsehoods can be probable. An exception might be made concerning the relation between God's existence and the probability of his existence, at least when we combine a modal understanding of probability with the strong Anselmian conception. As pointed 11 out earlier, combining these two views implies that either P[G] = 1 (if God actually exists) or P[G] = 0 (if God actually does not). So, perhaps the above interpretations are permissible in this particular case after all. But this leads to a new twist: if the de jure arguer has to maintain ~(P[G] = 1) or ~( P[G] > 1⁄2), then on the modal understanding of probability combined with the strong Anselmian conception, this is tantamount to denying God's actual existence, thereby vindicating the Generalized Reduction Argument. But, again, this sort of reasoning will only convince de jure arguers operating on both a strong Anselmian conception and modal understanding of probability. No matter how we interpret the antecedent of the narrow scope reading of the Bridge Claim-probabilistically or otherwise-there is a more fundamental problem with the current interpretation of it: unlike previous interpretations, the current interpretation does not follow from the considerations Plantinga offers in favor of it. Plantinga says that God intended for us to know him, instilling in many theists positive epistemic status. This is a relation between G and S, not G and P(S). So, Plantinga's reasons do not directly support G→(P[S] > 1⁄2). They at best directly support P[S|G] > 1⁄2 or P[G→S] > 1⁄2-the wide and narrow scope interpretations of the Bridge Claim. In order to directly support G→(P[S] > 1⁄2), we'd need to argue not just that God makes S true but that he makes S probable. It is much less obvious that this is true. Even if we grant that God makes S true, it does not automatically follow that he thereby also makes S probable, since there are improbable truths. Perhaps God would make an additional effort to make S probable. However, on some conceptions of probability-such as probability as a measure of logical possibility-probabilities are not things that can be manipulated, even by God, supposing that God is bound by logic and necessity. But even if he could make S probable, it is not clear that he would. This is especially so on the epistemic interpretation of probability on which Plantinga is operating. On that interpretation, God's desire for S to be probable is the desire for us to have positive epistemic status toward S, i.e., the desire for us to have positive epistemic status for the belief that theism has positive epistemic status-a second-order epistemic status. It is dubious whether God would bother with this second-order epistemic status. After all, there must be some positive integer n, such that for all m > n, we do not have mth-order positive epistemic status toward theism. Since we know there are such limitations on human beings, it follows that God must have stopped somewhere for whatever reason. Perhaps it was at n = 1. At any rate, Plantinga has not argued otherwise, and it is difficult to see how a plausible argument would go. De jure arguers therefore are free to dismiss the current interpretation of the Bridge Claim. 4.4 Plantinga's Dilemma This completes our survey of the possible interpretations of the Generalized Reduction Argument. We have found each lacking in some significant respect or other, and can sum up by finally stating the cumulative results in the form of a dilemma for Plantinga: Plantinga's Dilemma P1. The theological considerations offered by Plantinga for relating God's existence to positive epistemic status do not support the narrow scope reading of the Bridge Claim. 12 P2. Although Plantinga's theological considerations plausibly support the wide scope and conditionalized readings of the Bridge Claim, probability calculations reveal that the corresponding interpretations of the Generalized Reduction Argument are invalid. ∴ C. The Generalized Reduction Argument either has a false premise (due to P1) or is invalid (due to P2), and is therefore unsound either way. 5. Actual Proper De jure Objections So far, I have devoted my efforts to the negative project of casting doubt on the Generalized Reduction Argument. I now turn to the positive half of the project, where I discuss the construction of actual proper de jure objections. I do not intend here to provide any decisive line of argumentation. Instead, my goal is to do some preliminary work for those who do wish to carry out such a project. Specifically, I will sketch some strategies for de jure arguers, discuss their comparative virtues and vices, and preempt some possible objections. 5.1 A Formal Proper De jure Objection for Factive Positive Epistemic Status The first type of proper de jure objection is purely formal (in the sense that it can be derived purely from logical and probabilistic relations between propositions without added substantive philosophical presuppositions). In order to get such an objection, we need to focus on factive positive epistemic statuses, such as knowledge and perhaps warrant.26 Let S be any such status with respect to G. Since there is a one-directional entailment from S to G, it is plausible that P[S] < P[G]. If agnostics avoid either the strong Anselmian conception or a modal understanding of probability, so that non-maximal values of P[G] are allowed, and if they can argue that in fact P[G] = P[~G] = 1⁄2, it follows that P[S] < P[G] = 1⁄2, yielding the result that P[S] < 1⁄2. To elaborate on the significance of this, let's distinguish between two types of agnostics. First, the equal-weight agnostic about G sees the scale of evidence as equally balanced between G and ~G and therefore judges that P[G] = 1⁄2. Second, the inscrutability agnostic about G reserves judgment about how the evidence comparatively fares, consequently judges P[G] to be inscrutable, and therefore takes no attitude toward its value. Now, it strikes me as immediately intuitive that for agnostics of both types, agnosticism is also the proper default stance toward any claim to factive positive epistemic status with respect to G. That is, in either case, they should be neutral about claims to factive positive epistemic status toward G-without special reason to push them to one side or the other. However, since equal-weight agnostics about G have the above argument for P[S] < 1⁄2, it turns out rather surprisingly that their proper default stance toward factive positive epistemic status is disbelief. Since P[S] < 1⁄2 does not follow for inscrutability agnostics about G, their proper default stance toward factive positive epistemic status remains agnosticism. This yields a surprising discrepancy between the two types of agnostics.27 5.2 A Plantingan Proper De jure Objection for Knowledge and Warrant If we do not simply rely on the factivity of a given positive epistemic status, we can no longer derive formal proper de jure objections. We shall have to bring in more substantive 13 philosophical claims. Interestingly, there are significant prospects for doing so on Plantingan grounds. Suppose equal-weight agnostics can plausibly establish that P[G] = P[~G] = 1⁄2. Let W be the proposition that theism is warranted for some specific group of people. Then P[W] = P[W|G]P[G] + P[W|~G]P[~G] = 1⁄2P[W|G] + 1⁄2P[W|~G], which is < 1⁄2 when P[W|G] + P[W|~G] < 1, i.e., when P[W|G] < 1 – P[W|~G]. So, if agnostics can defend this inequality, they have a proper de jure objection. They can make use of the fact that many atheists, agnostics, and even theists (including Plantinga himself), agree that P[W|~G] is nearly zero.28 They would just need to argue that it is sufficiently low, viz., closer to zero than P[W|G] is to 1. In other words, they'd need to argue that W is somewhat more certain that W is false under ~G than that W is true under G. But how could this be done? Well, here's a suggestion. Agnostics might argue that, while it is fairly clear that the sort of God under discussion would want W to be true for the target group of people, this nevertheless remains far from certain due to the existence of various significant doubts (including the fact that God and his desires would be quite complex and largely obscure to mere humans, not to mention the possibility that faith and free will conflict with theistic warrant). So, the doubts here are non-negligible. But on the other side, there aren't any comparable doubts for the claim that theism would be unwarranted if there's no God. In fact, not only are the reasons for attributing warrant to theism absent if God does not exist, but there are also strong positive reasons to think theism couldn't have such a status. Agnostics could here appeal to Plantinga's (in)famous evolutionary argument against naturalism to argue that if God doesn't exist there couldn't be warrant for any proposition at all, much less for something like theism.29 Of course, most agnostics will not want to go this route because it, in conjunction with agnosticism, would entail that agnostics have no warrant for any of their own beliefs. But perhaps that's not so worrisome, as long as agnostics could continue to reasonably claim some other (non-factive) positive epistemic status (e.g., justification or rationality) toward the propositions they accept. So, pending further work, it might turn out that agnostics have a plausible case for the conclusion that there are more doubts about W under G than there are about ~W under ~G. If so, then they can plausibly conclude that P[W|G] < 1 – P[W|~G] and therefore that P[W] < 1⁄2, even though P[G] = P[~G] = 1⁄2. The objection carries over to knowledge as well, since knowledge requires warrant. 5.3 G-S Independent Proper De jure Objections Formal and Plantingan proper de jure objections unfortunately possess a certain weakness. Let's distinguish between two types of proper de jure objection: G-S Dependent Objections: Proper de jure objections that derive from some claim about the relationship between G and S. G-S Independent Objections: Proper de jure objections that do not derive from any claim about the relationship between G and S. 14 The formal and Plantingan proper de jure objections are G-S dependent because they rely on claims about how God's existence bears on positive epistemic status for theism-claims mathematically represented by the inequalities P[S] < P[G] and P[S|G] < 1 – P[S|~G]. But the problem with these inequalities is that they are weak. They are weak in the sense that they become dubious once "<" is replaced by "<<." So, although they would suffice to establish that P[S] < 1⁄2, they would not suffice to establish that P[S] << 1⁄2. And I do not know of any clear G-S dependent objections that would allow us to convincingly establish that P[S] << 1⁄2. Moreover, there is some room to argue that if P[S] < 1⁄2 but ~(P[S] << 1⁄2), then this at best supports suspension of judgment rather than disbelief in the claim that theism has positive epistemic status, and therefore does not qualify as a proper de jure objection. In my own view, P[S] < 1⁄2 suffices for disbelief. But I do not wish to argue that here. So, for those who think that P[S] < 1⁄2 is insufficient to license disbelief, I recommend G-S independent de jure objections, which have the potential to bypass the problem. In order to present a G-S independent objection, one needs to set aside whether God exists and whatever implications his existence might have for positive epistemic status, instead focusing exclusively on direct doubts about positive epistemic status. There is a wide array of possibilities here. First, there are objections of the traditional type, where one argues that theism is unjustified or irrational or unreasonable or that no one could possibly know such a thing. But there are also approaches that remain relatively unexplored. For example, there are some prospects for an improper basing objection: even if there are sufficiently good reasons for theism, most people do not actually form their theistic beliefs on the basis of those reasons but instead do so on the basis of wishful thinking, poor reasoning, a stubborn commitment to tradition, or the like. Alternatively, one might argue that even if theism is likely justified, rational, reasonable, and even true, it is Gettiered or "lotteried" or involves some other such epistemic accident or poor epistemic luck. It is easy to see why one might think theism faces the lottery problem: the problem of religious diversity. Any particular brand of exclusive monotheistic belief asserts but one of many possible gods and religious beliefs that have equal but competing chances of being right. It is not quite so easy to see why one might think theistic belief is Gettiered. It is probably most plausible in the case of theistic belief based on religious experience. De jure objectors have sometimes claimed that religious experience is the result of hallucination, misperception, misinterpreted perception, or the like. One response sometimes given to this sort of objection is that such mechanisms could be the means by which God reveals his presence. Perhaps de jure objectors could argue that this gives theistic belief the structure of Gettier's original cases. Of course, perhaps there are other, non-deviant mechanisms by which God experientially reveals his presence. But if the de jure arguer can come up with grounds for thinking that at the very least the deviant mechanisms are most common, it is perhaps possible to liken the non-deviant cases to seeing a real barn in fake-barn country. Even if one or more of these suggestions is prima facie plausible, they face one last potential difficulty that stands out for all G-S independent objections. Remember that my earlier discussion of Plantinga did not decisively refute his Generalized Reduction Argument on any interpretation. It simply showed that on no interpretation is it sound given some plausible probability assignments. Other possible probability assignments would work. So, what I've shown is merely that the Generalized Reduction Argument cannot be relied on without further 15 information that would be difficult to acquire. G-S dependent objections have an advantage here, since they make claims about the G-S relationship and therefore at least have the potential to refute the Generalized Reduction Argument (on some or all interpretations). G-S independent objections are at a disadvantage here, since by definition they have no such potential. Instead, their strategy must be to deny that the Generalized Reduction Argument is conclusive (due to the worries from my earlier discussion), leave open that it could turn out to be sound for reasons we do not now have, and argue that until we acquire such reasons it is legitimate to ignore the Generalized Reduction Argument and tentatively proceed with de jure objections. One potential problem here is that theists might object that this strategy yields de jure objections that do not count as "proper" if the Generalized Reduction Argument is in fact sound on some interpretation-whether or not we know it to be. The question this raises is about how we are to understand the term "proper." There are two possible interpretations: Strongly proper: A de jure objection is strongly proper if as a matter of fact it does not entail (or make probable) the de facto objection. Weakly proper: A de jure objection is weakly proper if we do not have good reason to infer from it the de facto objection. Given my worries about the Generalized Reduction Argument, it is clear that even G-S independent objections can be weakly proper. It is possible but still questionable whether or not they are also strongly proper. They are perhaps both weakly and strongly proper. But at the very least, we can rest assured that they are proper in some important sense. 