We must take care not to equate sentences with beliefs without anchoring them in a speaker's use. — Banno

Quite so. Statements, not propositions.

Thanks very much for that. I think I can follow most of it.

We can think of a metaphysics as a totality of relevance which is mistakenly reifed. — Joshs

OK. Mischievous questions. Does the totality of relevance include what Derrida calls bricolage (which I understand to mean, roughly, non-standard uses. Using a screwdriver to fish out a small object that has got into a space I cannot get my hand into. Does it include accidents, as when I trip over a screwdriver or drop one on the cat?

He is critiquing our thinking of it in reifying terms. — Joshs

I don't quite see what it is that is being reified. In fact, if it is a mistake to reify it, there is nothing to reify and "it" has no place in that sentence. I can't even ask my question. Do you mean thinking of the screwdriver as an object?

But the ready to hand doesn’t constitute the most primordial understanding of Being. — Joshs

I get that. Science is not the primordial understanding of anything. The primordial understanding must be the understanding I have when I start the science. That's why I thought the present-at-hand was the primordial understanding.

They also want to say, it would seem, that there's no logical space between "You are cold" and "I judge you to be cold." — J

There's clearly a logical space between the two. If the first is true, the second may be true or false. If the second is true, the first may be true or false.
The odd bit is that I cannot logically assert "I judge that you are cold but you aren't". There's no logical space between the two conjuncts when I assert them. This is just Moore's paradox.
But that so-called paradox is also the reason why if you assert "That person is cold", I can infer that you believe that person is cold (normally).

I'm pointing not simply to ambiguity about communication, but ambiguity about how we understand assertion. — J

There's ambiguity about assertion, but, IMO, there's a great deal more ambiguity about propositions. Philosophers talk about them all the time and apparently understand each other most of the time. But don't ask them for a definition.

You’re right that Wittgenstein equates philosophy with metaphysics and metaphysics with theory, but the situation is different with Heidegger: — Joshs

I must have misunderstood something. Heidegger understands our cognitive, theoretical, stance as "present-at-hand" and our real-life experience as "ready-to-hand". He analyses Descartes approach through presence-at-hand (which I'm equating to a theoretical stance and therefore methodical doubt) as implying a model seeing us as subjects, the world as object and knowledge as what links the two. These are what Heidegger calls ontological presuppositions and he therefore points out that this mode returns metaphysics to First Phiilosophy. Now, here's my confusion. Doesn't he also criticize this model because it does not begin to explain our everyday lives as active and engaged in the world - ready-to-hand? So, isn't the return of metaphysics part of his working through of a model which he does not deny, but which he wants to limit the role of to specialized occasions, positing "ready-to-hand" - as the model for our "real" lives.

Seems to be straying into the mystical there. Requiring understanding and knowing not just through the lens of the mind. But from other parts of the being. — Punshhh

Yes. I understand the parts of Heidegger that I understand. But there's much I don't understand and that I skirt round, hoping to avoid sinking into any marshes that are concealed there.

It’s not just that the duck-rabbit game may eventually no longer be playable, but that to play it is to use the meanings established by it, and to use the meanings is to reawaken and reinterpret its sense. — Joshs

Well, it will certainly be playable for as long as we (and the people we teach to play) are around, because we are the players. I agree that we cannot know what may happen afterwards. Nobody plays push-pin any more. No-one can rule out the possibility that the concepts necessary for duck-rabbit will disappear or change in such a way the game will no longer be played. But, by the same token, no-one can rule out the possibility that ii may last as long as human beings, or life on earth or till the heat death of the universe.

I'm sorry I've not been here for so long.

I’m getting this concept of metaphysics from contemporary Continental authors, who apparently treat the term in a less technical and more encompassing way than the writers you are drawing from. — Joshs

H'm. Well, there's no stopping people using a term like metaphysics in a different way. But I can't set aside the difference between a theoretical stance, which seems baked into the concept and essentially different from a form of life which is the engagement of a living being with needs and desires (and hence values) in the world. Certainly, for Wittgenstein (though he doesn't put it this way) and for Heidegger, insistence on the latter is a fundamental part of their philosophies - IMO.

Does D have to say that he should not have doubted the "eternal truths"? Or that he should not have been inattentive to them? Does this amount to the same thing, if they're irresistible? — J

The difficulty is that "irresistible" seems to mean that he could not have doubted eternal truths. Well, only in the way that he can utter the sentence "I doubt the Law of Non-Contradiction". My complaint is that he can't follow through with the consequences of that doubt. It's the follow-up that makes it real. (I'm sure that you are thinking, "Oh, but one can doubt the LNC". In a sense, yes. But think about what one would do and say that puts flesh on the bones. Descartes doesn't give us that, on the excuse that his doubt is (merely methodical). I say that it's not a real doubt.)

Do you mean that we should acknowledge that someone, somewhere, could be taught to see a lion in the duck-rabbit?" If that's the idea, I agree; it is not strictly impossible. — J

We can utter the words. But we can't put any flesh on the bones. (If we could, we could see the lion in the picture.)

I think Ludwig, and maybe Moore, mean the first; my hand, when seen, has the property of self-evidence. — J

I'm doubtful about the concept of self-evidence. I think the point here is that a claim like "This is my hand" explains what it is to have a hand. If you insist on doubting that, I shall ask why. You don't have any reason beyond repeating "That hand might be an illusion", I shall not be impressed. I'll think you just don't understand what it is to have a hand or to see a hand. Contrast the situation when I explain that I have a prosthetic hand, not a real one.

I suppose I could see my hand but not be sure that "this is a hand," because I don't know the concept. — J

If I have a hand, it is part of my life. You might think differently and not have the same concept, but the hand will show up in your thinking in one way or another. Your supposition that it might not is empty - just a form of words.

So, is there a difference between "not being able to see the lion" and "not being able to not-see my hand"? Does either one equal "simply true"? I'll keep mum. — J

Well, I'm not sure what to say, either. But those cases are clearly not the same as the duck-rabbit, because there is no coherent alternative interpretation. So I'm driven to say, on the one hand that there's no reason to withhold "true" from either and that our seeing involves a process just like interpretation.

But it is important to appreciate that it will never be the exact same sense, because the form of life or hinge making Moore’s assertion intelligible in the way that he means it is slowly morphing over time , but much more slowly than the empirical assertions and language games that it authorizes. — Joshs

That's just like Heraclitus' river or Theseus' ship. I don't exactly disagree. But I also insist that I am the exact same person as I was 20 years ago. It's normal for things to change over time without losing their identity. However, one could say that we now see hands differently from Moore's day, because physics has revealed that solid objects are not what we thought they were.

They are agreeing that it is a drawing, that their task is to identify what it resembles, that the figure within it can be interpreted in different ways, they see enough detail in the image to recognize a duck or a rabbit. — Joshs

Yes. But I don't think that any of that is metaphysics. But those practices are embedded in our form of life.

or enough to produce the ‘odd fact’ of actually seeing something as something. — Joshs

H'm. I'm reluctant to say that seeing something as something is an odd fact. It seems normal to me. I would say that the odd fact is the puzzle picture.

I’m equating metaphysical system with paradigm , worldview or Wittgensteinian form of life. — Joshs

Poor old W - he must be spinning in his grave. I can see that, in some ways, metaphysical systems may play a part in our lives similar to the part he attributes to "forms of life". But insofar as they are theoretical, in the sense that physics is theoretical, they can't be forms of life.

Is the duck-rabbit’s not being a lion is simply true, is it simply true in the same way as Moore’s declaration that ‘this is a hand’? — Joshs

I think the duck-rabbit's not beiing a lion is simply true. I'm not sure what to say about a picture that has, or at least appears to have just one interpretation - like my picture of my mother. We have to say, I think, that the puzzle pictures are a special case. But seeing my mother in the picture must also be an interpretation. I'm really not sure what to say about this.
I'm not sure what to say about the comparison with Moore's hand. However, one of the points about Moore's hand is that we would not know what to say to someone who insisted on doubting that he himself did not have a hand. We would have to work out what he meant. In that way, I think the two statements are comparable.

So, it seems reasonable to me to think the Presocratic speculations about cosmic constitution made sense to them in terms of what were thought to be the basic elements and the everyday experience of finding things to be made of different materials. — Janus

Certainly they made sense to them. But they don't make sense to us. Now, are we going to worry about whether they made sense simpiciter or in a non-relative sense of making sense. I hope not.

It's easy to dismiss their theories. But some of their questions survive to this day, in the form of logical paradoxes. (It's just that we don't draw the same conclusions from them.) They weren't idiots.

Hmm. What to make of this? It sounds like a flaw in the process of methodical doubt, though Williams doesn't go that far. — J

Fascinating. It looks like a flaw to me. Inattention is feeble. But it is possible to make mistakes in calculations and draw incorrect inferences, though philosophers seem curiously reluctant to mention the fact. No doubt any evil demons around will be only too happy to help that tendency along. So Descartes can maintain his usual premiss and sustain his methodical doubt. But then he faces another challenge, to explain how come those truths that he doubted a little while ago are now seen as are irresistible. There's a possible answer. I guess one could argue that seeing something clearly and distinctly requres that one pay attention to it.

