tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post8640499300260196809..comments2023-01-24T10:06:57.212-08:00Comments on (Blog&~Blog): Follow-up: "Interesting but Inconsistent?"Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-21543058804637452792008-01-29T10:39:00.000-08:002008-01-29T10:39:00.000-08:00"a theory that, although inconsistent and hence ne..."a theory that, although inconsistent and hence necessarily false, possesses features that, if it weren't inconsistent, would make it rational to believe that it was true?"<BR/><BR/>sure, why not?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08473707113508018304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-9039144736456428892008-01-28T10:45:00.000-08:002008-01-28T10:45:00.000-08:00Daniel,I think you're probably basically right, bu...Daniel,<BR/><BR/>I think you're probably basically right, but given that some very bright people situate themselves on the "I'm not a dialetheist, but..." second level, I'm willing to grant that its possible that something less muddled than it initially looks like is going on here.<BR/><BR/>...but ultimately, yeah, I'm agreeing with Priest here that once you've started to climb the paraconsistent-commitment ladder, it might make be harder than it looks to justify the decision to stop climbing halfway up.<BR/><BR/>Colin,<BR/><BR/>Well, sure, but what you're listing off there are theoretical virtues that we use to choose between theories that we think might be true, that in fact are each supported by enough evidence to make it otherwise reasonable to believe that they are true. If you are a non-dialetheist paraconsistentist, way down there on the 2nd Grade, who rejects the possibility of true contradictions and so doesn't think it would be rational to actually believe these theories to be true, what does the interesting-ness then amount to? Is it just a way of saying something like "a theory that, although inconsistent and hence necessarily false, possesses features that, if it weren't inconsistent, would make it rational to believe that it was true?"Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06702722560438833244noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-50650204670995817572008-01-28T06:27:00.000-08:002008-01-28T06:27:00.000-08:00I'd assume that 'interesting' in this sense can be...I'd assume that 'interesting' in this sense can be given whatever reading you'd prefer from standard variations on this theme in the theory-choice literative predominant in phil. science. For instance, you might think there are a bunch of markers of 'interestingness' such that...<BR/><BR/>1) theory A is more interesting than theory B if it has greater predictive power<BR/><BR/>2) theory A is more interesting than theory B if it is less <EM>ad hoc</EM><BR/><BR/>3) theory A is more interesting than theory B if it explains the target phenomenon better<BR/><BR/>4) theory A is more interesting than theory B if it is simpler<BR/><BR/>5) theory A is more interesting than theory B if it is more ontologically parsimonious<BR/><BR/>etc...Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08473707113508018304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2631035637795172582.post-18988914268268095352008-01-27T13:54:00.000-08:002008-01-27T13:54:00.000-08:00I suspect that "interesting but inconsistent", in ...I suspect that "interesting but inconsistent", in the second grade of paraconsistent involvement, means the same as it does in the third grade -- with the caveat that at the second grade, one says to oneself "But <I>of course</I> an inconsistent theory <I>can't</I> be true!" And so when all of your evidence would lead you to believe that some particular inconsistent theory is true (or at least is a plausible candidate for truth, deserving of further consideration), the second-grade paraconsistentist backs down, and assumes that there has been a mistake somewhere along the line. The inconsistent theory cannot become a <I>real</I> candidate for truth -- it's inconsistent, and that is <I>bad</I>.<BR/><BR/>Maybe "interesting" means the theory can be a place to build off of -- perhaps the theories which the second-grade paraconsistentist considers as plausible candidates for truth are just the various ways of making the inconsistent theory consistent. And what makes him a paraconsistentist is just that he doesn't think the inconsistent theory is <I>crazy</I>; he doesn't think it logically entails that Graham Priest is a fried egg, or that the moon is made of cheese. He thinks the theory is false, because inconsistent, but he doesn't think it's trivial (=entails everything). (I am not sure if this could ever be a difference which makes a difference -- a partisan of classical logic could also find an inconsistent theory "interesting" in that he tries to find a true theory by making the inconsistent theory consistent. The question of whether the inconsistent theory was trivial (in addition to false) seems to matter not a whit, if this is what "interesting" means. And it seems doubtful that anyone could disagree that there are "interesting and inconsistent" theories in this sense -- Russell's set theory before he discovered the paradox which bears his name, for instance. But then the difference between the second-grade paraconsistentist and the partisan of classical logic is just whether or not we want to <I>call</I> such a theory trivial -- they both <I>handle</I> the theory the same way, in trying to modify it.)<BR/><BR/>Hrmph. Now I am not sure what the difference between first- and second-grade paraconsistentists can amount to. If one is a first-grade paraconsistentist, then one won't claim that a theory is trivial just because it's inconsistent. (You're right to claim that "non-trivial" in this context adds bupkis. If one doesn't hold that there are non-trivial inconsistent theories, then one holds Explosion valid.) Presumably even non-paraconsistentists hold that there are inconsistent theories. So it looks like the only difference between the first-grade paraconsistentist and the second-grade paraconsistentist is that the second-grade paraconsistentist thinks some of these theories are "interesting" (but they can't be true, or else the second grade would collapse into the third grade).<BR/><BR/>So, I seem to have covered the same ground which you did in your post, in attempting to answer it: What the devil can "interesting" mean here? (I swear, I thought I had an answer at the start of this comment!). Hrmph again.<BR/><BR/>This strikes me as perhaps <I>ad hoc</I>, but maybe the answer is that the second grade in Priest's hierarchy just <I>is</I> a really unstable position -- Priest views the landscape from the position of his fourth-grade dialetheism, and maybe he really did describe the lower-grade paraconsistent positions as being a muddled mess. It would not surprise me to find that Priest views the "I'm not a dialetheist, but..." crowd with mild disdain -- from his dialetheic vantage point, they are <I>wafflers</I> in the battle against the (so-called) "law of noncontradiction." And so the earlier grades of paraconsistency are <I>supposed to be</I> bad positions. This would leave mysterious what the "I'm not a dialetheist, but..." crowd take themselves to hold, but I think they are mysterious. I can make sense of the dialetheists, and I can make sense of just thinking Explosion is a violation of relevance, but whatever's supposed to lie between those positions is ??? to me.Daniel Lindquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05443116324301716578noreply@blogger.com