Clarifying The Idea of Meaning
Follow up to: The End of Cartesian Demons
This is a recanted essay!: As a result of feedback with others who have read this, I now recognize this essay as misleadingly incomplete and partially inaccurate. I keep it up as a record of how I have previously thought, but do not stand by all of it.
A commenter on this blog by the name of Tom Mitchell who has a blog called Drip by Drip left a lengthy comment on my essay “The End of Cartesian Demons” challenging my idea that any statement that is meaningful will entail some experiences must occur and some experiences must not occur.
His comment is too lengthy to repost, so I recommend you read it, but I will do my best to summarize his criticism:
Tom’s first point is that there are statements which Tom refers to as motivators which provide reasons for action independent of the truth of the statement.
For instance, Jimmy might think that “Journalism is cool, and he would make a great journalist”. This statement motivates Jimmy to study journalism regardless of whether or not it is actually true, so long as Jimmy thinks it true. Some of these motivator statements may even be self-fulfilling.
The argument is that since these statements are not held for their truth content and yet still are meaningful to the person, then there are meaningful statements which do not specifically require a set of experiences to be true and/or a set of experiences to be false.
Tom’s second point is that what I said about Cartesian-like hypotheses (such as solipsism, the Simulation/Matrix argument, the dream hypothesis, Cartesian demons, etc.) is false, and that these statements can matter despite having no testable in principle outcome because they can function as motivators.
For instance, someone who is a for-some-reason convinced solipsist may become depressed and lonely by thinking they are the only real person. Furthermore, someone who thinks they’re in the Matrix might hunt for Morpheus.
Thus, this second argument says that these theories do have practical outcomes because they change how people act, again independently of whether the theory is true, or even capable of being true.
Are We Debating Definitions?
The first question I wonder about is whether we are not truly disagreeing over theories, but disagreeing about definitions. I wonder if Tom has a certain idea of the definition of meaningful than the one I used in my essay. As I mentioned in “The Folly of Debating Definitions”, it is worthless for us to decide which meaning of meaningful is the correct one, as long as we acknowledge our differences and choose one.
So when I said “any statement that is meaningful will entail some experiences must occur and some experiences must not occur”, I meant “I am defining a statement to be described as meaningful if it entails some experiences must occur and some experiences must not occur”.
But perhaps this was entirely unfair of me, since the word meaningful also commonly has the connotation of “only things called meaningful are worthy of discussion”, thus suggesting that we should never talk about things like solipsism if they don’t entail a certain set of experiences to be true and/or false. I do agree with this, yes, but I don’t want to assert my argument in the very definition of the word, because that would render me hopelessly circular.
So perhaps it’s best if I instead said this:
(1) I am defining a statement to be described as truth-apt if it entails some experiences must occur and some experiences must not occur, thus capable of being true.
(2) I am defining a statement to be described as meaningful if it worth considering.
(3) I am arguing that statements which are not truth-apt are not worth considering, and therefore not meaningful.
I think this makes my argument far more clear and helps relieve some of Tom’s first criticism. Thus what I was saying about meaningful statements needing to entail experiences was indeed true, but it was a conclusion from my argument, not a definition.
Therefore, for clarity I will now be making the distinction between something that is truth-apt and something that is meaningful, even if I think every truth-apt claim is meaningful and that claims that are not truth-apt aren’t meaningful. I think the very truth-apt nature of a statement; the very possibility that the statement could be true, is what makes the statement meaningful, and nothing else does.
Motivated by Motivators?
But what of Tom’s statements he calls motivators, statements that motivate you to preform certain actions by you thinking they are true, regardless of if they are true? I don’t think these motivator statements are actually any different from other statements, and therefore aren’t anything special that could derail my argument. Upon reflection, I think all truth-apt statements are motivators, and therefore they fit nicely into my theory instead of derailing it.
Consider the example Tom gave of the statement “Journalism is cool, and I, Jimmy, am going to be a great journalist”. In his example, Tom said that if Jimmy really reflected on this statement, he would find it unjustified because Jimmy doesn’t really have any special journalist knowledge or talents, and really doesn’t know anything about journalism.
Yet this statement is still motivating, and it causes Jimmy to act. Why? Simply because Jimmy thinks it is true.
Looking for Truth-Apt
This becomes clear when we look at the statement in depth. The statement “Journalism is cool, and I, Jimmy, am going to be a great journalist” is actually two different statements, both of which specifically anticipate certain experiences, thus making the statement truth-apt.
