Right, many of histories most bitter wars are ideological, so clearly debate can collapse into power relations. My concern about epistemic standards that are too loose is that they basically just fast forward us towards the collapse into power relations.

Talking is effective for different reasons, right? You have your old ethos, logos, and pathos, different sorts of appeals. But isn't a "good argument" one that tends towards truth, not one that tends towards conversion and agreement? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where do you see your preference for dissection playing in here? — Count Timothy von Icarus

First, a clarification -- A defense of dissection, in the sense that it is not superior to the builders of philosophy, is what I've set out to defend.

More or less that the skeptical position isn't inferior to the non-skeptics in terms of philosophical excellence. Both are valuable. Also there's a sense in which this delineation is quite soft, so even stating a preference for one over the other is a difficulty. As we see earlier @Janus disagreed with my classifying Hume as a nit-picker, and @Hanover disagreed upon that. So far it seems to me that the idea is still quite hazy.

***
Actually we both liked @hypericin's essay -- maybe we could say there are elephants and ravensland-whales and crows (sorry hyper), as styles of philosophy.

I could defend the other side, too, and even have in this thread to some extent by referencing Plato as an obvious myth-builder -- but there is a particular habit in philosophy, like Hegel's and Marx's, which swallows up other philosophies into themselves. At this point that's the only real error that I think I can point to that I've been thinking through: sometimes the world builder builds so large that it becomes a giant, coherent circle that reinforces itself, and since Hegel-to-Marx demonstrates that we can turn Idealism into Materialism it seems to me that the coherent circle reinforcing itself doesn't exactly have a relationship to what's real at all.

Neither idealism nor materialism, in terms of metaphysics.

Now for a proper coherentist this wouldn't be a fault. But I just don't see the world that way at all -- for the coherentist who does this would be seen as a good thing, a reason to accept the account. But for myself I tend to think absurdity is a real thing, so coherentism is automatically ruled out -- rather than a marker of a good belief I tend to think entirely coherent accounts which reinforce themselves are somehow skipping over a problem to make the system appear smooth, when in fact it's not.

Ye olde appearance/reality distinction

***

For my part I tend to think of metaphysics not as knowledge but ways of organizing the world around us such that multiplicity doesn't overwhelm. I'm not opposed to the metaphysics. I don't think one can be, really -- metaphysical thinking abounds. I just doubt that the metaphysics are real, exactly. The minutiae, the strange, the different, the absurd -- these are what seem real to me.
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Right, many of histories most bitter wars are ideological, so clearly debate can collapse into power relations. My concern about epistemic standards that are too loose is that they basically just fast forward us towards the collapse into power relations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that if we have to worry about epistemic standards being too loose in order to control power relations then we've already fallen into a battle of power relations where truth isn't as important anymore.

Not that this isn't practical, of course -- there are many social situations where we should not trust others' opinions on things. Power is in fact a part of the world that we have no choice but to contend with.

I think that if we have a good relationship, though, that the epistemic standards come to fore through that relationship. I want others to speak the truth so I speak the truth, and when we get that reciprocity from someone else then, and only then, do we have a trustworthy standard to which we can appeal.

So rather than standards or proofs I would offer relationships and trust -- if you have a good relationship of trust with someone then as we work together the standards will slowly take care of themselves as we tackle problems together.

Which is why it's easy for two traditions to clash. Both people have done a lot of work to the point that they are used to being listened to as an authority due to this or that argument or reason, and suddenly two well-informed people who think like that talk and they try to out-teach one another or show them up in some way and suddenly -- you see how that's a battle for power rather than truth?

But if we trust one another and we want the truth then we can set aside who is right and focus on "How did we get here?"

Talking is effective for different reasons, right? You have your old ethos, logos, and pathos, different sorts of appeals. But isn't a "good argument" one that tends towards truth, not one that tends towards conversion and agreement? If it was the latter, then it would seem that we are always dealing with mere power relations. That is, of course , the thesis of some philosophers though.

I am not sure if we have "succeeded" if we have successfully talked others into accepting our own false opinions though.

For sure, I agree there.

I don't see persuasion as divorced from truth, though. How else are we to craft an argument other than to make it persuasive? Are we supposed to make it sound bad in order to really make sure it's true?

While I can see an error in accepting a conclusion just because we like the conclusion, I would say that such a person wasn't interested in whether or not the argument was actually persuasive or not -- they just wanted to have something to say, like a chant in a rally.

