Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Let us pick up our thread about logical deduction. Our humble example of ‘trash day before laundry day’ may help us see that even our greatest (apparent) certainties have a probabilistic element to them. Consider our first premise. It probably is not the case that the trash collectors ALWAYS arrive on a Friday. There may have been one or more times since I’ve lived here when blizzard or wildcat strike or other disturbance in The Force has brought it about that the Friday collection didn’t happen. There must be some chance, however slight, that this Friday was one of those exceptional Fridays, so the collection I’m remembering didn’t happen until Saturday. Which means (if the other premises hold up) that today is actually Sunday. I better get busy on my laundry before my clothes get any more ripe! At any rate, let's bring this in contact with my theory of the right. The right is dependent upon the good, and the good is intuitively known. I am wIlling to embrace a ...

Would it be preferable if we could live life and make pressing decisions on a purely deductive basis? Suppose I’m wondering whether today is actually Saturday, thus whether I should get busy with my laundry as per my rule. I might create a perfect syllogistic chain to answer this question. By my count, such a chain requires three premises and one definition. For example: P1) In this neighborhood, every day on which the trash collectors arrive is a Friday. P2) Yesterday was a day on which the trash collectors arrived. C1) Thus, yesterday was a Friday. D1) “Yesterday” means the day that immediately preceded today. C2) By (C1) and (D1), The day that immediately preceded today was a Friday. P3) Every day that was immediately preceded by a Friday is a Saturday. C3) By (C2) and (P3), Today is Saturday, QED. Now … where is my hamper? Obviously, we don’t think like that. Nor is it a desideratum. Life would be a very ponderous business if we did. So when ar...

I recently discussed here the Peircean idea of 'abduction.' But I did so in a frankly polemical context, criticizing shoddy work by another writer who got the idea wrong or, rather, who did not get it at all but who failed to realize his loss. Leaving such caviling aside, let me make an observation about the need for the idea. . The idea arose because Peirce considered standard accounts of logic in his own day to be viciously circular. They relied on induction on the one hand and deduction on the other. Deduction has to give us the premises that make induction possible, and induction has to give us the premises that make deduction possible. Take the famous syllogism about Socrates. All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. The obvious problem here is that unless I know that Socrates is mortal, I don't know that all men are mortal. If exceptions are possible, then Socrates could be one of them. If I'm presuming that exceptions are not ...

Stefan Molyneux has gone all Trumpet on us. I've written about Molyneux before, most recently a two-post discussion early this year, keyed to his now-decade-old book, UNIVERSALLY PREFERRED BEHAVIOR (2007) in which he claimed to have figured out what are the rules of behavior all rational beings should follow, and to have inferred from them that the right social system is anarcho-capitalism. That book wasn't a great one, frankly, and Molyneux at his best is a pale shadow of Murray Rothbard as an anarcho-cap figure. Still, he was on the good guy's side, as I keep score anyway. Molyneux, though, has progressively defected.  He is now entirely in the MAGA camp. The nation-state may never be legitimate, but it can be legitimate enough!  at least if Donald Trump is its CEO. Or ... something. The news about Molyneux is that he is out with another book, THE ART OF THE ARGUMENT (2017).  The is some copy from the amazon page: "'T he Art of the Argument' shoc...

Continuing the thoughts on induction I began last week, re: David Stove. If we know that there are 100 swans in the world, and we have seen each swan, recording each as white, then the conclusion "all swans are white" is a matter no longer of induction but of deduction. I'm not sure how it would go formally, but I'm pretty sure you get to that conclusion from those premises. [Even there, one might wonder -- is the first swan that I checked still white? Maybe they can go black as they molt, or something? But let's ignore the impact of the passage of time on swans.] I've seen all swans, all the swans I've seen are white, therefore all swans are white. That's a deduction, so nobody likely objects to calling it a proof.  If so, then let's relax the assumption of completeness: the gradual addition of swans to my data base, the movement from 20 to 30, swans, thus from 20% to 30% of the universe, remains induction, remains something less than p...

As I observed in yesterday's entry, Mauser's project commits him to refuting an Humean argument. Yesterday I gave that argument in Mauser's paraphrase. Today I'll give it in Hume's own words. "In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with," Hume wrote, "I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprized to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relat...