The problem is how can you tell the way things are? You can tell the way things are to you, if others disagree with your idea of the way things are what then? Who is right? — leo

I don't see the mere existence of disagreement as a problem. Some people think their heads are made of glass. They are wrong. No problem there.

If you belong to an objective reality, you don't look at it from the outside, you are within, your thoughts and perceptions depend on that reality in some unknown way, so you don't have access to the way things are, your thoughts and perceptions do not show you the way things are, they show you something that depends on the way things are. If we can't tell what's objectively true then what's the point of using the concept? — leo

Here is the interesting part. I don't think my thoughts and perceptions depend on reality in some "unknown way". Its actually very well understood. See the biology of perception. Any way, even supposing that my perceptions do depend on reality in some unknown way, it does not follow from this that my perceptions don't show me the way things are. The way that they depend on reality might be compatible with them revealing the way things are.

There is then this metaphor about being part of reality and looking at it from "within" rather than from "outside". I don't see that it follows from this that I can't tell how things are either. If I were looking at the inside of a box from some point inside the box, I could see how the box really is - that it has sides and edges and corners etc.

Do you have an argument in mind for the claim that we can't tell how things objectively are? Perhaps you could make it clearer? And anyway, what is the sense of "tell" being used here? If all I need to do in order to "tell" that something is the case is have a true belief about it, then it seems obvious that I can tell how things are. I might just have a true belief. Presumably, you mean something stronger than that by "tell". Perhaps you could clarify what?

PA

I'm far more familiar with Moore than Witgenstein, but one issue here is whether Wittgenstein's view is a kind of Relativism - that there are lots of different language games and nothing beyond them which makes one the correct (or at least more accurate) game. There is a lot of controversy over whether Wittgenstein should be taken to mean this view, but it certainly is not a view compatible with Moore's ethics. True, Moore did hold that ethical claims were not provable by inferences from other propositions. He also often argued for ethical claims by appeal to intuition. There is some parallel here with hinge propositions.

But he also held that there were truths in ethics and would not have accepted that his ethical claims were just one language game amongst others in a relativistic sense. He also made use of thought experiment to convince others of his ethical claims, and I don't think Wittgenstein would have attempted this for what he regarded hinge propositions.

PA

But if the second person “gives information” in a language that the first person doesn’t understand, no information is received. Only sounds/symbols/marks on paper are given. The receiver depends on his own knowledge, not information embedded in speech, to understand it.
3h — NOS4A2

Indeed, I wouldn't want to deny any of these sensible points. The receiver has to have some background knowledge in order to interpret the noises of the speaker. I only insist that, given that the receiver has this knowledge, he can gain new information from the speaker via language. E.g, if speaker knows where the library is then he can give receiver this information so long as receiver speaks the same language, understands the concept of a street, etc.

PA

Does information mean anything without a decipherer? — Banno

Perhaps not, but does this question have any bearing on whether language can move information from one head to the other? I gave a pretty clear example of that.

PA

"Where is the library"
"It's on 23rd street".

The second person gives information to the first person, who thereafter knows where the library is. This is done via language. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

PA

The ability to formulate that objective truth in a language, to say what it is or to give an example of it. But if we say that something is objective truth and some people disagree, then how is that an objective truth? — leo

In this sense, everyone has access to objective truth. Everyone (who knows at least one language) can say objectively true things in a language.

As to your question: if I say that P is the objective truth and you disagree, that does not entail that P is not the objective truth, since "objectivity" doesn't mean "what everyone agrees on" (at least I don't mean this by "objectivity"). As I use the phrase, to say thay something is objectively true is to say that it corresponds to the way things are, and this may hold whether or not anyone agrees that it does.

PA

Well now I get it. Thanks for the clear explanation. I think you might just be right. Do you think this same sort of error afflicts other examples that are usually cited in this area?

