One of the reasons I posted that, was that I've been mulling this over for the past few days: — Srap Tasmaner

Well I would say that the Socratic examination of opinion is all about the transcendence of opinion. This is the common view, and the way Fooloso reads Plato looks to be idiosyncratic. Or are we trying to talk about Socrates apart from Plato?

have I completely mischaracterized Socrates, who swore up and down that he did not inquire into the heavens and the earth like some others, but only asked people questions? — Srap Tasmaner

Socrates is very interested in the human good (and Plato in The Good), but I don't see the human good as separate from reality. For example, Socrates examines opinions in inquiring about Justice, but it's not as if he is looking at opinions about justice instead of justice.

Now if someone wants to push the image of Socrates-as-skeptic, that's fine, but skepticism is not the same thing as Plato's dialogues or philosophy. If Socrates is to be reduced to a know-nothing skeptic, then we are talking only about one small part of philosophy. If it were the whole of philosophy then perhaps philosophers would be primarily interested in what "has already been said."

In any case, I find it exceedingly odd that none of Socrates' followers do the "Socrates-as-mere-skeptic" thing, and that in the most important and last moments of his life we do not see that aspect emphasized. I find it hard to read Socrates that way.

If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else remained undisturbed, would there still be foxes? Whether truth remains undisturbed turns on whether truth depends on life/mind, and that is the question you have been avoiding. It looks like you're trying to run a theistic or deistic vehicle that is all out of gas. In the history of philosophy the existence of truth has not been taken for granted in the way you take it for granted.

Also - I noted that you mentioned Aquinas' realist epistemology in our previous discussions of these matters. However, a vital distinction between today's realism, and his form of realism, is that Aquinas was an Aristotelian realist, one for whom universals are real. This is not the thread for the discussion of that hoary topic but it's part of the background to the whole debate of the relationship of mind and nature, which is very different for the Aristotelian than for today's naturalism. — Wayfarer

Yes. I will come back to this, but let me just say that realism is the view that something is real. If one thinks that universals are real then they are a realist with respect to universals; if someone thinks the external world is real then they are a realist with respect to the external world; if someone thinks objects of perception are real then they are a realist with respect to objects of perception, etc. Often in these discussions we would do well to remind ourselves what kind of "realism" we are talking about. For example, in discussing Pinter one might want to hone in on the question of realism with respect to the shape of objects of perception. The OP was interested in realism with respect to, "objects external to our mind," or, "Mind-independent objects." Ideally in any of these arguments we want to argue our position such that it is contentious yet not vacuously true, such that the opposing view retains a level of plausibility.

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara."

Now either you agree with that or you don't. It seems like you want to retract your statement without retracting your statement.

The point <here> is that while I also disagree with Pinter, you have disagreed with him so strongly so as to fall into the opposite pit. Probably what you want to do is retract your statement and replace it with something more measured and less extreme.

Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. There is some overlap with Pinter, here. To disagree with Pinter as strongly as Banno has is to run afoul also of this broader school which associates truth with mind. — Leontiskos

You are free to retract your statement if you think it is false. I will not hold you to it.

That's you, not I. — Banno

Put on your spectacles and discern where the quotation marks start and end.

You claimed, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara."

I concluded, "This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do."

Why? Because if all life disappears from the universe, then all minds disappear from the universe. You say that even then, "it would still be true that...," and therefore you think there would still be truth even if there were no minds. Or do you say that there are still minds where there is no life?

- Does the Geriatric Troll say that there are minds where there is no life?

It's not clear to me that is what Banno is claiming. We can make truth-apt statements about what would be the case in the absence of any percipients. It is that which is really the point at issue as I see it. — Janus

Well he literally said, "If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara." This is clearly committing to the view that truth exists where no minds do.

But apparently you hold a different view, namely the view that we can make truth-apt statements about unperceived events?

When the kids visit, they're either bemused or bewildered that almost nothing has changed. — Srap Tasmaner

A funny picture, but perhaps mistaken:

the main thing they talk about is what they or someone else, not present at the moment, has already said.

...

