Fallible Foundationalism
I recently read the SEP article "Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification" and was quite disappointed by the protracted discussion, not of Foundationalism, but of claims of infallibility. We read:
Quoting Ali Hasan and Richard Fumerton
After that the article goes off on multiple tangents that seem not to touch on the central issue.
Aristotle's claim is simple and straight forward: we can't prove everything, so we have to accept some judgements without proof. One can show this with an infinite regress argument, or simply reflect that life is too short to prove an unlimited number of claims. As far as I know, Aristotle never claimed to be infallible, or even that one could not question and discuss the grounds for accepting fundamental premises. Indeed, he does so, but considering how we form judgements and discussing the consequences of rejecting the principles of logic.
Aristotle founded a number of sciences, including marine biology and mathematical physics, and he insisted that his students get their hands dirty doing dissections. It seems to me that he did philosophy in the same way, by reflecting on the reality he encountered, not the world he imagined -- as did 19th century German metaphysicians. He saw that we learn about reality via sense data and, in De Anima, provided an unparalleled analysis of what must happen for physical sensation to yield intellectual understanding.
Clearly, human beings are fallible. So it is an enormous error to begin philosophizing by seeking an infallible basis for human knowledge, as Descartes did. He, and others, made divine omniscience the paradigm case of human knowing. We are not God, and will never know as God does. Thinking that we do, or ought to, is what I call the Omniscience Fallacy. Not only are we subject to errors of judgement, but our brains can only maintain 5-9 “chunks” of information in working memory. (D. A. Broadbent, “The Magical Number Seven After Fifteen Years” in Alan Kennedy and Alan Wilkes, eds., Studies in Long-Term Memory. (New York: Wiley, 1975): 3-18.) So, we do not know anything exhaustively.
It is consequence of this second observation, of our limited representational capacity, that we must employ the stupid human trick of abstraction. When we encounter a complex situation, and all situations are complex, we must focus on certain aspects, on selected notes of intelligibility, to the neglect of others. The result is an abstraction. Abstractions, then, scale the complexity of reality down to our limited human representational capacity. We invariably wind up with a projection of reality -- a dimensionally diminished map.
Alfred North Whitehead recognized this in Science and the Modern World and pointed out an all too common and unrecognized error, which he called "The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" (p. 11). The fallacy is mistaking our abstractions with the reality from which they are abstracted. As I pointed out in discussing the Hard Problem of Consciousness on this forum, this is the basis of both reductionism and physicalism.
Further, all knowing is a subject-object relation. There is no knowing without a knowing subject and a known object. Consequently, it is foolish (an instance of Misplaced Concreteness) to speak of "purely objective" knowledge as though it were possible for humans. Our encounter with reality is relational -- shaped not only by the nature of what we encounter, but also by our human capacity for encounter, with all of its limitations. So, we can never know reality as "it is," as God does, but only as it relates to us.
Still, this is enough. While all we can know is how reality relates to us, that is all we need to know -- for we only deal with reality in relation to us. How else could we deal with it?
So, we come to the question of truth. Corherrentist theories deal with something of no concern to humans, as we are concerned with how to live in the world, and that requires us to be in relation to what we call "reality." So, the only kind of truth that matters is one that reflects the human relation to reality. How should we characterize that relation?
Truth is not correspondence to reality. Why? First, because our knowledge is not exhaustive, but leaves an untold amount behind. It is only a diminished projection of what we encounter. Second, because we do not and cannot know reality as it is, but only as it relates to us. (While relations reflect the nature of the relata, they are not the natures of the relata.) Of course, we want truth to reflect our relation to reality, but reflecting our relation to reality is not reflecting reality in se.
The medieval Scholastic defined truth asadaequatio intellectus et rei (the approach to equality of intellect and reality). The important point here, is that, despite numerous mistranslations, adaequatio does not mean "equality" (aequatio), but "approach to equality." Thus, the definition does not demand correspondence as a requirement of truth.
If only an approach to equality is required, the question arises: "How close an approach?" Let me suggest that the answer is context-sensitive, and suggested by the English cognate of adaequatio, "adequate." To be true, our judgements must be adequate to the context under consideration. Remembering that what we know is not exhaustive and based on an abstractive process, that our judgement will be adequate if what we ignored in our abstractions is irrelevant to our present endeavor.
For example, I do not think I was lying when I taught freshmen engineering students Newtonian physics without fully explaining how relativistic quantum physics falsified it. Why? Because what I taught them was adequate to their needs. Those who would need more precise physics would take other courses to learn it. We can never present all that we know, but we can speak the truth by presenting something adequate to the needs of our audience.
In sum, philosophy can only deal with human knowledge, because, however limited, it is the only knowledge we have. It begins by accepting experience, not as infallible, but as the only raw material that we have to reflect upon.
Quoting Ali Hasan and Richard Fumerton
Aristotle argued that “not all knowledge is demonstrative” (i.e., not all knowledge is based on an argument from other things known), and that some knowledge must be “independent of demonstration” (Posterior Analytics, I.3).
After that the article goes off on multiple tangents that seem not to touch on the central issue.
Aristotle's claim is simple and straight forward: we can't prove everything, so we have to accept some judgements without proof. One can show this with an infinite regress argument, or simply reflect that life is too short to prove an unlimited number of claims. As far as I know, Aristotle never claimed to be infallible, or even that one could not question and discuss the grounds for accepting fundamental premises. Indeed, he does so, but considering how we form judgements and discussing the consequences of rejecting the principles of logic.
Aristotle founded a number of sciences, including marine biology and mathematical physics, and he insisted that his students get their hands dirty doing dissections. It seems to me that he did philosophy in the same way, by reflecting on the reality he encountered, not the world he imagined -- as did 19th century German metaphysicians. He saw that we learn about reality via sense data and, in De Anima, provided an unparalleled analysis of what must happen for physical sensation to yield intellectual understanding.
Clearly, human beings are fallible. So it is an enormous error to begin philosophizing by seeking an infallible basis for human knowledge, as Descartes did. He, and others, made divine omniscience the paradigm case of human knowing. We are not God, and will never know as God does. Thinking that we do, or ought to, is what I call the Omniscience Fallacy. Not only are we subject to errors of judgement, but our brains can only maintain 5-9 “chunks” of information in working memory. (D. A. Broadbent, “The Magical Number Seven After Fifteen Years” in Alan Kennedy and Alan Wilkes, eds., Studies in Long-Term Memory. (New York: Wiley, 1975): 3-18.) So, we do not know anything exhaustively.
It is consequence of this second observation, of our limited representational capacity, that we must employ the stupid human trick of abstraction. When we encounter a complex situation, and all situations are complex, we must focus on certain aspects, on selected notes of intelligibility, to the neglect of others. The result is an abstraction. Abstractions, then, scale the complexity of reality down to our limited human representational capacity. We invariably wind up with a projection of reality -- a dimensionally diminished map.
Alfred North Whitehead recognized this in Science and the Modern World and pointed out an all too common and unrecognized error, which he called "The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness" (p. 11). The fallacy is mistaking our abstractions with the reality from which they are abstracted. As I pointed out in discussing the Hard Problem of Consciousness on this forum, this is the basis of both reductionism and physicalism.
Further, all knowing is a subject-object relation. There is no knowing without a knowing subject and a known object. Consequently, it is foolish (an instance of Misplaced Concreteness) to speak of "purely objective" knowledge as though it were possible for humans. Our encounter with reality is relational -- shaped not only by the nature of what we encounter, but also by our human capacity for encounter, with all of its limitations. So, we can never know reality as "it is," as God does, but only as it relates to us.
Still, this is enough. While all we can know is how reality relates to us, that is all we need to know -- for we only deal with reality in relation to us. How else could we deal with it?
So, we come to the question of truth. Corherrentist theories deal with something of no concern to humans, as we are concerned with how to live in the world, and that requires us to be in relation to what we call "reality." So, the only kind of truth that matters is one that reflects the human relation to reality. How should we characterize that relation?
Truth is not correspondence to reality. Why? First, because our knowledge is not exhaustive, but leaves an untold amount behind. It is only a diminished projection of what we encounter. Second, because we do not and cannot know reality as it is, but only as it relates to us. (While relations reflect the nature of the relata, they are not the natures of the relata.) Of course, we want truth to reflect our relation to reality, but reflecting our relation to reality is not reflecting reality in se.
