Monday, October 21, 2013

A Head Scratcher

Ed Feser has responded again, and it's a puzzler.

I will ignore the first part of his post, in which he is once again arguing against some argument that is not the argument I made.

Next, Feser points out that my objection, even if it worked against Ross, was irrelevant against Feser's own version of the argument.
For another thing, it is not just Ross’s views that are in question here, but mine.  And I can assure Oerter that what I am claiming is (2) rather than (1).  So, even if what he had to say in his latest post was relevant to the cogency of Ross’s version of the argument in question, it wouldn’t affect my own version of it.

Well, I never said I was arguing against Feser's version of the argument, I explicitly stated I was critiquing Ross's argument. And that is what I will continue to do here, though I may return to Feser's version later if I have the time and inclination.

Feser then goes on to explain why he thinks his version of the argument is actually what Ross intended anyway. Specifically, he addresses what Ross means by saying the calculator is not adding. Now, Ross makes a clear and consistent distinction in his paper between true adding, which he elaborates as carrying out the "pure function" of addition, and what the calculator does, which is only "simulating addition." This is a crucial distinction for him, because his basic claim is that humans can execute pure functions, while any purely physical system cannot.

In my posts I have consistently (I hope) been using "adding" in Ross's first sense. I didn't think it was necessary to spell this out: since I was critiquing Ross's paper, I was using Ross's terminology, except where I explicitly stated otherwise. But to be clear, I will henceforth use ETPFOA ("executing the "pure function" of addition") instead of "adding."

So when I said that Ross denied that the machine was adding, I meant it was not ETPFOA. Feser, on the other hand, wrote,

Ross is not denying, for example, that your pocket calculator is really adding rather than “quadding”....

So how does Feser respond? He quotes Ross's discussion of simulated addition, then writes:

So, Ross plainly does say that there is a sense in which the machine adds -- a sense that involves simulation, analogy, something that is “adding” in the way that what a puppet does is “walking.”  How can that be given what he says in the passage Oerter quotes?  The answer is obvious: The machine “adds” relative to the intentions of the designers and users, just as a puppet “walks” relative to the motions of the puppeteer. The puppet has no power to walk on its own and the machine has no power to do adding (as opposed to “quadding,” say) on its own.  But something from outside the system -- the puppeteer in the one case, the designers and users in the other -- are also part of the larger context, and taken together with the physical properties of the system result in “walking” or “adding” of a sort


In short, Ross says just what I said he says.


Now it is very strange for Feser, who is a professional philosopher, to sweep aside an crucial distinction like this, as if it were unimportant. It is not true that Ross says the machine can add in the ETPFOA sense that both Ross and I are using. It is true that Ross says the machine can do something like adding - but only something that has the name of adding, and gets that name by analogy to ETPFOA, not because it is actually ETPFOAing.

Moreover, I don't see anywhere Ross says that the machine "adds relative to the intentions of the designers and users," as Feser claims. And what exactly is Feser claiming here? That the machine ETPFOAs relative to the intentions of the designers? Or that it only simulates adding relative them?  OK, the machine taken together with the larger context results in addition "of a sort" - but of which sort? Again, Feser glosses over the crucial distinction.

You wouldn't think it possible, but there's actually worse to come. Quoting Feser again:

Oerter insists that I am misunderstanding Ross here.  As we will see in a moment, I am not misunderstanding him at all, but it is important to emphasize that even if I were, that would be completely irrelevant to the question of whether the argument for the immateriality of the intellect that we are debating is sound.  For one thing, and quite obviously, whether or not I have gotten Ross right on some exegetical matter is irrelevant to whether premises (A) and (B) of the argument in question are true, and whether the conclusion (C) follows from them.  So Oerter is, whether he realizes it or not, just changing the subject.  


Later on, he continues in a similar vein:
Evidently the reason Oerter thinks all this is worth spilling pixels over is that he thinks his “Hilda” example shows that Ross is being inconsistent, and he needs for me to have gotten Ross wrong in order to make his “Hilda” example work.  I have already explained, in my previous post, why Ross is not at all being inconsistent.  But even if he were, it wouldn’t matter.  The alleged inconsistency, you’ll recall, is that Ross treats Hilda as adding despite the fact that we can’t tell from her physical properties alone whether she is, whereas he does not treat the machine as adding despite the fact that we can’t tell from its physical properties alone whether it is.  Suppose he really were inconsistent in this way.  How does that show that premise (B) of his argument is false (much less that (A) is false, or that the conclusion doesn’t follow)? 


