Hello Mww,

Einstein used mathematics to prove if there is a stationary clock here and a moving clock there, there must be a change relative only to the clocks but not as an experience of the subject, who only experiences the verification of the mathematical logic but not the relativity of the clock’s times to each other, which is a function of Nature alone without any regard whatsoever for principles of human reason.

But wouldn’t Einstein’s argument also be explained metaphysically as:

Kant understood perfectly well if there was a clock here and a clock there, one moved and the other didn’t, there must be the experience of change in a perceiving subject, the change relative to the clocks themselves utterly irrelevant except as the representation of an internal logical human principle.

It seems like they are incompatible views, but Einstein’s empirically verified views can be reconciled with Kantianism insofar as one denies Einstein’s metaphysical views.

Furthermore, upon the successful exhibition of that which was formally only mathematical logic, makes necessary actual real things, which again removes the thing-in-itself objection, re: Hafele–Keating, 1971.

I didn’t understand this part: could you please elaborate?

Representations are somewhat accurate….yes, but only of the sensations evoked in us of a thing, not a thing-in-itself

I have a hard time parsing this, as the sensations are supposed to be the raw input of things-in-themselves, so are you saying that after the things-in-themselves have conformed to our sensibility we have accurate representions of that?

I figured you’d glean from “the properties of real things is fathomed” presupposes those properties, which makes explicit that which fathoms cannot be the source of that which is fathomed.

Yeah, I mean I think kantianism operates implicitly under the assumption that causality is not merely the pure forms of our intuition: otherwise, I don’t know why a Kantian would even think that they are “fathoming” properties of a thing-in-itself, which has “impacted” their senses in a manner that resulted in a process of interpretation (i.e., creation of a representation). This is one thing I think Schopenhauer got right: (physical) causality only pertains to the representations, and so there is absolutely no reason to believe that things-in-themselves are impressing upon our senses.

What….I can’t free-wheel with language, just a little? Nature doesn’t technically “show” me anything, but when things make their presence perceivable to me, are they not shown to me?

But isn’t ‘nature’ the totality of the ‘things-in-themselves’, which you equally claim you know nothing about?

And why should Nature be an incomprehensible nothing? If I can think a conceivable representation then it is necessarily something, and it being a conception that doesn’t immediately contradict any other conception it must be comprehensible. Right?

Only if by ‘nature’ your claims are restricted to the possibility of experience, and not universally valid (I guess).

Sorry for the dialectical delay.

Absolutely no worries! I appreciate our conversations, and would much rather have a substantive response that takes a while than a quick superficial one!

Hello Chiknsld,

Hi Bob, morality is personal. Ethics apply to everyone.

I disagree with this ‘morality’ vs. ‘ethics’ distinction exactly because of this:

No Bob, you cannot turn personal morals into laws, that would be unethical.

To me, this is a semantic move to justify your own morals and while invalidating other peoples’ morals; for you in order to ban morals from laws (which is a political move), then one must invoke the moral judgment that one should not invoke moral judgments in legalities—which is clearly, when put that way, self-undermining.

In other words, I don’t think your argument can respond to “why should I not invoke morals into laws” without invoking a moral judgment.

Your natural rights come from your physical existence which persists and also precedes your cognition

I didn’t understand this: could you elaborate? Perhaps give an example of a ‘natural right’ that is derived from one’s ‘physical existence’ that ‘precedes’ one’s ‘cognition’.

Social convention does not override the natural given rights of the individual as social convention is merely a subset of the natural given right of every individual.

How, under your view, are natural rights not a subset of social conventions? What properties do they have that make them precede social conventions?

Hello Philosophim,

Yes, and I disagreed with your interpretation, and noted looking to the Gettier argument's idea of truth gives the normative view of truth.

Gettier arguments don’t demonstrate your theory of truth: it is compatible with both of ours. Gettier was demonstrating the faultiness of justification in relation to truth. I can say that, in any Gettier argument, that the justification failing to prove the truth is because the justification for the claim corresponding to reality was insufficient for demonstrating that it actually does.

And I think the only thing I can spot is that you want to say truth is not material reality, which I will get to later.

Although I know you think it is the crux of our conversation and I will continue to converse about it, I want to disclaim again that our metaphysical differences (with respect to ontology) are irrelevant. Correspondence theories are compatible with metaphysical theories that posit a material world (beyond our conscious experience). As a matter of fact, typically it is viewed that idealists cannot hold correspondence theories; and my only point here is that our conversation about whether a material, mind-independent object exists does not matter for the conversation about truth, no different than how morality doesn’t matter either.

The idea that truth is redundant with reality and therefore should have its definition changed is an opinion.

It is less parsimonious, incoherent with respect to the basic norms of semantics, and the terms are not merely synonyms (under your view)(as a synonym can be a word which is not equivalent to another word but can be exchange loosely for it).

This is the general understanding of truth as referred to in JTB. Truth is true irrelevant of your justification, or correlation to it.

Again, yours is not referenced in JTB. Secondly, I agree that truth is not contingent on our justification for it: I never claimed that.

What is true does not care about our opinion or observations

That’s false. It is true that I saw an orange ball today, but not that an orange ball exists outside of observation, as color does not exist as a property of the ball in reality (even under your view). So I disagree that it is not contingent upon observations (in a holistic sense): like you even said, truth encompasses observations, but you would be excluding it if you said it if it was independent of observation. If by this you just mean that you either observed X or you didn’t, and that isn’t contingent on you opinion of the matter, then I totally agree.

For myself, I have not seen a compelling case in removing the word truth as something which exists independently of subjects.

Saying that is exists dependent on subjects (to some extent) does not mean that it is contingent on our opinions. Either the claim corresponded to reality or it didn’t: independent of our opinions on the matter (i.e., other claims we make about it).

The expression of grammar in language is not an argument

You are making a false analogy between language and (my definition of) truth. You saying that my argument for truth is no different than arguing that objects corresponding to words are subjective because the word is subjective—which is obviously false. They are not analogous. The word references something which is not dependent on a subject; but ‘true’ references a thought and an object and compares them.

That’s why I said “its” is referring to a thought, and it makes no sense to say “its true <...>” if that is taken away. I am not merely saying that describing things makes no sense without words. To make it analogous to your language example, it would have to be an analysis of a word and whether it corresponds to the said object (in the sense that the word actually semantically references it). This ‘word-to-object comparison’ would be contingent on the word (and thusly the subject) and the object, just like truth.

I think its absolutely the crux, because I can see no other reason why you would argue for the notion of truth in such a way. There is zero gained utility in it beyond minor personal preference, unless you have issue with the general idea of "things in themselves".

I’ve already explained the benefits: it is more parsimonious and captures what we mean (implicitly) by truth better. We only say something ‘is true’ when relating a thought to something in reality, such that it corresponds: to use your definition (with consistency) one would have to come up with a different way of expressing it with language, which I think just counts in favor of my definition being better suited for colloquial settings.

Lets say that I'm walking along a road and I see a pole with a flat board and some lines on it that look like writing. We both agree this is real. I point to "it". I say, "That". Does "that" exist even if I haven't seen it? Yes.

This is too vague. For example, I take it that you agree that color is not objective, in the sense that the object does not contain the property of color which we attribute to it (e.g., I see a red ball, but that ball isn’t red: it is reflected a wavelength that my eye interprets as red). Imagine the pole is red, and you point it out with “that” and ask “is ‘that’ real despite my conscious experience of it?”. Well, no, the redness is not a property of the “that” in reality. Now, imagine extending that for all qualitative properties, which is all conscious experience, of the objects. E.g., does ‘that’, as a tangible pole, exist despite me consciously experiencing it? Well, if we grant (which I know you won’t) that it is analogous to color, then no. Does it not exist at all beyond our conscious experience of it: no, I would say the information about it is accurate enough: it just isn’t ontologically a tangible, red pole.

This insistence that there cannot be a tree in a forest if no one is around only has teeth as a grammatical note

I am not sure why this would be true. I am not arguing that a tree doesn’t fall (literally as a material object) beyond conscious experience because language is dependent on subjects: that’s a horrible argument.

there's still that thing in itself that we would have called a tree falling in what we would have called a forest.

But the thing-in-itself does not have to literally fall to still objectively exist, no different than color doesn’t have to literally be a property of the thing-in-itself.

