*shakes fist at the algorithm, in solidarity*

It seemed rather odd to me, at first. Then, I realizes that I should have seen it all along. It's one of those switches in perception that happen from time to time. It seems very odd at first, but then one realizes that the writing off of taste as just arbitrary choices is completely inadequate. — Ludwig V

:)

I'm very happy to see someone "get it" -- it took a long time for me too. I dove into Kant after Hume because I was like "There is no way this is true...", and here I am...

We are so used to thinking of reason as about truth, by definition, that it takes a jolt to realize that there could be varieties - domains that should be included in it. There's more to life than truth. — Ludwig V

Yes!

Philosophy is more than the study of the predicate "...is true", to put it into OLP terms.

heh, yup! :D

By the time I got around to the book it had already gone through its pop culture phase, the movie was old, and I had seen it and was interested in the book because of all the made up words in it. I say what I say because I read that essay :)

Hume understands taste to be wider than that. For him, “taste in morals, eloquence, or beauty” assigns either “approbation” or “disapprobation” (or some combination of both) to objects of taste. — Ludwig V

That's how I understand taste, too.

That is, even if there are moral truths, it seems most human beings -- if they operate according to any kind of reasoned path at all -- operate in accord with a sort of aesthetics of morality. Passion isn't some nullification of morality or reason, but simply the answer to how human nature does it.

And it can be taken in either realist(naturalist) or anti-realist(phenomenology-as-ontology) ways -- I don't think he was clear on that because that's kind of an our-time question. He's dealing with an entirely different set of problems.

And, arguably, an entirely different set of problems from his time, since his Treatise was not well received in his time. Though the influence on Kant I think cements him as an important figure (and on that I tend to think of Kant and Hume as closer than often depicted)

I would love to see how that would play out in reality. Thinking it through rigorously is more likely to expose the errors in the assumptions underlying the coherence of the idea of externally manipulating another’s ability to choose the good. — Joshs

I don't think it would work quite as effectively as the story says -- I'd imagine some analogues to current pharmacological methods -- it's not like the environment and history suddenly isn't important because the neurons dance differently. (soldiers can be made more effective through pharmacology today, so my imagined scenario isn't quite so imagined

Yup!

I think when we look at the 21st chapter of Clockwork Orange it demonstrates that even if we remove the power to "be good" through what amounts to very effective operant conditioning -- Alex still grows up and starts to want to do good out of his own volition, rather than because he feels sickness at what he has been forced to learn as evil.

In a world becoming unliveable because of conflict, inequality, social unrest and environmental degradation, technology may hold the key to a profound solution: an empathy chip. Imagine a small neural implant that enhances human empathy, allowing people to understand deeply and care about the feelings of others. Such a breakthrough could revolutionise human interaction, reshape societies, fix inequality and potentially save the planet from its greatest threat, which is us human beings. — Rob J Kennedy

In imagining such an implant it would seem to me that we'd be able to do much more than create an empathy implant -- we could also create implants which transform people into the perfect soldier (feel fulfilment in killing the enemy), or the perfect worker (only desires to make any boss happy), etc.

That is, the science will be neutral as to how it's used.

To use the excellent example here:

I wonder if you've ever read the novel "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess, or perhaps seen the film. The story explores exactly what's wrong with the idea of conditioning people to be good (or empathetic). — J

What could happen is that we could install extreme empathy chips in criminals so that the rest of us can then punish them for their crimes by triggering their empathy for others -- the empathy chip itself could be put to horrible uses.

And, given human nature, I generally think that's what will happen.

Unfortunately, given human nature, if it's possible I'm sure we'll figure it out some day.

:up: Cool. I'll let it sit there for now.

But your critique of the supererogatory was grounded in coercion and compulsion. I realize you tried to argue that compulsion can be subtle, but if subtle compulsion is monstrous, and every moral belief involves subtle compulsion, then morality is itself monstrous. — Leontiskos

Isn't that part of the tension in the OP?