PA

If we say that objective truth exists out there but we can't access it or not all of us can access it, then how is that an objective truth? If no one can access it then it's an idea, not a thing, and if only some can access it then it is personal, not objective. — leo

What is meant by "access"? I suppose in some sense of "access" everyone has access to the objective truth, and in another sense, they don't.

PA

Remember, in the first case, Smith was - by Gettier's own admission - justified in believing that he would get the job. Smith thought to himself "I am going to get the job". Smith believed that he had secured the job. That is to think of and/or about oneself, not another.

That sort of thought/belief is self-reflective. It cannot be about anyone else. It turned out to be quite false. Yet Gettier's sleight of hand was invoking the rules of entailment as his own justification for changing an undeniably self-reflective thought/belief into belief about someone else. That move is unjustifiable here. — creativesoul

I don't follow your basic point.

In the job case, Smith is told that he will get the job. Because he knows he has 10 coins in his own pocket, he validly infers "a man with 10 coins in his pocket will get the job". It turns out that Paul gets the job and that Paul has 10 coins in his pocket. Smith has a justified true belief but he doesn't have knowledge. Now you claim that Gettier changes the meaning and truth conditions of some belief of Smith's, but where? He doesn't change the meaning of "I am getting the job" to "a man with ten coins in his pocket will get the job". He validly deduces the latter from the former using the extra premise "I have 10 coins in my pocket". What's wrong with a basic use of deduction such as this?

-PA

I agree. Though I guess they would say that we aren't perfectly reliable - just reliable enough to survive.

I think the position is unintelligible. If I am to accept that the whole of sense experience is an illusion, I no longer have any grasp on the idea of the physical world, nor can I attach any meaning to the suggestion that there are these "reliable machines" that "survive". All of that stuff belongs to the allegedly illusory world of sensory experience.

I know they will reply that it is not that the world of sense experience is an illusion, but the sense experience itself. I cannot see that there is any difference between the two.

PA

I believe the usual line for an Illusionist to take is to say that, in the sense of "reason" that you have in mind, there is no reason at all to believe anything - even basic empirical claims about our immediate surroundings. They will say that we are mere machines that process light waves and reliably spit out true beliefs.

So as they see it, their view might undermine traditional epistemology, but traditional epistemology is already, again in their view, impossible.

PA

What are the problems that you think are solved by not believing in Truth, or by supposing that all truth is relative?

but its easy to spin it around. The wall isn't light, but the individual bricks are light.

There are some more obvious examples than the circle. One due to Bertrand Russel: a brick wall might be very heavy, although none of the bricks on their own are heavy.

Like many here, I don't find the argument that convincing.

The original argument is:

(1) If there are no objective values then there are no facts (since there’s nothing that we ought to believe).

(2) There are facts.

(C) Therefore there are objective values.

(2) seems just fine, and most folk who deny the existence of objective values will accept (2), so probably not much need for an argument there. The trouble all starts with (1). What exactly is the argument for (1)?

I think the argument for (1) is meant to be the part in the brackets. Looking through your discussion with Terrapin, I guess you had this in mind:

(3) Facts are things we ought to believe.
(4) If there are no objective values then there is nothing we ought to believe.
(C2) If there are no objective values then there are no facts.

And (C2) here is identical with (1), giving us an argument for (1). But there are problems with this argument. The inference from (3) and (4) to (C2) is only valid if (3) is meant as a definition of "facts". If "fact" is defined as "something we ought to believe", it then follows that if there are no objective values there are no facts. But if (3) is instead taken to mean "we ought to believe facts", where "fact" means something like "propositions stating how things are", the argument will be fallacious. In that case, that there are no objective values and nothing we ought to believe will not entail that there are no propositions stating how things are (facts), since (and this was pointed out by others) it might be that there is a way things are without there being any rules about how we should/should-not believe.