6. Where This Leaves Us It looks like there is little hope for theists to simplify the defense of their position from de jure objections by appeal to the claim that such objections are improper. It is clear that some such objections are at least weakly proper, are potentially strongly proper, and the prospects for establishing that they are not strongly proper are dim. This does not mean that theism is refuted. What it means is that theists must deal with each de jure objection one at a time, and independently of the de facto objection. There is no quick and easy path to circumvent this challenge. Perhaps as somewhat of a consolation, it also means that atheists do not have a quick and easy path to win over agnostics. Were there to be a convincing reduction of de jure objections to de facto objections, agnostics already convinced of a de jure objection would then have a reason to infer a de facto objection and convert to atheism. 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Zagzebski, Linda. 1994. "The Inescapability of Gettier Problems." The Philosophical Quarterly 44 (174): 65-73. Notes 1 This paper is currently under review at Religious Studies. 2 I borrow the terms "de facto" and "de jure" from Plantinga (2000: ix). 3 Roughly, "a belief has warrant for a person S only if that belief is produced in S by cognitive faculties properly (subject to no dysfunction) in a cognitive environment that is appropriate for S's kind of cognitive faculties, according to a design plan that is successfully aimed at truth" (156). But note that Plantinga proceeds to modify this in rather complex ways. 4 According to the developed version of this model, human beings are made in God's image, which includes being instilled with special cognitive faculties-namely a sensus divinitatis (sense of divinity) and the "internal instigation of the Holy Spirit"-which, when functioning properly (i.e., as God designed) (and it might not due to sin), reveals to our intellects the existence of God (and other essential truths of Christianity) and "seals them upon our hearts." Christian belief is therefore "basic" (produced innately, not deliberately by inference or argument), and, given Plantinga's epistemology, is "properly" so (i.e., justified, rational, and warranted). 5 Todd Long (2010). 6 Wykstra (2002), Senor (2002), and Swinburne (2001). 7 See Baker (2005) for a critical overview of a good range of such objections. 8 Beilby (2007), Clark (2007), Feldman (2003), Gale (2001), Gale (2007), and Kvanvig (2007). 19 9 One might understand positive epistemic status as a specific positive epistemic status, such as rationality, justification, warrant, or knowledge. Another option is to interpret it as an all-things-considered epistemic evaluation. 10 Long (2010). 11 Plantinga would presumably prefer this adjustment himself, since he holds that a proposition being more probable than not is an insufficient standard for belief (WCB, 271, n. 56). 12 For a good explication and defense of this conception over others, I recommend Morris (1991). 13 See Plantinga (1974: 214-215), where he adopts the argument of J.N. Findlay (1948: 108-118). For further defense of the idea that perfection requires necessary existence, see Brian Leftow (2010). And for some reasons to contest that perfection requires possessing the various perfections essentially, see James Sennett (1994). 14 For a good, introductory overview of the philosophy of probability and the standard probability calculus, I highly recommend Mellor's book (2005). 15 If, for example, Q follows from P only via a complex deductive chain that I am not currently capable of seeing, there is some sense in which I am internally consistent in simultaneously accepting P but denying Q. 16 I borrow the name given to it by Hajek (2003: 273). 17 Plantinga presumably would only accept the Ratio Formula as an idealization when it comes to epistemic conditional probability, since in earlier work he gives his own alternative account of non-idealized epistemic conditional probability (1993a: Chapter 9). See the next endnote. 18 Although Plantinga gives an analysis of conditional probability, it is not a function with absolute probabilities as inputs. Here is his "first approximation" (for which he later makes some qualifications): "P(A/B) = <x,y> iff <x,y> is the smallest interval which contains all the intervals which represent the degree to which a rational human being S (for whom the conditions necessary for warrant hold) could believe A if she believed B, had no undercutting defeater for A, had no other source of warrant for either A or for –A, was aware that she believed B, and considered the evidential bearing of B on A" (1993a: 168). 19 I borrow the name from Bennett (2003: 20). Note that this is a weak version of the analysis in the sense that it only goes so far as to say that the material and indicative conditionals have identical truth conditions. A stronger version would go further by claiming that they have the same meaning. I will be neutral about the stronger version here, since it is irrelevant to anything I will say in this paper. 20 I am convinced by Jackson's argument from the "or-to-if" inference (1987: 4-6), and other similar arguments, and think the responses to it are problematic. But when it comes to explaining away the apparent counterexamples to the Horseshoe Analysis currently available in the literature, all that is available is the Gricean defense from conversational implicature (1967a and 1967b) and the Jacksonian defense from conventional implicature (1987). My own defense departs from the implicature route altogether and is planned as the subject of a future paper. 21 "The Formalized Ramsey Thesis" is my own name for a proposal about how to formalize a claim that is sometimes called "the Ramsey Test" or "Ramsey Thesis" or "Ramsey Test Thesis," after its author, Frank Ramsey, in a much-discussed footnote (1929: 143): "If two people are arguing 'If A will C?' and are both in doubt as to A, they are adding A hypothetically to their stock of knowledge and arguing on that basis about C ... We can say they are fixing their degrees of belief in C given A." Others have called the proposed formalization "Stalnaker's Hypothesis" (owing to Stalnaker's 1970 discussion of it, though he was not the first to do so) or "the Equation" (Edgington 1986). 22 I borrow the name for Adams's theory from Lycan (2001: 49). 23 But we can easily see that there is no such collapse if we accept the Horseshoe Analysis and Ratio Formula. First, when P[x] = 0, P[x→y] remains defined, whereas P[y|x] does not. But even when P[x] ≠ 0 and P[y|x] is defined, the conditional probability is not generally the same as the probability of the corresponding conditional. As can easily be proven, the relationship between the two probabilities is this: P[x→y] = 1-P[x]+P[x]P[y|x] (when P[x] ≠ 0), from which it follows that the two probabilities are equal just in case P[y|x] = 1, which is the trivial case in which x makes y maximally probable or y is already maximally probable and x has no effect on it. 24 By "modal understanding of probability," I mean an understanding where (a) the probability of a proposition measures the degree to which the proposition is possible (whether the modality is understood physically, metaphysically, logically, or epistemically) and (b) "necessary" in "necessary proposition" expresses the same type of modality as is measured by the probability. Given this type of probability, it follows that any necessary proposition receives maximal probability (i.e., probability 1) and any impossible proposition receives minimal probability (i.e., probability 0). 25 Thanks to Edward Wierenga for this objection. 20 26 Many have argued that warrant indeed entails truth, e.g., Zagzebski (1994), Merricks (1995 and 1997), and Plantinga (1997). For opposing views, see Ryan (1996), Huemer (2005), Coffman (2008), D. Howard-Snyder et al. (2007), and Moon (2012). 27 In fact, this generalizes. For any proposition Q, if P[Q] = 1⁄2, then P[SQ] < 1⁄2, where SQ is the proposition that Q has some factive positive epistemic status (unless there is perhaps some strange Q such that Q also entails SQ). So, the proper default stance toward SQ is disbelief for equal-weight agnostics about Q but agnosticism for inscrutability agnostics about Q. 28 At least, for some such instances of S, such as theistic knowledge or warrant. 29 Plantinga (1993: Chapter 12), Plantinga (2000: 227-240), Fitelson and Sober (1998), Beilby (2002), and Sosa (2007). 30 I am grateful to Edward Wierenga for his fascinating philosophical theology seminar on Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief at the University of Rochester several years ago, during which I developed the foundational ideas of this paper. I am also grateful for his penetrating critique of the initial, rudimentary version of my central argument, the response to which required me to navigate through a vast philosophical terrain, ultimately yielding the more subtle line of thinking presented here. | {
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Page 1 of 6 Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System Florin Gaiseanu* PhD, Principal senior Researcher (Professor), Science of Information and Technology Bucharest (Romania) and Barcelona, Spain Introduction Although when we refer to brain and its running mode, we often relate it to information, little it is really known about information itself and how the brain operates with it. Information concepts are largely used day by day in our informational age, the microelectronic intelligent systems assure us a comfortable communication at distance and unify our knowledge around the earth. We speak about Bits, internet and television and benefit of telecommunication and computer systems to be informed, but little data we know actually on how our brain acts, as an interface with our internal and external world and on consciousness, this knowledge spectrum which illuminates our life, even less. The advances in information science and technology, starting with the statement concepts on information and its evaluation [1] and continuing with operating mode of microcircuits and microprocessors in the intelligent systems today, and with the specific terminology and investigation/ evaluation tools allow to initiate the approach of the brain operation mode by analogy with microprocessors, complex units of informational processing in computers [2,3]. Artificial intelligence was also a stimulating way to approach also consciousness from the artificial neuronal networks point of view [4]. However, while from the philosophical point view the logic operation and information interchange between various systems would be understandable *Corresponding author: Florin Gaiseanu, PhD, Principal senior Researcher (Professor), Science of Information and Technology Bucharest (Romania) and Barcelona, Spain. Received Date: May 30, 2019 Published Date: June 07, 2019 Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Open Access Research Article Copyright © All rights are reserved by Florin Gaiseanu This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Abstract Introduction: the objective of the investigation is to analyse the informational operating-mode of the brain and to extract conclusions on the structure of the informational system of the human body and consciousness. Analysis: the mechanisms and processes of the transmission of information in the body both by electrical and non-electrical ways are analysed in order to unify the informational concepts and to identify the specific essential requirements supporting the life. It is shown that the electrical transmission can be described by typical YES/NO (all or nothing) binary units as defined by the information science, while the inter and intra cell communication, including within the synaptic junction, by mechanisms of embodiment/disembodiment of information. The virtual received or operated information can be integrated in the cells as matter-related information, with a maximum level of integration as genetically codified info. Therefore, in terms of information, the human appears as a reactive system changing information with the environment and between inner informational subsystems which are: the centre of acquisition and storing of information (acquired data), the centre of decision and command (decision), the info-emotional system (emotions), the maintenance informational system (matter absorption/desorption/distribution), the genetic transmission system (reproduction) and info-genetic generator (genetically assisted body evolution). The dedicated areas and components of the brain are correlated with such systems and their functions are specified. Result: the corresponding cognitive centres projected into consciousness are defined and described according to their specific functions. The cognitive centres, suggestively named to appropriately include their main characteristics are detected at the conscious level respectively as: memory, decisional operation (attitude), emotional state, power/energy status and health, associativity and offspring formation, inherited predispositions, skills and mentality. The near-death and religious experiences can be explained by an Info-Connection pole. Conclusion: consciousness could be fully described and understood in informational terms. Keywords: Brain; Informational operation; Virtual and matter-related information; Info-input and output; Genetic and Epigenetic; Informational subsystems; Cognitive centres; Extra-sensorial experiences Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Volume 1-Issue 5 Citation: Florin Gaiseanu. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System. Arch Biomed Eng & Biotechnol. 1(5): 2019. ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Page 2 of 6 somehow, the "hard" problem which arises when we refer to the brain operation is how to explain the senses and sensations [5]. Physics is implied also more and more on this field, bringing into the discussion the intimate mechanisms of the matter-support of mind and consciousness [6], offering responses to the "mind-body" problem on the basis of quantum [7] or epigenetic processes [8]. As concerns the near-death experiences (NDEs) and other extraproperties of the mind [9,10], it was necessary to imply a deep understanding of matter-related information both at the micro and macro scale [11]. In this paper it is presented especially the informational mode of brain operation correlated with its anatomic structure and functions to extract conclusions on the structure of the informational system of the human body and consciousness. Analysis of the Informational Structure of the Brain and Associated Functions Mechanisms of the transmission of information and consequences As it was shown above, little attention was paid to the deep implication of information, as a physical parameter, when the working functions of brain were approached. The term of information was and still is used in a general way, as a news or intercommunication support [12,13]. However, when we apply this concept to matter, particularly to biological processes, we have to take into account not only the basic meaning, coming from our fundamental senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touching), but also the implicit, incorporated information into the matter components. Figure 1: Mechanisms of the transmission of information in the organism: the virtual information received by sensors and operated by the brain (superior side), electrically-assisted info-transmission by the axons of the nervous cells and neurotransmitters between the nervous cells, and the epigenetic transmission (bottom side). In Fig. 1 there are represented the transmission processes of information in the human body, starting with info-recorded signal in the brain and continued by electric and non-electric signals to the cells. Specifically, the transmission of information by the nervous system is part of it assured by electrical signals along the nervous axon, on the basis of YES/NO type conduction, like in the computer systems. YES/NO decisional operation unit is an informational basic way to approach and evaluate the information, as it was defined by Shannon [5] by means of functions of probability in a binary system. In the brain, specifically consisting in a highly packaged neural mass, this is a main type of informational transmission. As an electrical transmission, this is associated with the electromagnetic field specific for the electric and electronic circuits and processes, which allow applications concerning especially motor-type commands by mind to various helping body-added mechanisms or to wifi-assisted external electro-mechanic devices [14]. The recent non-invasive and non-destructive functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a high technological method to investigate the local activity of the brain as a function of the investigation goals and to correlate various areas of the brain with a specific task. This is based on a differentiated visualisation of the predominantly irrigated regions with blood flow due to the nervous specific activation. Although the electrical transmission by neural axons is an essential way of communication, allowing the understanding/ analysis of the brain activity by similarity with that in the logic/ intelligent microelectronic systems, a next signal differentiating, but non-electrical transmission way is assured within the synaptic junctions between the neurons by physico-chemical mechanisms assisted by neurotransmitters, as info-transmission agents, as it can be seen in Fig. 1. Vesicles with neurotransmitter molecules are transported within the dendritic button, which expel the neurotransmitters to the next dendritic button of a neighbourhood neuron, to be trapped by specific receivers from its surface. This is a selective mechanism of the transmission of information, because only certain type of neurotransmitter is accepted by a corresponding receiver, if each other have complementary structures, allowing to fit together like a key in a lock. When the fiting process is attained, information signal is transmitted from the informational agent (in this case the neurotransmitter) by a "disembodiment" of information to the receptors, which receive the transmitted information by an info-"embodiment" process, that meaning that the information is on this way "incorporated" into this new agent of info-transmission. After multi-repetitive steps of the transmission of the same type of information, converted in a typical stereotype, this could be transmitted into the cells by an intra-cellular communication, and incorporated as a new trait in the genetic system, without affecting the genetic structure of the species, as it can be seen in the bottom side of Fig. 1. This is an epigenetic-type mechanism, proposed to explain not only the traits transmission, by also memory and some forms of mental disorders [8]. Citation: Florin Gaiseanu. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System. Arch Biomed Eng & Biotechnol. 1(5): 2019. ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Volume 1-Issue 5 Page 3 of 6 All these mechanisms show, besides the possibility to describe them in terms of information, independently if they are electrically or non-electrically supported, that the information automatically and insistently experimented by the brain as a acquired information, could be included in the genetic system as a new acquired trait and transmitted to the offspring. Therefore, the informational processes managed by the brain are not referred only to the virtual (mentally activated) information, but also to the matter-related (not conscious) information, as "embodied" into the cells, with the maximum expression in the genetic final form, ready to be transmitted to the offspring. It is to be concluded thus that viewed from the informational perspective, the activity of the brain and of its circuits could be globally described as referring to an informational system of the human body, able to manage the information resulted from the interaction with the environment for adaptation, to receive, operate and to transmit the decisions to the execution elements as a motor-type response, and/or to incorporate it by repetitive processes until this informational sequence to become part of the cell itself, by epigenetic mechanisms, responsible for the transmission of the acquired traits as a genetic information, as discussed above. Informational structure of the brain Starting from the stimulating results of such an informational analysis, the next step would be the identification of the specific essential/vital functions of the organism from the informational point of view and of the associated areas of the brain, which manage such functions. The main components of the brain which we refer to [3] are schematically presented in Figure 2. Figure 2: Schematic representation of the anatomic structure of the brain, which defines the main areas managing the components of the informational system of the human body. Taking into account both the informational activity to operate with the virtual information (received from the external and internal sensors), and with the matter-related information (particularly with the genetic information), the following operational subsystems could be distinguished, as described below and referring to the Figure 1,2&3. 1. Centre of Acquisition and Storing of Information (CASI, Fig. 3), which is represented by the sum of all areas where the internal and external information is received and stoked. This centre is basically represented by shortand long-term memory, but also by the areas connected to the sensors of the virtual information. The main associated physical areas of the brain are (Fig. 2): the prefrontal cortex, the area of the short-term memory (about 1 min. duration), hippocampus – corresponding to the long-term memory, cerebellum, responsible of the memory of the learned behaviours and skills, thalamus-complying the function of a relay for sensory impulses, cerebral cortex with areas for interpreting the main sensorial signals (touch, vision, hearing). CASI is connected to the external and internal sensors, which transmit to it the input information into the informational system Figure 3. Figure 3: Schematic representation of the informational structure of the human body and the corresponding cognitive centres of consciousness. 2. Centre of the Decision and Command (CDC), responsible of the main dynamic abilities of the mind like thought, creativity, communication, intelligence, motivation, judgement, planning, voluntary control of muscles, voluntary movement operated by the cerebral hemispheres, frontal and prefrontal lobes of the cerebrum. Cerebellum has also a helping role in the muscle's Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Volume 1-Issue 5 Citation: Florin Gaiseanu. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System. Arch Biomed Eng & Biotechnol. 1(5): 2019. ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Page 4 of 6 coordination, including learning and storing motor skills. The left hemisphere is typically responsible for language and speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing, while the right hemisphere manages especially the creativity, spatial ability, artistic and musical skills. CDC provides to the body and to external environment a decisional information, which is the attitude, as an information output of the informational system (Fig. 3). The motor decisions are addressed to the execution elements (EE), as shown in Fig. 3. 3. Info-Emotional System (IES, Fig. 3) is managed by the limbic system, composed by thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, midbrain and amygdala (Fig, 1 and Fig. 2). This is also an informational system because is responsible of emotions a sensorial impulse. 4. Maintenance Informational System (MIS) operates automatically to manage basically the operational processes related to the digestion and the distribution in the organism of the necessary nutrients. This system is therefore related with the processing of the material components necessary for the continuous maintenance of the body (nourishment, water, air) (Fig. 3). The brain stem area of brain acts as a relay centre between the cerebrum and cerebellum to the spinal cord, and manages many automatic functions such as breathing, heart rate, body temperature, wake and sleep cycles and digestion, while the hypothalamus controls and integrates the activities of the autonomic nervous system. Medulla – the last part of the brain stem controls the vital autonomic reflex functions like cardiac activity (rate and force of heartbeat, vasomotor regulation, variation of diameter of the blood vessels, the blood distribution to specific organs, the blood pressure and the respiratory rate and depth of breathing (Figure 2). 5. Genetic Transmission System (GTS, Fig. 3) is correlated mainly with hypophysis and hypothalamus, responsible for the sexual activity. This system assures the output matterrelated (genetic) information of the body, including the species characteristics and the acquired traits. 