• Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    Thank you for your patience with the reading. — Antony Nickles
    It's a question of balance. I didn't think that my observation would be a distraction in the sense of getting in the way of the reading.

    If we may equate skepticism with doubt, then… — Joshs
    Yes, that's a good reply. One might want to argue about whether it is conclusive on its own. But that wasn't quite what I was talking about. It was, rather, Wittgenstein's comments about "our real need" or the what motivates, for example, the sceptic. Why would anyone say that they were the only person in existence? I think we need to tease out what, exactly, that means.

    In understanding ‘certainty’ as a term we could apply here, it would be the framework imposed by the analogy of our relation to objects. — Antony Nickles
    Yes, that's the context. I was just a bit concerned that sometimes people seem to think that the only problem is reification, and I think that could become a source of cramp.

    we might object (fear) that I am trapped by my ‘self’, — Antony Nickles
    I have seen people refer to being caged in the self, in the context of solipsism.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    I would only add that the "world ending" in 6.431 is a recognition of the solitary that reveals the Berkeleyan move to be a giving oneself a world before retreating from it. When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. That is an echo of PI 251: — Paine
    I don't really understand 6.431. I can see that death is the limit (end) of life and consequently not an even in life (he says that somewhere in the book, doesn't he?). Consequently death is not the destruction of my world because that destruction would be part of my life. But he seems to be saying that my death is the end of the world. That would be true of the solipsist's world, But not of anybody else's.
    But what is the Berkeleyan move, exactly? The move that insists that it is only our own minds that we perceive and that consequently exists? in what way does he retreat from that? Or do you mean that he posits the world as the ideas of God, but allows God to remain hidden behind those ideas? (I could make sense of the idea that Kant does this, by giving himself the phenomena, but then positing the hidden reality of the noumena or being-in-itself.)

    a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive. — Antony Nickles
    Yes, I notice that you are also suggesting quite a wide range of possible needs in the next paragraph as well. All good grist for the mill of reflection. Thanks.
    A small contribution from me. Scepticism is often explained as a desire for certainty, but if certainty is an unattainable ideal, perhaps we should think of it as being, not the desire for certainty, but the fear of it, as some inflexible that hems us in.

    I'll come back later when I've read your latest carefully and the relevant extract.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    And given that the culture is veering more and more towards letting AI do everything, — Baden
    Yes. But it seems to me that there are some things you just cannot delegate. You can't delegate your own exercise to a car etc. You can't delegate the cultivation and maintenance of friendship or love. You can't delegate the work of understanding, either. (Of course, this point extends more widely than just AI.)

    It quickly compares volumes of data and prints strings of words that track the data to the prompt according to rules. I don’t know how. I’m amazed by a how a calculator works too. — Fire Ologist
    Yes. But, so far as I can see, it can't break out of the web of its texts and think about whether the text it produces is true, or fair or even useful. It's probably unfair to think of it as a model of idealism; it seems closer to a model of post-modernism.

    It imbibes them and its understanding of those texts emerges through pattern recognition. — Pierre-Normand
    Yes. But that word "understanding" contains the whole question how far that understanding is something that we should want to adopt.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    When not permitted the move, one cannot judge objectivity from a separate space. — Paine
    That's complicated. This argument is not like others - the length of a rod, say. It's about the limits of language. We have to explore them in devious ways. I can envisage an argument that solipsism might provide opportunities for understanding those limits that are not available without playing with nonsense.

    Wisdom, yes, and Hume; to say “of course that’s a table, duh”, not trying to understand the “difficulty”, not seeing there is perhaps something to learn from/by the skeptic. — Antony Nickles
    Hume is very explicit about the difference between radical scepticism, which he identifies as Pyrrhonism or academic scepticism. That, he thinks, cannot be refuted, but must be cured by immersion in real life. On the other hand, he thinks that "judicious" scepticism and "necessary for the conduct of affairs".

    So it is not just untangling the solution, but reversing the framing of it as a problem/puzzle in the first place. — Antony Nickles
    It's very hard to produce a concise statement of exactly what is going on. Seeing the puzzle as a puzzle is an interpretation. Seeing it as not a puzzle is another. The duck-rabbit again.

    Witt starts by saying they mistakenly picture thoughts as objects, and that they are forced into befuddlement by the analogy, but it’s from a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive. — Antony Nickles
    I agree that reification is endemic in philosophy and likely the commonest example of the mistake of applying one's model in inappropriate circumstances. Here's another example of what I consider to be the same thought.
    It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs. — Nicomachean Ethics Book I, 1094b.24

    we are not just talking about a “philosophical” issue, but our basic human response to others. The skeptic claims the same dominion, only limiting it to the intellectual, which is (though unaware) by design, and the whole problem. — Antony Nickles
    On the other hand, the field of philosophy is often described as logic - and that makes sense to me in the extended sense of logic that applies to Wittgenstein's work. Basic human responses does not exclude logic, I suppose, but does call up a field that is, perhaps, more closely related to psychology or even biology - instincts, for example, could count as basic human responses. I don't want to be caught out trying to imprison philosophy within any very specific boundaries. But there's a certain vagueness here that, as you put it, I'm uneasy with.
    I do agree that one effect of W's work is to make us aware of the limitations, for philosophy, of a purely theoretical perspective - especially when it becomes dogmatic about what it and isn't philosophy.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    AI is a tool. Tools can be useful. I don’t think it should be banned. — Fire Ologist
    I don't disagree. Actually, I don't think it is possible to prevent it being used. There's a lot of hype and over-enthusiasm around at the moment. I'm sure it will settle down eventually.

    So we should also watch out. And have conversations like this one. — Fire Ologist
    Hopefully, people will get more reflective and more selective in how they deal with it.

    There are plenty of online tools out there that already do that. Some are more reliable than others. — Baden
    I'm glad to hear that and that there are a number of them.
    If what has happened with pictures and videos is any guide, it'll be a constant struggle. Fakers will work to outsmart the tools. New tools will be developed. There's no magic bullet
    Tip: Avoid sponsored results that give false positives to sell you something — Baden
    Yes. It's always a good idea to assume that you don't get anything for nothing - and very little for six pence, as they say in Yorkshire.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    The solipsism of TLP appears as a natural consequence of the previous statements but accepting that result is not a speaking of it. It sounds like a speaking of it. We need a point of comparison to approach this negative. — Paine
    Not sure I understand the last sentence. There is a very tricky problem, though, in working out how one can state a philosophical thesis without relapsing into nonsense - because, in the standard account - one is working on the borderline between sense and nonsense. The latter is not an assertion and therefore cannot be denied, or contradicted. For example, strictly speaking, it is performatively self-contradictory to assert solipsism as an assertion addressed to someone else.
    The stuff about my world vs the real world tracks back to Berkeley's realization that he doesn't have an idea of himself, because his perceiving self is not among the things (ideas) that he perceives. (So he postulates that he has a "notion" of himself instead.) Lichtenberg, I believe, a little later comes up with the objection to Descartes' cogito that it goes further than it should because it includes the doubter in what is immediately known, but the doubter is not an element of the thinking - and indeed is not subject to doubt.
    In the TLP, the world is everything that is the case - facts or states of affairs, not objects. The world is described by the totality of states of affairs that can be described in a language., My world, presumably, is all the states of affairs that I am aware of. Common-sensically, then, my world is a subset of the world. But if solipsism is true, the distinction between my world and the real world collapses - my world and the world overlap completely. The list of propositions that describe my world is identical with the list of propositions that describe the world. So where one might describe a state of affairs in the real world with "The cat is on the mat" and in my world as "I know that the cat is on the mat", in a solipsistic world there is no difference between the two states of affairs. "I know ..." adds nothing to the report - and indeed is not meaningful in real-world-speak (because "I" doesn't designate an object in the world). One needs multiple "I"'s to articulate the concept of one's own self.

