Here it is, our regular Friday diet of suggested readings for the weekend:
e-life is distracting, but rarely as pathologically as described in this article (which, of course, I read online).
The complex economics, and morals, of pornography, especially in the age of the internet.
Long but very good summary of the current status of the neuroscience of “free will” (i.e., human decision making).
The philosophy of non existent objects. (See also here.)
A defense of biological Platonism (response coming soon…).
Do we live in a post-ironic age? And is that a good thing?
Mr. Spock as multi-cultural icon.
The problem with science writing and the middle ground between science worshiping and science denialism.
Battle of the vegetarian philosophers: Tatjana Višak vs. Peter Singer.
Seven movies that teach us key philosophical lessons.
Hitler, the drug addict, and the horrors of Nazi drug culture.
Apparently, at the top of the list of people who need not be competent to keep their job are economists.
Footnotes to Plato 
Hi Caley,
Nice to see you posting here. You may recall that we met when you were in Aberdeen with your father a couple of years ago.
That could be the case, but what I get out of the article is more of a hindsight bias. In any field like economics (or sports, or politics) where prediction is very difficult, but where there is a great demand and appetite for prediction, we’re going to get pundits who earn a living by confidently and authoritatively offering predictions whether or not those predictions are really justified. I think you’re right that predictions of growth and prosperity are perhaps more in demand than predictions of doom, so perhaps there is an incentive for pundits to lean towards optimiism.
In any case, pundits will often disagree entirely. Of course, some pundits are likely going to be proven right and some are going to be proven wrong, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that being correct is evidence of any deeper insight — you’d get similar results if everyone were flipping coins.
That’s not to say that they are flipping coins, by the way. I don’t doubt that they have a great deal of genuine expertise. But sometimes all the expertise in the world isn’t enough to justify confidence in predictions, particularly in domains as complex as economics and markets, where what happens is the aggregate result of millions or billlions of decisions by individual humans.
It’s very easy for a pundit who was proven right to sneer at those who disagreed and say “See, I told you so! This was obviously going to happen”, and this is more or less how this article comes across to me. I’m sure that before the crash, there were compelling reasons on both sides of the argument. I think all we can do is try to learn from experience, to take the empirical evidence of the crash as input into any future such arguments.
And I think this is how we can make progress — by accumulating knowledge of case studies and economic history, hopefully prediction gets a little easier, and we won’t have such disagreement among pundits.
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Just an addendum to my last comment:
I don’t know enough about it really to say that I disagree with the article or that the crash really wasn’t forseeable. I just think we have a tendency to automatically lionise the experts who were right and villify the experts who were wrong, and I think we need to think a little more carefully, reading articles such as this one with a skeptical eye.
In truth, I’m agnostic as to whether the crash should have been forseeable or not.
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On the philosophy of non-existent objects…
Don’t Russell and Meinong both have a point?
Russell says that that “Father Christmas” is a description which may or may not be satisfied. I think this just means that Father Christmas is a concept rather than a person, and the concept of father christmas clearly does exist — it is a pattern of thought that exists in the minds of many people. Granted, each person has their own unique version of this concept, but there is a family resemblance between these concepts such that we can lump them together under the label Father Christmas.
Where Russell’s view is supposed to fall down is that, subjectively, thinking about a concept is not the same as thinking about a person.
I don’t think this criticism quite succeeds.
The concepts we hold in our minds may or may not correspond to things in the real world. When we think of something, I believe we are not thinking of it directly but via whatever concept we hold of it (I know Dan for instance, following Putnam, disagrees with this view). Whether or not this concept corresponds to something in the real world, the subjective experience of thinking about it is much the same. I can think about the historical figure of Jesus Christ without knowing whether or not he actually existed, and the experience is the same to me either way. In either case, I am thinking of it via a concept, but not, to be clear, qua a concept. Thinking of Jesus Christ qua concept is a different mental task, done via my concept of concepts and so on.
So Meinong is also right. We can think of something which does not exist (except as a concept). They both have a point, and their views can be synthesised without any need to stick firmly to one camp or the other.
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When I was doing business finance at University we had one lecture entirely on secutitised home loans.