“Journalism is cool” predicts that Jimmy will find journalism to be a rewarding and interesting career. “I, Jimmy, am going to be a great journalist” predicts that Jimmy will be successful in a chosen career of journalism. If either of these two experiences do not occur when they could, Jimmy’s statement was false.
But how does the truth-apt nature of this translate into motivation? Simply because we act on every bit of knowledge that we consider — if we want to make toast, and think the statement “putting bread in the toaster will produce toast I can eat” accurately reflects reality, then we act upon this truth-apt statement. If Jimmy thinks “Journalism is cool” accurately reflects the reality of journalism and Jimmy’s future careers, Jimmy will act upon this truth-apt statement.
We even act upon statements that we think are false. If Jimmy wants toast but thinks “banging my head against the wall will produce toast” is a false statement that does not accurately reflect reality, Jimmy will act upon this by not banging his head against the wall, and instead seeking some other course of action.
Therefore the truth-apt nature of the statement is required for Jimmy to be motivated, which seems contrary to what Tom was suggesting.
Putting The Truth in Truth-Apt
Now let’s look deeper into Tom’s first criticism: specifically, the idea that these motivators remain motivating even if the justification for them is shaky. While yes, these statements do have to be truth-apt in order to be motivating, do they actually need to be accurately held? Or can a false statement be motivating even if the subject thinks the statement is true?
Clearly this can be the case: a person could be motivated to become a journalist because he thinks “Journalism is cool”, only to later find journalism a very boring profession. But all this means is that there is a difference between what a person thinks and what is actually real, which I have repeatedly acknowledged.
The fact that people are erroneously motivated by false facts they think are true is actually one of the biggest reasons to value true facts and want knowledge, so you don’t accidentally sabotage your own goals. If you were only motivated by true-in-reality facts regardless of what you thought of them, then you would have little to no reason for knowledge.
Don’t Forget the Self-Fulfilling Nature!
But lastly what are we to make of the specific case of self-fulfilling motivators? For instance, we could easily imagine Jimmy thinking the career of journalism is worthwhile only because he once thought “Journalism was cool”, and would not have found the career of journalism to be worthwhile otherwise.
I think this is slightly bothersome to consider in of itself, but is no detriment to the theory I’m proposing, simply because holding a belief does change reality — it changes something about you, namely you now hold a certain belief. For an analogy, consider the sentence “This sentence is being said aloud”. It is false right now because you are merely reading it, but it would be made true in a self-fulfilling fashion were you to speak it aloud.
This self-fulfilling nature is because the statement is also self-referring, it describes a reality that the existence of the statement itself influences. This is the same for “Journalism is cool” in a way: since saying “Journalism is cool” means “I subjectively find journalism to be a rewarding experience”, holding this belief itself can confer that subjective experience just by holding the belief itself.
How Motivating is a Demon?
Now we can address Tom’s second point that these Cartesian-like hypotheses can function as motivators and therefore are meaningful. This clearly squares against the idea that motivators must be truth-apt, because Cartesian-like hypotheses are not truth-apt. How can you be motivated by something you cannot know is true?
I think we see this distinction specifically in the kind of motivation that is happening: Tom’s examples are of people motivated by the truth-apt versions of the Cartesian hypotheses; which I did talk about being possible versions that are meaningful, but not the versions people currently seem to hold and discuss.
For instance, consider the idea of someone looking for Morpheus. Surely this is someone who is anticipating finding Morephus, and thus thinks the Matrix argument entails a specific prediction: “If the Matrix argument is true, Morpheus exists somewhere I can find”. This means the person is motivated by a truth-apt version of the Matrix argument.
I think Tom actually recognizes this, because he says:
To summarize, the existence of a Cartesian demon, or the matrix, or whatever is a valid concern because of its potential as a motivator of human action. It cannot tell us anything about what we are experiencing and what we will not experience; but it can shape what we have the potential to experience.
The last sentence is a contradiction: if something is shaping what you have the potential to experience, it is making it so that you will not have certain experiences, thus making the statement testable-in-principle (we can look and see if we have that experience, potentially) and truth-apt (there is an experience that can be true or false).
Conclusion
Specifically, we are motivated to find truth because of what I mentioned in “Meaningfully True”: we have goals we want to satisfy, and we need true knowledge to satisfy them. Thus, we are individually motivated to care about certain truth-apt statements, because they have the potential to affect how we go about our goals.