Answer: It doesn’t.  The most such an inconsistency would show is that Ross needs to clarify what is going on with Hilda that isn’t going on with the machine.  And there are several ways he can do this consistent with the argument.  First, he could say what I would say (and what, as I have shown, he does in fact say himself, despite what Oerter thinks) -- namely that the machine does add in a sense, but just not by virtue of its physical properties alone.  There is perfect consistency here -- both systems, Hilda and the machine, add (albeit in analogous senses), but neither does so in virtue of its physical properties alone.

This is just bizarre. Ed Feser, who revels in pointing out inconsistencies of the naturalists, is arguing that an inconsistency doesn't matter? Nor is this some trivial point of Rossian exegesis, as Feser implies: it's a basic contradiction in Ross's whole scheme.As I pointed out already, the distinction between ETPFOA and simulated adding is crucial to Ross's argument.

The logic of my Hilda example is straightforward. Ross says that humans can ETPFOA. Ross says that  A, B, and C entail that a computer cannot ETPFOA. I claim that A, B, and C are true for Hilda, too. So A, B, and C entail that Hilda cannot ETPFOA.

With this contradiction, the whole argument falls to pieces. Now, you can argue that I am wrong: that A, B, and C are not true of Hilda. Or you can argue that there is some D that I missed that is true of the computer but not true of Hilda. But you can't say this example is irrelevant to the soundness of Ross's argument.

38 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure "D" is the immaterial aspect of the human mind, which Hilda has, and the computer lacks.

    Both Hilda and the computer have A,B, and C, and neither Hilda nor the computer can be said to add merely from A,B, and C.

    So either there is the immaterial "D" or nothing adds.

    If you chose the nothing adds option, it doesn't refute Ross's point at all, it concedes it. If you're going to be a materialist, you're going to have to concede that nothing adds or performs an other determinate function. Ross (and probably Feser) think that constitutes a reductio of materialism, but some materialists have bitten the bullet.

    Either way, I can't see that your Hilda objection accomplishes anything.

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  2. Chad, that doesn't work. If you just say that a purely physical system cannot have a material mind, then you have assumed the very thing you are trying to prove.

    Also, Ross doesn't merely conclude that the machine "cannot be said to add" - he concludes that it DOES NOT add.

    Finally it's not the materialist who has to concede that nothing adds, it's Ross who is forced into that conclusion by the logic of his argument. That's why it's a problem for his position.

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  3. Ross believes that there's something going on in Hilda's head beyond the physical facts, so Ross does not need to conclude that Hilda is not adding.

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  4. But surely you see that is just begging the question?

    Ross gives an argument that no purely physical system can ETPFOA. If I ask him, "Why doesn't your argument apply to humans, too?" he can't simply answer "Because humans have something going on in their heads that no physical system can have." That makes the argument completely circular: " How do you know humans can do something machines can't do? Because humans can do something machines can't do."

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    1. Hi Robert,

      I do not think that Ross would reply to the question "Why doesn't your argument apply to humans, too?" by claiming that humans have an immaterial mental process. The argument seems to say, rather, that from the physical facts about Hilda, she is not adding. This seems to make sense; all we might see are inputs and outputs (if we tell Hilda to add 3 and 5 and she tells us 8), or perhaps an algorithmic process of adding (if we watch her work on a piece of scrap paper), or her brain states (which would be indeterminate like the calculator is). The argument seems to say that Hilda qua physical system does not add or perform any pure function.

      That is not to assume that Hilda is partly immaterial. By observing Hilda, we can't definitively say that she is adding. We can only observe our own thought processes to realize that they would have to be immaterial (by Ross's argument). We would only infer that Hilda thinks formally because she is of the same kind as us, but the point remains that qua physical system she is not adding.

      One could, perhaps, say that a machine might likewise be able to add in the way humans do (by some non-physical process), but the point is that it is not the physical process of the machine that does so. At best you'd get to some sort of panpsychism.

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  5. It doesn't beg the question because that there is an immaterial aspect to human thought is not formally part of the conclusion. The conclusion of the argument is simply "no purely physical system can perform a determinate function." If you're a physicalist, it's completely possible to conclude from this argument that neither Hilda nor anything else performs a determinate function, which, as Feser mentioned, is exactly what eliminative materialists like the Churchlands and Alex Rosenberg do.

    So, the answer to your question "why doesn't this apply to Hilda?". the answer is: "It does apply to Hilda, but only if you think Hilda is a purely physical system."

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  6. "It doesn't beg the question because that there is an immaterial aspect to human thought is not formally part of the conclusion. "

    You're switching from your representation of the Hilda issue to Ross's argument.