So we must take (3) as a definition of "fact". The problem is, if we take (3) as a definition, no one who denies or is agnostic about the existence of objective values will accept your (2) without argument. That is, they will not accept that there are facts, because they will not accept that there are things we ought to believe. And all this is just to say that the argument will not convince anyone who doesn't already agree that there are objective values, making it a poor argument indeed.

Now, you did offer a different argument, which was to claim that denying that there are things we ought to believe is "absurd". You look to prove that it is absurd by this argument:

Any claim that there are no facts (nothing that we ought to believe) can be met with the questions, “Is that a fact? Ought we to believe that?” and so on to infinity. — AJJ

and again in talking with Wayfarer:

It is absurd to say facts are not things we ought to believe. Because every denial invites the question, “Well ought we to believe that? Ought we to believe that facts are not things we ought to believe? If the answer is no, well ought we to believe that? And so on. It’s really just this I’m appealing to to demonstrate that facts definitely are things we ought to believe, because we ought to believe true things, which are facts. — AJJ

So any person who denies that there are things we ought to believe can be asked "well, ought we believe that there is nothing we ought to believe?", and the sceptic will have to reply "no, there is nothing we ought to believe", which puts him, according to you, in an absurd position. I don't see why it is absurd. He denies that there is anything which we ought to believe, and, consistently, holds that even his own assertions are not such that we ought to believe them. We may choose to believe his claims or not, as we please. This seems a perfectly coherent position. I can describe my own beliefs without insisting that others ought to have those beliefs, and so can the sceptic. He can say that there is nothing we ought to believe, without insisting that this is something we ought to believe. He might nevertheless be correct. I don't see why the mere fact that you could ask him the question again does anything to hurt his position. It doesn't show that his position is false or contradictory, nor is there any barrier to understanding his position. The regress doesn't seem to be vicious.

PA

I'm working on my Philosophy PhD at the moment, and I agree pretty much entirely with everything that you have said. Your account of intuitions seems to me to be spot on and so too your suggestion that debates about which concept is "correct" are meaningless debates. I too have discussed with a number of philosophers about this view on intuitions and almost always met either (a) "That's ridiculous", (b) "that's obvious" or, most puzzlingly, (c) "That's Relativism".

(a) seems to be made only by those who refuse to accept that so much time and effort has been spent fruitlessly playing a semantic game, although to anyone who has reflected on the literature and the methods being used within it, this is quite obvious. (b) is usually made by philosophers who have just accepted that their job is to play semantic games. I once pointed out that debates about "the nature of knowledge" are just semantic quibbles and a philosopher replied to me, with a pleased smile, "that's just what philosophy is" (!?). (c) is given by those, in my view, who haven't really thought much about what intuitions are but have dove head first into the method of using them.

I very much understand the frustration of it all, and perhaps if my thesis were directly about that issue, I would have reacted the same way you did.. There is, however, plenty of Philosophy going on outside of the linguistic kind, and it seems to me well worth studying. In addition, I think that, most of the time, underneath the linguistic stuff, there is a more substantive issue which is worth trying to extract, although you shouldn't expect that linguistic philosophers will have any interest in discussing it!

PA

Good point. How much of philosophy is left over once part of it becomes literature-mysticism-politics and the other part of it becomes science? Others who know more might illuminate me here, but it seems to me that obsessing over language is largely what's left over. — ghost

I don't think that's all that is left. Rather, the people who get into Philosophy these days seem to, a lot of them anyway, have a huge obsession with words, to the extent that what were once substantial normative, logical or metaphysical issues are turned into fuss about the meaning of words.

PA

I dispute your claim about accuracy, because I am categorising these statements accurately in accordance with the appropriate branches of philosophy which they fall under, and doing this doesn't mean that they can't be distinguished from history or science, as they retain their own more specific identities. Philosophy is just a broader category which relates to, and subsumes, other academic subjects, such as those mentioned. — S

By “accurate” I mean that my definition describes the actual practices of those who call themselves “philosophers”.

It is useful for salvaging the already damaged reputation of philosophy as excessively focussed on stuff of little substance or bearing on the world, — S

Fair enough. I agree.