The medieval Scholastic defined truth asadaequatio intellectus et rei (the approach to equality of intellect and reality). The important point here, is that, despite numerous mistranslations, adaequatio does not mean "equality" (aequatio), but "approach to equality." Thus, the definition does not demand correspondence as a requirement of truth.
If only an approach to equality is required, the question arises: "How close an approach?" Let me suggest that the answer is context-sensitive, and suggested by the English cognate of adaequatio, "adequate." To be true, our judgements must be adequate to the context under consideration. Remembering that what we know is not exhaustive and based on an abstractive process, that our judgement will be adequate if what we ignored in our abstractions is irrelevant to our present endeavor.
For example, I do not think I was lying when I taught freshmen engineering students Newtonian physics without fully explaining how relativistic quantum physics falsified it. Why? Because what I taught them was adequate to their needs. Those who would need more precise physics would take other courses to learn it. We can never present all that we know, but we can speak the truth by presenting something adequate to the needs of our audience.
In sum, philosophy can only deal with human knowledge, because, however limited, it is the only knowledge we have. It begins by accepting experience, not as infallible, but as the only raw material that we have to reflect upon.
Comments (124)
But why must it be exhaustive? If a state-of-affairs includes aspects A, B, C, D, E, and F, and we only describe it as having A, B, and D -- is that not true? It would be false if we claimed it only had aspects A, B, and D, but we needn't claim that. We know we're leaving things out. What we want is correspondence between what we claim is there and what is there. You can reasonably say "correspondence" should be a bijection, not an injection, but that's just semantics. What really matters is the difference between my A-B-D claim and someone else's A-B-M-N-O-P claim. That's not an injection, because the state-of-affairs does not include M, N, O and P. And then there's the A-B-C-D-E-F-M-N-O-P claim: that's exhaustive but also excessive, and also no good.
Quoting Dfpolis
And I think this is exactly what you recognize here. "To say of what is that it is" while avoiding saying "of what is not that it is", and so on.
I don't think knowledge needs to be exhaustive. Still, if we demand that what we know correspond to reality, then, if we think a table is solid, and later find that it has an atomic substructure structure, we will conclude that our initial knowledge was as nothing in it corresponds to atoms.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
It depends on the context. If F is the fact that we were at the murder scene when the murder was committed, and we leave that out of our witness statement, then our statement is inadequate and false. If F is the fact that we scratched our noise before going to bed, that will not make the statement inadequate and false. Formally, these cases are the same (F is left out), but materially, they are very different.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We do not have to make an explicit claim for a statement to be false, because truth and falsity are context dependent.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think we want more and less than that. We want more if there is more known relevant to our needs, and we do not care if more is known that is irrelevant to our need. If you know that a material will fracture at the temperature that I tell you I'm going to use it at, but meets my requirement at room temperature, and you leave the relevant information out, what you say corresponds to reality, but is substantially deceptive. If I tell you F=ma, leaving out the relativistic corrections you have no need of, what I said does not correspond to reality, but is substantially true.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, you can and I think must specify the kind of correspondence you mean if that is your theory of truth. Still, since human knowledge is limited, a one-to-one mapping is not possible.
Truth is a species of goodness, that appropriate to judgements and the propositions expressing them. It seems to me that goodness is adequacy for purpose. Is my representation of reality sufficient/adequate for the action I contemplate, the theory I am constructing, or the information I am conveying? It is if it includes the relevant factors and not otherwise -- and that depends on context in a way not captured by formal correspondence.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I am not arguing with Aristotle, but with a purely formal view of correspondence.
Agreed pretty much all around, and congenial to my usually Gricean way of looking at things. We can, for purposes of theory, or in difficult cases, distinguish between the bare meaning of a sentence and what someone meant by saying it in the context that they did. Leaving out a relevant piece of information, for instance, doesn't make what you say false, so much as misleading (and violates Grice's maxims).
Quoting Dfpolis
Is this Aristotle?
My coffee cup sits on the table. I just put it there. My coffee cup does not sink into the table, the way it would if made of something that is not solid - a liquid, perhaps.
Knowing that the table is also made mostly of space, and has a certain atomic structure, does not mean that we are wrong about the table's being solid.
I noticed a preponderance of physical examples. Perhaps the point of foundationalism might be better served by taking a wider view. I know, for example, that the bishop remains on its original colour, the one that starts on my left will remain on the red squares for the whole of the game. That's not a truth that is known by making observations of the way things are and then describing them, but a truth that is in a way constitutive of playing Chess; were it otherwise, we would be playing a different game.
If you like, that the bishop stays on the red squares is foundational to chess.
And perhaps, that the cup does not sink into the table is foundational to their being solid.
The other position is lost in abstraction. There is a concretion to reality, which not even the most fundamental idealist or radical skeptic can deny.
Not that I recall. It just came to me as I was writing my response.
I agree. The example is from Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, who reflected on the table of common sense vs. the table of science. The lesson is we shouldn't extend the meaning of "solid" beyond its experiential basis. Saying it is solid is adequate to what we want to know, e.g. that your coffee cup is not going to fall through it and make a mess of the carpet.
Quoting Banno
You caught me! My degree is in theoretical physics. I tend to go to science for examples because reflecting on it raised a lot of my questions.
Quoting Banno
Yes. I agree that knowledge has a justified range of application. Of course, in doing philosophy we want a consistent framework for understanding the full range of human experience, from mysticism to cosmology.
Good for you!
Truth and knowledge are also normative concepts. You should believe what is true, and should believe it because it is true. To do so is to have knowledge. "Getting something right", "doing something right" and "doing the right thing" are not just homophonically related.
I have been talking about similar concepts on this forum lately, it is interesting to see a different way of explaining it, thanks for your post. I will note how you laid out these concepts and see if there isn't something I can use to improve my own position.
But what if we use this "psychological" fact as the stepping stone to the larger metaphysical picture?
So your argument is that the "truth of reality" seems problematic as we appear caught between a subjective and objective viewpoint. It is we who construct the abstract concepts by which we understand the physical world. So all becomes modelling and the thing-in-itself never truly grasped.
And once you accept that psychological fact, then perhaps the search for truth must collapse back on itself as being a merely the "pragmatic" exercise as truth as it is "for us". Objectivity must be forsaken and subjectivity accepted?
However rather than inquiry collapsing back onto itself in solipsistic manner, it could also kick on to generalise the very fact of this subject~object modelling relation.
It is still going to be an exercise in abstraction. But now the goal is to generalise the very idea of a modelling relation.
That becomes pragmatism writ large.
An example of this way of thinking can be found in Robert Rosen's relational biology, for instance. The "physics" of nature is enlarged so it includes formal and final cause.
This already claims to know beyond what it says cannot be known. Seems to me this criteria of exactitude that you seem to leverage is unproductive. I know mountains, grass, stones, words, successful surgeries are performed on the basis of empirical knowledge. I reject the kind of skepticism (and I have good suspicion of where you got it) that says knowledge must entail exhaustive comprehension. You do not live by this standard, it is just a formal objection, one that I suspect, allows you to posit the probability of another kind of premise. I don't see what you are putting forth here as the conclusion of your polemic, interesting that you mentioned God. I wonder...
Indeed, here it is: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260342309_AS_Eddington_Opening
Now isn't there something a bit mad about the assertion that there are two tables?
Isn't it rather the case that we have two ways of talking about the very same table?
But back to the OP; do we agree that, the bishop remaining on the same colour for the duration fo the game is a foundational truth, rather than a truth known by experience?
I do not think that knowledge is either a normative concept or a species of belief. If knowledge were a form of belief, we would necessarily believe (be committed to the truth of) everything we know. We do not. We may know that we cannot afford a purchase, or that smoking is bad for us, and choose not to believe it.
That's interesting. When someone says, for example, "You should have known how many were left," what they mean is probably, more or less, you should have counted, should have put yourself in a position to know.
I want to hear more about belief and knowledge. You gloss "believing that such-and-such" as being committed to the truth of such-and-such. Does that come in degrees?
Do you treat "knowledge" as a primitive, not to be glossed or explained?
It is an epistemological fact that must be considered in our metaphysical reflections.
Quoting apokrisis
No, that is not my argument. I am following Aristotle in De Anima ii, 7. We are not "caught between a subjective and objective viewpoint." To view, someone (a subject) must see, and something (an object) must be seen. So, it is not that we are caught, but that in knowing, we enter into a relation with what we know. Since knowing is relational, it cannot exist independently of its relata, viz. its subject and object.
