What is a Trump?

Posted on May 22, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy | 15 Comments

I wanted to respond to Brandon’s comments about trumps. He wrote

[W]hat I claim is that there has been no notion of trump put forward so far in this discussion that lays down coherently and consistently any [difference between very strong authority and a trump]


I’m not sure this is correct. I think I’ve outlined several explanations of a trump. The main one being whether the evidence as used opens up inquiry or closes down inquiry. Beyond that I also said the difference was whether one always defers to the evidence or not. To always defer implies (as both Alan and I see it) infallibility. If a sign isn’t infallible then one shouldn’t automatically defer to it.

But let me attempt to do a more formal job.

First let us note that evidence has no meaning by itself. Even evidence by appeal to authority. It must always be brought into a role within an argument. That is its meaning is as a part of the whole. Hopefully that claim doesn’t need justification and is clear to all readers. Following the semiotic terminology we will call this functional role in a particular context (the argument) the code for the sign (with the sign here being our evidence).

Therefore what we are talking about with a trump isn’t just evidence but evidence with a meaning in all contexts. Or, put an other way, for any argument or evidence our trump T always signifies some conclusion C and for any arguments involving T, the conclusion is always C. This is what we mean by the trump being infallible.

“Very strong evidence” is always itself embedded in contexts as well. To acknowledge that “very strong evidence” is fallible is to say there exists a possible context such that the evidence does not entail our conclusions C. That is there is some context such that “very strong evidence” does not signify C.

Now at this point we ought be able to immediately tell the difference between “very strong evidence” and a trump. The trump is true for all contexts and thus no further inquiry is necessary. That is because inquiry is always about discovering new contexts but we already know by the infallibility of the sign that no such context will be found.

In contrast the “very strong evidence” demands inquiry since there exists at least one context such that it doesn’t entail our assumed conclusion. Thus inquiry is necessary so as to see if this possibility is an actuality.

Comments

15 Responses to “What is a Trump?”

BTW – in case there is confusion the notion of a “trump” comes out of card games like bridge where there are trump cards. In such a game if a card is a trump it wins no matter what the value of other cards. (There can be conflicts between different trump cards in which case the normal value of the trump card wins over the normal value of the other trump card.)

So let’s say hearts are trump and I play a King of spades. The next person plays say a two of hearts. That would normally lose but because it is a trump it automatically wins.

The use of trump in the epistemological sense is thus a metaphor from card games.

2 Michael Dorfman on May 23rd, 2008 3:42 am

In thinking of this notion of a “trump”, I’ve always had in mind the motto of the Royal Society, “Nullius in Verba”– nobody’s word is final– which seems to me to be one of the essential determining properties of science and reason. Applying a “trump” is setting a particular word– most often, the presumed word of God– to be final.

You have indeed outlined several explanations of a ‘trump’, but they aren’t obviously consistent with each other, and in several cases seem too vague to be of use. The ‘closes down inquiry’ description, for instance, is unhelpful, because there are lots of different reasons why one might close down inquiry, not all of them obviously unreasonable or involving any sort of ‘trumping’ in the other senses that the term was given. If someone comes to you claiming to have discovered a perpetual motion device that will create endless energy from nothing, that is a line of inquiry that has effectively been closed down; for it to be opened up again our entire view of the world would have to change radically. Similarly, for most of us inquiry into the moral rightness or wrongness of the Holocaust has closed down: we simply don’t regard the claim that it was wrong to try to put the Final Solution into effect as open for discussion, of any sort, and if any moral theory has as a consequence the claim that the Nazis were in the right, we simply take that as a reductio or the whole theory. Nor is this obviously unreasonable, and certainly not (as Alan’s original argument required) a performative contradiction.

But in any case, my point wasn’t that you in particular hadn’t given a characterization; it was that, of all the people who defended or accepted the argument, they gave mutually inconsistent characterizations, and none of the characterizations that made much sense on analysis turned out to be obviously very different from the claim that the authority in question was extremely good. (I’m still not convinced that you’ve managed to identify any obvious difference; here you seem to be simply characterizing a trump as the limit case of authority — weak authority can be wrong in lots of cases, very strong authority in only a few, and trumps in none.)

for any argument or evidence our trump T always signifies some conclusion C and for any arguments involving T, the conclusion is always C.