Further, some of these debates are highly consequential. Consider the current debate over vaccines in the US. Or consider the example of a sui generis "socialist genetics" that led to famines that killed thousands, if not millions. The stakes in some debates are very high, and so I'm not sure "we talk and maybe we agree and maybe we don't" works in principle. That at least, isn't how things are often done in the wider world, again because stakes are often high. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, it doesn't work in principle. When Feyerabend says "Anything goes" he really only means at this highly abstract level where we are trying to divine the logical principles by which all knowledge is produced from the beginning of time and onto into the future. When that's the standard of universality that you're reaching for then upon examining classical cases of knowledge generation, such as Galileo's Two Worlds, you'll simply not find a common thread through all of them. The number of people that have tried different things and succeeded is so large that you'll always be able to find some counter-example to such a giant aspiration.

More or less the question cannot be answered. But what's interesting is that if we closely examine particular sciences then you start to see patterns at least within the same era. And it seems they work in a more local sense, and in terms of a smaller (i.e. not literally the whole universe of knowledge, past present and future) generalization we can succeed for a time. It's just that it's probably going to change in the future since that's pretty much what we've observed since the beginning of science -- constant change from one theory to the next.

That in spite of the fact that the stakes are, indeed, high. There's a reason we think about this stuff. It makes complete sense to ask and pursue the questions. I have no problem with such projects -- I just think there's a lot of them out there (and this is part of the confusion in living in our modern world)

A question here might be: "can people be taught to better evaluate claims?" If they can't, then philosophy is pretty useless, or at least general epistemology is. If they can be taught, then presumably there are principles for evaluating claims and narratives that are more general. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well I am mostly in favor of philosophy being useless. I wish it could be more useless -- but this is an aside.

I don't think that exactly follows because one can be taught something that doesn't have principles. Like @J's use of musicology I'd go to acting theory here, particularly Stanislavski, who is explicitly building a system that doesn't have principles. We learn to do, and sometimes we can learn how to evaluate claims, but in so doing we'll be attached to a particular tradition with its own evaluative tools.

This isn't exactly damning insofar that we understand that we can't learn without making some assumptions. But just like Picasso and Botticelli are both painters so there can be two philosophers that produce different works of art. (Indeed, I largely think of philosophy as a kind of wisdom literature, which is why I think aesthetics are actually very important for understanding philosophy, moreso than epistemology)

But all that to say I would answer "Yes" to your question, but not follow your inference. People can be taught. That doesn't mean there are principles for evaluating claims and narratives. It could be that we evaluate claims and narratives with other claims and narratives, and that would explain why it gets so confusing sometimes.

We rely on authority to settle a lot of these issues, e.g. doctors carry special weight in the vaccine debate. But obviously there is an issue of proper authority. Doctors don't have authority on vaccines just because they claim it, or because it is yielded to them, else there is never "improper authority" in cases where people recognize authority. The idea of a "proper authority" that is distinct from whoever just so happens to hold authority seems to me to require an additional standard, and probably one that is general in its principles since we must adjudicate proper authority across disparate spheres. — Count Timothy von Icarus

We do, but it doesn't seem to me that doctors really ask what philosophers think on whether or not a doctor is a good doctor. Similarly so with all the trades. I did note in brief earlier how the one thing you probably have to know is some kind of trade to live in an industrial world. So these are the sources of knowledge that we work with on the day-to-day. Sometimes philosophers' ideas trickle out into the world and you can see their influence, but their influence is -- properly I think -- restricted to influencing the mind through argument, narrative, ideas, and all the various tools of philosophy.

Rather than writing the standards by which some professions ought to proceed I think the philosopher is better as a point of reflection. Philosophy is a dictatorship, but a dictatorship without any power to enforce its whims -- at least when it's best.

And then also -- while there may be an elevated relationship between philosophy and other disciplines at the very least here, on TPF, the general assumption is that we're all equal. There are people of differeing levels and exposures of course like anything, but really the only way we here can resolve a dispute is by talking and finding some sort of standard by which we can agree. Else it's the clash of worldviews talking past one another.

What settles epistemic disputes? — Count Timothy von Icarus

We do. By talking. Sometimes negotations fail, though.

I don't think there's one way it happens. What settles a philosophical dispute? Isn't the volume of words on this site alone enough to demonstrate that there is no such settling, once and for all?

I think this is where the notion of research programs, or paradigms, or traditions plays an important role. But I think that this paring down of a problem is -- necessarily -- going to block out many things of concern. There is simply an overabundance of being, a constant overflowing of language such that language is always catching up, at a distance. And because there's so much in relation to our abilities we will necessarily have to focus in on some part of the infinite whole. We've been doing this since we could pass on knowledge through oral traditions. We have no say in what came before, only a valuable inheritance which, as it was then so it is now, is constantly in dispute.

But even this valuable inheritance is too much for us to comprehend -- even it is infinite in relation to one person's ability. And in order to learn a tradition or research program or paradigm one must listen to those who are doing the practice. These are what I'd call the a priori assumptions which define a practice, if we want to put it into philosophical language at least. There may have been someone for whom it was a posteriori, but for us who inherit what came before it's quite literally a priori, and often the way these things are taught they are taught such that we just have to accept them as true in order to move on.

