The ontology of God's game

 In this post I want to discuss a sort of view that I am sympathetic about and I think helps us understand concepts such as truth, objectivity, properties and realness. I call this analogy "God's game" and I hope that this analogy will help us better understand various issues. I also want to discuss some issues I think there are with this analogy in particular with social concepts.

 Before I formally describe God's game, I want to discuss some important claims that I believe in that I hope to explain using the analogy.

1) Truth as some kind of correspondence to a mind independant reality.

2) The ability to characterise 'real' and 'unreal' properties, in particular things like Gender, Race.

3) To understand what it means to have objects and properties.

4) To understand what it means for a property to be formally reductive or supervenient on other properties.

5) To understand how we can have abstract properties that cannot be directly experienced by any existing agent.

6) The concept of meta-agents

7) The concept of property extentionality and extenional oracles.

 I think these are very much non trivial ideas to express and spread across various areas of epistemology, metaphysics, logic, truth and so on.  

As in various religions, God is often thought to be some omniscient and omnipotent entity. The nature of God is very much distinct from not only us as humans but also other entities such as animals or trees. It is first useful to consider the possibility that such a God genuinely exists, that such a God has full power to create various entities and also that such a God has full knowledge over everything in God's universe. 

Now take that exact possibility and imagine instead that we exist in some kind of video game and that 'God' is instead the almighty game designer that has full view of the entire game.

Let us now take a minor aside to a basic concept in objective orientated programming. A programmer can write constructors that are basically a formulaic way for constructing objects with various properties. The programmer can create an object and has the full view of the properties that the object has. For example, we can imagine the game designer writing a 'human' constructor to create a 'Jesus' object with a height property of say 175cm. The programmer can view the property by doing something like Print(Jesus.height).

We can therefore imagine that our game designer is such a programmer who can freely construct different objects. These objects will be the various entities of our game and will include things like people, animals, chairs and so on. Each entity will be its own object and will contain various properties. The game designer can pick out any object and see its various properties.

Now we can think about truth as a how we correspond our game state to truth. In programming speak we can think of this as a unit test. We write something like "assert Jesus.height == 175". What this does is it queries the 'height' property of the 'Jesus' object and checks if it is equal to 175cm. If it equal, then our assertion will come out as true. If not it will come out as false.

We can think about facts as these kinds of assertion statements. A fact makes a claim about reality, which is then queried against the game state to see if it is true or false.

It is important to note that I have said nothing so far about what objects exist and what properties exist. The game designer will of course know because they are a meta-agent, they exist outside the game and they are not an object of the game. With our concepts so far we can now discuss what it means for an object to be real and for a property to be real.

An object is real if it corresponds to an object in the game. Properties are things that are had by an object. However there will often be common property types that are shared by many objects. For example, we might expect all human objects to possess the property type of 'height' but potentially possess different values. We can query whether a property is a real if there exists an object that has the property. This is particularly important for the more controversial properties such as gender. We're saying that 'male' and 'female' are 'real' if and only if there exists an object that has one of these properties assigned to it. Note that the property assignment is done by the game designer only. It's 'real' because the game agrees that it is.

Truth and realness all correspond to the game state. Furthermore, truth and reality are very much mind independant concepts. They are theoretically verified by querying the game state using some kind of assert statement. Note however that this does not require any sort of 'thinking' on behalf of any of the agents in the game. The agents in the game can all think one thing, but the truth is exactly what the game state says. 

OBJECTS WITH FREE WILL

Let us extend God's game further where the game designer allows the objects in their game the freedom to do various things. The objects always live within the confines of the game but can choose to do whatever they wish within the game, as long as they follow the programmatically defined rules. For example, the game designer may create concepts such as gravity. Human objects will need to follow the game rules and thus will be unable to fly unless they develop new things.

Humans (and other objects) can manipulate various objects that exist within God's game. They can take trees to create chairs, kill animals to make food and so on. This a good point to note an objection - how does this object conversion work? Does a cow object somehow become a meat object upon death? 

Now Human's are also able - to some extent - view the properties of other objects. For example, they can broadly detect rocks from trees, short from tall, water from salt. Human's can also build upon existing properties to create new properties. For example we might say that an object that contains the property of 'male', 'adult' and 'unmarried' will also have the property of 'bachelor'. This bachelor property we might say is a 'reductively real' property. The game designer might never have thought of it but it is full understood in terms of properties that the game designer has understood.