No one ever said reality had to be a material world. Reality and truth are simply what is.

I never said it did, and this is why I didn’t find it relevant for us to get into our metaphysical differences. My theory of truth is independent of my idealism. As a matter of fact, I developed it when I was still a physicalist.

we've solved none of the problems we still have with knowledge.

Although we can get into trying to tackle gettier problems, and such, I never was claiming that my theory of truth (nor yours) solves them. One’s theory of truth is a prerequisite for their theory of knowledge: not vice-versa.

Hello Philosophim,

You seem to think that your definition ‘truth’ is predominant in society and that mine is not; but they are both aspects of the standard colloquial notion of truth. I already shared the definitions as per the Webster dictionary, and, as one more, a simple Google search (which gives colloquial definitions at the top) defined ‘truth’ as ‘that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality’ in the second definition. So I don’t see how you can rightly claim that my definition is not circling around in the colloquial ecosystem as a predominant notion. Thusly, when you keep saying things like:

This is a normative notion of truth that will be accepted by the majority of the people.
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That's not a reason to change the identify of truth as "what is".
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Did you say anything above that couldn't just be resolved to the normative notion I put forward?

You are just presupposing one of the things under contention.

I also would like to point out that your use of ‘subjective’ truth is absolutely not the common notion of that term. People tend to mean by ‘subjective truth’ that it is relative to the subject, or a whimsical opinion, and not ‘the experience of a subject’ which is also ‘objective true’. I agree, though, that people use ‘objective truth’ in the sense of something independent of opinion, factual, or independent of desires, thoughts, etc.

Nevertheless, I don’t think that we should strictly always use colloquial definitions for the sake of keeping it immediately comprehensible for the public; for there are a lot of situations where the terms need to be technical to encapsulate its entire refined conceptual meaning. So, even if ‘truth’ was predominantly viewed as ‘what is’ in society, I have already elaborated on why this definition is insufficient—some of which you passed over as ‘minor quibble’:

1. Is redundant with the term ‘reality’
2. Does not completely capture its colloquial usage (e.g., saying “bob’s claim is true” makes less sense if ‘truth’ is ‘reality’, as it is implying that it is true in virtue of the fact that bob’s claim corresponds with reality—but ‘true’ no longer relates to correspondence under your definition). — Bob Ross

I don't think you made a strong enough case for me to agree with these. I can definitely see some agreeing with you, but not the majority. But this is a minor quibble.

Both of those, taking in conjunction, offer ample evidence that, if true, your definition is insufficient; so I don’t think you can just skip over those two: please demonstrate the falsity or why they are irrelevant/insignificant to our discussion.

I can say, "Its true that the universe would exist without me."
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"Its true that there are things existent outside of our thoughts".

“Its” refers to a claim, and so this sentence makes no sense without it. So I don’t think you have provided examples here of an expression of something that is true which is not being related to thought (implicitly or explicitly).

. Lets look at the notion of noting that the descriptor of true and false would not need to exist if there were no beings that. Why is that special for truth?

I never said it was special. The difference, however, between words and truth is that the former is only contingent on subjects.

Your notion is just describing that we create identities, and without people to create identities, identities wouldn't exist.

No, I am not saying that truth is equivalent nor analogous to language. I am saying that the thought corresponding to what it references about reality is what it means for something to be ‘true’, and not that we create identities; but, of course, a ‘thought’ is a ‘created identity’ (in your terminology), and so if ‘truth’ is defined with any contingency on ‘thought’, then, naturally, it is to some extent contingent on the subject (which I have already noted).

There is subjective truth, my experience, and objective truth, that which is outside of my experience. Its simple, coherent, and everyone understands it

Couple things to note:

1. I didn’t say simplicity is an objective epistemic norm: I said parsimony, which is very different.
2. Both of our definitions are coherent; so I am not following that part of your claim (that it is somehow in your favor with that regard).
3. With words, sticking to common language is ideal, so prima facie this does count (sort of) in favor of your view. But I think my is also very aligned with the common notion.

4. The common notion of truth is incomplete and vague; so it is not most parsimonious to stick with it, albeit simpler. I think mine is perfectly parsimonious for accounting for what ‘truth’ is (i.e., I don’t think it posits entities without necessity). However, yours does posit an extraneous entity: the definition is redundant with the definition of ‘reality’.

this is a simple observation that without subjects, identities created by subjects don't exist

No. The point was that the correspondence theory applies to everything, including what pertains to subjective operations in reality. There is no ‘subjective’ vs. ‘objective’ truth distinction under my view, because I don’t think it makes sense. The subjective truth as “my experience” is subsumed under absolute truth and is no different, in its nature as ‘truth’, as this objective truth that you mentioned (viz., reality doesn’t care about my thoughts about my thoughts, which also fits your definition of ‘objective truth’ but since it is just about my thoughts it is also ‘subjective’ truth—and now we have even more redundancies and unnecessary turbidity). Positing them both makes it sound like there are two natures to truth, or types of truth: which is false. There is only one truth.

We may have to, as I think this is the crux.

I think it is completely irrelevant, as it simply depicts our metaphysical differences (which we are both aware of at this point) that do not affect in any way our definitions of truth. However, with that being said, I am more than happy to dive into this if you would like (if you believe it would help)!

Identities are our representations of what is real so we can understand them. What is real does not cease to exist just because our identities do.

Correct. I agree.

A tree is a combination of matter and energy.

A tree, as a tangible object, is the representation; and not the thing-in-itself. So I disagree here (assuming you mean that reality herself contains such a tangible tree).

Whether we're there to observe and identity it or not, that matter and energy exists, and has a state change.

The information about the tree falling is independent of conscious experience of it; but not the material (i.e., tangible object) falling of the tree to the material ground.

I can say this using normative language, and its clear for everyone to understand. You note that reality exists apart from subjects. Aren't we essentially saying the same thing, but I'm able to do so more efficiently?

Saying the same thing about ‘truth’? No. About reality being independent of our observance: yes. About reality as a material world being independent of our observance: no.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello RogueAI,

You think a zygote has the same moral status as a thirty year old woman? They're both equally persons?

It depends on what you are exactly meaning by ‘moral status’, but based off of your example, I would say no. They can have different moral consideration in different contexts while both remaining persons.

Suppose fire breaks out at a fertility clinic where a million fertilized eggs are stored and an orphanage with ten kids present. Where do you send the town's only fire truck?

I would absolutely send it to the orphanage, because (1) I have to choose which to save, (2) the kids are significantly more developed conscious beings than the fertilized eggs, and (3) I am presuming that there is no culpability worthy of any consideration in this case (since most young kids we don’t blame as much for the same mistakes and I doubt any of them are arsonists).

I doubt very much you would prioritize the fertility clinic over the orphanage, so isn't that suggestive that fertilized eggs are not people?

Not at all. Two beings can be persons and one can be prioritized, within a context, over the other. Being a person does not mean that they have an absolute right to their life.

For example, if I have to choose between saving my mother from an active shooter or a stranger: I am 100% of the time picking my mother because she is my mother. The stranger and my mother are both persons, but I don’t, in that situation, have to treat them 100% equally (i.e., I don’t have to just save the person that is closest, to be fair or something).

But the NIH has an article that says it's not clear at all.

You are confusing academic articles with academic consensus. The consensus is that it is bad: period. But there are, of course, always students, undergrads, grads, and professionals diving in deeper and posting articles on different views that contend the consensus. One should not believe an article of contention over the consensus.

If it were the consensus, then would you really anticipate that the CDC would say that there is absolutely no safe limit to drink while pregnant?

Hello 180 Proof,

If X deprived of Y, then do Z in order to restore X by mitigating Y

To me, whether it is expressing something subjective is if the hypothetical is an operation of the mind as opposed to something mind-independent. So, for me, even if that were hardwired into our biology (which I don’t think is true for all people) it would be contingent on one’s mind since I hold that biological operations are mind-operations (metaphysically). For your view, as I noted before, if you hold that this hypothetical is a product of mind-independent operations that governs our actions (as a mind), then it would be a categorical imperative: not hypothetical. In other words, the hypothetical, holistically, is a categorical imperative (viz., the hypothetical is deployed as some function of our mind independent processes).

