The Ambassadors by Henry James

It is one of the funniest books I have ever read. James recommended reading it slowly, perhaps five pages at a time. I sometimes manage only five sentences at a sitting, which may amount to the same thing. When a character meets his friends arriving by train it takes one chapter to get them out of the station. Even then we have to go back to pick up some observations we might have missed. You go to a party and after three or four pages you have just about got across the lawn and sighted some of the guests through the window. Each sentence is a journey and you often arrive holding onto unfamiliar luggage, having unaccountably lost your passport, your return ticket and your left shoe.

How? We can just as readily imagine a scenario where no vat-concept corresponds in any way with a trans-concept. — hypericin

True. In that case 'I might be a brain in a vat' does not refer to a brain or a vat as we understand them, which is Putnam's argument.

On Paris, yes, true. If the concepts correspond then there is a corresponding ambiguity. Vat-Texas is Trans-Vat-Texas.

I'm not sure I buy this. Since we are making up the vat scenario anyway, why not make it up such that vat world concepts correspond with trans vat concepts? — hypericin

That is interesting. If vat-world concepts correspond with trans-vat concepts, then the name 'Paris' in both vat-world and trans-world refers to Paris. [True? or not?] If I can successfully refer to Paris even in a scenario in which I'm a brain in a vat then we seem to have a way out of scepticism. [But have I just played a trick with sense and reference?] I think this is Putnam territory.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/577242

Perhaps we have to give big pharma the credit because otherwise we might have to thank the Government - and that is unthinkable. In the UK this conversation happens on talk radio:

Caller: The Government has mishandled the pandemic and killed tens of thousands.
Presenter: What about the vaccination programme?
Caller: Well, that's the scientists and all their great work, not the Government.

I don't know the answer to your question but it is a very good question!

I don't know how they managed it — Isaac

You are right, it is remarkable. My guess is that they managed it by developing good products which provide more benefit and prevent more harm than any alternative. The crowds, in their wisdom, sense this and so trust the products. There is an element of desperation: we would not normally trust a new drug so quickly and if someone suspects that corners have been cut they may also imagine drowning in their own mucus and ask themselves 'what have I got to lose?' If it turns out (I hope it doesn't) that there are severe long-term harms associated with the vaccines or anything else the companies make then we will know that evil big pharma has hoodwinked us again. We won't hear the end of it. The PR people will still be in a job.

Many disagree. They think that in their case the benefit to be gained or harm to be prevented do not outweigh the risks and the invasive process. These people are derided, excoriated and threatened. They may well be wrong. But they are not stupid idiot evil kind of wrong. They are voicing the hesitation that would be normal for most of us in less desperate circumstances. They are reminding us that there are many uncertainties and that we are all anxious. We hate reminders like that and so we lay into the people who provide them.

It's Putnam's argument informally expressed. But there is an answer:

"If I accept the argument, I must conclude that a brain in a vat can’t think truly that it is a brain in a vat, even though others can think this about it. What follows? Only that I cannot express my skepticism by saying “Perhaps I am a brain in a vat.” Instead I must say “Perhaps I can’t even think the truth about what I am, because I lack the necessary concepts and my circumstances make it impossible for me to acquire them!” If this doesn’t qualify as skepticism, I don’t know what does." (Nagel, 1986)

So perhaps we are back where we started.

https://iep.utm.edu/brainvat/

What is the definition of 'is material'? — TonesInDeepFreeze

moderate-sized specimens of dry goods — Austin

I think 'dry' refers more to Austin's tone than to the goods. We could include liquids and gases.

The second video looks at the paradox in depth and more seriously and without the teasing. You're right about the disinformation and I would think in a case like this it's probably ok in the classroom where the confusion can be sorted out afterwards - but publishing it on line may just cause more.

Yes, thanks, I missed out the reply sign, that's what I meant! :up:

Ha ha! very good - this is the same topic in a bit more depth

You are probably right. Sorry, I haven't got a clue.

