History Were Historical Shifts in Philosophy Right or Wrong Turns?

[Mentat]

Tournesol,
Let's calm down a little. I don't mean to be polemic, merely critical .

My point was that you CANNOT infer metaphysical quantisation
directly from grammar, and I illustrated it by an example that nonbody
would be crazy enough to believe in: the example of "a cold" as an actual
entity.

But nobody relates the "cold" to another (singular) object. That you refer to it as "a cold" simply means that you are quantizing your case of the cold. That you relate an impression on our computative apparatus to the singular entity that caused the impression (and that you do so in a one-one relation -- i.e. compare and contrast just as you would with two singular objects) is indeed indicative of the confusion of Universals for particulars; of processes for quanta.

If you don't see this, then I wonder: what did you think a "quale" was?

Nope, the HP is about explanatory gaps.

Yes, but the HP evolved from a series of "turns" in the history of Philosophy (I feel as though I'm repeating myself, but you don't seem to be listening here (no offense)). The quantizing of impressions, or the reference to "final" ("end product") drafts of consciousness (implicit or explicit) is one of those "turns".

Fear has nothng to do with it; it's just no the way things are.

So you believe. But then, I'm applying heterophenomenology yet again.

Circular. You are appealing to your no-consciousness conclusion to support
the aptness of an analogy which is itself being put forward to support the no-consciousness conclusion.

No, I'm explaining that, in the history of man, there was a time (we're still in it) when we did not have a way to see what was going on within us. We are, however, territorial, self-aware animals, and so we don't like the concept of the things most intrinsic to us being unknown to us. So we develop a vocabulary that allows us to make claims about our states, inspite of our actual ignorance.

Whichever is really applicable.

But what does that mean? Is it the same as "Whichever can be used to make the most accurate predictions?".

You refer to my argument as "unscientific", and that is indicative of an ignorance about the philosophy of science (again, I don't mean to be offensive). Science holds the theory as the highest point of certainty (a theory can be "strong" or "weak", but it never ceases being a theory), and the best theories are the ones that can be used to make accurate predictions (and there's very little more to it).

Nope. Relativism is not demonstrated by Popper-style considerations.
The fact that you cannot have final knowledge of the way things are
does not mean there is no way things are.

Popper wasn't saying that. However, if we can never know how they "really" are -- and if we invented a method that doesn't require them to "actually" be anyone way -- so long as we can make accurate predictions, then, frankly, we don't care.

However, I am glad that you have made it clear that you have no
sympathy with realism, and are therefore not really basing your approach on science.

Again, please don't make too many claims about science without understanding it, Tournesol. I make no claim to know what level of education you've had in this field, merely that your comments do not reflect a good working knowledge of it.

Philosophy of Science, as it currently stands, dictates that realism is quite distinct from science.

Among other things, it mean the way things seem to us is not how they are.

Ah, but that there is a way that "things really are", is yet another example of how things seem to you. Think about it.

Yes there is. The fact that the report is all there is for you does
not mean it is all there is for me. To infer from "this is all the information I have" to "this is all that exists" is to make the same error
as a solipsist -- another Wrong Turn.

I'm not really saying that's all that exists, there is more to it (though, I confess, I haven't been forthcoming on this point before). There is also the matter of belief. However, Dennett's heterophenomenological approach does allow for the existence of belief. Indeed, it requires it.

However, it is a perfectly logical claim that there is nothing more to what you report than that which you report. It depends on your truthfulness, and perhaps on your belief that there are things that you cannot report (for whatever reason), but that is also taken into account.

You mischaracterise het. The het-ist is supposed to take my reports
at face value unless there is specific reason to the contrary.

That's what I said, isn't it?

btw, thank you so much for that: "het". That helps (I don't like typing "heterophenomenology" either).

That doesn't make sense. If I say "There is more to my experience than
the reports thereof", you are insisting on not taking it at face value--you are telling me I must be wrong.

No, we are taking the report at face-value. It is an expression of the belief that there is more to your "experience" than that which you can report. And we take that as absolutely, unquestionably, incorrigibly TRUE...in your fiction (or, if you prefer, in your belief-system/language-game).

My:
"I never said anything of the kind"
was a repsonse to your:-
"The fact that you can be absolutely, 100% positive, that that is indeed how things seem to you, reveals this fact. "

See what's going on here ? I didn't make the comment about
incorrigibility that you attributed to me. You are imagining
that I'm talking about incorrigibility when I am not; you are arguing
with an imaginary opponent.

Did you not say, in the "previously posted by you" quote, that there is a certain way that things seem to you? Isn't that the same thing as saying "there [certainly] is a certain way that things seems to me"? You made a statement, a proposition in logic if you prefer. As such it is assigned truth-value T, simply because it was stated in the positive sense.

Ok, so it's not incorrigible -- I never said it was. Now deal with real
issue: the difference in format, in presentation between neural firing
and subjective exprience.

"Subjective experience" = your fiction (as per het).

Neural firing = observable phenomenon.

What more distinction do you want?

Whatever. You can't infer from the fact that someone doesn't employ
a particular bit of jargon that they are not talking about what the
jargon refers to: they could be using other terms.

It's not just about "jargon". Think of how much more is involved in an esophagus than just the "pipe" (cilia; muscles that create a "wave-like" motion, thus propelling the food downward (if not, you wouldn't be able to eat upside-down); etc). What is important is that they are not referring to exactly the same thing.

 

[Mentat]

Here's a thought experiment for you:

Zed is a neuroscientist. He is in the habit of sticking his head in a brain scanner and
correlating his subjective experience with what the scanner shows. Eventually
he gets so good at this that he doesn't even need to look at the scanner any more.
He can describe to an audience of his colleagues what is going on in his brain
purely on the basis of introspection: "as I eat this strawberry ice-cream, neural cluster JB853 should be firing at a frequency of 24.5hz" -- "Yes Zed, that is what the scanner shows".
IOW, he can now imitate an Antipodean. And Antipodeans know what is going on in their heads. So Zed knows, too. The only difference is that he can express it in
two ways, the Antipodean way, in neural language, and the ordinary way, in the language of seemings and feelings. He is, as it were, bilingual. But then, who
is to say that those of us who are monolingual who only speak the language of seemings and feelings do not know what is going on in our heads ?

So, he's playing two language-games now? His first language-game still needn't really mean anything. It could have been a short-cut game, which he used before he had the antipodean ability of "intro-inspection" (I had to come up with something ). If he continues to use it afterward, it is merely because society at large doesn't yet have the intro-inspection abilities.

You've got to wonder if that's not why there's so much consensus in PoM with regard to there being some kind of MBP and/or HP. After all, so long as we've got nothing more direct, our short-cut jargon is the currently-accepted language-game.

 

[Tournesol]

But nobody relates the "cold" to another (singular) object.

That is exactly the point I was trying to make. The presence of an
singular noun in the sentence does not legitimise the metaphysical posit
of a single really existing enitity in this case, because there is no
general rule to the effect. That being the case, you cannot infer
that someone who talks about "a quale" believes that qualia,
any more than colds, are baisc constituents of the world.

That you refer to it as "a cold" simply means that you are quantizing your case of the cold. That you relate an impression on our computative apparatus to the singular entity that caused the impression (and that you do so in a one-one relation -- i.e. compare and contrast just as you would with two singular objects) is indeed indicative of the confusion of Universals for particulars; of processes for quanta.

Nope.

If you don't see this, then I wonder: what did you think a "quale" was?

Qualia are the ways things seem to us. Note that since we do not have a final can complete Theory Of Everyhting, we simply do not know whether the
things we talk in terms of --atoms, quarks -- are basic constituents of the words or approximate place-holders.

Yes, but the HP evolved from a series of "turns" in the history of Philosophy (I feel as though I'm repeating myself, but you don't seem to be listening here (no offense)). The quantizing of impressions, or the reference to "final" ("end product") drafts of consciousness (implicit or explicit) is one of those "turns".

That is your contentious claim.
OTOH, the HP can be formulated without reference to quantisation or finality.

No, I'm explaining that, in the history of man, there was a time (we're still in it) when we did not have a way to see what was going on within us. We are, however, territorial, self-aware animals, and so we don't like the concept of the things most intrinsic to us being unknown to us. So we develop a vocabulary that allows us to make claims about our states, inspite of our actual ignorance.

That's a testable proposition. If you are right there should be no correlation
between subjective reports an brain-scans. If I am right, there should.
Guess whose side the current evidence is on ?

But what does that mean? Is it the same as "Whichever can be used to make the most accurate predictions?".

That would be a start. But note that realists can talk about what
is really the case without specifying how it can be discovered, or
even requiring that it can be. Anti-realists believe you can't. Both
claims are philsophically contentious. Science assumes realism.

You refer to my argument as "unscientific", and that is indicative of an ignorance about the philosophy of science (again, I don't mean to be offensive). Science holds the theory as the highest point of certainty (a theory can be "strong" or "weak", but it never ceases being a theory), and the best theories are the ones that can be used to make accurate predictions (and there's very little more to it).

And theories which predict better do so becuase they are closer to reality--why else would they ? So there is still a more-real / less-real
distinction even in the absence of absolute certainty.

Popper wasn't saying that. However, if we can never know how they "really" are -- and if we invented a method that doesn't require them to "actually" be anyone way -- so long as we can make accurate predictions, then, frankly, we don't care.

If "we" are realists, we care about why one theory works better than another.

Again, please don't make too many claims about science without understanding it, Tournesol. I make no claim to know what level of education you've had in this field, merely that your comments do not reflect a good working knowledge of it.

I have a BSc in Physics. Don't confuse disagreement with ignorance.

Ah, but that there is a way that "things really are", is yet another example of how things seem to you.

Not experientially.

I'm not really saying that's all that exists, there is more to it (though, I confess, I haven't been forthcoming on this point before). There is also the matter of belief. However, Dennett's heterophenomenological approach does allow for the existence of belief. Indeed, it requires it.

However, it is a perfectly logical claim that there is nothing more to what you report than that which you report. It depends on your truthfulness, and perhaps on your belief that there are things that you cannot report (for whatever reason), but that is also taken into account.

But not at face-value -- and of course, there is no question of you
introspecting about how your reports relate to your experience ?

You mischaracterise het. The het-ist is supposed to take my reports
at face value unless there is specific reason to the contrary.

That's what I said, isn't it?

You seem to be making an exception for any reports mentioniung subjectivity,experince, qualia, etc.

No, we are taking the report at face-value. It is an expression of the belief that there is more to your "experience" than that which you can report. And we take that as absolutely, unquestionably, incorrigibly TRUE...in your fiction (or, if you prefer, in your belief-system/language-game).

That is not taking it at face-value -- that would be to take it as true
full stop. "True in my fiction" is just a long-winded way of saying "false".
You are tying yourself in knots here.

Did you not say, in the "previously posted by you" quote, that there is a certain way that things seem to you? Isn't that the same thing as saying "there [certainly] is a certain way that things seems to me"? You made a statement, a proposition in logic if you prefer. As such it is assigned truth-value T, simply because it was stated in the positive sense.

No, there is in everyday language and logic a difference between saying
something is true and saying it is necessarily or certainly true.

"Subjective experience" = your fiction (as per het).

Neural firing = observable phenomenon.

But subjective reports can be correlated with objective brain-states.
How can a fiction be correlated with a fact ?

It's not just about "jargon". Think of how much more is involved in an esophagus than just the "pipe" (cilia; muscles that create a "wave-like" motion, thus propelling the food downward (if not, you wouldn't be able to eat upside-down); etc). What is important is that they are not referring to exactly the same thing.

OK. Oesophagus-talk is more accurate and detailed than food-pipe talk.
But that does not mean food-pipe talk is wrong, meaningless, fictional
etc.

So, he's playing two language-games now? His first language-game still needn't really mean anything.

It may be less informative -- that does not make it meaningless.
(It may even be more informative about some things -- ethical and aesthetic issues, the sort of things scientists aren't concerned with).

You've got to wonder if that's not why there's so much consensus in PoM with regard to there being some kind of MBP and/or HP. After all, so long as we've got nothing more direct, our short-cut jargon is the currently-accepted language-game.

surely the essence of the MBP is what sort of metaphysics to derive
from these two languages. IOW, it is a subset of the larger problem of how
to get from ways of talking to ways of being, the same problem
that gives us "do numbers really exist" , "do virtual particles really exist"
etc.

 

[Mentat]

That is exactly the point I was trying to make. The presence of an
singular noun in the sentence does not legitimise the metaphysical posit
of a single really existing enitity in this case, because there is no
general rule to the effect.

Yes there is, that's the whole point of "singular nouns"? Again, to refer to "a cold" is to refer to "a case of the cold". One. Singular. Ergo, quantized.

That being the case, you cannot infer
that someone who talks about "a quale" believes that qualia,
any more than colds, are baisc constituents of the world.

I'm not talking about basic constituents of anything, merely about singular entities. The word "quantum" just means that it is a singular or discrete entity.

Qualia are the ways things seem to us. Note that since we do not have a final can complete Theory Of Everyhting, we simply do not know whether the
things we talk in terms of --atoms, quarks -- are basic constituents of the words or approximate place-holders.

What are you talking about?

That is your contentious claim.
OTOH, the HP can be formulated without reference to quantisation or finality.

But you have yet to show this. Every time you talk about "impressions" or "qualia" you relate them to something specific (which is only right, if they are the way we preceive things), and you do so in the same manner (grammatically and logically speaking) as one would relate one object to another. You thus quantize the impression.

That's a testable proposition. If you are right there should be no correlation
between subjective reports an brain-scans.