But since such standards apply only WITHIN that metaphysical system, it has nothing to say about an alternative metaphysical stance within which it makes sense to say that a duck-rabbit may also be a lion. — Joshs

My remark that the duck-rabbit can't be a lion was not, so far as I'm aware, a metaphysical claim. It's simply true. The idea that it could be a lion really passes my imagination. What do you mean here by a metaphysical system? Kant versus Berkeley, vs Aquinas etc? Can you elaborate?

It is the impossibility of closure that leads me to say there can be no certainty in relation to metaphysical speculations. — Janus

Well, yes. In a way. But in case like this, you may find that people will infer that metaphysical speculations are always uncertain. But that's misleading. Better to say that metaphysical speculations are neither certain nor uncertain. But that doesn't mean that it's an open house. Interpretations do have to meet standards before they are acceptable. You can't interpret the duck-rabbit as a picture of a lion. That's why one talks of interpretations as valid or invalid, (or plausible or not, etc.) rather than true or false.

I say again that "amply demonstrated" and "impossible" are too strong. I'm agnostic, leaning toward skeptic, about metaphysical certainty, but the debate is hardly over. — J

I'm afraid that I have never understood exactly what metaphysical certainty is, so I'm not going to express an opinion.

Perhaps I am more skeptical than you in thinking that it is not possible that the debate could ever be over. I mean the situation seems quite different than in the sciences where new information can always come to light―in the context of purely rational thought, wherein it seems to be writ that empirical findings have no demonstrable metaphysical implications, where is any new information going to come from? — Janus

I agree that it's not a question of new information. But that doesn't mean that new ways of thinking about the problem, especially new ways of interpreting what we already know, are ever entirely impossible. I tend to see what are labelled metaphysical questions as questions of interpretation. So the developments that started the analytic tradition bring a new perspective to old questions and enable debates to radically change. Questions of interpretation don't have closure in the way that questions of information or even rationality sometimes do.

To give the most charitable hearing to Descartes' project, I think we ought to agree that this is what he meant. Consider a memory -- say, of the Brooklyn Bridge. When it comes to mind, do we say that I have "thought" the Brooklyn Bridge? Not really; in English, that's awkward. But such an example would surely serve for Descartes' point -- if I can have such an experience, I must exist. Whether we call it an English "thought" or a French "pensee" or simply a mental event doesn't really affect the point. — J

The quotation from the Principles does confirm Williams' reading. That reading is also at least compatible with the Meditations. I'm convinced. I've never been keen on the dancing around with Descartes' self. It all seems a bit gossamer, even subjective.

You don't have to form the thought "I think" in order to be thinking, on his usage. — J

I've not heard that before, that I remember. It cuts out a lot of messing about, so it is a very interesting idea.
So we can paraphrase it as "Whenever I think something, I exist", or "If I think, I exist" which certainly makes it not performative and supports the inference (provided we hold D. to a narrow interpretation of syllogism. It also cuts out Gassendi's argument about "I" and makes sense of the way that he derives the illumination by reflecting on what the demon has been doing to him, rather than what the demon is doing now. Does he need to trust his memory?

However, it is a subtle aspect of the meaning. I checked the classical Latin cogito and the entry did not clarify the point one way or the other. I don't know enough to argue about the finer points of 17th century French or Latin usage in 17th century France. Does he back his claim up?

attempting to find certainty in experience rather than what we would call analyticity. — J

Yes. Though I don't think he would have thought of it that way. Most likely, he would have thought of reason as the primary source of knowledge.

My view is that there's no reason to restrict one's actions to what can be based on certainty. — J

There's a bit of an ongoing issue about that. I prefer to insist on certainty, but alter the definition to something we can achieve - i.e. not simply the logical possibility of being wrong. People like you prefer to insist that it is not irrational to act on high probabilities. It's pretty much six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The book is so good that I'm reading it slowly, lots of notes, and have only gotten to God! Williams is quite hard on D here, as are most philosophers I've read. — J

It's wonderful to find a philosophy book that one just wants to read it slowly. Most philosophers are hard on someone who believes in God. Some people, though, suspect that he was just paying lip service.

Descartes himself dealt with a number of objections from people who pointed out that the "I" in "I think" could use a lot more specification. And there is the so-called "impersonal cogito," which considers whether it should more properly be phrased as "there is thinking going on" rather than "I think". (Williams analyzes this one at some length and believes it is an incoherent objection.) — J

I think the point is that D will be aware of his thought, but not of himself thinking it. The observing self is never part of what is observed, so it's existence is a deduction. So even on the impersonal view, D's own existence will be proved as the first next step. D's view of it is "he does not deduce existence from thought by means of a syllogism, but recognizes it as something self-evident by a simple intuition of the mind". The concepts of self-evidence and intuition are not popular in modern philosophy, mainly because they are unreliable guides to truth. (I'm sure you see the irony!).

Not that I think he is wrong. His argument is "If I convinced myself of something [or thought anything at all], then I certainly existed. But there is a deceiver of supreme power and cunning who deliberately and constantly deceives me. In that case, I, too, undoubtedly exist, if he deceives me; and let him deceive me as much as he can, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I think that I am something." So, the doubter can doubt everything, but the act of doubting reveals his own existence. To put it in modern terms, asserting "I am thinking" itself proves that he exists. It is a self-confirming assertion. Compare, for example "I am here". Stanford Encyclopedia - Descartes' Epistemology (See section 4.1) attributes this view to Hintikka and discusses it more detail

However, the idea that the cogito is an inference still has supporters, who argue that D's rejection of proof by syllogism does not exclude an inference. I think this is not a strong answer - a bit like a lawyer wriggling. However, you can find a detailed discussion in the SEP article above.

I think the two most discussed views nowadays are these two - inference and performance. There are others, including Williams' own critique. Wikipedia - cogito ergo sum has objections from Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Macmurray, and Whitehead. I hope you don't mind if I refer you to Wikipedia for those.

It is possible to get lost for quite a while in this. But, however it is interpreted, what matters most is what he does with it. So I suggest you at least look at the rest of Meditation II and consider whether his process does what he needs it to do. I'll be interested to know what Williams says about this.

PS - a last point.

I appreciate the reminder from Ludwig that logical truths and their role in reasoning was a different animal, back in Descartes' time. — J

I found it hard to find the answer to the question what philosophy of mathematics Descartes might have espoused. So far as I can see, the existing orthodox philosophy centred on the idea of mathematical objects - all variants of platonism, in a way. But mathematics was in the throes of a major upheaval at the time - to which Descartes contributed. So anything is possible. But I don't see how he could align mathematics and logic without modern logic.

I put the Brother's Karamazov far above any of the influential articles we read. Is it philosophy? Arguably not. But it's lent itself to a great many philosophical treatments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. There are some topics that benefit greatly from literature. Ethics is a prime example; Politics is another. A thumbnail sketch may be good enough for logic, but the issues in ethics really require a good imagination, so they benefit from a good story-teller. Raymon Gaita's books "The Philosopher's Dog" andin a different way, "Romulus, My Father"are a good examples. They sell well, too.

Either way, it's a thorny issue the formal solution simply obscures. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Is there a formal solution to the problem of free will?

This birthed the very influential, now hegemonic "neo-liberalism;" again, probably not to its credit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Forgive me, but, in my book, proper (i.e. traditional, socially responsible) liberalism was hi-jacked in the eighties by capitalist interests. It has very little to do with neo-liberalism.

Continental philosophy still has a fairly large effect on culture through the arts and the humanities, although the effects on some fields like Classics hardly seem to its credit — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, given that analytic philosophy has very little to say to or about the arts and humanities, that's hardly surprising. I have an impression that there's a good deal of suspicion of science, and a desire to distance philosophy from science. But, to be fair, analytic philosophy looks much more towards science than continental philosophy does. Some would say that it often approaches scientism.

One way this plays out is in the absolutely catastrophic job market for philosophy PhDs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, it's hard to sell a non-vocational qualification in the present climate of absolute obsession with The Career. But I do think we should try not to think of an educational qualification as primarily a qualification for a career. Nor is philosophy the only subject facing those issues. Fine Art and English (and languages in general) face the same issues.
Though I can't believe that students enrol for a philosophy qualification at any level expecting to get a job on the strength of it. Lots of them do other things, and, I hope, feel that they benefited from their philosophical training. When I enrolled for my Ph D, I expected to have to start a proper career when I had done the three years' residency. I was not at all sure that I even wanted a job in academia and getting an offer was quite a surprise.

What if he didn't drop the bomb and Japan surrendered after a year more of fighting? — Christoffer

That indeed is the alternative - except that it might have been more than a year, more than two - nobody knows.
I have to admit, though, that I would not have been surprised if there had been some bias on Truman's part in thinking it more important to save American lives that Japanese. It is more or less unthinkable that he would even contemplate no bomb and a higher American than Japanese body count, just in order to keep the overall numbers down.
Remember also the shock and fury at Pearl Harbour. Revenge is a disreputable motivation, but real, nonetheless.