You can play a variety of chess with new rules that the queen can move only two squares in any direction and there are no pawns. But you can't do any kind of arithmetic by stipulating that 3 + 5 does not equal 8. That's because queens and pawns are our constructions and a queen is and does whatever we say and without us there is no such thing as a queen. But there were two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen in water before we came along. If there hadn't been we couldn't have evolved to learn to count them.

Mornington Crescent.

Then the sun goes round the earth. That's how it seems and if what seems is all there is then that's how it is. It's a revolution - or perhaps a counter-revolution.

Ok, let it be so, brain in vat time again and all aboard for the ride. But if my brain is a brain in a vat it would not be a brain as I understand brains because what I now understand to be a brain is (I'm imagining) an illusory brain. And it would not be a vat as I understand a vat because I only know illusory vats. So I would not be a brain in a vat. I would be something and I would not be able to say what that thing is because all I seem to perceive now is some kind of psychological trickery and I have no experience of reality. So it turns out that I cannot coherently state the situation that I am supposing to be possible. And that makes me pause to think whether it is a coherent supposition at all.

I wonder whether the guy who looks after the brains in vats is ever tempted to let one of them in on the secret. I think about that guy sometimes. Lonely job - all those brains and nobody to talk to.

True. If you have kids in order to improve the quality of conversation at home then you're taking a gamble. If you go into school teaching in order to hear interesting questions from children then again it's quite a risk.

It's a common misunderstanding that Witty is an advocate for 'vagueness' or somesuch — StreetlightX

Yes, I agree. I stated the criticism about vagueness but finished 'I tend to think not' as my post was long enough already. 'Vague' can be a pejorative term but it can also mean just 'adaptable to circumstances'. If we take the same time to walk round the block that is a different kind of 'same time' as the same time it takes two Olympians to run 100m.

In every case it must be asked: does that word fulfil its purpose? And if so, it's exact as it can be. — StreetlightX

I think there are practical examples in medicine and law, for example. What is diabetes? Diagnostic criteria are very specific and a yes/no diagnosis is possible by following them. So the Socratic method works. But not quite. There are patients marginally outside the criteria who would benefit more from treatment than other who are marginally inside. So fix the criteria. But we know that this will never be perfect. So make the criteria somewhat adaptable, analogously to case law: you make 'anti-social behaviour' criminal and then decide on each case and by precedent. The 'purpose' of the concept 'diabetes' in this context is to get people to treatment who need it and not inflict invasive treatment on people who don't. Fixity and adaptability (which may be 'vagueness' with the pejorative tone taken out) are both needed.

What is your idea of self for you? Is it your physical body, mind? or the combination of both?
Which one do you regard as your true self, and why? How many self / selves do you have? — Corvus

I'm the one who can truthfully say 'It's mine' when someone asks 'Whose is this debit card I just found at the checkout?' That is, the self exists essentially in relationship to others, a life and meaningful actions. If I hesitate because I'm wondering 'But is that my true self?' then I will no longer be able to go shopping. I will have to steal my groceries and that will lead to other kinds of self-identification, where asking who is my true self will be equally impertinent and may be taken as contemptuous of the court. Everyone has a mystical philosophical self until they get a punch in the face and then they know who they really are.

OP is a great example of children's negotiating skills. "You talk about what I want you to then I'll eat what you want me to." However

Notoriously insensitive to subtle shifts in mood, children will persist in discussing the color of a recently sighted cement-mixer long after one's own interest in the topic has waned. — Fran Lebowitz

In explaining a concept one approach is to look for necessary and sufficient conditions of its application. What is X ('justice' for example)? Let's say that X is Y ('justice is the will of the stronger'). Oh, but here is something A that is X and that is not Y. And here is something else B that is Y and that is not X. OK, well let's fix our definition and say that X is Y or Z. But here comes C that is X but is not Y-or-Z and then there is D that is Y-or-Z but is not X. And so on. It's a Socratic method. The idea is that you can pin down the concept by specifying the conditions exactly. It's about thinking, not merely looking. Looking at how people use the word 'justice' may tell us something about how unwise people can be but it will reveal little or nothing about justice.

