Part of the joke I've been enjoying is that all I've been doing to Aristotle is Aristotle's method to Aristotle — Moliere

Except I don't think that's anywhere close to true. Aristotle accurately and charitably characterizes his opponents before answering them. You've not done that. Here is an example:

• Moliere: Aristotle's induction would be valid if he first observed every member of the set.
• Leontiskos: Observing every member of a set and then drawing a conclusion about every member of a set is not induction at all.
• Moliere: *crickets*

Else, if it destroys all knowledge and philosophy, why did he continue to do philosophy, and even write a history of England? — Moliere

Of course, because he couldn't see it. Lots of folks engage in performative self-contradiction. But it doesn't destroy non-empiricist philosophy, that's true. I would have singled that out if I knew you were positing a priori categories or conditions of knowledge.

Would it be inappropriate bias to object to slavery as a matter of law? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If the whole of political life is already mere bias, then I can hardly see how you can maintain your objection to religion being involved in politics on account of it also being biased. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why is the default preferable If it is also just bias? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Great points. :up:
What you describe as "default" I have previously described as @Janus's exclusive reliance on "burden of proof" claims. His one and only argument, at bottom, is, "They have the burden of proof, not me."

I seems pretty clear that @Janus embraces irrationality when confronted with these problems. This is a broader problem, in that, on TPF, discussions of ethics or politics or metaphysics are usually wholesale irrational. The current state of philosophy is incapable of addressing such topics in a rational manner. That's why the threads on logic or mathematics or reference are so popular: because they represent that small slice of reality where the Western mind can still manage to engage in rational thought. Asking someone like @Janus to consistently apply his theory to laws against slavery results in an endless circle of non sequitur responses, or in other cases, brazen equivocation.

Note though that if you ask Rawls why religion must be excluded from the public sphere, you will get the same sort of fumbling incoherence. This sort of incoherence is part and parcel of our epoch, and has been imbibed deeply by the post-WWII generation. The younger generations are so appalled by this sort of irrationality that I fear we will see a strong pendulum swing.

Good, but what is the premise of your point here? It is that, "No one would ever say that S implies P and yet S is not truth-apt." But we have folks doing that all the time on TPF, including within this thread. We regularly see folks who respond in this way: "Why do you hold P?" "Because of S, but S is not truth-apt." One of the examples I pointed to was an entire thread arguing for that idea.

The point is that metaphyseal posits cannot be more than purported truths in that they fail to be subject to demonstration. — Janus

This would have the potential to be a fruitful conversation if you knew what you meant by your terms, but I don't think you know what you mean by either "metaphysical" or "demonstration." By "metaphysical" you seem to mean, "Stuff I don't think can be demonstrated," and by "demonstrated," you seem to mean, "intersubjectively agreed upon." This is basically a less coherent version of the equally circular, Rawlsian notion of "public reason."

They are obviously not demonstrable to the unbiased — Janus

:lol:

You may as well just put an exclamation point on the end of your assertion and pretend that you have done something philosophical. Each time I point out the problem you can add an extra exclamation point.

Your reading skills are truly woeful if you are writing honestly here. I have said many time I hold some positions which are not demonstrable, just because they seem intuitively right to me. I have also said I think it is fine for others to do the same. I have also said that I see no reason to expect others to agree with me about my intuitively held beliefs. The problem is when people conflate such intuitively held beliefs to be absolute truth. — Janus

Is the thing that "seems intuitively right to me" truth-apt? Isn't it precisely, "The thing that seems intuitively true to me"? And so the ever-looming question asks what is meant by these strange utterances such as, "Absolute truth." Does it seem intuitively true to you, but not intuitively absolutely true? Are these distinctions really thought to be meaningful?

You argue that metaphysical truths are demonstrable and yet you cannot explain how they could be demonstrated. — Janus

I don't think you even know what a "metaphysical truth" is. It is not a stable category for you. Apparently you think that everything which is "indemonstrable" is "metaphysical." And apparently if we came up with a demonstration for something that previously lacked one, then it would magically transform from a metaphysical claim into a non-metaphysical claim. None of this is principled reasoning, and it is pretty hard to answer your request when you don't even know what you mean by a "metaphysical truth."

A well-accepted metaphysical truth would be the PNC, which Aristotle argues for in Meta IV. And given your remarkably strong reliance on intersubjective agreement, the PNC must be a demonstrable metaphysical truth (since virtually everyone recognizes it).

:roll: I was interested in phenomenology for many years and took undergraduate units in Heidegger and Husserl. How about you? — Janus

And you think Heidegger and Husserl limit themselves to what experiences seem like?

The point here is that you called phenomenology "quasi-empirical," and then you said that mysticism is a variety of phenomenology. I am wondering if you therefore deem mysticism quasi-empirical.

You're remarkably good at either failing to see the point or at deliberately changing the subject to avoid dealing with what is problematic for your position. The point is that metaphyseal posits cannot be more than purported truths in that they fail to be subject to demonstration. That they cannot be more than purported truths was the reason I wrote "metaphysical "truths". Why harp and carp on it when I had already explained that? — Janus

But it has already been pointed out to you in some detail, by multiple persons, that your second sentence here does nothing more than beg the question. People who think metaphysical truths exist also think metaphysical truths are demonstrable. What good is your assertion otherwise? It makes no difference that you say metaphysical truths are not demonstrable, given that you have no argument for your assertion.

This is very close to your failure to justify an anti-slavery position. By all of your own criteria, "Slavery is wrong," is an unfalsifiable metaphysical position. And yet you hold it all the same, without argument or rationale. So you basically hold "metaphysical" positions when you want to, and you object to others holding "metaphysical" positions when you want to, and there is no rational basis in either case. It's just your will. Whatever you want, regardless of arguments.

The phenomenological study of mystical experience would consist in investigating the ways in which those experiences seem, just as the phenomenological study of everyday experience consists investigating the ways in which everyday experience seems. Phenomenology is, or least the cogent parts of it are, all about the seeming. — Janus

So you think phenomenology limits itself to what experiences seem like? Have you read any phenomenology?