    I hope that makes some sense. The relevant point I'm after is that one cannot give a clear sense to solipsism in an ordinary language.

    This suggests that Berkeley not "carrying out" the thought allowed him to have opinions about what is objective that is a misunderstanding of his transcendental place, to employ a Kantian term. Wittgenstein insists that we are constrained in this regard. That restraint is also evident in his later work. — Paine
    Well, I can see that Berkeley did not understand the point he was making when he introduced the concept of the perceiver as essential to the perception but additional to it. It is true, I think, that the connection between the TLP and the Blue Book is the continuing struggle to clarify just what it is that the solipsist is trying to assert.

    Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not. People don't come to blows over it, for example. That is part of the framework on which the working of our language is based (for example, in giving descriptions). — Philosophical Investigations 240
    Few people would quarrel with that. I am, let us say, a bit queasy about the first sentence. Disputes like that break out quite often - his own argument with (about) Godel is an example. But that doctrine is indeed a lynch-pin in orthodox philosophy. Yet, later on, the distinction between grammatical statements and others gets serious eroded and transformed into different uses of particular grammatical (linguistic) forms.

    "So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" —It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is no agreement in opinions but in form of life. — Philosophical Investigations 241
    An excellent quotation. People make that mistake a lot. I must remember that for future use.

    Privacy is indeed another issue.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    Much of what all of us do is "parrot." Not many people can come up with an original idea to save their life. — Sam26
    Literally parroting is often a waste of time. But formulating existing ideas for oneself, discussing and debating them, playing with them are all part of understanding them. This is worth while in its own right, and is often a necessary prerequisite for coming up with one's own worthwhile ideas.

    The irony of the “information” super highway. — Fire Ologist
    Actually, on further thought, I'm beginning to think that the real fault lies with the naivety of thinking that the internet would be immune from all the varieties of human behaviour. Almost everything that goes on is normal behaviour - on steroids.

    The irony of calling its latest advancement “intelligent”. We demean the intelligence we seek to mimic in the artificial, without being aware we are doing so. — Fire Ologist
    Many people seem to think that the point of AI is to mimic human intelligence. I can't understand that, except as a philosophical exercise. We have, I would say, a quite reasonable supply of human intelligence already. There are plenty of things that AI can do better and quicker than humans. Why don't we work with those?

    I've added the note: NO AI-WRITTEN CONTENT ALLOWED to the guidelines and I intend to start deleting AI written threads and posts and banning users who are clearly breaking the guidelines. If you want to stay here, stay human. — Baden
    That seems a bit radical. What does bother me a bit is how one can identify what is and isn't written by AIs. Or have you trained an AI to do that?
  • Every Act is a Selfish Act
    Acts of charity, generosity, and volunteerism are correlated with activation in the brain’s reward centers (ventral striatum, medial prefrontal cortex). Helping others feels good, biologically. The altruist experiences hormonal reinforcement through dopamine and oxytocin — demonstrating that “good deeds” literally reward the doer. — Copernicus
    Selfish people no doubt experience the same reward when they perform acts of greed and meanness and bullying. The difference is not in the hormonal reward, but in what acts stimulate the hormonal release. By focusing on the same reward that follows altruistic and selfish acts, you eliminate the distinction. Clearly, to you, the distinction is not important. Fair enough. But you can't prevent other people finding the distinction important.
    No doubt people who harm themselves (cutting themselves, starving themselves) experience some sort of hormonal reward. You would no doubt call those acts of self-interest in the same way and ignore all the reasons why such actions are problematic and fail to understand why other people want to help, not merely observe. Addicts perform actions that are similarly harmful to themselves, and experience a certain reward. For the rest of us, it is not about the reward, but what stimulates the reward.
    Your way of looking at these actions does not enable you to see such actions as problematic. That's your prerogative. Other people see things differently, and they are entitled to their view even if you cannot understand it.

    I don’t deny that we are motivated to achieve k personal satisfaction, emotional fulfillment and meaning. — Joshs
    Yes, but I think it is important to add that the differences at stake here are not about those rewards as such. They are about what gives us personal satisfaction, emotional fulfilment and meaning. People find those things in different ways, and that is where the moral questions arise.

    When I perform an active of ‘selfless’ altruism or generosity, it is made possible by my ability to expand the boundaries of my self, — Joshs
    In a sense you are right, of course. But that way of putting it doesn't distinguish what's going on from individualistic self-interest. It's more complicated than that. When I empathize or sympathize with someone else's predicament, I do not lose sight of the fact that it is not me that is sleeping in the streets.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    When W says that solipsism is not an opinion, the view is connected to the Tractatus saying it is present but cannot be said. There is something to be overcome but is not like overturning a proposition. — Paine
    Yes, of course there must be a connection. That's very tricky. One might have expected W to announce that he had changed his mind, or not, and here's why. But, as usual, there's no explicit reference to the Tractatus. I suppose one question is whether W has overcome the solipsism of the TLP or is just expressing it in a different way. I think the orthodox view is that he has overcome it, in the sense that he does not even pick up the TLP discussion - not would it make much sense, I think, without the framework of logical atomism. To be honest, I don't know what I think. Thank you for that.
    A possible preliminary question is whether W stands by solipsism “strictly carried out coincides with pure realism” (5.64). I can't see an analogy with that remark in what he says here. Nor does he even mention the limits of the world.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    Many take the issue to be just to cure the solipsist, to either solve or untangle the “puzzle”. ..... We want to understand “the source of his puzzlement”(p.59), in order to “have answered his difficulty” (p.58). — Antony Nickles
    I think that the reference to the "source of the puzzle" here is a bit misleading. Because it suggests that the source is something different from the puzzle. Untangling the puzzle is more like the rearrangement, the ordering, of the pieces and works better. But still, the metaphor of the cure reinforces the idea that the solipsist is suffering in some way. But perhaps it is we who are unhappy, who feel the cognitive dissonance. Pyrrho's scepticism was, for him, a resolution of his problem. The first issue is to get him puzzled, to get him to see that his resolution is not a solution. Or, it is we who feel unhappy with his conclusion. So, in a way, all we are doing - all we can ever do - is to develop an untangling - an alternative view, and then, perhaps, persuade him of it. (Of course, if we have a partner in dialogue who shares our problem, at least, then the story is completely different.)

