Is strict objectivity theoretically possible?
Objective truth or objective reality may exist, that is, there may exist truths that are true regardless of perspective or bias, but is it possible for a perceiver to be provably objective about truth? It's one thing to try to be objective, but another to be provably so. Does perception require some assumption?
Comments (365)
Perception requires a reference point, that will inherently be subjective. Fill in the dots.
Depends on the language, no?
Mathematics, physics, and formal languages require no reference point as an "I". They're about as objective as you can get.
If we're strictly speaking about perception, then there's a differential at play, being the subject.
But, yes, the object is the same in reality.
Eating the apple would seem to produce the subjective differential, for example.
It is impossible to be objective. No one knows.
The odd thing is that there are things that remain the case, regardless of what one thinks about them. That is, their truth remains, regardless of one's perspective or bias.
But if truth depends on bias and perspective, how could that be?
Might there be something wrong with this question?
Hm. I'm not convinced of the relevance of this. I can understand what it is like to see something from another perspective. As we sit facing each other at table, I can understand that my knife is on my right, and yours on your right, despite yours being on my left.
You claim that objective truths can only be subjectively known; yet you and I both know that this sentence is in English. So, how is it that, that the sentence is in English is not an objective truth, as you claim? Do you suppose that someone might inspect the sentence and, given their particular biases and perspectives, conclude that it is in French?
...and if they did, wouldn't it be reasonable for you and I to say that they are wrong?
What you are asking is type of issue called a "non trivial problem", which means it is either very, very difficult to solve or can not be solved at all.
All perception requires us to use a reference point to grasp an aspect of reality, but it is a given that most if not all times we are gazing into one of these aspects of reality we are blinded we are blinded to certain other characteristics of said reality that might be perceivable from a different reference point.
If you want to understand this issue I recommend reading up on a Jain concept called "Anekantavada" (no one sidedness) which is the story of the three blind men and the elephant is based upon. There is a Wiki page on the subject but it doesn't seem to be working for me at the moment so I can not say it will work when you try it.
A good rule of thumb I have kind of learned from Anekantavada is no ideology is always "right" or "wrong" when it comes to visualizing issues and the world around us and sometimes thinking of any given ideology as a merely a tool to help us deal with the world and that some problems require different ideologies or even more than one ideology at a time to grasp an issue making it obvious that always rekying on one ideology for all problems creates a "if all one has is a hammer everything is a nail" issue when one is dogmatically reliant on only one ideology/one way of thinking.
:up: :clap:
I was just wondering...the truth here is the entire elephant which, in my view, represents the coherent whole. So, do the various branches of knowledge we've engaged in so far come together in the form of a majestic elephant or is what we get something out of the island of Dr. Moreau, a monstrosity?
As if the elephant had no parts.
There's a switch that's taken place here, a move from the sort of truth that can be objective or subjective has been replaced by a somewhat mystical holistic truth.
I'm not convinced that that's a good thing to do. Seems to me it might obscure the truth...
Then in what sense were the blind gentlemen failing to see the truth were it not for the fact that they didn't recognize the elephant? :chin:
Of course he spoke the truth.
Of course he did but an elephant is not a tubular structure. He failed to see the trunk was only half the picture. Note, they were given an elephant and were duly informed that what they were feeling was an elephant.
Well, no, it isn't. Each of the observtions is also true.
but the elephant is definitely not just the trunk.
The fact that truth can be distorted underpins the idea of objectivity. The wikipedia article cites perception, emotion and imagination as possible causes of truth distortion. Therefore, to prove one is being objective you'd have to show that none of the aforementioned things were faulty when it was employed in truth finding.
What means you by reference point? :chin:
Knowledge consists of propositions that are justified and justification lends to such propositions the quality we're discussing, to wit objectivity. So, if there's any lack/loss of objectivity it must be with the premises of the justificatory process. It makes sense then that perception, emotion and imagination are thought of as stumbling blocks because they're more closely associated with premises rather than the validity of arguments (justification). What you say is true then; after all how are we to ever know our perceptions, emotions, and imagination aren't interfering in what we take to be true premises? Corroboration may help in correcting errors of perception, involvement of a disinterested party may check our emotions, and imagination is more or less countered by reality coming down hard on daydreamers. However, these are imperfect countermeasures and some mistakes are bound to slip through these defenses.
Yes, but not because there is no objective reality. Let's just say the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves. Fallibilism, yes.
They do require a reference point though, because the data provided through these domains must be subject to interpretation.
This is just your imagination of another perspective, from your reference point.
What would such an argument look like? Cartesian doubt, doubt in extremis, led to the certainty of Descartes' existence. Perhaps we may doubt external reality in toto but then there's the doubter to reckon with.
To a novice like myself, the philosophical landscape is riddled with traps. Indeed Descartes' existence couldn't be doubted while he was alive but anything above and beyond is fair game for the skeptic.
Quoting Shawn
It looks like you just stated a truth about reality, therefore it would be an objective statement.
Quoting Shawn
How do we make objective statements with words, which are just particular sounds or scribbles, from our subjective perspective?
Quoting emancipate
Quoting emancipate
Are you making true statements, emancipate? If so, then aren't you're statements objective? How is it that you are making truth claims about how things are for Banno, when you aren't Banno? You must have some objective perspective of Banno to do that.
What about our own minds? Do we have objective access to our own minds, and are not our own minds part of the world?
Quoting Shawn
Which is to say that that is how the world appears from that reference point, which seems like an objective statement to me.
So what would entail subjectivity? When you are being subjective, you are making category errors. To say that the apple is red and good, you would be confusing the state of your mind with the state of the apple. The apple is simply ripe. Redness and goodness is a property of the mind, not the apple. Ripeness is a property of the apple represented in different ways to different sensory organs (red to eyes and good to tastebuds).
What is the way to know if we have reached an objective truth?
There is a difference between "being objective" as an observer and arriving at objective truths. The former is not possible, the latter arguably is, in a very limited field.
Relative perception exists within things that do not actually exist in the universe, such as suffering, horror, and other sensations which are not what we perceive them to be, but are psychological phenomenons relative to survival, i.e. Animalistic perceptions. For example, you cannot predict whether or not with complete accuracy if someone will have an adverse emotional reaction to something, since the essence of which does not exist.
Do truth statements need to be absolutely objective? Can truth statements be both objective and subjective at once? In that case, I would prefer to say that my statements were partially true or that they contained an element of truth. While also being partially false.
What do you mean by "true" if not that it is the case for everyone? If it's not true for everyone, then why say it? What use would it be for others? Keep it to yourself as it only applies to you.
It doesn't need to be the case that 'true' is exactly identical for everyone. It is sufficient that everyone finds enough truth in a statement to make practical use of it. Do you believe that your words are delivered without lack? Yet I still understand you.
But, that's really a silly assumption. Is there any serious objection to my statement that I am currently using a computer?
I don't object to the statement but I do have to understand it through my subjectivity. How could I not? I have my doubts about strict objectivity.
It does not necessarily require objectivity, it could be dumb luck. But that kind of thought doesn't get us anywhere.
I think I mostly agree with you, but I wouldn't call it objective perception. It's not the perception that's objective, it's analysis of the shared patterns of our subjective perceptions. Those patterns, or rules, are objective, even if all the actual content of our perception is fabricated.
Quoting Templisonanum
You cannot technically predict anything with complete accuracy. Emotional reactions should not, in principle, be different.
There's a philosophical game that says it does. That game relies on using "perception" in a particular way.
You and I both perceive this post; we perceive the very same post.Yet, according to the perception game, these are two distinct perceptions of the same post.
One philosophical games tries to play this out as showing that it is the perception that is pivotal, not the post. As if it is the perception-of-this-post that is real, not the post. We never have the post-in-itself; all we have is the perception-of-post.
David Stove called this the worst argument in the world; Stove's gem.
Yet it keeps so many novice philosophers enthralled.
Quoting emancipate
Well, yes, of course it is. Your saying this does not move the knife suddenly to the left. We share an understanding of the position of the knife, despite the difference in perception. Call that shared understanding objective if you like.
I've been thorough this discussion more than once. The next common reply is to claim that i have not answered the question - "does perception require a reference point?" It's not unlike my demanding that you answer the question "have you stoped beating your wife?" with a yes or a no.
You can stipulate that perception involves a reference point, if you like. Doing so is not saying something about how the world is; it's no more than starting a certain sort of philosophical game.
A few elementary points.
One can drop with word "objective" without loss: "What is the way to know if we have reached a truth"
There is no reason to think that there is exactly one answer to this question; that is, the reason we know that Paris is the capital of France is not the same as the reason we know that this sentence is in English or that twice two is four.
Being true is not the same as being known.
We can only know things that are true. If we think we know something, but it's not true, then we are what is called wrong.
There's a few tricky words in that sentence, apt to mislead: idea, objective, assert...
After all, we can, and do, make true assertions.
So reconsider:
Quoting Cidat
Objective or not, there are things that we know. Beware of philosophical games that lead one to think otherwise.
It's odd, how folk divide the world into subjective and objective, only to immediately demand that one is a mere subset of the other. As if subjectivity made sense without objectivity.
So long as you do not take this to mean that you cannot predict anything.
If you understand, then what is lacking? Again, you are making objective statements about words lacking something, as if anyone that uses words lacks something.
What I don't understand is how you keep making claims about some state-of-affairs that is true for everyone - namely that "It doesn't need to be the case that 'true' is exactly identical for everyone. It is sufficient that everyone finds enough truth in a statement to make practical use of it.", while at the same time claiming that it's not true for everyone. It's like saying that you know that you know nothing - a contradiction. You can't escape making objective claims about the world as it relates to all of us.
"Everything is subjective" is an objective statement as it is being asserted to be true for everyone.
Quoting Echarmion
It depends on the goal. If the goal was accomplished, how can it be said that it wasn't accurate?
It is not exact. Many theories in the past were predictive and are considered false today.
We can also talk about "subjective truths".
Quoting Banno
There are some differences according to the different branches of knowledge but it is possible to draw a scale of objectivity. The so-called factual sciences are at the top. (Formal sciences are not objective).
In general, objectivity is related to prediction. We say that "boiling water burns" describes objective facts because we do not know any exceptions to it. We can predict "objectively" what will happen if someone puts a finger in the pot of boiling water.
This seems very simple, but it starts to get complicated when we go to less simple propositions and theories than that. Mainly, because in science we cannot test isolated propositions, but a complex of theories and facts.
Obviously, all this disappoints the metaphysicist who is looking for absolute objectivity or certainty. A chimera.
I have not understand well.
Your eyeballs merely react to some photons. It's your mind that sees the computer. And, even according to 20th century physics, the computer isn't really a continuous object.
Quoting Banno
I don't :wink:
Quoting Harry Hindu
If there was a chance it'd go wrong, then the prediction wasn't [I]completely [/I] accurate. A well designed plane can still crash.
Then the philosophers become involved... and off we go up the garden path.
That is, the perfectly reasonable notions of subjective and objective statements become increasingly incoherent when dragged out of their home context. You can see this starting to happen when folk start to talk as if it is worth drawing a distinction between subjective and objective truth, or objective and subjective reality. The terms are being stretched beyond their usefulness.
see, Pneumenon, not only do you not see with your eyes, you don't actually have a computer. Quoting Echarmion
AH, but see, you do.
He doesn't? How does he write his replies then?
Yes, from the mereological nihilist. However, identity, to my apprehension, is not something that requires perfect physical continuity in order to be made intelligible or referable. The problem seems irresolvable until we abandon our Humean conception of identity and adopt a different ontology about what it means to be a computer; and that definition need not be restricted to some subset of particles assembled in some particular fashion.
We're all subjects imagining other subjects doing subjective stuff. It's subjects all the way down.
But seriously, there is a difference between subjective, intersubjective, and objective. The objective part here is that we're somehow exchanging information. The intersubjective part is that we're using an Internetforum, computers, the English language etc. And then we each have a subjective interpretation of what is said and why, with a small model of what the person saying it might be like.
Unless you're specifically doing metaphysics or epistemology, there isn't any reason to differentiate between objective and whatever is intersubjective for all humans.
Now, if we are having a chat, none of that matters much. We get it and we don't get lost given that we live all the time in folk ontologies. Nor is it likely that we show up at your house to find you using the computer to smash watermelons. No, so that sentence isn't going to cause problems in most situations it will be used. But it contains subjective elements. Fortunately most of these are fairly universal, unless perhaps one is in a very, very different culture. But universal and objective are not the same. And in a philosophical context some of those folk ontologies are up for question.
There's no God's eye view of what you are describing: no view that is not bound in time, without a primates way of thinking of it. Not a view from all angles at that action. It is a selective, interpreted view. This too can be objective or partially objective. But it is suffused with subjectivity at the very least also.
Right. So a crash wouldnt happen because of the design of the plane, but for some other reason that has nothing to do with the design of the plane.
You're making objective claims about how the world is for everyone, as if you have a view from everywhere.
Quoting Cidat
Yes. At least some of you are getting it.
I'll say it again,
Quoting Harry Hindu
Truths that are true regardless of perspective or bias exist in possibility - they may be perceived, or expressed as a perception. An understanding of objective truth may even be shared or reiterated by other perceivers, thereby increasing the potentiality of shared meaning. But any attempt to prove or define an objective truth is limited by the perspective or bias of this potentiality: including the language, values, logic and subjective experiences of contributors. So long as an alternative perspective exists that cannot be accounted for in shared meaning, the objectivity of a truth remains unproven. You cannot claim objectivity by ignoring, isolating or excluding information related to that truth which is illogical, irrational, improbable, immoral or even fictional.
The claim isn't necessarily "we are subjective beings". It could just be "we don't know whether or not our experiences are objective". They might be, but we cannot just assume they are.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You should tell Boeing. Perhaps that'll convince the authorities to let their newest plane operate again.
Quoting Harry Hindu
No, I am not making claims about the world, but rather claims about our ability to know the world.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Unless the person saying it uses it as a general statement of doubt, in the form of "everything is subjective, including this statement".
If this is an assertion about epistemology...iow something in the family 'given the fact that we perceive in this manner and...(other reasons). then we cannot know if our assertions are objective or subjective'
then that is still an objective statement. If we simply 'I don't know if my ideas are X' then it might not be since one is reporting on one's experience and not concluding something objective.
All assertions and the listening to and interpreting of assertions includes subjective elements. Our words do, and more.
I suppose I am a pragmatist. More focused on process than the ontology of a statement. It's truth with a big T or something, but more, what do we do and how does that work for us as far as we can tell. Rather than assertions getting timeless attributes, standing there beaming out their Truth.
I notice that that is how I seem to work.
...which is part of the world. Your knowledge of the world, accurate or not, is part of the world.
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
How is this statement useful? Subjectivity is essentially making category errors, of projecting mental properties, like color and taste, onto things that don't have mental properties.
Doubt is part of the world. Is it not an assertion of truth that you doubt? Is it not an assertion about the state of your mind? How do you go from making assertions about your state of mind to making assertions about others state of mind by using the term, "everything", which includes the world, minds and all?
You don't seem to understand that your mind's state is part of the world.
What's the object being referred to? Epistemology is about my knowledge as a subject. Substituting "we" for "I" is based on the assumption that human minds are alike.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's like saying New York isn't part of America, but part of the universe. My ability to know things is a subjective ability. It might be objective to some other observer, but that's beside the point.
Quoting Harry Hindu
So according to you, literally every statement is objective, including statements about qualia and preferences?
