Digressions&Impressions

On Reichenbach's Wager, Prior, and Pascal's Wager, and Al-Ghazali

The way toward an understanding of the step from experience to prediction lies in the logical sphere; to find it we have to free ourselves from one deep-rooted prejudice: from the presupposition that the system of knowledge is to be a system of true propositions. If we cross out this assumption within the theory of knowledge, the difficulties dissolve, and with them dissolves the mystical mist lying above the research methods of science. We shall then interpret knowledge as a system of posits, or wagers; with this the question of justification assumes as its form the question whether scientific knowledge is our best wager. Logical analysis shows that this demonstration can be given, that the inductive procedure of science is distinguished from other methods of prediction as leading to the most favorable posits. Thus we wager on the predictions of science and wager on the predictions of practical wisdom: we wager on the sun's rising tomorrow, we wager that food will nourish us tomorrow, we wager that our feet will carry us tomorrow. Our stake is not low; all our personal existence, our life itself, is at stake. To confess ignorance in the face of the future is the tragic duty of all scientific philosophy; but, if we are excluded from knowing true predictions we shall be glad that at least we know the road toward our best wagers. Hans Reichenbach (1938) Experience and prediction;: an analysis of the foundations and the structure of knowledge. p 404

In a footnote to a profound and witty dialogue(called a "play") from 1942, "Can religion be discussed?" (The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy), Arthur N. Prior seems to refer to the quoted passage when he describes "an astonishing resemblance" between Reichenbach's wager "argument for induction to Pascal's "wager" argument for religion." (See p. 148, note 8.) In the preamble to the dialogue, Prior writes that "my characters are Barthian Protestant,* Modernist Protestant, Catholic, Logician and Psychoanalyst. The footnotes are by myself." So, I think Prior wants us to reflect on the similarity between Pascal's wager for God's existence and Reichenbach's claim that fallible inductive science provides us the road toward best wagers.

As an aside, I find two features of Reichenbach's position notable: first, these days epistemologists accept that knowledge is compatible with fallibilism. It is notable that Reichenbach still felt the need to argue the (Humean) case. Second, Reichenbach treats decisions within science as formally alike to wagers of practical wisdom. That is to say, lurking here is a (Kantian) effacement of any significant difference in kind between theoretical and practical knowledge. For, the very system of theoretical knowledge (science) rests on a practical, even existential decision -- this is very akin to Carnap's voluntarism --, namely on the wager that induction and a system of inductions is the best route to practical prudence. I call this Reichenbach's wager. 

Anyway, since Pascal is mentioned by Reichenbach as one of the original investigators of the "mathematical concept of probability" (298-299), the resemblance may well be deliberate and Pascal the original inspiration for Reichenbach's (presentation of his) version of the idea. I don't think the similarity between Pascal's wager and Reichenbach's wager is entirely a contingent matter depending on historical circumstances. Because  in Al-Ghazali we find versions of both Pascal's Wager (recall here) and Reichenbach's wager (recall here). Strikingly, in Al-Ghazali the inductive leap required for scientific discovery is itself likened to prophecy. (I don't think there is evidence that Reichenbach or Pascal were familiar with Al-Ghazali's writings.) 

For, Al-Ghazali the development of successful scientific theory requires guided intuition of structure (or special properties), and this guided intuition is of the same kind in prophecy. One way to think about Reichenbach's wager in light of Al-Ghazali, then, is that wagers based on past science (and new information, etc.) play a role in the role of guiding of the scientist's intuition when discovering or developing new science.

Prior's footnote is attached to a passage by the "logician" character in the dialogue in "Can religion be discussed?": "The validity of inductive inference, on which Psychoanalyst's "explanation " of religion ultimately depends, can only be affirmed as a leap in the dark." The claim by the logician about inductive inference is more Kierkegaardian than, I think, the Al-Ghazali inspired interpretation of Reichenbach's wager I just offered. On the latter, there is no less an existential leap, but it's less in the dark than the Kierkegaardian leap of the logician (who anticipates the kind of thing Thomas Kuhn seemed to be groping toward sometimes). 