You are apparently not paying attention to what I'm saying, Tournesol. I didn't say that there was no correlation between subjective reports and what's actually going on inside the head, merely that our grammar evolved among beings that do not have privileged access to their insides. If there is a correlation, it could easily be the case that they are merely concomitant, and not causally related at all. IOW, the physical processes that caused the brain state could have caused the verbal report, but that doesn't mean that the report is indicative of privileged knowledge, merely that it was caused at the same time.

That would be a start. But note that realists can talk about what
is really the case without specifying how it can be discovered, or
even requiring that it can be. Anti-realists believe you can't. Both
claims are philsophically contentious. Science assumes realism.

No. It. Doesn't.

There is too much literature on the subject of philosophy of science, and this ain't the place to discuss it, but I can tell you quite confidently that you are wrong about this. Science works within a method that doesn't take into account how things "actually are" (or even that such a thing exists).

And theories which predict better do so becuase they are closer to reality--why else would they ?

Who cares "why" they predict better? Scientists certainly don't. A theory predicts better, ergo it is better. That's what a "better theory" means. One that predicts better. It could be further from the "actual truth" (if such a thing actually exists at all) than ever before, but that would make it no less accurate in its predictions.

If "we" are realists, we care about why one theory works better than another.

But "we" are not realists. Just because you are -- and you may be the foremost scientist in some field or other, for all I know or care -- doesn't mean that other scientists are, and it certainly doesn't mean that the method of science has any relation to realism whatsoever.

I have a BSc in Physics. Don't confuse disagreement with ignorance.

Your ignorance of the philosophy of science is not affected by your knowledge of a certain science. Most scientists (in my experience) know (and care) very little about the underlying philosophies of what they do, or the history thereof.

Not experientially.

Have you ever "experienced" something outside your own "experience"? Have you ever had a conscious thought that you didn't "experience"?

But not at face-value -- and of course, there is no question of you
introspecting about how your reports relate to your experience ?

You are assuming (as per your belief) that there is such a thing as "experience". Why is that so hard to see? You believe this very strongly, but that doesn't mean anything more than that you believe it strongly.

You seem to be making an exception for any reports mentioniung subjectivity,experince, qualia, etc.

I make no such exception. Your reports about qualia and subjective experience are taken at face-value, just as much as your reports about when the next Leonid shower is. They are how things are in your fiction, and whether that relates to the world of science is a completely different matter. Your reports, at true "face-value", are just that: your reports.

That is not taking it at face-value -- that would be to take it as true
full stop. "True in my fiction" is just a long-winded way of saying "false".
You are tying yourself in knots here.

No, I'm not. Do you think anyone could debate with Sir Doyle about some aspect or other of Holmes' habits, appearance, or any other such thing? It would be foolish to even try. That's because it is Doyle's fiction, and no one else's. That doesn't make his reports about Holme's "false". It just makes them his.

No, there is in everyday language and logic a difference between saying
something is true and saying it is necessarily or certainly true.

Oh, please! I can't even believe I'm going to respond to this, but...

Is not the statement that something is (not "might be", not "could be", not "should be"...) "true", good enough to establish that you are not tentative or trepidatious about this statement?

But subjective reports can be correlated with objective brain-states.
How can a fiction be correlated with a fact ?

What is "fact"?

Besides, your fiction could easily correlate with "popularly-accepted-fiction", and that would be enough. Just as my fiction that the world is not the center of the Universe, could be considered "fact" so long as it agreed with "popularly-accepted-fact".

OK. Oesophagus-talk is more accurate and detailed than food-pipe talk.
But that does not mean food-pipe talk is wrong, meaningless, fictional
etc.

And I don't think that your short-cut speech for internal states is "meaningless or wrong" either. It is, however, "short-cut speech", nonetheless.

It may be less informative -- that does not make it meaningless.
(It may even be more informative about some things -- ethical and aesthetic issues, the sort of things scientists aren't concerned with).

Sociologists and the like are indeed concerned with such thins.

Anyway, it's not about how informative it is. That he used a short-cut language before, and that he doesn't need one anymore (except to communicate with others who still don't have direct, privileged access), is what's important.

surely the essence of the MBP is what sort of metaphysics to derive
from these two languages. IOW, it is a subset of the larger problem of how
to get from ways of talking to ways of being, the same problem
that gives us "do numbers really exist" , "do virtual particles really exist"
etc.

But all this questioning about what something "really" is, or whether something "really exists" is part of the problem ITFP. It's the "wrong turn" we took at Kant.

 

[loseyourname]

But the idea that they all branched off from philosophy makes philosophical points appear to be those which must be understood/agreed first, in order for other fields to do their work. That implies, once again, that philosophy is the firm "ground" upon which to found our assumptions (which, in turn, form the bases of our fields of study).

You're going to have to elaborate here, because how what you just wrote doesn't follow from what I wrote. To review, I pointed out that all products of philosophical thought that do result in concrete answers branch off to become sciences of one sort or another. The reason for this separation is simply the nature of the two beasts. I could be wrong, but I suspect that I have a very different view of philosophy than you do. I do think that philosophers, like any other human being engaged in the quest for knowledge, seeks certainty to whatever extent he can, but that doesn't mean philosophy itself is the practice of doing so. In fact, I think that the sciences have more of a grounding than philosophy does. Philosophy has more of a tendency to look for implications and to find more questions to ask, whereas science is concerned primarily with answering the questions that are already there.

You're right to say that philosophy has a greater tendency to actually seek certainty than the sciences, which simply seek whatever knowledge is practically attainable (and because of the nature of funding, largely what is useful). The thing is, if philosophy ceased to do this, it would cease to be philosophy. To illustrate, I'm going to bring up an example from political philosophy. Political philosophy can be looked at basically as the attempt to ground human society in foundations that will best serve the needs of the members of those societies. If you look at Rouseau or John Rawls, what they were doing was making an attempt to rationally demonstrate the basis of the social contract and the welfare state, respectively. If I'm reading you correctly, your brand of language-game sophistry would have them simply seek to use the most convincing arguments rather than the best. If they took your path, however, they would cease to be philosophers and become politicians, or at best political scientists.

Rorty would say that that's what's wrong with philosophy today. Philosophers are so concerned with getting the "first questions" answered first (and grounding all others in these "first questions") that they will always be stuck at "square one". Wittgenstein's therapeutic approach to philosophy, on the other hand, suggests exorcising our "problems" by dealing with them in terms of puzzles in a language-game. IOW, if philosophers would adopt a more social approach (and a more relative one ("what move can/cannot be made, in this particular game?")), they wouldn't constantly run into "problems".

What exactly do you see as these "problems," though? The problems of philosophy are simply a reflection of our inability to answer specific questions with complete certainty. It seems as if you are saying that this results in a lack of progress on the part of philosophy. However, when you look at the entire history of ideas that have emanated from philosophy, there has been plenty of progress. It's just that, as I mentioned earlier, when a certain field of study makes that progress it begins to call itself "science" rather than philosophy. I'm having trouble seeing how philosophy would progress anyway if it took your path. Let's say that metaphysicians ceased to search for truth, and rather looked to convince players in a language game. How would this results in philosophical progress? The only way is if you define progress as the ability to reach a consensus within a group that has already reached a consensus on the rules of its discourse (which is essentially what a language-game is).

But what if our "ideals" are misguided?

Is there any reason to think that they are? It seems awfully cynical to say that we should do away with one of the most basic of all human urges (the curiosity for knowledge) simply because it can be frustrating and practically difficult.

You're wrong about science, btw. Theories, the highest points of the scientific method, can be falsified. Indeed, they can never be completely "proven", in any normal sense.

I'm not wrong, I just didn't state it clearly. When I typed "cannot be falsified," what I meant was that the theory is accepted because, as of this current moment, it best fits the facts and has resisted falsification. Not that it can never be falsified.

As to lawyers, their purpose is not to establish absolute truth, but (as you said) to establish truth beyond "reasonable doubt".

That's the purpose of the lawyers, but it isn't the purpose of the justice system. The purpose of the justice system is to find the guilty party and punish him. Central to this aim is the pursuit of truth. Granted, it is the philosophers of law that see this pursuit as central more than it is the lawyers themselves, but is there really something wrong with that? Are you really going to get down on the philosophers because they want truth whereas the lawyers just want to convince a jury? It's hard to see how doing away with the philosophers by turning them into another form of lawyer will result in progress. We already have enough lawyers.

Our "ideal" scientists and lawyers are only ideals in terms of philosophy as a search for absolute truth (a goal that the lawyer and scientist will always fall short of attaining, but a goal nonetheless). There are other ways of doing philosophy.

Yes, I know. What I am saying is that it is not a better way. Just look to the last time we actually had philosophers doing what you would have them do - ancient Greece with the sophists. Do you really think that they made more progress than subsequent philosophers?

Well, think of this: can science ever be used to falsify the belief in a god?

This could be argued ad nauseum, but the usual consensus is that it cannot. Nor, AFAIK, can any other system/field of study ever be invoked to "prove" or "disprove" a religious precept.

To begin with, I have a semantic difficulty with the idea of "falsifying" a belief. If all you mean is to demonstrate that the belief is incorrect, then fine. In principle, what science can do is completely explain the causes and appearances of all of the natural world, in which case the invocation of God becomes completely unnecessary and superfluous. When they can no longer invoke the "God of the gaps" fallacy, it will be interesting to see where religious people turn, or if the world will even still contain religious people. Obviously, though, this isn't the aim of science; in fact, when it was first developed it was looked at largely as a means of uncovering God's truth.

It is my contention, however, that the debate between science and religion should not be one of belief, but rather one of methodology. If we look at how the respective practices seek to acquire knowledge, generally speaking we have the scientific method, which seeks to demonstrate the truth of its propositions through logical reasoning and empirical study. Religion, on the other hand, is mostly a process of revelation, in which one either takes on faith the word of some authority or personal epiphany. The language games are certainly different. I'll agree with Wittgenstein on that, but I will not agree that we should simply leave each to its own domain and its own conclusions. Let us look at the issue a little more closely.

Take a simple religious proposition, one central to all of western religion: "God loves us." What is it that makes religious people believe this to be the case? To be honest, I'm not entirely certain. There are religious people that can suffer unspeakable misfortune for no apparent reason, often because of their religious beliefs, in spite of their prayers for help and mercy, who will still believe that God loves them. What's worse than that are the rational theologians with their free will defense of the problem of evil. The argument is often made that God allows evil to exist in order that we may be free, including that we may be free to choose the wrong path and utterly destroy and ultimately condemn ourselves.

Let us change the context here. Imagine a parent with a 17 year-old child that has become addicted to heroin and gotten caught up in the crime underworld. This parent does not want to impose on his child's freedom, so he watches him for the next 3 years as he falls into the depths of utter depravity, ultimately killing himself while at the same ruining the lives of numerous loved ones. In fact, the reason the parent does this is simply that the child chose this path and did not seek the parent's help, thinking he could handle his problems on his own. Would any reasonable person call this parent a good, loving parent? I would hasten to guess not. In fact, I would say that a religious person would have an especially condemning attitude toward this parent. If, however, it is God that behaves in such a manner toward his child, that same religious person will stand back in awe of God's infinite love.

What is my point? Simply that all language games are not of equal value. One of the defining characteristics of most religious propositions is that they are not falsifiable by any means whatsoever. No matter what happens to a person and no matter what reasoning or empirical research can be shown to contradict his claim, the religious person will continue to believe it. I want to say that this language game is not on equal footing with the method of demonstration and falsification used in the scientific language game. In fact, I want to say that ideally this method should be employed by all language games. It isn't that I expect a religious person to seek a scientific study that can disprove his metaphysical notions, but I do expect that he should remain open to the possibility of being incorrect and to the possibility that his incorrectness can be demonstrated through some means.

Thus, the relativism inherent in Wittgenstein's philosophy may not be so counter-intuitive after all (and, of course, even if it is, that doesn't make it wrong).

Whether or not I have demonstrated that Wittgenstein's idea of language game relativism is wrong, I hope at least that I have demonstrated that it is undesirable and can easily lead to more practical problems than we now have. Given that you claim Wittgenstein (and yourself apparently) is not looking to be correct, but only to be convincing and practical, I would think this should be adequate by his own rules.

 

[hitssquad]

Gerald & Kathy Hardcastle and bad parenting

Imagine a parent

Judges Gerald and Kathy Hardcastle.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2004/Jun-13-Sun-2004/news/24070707.html
http://stlawrence.to/ripples/hardcastle.html

with a 17 year-old child that has become addicted to heroin and gotten caught up in the crime underworld.

The aformentioned's daughter Whitney.

This parent does not want to impose on his child's freedom, so he watches him for the next 3 years as he falls into the depths of utter depravity.

From the New York Times: "The Hardcastles indulge their daughter with money, cars, a cellphone, nice clothing. They are waiting for her moment of clarity, the day she wakes up and they all laugh about this...

They spoil their daughter, the Hardcastles know. In defense of themselves, they recite that old saying: No matter how much you give your kids, it never feels like enough."

Would any reasonable person call this parent a good, loving parent? I would hasten to guess not.

The New York Times writes:

The judge can tell you about the horror of standing in the emergency room above his daughter, her painted lips dull red, her skin light blue. He can tell you about the fear he felt, wondering where it all fell apart.

He blames himself for his daughter's problems — his insatiable career drive, the pressure he placed on her to maintain appearances. But he also blames the corrupting influence of Las Vegas, a city grown beyond belief and control. He followed a dream here 30 years ago, when this was a small town. Now, he says, his dream is dead.

"I wouldn't come here again," he said. "I won't retire here. There's a lack of social control. The kids don't have dreams. I ask them, What do you want to be? They tell me nothing."

 

[Tournesol]

Yes there is, that's the whole point of "singular nouns"? Again, to refer to "a cold" is to refer to "a case of the cold". One. Singular. Ergo, quantized.

