A Key Insight

Characteristics preordained by geometry need not burden the genetic code. — Benoit Mandelbrot

page 162, The Geometry of Nature

Written long before it was discovered that the genetic code is much smaller than it was originally guessed to be. Obvious on the face of it.

Quotes I have loved

Nor let yourself by usual habit follow this path bound by a random-moving eye, a ringing in the ear, and a tongue, decide but reckon the much-contested argument. - Parmenides

Let no one ignorant of geometry come under my roof. - inscription reportedly over Plato’s Academy door

Vain is the word of the philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For just as there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either if it does not expel the suffering of the mind. - Epicurus

Find the path, enter the path, travel the path, become the path. (Taoist saying)

To enter the spiritual path, you must begin to understand your own mental attitude and how your mind perceives things. If you’re all caught up in attachment to tiny atoms, your limited, craving mind will make it impossible for you to enjoy life’s pleasures. External energy is so incredibly limited that if you allow yourself to be bound by it, your mind itself will become just as limited. When your mind is narrow, small things easily agitate you. Make your mind an ocean. - Lama Thubten Yeshe

Yet although the Logos is common, most men live as if they had their own private understanding. – Heraclitus

This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep. – Heraclitus

The wise is to know how that all things are governed through all things - Heraclitus

All things are made of atoms – little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. – Richard Feynman

“Elementary” means that very little is required to know ahead of time in order to understand it, except to have an infinite amount of intelligence. - Richard Feynman in his Lost Lecture “The Motion of Planets around the Sun”

There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true. - Niels Bohr

I have diverse definitions for the straight line. The straight line is a curve, any part of which is similar to the whole, and it alone has this property, not only among curves but among sets.” – Gottfried Leibniz

I had a scheme, which I still use to-day when somebody is explaining something that I’m trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem… As they’re telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something that fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball) – disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally, they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn’t true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, “False!” – Richard Feynman

We have life interacting with no-life all the time. – Ilya Prigogine

The random assumption is a way of throwing up one’s hands, a null hypothesis in the absence of any information. – Steven Strogatz

I have universally observed among all those who make a profession of portraying faces from life, that he who paints the best likeness is the worst of all composers of narrative painting. – Leonardo da Vinci

The Swineherd then gave orders to his men: “Bring in our best pig for a stranger’s dinner. A feast will do our hearts good, too; we know grief and pain, hard scrabbling with our swine, while the outsiders live on our labor.” – from Homer’s Odyssey, Robert Fitzgerald translation

Drawing what you actually see—that is, drawing the plastic bull that’s in front of you rather than the simplified, idealized image of a bull that’s in your head—is something that does not come naturally to most people, let alone children. At its root, my gift was not the ability to draw what I saw. Rather, it was the ability to look at what I had drawn thus far and understand what was wrong with it. – John Siracusa in “Hypercritical”

Knowing what’s wrong with something (or thinking that you do, which, for the purposes of this discussion, should be considered the same thing) does a fat lot of good if you lack the skills to correct it. – John Siracusa in “Hypercritical”

Would a musician feel flattered by the loud applause of an audience if he knew they were nearly all deaf, and that, to conceal their infirmity, they set to work to clap vigorously as soon as ever they saw one or two persons applauding? And what would he say if he got to know that those one or two persons had often taken bribes to secure the loudest applause for the poorest player! – Arthur Schopenhauer, from the Wisdom of Life

I am certain there is too much certainty in the world – Michael Crichton

We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched – Lord Byron

I don’t use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough – M. C. Escher

… all men, all women resemble each other: no love resists the effects of sane reflection. – the Marquis de Sade

Your mind is your religion. – Lama Thubten Yeshe

All that has a form is an illusive existence. When it is perceived that all form is
no−form, the Tathagata is recognized. – Buddha, in The Diamond Sutra (Tathagata means one who has thus gone and one who has thus come, and a reference to Buddha when referring to himself)

Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness – Hakuin Ekaku

No pleasure is bad per se: but the causes of some pleasures produce stresses many times greater than the pleasures.  Epicurus