It would have been natural to assume that the "logician" speaks for Prior. And that my distinction between the Kierkegaardian and Al-Ghazalian interpretations is mere artifice. But Prior had already alerted the reader that only in his footnotes is Prior (ahh) himself. So, we can, even must, read Prior's footnote as a correction to the logician.

I could stop here. But I want to add a kind of appendix.

Prior's engagement with religion was non-trivial. Even so, his comments about Islam reported in the Stanford Encyclopedia  are rather derogatory. In the body of "Can religion be discussed?," the psychoanalyst is quoted as treating Islam as a "sort of sideshow;" ("The kind of clear and sharp and anti-idolatrous belief that we have been considering is hardly to be found outside ancient and modern Israel and the Christian Church (with Mohammedanism as a sort of sideshow)." So I was a bit surprised that in footnote 9 (the one after not 8 containing the comment about Reichenbach), Prior, speaking for himself, writes: 

In a work of early Scottish Protestantism, with which Barth has strong affinities, occurs this sentence: "The poets say, (Oedipus knew that he had a father, but knew not that Laius was his father  so the heathen know that there is a god, but know not the true God." It is from this point of view that Mohammedanism is a "sideshow"; for while it may be a purer form of abstract " monotheism "' than Judaism or Christianity, it is not so definite and unambiguous (and so '"monotheistic") in its identification of God's Person by His concrete presence and action in history.

I cannot here do justice to Prior's relationship to, and reflection on Barth. So, I just want to focus on the second sentence of this footnote. Prior is clear that Islam is (relative to Judaism and Christianity) the purest form of monotheism. But he thinks Islam is problematic, rather, in how according to Islam God's presence is manifested in history. I suspect, but would love for a theologian to help me out, that what Prior objects to is that for Islam Jesus is just one of many prophets, and that the Church is just one of many religious institutions.** 

This note 9 turns out, thus, to be a partial correction to the psychoanalyst who misunderstands the manner in which Islam is a sideshow. But it is also a partial elaboration of an earlier footnote (5) in which Prior writes as himself:  "Freud's "Moses and Monotheism"' is, as far as I know, the only anti-religious work which treats the uniqueness of the Hebrew-Christian tradition as a serious problem for unbelief to solve, and does not evade it with chatter about all religions being the same, or evolving along a single line." That is to say, for Prior a certain tradition of monotheism generates a special challenge to the anti-religious or really atheist ("unbelief") argument. (On Prior's atheism recall here.) But Islam is not part of that tradition. And the reason it is not part of that tradition, for this purpose, is how Islam handles the identification of God's Person by His concrete presence and action in history. (That is to say, for Prior the status of Islam merits a central role in the commentary in his own voice on the argument of "the play.")

If I am right about why Prior admires Barth* then for Prior the real problem with Islam is that it does not really allow Church autonomy in the face of worldly ambition or evil (because, on this view, Islam does not really accept the church/state distinction). One may still wonder why this removes Islam from the tradition that is a genuine obstacle for the atheist's argument. I think the answer is that for Prior monotheism generates for the atheist not an epistemic but a moral-political obstacle.

Before Arthur Prior was the pioneer in intensional logic; and on the philosophical politics of Australia