I'm thinking of the teleological suspension of the ethical here...

Ergo: those who think humans should try to be better are monstrous, which strikes me as absurd. — Leontiskos

And yet it may be true.

This is a very well written contemplation. I loved reading it.

I believe I'm sympathetic to its conclusions -- in philosopher terms it makes me think of Kierkegaard's tension between Abraham as a Knight of Faith or a moral monster. I get the same sort of feeling here between two bad choices, hence a dilemma or paradox.

@Mikie

Restart the thread with that title in the lounge?

i.e. "Agree-to-Disagree deniers" -- seems pretty clear who is invited

Must it?

Or could it be a place for people who disagree with you to talk amongst themselves?

Post away, of course, but no one need reply.

Alas, spending the suffering of future lives for our present pleasure is the morality we oossians have decided to bathe in.

And @Amity @Wayfarer

I've appended these guides to the original post. Are they sufficient for you Christoffer?

I'll take up the role. Thanks @fdrake!

Is there any way to avoid writing on something too similar to someone else given the anonymity? Or do we not care? — AmadeusD

We don't care -- it's more important that the writer wants to write it because that'll be the motivation for finishing it and also looking it over a bit.

Oh I was thinking about the relationship between science and history and religion, and the place of scientism -- I can see how there's something related there, but it's not clear enough yet.

For one, we use "scientism" differently but from similar resources. And I'm still puzzling through that one. For two you prefer to start on the ontological side where my habit is to start on the methodological side.

This relates because the Bible, if we take it from the perspective of the writers, is written before "Science" was really a genre at all, or at least not recognizably so. So things like method and ontology are devices we're bringing to the text to make sense of it more than what the writers were thinking about in writing.

But that takes it up a level of abstraction and out of the more down-to-earth arguments you're dealing with here. It also makes it less philosophy of religion and goes back to philosophy of knowledge, more.

Hegel's a trip. :D

But I suspect he's basically a rationalist crank, at bottom. A very good one with great points, but as you ascertained I am a skeptic :D

My relationship w/ Hegel is love-hate.

Well, technically speaking, it wouldn't be a belief either. It would be a divine revelation — Arcane Sandwich

Or, on the other hand, a preference I have: an opinion that I care about.

Because we like to has satisfactory stories that make sense to us.

It's a just-so story which goes alongside the divine just-so story. Why do we find religion everywhere? Well, in one just-so story it's because there's a divinity within us all. In another it's because those are the social organisms which survived the process of primitive accumulation.

The work of putting together the science or the history is something which no individual can do by themselves -- it's already a collective effort by the many who have come before. But I still have to live my life and in that process I tend to acquire beliefs and answer questions even if I can't attend to those at the level of scientific or historical discourse.

I just don't then go on to say that the belief is scientific or historical.

Yes, they do. Catholics love Tolkien. Priests even compare Jesus to Gandalf. What Church people in general don't like, is Dungeons and Dragons (they think it's Satanic). But they like Tolkien. — Arcane Sandwich

Do they treat it as the same as the Bible?

We can use another book because the point I'm making is it's not really the text but the reader. I thought you were saying "He's Catholic" as in to say "Look, no one will treat Tolkien like Mathew, because he's Catholic"

Yes, the story has a Catholic allegory to it. So suppose 2000 years in the future the Bible is destroyed and all we have is The Lord of the Rings. In that scenario I could see people treating The Lord of the Rings in the same manner -- it's got stories and allegories and all the rest of his beliefs interwoven into a compelling narrative of sacrifice.

There are even other texts after scattered all throughout our culture that mimic the tropes of The Lord of the Rings. Today we call it Fantasy Literature, but tomorrow we could compose an anthology of such literature by different authors and treat it exactly as we treat the Bible today.

I think this explains why there are so many religions with competing visions -- there's a basic human need to feel more than what one is, and these rituals are the means by which this is achieved.

