Marcel Weber's inference to the best explanation

Source: Weber, Marcel. "The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 60, 19-49

Pierre Duhem is famous for his severe philosophical criticism of severe testing, or crucial experimentation, in science. A crucial experiment would follow a form of eliminative induction as follows.

Starting with alternate hypotheses of an evidenced phenomena, an experiment could negate one or all but one by showing contradiction with the evidence. This constitutes modus tollens or denying the consequent of the form “If h1, then e. Not e. Therefore, not h1.” If e follows from h2, then by disjunctive syllogism we can conclude the veracity of h2, or the last hypothesis standing.

Such a train of inference from experimentation is admissible according to logic, but it faces two difficulties in practice.

First, hypotheses are not singular postulates but conjunctive bundles. They rely on auxiliary hypotheses which rely on auxiliary hypotheses which rely on auxiliary hypotheses and so on... This is called the problem of untested auxiliaries.

Eliminative induction fails because humans cannot pinpoint error; they cannot grab the tip of the devil’s tail.

Second, while we can purport to parse the full field of contenders in logic or mathematics, we cannot do so in physics or economics. According to Duhem, “Shall we ever dare to assert that no other hypothesis is imaginable?”

The answer, of course, is no. But Duhem’s dire turn of phrase should not deter us from saying, "Big deal," and forging on with science uncowed. We might accept a pragmatic constraint on science as necessitating or justifying a means of distinguishing between theories, because the alternative, anarchy, is unacceptable.

Said differently, Duhem’s epistemic standards are too high: imaginability is not a useful criterion with which to judge science.

The conventional answer as I have phrased it is pick the best hypothesis, call it theory, and move on. This is called inference to the best explanation and it is the line taken by Marcel Weber.

The conventional rejoinder comes as a finer distillation of the Duhem critique. This is Bas van Fraassen’s “bad lot”-argument: if all the choices are crappy, even the least crappy is still crappy. Well, crap.

Muscles and entrails

If practice makes perfect,
And practiced practices are habits,
Then perfected habits are practiced.

If mastication speeds assimilation,
And indigestion is somatic sedition,
Then unseed sedition with ration.

If excessive excess is infinite infinity,
And excessive moderation is infinite finity,
Then moderate excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

If the early bird catches the worm,
And the late bird captures the moth,
The booby goes to the sloth.

If phraseology is phenotypic,
And the corporeal forms assimilate infinity,
Then the emperor's clothes are immaterial.

Notes from "American Parsifal"

"American Parsifal" is a class at Syracuse University taught by Andrew Waggoner, composer in residence and violinist. I took it in Fall 2009. The class appraises trends in the tug of war between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism in America. Besides Waggoner's riffs on history and culture, we consumed and chewed on a lot of art: poetry (Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop), music (Charles Ives, Elliot Carter, early Rock and Roll, Jazz), film (Forrest Gump, Being There, Bamboozled), and essays (Louis Menand, Toni Morrison). I was pupil qua amanuensis for the course, typing away on my petite laptop to sop up the wit and wisdom for posterity. What follows are notable transcriptions and interpretations from my notes.

• "I dream up goofy, fun stuff to study.", "The history was written by men; it's really quite simple.", "I can teach any damn fool thing I want."
• Semiotics was like influenza - the US strain went to Europe, mixed with the French, became virile and nasty, and returned to the US to wreak havoc.
• Science as metaphor. Fundamental mistake: metaphors are not equal.
• "Public education in this country has been an absolute disaster for the past 50 years."
• Bush: America is falling behind in Math and Science--the same administration which had been openly aggressive and violent towards science.
• I do not want intellectual labor saving devices. The way to avoid doing that that musically is to listen to intellectually engaging, difficult music--jazz.
• "The Soviet Union was an anthill run by psychopaths."
• "The right is an easy target:" Bill O'Reily, Sean Hannity - bit players - "these are visibly stupid people."
• Three options when talking about blackness, Africanism, and other controversial phenomena:
  1. Talk about it in ultra-respectful, politically correct language with a sense of modesty and seriousness.
  2. Just talk about it.
  3. Do not talk about it at all.
  (we chose door #2 in class)
• "He wanted me to fight him, he wanted me to see him with all of his imperfections, he did not want me to turn him into something I needed; into a kind of black Dalai Lama."
• Going to a hip-hop show is a unique, black experience whites should get involved in; more black people should go to the symphony.
• There is no American music without black music, yet black music is over and over again characterized as a kind of dark, jungle music--corrosive, mad, rhythmic--capable of turning people insane or corrupting their brain with excessive, orgiastic experience.
• Forrest Gump: The film springs from the American mythos that "The truest, most authentic, and most valuable aspect of the American psyche, the American soul, is to act with innocence and out of a pure desire to remain impervious to the distractions, the temptations, the sense of chaos, all the things, in other words, that constitute humanity."
• In correspondence about this blog post: "I like the Forrest Gump quote, but maybe you could set it up so that it's clear that I hate the movie"  
• "So you can put that under your hats."