6. Info-Genetic Generator (IGG, Fig. 3) manages the development of the body according to the age, especially by means of hypophysis and hypothalamus (Fig. 2). These brain components regulate the body growth and its development, metabolism and even the aging [15]. Basal ganglia seem to have also a role in the personality features. This system is based on the genetic input information inherited from parents. According to the above analysis, the human body is managed by an informational system, basically provided with: (i) inputs for the reception of the virtual information and for genetic (matterrelated) information from the parents; (ii) an informational output which is actually the attitude, as a reactive, decisional response to the information input, and a genetic information output for the species survival (Fig. 3). The human body appears therefore as an informational structure connected to matter, able to process it for the survival. Results Consciousness as an Informational System Cognitive centres of consciousness The informational components described above are projected into the consciousness as discussed below (Fig. 3). • CASI is actually the memory, accumulating the data of the life experience [8,16] and therefore could be suggestively named I-know (Ik in Fig. 3), where the personal character of the life experience is highlighted as related to come from the first-person perspective. The information stoked in CASI is provided from external and internal sources, and the data contribution of all other cognitive centres is also retrieved in CASI as remembrances. CASI stores the acquired information under a passive, "stand-by" form. • CDC activates actually the necessary information from CASI, bringing it in the operational cycle of the brain activity to make a decision. Therefore, this centre is suggestively called I-want (Iw – Fig. 3). The informational operator of such a process is the thought. To obtain a decision, CDC needs both information but also decision criteria, which are provided actually by other cognitive centres via CASI. Among them, the emotions could have an important role in the decision making [16-18]. The decision composes actually the attitude. The motor type decisions are directed to the EE components, basically to the muscles and to the vocal system to express the attitude. • IES is projected in consciousness as the centre I-love (Il in Fig. 3), dedicated to emotions. The emotional states represent the reaction of the body to the received information [16,18]. The name of this centre suggests the large spectrum of emotions represented by love, which is the central emotional state of the life, as a favourable force. • MIS assures the power of the body and of the life, supporting the energetic processes and the body health, and it is projected in consciousness as the cognitive centre I-am (Ia-Fig. 3). This centre manages the characteristic information concerning the self-status. • GTS is perceived in consciousness as the cognitive centre I-create (Ic -Fig. 3). This centre is responsible for the associativity and the formation of the next generation, in close relation with the centre Il. • IGG is projected in consciousness as the centre I-created (IcdFig.3) and is perceived in the conscious mind by the inherited skills, predispositions and talents, and also by mentality, which is acquired especially during the first years of the life. Therefore, this centre provides strong decision criteria for the decisional centre [16,18] (Figure 3). According to the above description, the human body appears as an informed matter structure, a combination between matter and information, permanently under a dynamic regime of communications between its own components and with the Citation: Florin Gaiseanu. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System. Arch Biomed Eng & Biotechnol. 1(5): 2019. ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Volume 1-Issue 5 Page 5 of 6 environment, as it can be observed in Fig. 3. The graduated change of the background colour from lighter to the darker suggests the degree of conscious level. The conscious system, allowing the reaction for adaptation is defined as the Operative Informational System (OIS), while the defined Programmed Informational System (PIS) manages specifically the matter-related information. The virtual information, specific to OIS can be integrated into PIS by repetition, converting it in skills or epigenetically integrated info. Therefore, the graduated change of the background colour from lighter to the darker suggests also the integration/conversion by a repetition process of a virtual information to a deeply matterintegrated info. The cognitive extra-sensorial experiences The centres discussed above relate the current proprieties of the mind as a system for exploration of the reality [10,12,19]. However, in order to explain also the extra-sensorial properties of the mind, like that associated with near-death experiences (NDEs) [9], it is necessary to include in the informational system of the human body the Info-Connection (IC) pole. This connection refers to the possibility of the mind to access information on the informational field of matter, as it was defined earlier by Gaiseanu [10,20-22]. The concept of the informational field of matter is based on some recent discoveries of quantum mechanics, which shown that the physical properties of the particle, even that of atoms of a collectivity of atoms, could be separated from their body [23], and it was for the first time defined and introduced by Gaiseanu [20]. Another recent discovery, this time at a cosmic scale, shows that the dark matter, this mysterious matter of our universe, undetectable but present by the specific effects and field (even in our solar system), referred mainly to the contribution to the galaxies build, is actually anti-matter [24], with anti-symmetrical properties with respect to matter. The pair particles of matter/ anti-matter are permanently generated in the vacuum, giving rise to a gravitational polarization of such pairs induced by the earth and sun gravitational field. This is a similar process like in the tetravalent semiconductor materials (particularly in silicon), were pairs of electron/hole (positive charges) in the depleted regions of the junctions [25] or of atom/vacancy (a lack of an atom in the semiconductor lattice) [26,27] are generated statistically for a certain temperature. The activity of our universe could be therefore compared with that of an informational field, composed by YES/ NO specific alternatives – the basic informational binary unit (Bit), defined within the science of information and technology [6,20]. The mind connection to such a field by IC pole allows to explain the associated phenomena to NDEs as follows. The regression to the childhood is a consequence of the mind connection to the anti-gravitational and anti-entropic field of anti-matter, where the time arrow is inversely oriented, from the future to the past [11]. The same physical process can explain the premonition phenomena [10]. The extra-corporal view is based on the direct scanning of the informational field of matter by the internal "eye" [6]. These concepts and mechanisms could seem to be "strange". However, "strange" could seems also the quantum proprieties of the elemental particles, which quantum physics increasingly more reveals in various experiments, like entanglement (instantaneous communication at distance) and retro-causal phenomena (the future influence the present events) [11]. Therefore, the quantum phenomena are more and more invoked to explain some intimate biologic processes [28]. Immortality is also an example which could be discussed in relation with the exposed properties of the Info-Connection pole. As during the NDEs consciousness seems to separate from the physical body, and on the other hand the information should be conserved in nature, the question which arises is if consciousness could conserve its properties coherently and independently of the physical body and for what time period [22]. Recently, there were reported new data on this field in a study of case, showing the persistence of the cerebral delta waves following the cessation of both the cardiac rhythm and arterial blood pressure [29]. The Info-Connection can explain also the religious and mysticalexperiences (RMEs) due to the protection feelings induced by the anti-entropic field, favorable to living structures, against the destructive (entropic) field of matter [8]. IC is also favorable for the meditation process, serving for stress relaxation, as a hypnotic-based palliative therapy [8,30,31]. Therefore, the associated cognitive centre was defined as I-believe (Ib), such as it is represented in Fig. 3. Recently, it was shown that a cerebral correspondent area could be identified specifically in the anterior cingulate cortex [32]. On the basis of the cognitive structure of consciousness a music-based palliative therapy procedure could be also applied [17]. Conclusions Starting from the analysis of the specific processes implied in the transmission of information in the nervous system and by cellular inter and intra communication, there were identified two main mechanisms of transmission: electrical, along the axons of the nervous cells and non-electrical mechanism, by means of embodiment/disembodiment of information. The possibility to express in terms of information the transmission processes, starting from the virtual acquired information to the matterrelated information within the frame of the epigenetic processes, there were analysed and determined the main informational components of the informational system of the human body and the corresponding functional areas in the brain. In such way there were defined the following informational subsystems: CASI as a centre of acquiring and storing of information, with a corresponding cognitive centre Ik in consciousness, CDC – the centre of decision and command, with correspondence in consciousness by the cognitive centre Iw, IES as Info-Emotional system, correlated with the cognitive centre Il, MIS – the maintenance info-system, corresponding with the cognitive centre Ia, GTS representing the genetic transmission system, which corresponds with the cognitive centre Ic, and IGG – the infogenetic generator, corresponding with the cognitive centre Icd. The Archives in Biomedical Engineering & Biotechnology Volume 1-Issue 5 Citation: Florin Gaiseanu. Informational Mode of the Brain Operation and Consciousness as an Informational Related System. Arch Biomed Eng & Biotechnol. 1(5): 2019. ABEB.MS.ID.000525. Page 6 of 6 informational structure of the informational system is completed by IC – the info-connection to the informational field of universe, explaining the religious and mystical properties and NDEs by means of the cognitive centre Ib. The obtained results support from physiological and functional point of view the informational relations between the informational subsystems as components of the informational system of the human body, centered on the main directives of the living structures: reactivity for adaptation and survival. It was shown that these directives are fulfilled by info-connection to the environment and body itself by means of information inputs and outputs, both virtual and matter-related (genetic) information, assuring the individual adaptation and survival of the species. Acknowledgment In the memory of my exemplar and loved parents, the distinguished (Magna cum Laude) Professor Emanoil Gaiseanu and the distinguished (Emeritus) Professor Florica Gaiseanu, to my Brother and to All Other Members of my Family, who were part of my life. Conflict of interests No any. References 1. Shannon C (1948) The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell Syst Tech J 27: 379-423. 2. Baars BJ (1988) A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. 3. Baars BJ, Gage N (2013) Cognition, Brain and Consciousness, 2nd (ED) USA, Academic Press (Elsevier Sequoia). 4. Perlovski L (2001) Neural Networks and Intellect: Using Model Based Concepts. Oxford: University Press. 5. Chalmers D (1995) Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3): 200-219. 6. Gaiseanu F (2018) Information: from Philosophic to Physics Concepts for Informational Modeling of Consciousness, Philosophy Study 8(8): 368-382. 7. 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(2015) The role of clinical hypnosis and self-hypnosis to relief pain and anxiety in severe chronic diseases in palliative care: a 2-year long-term follow-up of treatment in a nonrandomized clinical trial, Ann Palliat Med 1-17. 32. Inzlicht M, Tullett A, Good M (2011) The need to believe: a neuroscience account of religion as a motivated process, Religion, Brain & Behavior 1(3): 192-251. | {
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This is the Accepted Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form will be published in South African Journal of Philosophy © 2015 copyright The Philosophical Society of Southern Africa. South African Journal of Philosophy is available online at: . http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/02580136.2015.1128242 Further Problems with Projectivism THOMAS PÖLZLER Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, Austria ABSTRACT: From David Hume onwards, many philosophers have argued that moral thinking is characterized by a tendency to "project" our own mental states onto the world. This metaphor of projection may be understood as involving two empirical claims: the claim that humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts (the experiential hypothesis), and the claim that this moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes (the causal hypothesis). Elsewhere I argued in detail against one form of the experiential hypothesis. My main aim in this paper is to show that, considering recent psychological studies about folk metaethics and the relation between moral judgements and emotions, the causal hypothesis must be considered problematic too. First, the most common argument in favor of the causal hypothesis is based on an implausible premise and a dubious assumption. Second, ordinary people's moral experience is influenced by a non-affective factor, namely their openness to divergent moral views. And third, projectivism in general and its causal hypothesis in particular might not even hold true for affective moral judgements. This negative assessment of projectivism is significant both for our understanding of moral cognition as an empirical phenomenon and for metaethics. KEY WORDS: moral projectivism; moral experience; moral psychology; experimental philosophy In the 17 th century various philosophers began to entertain the idea that humans' experience of certain kinds of facts as objective is not due to their perceiving these facts; rather, they "project" their own mental attitudes onto the world. Besides colors, sounds, taste (Locke [1690] 1997) or causality (Hume [1740] 1978), this projectivist hypothesis was mainly advocated with regard to morality. The most prominent early defender of moral projectivism was David Hume. In his "Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals", Hume famously claimed that the human capacity of "taste" (which he took to include morality) "gilds and stains" the objective world: 2 [...] taste [...] has a productive faculty, and gilding and staining all natural objects