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February 20 New Books (Feb 2008)(1) Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolutions of Human Intelligence, Random House (1977) Winner of the 1977 Pulitzer Prize. Sagan's first significant work. Hardback with dust jacket in good condition.
(2) Albert Einsein, Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, Folio Society (2004)
There are better books on relativity out there but the combination of Einstein and Folio is irresistible. Introduction by Sir Roger Penrose is a nice bonus. Hardback with slipcase, beautifully bound, brand new, no markings!
(3) Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, Harcourt, Brace & World (1961)
Very very technical. Required reading for those interested in the philosophy of science. Hardback with dust jacket in good condition.
(4) Jean-Pierre Luminet, Black Holes, Cambridge University Press (1992)
The 1998 Chinese translation drew me into the fascinating world of cosmology. Compared to Hawking's offering it is more technical and yet explain things more lucidly. Good paperback edition. Hardback is sadly out of my budget!
(5) Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford University Press (2001)
A controversal book by the 1998 Nobel laureate. Pristine hardback edition from the university book shop. February 12 宗教鸦片论？昨日与某君讨论宗教，我虽然不信仰任何宗教，但不能接受对方所谓马克思主义宗教观，也就是著名的“鸦片麻醉论”，无奈之下再来考据一番吧。
先看马克思在1844年的《黑格尔〈法哲学〉批判导论》里是怎么写的：
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
Souce: Carl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, trans. by A. Jolin and J. O'Malley, CUP, 1970 鸦片在当时的欧洲只作为镇痛药而非毒品。此段陈述了宗教的社会作用并未加褒贬。可是到了列宁时代，这话就开始变味了。列宁是这样讲的：
Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.
Souce: V.I. Lenin, Socialism and Religion, Lenin Collected Works Vol.10, Progress Publishers, 1965
注意啊，马克思原话的 of 到这里变成了 for，一个简单的介词变化却使people从主体变成了受体，整个句子的意味也因此而大变。等到50年代中文版《列宁全集》出版，译者更是创造性地把这句改成了“宗教是麻醉人民的鸦片”，虽然后来的版本加以订正，删去了“麻醉”二字，但这个版本分明已经成了官方认可的意识形态。马克思就这样一步一步被曲解了。后世的所谓马克思主义者们每每引用马氏原话，却不重视前面加黑的那一段“the heart of a heartless world”，一味强调宗教之毒害作用，岂不谬哉！ February 02 风动，幡动？前日Leila提到“风动，幡动”这一禅宗著名公案，于是回家小查了一下典籍，发现竟然问题多多！
此公案不见于敦煌法海本《坛经》以及王维的《六祖能禅师碑铭》，按中华书局法海本《坛经》的注释，最早记于唐中叶成书的《历代法宝记》。后来其他典籍纷纷引用，描述却各不相同。多数把故事地点写作广州法性寺，但我查看《法宝记》原文又作“海南制心寺”，不知道是不是别称。宋本及后来《坛经》版本，都不约而同地加上了这个传奇故事，曰惠能于唐仪凤元年（公元676年）正月初八：
联想到禅僧肆意增删经典的习惯，大抵这个故事也是传说多于历史事实吧。读完葛著《中国禅思想史》，愈发觉得西天二十八祖之类的故事，都是编造出来糊人的，参禅者大可不必理会。(Zen History) December 11 The Problem of Induction II4. Two More Responses
4.1 Paradigm Case Argument
This is a popular idea among British "ordinary language philosophers" in the 50s and 60s, who argue that the problem is no more than a problem of how people ordinarily use the language. Consider three cases:
Case 1) A weather forecast is based on pure guesswork.
Case 2) A weather forecast is based on the reverse of previous experience (i.e. if red sky has been followed by clear days, then the forecast predicts the opposite will happen).
Case 3) A weather forecast is based on previous patterns.
Clearly, people who understand the word "rational" would undoubtedly pick case 3) as being the rational forecast. This justifies that induction is rational, for what more is needed than that people who understand the term "rational" all agree that it is applicable to inductive inference?
Q: The argument leaves it open that there might be some underlying requirement for an inference to count as rational. Some inductive inference may indeed fail such requirement despite the inclination of ordinary people to apply the term "rational" to it. Example: people who believe in "free will" may well be made to think so by some external force, they are actually not "free" when they say they are. Same for the rationality of induction!
4.2 A Reliabilist Defence
So is there an underlying requirement for an inference to count as rational? Reliabilists regard the requirement to be that such inference must reliably transmit truth from premisses to conclusion. In a reliabilist's point of view, induction ceases to be a problem because we do not demand it to be deductively valid so there is no case against it as long it proves to be reliably transmitting truth.
