if there's anything that all philosopers can agree on

[Advocate]

[quote=Skepdick post_id=475160 time=1602413033 user_id=17350]
[quote=Advocate post_id=475055 time=1602342757 user_id=15238]
Scientism is popular among those who insist science is the best way of knowing because they don't understand that logical arguments are more certain.
[/quote]
You seem incredibly confused.

Science IS a logical argument. It just uses a different logic to the one you like. Science uses a probabilistic logic to perform hypothesis testing.

https://www.amazon.com/Probability-Theo ... 0521592712

Logical/deductive certainty is impossible in non-axiomatic systems such as reality. Induction is all you have.
[/quote]

Science contains logical arguments resting on measurable data, which could be wrong. Logic is logical arguments that stand alone, no matter what you plug into them or even if you never plug any information into them, it's called valid. In reality certain relationships always apply. 1+1 will always equal 2, no matter what 1 is. If all cats are blue and you're a cat, you're definitely blue, even if no blue cats have actually existed in reality.

[Immanuel Can]

Ok, i've got two tacos in my belly and some marijuana in my blood-stream. Let's continue!

>>...isn't any attempt at deep thought actually philosophy? And can anyone else tell you whether you're legitimately searching for truth?

>Well, aren't those two criteria? You say, "deep thought," plus "search for truth." So is that what you mean by "philosopher"?

Non-testable ones? [/quote]
Well, if there's no "truth," there's no basis for inquiry or "deep thought." And you'd need to say what made thought "deep" as opposed to, say, merely prologued or complicated, because thought can be both of those things without being really "deep," right?

...it would be possible to test whether someone merits them, so what would be the point? [/quote]
Well, unless we can identify who is a "philosopher" and who is not, we're not in any position to make a comment about whether or not they agree. We should complain instead that "people don't agree," since we can't distinguish "philosopher" from "person." So obviously, you must have something in mind when you speak of "philosophers disagreeing," right? You must know who you are talking about...

>>All i'm saying is that everyone has to start somewhere and even completely legit philosophers probably suck for a while because it's hard to develop filters against the world's ubiquitous bullshit, especially for those who have been long integrated.

>Well, yes: but that's what philosophers, as some understand the term, ought to deal with, I think. They ought to provide methods for pursuit of wisdom, rather than mere conformity to the world's blandishments. I think it was in this sense that Socrates stated so famously that "the unexamined life was not worth living." That might be a little dramatic on his part, but I think it was his way of saying that "willingness to examine by rational means" was part of what a philosopher should be.

That's why i don't agree with people who say there's no true Scotsman. We may not be able to know whether someone is a true Scotsman, but we can still choose criteria that a true Scotsman Ought to embody.

Yes. Well, that's my point about "philosophers." We should have some criteria, so we know who we are talking about. (As an aside, there are criteria for a "true Scotsman." He's male, obviously, and he's someone born in Scotland.)

In any case it's a semantic point, what work do the words do for us?

All the work. There's no other way for us to work, in fact. Unless we get our words right, our ideas will be confused and the pragmatic results will be almost certainly unfocused and perfidious.

Pragmatically, a philosopher must be above some indistinct point of understanding to be relevant. They must have overcome nihilism, for example, and not be a True Naysayer like so many here as those are self-defeating ideas.

Hmmm...so Nihilists can't be philosophers? How about Sophists? Or Cynics? I think I see a problem developing with that. I know what you want to say, I think, but a lot of people are going to see those views as genuinely philosophical.

>>I don't wonder that philosophers disagree, but i wonder that those who have been doing it for awhile still disagree.

>Ah, yes. That is a surprise, no? I mean, if they're REAL philosophers, shouldn't they all be committed to a single method or set of philosophers criteria that would incline them to agreement, inevitably?

Committed to truth should be enough, n'est-ce pas? First you must admit there can be answers, then you have to figure out how to recognize them (epistemology), then what the basic ones are (metaphysics), and then add in contingencies (aesthetics (roughly salience), ethics (roughly priorities), politics (ethics + scale).