    This does seem to just be a superficial issue of words, but, if we take it that our words matter, then what he is saying is that how they matter, and what they matter for, have disappointed us. — Antony Nickles
    I'm interested here in the difference between a psychological explanation and a philosophical one. I have, from time to time, encountered people who get wedded to some philosophical doctrine, say solipsism, who seem to me to be principally attracted to the doctrine because they like the disagreement, the contention, or perhaps the attention. W here seems to be making it clear that he has in mind a cognitive dissonance that is a matter of logic - in a broad sense of the term. At least, that idea seems to resolve my difficulty.

    Perhaps their criteria (for “real”) are that their feelings are certain (not possibly manufactured), measurable (not over-exaggerated as someone else could), complete (contained in feeling them; not having to be responded to, as another’s). — Antony Nickles
    I've come to the conclusion that what is stake here is Nagel's curiosity about what it is like to be a bat.

    As an analogous tendency, he has the solipsist ask "How can we wish that this paper were red if it isn't red?” and then they provide an answer that there is a variation that we just (agree to) call “red”. — Antony Nickles
    This puzzled me a lot, because if we have access to the difference between my perception and your perception of a colour, there would be no problem, if both perceptions were just shades of red. But, again, I think the issue here is the impossibility of me being you. But I'm not sure. Why would the solipsist ask that question?

    Perhaps this desire (for “our precious”) is the solipsist’s dissatisfaction and temptation, which ultimately leads to their difficulty. — Antony Nickles
    I may have missed something. But if the precious is my unique experience vis-a-vis yours, then I think that's right.

    Some points in the text that attracted my attention.

    But is it not right to say that in any case the person who talks both of conscious and unconscious thoughts thereby uses the word "thoughts" in two different ways? — p. 58
    Sometimes one comes across something in this text that abruptly reminds one that much water has passed under bridges since W wrote this. I don't think there is an issue any more about whether it is legitimate to talk of conscious and unconscious thoughts. Not that he's wrong here - it's just that the debate seems to have been settled now.

    Now when the solipsist says that only his own experiences are real, it is no use answering him: "Why do you tell us this if you don't believe that we really hear it?" Or anyhow, if we give him this answer, we mustn't believe that we have answered his difficulty. There is no common sense answer to a philosophical problem. — p. 58
    To me, this reads as his response to the Oxford ordinary language philosophers. I'm assuming that their ideas would have been under discussion even thought their publications didn't emerge until after the war. If not, why does he bother?

    Our ordinary language, which of all possible notations is the one which pervades all our life, holds our mind rigidly in one position, as it were, and in this position sometimes it feels cramped, having a desire for other positions as well. Thus we sometimes wish for a notation which stresses a difference more strongly, makes it more obvious, than ordinary language does, or one which in a particular case uses more closely similar forms of expression than our ordinary language. Our mental cramp is loosened when we are shown the notations which fulfil these needs. These needs can be of the greatest variety. — p, 59
    On the other hand, he does seem to recognize the importance of ordinary language even if he doesn't go quite the same way as the Oxford lot.

    . (All this connects our present problem with the problem of negation.
    I have no idea what this is referring to. It must refer back to something, but is it something in the book?

    Our actual use of the phrase "the same person" and of the name of a person is based on the fact that many characteristics which we use as the criteria for identity coincide in the vast majority of cases. I am as a rule recognized by the appearance of my body. My body changes its appearance only gradually and comparatively little, and likewise my voice, characteristic habits, etc. only change slowly and within a narrow range. We are inclined to use personal names in the way we do, only as a consequence of these facts. — p. 61
    I read on a bit further because it seemed to be still about solipsism. But it's a very powerful passage. It looks to me as if it is a seed for the later work on certainty - hinge propositions, etc.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    As a method of plagiarism, it resembles its predecessors. I remember how Cliff Notes provided the appearance of scholarship without the actual participation of a student. — Paine
    I remember Cliff Notes and the endless battle with plagiarism. It's not that AI actually invents anything; it's just that it makes things easier - for good (there are obviously some things that it does very well indeed) and for bad.

    And AI is called “intelligent”, like a moral agent, but no one sane will ever give it moral agency. — Fire Ologist
    That's as may be. What worries me is that people will cede authority to it without even asking themselves whether that is appropriate. It's already a tendency with conventional software - and to be honest a tendency before these machines were invented.

    But what will be catastrophic is if it remains so unpredictably wrong, and people accept it as close enough anyway, .... now we have AI to expedite the sloppiness and stupidity. — Fire Ologist
    That's the thing. "Revolutions" in technology don't change the fundamentals of being human, and so we still muddle our way through.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    I think of the checking as the donkey work and the peewee ting and organizing as the real labour. — Joshs
    I don't know what peewee ting is. But I take your point. I put my point badly about the checking. I agree with you that fact-checking ought to be donkey-work and a prime candidate for delegation. But it looks as if that's not going to be possible. Or do you know better?

    I have no idea what Wittgenstein would think of all this. But I don't think he would be happy with a society that cheerfully accepts the limitations of AI without trying to rectify them or compensate for them.

    Oh, maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I was not accepting, but bewailing our post-truth society - by which I mean a society that doesn't care about truth. Also, I didn't make clear that I don't think it is only in the 21st century that societies have not cared, or not cared much, about the truth. I would welcome a machine that could reliably tell me what, in the information that circulates around the web and across the world, is truth and what is not.

    “information” is a tool we use in specific human activities, and AI just adds new tools and forms of expression. — Joshs
    Maybe so. I guess I'm the pessimist and you're the optimist. We'll see. But I cannot get over my reservations about a tool that actually adds in false information to the mix. Does it not bother you? Do you not think it undermines the point of the exercise?
  • Banning AI Altogether
    Now with AI, we have photo and video fakes, voice fakes, that look as good as anything else, so we have a new layer of deception. We have the “hallucination” which is a cool euphemism for bullshit. — Fire Ologist
    It amazes me that people seem to be so unworried about the thorough poisoning of the well. Though given the extent that the well of the entire internet has been so thoroughly poisoned, perhaps it's just more of the same. But the whole story gives a good basis for thinking of this as the post-truth society. No-one seems to care much. I suppose it's all good fun and labour-saving - until you get on the wrong end of a lie. So much for the vision of information freely available to everyone.

    This is why I was shocked that philosophers, of all people, wouldn't be ignoring the "AI summary" invitation at the top of the search results? — bongo fury
    I do (ignore it). I have yielded to the temptation occasionally, but never found the summaries at all helpful. Also, I reason that the motivation for offering it so freely is to get me hooked. Perhaps, in due course, a more balanced view will develop, at least in some quarters.

