The Plummet Onions

If you read the comments to my last post, you'll know that I've previously attempted to move this blog over to the better blogging system at Wordpress. That effort had always failed before.

Yesterday I got it to work. The 2.5 years of The Plummet Onions have been imported. I've decided to move everything over there. Anyone who regularly reads, please change your links to point at http://theplummetonions.wordpress.com/

Goodbye, Blogger. There will be no further posting here.

Blogger has been slowing moving its blogs over to its new (still Beta) system since August. I finally got a notice the other day that I was now allowed to move The Plummet Onions over to the new system.

Then, when I tried, I was told that the system could not yet move my blog over, because it was too long. Blogs more than "a few thousand posts and comments" cannot be moved over yet. I'm disappointed, I want to try the new features.

I guess adding even more blog entries about it doesn't help.

The next time I tell you I'm going shop for gifts on a sunny Saturday afternoon two weekends before Christmas in one of the world's busiest shopping areas, slap me. In all honesty, it was a productive trip - we got several gifts - and we had to be downtown anyway. But the crowds and bustle are pretty intense.

What was just a little bit breathtaking was finding out that we shop at at least one of the same places as Nigella.

It seems as though the existence of the subatomic particle known as the axion has been confirmed. This is exciting because it may be what constitutes all that dark matter we think must be out there in the universe but can't yet detect directly.

US space agency NASA has said it plans to start work on a permanently-occupied base on the Moon after astronauts begin flying back there in 2020.

This is awesome.

Lots of people will say, "We should sort out things here at home, on Earth, before we go wasting money and resources and smarts traipsing about the universe."

To those people I say: shut up.
EDIT: unless one of those people is my mom, to whom I say, "I respectfully disagree."

There's plenty of room to do both. All the problems at home - poverty, climate change, injustice - are far more problems of will than of resource. All of the money and time in the world won't solve famine if we can't get our shit together and fairly distribute food and ensure security globally. Not going to the moon doesn't suddenly make that happen.

In the meantime, we would be ignoring the fact that the majority of reality is out there. We haven't seen it yet. Striving to know more is one of the key things about being human. There are a large number of scientific and practical discoveries that have been made solely because of space exploration. Launching and observing from outside the earth's atmosphere and gravity well would open up (pardon the pun) whole new worlds of opportunity.

A tornado has hit north-west London, where I used to live. Well, I wasn't in Kensal Rise. But this sort of weather phenomenon is very unusual here. Look at the damage.

EDIT: Okay, maybe not so unusual: "The UK experiences an estimated 50 tornadoes on land each year, putting it top of the European twister league."

It was confirmed last night: Headz Gamez will not be bringing its operations to my hometown of Parrsboro. In the end, it was a somewhat goofy dream by a single individual. Now that he's out of the picture, the dream is over.

I feel more than a bit sad about this. I would have liked to have seen something new invigorating the town where I grew up. People were excited about this, and most of us let excitement outweigh our incredulity. Now I'm sure that people feel a bit embarrassed: small-town folk who had a fast one pulled on them by some fast-talking city slicker. I keep thinking about the Simpsons' Marge vs. the Monorail episode.

This is a copy of the paper I'm handing in tonight for my epistemology course. This is the only work required for submission. There's still two classes left (tonight and next week) but it's been a pretty interesting first dip into epistemology.

Can Scepticism Be Refuted?

by

Tim Dickinson

It is clear that humans seek knowledge. We know this about ourselves and we see it in others, to some degree or other. At minimum, we want to know things because of evolutionary selection, since animals that seek reusable knowledge and reason inductively are more likely to survive than those that do not. There may be less utilitarian reasons for this seeking as well: a desire for self-growth, for example, or an intrinsic value on truth. In light of this apparent importance, the question of scepticism – whether we can in fact ever really know anything – is therefore due some consideration. Can scepticism be refuted?

In this paper I will describe how scepticism can be broadly separated into Agrippan and Cartesian forms, and how these forms cast doubt on our ability to acquire knowledge. I will show that sceptical doubt is powerful because it seems basic and intuitively grasped, and is not so esoteric as to appear dubious. I will then demonstrate how these forms of scepticism can be refuted with theories of coherence and contextualism that are equally intuitive.