Is it? Yes or no? — Arcane Sandwich

No. I don't believe it is. I'd say it's lesser than the Bible or Qu'ran or various other practices and more on par with L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology. It's entirely made up for the purpose of manipulating people.

But to them? It absolutely is. And the lessons serve the same -- basically it's origin is irrelevant to its function. The literal truth of the Book of Mormon, by my lights, is it was written by a con artist who liked being in charge of others.

But that was 200 years ago. Today? Totally irrelevant to the meaning of the text when it's read in Church by a believer.

But when it's read by me? Yeah, I tend to think of it at the L. Ron Hubbard level rather than the Biblical level.

Ok, you're a skeptic then. — Arcane Sandwich

Always :). A skeptic and a realist, though -- and thereby atheist. But this gets back to another point we haven't worked out and is way off topic from what is threatening to derail a good conversation I've been reading along with. Sorry about that, I just meant to answer the one question and then we got into a back and forth.

It would be a scientific problem to investigate. — Arcane Sandwich

And that would be your scientific hypothesis.

Can you prove it? — Arcane Sandwich

If at the level of science? No, certainly not. Not even at the level of history, except for pointing to a handful of examples I'm sure we're both familiar with. And I wouldn't even expect conquest to be the main mechanism of transfer, I'm only offering one possible alternative to the existence of the divine in human beings.

I'm a little uncertain that any of this will ever be able to be cached out in terms scientific or historical.

Please try to understand it. — Arcane Sandwich

Mkay. I'll refrain from posting until then. Good exchange.

Only to the extent that human imagination has a divine nature, not a physical nature. The imagination of the res cogitans is only the secular version of the imagination of the res divina. — Arcane Sandwich

I'm not sure about that. What if the reason people adopt a text has more to do with who controls the grain? Seems common that religions spread with conquest.

The awe of what, if not the divine? The Cartesian res divina, instead of the res cogitans or the res extensa. — Arcane Sandwich

Awe of us imagining what it was like then, of relating to a person thousands of years distant from you through writing and getting a sense for an entirely different lived world that is, somehow, still something we come to understand.

Who cares? The Catholic church is just an institution. It's a human construct. Divinity is not. — Arcane Sandwich

I mean that people would not dismiss Tolkien's works as a story only because he was a Catholic. The text can be read as an allegory and treated as the sacred texts are. People today wouldn't treat them like that. But the phenomena has happened as recently as the early 1800's when Joseph Smith wrote The Book of Mormon and created a religion -- the book reads like the fan fiction of the Bible that it is.

And yet, people derive meaning for their entire lives from it and connect to the Divine.

What's different there? The lack of a spokesperson for the text as divine, for one -- Tolkien does not say his text is divine. But you can surely see how if not Tolkien some work of fiction, today, could become a sacred text tomorrow because that's already happened before.

Then you haven't understood Ibn Arabi's ↪point, then. — Arcane Sandwich

Fair.

It's talking about a memory as ancient as the Paleolithic, when everyone was a nomadic hunter-gatherer. This makes it more ancient than anything anyone else has to say. Bring your favorite poets to this discussion, quote Emily D. for all I care. I believe what Pslam 22:1, part 21 says: There was a time when lions were our natural predators, there was a time when the wild oxen could kill us when we were just minding our own business. — Arcane Sandwich

Right! I agree with this perspective. That's part of the awe.

But you know that's not all that's in there. There's more to it than the Psalms. There are histories, mythologies, family trees, -- it's the very stuff of human imagination and care.

I don't know what that means. — Arcane Sandwich

It means that how we read a book makes the meaning different, and the reader is where I'd be inclined to pinpoint the difference.

No, Tolkien was a Catholic. — Arcane Sandwich

Does that mean some 2000 years later people couldn't read his work in awe of the imagination of the people of the 21'st century? Say the Catholic church dissipates in that time.

If only I had a very good distinction, then I'd have started there.

Tolkien I'd be inclined to call "just literature" -- a story for fun.