Quoting Cidat
Objective reference point for statements with empirical predicates would be experience; objective reference point for statements with intuitional or conceptual predicates alone, would be pure reason.
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Quoting Cidat
Beginning with a speculative epistemology predicated solely on the condition that all concepts in general are given from a logical ground, and from that assumption, it follows necessarily that objectivity as a concept is meaningless if not judged with respect to its complement.
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Quoting Cidat
“Everything is subjective” doesn’t even need to be asserted as holding for everyone, to be an objective statement in itself. In at least one established theoretical human cognitive system, all cognitions are judgements, all judgements are objective, and all judgements are objective statements in form, when passed to an external observer.
Thing is.....”everything is subjective”, while being a valid objective statement, cannot be an objective truth, insofar as it is impossible that every thing is subjective. On the other hand, “any human knowledge of things is a subjective condition” would be an objective truth, iff that statement holds across the entire human domain without exception, which, theoretically, it does because its refutation is immediately self-contradictory under the same circumstances by which the statement was thought in the first place.
Anyway.....carry on.
There you go, that would be another posited-as-objective facet.Quoting EcharmionI am not sure what you mean by the object being referred to. I was saying that what I just quoted, if it is saying that 'we don't (which might mean 'can't') know whether or not our experiences are objective' then it is making a claim about reality and an claim to objectivity. I actually think it might make more sense to replace 'experiences' in that sentence. I don't know what I would be saying if I said my experience was objective. My conclusion, my idea, my assertion, that seems more like something that could be objective when contrasted with subjective (ideas, conclusions...etc.) It's a bit like you don't have true or false things, but rather true or false statements.
I'm sorry, but your use of intersubjective is incorrect.
An objective proposition corresponds to the external objects.
The proposition that depends on the subject is subjective
The proposition that is common to several subjects is intersubjective.
The term intersubjectivism was introduced by the Vienna Circle (Carnap) to overcome the metaphysical problem of objectivity and solipsism
See A. J. Ayer: Language, Truth and Logic. Alternative: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/inter-subjectivism.html
The proposal seems reasonable to me: since strict objectivism is impossible, we defend knowledge that is based on basic propositions, that is intersubjective. This does not mean that it is free of problems. Although it avoids metaphysical problems, it has some difficulties.
I am not claiming it as objective, it's just a practical assumption. Not everything that refers to objectivity is automatically a claim.
Quoting Coben
Just linguistically, the object of that sentence is "our experience". So what I am making a claim about is experience. If you want to substitute "reality" for "experience" you're already presupposing realism.
Unless you mean something along the lines of "we are part of objective reality, so every claim about us is also a claim about objective reality". But in that case you're switching perspective to some theoretical "universal subject", and the notions of objectivity and subjectivity become meaningless.
Quoting Coben
Yeah, I think you're right about that. It'd have to be something like our conclusions based on experience, since experience necessarily refers to a subject.
Essentially, what we want to know is "can we find truth that's independent of our own perspective", right?
Quoting David Mo
That's actually how I intended to use the term. Can you point out to me what I did wrong?
@David Mo
Quoting David Mo
Then they are revised until complete accuracy is achieved. For example: the theory of magnetism implies the non-existence of magnetic monopoles, yet, if we are to follow subjectivity, it is possible that the contradictory existence of a magnetic monopole is at least possible, since we cannot predict with complete accuracy the nature of magnetism.
Quoting David Mo
Metaphysical inquiry can lead to the theory of the undivided particle - the monad, which as we know from physics to be true, from observing elementary particles.
Quoting Echarmion
Predicting a person's emotional reaction is different because it adheres to psychological phenomenons which do not physically exists as we perceive them to. This is where we oppose perception and adhere to reason. I may perceive a certain kind of fruit to be repulsive but is that fruit objectively repulsive? It is relative to the animal's desire to survive. The objective truth to that fruit is its chemical composition, which we may or may not care about.
Of course there are 2 distinct perceptions. We are not an identical entity, we are disparate.
Quoting Banno
I did not argue for idealism. So your gem argument has nothing to do with me. The term in the thread title is 'strict objectivity'. What I doubt, is that truth claims are either absolutely objective or absolutely subjective and it seems to me that framing the issue in either/or terms is an error. Since it seems that truth claims are always a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity. I doubt whether they can be so clearly delineated. This is why I have used expressions like 'partial-truth'.
No. It's not. You keep making objective statements, seemingly without knowing it. Each sentence you just wrote is an objective statement about you, and you are part of the world.
Quoting Echarmion Are qualia and preferences part of the world? Do qualia and preferences establish causal relationships with the world? If not, then you aren't part of the world. You would be non-existent. Imaginings and delusions cause people to behave in certain ways. Imaginings and delusions are themselves caused by states-of-affairs in the world.
We don't know when statements are true until we can all establish some evidence or proof of the claim. The claim is still objective in the sense that it is about the world as if from a view from everywhere (God's-eye view). It doesn't matter if it is right or wrong. People are asserting things all the time, as if it were true, because they are making arguments for it, and to disagree would be wrong. When making an argument for some view, you are asserting truth while at the same time saying that anyone that disagrees is wrong.
If you thought that your assertion was actually subjective, then why say it at all? What use would it be for others?
While imaginings and delusions are real and objective in the sense that they exist, what they are about is inaccurate, and in that sense they would be subjective. Like I said, subjectivity is projecting mental states onto things that don't have mental states, or aren't those mental states. Projecting your delusion or imagining onto the world as if it were also a state-of-the-world besides just being a delusion or imagining in the objective sense (you'd have to be able to distinguish between delusion and reality to be able to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity), is what subjectivity is.
I am not part of my world though. I cannot be both the subject and the object. You're arguing that there is no subject, which means your epistemology is stuck in the 17th century.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's the hard problem, isn't it? They don't seem to be.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That question doesn't make sense. Qualia and preferences aren't events, and only events have "causal relationships".
Quoting Harry Hindu
The subject doesn't technically exist, since existence is a relationship between the subject and an object. If you think that there are only objects, then of course this discussion doesn't makes sense to you.
Quoting Harry Hindu
How is that related to the topic?
I didn't say your world. I said the world. The world is not yours unless you're a solipsist.
If you are not part of the world, then how are you communicating with me and others?
If by subject, you mean process or relationship, then I can agree with that. I wouldn't know what you mean by subject other than a type of object. You refer to subjects just like you do objects in your use of language, so what is the difference?
Quoting Echarmion
The problem is only hard if you're a dualist. The mind is part of the world because it has a causal relationship with the world.
Quoting Echarmion
Causes and effects have causal relationships. Qualia and preferences are caused by other states-of-affairs and are themselves causes of states-of-affairs in the world. If you don't agree, then I ask how you move your body (physical) with the intent of your mind (non-physical)? The answer is that there is no physical vs. non-physical dichotomy, and therefore no hard problem. It is all part of the same world.
Quoting Echarmion
So objects and subjects don't exist, only process/relationships (Whitehead)? I might actually start to agree with you here, but then we'd be talking about, and agreeing on, the actual state-of-affairs, which would be objective. Whenever you assert how things actually are, you are attempting to be objective.
Yep, you don't have a concept of a subject. It figures. So what is your internal perspective then? If you're not a subject, what are you?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Actually the problem is just as bad because no causal process to explain qualia has been discovered. If everything is objects, there'd have to be some physical process that converts, say, electric charge into feelings. You talk as if this process was common knowledge, but it's not, and you haven't provided any.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Are you at all familiar with the whole "existence is not a predicate" argument?
You're talking about truth, right? Subjective truth versus intersubjective truth versus objective truth? If that's the case, then it's subjectively true that ice-cream tastes good, but objectively true that ice-cream tastes good to me.
If it's intersubjectively true that the earth is flat, that matters to someone other than the metaphysician, especially if there is one objector who happens to be right. If that weren't the case, then great discoveries are false prior to their discovery and only become true when enough people believe in them.
But since we're talking about truth, of what value is perspective, which is what objective and subjective reference? I'm not the first to remark that you have to have a view from somewhere, else it'd be a view from nowhere. So, is the earth flat? From my perspective it's not, but I can't pretend to know that objectively. I only think that, which is the way every person thinks when they think they've got something right.
I think the solution is either (1) there is an objective perspective we cannot know because we will always be situated somewhere, or (2) the question is incoherent because you cannot ask what something would look like if you were standing no where.
First, anything I say wouldn’t be purely subjective, that being reserved for what I think. Second, for whatever I say, the use of it by others is up to them.
That sounds about right.
Quoting Hanover
I think that this is not as bad as it sounds. For one, it is practically the case that our knowledge about the world relies on a consensus. I haven't personally been to space. For another, I am not saying intersubjective truth is divorced from objective truth. As long as proper methods are applied, the consensus will generally shift towards that most in line with objective truth, since objective truth has the annoying tendency to reassert itself.
Essentially, I think of intersubjective truth as an interface between the objective and the subjective, but one where we don't know which parts are from which side.
Quoting Hanover
There is also the corrolary: not only do you have to have a view from somewhere, it also must be a view of something. It's not a perspective if the subjective is all there is. To have an internal perspective also requires there to be something external.
So while I feel like 2 isn't entirely wrong, there must be a way "it is like", even if there is no looking involved. So that gets us back to 1.
The shift is towards that which results in greater survivability. The bee sees the world in a way that leads to his survival. Those who smell garbage as sweet probably don't survive well, regardless of what garbage really smells like, whatever that means.
Noticed that you’ve so far only addressed intersubjective reality in the singular. Although all this might go without saying, I wanted to make it explicit that each and every culture is its own intersubjective reality; as is each unique religious worldview, here including atheism; each unique language and its embedded semantics; and so forth. I have extreme doubt about such being anything but a practical joke, but the flat earth society, if their proclaimed belief is real and not mere deception, would be just one intersubjective reality among many. On the other hand, our tangible objective reality - if it is deemed to impartially effect (causally) all coexistent sentient being - can only be singular by entailment.
I’ll add that, to me at least, if these categories of “personally subjective realities”, “intersubjective realities”, and “the singular objective reality” are taken to be valid, they’d then retain the same properties regardless of which ontology happens to be the correct one: e.g., they’d apply just as much to idealism (it’s all psychical stuff in different forms) as they would to physicalism (it’s all physical stuff in different forms). The only main differences would be the metaphysical implications.
Don't blame the philosophers. There is no philosopher here and things are messy enough.
In my opinion, we ordinary people have more problems with words than (some) philosophers (not all).
The term intersubjective does not refer to means of expression or objects, but to properties of knowledge or propositions, to be more exact. The internet forum is not itself intersubjective, but the content that is expressed through it. You can make statements that are based on something that actually exists (objective), on a merely personal appreciation (subjective) or on a reference that you share with a more or less wide group of people (intersubjective).
As I said, neopositivism and philosophical analysis exclude the first option. An intersubjective proposition is close to objectivity when admitted by everybody, but it is not the same concept.
You can make a personal use of the word. But you should know how it is used in contemporary philosophy to avoid confusion.
SO if you lock the keys in the car, but you and everyone else believe that the keys are in your pocket...
This seems to be the easiest solution, but it is not so easy in practice. The process of refutation of a theory never involves a single theory but a set of theories that include the basic and secondary ones. The scientist's dilemma is which of them to reject. For this dilemma there is no algorithm. It is intuitive and there are some extra scientific implications. This uncertainty explains the changes in the laws that are even considered essential for science.
Therefore, accuracy in science is relative and objectivity is never assured.
Quoting Templisonanum
Leibniz's monads and Democritus' atoms had nothing to do with the contemporary concept of atomic particles. They were speculative. Their characteristics were not empirical. They had no extension, for example. And according to the ancients, they spawned numbers. You're a rational monad, you see.
For the same reason you cannot say that Jules Verne "advanced" to NASA interplanetary travel. (Actually, there is more distance between Leibniz and Bohr than between Verne and Gagarin)
Generally, in philosophy the concept of objective is reserved for knowledge that refers to what is outside the mind of the subject. It can be forced to mean that in introspection the mind is both subject and object, but this is an exception to the rule that should be emphasized so as not to create confusion.
Yes, that's about how I think it works. Though we cannot in the first instance say that our perception is based on survivability, since that's a theory based on our observations.
Quoting javra
Yes, there could be countless intersubjective realities. The reason I used the singular so far is that I was concerned with the idealised "human" intersubjective reality, i.e. what would result if there were no bias, mistakes etc. While that will never practically be the case, it serves as my baseline for what could be called "practical reality".
Quoting javra
It'd be more a question of what you think the order is: do the objects develop subjectivity, or do the subjects develop objects?
How do I lock the keys in the car if they are simultaneously in my pocket? You are acting as if I am claiming that there are two physical realities. I don't though. If you want to claim the keys are in the car while physically appearing to be in my pocket, you'd have to justify that first.
I guess "intersubjective reality" is a metaphor. What's intersubjective is the proposition. We share it or we don't share it. The enunciated means a state of facts. I do not share those facts with the others. They can exist in a world that is not mine, but nevertheless I can share the same statement. This is what makes it intersubjective.
Example:
Imagine a man who has an optical problem from birth and sees the colors red and blue interchangeably. When we are together we both say "This is red and that is blue" in the same way, that is, we point out the same things. Each of us will really be seeing something different subjectively, but we will say the same thing. Our statement is intersubjectively the same. And that's what matters.
Ok, so would it make sense to say that "intersubjective reality" is a set of propositions about phenomenal reality shared by a group of subjects?
Quoting David Mo
Yeah I agree. I came up with the word because it seems descriptive for what I mean.
SO your claim is now that knowledge relies on consensus, but that consensus does not imply knowledge?
You are not claiming that consensus implies truth, then. Good.
So, how does consensus relate to truth?
I suppose that would be a shortened way of referring to the reference of an intersubjective proposition. Is that so? I would understand it like that.
Example:
Peter and Paul are seeing something flying in the sky.
What is that?, says Paul.
Peter: I don't know.
Paul: It has the shape of a son of man.
Peter: Yes, and it has a red cape.
Paul: And red underpants!
Peter: Yes, and blue tights!
Paul: It wasn't a bird, it wasn't a plane! Was it Jesus?
Peter, Paul & Mary: No! He's Superman!!!
How they arrive at a common proposition? By referring to their respective subjective impressions. Objectivity is absent from the dialogue. Only intersubjectivity.
Intersubjective knowledge kinda requires a consensus by definition. If the knowledge (or propositions) about the physical isn't shared by several subjects, it's not intersubjective.
My position is that insofar as our knowledge about reality is based on experience, it's not objective. It is also, however, not just subjective, since we have methods to establish an intersubjective reality. We're not all experiencing wildly different realities after all. It stands to reason that the common elements in the experiences of different subjects are the result of objective reality asserting itself. That doesn't make the collection of subjective experiences themselves objective though, so the conclusion I arrive at (which I agree seems weird) is that our knowledge about phenomenal, physical reality is indeed consensus-based. And this is, I think, supported by looking at the actual history of scientific advancement.
Quoting Banno
Not in an objective sense, no. It might still be practically useful to have a version of subjective truth.
Quoting Banno
Well if you look at practices like the repeatability of experiments and peer review, it seems that consensus has an important rule in eliminating subjective bias. And in doing so, it should, assuming we maintain proper methods, bring us closer to truth.
Quoting David Mo
The reference would be the subjectively perceived phenomena?