It's all we've ever done — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think it's all philosophy has ever done. I think it's a very recent phenomenon. To argue about what someone else has said brings an objectivity to the discipline that it feels it needs in light of modern scientific objectivity. But historically philosophers have inquired into reality in a way similar to but deeper than what we now call "science," and if they did talk about what someone else has already said, it was only in service to this inquiry into reality. Lots of us still do philosophy the older way, where the object is reality and not primarily the text of some dead guy.

a book I mentioned, Charles Pinter, Mind and the Cosmic Order — Wayfarer

Yes. Do you remember when in one of your threads I disagreed with Pinter's idea that shape is not inherent to objects?

For me the strangeness of Banno's position is the claim that truth can exist where no minds do. Classically, truth pertains to minds/knowers, and if there are no knowers then there is no truth. There is some overlap with Pinter, here. To disagree with Pinter as strongly as Banno has is to run afoul also of this broader school which associates truth with mind.

And the reason I'm impressed with that book is that I think it is one of the many in that emerging area of cognitivism and cognitive science, which provides support for a kind of scientifically-informed idealism, as distinct from the materialism which has hitherto tended to characterise scientific philosophy. — Wayfarer

Yes, well we certainly don't want to crash into the mountain of materialism, but I would want to pull up on the stick gently rather than too abruptly, lest we create an opposite problem for ourselves.

It is true that there is gold in Boorara. If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara. — Banno

So then, @Michael, it looks like Banno does subscribe to something very near to the strained version of realism that you outline. That's at least one person. Presumably this sort of approach was born in the modern period. If Banno were more forthcoming one would be tempted to ask about his view of what truth is, but we all know how fast that conversation would go Nowhere.

What I mean about the difficulty of contemporary analytic philosophy, is that it's often extremely dense, written by and for those who can draw on a great deal of specialised scholarship — Wayfarer

I was thinking about the fact that a good thread or argument must be strong but not vacuously true, and therefore it must be contentious and yet not overpowering (and I was also considering the way that various posters will carelessly reduce their position to that which is vacuously true).

This contentiousness is a hallmark of philosophy, and this is especially true in the Analytic tradition. For some reason we think it boring to agree with someone or sympathetically develop someone else's idea. It is more exciting and attention-drawing to disagree, and disagreement is also the more obvious path to intellectual progress. This dynamic can lead quickly to abstruse hair-splitting that requires specialization to understand, and it often feels that in philosophy contrarian-ness is the horse leading the carriage, rather than more noble or intentional motives.

Is this avoidable? At first glance it is not, because disagreement forms the basis of philosophy in a way that it simply does not form the basis of other disciplines. And yet the way to circumvent this problem is to place philosophy into the context of a common goal.* Pierre Hadot does something like this when he shifts the focus from individual philosophers to schools of philosophy and ways of life, which groups of philosophers mutually contribute to and upbuild. Without a common goal, philosophy quickly degenerates into unfocused acts of disagreement.

* As I tried to do in my thread on argument.

(1) I'm not a logician and (2) I do not regard logic as mere symbol manipulation. — TonesInDeepFreeze

If you say that logic is not merely symbol manipulation, then what do you say it is?

Yeah, but it's very different -- methodical doubt is a process for finding a certain foundation for knowledge in Descartes. He's using it as a tool to dig out the foundations from the confusion.

Also, since he finds his certainty, he's no longer a skeptic at all by the end of the meditations. Whereas the Pyrrhonian wants to sustain the attitude of suspension of belief to the point that supposing someone came up with a persuasive argument then it would be the Pyrrhonian skeptic's task to invent another way to dissolve that belief. — Moliere

Well, Descartes wants to occupy the same space as the Pyrrhonist. He has a different goal, but he does not want to provide himself with a guarantee that he will get there (just as the Pyrrhonist is not supposed to provide himself with a guarantee that he will reach his goal of ataraxia). See:

Accordingly, when Gassendi, in keeping with his unwillingness to allow Sextus to doubt ordinary truth-claims as well as theoretical ones, was unwilling to accept that the sceptical doubt of the first Meditation was seriously meant to have absolutely general scope, Descartes replied:

"My statement that the entire testimony of the senses must be considered to be uncertain, nay, even false, is quite serious and so necessary for the comprehension of my meditations, that he who will not or cannot admit that, is unfit to urge any objection to them that merits a reply." (V Rep., HR ii, 206) — Myles Burnyeat, The Sceptic in his place and time, 340-1

Interesting thread. :up:

So the question: Must the cogito rely upon a notion of the past and future in order for its doubt to make sense? — Moliere

Yes, I think Sartre is right, at least with respect to doubt.