The difference as I see it is in how we approach the text. So in some future perhaps Tolkien's works could form the basis of a religion after the reality of the text's production are long forgotten.

Also I see value in trying to understand the past which we came from, so that alone makes the Bible more valuable -- it's one of the early documents. It sheds insight into human nature just by that fact.

But when we approach the Bible we approach it like it has some hidden wisdom within, and derive meaning from that reading. I think it's much the same as how we read poems and watch plays -- it's a deep interpretation between ourselves and the text. With Tolkien we treat the exercise in imagination as a game, but not so with the Bible.

Right! It's literature, not just literature.

I'm an atheist. Am I forced to agree with you? Do I have to "get along" with you, as you yourself say? — Arcane Sandwich

Nope, not at all.

Then it is worthy of worship, by the literal definition of the word "sacred". — Arcane Sandwich

Truth by definition?

No, I think it means it's what I care about, but no one else need to -- and many don't.

What's wrong with living in the clouds? — Arcane Sandwich

Absolutely nothing. It's where I see a meaningful life. But I think we have to look up to them, meaning staying grounded, and that's a lot of where I'm coming from in treating the sacred texts as literature.

It's not a move of denigration, but elevation. It's just not scientific truth, or historical truth as I see it.

With respect to the naturalistic fallacy -- "We have to get along" ought not be read as making a claim on moral truth. We certainly can, and will, go extinct.

But that general collective spirit is what I tend to think of in terms of what people want and do. People like to survive, and we can't do that by ourselves, so we have to get along insofar that we want to delay extinction.

You say that like there's something wrong with it. Is there? Philosophically speaking. — Arcane Sandwich

Only that it indicates to me that the point of the story isn't literal.

That is, to treat the text like its spelling out philosophical truths about God or Jesus seems erroneous to me. It's literature. It requires interpretation.

What would the atheist tell you? — Arcane Sandwich

No, we are not worthy of worship.

Who says that we have to get along? Creatures kill each other. We are creatures. Why should we not kill each other? — Arcane Sandwich

That's sort of the central bit I'd start with in talking about the divine: to me life is sacred, but we must kill eachother on this world. So, we live by an earthly ethic, even if individuals pursue heavenly aims like pacifism.

But that desire to be more than human? That's very human. And, as you can see from the state of the world, we don't even live up to that. "getting along" includes killing. It demands it. Those who ignore their duty to note kill are deluded, by this ethic, living in the clouds.

I'll tell you why: because it would be a naturalistic fallacy to suppose that creatures ought to do what creatures are.

Do you know who preached that truth, among other people?

Yeah. They call him "Jesus Christ".

They call him "Jesus Christ", sure. And they call Gandalf Gandalf.

The truths that are there aren't literal, if they are truths at all. I'd be more inclined to call Biblical truths so-called truths and the deeper meanings of Tolkien as somehow lesser, but in what way are they?

Even if he was a man his function in the story is to be a font of wisdom, right? So like the philosopher he's part-man, part-divine.

Are you not familiar with the the concept of the Passion of Jesus? — Arcane Sandwich

Which part of the wiki ought I look at for the specific concept? I'm surely familiar with the gospels. And in each one of them Jesus performs more miracles with each retelling. Almost like it's being told by a group of people who want to one-up eachother on just how holy Jesus was.

Why wouldn't they be? The word "pathetic" is etymologically rooted in the word "pathos", which means passion. — Arcane Sandwich

If he is then he's not worthy of worship, right?

We have to get along -- but it's an earthly existence, and not a heavenly one.

heh, prophets.

If so then the gods I see are a little bit pathetic ;)

Sure.

But I want to avoid speaking for the Muslim, or any other religious perspective. I've attended Islamic service and that's where my knowledge of Muhammed and Jesus both being profits in Islam comes from; since there's also theological disputes I append "generally"

So here I resort to what I see -- I grant the possibility, but religious claims often come back to this basic relationship of "seeing as": the point of the scripture is to help the reader see the world as such-and-such a person. The subject of the work isn't God as much as humanity.