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. – Albert Einstein

There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion – Edgar Allan Poe (who credits Francis Bacon)

The pleasure of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human spirit; but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it – Umberto Eco

The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we’re devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots. – Jaron Lanier

Cantor is overwhelmed by amazement at his own findings, and slips from German to French to exclaim that “to see is not to believe” (“je le vois, mai je ne le crois pas”) And, as if on cue, mathematics seeks to avoid being misled by the graven images of monsters. … The wide and uncritical acceptance of this view has become destructive. In particular, in the theory of fractals, “to see is to believe” - Benoit Mandelbrot

Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry. - Charles S. Peirce

The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them.  - Abu Ali al-Hasan-ibn al-Haytham

The duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make an enemy of all that he reads, and applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examinations of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency. - Abu Ali al-Hasan-ibn al-Haytham

…beware of mathematicians (astrologers) and all those who make empty prophesies. - Aurelius Augustinus, Bishop of Hippo

Divine determination depends on the life of a man, and not his life upon the determination. - St. Theophan the Recluse

So I say to you –
This is how to contemplate our conditioned existence in this fleeting world:

Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;
Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,
Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

Buddha, in The Diamond Sutra

In Motion and Stillness

In motion meditate on the still, and in stillness meditate on the motion.

Parmenides on Decision and Reckoning

Nor let yourself by usual habit follow this path bound by a random-moving eye, a ringing in the ear, and a tongue, decide but reckon the much-contested argument.

μηδέ σ᾽ ἔθος πολύπειρον ὁδὸν κατὰ τήνδε βιάσθω νωμα̂ν ἄσκοπον ὄμμα καὶ ἠχήεσσαν ἀκουὴν καὶ γλω̂σσαν, κρι̂ναι δὲ λόγῳ πολύδηριν ἔλεγχον.

Parmenides, Diogenes Laertius, Book IX, 6

Speculation on the Is/Ought Problem

“Let him demonstrate some rule by appraisal (epilogismos) from common usage, and not by describing particular classifications.” – Philodemus, On Poems Book I, 201

Can Sam Harris see the nose in front of his face? Is Sam Harris really so cheeky to inadvertently call a significant chunk of English grammar “an illusion”? Does he really hate modal and deontic logic, or worse: not realise it exists? Will modal verbs magically disappear from English with a wave of the neuroscientist wand? Nasty habit they have implying we have “freedom” of the will!

Or in other words, the is/ought problem, which should be more properly called the is/can/may/shall/should/will/must/has to/ought spectrum of English modal verb usage. In addition, I’ve added “to do” which seems to imply consequentialism. I am not a grammarian, but I’ll take my level best stab at it! Critique of my speculation is welcomed.

There are a few points where I agree with Sam Harris, in how fundamentalist religious belief can be destructive, although I personally believe he is far too rigid on religion for my taste. I’m of the opinion that mainstream religion is largely a positive force in society, and that the discovery of a religion-free method of moral reasoning will strengthen faith and help secular society at the same time.

To be clear, I am only dealing with Hume’s Is/Ought problem, not the Open Question argument.

Quoting David Hume, from the Treatise of Human Nature:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz’d 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, ’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.”

First of all, the is/ought problem is really an English language and logic puzzle, and the is/ought “moral puzzle” of Hume is both explainable and solvable within the context of English grammar without the need for esoteric modal and deontic logic (though that has been done too – not accessible reading for mere mortals, however). Common usage of English modal verbs can give intuitive hints to easily solve the problem related to is/ought. I do not use deduction from “is” to reach an “ought”, but the simple art of decision making – using teleological reasoning – an end goal. Hume is absolutely correct that you cannot use deduction to derive an ought from an is.

“Is” statements are not all the same. Some uses of “to be” are actually a “copula”, and some are not. Quoting Hume, “copulations of propositions”, he means exactly these copula statements. A copula is a linking verb that connects subject and predicate. The copula statements are what I assert to be impossible to derive a moral statement from. More broadly, is/ought is a logical problem specific to Indo-European languages – not all languages have a copula or the variety of modal verbs available in English. But English is David Hume’s language, so that’s where to start.