    I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour? — bongo fury
    To be fair, AI might pick up some of the donkey work in presenting and even organizing information. But not the labour of (trying to) check it.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    ↪unenlightened
    I think this is the fundamental problem. AI does no research, has no common sense or personal experience, and is entirely disconnected from reality, and yet it comes to dominate every topic, and every dialogue. — unenlightened
    That's bad enough. But I am told - or hear rumours - that AI actually gets things wrong. Of course, that makes it no worse than people. The problem is, however, that because it is a machine, people will trust it, just as they trust existing computers and internet. That is clearly naïve, unbecoming a philosopher. What would help would be an AI trained as a fact-checker. But then, it would have to understand exaggeration, minimization, accuracy, approximation, not to mention distinguishing fair and reasonable interpretation from distortions and misrepresentations.

    Whether it should be banned or not depends on what you are using it for. In an environment where people submit their own work in order to demonstrate their mastery of various skills and knowledge, AI clearly needs to be banned. The only way to enforce that is to require candidates to present themselves at a suitable location where they can be supervised as they produce the work. What goes around, comes around.

    If the point of PF is to enable me to access interesting writing and discussion about philosophical topics, I have to say that I don't much care who or what produces the posts or intelligent, well-mannered discussion, so long as it keeps coming.

    But if we are a repository of creative thought and writing which is open to anyone to cite and use, surely we have a duty to make at least some effort to ensure that work is produced by whoever says they produced it - even if many of them are avatars.
  • Every Act is a Selfish Act
    As a solipsist, that's the core of my worldview. — Copernicus
    Well, I'll just leave you to it. There's not much fun to be had here.
  • Every Act is a Selfish Act
    You serve your vision of a better world. — Copernicus
    You miss the point where the distinction arises. If your vision is of peace and justice for everyone, it is altruistic. If your vision is of your own well-being and prosperity alone, it is selfish.

    No. — Copernicus
    Thanks. Very helpful.

    Exactly. Everything is about that one way or another. — Copernicus
    You only read part of what I said. You will surely not see what you choose not to look for.

    No one escapes it. — Copernicus
    How would you know?
  • Every Act is a Selfish Act
    Great post, just that one line sticks out to me as something that others might gloss over thus prematurely proving the OP's premise as valid. — Outlander
    Thanks for that.

    But they're still your children. — Outlander
    There's a case for considering generosity to one's children is a kind of selfishness. But that just reveals that what counts as selfishness is not necessarily obvious. What do we make of the virtue of looking after one's family? In the context of wider society, it can look like selfishness. In the context of traditional individualism, it is altruism.
    Think of benefactors of your town or city or of art rather than homelessness.

    I could spend my money and time on my personal pleasures and leave the kids without. Would that not be selfish? Is helping out my friends and neighbours not generous, because they are my friends and neighbours? Yet, I agree that exclusive attention to my kids, neglecting my partner, would be wrong.

    It benefits your family and existence directly to have happy children who live productive lives, possibly earning lots of money, holding you in high regard, esteem, and favor, and then taking care of you when you're enfeebled. — Outlander
    Yes, but the point is that I consider those happy children to be a benefit and not a drag. The rest of it is far from guaranteed. However, if my generosity to them was predicated on those happy outcomes. that would undermine my claim to generosity.
  • Every Act is a Selfish Act
    Philosophy has long divided human action into the “selfish” and the “selfless.”
    Yet such a distinction may be more linguistic than real. Every deliberate human act is born from an internal desire — whether that desire seeks pleasure, avoids pain, fulfills duty, or maintains identity.     — Copernicus
    Well, we can all agree that every action has a motivation of some kind and that motivation "moves" the agent. To conclude from that that every action is selflish is just playing with words. What matters is what moves the agent. If I respond to pain with sympathy and the attempt to help, or take my children to the sea-side because their delight gives me pleasure, those is at least a candidates for a selfless action

    If every action originates from the actor’s internal state, then no act can be wholly “selfless.” Even apparent self-sacrifice — the soldier dying for his country, the mother starving for her child, the philanthropist donating wealth — finds its roots in personal satisfaction, emotional fulfillment, or existential meaning. — Copernicus
    Very few actions originate from the actor's internal state. Most of them are a response to the world around us. All the people you mention - the soldier, the mother, the philanthropist - are responding to the situation they are in, in the world they are in.
    But you miss the point when you write off those actions as equal to the arms trader who sells the weapons, the black marketeer who hoards the food, and the entrepreneur who hoards person wealth. There's nothing wrong with personal satisfaction, emotional fulfilment and existential meaning in themselves. It's about what gives you personal satisfaction, emotional fulfilment and existential meaning.

    Every act of kindness, every moral code, every love story is a negotiation between biology and meaning, desire and discipline, self and other. — Copernicus
    There's truth in that. Where does the meaning, the discipline, the other come from?

    Until the communitarian comes to terms with the fact of our separateness, of our individuation, the communitarian Good can never be imagined in any other sense as individual, selfish desire. — NOS4A2
    Maybe. But the individualist who cannot imagine goods that are shared by everyone will never understand individuals. For better or worse, we are social beings. Arguably, we all benefit from that. But perhaps you can't recognize the benefits. We (mostly) respect each other's property, and as a result, I can enjoy my property (mostly) in peace. Because people mostly respect the rule about driving on the left or right, everyone can drive more safely. Because people mostly respect their own promises, everyone can do their business. These things are not oppressions, they are enablers.

    Say someone was born with the need to help others, sometimes to the detriment of other wants and needs, but if one of their needs is to help others, and they find satisfaction in helping others, then would that fall into your definition of "selfish"? — Harry Hindu
    because it's giving them a good feeling, at least, if no other transactional motive is present. — Copernicus
    The virtue lies in the good feeling. The difference between someone who gets pleasure from the pleasure of others is different in important ways from the person who gets pleasure from the pain of others. The one spreads pleasure, the other spreads pain. Who would you prefer for your next-door neighbour?

    The self is caged in the solipsistic bubble and can only act from within. — Copernicus
    Oh dear, you will have to find your way out of that cage on your own - unless someone helps you. On the other hand, if you can recognize that solipsism is a cage, there is some hope for you.
  • The Mind-Created World
    It is off topic to this OP, but I often wonder about self-identified schools of thought and the range of vocabulary shared amongst different views represented through them. I won't try to talk about that in this thread. — Paine
    Yes, the vocabulary must be really important. People usually identify schools by their shared doctrines, but actually, I think it is just as much about their disagreements. That's what the shared vocabulary enables. There's also the social dimension.
  • Reading group of Wittgenstein's Blue Book
    Alternatively, the logical (grammatical) “cannot” is that I can’t know your pain without accepting it, identifying with you. — Antony Nickles
    The difference between empathy and sympathy comes up here. I've never been very clear about it. "Identifying with you" is a whole language game in it's own right. One might object to the phrase, because in that process, I do not for a moment imagine that I am you. What I imagine is myself in that situation.

    but, in doing so (not as an argument for), we also see a different relationship to another’s pain than knowledge. — Antony Nickles
    Yes. Doesn't he say, somewhere in the PI, that we naturally respond to another's pain by trying to relieve it. I'm inclined to say that anyone who doesn't understand that, and why, it is an appropriate response, doesn't understand what pain is.