PA

3. Omnipotent - NO

Could God create a copy of himself? If he did create a copy of himself, he would no longer be omni-potent, so we can conclude God is effectively not omni-potent. — Devans99

I don’t think this is a valid argument. It is true that if God did create a copy of himself then there would exist a being of equal power to him. If being omnipotent requires being the most powerful existing being then it follows that God would no longer be omnipotent after [\i] having created a copy. But this says nothing about whether he is omnipotent before creating the copy. He might well be omnipotent at that time. (This is pretty much Swinburne’s answer to similar problems about omnipotence).

PA

We disagree over what's more useful, as you would put it. — S

Alright, well what is useful about including science and history in a definition of philosophy? Perhaps there is some purpose that I don't see.

For my part, a definition which excludes science and history allows one to give an accurate description of academic philosophy, and that may well be needed to explain to non-philosophers what it is that an academic philosopher spends his time doing.

PA

I don't disagree over "what counts as philosophy". I don't think there is a fact of the matter about what counts as philosophy. We decide what counts, and what we decide should be determined by what it is useful to include and useful to exclude. Do you disagree?

PA

A stance on what? If you mean something like a stance on "the nature of philosophy" or "what philosophy is", I don't think there is any fact of the matter. If you mean a stance on "the correct definition of philosophy", again, I don't think there is any such thing as "the correct" definition. So if your stance is that the correct definition of philosophy is the ancient one, then I disagree in the sense that I reject your assumption that there is a "correct" definition at all.

I am, consequently, not trying to argue semantics at all. I am trying to point out that there is nothing to argue about.
PA

It was never my intention to mischaracterise you. It also wasn't my intention to argue semantics in favour of "one stance", if that means to argue that one way of defining philosophy is "correct".

I don't suppose there is any such thing as "the correct" definition of philosophy. There are more and less useful definitions for different purposes. For the purposes of answering the OP, I offered a definition which seems to accurately describe the current state of academic philosophy. Given that, I concluded that there are certain topics which may be philosophized about and some which may not be. I never meant to suggest that a definition with roots in ancient philosophy is "mistaken". You can, of course, also define philosophy in the way you do and conclude that almost everything may be philosophized about. I don't think there is any disagreement at all between us here unless you assume that there must be a "correct" definition of philosophy about which we are disagreeing.

PA

But I already agreed with NKBJ that there is an ancient use of the word "philosophy" that has it cover "the earth is round". I'll even agree that it might even resemble certain relatively recent uses of the word.

But there is no reason to infer from this that we should only use the word "philosophy" in that way, and that anyone who uses it another way must be wrong - which seems at least to be the attitude you take in disputing my own definition of "philosophy".

PA

That seems fair enough. I would add that the infinite series of "I believe that..." collapses to a single one because it is what mathematicians call an 'idempotent operator'. That means that applying it any number of times in succession has the identical effect to applying it once.

The link gives an example of a physical idempotent operator: an On button on an electric device. This contrasts with an On/Off toggle, whose effect depends on the initial state and on whether the number of times it is pressed is odd or even.

A mathematical example would be the operation of rounding to the nearest integer. Doing it once has the same result as doing it a million or infinitely many times. — andrewk

That's an interesting solution, but I'm not sure that "I believe that" really is an idempotent operator here. Saying that I believe that P does not mean the same thing as saying I believe that I believe that P. The former asserts that I think that the world is a certain way. The latter states that I think that I possess a certain mental state; that of thinking the world is a certain way. And of course, the more "I believe that"'s we add, the more the meaning will diverge from the original "I believe that P", until it gets so complicated that I can't understand it.


PA

The reason I don't want to call "the earth is round" a philosophical claim is that I have no idea what you mean by saying that. You have both made it clear that you aren't saying that "the earth is round" is a claim that is discussed by academic philosophers, taught and researched by philosophy professors etc. But if that isn't what you mean, I don't know what you mean.