Whether or not one chooses to do a moral, or right, action (i.e. a hypothetical imperative to reduce harm) is no more "subjective" than whether or not one chooses to solve a mathematical equation because both are, I argue contra the OP, equally objective operations.

If by this you are referring to the above hypothetical as an actually ingrained judgment which mind-independently governs us, then I agree that it would be objective. However, for me, since I am an idealist, I hold that we do many things which are subjective (mind-dependent) but not within “our” (as the ego) control in any meaningful sense of the term: minds, for me, operate in very consistent and regular ways: its just higher-order aspects (like the ego, our facutly of reason, etc.) that tend to operate quite whimsically or in a manner that ‘we’ (as the ego) feel we are in control of.

Does the following change your mind at all about alcohol and pregnancy?

No. It is very clear that drinking is always bad for the child, and the CDC clearly reflects that: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/fasd/alcohol-use.html#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20known%20safe,exposed%20to%20alcohol%20before%20birth.

People, academically, can investigate it further and right articles on it and perhaps overturn the current consensus later on, which is totally fine; but, right now, as it stands, alcohol is bad for children in the womb.

Also, do you think that a fetus in the first month of development is a person?

Before and on week 4, I do not have any means, by my lights, to determine any autonomous (or partially autonomous) movements of the embryo, but that doesn't entail it is not a person yet (just that we cannot detect it). I would say, from a standpoint of prudence, that conception be taken as the indicator of life (which I tie with personhood) and so I consider the developing human a life and person from conception, although it may not be prior to the 4th week.

Hello chiknsld,

Most assuredly it would be unethical but I draw a strong line between ethics and morality.

We just have very different definitions of ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’, which is totally fine. For me, I use them interchangeably as the study of, generally speaking, what we ought to do (although, yes, epistemic norms are technically different but subsumed under this definition).

I don’t think of ethics as fundamentally community focused, I view the community as driven by one’s morals and the morals that socially evolves over time (which, of course, can be very community focused).

History shows us the value of civil disobedience but in general I do align my morals with the law because I have trust in the law and in Lady Justice.
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If abortion were illegal then I would say that it is wrong to do so, but in the end it is still her natural given right. In such a case she might practice civil disobedience.

I see!

It is said that morals lead to ethics but I only consider the law as based in ethics, not morals.

I disagree: if one thinks an action is immoral, then they should consider it unethical. And if they considerate unethical, then they should attempt to regulate it (legally) no matter how imperfectly. Perhaps, in some situations it is legally infeasible to regulate, but one should try.

To me, it makes no sense to say “I think you shouldn’t do this, as a matter of not my personal goals but as something you are also obligated to do, but you should be legally allowed to do it”. Those seem a bit incoherent with each other.

I would say that without context, the deliberate pregnancy and killing of a fetus is wholly immoral. This immorality does not usurp her natural given rights.
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It means that that her rights come from nature itself, whereas morality does not.

Morality is relative whereas natural rights are facts that cannot be disproven. They are self-evident.

Interesting, it sounds like, and correct me if I am wrong, you are claiming that ‘natural rights’ are amoral (or exist in some ‘space’ outside of morality and ethics), of which are self-evident; whereas, I would say rights are always predicated on morality, values, and ethics—and there are no self-evident moral judgments.

How can it not be disproven that one does not have the right absolutely over their bodily autonomy? I don’t see how any moral (or ‘natural right’) judgments are incapable of refutation. Could you please elaborate?

A physicalist would say 'mind is physical' (just as processes like digestion and vision are physical).

I don't think this quite depicts physicalism, as it implies (usually) that it exists mind-independently. So saying 'mind is physical' is shorthand, by my lights, for 'the mind is "emergent", a product of, a process of, etc. mind-independent entities'.

For me, I would say that 'mind is natural', but not that it is 'physical' nor 'material'.

Right, but my question is not whether it's immoral for pregnant women to not eat right/smoke/drink, but whether you think it should be illegal for them to do so.

When pregnant:

Eating some junk food should not be illegal.
Drinking should be illegal.
Smoking should be illegal.

Hello Mww,

Was there ever a thought you didn’t think?

Yes: other peoples’ thoughts.

Of course not, which is to say every thought of yours was both a priori and certain, which is its form. Now if the content of each thought is included, it follows necessarily that the object thought has the very same certainty as it relates to its form

I see.

All logic to be thought….which is all mathematics is…..needs its content verified empirically. So the opinion reduces to, mathematical propositions refer to understanding for their certainty, so they do not refer to reality, and, insofar as mathematical propositions refer to reality, it is not for the certainty of them, but for the empirical verification of their certainty, which is their proofs

I just don’t think Einstein was conceding that mathematical propositions find their certainty in the understanding, but, rather, are certain insofar as they are in reason (as a cognitive faculty we have of our experience, and not the active participator therein).

How else does a thing get its properties, if the human thinker doesn’t decide what they are?

It would not be the human thinker deciding their phenomenal properties if the understanding is an aspect of the universal mind, and not the particular ‘I’ of any human; which I am starting to lean towards, as it seems implausible to me that the ‘I’ is the decider of the entire experience of which it has and is an entity within that experience.

But that’s not quite right, in that Nature only showed him a thing of a certain shape, but not that it was round, which he came up with all by himself, and assigned that as a property inherent in things of that shape, without regard to whether he, or Nature, was its causality.

But I don’t think this is accurate in Kantianism, if causality (and space and time) are produced by the human (as its forms of intuition), then there the ‘nature’ you refer to is reduced to a purely negative concept—an incomprehensible nothing—which cannot be understood to even “show him a thing of a certain shape”. You are inferring the representations from human understanding from the after effects of the human understanding, which is allegedly supposed to not provide any knowledge of the things-in-themselves.

If Nature gave the properties of things to us along with the thing itself…..why do we assign spin to an elementary particle as a property of it, when spin as rotating mass has no relation to what spin as this property, is meant to indicate?

I did not follow this part: could you restate it differently?

So, yes, human reason is the only means by which the properties of real things is fathomed.

It is a very, prima facie, appealing argument I must say; but it fails because the “proof” of reason actively determining things’ properties requires that the representations are somewhat accurate of the things-in-themselves, which, if Kant is right, there is no way to determine anything about them; instead, the claim “we represent the world” becomes not universally valid but, rather, valid only insofar as it is constrained to the possibility of experience—but Kant is working with a framework where the possibility of experience is a representation!

That’s the cool thing about Einstein’s avant-guarde thought experiments: there is no way to empirically verify them

Interesting!

.the viewpoint of things-in-themselves doesn’t make any sense, insofar as things do not have a viewpoint;

You were saying that Einstein views things from the universes’ perspective; that is, everything is relative. And Kant views it from the perspective of the individual, and thusly universal. However, these do not seem to be compatible views, as if Kant is right then Einstein cannot take the viewpoint of ‘everything is relative’ since it speaks of the things-in-themselves—not the individuals’ experience.

Hello Philosophim,

I think we are missing the forest through the trees here and I'm going to back out a bit to focus on the key points that I think are relevant to the discussion.

Fair enough!

Why should I not hold this? What does your view of truth introduce that solves problems of knowledge, or clarifies confusion in epistemology?

To speak briefly, using your definition:

1. Is redundant with the term ‘reality’
2. Does not completely capture its colloquial usage (e.g., saying “bob’s claim is true” makes less sense if ‘truth’ is ‘reality’, as it is implying that it is true in virtue of the fact that bob’s claim corresponds with reality—but ‘true’ no longer relates to correspondence under your definition).
3. Every deployed use of ‘true’ is contingent on a thinking being: there is no example where someone would say something is true without that something being related to thought. E.g., ‘that is true’ refers to a claim someone made and is useless as a proclamation if there was no claim made.

(Philosophim)Truth exists within the subject and despite the subject.

Truth still exists despite a subject, under my view, but not despite of all subjects. — Bob Ross

I don't understand this statement. Can you clarify the latter part?

Under my view, I am not saying that truth is relative (e.g., that there is my truth and your truth, and they can be contradictory but equally true); I am not saying that if I died right now, that truth would no longer exist, for there are other subjects which still exist. So long is there is at least one thinking being, I would say truth exists; but if all subjects died, then there is no truth (and, within the hypothetical where there are no subjects, there is certainly no use for describing things within it as ‘true’ or ‘false’: everything just is).