    But I’m not sure if pointing out just any alternative criteria would be convincing, nor do I think he means to say the argument would be over if they were aware of the nature of what they were objecting to, as if convention is more justified or powerful or certain, because the trick is to capture the “difficulty” seen by the metaphysician (and philosophy in general), which I take as real and actual and not something he is dismissing. — Antony Nickles
    I see your point.

    He feels tempted, say, to use the name "Devonshire" not for the county with its conventional boundary, but for a region differently bounded. He could express this by saying: "Isn't it absurd to make this a county, to draw the boundaries here?" But what he says is: "The real Devonshire is this". We could answer: "What you want is only a new notation, and by a new notation no facts of geography are changed". — p. 57`
    That's all very well. Then I thought of the Ukraine's argument with Russia. It wouldn't fly, for either side. Both sides would object that W has missed the point of the argument - doesn't understand it. It isn't about geography. That's the thing. There's no neutral ground on which one can resolve disagreements.

    (It is true, however, that we may be irresistibly attracted or repelled by a notation. We easily forget how much a notation, a form of expression, may mean to us, and that changing it isn't always as easy as it often is in mathematics or in the sciences. A change of clothes or of names may mean very little and it may mean a great deal.) — p. 57`
    The fact that he puts this as a qualification, an after-thought, in brackets, tells me that he does think that his geographical point of view is better. But I'm not at all sure that there is any privileged notation that is better or worse than any other from a theoretical point of view.
  • The Mind-Created World
    I am surprised by your lack of surprise. The shared use of terms by the two authors is clearly evident in comparisons of their texts. That includes the term 'experience', that invokes what is called empria by Aristotle which led to the word "empirical." — Paine
    It's based on my interpretation of references in Berkeley and Hume to "the academics" or "the schools" or "schoolmen". Aristotelianism as such is usually though to be over by 1700. That doesn't mean that nobody studied either Plato or Aristotle after 1700, and Aristotelianism was a major opposition to the new science and Enlightenment.
    Pedantic note. The Greek for "experience" is "empeiria". Probably just a typo.

    Afterthought - Aristotelianism died out by 1700. Berkeley would have been a young man (student) at that time, Hume would have been students less than 50 years later. There were likely Aristotelians still living then.
  • The Mind-Created World
    What is primary is what is sought throughout Aristotle. — Paine
    Of course it is. It's clearly a precursor. I'm not sure it's exactly our idea or Kant's idea. That quotation doesn't mention experience, which I think is the key idea for us.

    Kant's terms can be said to move across the background of their Aristotelian versions. — Paine
    I didn't know that. It isn't a surprise, though.

    I need to get more chores off the honey do list first. — Paine
    I know that list. But I've not heard it called that before.
  • The Mind-Created World
    I will pursue my Buddha nature by not commenting on the SEP article. — Paine
    That is enough to tell me what I need to know.

    The receptivity of perception in Aristotle can be seen as a parallel to that of the intuition of sensibility.
    Yes. But there's a vast difference in the "mechanism". Aristotle's mind is, so far as I can see, almost entirely passive. Quite unlike Kant's - I guess that's his great contribution.
     — Paine
    But where Kant directly rebukes Aristotle is over his use of logic at A268/B324. — Paine
    On this is grounded the logical topics of Aristotle, which schoolteachers and orators could use in order to hunt up certain titles of thinking to find that which best fits their current matter and rationalize or garrulously chatter about it with an appearance of thoroughness
    I don't read that as critical of Aristotle, so much as critical of "schoolteachers and orators". I was also very impressed that Kant (seems to) retain some concept of form and matter. How he reconciles that with the new science I cannot imagine.

    The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth. — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, page 374, or page 69 in the linked document
    I can understand the a priori as about the possibilities of experience, and then it makes sense that the senses are about actual experience. But now I don't understand why he says this. I suppose that pure understanding/reason is not the same as the mixed understanding of possible experiences. But then it seems odd to me that he seems to think I must grasp all the possibilities before I can grasp any actual experiences. Surely understanding some possibilities would be enough.

    I'm bit preoccupied with his concept of the a priori. I thought I might find it helpful to look at what other contemporary philosophers have had to say about it. I did some research in SEP. I didn't find it mentioned in the articles on other major eighteenth century philosophers. There's a precursor in Locke, (distinction between demonstrative and probable reasoning) taken up by Hume; Leibniz is quoted as saying "An idea is true when its notion is possible and false when it includes a contradiction"; Spinoza seems to have been very pre-occupied with necessity. I don't suppose you know where something like our idea of it first occurs?

    Instead of seeking two entirely different sources of representation in the understanding and the sensibility, which could judge about things with objective validity only in conjunction, each of these great men holds on only to one of them, which in his opinion is immediately related to things in themselves, while the other does nothing but confuse or order the representations of the first. — CPR A270/B326
    Yes. I guess his great contribution was to break the empiricist/rationalist dilemma by showing that both are necessary. Which should have been obvious all along.

    I greatly appreciate all the work you are doing with me. But as I get deeper, I find it harder to keep a grip on any one topic. (You may have noticed that my replies are getting slower and slower.) Yet obviously it is a system and one really needs to understand the whole thing. But I think I need to take a break for now. No doubt I'll return to him at some point in the future.

    For the moment, I'm going to read the Prolegomena and the Refutation of Idealism. If I can get my head around those texts, I'll have learnt a lot.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    Some epistemologists use "warrant" to refer to a justification sufficient for knowledge. The conditions that make it so are open to debate. Nevertheless, I was just treating warrant as synonymous with justification. — Relativist
    Well, that just reinforces my opinion that there is no set way to distinguish between them. So your synonymy is not wrong. I'm usually very sceptical about claims of synonymy. There's usually a difference to be found. In this case, perhaps, too many differences for comfort.
  • The Mind-Created World
    That’s what I get out of it, anyway. Loosely speaking. — Mww
    It may be a loose way of speaking, but it make sense to me. Thanks. Very helpful.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    Isn't "warranted" just another way of saying "best"?
    — @Banno
    No. Being warranted means to be rationally justified.
    A subjective "best" inference may, or may not, be warranted.     — Relativist

    We seem to be circling. Being warranted means to be rationally justified, and something is rationally justified if it is warranted. The best explanations are the ones which are rationally justified, and those are the ones that are warranted, and they are the ones we accept. A subjective best inference may not be warranted, but then it would not be the best inference, and so not justified, and not the best. — Banno

    I hope you don't mind looping back to this. No doubt you will ignore me if you do.

    It is clearly true that "warranted" and "justified" are closely related. But they can be distinguished, at least for philosophical purposes, by locating each in a different approach to argumentation. I'm referring to Stephen Toulmin's Uses of Argument. He treats an argument as a process of justification, and a warrant as a specific part of that process. A warrant, for him, is
    A statement authorizing movement from the ground to the claim. In order to move from the ground established in 2, "I was born in Bermuda", to the claim in 1, "I am a British citizen", the person must supply a warrant to bridge the gap between 1 and 2 with the statement "A man born in Bermuda will legally be a British citizen" (3). — Wikipedia - Stephen Toulmin

    But perhaps there is another distinction that can be marked by "warranted" as opposed to "justified".

