And how exactly does the fallacy of division apply to Matt's argument?

Why isn't Bartricks correct that Matt didn't commit any error?

Thanks for replying!

Superman is in the category of people who Lois believes can fly.

Clark Kent isn't.

Therefore, Clark Kent isn't Superman.

Thanks! Are these two tests commonly performed in logic?

Would every logician agree that these tests are solid ones to perform, or would there be any contention on that?

Before I give up on this particular forum and try /r/askphilosophy, can you suggest the best user on this forum for philsci issues, just in case I find some good help on here? I would hugely appreciate it, and I apologize for bringing up stuff that's so particular to philsci and that requires some expertise in that domain.

Can you elaborate on what exactly Dillahunty gets wrong about logic in the video that I linked above?

I don't know how I could possibly repay you for showing me this; it's an enormous help you're giving me, and I don't know how to return the help! Just let me know any way I can make it up to you!

I'm very ignorant about logic, but I know that Dillahunty (and others) don't seem to interact much with the professionals, and so I always wonder if they're pushing bad logic or bad philosophy.

My point is simply that I'm not going to express a view on philsci stuff (e.g., whether it's weird that science doesn't depend on falsifiability or whatever), until I know what scholars are putting forward on the topic.

Actually, this applies to free will. Compatibilism sounds like a weird thing to me; if libertarian free will is out the window, then why use the term "free will" to refer to some non-libertarian conception? Seems weird. But I'm not going to run my mouth on that till I've seen the compatibilist literature and until I at least know what they're arguing; they may have great points.

Thanks! This is interesting. Curious to see what the other users in this thread think of your breakdown!

Can you explain the two tests that you performed?

What if you say that you like ALL fruit, I mean, and not tomatoes, and then find out that tomatoes are fruit.

I guess that we need to know exactly what argument Matt was presenting. Right? Or else we can't evaluate if it's logically solid or not logically solid.

What if you say you like fruit, but then say that you don't like tomatoes, and then conclude that a tomato isn't a fruit? A tomato is in fact a fruit, apparently.

That's a good point. How do you think that the first premise could be more clearly stated?

Just to be clear, I'm not out to get Matt Dillahunty or anything. I genuinely just want to know the truth of the matter.

So does P1 fail or does it not? If it fails, why? If not, why not?

If P1/P2 are correct in what you laid out, then does C follow? If not, doesn't there need to be some error of logic?

And if P3/P4 are correct in what you laid out, then does C follow? If not, doesn't there need to be some error of logic?

Are you familiar with the philsci literature on these issues? I agree that it sounds weird. I would've thought otherwise. But I'm not a philsci scholar, so my intuitions aren't worth anything. Certainly not unless I at the very least know what the literature in that field has to say about that field.

Thanks. Just a final clarification: Would you guess that most people on this forum happen to have a degree in philosophy? Not that that matters in itself, but it may correlate with knowing a lot.

Thanks. Would I better off to try /r/askphilosophy? There seem to be some fairly expert people on there.

To be fair, some of this stuff might be well within the reach of a university-student who knows philsci.

If falsifiability really went out of relevance decades ago in philsci, then you don't need to be plugged-in to the cutting-edge philsci-research to be able to talk about that error.

I'm in the process of trying to reach various experts, but I wonder if there's at least one person on this website who might fit the bill.

They don't have to be a leading scholar themselves, but they need to know what the opinions of leading scholars are.

Do you know people on this website who might be really expert on philsci (or logic, ethics, epistemology) who might be able to help me out with this thread?

Do trained expert philosophers (or people who know the views of trained expert philosophers) hang out on this website?

If I ask about what "philosophers" think, then it's going to include a truckload of opinions that are totally worthless to me: people who have contributed nothing to any field, people who are religious apologists, and so on.

I'm talking about a specific subset of philosophers.

I apologize for the confusion. I want opinions from serious people.

"Philosopher" is ridiculously broad. William Lane Craig is a philosopher. But he's not a leading/serious/influential scholar in epistemology.

I would imagine that there are 1000s of religious apologists who would count as "philosophers", including Craig and 1000s of others.

"Philosopher" is way too broad. That's why I've always specified that I'm talking about serious/leading/influential philosophers in particular fields of philosophy.

People who publish peer-reviewed papers. People whose papers get cited. People who are well-regarded in their field.

