Thinking out loud

Causation and Mill's Account

John is dead because he ate raw chicken.

What caused John's death? Was it the raw chicken, the salmonella it contained, his poor immune system or that he forgot to take his antibiotics?  On Mills account, the cause of his death was the set of all conditions that were sufficient for death to invariably follow, unless any counteracting conditions were present (EG the antibiotics).

But Mill's account of causation presents a number of problems. Firstly, Mill dismisses absent conditions as causes. The absence of antibiotics therefore can't be a cause, despite the fact that their presence would have prevented John's death. Secondly, he includes counterfactuals - John wouldn't have died had he not eaten the raw chicken.  Thirdly, the sum of the conditions sufficient for the effect to follow is indeterminately large. It includes not only the conditions needed for John's death - poor immune system, salmonella etc but many more 'what if' conditions to be absent - that he didn't take his antibiotics, he didn't throw up the chicken, he didn't see a doctor earlier etc & ad infinitum.

Absent conditions matter because they cover a great deal of everyday meaning of causation - EG the driver died because he wasn't wearing a seat belt.

Counterfactuals are problematic because they turn sufficient conditions into necessary one.  Suppose John's wine was poisoned as well. Then the statement he would not have died had he not eaten the chicken no longer holds true.

The number of conditions necessary to be Mill's cause is problematic because it is simply too large to be meaningful to us. Mill rightly notes that no individual condition has any greater claim to be the cause than any of the others but it is beyond our cognitive abilities to list all the conditions present, let alone isolate them.

So what do we do?

Has Joe Hockey Missed the Point on Human Rights?

In a recent speech to the Grattan Institute in Melbourne, Federal Opposition Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey argues why he's a true believer in individual rights but wont support a Bill of Human Rights in Australia (extract from the Australian here). What struck me most upon reading this was the inherent contradiction in his position, a contradiction echoed by many who call themselves Libertarians. 

On the one hand, Hockey claims to be inspired by the work of Mill, most notably his argument that collective power should only be used against the individual to prevent harm to others.  Interestingly, he cautions against the growth in state power and argues that the subversion of individual rights that occurred under the Howard government of which he was a minister should be rescinded as quickly as possible.

Yet on the other hand, Hockey rallies against a Bill of Human Rights for Australia, arguing that it will imbue the Judiciary with too much power and undermine the independence of the courts.  Judges, he argues, will be making political, not legal decisions and this is undemocratic.

This position is contradictory on a number of counts however. The Judiciary exists in part to provide a check against the power of the Legislature.  They are the safety value that helps ensure the Libertarian ideals of Mill are not consumed by an overreaching State. They have always interpreted laws and made decisions on contestable issues that some in the legislature disagree with.  Far from being undemocratic, a Judiciary that is able to declare laws passed by Parliament unconstitutional lies at the very heart of our democracy.

Contrary to what some may think, the Judiciary do not make laws - that power is limited to Parliament.  If Hockey is concerned about Judges making contestable decisions about conflicting human rights, then the issue lies in the contents of a Bill of Rights, not in the existence of a Bill itself. As a Member of Parliament, this problem is wholly within Hockey's power to solve. Individual rights can only be protected by the law. They must be made explicit if their protection is to be enforced. 

A Bill of Human Rights, one that explicitly documents our fundamental rights and freedoms, only serves to enhance the Libertarian ideals that Hockey espouses. The individual freedoms and rights that he holds so dear will only be strengthened by a formal Bill of Human Rights explicitly stating what they are and a strong Judiciary that can enforce them.

Is Indeterminacy Really Indeterminate?

Quantum indeterminacy gets a lot of visibility these days, and it's led to physics playing a much more significant role in philosophical, and especially metaphysical, arguments.  Even though its been around for well over 50 years, and despite my distinct lack of knowledge concerning quantum physics, I still have a strong inkling that the world really isn't indeterminate at the quantum level. For those with even less understanding of quantum mechanics than I have, Wikipedia provides a nice introduction

Quantum indeterminacy is the apparent necessary incompleteness in the description of a physical system, that has become one of the characteristics of the standard description of quantum physics. Prior to quantum physics, it was thought that (a) a physical system had a determinate state which uniquely determined all the values of its measurable properties, and conversely (b) the values of its measurable properties uniquely determined the state. Albert Einstein may have been the first person to carefully point out the radical effect the new quantum physics would have on our notion of physical state. Quantum indeterminacy can be quantitatively characterized by a probability distribution on the set of outcomes of measurements of an observable. The distribution is uniquely determined by the system state, and moreover quantum mechanics provides a recipe for calculating this probability distribution.