What happens if we change the designation to "The man over there who I think has champagne in his glass is happy"? That's where Kripke himself winds up: "The speaker intended to refer . . . to the man he thought had the champagne in his glass." Has the speaker still made a mistake in reference? I think we have to say no. The reference is now based on something the speaker thought, not something that is the case about Mr. Champagne. The speaker can point out Mr. Champagne to me, explain that the man is being designated according to a belief the speaker has about him, and we can both usefully talk about that man and no other. Whether or not Mr. Champagne really has champagne coudn't be relevant. — J

Building on what said, this essentially contravenes your earlier observation, 'I shall use the term "Glunk" to refer to the man that I call "Glunk".' Note that part of the problem here is that 'Glunk' is not a term that is serviceable for triangulation, because it has no common meaning between the two speakers. This is the same problem with your, "The man who I think..." Mere thoughts are not common between speakers, and therefore are not serviceable for triangulation. This is why your revision does not add anything - because your interlocutor cannot read your thoughts. The reference still succeeds or doesn't succeed on the basis of the claim that the man is holding a glass of champagne.

Has the speaker still made a mistake in reference? I think we have to say no. The reference is now based on something the speaker thought, not something that is the case about Mr. Champagne. — J

It is now based on something thought to be the case. There is no escaping the assertion of what is the case (and this is equally true on TPF, where it is unavoidable to give opinions). The revision is only useful insofar as it introduces an explicit margin of error. It is only useful insofar as it says, "The man over there who is holding a glass which appears to contain champagne." The idea here is that the interlocutor will be helped if the possibility of an erroneous appearance is pointed up. But apart from that, revising to thoughts is no help at all, given that thoughts are private. "That man over there of whom I am thinking," is not going to suffice for a common reference. We say, "The one I am looking at," or, "The one my right foot is pointing at," but not, "The one I am thinking of." So, "I am thinking of the one I am thinking of," is an infallible statement, but it won't be helpful when it comes to public reference.

What I see is that the way we generate knowledge requires a priori assumptions, rather than knowledge -- or we might be tempted to call it knowledge after relying upon it or proving it or some such, but if we do there's be some other a priori assumption by which we are doing it. — Moliere

Plato begins with the a priori, empiricists like Aristotle move away from it, and then after Hume objects to empirical induction there is a natural move back to the a priori (with Kant). So sure, if you do that then you circumvent Hume to a certain extent. I wasn't expecting you to go the a priori Platonist/rationalist route.

So enter Kant -- he puts the rationalist spin on his philosophy but then I think he has a more romantic undertone which relies upon emotion than stated. Much in the same way we can look at Hume as a rationalist we can look at Kant as an emotivist and not because this is some defect in their thought or some such. What Kant adds to his moral theory is that there are proper kinds of emotions in order to claim one is acting morally or elsewise. That emotion is respect for the law itself. — Moliere

I think Kant does do the a priori thing in response to Hume, but I don't agree with any of this about Kant being an emotivist.

Similarly, Kant and lots of philosophers think emotions are reliable when formed and ruled by the reason. Like, you know, Aristotle.

"Truths" as I intended it translates to "purported truths". — Janus

Well there's your equivocation. Truth and purported truth are two different things. When you say "truth" and mean "purported truth," you are equivocating in order to try to salvage a bad argument. Everyone knows that purported truths are not the same for all. Nothing notable there.

Have you thought of a reply to <this post> yet?

It certainly is. I'll do my best. — Ludwig V

Okay.

This is the remark that I responded to. — Ludwig V

Right: so we are dealing with the thesis that religious claims are not truth-apt (or in your case, some religious claims are not truth-apt). I think you are the first person in the thread to admit that you believe such a thing, so that's good progress.

This is the remark that I responded to. I took truth-apt to mean true-or-false, (i.e. empirical) and responded because I do think they are not true-or-false. — Ludwig V

Well, I would first say that something which is truth-apt is not necessarily empirical. "3 > 1" is truth-apt, but not empirical, for example. But I would agree that a proposition which is truth-apt is true or false (or else capable of being true or false).

OK. So where do you want to start? — Ludwig V

Well I think <this post> of mine is the thing we have primarily been focused on. The key idea:

Suppose that S → P, and P is truth-apt. It follows that S is truth-apt. It doesn't really matter what kind of thing S is. S could be a way of life or practice. — Leontiskos

One would object to this by saying, "In such-and-such a counterexample, S → P, and P is truth-apt, but nevertheless S is not truth-apt." Do you or Wittgenstein have such a counterexample?

In practice, our lives are more complicated than that, and our ways of life and practices are always liable to development and change, often in response to facts about the world. But the relationship goes two ways and is more complicated than material implication. — Ludwig V

Here it seems that you are conceding my point. You seem to recognize that we might encounter a fact about the world (~P) which causes us to change our way of life (S). Nowhere have I claimed that material implication exhausts the point I am making, and therefore your point about material implication does not actually count as an objection to my thesis. In fact I don't see that it has anything specifically to do with material implication. It has to do with implication and the possibility of modus tollens, which was already inherent in the implication relation long before Frege succeeded in introducing material implication. See also:

I mean, you could give your definition of "true," but the point here is that if ways of life can be validated by propositions (facts) then they can also be invalidated by propositions. — Leontiskos

If you want to say that P can invalidate S rather than that P can falsify S, I won't quibble with that. Are we disagreeing on anything more than that?

I could have more accurately said, "The point here is that if ways of life can validate propositions (facts) then they can also be invalidated by propositions."