So, as an example, some people hold that for any argument or evidence the law of noncontradiction always signifies the conclusion that for whatever property we are considering, nothing can have that property and lack it at the same time and in the same respect; and thus for any arguments involving the law of noncontradiction, this will always be the conclusion. Nor do most people hold that there is any possible scenario where the law could turn out to be false; it is true for all contexts, and thus no further inquiry is needed. And if we actually take the card game metaphor seriously — I don’t think it generally has been taken seriously in the discussion, because very little has been consistent with it, but if we do — then most people do use it as a trump: someone who contradicts himself loses the argument. That’s a trump if there ever was one.

(A side issue: if we take the card game metaphor seriously, then it’s simply false to say that a trump automatically closes off all possible inquiry; because in many games trump cards don’t automatically win. For instance, you can have a game where Aces are trumps, but if you play an Ace it’s still possible to lose, because although Aces beet all non-Aces, the Aces might be ranked, and an Ace of Hearts might still beat an Ace of Clubs. But if any of your characterizations are accepted, it is impossible to have a hierarchy of trumps.)

Your point about the second law of thermodynamics is a good one. Does that function as a trump? Of course in practice it does. Should it?

I’m not sure that affects my argument merely the question of whether trumps are bad or not.

OK, I’ve thought about it. I acknowledge your point about limits although I think that’s a good enough reason to make the distinction. If people are confusing the infinite with the finite then that’s a huge problem.

The example of non-contradiction is, I think, a bad one since there are competing formulations of logic. Invoking traditional logic is somewhat akin to invoking Euclidean geometry and then saying that’s all there is. (As say Kant does) I also think we have to distinguish between formal systems (i.e. rules) and then the relationship of those rules to reality. One can say that 1 + 1 = 2 in a formal way but saying it is a platonic reality is something much more.

I also think I’ll take back my comment about the 2cd law. I think most physicists are open to evidence that thermodynamics is wrong, even though arguably it is the strongest of all physical theory. What they demand is an argument though. So inquiry takes place (or potentially)

Now your other point is more relevant.

The ‘closes down inquiry’ description, for instance, is unhelpful, because there are lots of different reasons why one might close down inquiry, not all of them obviously unreasonable or involving any sort of ‘trumping’ in the other senses that the term was given.

As finite beings we have to make a decision about where to inquire. But we have to make a distinction between this cost/benefit analysis due to being finite and the more theoretical stance that inquiry should be shut down as a theoretical point.

There’s lots of arguments I’ll discount simply because I don’t have the time to do further inquiry. But that’s a different matter from whether the argument is null and void in principle. So I don’t think this is a successful line to take.

Clark,

Fair enough, but my point with both the 2nd Law and the LNC was not that everyone should regard them as trumps, but simply that people are not obviously being unreasonable (and certainly not performatively inconsistent — with the LNC there is obviously no inconsistency at all) if they take them as trumps.

[This is a tangent, but your responses seem to me to be far too breezy. With regard to the LNC: there is no formulation of logic that prevents the LNC from being regarded as a trump; only formulations that, if certain conditions are allowed, guarantee that a contradiction does not have a certain type of result, like explosion, in the system. But this doesn't affect the question of the trump status of the LNC unless that type of result was the only reason for giving it that status. With regard to the 2nd Law: the sort of arguments most physicists would require for the existence of a perpetual-motion-based generator of endless energy out of nothing is at such a high standard that I have difficulty seeing your response here as anything more than a bit of sleight of hand. All that you are saying here, as far as I can see, is that under an apparently counterfactual scenario we do not really know even to be possible, which would require that a wide region of physics as we know it is wrong, it might be possible, for all we know, to set up an experiment sufficiently unambiguous that it would be more reasonable to interpret it as the violation of the 2nd Law and of the conservation of energy than to postulate principles that would allow us to have an account preserving both. If we really are allowed to set up such a tangle of apparent-counterfactuals and maybes and for-all-we-knows in order to preserve the scientific case, I'm not sure why we can't do the same to save all the supposed trumps in the same way. (And it would still not tell us whether it was reasonable or not to use them as trumps given the way things actually seem to be.) Am I perhaps misunderstanding your response here?]

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “the more theoretical stance that inquiry should be shut down as a theoretical point.”

Brandon, I don’t think I’m being too breezy. While standard logic obviously is accepted by most one can always question where it is applicable. I don’t think the tenants of logic are self-evident but more on line with the 2cd law of thermodynamics. That is I don’t think they function like a Trump.