We learned that they were a very safe investment in a steady or rising housing market and fell quickly in a falling housing market.
If you said to an economist, any economist that the business model of some of the largest companies was highly reliant on this kind of security, in particular one based on higher risk loans and that they had no hedge strategy for a falling market then the economists would predict “you will crash and burn”.
But economists are not privy to the commercial in confidence business strategies of Wall Street.
By comparison, ask yourself how many nuclear physicists predicted Fukashima.
Exactly. So is nuclear physics a soft science?
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Astro,
I’m sorry, but, no, astrological charts will not be tolerated on this site. Next time you do that you’ll get a probationary period off the blog. Thanks for understanding.
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Hi Caley,
It’s wonderful to have you join us, and yes, given our affections for the senior Pigilucci. Should you decide that this community happens to be worth your time regularly, you will most certainly be treated with respect here.
I support your view that complacency and a lack of incentive should help explain why economic pundits fail us, though this still leaves the question of “Why?” I enjoyed DM’s take, though let’s see if I’m able to get a bit more specific still.
My thought is that a person doesn’t become such a pundit simply by being a good economist, but more importantly by being a good politician. Is there a conflict between effectively modeling the nature of reality (economics), and promoting personal popularity (politics)? Hell yeah there is! So case closed?
Personally I consider the science of economics to be one of the “hardest” of the soft sciences, and specifically because it’s blatently founded upon the notion of utility promotion. This is merely a specialized “side science,” however, and thus doesn’t seem to have had much general influence over the rest. I believe that a magnificent revolution will occur in our general mental and behavioral sciences, once they finally acknowledge utility as reality’s fundamental unit of value, or the essential means by which conscious function is incited to occur.
(I wonder if the current edition was delayed somewhat on your behalf? As they say, “The devil makes work for idle hands,” which may help explain why Synred called me out in the waning moments of the last episode? ‘Twas a brief moment of levity, but fortunately Massimo did end up serving us a hearty meal!)
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DM: If you think natural strictures on pathways of development is “Platonism” it’s time to sic Dan and Wittgenstein on you again. Not that it will do any good.
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I think economics as a science (excepting somewhat behavioral economics) is the softest of the soft sciences, and near astrology.
Massimo, maybe Krugman has serpentine subtlety?
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Hi Socratic,
Did I say anything like that? No, I didn’t. I said treating the set of genomic possibilities as a real thing, e.g.. a space to be navigated by evolution, is Platonism. Platonism is taking abstract things to have an independent existence. That is just what Wagner is doing, and he himself refers to his approach as Platonism.
Agreed. It won’t do any good. Because I have a well-developed position and I can defend my view with argument and reason. I’m not simply straightforwardly wrong, on this occasion or on the others when you have threatened to sic Dan on me.
So it would probably best if you didn’t threaten to sic Dan on me again, thanks, although I’m happy to discuss my views and yours with either of you.
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I found Priest’s article to be interesting, even though “noneism” is one ugly construction. 🙂 But where’s the argument in this:
“Often, old philosophical views are not refuted; people simply get bored with them, and want to strike out in new directions. Conversely, a discarded view can make a comeback, because these new directions are more congenial to the view—and it cannot be denied that developments in modern logic have helped the Meinong-revival.”
You might as well say that as mankind’s body of knowledge grows, “old philosophical views” are reinterpreted in light of it, whether valid or not. So, there’s a provisional character to many views that cannot account for new knowledge; however, one can nevertheless question whether the application of new knowledge is sufficient to justify overturning a prior refutation.
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Hi SocraticGadfly
“I think economics as a science (excepting somewhat behavioral economics) is the softest of the soft sciences, and near astrology.”
A lot of people would clearly agree with you, but you and they are wrong.
Can you tell me how many nuclear physicists predicted Fukashima the way economists were expected to have predicted the ’08 financial crisis?
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DM, If Wagner thinks “arrival of the fittest” and “survival of the fittest” explain anything, then, no, he doesn’t understand. Many people get caught up in the Darwin gotcha game – thinking they have some gimmick that destroys natural selection – hasn’t happened yet.
