Sorts of mistakes

For one reason or another I find the following example by Elisabeth Anscombe in her Intention intriguing. It’s about a shopper and a detective. Maybe, you are also fascinated by it, so here it is: A man is going around with a shopping list that says what he is to buy. A detective follows him and makes a list of what the man buys. I think that we can say at least three things about this example, which are related, though.
1) Following Anscombe, we can say that the shopper’s list describes his intention, or alternatively it is an order that the shopper executes (maybe his wife made the list). Even if the list is an order, we can see it as an expression of the shopper’s intention, for it describes what he wants to do when going around. However, the detective observes the shopper, so for him his list is a record of what the shopper has bought. We can say that the shopper’s list contains his first-person perspective on what he is doing, while the detective’s list describes what the shopper does from a third-person perspective.
2) Let’s suppose now that the shopper or the detective makes a mistake. By mistake the shopper buys butter instead of margarine, as his list says. Or by mistake the detective notes down “butter”, for the shopper bought margarine. What is the difference? Since the shopper’s list is meant to direct his actions, he made a mistake in performance by buying butter, since he didn’t perform what he intended to do. However, the detective’s list is meant to record what the shopper did and by writing “butter” instead of “margarine” his list has become inaccurate. Here we see two sorts of mistakes that you can make when acting: mistakes in performance and inaccuracy. In the first case the list is good but the mistake is in what the shopper did. In the second case, the list is not true to the facts.
3) However, when we look at the shopper only, there are more kinds of mistakes he can make, so that his list and what he buys diverge:
a) There is a mistake in the construction of the list: One or more items on the list cannot be bought in the town where the man is shopping. They don’t sell cowpeas there, for instance. Here we have another sort of mistake you can make: A mistake of judgment
b) The shopper changes his mind because in the end he thinks that butter tastes better than margarine in the cake he is going to bake. Here there is no mistake in the proper sense, except then that shopper behaved against what the list said to buy or that he misjudged what should be on the list. Actually, this is also a kind of mistake of judgment
c) The shopper simply doesn’t buy what is on the list, for instance because he forgot to buy an item. We can call this mistake “carelessness”, or what you like. 

Especially the mistakes given under 3) are not unrelated to what I wrote in my blog last week, as Schwenkler makes clear. Let’s look at the ways a person can fail to perform an intention:
- A person fails to act because s/he cannot act (3a). This is in line with the soldier in my example last week who couldn’t clench his teeth because his teeth were false.
- A person changes his/her intention or expresses an opposing intention (3b). This is in line with a soldier who refuses to obey an order or a commander who gives an opposing order.
- A person simply fails or is failing to act (3c). This is in line with a soldier who fails to act as ordered. 

There are mistakes and mistakes, but making mistakes is what humans do, anyway. 

Sources
- G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976 (my edition); § 32.
- Schwenkler, John, Anscombe’s Intention. A Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp. 111-114.

Contradiction and contrariety

It seems so simple: The opposite of yes is no; of doing is not doing. However, I came to realize that matters are more complicated when I recently reread Elisabeth Anscombe’s Intention and read John Schwenkler’s guide to this book. Anscombe’s Intention is one of the most influential books in analytical philosophy. I have bought it already many years ago. It’s a little book with less than hundred pages but it is full of ideas. Anscombe was a student and friend of Wittgenstein and so it is not surprising that Intention has been written in a Wittgensteinian style. Anscombe was also one of the executors of Wittgenstein’s literary legacy. Enough reason to reread Anscombe’s book. It’s a pity that in my blogs I can discuss only some aspects. Here I want to write about contradiction and contrariety.
Take this example, also used by Anscombe: A man is operating a pump in order to replenish the water supply of a house. What is the opposite of this action? The first answer that probably comes to your mind is not pumping: The man does nothing. However, suppose that there is a hole in the pipe leading from the pump to the house. The man doesn’t know and keeps pumping (but so doing he isn’t replenishing the water supply). Can we say then that this is the same as doing nothing (not pumping) and that pumping without the intended effect is opposite to pumping with the intended effect? I think that this cannot be true.
Take now this example used by Anscombe, which she had read in a newspaper: “A certain soldier was court-martialled (or something of the sort) for insubordinate behaviour. He had, it seems, been ‘abusive’ at his medical examination. The examining doctor had told him to clench his teeth; whereupon he took them out, handed them to the doctor and said ‘You clench them’.” (§ 31). The soldier was court-martialled because he had refused an order: Not executing the order is considered here the same as refusing the order. But what if it is impossible to do what you are ordered to do? Apparently the soldier had thought (and in a sense he was right): “My teeth are false, so I cannot clench my teeth, for I don’t have them anymore.” Looking that way at the order to clench your teeth, not doing so is opposite to the order in a different way than refusing the order is.
Discussing these examples by Anscombe Schwenkler – following Aristotle – distinguished two kinds of opposition between statements: contradictories and contraries. “In Aristotelian logic”, so Schwenkler, “a pair of statements are contradictories just in case the truth of each entails the falsehood of the other and vice versa; and contraries just in case the truth of each entails the falsehood of the other, but the falsehood of neither entails the other’s truth.” ... A “contradictory pair says precisely that the other member is false. But Aristotelian contraries are opposed as well, as each member of a pair of contraries is such that its truth would entail the falsity of the other …” (pp. 109-110; italics Schwenkler), but I want to add: “though not the other way round”.
With the help of the distinction contradictory-contrary we can understand what went wrong in calling both not pumping and pumping without the intended effect as opposite to pumping, or, taking the other example, why court-martialling the soldier because he should have refused an order resulted from a misunderstanding. If the pumping man says “I am replenishing the house water supply” and you say “You aren’t, but I am going to repair the hole in the pipe”, we have a contradiction. However, if you say, “You aren’t for there is a leak in the pipe”, we have a contrariety. And the same so for the case of the soldier. The contradiction of “Clench your teeth” is “Do not clench your teeth”. That’s what the doctor thought and so he thought that the soldier simply refused to clench his teeth, and that he refused an order. However, the soldier thought: “I cannot clench them. I have no teeth. My teeth are false”, and not clenching his teeth for this reason is not contradictory but contrary to the doctor’s order. You cannot refuse what you cannot do. See here the reason of the misunderstanding between the doctor and the soldier that made that the latter was court-martialled.
There are many cases where the distinction contradiction-contrariety can be relevant. One such a case where the distinction can be meaningfully applied is telling the truth versus lying versus being silent. Another case is doing versus allowing versus doing nothing. 

