Q&A: Responses to the Lectures
Responses to the Lectures
Question
Dear Michi, hello,
I’ve been listening eagerly to your lectures on free will and choice, and the introduction to philosophical thinking. I feel the need to express my appreciation and thanks—for the honest approach, the intellectual integrity, and the success in making complex issues accessible without compromising on depth. True, the Rabbi is working during the lectures, but I listen to them, learn, and enjoy them.
Four comments I’ve chosen to make so far regarding the introduction to philosophical thinking—
I wanted to contribute to the discussion in logic with Pinchas Noy’s helpful distinction
between a model and a theory. I attached a scan of the pages from his book that present it.
Models and Theories P. Noy.pdf
Regarding the absence of any expression of causal agency in the mathematical formulation of the laws of physics—the example given was Newton’s second law. In the lecture, you argued that according to intuition, in reality force causes acceleration. I wanted to note that there are cases where the intuition is the opposite, for example when dealing with centrifugal force, or even inertial force in a system with linear acceleration (for example, when a car stops suddenly). Therefore, the absence of a direction of causation in the mathematical formulation may not be a deficiency, but rather a formulation that fits all possibilities.
You chose to present Kant’s axes of classification (analytic-synthetic and a priori-a posteriori) with respect to sentences (I do not know how it is in the original). Wouldn’t it be more correct to apply them to propositions rather than to sentences (which are the verbal representation of propositions)? Then one could say that with analytic propositions, analyzing the verbal representation is sufficient to determine their truth value, whereas with synthetic propositions, one cannot make do with analyzing the verbal representation in order to determine their truth value (observation is required).
It seems to me useful to distinguish between the truth value of a proposition (whether it is accessible to us or not) and the degree of our confidence in it. The first is metaphysical; the second is epistemic/psychological. It is commonly accepted that truth value is based on some kind of proof/refutation. The degree of confidence may be influenced by the attributed truth value, but also by additional factors such as pragmatic/adaptive value (it is worthwhile to believe because it improves my condition/survival), and perhaps also by the character traits of the believer (for example, the degree of skepticism that characterizes him).
Have a wonderful rest of the week.
Answer
Greetings.
Thank you for your comments. I quickly read the first part of what he says, and I disagree. The distinction he makes is well known, and I’ve written about it several times in the past. But I disagree with the approach that separates the model from the theory. To say that all theoretical entities (in physics or psychology) are merely forms of organization that we impose on the information we have accumulated is a completely unreasonable claim. If that were so, the model should not work and should not yield predictions (the probability of a reliable prediction would be 0). You should look at my argument in the article on judging favorably and Occam’s Razor (especially in the appendix): https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%93-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%95-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%94%D7%90%D7%9D
As for your comments: even in a rotating body, the relation is from force to acceleration and not vice versa. Something has to cause the acceleration. Beyond that, even if you were right and the equation describes the common denominator of all the situations, it would still be true that equations cannot describe, and do not describe, causation or a causal relation.
Regarding the distinction between sentences and propositions, I do not agree with your distinction. By the accepted definition, it is certainly incorrect. A proposition is a special kind of sentence: a sentence that can receive a truth value of true or false. That is not the relation between a sentence and its reference (its meaning). A sentence and a proposition have no existence in the world. Their reference and meaning are some kind of relation between the subject and the predicate. That relation is a fact, not a sentence. In short, both sentence and proposition belong to the linguistic sphere. The fact that the proposition describes belongs to the world, or to some state of affairs in the world.
I completely accept the difference between the truth value of a proposition and our degree of confidence in it. But that is not relevant to the Kantian discussion. He is dealing with the relation between the epistemic axis—the way I cognize the fact described in the proposition (a priori-a posteriori)—and the linguistic-logical axis—the structure of the sentence and its analysis (analytic-synthetic). By the way, the truth value of a proposition is not connected to metaphysics. On the contrary: in factual propositions, this is physics. Truth values are a matter of comparison between the content of the proposition and the state of affairs in the world that it describes. My degree of confidence in a proposition depends on many parameters (including the reliability of the tools by means of which I made that comparison).
All the best,