That previous para is the approach that W is questioning. Suppose we cannot (and we often cannot) find the necessary and sufficient conditions. This is not because we are failing to think hard enough, but because those conditions simply do not exist. Well, they may exist. But we have no reason to assume that they must exist. It's about looking, not (merely) thinking.

Still, W may have been mistaken. I think the OP is raising that possibility (polemically). Was he mistaken? Perhaps we've given up too early on the Socratic method. Perhaps the 'family resemblance' imagery is intellectual laziness: a celebration of blurred vagueness where we should be insisting on sharp accuracy. I tend to think not.

why female bodies are considered more coveted. — Maximum7

It is because females can bear children and males cannot. Mothers know who their children are but children may not know who their fathers are. Patriarchy is a way to redress the biological inequality. The male gaze is at least 85% envy.

I always wonder which comes first, peace or international co-operation. Do we set up international organisations because we happen to be at peace; or do those organisations cause and help to sustain peace? Or both? But if it is the first, then setting up co-operative structures is not a cause of peace: it is a symptom of a peace that we are already enjoying for other reasons.

Bayes dabbled in mathematical probability. — TheMadFool

:rofl:

Up tails all.

What do you reckon Boole meant by that? — TheMadFool

I think he is referring to the logical basis of mathematics; a line of thought that culminated in the Hilbert programme. Whom you quote in your profile. You know this stuff already, no?

The Pope is quite happy to preach the non-literalness of the Bible: https://www.thetrumpet.com/7757-pope-dont-take-bible-literally

Isn't it just that #3 is false? "If one doesn't know then enquiry is impossible." I don't know where my keys are. But I can look for them. That's a counterexample. So 3 is false. So the argument, valid or not, yields a false conclusion.

Meno is talking about the unknown unknowns, the subjects of which our ignorance is so profound that we can't even frame a question. But he's forgetting about the known unknowns: the subjects about which we are ignorant, yet about which we are able to frame questions and conduct experiments. That's the realm of science. — fishfry

I think that's right. Aristotle addressed the first kind by saying that philosophy (or science) begins with wondering, thaumazein, which I would say roughly translates as the wow factor, the stuff we gaze at in astonishment without even being able to say what it is, let alone ask why it is what it is. Awesome.

From 3. it follows that if you don't know where your house keys are then you can't look for them because you don't know where to look. You could try to remember where you put them down. But if you knew that you wouldn't need to look for them. It's an everyday problem. Why is it a paradox?

I mean we investigate the world with an a priori assumption that we will find regularities. When we don't find them, we assume not that the world is irregular but that we have not looked hard enough for regularity. So we go on looking. We think - 'it must be there'. Why must it be there? Perhaps it isn't. But that's not a good basis for investigation, even if it is (partly) true. So the world is regular because we are only able to acquire knowledge through regularities. So that is what we look at. If there are parts of the world that are irregular then we don't look further or we assume that we are not yet equipped to find the regularity that really exists.

Are there uncaused events? Possibly. We could not know the difference between an uncaused event and an event with a cause we were unable to detect.

When we find an example of physical laws changing then we look for a higher law which both the old and the new observations obey or we revise the old observations. This is a feature of law-making, law-devising or law-discovering rather than necessarily a feature of laws.

Example 1: sum of absolute value of two velocities is greater than or equal to either one of them, I. Newton. Oops, relativity. Correction: for velocities quite a bit less than c, law approximately applies.

Example 2: heavenly bodies move in circular orbits, circles being perfect. Sorry, they don't. Oh, ok then, old observations chucked, revise the law.

First to GO — Trey

I don't generally like slippery slope objections, but antinatalism could be particularly skiddy, best watch out for that.