Sources
- G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1976 (my edition).
- Schwenkler, John, Anscombe’s Intention. A Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

When prophecy fails: Trump

When I saw how the American President Trump reacted to his defeat in the presidential elections I had to think of the psychological theory of cognitive dissonance. I have written here already more about it, although it was already eight years ago, but, in a nutshell, the theory says that we try to bring our beliefs into line with the facts, when we notice that the facts are not what we originally believed. We call this cognitive dissonance reduction: The gap between our beliefs and the facts is reduced, if not closed.
Cognitive dissonance reduction is a normal and daily phenomenon. You want to buy a certain tool. You think that it costs € 25,-, but in the shop you see that it costs € 40,-. You think that you were wrong and that € 40,- is the real price. Then the gap between belief and fact is closed: your belief is adapted to the fact. However, it is also possible that you think that the shop owner made a mistake or that you can get a reduction of € 15,-. You ask the shop owner, and if it appears that you are right, and if the shop owner makes a new price tag, the fact is adapted to your belief. Now the gap is closed.
Such belief-fact dissonances and then adaptions are normal in life and usually the adaptions are rational. What the belief is and what the fact is is clear, and the one is adapted to the other in a rational manner. However, often it doesn’t happen this way. People don’t always want to give up their beliefs but the facts are adapted, even if it is clear that facts are correct. For example, a smoker hears about the bad effects of smoking and he quits. Nevertheless, it is also possible that he doesn’t believe that smoking is bad for your health and that he thinks that the positive effects prevail, for instance because his grandfather, who was a fervent smoker, has become hundred years old, or which other positive reasons for smoking may come to his mind. Such an irrational adaptation of the facts to the beliefs happens so often and is so striking that the theory of cognitive dissonance reduction has become almost synonymous with a theory that explains this irrationality.
The Leon Festinger et al. famously described in When Prophecy Fails an extreme case of cognitive dissonance reduction in which the gap was closed in a remarkably non-rational way: Members of a small sect thought that the world would be destructed by a flood but that only they would be saved (by a UFO). The believers came together at the pre-determined time and place and waited for the UFO that would save them but nothing happened. Then they thought that there must be a reason that nothing happened, and they came to the conclusion that the world would get a second chance, and they adapted their behaviour by trying to convert the world to their belief so that the world will be saved as yet. In this case the cognitive dissonance is reduced by giving the facts a new interpretation (or the facts are changed, if you like), although it would have been rational to give up the belief.
Such an extreme irrational adaption of the facts if a belief fails especially happens if
1) The belief is a very deep conviction.
2) The belief is supported by relevant actions.
3) Events can unequivocally refute the belief.
4) Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and is recognized by the believer.
5) The individual believer is supported by others.
And that’s what we see in the case of Trump’s defeat. Of course, it’s normal that in elections candidates say that they’ll win, but (1) from everything that Trump said and did during his campaign and after the elections it is clear that he didn’t only say that he would win, but that he was 100% convinced that he would win. (2) Moreover, Trump did everything he could to win the elections and (5) there were many people who actively supported him. He would (3,4) have failed if the election result showed that his opponent would be the winner.
Normally participants in elections know that it is possible that they will not win, even if the pre-election polls say that they will. In the end, the voters determine who wins and not the convictions of the candidates. A candidate who has lost may be disappointed but s/he knows that losing is in the game and it’s usual to congratulate your winning opponent. The facts are what the facts are.
Not so for Pres. Trump. Because the facts were not in accordance with his conviction that he would win, only one thing could be the case: Not his conviction was false but there was something wrong with the facts: The facts (the elections results) were fake and had been falsified, even though there was not any reason to think so. Who were the frauds? His opponent and his supporters, of course: the Democrats. Trump had been cheated. The votes (in some states) must be recount, so he says. Of course, it’s not unusual to ask for a recount in case of a close election result; you never know whether mistakes have been made. But that’s not the essence in Trump’s case. For him it’s so that if the facts don’t match his conviction, the gap between them must be closed by changing the facts and not be changing the conviction. Only then the cognitive dissonance will have been reduced for him.