From my perspective it's because performing miracles is a trope of the literature -- the Buddha also performed miracles in various stories. What it does is differentiate the character from the rest in the story so that you know you should listen to them as a font of special wisdom. Also I think these are features of the stories for the more literally minded who will shrug at doing virtue for its own reward, but when put in earthly terms like magic which fulfills desires and other earthly, human rewards then the more literally minded will understand.

I know that generally speaking Jesus is considered to be a prophet like Muhammed was a prophet -- so I'm inclined to read "We gave Jesus son of Mary the clear proofs" as saying he's on par with Muhammed, but not God.

Cool. And yes, the next step is the iterative and constructive aspect of language, allowing the construction of our social world. — Banno

Yes, there is something of the deflationary account in ↪Count Timothy von Icarus's reply. Although ""truth is the adequacy of thought to being" is pretty obtuse, and might look a bit like correspondence. — Banno

@Count Timothy von Icarus's account looks to me to be a correspondence theory.

The dog thinks, I think, and we can conform our thoughts to the world in our own way and when we do so we have some kind of truth.

I'm wondering if some of the conflict here is due to our preferences on whether we ought start on the side of metaphysics or whether we ought start on the side of epistemics.

I look forward to reading your contribution :)

I see. From my point of view, "nothing is really true tout court, but this varies by context," seems like a very consequential metaphysical position. It claims that most metaphysical outlooks (certainly historically, but also likely in contemporary thought) are crucially mistaken. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True! That's pretty much what I suspect -- I don't know if I believe it yet or not because I remain uncertain about how one justifies metaphysical beliefs.

These days I tend to think of the real as absurd -- "atoms and void" swerving about without any meaning. And the atoms need not be how we understand atoms today, though they can be. But it's an explicitly metaphysical belief rather than the science of chemistry. Chemistry will survive even if a metaphysics of the absurd -- atoms and void -- turns out false.

Likewise, what is the status of moral realism when the truth values of moral facts are allowed to vary based on "whim," as you put it? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now I could turn you off entirely by admitting what I believe :D -- I'm still a moral nihilist in the sense that I don't think there are true "ought" statements. There's more to this based on what I see in the world and how human beings behave, but that's way off course.

But moral realism can work with what I'm proposing. Suppose we have a sentence like:

"Everyone ought take care of their parents in their old age because they took care of you in your young age"

We can say this is true. If it's true then it's a fact. (My belief on facts is that they are true sentences)

Now, as I think of facts that does not thereby mean there's a moral reality which secures our moral propositions or makes them true. But a moral realist would assert that just as we have objects in the world to which we're referring to there are also morals -- of some kind or other, that are hard to specify -- which "ought" statements can refer to. And they can be true or false on the basis of that reference (which, I take it, would be to possible acts we can take)

One can bracket the question of "what is truth," and investigate how the term is used in language, mathematics, etc. without having to commit to deflation however. I do not agree that it is a position that comes with fewer commitments. Agnosticism would be a position that comes with fewer commitments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the idea is to minimize, rather than eliminate, commitments. Else we run into problems of begging the question when we come to arguments about what is real. (though if we're truly agnostic, sure, that's fewer commitments -- but it doesn't say anything either)

Deflation is at least a position though, and I respect it for that. The only approach that really irks me is the methodology of trying to present every significant philosophical problem as a "pseudoproblem." Some problems are pseudoproblems of course, but these folks are like someone who thinks every problem must be a nail because they have discovered a hammer.

Oh, yes. I'm not one to reduce philosophical questions to pseudoproblems, except to say that they need not be solved to live a good life: I don't think people need to do philosophy to live fulfilling and happy lives.

But that doesn't mean they're pseudo-problems, from my perspective. And even if they were I don't mind investigating them for fun.

Makes sense.

I think what animals are doing is offer a contrast to what we're doing in order to understand language. The way I'm thinking about language the dog doesn't have the capacity to refer, though I suspect they can individuate -- food is different from bowl.