    But both beg the question. Ross's question-begging is implied. In fact, it's demanded, as I've explained on Feser's site.

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    1. Hi donjindra

      You claimed that this argument is question-begging, because "line (2)...assumes the conclusion":

      (P1) All formal thinking is determinate
      (P2) No physical process is determinate
      (C) Thus, no formal thinking is a physical process.

      But that is logically false. A question-begging argument assumes its conclusion in the premises. If P2, is the culprit, then the conclusion should follow if P1 is false, but it clearly doesn't.

      You gave this clarification for the charge of question-begging:

      If I assume all thinking (which would include formal thinking) is a physical process, then I would never agree to (2). Even if I accept the possibility that all thinking is a physical process, I could not accept (2) as an unassailable proposition. A deductive proof demands unassailable propositions. So, imo, I must accept the conclusion prior to accepting (2).

      But this is confused. Say we have the argument:

      (P1) p implies q
      (P2) p
      (C) q

      Of course if you assume ~q (the negation of the conclusion), you will run into issues with accepting P2, since the premises imply q, and q & ~q is a contradiction.

      What's funny, though, is that the problem here is not that the argument begs the question, but that the person who is evaluating is begging the question against the argument, for that is precisely what you are doing by "assum[ing] all thinking (which would include formal thinking) is a physical process." That is ~q. That's just not how you evaluate an argument in logic.

      The whole point of framing arguments in valid syllogistic form is so that, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be. And Ross's argument is in valid syllogistic form. You don't have to accept the conclusion prior to evaluating the argument, but you can't assume the negation of the conclusion either. If the negation of the conclusion is true, then it must be because one or both of the premises is false.

      But then, since the falsity of either of the premises means that Ross's conclusion does not follow, he is not begging the question.

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    2. All that and you still haven't explained why I as a materialist or an agnostic on the issue would ever agree to premise (2). Fact is, I'm forced to agree to the conclusion prior to the proof. That's begging the question.

      I don't deny I'm begging the question by sticking to -q. But I'm not trying to prove -q.

      Here's a similarly structured "proof":

      All humans have free will
      No clump of matter has free will
      Thus humans are not clumps of matter

      But this, like Ross's proof, proves nothing.

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    3. All that and you still haven't explained why I as a materialist or an agnostic on the issue would ever agree to premise (2).

      Being a materialist does not commit you to denying P2; materialists have held it and even contributed to developing it (whether they can do so consistently is another matter).

      Fact is, I'm forced to agree to the conclusion prior to the proof.

      Errm, no, you are not. A materialist can hold P2 and try to deny P1, in which case the materialist does not have to hold C. A materialist is not required to hold that physical processes can be determinate; P2 is not in itself anti-materialist. The premises together contradict materialism, but that is to be expected, if the argument succeeds.

      I don't deny I'm begging the question by sticking to -q. But I'm not trying to prove -q.

      If you aren't trying to prove ~q, then what value is it? If you want to allow that ~q is possible, then that is fine; but if someone gives the argument "p implies q; p; therefore q," saying that you need to be able to hold the possibility of ~q is not a sufficient reason for saying that p begs the question. If you can argue that ~p or ~(p implies q), then you avoid the conclusion, but that would be beside the point of your begging ~q.

      Your similarly structured example gets across the point likewise. A materialist can deny either premise to avoid the conclusion, and he can hold either premise without being required to accept the conclusion. The materialist may disagree with P2, but that doesn't make the argument question-begging.

      The inference in each proof is pretty basic, so obviously accepting both of the premises is equivalent to accepting the conclusion. but the premises are defended at some length, so it's not like no arguments for P2 have been given.

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    4. "Being a materialist does not commit you to denying P2; materialists have held it and even contributed to developing it (whether they can do so consistently is another matter)."

      I suppose it depends on what we call a materialist. My definition precludes dualism of the sort that would allow P2. As such, I'm definitely going to insist physical processes can be determinate since all aspects of the material mind (and its physical processes) fit into Ross's usage of "determinate." IOW, I'm not going to agree P1 and P2 are mutually exclusive categories.

      I don't see why you think my rejection of Ross's premise means I have to prove the opposite of either the premise or the conclusion. I'm under no such obligation. I don't have to prove there is no God in order to cast doubt on proofs of God.

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    5. I suppose it depends on what we call a materialist. My definition precludes dualism of the sort that would allow P2.

      P2 is not a dualistic premise. One does not have to be a dualist to hold P2.

      I don't see why you think my rejection of Ross's premise means I have to prove the opposite of either the premise or the conclusion.