I said its true because what you are thinking is "what is". What you think, is "what is". The fact that you are having a thought is true

Yes, but whether it is true that you are thinking is not, for you, dependent on your thought (that you are thinking) corresponding to reality, such that you really are thinking. For you, it just has to be the case that you are thinking. Now, of course, if there are no thinking beings, then the claim, under your view, would be false—but not because the claim that “you are thinking” does not correspond to reality but, rather, because it simply is not the case. Even saying ‘it is not the case’, to me, implies that something did not correspond to reality, which, under view, is irrelevant to whether it is true or not.

But the lack of the observer does not negate the air's vibration when the tree falls. That is also true. How does your view of truth that needs a subject handle this?

I am not saying that thinking is not a part of reality, my correspondence theory applies to everything in reality; so I am thinking iff my thought that I am thinking corresponds to reality such that I am actually thinking. This process applies subjective acts just as much as anything else.

In your analogy, I found nothing wrong with it (other than that I do not think that a tree literally falls, a physical sense, when no one is conscious of it: but I doubt we want to get into that right now). I am just failing to see how this ties to my idea of truth: could you elaborate a bit more?

Bob, this is a contradiction. You can't say that truth is not contingent on the subject, then say that it is an emergent property of the subject

I didn’t say that, I pointed out that the argument you gave doesn’t work and that is why, of course, you should find something flawed with (i.e., the claim ‘You think because we can note that our subjective experience is true, that the truth of that subjective experience suddenly means all truth is tied to our subjective experience’). I was simply noting that that is not what I am claiming.

To clarify, I am saying that truth is contingent on the subject and object; but not on any particular object nor subject (viz., if I die, then truth still exists; if every subject dies, it does not; if all possible objects of thought perished, then truth no longer exists; if one object of thought perishes, then it still does).

Its that our minds are jumping to improper conclusions that aren't real.

Exactly! Which makes more sense if we are depicting a faulty correspondence between their thoughts and reality—and not just that ‘it is not’.

Hello LuckyR,

Cute. Even if your name wasn't Bob, I'd know you were a guy. Ear infection, eh?

You have absolutely no clue what gender I am, and you clearly misunderstood the analogy.

If you want an analogy, let's give an analogy. Let's say if you jump in the pool you'll get mystery disease X. Folks who get mystery disease X have a 1.4% chance of "serious morbidity", a 32 per 100,000 chance of dying and about a 33% chance of needing major surgery.

This maybe be a perfect analogy to compare two things, but not the two things I was comparing in my analogy, and thusly this is not pertinent to the conversation you quoted of me (that I am having with someone else).

However, I am more than happy to entertain your analogy, so long as it is not misunderstood to be a replacement of mine. I would say that the person in your analogy is not obligated to save the person themselves (although they may be obligated to try to get help from someone who can: like the authorities) because (1) they are not culpable for their condition and (2) the disease posits threat of significant unwanted bodily modifications.

Next: "Generally speaking, there is legally no duty to rescue another person.

Correct. I never said that there was.

The courts have gone into very gory details in order to explain this. In Buch v. Amory Manufacturing Co., the defendant had no obligation to save a child from crushing his hand in a manufacturing machine. The court suggested an analogy in which a baby was on the train tracks – did a person standing idly by have the obligation to save him? Legally, no

I, prima facie, agree with their conclusion about the two examples (they gave), because the rescuer is not (1) culpable for the condition of the other person and (2) saving them posits threat of significant unwanted bodily modifications. The pool example I gave does not have #2, but only #1.

Another thing: I can tell you that the kidney stabber convict situation is well established in the Medical Ethics field and it is quite clear the stabber cannot be coerced into donation of a kidney.

I disagree with this established view in the case where (1) the person is culpable for the other person’s condition and (2) they are the only means of saving that person. I do not think that taking organs should be used as a punishment but, rather, a last resort if amending the situation requires it—I don’t think the kidney stabber should get away alive while that person dies. Of course if there is a donor, then by all means use that kidney!

Lastly your commentary is missing another angle in the abortion situation and that is society and the courts give very broad powers to parents to manage the healthcare of their minor children. Thus it stands to reason that it should grant even broader powers to those governing potential children (who are not minor children).

They absolutely don’t when it comes to the life of that child and basic essentials. We do not let parents kill their children, nor do we let them neglect them (e.g., starvation, etc.).

Hello RogueAI,

What about drinking?
…
Smoke the occasional cigarette?

It is immoral to drink or/and smoke while pregnant, as they have been demonstrated to cause many health problems for the child (after they are born). This is no different than how one should not give their kids second hand smoke (in confined areas)--except it is much worse in the case of pregnancy, as it leads to much more severe effects.

Should it be a crime for a pregnant woman to eat too much junkfood?

This is in no way as dangerous as smoking and drinking while pregnant: eating a bag of chips a day while pregnant has not been shown to lead to any health problems for the child, and thusly should not be regulated; however, I, like so many others, would suggest that the mother eat as healthy as possible at least while she is pregnant.

If something that one could normally eat has been demonstrated to having sever impact on the health of the child, then the woman should refrain from eating it so long as she is pregnant.

Hello L Elephant,

do I have the right, as the egregious perpetrator, to keep my kidneys if I do not consent to giving them to the victim? — Bob Ross
Yes. You do.

That’s true: I should have said ‘should I have the right ...’.

Hello Chiknsld,

I would say that it is certainly unethical to not help the child but I think it’d be difficult to prove any moral obligation to do so. In the end, it is a favor.

Interesting. If everyone is entitled to a say over their own bodies, then wouldn’t it be ethically permissible for me to refuse to help the kid so as to prevent an ear infection? Or, if it is unethical, then wouldn’t it be false that everyone has an absolute right to bodily autonomy?

I think that we may be able to find common ground on examples like these, which will help with the discussion about abortion.

When you commit a crime you give up your rights, hence the death penalty.

Interesting. So, would you so, then, that if abortion is illegal in a society then they should not do it?

Also, would you say that putting a person in a situation where they are dependent on you (to live) only to kill them as a crime? I feel like your response forces me to beg the question, because whether it is a ‘crime’ is dependent, at least partly, on whether it is immoral; which we disagree on.

That is interesting :) though I would not equate a natural given right with a moral principle.

What do you mean by a ‘natural given right’, as opposed to a ‘moral principle’?

Hello 180 Proof,

But why do you call this substance – existence itself – "mind"? Seems to confuse more than it clarifies ...

Although maybe I have before (I can’t quite remember), I wouldn’t now: I would say that the type of existence is ‘mental’, which just signifies a nice shorthand for ‘everything that exists is mind’; but, of course, someone could point out that existence itself is mind-independent and is ‘physical’ in that sense. However, to me, that misses the point of idealism entirely to think that it is a form of physicalism because existence is mind-independent, unless, perhaps, someone is positing existence as a valid attribute (which I don’t) and thusly like a separate entity, similar to two separate existent entities within a substance.

... everything is mind-dependent in the sense that everything that exists is mind-dependent, but not ... existence itself, taken up as an entity itself, is mind-dependent. — Bob Ross

So to paraphrase in Schopenhauerian terms: "everything that exists" is phenomenal, or only appearances (i.e. Representations), but "existence itself" is more-than-appearance, or noumenon (i.e. Will). :chin:

Your paraphrase is of schopenhauer's metaphysics, which is all fine and good, but doesn't paraphrase what I was saying in the quote you have of me; as schopehauer doesn't get into these kinds of distinctions I was making. My point in saying my view is schopenhauerien is not to mask it under everything he claimed, but just to answer your question (when you asked if it is berkleian, etc.).

My point was that substance, analyzed as an entity, (i.e., existence) is not dependent on a mind; but the things which exist are because they are contingent upon one universal mind. In other words, all that exists is one universal mind.

And, as per the OP, "objective epistemic norms" are, in effect, justified by, as Schopenhauer argues, the (Platonic / Leibnizian) Principle of Sufficient Reason (à la "The Fourfold Root of ...")?

No, my justification is what I put in the OP. I take elements of schopenhauer's thoughts, but I do not subscribe to everything he said.

For something to be analogous, it has to be in the same ballpark

Not at all. An analogy is a perfect similarity between two relations in wholly dissimilar things. In order to understand an analogy, one must understand what is being compared as similar: what aspect is being pointed out. You keep pointing out things which were never claimed as analogous.

