You've been failing to answer arguments and even posts for months now. — Leontiskos

From you, yes.

Your engaging in yet an another conversation about me instead of about my arguments is gratifying. It implies you have no were left to go.

A dignified exit from a poor thread. You did some nice work here.

Excellent first post, by the way. Welcome.

Nice.

Can you clarify what it is to be morally valuable? Does having a moral value "supervene on some of our essential properties", or is it itself a property? IF "it is morally valuable because of the kind of thing it is" then isn't moral value a property of the thing - the kind of thing that it is - rather than something that supervenes on a property?

On the one hand, a thing has some set of properties and the moral value of that thing supervenes on at least some of those properties, while on the other, the moral value just is a property of the thing.

So isn't supposing that a thing can have an intrinsic moral value denying that values supervene on properties?

Hastie has resigned from the front bench - he can do more damage to Ley, the leader of the opposition, - if he is not bound by the conventions of being a shadow minister.

Andrew Hastie’s resignation over immigration couldn’t be worse timing for Sussan Ley

The Liberal Party has to sort out whether it is conservative or liberal. This is the process in play here at present.

Just noticed an article in the recent Philosophy Now that is germane: Popper, Science & Democracy.

Things are stirring...

Georgian Dream claims victory in all municipal elections in first round

Georgia’s police use water cannons on protesters trying to storm presidential palace

What's your point? Are you just acknowledging what I said about background beliefs being involved in our epistemic judgements? — Relativist

The point is clear, I hope - evidence is always equivocal. There is always a point about which folk may disagree.

I contend that more credence should be given to claims that are supported by evidence, than those that are purely speculation. — Relativist

No one would disagree ( :wink: ). At issue is how "supported by evidence" is payed out. From Quine-Duhem, we see that there are always ways to question the evidence. So the issue becomes when questioning the evidence is reasonable, and when it isn't. And it seems there is often no clear clean place at which to draw the line.

Hence,

Plausibility is a factor in epistemic judgement. — Relativist

And not the result of the application of an algorithmic method. I think you see this, but perhaps what's been said here will better articulate it.

Feyerabend's conclusion is that "Anything Goes" in choosing between hypotheses. That's too far. The trouble with "anything goes" is that we are obliged to choose, and so if anything goes, we may as well choose the easiest path, which will be what we already hold true - again, a recipe for confirmation bias. The trouble with "anything goes" is that it will amount to "everything stays the same".

But instead we can admit that the process is fraught with difficulty, and not so clean and clear as some theorists would suppose. Scientific method is not algorithmic, but communal. It is human, involving the interaction of many, many people in an organised and cooperative fashion. I'd argue that this process involves not interfering with the work of others, responding to their claims in a way that is relevant, and doing so publicly; basic liberal virtues. Values not on show in places in this very thread.

Part of that is the issue of demarcation, the separation between science and non-science, which relates to your discussion of conspiracy theories. The idea is that conspiracy theories are not scientific; they do not conform to scientific methods. Now this is I think pretty much toe right sentiment, but given that we are unable to set out what that scientific method is quite as clearly as some suppose, and hence that the difficulty in setting out what counts as a conspiracy theory and what doesn't, a bit of humility might be needed. It won't help to just tell a conspiracy believer that their theory does not match the evidence, because for them it does.

Take a look at this.

First issue is whether abduction is just brainstorming, or if it includes some selection amongst the hypotheses generated. To you, it seems it does. To others, it seems it doesn't.

The problems I want to point out apply to abduction considered as being normative - as involving choosing between hypotheses. So, to your account.

How is it that "abduction would tend to rule out theories that are commonly called conspiracy theories"? What's the basis for the selection?

The criticism I began with is that if you set out those criteria, if you set out your expectations for a good hypothesis, then what you are in effect doing is choosing only the hypotheses that meet those expectations; I somewhat hyperbolically called that "confirmation bias" - you get what you want, an so perhaps not what you need.

On this approach, is any theory that does not meet one's expectations a conspiracy theory? Seems to be so, unless there is some additional criteria.

Next step was introducing Feyerabend, who shows historical cases in which going against expectations and logical conclusions leads to progress in science - were irrationality leads to choosing the better theory. His argument gets a bit deeper than that, but there's a start, since this is counter to the naive view of abductuion as choosing the best theory.

Now some care is needed here. We agree that we do "make judgements based on data too sparse to draw a deductive conclusion". what I am baulking at is calling these judgements "abduction", if what is meant is that they are correct, or true, or worse, necessary.

All up, it seems to me that there remains a hole in your account, that explains the why of how we must choose this hypothesis over that one.

I have a problem with this part: — javra

Me, too. It's intended to show how the "why" doesn't end satisfactorily in at least some cases.