Okay, but you realize, of course, that's a lot of territory to cover while expecting that people should always find a way to "agree," right? That's why I suggest what you're looking for is a universal methodology, like reason, say, or logic, to govern that whole package toward a common end. But you're also going to have to guarantee that all the participants in the philosophizing are approaching with the same basis of facts to plug into the method.

But literally nobody comes at it so directly as that.

Well, with good reason, maybe. It's not always so easy to guarantee that both basic facts and a discipline to the methodology are practiced by all the participants.

I do agree it's inevitable for truth-minded people to actually converge, Bayesian style, regardless of their priors.

How, I wonder? We've still to guarantee both their facts and their methods, if that's to happen. And that doesn't seem to me inevitable.

>But the problem is this: that reason (the key tool of real philosophers, as I would suggest) is a procedure not a set of conclusions. It's a method, we might say, not a set of axioms. And so what you assume at the beginning is going to change what you get out at the end.

I'd like to see that broken down in spreadsheet form I haven't thought it out myself.

Well, that's what I was trying to do, essentially, my analogy to mathematics.

My answer to all of philosophy is clearly a set of axioms, but i couldn't say how i developed them because it was all independently derived piecemeal. My only real tool is having an advanced bullshit detector. Not many of my ideas have changed because i've always tried to seat them in logical necessity rather than mere convenience or emotional salience or availability bias or whatever. The key procedure as far as i can tell is to be skeptical as fuck without giving in to nihilism or infinite regress. But again, i'm not at your level of thought on this point.

No, that's excellent, actually. I don't doubt that you have commendable instincts. Sometimes, all formal training in philosophy does, after that, is explain the "why" for what your intuition may already be telling you, or round off the rough corners of your thinking. It doesn't always shake your instincts to pieces. Sometimes, BS detection is just a good intuition.

>You can see this point through that most "rational" of all disciplines, mathematics. If you have a rational equation, like 2X + 4 = Y, then the value of Y is going to change with the value of X. And it's not that your mathematics are bad...your procedure, your method is perhaps unimpeachably correct and reliable. But it makes all the difference what the assumed value of X is.

Math is descriptive of relationships of quantity, insofar as we treat things as separate in space/time. Logic is equally rational/precise by dealing with other relationships between other base ideas. (in fact math is a subset of logic) It seems to me that here you're elucidating the difference between valid and true, which i would compare and contrast with my idea of answer v solution.

In a way, yes. I'm suggesting that its possible to get one's methodology correct, and still come out with BS at the end, if the basic facts (the assigned value of X) is wrong. The method isn't the problem, in that case.

That kind of strict materialism must be rejected because morality is a real thing that does real work for everyone on a daily basis.

I think we all intuit that. But philosophers always want us to justify that intuition, and they've got a point.

You're scraping up on the is/ought problem there,

Well, tangentially, yes.

... but Sam Harris has neatly answered that point, and i would more simply by saying "Oughts actually exist and the only possible source for oughts is ises."

Oh, I think Sam Harris is so messed up on that one he doesn't even know how many ways he's wrong. I do think that "oughts" exist, but not at all for the reasons Harris imagines. One can't even make his view make sense, really. I've been talking about this on another strand with KLewchuk, and I just explained it much more fully to him. You might be interested. It's on a thread called "Big Question 1."

If you're not a materialist at bottom you can't act effectively in the material world where you get material feedback.

No, that's definitely not true. In fact, I would suggests the opposite, since a Materialist, by definition, has to rule out the existence of all metaphysical properties, such as meaning, morals and values as real-world entities. None of them are testable by Materialist means.

But since spiritual matters always have a material correlate, the Answer is to understand that it's different layers of metaphor for the same base stuff. That's not the typical compatibalism but it's the True one, the only logically possible one.

Maybe so. But there's the old correlational fallacy to mess us up. We can't say that just because there is a "material correlate" to something that the Materials are the comprehensive explanation or cause of that thing. The actual cause can be a third thing, at the very least.

Rationality must lead you to an understanding of the difference between internal and external ideas. It's too basic to be bypassed or ignored.

Yeah, I think that's true.

>>No intelligent people ever disagree with their individual perspectives and priorities are accounted for. But it seems most philosophers don't spend adequate time on basic critical thinking or learning how to deal with hypotheticals or logical extremes.