That people used to often read aloud might also be a reason for the heavy preference of verse up until the modern era, the epic poem being for them what the novel is for us, and even scientific and political topics were covered with poetry. Another common hypothesis is that it is easier to remember text that is in rhyming meter and books were so expensive that memory was essential. Also, you can often do more emotionally and thematically with clever verse using less text, and when you have to kill a bunch of oxen to make a single book, economy is key. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, and I think the recovery of reading aloud would be a good thing. Simpson talks about the development of poetry as part of the natural progression of culture's orientation towards a comprehensive end:

Further, methods and principles will be looked for everywhere, and those who, because of advancing community, have leisure from necessities through being served by others, will look for principles and methods in the things of leisure, particularly in counting and numbers, and in the regular motions of the heavens. Records of the past will be examined and ways to preserve memory fostered, in particular by forms and patterns of words that in their rhythmic features lend themselves to easy recollection. Poetry will develop, and those skilled at composing or remembering poems will be prized and honored. At some point, ways of recollection that do not rely on living memories will be invented, such as by marking shapes on long-lasting material objects: walls of caves, pieces of wood, cured animal skins, baked clay, or beaten metal. Pictures that are direct copies of visible objects will likely come first, but the need for more abstract shapes, such as to record numbers or the sounds of human speech, will be felt and find varying solutions. But throughout all will remain the mysterious riddles of the universe and whence it came and how it always remains, and where and what are the hidden things, the dreams and visions of the night, strange foretellings of the future, sudden intimations of events far away. The riddles of man himself will figure largely among these mysteries, the mysteries of love and peace, hatred and war, success and failure, advance and decay, birth and death. — Peter L. P. Simpson, Political Liberalism, 72

-

- Sounds good.

Thanks. It's good to know I was not wrong. — Ludwig V

I miffed that a bit. It was actually St. Augustine writing about St. Ambrose, who practiced silent reading. Augustine found it strange.

Roughly, I want to convince to feel, behind every thought you have and every word you utter, millions of years of evolution and hundreds of thousands of years (at least) of culture. The thoughts and words of countless ancestors echo through your thoughts of words. Everytime you choose as the starting point for analysis "What am I doing all by myself?" that's a mistake. It's the tail wagging the dog. — Srap Tasmaner

I think this is why people like @J talk to themselves aloud. It creates a quasi-externalization and a quasi-triangulation.

We start as early as possible learning to see the world through the eyes of our caretakers. I think talking builds on and elaborates this fundamental orientation of ours toward communal cognition. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, but we see the world through their eyes. Your granddaughter asks implicitly, "Am I doing it right?" I don't think she is implicitly asking, "Am I doing it your way?" That's why I think—at least according to a prominent rational aspect—the parasitic move is secondary. If I tell my nephew what a spider names, or how many legs a spider has, he is immediately thinking in objective terms. He thinks, "A spider has eight legs," not, "My uncle says/thinks a spider has eight legs." The shift to the latter is actually quite complex and difficult. In fact the concept and basis of error eludes most of the TPFers on a regular basis.

Well, there is a theory that reading in the ancient classical world was always reading out loud. Reading to oneself in sllence developed later. Sadly, I have lost my note of where I got this story. — Ludwig V

St. Augustine found St. Ambrose's silent reading strange and abnormal, which is one evidence we have for that thesis.

Yeah that's quite interesting, and I think both (yours and mine) represent types of triangulation.

A further curiosity is that parasitic reference has to be self-consciously contrastive, so it's the sort of thing a parent can engage in; on the other hand, children are said to be learning when they manage this sort of "playing along," "calling things what you call them," but they lack the distinction between the two ways of doing this. — Srap Tasmaner

That's right, and therefore I think the interesting question asks how parasitic or triangulated reference fits into reference in general. There is certainly a sense in which parasitic or triangulated reference is secondary, and this is seen in the way that the child does not begin with it. I think it is also true that lying requires parasitic or triangulated reference, and lying too is a secondary form of reference.

More generally, people are doing slightly different things when they refer, but it would seem that all acts of reference have commonalities.

Suppose you ask me who that guy is holding the glass of champagne, and I realize you mean Jim, but I happen to know Jim is holding a glass of sparkling cider. I could silently correct you and just answer "That's Jim," but in doing so I will have implicitly endorsed your claim that Jim is drinking champagne.

We are again in the territory of farce. — Srap Tasmaner

Cf.:

To use a referring expression (whether a definite description or a proper name whose meaning is fixed, a la Russell, by some definite description) to refer constitutively is to intend to refer to something one has in mind while conceiving of the intended referent under the description in question. To use a referring expression to refer parasitically is to intend to refer to something one has in mind without conceiving of that thing under the description in question—typically, because one believes for one reason or another that the description does not genuinely apply.

For example, Smith remarks to Jones about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s treatment of a particular leitmotif in Phantom of the Opera, referring to him as ‘the most significant British composer in history’. Jones, no fan of contemporary musicals, might co-opt Smith’s description and reply by saying ‘The most significant British composer in history is a hack’. In making this retort, Jones does not contradict himself, nor even impugn any other British composer by implication. Jones employs Smith’s preferred description to refer to Smith’s intended referent, even though Jones does not believe that the description is actually true of the intended referent. Smith uses the description to refer constitutively to Webber: the description constitutes part of Smith’s conception of Webber, at least on this occasion. Jones uses the description to refer parasitically: he borrows part of the conceptual content of Smith’s conception of Webber in order to refer to the man, but he does so without adopting that conceptual content as part of his own conception of Webber.

Such is the phenomenon of parasitic reference with respect to bona fide objects. It can also function, however, in connection with mere thought objects. For instance, if a child were to ask her parents how long they think it takes Santa Claus to circumnavigate the globe from his shop at the South Pole, they would not be acting irresponsibly (or not obviously so) were they to correct her by pointing out that, as they understand it, Santa’s shop is located at the North Pole. When the child uses ‘Santa’, she conceives of her intended referent as a jolly old elf who delivers toys to children at Christmas by means of a flying-reindeer-drawn sleigh, etc. But when her parents use ‘Santa’, they conceive of their intended referent as a certain fictitious character whose existence is falsely (though benignly) affirmed by parents and others. They refer to that which their daughter has in mind by borrowing part of her conception of Santa, but they do so without adopting it as part of their own conception. They do not believe that Santa lives at the North Pole, but they encourage their daughter to do so in order that the thought object to which she refers by her use of ‘Santa’ will conform with the popular conception of him. So the parents are free to assert that Santa’s shop is located at the North Pole and to deny that it is located at the South Pole without thereby committing themselves to the existence of a jolly old elf who weighs more than ninety pounds, lives north of Minnesota, and so on, because they use ‘Santa’ to refer parasitically rather than constitutively. — Tony Roark, Conceptual Closure in Anselm's Proof - link to related thread

...he can't help but draw the consequences when thinking philosophically. — Moliere

Okay, but would Hume himself say that this makes the drawing of the consequence justified? I don't think he would.