Rant of an ulkomaalainen (foreigner)

Brad: What am I up to tonight? Well, I'm hitting the Finnish again...

Brad: You're what!? What tomfoolery is this!? Why play Sisyphus?

Brad: My dear one, you can and should be a Debbie Downer if you want to be--you have logic, the majority opinion, and inertia on your side. And me? Behind me are assembled 5.4 million snowpeople (including Santa Clause, trolls, and various humanoids), some 200,000 reindeer, and 187,888 lakes. But, alas, I am not equipped with rejoinders. I shelter behind the vintaged commandments: respect people and country, avail oneself of the uniqueness, when in Roma and whatnot.

Brad: Kind sir, I see. Perfectly reasonable! I respect your respect for the Finns. Those sweaty nudists, reveling in the phantasmagoria of the northern lights, drinking the drink, and skiing the freaky fluke of Europe. Why not go native?

Brad: Assuredly, yes, a staid people with eccentric habits. I'm keen to join the club, but even they discourage learning their hairy tongue.

Brad: Haha, hairy?

Brad: Dotted, you know, not bald, but covered by a spotty turf, a prickly rug. For instance, "Miten täällä on yht'äkkiä näin vitun suuri määrä ihmisiä?" The question is this: Am I, AbelarBrad, bold enough to hug the bizarre to the bosom, to subject myself to an obscure and thankless toil? What kind of insane person wouldn't? Balls to sanity, normality, nationalism, conformity, pragmatic or instrumental logic, cost-benefit analysis, inference-to-the-best-explanation, optimization, conventional wisdom, the profit motive. Balls to the whole kit and kaboodle. Balls to Mitt Romney. I'm taking lines from the illogicians. Now is the time to suck the shock elements up the nostrils to discordianize the chains of command in the brain, the 'mind-forg'd manacles' that Blake wrote about. A friend I met this weekend said it best, "Hay que aprovechar chingada mierda, hay que aprovechar" (OK, I added the green language). Cachai? Moreover, what's a greater despoil of time: to dedicate oneself to a moribund language without hope of using it let alone becoming its master, or, given just one chance in a lifetime, failing to affix the lips to the cultural fire hose? And what is culture anyway? Bingo!, you guessed it, it starts with "lang" and ends with "uage"! It's not enough to ski and sauna to my heart's content, I need the langue and parole, I need Finnish.
So that's my rant for the day.

Brad: All hail the sultan of Finnophilia, ye squanderer of resources, cultural omnivore, engrossed in the fallacy of the unbounded, cosmopole lost in orbit. Get a real job, you eternally adolescent hipster day-tripper, you millenial, and then come talk to me--in English, if you please, the language of the ungraspable past devouring the future, the language of the always.

Invincible in the wind

Invincible in the wind,
On the stairs, by the road,
Passerby glance,
Bewildered,
Can’t sense the afterglow.

Doughty lad towel clad,
True in tension, blood below,
Darkness embalms,
Aloneness,
Can’t see for the afterglow.

When the bus overtakes,
Diving whale, stabbing crow,
Hurricane tunnel,
Laughter,
Can’t strip the afterglow.