Q: The argument seems to be circular in that one has to justify how an inference is reliable. The usual answer is that since we have abandoned the idea that induction can be made deductively valid, it is legitimate to use induction in further analysis. How else, the reliablist asks, can we address the problem? Some philosopher point out that even if we do accept such an argument, there are still plenty of examples in which people have made induction but arrived at a false conclusion. So even the assertion that "induction reliably transmits truth" can not be true (see the history of science!).
5. My Point of View ;-)
1) Inductive inference cannot be made deductive, therefore if we maintain that "rational” statements must be deductively valid, induction is certainly not to be regarded as rational.
2) Most people are ready to expand the category of rational statement beyond deductively valid ones, but this invokes further questions on the notions of knowledge and justification, etc. And they all encounter serious difficulties.
3) To go one step back, if we accept the Uniformity of Nature (UN) as a starting point, then the problem can be dealt pretty easily. However (UN) itself is matter of belief or opinion.
4) It seems that Hume's own answer is still preferable to others: Our acceptance of (UN) is non-rational, but not contrary to our mind. It is not optional, but "a matter of habit or custom, or instinct." We do not accept it on the basis of argument.
So after all these words, the problem of induction remains unsolved.
写到这里突然想起stella ZT物理八卦最后的笑话，呵呵，确实要小小地嘲笑一下那些不懂科学又自命不凡的“哲学家”们。 December 09 The Problem of Induction IThe last entry is too much of a stream of consciousness! Now something different:
Notes on Induction I
1. The Problem of Induction
Example: An enumerative induction, "n As have all been observed to be Bs" hence "All As are Bs."
Q: How we arrive at a general conclusion from a finite number of instances? Logic does not guarantee that a larger class will display the same behaviour. (Hume is so clever to have pointed this out and questioned the very foundation of all empirical sciences!)
2. Responses
2.1 A Principle of Induction
The principle asserts that, for some number N,
(P) For any A and B, whenever N As are observed to be Bs, then all As are Bs. Q: (i) Invokes a new question: how big N needs to be and (ii) (P) is not an analytic claim (i.e a sythetic statment) and therefore requires empirical evidence. But since (P) is also a general statement, its justification wil have to be an inductive argument. The problem simply repeats itself. 2.2 Inductive Argument for Induction
OK. We accept that inductive arguments cannot be made deductive. Can we not accept induction because they work? Even if there is no logical guarantee?
Q: Again, a circular proof because a generalization from past success of induction to its future success is itself an inductive inference. as Russell puts it: "it is no help to observe that past futures have conformed to past pasts, what we want to know is whether future futures will conform to future pasts."
2.3 Probability Theory
Inductive inferences are merely generating probable conclusion, not certain ones.
Q: First we have to distinguish two notions of probability: degree of belief and objective tendency. In both cases the circular proof surfaces again. (detail analysis omitted)
3. Popper's Alternative
3.1 Conjectures and Refutations
Popper: Science does not rest on induction in the first place. The scientific process is not observation -> theory but the other way round. A theory is proposed and we test it with observations. The important inference is refutation, i.e. if a theory passes the tests of experiments, it will continue to be held provisionally. not as proven truth but as a conjecture. If it fails the test, the theory is falsified. Therefore the problem of induction is pseudo-problem and does not arise at all.
---> "The Problem of Demarcation" i.e. to distinguish pseudo-scientific and anti-scientific theories with the criterion of falsification, according to Popper, science is at least "falsifiable", but not "provable".
3.2 The Failings of Falsificationism
It only accounts for negative scientific knowledge as opposed to positive knowledge. E.g. we take medication because we know it cures a disease not because we know it doesn't.
Popper: Falsification is concerned only with the logic of pure scientific research, not the practical problem of whether we should believe in a particlar conjecture.
Q: This will not do. Popper is simply denying that we can make rational judgments about future. As evidence comes in, many theories (e.g general relativity) are now regarded as well-established truth, rather than mere conjectures.
Did you read it all? Does it make you laugh? Yeah, this IS how philosophy is done, more ridiculous things to come! Stay tuned... December 08 A Liberal DecalogueThis had been a draft for too long (Guarantee no more quotes from Russell!) ...
The first step towards building a new vision of life is to free one's mind from the fatters of dogmas and unwarranted beliefs. This requires a critical yet open and rational attitude. In the following passage Russell famously provides a liberal decalogue outlining the principles to abide to. However, it should be noted that this "liberal outlook" is not the same as "liberalism", the two often get confused by the critics of liberalism, if not intentionally!
Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
I agree with most of it except no.10, which sounds rather caustic. （老罗这样损人不太厚道哦！） September 01 Obscurity = Profundity?Can anyone understand Kant on a first reading?