    A prediction is justified by the fact that there's a depression and westerly airstream out in the Atlantic.
    The forecaster is warranted in making the prediction because they are qualified to do so.

    I am justified in claiming victory because I saw the winning goal being scored.
    You are warranted in accepting that because I told you about it.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine

    I'm sorry I've taken so long to reply. Off-line life, which we choose to call real, intervened. I need to take more time to work through what you have posted. So, for the moment, a thought about something else.

    Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition, which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. — CPR, Bxvi
    My puzzlement about what "conform" means continues. It occurred to me that taking into account what Kant may have been reacting to might be illuminated by looking again at Aristotle. (It is possible that he actually had Aristotle in mind, but I'm not historian enough even to suggest that.)

    His (sc. Aristotle's) primary investigation of mind occurs in two chapters of De Anima, both of which are richly suggestive, but neither of which admits of easy or uncontroversial exposition. In De Anima iii 4 and 5, Aristotle approaches the nature of thinking by once again deploying a hylomorphic analysis, given in terms of form reception. Just as perception involves the reception of a sensible form by a suitably qualified sensory faculty, so thinking involves the reception of an intelligible form by a suitably qualified intellectual faculty (De Anima iii 4, 429a13–18). According to this model, thinking consists in a mind’s becoming enformed by some object of thought, so that actual thinking occurs whenever some suitably prepared mind is “made like” its object by being affected by it.
    SEP - Aristotle's Theory of Mind
    If I remember right, Aristotle thinks that our minds cannot have any inherent form, because that would prevent it being able to grasp any external object that had the same or similar form. So Kant's Copernican move makes sense. Possibly. But I think the comparison helps.

    In other words, the Critique does teach the twofold aspect, but not of the object. It is the two-fold aspect of the human intellectual system as laid out in transcendental philosophy. It is by means of that system that an object is treated as an appearance in accordance with sensibility on the one hand, or, an object is treated as a ding an sich on the other, in accordance with pure speculative reason. — Mww
    This seems very plausible to me. But since it is a question of how the object is treated, I wonder what ground there is for talking of two different kinds of object. Put the question this way, what determines whether a given object is treated in accordance with sensibility or in accordance with pure speculative reason. Or is it like the difference between smells and sounds, where the difference is guaranteed by the nature of the "intuition"?

    We can also ask what manner of existence they could have for other percipients or absent any percipients at all — Janus
    I'm not at all sure that the latter alternative will stand up to Berkeley's "master argument". (He concludes too much in his conclusion that the tree doesn't fall unless someone perceives it. The tree falls and if some one had been there, they would have perceived it.)
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    So if you want to argue a counter-narrative, it has to engage with the conspirator’s structure of belief on what may be its own well-structured level. — apokrisis
    That's right. Doesn't that mean that you have to recognize the plausibility of the "conspirator's" narrative? Which is a long way from attempting to "debunk" anything. It seems to me that it actually means putting one's own non-conspiracy narrative at risk. Starting from the belief that the narrative is obviously wrong, is adopting a stance from which it is impossible to do this.

    One should also consider whether constructing and presenting an argument may be an ill-advised approach, because it puts the "conspirator" on the defensive, which makes it more difficult for them to recognize the weaknesses and implausibility of their theory. Rationality may be the best guide to truth, but it is not always the best way to persuade people. Recognising and taking into account emotions and biases may be the only effective approach. Sometimes, the best policy is not to engage, but to change the subject.

    By ackowledging our beliefs are warranted by abduction, a discussion is feasible, and can be productive for both sides. Productive in various ways: undercutting the other guys belief ("proving" him wrong, in an abductive sense); or simply helping both sides to understand the other's point of view - when both positions are defensible. — Relativist
    Perhaps it is necessary to bear in mind that it is possible for two incompatible interpretations of data to be right, or at least not wrong.

    Yes, a single, specific real explanation isn't always possible. A more general explanation may still be possible, or at least some may be ruled out. It can be appropriate to reserve judgement. — Relativist
    Yes. But we seem to prefer to reach a conclusion, even when we don't need to decide. Perhaps we just don't like the uncertainty of indecision.
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine


    Here's a question I would like to put to you.

    I found the following in SEP - Kant

    The two-aspects reading attempts to interpret Kant’s transcendental idealism in a way that enables it to be defended against at least some of these objections. On this view, transcendental idealism does not distinguish between two classes of objects but rather between two different aspects of one and the same class of objects. For this reason it is also called the one-world interpretation, since it holds that there is only one world in Kant’s ontology, and that at least some objects in that world have two different aspects: one aspect that appears to us, and another aspect that does not appear to us. That is, appearances are aspects of the same objects that also exist in themselves. So, on this reading, appearances are not mental representations, and transcendental idealism is not a form of phenomenalism.

    That makes a lot of sense to me, and would resolve many of the objections that I've been raising. What, if anything, do you think of it?
  • The Mind-Created World
    ↪Paine

    I'm fairly typical of people educated in the 20th century English-speaking philosophical tradition. But with an emphasis on ordinary language philosophy and Wittgenstein (especially the later Wittgenstein) and Locke, Berkeley and Hume, so very sceptical of analytic philosophy. Some Ancient Greek Philosophy, but mostly early to middle period Plato and Aristotle's ethics. Some continental philosophy, especially existentialism. I was not active philosophically from 2000 to 2020 so considerably out of date.

    All the thinkers Kant responded to had different ways of framing what is intuition, phenomena, ideas, logic, and categories. They were arguing within a set of parameters. The problems we have looking in from outside is that we cannot share that set without problems of translation. — Paine
    I'm not surprised. There's always a delicate balance to be struck there.
  • The Mind-Created World
    I meant to say that taking intuition of space and time as a process of my perception raises the question of how "objective" it is. That ties into Kant's beef with Berkeley who treats space as an experienced phenomenon. Kant argues that it is, rather, an a priori condition for sensibility: — Paine
    Space and time are big issues in philosophy, and I'm not an expert. But I do agree that we do not experience space as a phenomenon. I wouldn't say that it is a condition for sensibility, but rather a principle of interpretation of the phenomena.
    I'm afraid, though, that I simply have no grasp of what he means by saying that it is an intuition. Is it something like a brute fact?
    My other problem is how we can conceive of space without objects in it, when we cannot conceive of what I call objects without their spatial dimensions and position in relation to each other. The mathematical representation of space - as a graph with three axes and an origin seems to separate space from what it contains, but I think that is an illusion. The graph has no meaning except as a way of locating objects.
    I realize that a priori means before experience, but what does the metaphor mean here? (I realize that it is a deeply embedded metaphor that has become a regular way of speaking. But I detect an ambiguity here, whether before means a stage in a process or a position in a structure, supporting or enabling experience. My metaphor for understanding the a priori is framework vs content, setting up the rules of a game vs playing the game. I think that that Kant thinks that the a priori tells us something about how the world is - about possible worlds.

