Cheers. Semiotics seems to me to miss the point by treating all causal talk, all meaning, as merely codes or signs floating in abstraction. It's what we do!

You don't actually say anything here about why I'm wrong. That's why I tend not to reply to your posts.

You can't be claiming that Bayesian calculus is not about belief. So, what?

It's not easy stuff, but to my eye it's by far the most interesting thing going on in philosophy at present.

Sure. Our words are about the world. The true, ones, at least...

But I wouldn't put that in terms of necessity. Too loaded.

Bayesian calculus deals with our beliefs, such that given some group of beliefs we can calculate their consistency, and put bets on which ones look good. But it doesn't guarantee truth. So what it provides is rational confidence, not metaphysical certainty. It's in line with Hume's scepticism.

I suspect we are emphasising different aspects of the same issues, and that we do not have an actual disagreement. What do you think?

That's a good line of thinking, well put.

Where a vice may arise is if one of the premises asserts the conclusion — Clarendon

We must take care here - if an argument is valid, then asserting the premises taken together is just asserting the conclusion. Nothing novel comes from a deductive argument. So if your argument is valid, then the conclusion is present in the assumptions. (added: that's the generic flaw in arguments for the existence of a god).

So, where?

Well,

Look at the critical premise: Premise: “Physical essential properties (shape, size, location) are poor candidates; intrinsic moral value plausibly supervenes on consciousness or rationality.”
There's an implicit assumption: "Any essential property that grounds intrinsic moral value cannot belong to a purely physical thing." This is already what the conclusion asserts: that intrinsic moral value depends on non-physical features, therefore, the bearer (us) is non-physical.

The argument is valid only because this assumption is built in, even if it’s unstated. Without it, the argument would only show that intrinsic moral value depends on consciousness, but not that consciousness is non-physical.

_______
There's a difference between imagining a photon and thinking about one. Photons are considered to be physical. Yet they do not have a determinate location, nor a size, nor a shape... unless you are willing to interpret those terms quite broadly.


_______
Added: I really should emphasis that I think your intuition that values are not physical is correct. But your argument can't demonstrate that it is correct.

I'm not familiar with Gillian Russell's work...will check it out. — Janus

Came across this...

This book’s proof of the Strong General Barrier Theorem is a landmark achievement in twenty-first century philosophy. Not since Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1921) has such an important contribution been made to philosophical logic. — Barriers to Entailment by Gillian Russell

It occurred to me when I wrote the above that I am addressing only our ideas (beliefs). — Janus

Yep. So Bayesian Calculus is about belief, but Russell's work is to do with models, and so truth. Looks pretty cool. It is a formalisation of the problem, and the "barrier to entailment" mentioned in the OP.

But I need to get into the detail.

However, though a physical thing's shape and size and location can change, it doesn't seem possible for it not to have a shape, size or location. — Clarendon

But think of a photon.

What bothers me about your argument is the "hedgehog" - we cannot infer hedgehog conclusions from non-hedgehog premises. If that we are non-physical things is the conclusion of a deduction, then that conclusion must be present somewhere int he assumptions of the argument. You've built in to your argument that anything whose intrinsic value supervenes on consciousness is non-physical.

I think the talk of essences distracts from that basic problem. The Aristotelian idea of an essence - "that which makes something what it is" - vergers on useless. If the argument could be reworked in model terms, using necessary properties rather than essences, the issue might be made clearer.

I'll leave you to it.

But they can be distinguished, at least for philosophical purposes — Ludwig V

A valid point - I do tend to use "warrant" and "Justification:" synonymously, which is a problem acknowledged in the literature. We've Plantiga's use of "warrant" for whatever it is that turns a true belief into knowledge, and again that's a whole new kettle of fish.

I'm not sure we have an opposition between warrant and justification so much as the one being a sub-class of the other. We are also justified in believing the forecast of a qualified meteorologist.

Are inductions warranted but not justified?