Whether or not it was intended as such, this article of Professor Ryle's has functioned in fact as a blow on the side of Melbourne in a battle between Melbourne and Sydney which has, I understand, been a feature of the Australian philosophical scene for many years, and which was certainly in evidence at the 1951 congress. Professor Anderson, it would seem, has always found someone to cross swords with in the southern University. In an earlier period the Victorian Sassenachs were predominantly ' idealists ' of one sort or another; but now there is a strong representation there of the current British tendency to regard the main task of philosophy as the unravelling of mental and verbal tangles generated by the endless complexity and changefulness of ordinary language. An admirable example of this technique was given at the congress by Dr W. D. Falk, in a paper on ' Prescriptive Speech '. It is often held by those who reduce philosophical to linguistic problems that statements about what we ought to do, as well as statements about what is ' good ', are just a subtly disguised manner of ordering people about. As far as ' ought ' is concerned, this is of course the Andersonian view too. It is not Dr Falk's view; but he attacks it, as he says, 'from within'. The greater part of his paper was something that could almost have come from a good novel -an extremely polished and painstaking account of the various ways in which the speech of one person leads to action in another. The main dividing-line, he argued, is not that between utterances in the indicative mood and utterances in the imperative, but that between utterances which merely draw a person's attention to some circumstance which would have moved him to action had he known of it independently (;'If you don't go now you'll miss the last bus ') and utterances which themselves bring into being a motive for action which was not previously present (' If you don't get out now I'll throw you out'). There are of course an infinite variety of intermediary cases, and cases of the one form masquerading as the other ; and Dr Falk discussed a number of these with great insight and humour. He then went on to consider cases in which we say 'You ought to do X', and came to the conclusion that these are more like the first sort of case than the second. In the Andersonian view these exhaustive and sometimes exhausting discussions of linguistic usages are a waste of philosophical time ; what little value they have is as a prelude to the exposure of 'bulldozing'. It also seems to be the Andersonian ' line ' that philosophers who are endlessly preoccupied with linguistic conventions, and with what people mean rather than with what is the case, are generally  on the side of the conventions socially too, and have abandoned ethics for etiquette. I have concentrated on these ethical and semi-ethical issues because they are probably of most general interest, but the congress had its teeth into other things also. A paper, for example, by Professor J. J. C. Smart of Adelaide on Logical Paradoxes. These are tricky things, but it is worth while trying to outline one of them and Professor Smart's manner of dealing with it, as I am not very satisfied either with his solution or with any other that I have thought of or come across, and would be interested to see some philosophical amateur who  reads Landfall chip into the discussion. (He couldn't easily do worse than the professionals have done with this subject.)--A.N. Prior "This Quarter" The Landfall March 1952, pp. 51-2

Causing and then knowing of my recurring fascination with the 'pioneer in intensional logic,' A.N. Prior (recall), the economist, David M. Levy, has repeatedly called my attention to A.N. Prior's writings in the New Zealand periodical, The Landfall, and decided to reduce my search costs by adding a link to the archived PdF copies. Among the gems to be found there are fascinating reviews of Popper's Open Society and C.S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man.(I intend to return to these.) The essay from which I quote above -- a kind of impression of a "single event" (p. 49) then bi-annual Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy in august 1951 -- is written just at the point of Prior's first publications as a formal logician.

What caught my attention is Prior's description of the transition, at the University of Melbourne, from an Idealist-centric department to a department oriented around ordinary language philosophy (exemplified by W. D. Falk, who is, in fact, himself a fascinating thinker). Both the earlier idealists and the then dominant ordinary language philosophers are opposed by Sydney's John Anderson. (Part of the joke is that Anderson was born a Scot.) Anderson's philosophy is characterized by his fondness for a flat ontology and embrace of a certain species of atheism (and rejection of ontological hierarchy).

In almost Swiftian fashion, Prior describes the Lilliputian "battle between Melbourne and Sydney which has, I understand, been a feature of the Australian philosophical scene for many years." The battle is a product of geography and, apparently, the force of Anderson's personality. Part of the comedy of Prior's report is that Prior recognizes that he is thought by others, including the eminent J. J. C. Smart,  to belong to Anderson's school, but not by Anderson ("Professor Smart, who is of the Ryle-Melbourne faction, called me an Andersonian. Later on Professor Anderson did his best to put him right about that). Prior's thoughts on his club identity are left obscure. 

At the start of his essay, Prior grants that there are no "subtle reasons why this event should loom larger in our thoughts than the election (N.Z.), the election (U.K.), the referendum (Australia), the sedition bill (N.Z.), the armistice negotiations (Korea) and the rest." But philosophical politics clearly can be as absorbing as the great politics of states and dominions. I return to that shortly.