Let us consider now one of the more controversial properties. E.g. let's consider now 'race'. We know that the property type 'race' is real if and only if there exists an object that actually has a property with the 'race' property type. This can be directly queried against the game state. Suppose however that there is no 'race' property type in the game. We can now consider whether 'race' is 'reductively real' which means it can be reduced to properties that we do understand in our game state.

Peaceful dialectic

It's been a while since I've last written in this blog, but today I want to talk a bit about the current situation involving #BlackLivesMatter and some of my thoughts and concerns. Primarily, I am worried that in our zeal to 'do the correct thing', we end up confusing a social cause with the justification for it. We end up silencing those who oppose us not based on the counter arguments they raise, but based on a (perceived) judgment on their character and upbringing. I will argue that not only is this practice immoral, it is also irrational and unhelpful. I will describe a concept of 'peaceful dialectic', where individuals make arguments in order to determine the truth of an issue. I will then draw an analogy between peaceful dialectic and peaceful protest and that our reasons to favour the latter also apply to the former. Finally I will argue that if one's position is correct, then it is both epistemically and ethically better to establish it via peaceful dialectic.

As an initial disclaimer, I believe in objective truth (i.e. things are true independant of whether we believe them to be) but I also recognise that it can be difficult to convey truth as I will see things from my own perspective. Still, I will try to provide the context to this all in a neutral manner, as the purpose of this post is less on who is correct, but on how we should approach things.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement that campaigns against racism and system violence against black people. It has recently seen a resurgence after the death of a black man - George Floyd - at the hands of a white police officer. Protests began soon after the death, some of which have over time become violent riots. American police have been ordered to control the protests and have faced criticism for using heavy handded tactics. Around the world there has been a call for solidarity with Black Lives Matter, and many organisations and individuals have made public statements. At the same time there has been backlash against the movement itself and against violent protests.

There are three main phenomena that I think will be useful to help illustrate some ideas:

1) All lives matter and the backlash towards this
2) Silence indicating compliance towards racist structures
3) Backlash towards the violent protests

1) In response to BLM there appears to be a counter movement that take issue with the slogan #BlackLivesMatter. Some reasons provided by proponents of the counter movement is that #BlackLivesMatter places overemphasis on race - in particular blackness - as opposed to the fact that death has occurred. They might agree with the #BlackLivesMatter but only as an implication from their claim that #AllLivesMatter.

There has been a common counter response against the #AllLivesMatter movement that proponents are missing the point. It is argued that the emphasis on black lives is specifically because black people are more likely to lose their life or experience violence at the hands of the state. The slogan #AllLivesMatter implies that all lives are equally at stake, when they are not.

2) I've seen a number of posts on social media that argue this point. The point is that if one is being silent in this situation, then they are being compliant with racism. Instead individuals should feel compelled to make a statement - presumably in this case - in solidarity with BLM. In particular here, and also with the first example there has been a demand for individuals to educate themselves on the matter.

3) There are two parts to this - backlash towards the protestors and backlash towards the police. Let's start with the protestors. There's an interesting tension here as I think most people are against violent protests, but they can also sympathise with the reasoning behind the protest. They can understand why it is done, without necessarily agreeing with it. The police case appears to be different and there currently appears to be a lot of anger towards the police and how they have responded to the protests. The suggestion to potentially bring in the Army may not have helped here.

The examples above illustrate a few interesting observations. The first observation is that many people appear to see these issues as (forgive the pun) black and white. There is the right side and the wrong side. And if you're not on the right side, then you're on the wrong side (particularly evident in the second example).

The second observation is that it seems if one is on the 'wrong' side, then their opposition can be framed as racist, a term which can imply moral corruptness. The prevalence of the term 'educate yourself' I think escalates this a bit further. Not only are you immoral, you are also uneducated or are epistemically sinful. If I claim that my position is correct and tell you to educate yourself if you disagree, then there's a strong implication that my position is factual.


The third observation is that there cases where we might not normally condone of an action, but because the actions are committed by those that we favour, we might see it as permissible and justified. We might for example see violent protests as generally problematic but can sympathise with those who do it in certain cases. The question here is whether are sympathy extends further - do we actually feel like it is justified?

A brief comment - this post is primarily targetted at those who believe the 'right' side is in favour of BLM. In fact, I agree with them - but I still think there are a large number of issues with how the proponents are behaving. I am also open to the possibility that I myself am wrong. Also as I'll argue later, this 'sides' thinking is problematic as well.