In knowing we do not construct concepts. Rather, we encounter intelligible objects, i.e. things that can be known. (Remember that "knowing" names an activity that humans actually do, and that philosophic reflection seeks to understand the nature of that activity.) So, the content of our concept derives from the intelligibility of the object known, not from us. If we already had the content, we'd already know the object and no encounter would be needed.
Since, we grasp the object's intelligibility, we know it, and not our own construct.
Quoting apokrisis
No. Subjectivity and objectivity are correlative poles of the relation called "knowing." While objects may exist independently of subjects, they cannot be known independently of knowing subjects.
Quoting apokrisis
Humans do model, but knowing is not modelling. Knowing actualized prior intelligibility. Modeling adds hypotheses to what we know to filling the gaps in our knowledge. Or, perhaps, it may simplify what we know on the hypothesis that part of what we know is not needed to attain our goal.
Quoting apokrisis
There is nothing wrong with being pragmatic, as long as we limit our pragmatism to the practical order. Humans also want to know, not for the sake of doing, but purely for the sake of knowing. As there is no practical goal in theoretical knowledge, there pragmatism is irrelevant and useless.
I am unsure how Rosen's remarks are relevant to what I am saying.
No, it does not. It reflects on our surprise when something we thought we knew teaches us something unexpected. From this we learn to be humble and not complacent in our knowledge -- to realize that in knowing, we do not know all.
Quoting JerseyFlight
I'm unsure what you think I am proposing, I am merely saying that divine knowledge is not a proper paradigm for human knowing, and that infallibility and Cartesian certitude are foolish and inhuman goals. Our knowledge is human, not divine, knowledge, and it can suffice for a well-lived human life.
Quoting JerseyFlight
We agree completely.
Although I am a theist, my mention of God is merely to make the idea of perfect knowledge concrete.
I read it as two table concepts.
Quoting Banno
It is a conditional conclusion, and in no way foundational. The condition is, "If one follows the rules of chess, ...".
Quoting Dfpolis
I was not aware there was such a thing as divine knowledge?
Think of Descartes telling us about his methodological doubt. He begins by telling us that he was in his chamber. He knew, therefore, that he was in his chamber, which is an act of intellect, of awareness. Nor does he cease to be aware that he is in his room when he chooses (an act of will) to doubt it. (Just as dramas call for a willing suspension of disbelief, so Descartes willingly suspended his belief.) As he continued to know he was in his chamber, even as he suspended his belief that he was, knowing cannot be a species of (say, causally justified true) belief. So, nothing in the Descartes reflections ever calls knowledge into question, only his commitment to the truth of what he knew.
I think there are degrees (or, more properly, regimes) of belief. We may be willing to act as though p is true in some operation regimes, but not in others -- or we may be absolutely committed to the truth of p.
The whole idea of knowledge as justified true belief comes from a careless translation of Plato. The term doxa means "judgement" as well as "belief" and "opinion." It seems pretty clear from the Teatatetus 190A, that Plato meant "judgement," not "belief," by doxa in the context of knowledge.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I treat "knowing" as naming an actual human activity, the nature of which we can reflect upon. Denying that we know is, therefore, an abuse of language.
I do not wish to go off on that tangent in this thread. Here, one can take it as an ideal standard for human cognition I am rejecting.
Wait a second. This is not fair, it is intellectually dishonest. You were the one who introduced "divine knowledge." We have got to get something straight on this Forum. It is not okay to point the finger at those who call out this kind of stuff as somehow derailing the thread, that is not philosophical, it is emotional. Philosophy precisely targets and calls out these kind of loaded terms. It is part of your central argument. It reminds me of Plantinga with Michael Tooley, Plantinga is allowed to just use a thousand general terms and fantastic concepts, and no one is allowed to call them out? How can this be philosophy? No friend, you don't get to bring this kind of stuff up and then evade your burden of proof. If that's what this Forum is about then it's not a philosophy forum.
Of course, you don't want to explain these fantastic terms, the burden of proof here is too great and you know it, hence you feign to some kind of false nobility. My real problem with it is that it's hypocritical and unphilosophical.
So far as we know based on evidence there is no such thing as "divine knowledge," how then do you introduce this term into philosophy? If it's a mere hypothetical it's a nonsense hypothetical because it doesn't even have a probability, it's a religious assertion.
I'm open to all counter views here, but if the legitimacy of a counter position is only sustained by rejecting the very essence of philosophy's negativity, then we are no longer doing philosophy, we are playing a different game.
Because thinkers identify with their beliefs, which is a huge mistake, this is why they get so emotional and defensive when it comes to refutation. As philosophers we must learn to grow past such immaturity. Real philosophy will always produce psychological pain in one form or another. If it's not producing this you are doing it wrong because philosophy is directly set against man's primitive psychology -- man's psychology is not philosophy, but is thwarted by it. This is painful.
I MOVED THIS CONVERSATION TO ANOTHER THREAD: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9214/high-philosophy-and-the-burden-of-proof
I introduced it as a concept, not as a reality. I could have said the same thing if I were an atheist. It is not part of my present argument that there actually is omniscience. I am only saying that it is a bad paradigm for human knowledge.
There is nothing dishonest or emotional in managing the direction and scope of a thread. If you wish to discuss theism or omniscience, I would be happy to do so, either privately, or in thread dedicated to that topic. This one is about human knowledge.
Which option do you prefer?
No, I do not wish to discuss these, but the thread I linked to above deals with the more important topic, the ministry of philosophy itself.
I think a layperson's reaction to Descartes is often something like, he is pretending not to know.
But pretending can be given some force. Suppose you have hidden Easter eggs for your children and you want to provide advice on how to search without really providing hints on where they are. You can pretend not to know where they are and describe how you would look. (You don't need to look inside the salt shaker, because it's too small, that sort of thing.) Pretending here means, roughly, not relying on what you know, not using what you know in the search process.
A belief then might be something you rely on, use in reasoning, and might be something you know or something you don't. If you reason from something you don't know, you're either talking hypothetically or making a mistake.
Am I in the neighborhood of your approach?
Yes.
Quoting Dfpolis
No. It is foundational to chess.
What's riding on the word "foundational" here?
Given the title of this thread, that would seem to be the issue: in what way could the foundational rule, that the bishop moves only diagonally, be fallible?
I don't have a problem with anything you said, but what I'm saying is that we know things in terms of how they relate to us, and while that is not exhaustive, it is what we need to know to be human in the world.
OK, but chess is not foundational to reality. The purpose of philosophy is not to understand chess, but reality.
I didn't read the OP that closely, but I would have assumed the idea is that foundations need not be infallible, rather than a requirement of fallibility.
It's an interesting example, but do you want to wade into "true by convention" waters?
My point was that this is too simplistic. A fully relational view of knowledge makes the psychological observation that the "we" who observes is a construction, not something already given. And the world as it exists for this subject - the "we" - is then constructed as the "other" of this we. It is a phenomenal umwelt. A sophisticated interpretation.
So of course it is taken for granted that we do exist - as creatures modelling an actual world. Pragmatism situates knowledge in an actual relationship where there is a reality to regulate, to act in meaningfully. Thus a modelling relation will target the intelligibility that exists to be discovered.
But it also then makes the point that the model is "self-interested" in its knowledge. It embodies a purpose. And in coming to do that - in developing a "point of view" - a selfhood is constructed. And also the "world" that self inhabits is constructed accordingly. The world - as it "intelligibly" becomes as the "other" to this self - is a system of interpreted signs. A phenomenal world and not a noumenal one.
This is how it has to be for life and mind to exist. Biology is a relation where bodies find a way to stand apart from the physics and chemistry that they need to regulate. That involves a model - an epistemic cut. A sense of self - an embodied state of purpose - emerges in conjunction with a similarly intelligible sense of "the world".
So it is an irreducibly triadic relation, not the simpler dyadic one of a (mental) subject relating to a (physical) object.
The intelligibility lies in the discovery of a way of looking at the world which itself crystalises the thing of a subjective point of view with its idea of the world. And the intelligibility of this model is confirmed to the degree it then works in serving that embodied purpose.
If seeing rocks as rocks works for me, then I will keep seeing them just like that. I will simply take everything at face value. The knowledge relation can just take for granted there is a "me" and "a world".
But pragmatism - as became clear through science - says knowledge is in fact more complex than that.
We have to realise that selves are constructions of purposes. Therefore we need to have a method of deconstructing that subjectivity and instead constructing a new epistemic ideal - the dispassionate and objective "view from nowhere" of the self imagined as a scientist or mathematician.
