I seem to recall reading somewhere that Gödel was a mathematical Platonist. Are you suggesting that Gödel's incompleteness theorem would be trivially true on a formalist understanding of mathematics because to be true in a language just is to be proven in that language? — Janus

I wasn't specifically referring to Gödel's theorem, but using that example, a strictly formal reading of the first incompleteness result would be like this quote in the Wiki article:

Any consistent formal system F within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out is incomplete; i.e., there are statements of the language of F which can neither be proved nor disproved in F. — Raatikainen 2015

Here the statement is not said to be either true or false; if pressed, an anti-realist* might say that (a) the question of truth is meaningless outside the context of a particular formal system, and (b) in the context of system F the Gödel statement is neither true nor false, since it can be neither proved nor disproved in that system.

On the other hand, you have, no doubt, heard paraphrases to the effect that the Gödel statement is "true but unprovable." Such readings lean on a realist/Platonist understanding of mathematical truth. They would appeal to the structure of the Gödel statement, which states an arithmetical truth.

This is a very crude and clipped summary. Like I said, the question of truth in mathematics and its relation to provability has been investigated and debated at great length. Just searching for works with the words "truth" and "provability" or "proof" in the title will net you several pages of results on Google Scholar.

* I will withdraw the label "formalism" and use instead the more vague "anti-realism" or "anti-Platonism."

There are different versions of formalism, and it is not the case that in general formalism regards truth to be just provability. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I agree that those two premises are not refuted, at least not directly, by the conclusion that we have no knowledge of causality. But as you seem to admit, the conclusion does refute Hume's (apparent?) notion that we can reasonably identify constant conjunction as the source of our belief in causality and our expectations regarding future events. — Noisy Calf

I don't think he claims this to be the logical conclusion of his argument. It is more like, having cleared the ground, he is venturing a plausible hypothesis. As any narrative that describes events and processes, it must rely on causal notions in order to make any sense. But he already admitted that causality is ingrained in our thought process and is indispensable for sense-making.

What do you make of the rest of what Russell says then?: — Amalac

Russell seems to assume an externalist, causal conception of empirical knowledge, and then projects that assumption onto Locke and then Hume, for whom this would be a stolen concept, given his stance on causation. But whether or not Russell is right about knowledge, the question here is whether Hume espoused the same view: only then would he be open to the charge in the OP. Hume actually seems to hold an internalist view, at least some of the time, i.e. his account of knowledge refers only to mental states. But Russell may well be right in that looking carefully through his writing, one can catch him out on a contradiction.

It is true that, like Locke, he admitted no simple idea without an antecedent impression, and no doubt he imagined an "impression" as a state of mind directly caused by something external to the mind. But he could not admit this as a definition of "impression," since he questioned the notion of "cause." — Russell

Hume believed that all knowledge can be categorized into "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact." On the latter he took an austere empiricist stance: matters of fact can only be known from direct sense impressions. And he argued that causation is not impressed onto us by our senses, and therefore is not a matter of fact. Neither can it be inferred by pure reason. However, he did not venture a causal theory empirical knowledge; he took the above principles as more-or-less self-evident. It is fair to dissect and question Hume's empiricist principles. It is also fair to ask whether those principles are more foundational than our causal intuitions. However, I don't think it is fair in this case to accuse him of illicitly helping himself to the very ideas that he questioned. That Hume imagined impressions being caused by their objects is a speculation.

And in neither case is Hume making an attack on the world, that there is no such thing as causation, or that there is no such thing as morality. Rather, he is making an attack on overblown rationalism that thinks it can make the world conform to thought, instead of conforming thought to the world. — unenlightened

That's one way to read him, but my impression is that he is somewhat less clear and more conflicted on this point. I'll leave this to Hume scholars though.

There's never a statement in any given language that is both definitely true according to the rules of that language and also not provable in that language, because to be definitely true according to the rules of a language just is to be provable in that language. — Pfhorrest

What you say just seems wrong for the simple reason that the truth of statements that are not provable cannot be ruled out; we don't know if they are true or not. In other words there can be truths which we cannot determine to be such, or at least it cannot be ruled out that there are. — Janus

What is mathematical truth is an open question in the philosophy of mathematics that has been much debated over the last 100 years, since Tarsky resurfaced it. This exchange illustrates the traditional axis of controversy between Platonists and formalists, realists and anti-realists.