Your analogy/example/comparison fails because you are equating, to at least some degree, being forced to go in a poor and risk an ear infection to being forced to carry a baby to term and give birth to it.

No they are not. I already explained the analogy I was using in the quote you took of my conversation with the other person; and it was not implying this whatsoever.

I will re-quote myself on what was pointing out in the analogy:

My example is absolutely analogous to the principle of which chiknsld explained in their post about people having a right to make their own decisions about their bodies; and, in turn, is going to be analogous to abortion for my conversation with them insofar as I think my example demonstrates an example where that principle is clearly false, which breaks it.

In certain states in the US, a woman does not have a full autonomy over her body. An example is, if she was pregnant and a drug user, it is criminal.

I agree with this sort of legality: if one is pregnant, then they have to consider the child and, thusly, cannot use drugs; and that absolutely should be criminal if they do.

I just like to use examples that prima facie aren't about abortion so that the conversation doesn't derail into begging the question and to try and latch onto intuitions one may have outside of abortion talk which are pertinent to it.

Hello RogueAI,

As I pointed out before, this is disanalogous to abortion

I never claimed that they were equivalent to abortion, but, rather, that they are analogous. You seem to think, and correct me if I am wrong, that for something to be analogous it must be equivalent.

My example is absolutely analogous to the principle of which chiknsld explained in their post about people having a right to make their own decisions about their bodies; and, in turn, is going to be analogous to abortion for my conversation with them insofar as I think my example demonstrates an example where that principle is clearly false, which breaks it.

Also, being forced to save a drowning person is a very rare situation

Most of what you said, with all due respect, is completely irrelevant and demonstrates a misunderstanding of hypothetical situations. It simply does not matter how frequent the situation occurs in reality: that’s why it is called a hypothetical.

Hello 180 Proof,

As for "misreading" what you actually wrote, Bob, I don't think so. And your attempt to clarify doesn't help.

I am unsure as to where the confusion lies, so let me just re-state it and I will let you go into detail about what you think the inconsistencies are.

I am saying that existence itself, i.e., substance, is mind-independent; for, otherwise, the mind would exist and then ‘being’ itself would ‘unfold’ (or be produced by) it, which would, in turn, entail that the mind itself is non-being (i.e., does not exist) since it is outside of (as the producer of) being.

With this in mind, I am saying that my flavor of ‘objective idealism’ posits that everything is mind-dependent in the sense that everything that exists[/i] is mind-dependent, but not that existence itself, taken up as an entity itself, is mind-dependent.

Where are the inconsistencies with that proposal?

So, leaving aside Berkeley, you're not a Leibnizian? not a Kantian? not a Hegelian? ... but rather, an 'idealist' in the vein of Gabriel Markus? or Donald Hoffman? or Bernardo Kastrup? ...

More in a bernardo kastrup sense, or an schopenhauerian sense.

Hello Philosophim,

The property of being in accord with fact or reality is another way of saying truth is reality.

I absolutely disagree: let’s break it down. To say something is ‘in accord’ is another way of saying ‘in correspondence with’, so we can rightly refurbish this definition, without changing its meaning, to ‘the property of being in correspondence with fact or reality’. Secondly, to simplify this down, I am going to remove ‘fact’ from the definition and stick to just ‘reality’ (simply so we don’t have to derail into our definitions of fact, and we already agree on the definition of reality). So it is now ‘ the property of being in correspondence with reality’. Thirdly, your definition is that truth ‘is reality’, which has no consideration of whether a thing has the property of corresponding to reality: it simply doesn’t matter for your definition. So, right there, in itself, these two definitions are not equivalent. Fourthly, to get my definition, all we have to do is specify what has the property of <...>, which I claim is ‘thought’: ‘the property of being in correspondence with reality, which can only ever be a thought’. This webster definition, as can be clearly seen, is a spin-off of mine (or mine is a spin-off of it); and is most certainly not the same as claiming truth ‘is reality’, for if that were the case, then there wouldn’t be any sort of property of correspondence to reality being posited in the definition.

I'm asking the truth assessment of the property, or whether this is in accordance with reality

I think you are using my definition here implicitly, and this is a great example of why truth being ‘is reality’ doesn’t work—it leaves out that you are assessing whether the claim (the thought) corresponds to reality (i.e., is in accordance with reality). I think, within your terms, you would have to say that you are (1) assessing whether the thing exists (and this is truth), and (2) to determine that (which isn’t itself truth) you see whether your claim about it corresponds with reality (which perhaps would be knowledge); but you wouldn’t be able to claim that your assessment of the truth of it is whether it corresponds with reality, which is, if I understood you correctly, what you claim in the quote above.

In no way does this definition imply thought.

Thought is the only thing which has the ability to correspond to reality, because it has the property of ‘aboutness’. Non-thinking beings just are: they don’t have any potential for correspondence with reality: they are just a part of reality.

I'm not saying you can't change the norm of truth, but the norm of truth is what is real, not the marriage of our thoughts and what is real.

We may have to just agree to disagree, but I think webster is a legitimate source of colloquial definitions, and a correspondence theory of truth is definitely in there.

It is the "what is" that everyone understands at a primitive level. Reality is much like the term, "tree". Truth is a higher order descriptor...After all, an illusion is a real experience

Under your term, illusions are a part of truth; but it is odd: isn’t it? What aspect of illusions makes them true (in the sense that that a part of reality is illusion) and them false (in the sense of what they are)? Within your definition, there is no way to account for this other than saying that an illusion, as an illusion, is real (and in the truth), but that to say whatever the illusion pretends to be is real is false because it isn’t. A much clearer way of depicting, I would say, is to note that the truth or falsity about illusions depends on what the thought about them references about reality. If I am saying that “illusions exist”, then that is surely true because my thought corresponds correctly to what it is alleging of reality; whereas, if I say that the illusion is what it is pretends to be, then it is false because the thought does not correspond.

Reality is generic, truth is more stringent.

This cannot be true if you are defining truth as equivalent to reality; but sounds like you may not be, correct?

Whatever is true, is real; whatever is real, is true. It is irrelevant whether someone has a precise or vague idea of what exists (which is what you were referring to, as far as I could tell). So they, by my lights, if they are the same thing, are redundant. I can, in your terms, describe every vague vs. refined idea a person has about reality in terms of ‘the real’ or ‘the truth’. For your argument to work here, I would say, there would have to be something about ‘the truth’ which is not ‘the real’.

If a person is on trial and someone said their thoughts were corresponding to reality, a good lawyer would counter with, "But how do you know?

Then, like all trials, which they certainly do this all the time, they would present evidence in the courtroom of why one ought to believe that their claim corresponds to reality. This is the whole point of eyewitness testimony, videos, audio recordings, images, etc. that are submitted as evidence and presented to the jury.

Such statements require proof, which is the realm of knowledge. It can be true that our thoughts correspond with reality, but knowledge is the process that demonstrates how this is possible

Correct. That is why I said that truth, in my view, is simply that what is ‘true’ is that which corresponds, but makes no claims about how to determine how it corresponds (as that is knowledge).

Truth does not require justification. Truth simply is.

I would say truth simply is the correspondence of a claim with reality and requires only the justification required to demonstrate it is that, but whether or not a claim corresponds to reality is not a matter of truth itself, but the means of determining whether it is a part of the truth.

This is again, at the heart of the Gettier argument. I can have a thought that Jones has 5 coins in his pocket. Its true that he does. But the justification which lead me to believe that Jones has 5 coins in his pocket is false. So again, truth requires no justification, truth is simply "what is".

I simply say that one can take up something as true on evidence, and then reject it later on counter-evidence; it would have originally been true, but is now considered false. The gettier arguments falsely presuppose that the counter-evidence suggesting it is false is final: that is definitively false; but one can simply ask further: ‘what if it turns out to be turn, upon further counter-counter-evidence?’. For me, I don’t view it as a problem because I am not claiming that we can absolutely know the agreement between thought and reality.

As such, I see no need to tie it solely to one's subjective experience.

It is not solely tied to one’s subjective experience: it is tied to subjective experience (in it’s entirity, and not dependent on nor relative to one particular subject) and the objective world, as emergent from both.