Forms of Scepticism

There is a form of scepticism more properly identified as incredulity. This is what I mean when I describe the viewpoint of someone who tends to reject ideas which lack supporting evidence; this is the opposite of dogmatism. I will not consider this form of scepticism here, since it is not general. This casual scepticism does not exclude any knowledge for which I do have evidence (and is, in fact, generally regarded as a good and important part of any analytical viewpoint). What I will examine is philosophical scepticism: the claim that acquiring knowledge is inherently impossible.

I will discuss two forms of philosophical scepticism: Agrippan and Cartesian. I will not include fallibilism because it is not radical scepticism: it is simply the view that I may be mistaken about some things and can probably not be certain of much, not that it is impossible for me to know things to be true. In fact, if we know anything, it seems likely to me that the fallibilist view is the right one, and that we can be absolutely certain about very little (if anything at all).

Agrippan scepticism is an ancient form that developed from earlier Greek scepticism[1]. It implies that beliefs always rely upon an unfounded assumption, circularity, or an infinite regress[2]. That is, every attempt I make at justifying why I have knowledge must end up at some fundamental assumption upon which I build the rest of my knowledge; or my reasoning ends up in a loop where my justifications all rely on one another; or my justification can always be met with another request for justification. These are simple, yet powerful, obstacles. Since, according to the Agrippan view, all attempts at justification must fall into one of these traps, no knowledge is possible. To refute Agrippan scepticism, I will thus have to demonstrate that justification does not always fall afoul of these traps.

Cartesian scepticism derives from the philosophy of Descrates[3], who questioned the possibility of asserting that we have reliable knowledge of the external world. Others have built upon this viewpoint, and what is now called Cartesian scepticism may be regarded as the claim that – given all the evidence I will ever have to make some claim about the world – an alternative explanation that makes my claim false is just as likely to be true. This form of scepticism implies that justified beliefs must be either direct knowledge or inferred (deductively or inductively) from direct knowledge. This is sometimes expressed as a problem of underdetermination (i.e., I have inadequate evidence necessary to decide that my belief counts as knowledge). To refute Cartesian scepticism, I will thus have to show that I may sometimes have sufficient justification for knowledge.

Refuting Agrippan Scepticism

As discussed above, to refute Agrippan scepticism I will have to show that unfounded assumptions, circularity, and infinite regress do not block all claims to knowledge. I will consider the first two problems by examining existing models of knowledge that claim to overcome them. I will then go on to propose that a model might exist that circumvents the third problem.

Foundationalism – the model that I have certain fundamental, directly knowable true beliefs, upon which others can be built – claims to refute to Agrippa’s problem of assumptions. Foundationalism would say that these basic beliefs are neither unfounded nor assumed: they, at least, are justified. I find foundationalism unconvincing. What special knowledge requires no justification? Some level of assumption seems difficult to avoid, at least for anything beyond self-awareness. Foundationalism does not appear to be a theory that defeats Agrippan scepticism.

Coherence – the model that our knowledge is a network of mutually supporting true beliefs – claims to refute the second Agrippan problem, that of circularity. A coherence view would imply that circularity of justification is not an obstacle to knowledge. A complex, non-contradictory network of knowledge implies a tested, reliable system of knowledge in much the same way that the subsets of knowledge we are more familiar with (e.g., physics) do. As such, a coherence system of knowledge gains force as it becomes more comprehensive and increases in accuracy. To maintain sceptical doubt in the face of such force requires an increasingly infallibilist position (that our justification and knowledge must be free of the chance of error). I note that Williams[4] claims that coherence requires me to make assumptions about the validity of my whole system of my knowledge, and is therefore simply another form of foundationalism. I disagree with this view. The modularity of my knowledge, or my inability to hold the entirety of it at all times in my mind, does not threaten my justification: only a poor standard of justification does. Coherence therefore appears to be a strong possibility for refuting the Agrippan assertion that circularity should make us sceptical about our knowledge.