I am not a "veteran logician," and my criticism was not directed at your logic - quite the contrary. The logical structure of a typical philosophical argument is fairly trivial, and that goes for your argument as well. Logical consistency is by far the lowest bar you need to clear; focusing as much attention on it as you do just distracts you from more important things, and for the reader makes it that much more tiring to engage with you. Your reply to me was so pointlessly pedantic, I almost thought you were trolling.

On a side note, if you were to formalize your critique of the second antecedent in the conditional conjuntive statement of P1 of the main argument, which is asserted again in P2, then you would realize flaws in your own reasoning. One, it is in the form of modus ponens which is tautological in nature, so it is actually just a specialized construct of logical syllogism rather than pedanticism on my part. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Whoosh!

Oh well, maybe it's just a phase you have to go through. On the other hand, I saw an earlier thread of yours - it was much better.

I have no interest in formal debates, either as a participant or as an observer, so perhaps I'll be barking up the wrong tree. But anyway, here are my two cents on your proposal:

Your exposition of the thesis and the argument is overlong and unnecessarily formal. Basic logic is like basic arithmetic: once you acquire competence in it, you rarely have a need to explicitly apply textbook rules and procedures; you just do it. And you should expect similar competence of your peers. Those who would find it difficult to follow your argument when it is stated informally (but clearly and fluently) will likely experience even more difficulty if instead you frog-march them through a page of definitions and syllogisms.

In my experience, when I see such overuse of formalism, it is either a novice, fresh off a logic class and eager to show off their newly acquired prowess, or someone trying, perhaps unconsciously, to puff up a weak or banal argument. (And I have seen this even in academic papers written by prominent philosophers.)

I would suggest that you state your thesis and its supportive arguments in a couple of paragraphs - that should be enough to encompass the substance of what you have written in the OP. And you can omit pedantic qualifications, such as "the subset of humans who value intellectual honesty." You can assume that your peers value intellectual honesty, because if they don't, then they are hardly your peers in this conversation, and why would you even want to discuss philosophy with them?

I was really only concerned with the basic idea. And my thesis was how one could save materialism. Since materialism represents a monism, i.e. assumes that there is only one kind of stuff, namely matter, which makes up the whole world, I must necessarily, in order to prevent dualism, regard physical fields, provided they are ontologically real, as a form of matter. — spirit-salamander

Yeah, but I feel that saying "there is only one kind of stuff, namely matter" doesn't really say much. All we have to do to "save materialism" in this sense is to extend the definition of "matter" as far as we need.

Okay, so matter would be quantum fields in your view. — spirit-salamander

Also solids and liquids and chairs and cats, etc. That is, if by "matter" you just mean what there is. There are many different ways to look at what there is, fields being just one such way.

Marc Lange's book is very readable and he tries to make it clear that physical fields must be real things or entities rather than merely a calculational device. — spirit-salamander

Sure. Whether fields are real in some sense is a debatable question, but it's not obviously wrong. What I took issue with is comparing fields with states of bulk matter, which I think is a category error. Bulk matter can be alternatively in a solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma state; it cannot be alternatively, and in the same sense, in a "field" state. Fields are used as mathematical models of continuously distributed physical quantities, but that probably isn't what Lange has in mind (although it can still be asked whether any or all such fields are real things). Perhaps he is talking about something like light, which we are told is an electromagnetic field: shouldn't we be committed to its existence? Isn't it a physical entity? Perhaps, but an electromagnetic field is not a bulk state. In fact, your next quote from Wallace indirectly makes that point where he says that "ordinary matter is held together by electric fields." (Indeed, at an even deeper level, ordinary matter - solids, liquids, etc. - is all quantum fields.)

Well, fields can move particles, again provided that fields are real things, which I assume. — spirit-salamander

If I were making an argument that fields are real things, I would put it the other way around: fields are real things because they have real effects.

This is the context. I think you can leave the passage I quoted in isolation without the context. — spirit-salamander

I see, he is talking about relativistic length contraction. That's not an example of fields moving matter; for that you could just refer to e.g. an electric field interacting with charged particles.

Materialism is the world view most fiercely opposed by philosophers since Plato (Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer to name just a few great names). They all had good reasons to reject materialism.

However, materialism is still popular. I have found for myself that I need to modify it somewhat to consider it plausible. — spirit-salamander

I don't think there's much point in debating this question, since there has never been a unified concept of "materialism." The word has been thrown around for a long time, but its meaning has remained vague. These days, more often than not, materialism is used as a strawman, a word to label ideological opponents to whom you can then attribute untenable and unattractive views that, in all probability, they don't actually hold.