with the colours, borrowed from internal sentiment, raises in a manner a new creation. (Hume [1751] 1983: p. 88) Today moral projectivism still enjoys considerable popularity (e.g., Mackie [1977] 2011; Blackburn 1993; Greene 2002; Joyce 2009, 2010). Simon Blackburn, one of the view's most prominent defenders, explains: We have sentiments or other reactions caused by natural features of things and we "gild or stain" the world by describing it as if it contained features answering to these sentiments, in the way that the niceness of an ice cream answers to the pleasure it gives us. (Blackburn 1993: p. 152) Moral projectivism is often thought of as entailing the metaethical view of anti-realism; i.e., it is assumed that the objective moral properties that humans are led to attribute to things do not actually exist (D'Arms and Jacobson 2006: p. 188; Kauppinen 2013: p. 14). However, one may also advocate or discuss only the empirical core of claims of projection (Joyce 2009: p. 57). In this minimal, metaethically uncommitted sense moral projectivism has sometimes been claimed to support moral anti-realism rather than being defined by it. For example, some metaethicists have argued that projectivism weakens or defeats the prima facie reason in favor of realism (supposedly) generated by our realist-seeming moral experience (see Mackie [1977] 2011: p. 42; Greene 2002: pp. 143-144), or that it provides evidence in favor of error theory's semantic claim of objectivist cognitivism (see Mackie [1977] 2011: pp. 33-35; Joyce 2009: p. 59). So is minimal moral projectivism (henceforth simply "projectivism") true? How one assesses the plausibility of projectivism significantly depends on what one means by humans "projecting" their mental states onto the world. Following Richard Joyce, Section 1 explains that the metaphor of projection may be understood as involving two claims: the claim that humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts (the experiential hypothesis), and the claim that this moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes (the causal hypothesis). Elsewhere I argued in detail against one form of the experiential hypothesis (Pölzler 2014: pp. 70-120, forthcoming). My aim in this paper is to strike another blow against projectivism. Considering recent psychological studies about folk metaethics and the relation between moral judgements and emotions, I attempt to show that projectivism's causal hypothesis must be deemed problematic too. My argument consists of three parts. In Section 2 I shall argue that the most common argument in favor of the causal 3 hypothesis is based on an implausible premise and a dubious assumption. In Section 3 I shall argue that ordinary people's moral experience is influenced by a non-affective factor, namely their openness to divergent moral views. And in Section 4 I shall argue that projectivism in general and its causal hypothesis in particular might not even hold true for affective moral judgements. 1. Clarifications According to projectivism, moral cognition is characterized by humans "projecting" their own mental states onto the world. It is important to note that this claim is metaphoric. None of its proponents believe that, like in cases of literal projection, certain kinds of mental states emanate from our minds and cover parts of the world (D'Arms and Jacobson 2006: p. 188; Joyce 2009: p. 60). In order to be able to assess projectivism's plausibility we must therefore translate it into more literal terms. In this paper I assume a conception of projectivism that has recently been developed by Richard Joyce (2009 and 2010), and has in identical or similar forms also been endorsed by various other participants of the debate (e.g., Greene 2002: 146147; Kail 2007: 3-4; Olson 2014: p. 6). On Joyce's view, projectivism is essentially a "causal account of moral experience" (2007b). As such, it involves two claims: a claim about the nature of humans' moral experience, and a claim about the causes of this experience. With regard to the nature of our moral experience projectivists hold that this experience is realist-seeming, i.e., that humans experience morality as objective. The Experiential Hypothesis1: Humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts (see Joyce 2009: pp. 60-68). As projectivists typically understand this claim, humans experiencing morality as "objective" means that they experience morality as "out there": as something that exists in the world, and waits to be discovered. Joyce specifies this idea in terms of subject-independence (2009: pp. 62-65 and fn. 3). Morality would qualify as objective in this sense if and only if whether things are right, wrong, good, bad, etc. is independent from one's own (i.e., the subject's) 1 Joyce refers to this hypothesis as "phenomenological". For reasons that will become clear soon, this label is somewhat misleading. 4 mental states - from how one feels about these things, what one believes about them, and so forth.2 The experiential hypothesis' notion of "experience" is most readily understood in an exclusively phenomenological sense. Projectivists seem to be committed to the view that "what it is like" to make moral judgements is to respond to moral facts that are independent from us. However, Joyce rightly emphasizes that in the present context "experience" is more appropriately understood in a broader sense (2009: pp. 65-66). While some projectivists may hold views about the qualitative character of moral judgements, some may also only mean that humans have a deeply entrenched metaethical intuition that morality is objective - an intuition that may or may not have any qualitative character. In addition to its claim about the nature of humans' moral experience, projectivism also entails a claim about how this experience comes about. In particular, it entails that what causes us to experience things as objectively right, wrong, good, bad, etc. is not that we perceive them to have these properties, but rather a kind of mental attitudes within us, namely affective attitudes. Suppose, for example, you witness some kid torturing puppies for fun. Your observation may arouse certain negative affective attitudes in you: emotions like anger or disapproval, say. According to projectivism's causal hypothesis, it is these affective attitudes that then cause you to have the experience that torturing puppies for fun is objectively wrong. The Causal Hypothesis: Humans' moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes (see Joyce 2009: pp. 68-69). 3 Projectivists have said little about what they mean when they talk of (particular) "affective attitudes" causing humans' moral experience. There are reasons to believe, however, that their conception of these attitudes is non-cognitivist, i.e. that they conceive of the attitudes as lacking any cognitive content and hence as not representing facts. First, in line with Joyce's above 2 Note that in contrast to many other conceptions of objectivity (e.g., Huemer 2005: pp. 2-4), this subjectindependence conception allows for morality to be objective relative to some subjects, but subjective relative to others. Joyce illustrates this by an analogy with a person's sadness. While my sadness is subjective from my own perspective (it trivially depends on my own mental states), for anybody else it is something that is "out there" and can be discovered (2009: pp. 63-64). 3 Projectivists need not claim that perceptions do not play any role whatsoever in generating ordinary people's moral experience. For example, they may acknowledge that our seeing a certain action often causes us to have the emotions that then lead us to have a certain moral experience. Hence the qualification "immediate" (Joyce 2010: p. 39). 5 explanations, projectivists generally contrast the relevant affective attitudes with perceptions, which are the products of a cognitive faculty (e.g., Hume 1978: pp. 468-469; Greene 2002: pp. 146-147). Second, some projectivists have explicitly characterized these attitudes as noncognitive. Simon Blackburn, for example, explains that the attitudes that humans tend to project onto the world are "not descriptive" (1984: p. 171). And third, as almost all proponents of projectivism hold metaethical positions according to which there are neither objective nor subjective (robust) moral facts (see, e.g., Blackburn 1984; Joyce 2001; Mackie [1977] 2011), there is no metaethical reason for them to construe the relevant affective attitudes as cognitive (and thus possibly responsive to moral facts) either. Projectivism's commitment to the non-cognitivist character of the attitudes appealed to in its causal hypothesis has important, yet widely neglected implications for the assessment of this hypothesis (McNaughton 1988: p. 113). It entails that the causal hypothesis cannot only be refuted by showing humans' moral experience to be caused by cognitive attitudes, but also by establishing that the particular affective attitudes that this hypothesis appeals to involve significant cognitive elements. A refutation of this second (more theoretical and conceptual) kind seems prima facie plausible with regard to at least some kinds of affective attitudes, such as, for example, emotions (see, e.g., Lazarus 1991; Solomon 1993; Nussbaum 2004). In what follows, however, I will grant projectivists that the emotions, sentiments, passions or other affective attitudes that they appeal to are non-cognitive, and rather focus on the first of the above mentioned refutations. Granting projectivists their conception of affective attitudes, the truth of projectivism becomes a largely empirical question. Questions of this kind are most reliably assessed by the methods of empirical science. In recent years various projectivists have argued that the available scientific evidence strongly supports their view. Richard Joyce, for example, claims that "evidence concerning (on the one hand) what really causes moral judgement and (on the other hand) how it seems to us virtually adds up to a statement of moral projectivism" (2007a: p.125). And according to Joshua Greene, projectivism has recently "gained widespread acceptance among experimental psychologists" (2002: p. 142). In the following three sections I will argue that with regard to projectivism's causal hypothesis this assessment is likely wrong. Recent psychological research on folk metaethics and the relation between moral judgements and emotions suggests that humans' moral experience is the product of cognitive rather than affective attitudes. 6 2. The Argument from Emotionism Projectivism's causal hypothesis has recently typically been defended by appeal to the claim that moral judgements are mainly caused by emotions (see Greene 2002: p. 142; Joyce 2007a: p. 130). In what follows I will show that this "emotionist" argument in favor of projectivism's causal hypothesis is weak. First, the claim that moral judgements are mainly caused by emotions is contradicted rather than supported by the available scientific evidence.4 And second, even if this claim were true, it would not lend (much) support to the hypothesis that humans' moral experience is mainly caused by emotions anyway. Moral Judgements and Emotions The claim that moral judgements are mainly caused by emotions has recently become quite popular (see, e.g., Haidt 2001; Greene and Haidt 2002; Prinz 2006, 2007b). Among others, it has been thought to be supported by two studies about the effect of disgust. In the first study (Schnall et al. 2008a) one group of subjects was confronted with stimuli likely to make them feel disgusted (e.g., they were seated in a room treated with "fart spray" or asked to recall a physically disgusting experience), while another group was not confronted with these stimuli. When subjects were then asked to rate the moral wrongness of a number of actions it turned out that those in the disgust conditions rated the actions significantly more wrong than those in the neutral conditions - or at least this is how the study's results are often presented (e.g., Prinz 2006: p. 31). Subjects in the second study (Schnall et al. 2008b) had to watch a film clip that involved a dirty toilet. One group was then asked to complete an otherwise unrelated task involving words associated with cleanliness, for example "pure", "clean", or "pristine", or to wash their hands with soap and water. The other group completed a task involving only neutral words, or were not given the opportunity to wash their hands. Again disgust, or the absence of it, seemed to have had a significant influence of subjects' moral judgements. Those in the cleanliness conditions rated thee actions they were presented with significantly less wrong than those in the neutral conditions - or again, this is at least how the results of the study are often presented (e.g., Prinz 2011: p. 137). 4 This part of the Section is based on Pölzler 2015: pp. 181-184. 