We would essentially need a massive catastrophe due to climate change before we can build a world that is ecologically sound and rational. The world seems to not be able to do this on its own. — Christoffer

I think we need more than that. I think we need everyone, everywhere, to fear the effects of climate change on themselves and/or their families. Altruism won't carry normal people through the enormous adjustments (many of them reductions) in living standards that will be necessary. At the moment, there's an illusion that life can carry on as normal with a few technical adjustments to energy policy. People will do it for themselves, but not for people who are thousands of miles away.
Sounder and more rational is possible. Sound and rational, for me, is pie in the sky.

He also wasn't responsible for how nukes were to be used, as demonstrated by the scene with Truman. — Christoffer

Quite so. Truman's decision is not standing up well to the scrutiny of history. But he was balancing the destruction of dropping the bomb (and no-one really knew what would happen) with the destruction of fighting through to Japan the hard way. (Just as you describe.) No doubt he had a bias in favour of saving American lives. I don't say he was right. But I'm not at all sure he was wrong. It's all much easier from an arm-chair and with hindsight.

So, destruction, just like Shiva's role, is both an end and a beginning. Shiva both destroys and creates. — Christoffer

That's true. But can we ever calculate that the creation balances the destuction, morally speaking? If only there were a way of ensuring that no-one will use that thought to justify some total horror in the future. I wouldn't trust any human being with that decision. If it has to happen, let it happen without, or in spite of, human agency.

And it's why people now fear that when the last of the witnesses of that event in history dies, we will see a rise in new atrocities and conflicts because people's minds again start to build up an unhealthy ecosystem of thought. — Christoffer

The fear of atomic warfare has never prevented small wars in the years since then. But it seems that people are beginning to think that it is OK to threaten it. I suspect that complacency is a factor, but miscalculation is all too easy, so I'm not at all secure about it.

Indeed, he says that the evil demon could make us wrong even about "2+2 = 4". Would he agree, then, that his methodical doubt should exempt logical truths? Evidently not. "I think," for Descartes, has a certainty and an incorrigibility that "LNC" does not. — J

I have only just discovered this message of yours. It certainly changes things a lot. It shows how easy it is to get things wrong if you don't read the text again from time to time.
I think we need to remember that in Descartes's time, the idea that logic was the foundation of mathematics was far in the future. He would have seen the LNC and the cogito as a different category from mathematical truths. I really don't know what the ideas were at the time.

As I think Ludwig is suggesting my point was that any discourse which purported to deny the LNC must necessarily be involved in an incoherent performative contradiction because to do so would undermine discourse itself. — Janus

If we see the LNC and the Law of Excluded Middle as both undermining the possibility of making an assertion, then the cogito will fit beside them, because it is validated in the act of asserting it. I don't recall any commentary that takes on board his inclusion of mathematical truths in his methodical doubt.
Perhaps @J could check Williams' book and see what he says?

I don't see people as living wholly within the empirical world. As Sellars pointed out we live with both the scientific images and the manifest images of the world, or within the space of causes and the space of reasons. The latter cannot be understood (parsimoniously at least) solely in terms of causes. — Janus

I wouldn't say that people live wholly in the empirical world. That thought was badly expressed. I wouldn't disagree with Sellars.

Despite all the talk of rigour, logic, clarity, and convergence, Williamson’s piece is fundamentally rhetorical:
— Banno
If "rhetorical" is taken as the alternative to "argumentative," then yes. But rhetoric often gets rejected as not philosophy at all -- and sometimes for good reason. W's paper is very clearly philosophy. — J

I don't disagree with you. But I would go much further. We warp our understanding of philosophy by thinking that rhetoric is something that can be removed from our use of language, like cutting out the rotten bits of an apple. Rhetoric is often assumed to be an optional strategy, mostly relied on by those who do not have good arguments. Argumentation is not an alternative to rhetoric. When arguments are presented to an audience/readership, it is an attempt to persuade and consequently rhetoric. Much of what is labelled rhetoric is not an alternative to argumentation, it is simply bad argumentation.

Rhetoric covers a wide range of facets of writing. Good writing always invoves these as well. It's a cliche, that when we dress, we never simply cover our nakedness or announce our membership of some social group. Whether we intend to or not, we give an impression of the kind of person we are how we are feeling and much else. So we think about the effect we will have on people and dress accordingly. It's no different with language.

This post is intended to draw your attention, not necessarily to persuade you. But it is not difficult to see it in whatever you read, if you look for it. After a while, you can see the rhetoric in any writing - including the writing of whatever brilliant philosophers you love most.

Consider this from Williamson's last paragraph. He is talking about Dummett:-

But when participants in a debate are allowed to throw out both (Sc. the laws of non-contradiction and excluded middle simultaneously, methodological alarm bells should ring

So he is representing the debate as something like a boxing match. When a foul is committed the referee stops the match and makes the participants start again. That's not even possible in a philosophical discussion. If Dummett has committed a foul, someone will likely call him out and he will either accept the criticism and take the remark back or not. There's no referee. Why does he present things in this way?

The argumentation is not at issue here. It's about the way that (professional) philosophy works.

Agreeing to disagree about Descartes' project is almost a sure sign of philosophical maturity! :smile: — J

I hope, at my age, I can at least claim to something like philosophical maturity!

I'd thought we could focus more on why Descartes chose methodical doubt as a way to establish certainty. But given the many objections you raise, and given your honesty that you're not really open to the idea that there could be a sound basis for it, I'm fine with letting it go. — J

I'm not saying I couldn't be convinced. The core of the problem is that, so far as I can see, Descartes has little or nothing to tell us about what he means by "methodical doubt", so it looks as if he thought it was obvious. His astonishment that people took the idea of doubting everything more seriously than he intended shows, I would say, that he hadn't thought it through very much.

This is the only one of your objections I'd really want to push back on. I'm having trouble seeing why Descartes doesn't have a legitimate theoretical context. Maybe you can give an example of a theoretical context where "questioning one's data . . ." etc. does make sense? — J

That's fair enough. I have elaborated, or even qualified, my objection in my previous message. Here it is again:-

Reviewing one's assumptions is not a bad idea. Copernicus reviewed the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe. Kepler reviewed the assumption that the planets moved in circles. Newton reviewed the assumption that different physical laws applied to the stars and the earth. In addition Euclid's geometry was a great success. It started from a few definitions and axioms and drew a whole world from it. Descartes is following success and taking it further. But that's where the problems arise. So, to question axioms with theoretical doubts in a theoretical context is a good thing (provided it is not over-done!). But Descartes doesn't set up a theoretical context that gives sense and meaning (and so the possibility of resolving things) to his doubts. — Ludwig V

If you consider these cases, you can see that the theoretical context includes ways of questioning axioms, replacing them with others and methods of working through the consequences and proving the results. (Essentially, mathematical workings to draw out the implications of the data and prove that the new model made better predications that the orthodox ideas.) You could argue that in following the mathematical format, that is what he is trying to do. But the format does not work in the context of this project. One obvious problem is that the data is not systematically organized or in a format that allows mathematical methods to be applied. The other is that the assumption that all knowledge can be turned into a single comprehensive logical structure is, to put it politely, a massive task with no guarantee of success. (Bear in mind, here, that the new science (with Descartes' help) decided to exclude anything that could not be handled mathematically, such as colours and sounds, not to mention emotions and values. But those are part of what he is now taking on.)
Perhaps looking at his constructive phase - the cogito and what follows will make this clearer.

This is another, separate question, also interesting. I assume you don't think Descartes was successful in raising his methodical doubt, given your objections to the method. But are you saying that he failed to set the doubts to rest on his own terms? -- that is, allowing for the purpose of argument that real doubts were raised, are you saying he failed to allay them in the ways he believed he had? — J

That's not just my opinion, There is a raft of issues about the cogito. I think we may be about to move on. I'll need to remind myself about all that, so it may take a little while.

Oh no worries. Just checking to make sure you didn't really believe it was that simple! :wink: — J

I'm glad of that. This medium is not kind to subtleties that can easily be conveyed in actual conversation. There was no way that I could inflect my voice or face to say - don't take this too seriously. I'm not adept with smileys.

We need code enforcement, but we need all the rest. And so do code enforcers. — Fire Ologist

I have no problem with the code on this (or other) forums. But laying down, and enforcing a code on philosophy as such seems like a futile project.

Think of it this way. One cannot legislate for language. What determines the language is the continuous use of the language and the consensus of users determines what works. (Yes, there are exceptions in France and Sweden. But those systems depend on acceptance and application of the code.)

Philosophers are a big enough and disparate enough community to make observation and enforcement of a code very difficult to impossible. In the end, what gets accepted by philosophers is what philosophy is. Yes, there are social forces at work here as well as the core reading and responding to texts. They may pollute the ideal, but one must acknowledge their existence.

Can you keep open the possibility that he is simply not "doubting things" in the ordinary way, and that there's method to his madness? — J

I can see that he has thought about what he is doing, and is not just doing it for entertainment or on some other impulse. But I can't pretend, to myself or you, that I think there is a sound basis for the project in what he says.
Reviewing one's assumptions is not a bad idea. Copernicus reviewed the assumption that the earth was the centre of the universe. Kepler reviewed the assumption that the planets moved in circles. Newton reviewed the assumption that different physical laws applied to the stars and the earth. In addition Euclid's geometry was a great success. It started from a few definitions and axioms and drew a whole world from it. Descartes is following success and taking it further. But that's where the problems arise. So, to question axioms with theoretical doubts in a theoretical context is a good thing (provided it is not over-done!). But Descartes doesn't set up a theoretical context that gives sense and meaning (and so the possibility of resolving things) to his doubts.
However, there's no problem about agreeing to disagree and moving on to other things. That's a perfectly normal thing to do in conversations like this. Is that what you had in mind?