Furthermore, no one can be motivated to care about a statement that is not truth-apt, because it entails nothing that can even affect them. If they are motivated, it can only be because they are anticipating an experience, and thus considering something that is truth-apt.
For these two reasons, I think my theory actually includes a lot of what Tom was looking for, once we clear up the somewhat confusing language I was using.
I invite Tom to continue the dialogue by showing where he agrees and disagrees.
Followed up in: The Map and the Territory and The Metaphysics Dilemma
Before commenting further, please note that this is a recanted essay that I no longer agree with.
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I now blog at EverydayUtilitarian.com. I hope you'll join me at my new blog! This page has been left as an archive.
On 14 Sep 2011 in Recanted. 14 Comments.
16 Sep 2011, 7:35 pm
Hey Peter,
Good article. I think the first problem the commenter brought up was incoherent, but I often hear the second one reiterated.
I’m partial to Putnam’s thoughts about Matrix or (brain in a vat) type of situations. There’s no way to meaningfully talk about such situations, because our language can only deal with our reality.
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brain-vat/#2)
19 Sep 2011, 3:47 pm
Matt,
I had a chance to look over that article and it looks interesting and promising. However, it’s not really the main argument I want to advance: that meaning comes from distinguishing between differences in the implications of a proposition, which can only come from truth-apt propositions.
22 Sep 2011, 11:59 am
“If Jimmy wants toast but thinks ‘banging my head against the wall will produce toast’ is a false statement that does not accurately reflect reality, Jimmy will act upon this by not banging his head against the wall, and instead seeking some other course of action.”
I do not agree with this. I would agree that: Peter Hurford would act upon the toaster not producing toast by not banging his head against the wall, and seeking some other course of action.
But would Jimmy? And even if he did, how many bangs would it have taken for him to stop? Would he bang once and give up, or slam his head into the wall half a dozen times, not stopping till he lay unconscious on the floor?
The assumption you are making Peter is that if action A is damaging to the human body, a sensible person will drop whatever beliefs lead them to take action A and secede the action based on the information of immediate experience that action A is damaging to themselves.
First, I believe that there are a great many people who if God told them that banging their head would produce toast, or if Science told them that banging their head would eventually produce toast, they would drum their head on that wall all day long. I say sensible, but in reality I do not think there are “sensible” people. I think we are all absurd, and we all bang our heads. We just do it for different things and to different extents. The question to me is how long we persist in the banging and what actions we are willing to bang for. If continuing with your analogy rendered my point too abstract or incoherent, it is simply this:
Humans do not regulate their actions solely based on what harms them and what does not.
If you think about it for a second I am sure you will be able to discover dozens of examples to prove this. I think it is safe to say that for the most part humans do not like inflicting pain and damage to their bodies; but it is undeniable that despite this they continue to purposely do so. Even if a person does not go around breaking her limbs on purpose, she drinks alcohol, she smokes, she over-exerts herself in a basketball game or in a sprint, she stays up all night, the cases are endless. For you, banging your head into the wall is unquestionably damage to be avoided. But what about kids who bang their head into the wall for nothing more than the spectacle of their toughness?
Preservation of self is without a doubt an important ideology, but I argue that for many people (if not all people) it is not the absolute ideology, and thus should not be taken as the base motivator of action.
Your example is trying to prove that a untrue motivator (like banging your head into the wall will produce toast) will eventually be rejected based on ‘meaningful truth” ( the invalidation of a banging head-making toast cause-effect relationship). Do you really think this is true? The head-toast example is about as extreme an example that you could have thought of (which might I add is a rhetorical tactic to make my position seem less believable…). Let’s take one that is more realistic. Like “becoming successful.” I would argue that despite repeated failure (in a head banging sort of way) a person would continue to preserve towards their vision of success. In fact, doing so is highly valued in our society as showing true grit.
The point I saw you trying to make is that anything believed is in reality a possibility since humans lack the privilege of truly knowing. We believe in the possibility of a truth statement. As our lived experience adds evidence for or against statements we come to accept or reject them, and this is process of creating meaningful truth.
I agree with you. The point I am making that the amount of evidence required to break or solidify a potential truth statement is not a set standard. It is a subjectively determined set of motivators that determine how much evidence and evidence of what kind is required to legitimize/ delegitimize truth-statements. For Peter Huford, banging his head to produce toast is not even a possibility because of the motivators that determine your evaluation of truth-statements. For the post-modern one or two bangs would be enough to determine that the head-to-toast was invalid. But for people of different cultures, different faiths, and different bodies of knowledge we have know way of knowing how much or for what they will bang their head.