That's a good habit for learning within a tradition.

I think that the negotiations fail more often not simply because we've been habituated to this teacher-student model by the practice, and then when we encounter someone whose different from us that habit kicks back in. But here we are equals talking about ideas, and not teacher-students or student-teachers, except insofar that we acknowledge such a relationship. For example, @Banno has helped me understand Davidson and Wittgenstein -- without his efforts on these fora I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have cracked that nut on my own.

Not to say I have a superior interpretation or something -- I just mean I finally got to the meat and felt like I understood something of what he was getting at.

And, really, I can say that about lots of philosophers and fellow posters here. So it's not like we can't learn outside of the teacher-student relationship.

But it takes some mutual respect and understanding that the other person, no matter how crazy they may sound, probably did arrive at their views by some philosophical process, and really the best we can do is tease out what that sequence of thoughts are.

But the dispute will, likely, continue beyond us -- it's a dispute we had no hands in creating, and here it lives on through us, so I doubt we're going to stop it here.

Metaphysics takes a leap involving hypothesis based on assumption. Hegel had hubris claiming he saw the Absolute and giving it a capital “A”.

But I also see hubris in Wittgenstein. He made a similar mic drop move, but from the opposite pole. — Fire Ologist

Good post overall.

I want to highlight this from it because it looks important to me.

I think we can all accept that one of the general lessons of philosophy is that hubris is to be avoided -- not necessarily for the causes of virtue, but at least for the causes of not looking stupid ;)

And I think I see your assessment here as a way of adding a second dimension to the distinction so as to have four categories -- World-builders/Dissectors and Hubris/Humility.

With the former I think I'd say these are categorical, not evaluative, descriptions.

But with the other I'd say these are evaluative, and to give a nod to Aristotle I think the mean between them would be where goodness lies. One can be too proud or too humble, and we can think of extreme examples to make the point, but there is a kind of practiced back-and-forth in philosophical dialogue where sometimes we make the assertion and sometimes we take it back or think there's something else there.

And really I think that's more of a choice we make case-by-case. The extremes are there as a warning, but the mean remains rather undefined.

If Banno's categories of "dissector" and "discourser" are just "metaphor," and all dissectors are also discoursers and all discoursers are also dissectors, then what in the world do you think the thread is even about? — Leontiskos

Ways of looking at, or doing, philosophy.

When I contrast the builder with the destroyer (and you recast that as the builder and the critic), it makes no sense to respond by claiming that the destroyer is a builder. You can't distinguish builders from critics and then turn around and say that there is no difference, because the critics are builders, too. If there is no difference then why in the world would we make the distinction in the first place!? — Leontiskos

To note two ways to philosophize.

You wanted to claim that the builders are superior to the destroyers.

Thus far -- which is a usual approach for me to philosophical disagreement -- I've maintained that both ways of philosophy are good. So my disagreement has only been against your notion that the builders are superior to the other side, whatever that happens to be. (And surely you can see how "building" is a metaphor, yes?)

Tagging @Count Timothy von Icarus -- In case you missed it, click on @Banno's post.

And I guess all I can do here is point to the basic liberal principles of accepting the differences that make no difference. If someone wants to be referred to as "they", why not just oblige? And were it makes a difference, to seek accomodation before violence.

And of course there is much, much more to say here. — Banno

Having more to say is better than having nothing to say, so cheers to that.

I am tempted to go a step further, and suggest that we assume commensurability. That, after all, is what the Principle of Charity implies. You and I are talking about the very same world, in which we are both embedded. — Banno

I think I can go that far. Not sure how to disagree, but I split your reply for a reason... :D

Our points of agreement overwhelm our points of disagreement. But our disagreements make for longer threads. — Banno

Assuming commensurability makes sense to me, at least as a philosophical norm. Else we'll likely talk past one another.

But I wouldn't want to rely upon the justification "our points of agreement overwhelm our points of disagreement" -- because it may lead to the same thing. This is the first time I've tried to express this, but there's this "other" side of charity whereupon the maximal charity doesn't hear the expression of difference. Or, perhaps, the more charitable act isn't to always interpret within your bounds, but recognize when there's a genuine difference -- that'd be the more charitable interpretation.

I like charity as a principle, a lot. Just there could be this other weird way of "swallowing" another's thoughts.

Heh, me too -- but I keep coming back :D

by now perhaps a little tired? — J

Only if we've stopped caring about doing philosophy and found our answers, I think.

Indeed.

Hegelian rhetoric can be brilliant, as in the mouth of that salivating Slav, Žižek. And our own Tobias, of course. — Banno

I go so far as to say the ideas are brilliant. I mean, someone had to try to build the complete system of German Idealism, right?