A person can claim something which matches with reality, so what they said is true
…
In this case a correspondence and it being real is the same thing

Correspondence is not equivalent to what is real: it requires a subject to correspond to reality. You can’t have a correspondence with reality without a subject.

My point is that the ‘matching of’ is irrelevant to ‘truth’ under your definition, because it does not include any sort of correspondence with reality in it. For you, ‘truth’ just is, and corresponding with it is just how we know it.

"It is reality that I believe the visual illusion means something physical is there, but my belief is not true." "It is true that I believe the visual illusion means something physical is there, but my belief is not real."

I am not sure I fully followed this part; but, by my lights, the truthity of these claims is critically contingent on the correspondence (or lack thereof) with reality; but your definition does include that as a consideration.

So, for you, truth persists when there are no subjects, because it is just what is. Whether we correspond to reality or not doesn’t matter with respect to truth, so, for you, it is not that the lack of correspondence in the first claim (in the quote) that makes it false: it is simply that it isn’t real (and we come to know it by that lack of correspondence).

Truth exists within the subject and despite the subject.

Truth still exists despite a subject, under my view, but not despite of all subjects.

If you have a thought that corresponds with reality, that thought is true

The thought, under you view, isn’t true by corresponding: it is known; what is true is whatever is claimed is—but the thought is irrelevant to whether it is true or not. You have removed the subject from truth.

You think because we can note that our subjective experience is true, that the truth of that subjective experience suddenly means all truth is tied to our subjective experience

Not at all. Simply because we obtain something as true, it does not follow that it is subjective; nor that it is contingent on the subject whatsoever. Just because I obtain that there is a ball in my room, the balls existence is not thereby contingent on me. I am saying that truth itself is an emergent property of subjects uncovering the world (in a more aristotilian definition) because of the previous reasons I already outlined.

We take a general understanding of truth and knowledge, refine them, but still keep them within the cohesive framework of how people generally think where possible.

I agree, but I don’t see how I am going that far from the norm.

Essentially there is "subjective truth" and "objective truth". Your tying the word "truth" to only the subjective aspect of truth ignores the objective aspect

There is no ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ truth: there is just an absolute truth of the matter; and I never claimed that truth was subjective (in that sense): I claimed that is dependent on both object and subject. If there was no object, but only subjects, then I would say there would be no truth either.

Bob, we all have the right to our own body, otherwise it would be a conflict of interest. :blush:

I disagree. Let me give you an example and let me know your take on it. Let's say there's just me and a little kid at a pool (and I don't know this kid)(no lifeguards: nothing other than us two). I am dangling my feet in the water and the kid starts drowning in the deep end. I am the only one around that could save this little kid, but I don't want to risk getting an ear infection and since this matter (i.e., the potential ear infection) pertains to my body I think that I have the right to not consent to saving this kid.

Do you think I have the right, in that scenario, to not consent to saving the kid? I don't think I do, because consent doesn't matter in the instance that one could save someone else's life without any foreseeably significant unwanted bodily modifications.

Here's another example I would like your take on. Imagine I go out and stab an innocent person in both of their kidneys. The cops show up, arrest me, and the victim gets sent to the ER. Turns out, I am the only one with the right kidneys to save them (viz., there are no donors available that would match, etc.): do I have the right, as the egregious perpetrator, to keep my kidneys if I do not consent to giving them to the victim?

I don't think so: what do you think?

Moral principles might not hold in every situation within a relatively complex society such as ours.

I agree, but I think you are treating it as absolute (in practice) if you think that anything directly or indirectly related to one's body is governed by the right to consent.

I think you misread what you quoted of me, as I was claiming that mind cannot be 'non-being', which would be required if existence itself was mind-dependent; which you took it to mean I was claiming mind was 'non-being'. There was nothing incoherent (that I could find) with my statements (that you quoted).

I find Berkeley to be neither a true subjective nor objective idealist: I find him to be the father of idealism in general, and his views really weren't fully fleshed out. He was more focused on refuting materialism. However, I view, although (just like any other idealist view), does have similarities with Berkeley, mine is not his view. I find too many things wrong with his formulation.

Hello Philosophim,

Semantically speaking, I contest the idea that truth as reality itself is the norm in society: a hazy correspondence theory of truth is equally as popular (colloquially). I will grant that many people do think of truth as just what is, but many also think of it as an agreement between thought and what is.
This is easily reflected by looking up the word ‘truth’ in the webster dictionary, where #1 reflects your definition (i.e., ‘ the body of real things, events, and facts’) and #2 mine (i.e., ‘the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality’). So I don’t think I am radically shifting the terminology like you are proposing.

Now, you ask a good question: what benefit is there of taking truth as some sort of correspondence instead of merely as reality itself? Here’s my reasons:

1. Using ‘truth’ as interchangeable with ‘reality’ is redundant vocabulary. There’s no reason to have two words for the same thing, and ‘reality’ is a much better word (when compared to ‘truth’) for what one is describing. It is generally accepted that semantics should avoid redundant terms, and this is a text book example of two words which serve verbatim the same meaning (and aren’t even synonyms: they are literally equivalent under this sort of view).

2. Using ‘truth’ as interchangeable with ‘reality’ doesn’t completely capture what is meant by ‘truth’ in society. If someone is on trial and they make claim X and I say “they are right about X” (or “X is true” or “they are in the truth”), then it wouldn’t complete for those to merely express that “there exists X (in reality)” but, rather, the whole meaning is that that person’s thoughts corresponded to X (in reality). Using truth as ‘reality’ completely overlooks the person’s assertion. This is even more self-evident if I were to re-write my claim (in this example) a bit odder: “there exists X in reality, and what that person said (which was X) matches X so what they said is true”--the claim that it was ‘true’ is derived from the correspondence of their assertion with reality and not merely from it being in reality.

3. There’s no use for the term ‘truth’ if there were no subjects. We already have a term for what a world is without ‘subjects’ (or with them as well): reality; and there is absolutely no such thing as any claim being ‘true’ without subjects, so ‘true’, as a term, is now obsolete. My definition handles this, I would say, better insofar as truth dies with (the totality of) subjects, which I think makes more sense: it isn’t just merely inapplicable but still somehow pertaining to something in reality.

JTB, or justified true belief, clearly separates a belief, justification, and then truth. Truth can be different from one's justification, and different from one's belief. But in your definition, truth can no longer be separate from one's justification or your belief.

I think they can and are separate: my thought (or held belief) is not truth, for truth is the correspondence of that thought (or held belief) with reality. Truth is emergent from thoughts and reality (from subject and object).

I can formulate a belief without it being true, or without checking whether it is true or not; so I can have a belief without truth.

Justification, likewise, is just what is used to verify the belief with reality (to determine its truth) and thusly is not truth itself.

I am failing to see how these are the same thing under my view.

[quote
How could I look to a normal person, describe truth as you are, and they want to accept that from the norm?[/quote]

A lot of peoples’ notion of truth is correspondence, so I don’t think it would be as foreign to them as you are supposing. As a matter of fact, I’ve explained this to laymen before, and, although they weren’t sure of all the technical details, they usually say that “that seems about right” because they intuit truth as a correspondence. However, I will grant that if I also brought up “truth is what is”, they are very likely to say that same thing.

The fact of the matter is that people usually have notions and not concepts of terms; and I am interested in having the best concept of truth I can (whatever that may be). So appealing to peoples’ notions doesn’t really help me, except in attempting to keep it as similar as possible thereto (which I think I have done).

Here again, I think this is normally what people would refer to as knowledge. Truth is normatively seen as reality, while knowledge would be the understanding of reality, or truth.

Knowledge isn’t truth, but they are very closely linked: the latter is the ‘boiler plate’ for what it means for something ‘to be true’, whereas the former is system (or method) of gathering information in a manner that produces the most truth. Knowledge needs truth, but truth does not need knowledge (although, of course, one cannot claim something is true without thereby claiming to know it as well, but they are not biconditionally, as terms, contingent upon each other).

So here we've changed the normative meaning of the words, but we're right back to the same problem between knowledge and truth, its just called truth and reality now.

I was never intending to claim that my theory of truth itself solves gettier problems: I was extending past that into a bit of my theory of knowledge and claiming that I no longer see them as an issue.

The gettier problem would, as you rightly point out, be an instance, in my terminology, of something being claimed as true but isn’t real.