I don't mean to suggest that the satire is devoid of seriousness (or that I can read all clues on the  Trans-Tasman relations). The essay is structured along three contraries: as the quote (midway through the essay reveals), one of these is the contrast between philosophical "professionals" and "amateurs." The other is the contrast between 'pure' and impure/applied philosophers, that is "psychologists." These had been part of the same professional association, the Australasian Association of Psychology and Philosophy, but had recently split, with the pure philosophers. ["Australasian psychologists now have, I think, a periodical and presumably an association of their own, and the association now being considered has come to cater more exclusively for ' pure ' philosophers."]

Somewhat strikingly, it's the professionals -- presumably people like Smart and Prior himself, and especially John Anderson, employed at university -- come off looking faintly ridiculous, but not without fondness. The upshot Anderson's critique of ordinary language philosophy, in particular, is spelled out: "that philosophers who are endlessly preoccupied with linguistic conventions, and with what people mean rather than with what is the case, are generally  on the side of the conventions socially too, and have abandoned ethics for etiquette." Whole uncharitable, it is not devoid of significance (and in some ways precedes Isaiah Berlin's line of attack). The third contrary is the contrast between philosophical "factions" (p. 53) and the impartial lover of truth. 

And this leads me to a closing speculative observation on the opening line of the essay. ("I PROPOSE in all shamelessness to devote these pages to the consideration of a single event, and one, moreover, which did not take place in this quarter, but rather in the one before it-a congress of philosophers which met in Sydney last August.") My interest here is in the self-identification of shamelessness. Regular readers of Landfall, had already been informed by Prior, in his review of Lewis, that he is predisposed toward a form of sentimentalism in the vein of Adam Smith ("disinterestedness should...be made the defining characteristic of ethical sentiments, as it has in fact been made by the more circumspect subjectivists from Adam Smith onwards.") In fact, in the review of Popper, Prior also embraces Smith's philosophy. (Smith plays a central role in Prior's Logic and the Basis of Ethics.)

What's odd is is that shame is a very important sentiment in Smith's moral philosophy. But, at no point, in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, does Smith embrace shamelessness. Smith suggests that a "real lover a truth" even feels shame at any unintentional falsehood conveyed in careless gossiping. But,while Gulliver is often ashamed, the more rational (would be philosopher-kings) Houyhnhnms reject shame. But perhaps, the shamelessness consists in recognizing that in so far as all events are located in time by means of tenses, even belated ones, from a certain logical point of view all events are on par. The high and the low collapse into a flat plane, which is, of course, the Swiftian move par excellence. And, to add for good measure, so Smart was not all wrong in discerning the drift of Prior's philosophical leanings.

 

On Arendt on Socratic Persuasion

The Socratic proposition “It is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong” is not an opinion but claims to be truth, and though one may doubt that it ever had a direct political consequence, its impact upon practical conduct as an ethical precept is undeniable; only religious commandments, which are absolutely binding for the community of believers, can claim greater recognition. Does this fact not stand in clear contradiction to the generally accepted impotence of philosophical truth? And since we know from the Platonic dialogues how unpersuasive Socrates’ statement remained for friend and foe alike whenever he tried to prove it, we must ask ourselves how it could ever have obtained its high degree of validity. Obviously, this has been due to a rather unusual kind of persuasion; Socrates decided to stake his life on this truth – to set an example, not when he appeared before the Athenian tribunal but when he refused to escape the death sentence. And this teaching by example is, indeed, the only form of “persuasion” that philosophical truth is capable of without perversion or distortion; by the same token, philosophical truth can become “practical” and inspire action without violating the rules of the political realm only when it manages to become manifest in the guise of an example. This is the only chance for an ethical principle to be verified as well as validated.--Hanna Arendt (1968) "Truth in Politics," (p. 243 in Between Past and Present).

I do not understand the last sentence of the quoted passage.