Do you simply mean that you would like to use the word "philosophy" to describe statements like "the earth is round"? If so, I don't have any real objection to your doing so. I just won't be doing so. If you are suggesting, more strongly, that we should use the word "philosophy" to describe statements like "the earth is round", then I don't see any reason why we should do it. Pointing out that "the earth is round" is a "metaphysical claim" just begs the question in this context, since no one who denied that "the earth is round" is a philosophical claim would accept that it was a metaphysical claim.

PA

I agree that good philosophy can be done by incorporating science and history. But that is no reason to say that "the earth is round" is a philosophical theory.

I don't suppose much hangs on what we call these things anyway. But it is contrary to common practice to call "the earth is round" a piece of philosophy, and I don't see for what purpose you want to do so.

PA

Nice research. I agree that a good scientist should do philosophy.

PA

Yup

PA

I'm not "reducing" anything. I gave a definition which describes the actual use of the word "philosophy", taking into account the community of people who say that they study it and the community of people who distance themselves from the label. I don't understand where the controversy is. And, again, what use does including science under the name "philosophy" have, save for annoying people who call themselves scientists?


PA

And there are better and worse ways to define things. If I define "philosophy" as "tree" that's a really bad definition. If I leave out from the definition of "tree" all conifers, that's a really bad definition. Your definition simply does not cover all that philosophy is. You're leaving out all the "conifers" because you want to limit it to only what is "deciduous." — NKBJ

I don't think your analogy here is really apt. If I left out conifers in defining "tree" I would be leaving out things which it is very useful to include under the general term, "tree". What I leave out in my definition is only what (a) most people outside of philosophy don't call philosophy, and (b) is not practiced by most people who identify as philosophers. So I'm not leaving out anything that it is useful to include, so far as I see. Is there any utility to including science in the definition of "philosophy"? If not, why bother?

Also, you made another appeal to "what philosophy is", which again suggests that there is some fixed thing, the form of philosophy.

PA

Is it, or is it not, the case that history and science make claims of the sort that fall under the broader category of branches of philosophy such as metaphysics and epistemology — S

Yes, it's true. Scientists make claims about how the world is, and according to some philosophers, that's what metaphysics studies. But there are many different ways that philosophers have defined metaphysics and so no reason to stick with any particular definition so far as I can see.

But even if philosophers had always in the past defined "metaphysics" as the study of reality and listed it as a branch of philosophy, I don't understand what reason there is for sticking with this definition now. I don't see the point in defining philosophy in such a way that it includes topics which are simply not investigated by anyone who identifies as doing philosophy and explicitly called something other than philosophy by most people. Am I missing something?

You can have that definition if you want, but it's simply not a complete one. It would be like someone insisting that "cat" only ever refers to "house cat." — NKBJ

What could be meant by "complete"? Why is yours "complete"? It isn't like there is some shiny platonic form of philosophy and you only correctly define philosophy when you correctly describe the form. "Philosophy" is just a word and we choose to define it however we wish. So is the word "cat". It is useful to the biologist to have the word "feline" for all members of a certain family of animals. It is useful for most ordinary folk to have the word "cat" just for particular creatures that walk around their neighbourhoods. The word "feline" is not "more complete" than the word "cat". There are purposes where having "cat" mean just "house cat" is far more useful than having it refer to the entire feline family, and vice versa.

PA

And why would you dispute what seems so obvious? That metaphysics and epistemology are branches of philosophy; that metaphysics deals with reality and what's the case; that epistemology deals with what can be known, and what is known; and that history and science are subcategories of that? — S

I'm not disputing that philosophy, as you define it, includes metaphysics and epistemology and then science and history as subcategories. There is no fact of the matter about that "is" and "isn't" philosophy. It just depends how you define the word, which is why I asked you how you define it.