The presence of an
singular noun in the sentence does not legitimise the metaphysical posit
of a single really existing enitity in this case, because there is no
general rule to the effect.

You are apparently not paying attention to what I'm saying, Tournesol. I didn't say that there was no correlation between subjective reports and what's actually going on inside the head, merely that our grammar evolved among beings that do not have privileged access to their insides.

The fact that reports correlate show that we have some sort of
access. (I don't give a hoot about whether it is priveleged or not).
You must agree that we do not access what is going on
AS neural activity, since you evidently agree that Antipodeans
are different to normal people. So why shouldn't we
use 'expereince' or 'qualia' (or 'quali-age' or 'qualia-ness') to label
the non-neurological mode of access we actually do have ?

If there is a correlation, it could easily be the case that they are merely concomitant, and not causally related at all. IOW, the physical processes that caused the brain state could have caused the verbal report, but that doesn't mean that the report is indicative of privileged knowledge, merely that it was caused at the same time.

Since I have personal experience that my reports are produced consciously
on the basis of experience, you are never going to convince me that
they erupt out of nowhere automatically. Your refusal to introspect
produces no ore conviction than Pope whoever-it-was's refusal to
look through Galileo's telescope. Concs. is a 1st-person phenomeon, and
to insist on treating it from a purely 3rd-person perspectie is a form of
consciousness-denial.

There is too much literature on the subject of philosophy of science, and this ain't the place to discuss it, but I can tell you quite confidently that you are wrong about this. Science works within a method that doesn't take into account how things "actually are" (or even that such a thing exists).

This scientist begs to differ.

And theories which predict better do so because they are closer to reality--why else would they ?

Who cares "why" they predict better?

Scientists and other realists. If you feel that this topic should
be out-of-bounds to scientists the burden is on you need to explain why.

certainly doesn't mean that the method of science has any relation to realism whatsoever.

Is that a fact ? What kind of a fact is it, Mentat ??

Your ignorance of the philosophy of science is not affected by your knowledge of a certain science.

Rude and wrong. I have been studying both subjects since before you were born. Patronising ? Yes, and you thouroughly deserve it.

But not at face-value -- and of course, there is no question of you
introspecting about how your reports relate to your experience ?

You are assuming (as per your belief) that there is such a thing as "experience". Why is that so hard to see? You believe this very strongly, but that doesn't mean anything more than that you believe it strongly.

It doesn't necessarily mean that. It may or may not be true. How do we answer the question ? By looking, by introspecting.

You seem to be making an exception for any reports mentioning subjectivity,experince, qualia, etc.

I make no such exception. Your reports about qualia and subjective experience are taken at face-value, just as much as your reports about when the next Leonid shower is. They are how things are in your fiction,

Neither het. nor anything else entitles you to assume that my reports are mere fictions. Grossly question-begging.

No, I'm not. Do you think anyone could debate with Sir Doyle about some aspect or other of Holmes' habits, appearance, or any other such thing? It would be foolish to even try. That's because it is Doyle's fiction, and no one else's. That doesn't make his reports about Holme's "false". It just makes them his.

That a subject's reports are his does not make them fictional. You are misusing the word fiction. Of course, the problem her is that the het, principle
that subjects are the best authorities about what is going on inside
their heads is completely contrary to your desire to show that no-one
has privelged access or experience. (That is to some extent a problem for Dennett too).

Is not the statement that something is (not "might be", not "could be", not "should be"...) "true", good enough to establish that you are not tentative or trepidatious about this statement?

That still falls short of necessity. There are at least three 'grades' of truth:
possible (problematic), actual (assertoric), necessary (apodeictic). You
are confusing actuallity with necessity.

Read this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/

Note that there is no rule p->[]p

But subjective reports can be correlated with objective brain-states.
How can a fiction be correlated with a fact ?

What is "fact"?

It is what realists believe in and anti-realists don't. But you can't disbelieve
in something without knowing what it is.

Besides, your fiction could easily correlate with "popularly-accepted-fiction", and that would be enough. Just as my fiction that the world is not the center of the Universe, could be considered "fact" so long as it agreed with "popularly-accepted-fact".

That is the way relativists look at things. It is not "just true". Or indeed, a
fact. See, anti-realism and relativism are self-undermining because they cannot assert themselves as truths or facts. Realism isn't.

Anyway, it's not about how informative it is. That he used a short-cut language before, and that he doesn't need one anymore (except to communicate with others who still don't have direct, privileged access), is what's important.

How do you know Zed used a short-cut language before ? I never said so.
Since his reports on his neural states are "translated" from his subjective experience, they cannot possibly be more detailed than his experience.
So it is about how informative it is.

But all this questioning about what something "really" is, or whether something "really exists" is part of the problem ITFP. It's the "wrong turn" we took at Kant.

Questioning is never a problem, bad answers are the problem.

 

[Tournesol]

Scientific realism is, by the lights of most of its defenders, the sciences' own philosophy of science. Considerations of the significant philosophical challenges which it faces indicate that it can be effectively defended only by the adoption of a metaphilosophical approach which is also closely tied to the science, viz., some version or other of philosophical naturalism.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/#3

 

[Mentat]

You're going to have to elaborate here, because how what you just wrote doesn't follow from what I wrote. To review, I pointed out that all products of philosophical thought that do result in concrete answers branch off to become sciences of one sort or another. The reason for this separation is simply the nature of the two beasts. I could be wrong, but I suspect that I have a very different view of philosophy than you do. I do think that philosophers, like any other human being engaged in the quest for knowledge, seeks certainty to whatever extent he can, but that doesn't mean philosophy itself is the practice of doing so. In fact, I think that the sciences have more of a grounding than philosophy does. Philosophy has more of a tendency to look for implications and to find more questions to ask, whereas science is concerned primarily with answering the questions that are already there.

I don't disagree with anything here. However, in a Rortean (ergo, Wittgensteinian) consideration of philosophies role -- what it is and what it should be -- I have come to think that the tendency of philosophies to become increasingly "scientific" as they become increasingly "certain" is a mistake (IOW, the legacy of the "analytic philosopher" (I'm sture it's still practiced, I'm just referring to it as a "legacy" to place it in its historical context) is perhaps a misguided one).

What I'm saying is that the role that philosophy has assumed ever since Descartes (and, perhaps, much earlier) has been one of "grounding" (this concept wasn't well-formalized until Kant, so I usually refer to it as "post-Kantian"). According to Descartes, it is through introspection that we can find the most "certain" things, and it is on such "certain things" that we should found all other pursuits of knowledge. If you follow the empiricist trend (which, to my mind, contains some of the most integral underpinnings of scientific method and philosophy of science), you will assume that, since you never experience anything outside of your own experience, you shouldn't trust the results of "reason" or "argument" as much as you should trust the (for lack of a better term) "right-before-your-eyes" phenomena.

In sum, philosophy doesn't look for grounding because it thinks it has already found it. Science, OTOH, is much more "grounded" (as you put it) because of its history and philosophy. It is an empirical tradition (coupled with the assumptions of induction).

If I'm reading you correctly, your brand of language-game sophistry would have them simply seek to use the most convincing arguments rather than the best. If they took your path, however, they would cease to be philosophers and become politicians, or at best political scientists.

They would indeed "cease to be philosophers", in the traditional sense of what a philosopher is. Wittgenstein's philosophy wasn't called "therapeutic" because he thought philosophy was fine just the way it was .

What exactly do you see as these "problems," though? The problems of philosophy are simply a reflection of our inability to answer specific questions with complete certainty. It seems as if you are saying that this results in a lack of progress on the part of philosophy.

Not a lack of progress, a lack of progress in the right direction. It has indeed progressed, but only to be met with dead-ends (viz, "hard problem of consciousness").

What is wrong is not "our inability to answer questions with complete certainty", it's that we're still trying to. What is "certainty"? Our current definitions are either too vague or based on a priori assumptions that have no good reason (IMO) for being accepted.

I'm having trouble seeing how philosophy would progress anyway if it took your path. Let's say that metaphysicians ceased to search for truth, and rather looked to convince players in a language game. How would this results in philosophical progress?

It would result in a new role for philosophy. Philosophy would cease to be about polishing our internal mirrors (Rorty's metaphor for "making sure we are perceiving things accurately", i.e. that our "mental represenations" actually reflect something "real" and that they do so to greater or lesser degrees of "objective accuracy"), and would assume a role something akin to common sense or even literary tradition. Throughout history, such things (literary tradition, common sense, etc) have set the stage for numerous "games" to be played within the confines that they produce for society. So, if philosophy assumed a similar role, the fields that emerge from it would base their "games" within its "rules", but wouldn't run into the "problems" that result from representationalism.

The only way is if you define progress as the ability to reach a consensus within a group that has already reached a consensus on the rules of its discourse (which is essentially what a language-game is).

No, philosophy might be another one of the fields for providing "rules". Wittgenstein talked a lot about what "could be said" and what "should not be said", and is thus the quintessential post-Wittgensteinian-revolution philosopher. IOW, if philosophy assumes the role that the neo-Wittgensteinians think it should, then they will all start doing what Wittgenstein was already doing.

Think of the "progress" that literature has made throughout history. It can't really be said that it hasn't made any progress, it's just that there is no absolute ideal that it is striving to reach. Literature has been revolutionized numerous times, but it's not striving toward anyone thing. OTOH, it is setting the stage for new ways of thinking, new "rules" or formats for society's "games".

Is there any reason to think that they are? It seems awfully cynical to say that we should do away with one of the most basic of all human urges (the curiosity for knowledge) simply because it can be frustrating and practically difficult.

I don't think we should get rid of our curiosity for knowledge. Quite the opposite. However, I do think we should change our definition of "knowledge" and our understanding of how it is acquired, and this is not a particularly radical notion (many philosophers have pondered what "knowledge" really is, and how itss acquired; indeed, the first among philosophers (by the estimation of some), Plato and Aristotle, were concerned with little else so much as that question).

I'm not wrong, I just didn't state it clearly. When I typed "cannot be falsified," what I meant was that the theory is accepted because, as of this current moment, it best fits the facts and has resisted falsification. Not that it can never be falsified.

Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood.

That's the purpose of the lawyers, but it isn't the purpose of the justice system. The purpose of the justice system is to find the guilty party and punish him. Central to this aim is the pursuit of truth. Granted, it is the philosophers of law that see this pursuit as central more than it is the lawyers themselves, but is there really something wrong with that? Are you really going to get down on the philosophers because they want truth whereas the lawyers just want to convince a jury? It's hard to see how doing away with the philosophers by turning them into another form of lawyer will result in progress. We already have enough lawyers.

Couldn't agree with you more on that last sentence, but I think we may have more than enough philosophers too (no offense).

What is important is our definition of "truth". What more is there to "the truth" than that of which the lawyer can convince the jury? If there is more to it, then the jury system is intrinsically flawed.

Yes, I know. What I am saying is that it is not a better way. Just look to the last time we actually had philosophers doing what you would have them do - ancient Greece with the sophists. Do you really think that they made more progress than subsequent philosophers?

I don't think they had time to. I also don't think they were as concerned with "progress", and were perhaps the better for it. But that's just me :shy:.

To begin with, I have a semantic difficulty with the idea of "falsifying" a belief. If all you mean is to demonstrate that the belief is incorrect, then fine. In principle, what science can do is completely explain the causes and appearances of all of the natural world, in which case the invocation of God becomes completely unnecessary and superfluous. When they can no longer invoke the "God of the gaps" fallacy, it will be interesting to see where religious people turn, or if the world will even still contain religious people. Obviously, though, this isn't the aim of science; in fact, when it was first developed it was looked at largely as a means of uncovering God's truth.

All quite true. I would argue that science's explanations of "causes and appearances" are but one set of possible explanations, and that religious people have no reason to substitue science's explanation for their own, but that would side-track.

What I will argue is that science can never be used to explain why something is the way it is, and can thus explain the Universe exhaustively, in science's own game (the "hows" and "whats" and "whens" and "wheres"), but never really get rid of God, because God is usually invoked to give the "hows", "whats", etc a purpose or a reason for being there. Science is not equipped to answer this question, nor even to address it. It's a different game.

Let us look at the issue a little more closely.

Take a simple religious proposition, one central to all of western religion: "God loves us." What is it that makes religious people believe this to be the case? To be honest, I'm not entirely certain. There are religious people that can suffer unspeakable misfortune for no apparent reason, often because of their religious beliefs, in spite of their prayers for help and mercy, who will still believe that God loves them. What's worse than that are the rational theologians with their free will defense of the problem of evil. The argument is often made that God allows evil to exist in order that we may be free, including that we may be free to choose the wrong path and utterly destroy and ultimately condemn ourselves.

Brief interjection: they believe it because the Bible says it is the case. Indeed, one passage says that God is love, making love His quintessential quality.

Rational theologians don't make up the idea that free will is the cause of current evil, that's in the Bible too. God set up a test, the outcome of which He didn't know, for the first man and woman. The woman was thoroughly deceived by Satan to make the wrong choice. He called into question God's kindness, by stating that God was witholding something good from humans: the ability to decide for themselves what was "good" and what "evil".

Basically, it's supposed to be like a court case. God is the accused. Humans are the witnesses. If humanity can prove, by continual testimony (with reference to the results of human rule, which have been observed throughout history) that Jeremiah was right in saying "it does not belong to man that is walking even to direct his step", then God is "exonerated" of the charges.

Anyway, enough theology...

Let us change the context here. Imagine a parent with a 17 year-old child that has become addicted to heroin and gotten caught up in the crime underworld. This parent does not want to impose on his child's freedom, so he watches him for the next 3 years as he falls into the depths of utter depravity, ultimately killing himself while at the same ruining the lives of numerous loved ones. In fact, the reason the parent does this is simply that the child chose this path and did not seek the parent's help, thinking he could handle his problems on his own. Would any reasonable person call this parent a good, loving parent? I would hasten to guess not. In fact, I would say that a religious person would have an especially condemning attitude toward this parent. If, however, it is God that behaves in such a manner toward his child, that same religious person will stand back in awe of God's infinite love.