>Agreed. But I think it's their ontological assumptions that they are not spending enough time on. Rather, they tend to take as a given that whatever they happen to see as "real" is also what every other sane person surely also sees as "real," and rush on from there. So they take the X value for granted, and then accuse people of being bad mathematicians, bad reasoners, when the Y value doesn't turn out to be the same as theirs.

I agree with your initial point but.. Whatever seems real to someone must be their prior.

Absolutely. Most people take their own ideas about "what is real" as certain. We have to, because how else are we going to feel good about making decisions? But sometimes we're not right...what we thought was the totality of "the real" wasn't all that exists; or what we thought was only part of "the real" turns out to be more generally useful than we first thought. So we need to be willing to question and rethink our basic assumptions about what's real, because they're not infallible.

However, in much informal philosophy, people just tend to assume they know what "the really real" is, and to be a bit mystified, if not even contemptuous, when somebody reasons to a different conclusion than they do. They declare such people "irrational," but don't realize the problem is not the rationality itself, but the basic assumptions "plugged into" the rationality.

Most people do behave generally rationally. What I mean is not that they are all precise reasoners, but that they do tend to think they know what they're doing, and make their choices in the expectation of getting a quick and practical route to something they want. Few people will say, "Well, I know beyond a doubt that doing X will never get me to Y, but I'm going to keep doing X anyway. More likely, they don't really want Y at all, if they do that.

This gets to the difference between appearance and apparance. It appears to everyone that their senses are accurate and their conclusions are therefore justified.

Yeah...now you're onto it. I think that's right. You've got it.

>And in a sense, they're right: IF the original ontological assumptions of all people were the same, and IF all people reasoned precisely, then it would be inevitable that all reasonable people would agree...should agree...could do nothing BUT agree. But the IF is wrong.

IF we can teach people how to think, what to think, and why, in that order (which isn't actually possible because it doesn't match brain development) we can bypass that stuff. Everything they're told will be filtered for evidential weight.

Yeah. Wouldn't that be nice?

You always do. That's why you're on my friends list, or more to the point, not on my foe list. A True philosopher takes true attempts at truth seriously.

Thank you for your thoughts. I do take them very seriously. I think you're reasoning well, actually. And you do seem to have a good intuition for the BS stuff. This is a good conversation.

[Skepdick]

Science contains logical arguments resting on measurable data, which could be wrong.

Exactly like classical logic rests upon premises.

Which could be wrong.

Logic is logical arguments that stand alone, no matter what you plug into them or even if you never plug any information into them, it's called valid.

So you don't actually understand what "validity" means.

An argument without premises can never be "valid". So (at the very least) you have to plug premises into your argument if you hope for validity.

In reality certain relationships always apply. 1+1 will always equal 2, no matter what 1 is.

Huh?!?

There are 10 kinds of people in the world.

Those who understand binary and those who don't.

1+1 = 10

If all cats are blue and you're a cat, you're definitely blue, even if no blue cats have actually existed in reality.

You understand what the magic word "IF" means right at the beginning of your sentence, right?

It's a conditional, not a fact.

If all cats are blue, and I am a cat which happen to be red, then your premise is false. It's called falsifiability.

[Advocate]

If there's anything philosophers can agree on it's that Slurm is better than Branwdo which is better than Bawls.

[PeteJ]

Nobody, or nobody that you are willing to acknowledge?

Just name one philosopher who argues against the unbecidability of metaphysical problems. You're arguing against a basic and well-known fact. I have no idea why.
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Metaphysically, there are no facts, only interpretations.

The absurdity of positive theories is a demonstrable fact. It has been demonnstrated more times than you've had hot dinners.

Then you should practice what you preach. Surely before you "understand philosophy" or anything really, first you should come to understand what it means to understand?

This appears to be sophistry gone mad. Are you suggesting I don't understand metaphysics?

Then you you will be able to understand anything that you want to understand. Be it philosophy, art, quantum physics or fishing.

Now now. No need for silliness.

I am not blaming the world, it is your philosophy I disagree with.