And likewise, we have to realise our "world" is a semiotic umwelt. A collection of habits of interpretance. So we need to clean that up too. We need to accept that our understanding of the world must be made "more objective" by reducing it to acts of measurement. We take a disembodied view from nowhere by replacing our embodied sensations with the business of reading numbers off dials and other measuring instruments. We construct sets of objective facts.
Under disembodied scrutiny, a rock can become something else to the scientist. Some kind of crystalised compound. Some kind of quantum state. Some kind of whatever it now seems to make sense to describe nature if we are aiming at a maximally "objective" viewpoint to counter what is usually our maximally subjective state of interest in the world.
Quoting Dfpolis
I'm an atheist but I find your invocation of God here something which should be understandable to anyone, it is a basic point. I was recently discussing an idea about how "truth is arranged" which suggests that we process an already incomplete picture and personalise it by interpreting, emphasising, characterising and narrativising until we end up with something workable. So if you ask me "what do you think about X", my answer will be necessarily personal due to these aforementioned factors. Honestly, I would argue God would arrange truth as well although he would have full knowledge, I wonder if you might argue differently though?
I think that we deal with an intellectualised version of reality, which is mostly based on rulesets which function epistemologically but do not fall apart regardless of it corresponds with reality. I think we should aim to be logical, rational, reasonable and not purposefully deal in falsehood but just looking at language, we can see how I can describe things and there is no epistemic counterforce. What we really deal with is the consequence in practicality and things are categorised and characterised by oftentimes abstract divisions. I think when something works well to help us to navigate a complex issue and it is useful then that should be sufficient.
Here one has a concise masterclass in man's formation and value of knowledge. Very impressive Sir. Though one could argue over the details it seems to me every position is going to fall into this materialist structure in one form or another. There is also a required humility to it, so far from seeing ideals as some kind of transcendent entities contained in the universe, this views deals with them as they are, cognitive attempts to gain some kind of control [make order] out of existence.
Yup. It is by understanding how knowledge is an embodied process that we can start to imagine how to turn it into a disembodied one. We can move from the psychology of ordinary experience to a system of scientific reasoning.
However we can't actually transcend our embodied limits to "see reality as it really is". Science remains weighed down by human self interest. The knowledge being produced has to be intelligible to someone - a someone with some intelligible purpose.
Small steps. You asked about foundationalism.
Yes. Stove's gem. IS that closer to what you have in mind?
Quoting Dfpolis
Going back to my first post,
Quoting Banno
I'm wondering if, by thinking about what is foundational to chess, we might be able to develop a view about what is foundational elsewhere - to what is solid, perhaps.
SO give some consideration to the question I asked before:
Quoting Banno
We might imagine variations to chess, where the Bishop moves in some heterodox fashion. Perhaps it is allowed to "bounce" off the edge of the board, or change to a different coloured square every fifth time it is moved, or some such.
Should we consider these failures? A purest might. Or we might just consider these as alternate forms of chess.
What is experienced, here the knowing self, is neither constructed nor assumed. Acts of knowledge are self-reflective. Every act of vision informs us not only about what is seen (its objective object), but also that we can see (its subjective object). Similarly, acts of cognition not only inform us about the object of our attention (its objective object), but also that we are informed (its subjective object). There is no knowing, no being informed, without a subject being informed. You may not wish to admit this, but I can think of no cogent objection.
Quoting apokrisis
Do you even realize how incoherent your position is? Without knowing subjects, there is no agent capable of "modelling an actual world." We model by positing relations between concepts that can only exist in knowing minds.
If you think concepts can exist mind-independently, or that we could model without being knowing subjects, then on what basis do you believe this? Surely it cannot be on the basis of evidence, for, ex hypothesis, you can know no evidence. In fact, we can do nothing as there is no we -- not even a single I.
Quoting apokrisis
Models are not subjects, and so can have no knowledge or interests.
There is no point in commenting further on the consequences of this incoherent theory.
Classical theism, as represented by Aquinas, sees God as entirely simple and immutable. So, God does not elaborate positions over time, nor does He design, then execute. Rather, God sustains all existence in a single act and knows it by knowing His sustaining act.
Quoting Judaka
I would find examples helpful in understanding your position. I am thinking of science as your "intellectualised version of reality," but see new evidence as falsifying old theories. So, I don't quite understand what you're saying.
Quoting Judaka
Yes, it is "adequate to reality," and so close enough to be taken as true. When we aren't concerned with practice, but just want to know, pragmatism fails us.
Is that different from what I said?
Quoting Dfpolis
Sure. My point is that this is something that has to develop. Every newborn has to go through the process of discovering its own hands as something “they” control.
I just looked up Stove's Gem, as I had not heard of it before you mentioned it. From the little I could learn in a short time, I agree with Stove that instances of his Gem are fallacious.
While we can and do know our thoughts, primarily, our thoughts are not what we know, but means of knowing.
Quoting Banno
Rules can't be fallible, for they do not think. It is thinking subjects that can fail to think correctly. We can make routine mistakes, or suffer the devastation of Alzheimer's. As we use our brains to process data, and brains are subject to trauma, we are all to the possibility of error.
Quoting Banno
I return to the conditional nature of such rules, "If we are playing chess, ..." If you remove the condition, the rule looses its force.
You seemed to be arguing that the knowing self is a construct, not an experienced reality. If so, then yes, it is different.
Quoting apokrisis
Of course. And, it takes time to develop a set of concepts to reason with. Still, I would not say that most of our concepts are "constructed." They are abstracted, which means that they actualize some notes of intelligibility in our perceptions to the exclusion of others. We have to accumulate experience to learn which abstractions are most useful in dealing with the world.
Interesting. In the article, to be fallible is to be capable of being false, wrong; hence it speaks of fallible foundations. I followed the usage.
Taking your reading into account, given the title of this thread, that would seem to be the issue: in what way could the foundational rule, that the bishop moves only diagonally, be wrong, or false?
In the first paragraph above you state that you taught them that was adequate for their needs. The knowledge of what was adequate, can you say that that was ONLY based on knowledge? No gut feeling?
Perhaps the title was confusing, but in the body I only said humans are fallible.Quoting Banno
If one violated the unspoken condition that one is playing standard chess.
Choosing what to do is a moral decision -- based not on absolute certitude, but on moral certitude, i.e. on what is generally true, given what we know. So, my assessment was based on knowing what most engineers do. Certainly, some will go on to highly specialized work, in which advanced physics is needed, but, as I said, they will take other courses to prepare.
Here's my reconstruction of the argument in the OP:
But what is the argument?
Quoting Dfpolis
You tell the students something; it leaves something out, therefore it is an abstraction, adequate to their needs. What you tell them is, for their purposes, true, even though for other purposes what you are telling them may be false.
But this is not what (1) claimed. This is
In this case, the proof would come in a different context. Your claim is that there is no requirement to take into account the contexts in which the judgment is false; we only think there is such a requirement because we imagine a context in which we have knowledge not relativized to our needs, "objective" knowledge, which would therefore be exhaustive.
Let's go through the argument again:
But here it seems you are on the verge of claiming
which is clearly false, and does not follow from (iii). (iii) is "If it's irrelevant, we leave it out"; this is the converse.
But do you rely on (iv*) to justify the claim that what you tell your students is true?
What are you leaving out is that you know what you are telling your students to be false. That it is false will not matter to them, because what you are telling them is true "for all practical purposes"; it is an approximation, and will serve in the contexts in which they will make use of it.
So we have this claim:
And since truth is always relative to our needs,
which, like (iv*), is also clearly false and not what you want to say.
I think what you want to say is that (b*) is just nonsense. "P is true" is incomplete, and says nothing. The complete formulation would be "P is true in context C", or "P is true relative to needs N" or something like that. (b*) imagines there is truth relative to no particular needs, that there is (I can't resist) "needless truth".
But you must still avoid (iv*) because (iv*) is a license to sophistry. How will you do that?
It seems that the burden of determining truth is shifted from some imagined exhaustive and needs-indifferent adequacy to the the object itself, to whether the judgment is genuinely adequate to the circumstances of its assertion.
How will you determine this? It's clear enough that structural engineers and high-energy physicists have different needs; you are able to relativize truth by comparing those needs.
This sounds reasonable enough, but if we want eventually to come back to (b*) and define "truth (full stop)" as "truth relative to human needs", we will engage in further abstraction, but what will we compare humans to? Is abstraction enough to get you there, or will we compare humans to other animals, and then be forced to talk about the judgments of animals?