You, however, do not believe in an after-life. That's an essential part of most religious "language-games".

Anyway, according to Scripture, God has provided a way out for all obedient mankind: the ransom sacrifice of Jesus.

By virtue of that sacrifice, obedient people get rewarded with everlasting life on a paradisaic Earth.

All these points are, again, essential parts of the Biblical language-games.

What is my point? Simply that all language games are not of equal value. One of the defining characteristics of most religious propositions is that they are not falsifiable by any means whatsoever. No matter what happens to a person and no matter what reasoning or empirical research can be shown to contradict his claim, the religious person will continue to believe it. I want to say that this language game is not on equal footing with the method of demonstration and falsification used in the scientific language game. In fact, I want to say that ideally this method should be employed by all language games. It isn't that I expect a religious person to seek a scientific study that can disprove his metaphysical notions, but I do expect that he should remain open to the possibility of being incorrect and to the possibility that his incorrectness can be demonstrated through some means.

And should you too not remain open to the possibility that empiricism and induction could be "incorrect"? Should you not remain as open-minded as you would ask the religious person to be, with regard to what constitutes "correctness" in the first place?

 

[Mentat]

The presence of an
singular noun in the sentence does not legitimise the metaphysical posit
of a single really existing enitity in this case, because there is no
general rule to the effect.

Well, when you put it that way.

The fact that reports correlate show that we have some sort of
access. (I don't give a hoot about whether it is priveleged or not).
You must agree that we do not access what is going on
AS neural activity, since you evidently agree that Antipodeans
are different to normal people. So why shouldn't we
use 'expereince' or 'qualia' (or 'quali-age' or 'qualia-ness') to label
the non-neurological mode of access we actually do have ?

Our verbal reports are the result (end-result, some would say; but, "result", regardless) of neural processes. Speaking is a physical activity with correlates in the brain. This is all obvious.

So, we don't need "access" of any kind to our insides in order to report, because the report could easily be a result of those same physical processes of which the brain is indeed kept informed. IOW, nerve-endings in the skin (for example) allow the connected brain to detect when that skin has been damaged. The verbal report "ow!" is simply one of many physical processes initiated by the brain, upon being informed of such damage.

Since I have personal experience that my reports are produced consciously
on the basis of experience, you are never going to convince me that
they erupt out of nowhere automatically. Your refusal to introspect
produces no ore conviction than Pope whoever-it-was's refusal to
look through Galileo's telescope. Concs. is a 1st-person phenomeon, and
to insist on treating it from a purely 3rd-person perspectie is a form of
consciousness-denial.

Your missing the point. Your belief about what you've got going on inside you is irrelevant. Or, rather, it is relevant, but not for establishing absolute truth (as you are intending to do, with statements such as the first sentence above).

Pope Paul V had no more authority (regardless of how strongly he believed that he did) on what was going on in space, than you have on what's going on inside your body.

Scientists and other realists. If you feel that this topic should
be out-of-bounds to scientists the burden is on you need to explain why.

Philosophers of science throughout the ages of disagreed about many things, but I have yet to read one that disagrees with the fact that science does not answer "why" questions. It does answer "why" questions of the form "what cause", but never "what purpose" nor "why not some other way". Scientists can ponder this because they are human, and their interests needn't be exhausted completely by what is allowable in the scientific method.

Is that a fact ? What kind of a fact is it, Mentat ??

A historical one. You once again try to re-write history (or, rather, ignore it completely) to allow your views to continue to exist. I, OTOH, have formed my views based on an understanding and extensive reading of the what is currently known about that history.

Rude and wrong. I have been studying both subjects since before you were born.

Then I pity you. In 16 years of existence I have gathered more about your chosen subjects than you probably ever will (if you don't get past your current biases, and actually research the subjects). Patronising? Yes, but you're not listening anyway, so what does it matter what I say?

It doesn't necessarily mean that. It may or may not be true. How do we answer the question ? By looking, by introspecting.

To do what? Create more beliefs? Or, perhaps, to create/discover reasons to hold to the ones we already have that much more strongly? You will still change nothing with regard to the heterophenomenological approach, which will continue to treat your beliefs as beliefs!

Besides, haven't you read Summa Logica? If it doesn't "necessarily mean that", then it can be explained without invoking the assumption, and should be (since ad hoc assumptions are the death of rational inquiry).

Neither het. nor anything else entitles you to assume that my reports are mere fictions. Grossly question-begging.

I have begged no question, but you have. If you think you have some absolute way to distinguish between "fiction" and "non-fiction", then I'd like to hear it. Until then, it should mean nothing at all that I refer to your beliefs as "fictions". They are your worlds, your understandings, your beliefs. And the heterophenomenologist treats them as such.

That a subject's reports are his does not make them fictional. You are misusing the word fiction. Of course, the problem her is that the het, principle
that subjects are the best authorities about what is going on inside
their heads is completely contrary to your desire to show that no-one
has privelged access or experience. (That is to some extent a problem for Dennett too).

Heterophenomenology does not say that you are the best authority about what's going on inside your head. You are the best authority about what you believe is going on inside your head.

That still falls short of necessity. There are at least three 'grades' of truth:
possible (problematic), actual (assertoric), necessary (apodeictic). You
are confusing actuallity with necessity.

Read this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-modal/

Note that there is no rule p->[]p

Your site is about Modal Logic. I'm already familiar with that, and wonder how you can add the "actual" truth-value to the two truth-values that Modal Logic allows for (namely: "possible that" and "necessary that").

Your statement, if it is to be translated into Modal Logic, cannot be translated "it is possible that there is a certain way things seem to me", and must thus be translated "there is necessarily a certain way things seem to me".

Re-read my previous post. I gave other options ("should be", "could be", "might be", etc), but you didn't use any of those. You said "there is a certain way things seem to me". Anyway, heterophenomenology already allows for this. There is indeed a way that things seem to you (which is exactly the same as saying that you have a system of beliefs about how things are), and that is what the heterophenomenologist is concerned with.

It is what realists believe in and anti-realists don't. But you can't disbelieve
in something without knowing what it is.

You're dodging, and you're wrong. I can indeed disbelieve something without knowing what it is in any exhaustive sense. I don't know very much about Astrology (as can be seen by my posts on the subject in the S&D Forum), but I disbelieve it.

Now, I ask you again, what is a "fact"?

That is the way relativists look at things. It is not "just true". Or indeed, a
fact. See, anti-realism and relativism are self-undermining because they cannot assert themselves as truths or facts. Realism isn't.

Sure they can, they just define "truth" differently than you.

How do you know Zed used a short-cut language before ? I never said so.

Didn't you say that he used to speak in terms of "qualia" and "subjective experience"?

Since his reports on his neural states are "translated" from his subjective experience, they cannot possibly be more detailed than his experience.
So it is about how informative it is.

Assumption upon assumption.

Questioning is never a problem, bad answers are the problem.

Questioning carried out badly (for example, questioning that basis itself on bad a priori assumptions) is indeed a problem.

 

[Tournesol]

So, we don't need "access" of any kind to our insides in order to report, because the report could easily be a result of those same physical processes of which the brain is indeed kept informed.

That would simply be a form of access. Any kind of ability to report
on something (even to report on a virtual realityof mere beliefs) entails
and access to what is being reported on.

Pope Paul V had no more authority (regardless of how strongly he believed that he did) on what was going on in space, than you have on what's going on inside your body.

It is you who are analogous to His Holiness, since you are the one who
refuses to emply his introspective "telescope".

Philosophers of science throughout the ages of disagreed about many things, but I have yet to read one that disagrees with the fact that science does not answer "why" questions. It does answer "why" questions of the form "what cause", but never "what purpose" nor "why not some other way".

"Why are better theories better" is a "why" question of the first sort.

Then I pity you. In 16 years of existence I have gathered more about your chosen subjects than you probably ever will (if you don't get past your current biases, and actually research the subjects). Patronising? Yes, but you're not listening anyway, so what does it matter what I say?

Not agreeing is not the same as not listening.

You will still change nothing with regard to the heterophenomenological approach, which will continue to treat your beliefs as beliefs!

Beliefs may be true or false.

Besides, haven't you read Summa Logica? If it doesn't "necessarily mean that", then it can be explained without invoking the assumption, and should be (since ad hoc assumptions are the death of rational inquiry).

The existence of experience is something that needs to be explained,
not something posited in order to explain something else. The alternative
is to deny consciousness, not to explain it.

I have begged no question, but you have. If you think you have some absolute way to distinguish between "fiction" and "non-fiction", then I'd like to hear it. Until then, it should mean nothing at all that I refer to your beliefs as "fictions".

Every sane person has ways -- absolute or not, I don't care -- to distinguish
between fiction and non-fiction. If you do not, you do not have the right
to assume fiction. (bear in mind that even if it only seems to me that
there is a way things seem to me -- there is still a way things seem to
me!)

Your site is about Modal Logic. I'm already familiar with that, and wonder how you can add the "actual" truth-value to the two truth-values that Modal Logic allows for (namely: "possible that" and "necessary that").

Thos are the two modal operators allowed IN ADDITION TO the unadorned
proposition 'A', etc.

You're dodging, and you're wrong. I can indeed disbelieve something without knowing what it is in any exhaustive sense.

But then your disbelief may be ill-founded. In any case, this is not about
obscure technicalities, it is about common words like "truth and "fact",

Now, I ask you again, what is a "fact"?

Something which is the case.

Sure they can, they just define "truth" differently than you.

Quite. For relativists, true means true-for-such-and-such-a-commnnity.
So relativism is true-for-relativists. But I'm not a relativist , so it isn't
true-for-me!

 

[Mentat]

That would simply be a form of access. Any kind of ability to report
on something (even to report on a virtual realityof mere beliefs) entails
and access to what is being reported on.

No, it doesn't. Again, if the same physical processes that are responsible for (for example) the processing of a harmful stimulus are also responsible for creating verbal reports of being in pain (like "ow!"), then that report is not so much as "report" (in the usual sense) as simply a coinciding phenomenon. Why such phenomena would coincide so consistently is easily explained from an evolutionary perspective, and needn't be gotten into here.

It is you who are analogous to His Holiness, since you are the one who
refuses to emply his introspective "telescope".

And you are the one who believes that such a thing exists. That you are holding to a belief, while I merely negate them, is what parallels you to the Pope (and every other opponent of scientific research and progress throughout history). Surely you realize that Chalmer and co. can, if allowed, stunt scientific progress greatly, since their theory of consciousness doesn't allow for it to be a scientifically-understood phenomenon.

"Why are better theories better" is a "why" question of the first sort.

Which is why scientists do not ask that question. They leave that to the philosophers of science.

OTOH, they can ask "why is this particular theory better than the alternatives", but even that is not really scientific. A scientist needn't even know the criteria for "better theory" or "replacable theory" to get on in their fields.

Not agreeing is not the same as not listening.

But talking over me, with no regard to what I've actually said, is.

Beliefs may be true or false.

That, also, is a belief. Besides, even if it were shown to be a "true" belief, it would still depend on what you believe to be the accurate meaning of "truth".

The existence of experience is something that needs to be explained,
not something posited in order to explain something else. The alternative
is to deny consciousness, not to explain it.

This may be your opinion, but my research (and that of professional philosophers before me) has yielded other results. The history of the study of consciousness is just as I have laid it out for you, and that history explicitly requires that specialized terms such as "conscious experience" and "qualia" were invented to play a specific game that (IMO) needn't be played at all if the only goal is the explanation of consciousness. IOW, consciousness can (and should) be explained without such terms, but that doesn't change the fact that those terms were originally created for the purpose of explaining consciousness.

Every sane person has ways -- absolute or not, I don't care -- to distinguish
between fiction and non-fiction. If you do not, you do not have the right
to assume fiction.

I could use the word "story" instead, if it makes you feel better. Have you ever heard the expression "that's my story, and I'm stickin' to it"? Your beliefs are your "story".

BTW, in absentia of a good distinction between fiction and non-fiction, I was using the term "fiction" as nearly synonymous to "story".

(bear in mind that even if it only seems to me that
there is a way things seem to me -- there is still a way things seem to
me!)

Irrelevant. As a heterophenomenologist, I would have to take for granted that there is a certain way that things seem to you (your beliefs about how things are); that's the whole point. However, your statement that there is a certain way that things seem to you is simply a statement of belief; a piece of your story.

But then your disbelief may be ill-founded. In any case, this is not about
obscure technicalities, it is about common words like "truth and "fact",

My disbelief needn't be "founded" at all. A negation does not bear the burden of proof. An anti-thesis does, but not a simple negation.

Something which is the case.

Is that a fact?

Quite. For relativists, true means true-for-such-and-such-a-commnnity.
So relativism is true-for-relativists. But I'm not a relativist , so it isn't
true-for-me!

Re-read your own paragraph please. It contradicts itself.

In case you don't see it: If you are not a relativist, how can you claim that relativism isn't "true for you", and expect it to mean anything?

 

[Tournesol]

No, it doesn't. Again, if the same physical processes that are responsible for (for example) the processing of a harmful stimulus are also responsible for creating verbal reports of being in pain (like "ow!"), then that report is not so much as "report" (in the usual sense) as simply a coinciding phenomenon.

So what is the usual sense ? And how do you report on, eg, dreams without
having some kind of insight into what is going on in your head (or your brain
having some kind of access to itself -- which need not be any more mysterious
than a computer's ability to report on the amount of disk space it has left).

Surely you realize that Chalmer and co. can, if allowed, stunt scientific progress greatly, since their theory of consciousness doesn't allow for it to be a scientifically-understood phenomenon.