I can assure you it's not my fault that extreme metaphysical theories are absurd. I'm struggling to grasp how someone interested in the topic can not know this. It is metaphysics 101.

If you want to argue I'd suggest finding a philosopher who agrees with you.

Centuries ago Kant said the all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable, and nobody has ever bothered to argue with him since it a well-known fact, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to argue with it.

[Skepdick]

Just name one philosopher who argues against the unbecidability of metaphysical problems.

YOU! YOU are arguing against it and you can't even see it!!!

Some metaphysical phenomena are decidable.
Some metaphysical problems are undecidable.

The discrimination between decidable and undecidable problems is precisely the concern of Computer Science.

You're arguing against a basic and well-known fact. I have no idea why.

Because even you don't believe it's a metaphysical fact. Your claim is a performative contradiction.

The absurdity of positive theories is a demonstrable fact. It has been demonnstrated more times than you've had hot dinners.

You are conflating the failure of the demonstration with the failure of the theory.
The inability to communicate it is not evidence of failure, it's evidence of communication failure.

But, isn't the notion of "failure" a metaphysical notion?
And didn't you just say that ALL positive metaphysical theories are undecidable?

So how did you decide that the theory has failed then?

This appears to be sophistry gone mad. Are you suggesting I don't understand metaphysics?

I am suggesting that "understanding" is a metaphysical notion, and I am also suggesting that "PeteJ understand metaphysics" is a metaphysical claim.

And it was you who insisted that metaphysics is undecidable.

So how have you come to decide that you understand metaphysics if metaphysics is undecidable?

I can assure you it's not my fault that extreme metaphysical theories are absurd. I'm struggling to grasp how someone interested in the topic can not know this. It is metaphysics 101.

So, it seems like you are saying that the undecidability of metaphysics is decidable.

Which is tantamount to the claim that metaphysics is meta-metaphysically decidable.

I am glad I could demonstrate to you that you disagree with yourself.

If you want to argue I'd suggest finding a philosopher who agrees with you.

Great. So I've found you... Now what?

Centuries ago Kant said the all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable, and nobody has ever bothered to argue with him since it a well-known fact, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to argue with it.

Because Kant somehow decided that metaphysics is undecidable.

Undecidability is decidably undecidable. Does that make it decidable or undecidable?

[Advocate]

>Just name one philosopher who argues against the unbecidability of metaphysical problems.

I'm one but you can't see the first through the trees. Anyhow, you say things like that someone isn't s True Philosopher of they disagree with your "fact". In Truth, every question has an answer and most problems have a solution.
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>The absurdity of positive theories is a demonstrable fact. It has been demonnstrated more times than you've had hot dinners.

You reference positive theories as though that's technical language but a search for "positive theories of metaphysics" doesn't yield any meaningful results. do you mean positivism as in a postiori knowledge? Do you mean any claim that metaphysics can have an answer?

>Centuries ago Kant said the all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecidable, and nobody has ever bothered to argue with him since it a well-known fact, I cannot imagine why anyone would want to argue with it.

Do you mean "Reason in metaphysics, even if it tries, as it professes, only to gain a priori insight into those laws which are confirmed by our most common experience, is constantly being brought to a standstill, and we are obliged again and again to retrace our steps, as they do not lead us where we want to go. As to unanimity among its participants, there is so little of it in metaphysics that it has rather become an arena that would become especially suited for those who wish to exercise themselves in mock fights, and where no combatant has as yet succeeded in gaining even an inch of ground that he could call his permanent possession."?

The answer to metaphysics is the balance between internal and external. "Every thing is a pattern with a purpose." There's no conflict between the material and the metaphorical layer we apply to it. There are no unsolved problems/questions in metaphysics. The answer is contingent, not arbitrary.

[PeteJ]

YOU! YOU are arguing against it and you can't even see it!!!

Some metaphysical phenomena are decidable.
Some metaphysical problems are undecidable.

The discrimination between decidable and undecidable problems is precisely the concern of Computer Science.

I don't understand why you cannot find an argument but just shout at me. Why not quote a philosopher who agrees with you. or give me an example of a decidable metaphysical question? Have you even thought about what I'm saying? It's not even slightly contentious.

