Brain in a skull

The Blank Slate

From: http://www.lukesurl.com/

The naturalistic fallacy

This term loosely describes arguments that claim to draw ethical conclusions from natural facts; for instance penguins are monogamous and therefore humans should be. G E Moore  formally identified the naturalistic fallacy as any attempt by ethical philosophers to prove or back up a claim by defining good in terms of one or more natural properties (such as 'pleasant', 'more complex', 'desired', and so on).

The naturalistic fallacy assumes that because the words 'good' and, say, 'pleasant' can be used to describe the same object, they must be describing the same attribute. A good cheese will clearly taste pleasant, but a good bomb is one that kills most people.  

The naturalistic fallacy is related to, but should not be confused with, the is-ought problem. .

The Open Question Argument

Many moral religious and moral philosophers have attempted to equate good either with a deity (God is good) a divine command (what is pleasing to God) or with some natural phenomenon (pleasure is good). The Open Question Argument was formulated by G. E. Moore in his 1903 work Principia Ethica in order to refute such identifications. The argument is as follows:

(Premise 1) If X is good, then the question "Is it true that X is good?" would be  meaningless.
(Premise 2) The question "Is it true that X is good?" is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question).
(Conclusion) X is not (logically) equivalent to good.

This known as the open question argument as it depends on the second premise being an open question; that is a question whose answer has to be investigated rather than reasoned about. A closed question would be something like, Is that widow's husband dead? 

In response to criticism that the original argument assumed its own answer in the second premise G E Moore's original argument has been restated in the following manner.

(Premise 1) If X is good, then X will in itself motivate an individual to pursue it.
(Premise 2) A sane and rational speaker of English can understand that Action X* produces X, yet not pursue X*.
(Conclusion) X is not (analytically equivalent to) good.

The first premise follows Plato and Kant on the equvalence of knowledge of the good and right action. Hume would agree with premise 2 in that both belief and desire are needed to motivate actions.

In Our Time

This week's In Our Time, the 500th edition of the programme, is on free will and determinism and covers most of the topic in less than 45 minutes. You can download it as a podcast here or you can go to the programme's webpage and listen via the BBC I-Player here. Almost all of the programme's archive on culture, history, philosophy, religion and science is available to listen to. Search, for instance, for Socrates, or Good and Evil.

Computer Wins Quiz

An IBM computer called Watson has won the American quiz show Jeopardy. Its competitors were two of the most successful players of the game ever; Ken Jennings had won 74 time in a row and Brad Rutter had won the most money with $3million (£1.9m). 

The point of the victory was that Watson able to understand and respond quickly to natural human language and clues that rely on double meanings, riddles and other subtle aspects of speech. IBM expect to deploy the computer system shortly in helping with medical diagnosis; where accurate knowledge of large amounts of data is important. Other possible applications might include dealing with the enormous sets of data to be found in the law and in finance. 

No one is suggesting that Watson possesses artificial intelligence at this point. There is a short film about the final quiz here.

Berkeley, God, ideas and other minds

In his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley stated:

Whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them.

Thus the fact that he cannot change the world he perceives becomes evidence for some higher power that causes and maintains the world.

Berkeley divided human knowledge into two categories: ideas and spirits. Ideas are things that can be perceived whereas spirits cannot. Our souls perceive ideas but they themselves can only be comprehended by inner feelings or reflection.

John Locke used the term 'idea' to mean the object of reflection. (e.g. 'I have an idea for a novel')
Berkeley restricted the meaning of 'idea' to the passive objects of perception and used the term 'notion' when talking about spiritual substance and its operations. For Berkeley, we have no idea of spirits (we do not directly perceive them) but we do have a 'notion' of them.

Berkeley admitted that idealism could lead to doubts about the existence of other minds:

It is granted we have neither an immediate evidence nor a demonstrative knowledge of the existence of other finite spirits. (Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous)

But he thought it was possible to use arguments based on analogy to justify a belief in other people having similar inner lives to the one to which we have immediate and privileged access.