Directly, yes. In the second instance, objects constructed as handfuls of sensations under a form.
Consensus increases the perceived potential information of a subject, enabling them to theoretically approach a more accurate or objective view of truth than the one subject’s sensory experiences alone. But this additional information is relative to unfamiliar perspectives, and so is less certain. The more information we obtain about these different perspectives in relation to our own, the more accurate our resulting view of truth.
To use a recent example, the more clearly the blind men can ‘map’ each of their relative positions and experiences using additional information (asking questions, etc), the more accurately they can piece together a view of the elephant. But at this stage they have only increased perceived potential information: they’re better placed to make sound predictions and hypotheses, but not yet to claim this view of truth as knowledge or fact.
...which seems to me to be saying no more than that if several folk agree on something, then they agree on something. Surely this does not apply to knowledge per se? That is, your observation here applies to intersubjective knowledge alone; and hence we can still ask if all knowledge relies on consensus; and follow this up by some analysis of that knowledge which relies on consensus and that which does not?
Now that seems a bit odd. You and I agree that this thread is in English, I presume; and we do this as a result of having read the thread - that is, as a result of having made certain observations. Why balk at the claim that, that this thread is in English is an objective fact? IT's not, after ll, based on some individual preference in the way subjective facts are...
Quoting Echarmion
So back to the keys. You agree, I assume, that getting the keys out of the car does not consist in getting everyone to believe that the keys are out of the car... It's not the consensus that makes the fact true? So some how knowledge is consensus-based, but truth isn't?
Again, it's not the consensus that leads to a statement's being true, though, is it? Although it might lead to our believing it to be true.
SO you are saying something like that the more "perceived potential information of a subject" there is, the more true it is?
That's a big claim.
Perhaps you meant to say that the more "perceived potential information of a subject" there is, the more believable it is?
Well, yes, the more folk agree with you, the more you believe you are right.
I suppose underneath this I am getting at 'we never have direct access to truth' we have what works. Things are open to revision.
But truth and belief are quite different things. Believing something does not, except in specific circumstances, render it true; nor does a thing's being true make it believed.
SO a statement's being true does not lead to consensus. Nor is there a better chance of the consensus being true in virtue of that consensus - although hopefully we are more likely to believe what is true... nor is what is useful always what is true; so pragmatism gets nowhere.
You might do well to believe the consensus, if only for the sake of a quiet life.
Why would one think we never have access to the truth, direct or otherwise? We have access to lots of truths.
A true statement
A six-word statement. Or 'a sentence in Russian' or 'A sentence written in blue ink.'
I think that compound adjective in the second phrase is one we can directly assess. We count the words. The statement is enough. We don't have to look elsewhere to decide if the adjective is correct. True, in the first phrase, is an adjective that we must go through a process to see if the adjective is one we want to accept. We look at the justification. If we like that, then we can accept the adjective is a good one.
I did not mean that you and I have no way to find out, by going to the library, say, what the name of the bones in the foot are, or how far Australia is from AFrica. We certainly have direct access in that sence or access. It is not about you and me going and collecting some truths.
My point that true statement don't glow green or something, thus showing their truth. You have to dig. And what you dig into is justification.
We may already feel like we have the justification in us. So a statement that is true may seem obviously correct. That means we've undergone that process already.
A true statement may not be a true statement later on. It may be revised. Or better put 'what we consider a true statement today' might not be considered that later, when better justification comes along for something else. What we have access to is justification and experience. The latter being, in relation to this issue, part of the former.
No, I’m saying that theoretically we can obtain a more accurate view of truth - that’s definitely not the same as saying ‘the information is more true’.
If you see what looks like an oasis, and everyone else around you also says that what they see looks like an oasis, then you can confidently assert that... what you see looks like an oasis. It is in the information which specifically differs from our own perspective that we obtain a more accurate view of truth.
Why call it objective? It seems fairly obvious that there is no "thread" as an object "out there". Everything we do with the text (that's not actually stored as text anywhere outside our minds) is a mental exercise.
I already said I had no issue with using the term objective like you propose here, unless it's a discussion specifically about epistemology or metaphysics.
Quoting Banno
Getting the keys is an action. Presumably, you can both feel and touch the keys. You don't need other people to tell you what you see and touch.
What's the fact you want to establish? That there are objectively (in the strict sense) keys in the car? I believe that to be impossible, on account of there being no objective source of information. If you want to ask "where (physically) are my (physical) keys", then the answer is whatever you conclude based on the available evidence. Theoretically, everyone with access to the same evidence should arrive at the same conclusion, but in case they don't, the consensus opinion would be most likely to have the desired result.
Quoting Banno
Depends on what your definition of true is. If I want a theory that will produce accurate results regardless of who applies it, that does depend on a consensus. If something works for me, but everyone else says it fails for them, then what I have is something subjective.
The major: agreed, all empirical knowledge is grounded in experience, which is always subjective;
The minor: agreed, there is no reason to think, and it is counterproductive to suggest, that which appears to the sensibility of a plurality of perceiving subjects is not the same for each of them;
The conclusion: does not follow from the premises, in that consensus-based becomes the condition for the premises, rather than consensus alone being a valid judgement given from them.
A plurality of congruent individual knowledges is merely an agreement, and such commonality in itself cannot be sufficient reason for the knowledge, for it then becomes possible for agreement to be the ground of knowledge, which contradicts the major.
I may very well have direct experience, hence knowledge, of what I am told, but I still may not have the direct experience of what I am told about. This is the standing argument against “....the arrogant pretensions of the schools, which would gladly retain, in their own exclusive possession, the key to the truths which they impart to the public....”
Of no particular import, I know. But still.....gotta separate the subjective concept of knowledge from the objective domain of learning.
So, a subject is a view? Are you saying that is all that you are - a view of the world? The "internal vs. external" is a product of the same problem as the "physical vs. non-physical" - dualism. I am not just my view of the world. I am a human being - an organism of which my view is only one part.
Quoting Echarmion
That' because you keep thinking in terms of physical vs. non-physical. You don't seem to be paying attention to what I'm saying. You seem to want to only promote your view as if it is objective - as if it is the case for not only you, but everyone else. Why do you think you keep trying to get me to agree and see things how you see them? What is the purpose of that?
I asked you how you move your "physical" arm with your "non-physical" mind? You need to show me the same respect that I have shown you and answer my questions. Do you agree or disagree that there is a causal relationship there? Do you disagree that there is a causal relationship between imagining flying to the Moon and the existence of "physical" rockets that fly human beings to the Moon? Could human beings travel to the Moon without first having imagined it and then imagined the plans for the design of a rocket ship to get them to the Moon?
Quoting Echarmion
The concept, "existence" is implied by the concept of "property".
It seems to me that you can only talk about what you think and in talking about what you think, you are talking about part of the world. Subjectivity comes about by confusing what your mind is with what the rest of the world is.
If the use of what you say is up to others, what is the use of you saying it, for you? Why do you say anything if not for others to find the same use as you?
Other minds are outside of my mind, and my mind is outside of their minds. So how do you reconcile the facts that you are a subject from your perspective but an object from other's perspective when we all share the same world?
How can it be true that ice cream tastes good, if it doesn't taste good to others? It can only be true if it tastes good to you. There is no such thing as a subjective truth. A subjective truth is a category error.
How can it be true that ice cream tastes good, if it doesn't taste good to others? It can only be true if it tastes good to you. There is no such thing as a subjective truth. A subjective truth is a category error.
Quoting Hanover
Think about how shit smells to dung beetles.
So, if I taste ice cream, and it tastes good to me, but it doesn't taste good to you, and I say "Ice cream tastes good to me," is that statement true or false? You've claimed it can't be true, so all I'm left with is false. So ice cream doesn't taste good to me even though I think it does?
I said that "ice cream taste good to you" is [objectively] true. This is a case where you didn't confuse some property of your mind with some property of the ice cream. You are explicitly stating something about the state of you, not the ice cream.
In saying "ice cream is good", you are not explicitly stating something about you, but about the ice cream.
Is "good" a property of you when tasting ice cream, or the ice cream without having been tasted?
Reconcile? It's a fact that I'm an object for others. Two points:
The perception of the other as someone who looks at me implies that I perceive them as another consciousness in the same world.
And we can feel that we have a common existence in the fact that we can share the same project. That is, in practice.
Therefore, intersubjectivity is not a feature of consciousness alone, but of human existence as a whole. It begins with language and continues in acts. Or vice versa.
If you refer to yourself as a "subject", and others refer to you as an "object", are we both talking about the same thing, or are we talking past each other?
Of course; whatever is said is first thought, yes.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you prefer, so be it. I do not. Mind is a human construct given from pure reason, subjectivity being nothing but the consequence of such construction. It is hardly a confusion, insofar as the rest of the world cannot be blamed for human intellectual error, so theoretical subjectivity was invented to take the fall, and speculative epistemological philosophy was invented to, if not correct the fall, at least to make the fall less painful.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Your subtlety is well-noted. Irreducibly? For me? To assuage the ego, of course. What else? Not the blatant uncontrolled “I’m right, you’re a farging moron” ego, just the half-assed reclusive, take it or leave it, I don’t really care ego. Transcendental rather than Freudian.
Quoting Mww
So, then we are not to take your previous quote seriously, as if it bears some truth, or is representative of of some state-of-affairs independent of you thinking it? Your words aren't about the world, but are about your ego?
If I’m interpreting you correctly: I know this would be a vast debate on its own. Feel free to disagree, of course. But for me, “reality” is merely the noun form of the adjective “real” which, in turn, is intended to signify “actually existing or occurring - rather than fictional”. My recollection of a dream I had last night would, given this semantic, be real - and, by extension, would thereby be a part of my intra-subjective reality: one experience among others which actually exists or occurs for me but for no one else. If this dream was real and I’d express it to you, I’d express a truth; if unreal, I’d express a falsehood. In the same general way, because English (by which I include all semantics particular to the English language) is an actual, rather than fictitious, medium via which English speakers communicate, and because the English language is not the intra-subjective reality of one individual but is, instead, an actuality whose very occurrence necessitates commonality among a plurality of beings, the English language will then hold an intersubjective reality - i.e., will be intersubjectively real.
This usage of “realtiy” is in keeping with common usage, as in, “they live in a different reality than we do” - as can be affirmed for the flat earth society. Here is not implicitly referenced objective reality - which “reality” is most often employed to express - but, instead, a belief structure of what is real via which individuals interpret the objective world and act within it. Differently exemplified, those who are Young Earth Creationists will hence dwell in a different intersubjective reality than those who accept the validity of biological evolution - the two cohorts' belief structures in essence make each inhabit a vastly different (interpretation of) cosmology relative to the other - yet both cohorts will nevertheless inhabit and be bound by the same objective reality. The YEC doesn’t deny the presence of dinosaur fossils, for example, this being a facet of objective reality - but does (I presume) believe that they were placed here by God to test their faith in their notion of God … this latter shared belief then being a facet of the YEC’s intersubjective reality.
Quoting Echarmion
The case could be also made that each species of animal shares its own species-specific intersubjective reality. A human, a dog, and an ant will interpret the objective reality of a rock differently, given the species-specific proclivities of perception and interpretation peculiar to each. But, here again, there would not be existent just one species-specific intersubjectivity, but a multitude of these; each one relative to a different species of life. All the same, I now understand what you were getting at.
Quoting Echarmion
In case this question wasn’t rhetorical: My own understanding of ontology addresses this question in horrendously complex manners. Currently, I’d rather be remain a mute about it - though I will simplistically express that, to me, subjectivity is ultimately conditional on objectivity.
I posted one quote concerning the “pretensions of the schools”; treat it as you wish, hopefully in context.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Depends. If the topic has empirical predicates the words will be about the world, conditioned by the pure intuitions and having natural law as its irreducible ground. If the topic has rational predicates, the words will be about speculative manifestations of the intellect, conditioned by pure reason and having the ego as its irreducible ground. And n’er the twain shall meet. The value of expressions in words to one mind, cannot be determined by the origination of them in another.
In this Platonic pseudo-elenchus we got goin’ on here....if you are Socrates, which interlocutor might I be?
I can't verify firsthand that your subjective experience of English is the same as my own. The backbone of your statement is that it must be objectively true that we're communicating, but one could doubt even this. Neither does the fact that I'm using what I believe to be English tell me anything about what English actually is. I'm certainly not objective about it; I'm tied in to my own experience of it.
You're right, the conclusion as written contradicts the major. I think I have unnecessarily doubled up on the knowledge part. It should actually be the other way round: the a consensus of individual knowledge forms our shared physical reality.
Quoting Harry Hindu
The view still has to be explained though. If the universe is just a bunch of objects strung together by cause and effect, how is it possible for some object to have an internal perspective?
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is a philosophy forum. I am not saying there isn't anything objective or true.
Quoting Harry Hindu
My physical brain is moving my physical arm. Whatever the mind does beyond the physical I don't know. The physical phenomena are representations of the non-physical reality. So the mind is not strictly speaking in a causal relationship with anything physical.
Quoting Harry Hindu
That's a good point. The imagination does seem so be necessary to cause the following developments. But if you were to look at the chain of events that led from, say, the evolution of humans to spaceflight, where would you find the imagination? Could it be described?
It's good that you draw attention to this. Overwhelmingly, folk share the same beliefs. We just tend to spend more time on the stuff about which we disagree.
Hence the Principle of Charity; interpret the utterances of others so as to maximise agreement.
One might suppose so. The confusion, which we have apparently avoided, is to think that it is the consensus that makes some utterance true.
Of course there are trivial exceptions: "Most folk think Trump is dangerous" will be true if and only if most folk think Trump is dangerous; in such cases the consensus is what makes the utterance true.
Hmm. Well, some statements do sort of glow green. I'm thinking of Moore's "Here is a hand"; statements which it makes little sense to doubt. And hereby hang many philosophical issues.
Yes, I don't believe that to be the case. I mean, I agree with you. The consensus sure can be wrong.
Quoting Banno
It could also hold for value judgments. If everyone thinks it's rude to put your elbows on the table, well, it is.
Not too sure what you are doing here. Is it that the more "perceived potential information of a subject" there is, the better our definition of "true"?
Quoting Possibility
Of what is true, ir of what "true" is? De dicto or de re?
That's an odd thing to say. There is a thread that I see, you see, Coben sees,
Now it can't just be in your head, since both Coben and I also see it. And further we each see the same thread - and post to it.
SO I'd go so far as to say that here you seem to be wrong.
That seems to be wrong, too, as a general rule. WE do after all make incorrect conclusions from the available evidence.
What I want to emphasis here is that the evidence does not make something true; rather the evidence leads it our belief.
That is, that belief and truth are quite distinct.
Well, indeed. If someone were to suppose that what is true is what is believed by the majority, I'm sure you and I would agree that they have not understood "true". We might dissuade them of their view by pointing out that sometimes the majority is wrong.
So that definition of "true" is wrong.
D’accord.
Reality does not care what your consensus is.
And I'd go so far as to say that you're making a bunch of unjustified assumptions about what I and Coben see. What do you think you know, and how do you think you know it?
Quoting Banno
But how do we establish truth in the context of physical reality? By making conclusions based on evidence. So the only way you know that a conclusion you made was wrong is if either you, or someone else, arrives at a different conclusion that includes the same evidence, i.e. falsification.
How do we know that the theories about Phlogiston were incorrect? Because we have new theories and [I]a consensus [/I] that they were wrong.
One liners won't convince anyone. If you want to have a discussion, address my actual argument.