My view is orthodox. Nobody has ever come close to falsifying it. It is only because metaphysical problems are undecidable that the subject is difficult.

I feel you should read one or more of Kant, Hegel, Chalmers, Russell, Nagarjuna, Bradley, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Plato, Locke, Hume or indeed anyone who has written about metaphysics.

I can assure you that it is well-proven that all metaph6ysical questions are undecidable. If it weren't the case mysticism would have to be nonsense and there would be no way to explain why so many people cannot make sense of metaphysics.

I'm torn between trying to put you right or just going away. I''ll see how it goes. I'd suggest you try to understand what I'm saying.

[Advocate]

>Yes. Well, that's my point about "philosophers." We should have some criteria, so we know who we are talking about. (As an aside, there are criteria for a "true Scotsman." He's male, obviously, and he's someone born in Scotland.)

That's why i feel self-identification is usually sufficient. If there's something they're doing that is counter-productive or leading down a blind alley we can point to it and say specifically, "That thing is not worthy of a good philosopher because <reason>." Like, "Arguing over definitions is only useful when it's necessary toward some specific point, not as a general process (skepticism) which inherently leads to infinite regress or circularity... and a good philosopher wouldn't do that."

>[i]All[/i] the work. There's no other way for us to work, in fact. Unless we get our words right, our ideas will be confused and the pragmatic results will be almost certainly unfocused and perfidious.

Yes but. What are we trying to do by defining philosopher so specifically? I have no use for that specificity. There are words like Reality that Have to be determined for Anything to make sense, but philosopher isn't of that kind.

>>Pragmatically, a philosopher must be above some indistinct point of understanding to be relevant. They must have overcome nihilism, for example, and not be a True Naysayer like so many here as those are self-defeating ideas.[/quote]

>Hmmm...so Nihilists can't be philosophers? How about Sophists? Or Cynics? I think I see a problem developing with that. I know what you want to say, I think, but a lot of people are going to see those views as genuinely philosophical.

"to be relevant" For just the same reasons that Ayn Rand isn't relevant. Her philosophy is self-defeating, so however much a philosopher she is, and i'll grant her the title, she's a bad one. A philosophy that can only extend one generation (hers breaks as soon as the children of those who "earned" their wealth inherit it) can't be considered good philosophy, particularly when most philosophy strives to be universal, and when selfishness is actively denigrated by most of humanity.

In other words, to call someone a philosopher doesn't need to be particularly specific. The point is their ideas - are they worthy of review and/or acceptance? If someone who didn't claim to be a philosopher suddenly said something indicating their understanding of The Prime Metaphor, i'd have to call them a philosopher at minimum, and a good one if their idea is True, even if they don't recognize (or even if they deny it) themselves.

>>Committed to truth should be enough, n'est-ce pas? First you must admit there can be answers, then you have to figure out how to recognize them (epistemology), then what the basic ones are (metaphysics), and then add in contingencies (aesthetics (roughly salience), ethics (roughly priorities), politics (ethics + scale). [/quote]

>Okay, but you realize, of course, that's a lot of territory to cover while expecting that people should always find a way to "agree," right? That's why I suggest what you're looking for is a universal methodology, like [i]reason[/i], say, or[i] logic,[/i] to govern that whole package toward a common end. But you're also going to have to guarantee that all the participants in the philosophizing are approaching with the same basis of facts to plug into the method.

Bayesian reasoning seems to have it covered as a universal method that always converges. One of the first things required is to understand the relative values of evidence, and that'll get you right to the path marked out above. It's rooted in pragmatism which makes it acceptable to most people, and is inherently evidence-based, which makes it acceptable to any good thinker. As for the facts, i'd say that points to the contingencies; salience, perspective, and priority - perspective in particular, meaning information only available to an individual. The Bayesian Method also illustrates my point that intelligent people never actually disagree (when the contingencies are accounted for).

>It's not always so easy to guarantee that both basic facts and a discipline to the methodology are practiced by all the participants.

If they actually understand the discipline of approaching truth, and actually desire to approach truth, they'll either find the facts or they'll be able to figure out why their facts disagree.