What I don't understand, however, is why you want to define philosophy in this way. If philosophy, as you define it, pnly involves metaphysics and epistemology, then you miss out ethics and aesthetics, which are standardly taught on philosophy courses, and researched by people who call themselves philosophers. Your definition also includes research in history and science. Most people who identify as philosophers do not do this sort of work, and most people who do this sort of work don't identify as philosophers. These are only fatal flaws in your definition if you care about actual practice, but if the definition serves some other purpose than capturing actual practice, all well and good.

PA

Well certainly I thought I was, but I wouldn't include scientific or historical questions under Philosophy, and you would. So you must be defining these things in a different way to me.

PA

We make some progress here, but I'm sure you know that "metaphysics" and "epistemology" are again technical terms which philosophers use in different ways. So I will have to ask again what you mean by these two words, exactly?

PA

My question to you is the same as I ask NKBJ: what do you mean by "Philosophy"?

PA

When you say that the natural sciences are part of Philosophy, what is it that you mean by "Philosophy"? Because when I use that word, I merely refer to the academic discipline that has that label, but obviously you mean something different.

PA

It would be good to be clear about the disagreement first. I know you say "Philosophy includes the natural sciences". I don't know if I disagree or not, because I'm not sure what you mean.

My own claim was that if you look at the actual practices of people who call themselves "philosophers", very few of them do anything like studies of microorganisms, genes, planets or the like. If you skim the IEP you won't find any entries discussing how different animals reproduce. A simple scan here: https://www.iep.utm.edu/a/

Will reveal no topics normally falling under "natural science". And if you look in journals like "The Journal of Philosophy" or "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research", you won't find any studies of that kind either. If you go to most university websites and look up what is taught on their Philosophy programme, you won't find modules about plant biology. I went to the Birmingham University website and took a look at the Philosophy department. The intro to the subject says:

"Have you ever considered the difference between knowing something and merely believing it? Have you ever worried about how to tell right from wrong, or even considered that there may be no such things? Perhaps you’ve even asked yourself how it is that words and sentences have meaning - how this printed material is conveying information to you? Come to Birmingham to study Philosophy and develop the analytical skills required to address these issues" -https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ptr/departments/philosophy/undergraduate/index.aspx


Note that it doesn't pose any natural scientific question and that these subjects are taught in a different department. They also have a list of their research projects in the department, and none of it is what would normally be called "natural science": https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/schools/ptr/departments/philosophy/research/index.aspx

The same would be true of almost every Philosophy department, and that is why I say that Philosophy is the study of certain topics and not others. I merely describe what is practiced under the heading "Philosophy" as an academic discipline.

Do you deny these things? If you don't I'm not sure that we disagree, or what you mean to say.

PA

I come and go. Sometimes I post every day for a few weeks, and then I don't post for months, and then I'm back again.

There are quite a few people here that are interesting to talk to about Philosophy; who seem well educated on the relevant material and who try hard to engage in discussion. But there are also people who won't read a post carefully, will only provide minimal responses and will abandon a discussion if their partner "doesn't get it" after 2-3 posts. As I know Philosophy, it should be expected that a discussion might take a while to get anywhere, and for people to understand each other.

PA

The philosophy department through which I got my degree frequently did dual courses, sometimes even taught by two professors. — NKBJ

So did mine, but they were dual; Philosophy and Psychology in my case. Philosophy and History for a friend of mine. These subjects were not listed as part of the Philosophy department, nor are they so listed in most universities, so far as I know.

And my philosophy professors were the ones to point out that science is just a form of natural or applied philosophy. — NKBJ

Yes and they are right, by the ancient/early-modern definition of Philosophy. But that doesn't change the fact that those who call themselves academic philosophers don't do experiments with chemical compounds or microorganisms, nor gene studies nor look in to the daily lives of the old Romans. And those who do those experiments and studies don't call themselves philosophers anymore (though they used to). They call themselves scientists or historians. Philosophers study certain topics by profession, and not others.

PA