Peaceful dialectic

First, some quick definitions. Let us say that a position on a topic (such as BLM) is one's overall set of views about the topic can be considered as a collection of statements that they agree with. As a result, positions can be extremely specific. Sides on the other hand can be considered factions of an issue where rival factions disagree on a core set of statements

I see the practice of vilifying those that we disagree with as really problematic and I worry that we are focusing too heavily on which 'side' individuals are on, and not enough on what justifies it. For if our side is truly justified, we should not need to denounce others are villainous for disagreeing, or denounce others as silently complicit for not shouting about it. The truth should come out by itself. To simply brand those who disagree with you as racist / stupid can be seen as an ad hominem. Given how precise positions are there is likely considerable disagreement even with those on your 'side'. Some of this disagreement can be incredibly helpful and help us refine our views without undermining them.

I can appreciate that some sides may have more riding on their position, both emotionally and physically. However whilst I can sympathise with this, I think one should also be wary. The truth is independant. For the truth is that which reality actually is like, and it is the truth that our own behaviours and beliefs should conform towards.It is also plausible that one's opposition does not engage in these practices, but this does not justify oneself in not doing so. We should lead the way.

I propose we engage in what I call peaceful dialectic. Peaceful dialectic is a manner of discussion where agents are truth seeking. Both sides propose their arguments to one another (without engaging in fallacious practices such as villifying / ad hominem). The aim for each side is not necessarily to win, but to come to a shared agreement. Remember that if your position is correct, we expect the result of this to show that your position is correct. If your position is wrong, then you should admit your position is wrong. One useful way to engage in peaceful dialectic is to consider what your 'opponent' would need to establish to convince you of their side. This has two major benefits - first it humbles us into remembering that we are not always correct, second it helps to refine and allow for abstractions of our position.

Not doing so, I argue, is both ethically and epistemically wrong. Ethically, because you are treating someone (presumably negatively) without being justified. You're accusing someone of wrongdoing without understanding what they have done or where they come from. Epistemically because your practice does not maximise truth - you are outright cutting yourself from further evidence that may expand your view point.

I see this as similar to peaceful protests more generally. If one's protest is justified we should expect for people to be convinced by it without needing for one to engage in physical violence. In fact, engaging in violence can often deter others from supporting one's position.

Rarely is one proposed position completely right and one proposed position completely wrong. Likely there are aspects of each position that make sense, and thus why not take that middle ground and accept that one's own views can have issue? For example, it might be reasonable to agree broadly with a social movement whilst denouncing certain practices as problematic. Similarly we might recognise that a broader structure such as the police force has many problems, without villifying them all or calling for their own suffering. It is because of this observation that I think 'sides' is a problematic concept, because it tends to turn to require uniform judgement on all statements within it. We're unable to admit we made a mistake because it risks undermining the entire position.

(Interesting note - my argument shares some minor parallels to what is known as 'conciliatory' views of disagreement. These views face what is known as self undermining argument, that one cannot be conciliatory about the conciliatory view itself. It might appear that I experience the same problem here where I frame actions or dialectic behaviours as being ethically wrong. There are examples in the literature that defend conciliatory views, which I think could potentially also apply here.)

Hypocrisy, morality and belief.

In this post I argue that one’s theory of morality should fundamentally motivate their behaviour. If an individual espouses that certain actions are morally wrong, they ought to follow by what they say. In this situation, I think hypocrisy is unacceptable for moral and epistemic reasons.

 

Let us define an act of hypocrisy as a situation in which an individual (or group) make a normative behavioural claim which has a scope that includes themselves, and then acts contrary to their claim.  A normative behavioural is a claim about what is a right behaviour in accordance to some (perhaps implied) criterion.

As an example, it is an act of hypocrisy if Adam states that ‘everyone should stop smoking’, but he himself does not. This is because

1) Adam belongs to the category of everyone. 

2) Adam is making a normative behavioural claim

3) Adam is not following his normative behavioural claim

With this analysis we seem to have provided three conditions that are jointly sufficient. Whilst the second and third conditions seem obviously necessary, I will now argue for the necessity of the first.

It is not hypocritical if a parent tells a child that ‘children need to go to sleep at 9pm’, and then they themselves go to sleep at 10pm. This is because the parent is not making a claim that they themselves must fall under. They are implicitly suggesting that different standards must be applied. Thus, for them not to follow the child’s standard is not an act of hypocrisy. Now scoping is not always apparent semantically. For example, suppose I made the claim that ‘You should donate to charity’. Whilst the literal scope only applies to the individual referred to by ‘ you’, one can interpret this claim as applying to any individual, including myself. As a result, it can be argued that it is hypocritical for me to ask others to donate, whilst I myself do not. If one is unsure about scope, it is always worth asking, for normative scope is not something that is easily hidden.