Defining materialism precisely is problematic, and even if you succeed, you will only identify your version of materialism. Defending or knocking it down would not accomplish much, as far as the general concept is concerned, because as I said, such general concept does not exist.

I think it would be more productive to advance or attack specific positions and not bother about isms. If you want to talk about ontology, talk about ontology; if you want to talk about the mind, talk about the mind. Who cares what it's called?


But to comment on a couple of quotes in your post:

"As we will see later, fields have energy. They therefore are a form of matter; they can be regarded as the fifth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the other four states of matter)." (Marc Lange - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics) — spirit-salamander

This sounds very confused. A field is not a state of matter like solid or liquid. Fields in physics are mathematical models used to describe... physical stuff (let's not get hung up on what "matter" is), in whatever state it may be. Saying that a field is a state of matter is like saying that engineering is a type of car.

"Ordinary matter is held together by electric fields, so if those fields are altered by motion, then it is only to be expected that the shape of the matter will be altered." (Wallace, David. Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction) — spirit-salamander

Looks like you pulled this quote out of context and misunderstood its meaning, which is precisely the opposite of the point you were trying to make. I am guessing that Wallace here is discussing the rationale behind Einstein's theory of relativity. What he says about electric fields being affected by motion is a counterfactual: as everyone knows, the shape of matter is not affected by (inertial) motion. You didn't need to hunt for a quote to make your point about fields affecting matter though, because that's just what physical fields are: they quantify forces, potentials and other things that affect matter.


ETA: Oh, I see it's now a Bartricks thread. Abandon all hope.

Yeah, but it couldn't be just the regular space(time) metric, because that already accounts for distance and gravity - not something you would want to screw with in order to account for something else. Perhaps something on top of that? I don't know.

The idea is similar to ER=EPR where the two entangled particles are connected via a wormhole. — Andrew M

Sean Carroll discusses his team's work on this at his blog: — Andrew M

ER=EPR is way above my paygrade, but I think I get the gist of what Carroll et al. are trying to do:

Divide Hilbert space up into pieces — technically, factors that we multiply together to make the whole space. Use quantum information — in particular, the amount of entanglement between different parts of the state, as measured by the mutual information — to define a “distance” between them. Parts that are highly entangled are considered to be nearby, while unentangled parts are far away. — Space emerging from quantum mechanics - Sean Carroll

From this the usual spacial geometry is supposed to emerge at larger scales. But he notes that

It might seem like entangled particles can be as far apart as you like, but the contribution of particles to the overall entanglement is almost completely negligible — it’s the quantum vacuum itself that carries almost all of the entanglement, and that’s how we derive our geometry.

My naive idea of how to reconcile Einstein's physical intuitions about distant objects with quantum entanglement was to propose that entangled systems can be interpreted as presenting different aspects of the same "object" that just happens to be spread out in space. Perhaps a more promising approach towards reconciling physical intuitions (aka metaphysics) with quantum mechanics is to acknowledge that these intuitions are only valid at some scales, but might be emergent at others.

No, in practice I could look at an insane post like this, look at their bio, and if they were, say, 17 years old I could happily move on and ignore them entirely. — Maw

What I mind is wasting time with a moronic interlocutor who turns out to be in college or a Roger Scruton fan. — Maw

So for you it's perfectly fine to waste your time on crazy or stupid people, as long as they are above 23. That's just bizarre. I judge people by their posts, not their age. If I see someone making consistently inane or insane posts, I start ignoring them, no matter how old they are.

Yes, so? I think it should be obvious from the style that I was speaking informally.

How do you glue two points in a set together? You make them equivalent.

However, this is a non-admissible simplification, and Bell in his article explains why. — Andrew M

I have thought of a different simplification, which I think hits closer to the mark. But first let me quote from Bell's lecture, where he quotes Einstein stating his (meta)physical beliefs:

If one asks what, irrespective of quantum mechanics, is characteristic of the world of ideas of physics, one is first of all struck by the following: the concepts of physics relate to a real outside world... It is further characteristic of these physical objects that they are thought of as arranged in a space time continuum. An essential aspect of this arrangement of things in physics is that they lay claim, at a certain time, to an existence independent of one another, provided these objects "are situated in different parts of space".

The following idea characterizes the relative independence of objects far apart in space (A and B): external influence on A has no direct influence on B. — Einstein in a letter to Born

Imagine an ideal 2D plane in 3D space (you can picture it as a thin glass pane). When we write a word on one side of the plane, a mirror image of the same word can be seen from the other side. This is no mystery, of course, since the two sides are nothing more than different perspectives on one and the same plane.