List 'em, then.
Notice that this is no longer about what is true, but what is established as true. The conversation has surreptitiously moved from truth to belief.
Well for one you're assuming I am even looking at something. Perhaps my computer is reading the text out for me.
If I am looking, how do you know what language the text appears in to me? Perhaps it's translated. How do you know whether the formatting, colours, the order of posts etc. Is anything like it looks to you? I could be using a specific device, or a specific software, that you don't.
But most importantly you see a different thread because in your thread, you make different posts than I do in mine. You have a bunch of background information about you that I don't, and vice versa. You automatically know what you meant with your posts. I don't.
Quoting Banno
Because truth and belief are connected. Sure, you can have a notion of "objective truth" that is completely divorced from whatever anyone thinks about the world. But by that same token, it'd be completely empty. If there is no way to establish truth, then judging things as true or false is pointless. And aren't you the one complaining about unnecessary confusion?
No one can talk about me from my point of view, strictly speaking. But the other one doesn't talk about other person. He sees me from another point of view and this is me too.
But the point is how to bridge the gap between the two "I's". The answer is not in the wind of words but in common practice.
OK - now, what is it that is being read out to you?
The thread.
Therefore there is a thread.
Quoting Echarmion
What is it that is being translated?
The thread.
Therefore there is a thread.
Quoting Echarmion
Demonstrably, I am replying to what you posted. How could that be if I did not see what you wrote? Sure, you and I ight differ as to our understanding of the thread...
What is it we disagree about?
The thread.
Therefor there is a thread.
In the very act of denying the thread, you show that it exists.
If you were to replace "the thread" with "the posts" or even "the words", then we might get closer to an agreement.
But if you use the same term to designate what is inside your mind and what is outside it, you will have to give additional explanations to avoid possible misunderstandings. The main explanation is that there are two types of reality, the subjective one, which occurs in your mind, and the objective one, which occurs outside it. You will have to correct the concept of truth, which will have to distinguish between a subjective truth and an objective truth. All this is easier resolved if we speak of objective and subjective and if we limit the concept of truth to the correspondence with something external to the ideas of my mind, this is to say, the reality. Or as a property of certain type of propositions, which is a formulation I like better.
As far as intersubjective reality is concerned, you should make it clear that it only refers to the fact that certain people share certain ideas, which is very different from those ideas referring to something outside their minds.
So many previous clarifications hinder a discussion that it would be easier if you used the terms as they are usually used in the field of philosophy. No one is forcing you to do this, but it would pave the way.
What I was pointing out is contrary to this, from you:
That the thread has parts - posts and words - does not render it any less.
How do you distinguish between ideas that refer to things outside of your mind and others that are entirely subjec... sorry, that have no external reference? I think this is an epistemologically inevitable distinction that is usually made by distinguishing subjective and objective. What is your choice? You're defending solipsism?
No. The ‘subject’ I’m referring to here is the person experiencing, not the ‘truth’ in question. I realise this might be confusing, so I wanted to clear that up, first off.
If all we’re looking for is a consensus on the information we already have - ie. that what I see looks like an oasis - then we can verify only that limited perception of what is true. Increasing the value of this specific piece of information cannot tell us objectively if what I see truly is an oasis, for instance. We cannot automatically assume that our visual information is ‘true’; but we also cannot assume that the visual information of humans in general is ‘true’, objectively speaking. We’ve learned - through the pain, humiliation and loss of prediction error - that we must structure objective truth with more than visual information.
It seems obvious that there is a difference between the truth information of what we believe looks like an oasis and the truth information of what is an oasis. But recognising the difference between the truth information of what we believe is an oasis and what is an oasis can be more difficult.
Quoting Banno
What is true - but this is an important distinction. Truth is not the same as a statement of belief. A statement of belief is a reduction of truth information, relative not just to the potential information perceived, but also relative to how we structure it - our conceptual systems, including language, values and logic - formed according to our subjective experiences, the events of our lives and how we perceive, value and structure those, too. There is truth information in any statement of belief, but what information is true may not be what we believe it to be when we make it. The truth is not in the words themselves, but in how those words relate to our unique perspective of what is true. Like a blind man describing the elephant’s trunk.
Lets take a clear subjective truth - I prefer vanilla milkshakes to most other flavours.
Now the milkshake is not a thing in my mind; that is, my preference is about milk shakes - that's not extraneous; it's very relevant...
I guess it might be argued that while the milkshake is outside of my mind, the preference is somehow in my mind. But that's not quite right, either; the preference is exactly that I will choose to drink the vanilla over the chocolate; the preference is demonstrated, instantiated, outside my mind.
And that cuts to the heart of what went wrong in the OP; the distinction between subjective and objective falls apart on analysis. Or better, it lends itself to philosophical misuse.
Sorry, are you discussing types of ideas or the concept of truth? They're two different problems. If we mix them up we'll have a mess. Of course.
I want to distinguish between two kinds of realities: one is ideas and the other is objects. The distinction is that if I think about a cake something happens inside my mind not outside and if my mother makes me a cake it's outside my mind. Fortunately.
How do you distinguish between the two things? That is, the idea of a cake and the cake itself. You have to do it whether you want to or not. Otherwise you risk to perish of starvation.
Right, but what you're doing seems to me to merely be a word game. Since you brought up "the thread", and I am reacting to that, linguistically "the thread" is the object of our discussion. That of course doesn't say anything about whether it's also an object in other respects.
I just finished cooking a chocolate cake. True story.
It's not in my mind. It's in the kitchen. Except for the bit I ate.
I know what chocolate cake is. I'm not so sure about an idea-of-chocolate-cake. Is it a thing? A thing in my mind? But then is the thing in my mind the very same as the thing in your mind? All sorts of complexities ensue...
So I'm not convinced that the distinction between an external reality, out there in the world, and a internal reality, hidden form view in my mind, is going to help make sense of the way things are.
I'd go so far as to diagnose such talk as a misuse of "real". Like most philosophical problems, it's word knots.
Have you seen one that isn't?
Not all debates are like internet forums. Some are even cooperative, orderly and respectful of others' opinions. Very boring.
If I am playing word games, it's because that's what much of philosophy is. So let's do it self-consciously - Sort through the word games and see which ones make sense.
Words like objective and subjective have a useful place in some conversations. But when they get attached to truth and reality and such, they take us up the garden path.
Try eating the idea of a cake and you'll see the difference.
It's another thing whether ideas, which are not eaten, can correspond exactly to the thing outside. This is a very serious problem, but it is based on the fact that you must make the distinction between objective and subjective first. If you don't want to do that, apart from starving yourself, then answering the second question is meaningless. If you do the distinction the problem arises alone.
May be that the problem is not in the concepts, but in the ideas we link to them.
Or maybe the problem of truth is complicated in itself.
Well... here is the thread...(pointing)
The thread is not subjective...
Again, I am arguing that it's wrong to suppose that each thing - thread, rock, concept, idea... must be either objective or subjective.
I think that truth is quite easy. Indeed, simple. Un-analysable .
I think T-sentences tell us pretty much all there is to know about truth. But there's another bunch of threads.
"T-sentences"?
I don't understand anything. Could you explain it a little more?
This is a point which is in danger of being lost in the weeds, so I wanted to re-raise it.
@Banno is (as he did last time we discussed this) trying to use the likelihood of a shared set of stimuli to for an argument about the meaning of a term.
Banno's 'thread' and my 'thread' seem likely to come from the same shared source. Without such a thing we couldn't even talk about the differences between our subjective versions, but the mere existence of such a thing does not constitue proof that the word 'truth' refers to that thing, nor even that it should.
But all along you were the one insisting objects are "out there" and that they are there regardless of beliefs. Now you're saying that they are just an element in a language game, and what matters it whether it makes sense. But "making sense" is something mental, and doesn't reference anything objective.
So I am confused what your position is now
T-sentences were developed by Tarski and retargeted by Davidson. Not really that relevant here; except that they are exactly right. The "p" is a reference, a name for the statement p on the right; and the one will be true if and only if the other is true.
If I may.....
The formula is the new-fangled, analytic, thinks-it’s-better way of stating the continental version which claims, “...the definition of the word truth, to wit, the accordance of the cognition with its object...”. The formula relates to the criterion of the truth for propositions while the definition relates to the criterion of truth for human thought which is, of course, responsible for the construction of such propositions in the first place.
We commonly speak in propositions, but can and do communicate by other means that are not propositions, re: signing, Morse, etc., but we do not consciously think by means of any of those. It would seem a better test of truth to restrict its universal form (the definition) to our method of cognition, rather than the universal form (the formula) in the use of it, for it is quite clear ultimately all truths are our own judgements necessarily, even if we must still rely on something else other than ourselves merely to sustain or reject such decision. It follows that propositions may very well show error in composition or finality, but can never show error in origin, and as a rule, we wish to know, not that we were wrong about something, but how it is we came to be wrong.
Absolutely. I’d even go one step further, to wit: is impossible. Still, pointless works, because if it’s pointless, being impossible doesn’t make all that much difference.
Yeah. I'm adopting the terminology of the OP in order to undermine it. We can reject the language of the homunculus.
Quoting Echarmion
Language games take place in the world, and involve stuff. So drop the "just". The keys are both part of a language game and the things you start your car with. "Making sense" involves both; better, the distinction is a metaphysical error. Stuff in the world is always, already, interpreted; but it is also still stuff.
I was talking about your quote in the same post, here:
Quoting Mww
Is this quote about all minds and speculative epistemological philosophy, or about your [mind's] ego's need to put scribbles on a screen?
Quoting Mww
I'm not clear on your distinction between empirical predicates and rational predicates. This might be a product of the false dichotomy of empiricism vs. rationalism. In my mind, they are inseparable. Your rationality takes the same form as your "empirical" thoughts. Thoughts are about things, and can't be grounded in anything except what they are about.
This is one of these sentences that can mean everything and nothing.
Quoting Banno
But even if I were to accept that there is no distinction, it still seems that the language game about the key, as a "thing" is different from the keys as a "thing". The language game doesn't start the car.
Quoting Banno
I agree with the first part. Not sure what the second part is supposed to say. Stuff is stuff, but also still stuff?
I thought we had reached some sort of an agreement that it might be processes/relationships all the way down, not objects which would imply the "physical vs. non-physical" dichotomy I was trying to stay away from. You might need to re-read our previous exchanges.
If you refer to yourself as a "subject", and others refer to you as an "object", are we both talking about the same thing, or are we talking past each other?
Quoting Echarmion
You don't try to get people to agree with you, and see things how you see them outside of a philosophy forum, like in everyday life? Being on a philosophy forum or not has no bearing on how you use words to communicate ideas about the world.
Quoting Echarmion
Then your mind has no purpose?
How can "physical" stuff represent "non-physical" stuff, and vice versa, except by causation?
Quoting Echarmion
Imagining stems from the brain's ability to form concepts and goals. The goal in the mind is just as imaginary as Santa Claus. It doesn't exist in the world outside of the mind. But it drives the behavior of the body to change current conditions to reach that goal - so that world and mind are in sync - homeostasis.
Quoting Banno
I still don't know what this is about. Especially if you add that it has nothing to do with this.
Anyway Tarski's definition of truth refers to the formal conditions of truth, which have little to do with truth as a relationship of the subjective and the objective. About exactitude of formal sciences we have a lot of theories. Our problem is our natural languages with their distinction objective-subjective. Science, for example.
Yes, correspondence theory of truth. Aristotle.
But limiting itself to the pure form of the proposition. If we do not epistemologically analyze what the object may be, we are not going anywhere in this thread at least.
Tarski's formula: P it is true if and only if p
The statement "The snow is green" is true if and only if the snow is green, is a banality from the point of view of knowledge of the world.
Covid-19 kills people.
Does it?
We don't care if it's true or not?
I suggest that a theory about truth is neither impossible nor pointless.
I'm aware that chess is a construction, or, in other words, an invention. Yet the strategies within chess are objective - they exist regardless of whether a mind grasps them or not. The physical component of chess isn't relevant either: Chess can be played without a physical board and without physical pieces. In a nutshell, chess or war or poker maybe "constructions" or "inventions" but the strategies utilized within these frameworks can either be better or worse and this is not a matter of subjective opinion.
Yes, it’s a paraphrased conclusion having to do with human minds in general, given from certain pertinent tenets of a particular epistemological theory. It says here what minds are; what they do is elsewhere. And no, it isn’t a need, indicating some particularly beneficial inclination; it’s an interest, indicating merely some arbitrary persuasion.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
The false dichotomy is long-since reconciled, again, theoretically, and under all objectively real conditions, they are necessarily inseparable. Nevertheless, the human cognitive system is fully capable of pure thought, of which nothing empirical is cognizable because the conceptions are self-contradictory (an unextended body), or, that of which empirical cognition is possible but iff we can construct objects corresponding to the conceptions (a straight line connecting two points). To say nothing of moral dispositions, for which the actions are necessarily empirical, but the causality for them is given from pure thought alone.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
Really? What is better? For some 'better' is winning in the shortest amount of moves possible. For others 'better' is the ingenuity of play. If you mean 'better' as simply winning the game, then isn't that merely the performance of a logic that is fundamentally a subjective framework? Winning a game invented by humans; whereby the semantics and rules are collectively agreed upon, acting as a kind of subjective constraint.
And like I said, I believe in an objective reality we know next to nothing about. To say that it's an objective truth that we know little about reality isn't self-defeating.
It seems like you both made assertions, but actually it was just his opinion and your post was just your opinion. Clearly your opinion differs from that of neonspectraltoast, doesn't this difference therefore point away from objectivity?
How can you know nothing about reality and also know that it's objective?
I agree that a generalised rule shouldn't be formed from an objective specific.
Ah objectivity is faith based then
I can't experience others' awareness firsthand, but I think it's reasonable to believe in them. And it's important to not take them for granted. If it rains, we all know it's raining, but it's a big step to then assume you know what the essential nature of water is. We don't even have a comprehensive scientific understanding of what matter is.
Perhaps, but the quote, taken in the full context of its derivation, has been associated with the coherence theory as well. Depends on how far one delves into the text and what he can dig out of it for himself.
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Quoting David Mo
Agreed, for in no other way is criterion for truth irreducible, then to the form to which all substitutions in it must adhere. If substitution violates the form, the substitution is false.
——————
Quoting David Mo
LOL, true dat!! Still, the formula isn’t falsified by banality.
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Quoting David Mo
Of course it is neither. The context from which this exchange originated doesn’t address theory, it addresses what happens without one.
This is so obviously, astonishingly wrong, that it is hard to know where to begin.
Neon knows nothing about the language they use to construct the post nor the device they construct it on...?
Nothing about the topic of this thread?
That's bullshit - using that word as a technical term. Neon misrepresents what they believe; the pretence is that they know nothing, but their actions put the lie to this.
So what's their payoff? How does Neon represent them self?
"Better" is about winning games. If I ask you who is the better tennis player - you or Roger Federer I feel like there wouldn't be this kind of confusion.
I'd like to keep the focus on chess strategy. I know the rules were invented and sometimes even changed over time. But when we talk about chess we're not talking about chess as it was played in the 1500s. I shouldn't have to specify that.
There are better and worse strategies - in other words, strategies more apt to win games and strategies that perform poorly towards this end. This can be demonstrated repeatedly in real life to point where no one even argues it anymore.