7 As shown in Pölzler 2015 (pp. 183-184), there are two main problems with the above interpretation of Schnall et al.'s studies.5 The first problem is methodological. Although the studies' findings may be explained by disgust (or other emotions) influencing subjects' moral judgements, they are consistent with various alternative explanations as well. For example, emotions may have influenced subjects' perception of the actions they were presented with rather than their moral judgements (e.g., they may have increased their awareness of the actions having certain morally relevant non-moral features, see Huebner et al. 2009: pp. 1-3); or subjects may rather have become aware of their having the emotion they were induced to have, and this awareness affected their reasoning (e.g., they may have (unconsciously) reasoned that because they felt disgust, there had to be something wrong with the action at issue, even though they could not tell what it was, see Jones 2006: p. 50). The second main problem with many commentators' interpretation of the above studies is that they have grossly exaggerated these studies' results (see May 2014). Proponents of the significance of emotions in moral judgements have often suggested that in these studies, emotions affected the severity of subjects' moral judgements with regard to all or most of the scenarios they were presented, and to a rather strong degree. But this is clearly wrong. In the first above study only the first of four experiments showed a significant effect of disgust that was independent from subjects' awareness of changes in their body (Schnall et al. 2008a: 11001103). And even in this first experiment disgust only made subjects' judgements significantly harsher with regard to 2 out of 4 vignettes in the weak and 1 out of 4 vignettes in the strong experimental condition, and only to an average of 0.6 on a seven-point scale of wrongness (Schnall et al. 2008a: 1099). Similar considerations apply to the second study as well. Coming across cleanliness words/handwashing had a significant effect on subject's wrongness ratings only with regard to 1 out of 6 of the scenarios presented in experiment 1, and 2 out of 6 of the scenarios of experiment 2. Moreover, the effect was again quite small. On the nine-point wrongness scale of experiment 1 subjects in the non-disgust condition rated actions at an average of 4.98, and subjects in the disgust condition at 5.81 (Schnall et al. 2008b: 1220). On the seven-point wrongness scale of experiment 2, subjects in the non-disgust condition rated the actions at an average of 4.73, and subjects in the disgust condition at 5.43 (Schnall et al. 2008b: 1221). 5 Note that Schnall et al. themselves do not endorse the above interpretations. They present their data in a more cautious way. 8 Reviews and meta-analyses by Landy and Goodwin (2014), May (2014), Pizzaro et al. (2011) and others suggest that, at least on closer consideration, most other relevant studies are in line with those considered above. They too suggest that emotions often do not have any substantial effect on moral judgements. Moreover, the conclusion that moral judgements are not mainly caused by emotions is also supported by studies on the co-occurrence of moral judgements and emotions. In Greene et al.'s (2001) famous Trolley dilemma study, for example, subjects were presented various moral dilemmas that either involved inflicting harm in a personal or impersonal way. It turned out that when subjects thought about impersonal moral dilemmas they showed very little activity in brain areas typically associated with emotions (Greene et al. 2001: p. 2107). However, if (significant) emotional activity does not even correlate with particular kinds of moral judgements, then it cannot be these judgements' predominant cause either. Moral Judgements and Moral Experience My second main objection against the emotionist argument in favor of projectivism's causal hypothesis concerns this argument's inductive strength. Moral judgements and moral experiences are distinct aspects of moral cognition. The truth of the claim that moral judgements are mainly caused by emotions would therefore not entail that our moral experience is mainly caused by emotions too. In order for the causal hypothesis to be supported by this claim it would also have to be the case that our moral judgements and our moral experience are causally regulated by one and the same mental attitude. For example, as apparently assumed by Joyce (2009: p. 70), the same attitude would have to cause us first to have a particular moral experience and then, via this experience, to make a corresponding moral judgement. Let us call this assumption of the emotionist argument in favor of the causal hypothesis the "same attitude assumption". Suppose the same attitude assumption were true. In this case we should find all sorts of correlations between people's moral judgements and their moral experiences. Most obviously, we should find a correlation between the strength with which people hold a moral judgement and the kind of moral experience they have with regard to it. The stronger a person's confidence in her judgement that a thing is right, wrong, good, bad, etc., the more likely she should be to experience this thing's rightness, wrongness, goodness, badness, etc. as an objective property of that thing (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 180). Is this implication of the same attitude assumption true? 9 In recent years psychologists have become increasingly interested in ordinary people's metaethical intuitions (e.g., Goodwin and Darley 2008, 2010; Wright et al. 2013, 2014). Elsewhere (Pölzler forthcoming) I argue that several prominent studies on this issue did not measure what they attempted to measure. Most commonly, they confused the question of whether moral judgements purport to represent (objective) moral facts (cognitivism vs. noncognitivism) with the question of whether these facts exist (realism vs. anti-realism). I therefore suggested reinterpretations of these studies which I will also assume in what follows. Regardless of whether one tends towards these reinterpretations or the experimenters' original interpretations, however, it seems that the available data with regard to the same attitude assumption is ambiguous or rather contradicts this assumption. One early study on folk metaethics, conducted by Goodwin and Darley (2008), is consistent with the same attitude assumption's prediction of a correlation between persons' strength of agreement to moral judgements and their metaethical intuitions. Subjects in this study who responded as cognitivists to a particular moral statement (which entails realism or some, but not all forms of anti-realism) tended to agree significantly stronger to this statement than subjects who responded as non-cognitivists to it (which is a variant of anti-realism) (Goodwin and Darley 2008: pp. 1350, 1354). Two other relevant studies did not find any such correlation, though. Consider, first, a recent study by Wright, Grandjean and McWhite (2013). In this study subjects' metaethical intuitions were determined by asking them two questions. Properly interpreted, subjects' responses to these questions are indicative of either more cognitivist and realist leanings or more non-cognitivist and anti-realist leanings. It turned out that subjects who chose the more cognitivist and realist option with regard to a moral statement did not tend to agree with it more strongly than subjects who chose the more non-cognitivist and antirealist option (see Wright et al. 2013: pp. 342, 344): [...] while a wealth of research has found that people treat differently those attitudes and beliefs they hold strongly from those they hold more weakly [...], attitude strength did not reveal itself here to be predictive of [...] objectivity. (Wright et al. 2013: p. 342) Second, Goodwin and Darley decided to have another look at the relation between metaethical intuitions and strength of agreement as well. This time they did not find a correlation either (reported in 2010: p. 180): 10 [...] our data has shown that [...] objectivity judgments are divergent from first order moral judgments, i.e., they are divergent from strength of agreement ratings concerning moral beliefs. (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 180) The available evidence on the relation between the strength of people's moral judgements and their metaethical intuitions is admittedly scarce. As shown above, however, it provides at least some reason to believe that the emotionist argument's same attitude assumption may be false. This argument is thus not only based on an implausible premise, its inductive strength rests on a shaky foundation too. Even if moral judgements were mainly caused by emotions, this may not lend (much) support to the claim that our moral experience is mainly caused by emotions as well. 3. The Causes of Metaethical Intuitions In section 2 I showed that projectivists' main argument for their causal hypothesis is weak. In addition, there is also positive evidence for doubting that humans' moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes. Several psychologists and philosophers have recently suggested that ordinary people's metaethical intuitions are at least in part determined by their openness to alternative moral views. The more one is able and willing to consider the perspective of others with regard to a certain moral issue (for example, the more one is able and willing to imagine how one would judge this issue if one had others' interests, desires, world-views, etc.), the more anti-realist one's metaethical intuitions with regard to this issue become (Sarkissian et al. 2011: p. 501). 6 The truth of this hypothesis about the causes of our metaethical intuitions would clearly be bad news for projectivists. As being open to alternative perspectives essentially involves reasoning about the implications of different possibilities and is therefore likely a predominantly cognitive factor (see Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 180), it would mean that humans' moral experience is not exclusively determined by affective reactions. In this Section I will argue that the hypothesis that humans' moral experience is causally influenced by their openness to divergent moral perspectives is indeed plausible. First, I will present three studies that suggest a strong correlation between ordinary people's metaethical 6 Another variable that was found to significantly correlate with and even to some degree causally influence people's metaethical intuitions is people's perceptions of consensus. The wider subjects believed a statement to be accepted by others, the more cognitivist/realist their responses turned out to be (Goodwin and Darley 2012: pp. 253-254). 11 intuitions and their openness to alternative moral perspectives. And second, I will argue that this correlation is at least in part to be explained by the hypothesis that people's openness to alternative moral perspectives causally influences their metaethical intuitions. Verbal Explanations First evidence for a correlation between persons' metaethical intuitions and their openness to alternative moral perspectives is provided by Goodwin and Darley's above 2008 study. Subjects in this study were told that another subject had denied a moral judgement that they themselves had previously made. Then they were (among others) asked why they believed this disagreement might have arisen (2008: p. 1363). It turned out that answers to this question correlated with subjects' metaethical intuitions. Those who had been drawn towards more cognitivist and realist options tended to express surprise about how anybody could disagree with them and tended to characterize the other subject as morally depraved. With regard to the statement "Robbing a bank in order to pay for an expensive holiday is a morally bad action," for example, some more cognitivist and realist subjects explained such disagreements as follows: "The other person obviously has no values, and no respect for the property of others!" "The other person has a warped view of what is a moral action." (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 174) Subjects who tended towards non-cognitivism and anti-realism, in contrast, rather tried to understand and make sense of the disagreeing persons' judgements (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 174). Tolerance Further evidence for a correlation between persons' metaethical intuitions and their openness to alternative moral perspectives comes from a recent study by Wright, McWhite, and Grandjean (2014). Subjects in this study were again told that another person disagreed with one of their moral judgements. Then their degree of tolerance for this person's divergent moral view was examined. For example, subjects were asked how willing they would be to interact with this person, how willing they would be to help him/her, or how comfortable they are with another person denying one of their moral judgements in general (2014: pp. 35, 43). Wright et al. found that in all of these respects subjects with more cognitivist and realist leanings were significantly less tolerant towards the disagreeing person's moral views than subjects who had tended towards non-cognitivism and anti-realism (2014: pp. 37, 46). 12 Disjunctive Reasoning A last relevant study was again conducted by Goodwin and Darley (2010). Subjects in this study were asked to complete the following psychological test: There are five blocks in a stack, where the second one from the top is green and the fourth is not green. Is a green block definitely on top of a non-green block? [answers: "yes", "no", and "cannot tell"] (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 175). In order to figure out the right answer to this question, one must be able to disentangle the possibilities with regard to the colour of the third block. In particular, one must consider what would follow if this block was green, and what would follow if it was not. The above task is thus widely used as a measure of people's "disjunctive reasoning ability": their ability to consider alternative possibilities when deciding between options. In their study Goodwin and Darley found that subjects' metaethical intuitions were significantly correlated to their performance in the above task. Subjects drawn to more cognitivist and realist options were significantly less able to solve the task than subjects drawn to more non-cognitivist and antirealist ones (2010: pp. 175-176). All three of the above studies suggest a correlation between people's metaethical intuitions and their openness to alternative moral perspectives. One way in which this correlation has recently been explained is by the hypothesis that people's metaethical intuitions cause them to be more or less open to alternative moral perspectives (Wright et al. 2013, 2014). While this explanation may indeed capture part of the truth, there is reason to believe that causation (also) runs in the other direction, i.e., that persons' being more or less open to alternative moral perspectives causes them to have more or less realist intuitions. This interpretation of the data is in particular supported by Goodwin and Darley's Disjunctive Reasoning Ability experiment. People's disjunctive reasoning abilities are rather stable personality traits (e.g., Toplak and Stanovich 2002) which possibly even have some heritable basis.7 Seeing moral issues in a more realist or anti-realist light therefore likely does not substantially causally influence these abilities. A more plausible explanation of the correlation found by Goodwin and Darley is that 7 A study by Feltz and Cokely (2008) suggests that ordinary people's metaethical intuitions are correlated with another rather stable and possibly inherited trait associated with openness to alternative moral perspectives as well, namely with their openness to experiences. 