Here's an example of the type of world that I'm interested in:

https://philpapers.org/rec/BENTIG

Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable rationalists to begin to meet the challenge of supplying a theoretically satisfying treatment of their favoured epistemic source. It is argued, first, that intuitions and perceptual experiences are at a certain level of abstraction the same type of mental state, presentations, which are distinct from beliefs, hunches, inclinations, attractions, and seemings. The notion of a presentation is given a positive explication, which identifies its characteristic features, accounts for several of its substantive psychological roles, and systematically locates it in a threefold division among types of contentful states. Subsequently, it is argued that presentations, intuitive no less than sensory, are by their nature poised to play a distinctive epistemic role. Specifically, in the case of intuition, we encounter an intellectual state that is so structured as to provide justification without requiring justification in turn—something which may, thus, be thought of as ‘given’

I apologize. I wasn't angry, and I put a happy-face emoji in order to try to indicate my emotions; I apologize if it came across as angry nonetheless. I wasn't angry. :)

To give an example of the kind of world that I'm interested in, this is the type/kind/sort of expert who is the type of person whose opinion I would be interested in:

https://philosophy.wisc.edu/staff/bengson-john/

Professor Bengson’s research interests span practical and theoretical philosophy. He has written on a variety of topics, including intuition, perceptual experience, understanding, know-how, skill, intelligence and intelligent action, moral knowledge, constitution and constitutive explanation, and philosophical progress.

He is is co-editor of Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action (OUP, 2011/2014) and is currently completing three co-authored books, one on methodology (Philosophical Methodology: From Data to Theory, exp. fall 2020) and two in metaethics (The Moral Universe exp. 2022; Grasping Morality, exp. 2022).

Recent journal articles include “Trusting Moral Intuitions” (Noûs, 2020), “Method in the Service of Progress” (Analytic Philosophy, 2018), “The Unity of Understanding” (in Making Sense of the World, OUP, 2017), and “Practical Perception and Intelligent Action” (Philosophical Issues, 2016).

I don't care about "philosophers".

I've never once in this thread asked about "philosophers".

For example, this person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lane_Craig) is presumably a "philosopher", but I have zero interest in his take because he's not a leading/serious scholar that publishes well-regarded peer-reviewed papers or influential peer-reviewed papers.

I don't take religious apologists seriously. I'm asking about serious philsci-experts, serious logicians, etc.

I think we're talking past each other here. I'm trying to be serious.

I want to know if philsci-experts would say that anything in what I linked in my post is misinformed, or uninformed, or incorrect. It's called "bad philosophy". There's a subreddit dedicated to talking about how "bad philosophy" is promulgated: https://www.reddit.com/r/badphilosophy/.

It could be logical errors, or any kind of error you can imagine. I want an assessment from serious people of what they think about stuff.

The pope is not a serious scholar of epistemology, and I don't have time to waste on silly jokes, so I can only respond to serious philosophy-related stuff. I won't respond to silly stuff. It's a funny joke, and I don't mind humor, but I want to keep this thread on topic. I do appreciate the humor, though, so I'm not trying to be rude. :)

Try to give me a chance to fix typos, too, before you respond.

By "error", I don't mean anything technical. I simply mean: "Not knowing what you're talking about."

Suppose someone says that science relies on falsifiability in order to operate and in order to make progress, and then a philsci expert says: "Actually, falsifiability has not been relevant in our field (philsci) for decades." That would be an error, since the person is saying something that scholars would consider incorrect and that scholars would say (in this case) represents old thinking that went out of date decades ago.

So it's really just: "Things that leading/prominent/serious scholars in the field would consider misinformed or uninformed or incorrect."

Does any serious/leading scholar of epistemology challenge the notion that nonbelief (in supernatural/religious claims) is rational? I would love to read their argument, if so. I don't imagine that that's controversial.

The word "atheism" is extremely loaded, so I avoid it. I only care about whether nonbelief is rational. "Atheism" is a nightmare of a term, since it might imply an assertion about God not existing or some such thing. I try to avoid that term at all costs, to avoid massive confusions.

I just mean philosophy of science.

Thanks for replying!

1: I apologize for any vagueness. It's annoying to simply ask philsci (and other) experts to weigh in on this material, since it takes hours to try to watch all of these videos. It would be great if (e.g.) Dillahunty (or other hosts) simply had a book/paper that could be sent to experts to review, but instead the content is spread across all of these lengthy videos, so it's a lot of work to find out what their views on philsci (or other topics) even are.

2: I did link to various things in my post, though, so those could be commented on. There are "ten bullet-points" and also two YouTube-videos. I would be curious to know what people think about those things.

3: Falsifiability is a big one. Dillahunty talks in the two videos that I linked about how science uses falsifiability, but one of the "ten bullet-points" that I linked to mentions that falsifiability is not actually relevant to philsci. And that's an interesting idea, since laypeople would imagine that falsifiability is crucial to science, so if it isn't then experts (on philsci) might clarify why it's not crucial and why science is able to function without it.

By the way, I sincerely apologize for allowing myself to get knocked off course. I shouldn't have mentioned anything irrelevant to the issues raised in my post.

I came to this forum to stay on-topic about philosophy. It's my fault, though, for letting myself get distracted. I will try to be much more disciplined about the specific issues at hand.

Thanks for responding. I want to clarify something absolutely crucial.

I would imagine:

--nonbelief (in supernatural/religious claims) is not remotely controversial among leading scholars of epistemology

--serious scholars will not challenge "atheist" commentators on the issue of whether nonbelief is rational

--nonbelief is fully rational based on the most rigorous thinking in epistemology

--"atheist" commentators probably make all sorts of philosophical mistakes, despite being correct in their conclusion that nonbelief is rational

I just want to clarify a couple points, since there seems to be some extreme confusion here.