In "Truth in Politics," while relying on a distinction between ethics and politics which she grafts on a Platonizing distinction between truth (which she connects with philosophy) and opinion (which she connects with politics), Arendt claims to writes from the truthful perspective outside of the "political realm" (258). [To be sure, factual truth matters to politics because it is an obstacle to lots of forms of persuasion; Arendt notes that (229) Madison (who got it from Adam Smith) teaches that government rests on opinion, but the truth can undermine it.]  Her claim is a bit odd because she is manifestly instructing the public in her essay (which first appeared in the New Yorker) in order to recognize the social, if not political utility of a distinct realm in which truth rules within and protected by the polity. The agents that occupy that realm (the institution of justice, and research in the modern university) are supposed to be motivated by impartiality, love of truth, and free from "self-interest in thought and judgment." I like that phrase, but we saw recently that Arendt recognized that influence and power would corrode this ethos. 

That is  to say, Arendt is using a form of rhetoric, or persuasion, in the service of a kind of advocacy on behalf of the institutions that promote truth (which people think is impotent). One wonders if this kind of persuasion is also part of "the rules of the political realm," or if Arendt is cheating. Either way, given that hers is different from the less subtle, Socratic form of persuasion -- in staking his life as an exemplar of both the Socratic proposition and as evidence that, thereby (?), truth can be, well, potent in motivating action* --, we can conclude that hers does distort (at least somewhat) "philosophical truth" in the process. I suspect the distortion is the fact philosophers do not want to be (justified as) instrumental to political life (but prefer being oriented toward their a-political truth).

I mentioned above that Arendt recognizes the great significance of truth in political life, but not as a source of action. As she writes in a famous passage (she recycled it for somewhat different ends in 'Lying in Politics'):

The mere telling of facts, leads to no actions whatever; even tends under normal circumstances, toward acceptance of things as they are....Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, because it has little indeed to contribute to that change of the world and of circumstances which is among the most legitimate political activities. Only when a community has embarked upon organized lying on principle, and not only with respect to particulars, can truthfulness as such, unsupported by the distorting forces of power and interest, become a political factor of the first order. Where everybody lies about everything of importance, the truthteller, whether he knows it or not, has begun to act; he, too, has engaged in political business, for, in the unlikely event that he survives, he has made a start toward changing the world. (246-7)

She seems committed to the view that reporting of the facts ordinarily entrenches a status quo bias (that's compatible as she notes with it sometimes undermining it). So most governments would have nothing to fear from (say) public exposure of their activities. As her own essay goes on to remind us, most governments -- including liberal democracies -- act otherwise and, by their cover-ups, create the scandals that undermine them suggesting, if Arendt is right, that they lack practical wisdom.

One final thought, by staking his life, Socrates acted in a way that is political. Arendt does not quite claim why this is so, but presumably this is because (one can agree this much with Hobbes) the political exists at least in part to preserve life and postpone death. Truth compels those that grasp it, but does that do not, she seems to be saying, require an exemplar of what I have called philosophical integrity' the intimate relationship (perhaps one of partial identity or accountability) between our words and our character as revealed by our habitual deeds.. And perhaps, what Arendt is saying, is that such integrity is a matter of public record, or validation.

 

 

Winners and Losers in Philosophy; Williamson on Recent History of Philosophy (II)

History is often said to be written by the winners. In the case of analytic philosophy, however, there is a danger that history will be written predominantly by the losers. One reason is that analytic philosophy is a somewhat anti-historical tradition, especially where it most resembles a science, in aspiration or achievement. For there it tends to be oriented towards the future rather than the past, in the manner of a science – hardly surprising when progress is expected. Those who do not like history cannot complain when their history is written by people who are not like them. A second reason is that recent analytic philosophy seems to subvert the global narratives it might otherwise be tempting to tell about the history of the subject – most notably, in the resurgence of realist metaphysics, often unashamedly concerned with things in themselves. For those sympathetic to Kant or Wittgenstein or Dewey, it must be tempting to see much recent analytic philosophy as an insignificant anomaly, a passing throwback, in the long march of philosophy.--Timothy Williamson,

“How Did We Get Here From There?”