Also keep in mind that "invented" doesn't mean "subjective." The English language was invented and evolved over time, but if it were truly subjective then I could use it or write it however I wanted and it would be fine but that's not the case. For something to be subjective the truth resides 'in the subject' which is not true for the English language or chess strategy.
Yes, it is - that's part of the point. "...is true" is banal. It adds nothing to what has already been asserted.
That it draws attention to this is a key reason for giving T-sentences consideration.
No, I don't. And if you really think about it, neither do you. Tell me the nature of language, the nature of the atom, and the nature of reality, and I might agree with you. All we understand is the bare face of completely abstract concepts.
Yeah, you do - you just did, in using a sentence of English in an attempt to show that you know nothing...
(yes, I know it's Canberra...)
Doubt has a background of knowing; hence it is absurd to attempt to doubt everything. Indeed, it is absurd to attempt to doubt most things.
Hence the philosophical enterprise of nihilism undermines itself.
Do you have any points that aren't moot?
I don't know what English is, exactly. Neither do you. Simply calling our mode of communication "English" explains nothing.
I've explained twice now that I believe in an objective reality we know little about. I won't explain that again. Are we using English? Well, I think I have higher standards of what it is than you do.
...and yet you are proficient at using it.
You can't tell us what English is, and yet you show it.
Here's your game: use English to say that you do not know what English is.
Quoting neonspectraltoast
Yet you function well enough in what you 'know little about' to be able to post here.
You know more than you say. Nihilism is a philosophical pretence.
I absolutely do not function with complete understanding of objective reality. I don't know what language is, how exactly the style and nuances of the English language were formed, or why. I don't know if it is an absolutely effective form if communication. I don't know why or how or if it is more effective than French, or how the French people's human experience is different on account of their language.
There is literally so much about language I can't be objective about. It may be objectively true that we're speaking a language, but what does that tell us? That all of reality can be objectively understood? When we can't even posit any insights into the language we're speaking?
I'm not saying we know nothing. We know reality implicitly. But there's a difference between knowledge and understanding.
Just take more care next time.
Wow. That will come as shocking news to the millions of people who use it every day to add something to their assertions.
"It's true...I really do have a tattoo on my back";
"It's snowing?...Are you joking?", "No, It's true, It's snowing"
"You're lying to me, the documents aren't in the case!", "No, the documents are there, it's true, I swear!"
"He's an honest man, if he says he wasn't at the bank, it's true that he wasn't at the bank"
Are all those instances of 'is true' really adding nothing to what has already been asserted?
Or is tempering philosophical whimsy with reality something which applies only to some philosophical projects and not others?
The substitution axiom is a mathematical axiom. I would like to know what it has to do with the existence of objects outside the mind and the possible knowledge of them. Can you explain it?
In my opinion pure mathematics needs transformation rules to become physical laws. Is the axiom of substitution one of them?
What kind of objectivity are you talking about? You seem to believe that even if humanity, the planet, the galaxy and the known universe disappeared, the Sicilian Defence would still exist. Is that so? In what kind of reality?
That is, it is merely analytical or formal. In that case, Tarski's criterion could not tell us anything about the existence of Covid-19 and the falsehoods that a certain ridiculous guy says about it in Twiter. What kind of criterion of truth is that? Or do you not believe that false things are said about Covid-19?
But you cannot say anything about Covid-19 if you do not first have an implicit or explicit criterion of what truth is. Saying "Covid19 kills if and only if Covid-19 kills" does not make anything clear. The problem is how do I know if Covid-19 kills and to what extent can I know.
Quoting Tarski at this point seems pointless to me. Unless you explain it to me better.
Of course, having an implicit concept of truth usually works, but there are certain moments in life and theory where one has to ask oneself what is truth and what the problems of realism are. Ask Einstein and Bohr, for example.
It would be "Covid-19 kills" is true IFF Covid-19 kills.
One already knows what being true is; the problem is that one does not know which particular utterances are true in all cases. That particular conceit of the philosopher, "you cannot say anything about Covid-19 if you do not first have an implicit or explicit criterion of what truth iis" - well, let's just refer questions about Covid-19 to the medics, not the philosophers.
And yet there's a 109 page thread about it, full of budding Nostrodamus's, exhibiting the seemingly universal human trait of defining what is 'true' by reference to a embedded narrative, rather than a reified ideal of a shared reality.
Physiological I'm afraid. Philosophers, scientists and forum posters all share the same primal fear of not being able to predict the outcome of their actions. Do do this they need a model (bayesian, of course) and seeing as the outputs of some models form the priors of others (Quinean Web of Belief stuff) the notion of having to change one small part of the Web becomes more distressing the more interconnected that node is. Leaving the contents of that node to an external source seems to make it more vulnerable to future change, so we avoid it. Re-enforcing those beliefs by seeking mutual approval for them is comforting, as is doing so by fitting them, post hoc, to facts others agree on.
The more frightening the potential consequences, the less uncertainty people will express about the consequences of certain courses of action, regardless of even their own assessment of certainty in less perilous states.
If there was no objective reality* then we can't be wrong about anything and yet philosophers constantly disagree. We know lots of things that are objectively true and we're wrong about some of them. The whole debate is a symptom of over idealizing knowledge. Can I know so something beyond doubt; well to doubt it implies there's a way it actually is; so doubting objective reality can be known implies it is otherwise.
*or access to it, or "provability", etc.
Why on earth not? I was wrong to kick the table leg because it hurt my foot. There need not be access to an objective reality to make that the case.
That's about what we do do, not what we ought do.
What ought we do?
Idealising knowledge, as I do, I'd point out that we don't know anything that is wrong. We might believe it, and think we know it, but if it isn't true, we don't know it.
Shame to hear about the cup, sort of had a lot riding on it.
Of course it did. What is a nerve signal if not some form of perception?
I'm afraid psychology doesn't cover what we ought to do (despite the appearances to the contrary from some of the field's more nefarious representatives). So I don't think there's any fact of the matter about that question.
Personally, I think it's unavoidable and so there little different one ought to do other than carry on. It's possible to become more adaptable and less frightened of contrary (or absence of) information. That certainly reduces the backfire and continuous influence effect (respectively - hardening one's position in the face of contrary evidence, and seeking only confirmatory evidence - if you're not familiar with the colloquialisms).
But then, being adaptable becomes a paradigm in itself and you end up vacillating unnecessarily just because it fits your self-identity. You can't win. Just pick a good story to start with and be prepared to drop it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but don't be too quick to drop it just because it's got a few cracks in it, everything has, and we need those stories to be quite robust and dependable. It's no good becoming a ruthlessly logical fact database at the expense of ones sanity.
It's not the philosopher saying it, it's common sense. How can you say there is a dog if you don't have a criterion to decide what is a true dog from a false dog? At least implicitly!
The philosopher will never say when a scientific statement is true or false. At most, he will say what the implicit criterion of truth that science uses means. And as I said, even theoretical physicists are interested in it. It's not just a philosophical mania.
If, when I pat it, my arm goes right through, it's probably a false dog.
But this is just tautology, as here 'false dog' just means 'one which my arm goes right through when I try to pat it'. We're just sorting things into classes and giving those classes labels - 'True Dogs', 'False Dogs' - according to some criteria of experience which seem to work for whatever we're trying to do with those classes at the time.
Yes, but not necessarily or exclusively. Substitution can also be a logical activity, insofar as the universal form of premises can be exchanged for the particular matter of them. If truth is the conformity of a cognition to its object, merely substitute what constructs a cognition, with the instance of that construction, and see if they match. The universal matter of truth, on the other hand, whether analytic or continental, can never be given from mere instances of particulars, but only each one in its own time, in accordance with the rule contained in the form.
We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist.
As for possible knowledge.....no such thing with respect to objects of cognition. Such objects are an experience. What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought. The aforementioned inseparability of the empirical/rational dichotomy writ large.
That's not what I'm saying. The sicilian defense is the sicilian defense merely by convention. It's just what we call 1.e4 followed by black playing c5. You could call that opening any number of things. Naming that the sicilian defense only helps us talk about chess/a common opening.
I'm saying patterns and geometry inhere in the game. It doesn't matter if the players don't see it - it's still there. There was certainly a time when players just didn't grasp certain patterns but now that certain players (minds) do grasp them we'd say that these patterns were discovered, not invented. In other words, they didn't just spring into existence when they were first consciously grasped.
That's basically what I mean by "objective." If you want to argue that everything is mind-dependent and ultimately dependent on some type of universal mind that grounds all existence that's fine with me and your view is credible to me.
So your words are about human minds, yet you say that the words are about some arbitrary persuasion. I don't see how they can be about both. Either it is about human minds from a view from no/every-where, or about your arbitrary persuasion (your view of human minds).
It seems to me that you are saying that it is a "want" vs. a "need". I see "wants", or "arbitrary persuasions", as cultural manifestations of our biological needs. We have a biological need to socialize, but also to know facts about the world in general to better survive in it. I'm trying to establish which one is the case here.
Quoting Mww
It looks as if we mostly agree here, but I have to ask: How do you know that you are thinking of an unextended body or a straight line connecting two points if those concepts don't take some shape, some form, in your mind? How do you know that you are being rational or irrational if rationality and irrationality don't take some form in the mind? To assert your rationality, you must have some reason to assert your state of rationality.
Yet, "doubt" is used to refer to a feeling of uncertainty.
There seems to be a stark difference between knowing that it is raining and knowing the capital of Australia. For the former, the truth lies outside of the mind(s) that is doubting or knowing. For the latter, the truth lies in minds. Canberra is a city, but being the capital of Australia is a purely human established truth, not a truth prior to humans evolving and thinking it.
One isn't doubting what rain is, but whether or not it is raining right now, and if you are doubting that it is raining right now, then you can't build any knowledge upon that doubt. In other words, you need to have knowledge as a foundation in order to build doubt on it.
Now, if it is absurd to attempt to doubt most things, then why philosophy? It seems to me that philosophy is about doubting everything because the very foundation of what we claim we know is being called into question (is solipsism or realism the case, the mind-body problem, something from nothing or something all the way down, etc.). If philosophy claims that your foundation has problems, then what does that say about all the knowledge you built on that foundation that you say is absurd to doubt?
If it is absurd to doubt most things, then why don't human beings agree on most things, or are we all mostly talking past each other? Or are you humbly implying that you know almost everything and anyone who disagrees with you knows mostly nothing?
Claiming knowledge is equatable to truth is easy if you haven't explained how one arrives at truth.
My words are about human minds in general because the theory is. Not being the author of the theory, the onus is not on me to defend it, but if the theory is interesting, my understanding of it accords with the interest the theory holds, and an arbitrary (because of all the theories with which I am familiar) persuasion (this one, as reflected in the words I use concerning human minds) arises.
——————-
Quoting Harry Hindu
First of all.....you must surely understand the vast dissimilarity between thinking and talking about thinking. In that is found the worth of the theory, as the means to describe what the mind is doing when it’s not being talked about.
Second.....I can think whatever I want, and if you’re interested, thought is nothing but “...cognition by means of conceptions....”, and conceptions “...are based on the spontaneity of thought....”. Understanding is the synthesis of conceptions, so while I am not prohibited from synthesizing body with unextended in thought, the two conceptions so conjoined contradict the principles of causality for empirical objects, which all bodies, per se, must be. The human system absolutely mandates something from which certainty is at least possible, otherwise we have no ground for claiming any knowledge whatsoever, which in humans is the LNC. Therefore, even if I can think a contradiction, I must have in place some means to prevent any experience from ever following from it, in order to preserve my requirement for possible certainty, and by association, knowledge itself. This manifests in the fact that while I can think “unextended body”, I couldn’t possible describe the properties such a thing might be given, which means such a thing is not possible for me to know.
So to answer your question, there are forms of those conceptions, it is just impossible to cognize anything by the conjunction of them on the one hand, yet serves as justifiable criteria for the valid cognition of things like lines and points on the other.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Rationality is the quality of a rational procedure, the form of it given through its schema, re: sub-categories, instances, iterations, occurrences, etc. I may never know I’m being irrational, if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world. I might be crazy but think I’m doing alright. Why shrinks drive Beemers.
Normally though, I would be irrational if I insist on knowledge proven to be illicit. If I insist I can demonstrate the reality of an unextended body, for instance. Or, if I insist the interior angles of any triangle cannot sum to greater than 180 degrees.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Not sure what to do with this. Not sure rationality is something to be asserted. Exemplified, perhaps. Dunno.
Mostly agreeing.....always a good thing.
Toddlers do this all the time. While it common for folk to think they need such criteria, it turns out that they usually don't. Can you tell a prairie dog from a hot dog?
Why do you believe that?
Make a list of all your beliefs, from your presidential preferences down to the size of your shoe.
How many of those would we agree on?
Charity says interpret to maximize agreement. That wouldn't explain why you think we mostly agree on everything.
Quoting Banno
I don't know. Isn't it possible that it just looks like we agree?
And... that would be different from our actually agreeing?
Quoting frank
It says let's start by assuming we agree on most things.
Why not?
Quoting Banno
That's a little different from asserting that we do agree on most things.
I don't see anything substantial in your comments so far. What do you want?
In certain settings we get really precise, like in scientific endeavors, but that precision is pretty narrowly directed and rides on the shifting ground of unknowns and wild theories.
On the other hand maybe we really do agree on most things which would open the door to more questions. Have you ever read anything about the idea of the syntax-semantic interface?
I gather someone has made it part of their jargon...
Of course definitions are tautologies. But they are useful or not. It's a question of meaning and reference.
Yes, perception is a simple criterion. It's more or less useful in everyday life. But it is useless in propositions about electrons or force fields. This is where the problem of true propositions begins.
If you have thought that defining truth is simple, you are wrong.
You have simply transferred the problem of truth to the problem of "cognition". You've changed one word for another. "When I state a true proposition?" is equivalent to "When I have a cognition of a thing?" With the aggravated problem that you can't recognize and communicate a "cognition" if you don't speak about it through propositional language.
Quoting Mww
Do you mean to say that my experience of an emotion and that of a lizard is subjective? This is what it seems to say, since the form of my cognition is something subjective, which does not depend on the known object. This does not seem to me to stand up. It seems that the object I know has something to say about the way I can know it.
But I wasn't talking about using perceptions to define 'truth'. I was talking about using perception to distinguish 'true dog' from 'false dog'. There is no general case which covers 'true x' and 'false x'.
When it comes to electrons, physicists are not even thinking in terms anything like the dog example. They're thinking in terms of fitting data to a model with predictive power (or elegance, or simplicity...). Here it's not 'true dog=pat it - false dog=run away'. It's 'fits the model=publish - doesn't fit the model=revise the model' (to put it very simply). In neither case does the scientist or the would-be dog patter need a general definition of truth to hold or perform either of those two algorithms. Experience is sufficient.
I'm not trying to say that.
First of all, you have too much confidence in the absolute exactitude of chess computers. The possibilities for the development of the Sicilian Defense are endless. At one point in the '85 confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov the Whites played Bg2. Experts disagree as to whether this was a basic error or why. Neither do the chess computers. Therefore, if the best solution exists it is not in anyone's brain, artificial or otherwise. We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.
This last possibility has many disadvantages. For example: limiting ourselves only to the human brain, there is an infinite possibility of imagining formal systems from Tac-tac-toe to Ryemann's mathematics. Objectivity would be an infinity of infinities. Outside of human measurement. How do you know that infinity exists? What is your inhuman faculty that allows you to grasp its existence?