What I am not saying
I am not saying that we should all be banging our heads or allowing our people to bang their heads on walls. As I sated before, the head banging for toast is an extreme example that does not really address what I am talking about. I thank you though, because it was not until writing this response that I see the distinction I have in my mind that I have not presented to you. There is a hierarchy of motivators. As you have pointed out, self-preservation is among it. So I would say that because of the motivation of self-preservation there are MANY cases where people should delegitimize “potential truth statements” for the sake of not killing themselves. BUT, there are motivations higher than merely living, for example freedom. I do not mean to get into what is freedom, but merely to state that there are conditions where people risk their life for something they value higher. It is for these higher values (freedom, knowledge, success, love, happiness, etc) that what I am saying applies.
22 Sep 2011, 12:59 pm
I can resolve this disagreement here really quickly: I never made this assumption. I said in my essay “If Jimmy wants toast but thinks ‘banging my head against the wall will produce toast’ is a false statement that does not accurately reflect reality, Jimmy will act upon this by not banging his head against the wall, and instead seeking some other course of action”
I emphasize “If” to make that very point: Jimmy will only not bang his head to get toast if he thinks banging his head will not get toast. Should a Jimmy exist that does think banging his head is a great way to get toast, then I think he will bang his head, unless he wants to avoid injury more than he wants toast.
In this essay, I make no normative claims about the efficiency of head-banging as a toast-gathering method, nor do I make any claims about the rationality of self-injuring agents.
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I do think actions can be described with a hierarchy of motivators for the most part. This is the part of what in philosophy is called the “Belief + Desire -> Intention” model, which is part of folk psychology.
So we could say that there is a desire for toast and a belief that “head-bang -> toast”. If our agent Jimmy has (1) no higher desires than toast that (2) would prevent head-banging, he will head-bang. As you pointed out, an example of this desire that satisfies 1 and 2 is the desire to avoid injury.
Going back to the main point of the essay, this folk psychology also shows the role of motivators as truth-apt statement where the agent has a specific position (a belief) that refer to a value-judgement made on a specific set of affairs (a desire).
The fact that it has to be a specifically truth-apt statement (or it can’t be a belief, and therefore can’t form an intention) is what I argued in my essay.
How did I do?
22 Sep 2011, 4:40 pm
I am not sure I am reading your last sentence correctly, but besides that I think you did pretty good.
You have successfully expanded your theory to encompass my oppositions. However, I feel that in doing this you have robbed your theory of its ability to be dialectically beneficial (to mediate opposing polarities). And this is regrettable. I have no way to stop you from subsuming motivators under truth-apts, because you are right, what I have been calling motivators abide by the same laws that govern your truth-apts. Motivators are a type of truth-apt. That said, we were not just arguing definitions.
The arbitrariness of definitions is one of the main tools I see you architect your thoughts with. It is a powerful and beneficial tool. I often use it myself (not as much as you). But there are other tools too, and times when they would be more useful. Definitions are arbitrary to some extent, but they are also very important. Distinction is important. If you enter a dialogue with the belief that you and the other are ultimately arguing the same thing you close yourself to the possibility of distinction, and the possibility of knowledge beyond that which you yourself create. Motivators are truth-apts, but I strongly believe that there needs to be a distinction between two types of truth-apts: The type that determine motivations; and the type that develop bodies of knowledge on the principal of those motivations. I think very few people will understand this distinction without it being made for them. Without a distinction between scales of truth-apts the idea of truth apts loses any power beyond being yet another tool of individualization.
There is some stuff still to be said, but unfortunately I have to do some work stuff now. The next thing I write on my blog will be on this topic. If you don’t mind I will use your term truth-apts so there is no confusion between us as to what I am saying.
23 Sep 2011, 12:38 am
What makes a theory dialectically beneficial?
I agree that the distinction is important, no worries there. I was just arguing that they must be included under the category of truth-apt, but sure they can be a very special sub-section.
Perhaps the distinction can be made in considering the fact-value distinction, which is also very important. Values are a type of fact, but they are very different from descriptions of the non-goal-oriented world. Motivators to me seem to be a particular kind of value statement, which is a particular kind of truth-apt statement.
I’m sure confusion is still possible on both of our ends, but I do look forward to further hearing your take on this topic.
29 Sep 2011, 1:44 am
Whether people in fact normally use ideas for prediction or not is an empirical question; it cannot be solved deductively. If they don’t, it implies they’re not using reason, that’s all.