A similar line of argument holds for theories of knowledge that are part of an infinite regress, Agrippa’s third sceptical challenge. I recognize that this position is not commonly given credit. In fact, Agrippa’s scepticism is usually described as a ‘twin-horned’ dilemma – comprised of assumption and circularity – upon which the non-sceptic impales himself whilst attempting to avoid the infinite regress of justification. However, I see nothing inherently impossible about an infinite chain of justification. Infinite series are commonly used in mathematics and are both understood and applied practically. I believe that our distaste for infinite regression lies in our perception of a direction of time. Few people have difficulty imagining an infinite progression into the future. Modern physics has shown that time is in fact a dimension more similar to the spatial ones that we had previously supposed[5]. I will not claim that this is strong evidence that an infinite regress refutes Agrippan scepticism in the same way that a coherence system does. I will here simply assert that a system of knowledge justified on an infinite regress cannot be rejected out of hand.

Refuting Cartesian Scepticism

Cartesian scepticism is sometimes illustrated by Descartes’ ‘Evil Deceiver’ or ‘dreaming’ scenarios; or, more recently, by the ‘Brain in a Vat’ scenario. Putnam claims to refute this sceptical view by using semantic externalism to claim that if I am a brain in a vat, then the statement ‘I am a brain in a vat,’ is incoherent, and therefore false[6]. I reject this argument as unconvincing; Putnam simply points out that some things that may be possible are conceptually impossible.

Phenomenalists claim to refute Cartesian scepticism by stating that all I can ever know is my experience, my sense-data. This sense world, they claim, is the only one that can exist for me. They believe that they thus defuse the problem of scepticism because there is nothing for me to be deceived about. This view strikes me as an unsatisfactory cheat. Everything about my experience seems to imply an objective world where things take place without me, and so it seems right that I should give that world credit and attempt to know it.

Grayling[7] stages an elaborate refutation of scepticism. As discussed above, however, the problem of scepticism is significant not only because of its implications about the truth of our knowledge, but also because it is so intuitive (themes in popular culture support this). Grayling’s position requires transcendental arguments and a discussion of realism that, I feel, are not sufficiently intuitive to combat such fundamental doubts.

To refute Cartesian scepticism I will therefore need to show that the evidence I am able to collect does not always underdetermine my justification of my beliefs about the external world. My first problem is then how I am to decide what constitutes sufficient justification. I have previously rejected an infallibilist requirement for certain justification as needlessly prohibitive. What lesser level of justification will do?

My approach is rooted in my everyday experience. How do I typically decide what constitutes sound justification in my day-to-day life? I judge the circumstances. I assess what I know of the source of the information; I try to consider my own frame of mind; I take into account the urgency attending the knowing and the importance of the outcome. The type of justification I might require to know that I smell my dinner cooking is likely to be quite different than that I might require from someone who is explaining a mathematical proof to me.

This view is the contextualist theory. I believe that it offers the best way to refute the sceptical position. The contextualist position is broadly that the level of justification required to be epistemically responsible depends on the circumstances. I can recognise the contextualism of semantics (e.g., we all use the words ‘I’ or ‘my brother’ in the same way, but refer to different people when we do so). Similarly, I recognise that I apply different levels of justification in my everyday decisions about knowledge (as above, I adjust my justification requirements depending on what I’m being asked to believe, who’s doing the telling, etc.). Contextualism says that there is an appropriate epistemological standard of justification depending on the context of what it is that I am being confronted with. If I am consistent and intelligible with my application of these standards, then there seems little reason to believe that contextualism is failing as a system for justification (even if I sometimes make errors).

Williams claims that, in addition to being a reliable view of knowing the external world, the contextualist view attacks hidden premises of scepticism[8]. Cartesian scepticism, he claims, inherently imposes a priority of experiential knowledge over direct knowledge of the world[9]. For the contextualist, there is no reason to grant that this context-invariant assumption is true. Cartesian scepticism amounts, he says, to a form of foundationalism. This undermines the sceptical claims, since they now depend on more complex theoretical assumptions and are not as basic and intuitive as before. I find this argument convincing. There are many instances of successful thought experiments predicting nature, for instance, which implies that sense-data may not always automatically supersede other knowledge about the world. Contextualism therefore seems to not only provide a reasonable system of justification within the framework of coherence, it challenges scepticism at its root.