Not Descartes! He insists on this. As discussed above, he is interested in what is possible, not actual. — J

I get that. But I don't think it defuses very much of what I've been banging on about. If he is prepared to believe in the possibility of the evil demon, his concept of possibility is much more elastic than mine. In the context of a pscychiatric assessment, that could count as evidence of losing touch with reality. But he has invoked "methodical", so I suppose he gets a pass.

It is possible, then, that I am something quite other than what I appear to myself to be, and only imagining the reality I experience. — J

There is a difficult argument here about how "other" you can be and still be yourself. You might have been born in a very different environment and grown up as a very different person - so different that you would not have been the person that you are. Where's that line? Hard to say, but it exists.
Again, if you opened up that discussion in a psychiatric consultation, you would have some explaining to do. But again "methodical" gets you a pass.

It's the "pre-emptive skepticism" idea again. — J

I can understand that. We can assess it, then, by considering how far he set these doubts to rest. Sadly, that was not very far. We might point out that it did provoke a good deal of serious philosophical thought about how to meet the challenge. Which is a success of a sort.

you're just saying that Descartes is over-scrupulous or too imaginative. — J

Perhaps. It is possible to be so scrupulous that you prevent yourself from achieving what you want to achieve. It is also possible to be so imaginative that you lose touch with reality.

It occurs to me that maybe the best way to do this is for you to say why Methodical Doubt is a "wrong idea." That way I could try to articulate what I understand as Descartes' reasons so as to address your points specifically, rather than just paraphrase the Discourse and Meditations. — J

If a quotation from the texts answers my objection, there's nothing wrong with quoting it.
But here is my attempt to rationalize the arguments I've put into a single, possibly coherent statement. But I haven't tried to re-state them. I'm assuming you can remember what they were. There's not an awful lot of text, so you should be able to find the relevant parts of my messages if your memory lets you down:-

What does “methodical” doubt mean (other than as a get-out-of-jail-free card)?
Questioning one’s data, axioms, assumptions in a theoretical context is fine. The context limits the corrosion and ensures that there are ways to distinguish true from false. But without context, one just gets universal corrosion.

Can one choose to doubt (or believe)?
One cannot doubt or believe to order. What gives rise to doubt or belief is evidence. Doubt and belief that is not based on, or at least open to the effects of, evidence is irrational.

The demon
This isn’t really an argument, but more of a way of making it easier to apply radical doubt more widely. In any normal situation it would be a paranoid fantasy, but so it’s as well that it doesn’t really affect the argument.

What can he not doubt at all?
He mentions that he is certain of his own sanity. His expresses concerns about his own memory but believes he has a way of relying on it.
He doesn’t mention reason (law of excluded middle and non-contradiction), his knowledge of language or his pen and paper or the existence of his future readers. Doubting any of these would wreck the project.

The Argument from Experience
He says he has been deceived by his senses, so he will mistrust all sense-experience. He also says he has been deceived in a dream, so he does not know he is not dreaming now.
Doubting some sense-experience makes sense, but not the whole class. It is more accurate to say that our experience (senses or dreams) does not prove that everything is doubtful, but that we can tell true from false.
Wittgenstein’s concept of hinge propositions and Moore's common sense fits here. Hinge propositions are (mostly empirical) propositions that are so deeply embedded in the network of our understanding that they cannot be coherently doubted without demolishing the possibility of ever knowing anything.

Doubt and Possibility.
There seems to be an assumption that if a proposition is contingent, it is possible that it is false, which means that it cannot becertain and can be doubted. This leaves Descartes with an impossibly strict criterion for indubitablity.
But the argument is invalid. It doesn’t follow from the fact that p is possible that p is true. Logical possibility does not amount to doubt or even uncertainty.

That's clever, but I hope you acknowledge that both those characterizations of the founders are highly debatable. If Descartes really "showed that it is not possible to know anything," why has that conclusion not won universal acceptance? — J

It is a serious distortion of what Descartes actually said. I was thinking more of his effect on generations of philosophers after him. Perhaps the failure of his constructive phase is, in a way, not his fault. But it was a serious failure, at least for philosophy. Ordinary life, of course, has muddled on as usual. But that's part of my complaint.
My parents had a phrase "that's clever-clever" which they frequently applied to me in my teens. It meant something like "clever and annoying" or "clever on the surface but pointless when you think about it". It applies to this paragraph. I should have deleted it rather than posting it.

Are there facts about what is useful, or is it just a matter of taste? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would say that there are facts about what is useful, but that they are contextual, not absolute.

Is "the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven," and is "nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

My answers are "yes" and "needs clarification".

.....more information helps ground practical judgement is at odds with the idea that they are afactual. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's true. But there is no problem about that. Practical judgement is a combination of values, desires and facts. That's what makes it practical. Values and desires are not facts, because they are neither true nor false.

So, when Rorty debates Eco, he wants to say that what a screwdriver is doesn't necessitate (or even "suggest") how we use it, since we could just as well use it to scratch our ear as turn a screw, and yet in an obvious sense this isn't so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see a problem. A screwdriver has a standard use, which is what is designed for; but it can be used in many different, non-standard, ways. We could call this improvisation, but Derrida has a splendid term for it - bricolage.

A razor sharp hunting knife is not a good toy to throw into a baby's crib (at the very least, for the baby) because of what both are, and this is true across all cultural boundaries and seems that it must be true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. But I'm not sure how you interpret that in the terms of the philosophical arguments.

Hume says quite straightforwardly that reason can never motivate action, full stop. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He does indeed. "Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions." One assumes that he is not deducing the "ought" from the "is". But Aristotle said it first, in the Nicomachaean Ethics, I think Bk. VI. Actually, he said "Reason by itself moves nothing." Not quite the same, but close enough to suspect an ancestral relationship with Hume's remark. (Aristotle goes on to construct the practical syllogism to explain the rational basis for action. Nobody has improved on it, but then nobody has explained how it moves us.)

So it doesn't deny that we might desire truth to attain some other means, but it does deny a rational appetite to know truth of itself that is a part of reason. IDK, this seems to be all over modern anthropology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

H'm. I take this as about the distinction between wanting something for the sake of something else "external" to it and wanting that thing for it's own sake. The difference between playing music to entertain people in order to earn money and playing music for it's own sake - no ulterior motive; ("For pleasure would not count as an ulterior (or external) motive).
It's curious that you call the latter ("for its own sake") a rational appetite, when the point is that it has no external ground or purpose, whereas playing music for money does, and therefore has a reason, so is clearly rational. Can you help me?

Nor can Hume just say, "but people just possess a sentiment for goodness itself," because this would obviously imply that there is something, goodness, to have an appetite for, which is distinct from people's other sentiments, which is at odds with the entire thesis. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think that's a problem. What "useful" means depends entirely on the context - it isn't a property in its own right, capable of applying to something independently of other properties; it applies to something in virtue of some other properties or qualities that the something has or doesn't have. Similarly, what's good depends entirely on the context.

They don't, and I'm not sure how you read that as a denial of the existence of the field of ethics. Rather, the denial is that ethics has any real subject matter outside opinion and illusory judgement. It is just taste and emotional sentiment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Oh, I see. I'm sorry that I misread you. Though, I'm sure you will agree that they would not necessarily describe what they are denying in that way.

"And when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther." is not a philosophical resolution of skepticism. The anguished skeptic can just say: "well it still bothers me." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, it is not. But then, Hume's point is that there is no philosophical resolution of scepticism. The reason he is not bothered by that is that he thinks it has no point, no consequences. Life goes on, just as usual. Essentially, that's his point about induction. There is no justification that reason can supply, so we will continue to rely on it, just as we have always done. It's not as if there is a useful alternative. He's not wrong, IMO.

Arguably, Hume might not contradict himself, if we take his "grounding in sentiment" to be purely descriptive. But then he hasn't done anything to ground morality either, and hasn't justified a move from moral nihilism the way he claims he has. So it's a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't remember the texts (not Hume, and not Macintyre, either.) enough to engage with this properly. You are right that if his theory is purely descriptive, then it cannot justify ("ground") morality. Perhaps Hume thinks that the fact that we do value the things that we value is all the ground we need? Or perhaps he is thinking of the issue in the same way as he thinks of the philosophical sceptic. The arguments may be impeccable, but they won't make any difference - we shall continue to value the things that we value. However, while we can comfortably let philosophical sceptics moulder in their prison, it is harder to ignore the moral nihilist who ignores the moral rules.
I did, a little while ago, look at his argument about miracles. There, he uses as his final court of appeal "universal agreement" about various things. That does seem a bit of a broken reed, particular when "universal" means "people like me". That is a real weakness. But philosophers do tend to refer to a "we" that believes or does, this and that. I've never been happy with that, but it is almost impossible not to rely on it without awkward and long-winded circumlocutions.