Ought statements, “normative propositions” as they are called by the philosophy establishment, which I prefer to call “ideal actions”, are related to goal-directed, teleological reasoning, and describe the ideal action to reach the goal. I see ought statements as unmoving “ideals” – ideal descriptions of end goals. The reality of the situation is seen as ought and ought not can only modify an infinitive verb. (to be, to qualify, etc). These statements are intransitive if in conjunction with the copula “to be”, unable to take a direct object. They are unable to act on anything in the present, or to act at all in conjunction with the copula, and ought statements describe unreal or future situations, or expressions of probability. This is why I term these statements as “ideal”.

While “is” copula statements are equally unmoving, they are descriptions of the present. They are also intransitive, same as ought statements. But unlike the expression of ideals in ought statements, copula statements are descriptions of real situations. There is no way to derive an “ought” from a statement using a copula on these grounds, but their similarity is why a copula can be so easily confused with an ought. Neither sentences are “moving” towards each other, or can move at all. A better alternative is to use can/ought statements, which do entail action towards a goal.

So the correct view of the logical is/ought fallacy, in my view and to my understanding of Hume’s problem, consists of mistaking a copula “is” present statement directly for an ought “normative” ideal goal.

Example 1 – fallacious is/ought

The girl is poor. (fact)
The girl ought to be poor. (ideal moral goal)

or in the negative

The girl ought not to be poor.

The first example clearly looks silly, but both examples are still fallacious as no explanation exists for why the girl is poor. No questions have been asked, no information gathering has taken place, no causes or reasons given. The positive ought statement makes her poverty seem like an ideal moral situation, when the reason for the situation is completely unclear. Indeed, the poor are often considered more moral in ethical philosophies both secular and religious, probably due to this very confusion. I’ve noticed many an argument where descriptions of a situation were mistaken for the ideal moral situation. This is the heart of the naturalistic fallacy, and may be related to moral relativism.

The five W’s (and a How) are helpful for information gathering and using this method to ask questions helps to discover causes, which imply reasons and goals in which to act upon:

Who? Who was involved?
What? What happened? What’s the problem?
Where? Where did it take place?
When? When did it take place?
Why? Why did it happen?
How? How did it happen?

Now a slightly more complex problem, with empirical reasons which suggest how to solve it.

Example 2

What is the problem? The girl is poor because she is unqualified for a well paying job. Why? She has not gone to school to get an education.

So I’ve got the problem determined. I am assuming that jobs can be easily found, of course, but I’m keeping the example deliberately simple. I’m sticking to a short-term goal that is easily reached, such as one which can fit in one sentence examples!

Notice that a passive verb construction has snuck in for the dependent clause of the first sentence, and a conditional statement has arrived for the second sentence. I think this is an important change – the sentences are no longer pure copula statements. They imply potential action to take. The passive verb construction places emphasis on what the subject did, which points towards a course of action.

Next, to answer Hume. A set of steps to reason from is to ought.

Four Steps to the Goal, or how to reason from Point Is to Point Ought in Hume’s Is/Ought problem.

Determine the Problem: The girl (who?) is poor (what?).

Discover the Causes of the Problem: The girl (who?) is poor (what?), because (why?) she is unemployed . She has not gone to school (where?), therefore unqualified for a well-paying job. (therefore/consequently implies how?)

Plan to Solve the Problem: The girl (who?) will (when?)go to school (where) to get an education (what?), so she can be qualified (how?) for a well paying job. (might be more than one possible plan, which!)

Decide on the Action to Reach the Goal: Choose plan. (DECIDE)  Go to school to get an education. (do!)

Now move through the positive modal verbs, using the plan and the actions to reach the goal, all the way to “ought”.

The girl can go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (possible to reach the goal)

The girl may go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (permission to reach the goal)

The girl shall go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (predestined to reach the goal)

The girl should go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (obligation/duty to reach the goal)

The girl will go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job.  (plan to reach the goal)

The girl must go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (necessary to reach the goal)

The girl ought to go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (ideal action to reach the goal)

The girl has to go to school to get an eduction, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (requirement to reach the goal)

The girl does go to school to get an education, so she can be qualified for a well-paying job. (consequences of action to reach the goal)

I can also treat the modals in negative, by negating the action, and in the second set of examples to negate the plan. (shades of the Ten Commandments!) Notice that negation of modals doesn’t always result in the opposite of the positive meaning.