Now I use normativity to describe that which is right or good. Normative behavioural claims are claims about how we should behave or what is the correct way to behave. It is natural I think for us to ask ‘right based on what’? This is both a metaphysical point (what grounds the rightness) but also a structural point in that it points us to some kind of measure. For example with the behavioural claim not to smoke, the measure might be the health. When studying mathematics, I might be told ‘you should use this sort of notation’. Here the measure seems to be something to do with clarity. The measure here is fundamentally important, but I do not think it matters in terms of deeming whether something is hypocritical or not. The measure seems to only house relevance when determining whether a normative behavioural claim is convincing or not, as it provides us with a means to assess it. 

An interesting question: is hypocrisy itself bad? How should we think about the normative behavioural claim ‘one should not act hypocritically’? First we note that the use of ‘one’ indicates that we are making a broader claim that presumably encompasses all individuals. Now the measure here is not apparent; are we epistemically motivated (accuracy maximising), morally motivated (happiness, rights etc) or even pedagogically (maximising learning)? Furthermore, there are many different acts of hypocrisy, each with their normative behavioural claim and thus each with their own measure. Thus what seems like a rather simple sentence actually is very complicated. It covers a wide range of individuals, with a context dependent / not immediately apparent measure applied onto a whole class of sentences that themselves have differing measures.

Now for my thesis. I will argue in favour of the following position ‘Under the moral and epistemic measure, one should not commit acts of hypocrisy when dealing with morally measured behavioural claims’. That is, it is morally and epistemically wrong to be hypocritical about one’s moral beliefs. Or rather, if one makes a moral claim, they ought to act upon such claims, for both epistemic and moral reasons.

Now there are two separate issues here with my discussion of the moral and epistemic. I will have to tackle them separately. The reason I discuss both is because I want to achieve a conclusion where it is not only the morally right thing to do to follow one’s morality, but also the logical and rational thing to do. For this argument to apply I will make the assumption that both morality and epistemology can be somehow measured by a kind of utility function, and then argue in favour of some kind of maximisation principle. 

We begin with the epistemic measure. A common view in formal epistemology is to see epistemic good in terms of accuracy maximisation of one’s credence function. We take it that there are a range of propositions that one might be interested in. Propositions are either true or false, and we assume that their truth or falsity is of the mind independent kind. Our personal credence function assigns different values to each proposition depending on our level of confidence in the proposition’s truth value. We can apply a kind of distance metric on our credence function to measure its accuracy and thus epistemic goodness. The closer one is to the truth, the better. 

Now the question here is how we are to establish whether a given individual is committing an epistemic bad or is epistemically problematic. We don’t expect agents to have perfect accuracy largely because accuracy seems to depend on evidence. It also seems hard to establish a numerical threshold for being irrational. What we can however do is establish a number of norms that – if violated – establish an agent as being epistemically problematic. We can then link these norms to our argument with hypocrisy; if a hypocritical agent necessarily violates certain norms then the act of hypocrisy is epistemically problematic.

A standard epistemic or credal norm is for an agent’s credence function to be probabilistic. That is, it follows the probability axioms. One can establish an accuracy first argument to show that an agent striving to maximise accuracy will always have a probabilistic credence function. This is because non probabilistic credence functions are always accuracy dominated by some other credence function. The norm however that I wish to focus is a norm of consistency; rational agents will not have inconsistent sets of beliefs. 

The assumption here is that agents can choose what they believe. I also assume that rational agents can determine the logical consistency between sets of beliefs. I’m not asking for perfectly ideal agents here, for logical consistency should be attainable for most individuals. Certainly I think that an agent who believes that both p and not p even after being told of their inconsistency, can be thought of as violating this consistency norm and behaving epistemically poorly.

With this argument out of the way, what I therefore intend to establish is that epistemically rational agents. Essentially I need to establish there is something fundamentally contradictory with believing that one should morally act in a certain way, but not feeling compelled to act in that way.

Now I want to suggest that the moral case here is something special because of how it interacts with one’s beliefs and motivations. To see this, let us first consider the following normative behavioural claim that instead uses the health measure: “You should not smoke”. Suppose a smoke tells us this, thus behaving hypocritically. They might however make the claim that they do not feel compelled to behave in a certain way. That the fact smoking affects their health does not necessarily motivate them to behave in a certain way. That is, they can accept that smoking is bad from a health perspective but perhaps they place no value in health and thus don’t feel compelled to change their behaviour. Whilst somewhat odd, it doesn’t seem like there is anything epistemically bad about this – their position is consistent. Morally speaking, it might even be a good practice – they want to encourage others to have healthy lifestyles since they recognise other individuals value health, even if they themselves do not.