Logicians and philosophers now look to see both where formal systems can display the structure of natural languages, and were aspects of natural languages can suggest ways to develop new approaches within logic. — Banno

Thanks for the explanation. It would seem that there has been considerable progress on this issue since the bad old days.

I don't want to disrupt the discussion that is actually going on here. I hope that it is possible to ask a question in the margins, as it were, without doing so.

The present state of play, so far as I can make out, has the philosophers working in these areas developing a variety of formal systems that are able to translate an ever-increasing range of the aspects of natural language. — Banno

If I remember right, the original philosophical reason for the "translation" into logic was to clarify natural language, so that at least some philosophical problems could be resolved or dissolved. The other (possibly philosophical) project was the attempt to provide a foundation for mathematics. But I had the impression that both projects were abandoned, though to be honest I have forgotten exactly what the reasons were. My question is simply what is the aim of the translation project now? Is it the same, or something different?

But we can instead say, "This is why Descartes is a great philosopher, not just an interesting one. He believed he had found a whole new and important use for doubt, one that is precisely not its ordinary use. And the ramifications of his idea were so provocative that we've been discussing it ever since!" — J

Certainly we can say that. My arguing that he is wrong does not mean that I don't think he is a great philosopher (though it might mean that I think he is an even greater mathematician/physicist). His achivement is that he came up with a really interesting wrong idea - so interesting that it has dominated Western philosophy for over three hundred years. If I could achieve anything even close to that, I would be very pleased with myself.

Again, we'd need to really dig in to his reasons for "inventing" Methodical Doubt, and what he hoped it could accomplish. I'm willing, if you like. — J

OK. Hit me.
Lee Braver wrote a book called "Groundless Grounds" in which he argues that Wittgenstein and Heidegger both argue that a key part of their very different projects was to return philosophy from its obsession with the theoretical and derive its understanding from everyday life. I'm not scholar enough to know for sure, but I think he makes a very good case. That's why I'm going on about it.

He says he's been misled in a dream --and not known it at the time -- to such an extent that he thinks we have to take the possibility as real. But remember, the question is not "Did it happen?" but "Could it happen?" — J

Yes, he has been misled by a dream. But when he woke up, he realised the truth. It's that insistence on being absolutely certain now that creates much of the problem. These philosophers have no patience!
Suppose he told us that he dreamt he was an astronaut and flew to Mars last night. Are we to think it could have happened? And isn't the fact that it couldn't have happened the key reason why he, and we, are so sure that he dreamt it? And that is true even though it is not self-contradictory to assert that he did fly to Mars last night.

Of course you may feel it simply could not (sc. happen), but that's disagreeing about a result concerning what can be doubted, not the method itself. — J

In a way, you are right. I wouldn't seriously question the idea that, in a specific context, it might be helpful to re-examine one's assumptions. But Descartes' project is removed from any specific context, and it's target is everything he, and we, think we know. That's a very different kettle of fish - and that grandiose aim, to criticize everything is a typical philosophical over-reach.

People forget that something can be possible and not the case. It was possible that my parents might have lived to be a hundred years old. Yet I know that they didn't. Earlier, I gave as an example of something that is certain "I have two hands". That comes from G.E. Moore and Wittgenstein discusses it. It is a contingent statement, so it is, in theory, possible that I do not have two hands. But if I consider the idea carefully, it makes no sense; there is not the remotest actual argument for supposing that I do not have two hands.

Yes! That's why Descartes is so concerned to win back all (or most) of the territory he concedes as uncertain. He uses doubt to demonstrate, in the end, a method by which we can learn what is certain. — J

There are two moments in his project. Creating the doubt, and resolving it. I may be questioning the creation process, but, in a way, I am already participating in his project. There is another line available, which is to accept his project, and consider whether his retrieval is successful. Unfortunately, there is another vast literature on that. What's worse is that many since then have tried to rescue the situation. No-one's really put the issue to bed. It would seem that he achieved too much in the first phase and not enough in the second.
Of course, that may be because it has now become a standard exercise - no, initiation - for those beginning philosophy; no-one else, except Socrates, has achieved that. The two of them constitute the founding myths of philosophy. That's paradoxical, in a way; one of the founders of philosophy discovered that he knew nothing and the other unwittingly showed that it is not possible to know anything anyway. No wonder philosophy is a mess.

I think we should take Descartes at his word when he says that he does not intend "methodical doubt" to be applied in daily life. His quoted words in the letter make that pretty clear, and Williams cites a number of other instances. — J

Oh, I don't doubt his sincerity and I do take him at his word. But his move removes doubt from its usual context, and especially it's usual consequences. So it is a bit like shaking hands without touching. It's a greeting, but not a greeting. Or pulling a punch. That's what gives force to Hume's complaint that radical scepticism (not that he mentions Descartes) has no consequences. One doesn't quite know what it means.

He wants us to take methodical doubt very seriously indeed, as a method of ascertaining what might constitute certain knowledge. I called this a kind of "giving the Devil his due" skepticism; Williams calls it "pre-emptive skepticism," meaning much the same thing. Descartes wants certainty, not merely what seems overwhelmingly likely. So he's willing to make enormous concessions to what a hardened skeptic might claim. — J

Yes, in one way I understand all that. Perhaps you could think of my obstuseness as an application of his method to his method. (Oh, I do hate arguments like that. Don't take me seriously).

See what I mean?

And there are a number of modern arguments, broadly analytic or Wittgensteinian in nature, that make that case. — J

Oh, yes. We could get them out of the books and see what we think of them. But improvising on the basis of an unreliable memory is also quite fun.

It's not that "I have two hands" must be shown to be indubitable, but rather that "whatever I affirm that I perceive clearly and distinctly" is indubitable -- that is, cannot, under any circumstances, be mistaken. So, with respect, this isn't quite it: — J

Now you are switching back to wholesale undermining of an entire class. We have ways of telling when our sense our misleading us (I prefer "telling when we have misinterpreted our senses"). How else does Descartes know that he has been misled in the past? This won't do at all.

I read him as asserting what is possible, not what is the case. It's the difference between saying, "That bird could be an oriole" and "That bird is an oriole." These are both assertions; if I make the first one, it will be true if the bird could be an oriole, and false if it could not be. The second assertion says something quite different; it will be true if the bird is in fact an oriole, false if it is not. I believe the former mode is what Descartes is talking about. — J

Yes. I get that. It is a common way of presenting sceptical arguments. I'm not sure it is actually in the text. But it might be. The trouble is that the presentation usually collapses possibility into logical possibility, and establish what are now contingent statements on the basis premisses that make them all a priori or analytic (cf. Euclid or mathematics in general). But if we want to eliminate all contingent statements from our knowledge base, we'll end up in a sad state, don't you think?

It's just that, in the absence of egregious oppression and lack of quality of life, this never seems to happen. — Janus

No, it doesn't. Most people don't care much about the big picture and just want to be left in peace. True, that can be a mistake, but it seems to me that's how it is.

I think you know from past discussions that I would be the last to indulge in human exceptionalism and conclude that we are somehow more than mere animals. We are only exceptional inasmuch as we are very unusual animals. That said, there are also many other very unusual animals. — Janus

Sorry. That remark was intended in general, not in particular. I write quite quickly when I finally get to the keyboard. Sometimes I don't put things precisely enough. But I've found that if I write too slowly, I end up not writing at all.

It seems to me to be a question of what we can logically doubt, and I think the answer is 'anything that can be imagined to be false without logical contradiction'. It seems we cannot doubt the LNC itself without falling into incoherence. — Janus

There's a good point there. If Descartes does try to doubt the LNC, the project will fall apart. Same thing if he doubts his memory. He makes quite a fuss about that at the end of the first meditation.

The obverse is what we can absolutely certain of; and I think that would be only what is true by definition or according to some rule or set of rules we have accepted; i.e. tautologies and mathematics and they really tell us nothing outside of their contexts. — Janus

Yes. That's a trap. The price of absolutely certainty is paralysis in the empirical world. But perhaps we don't live in the empirical world? If we want to return to normal life (a dubious prospect, but still..) we need to re-cast this conceptual space. That's what Wittgenstein is trying to do - and, in his way, Moore.

That's the popular summary statement of emotivism: "x is good" just means "hoorah for x," and "y is bad," just means "boohoo for y." As Hamlet says, "nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I have seen it expressed that way. I don't think it does more than make an interesting beginning for a theory. Hamlet's version is somewhat different. I've always wondered where it came from - Shakespeare may have thought it up himself, but it is also likely that he read it somewhere.

Wouldn't the anti-realist position rather be that nothing is truly more or less desirable, that "desirable" just means "whatever we just so happen to currently desire." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ah, I see. You are using "truly" to distinguish a realist concept from an ant-realist concept. In which case we are just talking about two concepts of desirability, and a concept is either useful or not, and never true or not. Yes. I'm dodging the question. That's because I don't know what I think (yet).

"better" just means "I prefer." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, it often means that, though, I would say, never just means that. See above.