Some qualiaphiles think it can't be explained, and some think it can.

"Why are better theories better" is a "why" question of the first sort.

Which is why scientists do not ask that question. They leave that to the philosophers of science.

But question of the first sort, accordiing to you, are the sort that science can answer.

That, also, is a belief.

And a 'mere' belief, no doubt...unlike everything you say.

BTW, in absentia of a good distinction between fiction and non-fiction, I was using the term "fiction" as nearly synonymous to "story".

No, what you are doing is equivocating. You are treating some of my beliefs
neutrally, and condemming the ones don't you like as 'fictions' as opposed to non-fictions. (And, of course, treating all your own beliefs as proven fact

Irrelevant. As a heterophenomenologist, I would have to take for granted that there is a certain way that things seem to you (your beliefs about how things are); that's the whole point. However, your statement that there is a certain way that things seem to you is simply a statement of belief; a piece of your story.

Which may or may not be true.

Is that a fact?

Yes.

In case you don't see it: If you are not a relativist, how can you claim that relativism isn't "true for you", and expect it to mean anything?

I don't. Since I am not a relativist, I do not employ the true-for-X formulation at all.
Relativism just isn't true, simpliciter. If it is false, it is false, and if it is true, it is only true for relativists!

 

[Mentat]

So what is the usual sense ? And how do you report on, eg, dreams without
having some kind of insight into what is going on in your head (or your brain
having some kind of access to itself -- which need not be any more mysterious
than a computer's ability to report on the amount of disk space it has left).

Are you still claiming that you are listening to me?

Re-read my response (to which this post was supposed to be a rebuttal).

Some qualiaphiles think it can't be explained, and some think it can.

And some Catholics like science; some don't.

But question of the first sort, accordiing to you, are the sort that science can answer.

Sorry about that. I flip-flopped my own post :shy:.

In this case, you are wrong about the question being of the first kind. It's actually of neither kind, but of a third: "what makes something this, instead of some other thing". This is also, solely in the realm of philosophy. For example: a scientist can't answer why the Universe is composed of atoms instead of fire, water, lightning, and air. It's not a question they are capable of asking (as scientists). Philosophers, OTOH, have complete freedom to ask such questions, and have been doing so since the ancient Greeks.

And a 'mere' belief, no doubt...unlike everything you say.

That's because 90% of the things that I say are in negation to something you've said. Think Pyrrhonean.

No, what you are doing is equivocating. You are treating some of my beliefs
neutrally, and condemming the one's you like as 'fictions' as opposed to non-fictions. (And, of course, treating all your own beliefs as proven fact

If calling them "fictions" is condemning, then I condemn all of your beliefs (stated and as-yet-unstated). However, I am indeed treating the term "fiction" as synonymous to the term "story". Your reports are your "story".

Which may or may not be true.

Which is a belief of yours, that you re-state constantly . Saying it over and over again doesn't make it any more valid. I've already taken it into account as the statement (piece of your story) that it is.

Yes.

Self-referential drivel. If "fact" is defined as "something which is the case" and that definition is itself "factual", then you are requiring an a priori assumption that will lead (inevitably) to your being correct. Bad form!

I don't. Since I am not a relativist, I do not employ the true-for-X formulation at all.

Though, of course, your last statement (in the previous post) does indeed make such a statement.

Relativism just isn't true, simpliciter. If it is false, it is false, and if it is true, it is only true for relativists!

Are you implying that we should judge relativism in your framework? Why?

 

[loseyourname]

What I'm saying is that the role that philosophy has assumed ever since Descartes (and, perhaps, much earlier) has been one of "grounding" (this concept wasn't well-formalized until Kant, so I usually refer to it as "post-Kantian"). According to Descartes, it is through introspection that we can find the most "certain" things, and it is on such "certain things" that we should found all other pursuits of knowledge. If you follow the empiricist trend (which, to my mind, contains some of the most integral underpinnings of scientific method and philosophy of science), you will assume that, since you never experience anything outside of your own experience, you shouldn't trust the results of "reason" or "argument" as much as you should trust the (for lack of a better term) "right-before-your-eyes" phenomena.

I wouldn't quite go that far. Scientists rely on deductive logic to derive expected implications of their hypotheses. The difference between a scientist and a pure rationalist is that the pure rationalist will stop at that point, whereas the scientist seeks to confirm his hypothesis by attempting to observe the results that it logically entails.

I am prepared to say, by the way, that this is the way all investigation should be conducted. One should always seek confirmation (along with falsification) of any suspicion they might hold or idea they might form.

Not a lack of progress, a lack of progress in the right direction. It has indeed progressed, but only to be met with dead-ends (viz, "hard problem of consciousness").

The only philosophers that think the hard problem is a dead end are the ones that think that there is no hard problem. In short, it's not like this is a disease inflicting all of philosophy. I also don't think it has anything to do with a quest for certainty. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Things like the hard problem become a failing of philosophy because people are still enamored with the Cartesian idea of the "natural light of reason." Basically, they just trust what they can intuit and then make up silly arguments to back up their intuition. Doing so might have earned Descartes a place in history, but I don't think it made for good philosophy, and it still doesn't for those who continue to use the same method of discourse.

In short (I sure do like to say that, don't I?), it isn't the quest for truth that is the issue here; it is the Cartesian method employed in that quest that is the problem. I suppose it's fair to say that he improved upon the scholastic method, but Descartes inadvertently infected philosophy with a lot of bad ideas and methodology himself. On that, you and I agree.

What is wrong is not "our inability to answer questions with complete certainty", it's that we're still trying to. What is "certainty"? Our current definitions are either too vague or based on a priori assumptions that have no good reason (IMO) for being accepted.

Are you certain? If you are, then you must have some idea of what you mean by that. That isn't to say that the human species has come to a consensus on the matter, but still.

Think of the "progress" that literature has made throughout history. It can't really be said that it hasn't made any progress, it's just that there is no absolute ideal that it is striving to reach. Literature has been revolutionized numerous times, but it's not striving toward anyone thing. OTOH, it is setting the stage for new ways of thinking, new "rules" or formats for society's "games".

Well gee, then we don't need philosophy, do we? If you're going to turn it into literature, why not do away with it entirely? If fideism is correct, doesn't that imply that different schools of philosophy already have their own unique language-games and, within the rules of each, the statements they make are correct? On what absolute basis does Wittgenstein say that they are not?

I don't think we should get rid of our curiosity for knowledge. Quite the opposite. However, I do think we should change our definition of "knowledge" and our understanding of how it is acquired, and this is not a particularly radical notion (many philosophers have pondered what "knowledge" really is, and how itss acquired; indeed, the first among philosophers (by the estimation of some), Plato and Aristotle, were concerned with little else so much as that question).

Many still do. If that is all you are proposing for philosophy, then you are simply proposing something that is already being done.

Couldn't agree with you more on that last sentence, but I think we may have more than enough philosophers too (no offense).

How many philosophers do you think we have exactly? I'm willing to bet it's in the bottom five percent of all professions in terms of job holdings.

What is important is our definition of "truth". What more is there to "the truth" than that of which the lawyer can convince the jury? If there is more to it, then the jury system is intrinsically flawed.

Of course our jury system is intrinsically flawed. All political institutions are intrinsically flawed. That isn't to say that it is logically impossible to have a perfect justice system, but it is definitely a very difficult undertaking. Nonetheless, our system is built on the idea that we should strive to be as perfect as is possible given what limitations we have. I do happen to think that that is a good principle on which to base a system of justice.

I don't think they had time to. I also don't think they were as concerned with "progress", and were perhaps the better for it.

Fair enough. I will, however, take the opposite position that were it not for the post-Socratic quest for truth and rigor in investigation, we would never have made the social and technological progress that we have.

All quite true. I would argue that science's explanations of "causes and appearances" are but one set of possible explanations, and that religious people have no reason to substitue science's explanation for their own, but that would side-track.

I would, of course, contend that you are wrong and that any belief otherwise is absolutely ridiculous. If we relied generally on religious explanation of cause and effect, we'd still be stuck with animism and polytheistic determinism, in which the natural world operated not according to any particular laws, but rather at the whims of capricious unseen beings. If (and I'm only saying if) science could fully explain the laws of the natural world in such a way that all events could be explained and predicted according to these natural laws, what possible reason could someone have to believe that there was additional causal explanation that needed to be given? The only question I can see remaining a question forever is why there should be existence at all. I, for one, am happy to admit that neither science nor religion can answer that one. Even God, if such a being did exist, could not explain his own existence.

What I will argue is that science can never be used to explain why something is the way it is, and can thus explain the Universe exhaustively, in science's own game (the "hows" and "whats" and "whens" and "wheres"), but never really get rid of God, because God is usually invoked to give the "hows", "whats", etc a purpose or a reason for being there. Science is not equipped to answer this question, nor even to address it. It's a different game.

I will answer that religion is not equipped to answer these questions either. In fact, the very idea that these are questions that need to be answered is a byproduct of a form of thinking far more infectious and insidious than the Cartesian kind.

Brief interjection: they believe it because the Bible says it is the case. Indeed, one passage says that God is love, making love His quintessential quality.

Exactly my point. An arbitrary text from antiquity is picked out and believed for no apparent reason to hold the truth. From this point, religious people then move to defend this truth against all appearances to the contrary. If religious people were more scientific in their thinking, they could employ the same hypothetico-deductive method. Work out the logical implications of God loving you, then find out if these hold. Simply believing it to begin with and then twisting all prima facie contradictory events to meet a pre-existing bias is hardly sound thinking.

Rational theologians don't make up the idea that free will is the cause of current evil, that's in the Bible too. God set up a test, the outcome of which He didn't know, for the first man and woman. The woman was thoroughly deceived by Satan to make the wrong choice. He called into question God's kindness, by stating that God was witholding something good from humans: the ability to decide for themselves what was "good" and what "evil".

Here is another good example of how poorly religious people think. Nowhere in the book of Genesis is there ever a reference to "Satan" or indeed to any malignant fallen angel of any kind. There is only a reference to a talking serpent, "the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made" (Gen 3:1). It seems to me that it is saying that God created an animal with the ability to deceive men and that this animal subsequently deceived men. Furthermore, any logical enquiry conducted by Adam and Eve at this early stage of their existence could only result in the conclusion that the serpent was correct, because indeed he was. God was withholding knowledge from them. In fact, the passage includes a curious reference to knowledge that only "gods" are allowed to have. I can see why the translator might have difficulty with this, since the word used in Sumerian texts on which the creation myth seems to be based is a plural word (Sumerians were, of course, polytheistic). Since you're into philosophy as literature, why not go out on a limb here and interpret the serpent as a hero that was only trying to liberate early humans from oppressive beings claiming to be gods? I realize that other books of the bible do not mesh well with this interpretation, but since the creation myth seems to be based on literature from an entirely different civilization and era than the rest of the bible, why assume that it should mesh?

Basically, it's supposed to be like a court case. God is the accused. Humans are the witnesses. If humanity can prove, by continual testimony (with reference to the results of human rule, which have been observed throughout history) that Jeremiah was right in saying "it does not belong to man that is walking even to direct his step", then God is "exonerated" of the charges.

You're going to have to interpret that for me, or at least put it in context. From what you've quoted, it only seems that Jeremiah is saying that man should not do anything of his own accord. If God wanted men to be automata that mindlessly followed him, why give them a choice at all? In fact, according to God, men are not responsible for the bad events that occur at all. "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7)

You, however, do not believe in an after-life. That's an essential part of most religious "language-games".

It wasn't part of the language game of the people who authored the creation myth. Indeed, it was not even part of the language game of the early Jews who authored the old testament. Do you really think that going the Christian route and postulating ad hoc that restitution will be given in the next life is the way to go? For the sake of consistency, should we not at least use the same language game as the author of the arbitrary ancient text we have chosen to base a belief system upon?

Anyway, according to Scripture, God has provided a way out for all obedient mankind: the ransom sacrifice of Jesus.

By virtue of that sacrifice, obedient people get rewarded with everlasting life on a paradisaic Earth.

I'm having trouble here. Just for the sake of consistency, God is still considered to be omnipotent by modern Christians, no? In light of this, what reason was there for God to incarnate and then sacrifice himself? Should he not have been able to forgive without all the drama and subsequent martydom? In light of the subsequent history of the Roman Catholic Church, maybe it wasn't best to give early Christians the idea that human sacrifice was a positive thing.

All these points are, again, essential parts of the Biblical language-games.

You mean they are part of the Christian language game. They don't seem to have been part of any language game until at best 130 AD.

And should you too not remain open to the possibility that empiricism and induction could be "incorrect"? Should you not remain as open-minded as you would ask the religious person to be, with regard to what constitutes "correctness" in the first place?

Sure, I'm open to that possibility. If I can ever be shown, or find on my own, a better method of acquiring knowledge, then I will use that method. This is all, of course, predicated on the basic assumption that I should be striving for as much certainty as I can get. This seems to contradict your prior stance. Your prior stance seemingly dictated that I simply work on my ability to be convincing, something that I think I am already pretty good at. Within my own language game, I'm already correct, so under that framework, what reason is there for me to maintain an open mind?

 

[Tournesol]

Philosophers, OTOH, have complete freedom to ask such questions, and have been doing so since the ancient Greeks.

Is that a fact ?

Think Pyrrhonean.

Naah, that's being sceptical about everything. You are highly selective (and inconsitent).

Self-referential drivel. If "fact" is defined as "something which is the case" and that definition is itself "factual", then you are requiring an a priori assumption that will lead (inevitably) to your being correct. Bad for

It's also inevitable that bachelors are umarried, and unmarried men are
bachelors. You are objecting to what I have said for not being contingent,
but it isn't suppose to be and thre is no reason why it should be.