      I said "[S]aying that you need to be able to hold the possibility of ~q is not a sufficient reason for saying that p begs the question." You do not have to prove ~p; you can just disagree with p. The point I'm making is that your desire to hold ~q does not make the argument question begging, as was initially suggested ("If I assume all thinking (which would include formal thinking) is a physical process, then I would never agree to (2)."). That would just be bad logic.

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    6. "P2 is not a dualistic premise. One does not have to be a dualist to hold P2."

      Yes it is and yes they do. Maybe you should tell me how a non-dualist could hold P2 and still remain a consistent non-dualist.

      "Petitio Principii [Begging the Question] is the name of an argument which assumes the conclusion that is to be proved... 'the surreptitious assumption of a truth you are pretending to prove.' Since, then, the fallacy is one of assumption... its source must be found, not in what is definitely asserted, but in the world of reality or existence in which what is asserted has a definite meaning or fulfillment, that is to say, in the universe of discourse from the standpoint of which the argument is interpreted..." —Arthur Ernest Davies, "Fallacies" in A Text-Book of Logic (from the Wikipedia article on begging the question.) This is that Ross's "proof" does.

      In the world of reality we have before us there is no justified reason to assume that formal thinking is not a subset of physical process. OTOH, there is plenty of reason to think formal thinking is indeed a subset of physical process. So given P1, P2 should read Some physical processes are determinate. But Ross slides in his dubious P2 because his presupposed conclusion lets him.


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    7. You will recall that this is the argument:

      (P1) All formal thinking is determinate
      (P2) No physical process is determinate
      (C) Thus, no formal thinking is a physical process.

      Neither premise assumes that "formal thinking is not a subset of physical process." One claims that formal thinking is determinate; the other claims that no physical process is determinate. If one were to deny that formal thinking is determinate (or claim that no one really does formal thinking), then the fact that no physical process is determinate would not imply dualism. The two premises taken together imply dualism because it's an argument for dualism.

      The fact that you are a materialist and believe the first premise does not mean that the second premise begs the question or is implicitly dualist, since one can accept the premise and consistently remain a materialist if P1 were false. The second premise being true would just make you an inconsistent materialist.

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    8. Somewhat ironically, the sort of argument you're making here would imply that, given any formally valid argument, if one were to believe one premise but want to avoid the conclusion, the other premise would be question begging!

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    9. "The fact that you are a materialist and believe the first premise does not mean that the second premise begs the question or is implicitly dualist, since one can accept the premise and consistently remain a materialist if P1 were false. The second premise being true would just make you an inconsistent materialist"

      You're not understanding what I write. The truth of P1 is irrelevant. P2 is the problem. I don't even have to consider the validity of P1 in order to reject P2.

      IOW, consider:

      (P1) All formal thinking is umblada
      (P2) No physical process is umbalada
      (C) Thus, no formal thinking is a physical process.

      This is formally true but I'd reject it as begging the question for exactly the same reasons. You're simply wrong in stating that I "imply that, given any formally valid argument, if one were to believe one premise but want to avoid the conclusion, the other premise would be question begging." I don't care whether P1 is true or not. The problem is that the argument's premises implicitly assert that formal thinking is not a subset of physical process. No non-dualist would accept that. So your responses to me are irrelevant. In order for you to make the proof valid, you have to first convince a physicalist that something exists outside the physical. That would be the only way to accept P2.

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    10. I don't care whether P1 is true or not. The problem is that the argument's premises implicitly assert that formal thinking is not a subset of physical process. No non-dualist would accept that. So your responses to me are irrelevant. In order for you to make the proof valid, you have to first convince a physicalist that something exists outside the physical. That would be the only way to accept P2.

      But this is simply false. P2 does not say anything about formal thinking and so does not imply anything about formal thinking (likewise, your P2 says nothing about formal thinking either). One has to add another premise for it to do so.

      I don't have to convince a physicalist that something exists outside of the physical. "No physical process is determinate" does not exclude "No process at all is determinate"; the premise does not imply that some process is determinate and therefore non-physical. You need another premise for that. Hence P1.

      And underdetermination of the physical has been accepted by non-dualists. (I also would expect that eliminativists, for instance, would rather object to P1.)

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    11. I find it noteworthy that in that construction P2 definitely is not the issue. Suppose we substitute in 'magical':

      (P1) All formal thinking is magical
      (P2) No physical process is magical
      (C) Thus, no formal thinking is a physical process.

      Still a formally valid argument. P1 is clearly false. But P2 is I think clearly true. So throwing in 'umblada' seems not to accomplish anything, since in the argument form you are taking with, P2 simply is not question begging.