In a way his is the philosophy to pick up if you think you can have a ToE -- if you can definitively translate Hegel into your system as a worthy inference, somehow, then you might have a philosophical basis for at least claiming a ToE.

But not necessarily, as @Count Timothy von Icarus noted about Hegel being pluralistic in a way. And my general impression of Hegelian interpretation is pro-pluralist: all interpretations are valid. And I cherish any input @Tobias decides to give us.

But you see... there's that quicksand feel of being sucked back into the universality of Hegel's mind, as if a human in the 1800's could see all of time and know it.

Although, more seriously, it is interesting that few thinkers are interpreted in more diverse ways. But if Hegel can produce Magee's hermetic sorcerer, Pinkard's Aristotleian "naturalist," Blunden's proto-Marx, Kojeve's liberal, Dorrien's theologian, Houlgate's ontologist, Pippen's logician, Harris' semi-mystic, or the proto-fascist Hegels of yesteryear, he can hardly be monolithic. Rather, all have issued from what he put forth in virtual form, and they shall all sublate one another on their return to Hegel as Geist. But they are each moments in the Absolute Hegel. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But you see this is exactly the monolothic move -- to demonstrate how Hegel is actually appealing to whomever is talking about him, and how, in fact, they would agree with him only if they truly studied and understood his words.

I think it's monolothic in that it's a philosophy that swallows all philosophies, and one need only spend time studying Hegel to see the truth of that. In a way one cannot disagree with it -- they can only misunderstand it. :D

Right, for me the great philosophers' ideas and systems have aesthetic value. They present us with novel ways to think about things―and they are admirable just on account of their sustained complexity of inter-related ideas. — Janus

Definitely. I mean I think we do have to ask, eventually when we think we understand the philosopher well enough, "So is it true, though?" -- and that's what I'd call the against the grain reading.

But generally I see more value in the with-the-grain reading because the whole value to me is understanding different ways of thinking. I find it fascinating.

Truth is an underlying concern of mine, but the value of philosophy -- much like science -- really does include knowing what's we've said before whether it was true or false. One, those thoughts might prove true in a different environment, so they are worth preserving so as not to have to reinvent them wholesale down the line. Two, if we forget a mistake it's more than likely we'll commit it again, so it's good to look for these thoughts on their own even if they are false -- I wonder about the truth or falsity, but their value is so much more than that.
 

As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher. I also see Hume as an immensely creative thinker and not at all a mere "nitpicker".

I'm open to reclassification on the basis of something. It's just a rough idea right now! :D And I'm attempting to classify such that it's appealing to all involved in the conversation -- rather trying to show that the idea is appealing as an idea for thinking through ways of philosophizing.

Attempting to use familiar names to get at what those differences might be is the method, but I don't imagine I have it correct.

If Language games are incommensurable, all sorts of problems ensue. So I think we have to go with Davidson here, and reject the idea of incommensurability in such things. — Banno

I think we have to make a case for, rather than assume, incommensurability between language games. I'd put the incommensurability on the side of intension, though, such that it's not an in-principle incommensurability -- insofar that people with two sets of assumptions listen to one another over time I think bridges can be built, and in fact usually they are not necessary at all. We simply mean different things by the same words and misunderstand one another.

But then there are times where it seems quite difficult to translate one explicit language game into another explicit language game -- insofar that we recognize that they aren't really doing the same thing then we would say these are not incommensurable. It's only an interesting sort of possible incommensurability when we have two language games of fairly equivalent persuasive power competing over both intensions and extensions of words.

Or something like that.

I think incommensurability needs to be bounded -- but there are times it seems to "fit", and insofar that it's not an in-principle incommensurability then it doesn't seem to contradict Davidson to me.

So the critic is actually a builder? That's your solution? — Leontiskos

Pyrrho didn't leave anything for us to critique. That's perhaps the most consistent sort of skepticism I can imagine. So, no, he had no need for them. The point was to counter them.

Also, I'd say that the builder metaphor can only go so far in philosophy. This going back to there being more than one way to do philosophy.

So the critic is actually a builder? That's your solution? "Critics don't need any builders, because they are builders too!"

You are conceding my point, namely that builders are necessary. You've merely conceded it by magically making the critic a builder. You are not contesting my point that critics cannot exist without builders. — Leontiskos

Do we die on the hill of a metaphor?

Suppose there were two people who like philosophy talking to one another and at the end of the conversation someone says "When you live in this house it will destroy you"

The once-contractor nods and goes about thier business.

Some time later the builder sees a path into the woods in the same place.

Before the builders there were people who just wondered about shit. It took the architectonics to come along and think that thought had to be a building to be worthwhile -- so indeed I do think it's the other way about, and sometimes we just want different things.