Now imagine that the front and back surfaces are separated by a distance, but as before, when we write a word on one surface, the same word is instantaneously reflected on the distant surface. That would seem like magic, "spooky action at a distance." Our physical intuitions tell us that objects situated in different parts of space must have an independent existence, so that whatever happens to one cannot have a direct influence on the other. Any influence would have to be mediated by a retarded causal mechanism.

But what if we persist in thinking of the two separated surfaces as being, in a sense, a single object that just happens to be located in different parts of space? Their correlation would then have a natural explanation that does not involve an instantaneous action at a distance, any more than the appearance of a mirror image on the reverse side of a plane requires an action in addition to that which produces the image on the front side.

Interestingly, in topology, where you can imagine all sorts of exotic spaces, you can do just that. You can take two separated points on a plane and "glue" them together, making them one and the same point. You can do that with lines and surfaces as well. That's not to say that puzzling quantum mechanical correlations should be explained by weird space topology. (Although if someone were to produce a topological account, I would be open to it. I just doubt that it would be the topology of the physical space - configuration space perhaps?) Rather, I was thinking of Einstein's concluding remarks:

There seems to me no doubt that those physicists who regard the descriptive methods of quantum mechanics as definitive in principle would react to this line of thought in the following way: they would drop the requirement... for the independent existence of the physical reality present in different parts of space; they would be justified in pointing out that the quantum theory nowhere makes explicit use of this requirement.

I admit this, but would point out: when I consider the physical phenomena known to me, and especially those which are being so successfully encompassed by quantum mechanics, I still cannot find any fact anywhere which would make it appear likely that (that) requirement will have to be abandoned.

I am therefore inclined to believe that the description of quantum mechanics... has to be regarded as an incomplete and indirect description of reality, to be replaced at some later date by a more complete and direct one. — Einstein

I don't have an unshakable commitment to quantum physics in its standard form, but neither do I have an unshakable commitment to the conventional metaphysical ideas articulated by Einstein. Like those physicists whom he opposes, I would consider relaxing some of those ideas if it helps us better accommodate lessons from physics.

What if we are now in the position of the inhabitants of Flatland who reluctantly conclude that they may in fact live in a Klein bottle?

I have great respect for Hume, but I think what we perceive is not a ‘metaphysic of value’, but simply a fact of collective teleonomy—that we collectively do behave this way. To preserve this behavior is therefore consistent in a higher order manner. — Adam Hilstad

As indicated in my last post, I believe this has primarily to do with teleonomy and how we react to it. There is no cosmic reason to do the right thing, there’s just the fact that we are most of us concerned with it, and therefore to fully participate in humanity requires that the rest of us are concerned with it as well. — Adam Hilstad

I am not really grasping your point here, nor how it relates to your thesis. Hume argued that normative statements cannot be logically deduced from non-normative statements, and that is hard to dispute. By the same token, the fact that people behave and think in a goal-oriented manner does not entail any specific goals for us to pursue, nor even a general prescription to pursue goals. (Only if you want to "fully participate in humanity," but that's an instrumental ought, not a normative ought.)

There are other is/ought gaps besides the logical gap: semantic (as in Moore's open question), ontological (as in Mackie's argument from queerness). You appear to go after epistemology in the following:

By ‘ought’ entailing ‘is’, I mean something Kantian—our understanding of what is true is shaped by how evidence ought to be interpreted in order to best understand the world and others. — Adam Hilstad

It's arguable whether epistemic habits and commitments can be treated as normative, or normative in the same sense as other normative beliefs. I would say yes to the first and no to the second: epistemology seems to me to be an identifiable species, sufficiently distinct from, say, ethics.

Anyway, you haven't said much to go on, so we are left to extrapolate.

Why are we so sure that the answers of science are valid — Anna893

We are not. Fallibilism is built into the very idea and method of science. So if your thesis is that science is just like religion because both are dogmatic, then you are missing the mark. And I don't think it's fair to characterize religion as essentially dogmatic either. At least in some religious practices there is a place for searching, doubt, dispute and progress.

And even if we find pretty words to describe science, is it not a believe of how the world is made out of, but more - similar to religion - what we want the world to be made out of? Is this idea of »it is how it is«, not actually how we want it to be — Anna893

That may be so, but I would go even further and ask: is there a uniquely and objectively true statement about how the world is?