    The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth." — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, page 374, or page 69 in the linked document
    My word. That is a surprise. He sounds like a radical 20th century analytic philosopher.

    Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us, because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein. — Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, page 374, or page 69 in the linked document
    This just defeats me. Perhaps you can paraphrase it for me?
    ".... space ..... can be known by us, because .... ... and makes all intuition of the same (i.e. all perception and experience) ....possible."
    Well, yes, with reservations.
    Does "space .... and all its determinations a priori," mean Geometry?
    What does "(sc. space)inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all perception" mean?
    "... experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation"
    "...space and time .... prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein."
    That's roughly the definition of the a priori, using a metaphor, which I think clouds his meaning. The kind of law that is a prescription defines the possibility of breaking it. But if the a priori defines possibility, there is no possibility of breaking it.
    I would need some argument to accept that space and time are the criterion for distinguishing truth and illusion. I would have thought that non-contradiction and identity would be essential - or is that what he means by the "pure conceptions of the understanding."?

    I, too, am learning from this discussion. — Paine
    That's all right, then.

    I will try to respond to some other of your comments but need to get back to painting a specific appearance. — Paine
    I see from later comments that you are painting a door. That's a hard task, because a vertical surface promotes drips. I was, however, rather surprised. I always thought that the only way you could paint an appearance was by painting a picture.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26

    All right. That's very clear.

    By contrast, probabilistic reasoning always carries qualification: no matter how small the probability of error, there remains some chance that the conclusion is false. Thus, probabilistic conclusions can approach certainty in degree, but they can never be absolutely certain in kind. — Sam26
    So where does probabilistic reasoning fit? An example of a conclusion that can approach certainty in degree, but never be absolutely certain in kind. Bear in mind, that probability is, by definition, defined by an outcome, of which the probability, by definition, is 1 or perhaps 0. (I'm not saying the outcome always has to happen, just that each probability defines an outcome.)
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    ↪Sam26

    Yes, I understand that position. I won't pick it apart here.

    I wanted to point out that mathematical probability is mathematically certain. It has uncertain elements, but even there, the degree of uncertainty is certain. We can consider coin-tossing as an abstract structure and see the implications of the rules, without any appeal to empirical probabilities. So the statement "There is a 50% probability that the coin will land heads" and "The coin will land either heads or tails" are mathematically certain.

    All that changes when we consider empirical probabilities. Here, nothing is certain and the language changes to reflect that. However, there are some elements that need to be regarded as certain. In an actual game of coin-tossing, we do need to be certain of the result of each toss; if there are any uncertain outcomes (the coin lands and stays on its side, or turns into a bubble), they need to be discounted, or included as a third possible outcome. (Where we are basing our estimates of life expectancy on past data, that, too, needs to be certain.) Probabilistic reasoning needs some things to be (or be regarded as) certain, though never mathematically certain.

    Bayesian probability is different again, since it assigns a probability to a single outcome. I'm not at all clear what meaning can be attached to that. But it does seem to me that the outcome of the experiment must be (treated as) certain, or there is no result and the prediction fails.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. — Ludwig V
    I meant that Hume does not question the idea of causation itself; he questions, and rejects, a particular account of what (efficient) causes are.

    Ludwig rightly emphasizes that Hume rejects the idea of causation as a metaphysical reality. — Banno
    I was referring partly to his rejection of metaphysics as such, and to his criticism of the traditional conception of causal powers.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    Operant and classical conditioning in animals (and in humans), for one example, would be impossible without such innately held means of association. — javra
    That's right. For Hume (by implication), association of ideas and impressions is the one piece of equipment built in to your minds. (Contrast Kant). The thing is - again by implication - it is a causal account. Again, it would be very odd, wouldn't it, if a sceptic about causality proposed causal relationships to explain what causes are. I think the best way of understanding this is by comparison with Wittgenstein's exasperated "This is what I do."

    On this view, causes are not waiting out there in the world to be discovered; they are part and parcel of the way we interact with the world. — Banno
    Yes - emphasis on interaction. Hume doesn't seem to escape from the passive observer trying to piece the world together. But causality plays a vital role in our ability to do things in the world and to change things in the world. I think there is still a hunger for something beyond regularities - as everyone keeps reminding me, correlation is not causality. If that's not looking for a secret power, what does it mean? Regularities are a brute fact, perhaps.

    but it's clear Hume rejected the Aristotelian idea of causation, replacing it with habit and custom. — Banno
    Well, yes. But we do still use purposive explanations; the difference is that we only use them in specific domains and we don't (most of us) have a grand overall hierarchy of purposes and values. However, I'm not sure that material and formal causes make much sense any more.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    But, as facts go, Hume never once claimed that causation was in fact illusory … hence, that there was no objective truth to causes (not in these or any other words). — javra

    That's true and you have a point. But it is an argument from silence and as such falls short of being conclusive. There's a complication, though, that Hume is quite explicit about metaphysics and about the "Schoolmen's" concept of power. So far as I know, he doesn't explicitly discuss whether there is a reality distinct from experience, which is a bit odd. I don't know what to think.

    However, I think it is a misrepresentation to call Hume a sceptic about this issue. He provided an account of causation as the result of an association of impressions and ideas that leads us to believe in causal relationships through "custom or habit". The issue about this account is that it seems to assert that we have this custom or habit but not to justify it. However, I think there are grounds for thinking that he thought that account did justify our custom.

    Mr. Locke divides all arguments into demonstrative and probable. In this view, we must say, that it is only probable all men must die, or that the sun will rise to-morrow. But to conform our language more to common use, we ought to divide arguments into demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition. — Enquiry, section VI, Probability, footnote to title
  • The Mind-Created World
    Berkeley is, in fact, mentioned by name at the beginning of the Refutation of Idealism: — Paine
    Yes, I knew that he explicitly criticised Berkeley somewhere. Thanks for the reference.

    One question is how far outside of myself have I gotten if it is my intuition of space and time that allows for the possibility for the experience. — Paine
    I'm not sure, but I think the correct answer starts from the fact that space and time are infinite. But it seems absurd to say that I have (actually) got infinitely far outside myself just because I have a mathematical function in my head that is infinite.

    Berkeley, who declares space, together with all the things to which it is attached as an inseparable condition, to be something that is impossible in itself, and who therefore also declares things in space to be merely imaginary. Dogmatic idealism is unavoidable if
    one regards space as a property that is to pertain to the things in themselves; for then it, along with everything for which it serves as a condition, is a non-entity.     — CPR B274
    I'm pretty sure that Berkeley would not recognize this critique. As I remember it, he argues (rightly. as it turns out) that space is relative, not absolute. He does claim that space is not absolute, but that doesn't mean that he claims that space is impossible. Since he doesn't have a concept of things-in-themselves, it seems a bit of a straw man to space can't be a property (??) of them. It would seem, however, that Kant thinks that space is absolute. How does that square with his idea that space is an intuition? Thinking about this, it seems that Kant's (and Berkeley's) conception of space seems to be that it is something that exists as a vessel or a medium in which objects have their existence. I don't see that. The existence of objects in space and space itself are not two separate discoveries. Each depends on the other, conceptually speaking.