      The argument form, anyway, is not invalid. Take:

      (P1) All x's are F
      (P2) No y is F
      (C) Thus, no x is a y.

      So the general argument form we are dealing is does not beg the question either.

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    12. Of course the general form of the argument is not question-begging. I've never said it was. The problem is in the mutually-exclusive categories it sets up. That does beg the question.

      "the [P2] premise does not imply that some process is determinate and therefore non-physical. You need another premise for that.
      Hence P1.


      And we do have a P1. As I stated above, it's not the truth or falsity of P1 that's the issue. It's the false, mutually-exclusive categories the argument demands.

      And underdetermination of the physical has been accepted by non-dualists.

      That non-dualist would presume everything is non-determinate. So Ross's proof wouldn't work for him either. He'd simply reject P1 for the same reasons I reject P2.

      As you say, the magical thinking proof fails. Two proofs that look formally the same do not have to fail for the same reasons.

      I'd rather consider this:

      All squares have four equal sides
      No rectangle has four equal sides
      Thus, no square is a rectangle

      We know this proof fails because P2 is clearly false. Square is a subset of rectangle. For a physicalist, Ross's P2 ignores the fact that physical processes include all thinking of any sort. And you could claim this begs the question too. And that's fine. But that doesn't give Ross the authority to beg the question from the other direction.

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    13. So the non-dualist is free to accept either P1 or P2 (exclusive). If he accepts both, then the conclusion obviously follows. But I'm not quite sure how an argument can be said to be question begging if a person hold either one of the premises need not accept the conclusion.

      A non-dualist need not hold that formal thinking is determinate, or that it is a subset of physical processes (he might hold that the idea of formal thinking is vacuous, for example). If one thinks that the argument sets up mutually exclusive categories, it is not because it begs the question; it is because one of the premises is false.

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    14. A non-dualist "might hold that the idea of formal thinking is vacuous, for example."

      In this case the proof is vacuous too. Btw, this is basically my position. The terms used here are are so vague that Ross's proof is meaningless. That's why I asked for someone to please tell me precisely what "formal addition" really is.

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  7. Hi Robert.

    The short answer to why you and Feser have been talking at cross-purposes is that Feser's argument is very different from Ross's, but he conflates the two. Hence confusion.

    However, they share the same underlying error: they mistake linguistic indeterminacy for substantive "metaphysical" indeterminacy, whatever that might be--the concept seems incoherent to me. I blame Kripke for giving apologists a new, nonsensical philosophical toy to play with.

    There is only the way things are, and how we can describe the way things are. Since we're setting aside epistemic uncertainty, only the latter question is relevant here, how to describe the way things are. There's linguistic indeterminacy because language is fuzzy. Sometimes there is no one right way to describe the way things are. We can call that indeterminacy. But that's just a problem for how we communicate facts to each other (and to ourselves). There's no indeterminacy in the way things are. (Well, maybe quantum uncertainty or something of that sort, but that's not the issue here.)

    Suppose we're talking about a normal calculator, doing what we normally call adding. The best way to communicate what it's doing is to say it's adding. To say it's subtracting would be very misleading. Could we say it's quadding? Let's assume that the listener has been given Kripke's definition of "quadding". Suppose, for a moment, both terms are equally applicable, and that the listener will understand equally well, whichever we say. Then it doesn't matter which we say. Both are right. But nothing of any substance hangs on that linguistic indeterminacy.

    In fact, we should say "adding", since there's no good reason to depart from that usual term, and "quadding" is potentially misleading. If we say "quadding", a listener is likely to wonder why we've departed from standard practice, and suspect that we're making that distinction for a reason. He might assume we mean that something in the calculator is actually checking whether the operands are over 57, such that it would behave differently if that condition were met (even if it hasn't been met so far). But that's not the case, if we're talking about a normal calculator. So we could have misled the listener. Moreover, there are an infinite number of other useless concepts we could define. We could substitute other numbers for 57 in the definition. Invoking "quadding" or any of those other concepts is just playing silly buggers. There's no good reason for it.

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    2. Hi Richard,

      There's linguistic indeterminacy because language is fuzzy. Sometimes there is no one right way to describe the way things are. We can call that indeterminacy. But that's just a problem for how we communicate facts to each other (and to ourselves). There's no indeterminacy in the way things are.

      Feser and Ross are not arguing that there is indeterminacy in the way things are. They are arguing that a physical process is indeterminate among incompossible functions. There is some absolute physical process that occurs when I type a sum into a calculator; the question is whether that physical process is (or can be) the same as the pure function of addition that I can think about. It would seem that this condition is met if "there is no one right way to describe the way things are," because the way things are is simply not a determinate function.