The girl cannot go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (impossible to reach the goal)

The girl may not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (no permission to reach the goal)

The girl shall not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (predestined to miss the goal)

The girl should not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (obligation/duty to avoid the goal)

The girl will not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job.  (refusal to reach the goal)

The girl must not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (necessary to avoid the goal)

The girl ought not to go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (ideal avoidance of the goal)

The girl doesn’t have to go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (possible to miss the goal)

The girl does not go to school to get an education, so she cannot be qualified for a well-paying job. (consequences of lack of action to reach the goal)

Now to swap the modal negative from the action to the plan, which makes for interesting reading in some sentences. Instead of the use of a “so” conjunction, I have used an “if” with the auxiliary verb “to do”. I’m sure other conjunctions will yield other interesting results.

The girl cannot qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (impossible to reach the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl may not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (uncertain to reach the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl shall not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (predestined to deny the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl should not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (obligation/duty to deny the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl will not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (future denial of the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl must not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (necessary denial of the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl ought not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (ideal action when failing the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl doesn’t have to qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (no requirement to perform the action to reach the goal, if this action is chosen.)

The girl does not qualify for a well-paying job, if she does not go to school to get an education. (consequences of lack of action to reach the goal, if this action is chosen.)

This leaves me with a new set of puzzles: how to determine if a factual statement actually is a moral problem, and how to discover accurate causes for moral problems, set moral goals to solve those problems, and decide on moral actions. All the while, making the process easily understood and usable by average people with “commonsense” intuition without philosophical training. Hume addressed problems in reasoning too, most famously induction, but not in the context of the is/ought problem.

Continuing to speculate briefly, I pleasantly observe how the reasoning of goal-directed behavior dovetails with Aristotle’s thought, most especially his four causes. The Final Cause seems to suggest an “ideal goal” which would be a candidate for reasoning out an “ought”. I highly suspect that Aristotle’s teleology is also based in grammar.

I would also suggest that teleological “goal-directed” reasoning applies more generally, as my examples do not show how anyone can evaluate if the moral values that derive from it are “good” or “bad”. To be fair to Hume, his puzzle doesn’t actually deal with morality but with logical deduction and compatibilism (a philosophical position I hold). Hume’s Is/Ought problem seems more appropriate to the reasoning involved with “free will”, the existence of human agency to make decisions, which people are then responsible for the consequences of. I prefer to call “free will” human agency, as I don’t believe an unrestricted “libertarian free will” separate from brain states can actually exist. While one can debate if there is some level of lawless freedom in brain states (which I suspend judgement on – it could be true, so I admit it as a possibility), Cartesian dualism always left a bad taste in my mouth. Of course, defending human agency would be an alien idea to someone like Sam Harris, who insists that “free will” is an illusion, too.

However, I simply can’t see how anyone can derive the “do” required for consequences to occur, without the ability to decide on a course of action to do anything. Human beings are not like marbles set in eternal random motion, nor are they like billiard balls knocked around by a prime mover. The ability to make a decision appears to be at the root of human agency, and it may even be a requirement to be moral at all.

My random thought is aesthetics, our subjective experience of sense perception, and our emotions (qualia) may also be related to our moral reasoning, in how we decide on what goals are good and bad, and how we evaluate the morality of our actions to reach them. This doesn’t put moral reasoning beyond the purview of science, as I think qualia is tractable by psychology and neuroscience – but possibly outside of the mental paradigm of “qualiaphobes” who go too far to deny the important role of subjective experience in everyday life.

Of course for the religious, they can still say that morals are handed down by God. I’m not quite sure that is true in every instance though, as many a madman has claimed a direct communication with God. The method for an average person to discriminate if a moral action is a decree from God or from the human use of human beings still seems unclear to me.