I couldn't. I spent an whole day on the Prolegomena, without understanding a single sentence of it. It is entirely unintelligible as if the texts were composed in Sanskrit. And yet this is supposedly his easiest book - an introduction and stripped-down version of the Critique. Now it is easy to understand why, despite being the greatest among modern philosophers, Kant's philosophy has never been in the mental furniture of well-educated Europeans. It is a cultural tragedy that he didn't manage to convey his ideas with simplicity and clarity. The consequence is that a large number of recent academics choose to write in the same style, giving the public an impression that obscurity equals profundity. But in fact, many of them have said either nonsense or precisely nothing at all in their writings!
Anyway, I'm leaving his book for the moment and turning to Hume's! August 30 Notes: Russell's Problems of PhilosophyCh.I
1) Def: Sense-data, things that are immediately known in sensation.
2) Distinction of state of awareness (mental) and its object (not mental).
3) Q: Is there any such thing as matter, if so, what is its nature?
4) Berkeley: It is an idea in the mind of God; Leibniz: a collection of rudimentary minds.
Ch.II
1) Descartes: Cogito ergo sum.
2) Russell: The "I/Self" is equally difficult to arrive at. What is immediately certain is our own sense-data.
3) Russell: Trust "instinctive beliefs" (common-sense school).
4) Q: Demarcation of "instinctiveness" and "reasonableness".
Ch.III
1) Def: Private space and real (physical) space.
2) Q: Relations between the two?
Ch.IV
1) Berkeley (Idealist): We cannot know that anything exists which we do not know.
2) Russell: The two "know"s are used in different senses.
Ch.V
1) Def: Knowledge by acquaintance: sense-dada, memory, introspection, self-acquaintance with sense-datum, universals.
2) Def: Knowledge by description: in the "a/the so-and-so" form, including 1) of physical objects, 2) of other people's minds.
3) Russell: Every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituent with which we are acquainted with.
Ch.VI
1) Def: Principle of induction
2) Cannot be proved by experience, only known by "intrinsic evidence".
Ch.VII
1) There are other principles that cannot be proved by experience, e.g. self-evident logical principles.
2) Rationalism: There are knowledge we know independent of experience but not proved by it (correct!).
3) Empiricism: Even those logically independent of experience are elicited and caused by experience. Nothing can be known to exist without the help of experience (also correct!).
4) Def. a priori knowledge.
5) Russell: All knowledge which asserts existence is empirical, the only a priori knowledge which asserts existence is hypothetical.
Ch.VIII
1) Before Kant: a priori principles must be analytic.
2) Hume: Certain a priori principles are synthetic (e.g. the connexion of cause and effect).
3) Kant: How a priori knowledge is possible?
4) Def. "Thing in itself" (essentially unknowable); "phenomenon" (joint product of us and thing in itself).
5) Kant: a priori knowledge does apply outside experience.
6) Russell: a priori knowledge extends to physical objects.
Ch.IX
1) Def. particulars; universals
2) Minds, objects etc exist. Universals subsist, or have being as opposed to "exist" as being timeless.
3) Russell: a priori knowledge is concerned with entities not exist in the mental or physical worlds. Ch.X
1) Russell: All a priori knowledge deals exclusively with the relations of universals.
2) Immediate knowledge: by acquaintance of particulars and universals.
Derivative knowledge: by descriptions: acquaintance + knowledge of truths.
Immediate knowledge of truths: intuitive knowledge, and the truths thus known: self-evident truths.
3) Q: Why cannot all propositions be known a priori? August 07 The Great Learning"What the Great Learning teaches, is - to illustrate illustrious virtue, to renovate the people and to rest in the highest exellence."
Translated by James Legge
Despite its briefness, the Great Learning 大学 ranks as one of the four classics of Neo-Confucianism and for the last eight hundred years, served as a primer through which the beginning student enters formal education. It articulates the highest political ideal of the Confucian school, i.e. "sageliness within and kingliness without"*. and how to bring such virtue into practice in eight steps:
1) 格物 Investigation of things
2) 致知 Extension of knowledge
3) 诚意 Making one's will sincere
4) 正心 Rectifying one's mind
5) 修身 Cultivating one's personal life
6) 齐家 Regulating one's family
7) 治国 Bringing order to one's state
8) 平天下 Peace throughout the world
Regardless of one's social status, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything else. Through investigating the principles of the phenomenal world one is able to make his knowledge complete, and form a solid foundation of his pursuits; and only by purifying the will and rectifying the mind can an individual establish the correct attitude towards life. Thus the first four steps are prerequisites that must be followed. As the text emphasizes, "It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered."
* In the real world whether the sage has the opportunity to be king or not is irrelevant. What matters is the quality he possesses. August 05 First Assault on PhilosophyStarted a direct assult on philosophy, starting with Russell's The Problems of Philosophy and the chapter on Epistemology in A.C.Grayling's Philosophy 1. Progress, however, was painstakingly slow. I have advanced less than 20 pages in a day. |
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