“How Did We Get Here From There?” (33)

As noted yesterday, Williamson's receptivity toward history appears to represent a change of heart. It is notable that the reasons he offers to do philosophical history are not themselves, well, philosophical. Rather, while he still thinks that philosophy is scientific enough to be progressive, he now thinks it is dangerous to decouple the present from the discipline's history. The danger he correctly seems to discern is that history is written by those that reject the status quo. Even so, Williamson's imagination deserts him because he only seems to recognize one kind of dimension on the status quo: you either represent the vengeful 'losers,'' and, thereby, probably mistakenly -- because of a lack of technical competence -- buy into a global narrative at odds with the philosophical present, or you represent, the technically more competent, 'winners' who embrace the status quo.

 

For Williamson the mission of history is to explain the internal -- as it were, causal sequence -- development of a series of doctrinal as well as methodological disputes and technical innovations that can explain how the philosophical status quo (as represented by, well Williamson in the Lewisian-era) came about from some arbitrary starting point. Interestingly enough, the starting point is given by unnamed "opponents of analytical philosophy" (7)--the very first words of the article!

 

In fact, one can welcome the status quo, write history that is philosophically competent and yet be distrustful of the narratives we tell ourselves. For these narratives may efface not just figures from the past, but also historical resources that can help us improve on the status quo. Let's grant -- for the sake of argument -- Williamson his claim that philosophy is like a normal, progressive science (with a commitment to abduction and in which theoretical disputes are adjudicated with appeal to theoretical virtue); then the unfolding of philosophy will generate Kuhn losses along the way. The philosophical history of philosophy would then be committed to recovering lost insights that may help improve the path forward from the status quo. Williamson's recognition that Bradley was not all wrong about the role of metaphysics in motivating anti-metaphysics is a nice case in point. It is, after all, no surprise that some of the most exciting contributions to recent work in history of philosophy are by Jonathan Schaffer, Michael Della Rocca, and analytical feminists like Eileen O'Neill (and those of us inspired by them), all of whom present new large-scale narratives without much fondness for Kant and Kantianism. Recovery projects simultaneously fill-the-gaps and allow us to imagine alternative futures to the present status-quo.

 

Of course, Williamson's own narrative undermines the idea that philosophy is akin to a mature science. He recognizes "the power of fashion in philosophy." (34) Now, in this piece, he aims to defuse the observation, by insisting that philosophy is relevantly akin to mathematics (which he claims is also fashion-driven). One need not be a Kuhnian to recognize that Williamson has few resources to marshall against the person who, accepting that philosophy aims to be scientific, points at the same phenomenon and argues that this is evidence that philosophy is in a pre-paradigmatic stage.* 

 

In a pre-paradigmatic stage, losers can hope to regroup and fight another day. For example, just a generation ago, 'friends-of-Carnap,' who chafed under a Quine-ean orthodoxy, united in a then-marginal intellectual society (HOPOS: History of the Philosophy of Science) to help nurture a better appreciation of Carnap's enduring contribution to philosophy. They did so both by providing a better understanding of the Kantian, Nietzschean, and logical roots of Carnap's philosophy and by articulating the ongoing virtues of the Carnapian program as well as by encouraging new Carnapian projects that have vindicated the original faith. If you don't like the previous example, consider the fate of McTaggart--sadly unmentioned by Williamson; once thought outdated in light of Quine's technical sophistication on ontology, yet his way of framing the issues in the metaphysics of time has endured (for good and ill).  

 

I close with a methodological (that I then use to make a new point and reinforce my philosophical-historical claims) observation: that opponents of a tradition (as analytical philosophy is) have a stereotypical, perhaps even misleading, image of a tradition is no surprise. For such an image to be effective rhetorically and even intellectually, it must contain enough grains of truth, but the work it does is designed to de-legitimate an opposing approach. In this case the image also has plenty of resonance within analytical philosophy in the ways it conceived and taught itself from the 1950s onward. This self-understanding is often captured by a succession of names Carnap-Quine-Kripke-Lewis (both [recall] by those within analytical philosophy that contest the received interpretation [see Price] and those like Putnam that wish to insert themselves into the tradition).

