Philosophy Test 2 questions

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Philosophy Test 2 questions Week 6 Class 1 1. In the sense in which Pritchard uses the expression, what does it mean to reason inductively? “arriving at a general conclusion about either all members of a group (or all events including future events) based on a limited sample size. (Sometimes this is referred to as ‘enumerative induction.’) 2. Why does it seems as though induction is a source of knowledge? Give examples. So the basic idea here is that we observe a finite number of things, but then make a leap and form a universal belief – a belief about all of the members of a kind. Or, we may look only at a finite number of past events and then form a belief about future events. In both of these cases, we are claiming to have knowledge of things that we have not observed (either every single member of a kind, or future events) based on a limited number of things that we have observed. 1) (‘some to all’) Every observed emu has been flightless (i.e., every emu in our sample size has been flightless). Therefore, all Emus are flightless. (It would seem that we know that proposition to be true, even though our evidence is limited and we have not actually observed every single Emu.) 2) (‘past to future’) Every time I’ve let go of this marker, it has fallen to the ground. Thus, in the future, when I let go of this marker, it will fall to the ground. (It would seem that we know that proposition to be true, even though we haven’t actually observed that marker yet). 3. Why does Hume think that induction gives no justification whatsoever for our beliefs (and thus cannot be a source of knowledge)? The problem is that there is a powerful philosophical argument that shows that induction cannot possibly be a source of knowledge because beliefs that are justified with induction are not justified at all. Not even a little. Premise 1: My marker always fell to the ground in the past. Conclusion: Thus, when I let go of this marker in the future, it will fall to the ground. But this is incomplete it needs a second premise; P2 the future will resemble the past Big problem: P2 and C are identical. The argument is circular. It’s question begging. And for that reason it fails.
P1 In the past, on any given day, what we, on that day, called ‘the past’ ended up resembling what we, on that day, called ‘the future’ P2 The future will resemble the past. C Thus, the future will resemble the past. 4. What is Popper’s response to the problem of induction? How does the notion of ‘falsification’ play a role in Popper’s story? What’s wrong with Popper’s respond to the problem of induction? True, induction doesn’t produce knowledge, but not to worry – we don't make inductive inferences all that much anyway. Science, for example, does not advance by induction but rather by falsification. And the knowledge that things are false (which was not, as it happens, arrived at through induction) is real genuine knowledge. So let’s at least be happy that we have that. All is not lost. Problem? Popper essentially admits that we cannot arrive at knowledge through induction. So that’s not much of a solution, is it? All is not lost, true, but we’ve still lost a lot. 5. What is Reichenbach’s response to the problem of induction? What’s wrong with it? Hume is right, there is no justification for induction, but it is still rational to believe the things that we arrive at through induction. Are we justified in believing that this marker will fall? Nope. Is it rational to believe so anyway? Yep. We ought to believe that the marker will fall even though there is no actual evidence for the conclusion that it will fall. What makes it rational to believe in induction? Reichenbach answers if we don’t use induction, we won’t end up with any true beliefs at all (or very few in any case) but induction will give us at least some true beliefs – quite a few, in fact. Problem? Yes it’s true that it’s rational to have some beliefs as opposed to no beliefs. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is why it’s rational to form beliefs according to induction instead of forming your beliefs according to some other method. Reichebach’s claim is that induction is more likely to give you true beliefs than other methods of belief-formation, then presumably, he would have to give an inductive justification for that, and point out that induction has always worked in the past. 7. How is Reichenbach’s solution (at least on the surface) similar to Pascal’s wager? How is it different from Pascal’s Wager?
This might sound like Pascal’s wager (the claim that you ought to believe in God, not because there’s evidence, but rather because if you don’t believe in God, and you’re wrong, you’ll end up in hell) , but there is a key difference. Reichenbach is actually trying to get you to have a true belief, whereas Pascal is just trying to make sure you don’t end up in hell. 8. What is the singularity? A future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed. 9. When will the singularity happen? 2045. 1O. Why will the singularity happen so soon? Why so soon? The Law of Accelerating Returns (exponential growth). Important things change – become more complex, (technology, evolution etc.) But the rate at which they change accelerates over time. When growth is exponential, there comes a point, ‘the knee of the curve’ at which the growth is noticeable and then explodes soon after. We are just at the knee of the curve now, where we can notice technological growth. The explosion of technology is soon to follow. 11. What is ‘exponential growth’ (in the sense in which Kurzweil is interested). Give examples. Gary Kasparov, “who scorned the pathetic state of computer chess in 1992. Yet the relentless doubling of computer power every year enabled a computer to defeat him only five years later.” Watson won at Jeopardy, Your iPhone can have a conversation. All of this is ‘due to’ Moore’s Law - an exponential law - (i.e., number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months) 12 . Describe any two of Kurzweil’s six epochs. Physics and Chemistry A few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, hydrogen and helium atoms (composed of familiar sub-atomic particles) condensed out of a soup of energy. Several millions of years later the other elements in the periodic table were formed inside of stars. The stage was set for increasing levels of order and complexity. Biology and DNA. About four billion years ago (at least here on earth) carbon-based molecules appears to have self-organized, forming incredibly intricate information