Sources

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails and my blogs dated 31 December 2012 and 15 December 2014.

Man, Nature and Pandemics

In my blog last week I have explained that the coronavirus and the present pandemic are not man-made but have a natural origin. Pandemics are of all times and the present pandemic is no exception. Nevertheless this pandemic is man-made in a sense. No, I’ll not go back on what I wrote last week. But I think that man is responsible and increasingly responsible for the circumstances that can make diseases and pandemics happen. By destroying nature and by causing air pollution and global warming, man has changed – no has impoverished – the natural environment that way that viruses and bacteria have got more chance to spread, leading to local and global epidemics. To mention a few recent infectious diseases that have their origins in the impact of man on nature and in a too narrow relationship between man and nature and that have become epidemic, if not pandemic: Ebola, bird flu, Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), Rift Valley fever, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), the West Nile virus and the Zika virus. They have all come from animals and crossed from animals to humans. Here are a few factors that make that infectious diseases can easier cross from animals to man than they did in the past. In one way or another these factors are caused by man:
- Decreasing biodiversity, especially a decreasing number of animal species.
- Destruction of nature, like wild fires ravaging rainforests. For instance, in Brazil malaria gets a chance where rainforest has been burnt down.
- Destruction of their natural habitats makes wild animals looking for places to live nearer to humans. Farming, mining and housing, which as such already lead to destruction of nature, bring men from their side in closer contacts with wild animals.
- Eating bush meat. This probably made that the coronavirus crossed over to humans.
- Intensively animal keeping for meat consumption, for the dairy industry, for animal products, etc. Moreover, animals kept for these reasons must be traded, and animal transport and animal markets are known for their contribution to the spread of infectious diseases.
- Global warming, which changes the habitats of animals and makes them more vulnerable to infectious diseases.
These are a few factors that affect the spread of viruses and make it more likely that they jump from animals to humans. According to Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, our immediate priority is to protect people from the coronavirus and prevent its spread. “But our long-term response must tackle habitat and biodiversity loss,” so Andersen. “Never before have so many opportunities existed for pathogens to pass from wild and domestic animals to people,” she told the Guardian, explaining that 75% of all emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife.
One of the problems to prevent the origin and spread of viruses is in the mind of man. Man sees man as a civilized being distinct form nature. However, this is quite Cartesian, with Descartes’s distinction mind versus body replaced by the distinction man versus nature. But man and nature are not distinct. The idea that man and nature are distinct “gives humans a central role in life on Earth, and with that, the possibility to control this life. The corona crisis provides insight into the flaws of these apparent contradictions,” so the website of Dasym. And then: “Even before modern man, there was no harmonious natural order, the earth has always been an inhospitable place where live organisms are continuously exposed to disease, parasites and natural disasters. But modern man mostly considered himself to be separate from nature and romanticized living in harmony with it.” Man must realize that man must not live against nature but with nature, for man belongs to nature and is nothing but an animal of a kind, as I explained in my last blog. Man is not simply a civilized being but a civilized animal. Man is nature. Only if we realize this and live according to this, we can possibly prevent new pandemics. 

Sources
- Benton, Tim; Richard Anthony Kok; Gitika Bhardwaj, “Coronavirus Crisis: Exploring the Human Impact on Nature”, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2020/05/coronavirus-crisis-exploring-human-impact-nature
- Carrington, Damian, “Coronavirus: ‘Nature is sending us a message’, says UN environment chief”, 25 Mar 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/25/coronavirus-nature-is-sending-us-a-message-says-un-environment-chief
- Dasym, “Our post-corona relationship to nature”, 23 April , 2020, https://www.dasym.com/our-post-corona-relationship-to-nature/
- Taylor, L.H.; S.H. Latham; M.E. Woolhouse, “Risk factors for human disease emergence”, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11516376/