 

Now, when images and concepts are contested one ought to be alert. For example, even in the early ages of analytical philosophy some central players (not the least Russell) had non-trivial metaphysical aspirations. Once alerted to this, one can recognize other previously forgotten metaphysical projects within analytical philosophy (e.g., Stebbing [recall]). Stebbing was taken to have 'lost' the debate with Max Black, but as I have argued, history may well judge otherwise. (Certainly Stebbing's vision of a public role for analytical philosophy is now warmly being embraced by all kinds of figures.)**

 

In fact, Williamson himself admirably broadens the standard story considerably; he pays serious attention to the roles of Cook Wilson, A.N. Prior, and Strawson. Of these three, Wilson and Prior are not really analytical philosophers. Prior has been so assimilated, but he himself insisted that historical commentary was a key philosophical enterprise (something that certainly does not fit Williamson's understanding of analytical philosophy). Outside of formal logic, one of Prior's main contributions to present metaphysics (see the work by Jessica Wilson) is the influential restatement of W.E. Johnson's distinction between Determinates and Determinables. Johnson (neither an Idealist nor an analytical philosopher) is commonly effaced in narratives that insist that analytical philosophy successfully rebelled against British Idealism and vanquished it.  

 

Unknown unknowns and Deleuze's virtual

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.— Donald Rumsfeld [wikipedia]

A great philosopher creates new concepts: these concepts simultaneously surpass the dualities of ordinary thought and give things a new truth, a new distribution, a new way of dividing up the world.--Deleuze

But the virtual is not the same thing as the possible--Deleuze

We must understand that the virtual is not something actual but is for that no less a mode of being,--Deleuze

There are three general ways of thinking about the possible: (i) we take the present world as kind of a baseline, from which we project alternatives; (ii) we create a maximally plural list of 'worlds' available to, say, an omniscient being, and distinguish among these; (iii) we treat the possible as a species of quantitative probability ranging from impossible (zero probability) to necessity (probability 1) [and lots of permutations of these three]. There are, of course, ways to treat (ii) and (iii) as intimately related; and it is possible to recover (i) as a special case of (ii).

Now, Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns do not contradict any of the three approaches to probability sketched above. Even so, none of these three approaches is especially useful to help us think about unknown unknowns. For, in practice, it's our imaginations and the features of our formal machinery that constrain what enters the list of the (metaphysically/logically) possible. Logical analysis may be useful to make transparent hidden assumptions about the possible, it will not reveal an unknown unknown--genuine epistemic or metaphysical uncertainty is hard to model in it. For, all three ways of thinking about the possible have a kind of this-world bias built into them; to say this informally, while it's easy to prove the existence of God in some modal logics, it's actually pretty hard, despite the presence of monsters, to get really crazy; that is, the possible always has some resemblance to the actual.

Can one be funny in analytical philosophy?

IT is sometimes said that the world might itself be vague. Rather than vagueness being a deficiency in our mode of describing the world, it would then be a necessary feature of any true description of it. It is also said that amongst the statements which may not have a determinate truth value as a result of their vagueness are identity statements. Combining these two views we would arrive at the idea that the world might contain certain objects about which it is a fact that they have fuzzy boundaries. --Gareth Evans

"Is Gareth Evans (the philosopher) funny?" I ask myself in reflecting on his famous "Can There Be Vague Objects?"*

By this I do not mean the kind of funny in which one uses a principle denied by the opponent as an undisputed premise in one's argument against them.** This kind of funny is generally an expression of situational power--one can assert and get away with it. It is a byproduct that accompanies the clever in a certain milieu.

I also do not mean the kind of funny that presents itself as rigor, yet does not axiomatize or stipulate the rules of the sentential operator.*** In fairness to Evans, there is funniness here because Evans might respond that this problem, while real, is really his unnamed opponent's problem. It's not clear that the principled metaphysical indeterminatist has a right to a definite logic of vagueness.