If so then it seems the skeptic must at least admit of knowledge of time. And so cannot be universally skeptical. — Moliere

Agreed.

If we know about time then just how could there be an Evil Demon behind the appearances? Is it outside of time? If so then the cogito has nothing to do with it, as per the argument. — Moliere

I don't follow this. Are you supposing that the Evil Demon cannot manipulate our experience of time?

Also of interest is how the argument does not touch on Pyrrhonian skepticism, which explicitly courts the suspension of judgment. This has more to do with the sort of skepticism inspired by Descartes which desires a certain foundation. — Moliere

Doesn't Descartes explicitly court the suspension of judgment? It seems to me that Descartes thinks he can descend even below the level of Pyrrhonism and nevertheless re-surface with certain knowledge.

Do you make any distinction between premises and inference rules? — Srap Tasmaner

You could, but I am not.

I'm trying to understand this. Are you arguing against the cut rule? — Srap Tasmaner

My point is that argument 1 and argument 2 are different arguments. Argument 2 could be an enthymeme form of argument 1, but it need not be. Michael somehow thinks it needs to be.

This is important because if we cannot speak about argument 2 apart from argument 1, then we cannot even understand the difference between Michael and Tones (and at this point in the thread Michael looks to be actively suppressing the emergence of that difference in a very strange way).

Edit: On my view no argument is demonstrably an enthymeme just in virtue of its material constituents. On Michael's view this is apparently not right, and therefore validity has to do with possible inferences, not documented inferences. Frege's judgment-stroke and the difference between inference and consequence seems relevant here, although Michael is pushing consequence even further than Frege's opponents would.

- :up:

Justice—no?

...

Yes. To punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim(s). — Bob Ross

Generally we do not believe that everyone has legal standing (locus standi).

Similarly, it is the duty of the judge to punish the perpetrator and avenge the victim, not the common person.

Do we have a duty in justice to right wrongs happening on the other side of the world? I don't know. Maybe, but not really? Not everything is within our jurisdiction. Here is Aquinas:

Again, no man justly punishes another, except one who is subject to his jurisdiction. Therefore it is not lawful for a man to strike another, unless he have some power over the one whom he strikes. And since the child is subject to the power of the parent, and the slave to the power of his master, a parent can lawfully strike his child, and a master his slave that instruction may be enforced by correction. — Aquinas, ST II-II.65.2

Your understanding of logic has been repeatedly shown to be lacking. There's no reason to take you seriously on such issues. — Banno

No one on this forum takes you seriously. I'm just continuing an exchange with Michael.

The point of that was to show that there is a meaningful difference between these two propositions:

1. If A is B then it can C
2. A can be B only if it has C

Banno is repeatedly misinterpreting/misrepresenting (1) as (2). — Michael

The question is whether that distinction is relevant when it comes to justification. (1) is not demonstrative. Mortality, for example, is an inductive inference. It's not at all clear that justifiability is inductive, such that one can claim that a proposition is justifiable without actually justifying it. Yet that is what you require.

Secondly, it is the realist who denies p → ◇Kp, and so if you follow your own reasoning you must provide an example of an unknowable truth. — Michael

Except that you haven't produced a single example of a real person who holds to your definition of realism. So there's that.

No I don't. — Michael

Sure you do. If you want to deny A→B then you must give an example of A^~B.

1. If the vase is fragile then it can break
2. The vase can be fragile only if it has a break — Michael

One can show that a vase is fragile without breaking it, but can one show that a truth is justifiable without justifying it?

If a truth is justifiable, then for that truth there is some justification. — Banno

Were @Michael to disagree with this, he would have to show us a justifiable truth with no justification.

(What is happening here is that there is a shifting back and forth between the View from Nowhere (justifiability) and the View from Somewhere (particular acts of justification).)

So is an explosive argument valid? In one sense it is, and in one sense it is not. — Leontiskos

So we have something like tiers of sophistry:

• Michael: An argument explicitly leveraging explosive inferences is valid. (light sophistry)
• Michael: Argument 1 and argument 2 are the same argument. (medium sophistry)
• Tones: An argument with inconsistent premises is valid, irrespective of explosion. (heavy sophistry)

What's interesting about the "medium sophistry" is that Michael has detached logic from humans in a remarkably thoroughgoing way. He is basically saying, "If a conclusion is inferentially reachable from the premises, then the argument is valid, even if the argument does not present the necessary inferences." He collapses an argument and an enthymeme into one thing, which doesn't make any sense in the end. Pace Michael, inferences (or lack thereof) are part of the argument itself.