Perhaps you can expand on why you think this way? Then there will be something to discuss.

Witti couldn't have said it better:

How would you philosophically explain and describe the probability 1/6 in the dice rolls. What is the 1 here, what is the 6 and what / and how do they relate to the real world?
I have come to the conclusion that it is all very baffling and perplexing because you get to questions of chance and determination. — spirit-salamander

As has been pointed out, your ideas of what probability should mean are very far from what is usually understood by that term. If you are interested in this subject, you may want to read something introductory first.

Now as for philosophical interpretations of probability, there are several, and all of them are contentious. The standard mathematics of probability (known today as Measure Theory) is well understood, but how it should be interpreted in real life is not that clear. Statements like

6 is the cardinality of the set of possible outcomes; that set is the event space. 1 is the particular outcome, which is one of the members of the event space. Division expresses the ratio of the particular outcome to the possible outcomes. — TonesInDeepFreeze

don't actually explain why TonesInDeepFreeze would bet a particular way in a game of dice.

My own preference is for the epistemic interpretation (often loosely referred to as Bayesian, although Bayesianism does not exhaust all epistemic interpretations). I already tipped my hand earlier when I declared that probability is a measure of your uncertainty: that is, in a few words, the essence of the epistemic interpretation. There are others: frequentism, propensity. In my opinion, frequentism is philosophically untenable: it is basically a naive interpretation of mathematics, which invariably ends in hand-waving when the rubber hits the road. However, frequentist heuristics underlie much of the practical statistics that was developed in the last century. Propensity better suits certain metaphysical ideas, and it can be complementary to the epistemic interpretation.

SEP, as always, provides a nice overview of the interpretations of probability.

You can try it yourself at home. Roll the dice 600 times and write down the results. There will be an approximately even distribution. Now my argument was about a dice as a thought thing, the perfect dice rolled perfectly. The distribution should be perfectly even. If this were not the case, one would have to conclude that there was manipulation involved. — spirit-salamander

Here is a little script that implements this scenario using a pseudo-random number generator: https://groovyconsole.appspot.com/edit/5205481161228288 (click "Execute script" to roll a die 600 times and see the distribution).

But you can try a much simpler experiment at home. Take a coin and flip it twice. Repeat as many times as you please. According to your theory of perfect coin flips, you should be getting one head and one tail every time. In reality, you will get that result about half the time. So real coin flips are nowhere close to what you think perfect coin flips ought to be. In fact, perfect coin flips would have to be manipulated to produce an alternating sequence: heads, tails, heads, tails, etc. Anything else would violate your criteria of perfection.

Your misconception of probability is perfectly summarized here:

But what is the point of using probability if it is not reliable? — spirit-salamander

Probability is a measure of uncertainty. Where you can make a perfectly reliable prediction, you have no need of probability.

Is this way off? — spirit-salamander

Yes. Like I said, history-independence is an assumption in common games of chance, such as dice. But if you start off assuming that the probability of each possible outcome in a single trial is 1/6 and then end up concluding that the probability of a particular outcome in the next trial is more than 1/6, then you have contradicted yourself.

The question that arises is what this 1/6 means philosophically or, if you like, mathematically. — spirit-salamander

This is quite a profound question, but for better or for worse, it is irrelevant to the gambler's fallacy. (Your understanding of probability is way off though.)

The key to understanding the gambler's fallacy is in the last sentence of your quote:

How many times the gambler has rolled that night has no bearing on whether the next roll will be a double six." (Philip Goff - Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse) — spirit-salamander

This is not a result of a probabilistic calculation - this is a key assumption, a real-world knowledge on which probabilities are based. The assumption is that every roll of the dice is effectively independent. If you agree with this, then the fallacy in the Gambler's Fallacy should be readily apparent. If you don't agree, then all bets are off, as it were, and that 1/6 probability model can no longer be maintained.

Okay, you're right. I was going by what I assumed was a consensus that may have existed in philosophy since Aristotle. In fact, I think if a survey were done today with academic philosophers, most would "abhor" the infinite mundane. — spirit-salamander

Depends on who you ask. I would expect that philosophers of physics, and generally those who have a handle on the mathematical and physical concepts of the last three centuries would, for the most part, be comfortable with the idea of physical infinity in some form, particularly the infinity of space. Classicists and medievalists (such as might use the words "infinite mundane") may well exhibit the prejudices of their subjects.