      In fact, we should say "adding", since there's no good reason to depart from that usual term, and "quadding" is potentially misleading.

      This does not seem to be true. If addition is, as Ross and Feser hold, a determinate process defined for any real number by F + F = 2F, then it is perhaps more accurate to say that the calculator is not adding, but is quadding. For some F the calculator will return an error rather than a sum, so it seems that, even if one could argue that a physical process can embody a pure function, a calculator would not be adding as we mean it. The reason we should say "adding" is not that "there's no good reason to depart from that usual term," but because we use a calculator when we want to facilitate our own addition.

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    3. When a hen drops another egg into her nest is she adding another egg to her nest or not ?

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    4. I said "Feser and Ross are not arguing that there is indeterminacy in the way things are. They are arguing that a physical process is indeterminate among incompossible functions. There is some absolute physical process that occurs when I type a sum into a calculator; the question is whether that physical process is (or can be) the same as the pure function of addition that I can think about." Yes, there is some determinate state of affairs when a hen drops an egg (what Ross elsewhere calls the "transcendent determinacy of the physical"). The argument is that the state of affairs is indeterminate among incompossible functions. If a there are two eggs in a basket and you add two more, have you performed 2+2 or 2*2?

      Either description is fine, of course, for that state of affairs. Each function maps the inputs to the output. This is true of any physical process; the process is always underdetermined because there are multiple incompossible functions which match the data.

      But adding and multiplying are different functions when we perform them in our heads.

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    5. "If a there are two eggs in a basket and you add two more, have you performed 2+2 or 2*2?"

      Both, but there's no point to be made there. Multiplication is actually just multiple additions. I agree they're both descriptive terms. They can both describe what the hen does, like English and French can both describe it. But she doesn't need to add in her head before she adds to her nest. The function of addition occurs in nature regardless of how we describe it in our heads. This is essentially how I see the calculator.

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    6. But it is not just addition that she is doing. There are absolute limits to the nest-adding function of the chicken (imposed, say, by the amount of space in her nest, the amount of matter in the universe). The coincidence of some inputs and outputs does not make it the same as the pure function of addition, which works for all real numbers in principle.

      So the fact about the chicken laying her eggs will not succeed in determining what function she is performing. There is an infinite number of incompossible function (the physical process is indeterminate among quus-like functions whose differentiating inputs are larger than the limit on the amount of eggs that can exist).

      Certainly, addition models it pretty well. But it isn't the pure function of addition.

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    7. Nobody yet has precisely described this "pure addition." Maybe you could give it a shot. Until then, I've got to assume it's pure fiction.

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  8. Robert, Richard,
    I have left some comments at Ed Feser's starting here where I try to understand what Ed means by 'adding relative to the intentions of designers and users'. Trouble is, this indeterminacy seems to swallow up the Rossian kind, so poor Ross need not have bothered with section II of his paper with quus and grue and all. I remain confused.

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    1. Hi David,

      I am a bit confused. Even if Feser and Ross are speaking of different kinds of indeterminacy, why would it matter if Feser's swallows up Ross's?

      It seems doubtful, anyway, that Feser and Ross are speaking of different types of indeterminacy. Ross concludes that "the machine never adds" but that "[w]hat it does gets the name of what we do, because it reliably gets the results we do (perhaps even more reliably than we do) when we add by a distinct process" (p. 142). If that isn't "adding relative to the intentions of designers and users," I don't know what is.

      The point that Ross makes in section II, then, is that plus/quus and grue considerations obviate the fact that a physical process is indeterminate among incompossible functions. That is really the only point that is needed for the argument. Feser brings up intentions of the designers and users only as support for that premise, and, it seems, to illustrate why a calculator can still be said to add. (He is not defining indeterminacy by the considerations of the designer's intentions. He is just clarifying a point of why we can still say that a calculator "adds.") But as we've seen where I've quoted him above, Ross makes roughly the same point.

      So we have an answer to Robert's comments:

      And what exactly is Feser claiming here? That the machine ETPFOAs relative to the intentions of the designers? Or that it only simulates adding relative them? OK, the machine taken together with the larger context results in addition "of a sort" - but of which sort?

      I don't know where all this confusion comes from. It is clear from both Ross and Feser that the machine does not ETPFOA; it helps the user ETPFOA, for which reason we colloquially say that the machine "adds," even though it doesn't.

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  9. Hi Greg. I've been away for a few days.