First, I'm a nonbeliever. I don't accept any supernatural claims, and I don't believe in God, and I'm not religious, and I don't accept any religious claims.

Second, I'm suspicious that "atheist" content has philosophical errors in it, but you're right that I have no idea if there are errors.

Third, I started this thread in order to find out if there are errors, so the very purpose of this thread is to find out (from knowledgeable people) if there are any errors. It's an investigation.

Fourth, I need to stick to the topic of this thread: whether there is or isn't any bad philosophy being spread. I can't be distracted by irrelevant stuff like what I personally believe about religion (irrelevant) or whether I think Matt is rude (irrelevant). This is a philosophy-forum.

I'm just interested in the questions that I asked in the post about whether there's any bad philosophy being spread.

I think Matt is annoying. Some of the other "atheist" hosts are super-nice, actually. But all of this is extremely irrelevant, and I probably shouldn't have even answered the question because it's a distraction from the purpose of this thread.

So I'll just stay away from random gossip/distractions and stick to the topic from now on.

And just to be clear, a lot of the hosts are really nice, and they might well be spreading errors as well, so it's not all about Matt and it's not all about the one host who happens to be impolite.

I don't like him as a person, but that has nothing to do with whether he's right or wrong about philosophy. He can be very obnoxious (just watch literally any of his YT videos and you'll see exactly what I mean; he hangs up on people and stuff), but that has zero to do with whether he's spreading bad philosophy or not.

Obnoxious people can be correct. And polite/nice/personable people can be wrong. So these are different questions.

If there are no major errors in his substantive material, then that's fantastic. That's what's at issue here: Is his substantive material solid or not?

If it's solid, then that's a really good thing. The bad thing would be if there were bad philosophy being spread (and being spread with a polemical confidence, too, which would just add insult to injury, since he would not only be spreading bad philosophy but also doing so in an extremely obnoxious way).

Thanks. I'm just pushing this idea as a potential fact: "the religious people are way off-base and Dillahunty also commits major errors when he wades into the pools of phil and philsci and logic and epistemology".

I just want to make that clear, since it's a false choice to say that either Matt is solid or his religious interlocutors are solid; they could both be wrong about various things in philosophy.

You raise a good point: "Whose assessment of Dillahunty would be useful?"

The first step would be to have some critical academics vet the stuff, whoever they are.

Another key point is that we all have some sense of which academics in a given field (a) publish peer-reviewed articles and (b) are highly regarded by their peers and (c) are having an influence in their field by being cited a lot by their peers. True, there's no objective way to know whose assessment is useful, but we all have a sense for who the first-rate scholars in a field are. The fact that they're first-rate doesn't make them correct, but it makes it interesting to see what they have to say about the philosophy that you're putting out to the world.

There seems to be a potential major error here. If not, I apologize. But why assume that the options are (1) "Dillahunty is solid in the stuff that he says about phil and philsci and logic and epistemology" or (2) "God is true and empiricism is not a sound epistemological approach"?

I'm skeptical about both (1) and (2). My third option would be: (3) "the religious people are way off-base and Dillahunty also commits major errors when he wades into the pools of phil and philsci and logic and epistemology".

Ethics is another area Dillahunty talks about, and on that topic he cites Sam Harris, who is arguably one of the most pilloried pop-philosophers in the entire world, as you can find out by searching his name on philosophy-forums.

When you mention the "commonly cited" textbook, is that something that Dillahunty cites? Or is it just commonly cited in general by...by whom? Thanks!

Thanks for getting back to me! I appreciate the fantastic response!

I know that Dillahunty is not an academic or anything, but I'm curious about whether he pushes bad philosophy ever, and if so if it's irresponsible for him to do so.

The piece cited in my post draws an analogy to biology. If there was a biology show "Biology Explorations with Matt Dillahunty!" and then he never brought on biologists to check whether the stuff that he was putting out there was solid, then you might consider that sketchy. For some reason, I guess, philosophy isn't considered the same as biology, since Dillahunty has no problem talking about philosophy without having any philosophers check whether his philosophy commentaries are solid. I wonder what the difference between biology and philosophy are. Or maybe the piece isn't even correct; maybe it would be perfectly OK to have a biology show for the public that didn't ever bring biologists on to "vet" things. But if that wouldn't be OK for biology, then why is it OK for philosophy?

I guess I should've been more clear in my post. Because there are two questions. First is whether the bullet points that are related to philsci are good points (and what you guys make of those points). Second is whether those points undermine any of the philsci-related stuff that Dillahunty talks about (this requires you to know what Dillahunty says about philsci). So there are two separate questions here. Not sure if my post was sufficiently clear about that.

I also linked to two videos. And I get that citing videos is brutal because they take a while to watch. But I wonder if just dipping into those videos you guys would find that those videos are solid, or whether there's any bad philosophy ("bad philsci") being pushed in those videos.