Giordano Bruno could also be mentioned. Not directly enlightenment, but strongly influenced the Enlightenment. — spirit-salamander

Indeed, the influence goes all the way back to Lucretius, who praised Epicurus and his doctrine of infinite worlds - which, of course, was considered heretical in Bruno's time.

My point was about philosophers. — spirit-salamander

Well, you did ask about physicists. But so far I have found that scientifically and mathematically literate philosophers are largely on the same page with physicists on this. There are, however, both respectable philosophers and physicists who are skeptical about even the least controversial forms of infinity: cosmologist George Ellis, for instance, who has been making inroads into philosophy in his later years. But they seem to be in the minority.

Since Aristotle, the philosophers say that there is only the potentially infinite. — spirit-salamander

That is a gross oversimplification. Philosophers argued for (or at least insisted on) the existence of infinities both before and after Aristotle. The extension of the universe is the most common type of purported infinity, and it was widely believed in the ancient world until the Church made Aristotelian position on the matter something of a theological dogma. For example, both Atomists/Epicureans and Stoics believed in the infinity of space - they only disagreed on whether it was uniformly populated with matter and even other worlds (Atomists/Epicureans) or whether it was void beyond our world (Stoics).

In the West Aristotelian dogma began to crumble during the Enlightenment, and in modern times the infinity of space, at least, was thought to be pretty much self-evident. That only started to change with the development of topology and differential geometry in mathematics and of General Relativity in physics.

Nowadays you would be hard-pressed to find a physicist who denies the possibility of some type of infinity on principle. Even those cosmologists and astrophysicists who propose that the universe is finite in extent do so on contingent empirical grounds, and would readily admit that there is no decisive evidence one way or the other.

Such statements by Greene as these are philosophically irritating:

"If space is now infinite, then it always was infinite. Even at the Big Bang. A finite universe can’t expand to become infinite." — spirit-salamander

Why is this "philosophically irritating"? (He is stating the mainstream position on the matter, BTW.)

If someone just doesn't give a crap about what's good or bad at all, — Pfhorrest

Now I remember why my earlier attempt to engage you on this topic was a failure. Bye.

Is the philosopher allowed to interfere in these debates? — spirit-salamander

You know that philosophy of science is a thing, right?

And to the extent that they are genuinely trying to answer those questions and not throwing up their hands and saying "because ___ said so!" or "it's all just opinions anyway!", they're doing things as my theory recommends. — Pfhorrest

If you are not with me, then you are not genuinely answering moral questions? One can disagree with the answers that other people give to moral questions (as well one must), but to deny that they are being genuine is extremely presumptuous, not to say insulting. You have not earned the right to this stance.

Everyone makes moral valuations. Everyone decides what is right and what is wrong. As a moral theorist, what you are proposing goes above and beyond genuinely answering moral questions. It is incumbent upon you to explain why this theoretical superstructure is needed in the first place, and how we can know if it's any good.

You're asking where my views "find purchase". That reduction of the particular things I disagree with to just giving up is where that happens. If I'm right about all the inferences between things, of course. But that -- "don't just give up" -- is what I'm ultimately appealing to to support everything else. — Pfhorrest

You keep repeating this pitch, but it is unconvincing, because it is empty. If you can give us the motivation - What are we looking for? Why do need it? How will we know when we've found it? - then the rest is a no-brainer. No Pascal's Wager is needed to additionally convince us to go searching for answers. But I have not seen the answers to these questions from you.

You want to have a science of morality, but absent the motivating principles that underlie science, this is just a simulacrum, a pseudo-science. It's technical, but ultimately pointless.

No, I've said that if I am right, then every difference from to my view, if applied consistently, is tantamount to "just give up" (on answering moral questions). — Pfhorrest

Don't be ridiculous. Everyone is answering moral questions, no thanks to your theory.

That's just the big picture overview. If you want the full argument, I've done a huge series of threads on it here over the past year. — Pfhorrest

No, thanks. I entered one of those discussions once, and it went nowhere (just as it's not going anywhere here). I never got any answers from you, just a repetition of the same pitch.

If all the inferences making up my theory are correct, what makes it right is that to do otherwise ends up implying merely giving up on trying to answer moral questions, in one way or another; so every attempt at answering moral questions is at least poorly or halfheartedly doing the same things I advocate, and what I advocate is to do what's already being done some and working some, just better and more consistently, and avoid altogether the parts that, if people were consistent about them, would conclude with just giving up. — Pfhorrest

Well, all you've told me so far is "if I am right, then I am right." I still don't have any idea of where your moral philosophy gets its purchase.

the breadth or fundamentality I'm talking about here is relative to the sets of intuitions we're discussing

We're talking about whatever theoretical framework our interlocutors already have. — Pfhorrest

Unstructured sets don't have such relational properties. And even if they are structured, they can be structured differently from yours, as evidenced by every other moral theory in existence. Absent shared epistemic standards for evaluating such structures, how can you argue for yours?