So normally it is the claim that ends themselves cannot be judged better or worse, normally packaged with a denial of the rational appetites (the desire for truth and goodness themselves) so that even rather obvious ends like "not being lit on fire" must stem from a sort of arational sentiment/feeling (this being the result of the axiomatic the denial of rational appetites). — Count Timothy von Icarus

It all depends on what you mean by rationality. Conventional logic, as I'm sure you know, can't establish good and bad. But we can reason about good and bad, ends and means. Why would anyone want to deny that we desire truth (on the whole) and goodness (so far as we understand it)?

Hence, "truly better or worse" can still be used by some anti-realists. Different race cars can be truly better or worse; some are faster. You can have truly better or worse choices for which school you attend, which vacation you go on, etc.. It's rather the "moral good" that is denied. But the counter is that this "moral good" is incoherent, and that the topics of ethics is so bound up in practical reason as a whole that the denial of this new category doesn't actually secure anti-realism the way the anti-realist thinks it does, or at the very least is an inappropriate category for analyzing pre-Enlightenment ethics (Western and Eastern). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Now you have me puzzled. Why would anyone deny that we have a concept of morality, and of ethics?

Not wanting to endorse a position and arguing for positions that imply that self-same position are two different things, and thinkers often do both. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Sometimes, however, they do so because they think that position A does not imply position B. So I need details.

That, and that he contradicts himself in trying to have his cake and eat it too, like when he argues from an is to an ought re treating children well a few pages after arguing for the impossibility of such a move. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fascinating. Could you let me have the reference so I can look it up?

A preface. David Hume draws a sharp distinction, between what he calls Pyrrhonistic or radical scepticism and what he calls judicious scepticism. It is the former that he disapproves of. But he also thinks that judicious scepticism, which is cautious balanced judgement, is an important virtue in life. I think that's right. He doesn't mention Descartes, which is annoying, but I think that Descartes would count as a Pyrrhonistic sceptic.

Does that fit your sense of Descartes' project? — J

It fits my sense of his project. But I don't like the project.

To the first point, Bernard Williams puts it succinctly: "There is the universal possibility of illusion, and there is the possibility of universal illusion." — J

Yes, that's right. So there are two versions of what is going on. I think you will find that the distinction is often not drawn, but I may be wrong. In any case, if you (and perhaps WIlliams) grant that the project of doubting everything is incoherent, we are left with the examination of specific doubts.

The programme is to consider each of our doubts, in order to distinguish the uncertain from the certain. He needs, therefore, to exempt from scrutiny all the knowledge that enables him to distinguish between truth and falsity.
In fact, he exempts a number of other things from his examination. One of them is his own sanity - he does not think that he is an emperor. Another is that his senses do not always deceive him, though he seems to forget that in other passages.
If I asked you to believe that I am going to spend my week-end on the moon, could you do it? Or would you look for some evidence and fit your belief to the evidence? Doubting without evidence is not rational, and sticking "methodical" in front of the doubt does not make any difference to that. You could easily pretend to believe me, but somehow I don't think that's what Descartes had in mind.

He wants us to set aside our practical, moral and aesthetic concerns and think about the apple in a completely disinterested way. He does not consider that to think about the apple in that way (a theoretical stance) may be to be unable to think about the apple as we know it.

So this is not an attempt to determine what must in fact be illusory. It is not a method we take into our everyday experiences. Neither the specific nor the general sort of doubt is being asserted. At this juncture, Descartes wants to know what is possible, not what is true. His idea is that, if we can find something about which not even the possibility of doubt can be raised, we will have found a foundation upon which to build our knowledge of the world. — J

That is in interesting change. But I don't think it changes much,
In any case, the question of what is possible is not at all clear. Many people believe that it is possible that the sun will not rise tomorrow morning, simply because it is not self-contradictory to assert that it has not risen. Is it possible that I don't in fact have two hands? To put it another way, someone who thinks that it is possible that he is being duped by an evil demon has a pretty elastic sense of what is possible.
The model of mathematical knowledge, particular geometry on the moden of Euclid, is in the background here. Because of Euclid's approach, it seems that a meaning can be given to the idea of foundations of knowledge. Whatever we may say about that approach in mathematics, it does not follow that the same model will work for all knowledge, particularly if the proposal is for one system for all knowledge.
What do you mean by saying that he is not asserting his doubt? Are all his assertions in Meditation 1 not really assertions? They certainly conform to the normal requirements for asserting doubt.

So if the above sketch is on the mark, then I'd say that Descartes does not defend skepticism at all. Really, he wants to defeat it. — J

Yes, I'll give him that. The trouble is that he has discovered a methodology that runs out of control and doubts too much.

Descartes compares this to an absurd practical attitude of constant "methodical doubt" and concludes: "This is so self-evident to everyone that I’m surprised that anyone could think otherwise." — J

But all he does here is to announce that we are not supposed to take our methodical doubts seriously. Which undermines the entire project. He wants to prevent that, but all he can say is "But I never meant it that way". We need a bit more than that, don't you think?

Yes, I'm being difficult. Some readers might feel that I should be more charitable. I'm not sure about that. I don't doubt his sincerity, by the way, though some people do argue that he is insincere.

"human" should be "humanist." That is, "the bulk of non-empirical human knowledge," as in (but not exclusively) "the humanities," — Count Timothy von Icarus

He may well have had that target in his sights.

We're not really burning them, but we're downgrading them to taste and sentiment. — Count Timothy von Icarus

H'm. That is certainly what was happening, though paradoxically during the next century or so, the humanities also got elevated to the sure sign of being a civilized person - and essential for the gentry who did not need to earn their own living.

But, I am sympathetic to thinkers who say that moral ant-realism or skepticism is itself a sort of radical skepticism (i.e. not limiting it to theoretical knowledge). For one, if nothing is ever truly good, then truth cannot be truly better than falsity, "good faith" good, and so too for "good methods," or "good argument," since these all relate to ends, i.e. "the Good," "that at which all things aim." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, from the point of view of a realist, that would indeed seem to be so. But if you don't have and/or can't recognize, the Good, but, perhaps, only a range of activities and/or ends that are worthwhile in their own right, then moral anti-realism seems less like a form of scepticism. To be clear, for someone who doesn't but Aristotle's crowning of the hierarchy of purposes, or who thinks that the supposed crown is an illusion, "truly good" is just rhetorical pleonasm.

Post-Descatres, there is an extreme focus on method, while philosophy also starts to be thought of more as a "system" or "game." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. Philosophers are very good at buying in to the latest intellectual developments, and, mostly, making too much of them. They usually settle down after 100 years or so.

For instance, for Bertrand Russel, Hume's case implied that "there is no intellectual difference between sanity and insanity." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Accusations of insanity are quite near the surface of philosophical argument. After all, not so long ago and during Russell's lifetime, a philosophical thesis was either true and trivial or nonsense. It was a high-stakes game. Fortunately, psychiatrists didn't buy into that mistake - they were busy making different mistakes.

The inability of the powerless to coordinate in order to restrain the powerful just might be a candidate for the major source of human misery―the central pathos of the human condition. — Janus

Yes, indeed. Though, of course, the powerful, when they are not complacent, live in fear that the powerless will get themselves together - and then they are unstoppable. Cardinal Bellamine said it best - "The voice of the people is the voice of God".

I also think humans love to pull things apart to see how they work, and then that search for constitutive function focuses on the smaller and smaller and smaller.. Both of these searches―for the greatest overarching principles and the smallest constitutive entities would seem to be impossible without symbolic language, which is probably why we don't see such concerns in other animals―and there would also seem to be a powerful element of misleading reification in both. — Janus

Yes, symbolic language is very important. But I get worried when people try to deduce that we are not animals.
Reification is a major curse for any philosopher that has an ear (eye) for language.

human cognitive system is representational, in that everything to which it is directed is mere affected senses, re: sensation, from which alone no cognition is at all possible. — Mww

I'm not sure I understand all of this. But I do agree that representing our "cognitive system" as representational does indeed set one up for scepticism about the things that are supposed to be represented. Just one more reason not to set oneself up in that way in the first place.

I'll respect your wish not to engage with Descartes at the moment, though I'd enjoy that conversation. Suffice it to say, both your questions deserve thoughtful answers. — J

I can resist anything except temptation. I would welcome reading your answers.

This is different from an approach that starts from what is known and then tries to explain a metaphysics of knowledge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That sounds like Aristotle, and I must admit, it makes more sense to me. One must remember, however, that he is also quite content to revise the knowledge that is handed down to him when necessary
; it is not sacrosanct or immune from doubt or anything like that. In specific circumstances, questioning one's presuppositions, beginning again with a clean slate are perfectly reasonable tactics. But as an approach to all knowledge, from the beginning,.... that's a different matter.

There is also Hume's thing about consigning the bulk of human "knowledge" and past philosophy to the flames, or the unresolved problem of induction (made particularly acute by the prior move to make abstraction a sort of induction) being resolved by just playing billiards and forgetting about it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. — David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding sec. 12, pt. 3

I don't think you are being fair to him.
1. It's not the really the bulk of human knowledge that's in danger - just "divinity and metaphysics".
2. His view of abstraction is somewhat similar to his idea of induction, but lacks the problematic element of making predictions.
3. You may not like his resolution of the induction issue, but he does at least provide a candidate. Admittedly, it involves accepting that empirical observations cannot justify a generalization, but then explaining that we humans are just going to continue to rely on it, justified or not. What's wrong with that?
4. Hume's key complaint about radical, Pyrrhonic scepticism is that it makes no difference to anything. So even though it may be sound, it is of no consequence. It is for that reason that he recommends ignoring it.