This isn't my conclusion. What I'm saying is that knowing only how reality relates to us (and not exhaustively as it is) is not a problem, because we only deal with reality in relation to ourselves.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That is not what I said, nor is it implied. Still, it has some merit.
What in (1) I am following Aristotle's observation that we cannot prove everything. So, we must accept some things as given. Reflecting, what we accept as given is what is given in experience.
Raw experience is infallible, because whatever we are aware of is what we are aware of. Still, there is a difference between being aware of something (knowledge by acquaintance) and making judgements. Since we are infallibly aware of whatever we are aware of, there is no question of its truth, but there is a question of the truth or falsity of judgements. That question derives from abstraction.
Universal concepts are derived from abstraction, but they may not be the result of abstraction alone, but also of construction -- combining associated data from different experiences. Concepts are universal because each of their instances is capable of evoking the same concept. But, it may be that the aspects (notes of intelligibility) one object that evoke a concept are not the same as the aspects of a different object that evokes the same concept. For example, we have may have seen Jane nude and know she is female, and Kathy made up and dressed in a skirt, and think she is also female. Perhaps, Kathy is a transvestite or transgendered, and biologically male. Then we have erred in judgement.
How did we err? Not by a mistake in awareness, but by miscategorizing -- by attributing to Kathy aspects we did not experience and she did not have.
We need to reflect on how we make experiential judgements and what justifies them. If the identical object that evokes the concept
It is, then, theoretically possible, but very difficult, to make reliable experiential judgements -- because the habit of association, while corrigible, is typically unconscious.
So, back to (1) and (1'): It is a fact that we can't prove everything. So, we have to commit to things we can't prove, but that does not mean that we can't analyze them and root out sources of error. Of course, we don't root out all our errors. So we wind up being committed to things that can be proven false. Still, there is hope. As social animals we can expose our assumptions to others with different life experiences and perspectives, and so root out further errors. One way of doing this is to value the reflections of previous generations enough to hear them.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think I claimed that. If we're to be serious thinkers, we need to reflect on the limits of what we know.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
And so, impossible for human beings. This is the error of making divine omniscience the paradigm against which we judge human knowing. All we need to do is be humble and admit, that while we know many things, we don't know everything about anything.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not quite. What we actually leave out (in coming to know) is what does not interest us, and hope that what does interest us is adequate.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, which is why I did not accept your (iii). Still, this often happens in practice. Critical evidence or lines of reasoning may be ignored because we have "made up our minds" -- which means we have closed our minds.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No, it is not false. That is the point. It is an adequate to what they will deal with. If you do measurements in the Newtonian regime and compare them to the equations, you will find no discrepancies. The scientific method will never give us absolute truth. It may, and often does, give us a theory that represents our observations adequately.
What we say is never exhaustive. Every discourse is limited. Even the most "objective" news stories include some facts and exclude others. If these inclusions and exclusions are made in good faith, we place no blame. Still, the story is (and has to be) intrinsically imperfect. So also is it with teaching, journal articles, books and so on. We will accept these imperfect discourses as true if they do not lead us into error -- if they are adequate to our needs.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That is the very nature of science. The so-called "theory of everything" (TOE) is a theory of everything but 96% of the stuff. Darwin's theory of evolution knew nothing of DNA transcription errors, toolkit genes or punctuated equilibrium. Our best understanding of quantum physics contradicts our best understanding of gravity. We accept these theories not because we think they are metaphysical truths, but because they provide adequate accounts of the aspects of reality we apply them to. That is why naturalists who treat them with religious reverence are so foolish.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Perhaps you are having difficulty because I haven't made it sufficiently clear that I don't see truth as a univocal concept. That is, "truth" does not mean the same thing in every context. Instead, "truth" is analogically predicated by an analogy of proportionality. What that means is that the requirements for being true are proportioned to the needs the truth is intended to meet. If we're doing metaphysics, we want it to be exceptionless, but if we're building a bridge, a set of reliable equations adequately modelling the conditions to be encountered are a true description -- in fact, one that corresponds to the relevant domain of reality, even though it may not correspond to irrelevant domains.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this is close. I am not sure that there actually is "needless truth."
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think we are justifiably anthropocentric, because the problems we have to deal with are human problems -- not that we should not value other species. It is just that we can never know what it is like to be a bat.
Thank you for taking so much time reflecting on my post.
I think you could have saved yourself some typing if you read the whole post before responding.
I'm going to save myself some typing by saying that this
Quoting Dfpolis
is perilously close to traditional empiricist foundationalism, which is a mistake. Read "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind."
"Perilously close" means "different from." I'll look at Sellars' argument, but I am pretty sure it doesn't work against my position.
The question is how you are to give knowledge a foundation you acknowledge is non-epistemic.
"(1) There must be cognitive states that are basic in the sense that they possess some positive epistemic status independently of their epistemic relations to any other cognitive states. I call this the Epistemic Independence Requirement [EIR]."
"(2) Every nonbasic cognitive state can possess positive epistemic status only because of the epistemic relations it bears, directly or indirectly, to basic cognitive states. Thus the basic states must provide the ultimate support for the rest of our knowledge, which I call the Epistemic Efficacy Requirement [EER]."
"Sellars denies not only that there must be a given, but that there can be a given in the sense defined, for nothing can satisfy both EIR and EER. To satisfy EER, a basic cognition must be capable of participating in inferential relations with other cognitions; it must possess propositional form and be truth-evaluable. To meet EIR, such a propositionally structured cognition must possess its epistemic status independently of inferential connections to other cognitions. No cognitive states satisfy both requirements."
I am proposing that we are infallibly aware of whatever we are aware of, but that this awareness is not proportional knowledge. Let's use Aristotle's terminology and call the combined sensory representation we are aware of a "phantasm." If the phantasm as a whole properly elicits a subject concept,
, and the identical phantasm properly elicits a predicate concept, we are justified in judging
. (The copula "is" betokens the identity of source.) While the datum (the phantasm) is not a judgement, by abstraction and identification (division and reunification), we can use it as the basis for sound judgement.
As Aristotle points out, to make justified inferences, we need to find middle terms (aka connections). Thus, if we judge
and, we may conclude . What this means, it is that a phantasm capable of elicitingis also capable of eliciting.
This account seems capable of satisfying both EIR and EER. Or, have I missed something?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I take it that you mean non-propositional by non-epistemic.
The foundation of knowledge is not "epistemic," it is psychological and neurobiological. It is not ideas that make the philosopher, but social environments that make ideas.
Well, you get to pick your poison.
Quoting Dfpolis
Abstraction from what?
If the datum is raw, unconceptualized, it's going to be useless for knowledge that's supposed to be inferred from it. If it is already conceptualized, then it's not independent.
Remember above you did end up reaching for an infallible foundation after all, but justified this move by it being knowledge by acquaintance, not propositional. Is this knowledge conceptualized? Is it "I'm experiencing that" or "I'm experiencing the red triangular facing surface of an object"?
I think this is largely right, but there are different kinds of details to fill in: roughly, (a) where our conceptual framework comes from, and (b) how we use it. That's my evolving view.
That is correct. Here the details are to be found in the categories I mentioned.
...in that case, the rule isn't wrong; rather the action goes against the rule.
When one breaks a rule, one either stops playing the game, or one has changed the rules of the game.
Quoting Dfpolis
Perhaps it would be better to say that our new knowledge of subatomic structure supplements our knowledge of what it is to be solid; it does not supplant it. Hence,
Quoting Banno
So,
Quoting Dfpolis
When we learn that the table has an atomic structure such that it is mostly space, we do not at the same time learn that the table is not solid. We are not wrong to say that the table is solid, and yet mostly consists of the space between particles.
And if you agree with that, we might be able to look at how the way we use words such as "solid" forms a foundation in language, and hence in science. While we might be wrong about this table's being solid, it's much harder to be wrong about what it is to be solid... to be wrong about how to use the word.
Quoting Dfpolis
This is right; and to it we might add that experience here is not just the experience of the individual, but the experience of those around her, such that they have a common language that includes terms such as "solid" and "red". In much the same way as we know that the Bishop moves diagonally, we know how to use these words correctly in our language community. It's not that this use is infallible, so much as that it forms a foundation against which we can develop descriptions, including scientific descriptions.
See above. Dropping back into philosophical language, I've argued for there being no private language, and hence that knowledge cannot be built on private experience, but instead on shared use; and that hence this shared use in foundational, if not quite infallible.
That's almost, but not quite, "true by convention".