I hope you would agree that those post-truth type of people are epistemically wrong, and that in principle philosophical arguments could be given as to why they're wrong, and why the scientific method is better than their unsorted mess of relativism mixed with dogmatism. And that those arguments hold sound even if it comes to pass that most of the world abandons science and devolves into epistemic chaos. — Pfhorrest

I don't know if empiricism can be philosophically justified - I doubt it. Fortunately for empiricists, there isn't much need for that, despite what you just said. Empirical intuitions are deeply ingrained, and social institutions for conducting investigations and accumulating knowledge will emerge and persist in the right circumstances.

Moral theorists are not so fortunate. We don't have much in the way of shared epistemic standards for evaluating moral theories, besides simply comparing particular first-order beliefs.

I view my arguments about ethics as like that. I know there's not broad consensus on them, but that's beside the point, just like it would be beside the point of arguments for science to say that most of the world rejects science. What's philosophically right or wrong, true or false, sound or unsound, etc, is not dependent on how many people accept it. — Pfhorrest

So what is philosophically right about your moral theory, as opposed to others, besides its being your theory?

Edit: I have found out that ‘Darwin’s doubt’ is not the thing I have described in the above. So that I don’t have to rewrite a load of things, just keep this in mind. — Georgios Bakalis

"Darwin's doubt" is a nickname that Alvin Plantinga gave to the idea that you sketched in your post (in his book "Warrant and Proper Function"), although the idea itself goes further back. (It is doubtful that it accurately reflects Darwin's own thinking; in context, Darwin was musing about highly abstract theoretical constructs like moral theory and religion, not basic cognitive function.)

Anyway, I don't think you will find answers to this question in formal logic: logic is not equipped to deal with epistemological issues like justification. You can, of course, formalize the thesis, but the result will be logically trivial, because all the non-trivial stuff will be encapsulated in the semantic content of logical symbols.

If you want to pursue this particular question, you can start with the debate around Plantinga's thesis (and you will quickly find that it leads deeper into the epistemological weeds - theories of justification, epiphenominalism, etc.)


What I found interesting about your stab at formalization is what should at first strike one as a basic error: You write pT to express that p is true. That is not how one would usually notate that in logic. In a logical formula when you write a symbol for a proposition, its truth is implicit (to express falsity you would use negation). But I think this notational error is telling: you are trying to express general theses about truth or consistency of an entire system. This will take you into very different weeds than what I referred to above - the metatheoretical work on formal languages and logic that goes back to Tarski and Godel. They won't help you with your epistemological query, but you may find them interesting in their own right.

But in any case, the breadth or fundamentality I'm talking about here is relative to the sets of intuitions we're discussing, and is basically a measure of how interconnected that intuition is to all the others, as in, how many others depend on that being true, and would have to be rejected along with it if we rejected it. — Pfhorrest

You can only talk about how moral beliefs are interconnected with and depend upon other beliefs after you put them into a theoretical framework. But we haven't agreed on a framework - that is still your argument to make as a theorist. We haven't even agreed that there must be a framework (your attempt to beg that question notwithstanding).

With empirical beliefs we have shared ways of establishing facts and validating theories. We have shared intuitions about the object of study, such as its objectivity and permanence, and that allows us to agree on how to conduct investigations, make progress and settle conflicts. None of that seems to apply to moral beliefs. We certainly share a good deal of our moral beliefs and tendencies, we have shared ways of transmitting and enforcing our morals, but I don't think that we have anything like shared intuitions about metaethics.

There are people whose moral beliefs conflict with yours (e.g. they value retribution, regardless of whether it increases your hedonistic metric of good). What are you going to tell them? That they are wrong because their beliefs don't fit into your moral theory? But they aren't buying your moral theory - why should they?

The point of that Russell quote on that topic I quoted earlier is pretty much that in doing philosophy, we're always going to start out appealing to some intuitions people have, and showing that other of their intuitions are contrary to the implications of those. If we're doing it well, we'll pick deeper, broader, more fundamental things, the rejection of which would be even more catastrophic, as premises, and show that other less foundational but still common views are incompatible with those, for our conclusions. — Pfhorrest

And how can you argue that some moral beliefs are broader and more fundamental than others? How can you even argue that there is such a hierarchy of moral beliefs without assuming your conclusion at the outset?