There's two approaches to this, and I'd like to look in to how they relate. The one is the already mentioned Bayesian calculus, which gives us a method for improving on our beliefs. Note that your examples concern our beliefs. There's a difference between the past constraining the future, and the past constraining our beliefs about the future. Bayesian calculus only allows the latter.

The other is Gillian Russell's recent work on logic, just mentioned. That is about the world rather than about our beliefs.

Model theory omits a link to ontology. It defines what truth is semantically, but does not relate it to anything in the world. — Relativist

Well, that's just not right. But rather than pursue the issue here, I'm thinking a new thread is needed. I'm thinking of starting a more general chat about one of Gillian Russell's articles on barriers to entailment, so I might leave this for now.

Thanks for the chat here. Let me know what you make of Against Method.

"The future will most likely resemble the past because as far as we can tell, the future has always resembled the past". — Janus

Ok. I still don't see that isn't a tautology - or so close as to make no nevermind.

Cool. I took that as read. I think the point still stands. "the future will most likely resemble the past, because the future has, as far as we know, always resembled the past" amounts to "The future will most likely resemble the past because the future most likely resembles the past".

Might leave this were it is. Check out the SEP link. The Model Theory to which I referred is a branch of mathematics.

In model theory, a model is a structure that makes a formal system’s sentences true.

I think we are at cross purposes.

The grand edifice.

But there's a difference in our methodological dispositions that may be irreconcilable. I have an allergy to explanations of everything. I think complete explanations are completely wrong. So I'll leave you to your mythologising, and muddle along. — Banno

I’ll stick with the patch I can walk on, the language I can play with, the practices I can follow. That’s enough to get things done, and more than enough to keep me honest. Your cathedrals are impressive, but I’m happier muddling in the workshop.

If conforming to a model solves the problem, then simply infer a model on the basis of the constant conjunction of the empirical evidence. — Relativist

So you would use model theory to explain induction? An interesting idea. What do you have in mind? There'd need to be a move from the preservation of truth to a preference between model, I presume?

That’s a lot to unpack, Apo. You’ve got Bayes, neural nets, and pragmatism all packed into one explanatory hierarchy. Impressive, but maybe overengineered? Bayesianism gives us a model for updating beliefs, that can be implemented in brains, machines, or whatever. But it's not a replacement for abduction but an elaboration. Bayes doesn’t eliminate the guesswork, it formalises it. We still need to choose priors, and those priors depend on the very same customs, habits, and shared practices that Hume, Wittgenstein, and Davidson were talking about.

So yes, it closes the loop, because we’re already inside it. The Bayesian calculus doesn’t tell us why we ought to weight one hypothesis over another; it just tells us how to do so consistently, given a prior. The “hierarchy of priors” you describe isn’t an algorithmic miracle — it’s the social, linguistic, and biological history of our talk about causes.

Rationality isn’t something we add on top of experience, but what emerges from doing what we do - talking, testing, correcting, and learning together. In that sense, Bayesianism is one more way of describing Hume’s “custom and habit,” not a transcendence of it.

All-round military hero, climate change denying anti-immigration anti-gay who wants us to prepare for war with China.

So yes, let's hope the Libs choose him and push themselves even further from the middle ground they need in order to get elected.

Perhaps we all can reach some agreement that Bayesian calculus of one sort or another is a rational response to Hume's problem?

We cannot justify it by deductive reasoning, but we can by inductive reasoning — Janus

I still do not understand this. "We can by inductive reasoning" just is "the future will resemble the past". It's re-stating, not explaining.


Added:

To put it another way, it is rational in a practical sense to assume that the future will resemble the past, because to our knowledge it always has. — Janus

That says that the future resembles the past, because the future resembles the past...?

Valid, I suppose, but I find it unsatisfactory.

Cheers, Apo. Tell me more about me. Yes, the representative vocab can be understood enactively.

Bayes formalises Peirce’s approach if you like. We can move on from the nineteenth century.

This doesn't imply we should all adopt extreme skepticism. — Relativist

I don't see anyone here suggesting extreme scepticism - including Hume. His point seems to be pretty much the one you are now making.

