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?

Actually the competing interests are the woman's bodily autonomy (not importance) vs the fetus' right to exist. Autonomy exists equally as a concept regardless of the type of relationship between the woman and her sexual partner.

I disagree with pinning bodily autonomy (i.e., consent) vs. right to life principles against each other as absolute principles; as they are not, and in one instance it could be that consent matters more than the right to life and in another it could be vice-versa. It is not productive nor correct to use either of these principles in an absolute manner.

For me, culpability is a principle which, when applied, determines the woman's right to consent as outweighed by the woman's obligation to amend the condition she has put this life in (albeit a new life). She, when consensually having sex, gives up, in the event that she gets pregnant, any relevant consideration of consent.

However, when she is not culpable, it becomes a question of consent vs. the de facto duty to rescue, which is going to revolve around the potential risk/severity of unwanted bodily modifications of the rescuer.

Hello Philosophim,

It seems as though we use the term ‘truth’ differently, as you appear to use it in the sense of ‘being’ and I use it in the sense of the correspondence of thought and ‘being’. You say:

Truth as defined is what "is" despite what one knows.

For me, I hold that truth is a relationship between subject and object, such that the asserted being (i.e., thoughts about reality) correspond to (i.e., agree with) actual being (i.e., reality). Truth, for me, is thusly not subjective nor objective, but emergent from both. For the full story, see my discussion board on truth.

So, within my terms, truth serves the same role as knowledge; since wanting to ‘know the world’ is to try to correspond, to orientate, one’s thoughts to what reality is.

I think, semantics aside, this is mostly what you are claiming as well, and my term ‘truth’ would just be the ideal function of epistemological theories for you and your term ‘truth’ is simply reality for me (i.e., being).

Which leads me to:

If however you feel that what is known is true, then there is one question which must be answered: "How do I know that what I know is true?"

I agree with you that the ideal of epistemology is to try to get at, as best as possible, reality (i.e., to ‘know reality’) and that it can’t ever absolutely obtain it. So I can, generically speaking, only “know” that what I “know” is “true” iff I have sufficient reasons (i.e., it passes epistemic verification) that what I am thinking corresponds with reality. Of course, I can only be certain of this correspondence on limited examples (such as ‘a = a’ as a logical principle), and the rest I only can be more or less confident in their truth.

My point knowledge always equating to truth is that it makes no sense to me, within my terminology, to claim something is ‘true’ (that is, it corresponds to reality with respect to whatever it is alleging of reality) but that I don’t ‘know’ it; nor that I ‘know’ it but that I don’t affirm it as ‘true’. Sure, even if I affirm it as ‘true’, that doesn’t mean I am certain of it—but, by my lights, I am taking it up as ‘true’ by saying I know or, otherwise, I am saying that ‘I don’t believe this corresponds to reality, but I somehow know it anyways’.

If we are stating something is contextually true, is it contextually true, or contextually known?

By contexts in propositions, I was merely trying to note that if one affirms a proposition, then they are thereby claiming it is ‘true’ (i.e., that it corresponds to reality); and that proposition, whatever it is claiming, has a scope—so one is claiming it is ‘true’ insofar as it is within that scope. If I affirm that “cats are green”, then the scope I am affirming is “every cat is green” which is the totality of whatever I classify as a “cat”.

To say it is “contextually true” (or ‘known’) was, for me, just to say that the claim corresponds to reality and that claim is limited in some scope (i.e., everything, totality of a class of objects, etc.). Perhaps I made it more confusing than it needed to be by invoking “contexts”.
To clarify, I am not claiming that truth (or knowledge) is contextual (in the sense of what I believe you are asking), as I would say it is absolute (in that sense); and this is why claims can be propositionalized. Either the proposition, when inquired, passes the tests to be considered corresponding to reality (with respect to what it claims about reality) or it doesn’t: it isn’t relative.

Epistemology's attempt is to find a consistent method to examine beliefs and claim without inconsistency or indeterminacy whether someone's belief is knowledge.