Conclusion

I believe that coherence theory has the best chance of avoiding Agrippan scepticism (and that a theory of knowledge based on infinite regress might also do), since it shows how a justified system of knowledge can exist, self-contained, without supposition to support it. With that basic structure in place, I believe that contextualism then provides a means for the justified acquisition of knowledge.

Growing up in Canada meant that we got to see some BBC shows on TV. One of the shows I have fond memories of is short-lived sci-fi series Space: 1999. It's now being shown on re-runs here. It was a poor man's Star Trek, for sure, but some of the model-based special effects were pretty good for the time. It certainly had an awesome theme tune.

I'm back from the Asia gig. It was excellent.

Like I blogged before, this concert promised a lot of nostalgia value for me. It delivered that. Asia was a band I thought was exceptionally cool when I was 13. I really didn't know anything about progressive rock at the time. I certainly didn't know that Asia was a prog supergroup: singer/bassist Jon Wetton was from King Crimson, guitarist Steve Howe was from Yes, drummer Carl Palmer was from Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and keyboardist Geoff Downes was in The Buggles and also had a short stint in Yes. I found that out later. In 1982, all I knew was that their self-titled debut album rocked. Their next album, Alpha, had only a couple of good songs. They started changing members after that and quickly went to shit. Asia continued to release albums intermittently right up until 2004, none of them worth a damn.

So when I saw that this was a 25th anniversary reunion tour with the original members, I got me a ticket.

There was no opening act at the Shepherd's Bush Empire tonight, just Asia in two acts. Unsurprisingly, Wetton, Palmer, and Downes are all older and fatter; Howe is older and skinnier, making him look like Death wearing a floral shirt. But they can all still play really well, as their prog roots required. Asia songs are prog - complex, dynamic, and abrupt - but with great pop-radio hooks. I was most impressed by Palmer, who didn't look nearly as old as the others, and played some heavy, fast drums.

They played a perfect set for my tastes: all nine tracks of their debut album, led off by my favourite, "Time Again". "Sole Survivor" sounded good too, as did big crowd-pleasing closer "Heat of the Moment". They also played "Ride Easy", which was a B-side to "Heat...", and the only three decent songs from Alpha: "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes", "Don't Cry" (both acoustic), and the very good "The Heat Goes On".

A fun twist they're doing this tour is playing homage to the bands they came from. Thus, we also got Yes's "Roundabout" (how hard is that to sing and play bass to?), ELP's "Fanfare for the Common Man", King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King", and - yes - The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star". Believe me, nothing's more humourous than watching a prog band play a bubble-gum hit that was the first video on MTV. Downes even wore a shiny metallic jacket and big sunglasses.

I queued at the end and got my on-the-spot double CD of the live performance, and got it signed by the band (I blogged about this instant-CD technology the other day, too). They're glad their tour is over, but are heading to Japan in the new year. On first listen, I'm not impressed with the mix of the CD: the vocals sound too high for me. Obviously, it's not going to have the benefit of studio twiddling, so I can't be too fussy. It's certainly a nice memento of a cool show, one that I've always wanted to see and never thought I would.

We watched Capote today. Well-done film. Interesting subject matter, how Capote got wrapped up in the story of the murderers. Philip Seymour Hoffman is a scary good actor, though.

At the country pub yesterday, we saw Hooky Pie on the menu. We asked what that was, and learned that it's locally-made beef and ale pie. It was, according to the woman behind the bar, very popular, and they usually sell out of it quite quickly. It certainly sounded like an appropriately hearty meal for a December day by an open fire. Then the couple at the table next to us each received that very dish, and the deal was sealed: it was huge, meaty, and tasty-looking. Three of our group of four ordered the Hooky Pie.

A few minutes later the bartender came back with bad news: only two portions of pie left. One of the girls took one for the team and ordered fish pie instead.