13 both people's disjunctive reasoning ability and their metaethical intuitions are regulated by some third factor. For example, it might be speculated that having a strong cognitive reflection ability or a strong need for cognition promotes both one's ability to reason disjunctively and the anti-realist character of one's metaethical intuitions. But the prospects of explanations of this kind are unclear as well. In their above study Goodwin and Darley, for example, found that several factors that may plausibly be claimed to influence people's metaethical intuitions (including their cognitive reflection ability and need for cognition) do not even correlate with these intuitions (2010: p. 175). This suggests that the correlation between people's disjunctive reasoning ability and their metaethical intuitions may at least partly be attributable to the fact that their disjunctive reasoning ability causally influences these intuitions (Goodwin and Darley 2010: 180). In sum, while research about the causes of ordinary people's metaethical intuitions is still in its infants, it seems to provide at least some reason to believe that humans' moral experience is in part determined by their openness to alternative moral perspectives, which means that it is at least in part determined by a non-affective factor. 4. Enabling Projectivism As projectivism is understood in this paper, it is the conjunction of two claims: the claim that humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts (the experiential hypothesis), and the claim that this moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes (the causal hypothesis). In the previous two sections I argued that in addition to the experiential hypothesis (Pölzler 2014: pp. 70-120, forthcoming), we have reason to be skeptical about the causal hypothesis as well. If this consistently negative assessment is correct, then it seems reasonable to reject projectivism and explain our moral experience in an alternative way. However, at least some philosophers would complain that such a conclusion would still be hasty. So far projectivism has been addressed as a statistical hypothesis. It has been taken to claim that it is true for most ordinary people most of the time that they experience morality as a realm of objective facts, and that their moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes. This is how projectivism has most commonly been advocated. Recall, for example, the famous statements by Hume and Blackburn quoted in the introduction to this paper. Neither of them qualifies his projectivist hypothesis in any sense. At least one proponent of the view, however, namely Richard Joyce, has recently argued that projectivism need not and actually should not be understood in such a statistical sense. 14 According to Joyce, projectivism turns out much more plausible if it is restricted to what he calls "privileged" moral judgements: moral judgements that are such that if one had never made them, it would be doubtful whether one has moral concepts and is able to make moral judgements at all (2007a: p. 132, 2009: pp. 69-73). This class of privileged moral judgements, Joyce suggests, coincides with the class of moral judgements that correlate with certain strong emotions. If a person has never made such "affective" moral judgements - if s/he has never judged something right, wrong, good, bad, etc. whilst feeling strong guilt, or empathy, for example - then the person does not fully understand what it means to say that something has these properties. Can one make a moral judgment without any act of emotional projection involved? "Sure you can," says the Moral Projectivist. The Moral Projectivist might claim that this happens frequently, or even usually. What makes him nevertheless a Moral Projectivist is the conviction that there is a privileged category of moral judgment and the projectivist story is true of all (most of?) the members of that class. [...] If a person has never experienced the emotion of guilt, say, then they cannot really have the concept guilt. [...] grasp of these emotion/affect concepts is a necessary condition for being granted competence with the moral concepts. (Joyce 2009: pp. 71-73) Joyce's "enabling projectivism" ("enabling" because it is based on the idea that affective moral judgements developmentally "enable" moral thinking) amounts to the conjunction of the following two hypotheses: The Experiential Hypothesis*: Humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts when they make affective moral judgements. The Causal Hypothesis*: Humans' moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes when they make affective moral judgements. One first thing to note with regard to Joyce's qualification of projectivism is that in its enabling form projectivism can no longer ground most of the metaethical arguments that have been based on it. Both of the anti-realist arguments mentioned in the introduction, for example, require that ordinary people experience morality as objective and that this experience is 15 immediately caused by emotions with regard to all or most moral judgements (Pölzler 2014: p. 283). From the perspective of some philosophers this implication of enabling projectivism will clearly reduce its attractiveness. Is enabling projectivism at least plausible as an empirical hypothesis, then? Do humans "project" their emotions onto the world when they make affective moral judgements? While there is too little evidence to answer this question in any decisive way, one can at least say that it is by no means obvious that enabling projectivism will turn out plausible. Considering the results of some of the studies discussed above the experiential hypothesis' enabling version appears promising. Greene et al. (2001) showed that in contrast to moral judgements about impersonal harms, moral judgements about personal harms tend to be accompanied by strong emotional activity. If Joyce were right in that at least people's affective moral judgements were experienced in a realist way, we should therefore have such an experience when we make moral judgements about personal harms. And indeed, subjects in Goodwin and Darley's study (2008: pp. 1347, 1351) tended to rate moral sentences that involve rather personal inflictions of harm (e.g., sentences about the badness of opening gunfire on a crowded street or robbing a bank to pay for an expensive holiday) as more cognitivist and realist than rather impersonal moral sentences (e.g., sentences about the permissibility of stem cell research or abortion).8 The main problem with Joyce's attempt to rescue projectivism is that the causal hypothesis may be problematic in its enabling form too. In order for this hypothesis to be true it would have to be the case that our moral experience tends to be caused by affective attitudes when we make affective moral judgements. Judging from the studies considered in Section 3, however, this might not be the case. In these studies subjects' openness to alternative moral perspectives correlated with their metaethical intuitions and presumably influenced these intuitions with regard to moral judgements in general, including affective moral judgements. For example, a correlation between high degrees of cognitivist and realist intuitions and low openness for alternative moral perspectives was also found with regard to personal and thus presumably emotion-provoking sentences such as "Robbing a bank in order to pay for an ex- 8 According to Greene et al., an action inflicts harm in a personal way if it "(a) could reasonably be expected to lead to serious bodily harm (b) to a particular person or a member or members of a particular group of people (c) where this harm is not the result of deflecting an existing threat onto a different party" (2001: 2107). Impersonal moral sentences, in contrast, involve actions that fail to meet at least one of these conditions. Needless to say, Greene et al.'s conception of the personal/impersonal distinction would need to be clarified much further. But at least on an intuitive level my above classifications seem reasonable. Whereas opening gunfire and robbery clearly fulfill (a) to (c), stem cell research and abortion at least seem to fail with regard to (b): these actions' victims are not yet (full) persons, at least not in a concrete, definable sense. 16 pensive holiday is a morally bad action" (Goodwin and Darley 2010: p. 174). As openness to alternative moral perspectives is a cognitive factor, this finding raises the suspicion that not even moral experiences that accompany affective moral judgements may be exclusively brought about by affective attitudes. Conclusion From David Hume onwards, many philosophers and psychologists have argued that moral thinking is characterized by a tendency to "project" our own mental states onto the world. This metaphor of projection may be understood as involving two claims. Having criticized the first claim at other occasions (Pölzler 2014: pp. 70-120, forthcoming), this paper focused on the second. In particular, I argued that it is implausible that humans' moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes. First, the most common argument in favor of the causal hypothesis is based on an implausible premise and a dubious assumption. Second, humans' moral experience is influenced by a non-affective factor, namely their openness to alternative moral perspectives. And third, projectivism in general and its causal hypothesis in particular might not even be rescued by restricting them to affective moral judgements. My above arguments are based on a small and to some extent controversial set of scientific evidence. They may therefore have to be adjusted or revised in the light of future findings. If it turned out true that projectivism ought to be rejected, however, this result would not only be significant for our understanding of moral cognition as an empirical phenomenon, but also for metaethics. It would suggest that any projectivist argument in favor of metaethical claims such as moral anti-realism is doomed, and would accordingly play in the hands of those who hold alternative claims.9 9 This article is based on my PhD thesis in Philosophy. For helpful comments I would like to thank Johann Marek (my doctoral advisor) as well as an anonymous reviewer of the South African Journal of Philosophy. 17 References Blackburn, S. 1984. Spreading the Word. New York: Oxford University Press. Blackburn, S. 1993. 'Errors and the Phenomenology of Value', in: Blackburn, S. (ed.). Essays in Quasi-Realism. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 149-165. D'Arms, J. & Jacobson, D. 2006. 'Sensibility Theory and Projectivism', in: Copp, D. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 186-218. Feltz, A, Cokely, E.T. 2008. 'The fragmented folk: More evidence of stable individual differences in moral judgments and folk intuitions', in: Love, B.C., McRae, K. & Sloutsky, V.M. (eds.). Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1771-1776. Goodwin, G.P. & Darley, J.M. 2008. 'The psychology of meta-ethics: Exploring objectivism', Cognition 106(3), pp. 1339–1366. Goodwin, G.P. & Darley, J.M. 2010. 'The perceived objectivity of ethical beliefs: Psychological findings and implications for public policy', Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1(2), pp. 161-188. Greene, J.D. 2002. The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth about Morality and What to Do About It. Princeton University: Ph.D. Thesis. Greene, J.D. & Haidt, J. 2002. 'How (and where) does moral judgment work?', Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(12), pp. 517-523. Greene, J.D., Sommerville, B.R., Nystrom, L.E.; Darley, J.M. & Cohen, J.D. 2001. 'An fMRI investigation of emotional engagement in moral judgment', Science 293(5537), pp. 21052108. Haidt, J. 2001. 'The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment', Psychological Review 108(4), pp. 814-834. Huebner, B., Dwyer, S., Hauser, M.D. 2009. ‚The role of emotion in moral psychology', Trends in Cognitive Science 13(1), pp. 1-6. Huemer, M. 2005. Ethical Intuitionism. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Hume, D. [1740] 1978. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, D [1751] 1983. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Indianapolis: Hackett. 18 Jones, K. 2006. 'Metaethics and emotions research: A response to Prinz', Philosophical Explorations 9(1), pp. 45-53. Joyce, R. 2001. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyce, R. 2007a. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press. Joyce, R. 2007b. 'Projectivism and quasi-realism. Supplement to moral anti-realism', in: Zalta, E.N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-anti-realism/projectivism-quasi-realism.html [201412-03]. Joyce, R. 2009. 'Is moral projectivism empirically tractable?', Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12(1), pp. 53-75. Joyce, R. 2010. 'Patterns of Objectification', in: Joyce, R. & Kirchin, S. (eds.). A World without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 35-54. Kail, P.J.E. 2007. Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kauppinen, A. 2013. 'Sentimentalism', in: LaFollette, H. (ed.). International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. http://philpapers.org/rec/KAUSIE.pdf [2014-03-22]. Landy, J.F., Goodwin, G.P. 2014. 