I mainly agree, but I would add there is more to it than being merely logically consistent and providing clarity (determinacy). Logical consistency, in itself, does not promise any sort of correspondence to reality (which I think you agree with me on that).

Since I separate truth and knowledge, then yes, it would necessarily follow that rationality is a precursor to epistemology. First comes the desire to make claims that are not contradicted by reality, then comes the establishment of norms and theories that help us refine and become successful at this.

Interesting, I think we largely agree here (just not about where to finally place rationality). I would say, epistemologically, that the desire to “know the world” (i.e., ‘know reality) is the prerequisite to epistemology and stemming from that desire is to want to not contradict reality. The desire itself to want to not contradict reality can be taken on without wanting to know reality; however, I don’t think one needs to the desire, as a prerequisite, to desire to know reality.

The big issues I would have here is that it makes (1) the desire to know the world not the sole imperative of epistemology and (2) it places rationality as moral tenants, which I would argue are inevitably going to bottom out at subjective moral judgments. When placed in epistemology, it becomes objectively based.

Again, I largely agree with your approach here besides a few conceptual and semantic differences!

Wonderful! I figured we would agree on quite a bit, but that there are some places we won’t (as of yet).

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello 180 Proof,

From my study of Spinoza, by "dual-aspect" I understand there to be (at least) two complementary ways to attribute predicates – physical & mental – to any entity which exhaustively describes its functioning.

How is this not property dualism?

This is my shorthand for Spinoza's description of substance (i.e. natura naturans) that, among other things, consists in necessary causal relations and is unbounded (i.e. not an effect of or affected by any external causes – other substances – because it is infinite in extent).

Oh, I see. Are you, then, a necessitarian?

Hello 180 Proof,

Well, your quote cherry-picks its emphasis (indicative of uncharitably reading me out of context again) by missing / ignoring the following...

Since I seem to be misrepresenting you, let me just ask for clarification: are you claiming that these promises are moral facts because (1) they are mind-independent (as biologically embedded into us as organisms) and (2) also obligations? Is that the idea?

Hello Apustimelogist,

Yes, because at the end of the day, aslong as you are receptive to evidence and change your views based on that then it should lead to the same result.

I don’t think this works, as you are saying that if it strikes you as the case that the counter-evidence (which would change your mind) was true, then you should do the opposite and thusly not change your mind. I don’t see how one would be receptive to evidence if they always have to negate their intuitive reaction to the situation, as they would be obligated to never accept counter-evidence that they would normally accept.

Yes, but why should one have to use parsimony if a non-parsimonious explanation is just as good? If the non-parsimonious one gets the job done, is there really a requirement to use a more parsimonious one?

If they both explain the same data, then it is extraneous to accept the more complicated theory: it is just superfluous and, thusly, there is no legitimate reason to accept it.

I will grant that it doesn't actually make sense to go against this principle but at the same time this principle is not guaranteed to give you knowledge.

That is absolutely fair enough! Yes, I am not saying that this principle, in itself, provides any understanding of how accurate one’s beliefs are in relation to the world, but I do think that it is a factor for ‘knowing the world’ better, if that makes any sense.

Hello Philosophim!

I have wanted to dive into your posts but I have not had the time to give them the thought they deserve. I am impressed by this particular post. I wanted to go over why.

It is great to hear from you again! I always enjoy our conversations, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on my posts!

Firstly, your reservation that I did not justify the epistemic norms themselves nor “rationality” adequately in the OP is completely warranted: my main purpose was to just demonstrate the objectivity of epistemic norms, and then to very briefly enumerate some of the principles I find to be such norms (and to define rationality). In terms of giving an elaboration justification for them, I can absolutely provide those. Although, I will disclaim that I am still thinking through my own epistemological theory, but I am looking forward to hearing your critiques of what I am thinking so far!

To elaborate a bit, my justification for those four principles as epistemic norms is based off of intuitions; so I will need to start us off with the first principle (namely, intuitions as a principle itself), which leads me to:

This is not circularly justified. In fact, you made no justification for it at all

Correct, I merely alluded to the circularity of, well, the first principle; so here’s my thinking on why it is actually circular.