There's a whole side road concerning intentionality here, that is well worth considering. At issue is the difference, if any, between these and other causal explanations. All good stuff.

Do we go there, in this thread?

I can live with this. Can you? — javra

Yep.

See the musings added to the previous post. You've got me rethinking my reply to Un.

Is there a problem?

Given your rudeness and ridicule, why should I respond to your posts? Your worldview strikes me as sophistic bullshit.

As in the rock intended to start the avalanche that happened by intending to pursue gravitational paths of less resistance down the mountain just so? — javra

That'd be more a "how" than a "why" - how the avalanche started rather than why.

Why questions all presuppose purpose — javra

Yep.

What's proposed is causation not as an external “thing to be explained” but as a feature of our ongoing engagement with the world. Saying that causes are unreal would be a misrepresentation. Pushing the trolly causes it to move, hence it's true that pushing the trolly caused its movement. That's not an antirealist ploy.

Added:

The reason why leaves flutter is not because the wind so wills it. Lest we loose track of what are poetic truths and what is objectively real. — javra

Reconsidering, "Why did the leaves flutter - because the wind blew them" presumes neither intent nor purpose. Fair point.

Davidson treats intentions as causal, after all. I'll give @unenlightened's post some more thought.

Why did the wind blow? - because of areas of differing atmospheric pressures.
Why were there differing areas of atmospheric pressures? - because of solar heating on a rotation earth.
Why was there solar heating on a rotation earth...

Each of these presents a broader description.

Do we end with "because godswill" or perhaps "Becasue triadic thingumies"?

My point is that: 1) we can draw some conclusions based on the information that IS available; 2) some conclusions are more reasonable than others; 3) (obviously) it's contingent upon the information being correct. — Relativist

Is the argument that abduction can be used to pick out which theories are conspiracy theories? Then what counts as a conspiracy theory is which "conclusions are more reasonable than others"; but a conspiracy theorist may just insist that the conspiracy is the more reasonable conclusion.

Hence Melina Tsapos' conspiracy definition dilemma.

Yes, and there's plenty more here to unpack. "Why" questions presume intent, in some aspect, and so all that goes with intentionality.

Again, it would be very odd, wouldn't it, if a sceptic about causality proposed causal relationships to explain what causes are. I think the best way of understanding this is by comparison with Wittgenstein's exasperated "This is what I do." — Ludwig V

That nicely frames the incipient circularity in explaining causation in terms of evolution. To make use of evolutionary explanations, we are already talking in terms of causation. It's not mistaken, so much as unsatisfactory.

"This is what I do." — Ludwig V

This is where we might sidestep Wittgenstein and invoke Davidson. We might overcome Hume's passive observation using something like Davidson's interactive process of interpretation; which is itself a development from Wittgenstein's language games. We sidestep the circularity problem by seeing causation not as something to be explained only by invoking causal mechanisms but as something continuously enacted and interpreted in practice.

Added, for @javra: And that is an evolved practice.

Let's see what @Ludwig V says, but it's clear Hume rejected the Aristotelian idea of causation, replacing it with habit and custom.

This is what I at first took T Clark to be saying, here:

My conclusion - identifying one element as the cause of another depends on where you look. What constitutes the cause is a matter of convention, not fact. It works when you can isolate the elements of the phenomena you are studying at from their environments... e.g. if I push the grocery cart it moves. — T Clark

But perhaps not.

, a compelling line of thought. Good stuff.

Ludwig rightly emphasizes that Hume rejects the idea of causation as a metaphysical reality. For Hume, causation is instead an aspect of our psychology: the association of impressions and ideas through “custom or habit.”

Javra agrees, and adds that these customs or habits may arise from the evolutionary inheritance of predispositions and behaviours via genotypes.

I would like to add that causal expositions can also be understood as a language game—an activity we perform in the world, using words to describe patterns and decide what to do next. In this sense, Hume’s “customs or habits” can be seen as a precursor to Wittgenstein’s “language games.” On this view, causes are not waiting out there in the world to be discovered; they are part and parcel of the way we interact with the world. This need not conflict with Javra’s account, but can complement it: our evolved predispositions may make us disposed to engage in these language games, generating causal explanations as part of practical life.

Thus, the focus shifts from grand metaphysical schemes to the practical question of how we act and respond to patterns in our experience.

Pathetic.

"My daddy's a policeman..."

We may have different notions of abduction. — Janus

That's part of the problem... the idea is equivocal.

Any way, back to the insults and misrepresentations from our friends.

Not even close. — apokrisis

Yep. On this we agree.

You've put up a few posts, to which I have not replied. That's becasue they appear to be addressing something very different to what I have actually said. That is what happens when everything must be shoehorned into Peirce's variant of Hegelian dialectic.