storage devices – DNA being the most well known example. Once these molecules existed, the stage was set for increasing levels of order and complexity in the biological world. Brains. The brain is more flexible and much faster at making changes than the purely unconscious and mechanistic force of evolution. Animals act in accordance with desires and goals, and we use our intelligence to change the world, and quickly. Technology – one of the great accomplishments of the human brain (and body). We build tools, and the rate at which those tools improve over time (these days), and the transformative power that they have is unprecedented. Kurzweil says that the rate of milestones traced through these first four epochs follow a classic exponential growth curve. He says: “A billion years ago, not much happened over the course of even one million years. But a quarter- million years ago epochal events such as the evolution of our species occurred in time frames of just one hundred thousand years. In technology, if we go back fifty thousand years, not much happened over a one-thousand-year period. But in the recent past, we see new paradigms, such as the World Wide Web, progress from inception to mass adoption...) within only a decade.” The Merger of Human Technology with Human Intelligence. Here is where the singularity will begin. We become part computer. And computers become part person they become intelligent, and self-aware. Just like us. The Universe Wakes Up. “In the aftermath of the Singularity, intelligence, derived from its biological origins in human brains and its technological origins in human ingenuity, will begin to saturate the matter and energy in its midst.” 13. What exactly does Kurzweil mean when he talks about the universe waking up? He means we will reach out and colonise the universe with computer substrates. It will seem as if the entire universe is turning online and becoming a giant supercomputer intelligence. 14. What is a positive feedback cycle, and why is it an important part of the singularity? A positive feedback cycle occurs in nature when the product of a reaction leads to an increase in that reaction, enhance or amplify changes. It is important to the singularity because we are going at an exponential rate of technological evolution and each product, or in this case epoch, leads to a increase in that reaction, causing exponential growth like Kurzweil claims.
15. How does Kurzweil claim to know that the singularity is near? In other words, what is his justification? He claims to know that is it near because of this argument of exponential growth and we are at the ‘knee’ of the curve, since we are in a very evolutionized state of technology, AI is becoming more prevalent, as well as virtual reality. So, the explosion of technology is soon to follow. 16. What does it mean to say that futurism isn’t a body of knowledge? Why does Pigliucci think that Kurzweil specifically has shown that he does not have the ability to know the future? How might Kurzweil respond to Pigliucci's complaints? It means that futurists often get many things wrong when they make prediction, just like Kurzweil has done here, his past predictions have been frequently wrong. And it is not the same as history, you cannot make solid justified claims about what the future will be like. 17. Why does Pigliucci claim that the law of accelerating returns is mysterious? Kurzweil claims that exponential growth has been going on for billions of years, but here’ the thing: there’s no connection between technology and what came before it (e.g., evolution) they operate in radically different ways, and are driven by radically different engines, and it would be truly baffling – truly bizarre, if they were somehow continuations of the same thing. How could that be? 18. Why does Pigliucci claim that what counts as a ‘key event’ or ‘important event’ is arbitrary? What is his reason for claiming this, and what’s the upshot – what is Pigliucci trying to prove by making that point? How does Kurzweil respond to this charge? There’s no objective measurement of ‘important historical events,’ and so your graph of ‘key historical events’ can look however you want it to look, depending on what events you choose (arbitrarily) to pick out. But if that’s correct, then the graph doesn't prove anything – the graph is not accurate. An accurate graph plots the relationship between all the data that exists out there in the world, not the relationship between the data that you selected on the basis of a prior desire for your graph to look a particular way.
Kurzweil responds by saying he used an objective measure to pick the key events: Encyclopedia Britannica, Sagan’s cosmic calendar, and the museum of natural history 19. What is the ‘Pigliucci paradox?’ What is it meant to show? If there is intelligent life elsewhere in the cosmos, they should have gone through the singularity long ago. But it is obvious that no one else has gone through the singularity yet. And that means that we won’t. Ever (let alone in in a few decades). Week 6 Class 2 1. What is the doomsday argument? How is either the raffle argument or the ‘hat argument’ supposed to make the doomsday argument intuitive? The doomsday argument is a claim that mathematical formula can predict how long the human race will survive. It gives us the odds that our species will come to an end in the next 760 years. So, it claims that humanity isn’t going to last must longer and that you can justify that belief with nothing more than the simple fact that you exist right now, at this particular point in history. You enter a raffle and win. What’s more likely, that one million people entered, or that virtually no one, say, 15 people, entered? The latter is more likely. We are much more likely to be the winner if there are fewer entries. As such, from the mere fact that we won, it’s reasonable to conclude that few people entered. So, since we are the lucky winners to exist, we must conclude that we picked from the low hat, or the one where only 500 billion people are going to exist, so we are close to the end. 2. What are three objections to the doomsday argument, and three responses to those objections? OBJECTION 1: 100 000 years ago, the first humans could have used the doomsday argument to conclude that humanity would have been 95% likely to go extinct within a few thousand years, but they would have been wrong to do so. Response: Given the information that early humans had, they were not wrong to conclude that humanity had a 95% chance of going extinct within a few thousand
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