Though, of course, your last statement (in the previous post) does indeed make such a statement.

Hypothetically. Notice the "would" ?

Are you implying that we should judge relativism in your framework? Why?

Relativism cannot assert itself as being true to someone who is not alredy a relativist. The question is: how does a relativist persuade someone who
is not already a relativist ? Demanding that they 'convert' at the outset is not the answer.

 

[Mentat]

I wouldn't quite go that far. Scientists rely on deductive logic to derive expected implications of their hypotheses. The difference between a scientist and a pure rationalist is that the pure rationalist will stop at that point, whereas the scientist seeks to confirm his hypothesis by attempting to observe the results that it logically entails.

I am prepared to say, by the way, that this is the way all investigation should be conducted. One should always seek confirmation (along with falsification) of any suspicion they might hold or idea they might form.

But "confirmation" in terms of Induction?

Besides, my point is that, philosophically speaking, scientists are a "step past" pure rationalists. It is this concept that leaves philosophy of mind as the "grounding", and everything else as that which is built up from it.

The only philosophers that think the hard problem is a dead end are the ones that think that there is no hard problem.

The eliminativists would probably word it slightly different. They think there is no "hard problem" only in that there needn't be one. Rorty, for example, traces it back to its historical roots, and tries to treat the problem before it even becomes a problem.

In short, it's not like this is a disease inflicting all of philosophy. I also don't think it has anything to do with a quest for certainty. In fact, I think the opposite is true. Things like the hard problem become a failing of philosophy because people are still enamored with the Cartesian idea of the "natural light of reason." Basically, they just trust what they can intuit and then make up silly arguments to back up their intuition.

This is all true. But the purpose of Descartes' concepts of "reason" and "intuition" were to establish that which could not (or, at least, should not) be called into doubt.

Trying to find firm grounding in things that cannot be doubted, but are simply true, is as old as Plato, which is why I go back to Plato and Aristotle for the first "Wrong Turn". That Descartes' First Philosophy led him to think he'd found that grounding for certain truth in intuition and reasoning is merely the reason that philosophy looks as it does today. It could have screwed itself over in a much different way, if Descartes had never published, but it would still have been on the wrong path since Plato.

Are you certain? If you are, then you must have some idea of what you mean by that. That isn't to say that the human species has come to a consensus on the matter, but still.

No, my certainty is merely my disposition to play on that side of the board, so to speak. It is a language-game, and my certainty (or current "belief", if you prefer) simply determines which "side" I'm on.

Well gee, then we don't need philosophy, do we? If you're going to turn it into literature, why not do away with it entirely? If fideism is correct, doesn't that imply that different schools of philosophy already have their own unique language-games and, within the rules of each, the statements they make are correct? On what absolute basis does Wittgenstein say that they are not?

You don't need basis to negate a claim. Only to make one of your own.

As to fideism, that's not what Wittgenstein and co. are encouraging. Faith is not the best basis any more than anything else is. Wittgensteinian philosophers are simply asking that people stop trying to ground all pursuits in one common grounding. This doesn't make sense for the concept of "game" or "language" and it doesn't make sense for the infinite different language-games.

Many still do. If that is all you are proposing for philosophy, then you are simply proposing something that is already being done.

I'm not suggesting that philosophy relegate itself to merely deciding what "truth" means, or what "knowledge" is. I'm just saying that it would help to clear that up before making claims as to what is "true" and what can be "known". I know that many philosophers are attempting this, but most of them are doing so within a neo-Cartesian framework. The skepticism of the Pyrrhoneans has been exchanged for Kantian skepticism about which concepts fit our intuitions best, and how well our intuitions reflect concepts.

How many philosophers do you think we have exactly? I'm willing to bet it's in the bottom five percent of all professions in terms of job holdings.

That may be enough.

Of course our jury system is intrinsically flawed. All political institutions are intrinsically flawed. That isn't to say that it is logically impossible to have a perfect justice system, but it is definitely a very difficult undertaking. Nonetheless, our system is built on the idea that we should strive to be as perfect as is possible given what limitations we have. I do happen to think that that is a good principle on which to base a system of justice.

That's all very fine, idealistically. However, the jury system is based on the concept that whatever a group of the accused's peers can be persuaded to believe is "true" enough to sentence him. That's a crude and ingratious way of putting it, but I hope you get my point.

If you were to propose another, and it were accepted, well, so what? Now society will have agreed that another criterion for "truth" is sufficient or "better" than the previous, and who's going to tell them otherwise? Do you see what I'm getting at?

Fair enough. I will, however, take the opposite position that were it not for the post-Socratic quest for truth and rigor in investigation, we would never have made the social and technological progress that we have.

That's what I said. But was that "progress" the "right" progress, or should it have turned out otherwise? Who decides?

I would, of course, contend that you are wrong and that any belief otherwise is absolutely ridiculous. If we relied generally on religious explanation of cause and effect, we'd still be stuck with animism and polytheistic determinism, in which the natural world operated not according to any particular laws, but rather at the whims of capricious unseen beings. If (and I'm only saying if) science could fully explain the laws of the natural world in such a way that all events could be explained and predicted according to these natural laws, what possible reason could someone have to believe that there was additional causal explanation that needed to be given? The only question I can see remaining a question forever is why there should be existence at all.

Well, if we were to side-track the thread thus, and I were to continue responding -- hypothetically speaking -- I would probably say something like:

What of the religions that hold to gods (or a God) that work within the bounds of the laws they set? What about the gods that like order and laws? Newton, Mendel, Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein, etc ad nauseum were all concerned with knowing "the mind of God". They studied nature and developed their theories because they thought that God had established a certain way that things should work, and that they would be able to better understand the mind of the Creator by observing His creations.

Indeed, without this religious belief (in a God of order) there would very likely be no science, since almost all the great scientists before the 20th century not only believe in Him, but did their work specifically because they believed in Him.

I, for one, am happy to admit that neither science nor religion can answer that one. Even God, if such a being did exist, could not explain his own existence.

That would be a huge side-track, so I won't even pretend to go there.

I will answer that religion is not equipped to answer these questions either. In fact, the very idea that these are questions that need to be answered is a byproduct of a form of thinking far more infectious and insidious than the Cartesian kind.

The idea that these questions need answering is a religious one. If you don't like it, don't play that game. No one's forcing you. However, if you don't like the concept that things just are the way they are, and that questions about purpose are meaningless, then you will have great difficulty playing science's game.

Exactly my point. An arbitrary text from antiquity is picked out and believed for no apparent reason to hold the truth. From this point, religious people then move to defend this truth against all appearances to the contrary. If religious people were more scientific in their thinking, they could employ the same hypothetico-deductive method. Work out the logical implications of God loving you, then find out if these hold. Simply believing it to begin with and then twisting all prima facie contradictory events to meet a pre-existing bias is hardly sound thinking.

Don't go there, I'm begging you. I will discuss religion as a separate game from science, and I will defend that each game has equal value (or, rather, each game has value to its own players). But I can't discuss the failings or acheivements of specifically Biblical thinkers, for personal reasons as well as the rules of the Forum.

Biblical thinkers hold that they have the truth by virtue of understanding the only bit of writing that God ever authored. Scientific thinkers hold that they might someday attain the truth by studying how things appear to them, and using Induction. They are different games, and your arguments only prove further that one who prefers one game should not trouble himself with judging another game by virtue of the rules of his own (it would be like saying that a move in Chinese Checkers is foolish because it discounts the obvious ability of the opponent to "jump" the moved piece (since such a thing matter in Checkers, but not in Chinese Checkers)).

Here is another good example of how poorly religious people think. Nowhere in the book of Genesis is there ever a reference to "Satan" or indeed to any malignant fallen angel of any kind. There is only a reference to a talking serpent, "the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made" (Gen 3:1). It seems to me that it is saying that God created an animal with the ability to deceive men and that this animal subsequently deceived men. Furthermore, any logical enquiry conducted by Adam and Eve at this early stage of their existence could only result in the conclusion that the serpent was correct, because indeed he was. God was withholding knowledge from them. In fact, the passage includes a curious reference to knowledge that only "gods" are allowed to have. I can see why the translator might have difficulty with this, since the word used in Sumerian texts on which the creation myth seems to be based is a plural word (Sumerians were, of course, polytheistic). Since you're into philosophy as literature, why not go out on a limb here and interpret the serpent as a hero that was only trying to liberate early humans from oppressive beings claiming to be gods? I realize that other books of the bible do not mesh well with this interpretation, but since the creation myth seems to be based on literature from an entirely different civilization and era than the rest of the bible, why assume that it should mesh?

2 Timothy 3:16. I'm sorry, I can't address this argument further.

You're going to have to interpret that for me, or at least put it in context. From what you've quoted, it only seems that Jeremiah is saying that man should not do anything of his own accord. If God wanted men to be automata that mindlessly followed him, why give them a choice at all?

Jeremiah was simply saying that moral choices (the choices about what is morally right and wrong) belong to Jehovah, and that man has no business making such decisions on his own. It's chapter 10, verse 23, if you want context. This is all in the "creation myth" as well, since "tree of knowledge" isn't a complete name. It was actually "the tree of the knowledge of good and bad".

It wasn't part of the language game of the people who authored the creation myth. Indeed, it was not even part of the language game of the early Jews who authored the old testament. Do you really think that going the Christian route and postulating ad hoc that restitution will be given in the next life is the way to go? For the sake of consistency, should we not at least use the same language game as the author of the arbitrary ancient text we have chosen to base a belief system upon?

In the "creation myth", the first prophecy is uttered (Genesis 3:15), and it is not until Revelation that it is interpreted. The Bible claims divine authorship, so, to play its game is to play the game of viewing the whole Bible as the writing of God. It is internally coherent only if you allow different passages to interpret each other (and not add anything of your own).

I'm having trouble here. Just for the sake of consistency, God is still considered to be omnipotent by modern Christians, no? In light of this, what reason was there for God to incarnate and then sacrifice himself?

He incarnated His Son, not Himself!

You mean they are part of the Christian language game. They don't seem to have been part of any language game until at best 130 AD.

It is all there, in the Bible (Old and New Testament). If you want more information, PM me or E-mail me. I cannot discuss this here.

I really have to stop now.

Sure, I'm open to that possibility. If I can ever be shown, or find on my own, a better method of acquiring knowledge, then I will use that method.

Your still talking about "better" methods. Why?

This is all, of course, predicated on the basic assumption that I should be striving for as much certainty as I can get. This seems to contradict your prior stance. Your prior stance seemingly dictated that I simply work on my ability to be convincing, something that I think I am already pretty good at.

And so modest too .

I'm not suggesting that you see which game gives you more certainty. I'm suggesting you choose a game (rather than continuing to think that you can play chess with checker-pieces).

Within my own language game, I'm already correct, so under that framework, what reason is there for me to maintain an open mind?

There isn't one, and that's the beauty of it. Philosophy, in a post-Wittgensteinian framework, doesn't need to convince you of anything. If you choose to play any of the games that fall under the domain of "pursuit of knowledge/wisdom", then philosophy can only tell you the rules for that particular game. If you don't like them, do what my sister does: make up rules as you go along. All that means is that you aren't really playing "chess" merely playing your own game with chess-pieces.

 

[Mentat]

Is that a fact ?

An historical one.

Naah, that's being sceptical about everything. You are highly selective (and inconsitent).

No I'm not. I am completely consistent, and I am skeptical only of your claims. That's perfect Advocatus Diaboli, if you ask me.

It's also inevitable that bachelors are umarried, and unmarried men are
bachelors. You are objecting to what I have said for not being contingent,
but it isn't suppose to be and thre is no reason why it should be.

I am objecting because you think that you can prove that bachelors are unmarried. That would be stupid, since you've already defined "bachelor" as "unmarried man".

Hypothetically. Notice the "would" ?

Go back seven posts, there is no "would".

Relativism cannot assert itself as being true to someone who is not alredy a relativist.

Relativism can't assert itself as being true at all.

The question is: how does a relativist persuade someone who
is not already a relativist ? Demanding that they 'convert' at the outset is not the answer.

I'm not demanding anything. I'm pointing out that your concept of truth is nothing more than a part of the game you have currently chosen to play. You are judging other games by virtue of the rules of your own game, and I think that's bad form. So what? You don't have to listen to me.

 

[Tournesol]

No I'm not. I am completely consistent, and I am skeptical only of your claims. That's perfect Advocatus Diaboli, if you ask me.

Then you are not a pyrrhonist, since they are sceptical of everything, and you
are inconsistent because you claim to be a pyrrhonist.

I am objecting because you think that you can prove that bachelors are unmarried. That would be stupid, since you've already defined "bachelor" as "unmarried man".

I never claimed to prove any contingent facts about bachelors or anything else. I was explaing the commone word "fact" in terms of other common
words. OTOH , I could simply call you bluff about not knowing whta facts are.

Go back seven posts, there is no "would".

You are right. It was an 'if'. Still hypotheticla, though.

Relativism can't assert itself as being true at all.

Hurrah !

I'm not demanding anything. I'm pointing out that your concept of truth is nothing more than a part of the game you have currently chosen to play.

I have demonstrated that there is only one consistent way of using
the word 'truth', which is the global, non-relativist one. Since it
is global, it is not just my game, and since I have demonstrated it, I am not
begging any questions.