    The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me — B275
    Well, yes. Except that the distinction between me and objects outside me requires that both are established in the same argument. I don't see how one could establish my own existence first and then establish the existence of objects in space outside me. Now we have to go back to the cogito and its implications.

    I, represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are indeed specifically a wholly distinct appearances, but they are not thereby thought of as different things. The transcendental object that grounds both outer appearances and inner intuition is neither matter nor a thinking being in itself, but rather an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts of the former as well as the latter. — CPR A379

    If, therefore, as the present critique obviously requires of us, we remain true to the rule established earlier not to press our questions beyond that with which possible experience and its object can supply us, then it will not occur to us to seek information about what the objects of our senses may be in themselves, i.e., apart from any relation to the senses. — CPR A379
    The way he expresses this thought is - a bit awkward, because he seems to allow us to formulate our questions and then ask us not to press them. But once a question is asked, it is necessary to respond, either with an answer or an explanation why the question is illegitimate. Sadly, experience does in fact pose questions to us that invite us to push at the boundaries. My favourite example here is the discovery of pulsars. This happened because a radio signal received by a radio telescope in Cambridge (UK) that in some ways was entirely unremarkable could not be explained, until an entirely new kind of astronomical object - the pulsar - was posited and then proved (by experience with some help from mathematical calculations) to be the explanation. Kant's limit seems arbitrary.

    But if a psychologist takes appearances for things in themselves, then as a materialist he may take up matter into his doctrine, or as a spiritualist he may take up merely thinking beings (namely, according to the form of our inner sense) as the single and sole thing existing in itself, or as a dualist he may take up both; yet through misunderstanding he will always be confined to sophistical reasonings about the way in which that which is no thing in itself, but only the appearance of a thing in general, might exist in itself. — CPR A379
    This isn't psychology as we now know it, is it? Still, that's not important. I have say, I was pondering whether one could argue that appearances exist and therefore are real in their way and consequently things-in-themselves. It seems I've been headed off. But I still need to ask how appearances can be appearances of things-in-themselves and things-in-themselves be completely unknown.

    I'm grateful for your patience with me. I may be raising objections all the time, but I am learning as well.
  • The Mind-Created World
    You describe these objects as "actual, physical objects beyond the senses". — Ludwig V
    I did exactly the opposite:
    I misunderstood you. I'm sorry.     — AmadeusD
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    Much of our knowledge comes through — Sam26
    Yes, that's quite right. I think, though, that philosophers have always been more interested in how new knowledge is acquired, so tend to focus on that. What they don't pay enough attention to, in my opinion, is how important the spread of knowledge is and how dependent new knowledge is on knowledged that has already been acquired.

    Almost all justification is fallible, not just testimony. Why? Because most knowledge relies on probabilistic reasoning, including science. — Sam26
    That's complicated. Some probabilistic reasoning is absolutely certain. The odds of a coin toss are exactly and without doubt 1/2. Empirical probabilities less so, although in practice they seem to work quite well. I don't know how reliable Bayesian probabilities are, but, given the difficulty of verifying them (in one-off cases), I set even less store by them. But note that probabilities have no meaning unless and until there are outcomes - at which point the probability becomes 1 or 0.
    Fallible justifications are a bit different. In many cases, no proper estimate can be made because the outcomes cannot be listed and weighed. In others, the fallibility is only a possibility and disappears when the outcome is known.
    Then there are the Wittgensteinian hinge propositions and other indubitable propositions. How far they stretch I am not clear. But it does seem likely that much of our everyday knowledge is more probabilistic than we like to recognize. (People treat the time their train leaves as a certainty, but they know full well that trains are often disrupted by one thing or another.) They ignore that because they can do nothing about it and it doesn't happen too often.
  • Thoughts on Epistemology
    To better understand the ready-existent regulations by which something operates is not the same as pigeonholing everything into rules of one’s own creation. — javra
    The search for definitions is often a matter of codifying what we actually do. It is a very hard thing to do perfectly, partly because the rigidity that goes along with that can end up in conflict with the more flexible and dynamic practices of actual use.

    a mystic’s understanding of reality at large cannot be shared in the complete absence of JTB knowledge regarding this understanding, via which the understanding could then be convincingly communicated to others. — javra
    There are various understandings of the world and some of the things in it that can't be communicated through propositional true/false knowledge. But there are other ways of communicating - poetry, pictures, music, dance.

    More mundanely, though, most understandings among adult humans in a society are commonly held by all individuals (e.g., the understanding of which side of the road to drive on). — javra
    Surely that example is easy to communicate in common-place ways. What is harder to communicate by means of articulate rules is different. Curiously, how to use words is one of them. But how to be respectful or friendly are not like that, either.

    But consider how kids learn language: they must come to their own understanding regarding what words in their proper contexts signify. One cannot impart this understanding to children directly (in contrast to how a JTB can be directly imparted among adults), but can only lead the way toward it via affirmations and negations regarding what is correct. This until the understanding clicks. — javra
    Yes, but you know when the understanding clicks because you know when the child is using the words correctly.

    JTB, on the other hand, will require a) belief (that is both true and endlessly justifiable in valid manners in principle), b) some measure of understanding, and c) awareness. — javra
    Doesn't this show that all three are interwoven as different aspects of knowledge?

    The five justificatory routes identified in JTB+U illustrate this point. — Sam26
    I was very pleased to see you include testimony. Because it enables us to pass on what we know It is critical to our practice of knowledge. We all stand on the shoulders of others and our society would be greatly impoverished if testimony were not an effective way of communicating it. However, accommodating it in the standard JTB framework is tricky. It requires acceptance of fallible justifications.

    In this way, JTB+U brings Wittgenstein’s therapeutic insight into constructive form: it dissolves confusions about “know” by looking at use, and it offers a framework that captures the grammar of knowledge as it is lived in our forms of life. — Sam26
    Yes, I agree with that.

    Sometimes knowledge enters philosophical consideration in the form of a propositional attitude. — frank
    I thought that knowledge just is an attitude to a proposition. In what other form could it enter into philosophical consideration? I think it is useful to see "know" and "believe" in the context of "think", "suppose", "imagine", "deny", "assert" and Frege's puzzle is indeed a puzzle.

    ↪frank

    Some philosophers and linguists also claim that sentences like ‘Jill wanted Jack to fall’, ‘Jack and Jill are seeking water’, and ‘Jack fears Jill’, for example, are to be analyzed as propositional attitude ascribing sentences, — sep article on propositional attitude reporting
    Well, there's some truth to that. But I think that it misses the point and over-extends a useful idea. It would be a bit misleading, wouldn't it, to parse "I wish I had a red flower for a buttonhole" as expressing a positive attitude to the proposition "I have a red flower for my buttonhole"; the object of my positive attitude is the red flower, once it appears in my buttonhole.
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