Knowledge can't be built only on private experience. But of course there is private experience and of course it is a key contributor to our knowing things.
I'm not too keen on the way "abstraction" is used here. It's not an uncommon use, but I think there may be some problems with it.
What is clear is that the description given to children is incomplete; but I'm not sure it is more abstract. Arguably, relativistic physics is more abstract than Newtonian physics, despite it being more complete.
Newtonian physics is not so much false, as appropriate to some conditions and not others.
"Abstraction leaves something out; Newtonian physics leaves something out; hence Newtonian physics is more abstract..." - Nuh.
I'd ask you to reconsider both uses of "of course".
If your experience is private, can it be expressed? If it can be expressed, then perhaps it isn't so private. If it can't be expressed, can you properly be said to know it?
But hereby hangs years of philosophical discussion.
C'mon, you know I was baiting you.
Not that I don't believe what I said!
Still at work, but while you're waiting for me you could go ahead and explain why the PLA entails that there is no such thing as private experience.
Oh, it doesn't. It just says that they are not something we should talk about.
Except of course that we do. The question is what sort of hay philosophy can make of talk of our inner experiences.
So in §243 we find this:
Does Wittgenstein turn out later to answer this "no" rather than the "yes" implied here? Been too long since I looked, but I can't think of a reason to say "no" myself. We have inner experiences and we talk about them in ordinary (i.e., public) language.
But then here is §246:
I don't see any denial here that we have an inner experience of being in pain, or that this might be expressed by saying "I'm in pain". But he does want to deny that this is a cognitive experience, that that-I-am-in-pain is something I learn about myself, and something I could properly be said to know.
(I find the first part of the middle paragraph a bit of a head-scratcher: he is clearly not saying that others cannot be said to learn that I am in pain, know that I am in pain, doubt that I am in pain; they can, but I can't. I think you have to read the sentence backward: if we behave in a certain way to communicate to others what we know, and if me-being-in-pain is not something that I know, then my behavior cannot be how I communicate that I am in pain, and therefore you cannot learn that I know I'm in pain [hide="note added"] -- or that I'm in pain, I missed that there is the in-band message "Pat is in pain" and the out-of-band message "Pat knows he is pain" --[/hide] from my behavior. Still feels a little off.)
Okay, so for the topic of this thread: of course people have inner experiences we might properly describe as seeing the red triangular facing surface of an object; but it's not, or not normally, something they know, and certainly not something that by definition they infallibly know. The language of "sense impressions" or the like properly belongs to psychology, to a causal theory of our ability to use language, our acquisition of concepts, and so on. (Like the genetic learning algorithms you mentioned to me recently.) But there is another way to talk about what we know, and that's to do with reasons, justification, and the like; that's not a causal story.
The ambiguity of "because" and "why" make a mess of the distinction -- you could almost say foundationalism is exactly what you get if you systematically equivocate on the meanings of those words.
Abstraction from the sensory representation, aka the phantasm.Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Baloney!. I already explained that, by attending to various notes of intelligiblity, we actualize various concepts. What is intelligible is knowable, not known, and so neither conceptual nor propositional. Further, I explained in general how, in attending to our representation of Socrates, we can actualize not only a substantive notion,
, (tode ti = this something), but also a predicate concept, say , and finally, that recognizing that both and derive from the same representation justifies us in judging .
, but more experience is not inference. And, if we didn't recognize the humanity in each independently, we couldn't see that it's a common trait. Rather, more experience helps us clarify which notes of intelligibility are best included in the concept we choose to use. Perhaps we will learn that you don't need to be white to be human.
, and so open ourselves to error, because there may be more to than what we are experiencing. But, we don't need concepts enhanced from other experiences to judge this experience -- or even named concepts. All we need to do is abstract notes of intelligibility from the whole and then predicate it back to the same whole.
You may object that we need several instances of humans to develop the concept
You really need to read De Anima iii, 7, and perhaps Henry Veatch, Intentional Logic or Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or the Degrees of Knowledge.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not for truth. The infallibility of awareness is not propositional. It is judgements and propositions that are properly true or false.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No. It is awareness without abstraction. Abstracting, which forms concepts, leaves data behind and sets the stage for misplaced concreteness.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Once we start applying prior concepts, we are making a judgement
Then, the rule is incomplete, because it does not state its condition. Further, since it is conditional, it is not fundamental.
Quoting Banno
The problem is that "solid" is equivocal, as it can be understood in two ways. First, pragmatically, as meaning that our tea service will not fall through it -- and this is justified by experience. Second, mathematically, as meaning that no magnification will ever reveal anything fundamentally different, which is not justified by experience. So, the error is extending our claims beyond their experiential basis -- and that happens quite often.
Quoting Banno
That is not what "solid" usually means. When things have lots of empty space we say they are porous.
Quoting Banno
Yes.
Quoting Banno
I think we pretty much agree. Language is a primary instrument of our being social animals, and science is a social endeavor.
Rather than reply point-by-point -- it may surprise you, but I'm not certain we're as far apart as it might appear, plus I'm not wedded to my position, plus I'm very interested in an Aristotelian take on all this, so -- rather than reply point-by-point, I wonder if I could get your view on what seem to be somewhat distinct questions:
We're accustomed to say that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" and thus in some ways expect the answers to (2) and (3) to be related, except we know there's an enormous difference, because children are trained to speak their native language by already competent adults. It is conceivable, therefore, that we could eventually come up with satisfying answers to (1) and (2) while (3) continues to elude us.
I'm not asking you to answer all three questions! But I am curious to know whether you think in terms at all like this, how you might see answers to these questions being related to each other, how you read Aristotle (and his interpreters -- thanks for the reading advice) as seeing the connections between these questions, or even whether the way we answer these questions has any bearing on this thread at all!
I hope I'm responding to the point you are interested in. We each have what I call a "conceptual space," a set of concepts that we know and use to understand experience. As an American trained in physics and read in Aristotle and Aquinas, I have a different set of concepts than someone raised in a Chinese or Indian cultural tradition. For example, I don't use a Chi concept, or have an adequate concept of nirvana. I lack many concepts current in analytic and in continental philosophy. Yesterday I added
A two days ago, I sent in the final corrections on a paper defending the compatibility of evolution with classical theism. In it, I defended the legitimacy of alternate taxonomies, with alternate species definitions. Because reality is complex, and abstraction attends to some notes of intelligibility to the exclusion of others, we can form different species concepts (different universal ideas), given the same data. (At least 26 different definitions of "species" have been proposed in the biological literature.) This is not nominalism, because we're not assigning categories arbitrarily (without an adequate basis in reality). Rather, it is moderate realism, because we're using different features to form alternate classification schemes, so that each scheme's concepts have an adequate foundation in reality.
We tend to project our experiences onto our pre-existing conceptual space, seeing them in terms of familiar concepts. Sometimes we recognize that none of our concepts fits our experience, and so we form a new concept --articulated in a new word, or a new use of an old word. Thus, language grows.
We can learn other people's ways of conceptualizing the world. E.g., I learned physics, abstract mathematics, evolutionary biology, mysticism and a number of philosophical theories.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I am not well-read in Piaget or more recent child psychology. My working theory is that children learn to associate sounds with experiences. I remember that one day my mother was talking to me in the dinning room, and it suddenly dawned on me that there was a "me" inside listening and that is what she meant by "you". I think I was 3 or 4.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I wasn't there. So, I would be giving pure speculation. I suspect gestures and shared goals played a large role.
I do think how children learn has a bearing, as children grow up to become us. Take counting and mathematical abstraction. After children count enough different kinds of things, they see that the relations of the numbers do not depend on what we count (abstraction) but on the act of counting alone. This is the basis for learning arithmetic.
Maybe an aside, but: that a person cannot be said to learn of their sensations in a way that is distinguished from simply having them is something that has troubled me. It reminds me of this exchange from the webcomic Erfworld:
Personally, I've had knee pain for a long time and can usually tune it out. When it goes away, I learn that I was in pain then but adjusted in a manner where I didn't feel it. But at the time before it went away, I would not have believed I was in pain. Seems like the presence of sensations very much can be inferred, but perhaps only after a transition in their intensity.
This is just the kind of thing I had in mind. Insofar as I have been pushing your position to look more like empiricism than you want, it's because I wonder how this works.