'Does incidental disgust amplify moral disgust? A metaanalytic review of experimental evidence', Perspectives on Psychological Science 10(4), pp. 518-536. Lazarus, R.S. 1991. Emotion and Adaptation. New York: Oxford University Press. Locke, J. [1690] 1997. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Penguin. Mackie, J.L. [1977] 2011. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin. May, J. 2014. 'Does disgust influence moral judgment?', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92(1), pp. 125-141. McNaughton, D. 1988. Moral Vision: An Introduction to Ethics. Oxford: Blackwell. Nussbaum, M.C. 2004. 'Emotions as judgments of value and importance', in: Solomon, R.C. (ed.): Thinking About Feeling: Contemporary Philosophers on Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 183-199. 19 Olson, J. 2014. Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pizarro, D., Inbar, Y., Helion, C. 2011. 'On disgust and moral judgment', Emotion Review 3(3), 267-268. Pölzler, T. 2014. Moral Reality and the Empirical Sciences. University of Graz: PhD Thesis. Pölzler, T. 2015. 'Moral judgements and emotions: A less intimate relationship than recently claimed', Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 35(3), pp. 177-195. Pölzler, T. forthcoming. Revisiting folk moral realism. Manuscript under Review. Prinz, J.J. 2006. 'The emotional basis of moral judgements', Philosophical Explorations 9(1), pp. 29-43. Prinz, J.J. 2007. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prinz, J.J. 2011. 'Sentimentalism and self-directed emotions', in: Konzelmann, A.Z., Lehrer, K. & Schmid, H.B. (eds.). Self Evaluation: Affective and Social Grounds of Inten-tionality. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 135-153. Sarkissian, H., Tien, D., Wright, J. & Knobe, J. 2011. 'Folk moral relativism', Mind and Language 26(4), pp. 482-505. Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G.L. & Jordan A.H. 2008a. 'Disgust as embodied moral judgment', Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34(8), pp. 1096-1109. Schnall, S., Benton, J. & Harvey, S. 2008b. 'With a clean conscience: Cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments', Psychological Science 19(12), pp. 1219-1222. Smith, M. 1994. The Moral Problem. Oxford: Blackwell. Solomon, R.C. 1993. The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. Indianapolis: Hackett. Toplak, M.E., Stanovich, K.E. 2002. 'The domain specificity and generality of disjunctive reasoning: Searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill', Journal of Educational Psychology 94(1), pp. 197-209. Wright, J.C., Grandjean, P.T. & McWhite, C.B. 2013. 'The meta-ethical grounding of our moral beliefs: Evidence for meta-ethical pluralism', Philosophical Psychology 26(3), pp. 336-361. Wright, J.C., McWhite, C.B., Grandjean, P.T. 2014. 'The cognitive mechanisms of intolerance: Do our meta-ethical commitments matter?', in: Knobe, J., Lombrozo, T. & Nichols, 20 S. (eds.). Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 28-61. | {
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Review of John Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction By Rodrigo González Aimed to entice both the lay and the expert, John Searle's last book is an introduction to philosophy of mind, which, warts and all, successfully expounds and reconsiders the origins of this discipline as well as its most important issues. But, why another introductory book, given the amount and quality of the books available on the market? Searle asserts that most introductions mainly focus on the mind body problem, a lesser number tackle the mental causation problem, and, finally, quite a few address aboutness, directedness or intentionality. In addition to correcting this imbalance, Searle wants to satisfy a personal philosophical whim. As he puts it, "any philosopher who has worked hard on a subject is unlikely to be completely satisfied with somebody else's writings on that same subject, and I suppose that I am a typical philosopher in this respect." To make progress in Philosophy of Mind, Searle says we ought to overcome the naïve Cartesian distinction between the mental and the physical, for that distinction has led to what has classically been dubbed as dualism or materialism, which inevitably assume the exclusion and reduction of one realm to the other, privileging ontological monism. Nevertheless, this account neglects part of what the mind is. It's time philosophy of mind rescues what is right and wrong in Dualism and Materialism, and furthers more specific goals, such as "the detailed structure of consciousness, and the significance of recent neurobiological research on this subject." Before doing so, it is crucial to rely on a double distinction, namely, those features of the world mentally dependent versus mentally independent, and the difference between original and derived intentionality. To get to the specific problem of consciousness, the main topic of the book, Searle takes several steps. In the first place, he backtracks the origin of the Mind Body problem, critically explaining Descartes's view, which not only gave birth to what is currently called Philosophy of Mind, but also left the following eight Big Problems to philosophy: the mind body problem, the problem of other minds, scepticism about the external world, the correct analysis of perception, the problem of free will, the self and personal identity, animal consciousness, and sleep. Secondly, he concentrates on the turn to materialism in the 20 th century, and the different available theories that arose from that standpoint. In particular, Searle critically examines views such as methodological and logical behaviorism, type and token materialism, functionalism, computational functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This summary, which illuminates the lay and is worth examining for the expert, provides arguments for/against each position, and a brief explanation of these concepts: algorithm, Turing Machine, Church's Thesis, the Turing Test, Levels of Description, Multiple Realisability, and Recursive Decomposition. Thirdly, he briefly covers "eight and a half" arguments (and counterarguments) against functionalism, the most influential versions of materialism. Nevertheless, he mentions neither Roger Penrose nor Lucas's objections among them. It would have been both philosophically lavish of Searle to have been included Penrose's arguments, which, besides being based upon Lucas's halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem, may be complementary with his Chinese Room argument. Searle includes another feature of intentionality that also undermines functionalism, i.e., its aspectual shape: "all mental 2 representation is under representational aspects." The argument is not fully developed in the book, which explains the "and a half" pan. Fourthly, Searle maintains that the following misleading assumptions, which compels to opt between materialism or dualism, have caused the Mind Body problem: i) A naïve distinction between the mental and the physical; ii) A confusing notion of reduction, which attempts to reduce the mental to the physical (and even to eliminate the former) iii) Causation: two discrete events are ordered in time by the notions of cause and effect (provided the brain causes mental events, and one assumes i) to iii), dualism follows). iv) The transparency of identity: identity is regarded as unproblematic. In contrast, he addresses the issue of consciousness through the following two steps: a) All conscious states have a first person ontology (e.g. I feel thirsty). b) The neurobiological apparatus causes conscious states (e.g. a shortage of water triggers neuronal firings, which translates into the feeling of thirst). This view, which Searle reluctantly dubs Biological Naturalism, is summarized in these four principles: I) Conscious states have a first person subjective ontology; II) Low-level neurobiological processes in the brain cause conscious states; III) Conscious states realize as features of the brain system, and exist at a higher level than neurons/synapses; IV) Conscious states are real features of the world and function causally. Accordingly, consciousness allows causal but no metaphysical reduction, which allegedly overcomes the Mind Body problem. Fifthly, Searle claims that there are neurological problems attached to consciousness, especially in relation to explaining its structure. These very special features of consciousness summarise what neurology will need to explain: 1. qualitativeness (conscious states are always qualitative), 2. subjectivity (ontologically speaking, conscious states owe their existence to animal or human's experiences), 3. unity (one experiences events as part of one unified conscious field), 4. intentionality (conscious experiences refer to things beyond themselves), 5. mood (conscious states come in a sort of mood or other), 6. attention (consciousness focuses more on center than on periphery) , 7. pleasure/unpleasure (there is always a feeling attached to conscious states), 8. situatedness (conscious states come with the sense of a background situation), 9. active/passive consciousness (the difference between intentional activity and passive perception), 10. Gestalt structure (conscious experiences come as organized structures), 11. sense of self (conscious experiences relate to personal identity). Obviously, all these features have to be accounted for in a satisfactory theory of consciousness. There have been different theories trying to explain those features on the market, like mysterians (consciousness will never be explained by science due to its nature), supervenience (consciousness is dependant on the brain functioning), pan-psychism (consciousness is everywhere), and neurobiology (science will eventually explain consciousness in causal terms). Despite the problems related to scientifically accounting for consciousness, Searle champions the last view as the only way in which consciousness can ultimately be explained. There are two neurobiological hypotheses as to how consciousness is created, namely, the building block theory and the unified-field approach to consciousness. While the former attempts to causally explain consciousness by blocks of conscious experiences, the latter focuses on how the brain produces the whole conscious field out of which particular conscious experiences stand. So far, clinical studies and philosophical hypotheses tend to favour the unitary field approach to consciousness though. 3 Sixthly, the problem of intentionality mirrors the problem of consciousness: it is as difficult to imagine how bits of matter become conscious in the brain as to imagine how those bits can refer to states of affairs in the world. How can the brain represent objects through mental states such as beliefs, desires and other intentional states? Searle deals with this problem by saying that the intentionality of language is derived from the intentionality of the mind. There are three problems as to the problem of intentionality: I) How is intentionality possible at all? Here Searle explains the intentional mental states, which are understood as representations, in terms of brain processes. II) The Structure of Intentionality. a) Most intentional states have a content and a psychological mode, that is, they have a proposition, which determines their reference, and also a psychological attitude attached (fear, hope, believe and so on so forth). In addition, intentional states have aspectual shapes, which means that, insofar as they are representations, every representation is an aspect of the object. b) Direction of Fit: intentional states are related to the world in different ways. In fact, most have a-mind-to-world direction of fit (e.g. the belief that p) or world-to-mind responsibility for fit (e.g. a desire). c) Conditions of Satisfaction: for those intentional states which do not have a null direction of fit (like enjoying the sun shining or stepping onto your foot), there conditions under which they get satisfied. d) Causal Self Referentiality: intentional states have a peculiar logic in their conditions of satisfaction, namely, they are all self referential in the sense that "the content of the state itself refers to the state in making a causal requirement.", which involves a difference between perceptual experiences and beliefs/desires. e) the network of intentionality (intentional states do not come isolated, and have conditions of satisfaction within a network) and the background of preintentional capacities (to have a belief or desire presupposes having certain abilities to carry out an activity). In a nutshell, intentionality is representation of conditions of satisfaction (p. 122), which explains why intentional states determine conditions of satisfaction in relation to their position in a network of intentional states and against a background of pre existent capacities. | {
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These subsets were created by streaming over the rows from monology/pile-uncopyrighted and filtering by the meta column. Each subset is generally limited to the first 100,000 qualifying rows encountered.
If you use this dataset, please cite the original Pile papers:
@article{gao2020pile,
title={The Pile: An 800GB dataset of diverse text for language modeling},
author={Gao, Leo and Biderman, Stella and Black, Sid and Golding, Laurence and Hoppe, Travis and Foster, Charles and Phang, Jason and He, Horace and Thite, Anish and Nabeshima, Noa and others},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.00027},
year={2020}
}
@article{biderman2022datasheet,
title={Datasheet for the pile},
author={Biderman, Stella and Bicheno, Kieran and Gao, Leo},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.07311},
year={2022}
}
Note: Some subsets contain fewer than 100,000 rows due to the sparsity of certain categories in the original dataset. In these cases, the rows may not be the first encountered but are unevenly distributed due to parallelization during collection.
Future updates may include completing the smaller subsets to reach the 100,000 row target, which could result in breaking changes for those specific subsets.