So it can be said scepticism, at least in this form, is both defended insofar as it is inescapable, and, resolved insofar as it is subjected to a proper method. — Mww

I suppose so. But then, the same could be said of both Descartes and Hume who are usually considered sceptical philosophers.

I'm reading Bernard Williams' book on Descartes at the moment, — J

I've very tempted to engage with this, but I'll have to save that treat for another time. For now, let me just say that even if Cartesian scepticism has been resolved, I'm sure that people will continue to read and discuss Descartes' account, just as people still read Plato and Berkeley.

Descartes several times warns us not to take his methodical doubt as genuine doubt -- the sort of doubt it might be reasonable to have about, say, sense perceptions. — J

I'm sure it's an excellent book and people do seem to forget that quite often. But do we really understand what methodical doubt means, if it does not mean doubt? The only thing that is clear is that the normal context in which we understand what doubt is, is set aside. So what does this amount to?

Often, 'common sense' is absolute horseshit. That's why we have things like 'folk psychology' to dismiss. — AmadeusD

I would be the last person to deny that. There's a lot of it about. But it's as well to be selective in what one dismisses out of hand.

There's some argument around fear of snakes, for instance, despite the risk of snake attacks being low. That may be something in-built, as it were and not at all telling us anything about hte world. — AmadeusD

That may well be true. I put it down to the "otherness" of snakes - and spiders, especially big ones - and we are programmed to be suspicious of other, incomprehensible, creatures.

If there is a problem of perception here, it is the misperception that things consisting mostly of space cannot also be solid. — Banno

Well, I do think that, in the absence of countervailing evidence it seems natural to regard solid things as those that occupy space, just as it seems natural to suppose that the earth is flat, and static - and to wonder what it rests on.

I suspect this is only so amongst apprentices, and the occasional journeyman. — Banno

Maybe you are right. But I don't find it easy to work out in this very special environment who is apprentice and who is professor - and, as Cicero pointed out, there is nothing so absurd that some philosopher will not believe it. (I will refrain from citing examples.)

So, perhaps it's partly that the skeptical solutions are not considered acceptable, or are themselves considered to be radically skeptical. I have certainly seen philosophers say this, not only about Wittgenstein, etc., but even about Kant's attempted solution. And then Hume was self consciously riffing on ancient skepticism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You put your finger on a fascinating phenomenon. When I returned to Hume recently, I was astonished to find that he is not at all what I would consider a sceptical philosopher; then I realized that Descartes' reputation is also a complete misunderstanding, since his project was precisely to resolve the nightmare he conjures up. The same goes for others, as well. It's very confusing. Is there any philosopher since Descartes who has actually defended, as opposed to trying to resolve, scepticism? Earlier scepticism was different in that it was proposed as a basis for achieving ataraxia or apatheia and so living a happy life.

IDK, I'd love to find a good treatment of the history. My inclination is that some of the resistance might also have to do with the "thin" anthropology used in some resolutions to skepticism, which is unappealing to some. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm afraid I can't help you. By "thin" anthropology, do you mean the sketchy references to ways of life and/or evolution? It's difficult being a philosopher and wanting to take allied discussion in other departments seriously. There just isn't time. Or that's my excuse.

What lies behind the traditional philosophical denial of common sense would seem to be the assumption that this world, not being perfect, cannot be the true world. The human desire for a transcendent reality, as opposed to this "mere shadow world" has a lot to do with the desire for life to be fair―that is to punish the wicked hereafter when they elude punishment down here, and to provide us with salvation and eternal life. Most of us would rather not die; so being in denial of the fact of death is one strongly motivated strategy for coping with it. — Janus

Yes, all of that. Ethics in general, and justice in particular, is an interesting combination of incompatible desires. On the one hand, the desire of the powerless to restrain the powerful and on the other hand, the desire of the powerful to control the powerless.

given that the real nature of things in the ultimate sense that the human mind seems so addicted to entertaining is not at all decidable. — Janus

Perhaps the ability and desire to push things further is what lies behind the tendency to look for ever more ultimate ultimates and get lost, as it were, in outer space. That's one thing that I don't see in non-human animals.

I don't follow that. How does skepticism enter the picture? I took Banno to mean that we wouldn't have a reason to doubt something or find it odd unless we were used to things being a certain way. That's not meant to be skeptical doubt, I don't think. — J

I'm sure it is not meant to be traditional philosophical sceptical doubt. On the contrary, that background of certainty is what prevents it running out of control, so to speak, and becoming the radical doubt that we were all brought up to combat. I'm sorry I wasn't clear.

Part of common-sense reality is a robust confidence that we can accept it. "Reality" here refers not only to the content of whatever beliefs and perceptions we may have, but also to the efficacy of our own equipment, so to speak. I read the early Greeks as mostly questioning (not denying) the former. But there are many examples to pick from, and I shouldn't generalize. — J

Thanks for outlining how you understand the word. Generalization is indeed a tricky business. I tend to regard it with deep suspicion, especially in the context of philosophy. The disagreement about certainty and uncertainty seems to me to be a case where generalization has generated a furious and false debate. It sweeps differences aside and makes them hard to see. No, I'm not saying that all generalizations do that. I am saying that some do, and it's not helpful.
Greek philosophy has a long history and many varieties. But, according to Plato, Zeno and Parmenides did not pull their punches when discussing the reality of Being. Come to that, nor did Plato. Pyrrho and the Sceptics were, perhaps, gentler, in that they always saw both sides of the question and refused to come down on either side.

You will have noticed @Patterner's discussion of solidity earlier. I'm fascinated by the temptation (which I partly share) to deny that tables and rocks are "really" solid when the explanation actually affirms, and does not deny, that solidity is, in everday contexts, exactly what it seems to be. The same phenomenon is capable of two different and incompatible interpretations. What can we make of this?

(I would add, echoing Ryle, that, while the explanation of physics has its power and meaning, it comes to us through the perspective of ordinary, everyday reality. There should be no need for us to make a choice between the two. They are both necessary.)

Long ago, when I was philosophically active, there was a widespread opinion that scepticism was vanquished and could be put to bed (or its grave). It turns out that was not so. It seems to be still alive and kicking. Cavell was right - we need to get deeper into the phenomenon and understand better where it comes from. Part of that is noticing that Cartesian scepticism is not the only variety of scepticism, and that denial of common sense reality goes back a long way in philosophy, arguably right back to the beginning. It may be that it is an essential feature of any enquiry that we might recognize as philosophical. But it also seems to be found useful in religion - another point where religion and philosophy seem to coincide or at least to be near neighbours.

As brilliant and imaginative as many people are, I cannot imagine anyone is ever going to come up with any workable explanation for how things exist as they do if there was not coherence and predictability. If electrons did not always have negative charges. If mass did not always warp spacetime. — Patterner

Yes. We need the assumption of coherence and predictability because that's what generates our questions. I think of it as a "hinge", but more of a methodological assumption than a belief. It can't be simply empirical - what could refute it?

I'm more concerned with the definition of "solid" at the moment. The definition does not say there is no space between nucleus and electrons, between atoms, between molecules, etc. The explanation for solidity is not the somewhat vague idea probably everyone has before learning what's really going on. but when a rock is coming out your head, regardless of all that, it's best to prevent that impact. — Patterner

The explanation (analysis) of solidity is a surprise - counter-intuitive, if you like. One can see why some people want to say that solid things are not "really" solid. But everyday phenomena are not denied by the explanation - on the contrary, they are affirmed. Perhaps we need to change the definition, perhaps we don't. That's another question.

Well, we still have the unpredictability of human actions to account for. — Metaphysician Undercover

True.

The world is often not as we expect or can tell at first glance. — AmadeusD

True.

Sure, the world is sometimes not as expected. But we can see this only becasue overwhelmingly it is coherent. — Banno

True.

Our scientific view of the world allows us to predict with confidence that our views will be regularly upended by new insights and discoveries! — J

True.
I'm reminded of the difference of opinion between Heraclitus - everything changes - and Parmenides - nothing changes. Both were right. Both were wrong.
The interesting bit then was why the disagreement arose - the philosophical issues and ideas behind it.
So what lies behind the disagreement here?

The point being made is that doubt takes place against a background of certainty. — Banno

So that's Banno's diagnosis - it's about scepticism.
I'm not at all clear where other people stand. Is it about scepticism? If not, what?
The deeper question that I think we should be talking about is what lies behind the ancient philosophical tradition of denying common sense reality.

But what gives you the idea that there is such a thing?
— Ludwig V
I don't. I'm responding to the claims. — Tom Storm

Fair enough. I wasn't quite clear where you stood.

Every day there's new discoveries which defy science. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm pretty sure that every day there are more discoveries that do not defy science. But they are not so newsworthy. Your sample may be a bit biased.