Understanding logical fallacies, cognitive biases, and basic logic are a minimum for being a good thinker and aren't taught most people except as an elective in college (in the US). If you're lucky they'll be in an appendix in a math book in high school. :/

>>I do agree it's inevitable for truth-minded people to actually converge, Bayesian style, regardless of their priors.

>How, I wonder? We've still to guarantee both their facts and their methods, if that's to happen. And that doesn't seem to me inevitable.

We're actually Doomed! Philosophy is just one big thought experiment. There is no free will and there's nothing we can do to stop humanity being a virus that self-immolates when it uses up the universe it can reach.

But if there was something we could do, it would depend on our individual power and resources. This forum is about the limit of my power and resources. Can i have $1,000,000 to build a foundation for spreading good philosophy?

>>Math is descriptive of relationships of quantity, insofar as we treat things as separate in space/time. Logic is equally rational/precise by dealing with other relationships between other base ideas. (in fact math is a subset of logic) It seems to me that here you're elucidating the difference between valid and true, which i would compare and contrast with my idea of answer v solution.

>In a way, yes. I'm suggesting that its possible to get one's methodology correct, and still come out with BS at the end, if the basic facts (the assigned value of X) is wrong. The [i]method[/i] isn't the problem, in that case.

Any method worth it's salt has to account for that specifically to prevent BS from coming out the other end. There's always the possibility of facts being wrong, but there's always a tipping point of acceptance to aim toward. I just don't see that as a particularly meaningful objection. Even simple conscientious caring about truth is sufficient to find a progressive method and a way of validating information, and to work to iron out any kinks in said method.

My own journey was a) caring about justice b) understanding that truth is a prerequisite for justice c) understanding that being right isn't sufficient unless you understand Why you're right d) epistemology etc., as above

>>That kind of strict materialism must be rejected because morality is a real thing that does real work for everyone on a daily basis.

>I think we all intuit that. But philosophers always want us to justify that intuition, and they've got a point.

Meh. All the justifications for all the most logically necessary Truth are out there. Good philosophers try to narrow the field, not find justification for every idea they run across. That's Throwing Shit At The Wall To See What Sticks Method, and is terribly inefficient. To be progressive you've really got to start at the bottom and work your way up so that the justifications naturally fall into place. When i hear you say philosophers... justify... the word "flailing" comes immediately to mind.

If philosophy can't account for basic experience, it's useless. Basically, we are embodied beings that have two distinctive varieties of sensory experience, internal and external. Materialism Means that external experience, and Reality Means our correlated understanding of it. The "spiritual" IS our internal experience. Justification in this sense isn't a valid tool. How do you justify "that's just what the words mean"? This is also why my own contention is that i have a story - a set of understandings that Best answers everything, not that it's the only possible way to do so. Whether it's the best way can be verified by stacking it alongside any other method and see what good work it can do.

>Oh, I think Sam Harris is so messed up on that one he doesn't even know how many ways he's wrong. I do think that "oughts" exist, but not at all for the reasons Harris imagines. One can't even make his view make sense, really. I've been talking about this on another strand with KLewchuk, and I just explained it much more fully to him. You might be interested. It's on a thread called "Big Question 1."

I think SH is very misunderstood. Do you have a particular example of something you've heard him say that is technically incorrect? I've seen/heard a lot of him and i can't recall any. He's very cautious with his language to prevent misunderstandings. I also don't think he has the best explanation but it's logically perfect. IF (and to the extent) we agree that the greatest suffering for all sentient beings is "bad" and the reverse is "good", then it is objectively true that some acts and beliefs will inherently, and others strongly tend, toward one or the other. That's his argument in a nutshell.

>>If you're not a materialist at bottom you can't act effectively in the material world where you get material feedback.

>No, that's definitely not true. In fact, I would suggests the opposite, since a Materialist, by definition, has to rule out the existence of all metaphysical properties, such as meaning, morals and values as real-world entities. None of them are testable by Materialist means.

I call bullshit on your calling my bullshit bullshit. Intelligent people never really disagree, remember?!