 

[loseyourname]

I'm sorry to say it, Mentat, but I really can't lend you any further creedence at this point. Again, I haven't read any Wittgenstein firsthand, nor any Rorty, but as you've presented them, as long as we can make up our own language rules and the statements we make within those rules are internally consistent, regardless of whether or not they are consistent with reality, that game is just as good as any other. You certainly haven't made a case that this is true, but I suppose under your own framework, you don't have to. As long as you don't contradict yourself, you're doing fine. All that's fine for debate, but I can't see the viability of this system for forming beliefs. Humans hold beliefs; this statement should not be contentious. They also hold these beliefs for a certain reason and I do not think that reason is only that they do not contradict other beliefs that they hold. You can present a perfectly consistent set of religious beliefs (or historical beliefs or whatever) to me, but that isn't reason enough to believe them. There needs to be some amount of correspondence with empirical observation, whether personal or learned from others. In fact, I would guess that there are animals out there that don't have any language, but nonetheless hold beliefs. How the heck is linguistic analysis going to explain these?

Heck, just let me take the history example and show you why I find this idea of extended fideism (I use the term to refer to any system of statements that wants to be considered unassailable from outside, not just theisms) to be rather ridiculous. Let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that I come up with an alternate account of the conquests of Napoleon. In fact, based on my interpretations of documents I've found, I've developed a perfectly consistent theory that postulates that Napoleon was, in fact, a robot with superhuman strength. Forget how I come to this conclusion. Just assume for the moment that I've been able to develop this idea and that no statement I make within this new system of history is in conflict with any other. You can't criticize my interpretations of the historical documents, as non-mainstream as they are, because I am just playing a different language game than the other historians. As far as I can see, according to your framework, I'm done. I can now hold the belief that Napoleon was a robot and my belief is just as good as any other.

Is this really what you want the pursuit of knowledge to become?

 

[Mentat]

Then you are not a pyrrhonist, since they are sceptical of everything, and you
are inconsistent because you claim to be a pyrrhonist.

A pyrrhonist is skeptical of all things in turn. Read; don't assume. A Pyrrhonian skeptic would never encourage defending or combating both sides of an argument at the same time.

I never claimed to prove any contingent facts about bachelors or anything else. I was explaing the commone word "fact" in terms of other common
words. OTOH , I could simply call you bluff about not knowing whta facts are.

I know what facts are, in that I have a definition for them.

As to your explanation of "fact", all you did was explain semantic necessity (i.e. a thing is what it is defined to be because it is defined to be that).

You are right. It was an 'if'. Still hypotheticla, though.

This is the statement I was referring to. There is no "if" or "would" in it:

You said...
Quite. For relativists, true means true-for-such-and-such-a-commnnity.
So relativism is true-for-relativists. But I'm not a relativist , so it isn't
true-for-me!

Hurrah !

Well, before you party too much, I would remind you that relativism doesn't allow anything to assert itself as absolutely true, so my statement is obvious.

I have demonstrated that there is only one consistent way of using
the word 'truth', which is the global, non-relativist one.

The very fact that there are relativists in the world, and that they have a different definition of truth, belies this (since it is no longer "consistent" in any way).

Besides, why should truth be consistent?

Since it
is global, it is not just my game

Yes it is. Yours is the game of post-Kantian philosophy, which is (by its own confession) the game of establishing "global truths".

 

[Mentat]

I'm sorry to say it, Mentat, but I really can't lend you any further creedence at this point. Again, I haven't read any Wittgenstein firsthand, nor any Rorty, but as you've presented them, as long as we can make up our own language rules and the statements we make within those rules are internally consistent, regardless of whether or not they are consistent with reality, that game is just as good as any other.

Consistent with "reality"? What's that?

I know this is just the kind of argument that has been irritating philosophers since Socrates (he used it, and it irritated his fellow thinkers), but it is relevant, and necessary. Why are you so tied to the concept of absolute reality and absolute knowledge of it, and how can you be sure that you are not simply playing one side of a game?

You certainly haven't made a case that this is true, but I suppose under your own framework, you don't have to. As long as you don't contradict yourself, you're doing fine. All that's fine for debate, but I can't see the viability of this system for forming beliefs. Humans hold beliefs; this statement should not be contentious.

A "belief" is nothing more than a disposition to hold to one side of a language-game or another. It has no more substance than the insistence on being "white", whenever one plays chess. Even Hume would substantiate this view of belief, except he still held onto the concept of an absolute reality (which is where you get Solipsism).

They also hold these beliefs for a certain reason and I do not think that reason is only that they do not contradict other beliefs that they hold.

What about William James' pragmatism, and the limiting factors on living opportunities? It is clearly not just Wittgensteinians that are suggesting some form of this concept.

You can present a perfectly consistent set of religious beliefs (or historical beliefs or whatever) to me, but that isn't reason enough to believe them. There needs to be some amount of correspondence with empirical observation, whether personal or learned from others. In fact, I would guess that there are animals out there that don't have any language, but nonetheless hold beliefs. How the heck is linguistic analysis going to explain these?

They don't have to. An animal that had beliefs, but no language-game whatsoever, could never communicate the fact that it had beliefs, and so they will never need to be dealt with.

Heck, just let me take the history example and show you why I find this idea of extended fideism (I use the term to refer to any system of statements that wants to be considered unassailable from outside, not just theisms) to be rather ridiculous. Let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that I come up with an alternate account of the conquests of Napoleon. In fact, based on my interpretations of documents I've found, I've developed a perfectly consistent theory that postulates that Napoleon was, in fact, a robot with superhuman strength. Forget how I come to this conclusion. Just assume for the moment that I've been able to develop this idea and that no statement I make within this new system of history is in conflict with any other. You can't criticize my interpretations of the historical documents, as non-mainstream as they are, because I am just playing a different language game than the other historians. As far as I can see, according to your framework, I'm done. I can now hold the belief that Napoleon was a robot and my belief is just as good as any other.

To play a different language-game than history is the same as not dealing with history at all. Science fiction writers write alternate-hisory novels all the time (Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna are among my favorites), but they don't claim to be playing the "history" game, they claim to be playing the "speculative fiction" game.

In light of this distinction, I ask you: if a person is playing a game very much like backgammon, but is using chess-pieces, and insists that he's playing "chess"...is he?

Is this really what you want the pursuit of knowledge to become?

It's what it already is. The very fact that you want to institute empiricism as an absolute framework for truth, while others want to institute "God says so" for that purpose, proves it.

 

[loseyourname]

Consistent with "reality"? What's that?

Frankly, I think that phrase is fairly self-explanatory. If what you really mean to ask is how I intend to demonstrate a correspondence with reality, the answer is through observation. It isn't the best technique for every kind of knowledge, but it works for most things. When Aristotle made the claim that a rotating projectile let go of would leave in a line perpendicular to a tangent line, he was wrong. He was wrong because when this is actually done, we can observe that the projectile moves in a tangent line. He wasn't correct according to the rules of his rational language game and wrong according to the rules of the empirical language game. He was simply wrong, because his statement was not consistent with reality.

Why are you so tied to the concept of absolute reality and absolute knowledge of it, and how can you be sure that you are not simply playing one side of a game?

I'm tied to absolute reality because I think it is ridiculously arrogant and anthropomorphic to suggest that a statement can be true simply we can convince ourselves of it. Reality is what reality is; we may know it or not (a collection of tautological statements, I know, but you get my point).

I'm actually not tied to the idea of any kind of absolute knowledge. It is what I would like to strive for, but whether or not it is attainable is a different question altogether.

A "belief" is nothing more than a disposition to hold to one side of a language-game or another.

Really? What about my belief that I am sitting here typing at my computer right now? Will you not distinguish between this belief and the belief that stalks of wheat are imbued with demigod spirits that will grow only if you castrate yourself after seeding? Is each really just a disposition explained by reference to linguistics?

Let's face it, Mentat. You're tied to an absolute frame of reference as much as anyone else is. The only difference is that your frame is linguistic analysis, whereas my frame is empirical reality.

Even Hume would substantiate this view of belief, except he still held onto the concept of an absolute reality (which is where you get Solipsism).

Hume's views on how humans acquire beliefs have no contemporary relevance except as history. His conception of atomism is completely wrong. Perhaps the most thorough refutation of the Humean framework for acquiring beliefs is to be found in Dennett's multiple drafts model.

What about William James' pragmatism, and the limiting factors on living opportunities?

James only presents situations where he feels it is best to hold a belief. I happen to disagree with him, but if he thinks he'll self-destruct if he doesn't profess a belief one way or another in things that he has no way of demonstrating, I'm willing to let him be. The fact remains that he presents no reason whatsoever to favor one belief over another and so doesn't give any reason to hold any particular belief.

They don't have to. An animal that had beliefs, but no language-game whatsoever, could never communicate the fact that it had beliefs, and so they will never need to be dealt with.

The communication isn't what's relevant. It's the holding of the belief. We're talking here about how beliefs are acquired. A human needn't communicate with another human, or even have the capacity to do so, to acquire a belief. Presumably, a deaf mute living alone in a desert could independently come to the conclusion that the liquid he found in the prickly plant kept him alive.

To play a different language-game than history is the same as not dealing with history at all. Science fiction writers write alternate-hisory novels all the time (Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna are among my favorites), but they don't claim to be playing the "history" game, they claim to be playing the "speculative fiction" game.

That isn't the point. The problem comes when we have two conflicting claims of truth, not with fictional accounts. If people of faith were willing to admit that their language games were fictional, then we would have no issues, would we? As it is, we have some pretty basic conflicts. Christianity claims that a spiritual teacher born in Judea in the first century was divine. Judaism claims that Christians are incorrect. Only one of these claims can be true. You're willing to say they're playing different language-games and I'm not. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the same guy and they both mean the same thing when they use the word "divine."

It's what it already is. The very fact that you want to institute empiricism as an absolute framework for truth, while others want to institute "God says so" for that purpose, proves it.

I didn't say I wanted to institute empiricism as the absolute framework by which to judge all claims. I just said that some verification and/or falsification, or at least the possibility of it, should be forthcoming if one is going to claim that something is true. I recognize that empirical confirmation will not always be the way to go. The most obvious example I can think of in which empiricism is useless is mathematical conjecture.

 

[Mentat]

Frankly, I think that phrase is fairly self-explanatory. If what you really mean to ask is how I intend to demonstrate a correspondence with reality, the answer is through observation. It isn't the best technique for every kind of knowledge, but it works for most things. When Aristotle made the claim that a rotating projectile let go of would leave in a line perpendicular to a tangent line, he was wrong. He was wrong because when this is actually done, we can observe that the projectile moves in a tangent line. He wasn't correct according to the rules of his rational language game and wrong according to the rules of the empirical language game. He was simply wrong, because his statement was not consistent with reality.

So "reality" = "observed phenomena"? Doesn't that presuppose that that which we observe is the best possible determinant of what is "real"?

I'm tied to absolute reality because I think it is ridiculously arrogant and anthropomorphic to suggest that a statement can be true simply we can convince ourselves of it. Reality is what reality is; we may know it or not (a collection of tautological statements, I know, but you get my point).

Ok, but didn't we invent the word "truth"? Rocks don't ponder the nature of "reality" or "truth" or "knowledge"; we do. So, don't we retain the right to define "truth" as we wish? And, if we can do that, then we should be able to define anything as we wish, so long as we can agree.

IOW, what's wrong with anthropocentricism if we are the only ones who philosophize ITFP?

I'm actually not tied to the idea of any kind of absolute knowledge. It is what I would like to strive for, but whether or not it is attainable is a different question altogether.

And do you admit that it's possible to go on living without thinking about "absolutes" or "truth"? Doesn't that make that pursuit your particular game, that not everyone has to play?

Really? What about my belief that I am sitting here typing at my computer right now? Will you not distinguish between this belief and the belief that stalks of wheat are imbued with demigod spirits that will grow only if you castrate yourself after seeding? Is each really just a disposition explained by reference to linguistics?

Why not? Hear me out (or, "see" me out...whatever :shy:)...if the term "sitting" meant what the term "standing" is generally accepted as meaning, and the term "typing" meant what the term "worshiping" is generally accepted as meaning, then the belief that you were "sitting here typing at your computer" would not hold up in argument, would it? Indeed, one could even say it would be a "false" statement.

Let's face it, Mentat. You're tied to an absolute frame of reference as much as anyone else is. The only difference is that your frame is linguistic analysis, whereas my frame is empirical reality.

In this argument I am defending a frame of reference. That means that I, for the purpose of this particular "game" am playing this "side", while you play the other "side".

Hume's views on how humans acquire beliefs have no contemporary relevance except as history. His conception of atomism is completely wrong. Perhaps the most thorough refutation of the Humean framework for acquiring beliefs is to be found in Dennett's multiple drafts model.

Point taken.

James only presents situations where he feels it is best to hold a belief. I happen to disagree with him, but if he thinks he'll self-destruct if he doesn't profess a belief one way or another in things that he has no way of demonstrating, I'm willing to let him be. The fact remains that he presents no reason whatsoever to favor one belief over another and so doesn't give any reason to hold any particular belief.

And yet you believe that beliefs should have "reasons", and do not substantiate this belief.

The communication isn't what's relevant. It's the holding of the belief. We're talking here about how beliefs are acquired. A human needn't communicate with another human, or even have the capacity to do so, to acquire a belief. Presumably, a deaf mute living alone in a desert could independently come to the conclusion that the liquid he found in the prickly plant kept him alive.

Could he?

It doesn't matter, I know that you are simply talking about the aquisition and nature of the beliefs themselves, and not the communications thereof, but that assumes a priori that my aforementioned definition of belief is wrong. You see, in Wittgensteinian tradition, I have defined "belief" as "the disposition to hold one side of an argument".

Think of this, how strong does one ever hold a belief that he never has to defend? What does it mean for that belief to be a "strong" one, if he never has to defend it?

That isn't the point. The problem comes when we have two conflicting claims of truth, not with fictional accounts. If people of faith were willing to admit that their language games were fictional, then we would have no issues, would we? As it is, we have some pretty basic conflicts. Christianity claims that a spiritual teacher born in Judea in the first century was divine. Judaism claims that Christians are incorrect. Only one of these claims can be true. You're willing to say they're playing different language-games and I'm not. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the same guy and they both mean the same thing when they use the word "divine."

