fare: A posteriori vs A priori

François-René Rideau (

fare) wrote,
@ 2005-05-30 20:16:00

Current mood:	libertarian
Entry tags:	a posteriori, dynamism, en, epistemology, memetics, objectivism, philosophy, relativism

A posteriori vs A priori

In Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags, Clay Shirky clearly explains the issue of a posteriori knowledge versus a priori knowledge -- the essential theme of austrian economics and libertarian politics. However, in the end, he not only fails to conceptualize the issue, he also steps into the trap laid by relativists: he confuses reality with knowledge about reality (a clear case of insanity, as defined by general semantics), and implies that we create meaning rather than discover it.

The nuance is tiny, but as Aristotle said, the least deviation from truth will be multiplied later. Human creation of meaning entails that meaning is an arbitrary product of human will, and that any disputes arising from divergent opinions cannot be solved by reason but only by brute force. Discovery of meaning entails that meaning is objective, and that disputes can be resolved by reason and other peaceful means. Thus, what appears as a mere detail in something as fundamental as metaphysics and epistemology has dramatic consequences when you later study ethics and politics!

Of course, Clay doesn't explore the political consequences of this tiny detail in his essay. His mistake is benign, and I'm sure he himself would be prone to dampen the mistake rather than amplify it, if he were to be taken in a more political discussion. Still, by admitting such wrong premises, Clay abandons all possibility of arguing back against those people who preach Evil. If he's not doing a disservice to himself, he is doing one to his readers. He is both a victim and a disseminator of one of the fundamental memes by which Evil disarms good people.

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	randallsquared 2005-05-31 04:35 am UTC (link)
	If you believe that meaning is found, rather than created, then would it also be your position that meaning would exist without mind -- if there were no mind in the universe throughout it's existence, would meaning still exist? Perhaps we're talking about different things by the word "meaning"? :) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2005-05-31 04:07 pm UTC (link)
	I think he is just saying that meaning is constrained by reality. alpheccar. (Reply to this)(Parent)

salience
2005-05-31 05:24 pm UTC (link)

That doesn't follow. Meaning is a concept that refers to a relationship between consciousness and particular existants. So clearly meaning doesn't exist without mind, since one of the defining participants in the relationshi0p isn't present, but jumping to "meaning is created by mind" is inserting a dichotomy where one isn't needed. Meaning is inherent in the relationship between the perceiving consciousness and the perceived existants, and that is what is discovered.

The trap here is thinking of the mind as something separate from "external" reality, instead of as a full participant in the system that it's observing.

A consciousness can claim meaning where there really isn't any, but we're not talking about pathology or postmodernism.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kraant 2005-05-31 08:23 pm UTC (link)
	Quick question... Do you believe that mathematics is discovered or invented? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	fare 2005-05-31 08:32 pm UTC (link)
	Lookup your dictionary: invention is discovery. The thing -- the abstract mathematical or physical or logical structure, already exists. But the knowledge and awareness of it -- the representation -- didn't exist, and is created. Confusion between things and their representation is insanity according to GS. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

kraant
2005-05-31 09:51 pm UTC (link)

Perhaps I should have used "contrived" instead of "invented" it would have made my point clearer.

The abstract consists of ideas and perceptions of quality - in other words pure representation. Specifically in mathematics axiomatic systems (the structures of mathematics), beyond a certain point of complexity develop paradoxes that have to be glossed or explained over lest the system collapse on itself. Logic itself has the same issues.

And because most developments in mathematics are based on what has previously been done, whether a paradox is glossed over or explained has a massive effect on future developments in the discipline. Sometimes people revisit old paradoxes that have been glossed over and find new explanations for them that contradict explanations in other areas of the field. Until you end up with quite a lot of concepts that exist, or do not exist, depending on what you choose to ignore and what you choose to explain.

Basically things exist or do not in mathematics, depending on what perspective you take. And yet whether they exist or not their representation once written persists. Think of it as a meta-paradox; the more structure that is built the more disintegration; so a complete all encompassing structure can never be built.

And if you accept that all these structures exist then you end up with the farce of having multiple conflicting objective meanings.

I'm not unsympathetic to what you're trying to argue but you're basing it on shaking ground and what seem, to me, like appeals to emotion and commonsense (Not that there's anything wrong with that but it isn't very objective :-) ).

ps. The Objectivist and the Nihilist duking it out on the textual battlefield... I wonder whether we could sell tickets.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

salience
2005-06-01 12:09 am UTC (link)

Mathematics based on arbitrary axioms seems to me the shaky thing in this whole mess. If mathematics really is based on arbitrary axioms, it's irrelevant in the literal meaning of the term. If on the other hand math is based on observation and reasoning about facts in the real world, it's the science of measurement. A lot of mathematicians have spent a lot of time trying to pound the latter into the former.