So suppose we ask, "Are we justified in claiming that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger" (which is asking whether we have true grounds for such a claim)? I think the Humean answer is, "No." And I don't think emotions or habit or anything else like that is going to come to our aid, even if Hume might have thought so.

If this were not so then one could answer Hume's challenge to induction by simply saying, "Oh, but our emotions and our habits provide legitimate grounds for the inductive claim."

The skepticism doesn't undermine knowledge as much as note how human beings' rationality is embedded with their emotions. — Moliere

...So I don't think this goes anywhere. If Hume indeed held it, then it is merely another problem with his thought. For instance, if our inductive propensities are not grounded in our rationality, but instead in our emotions, then in order to say that the inductive propensities are reliable we would have to say that our emotions are "reliable" in some sense. I don't see that going anywhere within Humean thought.

Else, what is the idea here? Is it that Hume would say, "Oh we don't know that the offspring of two tigers is a tiger via our reason, but we do know it via our emotions"?

The point here is that if Hume's argument is sound, then it counts against Aristotle (and everyone else, too). So do you think it is sound or not?

Aristotle is at the very least saying that someone who achieves familiarity with tigers will be able to identify tigers, and they will have at least a partial understanding of tigers. They will likely know, for example, that the offspring of two tigers is a tiger. There is nothing in Aristotle about "mathematical induction," as if it were some kind of formal inductive proof. The article I pointed you to is all about Aristotle's notion of experience and what is contained therein.

But again, this is the central question: Do you hold that Hume's argument is sound, or not? If you don't then you can't appeal to it. If you do then all of my unanswered questions loom. You can't maintain your praxis in which it is simultaneously sound and unsound.

I have noted that we could just not know. — Moliere

But that's not what you've done in this thread. You haven't claimed that we don't know whether the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger.

Regardless knowledge does indeed begin with listening to others. Without the ability to hear a teacher, say in an academy or some other setting that's not controversial, one doesn't obtain knowledge. — Moliere

It does, but not to just anyone, but to those who know.

We don't go to the degree of questioning whether the induction is a logically valid construct for our inference -- in our everyday life the way we determine what is real is through that interactive process with one another. — Moliere

I would suggest re-reading this post more seriously. "I know it because someone told me," is not a response to Hume. And if you think there is some schizophrenic divide between philosophy and life, then I think you need a new philosophy.

I don't think the process of knowledge generation is constrained by logical validity — Moliere

Then why the hell have you been arguing for page after page that Aristotle lacks knowledge because he lacks validity? Hint: it's because you've been saying things that you know are not true. For instance, you've been saying that your theoretical objections refute knowledge of species or else knowledge via induction, and yet now it seems that you don't actually believe that theoretical objections are sufficient for such refutations.

In any case, your whole idea that induction is an inference that is supposed to be valid is a strawman. Valid inferences are deductive. Induction is not formal in that way, and has never been said to be. This is related to the incoherence of your whole notion of induction:

The problem with your construal is that it isn't induction at all. It is not an inference at all, but a tautology. "I have seen three swans and they all have wings; therefore three swans have wings." Or, "I have seen every swan that currently exists, and they all have wings; therefore every currently-existing swan has wings." No induction is occurring here, much less any inference at all. If you go from "all tigers" to "all tigers" then you haven't made a move at all, and you have certainly not moved to a "more encompassing category." — Leontiskos

I wonder. Consider Newtonian mechanics, as employed in space flight. It's good enough to get the job done. But it's no special relativity! Isn't sometimes a rule of thumb - or a lower resolution argument sufficient to get us from a to b? — karl stone

If someone understands Newtonian mechanics as accurate within a (comparatively large) margin of error, and they wield the theory according to that understanding, then they have done nothing wrong. It only becomes a problem when they erect a double standard by wielding the theory against others in a different way than they understand it themselves. So for example, if they wield it against others as if it has a small margin of error, and they wield it against their own thought as it if has a large margin of error, then they are involved in the rational error I am highlighting.

We can just say "Rule 1 of this discussion: We know things" — Moliere

You can say that, but then you have to accept 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Upon thinking that we can see that [...] though there's the philosophical puzzle of the problem of induction we still know stuff. — Moliere

You can't do that without accepting 3. Your error is 5. You think the "problem of induction" is a problem for Aristotle, but not for your lackadaisical positions (like, "I've been told, therefore I know"). That's nuts. If Hume's argument doesn't count against you, then obviously it doesn't count against Aristotle or anyone else. Let's be done with these double standards.

I imagine it'd be easy to get him to see that knowledge is generated by human being, and that the conclusions of his argument are at least consistent with that. Rather than making appeals to the logical structure between events, which he demonstrates is invalid, we make appeals to people's emotions and habits of thought. — Moliere

An appeal to emotion or habits of thought will not justify the claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger, for Hume. But yes, part of the problem here is that Hume himself is not a serious thinker. He himself vacillates on whether his argument is sound.

I don't think that when I make a guess about something that I'm making a valid inference, so I'm being self-consistent. — Moliere

"I just make guesses," is not a serious answer. You can't just say, "Oh, Aristotle's approach was flawed, but I just make guesses, and that's a much better approach."

Either we have rational grounds to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger, or else we don't. This is what most people would do:

1. If Hume's argument is sound, then we do not have rational grounds to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger.
2. But we do have rational grounds to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger.
3. Therefore, Hume's argument is unsound.
4. Therefore, I can't go around wielding Hume's argument as if it were sound.