But what is "the right thing" to begin with? — baker

I think of Amartya Sen when I hear that question. Avoiding doing the obviously wrong thing is a start. E.g. we may not be certain whether working for an investment bank is an ethical career choice but if we find ourselves abducting children and selling them into slavery we've definitely gone wrong somewhere.

To me I can't imagine a quality without consciousness, consciousness seems fundamental to all qualities. — Yohan

You can't imagine unless you are conscious. But the things you imagine might not be conscious.

I can imagine a cup having the quality of roundness, if by that is meant just that the cup is round. I'm supposing that the roundness of the cup is not itself conscious of anything. I have no idea what it would mean for the roundness of the cup to be conscious.

If you cannot accept, for the purpose of discussion, God, it ceases to be a debate, or a nice discussion about God. — Jan Ardena

I think there are some insightful and committed atheists right here in this thread and also some theists and we seem to be getting along ok. It's possible to acknowledge the gulf in perception without trying to drag everyone over to one side or the other.

2. The beliefs that have no definite rational or inductive knowledge or ground. The beliefs that come from a private psychological state, which does not require evidence, justification or proof. Religious beliefs are in this category, and only in this case, the concept of faith should be applied to the beliefs. — Corvus

I think that distinction is useful. But does it apply to religious beliefs? If there is a God, then religious beliefs may not come from a private psychological state. They may come from the insight that there is a God - an insight that some people happen not to have. Which gets us back where we started.

It’s such an easy thing to comprehend....we want atheists to comprehend it..... — Jan Ardena

Some atheists want us to comprehend that it is mere comforting delusion at best and wicked trickery at worst. It's equally easy for them to comprehend and they would love us to stop tying ourselves in knots over a fantasy. The position of 'you guys just can't see what's obvious' is all too common in debates on religion. The case seems to be that what is obvious to one is obvious nonsense to another and we still have to live with each other. I agree with what you say about relationship not existence being the issue for theists, I made a similar point in the thread somewhere.

That's very interesting, Corvus. I think the pre-occupations of theists and atheists tend to be different with regard to faith. For some atheists, there seems to be no God and so the mere existence of God is an issue, a problem, a puzzle about why some otherwise apparently rational adult people should believe in an imaginary being. You can feel the frustration and impatience in writers like Hitchens and Dawkins - as if they are saying, c'mon, guys, admit that it's all a fantasy. For many theists, the existence is plain and it is the relationship with God that needs thinking about. So 'faith' for a theist might tend to be more about the question of how you can trust somebody than the question whether something exists.

Hanover, yes, I think you're right. There is such a thing as blind faith: crossing your fingers, leaping in the dark and hoping for the best regardless of probabilities. Faith in the vaccine isn't like that. I think the question of whether religious faith is like that depends on whether there's a God or not. And that's the point at issue. If there is a God then it's not blind faith to go along with a previously existing hunch that there is a God. If not, then it's delusion and blind faith.

Not sure how we can get from 'no perception without a perceiver' to 'to be is to be perceived'. Maybe Jo sees the blackbird; and there would be no seeing of the blackbird without Jo's seeing it; and there was a blackbird before Jo arrived.

It also teaches us that everything Richard Dawkins had to say about the survival of genes trumping the welfare of individuals has been forgotten. A rat gives up food for another rat. Bad for the rat, good for the gene pool.

The experiment teaches us some of the limits to empathy in humans.

Empath 1: I want to learn all about human empathy and morality and stuff.
Empath 2: Me too. Let's put a rat in a distressingly small cage and see if another rat will let it out.
Empath 1: Great idea.

Later:

Empaths in chorus: Wow! The other rat let it out! That's so cool. We know so much about human empathy and morality and stuff now. Let's do it on some more rats, though, just to make sure.

Yes, and I think faith (religious or other) has as much to do with trust and confidence as with belief. Possibly more. I believe that flying is the safest way to travel. But my faith is so weak that I will not fly for fear of crashing.