Neptune is naked

The fragrance of chlorine pervades the hall, reaching the front desk where you acquire the key to your second-floor "cabin." You're handed a towel, robe, some inexplicable variety of place-mat. And then you enter the hall. From above, one's tempted upon first impression to be reminded of a Sultan's harem: blue ceramic tiles, imperious pillars, small cafe tables, and naked bodies frolicking about in a large pool on the ground-floor. But there's no odalisque here, just naked men in the lanes, swimming vigorously one-after-the-other around in circles, like ducklings, pale asses cresting.

I'm at Yrjönkadun uimahallii, Helsinki, Finland, apparently the oldest swimming hall in the Nordic region. Built in 1928 in the classicism style (whatever that means), it was renovated in 1997-9 to retain its original appearance. In late 2001, bathing trunks became optional.
Nonetheless, what the deuce? Well, first of all, the exquisite classicist architecture is something in which to revel. Second, visiting the hall is about getting in touch with (figuratively speaking, c'mon now!) one's natural nude male species being. Third, there are off-the-chain saunas: steam, electric, and, best of all, wood-heated. And all for 6€ (student price), it cannot be beat!

The first surprise was that the female assistant led me to my "cabin," on the second floor, past naked or toweled men, overlooking the pool. It turns out mostly ladies, but some men, meander about cleaning, organizing, and serving beer and food to the patrons. It makes sense: the pool switches between male and female days, evincing something of a femme or feminist bias in that there are four of the latter to three of the former. I wonder if the male workers are here on lady days?

The "cabin" itself was like a curtained off corner in a hospital room, a curtained cubicle along the wall. It was outfitted with bed, locking drawer, and clothes hooks and coat-hanger. The second surprise was that the front-facing curtain was gossamer. In fact, this surprise was not a surprise, because the hall is or has been known for its gay activity. By publicizing the private, the see-through curtain maneuver stamps down on covert sex. All for the best, all for the best.

Naturally, the first thing was to take advantage of the sauna - steam then wood - and only after that, to go for a swim, and finally to repeat the double sauna in the same order to finish off. This procedure is time-tested and mother-approved. The steam sauna was crowded in the cheek-to-cheek kind of way where buns are not exactly touching, but a quantized distance is achieved in which an undeniable magnetic or gravitational sensation is palpable. The steam soothes the throat and relaxes the body but is not quite hot enough to bring about the indispensable sauna cook. Wood-heated wins the cake as my favored sauna because it gets maximally hot without what can be the harshness, or singing touch, of the regular electric.

After the initial steam soak and burn, I hit the pool. Finding myself stranded directly behind an exceptionally slow fellow, and therefore his buttocks and free-floating private bits, I deduced that I was in the turtle-speed lane and decided to hitch myself to the hare line. I found that more agreeable but slightly too fast, like a race, the Goldilocks just-rightness eluding me. But alas, beggars can't be choosers, and I settled in for a hard swim in order to earn my final steam and roast in the saunas.

All in all, it was an experience in the same way eating lutefisk is an experience (somebody make sure I do this before I leave the Nordic north). I do not risk controversy in proposing that Americans are more naked-averse than Finns (or Europeans more generally). I believe this is slightly unfortunate. At the same time, the Yrjönkadun uimahalli experience is foreign and slightly out-there even for most Finns. Nonetheless, it is a traditional, relaxing, social, and idiosyncratic past-time with a lot going for it only limited by vague awkwardness and Puritan prejudice.

Economic pessimism - a polemic

(Note: This article is in response to a preponderance of pessimism which culminated in the US some two weeks ago, but may be re-ignited by the budget super-committee's epic fail, and which is just reaching an apex in Europe.)

Nouriel Roubini was retroactively awarded the appellation "Dr. Doom" for purportedly predicting the global financial crisis (I attack Roubini and the author of this article, from the International Business Times, below). In 2010 he was 12th of 100 top global thinkers in a list by Foreign Policy. Other maverick economists also recognized, again retroactively, for anticipating the crisis are Robert Schiller and Raghuram Rajan.

While these thinkers deserve plaudits for their foresight and originality, and Roubini specifically impresses me with his erudition in this interview with the grill-master, Tom Keene, I think the wailing and gnashing-of-teeth have gotten out of control. Public discourse has jumped from excessive, pre-crisis optimism and faith in the market to apocalyptic dread. I, for one, am sick and tired of the crisis fetish.