The moral case I think is different and the reason for this is that I think morality is intrinsically motivating. That is, one does not need a reason to do moral things aside from the fact that it is good. One does not need a reason not to do immoral things, aside from the fact that immoral things are bad. If someone claims that something is moral, then they have inherent and sufficient reason to be compelled to do it. Contrast this to health – I can question what the value of good health. Perhaps I don’t care if I live. It seems like I can question why I should behave in accordance to what is healthy.  Yet it seems like when dealing with morality, the fact of morality is enough.

In this sense, to think that something is moral can be to think that something is intrinsically motivating. If you think something is a moral norm then you also think that you have an intrinsic motivation to fulfil it. 

Let's look at an example. Suppose that I think that eating is meat is morally - I'm convinced by an environmental or pain based argument and think I shouldn't eat meat. Now this is a common situation, and many people indeed choose to continue eating meat. Now some might respond that they think that the pleasure they get from eating meat overcomes the negatives to the environment or animals. That's plausible, although unconvincing in my view. Suppose however that when pressed, they think that this pleasure argument fails to outweigh the reasons not to eat meat. That the moral argument overrides all others. The situation seems rather problematic, and not only for moral reasons. An individual has agreed that they should behave in a certain way for moral reasons, that there aren't any arguments to outweigh this requirement to behave, yet they continue not to do so. 

It is strange because the individual is perfectly free to think that their pleasure does outweigh the negatives, yet they choose to adopt the line of thought that it is problematic, yet fail to behave in accordance to it. I've argued that morality provides an intrinsic justification to behave. In this situation, the individual has accepted that this is an overriding justification to behave in a certain way. Yet they still fail to do so. It seems clear there is something epistemically problematic. 

The key premise in this argument I think is the claim that morality is intrinsically motivating. This premise is really needed in order to tie together morality and belief. I think I need to develop the justification for this premise and see whether there are any other ways to tie morality and belief.

I really do like the overall argument though because to me, failing epistemically is in some ways much worse than failing morally. We can all envision in our minds the evil genius who seems perfectly rational, yet ignores the demand to be moral. There is something satisfying with an argument that can slight them as irrational.

Skepticism, moral realism and applied ethics (1)

In this post I want to discuss the connections between these three issues, and argue for the need to have a theory that attempts to unify them in a coherent manner.

A good starting point is a discussion of moral realism. Let us define the moral realist position as the claim that there exist things like moral facts, and that these moral facts can be true independent of our perception or beliefs about them. Moral realism claims that sentences such as 'abortion is wrong' are the sort of sentences that attempts to describe reality, and the sort of sentences that can be true because when they successfully describe reality.

Due to the mind independenct nature of these sentences, we can connect moral realism with views such as moral objectivism - the claim that morality is objective. As a result, if two people have conflicting moral attitudes, they cannot both be correct and we could in theory use the objective moral standards to determine who is correct.

Now in many ways, moral realism does seem quite intuitive. In particular the claim that moral sentences can be truthful. Not all of them of course - 'rape is right' seems like an false sentence. Yet when I go around telling people that murder is wrong, it seems as if I am doing the correct thing; that what I say not only has impact, but also has content. That it is in some sense meaningful and backed up.

Now there are many challenges to moral realism. The most common challenge that I observe is the problem of disagreement. In particular, one might observe that different people will see the same issue in different ways, morally speaking. I might think that it is immoral for a women to have abortions, whilst someone else might think that such an action is morally permissible. The issue it seems is that I don't seem to have anything to ground my view, i.e. I lack any concrete evidence that would prove me correct over the other person. Intuitions also don't seem to fully resolve these issues because we might have very different intuitions depending on our upbringing and culture. As many people would argue, it is arrogant to assume that our own theory of morality is correct when none of us have 'real evidence'.

I say 'real evidence' because I'm making the comparison to theories in science where our evidence, one might argue, is concrete. We can see it, and we can point to it as evidence. This provides a rather nice epistemology about how we might know our scientific theories are correct, or at least provides justification in believing them. It seems with morality, our evidence is only what we feel, and perhaps the hope that other people feel the same way. Since we presumably want to be justified in our beliefs, this gives us reason to doubt that our own moral intutions correspond to any objective moral values. Furthermore, if we apply the same reasoning to every other individual, we might reject the idea of objective morality altogether. The thought is that since we have so much disagreement, and we have no way of verifying who is correct, perhaps there is no such thing as a 'correctness' in the first place.

