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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/4/2008 10:15 AM (GMT -6) |   | This thread is a place where Laika and I can come and throw things at each other or wrestle in the mud whenever we’re tempted to side-track other threads with stuff that nobody but us cares about.
Laika: It is vacuous. Because it's not about this coin toss specifically.
Tom: That doesn’t make it informationally vacuous. If there’s something true about all coin tosses (i.e., that their outcomes are equally indeterminate), it’s hardly ‘informationally vacuous’ to say this is the case about any specific coin toss. YOU just said it. YOU just said that the outcome of every coin toss is equally indeterminate. Well, is THAT a meaningful claim? Is the proposition “Every coin toss is equally indeterminate with respect to its outcome” an informationally vacuous claim? It is not. Well, there you go. True, there’s no additional information peculiar to this coin toss over and against all other coin tosses, but that doesn’t make meaningless or informationally vacuous the claim that the outcome of this coin toss is indeterminate. It’s a perfectly meaningful claim.
Your example of who won a particular Oscar in the PAST perfectly demonstrates where you’re missing the whole point about ‘might and might not’ as it pertains to ontology (as opposed to epistemology) and future contingency.
OK, now it’s your turn to repost what you’ve already said so I can then repost what I’ve said a hundred times, and we can go round and round until one of us gives up and the one who posts LAST in the thread can declare himself the winner of the debate. That sounds logical, right?
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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 8/4/2008 11:02 AM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
Your example of who won a particular Oscar in the PAST perfectly demonstrates where you’re missing the whole point about ‘might and might not’ as it pertains to ontology (as opposed to epistemology) and future contingency.
My example is actually about the nature of knowlege. Knowlege is specific, not a hedging of all bets. Information gain reduces uncertainty, it's not just an inventory of the possibilities.
Tom said...
OK, now it’s your turn to repost what you’ve already said so I can then repost what I’ve said a hundred times, and we can go round and round until one of us gives up and the one who posts LAST in the thread can declare himself the winner of the debate. That sounds logical, right?
No, that's you and Meffy's thing.
If angels can dance on the head of a pin,
Don't that tell you something about their skin? Post Edited (Laika) : 8/4/2008 11:43:33 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/4/2008 12:12 PM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Laika
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Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 8/4/2008 3:07 PM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
But where you limit the terms 'might' and 'might not' to expressing one's lack of knowledge about what the outcome (X or ~X) shall be, I use these terms as equivalent to the proposition 'X is a future contingent' (which you agree is not informationallly vacuous).
OK, marking A as "will happen", marking B as "will not happen" and marking C as "might happen" is giving information about these three propositions.
But something is missing from C, the result. While "C might happen" gives you some information about the nature of C, it doesn't give you information about the outcome of C, hence the uncertainty of C. And the decrease of uncertainty is the measure of the information content of C, see Shannon's information entropy formula. So using "C might happen" as one leg of your tripod of God's omniscience leaves some information out. It doesn't satisfy the omni part of omniscience.
Since "C might happen" is indeterminate, any and all statements could be substituted for C, even gibberish, "Cow will marry carrot might and might not obtain".
"a;kdjf oowuj jafjpwieo oaiue might and might not obtain". Evidently the only information you're concerned with is the ontological state of the statement C, not it's content.
I have to think of a better way to explain it.
If angels can dance on the head of a pin,
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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/4/2008 3:15 PM (GMT -6) | | How far can I crank your leg up over your head?!
Happy,
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 8/4/2008 3:18 PM (GMT -6) | | | Let's try the paint store example again.
Joe works at the Sherwin Williams' paint store and WILL buy his paint there as he gets a discount.
There are 330 different color paints available and Joe WILL NOT mix any of the paints.
Which paint will Joe pick?
God knows, because according to your trilogy of God's omniscience, He knows all the WILLS, all the WILL NOTS and all the Might and Might Nots.
He knows Joe WILL buy paint from the store.
He knows Joe WILL NOT mix a special color.
He knows Joe WILL choose one of the 330 colors.
He's omniscient, right?
What color paint will Joe use? That's an item of knowlege. It can be falsified.
You say the omniscience is preserved because God knows,
"It might and might not be Cardinal Red, it might and might not be Seafoam Green......" until He has interated through the inventory.