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Visak is quoted: “Stress, boredom and various illnesses due to confinement and handling are frequent among farmed animals.”Obviously the next level in such a line of thought is to advocate an end to the domestication of any animal whatsoever. The lack of realism concerning the state of the world is stupefying.
Agreed with Socratic, re.: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I know my life would have been better had George Bailey never been born.
It’s interesting that both Sullivan’s article and the porn article tells us that the internet is reshaping our society in surprising ways, and not really that much for the better. Dan Tippens had some cogent remarks on how our computerized community is replacing real interpersonal relationships: https://theelectricagora.com/2016/09/16/facebook-siri-and-the-world-of-illusory-experience/ – O, brave new world!
So, although the network wouldn’t allow showing a kiss between Uhuru and Kirk, Roddenberry got them back with a ‘bi-racial’ hero. Not really as great a series as is often claimed of it, Star Trek still had an undeniable lasting impact.
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Hi Michael,
He does understand. He’s a serious evolutionary biologist.
Nor will it. This isn’t what Wagner is doing at all.
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DM,
If I understand correctly, then if Russell is right, and if there is no Father Christmas, the statements forming the description of Father Christmas cannot be analyzed for truth value – they are neither true not false, for they refer to nothing. If on the other hand the descriptors refer to a concept, rather than an existent being, then since the concept is a fiction, they still have no truth value as statements concerning the world, except about what people may believe or agree to propagate for entertainment or other cultural purposes.
I am getting my Russel somewhat second hand here, from Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, which I read on a suggestion from Dan K., and which I recommend. I have not been able to get around his argument that the Description theory cannot hold for proper names.
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Massimo, may I recast it this way, without flourishes, and then no more zodiacs, I promise. Is my understanding of the Meinong issue at all accurate?
Nice to see Meinong getting air time. Basically is it not a matter of Russell having attempted to rebut the suggestion that there can be any non-material reality? to block, as if with a gigantic boulder of thudding logic (a thing may not both exist and not exist, period), the common language proposition that there are different kinds of existence and that existence cannot be restricted to material entities?
Graham Priest also takes the opportunity to suggest that regardless of the actual logical strength of Meinong’s argument, its current resurgence may be the sign of a Kuhnian, that is to say social-historical, shape to philosophical progress, the idea of which is as distasteful to many philosophers no doubt as it has been to scientists.
Priest is himself a representative of this alleged Kuhnian ‘sea change’, as part of a gang known as Speculative Realists, who brandish paralogical swords against the defenses of the analytic camp, to the furious annoyance of staunch upholders like Brian Leiter. In that we talk here often of the analytic/continental divide, it’s worth pointing out this quite international, but essentially neo-continental brigade, is freshening the debate and inserting urgent topicality into academic philosophy.
Bringing these two, Meinong and Kuhn together recalls my observation that a cohort of philosophers, mostly continentals (prominently Leibniz, Vico, Rousseau, Bachelard, Benjamin, Kuhn, Derrida, Latour, Sloterdyjk) born near the summer solstice are found hostile to the rational/materialist enterprise originating in Descartes and Hobbes, born at the vernal equinox. Leibniz summarized the gesture thus: “Descartes himself had a rather limited mind.” Such sweeping effects, if they exist, might be attributed to seasonality, dispensing with quaint astrological nomenclature and mythology.
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>Platonism is just a mental tool, a way of thinking about things.
DM: This would seem to make you hardly a Platonist at all. I think most of us accept the ‘possibilities’ exist and not just ‘in our minds’.
the theory that numbers or other abstract objects are objective, timeless entities, independent of the physical world and of the symbols used to represent them
Why not just call possiblities possiblities? Plato seems to have meant something more.
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Economics is dismal science.
However, there is evidence for the Keynesian approach. It is the great depression and WWII and the aftermath.
Before WWII and the Roosevelt reforms depressions occurred with almost clock work precision. Afterwards they stopped an relatively minor recessions took their place.
Than Ronnie started dismantling the reforms (while producing a bubble with defense spending) and 20 years later, right on schedule, we have the great recession which accept for a modest application of stimulus and Gov. intervention would have likely become a depression.
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Gumball invents a new non-existent person…
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That there would be big earth quake and resulting Tsunami off the coast of Japan was certainly not unexpected. The details of when and where and what exactly what it would do are too complicated to forecast.