If one is to say that one ought to take what strikes them as the case as “true” until counter evidence is provided that demonstrates its unreliability (p.s., I know you don’t like that word in this usage, so I quoted it to defer that conversation for now), then what justification is there for that claim other than that it strikes them as the case that one ought to take what strikes them as the case as “true” <...>? I submit to you that there isn’t. I can only justify my belief that intuitions should be taken as “true” <...> based off of my intuition that it has been my best means of navigating life. But if someone were to ask “why are intuitions reliable?”, then I have nothing but an intuition to give them—hence the circularity.

You alluded to a solution that you have in your epistemological theory:

If you recall, that's what I did in my paper. It is justified by the fact that logically, it is our best way of assessing reality within our limitations

But I think your solution is plagued just the same by this issue, as I could ask “what justification do you have for intuitions being the best way of assessing reality within our limitations?”...is that not an intuition you have based off of your experience which strikes you as the case that your intuitions, which have not been invalidated as unreliable by counter-evidence, are the best way of assessing reality?

Intuitions, by my lights, seems to be an epistemic primitive: I cannot even invalidate intuitions (by claiming them all as unreliable) without thereby trusting intuition that they are all unreliable, which thusly leads to a paradox.

Next up, is your alluding of ‘true’ being improper within epistemology, as, if I remember correctly, you believe that epistemology is devoid of consideration of truth and, rather, is about cogency. You express this here (I think):

A minor quibble with the word "true". I would replace "true" with "known".

To me, to claim something is ‘known’ is to take it up as true, even if it is not certain as to whether it is true. I don’t see (anymore) how a person could claim to “know” something and simultaneously not take it as true (even if they are not certain about it). Perhaps, as I suspect you disagree here, you could briefly give me a refresher on how this would work in your epistemological theory?

To me, whatever the proposition may be, it has prepackaged within it a context (i.e., a scope), and to claim to know it (about the world) is to take it up as true within that context. We may not be able to know the absolute truth of things, but we are, by my lights, still getting at truth in this contextual manner. For example, if I claim “Bob Ross exists”, then it is pretty ambiguous—as I could be saying many things with that statement, such as “Bob Ross exists in the world-in-itself” or “Bob Ross exists in the world-for-us”. However, once the ambiguity is resolved, it becomes clear (to me) that if I were to agree that “Bob Ross exists in the world-in-itself”, then I am taking that proposition as true—it is not somehow not true and I know it.

Another thing you noted was the role of ‘beliefs’ in ‘knowledge’, which I would like to briefly address:

Beliefs are of course part of the discussion of knowledge, but beliefs are steps towards knowledge, not knowledge itself.

Although it has indeed been awhile since I read your papers (so correct me if I am misremembering here), I remember your use of ‘belief’ as something like an initial attitude towards a proposition (i.e., a conjecture/hypothesis about reality which hasn’t been verified yet). To me, it seems as though ‘beliefs’ are knowledge (i.e., the verified claim) and the conjectures (i.e., the preliminary attitudes towards something), and the difference is only whether the claim has passed the rules of verification (within the epistemological theory). My conjecture “that I exist” is a belief, and even after it has been verified it is still a belief I have: it is just now a verified belief (viz., I stamp it with the approval of it passing my epistemic validation, like a value returning a 1 when inputted into a function).

I would say that within you clay analogy the beliefs are indeed the clay, and so is the pot that is made out of it—and the difference is merely in the clay passing the validation of being whatever it was intended to be made into by the potter (in this case, a pot).

Another thing you mentioned is coherence not being a consideration of epistemology, for

Good epistemology does not seek coherence by forcing our rational outcomes into a belief system, but an already established knowledge system...it is not that we change or alter knowledge to keep coherence, it is that a system of knowledge should be coherent naturally

.