I could just as easily say, "Knowledge is the correspondence of thought and truth; but that correspondence if never certain between any particular instance of knowledge and truth. Our aim is to correspond, but never to claim that we have definitively gotten there."

You could, and that would reflect our semantic differences, but I don’t think, as I stated before, that truth as reality quite captures what is truly meant by the term.

The second statement keeps the cohesion of the general understanding of knowledge and truth, so why not just keep that?

Perhaps some people think of ‘knowledge’ as correspondence of thought with truth, which can be very practical and useful, but I don’t think that quite captures truth nor knowledge. To say something is true, in principle, is quite different (to me) than saying it is known (although knowledge is contingent on claiming it is true): the latter is claiming something is true in virtue of passing some epistemic verification while the former is merely stating that, in principle, the thought corresponds to reality (and not making any note, in itself, about how the agreement was verified).

Hello chiknsld,

The female has the right to do what she would like with the life that she is bearing

I disagree: why would she have that sort of absolute right to bodily autonomy?

I personally would view abortion as immoral due to the sanctity of human life.

I see. I think that the right life, just like the right to bodily autonomy, is not feasible as an absolute principle (either).

Hello Mww,

All ‘a priori certain’ is meant to indicate, is if it comes from human understanding, for whatever is thought, it is impossible for that thought to not have occurred, which is the same as saying that thought is certain

By “impossible for that thought to not have occurred”, you are referring to math being a necessary precondition for the possibility of experience? Otherwise, I am not sure I followed this part.

From there, because both Kant and Einstein recognized mathematics is “a product of human thought”, it is for that reason, both a priori and certain

I think you are just conflating the term ‘thought’ here. In the quote I provided, it seemed as though Einstein was referring to the ‘thought’ of ‘1 + 1 = 2’ as certain but not certain pertaining to our perceptions, whereas Kant means ‘thought’ in the sense of the active participation of the construction of our perceptions.

If Einstein held that math didn’t relate to reality with certainty, on what ground, then, did he actually invent mathematical propositions to explain certain aspects of it, re: w = c – v?

Because he thought it could be empirically verified, not that the equations themselves, nor math in general was a priori certain.

because that formula had no existence, had never been thought, and for which therefore there could be no possible experience, how is it not a priori?

Not an issue, really. Einstein didn’t approve of a priori mathematical certainty, merely because the content of the formulas he envisioned and constructed had no chance of being obtained in experience

But they weren’t obtained in experience, or at least some of them, right? Otherwise, they would be indistinguishable from being a product of human imagination.

Kant thought in consideration of his current time, in which his mathematical proofs were readily available without technical support; Einstein thought in consideration of times in which his ideas must wait for proofs, pending technological support. What…a scant three years for GR, but 35 for SR? Something like that.

That is fair: I don’t think Kant would have made the same exact claims had he have written CPR in our current era.

The term “universality” in Kant meant wherever a human is, in Einstein it meant wherever the Universe is.

True, but then wouldn’t Einstein’s viewpoint be impossible under Kantianism, since there is no way to know anything about the viewpoint of the things-in-themselves (i.e., Universe)?

Hello Philosophim,

I agree. The one reason I am not quite sold on your semantics is what is "real" cannot be considered true at that point.

Under my theory of truth, the ‘real’ (in the sense of simply what exists) is never ‘true’ but, rather, is a part (an aspect: a component) of what is ‘true’.

In other words, since truth is the correspondence of thought with reality, when a thought is ‘true’ it corresponds to reality with regards to what it references about it. Thusly, what is real is a component of the truth, in the sense that whatever is ‘true’ must correspond to it; but the ‘real’ is never ‘true’ itself—as it is just what is ‘real’. Without thought, there is no truth—but there is still reality (i.e., being).

I think this is how it should be, for when we speak of ‘truth’ what we mean, I think at least, is that the person at hand has a thought (or thoughts) which do correspond to reality. ‘Truth’ is the act of uncovering reality, so it can’t be reality itself.

Right. Basically instead of "How do I know what I claim is true is true," for you it would be, "How do I know what I claim is real is real?"

I agree. The problem becomes “how does one know that what they think corresponds to reality actually does?”. My answer is that we cannot know with certainty that the correspondence holds but, rather, can only construct epistemic verification methods to determine whether we accept it as corresponding or not. Once accepted, irregardless of whether it is certain or not, then the person is taking it up as true (irregardless of whether it is). So, for me, one can know something, and thereby take it up as true, and then, upon further evidence, reject it and claim that they don’t know it anymore. I don’t think that the new evidence invalidates the person’s justification for claiming to know it before (and saying it is true) even though they now think it is false. I think gettier problems assume that the end result (which verifies the illegitimacy of the original claim of knowledge) is certain (i.e., set and fixed as ‘the truth’). Thusly, one claims to know X with justification Y, and then, upon new evidence, determines Y did not provide any correspondence to X; but, then, it takes for granted that justification Z for the illegitimacy of Y (for X) is also not guaranteed to correspond.

In other words, Truth is the correspondence of thought and reality; but that correspondence is never certain between any particular instance of thought and reality, such that our aim is to correspond, but never to claim that we have definitively (absolutely) gotten there.

Bob

A typo – don't you mean "mind-dependent" instead?

Nope. I do not think that 'being' unfolds from a mind, as that mind would be 'non-being' then, which makes no sense to me. Instead, there exists, fundamentally, one mind (at-large) of which we are minds within it. This is what I think objective idealist theories tend to purport, but of course there are theistic accounts that posit God as some sort of producer of even existence itself.

Non sequitur

How was that a nonsequitur? I said that there are not mind-independent existent 'things', which is what I mean by 'there are no mind-independent entities'.

I didn't imply or state that they were.

I guess I didn't follow what you were trying to claim with invoking solipsism before: could you elaborate?

Hello LuckyR,

Curious that you never considered the single most common type of sexual encounter between heterosexual partners (consensual while using BC).

It isn’t that I haven’t thought of the scenario where one uses contraceptives but, rather, that I hadn’t thought about how that ties to my often claim about having the obligation to keep the fetus ‘when it is reasonably inferred’ that one will conceive; as the probability of conception is, indeed, irrelevant to my argument.

As to your reconfiguring your opinion/theory, in typical modern fashion, the intended conclusion is maintained while adjusting for inconvenient new data by fiddling around with the argument to keep it all "consistent".

To demonstrate that this is not the case, I encourage your to re-read my OP, as I never refurbished any of it after conceding this point with you, and you will notice that none of the conclusions depended on any ‘reasonable inferences of conceiving from the act’. For consensual sex, as an example, I invoked culpability—and this still applies in the case of using contraceptives.

Lastly, in your car wreck injury example most agree that "taking responsibility" for causing the accident takes the form of helping the victim. Just so you know, there is not a consensus (despite your assertion) that "taking responsibility" for an unintended pregnancy should solely be in the form of carrying it to term.

Two things:

1. Of course there isn’t a consensus: abortion is a hot topic right now! I was never intending to claim that there was.

2. I was never intending to claim that an “’taking responsibility’ for an unintended pregnancy should solely be in the form of carrying it to term”: I said “Amending the situation entails, by my lights, that what is the most feasible and reasonable means of amending the situation (viz., protecting and saving the life in this case) must be taken.”. I am claiming that whatever is most reasonable for amending the situation must be taken, which does not exclude other alternatives in the future (such as artificial wombs), and the very last thing that would amend it is to kill the fetus.

Hello 180 Proof,

I see, so do you believe that there is an unknown substance, and mind and matter are derivatives of that substance?

Hello 180 Proof,

Well, (your) mind is nonmind-dependent unless solipsism obtains (which, of course, it does not).

I don’t believe that is true at all. All that is required for idealism (and solipsism I might add: not that they are similar at all) is that existence itself is mind-independent, not that there exists any mind-independent entities within it.

Hello LuckyR,

So is having sex while using Birth Control "an action that is reasonably anticipated to bring a new life into the world"? Most lay persons would say "no", using Birth Control is the opposite of your phrasing.

This is a good point that I had not thought about before; however, you aren’t going to like my refurbishment (of my view) here (;

I would say that you are right insofar as I cannot say that the obligation to not abort (in the case of consensual sex) is contingent in any manner on ‘reasonably anticipated’ consequences of ones actions. For example, if this were true (that I could make them contingent), then I should never go driving, because there is a small percentage chance, even with taking all the precautions, that I could injure someone in a manner that would be my fault. Likewise, there is a small percentage chance that people having sex while taking every precautionary measures (like contraceptives) will conceive.

