Philosophy: What's the term for "no options"?

[Toge]

Some theories and methods in science are all-encompassing and thus containt no information. There is no way to dismiss them through rational argument or experiment. I'll give some examples of what I mean. The following sentences contain idea of "no options":

All measurable phenomena can be analyzed statistically.

Everything humans do is communication; delivering information for the observer.

The fittest pass on their genes in evolution.

On scale from 1 to 10, how are you feeling? Human sciences sometimes make hilarious attempts to measure in immeasurable. Statistics is a source of red herrings due to the increasing chance to find connections as the amount of variables increase. None of the connections contain explanations, and uneducated people are particularly vulnerable to misinterpreting them.

Intentionality is not necessary for communication. Sleeping person is conveying the information that she's tired, though I think the point of origination of such thought must be on the observer rather than the observed. If one believes that everything is communication, there's no experiment which would prove it wrong.

The evolution is good example of what I'm asking. If any living being dies without producing offspring, then that being is unfit. I guess this is not meant to give a priori truth (fitness = creating offpring), but it certainly feels like it. It also can't be falsified by any experiment.

[hyperpape]

I can't think of a term that covers these. You might variously call them tautological, or unfalsifiable, but I'm not sure either is what you're after.

P.S. On the third example, I couldn't tell you how it goes, but there's lots of argument over whether that's really tautological or unfalsifiable, or devoid of content or anything else. I can't remember how it goes, but I expect there's discussion here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fitness/

[Mike Novack]

..... The following sentences contain idea of "no options":

All measurable phenomena can be analyzed statistically.

Everything humans do is communication; delivering information for the observer.

The fittest pass on their genes in evolution.

a) The first and third are tautologies. The second is false.

b) Your problem is with adding other meanings to some of the terms or removing meanings from the terms. Things not included in the statements themselves.

That any collection of numeric data can be analyzed statistically doesn't mean that analysis will be useful in any way. That a passive action by the observed can be said to be "communication" does violence to the concept (is the rock I am looking at communicating to me?). The problem with introducing other meanings of "fittest" is common in rhetoric, logical "capture" resulting in bad logic appearing valid to the unwary (the biological term "fittest" in evolution can only be applied in retrospect to those that did leave more descendents).

[Toge]

Wikipedia says about communication:

Communication is defined by de Valenzuela as “any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Sleeping person communicates the state of being tired unintentionally, using behavioral signal and in nonlinguistic form without speaking. Rock is not communicating because it's not a person. Strange that other animals are not included here.

The point in the statistics example is that it's stacking abstractions upon a concrete object. The existence of relationship between it and some other thing is dependant on the statistical analysis itself.

[gasana]

"Intentionality is not necessary for communication. Sleeping person is conveying the information that she's tired, though I think the point of origination of such thought must be on the observer rather than the observed"

But the observer does have an intentionality, i would say.

[Mike Novack]

Wikipedia says about communication:

Communication is defined by de Valenzuela as “any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Just because you read it in Wikipedia doesn't make it so. That is an obviously flawed definition of "communication". We are not the only being on this planet that communicate. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas (communication is required for mating)

If you only require intention of the observer and not the sender explain why the rock in my counter example was not communicating ("endurance" perhaps). And if communication is solely whatever is received/interpreted by the observer, how could there ever be miscommunication?

[Bonobo]

[..] We are not the only being on this planet that communicate. Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas (communication is required for mating)

Thanks, now I have an ear worm again

If you only require intention of the observer and not the sender explain why the rock in my counter example was not communicating ("endurance" perhaps). And if communication is solely whatever is received/interpreted by the observer, how could there ever be miscommunication?

AFAIK, there is no intention needed on the sender side … red spots on the skin, a symptom, communicate the fact of measles to the doctor.

Cf. Semiotics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

[Bill Spight]

Wikipedia says about communication:

Communication is defined by de Valenzuela as “any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or nonlinguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes.”

Way to take the com out of communication.

[hyperpape]

Trying to define communication without some sort of context is likely to be futile. But there's an interesting line, between types of communication in which one person intends to produce understanding in an other, and cases where there's no such intent. Paul Grice said it better than I can, so I'll just tell you that you should read his paper.

[aokun]

The evolution is good example of what I'm asking. If any living being dies without producing offspring, then that being is unfit. I guess this is not meant to give a priori truth (fitness = creating offpring), but it certainly feels like it. It also can't be falsified by any experiment.

Which puts creationists in the comically silly position of denying a tautology.

Of course, the above is not a statement of the theory of evolution, which is a theory about the origins of the species observed in the natural world, not a theory about the adaptability of one organism at a time. My summary would be that evolution says the following. (a) An organism gets its characteristics only from its parents and from random variation and mutation and passes only those characteristics to its progeny. This would be falsified by a creature showing adaptation during the course of its life and then passing that adaptation to its children. The famous example is if giraffes stretched their necks further to get higher food during their lifetime and then passed the longer necks to the next generation. This "Lamarckian" evolution is a perfectly plausible (and falsifiable) theory and is inconsistent with the Darwinian model. If instances of it occured, it would to that degree falsify Darwinian evolution. (b) Some variations render some creatures fitter than others, depending on the environment they happen to be in. This is close to the 1+1=2 thing above, but not quite. If the variations were incidental or trivial or had no influence on survival, creatures wouldn't change much from one generation to the next. If creatures' survival didn't vary much, it would falsify this. (c) Because of (b), the characteristics of populations evolve over time leading, from time to time, to the production of two or more distinct breeding populations ... species ... where there was one. This is hard to falsify, because it is a statement of the form "such and such happens from time to time." Proving it never happened once would be hard, but would falsify it.

And the big one ... (d) The process of inheritence and survival driven speciation described in (a)-(c) is the origin of _all_ the species observed on earth; all species evolved by this process from a common ancestor. This says a lot and is so hugely falsifiable. Here's one way to know. We falsified it. It's no longer true. There are species of plant and animal that have been created in a lab the result direct genetic engineering, not breeding. (d) has to be restated, "that process was the source of all speciation on earth up until that guy in Missouri made the self-cloning lizards."

[jts]

Sometimes you need to start a description by defining your term. "Fitness" is a very useful term in evolutionary biology and allied fields; but of course, the way it is used in those fields is not the only way to use "fit".

"Yo, baby, you fit!"
"Can we fit in one more passenger?"
"I didn't fit in at St. Cyprian."
"He plays three sports; he's so fit."

Now, if your reader's mind is wandering unsteadily over all the different ways you can define fitness while reading your essay on evolution, he isn't going to get much out of it. So it's a courtesy to the reader to lay down the law. He could have chosen some other word; or he could have chosen some other definition; but given that he is using the word "fitness" with the definition "passing on genes", it's perfectly sensible to occasionally remind the reader of how his terminology works. It's good style.

[hyperpape]

"fit to be tied"

[emeraldemon]

I've always found it slightly annoying that "you have one option" and "you have no options" are used to describe the same thing.

[Fedya]

Well, "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean more or less the same thing too.

[speedchase]

..... The following sentences contain idea of "no options":

All measurable phenomena can be analyzed statistically.

Everything humans do is communication; delivering information for the observer.

The fittest pass on their genes in evolution.

a) The first and third are tautologies. The second is false.

Uh can we back up a second. I agree with you on one and two, but the third is a true statement depending on the context, not a tautology. This is not even true for humans anymore!