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No astro, it’s still bullshit, or as my favorite phrase as it, nonsense on stilts. Call me close minded, but please don’t bring that stuff on this blog. Thanks.
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Hi Arthur,
I disagree. I think Platonism is often misunderstood. I see it as a tool for thinking, a way of thinking about what exists and what doesn’t, than a claim that is either true or false.
Of course, as an MUH advocate, I think the whole universe is a mathematical Platonic object, so I’m about as hardcore as they come. And yet I don’t think there is a fact of the matter on whether mathematical objects exist. That is because I think existence is a problematic concept, especially the concept of observer-independent objective existence. I think, for example, physical existence, is a subjective concept. My wife physically exists from my perspective. (Somewhat facetiously), Princess Leia physically exists from Han Solo’s perspective.
If you think that possibilities really exist independently of your mind, then you are more or less a Platonist. A mathematical object is a possibility, after all — the kind of possibility that could be discovered by a mathematician..
Yes, I’m familiar with it! But I claim this is a way of thinking rather than something that is true or false. It ought to be taken as true if this is a more useful, parsimonious way of thinking, as I regard it to be.
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Santa wears a red suit.
–>True!
Most people (over age 6) have no problem with the implicit “The fictional character called” in front of Santa.
Why do philosophers have so much trouble? It seems straight forward to me.
The axion barely interacts with ordinary matter. True! The words ‘hypothetical’ and “would” are implicit.
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DM
Is there anybody out there who thinks there are no mind-independent possibilities? Not even hardcore Coel, I think.
-Arthur
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On ‘Platonism’ in math:
https://aeon.co/essays/aristotle-was-right-about-mathematics-after-all?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cae28344db-Saturday_Newsletter_1_October_20169_27_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-cae28344db-69000965
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Regarding the Andrew Sullivan article about how smart phones are destroying us (or whatever), my perspective is that here we have a standard “freak,” and such people do generally lead unbalanced lives. The tendency for them to believe is that whatever problems they personally suffer from, also happen to be bringing down everyone else as well. I consider it interesting that he was able to note how many other such prognostications of doom had gone unrealized, but continued to believe that this particular threat was the real deal. Then I was saddened to hear about his mother’s psychosis, as well as its brutal effects upon him. (That’s all consistent with the scenario that I’m presenting however, though I’m not happy about it!)
Given that humanity has tremendous problems, how shall we deal with them? My thought is that we still need better theory from which to lead our individual lives, as well as structure our individual societies. If “prescription and ought” have failed us so far, should we not then theorize “description and is”?
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Gee, and hear I thought civilization had already been destroyed by rock & roll!
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Wagner’s piece . . . my favorite so far stylistically speaking. I could imagine a younger version of myself being inspired by the piece, despite my dislike of the sciences back then. Liked the poetic exuberance in sentences like:
“The remarkable thing is, having so many different ways to say the same thing means that there are many more possible slips of the tongue. And with each slip of the tongue comes the possibility of saying something different.”
And, of course, the major metaphor in the piece that seems a nod to Borges’s “The Library of Babel.” Even the stuff on mathematics was palatable.
But the essences talk, Plato, and evolution are too deep for me. I’ll wait for Massimo to toss me a life preserver.
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Good to meet you Caley (if I may, and if that’s the proper phrasing on blogs as a matter of introducing oneself) . Your father has established a great site for resources and intelligently moderated discussion that I visit frequently. I look forward to your contributions.
Thanks Massimo for the free will article–one of my publishing/teaching interests, and it helped me flesh out some areas in the empirical research I was hazier on. it did take quite a while to read!
When all is said and done, Lavazza is recommending a compatibilist approach, though certainly an interesting one. The fact that she by-passes incompatibilist concerns with large-scale pragmatic ones (I’d argue) and defends a spectrum approach to degrees of free will makes a lot of sense to me. It would be interesting to hear what an incompatibilist/libertarian would say in reply.
I’m a blogger on Flickers of Freedom, and if it’s ok I’d like to post the link there with a HT to you.
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Alan, of course, feel free to cross-post. Cheers!
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