When our food finally arrived, it was as tasty as promised. Delicious. Thick. Oozing gravy. Huge chunks of beef, too, not a ground-up mush. Luckily, the fish pie was just as delicious an alternative for those that took it.

A family, with three kids, came in when we were finishing and tried to order the Hooky Pie. "Sorry," the bartender said, "we're all out." Without a pause, she pointed at our table and said, "They took the last pies." Five pairs of hungry eyes glared at us from across the pub. We cast our eyes downwards and finished our pints.

It's been a big day.

Up early for a service appointment for the car.

Drove over to Hampstead for breakfast at one of my old haunts.

Picked up The Girls and drove out to Oxfordshire.

Had lunch at The Pear Tree pub in Hook Norton. It's an excellent country pub we've been to before, but the girls hadn't. Super lunch. Had a short walk through the village after.

Stopped in Bicester Village on the way home for some high-end discount shopping. We all got something; I got dress shirts, ties, a T-shirt, and a red sweater.

Time to watch a movie or somethin'.

• I'm a big David Cronenberg fan, and purchased A History of Violence on DVD some time ago (after enjoying the film in the theatre). I watched it the other night, and enjoyed it just as much. I was able to pay more attention to details, like the shifting accents. Definitely Cronenberg's most mainstream and accessible film, but it's still got the threads of metamorphosis and identity and non-glamourised violence that make him an interesting director.
• We went to the theatre last night to see The Departed. We had to drive to Chelsea for this: the UK run of this movie seemed to happen really quickly and it's only showing in one or two theatres in London now. It was worth the drive. I'm also a big Martin Scorcese fan, although I was not that impressed by either The Aviator or Gangs of New York. But The Departed, being based (script-wise, at least) on Infernal Affairs, was excellent: gritty, fast-moving, intriguing, suspenseful and well-acted. I can't believe I enjoyed the acting of both Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon, but I did. I guess they're finally getting it.
  

Archaeologists have a new theory about the purpose of Stonehenge: they think it was a hospital. Or, at least as much a place of healing as they could have 5000 years ago. This theory fits all the available facts: why some of the huge stones were brought, at great effort and expense, from Wales (they came from a site that may have been thought to have health-inducing spa waters); why skeletons of visitors from all over Europe have been found there; why it grew in size and complexity over hundreds of years; and why there are so many encircling burial mounds filled with such deformed remains.

Fascinating.

The date is set: on 1st July 2007, England will go non-smoking in all public enclosed spaces. Wales and Northern Ireland will be doing the same in April, and Scotland has been non-smoking since last year.

The UK is smartening up.

If you missed it, the second of three autumn Ricky Gervais podcasts (the Thanksgiving one) came out last week. As always, Karl's idiocy is the star. His description of straining his eyes because he tried to keep looking although his eyes were closed made me fall over. The gay magazine bit was funny too.

I've blogged before about a game business that was going to double the size of the town near where I grew up. I was getting a lot of blog hits about this. In the last few days, I've started getting hits from searches on things like "headz gamez company sold" or "headz gamez deal off". This made me suspicious. A post on Dan's blog seems to confirm it: it was just a dream.

EDIT: maybe. Probably.

After a Google search, I found that some people who'd had the same problem with their iPod had knocked the hard drive back into alignment by dropping it. With nothing to lose, I whacked my iPod several times. Hard.

It's now working again.

Let's see for how long.

Tonight's class covered memory and testimony as sources of knowledge.

Testimony was the easy bit: basically, you judge what you're hearing, how you feel about the attestor, the context, and you decide to believe or disbelieve the attestor. Your justification depends on the normal things - how epistemologically responsible you're being,
what facts are available to you, etc.

Memory is a funny old thing. Is memory just a short-cut, a way of avoiding justifying knowledge each time it's required? What the difference between remembering a fact and remembering how to do something? What about misremembering something? Can you remember something to be the case if what you were told was false?

"If you cannot force your iPod into disk mode and restore it, then your iPod is in need of service, set up an iPod Service Request or visit your local Apple Retail Store."

Or you realise that it'll be less expensive to buy a whole new MP3 player, and you ask SWMNBN* for one.