Take Roubini's claim, from this interview with the Wall Street Journal, that "Karl Marx had it right. At some point capitalism can self-destroy itself. That's because you can not keep on shifting income from labor to capital without not having an excess capacity and a lack of aggregate demand. We thought that markets work. They are not working. What's individually rational ... is a self-destructive process."

Well, one should not reject academic-historical claims out of hand, but this is almost certainly going too far. What does it mean, first of all, that capitalism can self-destruct or that individual rationality is self-destructive?

Perhaps nothing, but in essence, it's an emergence claim. When phenomena at one level causally relate to those at another level, there is said to be a relationship of emergence. Economists typically aver a necessary relation of higher level effects to lower, individual level causes, which is explanatory reductionism. In this (cherry-picked) quote, Roubini assumes that causal individuals act rationally; behavioral economists, such as Schiller, would tend to disagree. Nonetheless, even in this simplified case, the aggregate, macro, system-level society-economy may crash. The emergent effect may be decidedly sub-optimal even given micro-level optimality conditions (generally guaranteed by perfect rationality among other things). Economists axiomatize rationality such that individuals maximize utility subject to preferences and a budget constraint. Alternatively, Ian Hacking (1983) holds that rationality does little explanatory work, but irrational does. For him, irrational means nutty, unsound, vacillating, unsure, lacking self-knowledge, and so on.

According to Hacking's definition, some people are irrational a lot of time time and all people are irrational at least some of the time. But it doesn't really matter, or so says Roubini. Even in the perfect-rationality limiting case, the economy can implode because it may have its own adaptive or path-dependent logic or be subject to radical and rapid changes, tipping dynamics, or system-internal defects, the seeds of its own destruction, à la Marx.

Now we're back on track with Roubini. He says that companies, during hard times, are incentivized to stockpile and reduce employee payouts, and their employees in turn are incentivized to stockpile and reduce consumption. A typical Keynesian stagnation spiral, but not what Marx was talking about at all. And Roubini claims that the stimulus was too meager, but that's what Keynesians always kvetch. Furthermore, just because the economy can self-destruct doesn't mean it will. And self-destruct? That means, what, exactly? Teleology has gone out of favor for good reason. For Marx, the end of the road is Utopia; for Dr. Doom, it's Dystopia. And for the world or humanity as a whole, perhaps it's self-annihilation. But even if that's the case, who really cares?

Suomi

So I live in Suomi, also known by its Swedish name, Finland. I get paid to study and research vector X of interrelated intellectualities. X? A farrago. I embrace obscurantism. There are many things which deserve to be buried and left unexhumed.

Specifically, I am studying the philosophy and methodology of social science. Most people have no idea what this means (perhaps I will attempt to explain in upcoming posts). I also twiddle from time to time with down-and-dirty methodology, such as Bayesian probability and statistics, Markov chains, and evolutionary game theory. Most people have no idea what these mean either. Nor should they. One doesn't need Bayes' rule to deduce that I am most likely to jettison or fail out of all of the above (this has already come to pass!). Above all, as a rule of thumb, one should avoid becoming impressed.

Nonetheless, I am grateful to everyone who has helped me. Ant hills are really cool.

Certainly my least noble but most eccentric Finland moment was attempting to cross the Vantaa river by bridge at Pikkukoski beach in Koskela. As banal as that sounds, in fact, I attempted to cross by hand: that is, hand over hand along one of the lateral I-beams (see image below for clarification). Queerly, the beam got progressively fatter towards the middle until it was truly obese, and my arms were swinging widely beyond the shoulders. I happened to attempt this feat the day before Halloween. The water met me chilly.

I am also guilty of turning the duvet cover on my bed into a pumpkin for the aforementioned October festivities. If I may say so myself, it turned out passably well. Pillows rounded me out. Some industrious friends cut out a face with black felt so I was a jack-o-lantern rather than merely an unmarked gourd. I set forth in company with Lyndsey Hoh and Lyndsey and John Helling. We made a jolly and bizarre quartet: pumpkin-face, the gnome, the mime, and the greaser. On our long haul from Koskela to a  party in city center, we witnessed not a single other costumed crusader.