That's pretty much the way I see things between you and I. Philosophy isn't a wrestling match and we really can consider ideas without judging them as true or false in all cases -- we can provide caveats and exceptions and note difficulties along the way without it toppling all knowledge. In fact, in order to do so, we have to have some kind of knowledge to begin realizing that our categories don't hold up -- it's in the differences that we find true knowledge of the world, rather than their idealizations into sameness.

Well, naturally, I'd never dream to counter the phenomenologist which can see all of time-thought in the moment of the absolute...

The analytic tradition was merely the next necessary moment in the push towards Absolute Freedom.

What it actually addresses is the fact that there are two ways of philosophizing within the analytic tradition, and some do it rigorously and some do it sloppily. Those who are rigorous allow beliefs to fall as logic requires. Those who are sloppy maintain their views regardless of where they are contradicted, using analytic systems when it benefits their biases and ignoring the problems when it doesn't. — Hanover

I don't think the two ways are unique to the analytic tradition. At least I'd use Kant as a mixer between the two ways, and Hegel as the world-builder.

In early modern philosophy I find it hard to find another comparison for the critical grump. Hume leaps to mind but I'm wondering if that would not count as a continental since he's from across the aisle, when I'd say he's part of the Enlightenment tradition which seems to count as continental to my mind.

Right, reason becomes trapped in the disparate fly-bottles of sui generis language games. Man is separated from being, either by the mind, or later by language. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I tend to think that Wittgenstein's intent, at least, is to lead the fly out of the bottle. Noticing that a language game contains one way of looking at that whole world outside it is what I draw from that metaphor.

He is like the separated lover who can never reach his other half in the Symposium. Language, the sign vehicle, ideas, etc. become impermeable barriers that preclude the possibility of union, rather than the very means of union.

Well that fits with my sympathies. Along with...

Doing philosophy is a human endeavour. While it reaches for glory and joy, it stands in mud, puss and entrails. :wink: — Banno

Once one consummates philosophy I believe it ceases to be a certain kind of philosophy, at least -- and sometimes it becomes a science or something else rather than what philosophers care about.

But the philosopher is one who reaches for the erotic, rather than consummates it.

I think such remarks are self refuting and mischaracterise both mathematics and philosophy by falsely implying that they are separate language games. — sime

How would you group mathematics and philosophy into the same language game?

I'd say they are different in the sense that math is a science, and sciences differ from philosophy. That may not be enough to claim a separate language game, though -- it'd depend upon how we want to talk about language games.

(** philosophically archaic definition, so as not to be confused with the way the term is commonly used on this thread, yet consistent with the immediate subject matter.) — Mww

:D Hey, I'm the one defending the nit-pickers. I had you in mind in crafting the thought -- it's always a bit of an art in trying to simplify the greats to a manageable idea we can all work with and think through.

As an example of the monolithic style of thought I'd say Hegel takes the cake. No one seems to claim to understand so much as he does. In the Adorno reading group I'm reminded of...

Next he looks at an early criticism of Hegel by Krug, who "objected that if he really wished to do justice to Hegel’s philosophy he would have to be able to deduce the quill with which he had been writing." — Jamal

Hegel's response being "that's not relevant to philosophy" as a way of dealing with a possible counter-example.

Now it could very well be the case that this is a stupid thing to say in relation to another thinker, to have missed the point. And truthfully I think for any research program to be productive -- be it philosophical or scientific -- there are going to be some counter-examples that are simply ignored as not pertinent to what the thinkers are trying to get at.

But I think it worthwhile to note that Hegel's approach, though it feels like it encompasses it all, can be turned on its head and re-intepreted.

And, further, it's actually good philosophy to do so, sometimes. (Re-interpretation seems to require both the critical and the narrative)

In Kant? Isn't there apprehension prior to judgement? There is intuition/understanding/reason, which is clearly influenced by the three acts. He takes quite a bit from Aristotle. That's sort of Hegel's critique. "Oh look, I started presuppositionlessly and just happened to find Aristotle's categories." (I never found this critique of Hegel's strong, maybe the categories have held up because they are themselves strong).

Kant would deny truth as the adequacy of thought to being in the strong sense, or the idea of form coming through the senses to inform the intellect. I suppose the response here is that he rejects this because he presupposes representationalism and he has no good grounds for doing so (totally different subject). I'm also pretty sure he falls into identifying falsity with negation. So there would be other differences. I just don't know if the differences hold up without also accepting the fundamental axiom of "we experience only ideas/representations/our own experiences, not things," and of "knowledge of things in themselves," (as opposed to things as revealed by acting, actuality) as a sort of epistemic "gold standard" to aspire to. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Naturally it's tricky and subject to interpretation. Something that might be of value here is that Kant kind of does sit astride the line being explored here. I can say how I understand it, but mostly what matters in my summoning him is in his limitation on metaphysics. I recognize he takes a lot from Aristotle, but his modifications definitely put metaphysics into question as a science -- and I think it's a fair reading to say that the powers of judgment "underly" the categories.