There is a normative element to deduction, of course, but it is well-bedded, model- theoretical. All that need be accepted is that a predicate is satisfied by the objects of its extension, and that truth is preserved under valid inference. The “normative” aspect here does not consist in a choice among alternatives, but in adherence to what follows from the model itself.

And this is to agree with Hume.

Here's the OP:

In Hume, legitimate beliefs exist. They occur in a process of recurrent association. A belief is legitimate when it is associated with a vivid impression. For example, the belief that one object will move after another is based on past experience of their constant conjunction. Hume concluded that fundamental beliefs, such as the existence of an external world or the existence of the self, are not rationally justifiable but are legitimate because they are the result of experience and custom. — JuanZu

Seems to me that JuanZu is pointing to the prima facie discrepancy between our being confident in a belief based on being "associated with a vivid impression" and a generalisation that is inferred therefrom. I'd understood that as much the same as Popper's basic statements. Hume didn't have a conception of the Duhem-Quine thesis, of course, so took "vivid impressions" as incontrovertible. I don;t see that we could maintain such a thing nowadays.

Any old guess could be a starting point. — apokrisis

We could apply a Bayesian calculus to any old guess, and move towards a better guess, sure. That's one possible solution to Hume's scepticism.

Very much along the lines of Davidson.

At issue is finding a solution to Hume's scepticism. That is, how we can move from a finite set of observations to the "objectively best" general conclusion. We know that this is not something that can be done by a valid deduction.

In order to answer Hume's scepticism, abduction would have to show us how to infer the objectively best general conclusion.

We agree that abduction does not do this, but provides only the subjectively best general conclusion.

Hence abduction does not provide and answer to Hume's scepticism, but rather agrees with it.

Here's your error. The "best" in an IBE is not necesarily warranted (rationally justified). It just means it was chosen as "best" because it was subjectively judged to be better than alternatives that were considered. — Relativist

So an inference to the best explanation is actually an inference to any explanation?

So what would Wittgenstein's response to Hume's scepticism be? — JuanZu

For Wittgenstein, the demand for justification presupposes a language game, a shared background of practices that already give meaning to “evidence,” “reason,” and “doubt.” To ask, “but how do we really know that causes exist?” is to try to stand outside all language games — to doubt from nowhere. And that, he’d say, is nonsensical. “If you tried to doubt everything, you would not get as far as doubting anything.” So instead of answering Hume’s scepticism, Wittgenstein dissolves it: the idea that we might need a justification for induction or causation presupposes a context of justification that itself depends on certain unquestioned practices.

In a sense it's the same answer as Hume - it's just what we do.

For Davidson, we make sense of the talk of others by presuming that they are rational and are participating in much the same word as we are. We then have the shared basis of the world in order to make sense of the talk of others. Again, we talk in terns of causes in order to make sense to each other.

That's much the same as the basic semiotic answer, that causation and belief are not primarily “out there” in the world; they are enacted and intelligible only within structured systems of interaction, whether psychological, linguistic, or semiotic. Apo and I do not differ as much as might be supposed. What Davidson, Wittgenstein, and semiotics all emphasise is that causation and belief are embedded in structured practices — psychological habits, language games, or broader semiotic systems. They are not features of the world independently of these practices. In that sense, the difference between Apo’s semiotic framing and the Wittgensteinian–Davidsonian account is largely one of emphasis: one highlights codes, the other interpretive and linguistic practices. But both converge on the insight that causal talk is intelligible only within a shared, structured system of interaction.

We could move on to the neuroscience, and talk about how neural nets recognise patterns - a sort of physiological background against which this stuff plays out.

That's very interesting. But you've forgotten to relate it to Hume's scepticism. — JuanZu

Each of those - Kant, Wittgenstein, Feyerabend and Davidson - can be understood as a reply to Hume.

No. Being warranted means to be rationally justified. — Relativist

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


Help me out of the loop.