I wouldn't say that this constitutes miracles, only that science doesn't really have the capacity to predict what the world will do. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know what you mean. It seems to me - but perhaps I'm naive - that the sun, the moon, and the tides are pretty much predictable. though the wind and the rain are less so. The stock in my corner shop is usually what I expect, though there are regrettable lapses. My car usually starts when I want it to; it has only let me down when I have not used it in a while, which is pretty much predictable. Football, cricket etc. matches happen when expected, though I grant you that the results are less predictable. Which number will come up in a lottery is not predictable, although we can be sure that someone will win - normally. Other gambles are also unpredictable, except that we know that the bank or the bookie will win.
Some things are predictable, some things are not, and we have pretty good knowledge of what we can predict and what we cannot. Yes, there are surprises. But mostly things rumble along pretty much as expected.

See the straight stick, see the crooked stick, trust enough on what we see, to understand what we see cannot be trusted. — Richard B

That nicely brings out the paradox in the conclusion. It's not a question of mistrusting everything we see, but of deciding what to trust. Mistrusting what you see that told you that your couldn't trust what you see is confusing.
It's the move from mistrusting what you (think you) see of the stick to mistrusting everything that you see that is the mistake. If I look at the forged money and compare it to the real money, I can conclude that some money is forged. But if I conclude that the real money might be forged as well, I've cut off the branch I'm sitting on.
It is true that each coin/note that I see could be a forgery, but it does not follow that all coins and notes might be forgeries. It it did, the distinction between real and fake money has collapsed.

My thinking is that, whatever the answers might be, they are the answer to how we come about. People say, "That steel isn't really solid. It's mostly empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is what gives us the illusion of solidify." I say that's empty space between nuclei and electrons, and the way electrons repel each other is, is how solidity is accomplished. — Patterner

Your reply is correct. But "people" already know that. The problem is that what you take as the explanation of solidity, they take as undermining solidity. You have to show them that they have messed about with the meaning of "real". It is a mistake to allow them to get away with that, because once that's happened, there's no way back.

Appeals to the supernatural lack direct empirical exemplars; one cannot simply point to observable cases in support. Instead, such appeals often proceed obliquely, through critiques of the epistemological limits of science or argument from hallucination or the inadequacies of a materialist/naturalist ontology. The strategy tends to rely on undermining the dominant framework, entering through a kind of philosophical back door, if you'll pardon the clumsy metaphor. — Tom Storm

If you start with the idea of the supernatural, the strategy makes sense. But what gives you the idea that there is such a thing?

That's evidenced perfectly by the entire history of humanity not knowing what the fuck is going on, because it isn't as it seems. — AmadeusD

I think if you look a bit closer, you'll notice that you are only telling half the story. The people who argue that what's going on is not what it seems to be will have another explanation of what is "really" going on. Which also turns out to be false. It's been the pattern ever since records began, and likely before that. Socrates is the only person who had it right - he stopped at "we don't know".

And now we’ve stumbled upon one of the central confusions of communication: we use words like “real,” “physical,” and “objective,” without having any rock-solid idea what they refer to. They work well enough for practical purposes—don’t touch the stove, it’s matter and it’s hot. But when we slow things down and look closely, the bedrock starts to look like smoke. There is no stable ground to land on. The closer we try to get to the thing itself, the more it unravels into interpretation, probability, model, rule. — Kurt

You are right to think that it is the specialized use of "real" (and company) that is the source of the problem. But you seem to be repeating the mistake by using "rock-solid" and "bedrock" in a metaphorical way without examining what they might mean in this exotic context. You might also ask yourself whether there is really anything wrong with being good enough for practical purposes and consider whether it is your decision to "slow things down" that is the source of the trouble.

This is very sad. I only knew Vera from her posts. But I always found them worth reading. Her voice was always distinctive and, in my view, constructive. I shall miss them a great deal.

Needs to be said to me suggests a rather dramatic misreading on your part. What part of "liberalism has difficulties with thymos-phobia and logos-skepticism/phobia" suggested to you: "traditional is always good and reason is omnipotent?" was remotely on the table? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I apologize. This was carelessly and badly written. I don't see what I can do to make things right but to apologize and delete this paragraph. I hope that does something to make amends.

What epoch do you believe we would be "returning" to in that case? — Leontiskos

See above.

I thank you for your patience during our debate. I have learnt quite a lot from it, especially that I need to think through more carefully what I have been trying to say.

But I'm afraid I cannot continue any longer.

"Reasonable" as in "known as true/good by reason," or "reasonable" as in the procedural, safety-centered sense of Rawls and co.? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've developed a habit of using "reason" when I'm talking about a limited sense of reason, which has to do with truth/falsity and logic. When I'm thinking of a more expansive sense of reason - especially a sense that enables one to think carefully and coherently about values of one sort or another especially in the context of action - I use "reasonable". I started doing that so that I at least could keep straight in my mind which sense I was in at any given time.
Without prejudice to any different usage that Rawls may make of the word. Though reading some of your comments, I've wondered whether you shouldn't be developing a Greek sense of balance - it would help when considering issues of safety and such.

Why the tangent? What purpose of ours does it serve to answer such classification questions? I simply cannot afford so many new tangents every few posts. — Leontiskos

I'm simply considering your idea from various angles. I don't see a problem. Judging from your reference later on, you classify mathematical propositions as a priori. You could have just said so.

You have offered what I see as two basic responses. — Leontiskos

I'm not sure whether I completely accept your characterization. But since we seem to agree that "S implies P" is sometimes valid and sometimes not, depending what we substitute for S and P, I don't think there is any need to pursue that any further.

But if they must engage in argument to protect P from refutation, then P has already been taken to be truth-apt and decidable. — Leontiskos

... unless what is at stake is whether P is truth-apt and decidable.

Implication can be two-way, even though the various reasons will be chronologically limited. — Leontiskos

I think that means you think accept both "God validates the Christian way of life" and "The Christian way of life validates God". I'm not sure what to make of that. Intuitively, neither seems wrong. I don't see what you mean by "the various reasons will be chronologically limited".

An example of a decidable P which follows from your chosen example of the Christian way of life would be, "Creation is good," or, "Care for the widow and orphan," or, "Do not commit abortion (or else exposure of infants)," or, "Jesus was resurrected from the dead." — Leontiskos

"Creation is good" is an evaluation. I expect you are an objectivist about ethics and so would claim that the statement is true. I won't argue with you. But value statements are a distinct category from factual statements such as "God exists", so I don't see how this helps your case.
"Care for the widow and orphan" and "Do not commit abortion or exposure" are not statements of any kind; they are imperatives and not capable of truth or falsity. They don't help your case.
"Jesus was resurrected from the dead" does appear to be truth-apt and, in principle, decidable. But it is not decidable now, so it doesn't help your case.

What is happening is that you are equivocating on "ways of life." The equivocation was present even when you were talking about Wittgenstein, for even there you referred to both non-justificatory schemas and justificatory schemas as ways of life. But your chosen example of the Christian way of life certainly does validate certain propositions. — Leontiskos

I doubt if it is possible to equivocate with a phrase as ill-defined as "way of life". It's almost completely elastic and plastic.

We could simplify the story and categories a bit and just say that St. Paul encountered something which caused him to decide to abandon Judaism and embrace Christianity. Your objection is something like, "Ah, but Judaism and Christianity have a lot in common, therefore he did not abandon his way of life; he just modified it." — Leontiskos

That's not quite what I meant. I meant that he did not abandon his way of life as a human being when he abandoned his way of life as a Jew. He cannot abandon his way of life as a human being without ceasing to be a human being. It is because he did not abandon the human way of life that he could preach the Gospel and be understood.

Once tradition is considered evil and reason is considered impotent, a sort of anti-tradition revolutionary mindset is largely all that's left (along with the ascendancy of the victim). — Leontiskos

But there is a third possibility, to recognize that tradition has good and bad elements and that reason has its power, but also its limitations. Less dramatic, but much more reasonable. Sure, those who are addicted to excitement will worry about lack of "conviction", but excitement, in itself, is neither a good nor bad thing - it depends on what one gets excited about.

The discourse sets up a perspective, a world, a game, an activity, whatever we call it. The dissection pulls it apart, exposing its assumptions, underpinnings and other entrails. Perhaps you can't have one without the other, .... — Banno

I can't see why you allow the "perhaps". Socrates would not get started without Laches and Euthyphro and Alcibiades. Equally, Plato needed Socrates to get started on his journey.

If we apply this insight philosophically, we see that striving for a complete worldview may not only be impossible—it may be misguided. — Banno

I hesitate to express a view about world-views in general; it smells strongly of hubris. Perhaps one should remember that if you set out to answer all possible questions, you are likely forgetting that any worldview will generate questions of its own, so a worldview can never be complete in that sense.

You really don't have a right to an opinion until you're sure you've achieved the most charitable, satisfying reading possible. — J

I'm very sympathetic to that idea. But I don't see how one could ever be sure that one has achieved the goal and even less sure that every idea deserves the same charity. On the other hand, I don't see how one could even move towards the goal without claiming the right to opinions from the beginning; what one should not claim is the right to claim exemption from the messy business of dissection and critique.