There is no single method of reaching the truth, but there does seem to be a single concept of truth. It is universal insofar as it designates certain characteristics common to all methods of obtaining a true proposition. Leaving aside merely formal propositions, for now.
All methods of obtaining truth refer to propositions based on intersubjectivity, experience and prediction. That goes for your dog and for an electron. This is what we mean with "Give me a proof of this".
Then comes the discussion about whether the truths thus obtained are objective or not.
Yes, I'll certainly grant that they have that very broad range of factors in common. But not all cases have all three. A mathematical truth has nothing of prediction or experience, a 'true' note in music has only inter-subjectivity and experience, the true statement of past events has nothing but inter-subjectivity alone.
Quoting David Mo
Why? What does this add to the methods we already have? And how could we possibly proceed in such a discussion when the truth of the solution can only be established by inter-subjectivity, experience and prediction?
Quoting David Mo
Mathematics is formal science. Not prediction. A theorem is not predicted, but deduced from axioms.
I assume we are speaking of objectivity because of the objects in the world.
Curiosity, I suppose. Amazement is the mother of science. Moreover, because of the consequences in practice. Belief in the reality of my actions is the surest antidote to apathy and spleen.
Of course, a scientist can live with being a subjectivist. But you can't be madly in love with your girl if you think your girl doesn't exist. Except if you are Edgar Allan Poe and we know how Poe's stories ended. Bad, very bad.
Ahh yes. The search for external social group validation for one's beliefs. You know that's a fairly modern phenomena? It's not really seen in hunter-gatherer communities (but then there has been much less work done on them, so it might be found one day).
It's what (generally) drives this desperate insistance that there are objective truths. The full assertion goes "There are external, objective truths in the world (oh, and the ones that there are happen to be all the ones I already think)"
You see this in everything from scientific paradigms, through politics to ethics. The quest for some external social validation to shore up an otherwise crippling lack of confidence in one's approach.
" We can determine truth from logic" - means 'I'm not getting the proof I need empirically, so I'll add a few laws in and make my assertion sound more authoritative'
"There are some ethical positions which are beyond debate" - means 'a the ethical positions I don't agree with would be easier to dismiss if I didn't have to discuss them'.
"We all agree on certain truths" - means 'We all agree (with me) on certain truths'.
It's (unsurprisingly) more common among intellectuals who didn't receive the validation they wanted from their peer group for their success relative to those with physical skills.
Now - get off my couch and pay the receptionist on the way out.
No. I was referring to the basic intuition that one does not fully exist if one does not realize oneself in the world. The opposite is the spleen of the romantics. Or isolation as the worst of punishments. It makes you crazy.
But if you want to get into the other subject, too, we validate ourselves (not our thoughts alone, but who we are) in social interaction. By attacking or joining forces. The myth is that of Robinson. When you validate something empirically you are doing it from a culture that imposes its social norms on you. You are not alone with your test tubes, even if it seems so.
For both, we need a concept of truth that is produced in interaction with the world and with others. Reality is what resists to me and what I shape. Individually and socially.
Then comes determining the qualities of that interaction that make me think in terms of objectivity. But only after I have established these truths phenomenologically. As a statement, not as an elaboration of a truth.
Quoting Isaac
Your couch? This is a no man's land.
Quoting David Mo
No, I haven’t. You are in effect asking for the truth of whether or not an object exists outside the mind, which would be necessarily given if that object affects our perception. But that affect in and of itself tells us absolutely nothing about the truth of what that object is. For that, cognition of it is required, and cognition is the result of the logical substitution of the matter of that object into the universal form of objects in general. And how that is accomplished depends on the cognitive theory one deems sufficient to explain the process.
——————-
Quoting David Mo
When you state a true proposition about a thing, you have already cognized the thing in such a manner that does not contradict experience or possible experience, yes. Just a cognition is not enough, it must adhere to the LNC in order to for a truth claim to be valid. Hence, the logical substitution of the matter of some object in particular into the universal form of all objects of the same kind in general.
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Quoting David Mo
Which is hardly a problem if that is the natural modus operandi of the human rational agent. Propositional language is nothing but a reflection of the intrinsically logical human cognitive system, so how else would we communicate, if not in keeping with how we think?
Besides....so what? Haven’t you ever just sat there and thought about stuff, cognizing this and that one right after another, actually quite endlessly, without telling anybody about it?
——————-
Quoting David Mo
The experience is, yes. How could it not? You said it yourself....”MY” experience. There are no experiences that don’t belong to somebody.
And we don’t experience feelings; we experience the objects responsible for the invocation of feelings. Objects give us knowledge of the world and objects also make us feel in ways about the world. Both are nothing but alterations of the subjective condition, but the former has to do with experiences in which causality is the object, whereas in the latter the causality lays in the subject alone, the experience be what it may. In no other way is it possible to account for the differences in feelings between subjects involved in the same experience, while the certainty of congruent knowledge from the same experience is not so questioned between involved subjects. We both know a Picasso when we see it, but you may find it beautiful while I find is a unremarkable mess.
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Quoting David Mo
All objects are always cognized, whether already objects of experience, in which case you are merely remembering them as such, or whether the object has never been experienced at all. We don’t have a system for known objects and a system for unknown objects; we have one system with embedded facilities that enable us to tell the difference. All cognition is subjective and empirical cognition does depend on objects known or unknown. I say empirical cognition, because the other kind, a priori cognitions, depend on the possibility of objects, and the knowledge possible of them iff they exist.
The object you know has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with how you know it, except such object must actually be available for you to know about. The mechanisms for knowing are in your head, that to which the mechanisms are directed is outside your head. How can the external object direct the internal mechanism?
Nevertheless, it is an age-old question, and apparently still around these days, as to whether we tell objects what they are, or objects tell us what they are. If it is me telling myself I know a thing, it should be me telling the object what it is. Otherwise, the object is telling me what I know which is the same as directing my intellectual capacities, so if I get it wrong, it is necessarily the object’s fault. But no, if the object is telling me what it is, how could I get it wrong, assuming my capacities are operating properly? I couldn’t ever make a mistake in my knowledge, and, I would immediately know that object in its entirety. I would have the thing-in-itself as knowledge, unless the object didn't tell me everything, in which case I couldn’t really say I know about it. Nahhhhh......way too many variables in that scenario, methinks. Parsimony rules, I say.
Yeah, yeah, I know.....objects absolutely must tell the brain something definitive about themselves, because otherwise there is inexcusable violation of natural law, which is anathema to all manifestations of reason. Enter the metaphysical mind, invented by reason itself, in order to allow natural law but still account for fallible renditions of it. But in that case, it can only be reason responsible for our fallibility.......AARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!
.....Would-You-Like-To-Play-A-Game........
Quoting Harry Hindu
It does get difficult to remember where each sub-discussion stands in a topic like this one.
Anyways while I am sympathetic to the idea of getting off the beaten path, I am not sure how to conceptualise a reality of "processes/relations all the way down". It seems to me that both processes and relationships require "things" as a substrate. How would you describe a process without the things it processes? How a relationship without the things it relates?
Quoting Harry Hindu
They're not the same, or they shouldn't be. If people refer to me as an object, they refer to what they observe. That isn't all I am, or so I believe.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Just because I want to convince people doesn't mean I regard whatever I want to convince them of as an objective truth. I wouldn't claim, for example, that my views on morality are objective. At best they're reasoned.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A purpose? I don't know. But it is important, since whatever it does is represented physically. So something "objectively real" is happening.
As for representation: think about how a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum represents the colour blue.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This sounds somewhat similar to the "representation" idea I have been advancing. What you're describing doesn't sound causal to me.
Can we agree at least that you don't supply adequate responses to other's posts? When you can go back and re-read the post you're quoting as a rebuttal to your response to the post, then your response is severely lacking.
If I can't get an adequate response, then it is quite difficult to discern exactly what we do and don't agree on.
Quoting frank
:rofl:
Quoting Banno
Here's the new presidential candidate that all Americans are "agreeing" on:
https://verminsupreme2020.com/
It looks like we can't even agree how to where our shoes (Yes, that is a boot on his head)
OK, but there are many theories of mind - some of which contradict each other, or aren't compatible with each other or other things that we know, so why did you use this theory? Why is it interesting?
Quoting Mww
No, I don't. How is talking about thinking different from thinking about thinking? How is talking about thinking different from thinking, when it requires thinking about the words to say, and how to say them? It's like you're saying that you cease thinking when talking about thinking.
Thinking is all that we (our minds) do. I think, therefore I am.
Words are just other visuals and sounds in our experience. If we can think in colored shapes and sounds (words), then how is that different than thinking in colors and sounds that aren't words? Words just add another layer of thinking - of aboutness.
Quoting Mww
It seems to me that in order to think of an unextended body, you must have had an experience/knowledge of unextended things and an experience/knowledge of a body prior to thinking it. The mind can only imagine unique amalgams of previously experienced concepts, so there is a causal process at work.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
But you just did, in bold.
Are we ever irrational? Maybe from another's perspective, but from our perspective we all use the information we have to make decisions. We may be missing information, or have inaccurate information (we were lied to) that an observer has, so it would appear to the observer that we are irrational, when in fact we are simply missing, or inaccurate, information, or as you put it: " if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world.", which is how I defined "subjectivity" - confusing the concepts in your mind for objects/events in the world.
I wasn't talking about chess computers being able to solve perfectly for every position on the board. I'm not saying that there's an objectively best first move or best move in every position. I was simply saying that the patterns and geometry inhere within the game whether they are recognized or not.
Imagine this: A universe where no one understands the 4 move checkmate. White gets the first 3 move sequence a billion times, but he never grasps that he can take on f7 and the game is over. The solution doesn't exist in anyone's mind and therefore.... doesn't exist? But the second someone does grasp it he hasn't discovered a pre-existing possibility (because discovery implies that it was there all along)... he has made it a truth because he, the subject, has grasped it. That's how I would view something to be a 'subjective truth.' It would make sense if I were to ask you what your favorite color or food was.... not about something concerning an external reality like a chessboard.
A move sequence can certainly exist as a possibility. These possibilities can be evaluated and a solution can be found. It's easier in some cases than others.
Don't forget the notion of evaluating a position just as it is. A certain position can exist on a board and it is likely experts and laymen will view it differently. It's up to the experts to provide a greater understanding; that's basically chess teaching in a nutshell. The reality exists and the teacher passes it down.
We already "conceptualise a reality of "processes/relations all the way down"".
Conceptualizing a reality of "processes/relations all the way down" IS perceiving or imagining processes/relations as objects at different layers/views (the view from on Earth as opposed to the view outside the solar system, or inside an atom).
Our scientific theories even describe objects as being the relationship between smaller objects, all the way down. Objects are conceptions of processes/relations.
Quoting Echarmion
What do you consider to be all of you?
Quoting Echarmion
Saying they are reasoned is the same as saying your views are objective.
Quoting Echarmion
Quoting Echarmion
How can you say that something represents another without causation? Does the representation exist before or after what it represents, and how does a representation come to represent something else?
Can you say the opposite, that the colour blue represents a certain wavelength in the EM spectrum, but from a different view?
I don't know what this means. You know something if you have an idea about it that you can rationally justify. Knowledge differs from belief because belief cannot be rationally justified. I don't know what matter and universal form have to do here. Is this Aristotelianism? Does this mean that to understand something you have to explain it in terms of a universal law?
It is generally accepted that knowledge of the objects of this world has to do with experience. This has to be precised, but it is the starting point.
Quoting Mww
Since I don't know what the LNC is I don't know what you're talking about.
Quoting Mww
Language is not just talking to someone. It's talking to yourself also. According to psychologists, when you are "sitting in an armchair" thinking your mind works in terms of words and images. Thoughts don't exist without that. Not to mention that our speculation from a couch depend on a previous history of socialized verbal contacts.
I don't know what this has to do with the objectivity or subjectivity of our thoughts. I am afraid we are wandering.
Quoting Mww
I suggest you go to Google Scholar and search for "experience of emotions". I suppose you will change your mind about this. It is totally different to see a lizard than to be afraid of a lizard. The difference between a direct complement (that which is seen) and a circumstantial complement (that which causes an emotion). Because the lizard exists outside the mind (as a thing or phenomenon) and the emotion does not.
That both knowledge and emotion contain a subjective part and a reference to an object does not mean that the emotion is not experienced or that there are no important differences between one thing and the other.
Quoting Mww
It would be a miracle if something generated exclusively in my head allowed me to manipulate objects outside of my head. And here's the thing about knowledge. Which is not mere speculation but an effective way of moving in the world.
The link between object and subject is the praxis.
Quoting Mww
False problem: the object does not dictate the knowledge. Knowledge is the interaction between object and subject. The mistake is the disagreement between them
Quoting Mww
Nobody thinks that way.
.
Ah well. I thought you were defending platonism.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
No. The future does not exist as reality but as possibility. Sartre called it the nothingness that is within being. It is beautiful.
But then how do we know there are processes behind the objects?
Quoting Harry Hindu
It would certainly have to include my internal thoughts, the way I feel about things etc. I am not convinced that is all physical stuff.
.Quoting Harry Hindu
I disagree. Morality has nothing to do with objects. It's about relations between subjects. "Objective morality" is a category error.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes, you can say the opposite. That's one major difference to causal relationship. Causality is unidirectional, representation is not.
As to how it works, there is no before or after, since those are temporal and therefore causal relations. Green is a certain wavelength (or spectrum), and that wavelength is green.
On the one side, you have the entire physical process: light is emitted, parts of it are reflected and strike the retina, electronic signals are emitted, a pattern of brain activity results. On the other hand you have "green-ness".
Exactly. From which it follows necessarily that talking is not something our minds do. We can think without talking but cannot talk without thinking, hence the origins and manifestations of thinking and of talking are necessarily completely distinct and separate, even if they are under some conditions related.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Correct. “I” think, therefore “I” am. That which thinks, exists thinking. Nothing more, nothing less may be derived from such problematic subjective idealism, for its negation, that which does not think does not exist, is absurd. The Good Bishop’s ultimate defeat.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Hmmm......did I? Did I assert some rationality, or did I merely exhibit a quality represented by that which is asserted, from which some judgement of yours with respect to rationality, is facilitated? When I tell you about a thing rationally, I am not telling you anything whatsoever about rationality itself. Exhibiting it, yes; asserting it, no. You witness rationality, or the absence of it, and judge accordingly.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
That’s what I’m sayin’, yep. Although, I think it’s possible to realize myself having been irrational, which is just me judging my own thinking introspectively.
Yeah....how ‘bout that.
Psychologists??? Google scholar??? Farging PRACTICE, fercrissakes!?!?!?!?
I’m done here.
Someone better tell Jurgen Habermas this, because his theory of communicative action explicitly evaluates the emergence of rational thought in the context of the evolution of socialized communications.
I wasn't talking about potential futures here in terms of exploring potential variations. I was talking about an evaluation of the actual position (i.e. evaluating the board as it is.) This is a crucial skill because even if you have deep foresight into potential variations if you can't evaluate the position afterwards it's kind of useless. A layman and an expert will evaluate a position differently. Chess teaching is often the expert helping the layman grasp a higher version of that reality (what's really going on on the board.)
Ok.
"There is thought now" is an updated version of Cogito Ergo Sum.
What language is this?
How do we know? This seems like a silly question. It is how we describe the world based on our observations. We even invent objects as processes. Think about a watch - an object that is a process of time-keeping. Would a watch be a watch without a particular relationship of gears and springs? Would you be a body without a particular relationship of organs? A solar system without the relationship of the sun, planets, gravity, etc.?