"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt...But, though all our knowledge begins with experience, it by no means follows that all arises out of experience. -- Intro CPR, Gutenberg edition




In the Kantian sense, sure, but "perception" isn't even the same thing as we normally mean it when we speak "in the Kantian sense" :D

The priority is of the forms of reason -- most importantly for our discussion here I'm thinking of Kant's critical turn on metaphysics, in particular. With respect to metaphysics Kant is the nit-picker, and with respect to scientific knowledge Kant is the world-builder.

When you say apprehension comes prior to judgment I can't help but think of Kant whose whole project can be read as "Judgment is the single fundamental unity to Reason in all matters philosophical" :D -- I'm not sure there's such a thing as apprehension prior to judgment at all. Hence theory-ladenness, though I wouldn't put it at the level of structuring our perceptions very frequently. More that our ideas give us an idea about what's important to consider, and this is a learned kind of judgment, and there was no such thing as apprehending before learning how to judge -- it was just ignorance.

So I wonder if the notion of a contrary can do the work you're wanting it to do here in demonstrating that falsity is posterior do to our state of knowing. Seems to me that we can explain our state of knowing in terms of Judgment, which in turn requires a notion of the true and the false, sort of like the categories. In the state of ignorance we lack any sort of notion of either truth or falsity.

I mean, I kind of get the idea, but where my thoughts go is that you needcan't have one without the other. I don't really think of falsity as a privation of being. If anything falsity has more to do with how we judge, and being cannot be privated by such things.

Considering it I can make sense of the notion, but given all of my stated perspectives. . . :D

Seems to me that once we understand what's true we also understand what's false -- at the very least the object is an object and the object is different from the foreground which is what makes an object an object and not just a wash of meaningless perceptions. To see any individual we have to be able to say when it is-not the background.

Other examples could be Wittgenstein or Kant -- anyone that sets a limit to philosophical knowledge would in some sense qualify as a skeptic, I think, in a softer sense. There's something we can't know, and it doesn't build up from our prior knowledge. Else that'd be a rather uninteresting philosophical skepticism: if we could eventually find out everything then are we really skeptics in a meaningful sense?

We can't just paper over your invalid objection to my claim that without builders there can be no critics. That is the central and older part of the conversation, and it is the part that an auto-didact will have an easier time with. I focused on it for a reason. — Leontiskos

The critic criticizes themself. They don't have to learn how to build in order to do that. Suppose the builder goes away and the buyer decides to try what they had said they wanted. It falls apart like the builder said, and the buyer becomes a builder.

But there is Pyrrho's option of simply not building. How does that not count to your mind? The very point is to not believe -- so one does not need to know how to make inferences in order to stop making inferences, or even pointing out ways in which they are unsatisfactory. It's not like Pyrrho kept to this stubborn skeptics task, at least in the telling of the story -- he learned how the rationalists spoke and used their arguments against them.

I don't see it as unprincipled when I'm directly telling you why I'm thinking what I'm thinking. I think we really can use different metrics at different times -- different solutions to the Liar's Paradox are valuable to know. There isn't a single way to respond to the Liar's Paradox as evidenced by the philosophical literature on the Liar's Paradox. There are times when dialethia are appropriate and times when the simple logic of objects is appropraite.

If you have to resort to the extremely controversial example of the Liar's Paradox then your answer is going to be highly implausible and controversial. — Leontiskos

Sure, I agree with that.

Surely you've noticed these aren't things I attend to :D

I do in fact think of the implausible and controversial.

I've already given you my thoughts on the Liar's Paradox and I obviously think your analysis is incorrect.

Yeh, a bit of an impasse. But if asked it is what comes to mind.

Yep. I am saying that, "If you claim that something is false, then you must already hold to some truth in order to say so." The counterexample would be, "Here is an example where someone claims that something is false even though they do not hold to any truth in order to say so." — Leontiskos

This may be koan like, but it is at least a concrete example from the opening of the SEP's article on Pyrrho.

With the exception of poetry allegedly written while on Alexander’s expedition (which, as far as we can tell, did not survive that expedition), Pyrrho wrote nothing; we are therefore obliged to try to reconstruct his philosophy from reports by others.

"This sentence is false" seems to fit to me, but I'm not allowed to use it. :D

In a straightforward way if the LNC and LEM holds then there is nothing this sentence is about "in the world", right? It points to itself. Its referent is itself. Is the sentence an object in the world?

