Glenn,
I am not sufficiently stupid to claim that my new alarm clock is the
newtonian concept of gravity. But it is not enough for you to say that the
analogy I offer between the age of clocks argument and your age of gravity
argument is merely an analogy. Obviously it is an analogy. What you need
to show is exactly why it is a bad analogy. What you need to show is how
the two arguments differ in structure, not merely in the fact that one of
them deals with clocks while the other does nor. We will now take a look at
how well you have done this.
GLENN WROTE:
> In your intentionally bogus argument the premise includes two clocks, one new
> and one old. *Any* intervening statements, such that the clocks tell time and
> are in accord, are irrelevent because the conclustion that the "new alarm
> clock was built in 1850" is wrong for the trivial reason that it was new.
ELEPHANT:
It is not in the least bit trivial, given that this "trivial reason"
falsifies a general structure of argument which both your gravity claims and
my alarm-clock absurdity both participate in. The argument I offered is
certainly ridiculous, but not in the least bit "bogus". It is an exact
copy of the reasoning in your argument about gravity, transfered to clocks:
and thus entirely to the point on the question of whether your argument
makes the least bit of sense. You seem to think that because your
conclusion about gravity is asserted by you to be true, this means you can
ignore all criticism of the means by which this "true" concluson is arrived
at. This is the same as saying "the conclusion is true, therefore the
argument must be true". That claim is a false one, as evidenced by this
ridiculous argument which offers itself as an analogy:
Apples are apples
Computers are computers
Therefore
4+4=8
The conclusion is in this case correct. But the argument is a pile of pants
(irrelevant, indeed). I agree that the alarm-clock argument is also a pile
of pants - and indeed, yes, I designed it to be such. But it was intended
to provoke you into explaining how your argument about gravity differed from
my primia facie application of it to alarm clocks. And this you have not
done. A second time:
ELEPHANT:
I've recently bought an alarm clock.
It tells the time.
I have a french clock from 1850 that I inherited from my grandmother
It also tells the time.
The old clock and the new clock are (nearly) in accord.
Therefore:
My new alarm clock was built in 1850.
Not a very good argument, I think you will agree. But exactly your
argument:
The old galaxy and newtonian Gravity are (nearly) in accord.
Therefore:
My newtonian gravity was buit when the galaxy was built.
Codswallop you will agree - and naturally what you won't agree to is my
characterisation of your argument. Well, put me right. Please put me right.
GLENN:
> 1) the old and new clocks are in accord, or nearly so, only after you set the
> clocks to the same time and wind them. One will wind down and stop before the
> other one does, at which time they are no longer in accord. There is no
> similar notion to setting the old gravity with the new gravity for them to be
> in accord, nor is there a notion of gravity winding down.
ELEPHANT:
That is just to say that a clock is a clock and the universe is the
universe. So what? What I ask you to do is to say something about the
structure of the argument that I have applied to both cases.
GLENN:
> 2) the accordance in your argument was direct and between two like things
> (clocks). The accordance in my argument was indirect and between three unlike
> things (gravity, the law of gravity, and the shape of a galaxy).
ELEPHANT:
Ok. Fine. Well, so what? To explain, perhaps you'd like to say a bit
more about what "indirect" means in this context, and how gravity itself is
a separate thing from the law of gravity. That might be to the point -
particularly given that the separate existence of this "gravity itself"
beyond the discovered "law of gravity" is precisely what your excursion into
the age of galaxies was supposed to prove. So, now you acknowledge that the
argument for that conclusion only works if we start out by assuming the
conclusion as a premise. Not a satisfactory state of affairs for an
argument - although, I'll grant you, you may have intended something more in
the nature of an intuition pump. An intuition pump is like an argument on
the outside: that is to say, lots of premises, the appearance of logical
reasoning, following rules, a conclusion. The difference is one of
function. With an argument, intuitions go in (in the form of premises), and
conclusions (different ones) come out. With an intuition pump, you put
intuitions in and get intuitions out. Usually the same ones, curiously
enough. But atleast they circulate, get out and about a bit.
GLENN:
> 3) your argument shows the folly in always believing that two things that were
> created both have to be created at the same time. My argument shows that two
> things thought to be created at different times are really one thing that was
> discovered.
ELEPHANT:
Nowhere in my application of your gravity argument to clocks have I or the
clocks argument itself *assumed* that "always" two things that were created
have to be created at the same time - rather this is one of the absurdities
which appears to *follow* in the specific case of the two clocks assuming
the validity of your argument structure.
And as to the difference that the one argument supposes two distinct things
while the other supposes one, fine. How do you like this argument:
I've recently bought an alarm clock.
It tells the time.
I have a french clock from 1850 that I inherited from my grandmother
It also tells the time.
The old clock and the new clock are (nearly) in accord.
Therefore:
My new alarm clock is the *very same clock as* my grandmother's clock built
in 1850.
I think that takes care of that variation.
GLENN:
> 4) your argument shows that two clocks are in accord in the present. You
> didn't show that the clock, as it ran in 1850, was in accord with the one you
> recently purchased. My argument effectively sees back in time and makes a case
> that gravity was behaving in accord with Newton's law at different junctures
> in history.
ELEPHANT:
No. You didn't simply claim that the universe was behaving "in accord with"
gravity before newton - because that's a claim I have absolutely no trouble
with. What you argued was that "gravity itself" existed before newton. Now
that's the claim that I've been arguing against, and the clock business is
an argument against your support for that claim. In fact, the preamble to
that clock argument was the really important part of my last posting on this
thread - the bit where I argued that it didn't make sense to talk about
observing gravity itself in the ancient galaxy, but rather more sense to
talk of observing that an ancient galaxy that was *in accord with* gravity.
You seem to have agreed to that bit, given your interest in the clocks
business and your use of my vocab ("accord"). I have to say that, from your
point of view, this is a mistake. If you are to challenge my argument
anywhere, it would have to be at this point. The appositeness of the clocks
analogy follows directly on the assumption that what we observe is
concordance with gravity. Which you appear to accept. You therefore have
absolutely no justification for your thought that observing concordance
between clocks is any different from obseving concordance between the world
and a physical law.
I'm now looking forward to comments directed at the validity of the clock
argument structure as a picture of the structure of your gravity argument,
rather than comments about the shockingly obvious differences between clocks
and gravity.
Yours trully,
Ticking Elephant
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