When i say "materialist at bottom", i merely mean you accept that external reality actually exists as external reality, not merely as a mind-bound illusion. But even a strict materialist doesn't need to rule out the existence of anything, they merely have to frame it in material terms. Mind is a set of patterns in a brain. Love is a subset of mind, plus certain hormonal correlates. We can test these correlates materially.

>Maybe so. But there's the old correlational fallacy to mess us up. We can't say that just because there is a "material correlate" to something that the Materials are the comprehensive explanation or cause of that thing. The actual cause can be a [i]third [/i]thing, at the very least.

Metaphysically, every thing is a pattern with a purpose. If your purpose is biological, you use the biological metaphor Brain. If your purpose is experiential, you use the experiential metaphor Mind. If you're doing material things, use the material explanation, and so forth. There's no actual conflict if you understand the True nature of the relation between them. ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... y_X2Kbneo/ )

The whole problem of causes is deconstructed thusly: "Why did something happen?" is always either How? or "from what incentive and toward what desired outcome?" Both are actually empirical questions. And both importantly admit of a broad range of scale of analysis.

>Absolutely. Most people take their own ideas about "what is real" as certain. We have to, because how else are we going to feel good about making decisions? But sometimes we're not right...what we thought was the totality of "the real" wasn't all that exists; or what we thought was only part of "the real" turns out to be more generally useful than we first thought. So we need to be willing to question and rethink our basic assumptions about what's real, because they're not infallible.

We don't necessarily have to accept our ideas as real because we need to feel good about our decisions. We can also accept them as real because we can show a chain of evidence for them that has yet to be refuted. This is why i ground Real in consensus experience and Actual as that esoteric unknown. Reality can constantly expand as our instruments and logic expand. Truth can change, to us, as our perspective changes. These words have to be understood as mind-bound substitutes for the externally ineffable. You get to an important ethical point. Whatever our epistemology, it must include a way of checking itself, just like good government.

>Most people do behave [i]generally[/i] rationally. What I mean is not that they are all precise reasoners, but that they do tend to think they know what they're doing, and make their choices in the expectation of getting a quick and practical route to something they want. Few people will say, "Well, I know beyond a doubt that doing X will never get me to Y, but I'm going to keep doing X anyway. More likely, they don't really want Y at all, if they do that.

I concur. They don't yet know what they don't know because they haven't yet begun along the path to Truth - epistemology, critical thinking, the relative value of evidence. In a practical sense they're entirely justified because being a fucked up society means fucked up incentives and fucked up rules lead to "good" results. >:( As for understanding their own priorities, yeah.. That would solve a whole lot of problems all by itself, no matter how fucked up the incentives. At least if someone is doing something harmful for a specific reason you can address the specific reason.

>Thank you for your thoughts. I do take them very seriously. I think you're reasoning well, actually. And you do seem to have a good intuition for the BS stuff. This is a good conversation.

If a philosophy isn't grounded in logical necessity, what can it be grounded in? Whether or not that logic is flawed by way of premises, it can also be tested for validity of process, n'est-ce pas?

[Advocate]

>It is only because metaphysical problems are undecidable that the subject is difficult.

No metaphysical problems are undecidable, all metaphysical questions are answerable, all metaphysical questions have been answered. The general set of answers is cohesive, coherent, internally and externally consistent, logically necessary, and explains in detail all the reasons why all those points are necessarily true both from an evidentiary and an experiential perspective.

Name a metaphysical problem and i'll show you exactly how it can be solved, including what kind of thing a solution must be.

The truth wishes not to be believed but to be tested.

[Skepdick]

I don't understand why you cannot find an argument but just shout at me. Why not quote a philosopher who agrees with you. or give me an example of a decidable metaphysical question? Have you even thought about what I'm saying? It's not even slightly contentious.

I did ALL of the above things!

1. I quoted a philosopher that agrees with me. I quoted you! Are you not a philosopher?
2. I gave you a bunch of examples of metaphysical questions that YOU decided upon.

Are you insisting that you didn't decide?

My view is orthodox. Nobody has ever come close to falsifying it.

That is literally what I did in my previous post. I'll continue doing in in this post.

It is only because metaphysical problems are undecidable that the subject is difficult.