This is what you do:

1. If Hume's argument is sound, then we do not have rational grounds to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger.
2. But we do have rational grounds to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger.
3. Therefore, Hume's argument is unsound.
5. Nevertheless, I will still go around wielding Hume's argument as if it were sound.

The problem with (5) is that it transgresses the first principle of dialogue: speak only what you really believe to be true.


(And of course you can keep running with the idea that we have non-rational grounds—whether emotional or habitual—to claim that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger. I don't think that goes anywhere. To predict a future event is a rational and normative act, and there is no such thing as non-rational normativity. The idea of "non-rational grounds for claiming X," conflates description with normativity. A psychological explanation for why someone proffers a prediction is different from a reason for why the prediction is reliable.)

I don't think that knowledge depends upon that inference being valid. The proof is in the evidence -- we generate knowledge from checking wild guesses all the time. — Moliere

Hume's argument is a kind of exclusion of induction by exhaustive dichotomy. What is your response here supposed to be? Do you think that Hume would say, "Oh, someone told you that the offspring of two tigers is a tiger! Oh, well in that case my argument doesn't apply!" Or would he say, "Oh, you are 'simply asserting that you know things,' well in that case my argument really seems to break down. I wish I had thought of that myself!"

These strange responses you are giving me are wholly inadequate to answer Hume's argument, so I don't see how you think they are relevant.

Though, also, my metaphilosophical position is one which does two readings: With the grain, and against the grain. So for every philosopher you start with the grain else you won't be addressing the arguments they are making. But then it is necessary to return and look for why people might object, or where there might be an error in the argumentation, or where some uncertainty is and what we might say in response. I call this against the grain. This is a metaphor I'm pulling from carpentry for how one is "supposed" to cut the wood, but noting in philosophy we are supposed to cut the wood the wrong way in order to see the full meaning of a philosophy.

In doing so we can lay out a particular philosophers position, but then note how we might diverge, or even just wholesale steal ideas out of the text. In order to understand the concept we reference back to the text, but philosophy is a generative activity. It is creative. We can do what they did and write our own little thoughts, inferences, suppositions, and what-have-you. — Moliere

All I'm asking you to do is be logically consistent. If you think Aristotle falls prey to Hume, but then you can't countenance the fact that everyone falls prey to Hume, including yourself, then you are not being consistent. Your argument is literally as silly as this:

• Moliere: Aristotle uses words, and anyone who uses words is wrong.
• Leontiskos: But don't you use words?
• Moliere: Oh, yeah, but I don't count.

You don't get to exempt yourself from the criticisms you level at others. That's not how it works.

That's a false dilemma. We can accept the parts we agree with and not accept the parts we disagree with. — Moliere

We are talking specifically about Hume's argument from induction in a broad sense, namely the idea that we cannot reason from particulars to universals. That's the thing that you keep vacillating about, using it as a weapon to attack others while ignoring the fact that it would destroy your own beliefs if it were deployed consistently.

it's not concerning at all, but expected. — Moliere

It's not concerning that we cannot tell whether you are jesting? The reason it's hard to tell is because your position is so bizarre that it's hard to know the difference between something you would say in jest and something you would say in earnest.

Nope. Not, at all. You can just go back and see that you're cherry-picking. — AmadeusD

When you misrepresent the conversation my answer is always the same:

It would have been much easier to simply quote yourself... — Leontiskos

You claim that you have said something, but you can't quote yourself saying it, because it is nowhere to be found. Fire Ologist asked:

Would you do me a favor and show me your example and how you conditioned these out of it? — Fire Ologist

You failed to answer him. You failed to point to the quote or even the post where you said, "that I am in a cab, having told the driver where I'm going and to wake me up when we arrive." Why did you fail to point to it? The answer is simple: because it doesn't exist. You are trying to rewrite the past in your favor.

But, no, I am speaking in jest. — Moliere

Is it concerning that it is hard to tell?

You have to either embrace Hume or reject him. You can't keep playing both sides and having it both ways. It's a waste for me to spend so much time talking to someone who will not abide by the canons of logical consistency.

You can't just magically jump back and forth between pro-Humean and anti-Humean positions whenever it is desirable to do so. — Leontiskos

I can and I will! — Moliere

Not if you want to be a rational human being, you can't.

We learn about what exists by listening to others. It's marvelously simple, but it brings down the grandeur of philosophy and science a few notches. Names are learned prior to any philosophizing about the nature of tigers -- we can use names without theories as to how it is a name refers. — Moliere

So your mom told you that tigers are an existing species and that the offspring of two tigers is a tiger? The problem is that at some point we need to grow up and say, "Mom, how do you know that?" If Hume is right then your mom passed on to you "knowledge" that she can't have. This is a good example of the way that you selectively deploy Hume, against Aristotle but not against your mom. "Humean objections for thee, but not for me!"

For me I'm fine with simply asserting that we know things. — Moliere

It sounds like you have chosen option 2:

"Yes, that's right, but I reject Hume's position." — Leontiskos

That's fine, but you need to work through the cognitive dissonance inherent in objecting to other's positions on the basis of Hume's arguments, but then exempting yourself from those same objections. You'll need to work out that double standard that is so ubiquitously present in your philosophical approach. You can't just magically jump back and forth between pro-Humean and anti-Humean positions whenever it is desirable to do so.