So if there are [math] n [/math] things on the table -- I can't even set up the question neutrally! -- we say there are [math] n [/math] things on the table, not [math] 2^n [/math], because we don't count all the sets as things. This is the natural way to count, to us, but there is a view -- I'm going to call this Wittgenstein's view -- that all we can really say is "this is how we count" and there could be other ways. In particular, modern mathematics seems to require counting the sets as, well, "things", even while maintaining a distinction between element and subset. It might be tempting to say: by "how many things are on the table" we mean "how many elements does the set 'things on the table' have", but that's circular, and I don't see a simple way out.
Your adaequatio approach suggests that "how many things are on the table" means "how many of the sort of things we understand ourselves to be talking about are there on the table" and that feels right. But then we're back to this not being something a child could conceivably figure out through the exercise of natural reason but only in a context where the conceptual apparatus is already in place.
This is why your use of "awareness", glossed as "infallible knowledge by acquaintance", troubles me. I think some of this conceptual apparatus is just hardwired from birth and some of it we acquire not through the exercise of reason but through training by adults already conversant with a much more elaborate scheme than what they had at birth, and then some more we develop through the use of reason, and thus modify our own habits of conceptualization. However that side of the story works, a lot of the conceptualization of our experience is taking place below the level of awareness and thus without attention or reason. The way you distinguish knowledge from judgment suggests a similar hierarchy, it's just that "knowledge" in this case would map to psychological processes we are largely unaware of, and that sounds a little odd to my ear. Of course we have to call it something!
Quoting Dfpolis
I was wondering if you might be willing to expound a bit more on these points?
Am I wrong in inferring that you are striving in the direction of properly basic belief?
Ha! I have a little tinnitus, which now that we're talking about it, I am experiencing again! (Tinnitus is famously mysterious this way.)
There's a point of Wittgenstein's that came up in the Moore's paradox thread that I found interesting: you can't take your own belief that p as evidence that p -- except when you can, but that requires moderately special circumstances. For instance, if you have, you know not how, picked the winner of every football game you've thought about for the last 11 years, you could take your, let's say, "intuition" that the Flamingos will defeat the Cormorants as evidence that they will. (Outlandish for clarity but ordinary might be informative.) But in normal circumstances, you don't, shouldn't, maybe can't treat your beliefs the way you treat things we do typically count as evidence. The way you can "read off" the state of the weather by stepping outside, you don't read off the state of the world from what you happen at the moment to think it is. Your beliefs are just your beliefs, and not evidentiary.
So I think this is the kind of thing LW is getting at, though it's perfectly obvious we can reflect on our inner state and say things like "I know what I'm looking at", "I know that I'm in pain", whatever, and in some conversational situations it's just the right thing to say. We say stuff. He just wants to block philosophers from thinking that the way we talk is a reliable guide to -- well, to any of the sorts of things philosophers like to talk about it. I'm putting that wrong, but I hate doing Wittgenstein exegesis.
Yes; folk do lots of things that they probably shouldn't.
Wittgenstein’s rather unsympathetic response is exactly right, while entirely missing the point.
§243 asks the question answered over the next few sections. It's a notorious argument. Perhaps for our purposes it might be helpful to focus on what justification one might offer for "I am in pain", and how that might differ from "She is in pain". One does not infer that one is in pain - one simply is in pain.
(But see @fdrake's interesting example. He claims to infer, from "I am not in pain now", that "I was in pain previously". I'm not convince infer is quite right here.)
The discussion in PI slides into the sensation "S" at §258 and on to beetles in boxes. But it might be better to go backwards, right to the beginning. §1 shows what he is arguing against - that the meaning of a word is found by identifying that to which it refers. This view would hold that there is something the very same, that you and I might both refer to as, say, having a toothache. Wittgenstein is arguing against this view by asking how we can be sure that what I point to by "toothache" is the very same as what you point to...
...and the conclusion is that what "toothache" points to, if anything, is irrelevant to the way we use it. Even if one accepts the picture of meanings as what the word points to, and hence concludes that one cannot know that "toothache" for me points to the very same thing as "toothache" for you, one can go to the dentist and have one's teeth fixed.
Or, to switch examples, even if you and I don't mean the very same colour when we say "red" - if your red is my blue - we will both stop a the red light.
So, even if one continued to accept Augustin's theory of meaning, it is irrelevant. What counts is what we do - theories of meaning are better replaced by descriptions of use.
I'm nonplussed here. It's precisely because it is conditional that it is fundamental. If you would play chess, then this is how you must move the bishop. Doing otherwise is not playing chess.
Let me suggest that there is a difference between having a sensation, and being aware of it. We get uncomfortable sitting a certain way, and change our posture without a moment's thought. Some people can, as you suggest, tune pain out. Aristotle's point in De Anima iii, 7, is that sensory representations (nerve signals) are intelligible, but not actually known until we attend to them (in his language, actualized by the agent intellect -- which I identify with awareness). So, having a sensation does not automatically mean that we have a cognitive experience.
I'm sorry, are you saying there is something wrong with people giving vocal expression to their feelings, mood, and all the rest?
Quoting Banno
It's sociopathic.
(( I'm ignoring the rest of your post because I've actually read Wittgenstein. ))
But not Banno. Oh, well.
I don't quite understand this? What exactly are you claiming is sociopathic?
Banno's point is quite accurate: Quoting Banno
Further, "Wittgenstein replies angrily..." what in God's name? Although, no surprise that the abstraction of analytical philosophy would negate human compassion. The way I see it you are playing a game that allows you to move away from reality and thereby feel better about it. I do not consider this responsible philosophy.
It is because sets are not things, but mental constructs (ways of grouping elements in our minds). Primitive shepherds counted sheep by tying knots in a string. (Similarly, in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the attack was synchronized by untying a knot each day.) Why count sheep and not relations or sets? Because shepherds are not generally interested in possible relations between sheep, but in the number of sheep they have.
I am suggesting that how we think about things is driven by our interests. Some are practical, but some are theoretical -- we just want to know.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That is why we teach children mathematics, rather than letting them discover it from scratch. Children want to please us, so they do as we ask.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would define awareness as the actualization of intelligibility. It is infallible because it is inseparable. Aristotle points out that before we know, there is an intelligible object (something which has the potential to be known) and a subject with the potential to be informed. One act, that of awareness (aka "the agent intellect"), simultaneously actualizes both potentials. There is no becoming known without a mind becoming informed -- and vice versa. Because only one act is involved, there is no possibility of an intervention preventing success. It is the union of object and subject in their joint actualization that is the basis of knowledge.
Judgement is quite different, for it invariably involves at least two acts: (1) the separation of certain notes of intelligibility from the whole (abstraction/concept formation) and (2) the recombination of at least two concepts. So, there is the possibility of an intervention preventing success.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I would deny the very possibility of concepts below the level of awareness. The concept
Of course, the mind is more than awareness. There is a lot of physical data processing going on, and most if it, we are unaware of. We form neural net connections underpinning Humean associations, but associations are not judgements. I may associate an orange moon with a citrus, but that does not cause me to think that the moon is a citrus.
So, I would say that a lot of association is taking place below the level of awareness.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I am not distinguishing knowledge from judgement. All knowledge is awareness of intelligibility. Some awareness is mere acquaintance ("I know the house on the corner"). Some knowledge is awareness of identities, i.e. judgements (we see that what evokes
What is mental, but not knowledge, is concepts. To think
What counts as a thing is a 'mental construct'... See PI §48.
One of the differences between PI and the Tractatus is the rejection of the notion of simples.
The basic act of knowing is awareness of present intelligibility. Intelligibility is usually present via sensation, but in mystical experience it is present in our very act of existence.
It is usual to think of ourselves as separated from what we sense, and spatially, that is usually true. Dynamically, it is a gross error. We sense objects because they act on us, and we can detect and neurally encode those actions, forming neural representations (which the Scholastics called "sensible species"). From the object's perspective, our neural representations are its action on us, its modification of our neural state. So, our neural representations are identically the object's action on our neural system. So, dynamically, sensing subject and sensed object share the same being: its action on us is our representation of it. We might call this "existential penetration."
But, as I discussed earlier today, sensations are not thoughts. We may have, and respond to, sensations without a hint of awareness. It is only when we become aware of the neurally encoded content that it becomes knowledge. As long as it is only a neural state, it can be no more than knowable = potential knowledge. Nothing that is merely potential can operate, and so what is merely knowable cannot make itself known. To become actually known, the neurally encoded content needs to be acted upon, and it is our awareness (Aristotle's agent intellect), that does this. When we turn our attention, or awareness, to some content, to some present intelligibility, it becomes actually known.