Look. You are doing it again!

You are deciding that metaphysical problems are undecidable.

"Are metaphysical problems undecidable?" is a metaphysical problem!

You are answering it in the affirmative! e.g you are deciding that metaphysical problems are undecidable!

I feel you should read one or more of Kant, Hegel, Chalmers, Russell, Nagarjuna, Bradley, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Plato, Locke, Hume or indeed anyone who has written about metaphysics.

I feel like you should stop paying attention to the writings of dead people and focus on what's right in front of you.

There's zero clarity to be attained from any text whose author is unable to elaborate their meaning in different words upon request. You are forever stuck guessing without the opportunity to verify/falsify your inferred meaning against the original source.

Books are a simplex communication channel.
Dialogues are a half-duplex communication channel.

I assume you understand the difference?
I also assume you understand why correcting your own (mis)understanding of another person's words is ONLY possible over a duplex communication channel with the original source.

I can assure you that it is well-proven that all metaph6ysical questions are undecidable.

Q.E.D you are defeating your own thesis! A proof is EXACTLY the same thing as a decision-procedure.

To "prove" that something is "true" is to effectively decide that something is the case.

"Are metaphysical questions undecidable?" is a metaphysical question!

YOU have decided that the answer is "yes"

HOW have you done this if metaphysical questions are "undecidable"?

If it weren't the case mysticism would have to be nonsense and there would be no way to explain why so many people cannot make sense of metaphysics.

"Have I made sense of metaphysics?" is a metaphysical question!

YOU have decided that the answer is "yes".

HOW have you done this if metaphysical questions are "undecidable"?

I'm torn between trying to put you right or just going away. I''ll see how it goes. I'd suggest you try to understand what I'm saying.

Metaphysically, I have decided that I understand what it means to understand.

I do understand what you are saying.

That is why I am effectively demonstrating that the undecidability of metaphysical questions is impossible to be true.

Because you and I are constantly making metaphysical decisions!

[Skepdick]

I don't understand why you cannot find an argument...

This is actually hilarious.

Arguments themselves are metaphysical artefacts! What else could they be?

To be persuaded by an argument, any argument, is to decide that a metaphysical object has the property of "persuasiveness" (whatever that is).

So at the very least (and according to you) "persuasiveness" is metaphysically decidable!

In being persuaded by Kant's argument you immediately proved that Kant is wrong.

[PeteJ]

I don't understand why you cannot find an argument but just shout at me. Why not quote a philosopher who agrees with you. or give me an example of a decidable metaphysical question? Have you even thought about what I'm saying? It's not even slightly contentious.

I did ALL of the above things!

1. I quoted a philosopher that agrees with me. I quoted you! Are you not a philosopher?
2. I gave you a bunch of examples of metaphysical questions that YOU decided upon.

Are you insisting that you didn't decide?

I didn't notice this. Are you mixing me up with someone else. It's easy to do.

I have no idea what you mean by saying you 'quoted me'. By 'philosopher' I meant well respected philosopher.

You did not give me a bunch of questions that I decided on. I have no idea what you're talking about here.

This is all a little weird.

I see that you approach metaphysics in a manner which makes no sense to me. For me it is a science of logic. For you it seems to be a muddle of conjectures and opinions. I suggest we both politely escape from thjs discussion with no further ado.

[Skepdick]

I have no idea what you mean by saying you 'quoted me'. By 'philosopher' I meant well respected philosopher.

I respect you sufficiently enough to include you in the category of "well respected philosophers". This is me practicing the principle of charity - nothing more, nothing less.

Do you object?

You did not give me a bunch of questions that I decided on.

The questions were implicit!

Implicit Question: Is metaphysics undecidable?
Your explicit answer: Yes.

^^^ That is a decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_problem

This is all a little weird.

It's certainly unorthodox, so it would be weird!

It's also a good thing! Because another way to think about "new information" is precisely a measure of surprise!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_( ... on_theory)

[Veritas Aequitas]

All Philosophers [as generally defined] would agree;

• "All humans are mortal."

All Western Philosophers will agree with;

• All humans are mortal.
  Socrates is human.
  Hence, Socrates is mortal.