    "Feser and Ross are not arguing that there is indeterminacy in the way things are."

    Well, I'm only suggesting that they see physicalism as entailing that there is indeterminacy in the way things are. But they don't think physicalism is true. So of course they don't think there really is such indeterminacy. They might even think that such indeterminacy is logically impossible, and still be using that entailment as an argument against physicalism.

    Please note that this isn't my main response to their arguments. It's just an explanation of what might be leading them astray in the first place. My main response--which I made briefly in a previous thread--is that they conflate processes with abstract functions, and then make an unwarranted jump from the fact that an abstract function (e.g. addition) is "determinate" to the need for a process that instantiates that function to be "determinate". (I've put "determinate" in scare quotes here because it seems to me that the word must be used in different senses when applied to an abstract function and when applied to a process.)
    "They are arguing that a physical process is indeterminate among incompossible functions.
    This is an example of conflating processes with abstract functions. If we're talking about processes, and if (for the sake of argument) a given process can be described as either "adding" or "quadding", then the properties of "being a process of adding" and "being a process of quadding" are not "incompossible". On the other hand, the abstract functions of adding and quadding are two different (non-equivalent) functions.

    This sort of statement makes it sound like they see indeterminacy as something more than descriptive. They seem to be saying that an indeterminate physical process would be two incompossible things at the same time.

    "There is some absolute physical process that occurs when I type a sum into a calculator; the question is whether that physical process is (or can be) the same as the pure function of addition that I can think about."

    To ask whether a process is the same as a pure abstraction is to commit a category error. It's like asking whether a process is the same as a number. Ross talks about whether a process has "the form" of a pure function. But that commits a similar error. I suspect that you and Ross have sometimes been confused by the fact that both an abstract function and a process can be referred to by the word "addition", and you are to some degree conflating those two senses of "addition". Much of the remainder of your reply to me conflates processes with abstract functions, so I won't respond in detail..

    I think we can sensibly talk about whether a given process instantiates (or realises) an abstract function. And we can sensibly say that the addition operation of a calculator instantiates the abstract function of addition. Suppose (for the sake of argument) that we can equally say that it instantiates the abstract function of quaddition. So what? That wouldn't mean that it doesn't instantiate the abstract function of addition. If we can sensibly describe it both ways, then we can sensibly say that it instantiates both. (But I don't actually accept that we can sensibly describe it both ways, for the reasons I gave in my previous comment. I don't think this is a good example of indeterminacy.)

    In addition to the argument from the indeterminacy of adding-quadding, Ross also makes an argument from imperfection: a physical system can't give the right answer to all addition questions. But so what? All we need is for physical systems to be as successful as we observe them to be.

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    1. <"That wouldn't mean that it doesn't instantiate the abstract function of addition. "

      Exactly. The "quadding" example is a red herring. We can be wrong about the facts. This doesn't mean the facts are indeterminate. It sure doesn't mean our errors are god-like in their significance. Ross seems to place human error as his foundation for determinacy. I ask, what is objectively true about that?

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  10. Hi Richard,

    Well, I'm only suggesting that they see physicalism as entailing that there is indeterminacy in the way things are.

    I do not think even this is true. They see indeterminacy in the way that the physical world realizes abstract functions, which is a separate issue from whether there is indeterminacy "in the way things are" (say, in a single state of affairs being precisely that state of affairs).

    [Saying that a physical process is indeterminate among incompossible functions] is an example of conflating processes with abstract functions.

    I think you are confusing the phrase "indeterminate among incompossible functions" with considering the process and the functions as the same thing (your comment quoted below, saying that the process "would be" two incompossible functions at once seems to do this as well; probably my fault). It is an argument about realization of the functions by the processes, not identity between processes and functions.

    You are right, I should not have asked whether a process is "the same" as a pure function, since the argument indeed is not about identity. The argument must be about realization (which, if it is impossible by a physical system, would lead to either Ross's conclusion, or eliminativism, if one opts to deny P1).

    They seem to be saying that an indeterminate physical process would be two incompossible things at the same time.

    I believe that Ross makes precisely the opposite point. The system is not realizing two things (addition and quaddition) at the same time. But the physical fact of the system cannot in principle tell you which it realizes. There is a determinate state of affairs, sure, but the state of affairs is what must be indeterminate among incompossible functions.

    Suppose (for the sake of argument) that we can equally say that it instantiates the abstract function of quaddition. So what? That wouldn't mean that it doesn't instantiate the abstract function of addition.