Again, there is a dynamical identity: our being informed is identically the object informing us. "The object informing the subject" and "the subject being informed by the object" are just two ways of describing the identical event. So, we are not (dynamically) separate from our objects of knowledge, but partially identical to them. Our knowledge of the object is the object informing us.
Quoting JerseyFlight
Basic, yes. Belief, no. Beliefs are commitments to the truth of some judgement, and so acts of will. Knowledge is awareness of present intelligibility, and an act of intellect.
Fundamental means that we are at the absolute starting point. The consequences of chess rules can't be a starting point, because the rules themselves are more basic -- the starting point from which we derive the consequences.
This is pretty close to my own view, the difference is that I see it as a dialectical process of action, both subject and object. It's pretty hard to refute this action view, more and more evidence is being accumulated in its favor.
It's been around since Aristotle.
But, but but... they are the starting point, from which we derive the consequence of Chess...
Philosophy moved on a bit after Aristotle. And after the Tractatus.
But that's not what you are after, so I'll leave you to it. Perhaps later...
The point of focusing on how we count was to point out how much of our conceptual apparatus (and not only that but other practices as well) must already be in place to do it.
So if a shepherd is interested in keeping track of how many sheep they have, that's not a property of the sheep (as "having white wool" is); that's the cardinality of the set of sheep they have. If they use knots on a string to keep track, that's Hume's principle, a one-to-one correspondence (a relation) between the set of sheep they have and the set of knots on the string. Thus shepherds must use sets and relations if they're interested in sheep.
And more than that, you have to know not to make a knot every time you see a sheep, even if it's one of yours, but only to make a knot, one knot, for each numerically different animal, either by keeping track or by artificial means like forcing them one-by-one through a gate.
There's no counting without both the mental constructs and the associated practices already in place. Does that matter to your position? What point were you making with the example of shepherds?
Yes, but moved on does not mean rightly moved on.
Yes, counting requires that we have developed the idea of number, but that is not difficult. All we need is for our mate to be happier when we bring home 2-3 birds or melons instead of one.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, it is, but you don't need to generalize from a flock concept to a set concept to count them. All you need is an ownership concept -- my sheep or our sheep. I learned to count at 3-4, long before I knew about sets and cardinality.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
We should not equate instruments of thought, like concepts and judgements, with constructs, which imply we have added constructive elements. If you want to say we've added elements we did not find in experience, you have to do more than say we have used concepts.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I was responding to why shepherds count sheep, not all possible sets of sheep.
Read that as many times as you have to to see what's wrong here.
Thanks for the conversation and the reading recommendations. Cheers!
Just because we can use our ability to count to describe a situation does not mean that those in it must be able to count. All they need do is see that scarcity is not sufficiency or abundance, and reflect on the nature of the difference.
"I have stopped being in pain now" -> "I was previously in pain"
Similar to:
"I have stopped hearing the storm" -> "I previously heard the storm"
Looks rather a lot like an inference to me!
"I am not in pain now" is not the same as "I have stopped being in pain now." The first is compatible with never having been in pain, the second is not.
Eh, you could argue that I've never experienced something which could appropriately be described as "I have stopped being in pain now". That's not something I'm interested in discussing really. If my experience that it happened is not sufficient to convince someone that it's possible, I don't really know what to do.
And yes, the first is compatible with not being in pain at the appropriate time while the second is not. However, stopping being in pain is consistent with not believing one was in pain before it stopped. It's ultimately a question of whether you can feel something while not believing you feel it!
Of course, you can not believe what you are experiencing, for example, look at Descartes. He knew he was in his chamber, but chose to doubt it. The problem is that knowing is being aware, while believing is committing.
It's curious - there is more going on here.
Quoting fdrake
What exactly is the missing premise? "If I have stopped being in pain then I was previously in pain"? There's something of question begging in that... it needs to be more like "I am not in pain now"; but that will not suffice to carry the conclusion. If your realisation that you are not in pain now is to imply that you were in pain, then it must include something like "but I remember being in pain..."
I don't think it's any more question begging than:
Alice: "I saw Jane today"
Bob: "How do you know?"
Alice: "I saw her."
Have you stopped beating your wife?
If someone answers yes, then we infer that they previously beat their wife.
If someone answers no, then we infer that they are still beating their wife.
Have you stopped being in pain?
If someone answers yes, then we infer that they were previously in pain.
If someone answers no, then we infer that they are still in pain.
That's not an inference. That's repetition...
Quoting fdrake
...but if they have not been in pain, then they have not stoped being in pain, and hence they answer "no". So the posited inference that they are still in pain would be wrong.
And if someone really had stopped being in pain? Would you infer that they were in pain just prior to then?
Would that be an inference or a memory?
I say memory.
Why not both?
(1) I was in pain up until time t.
(2) I did not realise I was in pain before t+1.
(3) I stop being in pain at t+1.
(4) I realise that I was in pain at all times[hide=*] (in a relevant interval of times)[/hide] before t+1 at t+1 as a consequence of the cessation [hide=**](or change of intensity)[/hide] of sensation in (3).
Does that seem problematic to you?
I don't think it's inappropriate to rephrase (4) as:
(4) I learned that I was in pain at all times before t+1 at t+1 as a consequence of the cessation of sensation in (3).
Because I am now in possession of a fact I did not know; that I was in pain up until time t (and did not realise it)!
Some people are probably going to balk at the idea that a sensation can happen without realising the sensation is had.
The cessation of pain is, you're claiming, a particular experience different from not being in pain, like your Erfworld example. Another real life example is being in a room with a noisy old-fashioned window air conditioner that suddenly cuts off when you're in the middle of a sentence -- you find that you were speaking much more loudly than you realized in order to be heard over the noise.
What's salient here is your claim that this is an inference:
Quoting fdrake
Quoting fdrake
That's a series of unrelated statements, not an inference.
(4) has "as a consequence" of something in (3) in it.
OK, let's try a different approach. Fred is suddenly certain that he has just stopped having a pain, of which he was unaware.
Only in this case Fred is mistaken. Although he believes he had been in pain, he was not.
Nothing in this entails a contradiction.
Hence the inference from the belief that your pain has just stoped to your just hsving been in pain is invalid.
Parsed it wrongly - Fred suddenly stops being in pain, a pain of which he was unaware. He isn't just certain of it; as it it were just an epistemic state directed towards a pain; Fred had stopped being in pain! If you stop experiencing something, you must've experienced it before that.
I think you are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Quoting bongo fury
E.g. isn't Wittgenstein's aim (with his linguistical speculation) to dissolve or reconceive the second one, not to entrench it?
I guess that you and he are saying "even if" the second question makes sense, but, like... how could you?? Are your linguistical insights worth the price of that hypothetical admission? Or is the private language argument no more than a reductio on the hypothesis of qualia? Excuse my irony failure if so.
et al
For at least 20 years - confounding my assumption that it would inevitably worsen - I've been able to cure the occasional onset of a "tuning fork" tinnitus within a few seconds, apparently by calling its bluff: listening as carefully as possible to the tone as though it were produced by a musical instrument, comparing it with the rest of real and imagined sound with respect to pitch, volume, tone colour, partials etc. Either by complete coincidence or (I prefer to think) in consequence of a recalibration of the whole auditory system, it stops.
I've seldom had the courage or presence of mind to withhold the procedure and thus test for coincidence. Too anxious to make it stop. Which is appalling superstition. I must henceforth attain more (haha, even the slightest semblance of) rigour in assessing the effect of the procedure. (But hey, this is the internet, so, take it from me, it really works!)
But what is recalibration? Not necessarily correction of a mapping of (sets of matching) internals to (sets of matching) externals. (Qualia sets to stimulus sets.) Rather, perhaps, just the matching of externals: (re-)learning to recognise the same stimulus sets that others do.
Same with pain, except the stimulus sets are types of bodily trauma and hence partly or wholly internal. But pains are (analogously) traumas as classified through public pain-talk.
Damned if I can figure out how the pain I never knew I was in, stopped being one.
The notion of an internal red - a private sensation - cannot be made a coherent part of our public conversation. The problem is dissolved. There is only the public red.
Ok, but your interlocutor could reasonably complain of having been misled by your blarney here:
Quoting Banno
It's intended to reinforce the argument that the question drops out of any relevance.
I doubt it has the intended effect. It implies that you are only concerned about what is relevant to the linguistic aspects, and are perfectly prepared to admit the possibility of a beetle beetling away.
Or better, folk do, but their talk makes no sense.
... or...
Quoting Banno
?
Hence Hegel.