(@NotAristotle)

Are there any introductory textbooks that talk about the principle of explosion? — NotAristotle

This is metalogic, but note that validity is meant to show how conclusions rightfully follow from premises. It is meant to provide us with a way to think correctly, and increase our knowledge.

Anything follows from an explosive system, and yet not anything follows with respect to correct thinking. This means that explosion is an aberration (along with the contradiction that it flows from). In propositional logic contradictions are supposed to be eliminated (via reductio), not utilized.

So is an explosive argument valid? In one sense it is, and in one sense it is not. It does not provide us with the thing that the notion of validity is meant to provide, but it is nevertheless valid in a certain (arguably degenerative) sense.

There are some logicians in these parts who view logic as mere symbol manipulation, without any relation to correct reasoning. For these logicians an explosive argument is uncontroversially valid.

It's not a matter of what I "regard" to be the case. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Sure it is, unless you are the Source of Truth Itself.

What textbook says that. If you can cite that statement I'll sell the farm. — NotAristotle

I'm sure you could find that in a textbook, but one must recognize that such textbooks presuppose that the premises are not inconsistent.

I think that is right, it is arbitrary. Although I would say that an argument can have inconsistent premises and still be valid as long as those premises do not do any "work" in the argument — NotAristotle

Sure, but a premise that is not doing any work in an argument is not a premise of the argument. It is an unrelated proposition. You want to say that if one half a contradictory pair is doing work, then the other half is implicated.

It is simply an a priori fact that from “p and not p” one can derive any conclusion, and so any argument with “p” and “not p” as premises is valid. — Michael

You think it's valid because of explosion. It's that simple. Again:

TonesInDeepFreeze thinks that any argument with inconsistent premises is valid, and that the principle of explosion does not need to be presupposed in order to say this. Michael disagrees. He thinks that any argument with inconsistent premises is valid, and that the principle of explosion does need to be presupposed in order to say this. — Leontiskos

• Michael: Susie's argument is valid because of explosion.
• Tones: Susie's argument is valid, but not because of explosion.

The rule is: If P v Q is on a line, and ~P is on a line, then infer Q.

The rule is NOT: If P v Q is on a line, and ~P is on a line, and P is not on a line, then infer Q. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I think @NotAristotle is right insofar as the rule is ambiguous. There is no magical rule-book of logic that settles this issue, and in practice someone who contradicts themselves is responded to with a reductio.

But that doesn't work if A and not-A are both true. That's my point. The proof doesn't work. The proof only works if you ignore that A is also true. — NotAristotle

Sure, and that's the same puzzle of the OP. I see your point.

See:

In cases of inconsistent premises what happens is that the person arguing arbitrarily makes use of some premises while conveniently ignoring others. For example:... — Leontiskos

A or B
Not-A
Therefore, B (disjunctive syllogism)

- Of course we appeal to modus ponens.

I asked why you think Susie's argument is valid. You gave an argument which you admitted is a presentation of the principle of explosion. Clearly you think Susie's argument is valid because of the principle of explosion, just as we might think that a conclusion follows because of modus ponens. Someone who makes an inference based on a rule of inference is appealing to that rule of inference. This should not be so hard.

An inference is presupposed when it is interpreted as the tacit reasoning of an enthymeme. You are supplying Susie's argument with a rule of inference that she does not explicitly present. You are interpreting it as an enthymeme and supplying what you see as the implicit inferential steps.

I don’t know what you mean by “presupposing” the principle of explosion. — Michael

Do you know if you are appealing to the principle of explosion? Because I asked if you are "appealing to or presupposing the principle of explosion."

And so you are appealing to or presupposing the principle of explosion when you claim that Susie's argument is valid, are you not?

- Which is a presentation of the principle of explosion, is it not?

It's valid. — Michael

Why?

No I'm not. — Michael

Susie gives an argument. Her premises are inconsistent. Is her argument valid? Do not presuppose the principle of explosion.

A. Yes, Susie's argument is valid.
B. No, Susie's argument is not valid.
C. We do not yet know whether Susie's argument is valid.

No I'm not. — Michael

So you think it is literally impossible to give argument 2 without implying argument 1? — Leontiskos

Yes. — Michael