The fact that the response a physicist demands to overturn the 2cd law of thermodynamics isn’t an indication that it is a trump. Rather it is an indication that in a conflict between evidences when the inquiry is made the 2cd law wins. The physicist demands a lot simply because there is a lot that must be explained. The point is that one can see this as not requiring explanation or (as physicists ought see it) as being a point one can explain and demonstrate. (And I can assure you that physicists have had enough tests on the subject that they ought be able to do this via experimental argument or via more abstract statistical mechanics)

By a theoretical stance I’m simply making a distinction between practical decisions (I have other things of value to do) versus what in principle could be done. So in theory I can defend the law of thermodynamics but typically it’s not worth my time to do so.

That is I don’t think they function like a Trump.

Again, fair enough, but my point wasn’t about your view but about whether others are unreasonable if they effectively treat them as such. I know you don’t think these are trumps; that’s been pretty obvious from the beginning. But my point here, as always, has been that it is a different and far, far more difficult thing to show that others are unreasonable if they take things like these as trumps. Alan’s original argument, as far as I can see, collapsed into sheer incoherence; different interpretations of it by others than Alan ended up being mutually exclusive and not, as far as I can see, much better; and while there may be, as you suggest, reasons for people of broadly pragmatist sympathies to reject trumps, there doesn’t appear to be any knock-down argument against someone who wants to say that (say) the law of noncontradiction should function as a trump — they just can’t be broadly pragmatist, which a very great many people won’t be on a point like this. They’ll tend rationalist, at least in their sympathies; and rationalists, as they ever have, will regard reasoning well as giving the right, at least if certain conditions are met, to be vigorously dogmatic about what reasoning has reached. And there is nothing inconsistent or unreasonable about this, even if it turns out that the pragmatists are right and the rationalists wrong.

Brandon, I’d be the first to acknowledge that some people can treat as trumps thing that others wouldn’t. So some might treat the 2cd law as a trump while others wouldn’t. I’d think that treating it as a trump is bad. Regardless of who is doing it.

To someone who says that the rules of logic ought function like I trump I’d merely ask why. It seems to me that the burden of proof is on them. And it’s not an easy thing to answer. (As, I think, common trumps are hard to justify – which is as good a reason to highlight the problem as any) It’s akin to mathematics being taken as the ultimate subject for years before someone starting noting first the lack of philosophical foundations and then (with Goedel) some of the problematic foundations. I think this is true with logic as well. Logic as often used entails metaphysical commitments that are anything but obvious. (Reminds me of Heidegger’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic)

There are things that people are dogmatic about (materialism, god, causality, etc.) that they really ought not be. To me the biggest value of philosophy is in bringing the problems and complexities to light. That is philosophy ought get us to discard our trump holding.

To your last point about pragmatism. I think that a Rationalist (say Leibniz) has to justify his Rationalism. To the degree that he can’t think I think he’s being unreasonable. One can debate how far they go but I think one has to agree that on key issues Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza make some key assumptions that are anything but obvious.

Are they being rational? Well I suppose that depends upon how they react were someone to question them on the topic. I suspect at least some of the assumptions were more blind spots than trumps.

No doubt; one could say the same for pragmatists refusing to accept something as a trump. The problem is that a genuine pragmatist and a genuine rationalist will simply not agree on what counts as adequate justification in either direction, because they will not and cannot precisely agree on the nature of justification itself; thus it largely does appear that the difference consists of one saying “It’s good to use this as a trump,” and the other denying, and each giving reasons, and neither recognizing the other’s reasons as adequate ones, except (possibly) for a range of relatively uncontroversial cases. The attractive thing about Alan’s approach is that, if it could be made to work, it would identify an internal problem with the move; but failing that it seems to be little more than two dogmas being opposed to each other, each capable of a defense — if you already believe it.

I think Alan’s point though was to identify and complain about things used in arguments as trumps in an unwarranted fashion. Whether that be Genesis with a Young Earth Creationist, materialism for a person discussing the mind, or so forth.

Very likely; part of the problem, as I’ve said, is that it involved no notion of trump that could support that sort of argument (and not also cut down other, less obviously problematic moves), but it’s likely that he had that intent for the argument. He stands with the same problem vis-a-vis them as the pragmatist and rationalist with regard to each other. It was a good tactical approach, though; it was just the actual maneuver that failed.

Hmm. I disagree, although I’ll not belabor it. I think there’s a fundamental problem with the Rationalist critiquing the pragmatist. Whereas I think the reverse works much stronger.

Well, naturally. Needless to say, the rationalists will say otherwise!

The question then becomes whether they can defend their presuppositions. That is, offer reasons. Which is what started the whole discussion.

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