That's a very compacted account, yet pretty much spot on. Yep, for us to experience objects and events as structured and intelligible, the transcendental subject applies categories like causality, using the schematism as a bridge, and unifying perceptions under the “I think.”

Is your aim here to understand Hume, and then to move on to Kant's response? that is, are you after an exegesis, or are you looking for broad answers? It seems to me that you have a pretty good grasp of both Hume and Kant.

What I've been doing is more about relating these ideas to more recent work. So we have Hume showing that what "I" have access to is just impressions. He points out that it seems illegitimate to infer the patterns of causation and so on that make up our world. His answer is somewhat unconvincing - habit and custom. This all woke Kant, who used a transcendental argument to claim that minds are predisposed to join these impressions into those patterns.

In Wittgenstein, those “necessary conditions” become grammatical rules rather than transcendental structures: not timeless features of mind, but conventions of our shared linguistic practice. In Davidson, the unity of apperception becomes the principle of interpretive coherence: understanding others and the world depends on fitting utterances and actions into a rational, causal, and linguistic web. And in Feyerabend, even that web becomes plural — our patterns of causation and justification are practices that can vary across scientific paradigms.

How's that?

But if the ensuing belief is warranted, that's all that matters. — Relativist

Isn't "warranted" just another way of saying "best"? If it's best, then it's warranted, and if it is the one warranted move, then it's the best?

Further, both involve an evaluation that is not a deduction.

Ok, thanks - that's clearer. So values always supervene on properties, and hence intrinsic values are those that supervene on intrinsic properties. Seems I misunderstood your "it is morally valuable because of the kind of thing it is" to be saying that values are properties, and not something that supervenes on a property.

I gather that your argument now depends on physical properties not being the sort of thins that supervenes on an item, and since values do supervene, then values are not physical. Hence,

...if we are physical things then our intrinsic moral value would have to supervene on some of our essential features.....but it doesn't. — Clarendon

So your argument runs somethign like :

• All moral value supervenes on properties — that is, nothing is morally valuable “for no reason.”
• Intrinsic moral value supervenes specifically on essential properties of a thing.
• For physical things, essential properties are things like shape, size, location.
• Our intrinsic moral value does not supervene on those physical properties.
• Therefore, we are not purely physical things — our intrinsic value must supervene on something non-physical (e.g., consciousness).

But a person, or a balloon, remains what it is despite change in shape, size or location. So these do not seem to be good candidates for essential properties. It seems to me that, for example, personality might be a good candidate for an essential property of a person, and that's not physical anyway. Seems your conclusion is already present in values not being physical. You've given a different articulation of Hume's fork.

But I might leave you to it. The notion of essential properties is far more problematic than just this.

Do you agree that inference to the best explanation can warrant a belief? This of course is only if it was done rationally. — Relativist

Well, I won't disagree, but point out that "the best" remains ill-defined. If we are in agreement as to which explanation is the best, then we should accept it; but here, "the best" might just be "the one we accept"...

Which is to say that we accept the answer based on experience and custom.

So it's not so much answering Hume as agreeing with him.

Are there NO easy cases, in your opinion? — Relativist

:blush: Pretty much. Welcome to philosophical analysis.

I hope we are in a position to see the problem with the argument as it stands.

Some item X has properties a,b,c... Moral values supervene on these properties, and so on X - value(a), value(b), value (c) and so on. The value of X is some summation of the value of its properties.

But an intrinsic value, instead of taking another property as its object, is understood as instead one of the items a,b,c...

Is that close to what you have in mind? If so, there are two approaches to value at work here.

Also, and parallel to this, there seems to be a presumption that a,b,c... are physical, while valuations are not. I agree, roughly, with this, and with the intuition that sits behind it, that moral values are not physical things. But I think here, it is presumed, rather than demonstrated.

Thoughts?

I have said an IBE is not necessarily rational. But it can be. — Relativist

Good. Then we are agreed that abduction, considered as inference to the "best" explanation, does not determine one explanation, and is not itself a rational process. Do we also agree that as a result it doesn't serve to answer Humes Scepticism?