My issue with quantum indeterminacy stems from a failure to properly distinguish between metaphysical and epistemic indeterminacy.  Metaphysical indeterminacy is the claim that the external world (at the quantum level) is indeterminate whereas epistemic indeterminacy is the merely claim that it is our understanding of the external world that is indeterminate, not necessarily the world itself.  This is a significant distinction that the case of a coin flip and Schrodinger's Cat highlight. To say that when I flip a coin, the outcome is random and conforms to probabilistic behavour belies the reality that the outcome is causally determined.  It is not the case that the coin 'randomly' or indeterminately lands on heads or tails - the outcome is determined by the angle and velocity of the flip, air resistance, arc and length of fall etc.  My knowledge of the outcome may be indeterminate, but the outcome has a physical cause. Likewise, the paradox of Schrodinger's Cat is only paradoxical when metaphysical and epistemic indeterminacy are confused.  We don't know whether the cat is alive or dead (or both alive and dead) until we open the box, but to claim that the cat is both alive and dead in reality seems, to me at least, clearly wrong.  Just because we can't observe some causal state to explain quantum mechanics, doesn't support the claim that indeterminacy exists in a metaphysical sense.  Absence of evidence is very different to evidence of absence.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Logical fallacies abound in the business and self-help literature.  Perhaps it is the way we humans are biologically programmed that makes us fall for voodoo, pseudo-science and other quackery, but I still find it amazing how supposedly smart people (even those with Ph.D after their names) still make these basic yet fundamental mistakes. One of the most common logical fallacies is asserting the consequent.  This is an argument with the form

If P then Q Q Therefore P This is a logical fallacy because the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises - there could be many reasons for Q that don't involve P.  Despite this fallacy being well known since Aristotle's day, there is no end of management theorists out there writing case studies on successful firms or people by examining what they did and assuming this to be the cause of their success. Good to Great by Jim Collins is a classic example of asserting the consequent.   To paraphrase 9 chapters:

We surveyed the market and identified 11 great performing companies. Those 11 companies all showed 7 key characteristics. Therefore those 7 characteristics are what made them great. Right.  Ah, what about all the other companies with those characteristics that didn't succeed? With millions of copies sold, I guess this is more proof that lack of a sound argument is no impediment to publishing success in the business/management genre.  Given that Fanny Mae and Circuit City were out of business within 7 years of the book being published, Collins' definition of 'great' may have a pretty short half life. Another favourite fallacious example of mine Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.  Here, he distills the characteristics of successful people as to such gems as be proactive, think win/win and synergize. All good things to do but are they really what separates the successful from the non-successful.  Are there 'failures' that exhibited these habits and are there successes that didn't.  In order to develop a more accurate list of the habits that truly separate the successful from the failures, the haves and the have nots, I propose a the New Seven Habits of Highly Successful People:

1. Skiing
2. Driving sports cars
3. Polo
4. Wearing diamonds
5. Yachting
6. Shopping
7. Buying art

I guess the topic of causation will have to wait for another day.

Problems with Probability

One of the often used justifications for inductive reasoning, especially in science, is probability theory.  If all observed swans in the past have been white, then there is a high probability that the next observed swan will be white.  David Hume quite rightly criticised this reasoning in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, but today I'd like to dwell on the issues surrounding probability theory. I can't see how probability theories can provide any justification for inductive reasoning.   Standard approaches to probability such as Bayesian Probability require the prior probability of a phenomenon to be known.  Clearly, this prior probability is impossible to deduce for anything other than artificial constructs such as games of chance, and as such, is of little use in science and the external world.  Put simply, how can we know the actual probability of something before we have experienced it? Probability derived from observed frequency is equally problematic.  Frequency probability is calculated by dividing the number of observed events (n_x) by the number of trials (n_t) so that as the number of trials becomes ever larger, the expected probability approaches the real probability.  Thus:

P(x) = lim(n_t -> ∞) n_x / n_t

It becomes immediately apparent that frequency probability has significant limitations when P(x) is close to 0 or 1.  The expected probability will always lag the actual probability of a phenomenon, underestimating certainly when close to 0 and over estimating certainty when close to 1, which is precisely the domain where science is most interested.  The story of Russell’s Turkey provides a vivid example of the ineffectiveness of frequency probability calculations, as even after 364 observations, on Christmas Eve the expected probability that the turkey will be fed at 9 am the following morning is 1. Perhaps a more fundamental flaw in justifications from probability based on the degree to which one could rationally believe a claim, and experience in general, is this.  The calculated probability or expected likelihood of an event is contingent upon the observer’s knowledge of the phenomenon, however the observer’s knowledge is independent of the underlying nature of the phenomenon.  There is a disjoint between expected and actual probabilities that cannot be determined a priori.  As Hume (EHU V.I) noted, the particular causes by which all natural operations are performed, never appear to the senses.  Because we cannot observe causes, only their effects, we have no way of knowing the nature of the phenomenon that causes those effects. Time for a thought experiment.  Consider an example of an alien coin.  Unlike coins made by man, this one is controlled by a different natural force, so that its characteristics are either random, consistent, or drawn to equilibrium.  The characteristics are fixed and determined at the time of minting but are completely unobservable a priori.  After flipping the coin and landing 10 heads in a row (the urge to imprint faces on coins seems truly universal), it remains impossible to accurately estimate the probability of the next toss also being heads.  If the coin is random, then probability is independent and 0.5.  If the coin is consistent, then the probability of another head is 1, while if the coin is drawn to equilibrium (say, has a memory), the probability is 0.000488 (1 / 2¹¹).  As this example shows, inductive reasoning requires a uniformity of nature to be effective but that uniformity cannot be assumed and cannot be observed a priori. So, can probability ever be useful?  Like induction, it seems to work most of time but can never be proved or be found conclusive before the fact, except for artificial games of chance.  Personally, I get very concerned when people start using probability based on historical data to 'demonstrate' how some phenomena (say the share market) will or wont behave in a certain way.

Anselm's Ontological Argument for God

I'm going through a number of 'proofs of God' at the moment and am really impressed with the logical 'sleight of hand' employed.  I have to admit, I find it difficult to believe that anyone has come up with a sound a priori argument, otherwise the dominance of atheism in modern philosophy would not be what it is. In my opinion, it is in chapter II of Proslogion (English or Latin) were Anselm's argument falls down.  Here is SH Moore's analysis:

1. One can imagine a being than which none greater can be conceived.
2. We know that existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind alone.
3. If the being we imagine exists only in our mind, then it is not a "being than which none greater can be conceived".
4. A being than which none greater can be conceived must also exist in reality.
5. Failure to exist in reality would be failure to be a being than which none greater can be conceived.
6. Thus a being than which none greater can be conceived must exist, and we call this being God.

It is clear that Anslem's premises 1-4 are either contradictory or question begging. In chapter II, Anselm uses the analogy of how one can conceive of a painting (it then exists in understanding) before it is painted (and then exists in reality).  This leads us nicely from premises 1 to 2.  Yet this principle is conveniently ignored when referring to God.  The non-believer - the fool, is asked to conceive of a being than which none greater can be conceived (in understanding).  Once this is accepted, it is then ignored by 3 & 4 as 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived' must exist in reality.  If we are to accept 3 and 4, then we cannot accept 1 without presupposing God's existence.  If we accept 1 without presupposing God's existent, then 3 & 4 do not logically follow.  If we are to accept all the premises, then Anselm is begging the question. Its a clever little argument that I'm sure is quite effective at convincing those that already believe.  Personally, I'd prefer an argument to be sound before I'm willing to accept it.  But perhaps Anselm does have a point with the contradictions - anything follows from ex falso quodlibet.