I'd say if we maintain the LNC and LEM as the standards for what can be considered, or all that is worthy of consideration, then a straightforward assignment of "False" to "This sentence is false" is an example of a falsehood that needs no truth.

Sorry, I chose it for a reason last time and it's still the one that fits now.

I just don’t give analytic dissection the priority. We need to assert, and then dissect. Whatever is left is truth about the world.

There is very little truth about the world that has survived the dissection. But I see it. — Fire Ologist

Well, yeah. It's right there!

Banno and Count seem to be arguing what wisdom is.

Well it is not error or nonsense, and it is not a ham sandwich. So it is something. And I see it is worth scrutinizing to try to define better.

For sure. I find philosophy pleasurable, so even supposing the skeptic is correct I'm not a Pyrrhonic skeptic. For me I just don't think philosophy is scientific knowledge, strictly speaking. I apply different standards to both disciplines, and tend to think they're better when they stop trying to control one another towards the "right" way to think. (But then can be productive together when both are valued)

"2+2=5" is false.

There's a sense in which we have to know things about "2" and "+" and "5" and "=" and "...is false"

So it seem easy to assert, without much specification on priority, that such an assertion would require some truths.

In just a first-go thought, that one would not qualify.

While they are contrary opposites, on the view of truth as a transcendental property of being, falsity is parasitic on truth for the same reason that evil is parasitic on good—it is an absence. If truth is the adequacy of the intellect to being then its lack is a privation. Likewise, without ends, goods, the entire concept of evil makes no sense, since nothing is sought and so no aims are every frustrated. — Count Timothy von Icarus

How is it you understand the truth without falsity, though? What's this part where you're not thinking about the false, but instead -- prior to falsity -- only the true?

I asked you what a critic is supposed to criticize if there is no builder, and in response you pointed to a critic who criticizes a builder. Do you see how you failed to answer my question?

This began when I said that if there are no builders then there can be no critics, and you responded by saying that in that case the critics would just criticize themselves. So again, your example of a critic who criticizes a house-builder is in no way an example of critics criticizing themselves, sans builders. — Leontiskos

Do you see how it's correct for the critic to still say that they don't know?

That's what I was hoping the example to demonstrate -- they don't have to say "Look, here's a better house" in order to say "I don't know how to build a house"

Their opinions may not be relevant to the construction of the house, sure -- but they'd still be right in claiming ignorance, so there are circumstances where it's better to claim ignorance rather than propose a solution.

I'm just asking you to give me an example of an assertion of falsehood which presupposes no truths. Can you do that?

"John wrote 2+2=5 on his paper. Bill said that his answer was false. But no truth needs to exist in order for Bill to say that the answer is false."

Something like that. Something straightforward. An example. — Leontiskos

Oh, OK. Sure, I can.

Your examples of the kinds of examples helped me get what you were after better.

So you want a circumstance where bill said some statement is false, and there is no truth that needs to exist in order for Bill to say that the answer is false.

Correct?

So it's about the conditions of assertability? When a person can assert they believe something is false?

Still thinking about a good one, just asking for more information

Like “I think, therefore, I am.” Or have I already said too much? — Fire Ologist

I actually wonder if that'd qualify... I'm not sure.

I was more thinking insofar that we weaken our requirements for knowledge so that the skeptical problems become irrelevant then in a very common sense way it seems to me that the mechanic knows cars -- a mixture of know-that/know-how that in some way connects the mechanic to the economic sphere such that they can take care of thems they need to.

I'd be more inclined to say we don't need to know the cogito, but we do need to know enough about some trade to live.

So we know something, surely -- but the devil is in the details.

But it is another thing to say “you are wrong because that doesn’t exist”. That is a positive assertion highlighting something that does in fact exist (namely, the landscape surrounding the hole you just carved where that thing you said doesn’t exist was supposed to be). Skeptics can’t say someone is wrong about what exists, just whether their manner of speaking is coherent or valid. — Fire Ologist

Why not?

Suppose a person who is skeptical about some things existing and not skeptical about other things existing -- so not the Cartesian scenario, but a little less grand.

Once you are talking about what exists, you need a metaphysician.

Maybe.

Though it's hard to believe when lots of people understand their environment well enough to get along in it -- I can't deny that there's a pull to the realist case, especially if we have no need of metaphysics whatsoever.

It's so easy to navigate that it's hard to theorize. Surely we must know something about what exists, even if we don't study philosophy at all.

If nothing is built there is nothing to criticize. Without builders what do you say that the critics criticize? If the critics are to criticize themselves, they will first need to learn how to build. Hence my point. — Leontiskos

That's not true. Suppose you hire someone to build you a house. You don't know how to build the house, but your criticism is important to how the builder proceeds.