And yes, I am discussing the use of the term, and so its meaning. What I would bring out is that it is not so easy as some might suppose to set out what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't. That the detail is important.

Or one might accept some doctrine as the ultimate truth, and then save oneself the trouble of thinking by simply lambasting any objections. That works, too.

Perhaps it is necessary to bear in mind that it is possible for two incompatible interpretations of data to be right, or at least not wrong. — Ludwig V

Just so.

But we could define a "conspiracy theory" using epistemology. — Relativist

What I've read, including the paper I've already cited, leads me to think that the term functions in the way offten described by Bernard Wooley in Yes, Minister

It’s one of those irregular verbs, Minister:
I have an independent mind,
you are eccentric,
he is round the twist.

Or in our case,

I question the official story,
you believe in conspiracies,
he’s a paranoid lunatic.

The epistemic issue here is that it's again not just the evidence that is being used, but the background against which that evidence is being evaluated. Things are not so clear cut as they might seem.

Most of our beliefs are established as subjective inferences to best explanation. Consider the alternatives: few beliefs are established by deduction, and few are basic. What else is there? — Relativist

This is a good approximation, perhaps.

We do make inferences, sure. The question I would bring back to you is that of what makes one inference "the best" among those available. It need not be the case that one inference is the best explanation we have - indeed, it is more common that there are multiple inferences that satisfy the evidence at hand.

And yet we are often obliged to choose. The evidence is insufficient for the choice to be determined, so there are other things at play, including our other beliefs, and the practices we share with those around us. Our epistemic choices are guided by more than evidence; they include the whole form of the life in which we are engaged.

And here Feyerabend's thoughts come in to play. What he shows is that sometimes we infer, not to the best explanation, but to some other explanation - and that this can be a very good thing. You will come across many examples in his book, so I will not list them here.

Now the problem with calling inference to the best explanation, abduction, and listing it alongside deduction and induction, is the air of logical determinism that is given to what is in reality a practice fraught with ambiguity and guesswork. There's a lot going on here that is plainly irrational.

And this brings us back to Hume. His talk of “custom and habit” reminds us that much of our reasoning isn’t strictly rational at all — it’s rooted in the patterns we’ve come to expect, both individually and collectively. What Hume saw as psychological, Wittgenstein turned into grammar, and Feyerabend showed as scientific practice: we act, speak, and infer within a shared way of life. Causation, explanation, belief — all of these belong as much to what we do as to what we think.

No, I wouldn't say that the attitude is intrinsic to the thing. Rather, something essential to the thing is what is responsible for my valuing attitude. — Clarendon

Yes, I see that. So you are right here:

Were I to say that I find something intrinsically valuable, then, I would be saying that I value it due to some of its essential properties, rather than saying that my valuing of it is an essential property of that thing. — Clarendon

Here you show again that the value supervenes on the property. It appears to me that what you have shown is that the idea of something's having an intrinsic value doesn't work in this scheme.

To be forthright, if the value is a property of the thing, then it can be intrinsic to the thing. But if instead it is a seperate property that does not belong to the thing but supervenes on the properties of that thing, then it is not a property of the thing.

In your argument I think you move from one to the other. So rather than showing that we are not physical things, perhaps you've shown that values are not intrinsic properties of things.

To my eye, what all this shows is the poverty of the notion of a property. Better by far to talk of predicates.

Everything truly has to be about him in egocentric fashion. — apokrisis

And will continue to be so, as long as you two talk about me rather then the topic at hand.

You don't have to make this a conversation about me. But you choose to. You can stop any time you like.

I didn't start the conversation about me. But I am happy to encourage it.

An example, maybe: suppose, for the sake of the discussion, that moral value is an attitude adopted towards some thing. Then we might say that having a moral value supervenes on a given act, and on the attributes of that act.

The moral value of a thing is, for the purpose of the argument, an attitude towards that thing that supervenes on it.

Can we say that the attitude is intrinsic to the thing in question? That seems to be what would be implied by "it is morally valuable because of the kind of thing it is"...