Now that's an interesting difference. I was speculating that one could capture the extensional features of retributive justice in a sufficiently wide definition of 'suffering-reduction', only that to do so would be trivial as the definition thereby allowed would be so wide as to just be synonymous with 'morally bad' anyway. Am I right to think you're suggesting here that no such definition could be made of even the extensional features alone? — Isaac

Seeing that retribution and reduction of suffering have different ends, it should be surprising to find that they never pull apart in specific instances. It is a common assumption that as an institution, criminal punishment serves to deter crime, but that is actually a questionable thesis. It is far from clear whether, how much and in what circumstances punishment has that effect. And what about private, non-institutional retribution?

If so, what features of retributive justice do you think fall into that category? I tried thinking along lines of your example of ensuring the perpetrators suffer, but even then could frame that as easing the suffering of the victim by schadenfreude. — Isaac

Well, one could say that doing what one believes is right satisfies an "appetite" and thus falls under the hedonism, but I wouldn't want to interpret Pfhorrest so uncharitably.

I understand what you're saying, but the manner in which I meant it is the manner in which your first proposition is undermined by your second. — Isaac

Not entirely undermined. I said that one could try to argue that retributive punishment is conducive to the reduction of suffering, but it wouldn't be a perfect fit, even extensionally (it doesn't always reduce net suffering), not to mention intensionally (it isn't aimed at reducing suffering). Trying to fit examples like punishment into the reduction-of-suffering paradigm is just as you said earlier:

like packing for camping and leaving the poles behind because they're longer than the box you had for the tent. — Isaac

What I'd be looking for, if you still think I've missed the mark, is an example of a moral position which cannot be (not just is not) construed in some super-widened sense of reducing suffering. — Isaac

Being a naturalist about morality, i.e. believing that moral intuitions and norms are the outcome of biological and cultural evolution, social dynamics, and other such natural factors, it seems reasonable to expect that common moral principles would be at least somewhat aligned with the imperative to reduce suffering. But by the same token, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect the alignment to be perfect.

Of course, I am not proposing a naturalistic moral principle (moral = natural) in opposition to @Pfhorrest's principle of reducing suffering. But if he is trying to start with widely shared, uncontroversial premises in building up his argument, he has to contend with the fact that, right out of the gate, people's moral intuitions aren't in alignment with his principle.

If one excludes the religious, then I think it is indeed plausible (trivially so) that "all that matters, morally speaking, is people not suffering", if you want to frame everything that way, you can. — Isaac

Actually, it is trivially false that all commonly held moral beliefs can be construed as being aimed at minimizing suffering. (I am including the "commonly held" qualification in deference to your social/semantic take on ethics.) Take, for example, the imperative to punish offenders. While it can be argued that just punishment, on the whole, tends to reduce suffering (by way of deterrence, for example), this is not so in every particular case. And in any event, minimizing suffering is not what motivates the imperative in the first place, even if it happens to have that side effect - on the contrary, what matters to those who adhere to it is that the offender does suffer.

If we survey current and past moral attitudes, we can find plenty of examples of moral imperatives that are not aimed at the reduction of suffering. I take it that @Pfhorrest and a number of others would not support such attitudes. So people disagree about right and wrong. What else is new? What are we discussing here? What's the point of all these threads and polls? To identify like-minded members?

It is my belief that the "preposterous beliefs" are the end result of moral relativism. — Fides Quaerens Intellectum

That's nice, but for this to be of interest to anyone other than you, you need to present a coherent argument against moral relativism. And before that, you need to tell us what it is that you mean by "moral relativism" and why it matters. Instead, you have this vague label that you associate with everything bad and wrong. Like Fascism! Everyone hates Fascists, right? And that's what moral relativism leads to! - Wait, what? What did you say "moral relativism" was again? Oh right, you didn't.

And prepending my quote with Mussolini's demagoguery, unsubtly implying that that is the position that I was defending (I wasn't even defending any position) is the last straw. You have lost any respect and good will that I have been giving you up to this point. Bye.

My question is for someone to spot the mistake in the above. — Georgios Bakalis

There is no mistake in what you said (other than some questionable choice of words). The mistake is in your misplaced expectation of certainty. Science and empirical investigation in general provides plausible beliefs, not certain knowledge.