Now the builder could tell you "Look, if that's what you want, I'm telling you you aren't going to get a house, it will collapse" -- but the person would still be justified in their claim that they don't know how to build a house.

Then provide a response to my argument. Provide an example where "this is false" presupposes no truth, and where "this is true" presupposes falsehood. — Leontiskos

There's one solution to the liar's paradox which says there is no problem -- "This is false" is straightforwardly read as a false sentence, and not true.

For the other I'd point to our previous discussion on the dialetheist's solution to the liar's paradox where the solution is to recognize that the liar's sentence is both true and false.

Now, that's just co-occurrence to demonstrate a dyad between the two to the standards you laid out. But I think that "...is true" and "...is false" presuppose one another to be made sense of. That is, there is no "...is true" simpliciter, but rather its meaning will depend upon the meaning of "...is false", and vice-versa.

So there is no prioritizing one over the other.

Haha. That's what I'm trying to avoid -- it's worthwhile to note that there are definitely aesethetic differences. And something about Plato is that he doesn't just myth-build, but rather the myths are there for a point: To train the untutored mind to begin to study the forms, which are surely not so literal as the texts say.

At least, that's a charitable way of putting it, while avoiding that question: "What is philosophy?" -- just note "however we justify it, it's philosophy in some way because Plato did it" Now would that fit into the builder side or the critical side, or both? It seems both to me. And which we would want to emphasize in Plato is whatever our preference for reasoning is -- narrative or myth or what-have-you that's greater than human experience, or taking apart how it is we do these things.

I think the greatest philosophers end up doing this -- Kant's a good example there where he manages to sort of fit both categories whichever which way we may want to put the categories.

So for the critical philosopher that doesn't seem to be a problem, to me. It's almost like you'd expect that in some way instead. So it's easier to render these as a sort of aesthetic, and some philosophers manage to express themselves in both . .. modes?

Oh if you're fine with it I am. I mostly didn't want to distract from your main point but if you think it's on topic then it's on topic -- it's your OP.

The NAACP has a bit of writing on the origins of police that is short and provides another perspective other than the law-and-order picture of dutiful citizens protecting their fellows.

Well, categorically speaking, myth-making is part of philosophy though, right?

I'd say there'd have to be some kind of "reasonable", whatever that amounts to, way to include myth-making in philosophy. Not all myth-making, but Plato is the immediate myth-maker that comes to mind there.

When someone is doing the Monty Python thing their telos is a kind of agonstic opposition, and this is not yet philosophy. Of course, there is a very significant difference between these two options:

"After dissecting your claims I have found that you are wrong, and I utterly refuse to try to say what I think is alternatively right."
"After dissecting your claims I have found that you are wrong, and I am open to trying to constructively work out a better option."

"I don't know" could represent the first or the second. The Monty Python thing is a comical instance of the first. — Leontiskos

I think it really could be the case that some questions' correct answer is "I don't know"; why does one need a guess to say "I don't know"?

I'd say that would require some sort of shared assumptions about how to make inferences, and the like.

But I find "I don't know" to be a far more productive realization, because it'll lead me to something else. Keeping in mind our lack of knowledge -- no matter how much we learn -- is how we learn more.

So I'd put in a defense for the skeptics that don't know -- they don't have to in order to say whether or not that they know.

Now, you don't have to teach anyone, either. A more curious student than an obstinant skeptic is a lot more rewarding for the teacher, most of the time.

But I think it's important to maintain the ability to say "I don't know", and reassess our beliefs because of our ability to make errors, or at least miss some things.

Bad arguments are better than nothing at all — Leontiskos

Why?

The builders can exist without the critics. The critics cannot exist without the builders. — Leontiskos

But the critics can criticize themselves!

They have no need of builders -- once you're curious enough to be a philosophical skeptic you will not have any need of a philosophical builder ever again. You'll be busy tearing down your own buildings, finding their flaws, rebuilding, finding their flaws, rebuilding. . . . or just stop building and see where things go. The Pyrrhonic skeptic, at least, has no need of the builders. Beliefs are the thing to be combatted.

Just as the critic lacks parity with the builder, so too does falsehood lack parity with truth. "This is false" presupposes some truth, whereas, "This is true," does not presuppose any falsehood. This is why your fundamental approach to knowledge based on judgments of falsehood is mistaken: — Leontiskos

Well, for the analogy to hold. . .

Though if this be the analogy I'd just say truth and false form a dyad: You don't understand the one without the other.

First, I would point back to the twins. Again, one's activity is parasitic and one is not. Philosophy does not exist without those who construct, but it does exist without those who deconstruct. Therefore deconstruction is not as fundamental to philosophy as construction; falsity not as central to philosophy as truth. — Leontiskos

I'd make the case that the builders need the critics -- else you get backbad arguments.