*Santa Who Must Not Be Named

I really rate homeopathy, because it's utter bollocks. As you know, it's the pesudoscience where quacks make dilutions of chemicals so weak that there's no chance they contain anything but water. The quacks claim that there are some water memory, or quantum, effects.

It's quite popular here in Europe, as well as in Asia. Earlier this year, it was shamefully given some medical standing in the UK. Now there's a study that shows that 49% of Scottish doctors have prescribed homeopathic remedies. That's just nuts.

I give a little more leeway on the "herbal remedies" side, because herbs can actually be medicines. Some have been proven to have some effects; some have not. But homeopathy has no chance of being anything. There's no science that supports it. There is much science that disproves it: not a single controlled random study shows a homeopathic effect.

Quacks, of course, respond by saying that homeopathy does not lend itself to random placebo trials to prove its efficacy because it treats many subjective measures of illness (rather than merely objective ones) and because each patient's water-dilution treatment is different. Well, so what? Evidence-based medicine uses and treats subjective patient measures like pain. And illnesses like cancer take cocktails of treatments that differ from patient to patient. Yet these procedures have been proven in trials.

I blogged earlier today about faxing my MP over the rise of creationism in UK schools. I was planning to do this via a very nifty online service called WriteToThem (formerly FaxyourMP.com). Just put in your UK postcode and you can find out who your local councillors, city assembly members, member of parliament, and European MPs are. Not only that, but the site provides forms that let you email and fax these representatives.

My plans were foiled, though, when I found out that my MP, Piara S. Khabra, has disallowed contact through these methods. A link to Parliament's site says that he only takes communication by phone call or by letter.

How 1950s.

Colorado is dumb. From Yahoo:

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

"Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up," he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."

Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas.

"Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus."

Dozens of schools are using creationist teaching materials condemned by the government as "not appropriate to support the science curriculum", the Guardian has learned.

Richard Pike, chief executive at the Royal Society of Chemistry, is right: evolution should be referred to as fact. We understand it as well as gravity.

A few years back, in an effort to stop bootleggers, bands like Pearl Jam and Phish started offering for sale live CDs of nearly every show. These were available through shops or the bands' websites within a few days of the gig.

In the last couple of years, companies like DiscLive have sped up the technology, and you can now get live CDs of some performances you've just seen within minutes.

Asia is doing this for their UK gigs. I'm going to the Sunday night show in London, and I think I'll get the live CD. It'll be a fun memento, and an interesting display of technology. Here's the email I received about the gig:

ASIA - LIVE The four original members of Asia will be recording the Carling Academy Glasgow, Carling Academy Liverpool and Shepherds Bush Empire nights of their forthcoming UK tour for 'immediate release' on the evening of the performance. Customers will be offered the opportunity to purchase this 'unique Live Performance' of the original line-up of Asia performing that evening's set. Using the most up to date digital technology the performance will be recorded 'Live', mixed on site and made available within 30 minutes of the end of the evenings as an exclusive double CD. The band will also be staying to sign copies of this and other merchandise purchased on the night. In order to ensure that you obtain a copy of these highly collectable, limited edition releases, featuring the new 25th anniversary Roger Dean logo, you can now pre-order a copy of this double CD to guarantee a copy for collection on the night. The CD's are priced at £14 (people who pre-purchase their CDs will be able to collect a voucher at the venue on the evening to exchange for the CDs).

Flickr has been keeping info on the cameras people use to take the photos they upload (as often as they can detect this which, at two-thirds of the time, is a pretty good sample). They've made these stats for the last year available: check out the graphs at the bottom of the page.

Palestinian hip-hop, anyone?

I watched Night Watch (aka Nochnoy Dozor) on TV last night. It's a big-budget Russian epic fantasy, the first in a planned trilogy, that sets up a modern mythology around the magical forces of good and evil. It was okay. I liked it a bit more than I thought I would. It was still a bit clichéd, and while most of the SFX were fun and original, some seemed a bit forced. But I liked the fact that the good guys were ordinary shlubs, and not all that good. The active subtitles were fun, too.

From Scienceblogs, some of the physics behind the radiation poisoning of that ex-spy.