My resolution is to say that the obligation to sustain that life (of which their condition one is culpable for) is contingent solely on one’s culpability and not ‘reasonable inferences’ pertaining to the consequences of ones actions. Thusly, in the case of driving, I am accepting that there is a chance that I may be at fault for another person’s injuries (due to, let’s say, a car crash or something) and, in that event, I cannot appeal to the fact that I took a lot of precautionary measures to prevent injuring people with my care to get out of the obligation to help this person that I am, in fact, culpable for their injuries. Same thing is true, I would say, for consensual sex: appealing to all of the precautionary measures they took to prevent conception does not exempt them from their obligation to sustain that new life, since they are culpable for it.

I appreciate your insight here, as that was a good question LuckyR!

Hello Apustimelogist,

Yes, fair. I don't think this changes my interpretation of what was said however since I was explicitly thinking that we accept or reject evidence in a way which has recourse to intuition so I was actively envisioning both of these being subsumed under "follow your intuition".

I agree. Here’s how I envision it:

Level 1: I intuit X.
Level 2: Someone provides me (or I myself provide) counter evidence, which does not include intuitions.
Level 3: I intuit that the evidence provided sufficiently counters my initial intuition (X), such that I no longer hold X.

So, for me, I don’t think this kind of reasoning is sufficiently elaborated on by saying “follow your intuition”--as, for me, that sounds like all levels would contain intuitions.

It seems to me most likely the only coherent way of approaching knowledge but if it doesn't necessarily give me knowledge I don't see it as objective

I think it does give you knowledge, by intuitively making mistakes and intuiting refurbishments (at rock bottom) based off of the evidence. Sure, someone could be particularly bad at intuiting, but there is no better alternative, for the alternative is to reject ones intuitions (which I don’t think works).

I think my point thought evidence being intuitional is that if you look at some evidence and accept it then ask yourself why you accept it, it leads to intuitions eventually

You are absolutely correct, and that is why I call it an ‘epistemic primitive’.

But my point is that it depends on the context so I can't say it is objective unless I rule out that alternative contexts (e.g. having awful intuitions) are possible, which I cannot do. There will be contexts when going by someones intuitions will be counterproductive too.

I think this is a fair point that I overlooked: if one were to “not follow their intuitions”, that may actually help them navigate the world. However, upon further reflection, this is a paradox (which annihilates it as a possibly viable alternative) principle, as in order to follow it one would have to intuit that it is true that they ‘should not follow their intuitions’; but if that is true, then they should not ‘not follow their intuitions’; but if they are intuiting that as true (which they would have to to accept it), then they should not not ‘not follow their intuitions’...ad infinitum. They would not be able to operate, which is means no knowledge of the world whatsoever.

I think the notion of parsimony I'm more used to is about what seems most parsimonious choice between some options so it is in some sense a subjective thing and not really about factual knowledge. The way you have described it just now seems to be more or less equivalent to "just pick the correct explanation" which is a bit redundant since you don't know what that is.

Parsimony, as I am using it, is that “entities should not be multiplied without necessity”, which is Occam’s razor. I do not mean that one should merely “just pick the correct explanation”, as, you mentioned correctly, that just begs the question. Rather, I mean that when explaining a set of data (about reality), do not extraneously posit entities (as it is superfluous and corresponds to nothing confirmable in reality).

Hello Apustimelogist,

However, at the same time this conception seems to be viciously circular in a way that almost defeats the purpose of framing the question the way you did when it could have been done simpler - just follow your intuition

That is fair: I just like to elaborate a bit more as ‘follow your intuitions’ seems a bit ambiguous to me (and doesn’t precisely nail down what I mean). With ‘sufficient evidence’, I do not merely mean intuitions but, rather, all forms of evidence (which includes intuitions).

I don't see how this could be an objective rule though as your intuitions could be faulty and never lead you to truth, never lead you to accept the correct evidence or interpret it in the correct way.

It is an inevitable rule that we must follow if we want to know the world as best as we can. The goal is not to merely follow whatever intuition they have blindly (as, of course, they should try to critically think about it) and it isn’t that evidence is purely ‘intuitional’ (for a person should be developing an intellectual seeming about reality and not just their imagination).

n fact, in a scenario where we have no reason to think our intuitions are very good, including intuitions about evidence, going against intuitions may still be as effective a way to find knowledge.

Like I said previously, strictly going against one’s intuitions will almost certainly lead to accepting that which is false.

I agree that it makes very little sense to not follow your intuitions in the way i described above in the bold part, and it makes little sense to something like take up a belief which you believe to be wrong. At the same time, just because this is the only really coherent way to go about looking for knowledge, doesn't mean it objectively gives us knowledge.

It’s an objectively better way of gaining knowledge in contradistinction to the alternatives, I would say. It doesn’t guarantee that one’s intuitions are purely factual.

But so what? Some people may have a preference for superfluous explanations. Why does that matter if a superfluous one is just as good at predicting what we want to predict as the non-superfluous one?

Because it claims to know extraneous information about reality, since it deploys extraneous explanatory entities to explain the same data about reality. It is purely imaginative and non-factual “knowledge”.

Hello LuckyR,

I don't disagree with your bolded statement as written, I would just add: matters to whom?

It matters for morally and legally weighing what should or should not be legal with respect to abortion.

Sounds like you're supposing the government, I'm siding with women with the advice of their medical professionals. I have no problem if an individual woman decides that her fetus' right to exist is of more value to her than her right to bodily autonomy.

If she had consensual sex, then she doesn’t have a say, as, like any other case of culpability of the condition of someone else, she is obligated to remediate the condition in which she has put this new life.

I am not arguing that bodily autonomy and right to life are two irreconcilable principles with respect to each other (when in conflict) (and that the woman can thusly just decide).

Your opinion that the type of relationship between a woman and her partner raises or lowers her right to bodily autonomy is an unpopular one that I happen not to share, though I'm sure a significant minority of folks would buy into it.

It isn’t per se about the relationship she has with her partner: it is whether she willingly partook in an action that is reasonably anticipated to bring a new life into the world. I can’t just hit you with my car and drive away: I am culpable for your condition: I don’t just get to decide whether to help you or not: to let you perhaps die or live.

What are your thoughts on the obligation of the medical community to use public health resources on treating the effects of smoking? Is the "culpability" of the patient in creating their medical problem germane in that instance?

Firstly, it is disanalogous to abortion, as this issue is not about a person being culpable for the condition of another life.

Secondly, it just depends on several factors whether I would agree. Right now, where I live, I would say no. If we were to fix the health care system and perhaps a part of that is to have some sort of universal health care, then maybe.

Hello 180 Proof,

Dual-aspect monism is ontological whereas property dualism is epistemological; I prefer the latter but I think its more precise to characterize Spinoza by the former.

I see: I have never heard of dual-aspect monism before. It sounds like substance dualism, but clearly is not: what is the difference? How can there by ontologically two types of existences within one type of overall existence?

Hello 180 Proof,

Yes, more or less ...

In any group of sufferers, suffering engenders an implicit promise to reduce each other's suffering as much as possible; this implicit promise is a fact (i.e. human eusociality) and it is moral (i.e. optimizing human well-being) because it constitutes participation in soliciting help and being solicited to help reduce suffering.

I see: that would be qualified as moral facticity. However, I neither think that a promise is implicit (to one’s biology) nor that my biology is mind-independent.

Hello Mww,

It is documented that Einstein read philosophy, had favorites in it, but would he ever admit to taking a hint from Kant? Nahhhhh….I doubt it. But, there’s the two texts; make of it what you will.

Well, it appears as though Einstein didn’t share Kant’s view that math is a priori certain:

... an enigma presents itself which in all ages has agitated inquiring minds. How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality? Is human reason, then, without experience, merely by taking thought, able to fathom the properties of real things?

In my opinion the answer to this question is, briefly, this: as far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality...

The effects of gravity on objects in space for the one; the difference in measurable durations relative to objects of significantly disparate velocities, for the other.

So is it that the math behind these behaviors is transcendent, and the space and time are transcendental?