    I think that your hypothesis here is vacuous. What is at issue is whether a physical process can realize addition or quaddition. Its looking like either (or both) of them does not imply that either (or both) is realized. You seem to think that Ross is deriving his indeterminacy from the fact that it realizes both; but his argument seems to be that it realizes neither because the physical facts rule neither out. The point, I think, becomes clearer in your next comment:

    In addition to the argument from the indeterminacy of adding-quadding, Ross also makes an argument from imperfection: a physical system can't give the right answer to all addition questions. But so what? All we need is for physical systems to be as successful as we observe them to be.

    Here again, I do not think you are accurately representing Ross's argument. I think he completely agrees that physical systems can be pragmatically useful, and some physical systems could be used to help a human both add and quadd (and might be colloquially referred to by either term, by the user). But talking about what we "need" for a physical system to be "successful" does not meet Ross's argument, it just changes the subject. If a pure function is defined in principle for all inputs, but a physical system cannot realize that pure function to the exclusion of others, then it simply cannot realize the pure function. To conclude that it is determinate is just to paste some linguistic observations onto nature (even knowing that the linguistic observations of the physical must break down).

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    1. "The system is not realizing two things (addition and quaddition) at the same time. But the physical fact of the system cannot in principle tell you which it realizes."

      It's going to take a lot of explaining to make that statement make sense. If the physical facts are not realizing two things (functions in this case), then how many things are they realizing? I think you're suggesting, in reality, they realize one thing. If so, I would agree with you. But if the facts do realize one thing, how would we ever know this if, in principle, it can't be known? What would make you suspect the facts realize one thing rather than another? Ross's answer seems to be that the facts realize zero things so he avoids this particular difficulty in favor of another.

      "If a pure function is defined in principle for all inputs, but a physical system cannot realize that pure function to the exclusion of others, then it simply cannot realize the pure function."

      The reason a calculator is limited to a certain range of inputs is merely a practical one. In principle, a computer can perform its additions on numbers as large as or larger than any human can perform in his head (or on paper for that matter). So your distinction between a human's so-called "pure" addition and the computer's operation is false.

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  11. Hi Greg,

    You wrote: "You seem to think that Ross is deriving his indeterminacy from the fact that it realizes both; but his argument seems to be that it realizes neither because the physical facts rule neither out."

    To say that neither is realized (if there are only physical processes) is to rule out the realization of each (if there are only physical processes). So I think you're contradicting yourself.

    The point of indeterminacy is that all of the states (among which there is indeterminacy) obtain. What do you think are the states among which there is indeterminacy here? I don't think you can say they are the states of realizing addition and realizing quaddition, if you're saying that neither of those states obtains.

    I think you and Ross are confused in your use of the word "indeterminacy". Perhaps we could discuss the argument better if we avoided it.

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  12. I think I can respond to a significant point in your last comment without reference to indeterminacy, so I'll do that.

    You wrote: 'But talking about what we "need" for a physical system to be "successful" does not meet Ross's argument, it just changes the subject. If a pure function is defined in principle for all inputs, but a physical system cannot realize that pure function to the exclusion of others, then it simply cannot realize the pure function.'

    Let me make my point more thoroughly. We only need to explain what we have reason to believe. What alleged fact do you think stands in need of explanation, but which cannot be explained in terms of physical processes? Your comment implies that you have in mind the following alleged fact: that the process of logical thinking "realizes a pure function". Let me call this a premise of your argument.

    The problem is it's unclear what this premise means, and therefore it's unclear whether I should accept it. All I will accept is that logical thinking needs to instantiate abstract functions like addition sufficiently well to deliver the sorts of behaviour that we actually observe. The way you use the premise implies that you understand it to mean something stronger than that, in which case I reject it.

    You try to support your premise by taking its rejection as entailing some extreme conclusion like the conclusion that we don't add, or "eliminativism". But rejecting your premise does not entail any such problematic conclusion. You seem to be drawing a false dichotomy between your premise and an extreme alternative, while failing to see the reasonable alternative which I've just mentioned. Now that I've drawn this reasonable alternative to your attention, the onus is on you to show that there's something wrong with it.

    I suspect the unclear wording of your premise--particularly the term "pure function"--is causing you to see it as less controversial than it is. You may even be conflating more and less controversial readings of it, and so committing an implicit fallacy of equivocation. There is some sense in which logical thinking must realize (I prefer "instantiate") logical functions. But it doesn't follow that it must do so in the "pure" sense that you have in mind.

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  13. P.S. Greg, it might be clearer if I say "approximate", rather than "realize" or "instantiate". Physical processes can approximate to logical functions, which I say is all we need to explain everything that needs explaining.

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