Well, duh. Who couldn't do this, inventory the store? What makes that kind of knowlege special enough to be included in the trilogy of God's omniscience?
Knowlege is discrimnatory. It knows something at the expense of other things. It knows one color will be picked at the expense of the other 329 colors being picked. Discrete and discrimnatory.
That's why they say the decrease in uncertainty is information gain. Saying what color Joe will pick is indeterminate is just pushing the information gain into the future. We're talking about omniscience for right now.
If angels can dance on the head of a pin,
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Tom
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| Posted 8/5/2008 1:10 AM (GMT -6) | | Knowledge is discriminatory, right. But “might and might not” does discriminate over and against other future tense propositions to say something about the future that is either contrary or contradictory to what those props are saying.
X will occur.
X will not occur.
There are two future tense props. One posits X’s occurring in deterministic fashion and the second posits X’s not occurring in deterministic fashion.
Is that all that can be said about the future? Is that all the truth we can discriminate about X’s occurring?
Well, no. There’s more that can be said. One can say that neither X’s occurring nor X’s not occurring is determined, that X is a future contingent event. How do we say that? We say:
X might and might not occur.
What’s not discriminatory about that? A future event can be determined to occur, determined not to occur, or indeterminate. Those are your three options. And there aren’t any more. That’s it. These are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. One HAS to be true, and no two can be true about the same event.
So your example:
Joe will buy paint.
Joe will not mix any of the existing colors.
Joe will choose one of the 330 colors.
Essentially Laika, you only have TWO propositions here. There’s no real difference between your first and third props. The third just quantifies the certainty of the choice over the available options. Your second just delimits the kind of choice Joe makes. But anyhow, the point is that you and I both agree that there’s a genuine ‘openness’ to the future regarding WHICH color gets chosen. And your ‘will’ in the third prop doesn’t discriminate THIS aspect of the future. But though you admit to the openness of the future in this respect, you won’t settle for a future tense symantic that discriminates JUST THAT aspect (though this aspect CAN be known and expressed in a discriminatory manner). And you object specifically to the only phrase that posits this indeterminacy you say you believe in: “might and might not.”
I could word your example like this…
Joe will buy paint.
Joe will not mix any of the existing colors.
Joe might and might not choose any one of the 330 colors.
…and then object to YOUR third prop “Joe will choose one of the 330 colors” with “Well, duh. Who couldn’t do this, inventory the store? Who couldn’t know that since Joe might and might not choose ANY of the colors and since Joe WILL choose paint, that Joe WILL choose one of the 330 colors? Duh.” I could dismiss your third prop as non-discriminatory (which in fact it is anyhow; it doesn’t add anything over and against your first prop).
There might be a lot of “Duh” stuff out there. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t count as genuine knowledge or that it doesn’t discriminate against other propositions. 1+1 is 2. 1+1+1 is 3. 1+1+1+1 is 4. Well, duh! Sure it’s duh. Sure, anybody of average intelligence can keep adding to 5, 6, 7, etc. But that doesn’t make any one of these props less than a meaningful prop that discriminates against other props.
I look at the three future tense props…
X will occur.
X will not occur.
X might and might not occur.
…and I think, “Well, duh. Yeah. X is either determinate or indeterminate. Duh.”
It might be a boring bit of truth, but that doesn’t make it non-discriminatory. Determinism and indeterminism discriminate with regard to one another—‘will’ and ‘will not’ cover the deterministic options and ‘might and might not’ posit indeterminacy.
If there is some upcoming event that you know is open or indeterminate and somebody posits the determinacy of the event by saying, “It’s not gonna happen. It certainly will not occur” and you want to contradict this by positing the openness of the event, what future-tense expression would YOU use? (Don’t use the words ‘deterministic’, ‘indeterministic’, 'open', 'will' or 'will not'). You wouldn’t use ‘might’? You wouldn’t say, “Excuse me, but that’s not true. You know, it just might happen” because you think this doesn’t add any bit of knowledge to anything? OK, how DO you express the openness of the future in a way that discriminates against ‘will’ and ‘will not’?
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 8/5/2008 8:00 AM (GMT -6) | |
Tom said...
Knowledge is discriminatory, right. But “might and might not” does discriminate over and against other future tense propositions to say something about the future that is either contrary or contradictory to what those props are saying.