And I'm pretty sure the guy who plays backgammon with chess pieces is playing with "actual" chess pieces. That doesn't change the fact that he isn't playing "chess".

An historian who wrote an alternate history (other than the commonly accepted one) and substantiated his claims differently (perhaps in terms of interpretation of a text, or the dismissal of some archaeological find, or down-right religious argument, or whatever) he would be playing a different game. If he looked at the same information as they did, and reasoned on it as they did, but came to a different conclusion, then he would be playing the same game, but making a different legal move, and might win.

As to the Jews and Christians, I'd probably get very involved in this if I even started discussing it, so I won't go there.

I didn't say I wanted to institute empiricism as the absolute framework by which to judge all claims. I just said that some verification and/or falsification, or at least the possibility of it, should be forthcoming if one is going to claim that something is true.

Fine. That is your opinion. You are attempting to establish a rule for certain language-games, which you think would be benefitted by the addition/permission of this rule. That's perfectly good philosophy, as long as you recognize it for what it is: rule-setting for a game.

I recognize that empirical confirmation will not always be the way to go. The most obvious example I can think of in which empiricism is useless is mathematical conjecture.

Different games, right?

 

[loseyourname]

So "reality" = "observed phenomena"? Doesn't that presuppose that that which we observe is the best possible determinant of what is "real"?

I didn't equate the two. I just said that observing reality is the best method we have of learning about it, in my cases. I have qualified that. I don't really think mathematical truths are "real" in the same sense that rocks are, but they are still real.

Ok, but didn't we invent the word "truth"? Rocks don't ponder the nature of "reality" or "truth" or "knowledge"; we do. So, don't we retain the right to define "truth" as we wish? And, if we can do that, then we should be able to define anything as we wish, so long as we can agree.

We invented the word "rock" as well. That doesn't mean we can change what a rock is by altering our intention of the word. It's the word that changes, not the concept it originally referred to. And yeah, sure, we can define anything in any way so long as we can agree. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is claiming that people who are all speaking English, using the same words, actually mean different things and can both be correct when they make conflicting statements. Heck, I can't even think of anyone that still takes this idea seriously. Michael Martin, at least, has given a very thorough refutation of the theistic conception of language-games designed to insulate their claims from any form of criticism.

IOW, what's wrong with anthropocentricism if we are the only ones who philosophize ITFP?

If you want your philosophy to be empty of all objective content, go for it.

And do you admit that it's possible to go on living without thinking about "absolutes" or "truth"? Doesn't that make that pursuit your particular game, that not everyone has to play?

Of course. I didn't say everyone had to seek "truth." The thing is, when people make statements and claim that these statements are true, I want them to be meaningful statements. When Martin claims that God does not exist and theists refute him by saying that they are playing a different language game and that, in their game, God does exist, of what value is that? What game are they playing exactly? One in which they've redefined the word "God" to entail existence? That's just flat out stupid. I can invent a new language-game and claim that animism was correct and that we really should castrate ourselves to ensure a good harvest. I can even define all of my terms so that this statement is necessarily true. Do you really think that means that an agricultural scientist can then no longer make any attempt at refuting my claim? The simple fact that two games exist doesn't mean that neither is more correct than the other.

Why not? Hear me out (or, "see" me out...whatever :shy:)...if the term "sitting" meant what the term "standing" is generally accepted as meaning, and the term "typing" meant what the term "worshiping" is generally accepted as meaning, then the belief that you were "sitting here typing at your computer" would not hold up in argument, would it? Indeed, one could even say it would be a "false" statement.

Fine. That isn't what those terms mean. I'm typing my posts in English, as are you, and the way in which we have posted historically leads me to believe that you are speaking the same language as me. If you were literally speaking a language in which "sitting" meant what I mean by "standing," I'd just have to translate for you and we'd be fine. People do it all the time.

In this argument I am defending a frame of reference. That means that I, for the purpose of this particular "game" am playing this "side", while you play the other "side".

You should know that you can't defend a certain game against another game without stepping into some common meta-game in which we are playing by the same rules.

And yet you believe that beliefs should have "reasons", and do not substantiate this belief.

Are you kidding me? I've been substantiating this belief for the last three pages!

It doesn't matter, I know that you are simply talking about the aquisition and nature of the beliefs themselves, and not the communications thereof, but that assumes a priori that my aforementioned definition of belief is wrong. You see, in Wittgensteinian tradition, I have defined "belief" as "the disposition to hold one side of an argument".

Fine, but that isn't what a belief is. When Wittgenstein's mother used the word and he learned it from her, that isn't what she meant. This isn't an a priori assumption. It's drawn from observing the way the term is used by people who speak the English language, along with dictionary definitions that are commonly accepted.

Think of this, how strong does one ever hold a belief that he never has to defend? What does it mean for that belief to be a "strong" one, if he never has to defend it?

I've never once had to defend my belief that my name is Adam, yet I'd say I hold it pretty strongly.

I have to leave. I'll respond to the rest of this later.

 

[Mentat]

I didn't equate the two. I just said that observing reality is the best method we have of learning about it, in my cases. I have qualified that.

You said that Aristotle's predictions did not correlate with "reality". Before that, you had discussed a specific prediction and showed how it didn't correlate with "observed phenomena". That you used the terms interchangeably was what made me think you were equating them.

We invented the word "rock" as well. That doesn't mean we can change what a rock is by altering our intention of the word. It's the word that changes, not the concept it originally referred to. And yeah, sure, we can define anything in any way so long as we can agree. I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is claiming that people who are all speaking English, using the same words, actually mean different things and can both be correct when they make conflicting statements.

Well, when you put it that way, of course it sounds foolish. I'm not saying that two people, using the same words, but making contradictory statements, are both "right". I don't like the word "right", nor the "concept" to which it's connected. A person who makes a claim, and believes it with all his heart, is "right" to himself, yes? What about other like him? ... That's all I'm saying.

If you want your philosophy to be empty of all objective content, go for it.

I'm just asking why it should always be related to "objective content"? Isn't that just one approach?

Of course. I didn't say everyone had to seek "truth." The thing is, when people make statements and claim that these statements are true, I want them to be meaningful statements.

Meaningful in which game? Don't get me wrong, I understand pretty much where you're coming from. But there has been no good refutation of the language-game concept thus far.

When Martin claims that God does not exist and theists refute him by saying that they are playing a different language game and that, in their game, God does exist, of what value is that? What game are they playing exactly? One in which they've redefined the word "God" to entail existence? That's just flat out stupid. I can invent a new language-game and claim that animism was correct and that we really should castrate ourselves to ensure a good harvest. I can even define all of my terms so that this statement is necessarily true. Do you really think that means that an agricultural scientist can then no longer make any attempt at refuting my claim? The simple fact that two games exist doesn't mean that neither is more correct than the other.

I didn't say that, did I? They are not "equally correct" so much as "correct for me" and "correct for you". That's not a perfect way of phrasing it, but...

Anyway, as to the animism thing, can you really define all of your terms so that it is necessarily true? Remember, if you step out of the realm of personal opinion, and into the realm of what is objectively good for harvests, you have begun playing agriculture's game.

It is the same with creationists who try to ground the Genesis account in science.

Fine. That isn't what those terms mean.

That isn't what those terms mean, to us.

You should know that you can't defend a certain game against another game without stepping into some common meta-game in which we are playing by the same rules.

I'm not defending a game against another game. I'm playing the language-game of philosophical debate. That the game requires the discussion of many other games does not change the fact that it is its own game. Trivial Pursuit isn't any less a game because it discusses objective realities.

Are you kidding me? I've been substantiating this belief for the last three pages!

Apologies.

Fine, but that isn't what a belief is.

Says who?

This isn't an a priori assumption. It's drawn from observing the way the term is used by people who speak the English language, along with dictionary definitions that are commonly accepted.

Fine, but that only further solidifies the concept that language-games can only be played as it is commonly accepted that they ought to be played.

I've never once had to defend my belief that my name is Adam, yet I'd say I hold it pretty strongly.

Hi, Adam. My name's Michael.

But what does it mean for you to hold a belief strongly if you've never had to defend it? Could it be that the disposition to hold that position strongly, if countered, that is exactly what your "belief" is? IOW, could it be that the disposition on your part, to defend that your name is Adam, is precisely equivalent to the "belief" that that is your name?

 

[loseyourname]

You said that Aristotle's predictions did not correlate with "reality". Before that, you had discussed a specific prediction and showed how it didn't correlate with "observed phenomena". That you used the terms interchangeably was what made me think you were equating them.

In cases where empirical claims are made, they should be verified empirically. In such cases, the best way to get at the reality of the matter is to make an observation under whatever controlled circumstances we can establish. In Aristotle's case, he should have simply swung a rock around his head and let go. He would have quickly seen that he was wrong, as logical as his claim seemed to him.

Well, when you put it that way, of course it sounds foolish. I'm not saying that two people, using the same words, but making contradictory statements, are both "right". I don't like the word "right", nor the "concept" to which it's connected. A person who makes a claim, and believes it with all his heart, is "right" to himself, yes? What about other like him? ... That's all I'm saying.

I wouldn't even go that far. The 'man who mistook his wife for a hat' had the most heartful belief that his wife was, in fact, a hat. He was wrong, in any sense of the word. He wasn't "right to himself." I want to establish a clear difference between the belief that a claim is correct and that claim actually being correct. There are gray areas, of course. Some claims are simply meaningless in that they lack any factual truth value. Many religious claims fall into this category. When a person makes the claim that Jesus was divine, there is no conceivable way to verify and/or falsify that claim. We might, in principle, confirm whether or not Jesus had the power to make water into wine, or that Jesus was resurrected three days after dying, but proving or disproving these claims would neither prove nor disprove his divinity. It is simply an article of faith - either faith that he was or faith that he wasn't. This holds true for all human beings. You can't ever know whether or not I am divine. As such, it is essentially meaningless to claim that I am. There are other cases where a claim might be verifiable and/or falsifiable, but not empirically. Take Canute's claim that physicalism is inconsistent. There exists no sensible object called "physicalism" that has the property of being consistent or inconsistent. We must test this claim using other methods.

The key point here is that Aristotle, the Christian theologian, and Canute are all playing the same language-game. When they make these claims, they are each making the further claim that what they say is true, in the same sense all three times. It may very well be that there does exist some language-game in which "x is true" simply means "it is my heartfelt belief that x is true." In many, if not all, cases, that second fact is certainly the reason the original claim is being made, but that alone does not make the claims identical.

I'm just asking why it should always be related to "objective content"? Isn't that just one approach?

It's the only approach useful for philosophical discourse, indeed for any discourse that intends to make interpersonal progress toward the truth. The approach you are advocating is just opinion-sharing. It is gradeschool philosophy.

Meaningful in which game? Don't get me wrong, I understand pretty much where you're coming from. But there has been no good refutation of the language-game concept thus far.

There has also never been any clear demonstration that language-games actually exist. They might be useful as theoretical constructs that intend to explain why different people come to different conclusions when presented with the same evidence, but there are other theories that explain this equally well.

Anyway, as to the animism thing, can you really define all of your terms so that it is necessarily true? Remember, if you step out of the realm of personal opinion, and into the realm of what is objectively good for harvests, you have begun playing agriculture's game.

It is the same with creationists who try to ground the Genesis account in science.

And the same with anybody who claims that Jesus was a real historical person that did the things the bible says he did. The same for anyone who claims that Mohammed really was the last prophet of God. The same for anyone who claims that Joseph Smith was really visited by the angel Moroni and given the book of Mormon. These are all factual, historical claims. I find it hard to think of any religious claims that are not, in fact, claims made pursuant to a language-game that is not solely religious.

That isn't what those terms mean, to us.

That isn't what those terms mean to anyone that has ever used them, so far as I know. "Sitting" means that the rear end of a person is somehow in contact with a surface that keeps his body from falling. I'm guessing that you have never encountered a different usage of this term either, and so when I make the claim that I am sitting, it should be immediately clear to you what I mean by that, and you should immediately be able to think of a way to verify or falsify my claim (visit me and see for yourself, ask for a photo, whatever).

I'm not defending a game against another game. I'm playing the language-game of philosophical debate. That the game requires the discussion of many other games does not change the fact that it is its own game. Trivial Pursuit isn't any less a game because it discusses objective realities.

I still can't see that you've given any evidence to believe that there exists such a thing as the philosophical language-game, that can be distinguished from science or theology. There are small differences in the usage of certain terms and, in these cases, I will grant that it is necessary to make a translation before a claim can be evaluted. Other than that, what's the big deal? When a scientist claims that his hypothesis is true, he means exactly the same thing that the philosopher and theologian do when they claim that their hypotheses are true.

Fine, but that only further solidifies the concept that language-games can only be played as it is commonly accepted that they ought to be played.

It also solidifies my claim that we are all playing the same language-game. In our case, it is English. We can, however, easily translate this into most other languages without losing much meaning. The concepts to which we refer are all the same and can be commonly understood using any language. There are small exceptions, of course (perestroika, for instance, really doesn't have any good English translation, but we can still get the gist).

Hi, Adam. My name's Michael.

What a pair of boringly common biblical names, eh? I think I'll name my son Empedocles.

But what does it mean for you to hold a belief strongly if you've never had to defend it? Could it be that the disposition to hold that position strongly, if countered, that is exactly what your "belief" is? IOW, could it be that the disposition on your part, to defend that your name is Adam, is precisely equivalent to the "belief" that that is your name?

That would be the behaviorist view, but is Skinner even still taught in psychology courses as anything but history? I suppose that was the commonly held academic view of belief up until about a couple of decades ago, but it's hardly a widely held view at this point.