Quoting Echarmion
You keep using this term, "physical". What does it mean?
It seems to me that all that matters it that it is causal, not "physical" or "internal". If there is a causal relationship between your thoughts and my observation of your body, then I don't understand why we need to use this terminology that you insist on using.
Quoting Echarmion
Then you didn't reason your way to some moral conclusion. To claim that you used reason is to claim that you abandoned your subjectivity in favor of objectivity. I agree that there is no such thing as an objective morality, but that simply means that there is no way to reason one's way to some moral conclusion. Any moral conclusion would be based on one's own perspective, needs and goals, which means that it would be subjective.
Quoting Echarmion
In a deterministic universe, effects represent their causes and causes represent their effects. Time can go either way. It is how we make predictions. If a particular effect necessarily follows a particular cause, then from different views in time, causes can represent their effects and vice versa.
The last part seems to be a result of your dualistic thinking. You keep using these incoherent terms, "physical", etc. You keep referring to objects as "physical" when I said that objects are how the mind conceives of processes/relationships. So you keep referring to mental phenomenon as "physical", yet assert that those things are "external". Objects do not exist out in the world, except in other minds. They are mental things that participate in the process of mind. What is external and internal (all the way down) is process. Mind is the process of representing a world that is all processes, as objects.
That's not how it seems to me at all. If you can think without talking, but can't talk without thinking, then that tells me that thinking is fundamental, and that talking is a kind/manifestation of thinking.
Quoting Mww
Exhibiting it is the same as asserting it. How else do you show the existence of rationality. I would ask for the same type of evidence for the existence of God, wouldn't you?
Everything from a purely physical standpoint is a process. Particles cling together for finite durations then proceed on their way, in the "direction" of whatever impelled them to begin with plus the sum of interactions. It is only because we have a psychological affinity for a specific spatio-temporal scale (the observable universe) that we preferentially identify things as "things". Change the spatio-temporal scale slightly and some things begin to look more like processes....
Bullseye!!! Remember that definition, “thinking is cognition by means of conceptions”? Images are the schema of conceptions, but we cannot communicate via images, so we invented words to represent our conceptions. Think first, speak later.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
When I do 20 pushups, have I asserted (told, mentioned, conversed with respect to) anything about my strength? When I tell you I like football, have I exhibited (manifested, displayed, shown acquaintance with) anything to do with football?
Quoting Harry Hindu
That which exists, exists necessarily, and its negation is impossible. That which exists cannot not exist.
Rationality cannot be an existence because rationality does not exist necessarily insofar as its negation is possible. Rationality can not exist when irrationality does.
Existence is a subcategory of quantity, rationality is a subcategory of quality. Asking how much rationality we have is senseless in juxtaposition to asking in whether or not understanding is properly conditioned by reason.
Philosophically, the quality of rationality is demonstrated by the accordance of pure reason with possible experience. Or, if you prefer, from altogether more mundane point of view, the accordance of logical inference with observation.
Piece-a-cake, trust me.
Right, but note that your description of the process is based on particles. So the particles ("things") seem to be required to have a notion of a process.
Yes, I used the term particles consistent with the accepted model of physics. It in no way constitutes or represents an atomistic ontology. Technically, particles are instantiations of underlying fields. I was expecting this response however.
I do know that this is the case, but are fields "processes"?
I would say that the manifestation of particles is a process for sure.
Never "read" a picture book? How are we communicating if not by images on a screen? Words come in the form of sounds, or images (more specifically, scribbles). You use your eyes to see the images and ears to hear the sounds. Thinking with words is thinking in images/scribbles or sounds. It's just that those images and sounds are about things - about your ideas, and your ideas are about the world if they are objective, and not if they are subjective.
I could draw pictures of what I mean, or I could write it or say it. The former is more time-consuming and a less efficient use of my finite energy. The latter saves time and is a more efficient use of my finite energy.
Quoting Mww
Yes, that you are strong enough to do 20 pushups.
Yes, that football is liked by you. You liking football is what contributes to football being a popular sport.
Is saying, "I can do 20 pushups" and doing 20 pushups redundant information? If I can see you do 20 pushups, do you really need to say it?
I can also ascertain your level of knowledge of the English language by your use of it, not just the subject matter of what you are talking about. I can also ascertain that a Big Bang event happened sometime in the distant past if you and I are here communicating. Each and every effect contains information about all the causes that lead up to, or are part of, it. You just have to change your view to access the information you are looking for.
The rest of what you said is confusing.
Pantagruel gave a better response to your question, Echamarion. I would just like to just expand on what Pantagruel said. In using the term, "particle", we are just talking about processes that are fundamental to the view of reality that we are talking about. Change your view to be about the particle then your particle becomes a process of more fundamental processes (particles). The particle-wave duality problem of light and matter is another good example. The problem is resolved by thinking of particles and waves as just different views of the same thing.
Categorical error. I’m speaking of images with respect to the schema of conceptions, which arise spontaneously from pure thought, you’re speaking of images as empirical representations of the original schema, which arise from experience. Which should prove my point.
Furthermore, apparently you don’t read picture books either, else putting “read” in quotes wouldn’t have an explanation. View pictures, read/hear words. Ever notice that perceiving empirical words becomes viewing mental images? Except for maybe the driest, most technical or abstract moldy tomes, words read always transform internally into the very schema from which they were born, otherwise there is no purpose for them.
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You said exhibition of rationality and assertion of rationality are the same thing.
Quoting Harry Hindu
My examples proved that incorrect, in that the judgements you make in response to each, are very different.....
Quoting Harry Hindu
....cannot be a valid judgement of yours merely from my saying so. I might detest football, saying I like it for any number of rational or irrational reasons, which would be impossible for you to derive from the mere assertion.
You're beginning to lose me, Mww. I'm not sure I can ascertain anything useful from your last post. You told me, "Bullseye!" in the last post, yet when I elaborate, you say, "Categorical error". You seem to be saying that we're using the same scribbles, "image" to refer completely different things. I'm trying to tell you that they are a different kind of the same thing.
What is the difference between viewing pictures and reading words if they are both done with the eyes? The difference seems to lie in the judgements of the imagery, not how the images are acquired and stored (remembered) for recalling later.
When seeing words for the first time, how would you understand that those scribbles are more than just scribbles, but are about a context that is irrelevant to the context of you looking at ink scribbles on a sheet of paper? How would you come to understand that concept prior to it being communicated to you because you have yet to learn any language? It was because you were shown pictures of what those scribbles were about - the relationship between the imagery of the scribbles and what context that the scribbles are about. Words are simply a way of condensing a complex idea into simple empirical symbols for communicating, and conceptual symbols (which are stored empirical symbols) for conceptualizing.
Quoting Mww
Which supports what I said about words having an additional layer of aboutness. Words are about your thoughts and your thoughts are about the world when telling the truth and not when telling a lie. When telling a lie, your words are only about your thoughts - your intent to mislead. Lies are an attempt to knowingly propagate subjective views, rather than objective ones. Lying is willful misuse of words for the purpose of invoking the imagery of what those words are about rather than imagery of what is actually the case. You using words to propagate false views tells me something about you - that you are a liar, and that your words aren't useful. This is why it is important to know when a person's words are about the world, or about themselves (like their possible intent to mislead).
“. . . as human beings, we must inevitably see the universe from a center lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms of a human language shaped by the exigencies of human intercourse. Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity (p3).”
“. . . the act of knowing includes an appraisal; and this personal coefficient, which shapes all factual knowledge, bridges in doing so the disjunction between subjectivity and objectivity. It implies the claim that man can transcend his own subjectivity by striving passionately to fulfill his personal obligations to universal standards (p17).”
--from Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (1964)
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Mww
Quoting Harry Hindu
The bullseye represents that you admit thinking is fundamental; the categorical error represents that you’ve substituted the primary constituent for the origin of antecedent thought, for the primary constituent of the consequential communication of it. This matters from the point of view that holds with the notion that when you put some general representative scribble in objective form, you’ve already cognized that to which it belongs for you, but when I perceive that same image, I have yet to cognize that to which it belongs for me.
It makes no difference to my understanding what the particular object of perception is, whether word, picture, or tickle on the back of my neck or loud boom from the backyard.....they each and all arise as images of some possible object, called “phenomenon”, to my thinking process. So yes, my employment of “image”, as you put it, is one and only one thing, re: that which represents a single phenomenon, which is then called a conception. I still need to synthesize that image either with a manifold of extant intuitions given from experience, in which case I already know the perceived object, or, some non-contradictory genus of conceptions that forms a possible cognition a priori, in which case I am merely learning what the perceived object is.
Now the categorical error manifests, in that it is the faculty of imagination responsible for synthesizing the possible object in phenomena, to the named object in conception, with my mental images as the intermediary between them, hence, images being the schema of conceptions. The phenomenon e.g., loud boom in the backyard or “images” in a picture book, or “scribbles” representing words, are all nothing but objects of my perception, which mandates they all traverse the same rational procedure as any other real physical object. The category is relation, and the error is thinking the perception of an external image suffices as the internal image as schema, when in fact it does not. Well........actually, in theory it does not.
As an aside, there is also the category of modality, having to do with necessity, but I got a feeling that ain’t gonna fly, especially if the error of relation hasn’t first.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
No, not really. Words cannot be the sole causality for condensing an idea into symbols representing it. If that were the case, nothing prevents the word “breakfast” from symbolizing the condensed complex idea “religion”, except the invocation of infinite regress to the point of inception of the initial correspondence between any single word and the conception it represents. The initial correspondence is sufficient for the principle of non-contradiction, which henceforth prevents cross-referencing words with concepts to which they do not belong. Which has much more to do with meaning of words, than words themselves anyway. All of that being nothing but.....you guessed it.....pure thought. Think first, speak later. Or, which is the same thing....speak now about what was thought earlier.
I see what you’re trying to say, but your method makes no room for all that happens between condensing and communicating. You’re trying to tell me in words what you think, which is fine in itself, you couldn’t do it without projecting it objectively somehow, but how you think is not determined by your words, they just represent what it is, after you’ve done it.
“Category mistakes are highly prevalent in figurative language. That is to say, it is very common for sentences which are used figuratively to be such that, if taken literally, they would constitute category mistakes. Consider for example metaphor. The metaphorical sentences ‘The poem is pregnant’, ‘The silence was liquid’, and ‘My thoughts are racing’ are all category mistakes. Or consider metonymy: a waiter might use the categorically mistaken ‘The ham sandwich is angry’ in reference to the customer who ordered the ham sandwich, and a political reporter ‘The White House decided to change its policy’ in reference to the people working at the White House. Another source of examples can be seen in the domain of fictional discourse. In the context of a fictional work, one can use sentences such as ‘The tree was tired’or even ‘The number two was happy’."
. . .
“Sentences such as ‘The poem is pregnant’ are only category mistakes in so far as we attempt to interpret them literally, and on the face of it there is nothing inconsistent with maintaining that a sentence has a figurative meaning at the same time as being literally meaningless. However, in the remainder of the paper, I argue that this appearance is misleading: re?ecting on some of the main theories of figurative language reveals that they are not after all compatible with the meaninglessness view. In Sect. 2, I discuss the case of metaphor, in Sect. 3 the case of metonymy,and in Sect. 4, the case of fictional discourse.”
. . .
“In this paper I argued that the view that category mistakes are meaningless is inconsistent with many prominent theories concerning various kinds of figurative language. Some (myself included) would take this as reason to reject the meaninglessness view. Others more sympathetic to the view, might take this conclusion as an invitation to provide alternative theories of figurative language,ones that are consistent with the view. Either way, it should be recognized that the debates concerning the semantics of figurative language and concerning the semantic status of category mistakes are closely connected.”
https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s11098-015-0575-1?author_access_token=wQ3lwrClut3P8Y-qawc5f_e4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY5uJWshWair3e2M6Cv1bHX3NPFgKxSyV10g8bGa4VO3q0oVpFnPsmfoIQuecakH8exnMejkg7dklKjTMkvV0md1WGKSLSXuISzjLMSEMroF8Q%3D%3D
Quoting Mww
Sure, but doesn't the fact that we are both human beings with the same sensory hardware, same type of brain, developed in the same culture that teaches the same use of the scribbles, mean something in how we both interpret the scribble that you or I made? In other words, don't our similar backgrounds lend you to believe that we would interpret those scribbles, a tickle on the back on our neck, loud booms from the backyard, similarly? You and I seem to both interpret the scribbles as words, so then why not what the words mean being that we were taught the same rules for using the scribbles?
In saying "you’ve already cognized that to which it belongs for you, but when I perceive that same image, I have yet to cognize that to which it belongs for me.", isn't accurate. In order to communicate, I would have to cognize that which it belongs to you too. I have to know what language you understand, and the relationship that you have established between certain scribbles and the concepts you hold in order to invoke those concepts with those scribbles. The relationships are established when you learn the vocabulary and grammatical rules of the language - the same vocabulary and rules I learned. To lie, you have to know what I know. You have to know that I don't already know the truth to successfully lie. If I were to tell you the truth, then I would have to know that you don't already know the truth, or else it would be a waste of my time and energy to tell you what you already know. So, part of using scribbles to communicate includes cognizing the potential reader's congnizing.
True enough, with the caveat that humans in general usually communicate by rote, misunderstandings being the exception rather than the rule. The main reason for all this theory talk is to serve as possible explanation for how misunderstandings occur. Since the ancients, what we know is deemed less important than what we don’t.
——————
Quoting Harry Hindu
It is, because I stopped at perception. Think of it this way: we each have two halves of an intercommunication, you think then objectify it, I perceive then understand it. For you whatever is being said begins subjectively, becomes objective in the form of its transmission; for me, it begins as object, but ends as an alteration of my subjective condition, that is to say, I know something given from what you say. Role reversal over time, sorta.
However, when all I’ve done is receive the object of your communication my powers of sensibility have engaged, but my rational powers have not, which means my statement is accurate. You’ve communicated to me, but not with me.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Interesting. What do you think a lie actually is?
Thanks for the reference. Interesting enough, but category mistakes of this kind are not the categorical errors I’m concerned with. The original form, via Ryle, from Way Back When, is, but this modern stuff....ehhhh, seems very much “....beneath the dignity of philosophy...”.
So essentially what you are saying is that you access an objective form of transmission, subjectively? I don't see how that makes any sense. The form the transmission takes is how it sounds or looks in your mind, so how is that an objective form, unless it took the same form in my mind?
The boundary between subjectivity and objectivity becomes blurred when what I am cognizing is the rules of the language that everyone else that understands the same language, learned. I don't see how the rules are subjective if we are using the same rules to transmit and interpret the symbols.
Quoting Mww
Misunderstandings occur because of a misunderstanding of the rules of the language and logic.
Perhaps I should clarify: objective form of transmission refers to the general kind of transmission it is, whether written, spoken, signed....stone cairns....whatever. The content of the transmission, whether words, sounds, motions.....whatever, will have its particular form in my faculty of intuition, depending on my experience with them. But yes, in any case, I access that content in whatever the form....kind.... of its transmission, subjectively, as I do with any perception.
Quoting Harry Hindu
This is correct, hence my clarification. The form the transmission takes has to do with what the transmission becomes (phenomenon, in my mind), the form the transmission has, has to do with what kind of object it is (words, sounds, etc., in the world).