I agree that the epistemological theory should itself, be coherent; but I also add that within the theory a consideration of coherence of current knowledge with the candidate knowledge is important. For we assimilate the world around us via what we already claim to know about it, and we attempt not to incessantly force the candidate knowledge to bend and appropriate to our current knowledge but, rather, to assess the hierarchy ‘web’ of our knowledge with the inclusion of the candidate knowledge to see how well it fits in contrast to our higher-prioritized knowledge (within that hierarchy web). For example, I reject that I can fly by flapping my arms in the air because it is, among other things, incoherent with my current knowledge (beliefs, as I would call them) of the world. There is absolutely no logical contradiction in such a claim, but nevertheless it is incoherent with all the knowledge I have that I prioritize higher than that claim (as potential knowledge).

Lastly, you mentioned that:

At a basic level, wouldn't it make more sense that rationality is what the epistemic norms are grounded in, and not the other way around?

I would say no, for then “rationality” would be defined outside of epistemology, which, in turn, only leaves it room to be crafted within morality, which, to me, doesn’t quite fit what ‘rationality’ tends to mean. We don’t mean that you are rational or irrational in relation to whatever ethical theory one has (e.g., you are acting irrationally because I take ethical theory A to be true and in A your action is immoral) but, rather, we take rationality to be epistemic (and, thusly, psychopaths can even act very rational when committing egregious crimes). If it is to be placed in epistemology, then it would have to be derived from the epistemic norms, whatever primitive ones exist, which are objectively better for “knowing the world”--and thusly rationality is not the prerequisite for the epistemic norms themselves.

For the sake of brevity, I shall stop here and give you a chance to respond.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Bob

Hello Apustimelogist,

Obviously your intuitions may be wrong but it also seems to be that I could apply the opposite rule and it wouldn't necessarily have an effect on how well I gather knowledge.

Are you saying that taking what doesn’t strike you to be the case as the case would be equally legitimate as doing the contrary?

I just don't see why this needs to be the case. I can imagine someone applying this and it turning out that the correct option had more entities than they woukd have deemed necessary.

With parsimony, it is not a principle that determines what is necessary to explain but, rather, to restrict one’s explanation thereto; so, a person not explaining the entire phenomena (which would thusly require more entities to explain) would not be more parsimonious than a person would utilized more entities to explain it but they were all necessary for explanatory purposes. Parsimony is not ‘the simplest answer wins’, it is ‘entities should not be multiplied without necessity’. Of course, what one thinks is necessary could be different than what another thinks, but that is not of concern for this principle itself.

Your higher-prioritized beliefs may be wrong.

True. But if you believe something with higher confidence than something else, then why would it ever make sense to, when in conflict, take the less confident belief as true over the more confident one? This seems irrational to me and clearly not a good way of ‘knowing the world’.

This one I agree with most and is most intuitive of what we want to do but at same time maybe sometimes we do hold inconsistent models about the world which nonetheless are useful.

Of course! However, utility is not knowledge. For utility, as opposed to knowledge (truth), the goal is only to provide whatever is the most useful towards another goal, which could entail any sort of explanation so long as it achieves just that. Thusly, you are absolutely right that it may be the case that a inconsistent, paraconsistent, illogical, incoherent, paracoherent, etc. theory may be a more useful than one which is perfectly consistent—but its usefulness, to me, says nothing about its truth (other than, of course, that it is true that it is useful).

Hello Mww,

Long ways from moral realism, aren’t we?

Lol: yes. But I am intrigued by this conversation, and as long as you are as well then I think we should continue.

It isn’t a fabric, it’s a mathematical model of a gravitational field under specific conditions. The Universe, reality in general, in and of itself….whatever there is that isn’t us…..doesn’t need space or time. We as calculating intelligences, do.

That makes sense! I’ve just only ever heard of Einstein’s space/time as a fabric, but that must just be physicalists and substance dualists that advocate for it and not Einstein himself (potentially).

The interesting part of this part of your response it that it almost seems like you are granting science metaphysically legitimacy, which I reckoned you wouldn’t as a transcendental idealist, but just that we don’t need, scientifically, to posit space and time but, rather, only mathematical models of things: is that correct?