There are two interesting lines we might go down from here. So far we have this recognition of an epistemic problem. If morality is true independent of what we know, how do we know that what we think is right (our 'own morality') is the truthful one?  Furthermore, if morality is objective but is something completely in accessible to us, then why should we take our moral intuitions seriously at all. For example if I have no concrete evidence for the claim 'killing is wrong', then even if this claim is correct, the fact that I can't justify my belief in the claim should suggest I should not believe in it. In this sense, perhaps our whole talk of morality is an entire sham. Suppose we think indeed that we cannot epistemically access moral claims. Then either, 1) we are discussing things with content (because morality is objective), but we have no access to and have no way to justify, or 2) we are discussing things which are entirely without content and so our various claims about them are in some sense meaningless. I say in some sense, because many things that appear unsubstantiated by the world could have meaning if people's minds are influenced by them.

The argument so far has suggested that we be sceptical about moral sentences. It has given us many reasons to doubt the truth and justification when we make claims that 'killing is wrong'. What do we do now? One thing perhaps is to doubt the existence of morality in the independent reality. The question then is how we should respond to people making moral claims. You will presumably see everyone who is making moral claims as in some sense making meaningless statements. The exact content of what they see is empty, because whenever they use 'moral vocabulary' there is literally nothing for their words to point at.

At the same time, it seems like we do have significant motivation to follow by whatever rules our current system of morality has. For example, I do want to live in a society where people think killing each other is morally wrong, or where stealing is viewed as bad or where being kind is a good thing. And I say this independently of legal reasons. I want to live in a society where murder is bad for reasons beyond the law. Yet if I follow my very sceptical position towards moral realism, I will also have to be content with accepting that such wants, both in my beliefs and in my actions, lack real content. And that is unsatisfying I think.

In my next post I will discuss how we should connect our views on morality with our views on action, and how having a moral sceptical position is undesirable. I will then discuss ways we might justify our belief in moral realism.

Conceptual ontology

When people propose a theory, an important question I think is to ask what kind of force they expect their theory to have. My interest here is ontological, so I am interested in what kind of thing their theory is purporting to be.

What is a theory? I define it to be a system of ideas that are intended to explain something. Theories usually have some kind of more universal property: whilst we might use theory to explain practical phenomena, theories have a level of abstraction above the immediate phenomena. As a basic example, we might wonder why it is wrong to kill a woman. Our theory of morality would provide an explanation, perhaps in terms of rights, utility or what not. Our theory however seems to tell us more: the fact that it is a woman seems irrelevant, in fact our moral theory might explain that it is wrong to kill any human.

Explanation is a non trivial topic. What counts as an explanation? Well on some level we would expect an explanation to be something that offers value in our thinking: it helps us understand things and perhaps helps us decide how to behave. On another level, we expect an explanation to reveal the true nature of things: it lets us perceive the objective reality. In an ideal world these would coincide: all theories would purport to refer to the objective reality, and our theory helps our perception of it, thus providing us with action guidance and understanding. Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case: a literary analysis whilst illuminating may not refer to the objective reality. We might think this is the case because there is no inherent object being referred to by the analysis, we can not pick out a real thing to say that the analysis is about. Instead the analysis or theory is there to present an interesting idea; to give us insight and understand perhaps what the author was thinking.

Other times, our theories generally do try and explain the world. Our theories of atoms purport that reality is really such that it has atoms, even if we cannot perceive them. Our theories of natural selection claims that the process of biological change is governed by an overarching principle, and that this is the way the world behaves. 

The important thing here seems to be the difference between the mind independent and the mind dependent. Theories are of value for both, but it is important to establish the distinction. If a theory is mind independent that the theory is in some sense externally valuable because it attempting to access reality. If a theory is mind dependent then the value is entirely internal, it depends on us being able to think and understand. 

I've suggested here that mind independent theories have some kind of special status. I want to explicate what I mean here. If a theory is mind independent and purporting to reflect reality then this provides us with some kind of ontology of theories. These theories actually are trying to grab hold of the world. These theories are especially important because assuming the world exists, the development of these theories genuinely allow us more and more access to the world. Because the world is a specific system with rules and laws, we expect a degree of logical consistency. Thus if a theory is viewed as correct and / or as of value, it can be in some sense easily measured against the other mind independent theories.