I wrote that much to give you more to latch onto, to show where I'm coming from, and to counter your notions of me in the hopes of communicating. But all you can see is Hume. — Moliere

I'm tired of the constant evasions and circular argumentation. If you think that Aristotle cannot argue from particulars to universals, then you can't pretend to be able to do the same thing yourself (when you claim that tigers exist as a species, or that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger). If you have a real argument against Aristotle or any other philosopher, it will have to be more than the double-standard of a Humean nuclear bomb. Until that happens, the tu quoque is a sufficient response to your nuclear option. If you don't possess an objection that does not destroy all of philosophy and all of science, then you don't possess an objection at all. :meh:

Not in so many words, but you did say this:- — Ludwig V

If P is not truth-apt, then of course S need not be truth-apt. — Leontiskos

and I think that what I said follows from that. — Ludwig V

My original claim was, "If P is truth-apt, then S is truth-apt." You responded by effectively saying, "But the question is whether P is truth-apt." My response about "need not be" has to do with the fact that you are subtly committing the fallacy of denying the antecedent. When someone denies the antecedent the correct response is, "Both the consequent and the negation of the consequent need not follow." Saying, "It need not follow when you deny the antecedent," does not positively entail anything about the possibility of the consequent.

Furthermore, the idea that P may not be truth-apt has nothing to do with my original claim, and it tells us nothing about S given that original claim. You want to discuss the proposition, "If P is not truth-apt, then S is possibly truth-apt." The problem is that there are different modalities at play, but given that such a proposition seems irrelevant to my thesis, I don't see any use in pursuing it. My original claim has everything to do with the cases in which everyone agrees that P is truth-apt.

I should have used a different variable, such as T. I'm sorry. — Ludwig V

Yes, you are right, of course. I wrote that passage badly, without explaining myself. It doesn't matter, so I withdraw the claim. — Ludwig V

Okay, thanks. I appreciate that. :up:

Listen, this conversation is getting long and unwieldy. Rather than answering the whole bevvy of issues you are now raising, why don't you just point me to two of them that you deem most central, and I will answer those.

I think you're attributing more to me than I've said. — Moliere

The fact that you wrote six posts in response makes me think that you know your approach is deeply problematic.

If you follow your Humean logic consistently, then you have no idea what you mean by "tiger," you have no grounds for believing that a species of tigers exists, and you have no grounds for believing that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger. Brilliant stuff. — Leontiskos

If you think that you are not wielding a nuclear bomb, then explain what grounds you have for, say, believing that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger. Aristotle, Darwin, Lavoisier, Kripke, and science and rationality generally, all believe they have firm rational grounds for their belief that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger. Hume thinks they are all wrong, and followers of Hume such as yourself must oppose not only Aristotle, but also Darwin, Lavoisier, Kripke, and science and rationality generally.

So you have three options at this point. You can say one of the following:

• "Yes, that's right, and I accept Hume's position."
• "Yes, that's right, but I reject Hume's position."
• "No, that's not right, and therefore I can accept Hume's position while also holding that I have firm rational grounds for believing that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger."

I think we need to figure out what to do with the nuclear bombs before we have even the smallest chance for a fruitful conversation.

The example was (roughly, and I've perhaps streamlined it here) that I am in a cab, having told the driver where I'm going and to wake me up when we arrive. — AmadeusD

That's just false, AmadeusD. Here is the example:

if you gave me an active, working Google Maps. I closed my eyes, followed the directions(pretend for a moment this wouldn't be practically disastrous lmao) and then the Maps tells me i've arrived - that's what I'm talking about. I am literally not involved in any deliberation - I am, in fact, still taking instruction. — AmadeusD

I gave the example of "waking up" as an explicitly different example:

Sure, you can decide (judge) that the app is to be trusted. Sort of like how you can trust a taxi cab driver to get you to your destination. Still, at the end of your journey you still have to judge that the app or cab driver is telling you that you have arrived (even though you are trusting them at the same time).

A case where no subordinated judgment occurs would be when you go under general anesthesia for surgery, simply trusting that you will wake up on the other side. Waking up is not a judgment, and so in that case there is only one act of trust-judgment. You are trusting that the judgments of others will cause you to wake up. — Leontiskos

You've literally lied about the example given, which was never about a taxi driver waking you up. You are resorting to this because you have no good arguments to support your strange case that no judgment occurs when you respond to the Google Maps app or the taxi driver telling you that you have arrived. Note that the lie does not help you at all, because after the taxi cab driver wakes you up, you still have to form the judgment that you have arrived. Your new example in which the taxi cab driver wakes you up in no way answers the question of how you know that you have arrived without any judgment.

I cannot remember Leon's take, but he wants to say all mental activity is judgement — AmadeusD

More nonsense:

Nowhere in that definition is the claim that every mental act counts as a judgment. — Leontiskos

You responded:

A1. Suppose every mental act counts as a judgment
A2. If so, then L3 would be true
A3. But not every mental act counts as a judgment
A4. Therefore, L3 does not follow

And my response was that I have never claimed A1. A1 is a strawman... — Leontiskos

You've stopped doing serious philosophy in this thread. You have resorted to, "The Oxford definition sucks and I refuse to give my own definition." You then went on to consistently mischaracterize what you and others have said in this thread. :roll:

(@Fire Ologist)

That's a cop-out, to be sure.

If you follow your Humean logic consistently, then you have no idea what you mean by "tiger," you have no grounds for believing that a species of tigers exists, and you have no grounds for believing that the offspring of two tigers will be a tiger. Brilliant stuff.

This has nothing to do with Aristotle. If you accept that sort of nuclear skepticism-sophistry of Hume, then Kripke, Darwin, and Aristotle are all destroyed. It makes no difference that Darwin believed in temporary species and Aristotle believed in more permanent species. Both are undermined by Hume's "induction argument" that you try to use against Aristotle. You're dropping a nuclear bomb and hoping it only affects Aristotle's neighborhood. You need to start thinking through these ideas, rather than just wielding them in the direction of those whom it is fashionable to wield them towards.

How I know it is certainly different from whether I think it. Why I think it is because I've seen them before and talked about them with others to make sure I know what I'm talking about.

I'd assert it because I have no reason not to -- unless they went extinct or some other circumstance that I'm unaware of they were alive last time I went to the zoo.

I'd say I know what a tiger is because I grew up in a community which differentiates a particular species. — Moliere

Did you see two or three things with stripes and then decide that there must be a whole species of tigers, that are all the same? You have a universal species in your hand that you call 'tiger', and I'm wondering how you know about that sort of thing. As a Humean, surely you couldn't have come to know about panthera tigris from observing particular things!