The animal is serving as a kind of "substitute" for our animal side in trying to separate out what makes human language different.

Or, on the other hand, it's a counter-example if we believe that the dog can refer or have true beliefs.

I think part of the motivation for deflation arises from the position that truth applies only to sentences. Such a position seems to lead down that path. Perhaps the idea that knowledge is just belief that happens to be justified and true also leads down this way. Earlier eras distinguished between many types of knowledge. Continental philosophy also tends to be more likely to differentiate many types of knowledge. Plato had four, Aristotle five (and arguably more). "Knowing how to ride a bike," sense knowledge, noeisis, etc. However, if knowledge, the grasp of truth, is always propositional, then it makes more sense for sentences to be the primary bearers of truth, and also for what is "known" or "true" to vary by language game.

Anyhow, an interesting consequence of sentences being true "of themselves" without relation to the intellect is that a random text generator "contains" all truths. There is some interesting stuff to unpack there. From an information theoretic perspective, a random text generator only provides information about its randomization process, the semantic meaning of any output being accidental (and highly unlikely). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see attraction to deflationary theories because I don't like to decide metaphysical questions on the epistemic side -- there's going to be implications no matter what, but the epistemic side is attempting to minimize the number of implications a given theory of truth will have. A correspondence theory will require a mind, a world, objects in the world, and something the mind does that's related to the world such that "correspondence" is real. A pragmatic theory of truth will imply that truth is something that arises from human activity and so we came up with this word "true" in order to help us do things in the world.

The deflationary account says there's nothing much to say about truth -- and can, in a way, accommodate both substantive theories by referring to a context -- this is the context of correspondence which is determined by the conversation we're participating in, and this is hte context of "I don't care what the real explanation is I just want to get the job done" so we adopt the pragmatic theory.

It allows us to choose a substantive theory of truth for the context we're in -- but that suggests that there's nothing really to truth.


I don't think that the LLM's we presently have contains truth in them because they're not people with desires and relationships but a toy. While I don't think there's much to the metaphysics of truth I do think that truth is a very human concern. Or, at least, something which we become concerned about because we're able to think about why I was wrong that one time and how can I make it better in the future.

Mostly to help us make sense of the Dog, I think. We are so accustomed to thinking in terms of belief that we have to interpret the dog as having them in order to understand their behavior, much as we do with other people.

And, us being animals, we really have some things in common with them -- like what mentions in this post: Frustration, confusion, error, correction all seem to happen.

But since they're not doing math or using money or making laws we can tell they're different.

Truth is determined by whims? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Pretty much.

We desire to know the truth for -- what reason?

Some people desire to know the truth so that they might be able to predict the future.

Some people desire to know the truth so that they know where they came from.

Sometimes it's out of curiosity. Sometimes out of wonder. Sometimes out of love. Sometimes out of hate.

The number of desires which lead a person to desire truth is myriad. And desires are what drive us to seek out truth. We want to be able to say "Thought conforms to being" -- but couldn't say that without language, or even think it without language.

But sometimes we want to be able to say "My perception corresponds to an object" -- here pointing out that we can us "...is true" for more than sentences, albeit still being a meta-lingual predicate. Why would we do such a thing?

Because we like truth. We want to be certain. We want the airplane to fly or to know what is good.

What doesn't matter is how we theorize truth -- we'll still want it to do pretty much what it's been doing the entire time. It's just gets complicated when we try to theorize it, and generally it's easier to say "I know you know what truth is, and we don't need to define it at all if we want to seek it out"

Note how the T-Sentence has a similar form to your notion of truth, it's just using a smaller vocabulary.

"P" is true if and only if P. So we have language, or thought, on the left hand side and the sentence which is being used in a context on the right-hand side -- or Being.

The same form as you have is there, it's just trying to assume less about truth.

And it's worth noting that truth and reference are separate topics. At least to my mind -- I don't see the relationship between truth and reference until we're talking about whole sentences, at least.