The mind dependent theories have a weaker ontology since they don't have the objective reality to connect themselves to. Instead they operate inside our mind. They offer ways for us to think about things without necessarily purporting that reality is as they say. This lack of committment is inherently weaker, because our ability to evaluate these theories are in some sense limited to other mind dependent arguments. 

Now it is very important for people to clarify the ontology of their theories. The example that I am quite interested in is questions about gender. For example suppose we have a theory of gender in which transexual people exist. Perhaps our theory tells us that one's assigned gender can be distinct from one's actual gender. This is characterised by the idea that you are a woman in a man's body. Now we have an important question: what is the ontology of this theory?

If the theory is meant to the mind independent ontology then we expect that there is this genuine concept of gender somewhere in reality. That is that there is some kind of switch or indicator (perhaps that we cannot epistemically access) that says whether a person has gender male or gender female or neither. Because we think the world is logically consistent, we think that there must be a true theory of gender out there; some objective and decisive way of understand these concepts. If you're telling me that people's real gender is what they identify with, then you'd be saying that there actually exists some kind of mechanism in reality (even if we cannot access) that takes self identification as a means to establish the switch.

If in comparison the theory has the mind dependent ontology, then it is saying something rather different. The theory of gender is then just a way for us to understand society, to understand certain phenomena. For practical purposes, this might not be so bad, in fact perhaps this is enough. However one might think we lose some element of justification. The mind dependent ontology just seems to lack the concreteness of the mind independent ontology since we don't purport there to be any objective tests of validation. That is, there would be no way for anyone to really prove it wrong, even in principle.

Now I'm sure we will face some confusion here so I want to emphasise two points.

First, the ontology is distinct from the theoretical provability. I can have a theory of mathematics that says there are abstract objects that I cannot access. I couldn't prove their existence, yet my theory still claims that they are there. It claims that the things we talk about genuinely refer to an objective reality. Thus philosophical and non empirical arguments can very much have mind independent ontologies. It's not necessarily about the ability to verify, its about whether the theory is purporting to describe the objective reality.

The second point is in terms of normativity. Suppose I say something like 'killing is wrong'. This is a normative claim because I am assessing what is good or what is bad. Now what is important here is what my 'good' or 'badness' is in reference to. If I am a moral realist I might think that the use of 'wrong' here is because I purport that reality genuinely has concepts of right and wrong, and that killing has the property of wrongness. Good and bad exists in our objective reality, and I have access to it.

Compare this to a claim like 'You should call people by their preferred pronoun'. We can identify here another sense of morality, that it would be wrong not to do so. However we can do this whilst remaining agnostic about the ontology of the theory of gender. That is, we can accept it because we think its nice to do what people ask of us, without having to accept some underlying theory that people have the gender of their preferred pronoun. Consider the example 'you should think 2 +2 =4'. Perhaps I think the theory of number does not refer to actual reality, but instead is mind dependent - it just offers a good and valuable way to think about plurality. In that case, I should still think that 2+2=4, but my reason to do so is not because 2 exists in our objective reality, but instead dependent us valuing concepts such as rationality. Whether or not a theory of rationality has a mind independent ontology is another interesting question. I'm inclined to think not, but that doesn't mean it lacks value.

So when people come up with theories about the world, ask them what the ontology of their theory is. Is their theory genuinely trying to purport that the world is a certain way, in a mind independent sense? Or are they just offering a useful way to think about reality?

Regarding the racism incidents in the Dota Dreamleague minor

Been reading some of the comments on this page, just want to raise some thoughts about how to see the issue. Also, to respond to some of the arguments and rebuttals. I think it's good to have an actual conversation on these matters and that its important that these things are brought to light.

First our context - what happened?

In a recent competitive match during the dreamleague minor (a valve sponsored event), a player - Skem - on team complexity made a racial comment - "Ching chong" - against the Chinese team, RNG.

After the event, Skem posted an apology, and team complexity punished him with a fine.

A few days later, during a pub game, a TNC player - Kuku - made the same comment in a pub. When this was brought to light he claimed that his comment was in reference to a player on his opposing team who just killed him. It was later found that this player only changed their name after the incident and thus his explanation was invalid.

Soon after, we see a major Chinese backlash. Team LGD state that they refuse to play scrim with TNC, a number of chinese talents and players expressing outrage against the incideits. Some talents/players actively demanding that Valve take action.

Today we see cases of 'review bombing' in Steam against Dota 2, with some of these reviews themselves contain racial comments and degoratory remarks.