You’re suffering from the materialist auto-dismissal of emotions and consciousness. The difference between a matrix/brain-in-vat world and the real world is not physically truth-apt. However, believing you’re not a BIV is more satisfying. Believing not-BIV predicts greater satisfaction, and no side effects. Therefore, BIV is truth-apt about emotions, and therefore meaningful. (Therefore, believe not-BIV, unless the opposite is true for you.)
29 Sep 2011, 12:39 pm
“Whether people in fact normally use ideas for prediction or not is an empirical question”
Can’t you just do something horrible, in theory, like give a person electric shocks every other time they pull a handle that dispenses food, then give them insulating gloves and see whether they put them on every alternative time.
Or….a non-horrible version of this (bit disturbed that this occurred to me so easily).
29 Sep 2011, 2:32 pm
Proposing to do horrible things to people is a long and respectable tradition in philosophy. Physics, too.
Examples: Schrodinger’s cat, indirect quantum measurement, the trolley problem.
I think in the gloves case it falls into what I’ve been calling the rock-and-compilers category, which is special. I’m thinking\: at what rate do pro-lifers actually forgo abortion? At what rate do Christians turn the other cheek? At what rate do atheists in fact give up worship? Do people who realize that voting is pointless usually give it up? Does showing that the EV of a lottery ticket is negative stop a person from buying them? Basically, how accurate is it to peg someone’s beliefs by their actions?
29 Sep 2011, 9:07 pm
LOL! Poignant observation. And your last paragraph strikes a chord with me because I’ve had the exact some thoughts. You’re not the only thinker to wonder if ethics has ever been thought in relation to humans, i.e., how does someone become a good person? What is a good person?
Moral internalism (agents with the conviction that X ought to be done are more motivated to do X; moral beliefs are intrinsically motivating) and externalism (moral beliefs are not intrinsically motivating; moral belief that X ought to be done has no necessary relation to motivation to do X) get into this a little bit, but not nearly enough. I think psychology may very well be a better source to consult in determining someone’s morality.
Oh yeah, to comment on BIV: doesn’t it cause problems? If we’re BIVs, then who’s maintaining us? And if existence is just BIV, it starts a infinite causal regress.
1 Oct 2011, 4:55 pm
@Alrenous:
Definitely. And I don’t claim that all people do use ideas for predictions, nor would I know how to go about testing that.
The claims I make are: (1) the only statements that make sense to discuss are statements that are truth-apt and (2) the only beliefs we should hold are about statements that are truth-apt.
~
I do agree that it is more satisfying for some people, but I think this is because an error in reasoning is going on, and if we correct this error, the satisfaction goes away.
This is because satisfaction is rooted in knowing you are in a preferable state of affairs, and if two states are identical in every testable way, it makes no sense to say the non-BIV state of affairs is preferable.
I write about this in “The End of Cartesian Demons”.
1 Oct 2011, 8:53 pm
The BIV is supposed to be stated as, “How can you know we’re not BIVs?” Then the idea is to see if it’s possible to logically construct the BIV such that you cannot possibly tell…and indeed it’s possible as far as we know. For completeness: if you cannot tell, it means the virtual world is indistinguishable from a real world for all intents and purposes.
Plus, we basically are BIVs. Just, the vat is usually called a ‘skull,’ and the world being fed to us is the actual world.
2 Oct 2011, 7:43 am
“Plus, we basically are BIVs. Just, the vat is usually called a ‘skull,’ and the world being fed to us is the actual world.”
Perhaps it is the nugget of truth that protects this viewpoint from being falsified.
As with solipsism, the world, as I know it, really is a mental construct, as that is the human nervous system’s way of representing a world.
Same for p-zombies as far as i can tell.
2 Oct 2011, 10:54 am
Yes, agreeing with you and summarizing my points:
1.) It is impossible to prove or disprove the ontological implication of BIV Theory.
2.) This means that, in a sense, “you cannot disprove that you are a BIV”.
3.) But, BIV Theory and No-BIV Theory suggest worlds that are identical in every detectable way
4.) Therefore BIV Theory is not actually truth-apt
5.) Therefore, there is no reason to care about BIV, because it cannot have any implications for your life
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I don’t buy the p-zombie argument at all for all the truth-apt reasons I mentioned here.
Eliezer Yudkowsky has a very humorous take on the issue here, and explains his opposition to p-zombies here.