Or if you want something more characteristically Humean, think about it this way. You see two "tigers" (whatever that is!) mating. What will their offspring be? Will it be a tiger? How do you know?

Yeah, there are some tigers out there today. — Moliere

How do you know that? How do you know what a tiger even is? In fact, what is a tiger, and how do you know?

For Aristotle I would just add that there are ontological conditions to the sets, whereas today we'd prefer to abstract to the logic alone and leave the ontology undefined so that we could then speak clearly about what exists.

Make sense? — Moliere

I would say that some philosophers follow Quine today. Not sure how many. I think there are less than you suppose.

Whereas I would say that it's in the very logic itself that makes the move from species to genera invalid. There is no essence that holds all tigers together, a what-it-isness which makes the tiger a tiger. — Moliere

So do you think tigers exist or not?

The problem here is that you keep opposing even a Kripkean essentialism (for example, by saying that water is not H2O). If you think that water or tigers have no necessary properties, then you oppose not only Aristotle but also Kripke, and your critique really has nothing to do with Aristotle per se. And I am really not convinced that your critique has anything to do with Aristotle per se.

So I'm not talking about being wrong in the sense of error as much as I'm saying there is no valid construction of induction because there is nothing to universalize. This is a big difference between my understanding of Aristotle, vs. Darwinian, biology. The species aren't as distinct as what Aristotle's method indicates -- they slowly morph over time and we update our taxonomies the more we learn, but this isn't a logically valid move. — Moliere

What isn't logically valid? Again:

No one actually believes that familiarity does not breed understanding, and no one believes that there are no truths about species. If Hume were right then we could not even say that swans can fly, or that swans can honk. For the Humean there is no possibility of saying, "We can't know that swans are white, but we can know that swans can fly and honk." — Leontiskos

Do you think swans exist? Do you think swans can fly? Do you think swans can honk?

Familiarity with swans will help us to understand swans, and if we happen to notice that all birds have wings then we might say that the essence of birds is "has wings", and since all swans are birds all swans have wings since that is what holds for all birds.

In such a world, if you could correctly identify an essence -- what holds for all the tigers, or whatever species/genera is under discussion -- then moving up to a more encompassing category would appear entirely valid. — Moliere

The problem with your construal is that it isn't induction at all. It is not an inference at all, but a tautology. "I have seen three swans and they all have wings; therefore three swans have wings." Or, "I have seen every swan that currently exists, and they all have wings; therefore every currently-existing swan has wings." No induction is occurring here, much less any inference at all. If you go from "all tigers" to "all tigers" then you haven't made a move at all, and you have certainly not moved to a "more encompassing category."

(Note too that the deeper problem with your Humean approach is that it can't even recognize a single swan or tiger in the first place. It hasn't conceived the problem of how the word 'tiger' is upbuilt in the first place.)

So, in my understanding of Aristotle at least, I can understand why he believes it's valid. It's not like he didn't know what validity was. However, I think he is wrong about essence, and what you end up with for any process of induction is never a logically valid move. It's a guess. Hopefully an educated guess, but a guess all the same -- and the taxonomies we write about animals are our way of understanding life rather than the essence of life. — Moliere

I don't think you understand Aristotle. Again:

But I think I understand your general thrust. "Aristotle looks at one swan and sees that it is white. Then he looks at a second and sees that it is white. After doing this 100 times, he infers that every subsequent swan will be white, and that's like mathematical induction."

That's intelligible, but I just don't think it's what Aristotle is doing. It's what Hume understands by induction, not Aristotle, which is why I pointed to Hume at the beginning of this chapter of our conversation. Aristotle's view is represented by the essays I linked <here>. — Leontiskos

You seem to be a Humean who thinks that Kripke could never have warrant to claim that water is H2O. And of course this means that you also oppose Aristotle and Darwin, who are also involved in similar claims. Darwin makes universal claims about species as well, after all. It makes no difference that species evolve. All such species-claims, whether Kripke's, Darwin's, or Aristotle's must be opposed by a Humean like yourself. So the topic here is really Hume, not Aristotle.

I don't think I've said anything Humean here -- if I were I'd be talking about relationships between events or the wash of perception or the emotional grounding of inference or something. But I'm just saying that Aristotle is wrong about essences, and that's what masks the invalidity of going from a particular to a general. — Moliere

The argument that it is impossible to move from particulars to universals is a Humean argument.

Or I could be wrong about the role of essence in Aristotle. But at least this is how I'm understanding it. Does it make sense to you? — Moliere

It makes sense to me that you are falsely attributing the thing that Hume critiques to Aristotle. It also makes sense to me that, as a Humean, you would oppose all knowledge of species, whether Kripkean, Darwinian, or Aristotelian. I just don't think you walk the walk and absent yourself from believing species-propositions.

So if P is not truth-apt, then S might or might not be truth-apt. — Ludwig V

Well I never said that. The problem here is that implication doesn't make sense among non-truth-apt things, but that's a separate issue.

The trouble is that we might well disagree about whether a given proposition, such as "God exists", is truth-apt or not. — Ludwig V

How is that supposed to be "trouble"? Try presenting an argument to the effect that, "We might disagree about whether P is truth-apt, therefore Leontiskos' claim is false."

But the foundations of language cannot possibly entail true or false propositions; — Ludwig V

...concluding that, since S implies P and S is true, P is true — Ludwig V

These two claims contradict one another. One moment you say that S cannot entail true or false propositions, and the next moment you say that S implies P and P is true. This is a good example of the problem with Wittgenstein's approach.

The point here is that when Wittgenstein says, "But this is what I do!," he is trying to excuse himself from argument and thus presupposing that "what he does" is inevitable and therefore not arguable or truth-apt. I would say that better philosophers don't make such an excuse. Aristotle will wrestle with the principle of non-contradiction, for example, in Metaphysics IV. He won't make an excuse and abandon the obvious fact that where S implies P and P is truth-apt, so too is S.