Some thoughts about racism:

There are different ways to define racism. The two common ideas however seem to be:

1. The negative treatment of an individual based on their race, ethnicity, skin colour etc.

2) The idea that society is structured in a way that negatively affects certain groups, either institutionally, intentially or unintentionally.

I'm not going to comment on which one is the correct usage. Regardless, in both definitions people tend to see racism as something that negatively affects groups such as Black, asian, hispanic and such groups. A thing to note that under the second definition, if white people are viewed as the priviledged group, then they are unable to experience racism. In contrast, if we use the first definition, they can experience it, for example if a interviewer refused to hire white people. These definitions can also be context dependent. For example in other countries, the cases of racial discrimination, and structural discrimination can affect different groups. Whilst we tend to evaluate how 'racist' something is using our own context, we should be aware that it can differ for other people.

This is important just as a cautionary warning: we should be careful with comparing degrees of racism. I've seen this argument a number of times now where people compare the usage of 'Ching chong' with the 'N' word. I've also seen a number of rebuttals claiming that the cases are not comparable. You have to recognise that in some sense you are saying that the purported racism experienced by Chinese people is not as bad as the racism experienced against Black people. One might bring up arguments about a history of slavery to indicate why one term is worse than the other. Making such arguments however you should also think about the treatment of China across history. There have certainly been some fairly destructive cases such as the Opium war.

It might also be cited that 'ching chong' is meant only to mock the language. We should again be careful here: one might think that when dealing with structural racism, what matters is the intention of expressing such derogatory remarks, as opposed to what said remarks reference. Part of the issue is that the negative effects of racism may not be entirely obvious. Bringing up cases of history or even statistics may provide you indicators, but if we were to take a structural conception of racism then the issue also lies in the small things: the acceptance of casual racist remarks, the willingness to make insensitive jokes and so on. Another thing to note is that you're also acting in different contexts: you might be thinking about racial relations within a country in North America or Europe, but others may see it from in China. They might for example look back at a history of the West taking advantage of China, and see these racial comments as referring to such a history.

Should Valve take action?

I think we have an agreement that Racism is bad, I don't think this needs to be argued. It should also be agreed that racism has no place in gaming. We might now consider two seperate cases. The Skem case occurred in a valve sponsored minor. In this sense, there is certainly an argument to expect Valve to comment or take action. A lack of response might indicate a sense of tolerance of racist behaviours. We note that the Kuku case is certainly different. Skem acts as some kind of valve representative in the sense that they publically invited him to play in a special tournament. Kuku in comparison was playing in a pub. There actions are both wrong of course, but if they are to take action, it should be against Skem. I think the Chinese reaction against the two cases is not to see them as identical, but to see Kuku's case as just evidence of repeated casual racism, and a frustration at that.

Now Valve do tend not to comment on these issues in general, and I don't think they necessary need to actively punish Skem right now. If the situations are important enough, Valve respond. Thus if they do not comment in this case (in their own event) when there is such public backlash this certainly is a PR risk (and arguably indicates an over tolerance for such racist behavior). I think that Valve should say that looking forward that racism in their sponsored events (at least) would not be tolerated.

Regarding the Chinese reaction

The first point is that racism should be taken seriously. It seems in some sense that it's the victims discretion in terms of how seriously they should take it. If I discriminate against you in a certain case, in a public setting it doesn't seem like you should be forced to tolerate it. You should have the right to react in the appropriate manner.

Racial remarks from Chinese reviewers:

This is obviously wrong. If you are a victim of racial discrimination, then you clearly see it as problematic. Presumably you should also see that it is the action itself that is wrong, not necessarily just who the victim is (ref to def 1). For certain Chinese reviewers to make such comments is morally unacceptable.

Hypocrisy:

Something to note is that whilst hypocrisy doesn't seem to be a good thing, this does not even out any arguments. Just because someone may be racist themselves does not mean that them being victims or racial discrimination is right. Certainly we can have many issues with things such as Chinese nationalism, racism and comments. By no means should we think of them as saints. We would be right to call out bad behvaiour. However this does not mean somehow weaken the unjust behaviour inflicted upon the Chinese.

I do hope that these incidents also cause everyone to rethink how they treat each other regarding Racism. That includes certain Chinese people reflecting on how they treat people of other races, and how such behaviour is morally unacceptable.

TLDR:

1. case is complex
2. racism is bad,
3. two wrongs dont make a right,
4. looking forward Valve should not tolerate racism in their events.
5.