Example: you have two apples. There are two relevant concepts here, namely 'apple' and 'two'. For each concept, we have an objective fact and a consciousness grasping that fact. The first fact is of the existence of a particular kind of fruit, and the concept 'apple' results. The second fact is that there is this one apple, and then there is another apple just like it, and the concept 'two' identifies the fact that there are two of them.

In other words, the facts that a conscious mind grasps are emphatically not necessarily physical objects, and Bertrand Russell wrote a whole lot of unnecessary smokescreen. The number two 'exists' as a concept identifying that there are in fact two objects. The concept 'square' exists as a concept identifying that a particular shape in fact has certain properties. The concept is in your head, but the fact it describes is perfectly real.

Mathematics formulated properly is just logical reasoning based on the facts in the real world. Once we establish those facts we can reason from them in interesting ways, but it's still founded on the base facts we observed in reality. As long as you're basing future study (advanced number theory, etc. which is more or less entirely derived knowledge as opposed to immediately perceptually available like integers) on factually-founded math, you're just practicing deduction from a set of valid premises, which makes it no different than deriving complex philosophical concepts like 'justice' or 'equality'.

"Math" that does start from arbitrary statements is something else entirely, and is very suspect.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

-- Question Reality! -- Says who?

fare
2005-06-01 06:17 am UTC (link)

Your criticism of logic based on the absence of a knowable privileged classical model is obviously oblivious of intuitionnistic logic with its sheaves model, and other logics like linear logic are more prone to describing our interaction with the world.

Now, whichever paradigm one finds most adequate to represent reality, the existence of this objective reality is a praxeological premise to any and all human action. Any attempt to deny it is but a vain performative contradiction.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

randallsquared
2005-05-31 10:34 pm UTC (link)

Well, for lots of "things", only representations exist. That is, there's no such thing as "square", just lots of representations of squares using actually existing things. "Square", like "leaf", "love" or "Linux", is something that only exists in representation using other, actually existing, things. They're very useful representations, but they don't exist apart from their representations the way that, for example, a specific leaf, a specific instance of love, or a specific implementation of Linux do.

So, to be clear, I agree that one shouldn't confuse things and their representations, but only because things don't exist apart from a representation.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	averros 2005-06-01 10:53 am UTC (link)
	Jorge Luis Borges, "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" ...one of my favourite essays, actually :) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	fare 2005-06-01 11:19 am UTC (link)
	Note to my gentle readers: Google (and its cache) will find this article for you. Thank you once again, averros. (Reply to this)(Parent)

The Ultimate Universal Language

fare
2005-06-01 11:34 am UTC (link)

Actually, this rambling about a universal language that defines an objective representation for every meaningful concept reminds me of that project I had to extend Unicode from 32-bit to 256-bit, defining a single unicode code-point for every glyph that a man may ever desire to publish: that is, any document that a man wants to print or otherwise display will have its code point. My thesis might have code point \u18301397114989213916504138087010426783359964432322918138529714566196407282017, whereas a nude photo of Marylin Monroe would have code point \u84007590508399794104443106782133249188872853079298113432894369167235420201227. Of course, each font implementor would be free to display each glyph in any variant that he feels appropriate. Note the difference between the latter glyph in Times and in Vera Sans Mono. One advantage of this scheme is that each and every series of utterances by man can be reduced to a normal form that consists of any one single code point. This also makes Unicode 3000 the ultimate lossless data compression tool. The only problem is the size of the standard font...

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	Re: The Ultimate Universal Language fare 2005-06-01 12:05 pm UTC (link)
	Of course, in Unicode 3000, the code point for the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. If you just print the glyph at a high enough resolution and with the proper font, you'll be able to read it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

averros
2005-06-01 09:09 pm UTC (link)

By and large, the problem with glyph encodings (such as Unicode) is that it is does not carry enough information to allow processing of text (such as case-insensitive search or lexicographic sorting) without carrying dictionaries and using heuristics to recognize which language collation rules are applicable! So in practice if processing is not limited to just rendition Unicode text must be augmented with some tags (rich text format) or always processed in some apriori known context (locale) - which makes the unique glyph encoding quite excessive (i.e. if I know the language of this part of text, I know its alhpabeth, so I don't need multibyte encodings (for most languages), etc).

Some years ago I attempted (admittedly, half-assedly) to design an encoding which addresses these issues, but later had no time and support to finish it. If anyone's interested, here it is: http://www.kotovnik.com/~avg/rosetta/

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