Fortunately, I have multiple contingents of industrious friends. Some Sergeis - one Russian, one Ukrainian - were kind enough to host a kind of Russian night. It all started in the sauna, which is apparently Slavic as well as Suomalainen. However, we (John Helling and Felix Horns also being present) were to discover that the sauna rites vary from place to place. As it turned out, the Ruski had harvested birch branches from the motherland (St. Petersburg), which were liberally moistened during the first 45 minutes of sauna in the hot water bucket. Throwing this water onto the coals not only generated the familiar heat-sensation humidity but also, imbued by the birch, a lovely fragrance. Eventually the time came for ritualistic scourging: unleashed with the branches upon the back, buttocks, legs, and soles of the feet of a person laying stomach-down on the upper bench. One could call this sensation refreshing.

After cleaning up the carnage of birch leaves, we headed upstairs (nearly every Finnish apartment building has a sauna on site) for the second course: vodka. There were some other things thrown in, such as chicken legs and salami, potatoes, home-pickled cucumbers and mushrooms (thanks to the Russian Sergei's mother!), olives, raw garlic (actually I'm the only one that ate this) and, last but not least, chunky lard slices on bread. Salty and delicious!

These are highlights characteristic of a blessed existence here in the upper latitudes. Other nice things include but are not limited to: superlative office, bike, bucolic urbanity. About time Suomi is naked and unbounded.

Who for?

It's mine, not yours
For me, not you

Twas cathartic to be a creator
Demiurge without a care
To tryst my willing paramour
In my screen-illumined lair

I'd bang away frustrations
On her cacaphonic keys
Reveling in ministrations
Let me count the ways

Then at some point declined
Innocent purge and delight
Occluded by dross and grind
A tale as sad as trite

Thus underswept the symbiotic world
Connections strained and wavering
Lovers taken by virtiginous swirl
Separate currents braving

Mercurial winds dash and reunite
Old oscillation eternal
But it is possible to reignite
Disclaimed sentiments fraternal

Over this micro-land
I reign gatekeeper creator
But resides here more than planned
Life which transcends the mirror

I have returned to this earth so sere
To huddle with my entities
I hope the time is near
To reclaim the nursery

It's ours, not mine
For us, not me

Pop music

Of a sudden, I am strangely and ashamedly enamored with pop music: Rihanna. Katy Perry. Lupe Fiasco. Taio Cruz. etc. The culpable parties are "fireworks" and "exercise." Allow me to explain.

On the 4th, I watched New York City's Macy's-sponsored fireworks display on television, with my parents, in my basement. Evincing incredible cleverness, the producers jammed Katy's "Firework"  and Taio's "Dynamite" during the show. All in all, it was an impressive set-up. I immediately downloaded the songs.

Subsequently, they infiltrated my exercise mix and imposed hegemony. Over time, the population of nakedly poptastic singles procreated and diversified. Madonna is represented.

Most bizarrely, I find that I hanker for Rihanna's "Rude Boy," which is among the most sexually explicit and, to be fair, super-sexy tracks I know. The video may partly explain my interest.

This is a drastic reversal. See, I have a memory of this song. I was in a work van, listening to the radio, on my way to tutor at a downtown Syracuse city high school. The track came on and literally disturbed me, I had no idea who the artist was, and I recall later describing it to a friend in exasperation, disgust, and befuddlement. "This is what we've been reduced to!?" It was cataclysmic. And now it's on repeat during exercise sessions.

This interest in base pop music is paradigmatic of an overall shift towards consumptive anti-gourmandism. I'm embracing my intellectual roots: Jeremy Benthamite utilitarianism (cosmo-consumption) but with a bit of the garbage disposal thrown in. From a certain perspective, it will seem that all is going downhill, down with the Bradstreet.

Actually, what's transpiring is ancient. It's my life story. Octopus hands all on me, multidirectional tugging.

Lupe puts it proper: "One day we're listening to N.W.A, the next day we're listening to Ravi Shankar." One day, it's goat utilitarianism, the next, it's Cartesian dualism... well, not really, but y'all get the point.