Otherwise, wouldn’t you be compelled to say that “the universe is completely unknown” instead of “the universe...in and of itself...doesn’t need space or time”: the latter seems like a knowledge claim about the things-in-themselves—but I could be just getting in the weeds here.

But then, the Universe doesn’t need mathematical models or gravitational fields either, so……

I also lean towards mathematical anti-realism, if that is what you are alluding to here. I just wonder what is actually going on in reality then, and how would we ever know?

Thing is, we’re investigating objects a posteriori, in order to understand them better, not space or time.

But that is exactly what Einstein did: he made predictions about objects that would prove the differing behaviors of space and time—so it was an indirect empirical inquiry of space and time themselves (e.g., predicting the orbit of mercury with space curvature).

Space and time don’t behave, don’t possess behavior.

So, under your view, space curving and time dilating are not classified as behaviors? Then what are they classified as?

Hello Apustimelogist,

Well the way I stated it in the OP was meant to just be a counterargument against irreducibility so that a physicalist could use it. But I think my view here is mostly just an argument against dualism. I don't think I am truly a physicalist

Oh I see! Yes, I agree that dualism is not a coherent way to go, for sure.

Oh heck no. The science is good.
...
He stated for the record mathematics is discovered, but in fact I rather think the proofs of mathematical relations are discovered, but math, in and of itself, is a purely rational construction by, and manifestation of, human intelligence.

I see! I am just a bit confused then what you think of space/time fabric? Einstein's notion of space/time is something which would exist beyond the possibility of all experience, which I thought, as a kantian, you would deny knowledge of any such things.

For example, do you amend Kant's original formulation and say that space and time are a posteriori (since we only understand them better via empirical investigation)? Are they still a priori insofar as they are forms of our experience, but their behaviors are a posteriori? Do you know what I mean?

You take my use of promise out of context and then object rather than engaging with what I've actually written. For example, there's nothing about saying "I promise", which you quarrel with tendentiously

I apologize if I misunderstood (and thusly misrepresented your view), but I can assure you it is not on purpose. Here's why I thought you were speaking of promises as moral facts:

Suffering signals the need for help; other sufferers either keep the promise implicit in their own need for help or they break the promise. A promise is an IS that entails an OUGHT, no? A moral fact that warrants a moral claim? So it seems reasonable to say the "furniture of the (our) world" does contain moral facts: suffering sapients.

You are absolutely talking about 'promises', which you seem to have denied in your current response, and you definitely claimed that a 'promise' is an IS that entails an OUGHT. So I am failing to see how I misrepresented you; but please feel free to clarify as I do not wish to misrepresent you.

I would like to hear more about your irreductivist approach to explanation.

I've no idea to what you are referring or how the above is relevant to anything I've stated.

Dual-aspect monism is just property dualism--isn't it? If so, then it is a irreductionist account, which is a theory of explanation. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what 'dual-aspect' means in your use of 'monism'.

I do not see how Spinozism (i.e. dual-aspect monism + modal-ontological determinism) is consistent with panpsychism / idealism.

This is more of a side-note, but when I read Spinoza's Ethics, I thought he was an idealist; but I could be wrong.

What is modal-ontological determinism? Could you please elaborate?

I still don't know what his idea of culpability means in this context. People aren't to blame for getting pregnant, they are responsible for their actions and their consequences.

The woman (and man) are to blame for the condition of this new life, which is fragile and needing of nourishment and care; because they decided to engage in an act which reasonably can be inferred to result in a pregnancy. How are they, under your view, not to blame for getting pregnant?

Clearly you and I aren't going to come to any agreement on this when you don't even recognize that you are making a judgment that the fetus' interests are more important than the woman's.

I have clarified that the fetus' life is more important than the woman's life in the case that she is culpable for their condition (i.e., consensually had sex). I do not think that the fetus' life is always more important than the woman's life. Within the context of consensual sex, it seems as though you also disagree with me here--as you envision the woman's health as always more important than the fetus': even in the case that the woman is to blame for that fetus' condition. We could start there if you would like.