Don’t neglect time here. Even a strict physicalist must acknowledge a time delay between the stimulus of sensual contact and the operation of the brain in relation to it. Just because there are pre-existent neural pathways for some particular experience doesn’t negate operational necessity. Philosophically as well, each and every object of perception runs exactly the same gamut of theoretical cognitive procedure, whether there is extant knowledge of it or not. The brain, the hardware, is predicated on the laws of Nature; pure reason, the software, is predicated on the laws of logic, each legislative in their own domain.
I bring this up in order to prevent the assumption that as soon as I see your words I know what you mean by them. In fact, all I know immediately, is that there are words, which in and of themselves, for they are merely objects of perception, tell me absolutely nothing about your intentions in the employment of them.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
Ehhhh....”rules” is just a word, the representation of a general idea, a theoretical explanatory device. Because the empirical world appears to function according to natural law, it stands to reason the immaterial world of human thought can be said to operate according to rules. We cannot say thought according to law, because law invokes the principles of universality and necessity, which is synonymous with robotics, but human thought is quite apt to be self-contradictory within one instance of it, and contradictory across multiple instances of it, the exact opposite of robotic.
Bottom line I guess.....rules are subjective because we as thinking subjects created them. There are no “rules”, per se, in Nature, so they cannot be objective, much like numbers, so all that’s left is to be subjective. And just as we can create an objective illustration of a number to represent the conception of quantity, we can create objective demonstration of a rule to represent the conception of language, or whatever conception to which a rule may be applied.
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Quoting Harry Hindu
You’re not cognizing the rules of the language; you’re cognizing the content of language according to rules. This is why theories of knowledge are so complex, because even though all thought is considered to be according to rules, doesn’t mean each instance of it will obtain the same knowledge. It should, but that isn’t the same as it will. Ought is not the same as shall. All thought according to rules can do, is justify its ends, but it cannot attain to absolute truth for them.
The boundaries can be blurred, for sure, but context helps with clarity. They are both qualities, but sometimes what they are qualities of, gets blurry. Subjectivity is pretty cut-and-dried, I think, but objectivity isn’t just about objects.
If anyone is interested in Habermas' take on this, objectivation is the result of the interconnection of systemic and psychosocial mechanisms. In other words, the actual unification of the natural, normative/social, and subjective worlds. This is communicative action in operation. It involves the hermeneutic problem of excavating foundational presuppositions about reality.
This avoids the whole subject-object problem (as systems theoretic approaches in general do).
This modern stuff.....practically everything philosophical written after Russell, 1912.
I’m old, and I think old. Categorical errors are mistakes of reason; category mistakes, except the original Ryle,1949, which is in fact a Kantian categorical error, are mistakes of propositional language, and are all but superfluous.
Still......you know what they say about opinions.
Avoiding isn’t solving, though, is it? In some contexts, the dualism is altogether unavoidable; I mean, the principle of complementarity demands opposites, right?
What would be an example of the subject-object problem your reference avoids?
I agree with the dyadic nature of certain systemic domains as fundamental wholes, certainly. Which explains why I never considered the subject-object dualism much of a problem anyway, with respect to reason as one such systemic approach.
Is this what you mean, that avoiding a problem is merely causing it not to be one?
The percentage of reality that we are able to experience, our sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, seems miniscule, if the objectivity of scientific instrumentation is accepted. If we can accept that our universe is significantly more complex than we are able to perceive, what else about objective reality might we be missing? If we're unable to answer that, how can we then be certain that our agreed upon reality and objectivity is as we claim it to be?
You asked "does perception require some assumption?", to which I would say that conscious, intentional observation and perception itself is an assumption or requires as much.
Why do you think that is?
Cool.
Yes, the quality of our own subjectivity for being objective, determines how objective we can be.
Apologies if I didn’t unpack your comment properly.
Nahhhh....Russell is just some arbitrary cut-off because everybody else after was talking about stuff of which I found not much worthwhile. Some Nagel, Chalmers, Dennet, Pinker, nothing from Sellars, Wittgenstein, Quine, James/Pierce/Dewey, the Churchlands. But to be fair, I read those guys but didn’t study them, as I did the German Enlightenment idealists. And they set the bar so high, poor shmucks coming later had nothing better to do but fall back on language, of all things, plus a few half-assed stabs at consciousness or, “being”. Gotta publish something, I suppose, to justify all those letters after your name.
Ironic, isn’t it? Admitting to the very cognitive prejudice I just talked about absenting in order to be objective. (Chuckles to self)
Yep, and if the limitations inherent in the critical reflection nosce te ipsum be given, so too is being objective.
A paradigm-shifting thesis on the metaphysical principles of quantum dynamics, with respect to the observer problem. Which might reconcile the illusory nature of objectivity for that of which direct experience is impossible, with the illusory nature of subjectivity for thinking that which direct experience contradicts.
Nature gave us reason, but neglected to give us the means to control it, which we had to come up with ourselves, oddly enough, by means of the very reason we were given no control over. Sorta like that refrigerator magnet magnanimously warning us.....never let a dog guard your food.
Nahhhhh.....I got nothing.
It seems to me, that when communicating, how we observe the rules of the language we are using must not be subjective or else we'd be talking past each other or never understand each other. Your experiences with a particular word beyond how you learned how to use it grammatically, or what it refers to, is irrelevant to the situation, which is talking about some state-of-affairs that is the case for everyone whether they agree with it or not (informing). And that if the state-of-affairs you are talking about is your own pondering without any conviction in the statement, you'd use phrases like, "It seems to me", "I believe", "In my opinion", etc. to inform others that you are referring to your mental state and not some state-of-affairs other than a mental state.
So if we're using the same rules when using these scribbles, then there is no subjective view of the rules. You know when subjectivity comes into play when we stop understanding each other.
Quoting Mww
Not only that, but what kind of object is perceiving it, and we are both similar objects, so it stands to reason that there would be similar perceptions of the same object. What the scribbles mean has to do with the rule of the language, and if we both have the same rules, then we are both interpreting the scribbles the same way. I certainly don't claim to know everything about the English language and it is my native language, and I think you would agree the same for you, and that we both may know something that the other doesn't about the English language, so there are bound to be instances where miscommunication occurs.
Quoting Mww
I agree with everything up to the last sentence. It is a causal process, and that is how I have explained it, but doesn't that mean that similar causes have similar effects? Our similar backgrounds (we're both human beings with similar sensory organs, developed in the same culture, learned the same language, looking at the same object) should lead to similar outcomes in perception and interpretation or else we wouldn't be able to communicate as successfully as we have so far. I mean look at all the scribbles on this screen. What would you say the success rate is in both of us interpreting them the same way so far?
As far as the last sentence goes, this is a point where I don't understand you're use of scribbles because it seems like a contradiction (misusing the rules of logic, not necessary the language). If the brain is a predicated on the laws of Nature (why the capital N?), then why not pure reason, if that is what the hardware does. If your stomach is predicated on the laws of Nature, then why not what the stomach does - digest food?
Quoting Mww
Are you sure that you know immediately that they are words? That was something you had to learn, and the fact that you and I both interpret the scribbles as words says something about how similar our cognizing is. Now, that extra step of then interpreting the word means that now that you have interpreted the scribbles as words rather than some random marks, your cognitive faculties go about referencing the rules for the language, which are the same rules I learned. Like I said, there are going to be some differences in our knowledge of the rules, hence there will be some misunderstandings, but those are a rarity in most everyday uses of the language and only seems to be exacerbated when discussing things like religion, politics and philosophy, where logic is often disregarded and word salad is always on the menu.
Quoting Mww
If the same knowledge wasn't obtained, the the same rules weren't followed. We would both be following different rules. Like I said, any rules you learned other than what a word refers to is irrelevant to the process of communicating, which is what words are for. If you learned that a particular word, or heard a particular word frequently during a stressful time in your life, you may associate a negative connotation with hearing or seeing that word, but that has nothing to do with what that word refers to. That would be an instance where you are confusing two different sets of rules - what the word means (how your reason interprets it) and how you feel about the word (how your emotions interpret it).
Think about computers. When computers don't use the same protocol in communication, communication fails. The rules, or protocol, matters, and is what syncs the computers. The fact that they are different pieces of hardware is irrelevant to the fact that they are running the same software and using the same protocols.
Quoting Cidat [my emphasis] I certainly build from assumptions that might not be correct. I don't want to just lie on the floor and question everything (and certainly not all the time). We build, we do our best.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Cidat
You tell me. Were you certain when you stated that the starting point is uncertain?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Cidat
You didn't answer my question. My question was about your idea, not my idea, which I haven't even provided for you yet. I'm simply asking a question about your idea.
This is a great example of the misuse of language being used as philosophy.
This is a contradiction. Your first sentence is a description of the nature of truth, then the next sentence says that we can't verify if truth exists, yet your previous sentence just explained what truth is - implying that it exists. You then follow up with another description of truth as being "just our strong opinion". Does truth exist as our strong opinion or not?
Is this a truth?
It's funny that this forum devotes itself to discussing esoteric teachings but here we are. That's what philosophy is, esoteric teaching. It was never meant to be intellectualized over. Can't be done without confusion and argument which this forum is full of.
“Being objective is being truthful, making right judgments is a moral activity, all thinking is a function of morality, it's done by humans, it's touched by values right into its centre . . .”
Guess the author of this tidbit and win a free trip to Phibsborough. Will it make a difference in how we think of it if we discover the author is a composer, author, revolutionary, archbishop, philosopher, actor, or whatever?
It is Iris Murdoch, from "The Good Apprentice." Doesn't this clip the wings of the 'is/ought' question?
Not necessarily.....or.....why would one think this might be true?
I haven’t read the book. I wonder how the author justifies the proposition, probably somewhere in the story, on the one hand, and why you find it so attractive, on the other.
For late-comers, the quote I posted is from Iris Murdoch's 1986 novel, The Good Apprentice. It appears on the page 29 in a book of 522 pages. Given this, and given how novels work, I imagine some kind of resolution or insight into these ideas will appear somewhere near the end. As Chekhov said: ‘If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.’
The quote from my original post is part of a dinner-party conversation revolving around questions of religion, science (“science is what's deep”), machines, (“a machine is objective”), objectivity (“being objective is being truthful”), thinking (“all thinking is a function of morality”), mathematics (“it's just our thinking too”), minds (“minds are persons”), artificial intelligence (“artificial intelligence is a misnomer”), losing our language (“and so losing our souls”), etc.
Selected Dialogue:
Stuart: “we are always involved in distinguishing between good and evil,” “Human minds are possessed by individual persons, they are soaked in values, even perception is evaluation,”
“But isn't serious thinking supposed to be neutral?” said Ursula. “We get away from all that personal stuff.”
Stuart: “Serious thinking depends on the justice and truthfulness of the thinker, it depends on the continuous pressure of his mind upon. . . .”
“That's a different point,” said Ursula, “. . . of course discoveries can be used rightly or wrongly, but the thinking itself can be pure, without values, like genuine science, like maths, like – at any rate that's the ideal and. . . .”
Stuart: “You can't just switch it on. . . . as you say it's an ideal, science is an ideal, and partly an illusion. Our trust in science as reason is something frail...."
End of selected dialogue.
There's more, lot's more to this burnished but somewhat bibulous dinner talk. But, alas, I will lose 90% of my readers if I say even one more word. So I'll stop here except to say that I'm still quite taken by the quote from my initial post; it makes deep intuitive sense to me.
Perhaps the idea gives some insight into the 'is/ought' divide. If what Stuart says is true, the chasm doesn't really exist; there is no such thing as a pure 'is': all 'ises' are dyed in 'oughts'. We are always making judgments—whether explicit or implicit.
I have not worked any of this through, at least not enough to argue it well. It would take me a long time to do so, and even then, I'm not sure I could. Perhaps someone could help me think it through.
Thank you again for your questions. I appreciate it.
Quoting Statilius
Quoting Statilius
If one accepts that one’s thinking with respect to morality is the ground of a subjective code of public conduct, it must depend on personal values, in order for the subject to determine in which form his conduct manifests.
If one accepts thinking itself CAN BE without values, as in the genuine sciences, which manifest no personal code of conduct necessarily, then it follows that NOT all thinking is a function of values, hence NOT a function of morality.
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Round 2....
Quoting Statilius
If that is the case, how much truth can there be in the assertion, “all thinking is a function of morality”? Even dyeing this “is” in an “ought”, giving “all thinking ought to be a function of morality” doesn’t diminish the falsification derived in Round 1.
Anyway....thanks for your effort with the dialogues. Nevertheless, would I be correct in supposing you insinuated the personal interpretation “all thinking is a function of morality” in place of the author’s “serious thinking depends on the justice and truthfulness of the thinker”? Perhaps justice and truthfulness suffice for your idea of morality? Among other things, to be sure.
Taking a sharp right turn here, it might be interesting to know how you connect judgements to the notion that the is/ought divide doesn’t exist. I guess....what is meant by the is/ought divide, such that judgements have something to do with the divide rather than the is or the ought.
In thinking about this I read the following remarks by Michael Polanyi, in his 1958 book “Personal Knowledge.” (see link below) Though he may mean more, perhaps this is some of what Stuart is getting at:
“ Theories of the scientific method which try to explain the establishment of scientific truth by any purely objective formal procedure are doomed to failure. Any process of enquiry unguided by intellectual passions would inevitably spread out into a desert of trivialities. . . . In fact, without a scale of interest and plausibility based on a vision of reality, nothing can be discovered that is of value to science; and only our grasp of scientific beauty, responding to the evidence of our senses, can evoke this vision (135).”
“In fact, without a scale of interest and plausibility based on a vision of reality, nothing can be discovered that is of value to science; and only our grasp of scientific beauty, responding to the evidence of our senses, can evoke this vision (135).”
“Empiricism is valid only as a maxim, the application of which itself forms part of the art of knowing (153).”
Speaking of the history of science: “Unfortunately, the empirical method of enquiry—with its associated conceptions of scientific value and of the nature of reality—is far from unambiguous, and conflicting interpretations of it had therefore ever again to fight each other from either side of a logical gap (153).”
“So difficult is it even for the expert in his own field to distinguish, by criteria of empiricism, scientific merit from incompetent chatter (156).”
“To limit the term science to propositions which we regard as valid, and the premisses of science to what we consider to be its true premises, is to mutilate our subject. A reasonable conception of science must include conflicting views within science and admit of changes in the fundamental beliefs and values of scientists (164).”
“Science is a system of beliefs to which we are committed (171).”
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo19722848.html
Good. Now I have proper context. It’s clear you and the author, and I, have very different conceptions of morality. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I personally reject the supposition that thinking predicated on the appearance of an objective reality, re: empirical science, carries the same implications as thinking predicated on pure a priori conceptions, re: morality, having nothing whatsoever to do with objective reality. It is a fatal flaw in reason, to conflate the rational ground of moral thinking with the empirical exercise of it.
I can dig the gist of Polanyi‘s thesis, given your brief synopsis of sorts, but I really don’t see why a book needs to be written about personal knowledge, seeing as how there’s no such thing as knowledge that isn’t personal.
Thanks much for your remarks. Leaving Polanyi to the side for the moment, what is your take on the above statement from Murdoch's The Good Apprentice?
Again, I appreciate the enlarged context. If you, and/or she, had said some thinking is a function of morality, I wouldn’t have taken so great an exception.
Which is fine, thinking folks been so inclined for millennia. Still, beware the greatest danger to radical-ness, self-contradiction.