...when he comes to the end of the justifications that he can offer and exclaims "But this is what I do!". — Ludwig V

See my post <here>.

To be honest, I don't think Wittgenstein is a very good philosopher, and I don't have much interest in discussing him or exegeting him. Of course if you think he makes a good point you can introduce that same point in your own words, but appeals to his name will be ineffective for me. I have no regard for his name, and these topics help explain why.

That seems a very sound policy. I was looking for examples that would show what I was trying to assert. — Ludwig V

Where does your desire for an argument for God's existence go? As far as I'm concerned, wherever it goes, it supports my point. Suppose I present an argument and it is convincing. In that case an atheistic way of life will be falsified (or invalidated) by the propositional truth. Or suppose I present an argument and it is unconvincing. In that case a theistic way of life will be less plausible given the propositional truth. Either way the propositional outcome will bear on ways of life.

When I said that's a bad argument, I was agreeing with what I thought was your point - that the conclusion does not follow from the premiss. — Ludwig V

I don't think the argument is wholesale invalid. The idea behind it is that intractable disagreement among intelligent persons can signify a more fundamental problem (and that this problem could be related to what is or is not truth-apt). There is a rationale to the idea, even if I think it is wrong in this case.

I don't know whether you think that "God exists" is an empirical statement or not, but I think it very unlikely that there is any empirical fact that would persuade you to abandon that claim. Equally there is for me no empirical statement that would persuade me to accept that God does indeed exist. Hence, I do not believe that "God exists" is an empirical claim. — Ludwig V

I think beliefs of this kind are falsifiable, and empirically so. Of course, it is obviously easier to falsify a negative existence-claim than a positive existence-claim. What is generally overlooked in this thread is that people change their minds all the time on the question of God, and they often do so when presented with arguments or when faced with empirical considerations (miracles, suffering, psychological insights, etc.). If the theories being proffered by atheists and agnostics within this thread were sound, then no one would ever change their mind about religious propositions. The theories are therefore empirically inadequate given the way people often change their mind with regard to religious propositions (and faith propositions more generally).

If the atheist says, "I believe God does not exist, and nothing will ever convince me otherwise," then I would say they are just being stubborn and irrational. If there is nothing that would convince him otherwise, then he is not taking the question seriously.


P.S. I think you need to address this in order to ensure that our whole conversation is not based on a misunderstanding:

Well if something is false then it is truth-apt, so this makes me think that you don't understand what "truth-apt" means. — Leontiskos

No. We know more now than we did then. — T Clark

So you don't think science ever progresses or regresses on the criteria you laid out? You don't think there can be progression or regression in the matter of, "quality control and assurance," for instance?

Let's go back to this for a second. You've identified more scientific, less scientific, and pseudoscientific. You don't seem to have left any room for badly performed science. Is that less scientific or only lower quality. Haute cuisine is good cooking while my macaroni and cheese made with Velveeta is bad cooking, but they're both cooking. — T Clark

They're both cooking: some better, some worse. Two things can both be science, some better, some worse. "Badly performed science," would presumably be less scientific. As @Srap Tasmaner noted, the method and the conclusions are interconnected.

Are you saying that scientificity is as easy to define and measure as speed? Isn’t that really the question on the table here? You and I disagree. I think scientificity is a very, very great deal less obvious. — T Clark

Does "scientific" mean something? If it does, then it looks like we have to admit that some things are more scientific and other things are less scientific. If a criterion such as, "quality control and assurance," is not uniform throughout every scientific discipline and age, then the strong science-pluralism that is being promoted within this thread looks to fail.

I agree that ways of life and propositions cannot be neatly separated. For me, at least, that was the significance of accept Hadot' remark. — Ludwig V

Okay, great.

The question will always be, then, whether P is really truth-apt and not false. — Ludwig V

Well if something is false then it is truth-apt, so this makes me think that you don't understand what "truth-apt" means.

If P is not truth-apt, then of course S need not be truth-apt.

Hinge propositions are not non-truth-apt. They are true, in such a way that whatever else gets questioned in the debate, they are protected from reputation. — Ludwig V

I don't know what "being protected from reputation" means, but the point is that truth-apt things are open to scrutiny.

Ways of life, on the other hand, in Wittgenstein's use of the term, are the foundations of language and are the basis of our understanding of truth and falsity, so not truth-apt, any more than practices are. Practices are just our way of doing things; they include the ways in which we establish truth and falsity. In practice, our lives are more complicated than that, and our ways of life and practices are always liable to development and change, often in response to facts about the world. But the relationship goes two ways and is more complicated than material implication. — Ludwig V

I suppose I just stand by what I already said. If Wittgenstein thinks his "ways of life" are not truth-apt and yet entail true or false propositions, then he is in a pickle.

Thatl would be a bad argument. — Ludwig V

It's the argument at the bottom of Wittgenstein's and everyone else's strange claims about the fundamentals being non-truth-apt.

So, could I ask what arguments you propose as evidence that God exists? — Ludwig V

I don't usually engage that question in these contexts, as the inquirer is just looking for something to try to debunk. I'm also not sure what it has to do with this conversation, especially given that you said my point about relativism, "Would be a bad argument."

two people have a right to make a contract — Outlander

I would say that all sorts of laws and positive rights restrict one's right to contract. The GDPR is not unique in this.

But I am really not up on Terms of Service (ToS) law. I know it's a complicated area.

- I've been publicly in favor of limiting the ability to edit posts to < 5 minutes for a long time. I'm pretty sure Plush Forums doesn't provide that middle-ground option.

And I think the GDPR is too strong on that front, but I don't actually know the legal history of that article.

- I don't know of any forums that are prepared to fight the legal battles required to oppose the colloquial sense of Article 17 of the GDPR. In theory they could fight those battles, sure.

The point here is that although it would be nice to retain a user's posts even against their will, there are significant legal impediments to doing so, at least in many countries. One possible workaround is to purge their identity and username but retain the posts, but even this would generally break backlinks and discombobulate the conversation history.