X will occur.
X will not occur.
There are two future tense props. One posits X’s occurring in deterministic fashion and the second posits X’s not occurring in deterministic fashion.
Is that all that can be said about the future? Is that all the truth we can discriminate about X’s occurring?
Well, no. There’s more that can be said. One can say that neither X’s occurring nor X’s not occurring is determined, that X is a future contingent event. How do we say that? We say:
X might and might not occur.
I understand all that. "Might and might not" means it isn't "will" or "will not". God's trilogy of omniscience consists of all props that are "will", all props that are "will not" and all props that are "might and might not". All props whose probability are 1, all props whose probability are 0 and all props whose probability are 1 > p > 0. And that is information. Information about the nature of the prop, but in the case of "might and might not", no information about the outcome of the prop.
According to information theory, all props that are "will" contain information as they have reduced uncertainty, all props that are "will not" contain information as they have reduced uncertainty.
But all props that are "might and might not" do not contain information as they have not reduced uncertainty. Yes they contain the information that they are indeterminate but the content of the prop is still unknown. Information theory measures that information. It's a given that the prop is indeterminate.
I see your point but I realize, you don't understand mine. Let me think of a better way to state it.
Women like silent men. They think they're listening.
-- Marcel Archard
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 8/5/2008 1:42 PM (GMT -6) | | Laika: "Might and might not" means it isn't "will" or "will not". God's trilogy of omniscience consists of all props that are "will", all props that are "will not" and all props that are "might and might not".
Tom: Right.
Laika: All props whose probability are 1, all props whose probability are 0 and all props whose probability are 1 > p > 0. And that is information. Information about the nature of the prop, but in the case of "might and might not", no information about the outcome of the prop.
Tom: I’m gonna be anal for a moment here, so forgive me. But it’s important to keep clear what props are. Props don’t “have” probabilities. They just express the truth of some ‘way the world is’, some ‘state of affairs’. It’s the “world” and not the “prop” that tends probabilistically toward some particular outcome or end. Props don’t “have outcomes.” They just state truthfully (or falsely) what the facts are about the present world. Sorry for being anal, but I think it’s important to know whether we’re talking about ‘props’ or the ‘states of affairs’ they posit. “Probabilities” and “outcomes” belong to the latter only.
Laika: According to information theory, all props that are "will" contain information as they have reduced uncertainty, all props that are "will not" contain information as they have reduced uncertainty.
But all props that are "might and might not" do not contain information as they have not reduced uncertainty. Yes they contain the information that they are indeterminate but the content of the prop is still unknown. Information theory measures that information. It's a given that the prop is indeterminate.
Tom: Again, if we keep clear on the distinction between ‘props’ and the ‘world’, then it’s never the case that the “content” of a prop is unknown. The outcome of the world’s process of becoming can be indeterminate, yes. So we won’t know what the outcome will be in the case of indeterminate events. But that’s got nothing to do with ‘props’. Props just either accurately or inaccurately posit some present state of affairs. Even in the case of a true “will” prop, it’s not the “outcome” that’s posited. It’s a present state of affairs the process of becoming of which entails a particular outcome. It’s the present state of a causal chain (the present “link” in that chain) that a “will” prop posits.
Laika: I see your point but I realize, you don't understand mine. Let me think of a better way to state it.
Tom: I see the distinction you’re making between what can be known about a future outcome in the case of a “will” prop that can’t be known in the case of “might and might not” props. I just don’t think this makes “might and might not” props informationally vacuous (in terms of what all props actually do). If a “might and might not” prop doesn’t tell us what the outcome of an indeterminate process of becoming shall be, that isn’t due to some information failure inherent in the prop or its content (as if there’s some information to be had which the prop fails to capture). In other words, a “might and might not” prop, just like a “will” prop, is as informationally full as the world will permit (as the world “is”). And that’s all one can ask of any prop. If this doesn’t jive with information theory, too bad for information theory. That’s the way the world is. Perhaps information theory should be adjusted to account for the realities of the actual world we live in and the constraints on propositional content inherent in the way props correspond to a world that is both deterministic and indeterministic. Sounds like a dissertation is waiting to be written, and you da man to write it!
TomPost Edited (Tom) : 8/5/2008 1:46:39 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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