You want that symmetry be explanatory because it’s a necessary structure. The question remains as to whether that structure is in the world or in the description. Is symmetry foundational to the world, or foundational to our descriptions? Is it that the world just gets on with whatever it is doing, while we construct descriptions of symmetry?

But from Davidson, we might see that this very juxtaposition is fraught with presumption. I see you as working inside a conceptual scheme that is itself a false construction. The whole picture you’re working with — of structure vs correlation, complementary limits, systems logic — is already suspect, or atl least already a construct.

We continue to talk past each other. There may be room for some form of reconciliation, since both Pierce and Davidson make use of holism. For Pierce there is a deep division between dialectic opposites that is healed by holism. For Davidson, that deep division is not there in the beginning - it's holism all the way down.

You wish for metaphysical explanations; but such explanations are inseparable from myth, not explanations so much as further descriptions and just-so stories. Your reading the necessary structure of the world into symmetry, into your complementary extremes, is not explanatory so much as more description. Meaning is not going to be found in the structure of the world, but is constructed by what we do with our language inside that world.

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.

A philosopher worthy of attention in regard to conspiracy theories is Melina Tsapos.

Maybe start with Who is a Conspiracy Theorist?, in which she sets out some of the conceptual problems involved. It includes a video abstract.

Tsapos points out that on the common definition, we are all conspiracy theorists; yet few self identify as such (the problem of self identification). Also, if the class of conspiracy theorists includes almost everyone, then that class becomes useless as an analytic tool (the problem of theoretical fruitfulness). The term is either used merely rhetorically, in which case it is an example of "othering"; or it "collapse into already well-established concepts within cognitive psychology, thus failing the differentiation test for being a valuable addition to our conceptual toolbox."

A simplistic account of conspiracy theories as failing to apply abduction "correctly" begs for an explanation of what a "correct" application of abduction is; which remains problematic.

I'm reading "Against Method" — Relativist

Good. Feyerabend is mistaken, but in interesting ways. Perhaps the most important aspect of his writing is his drawing attention to how the normatively inherent in scientific work is not algorithmic; the "best" hypothesis is not found using a fixed procedure; it’s lived and worked out within a community.

Perhaps we might continue when your finished.

Well, why not aim for the best explanation one can think of? — Janus

Go right ahead. Just don't conclude that such an explanation is true, which is what is needed if we are to overcome Hume's objection.

I take explanations to answer question of "why" — javra

This was a side-kick at Aristotle's causes. Perhaps for Aristotle "fire is hot" is a description, but "fire is hot because heat is its essential nature" is an explanation. The explanation gives the cause. Elsewhere I've argued against causes, for various reasons.

Here, Aristotle hasn't noticed that "fire is hot because heat is its essential nature" says no more than that fire is hot because fire is hot.

So I'm raising the question - can we distinguish between a description and an explanation? My suspicion is that explanations are descriptions in a border context. Explanations might appear to invoking metaphysical causes, but I suspect this is an illusion.

Nothing more nor less than creating explanatory hypotheses. I'm not seeing the difficulty you are apparently having with the idea. — Janus

If that's all it is, then fine. Add the word "best" - "creating the best explanatory hypotheses" - and it falls apart.

So where you say

There are not innumerable possible plausible explanations. — Janus

"plausible" adds the normative element that lets confirmation bias in. We can now reject all the explanations we take as implausible.

But further, in the context of this thread, do you take abduction as helping answer Hume's scepticism?

Besides, the point remains, gravity can serve as an explanation. — javra

I'll accept that, if you will accept that the explanation is no more than a more usable description. :wink:

Ok, so what is it?

Laws appeal to symmetries. So they are grounded in mathematical logic. — apokrisis

Noether’s theorem links symmetries to conservation laws - is that were you would go? Isn't describing things in terms of symmetry still describing them?

"For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" is interpreted as "momentum is conserved" which in turn is understood as "the Universe is symmetrical in space, hence momentum is conserved".


Bigger and bigger descriptions. Still descriptions. Awesome descriptions.

"be-cause of gravity" — javra

:wink:

And is that better than "Be-cause it is the will of the Flying Spaghetti Monster"?

I think not. What makes gravity a better account is F=Gm₁m₂/r².

It's what we do that counts, the use to which we can put the theory, and F=Gm₁m₂/r² is much more useable than "Because it is the will of the Flying Spaghetti Monster".

I've brought up conspiracy theories, and argued that it is irrational to embrace them - based on abdduction. — Relativist

Seems to me you missed the argument. Oh well.

Let's look at conspiracy theories. The classic analysis for my eye comes from Watkins, in his Confirmable and Influential Metaphysics. Watkins was a disciple and defender of of Popper.

In the paper, Watkins points out that some hypotheses are neither confirmable nor falsifiable. Such hypotheses have the logical form of an uncircumscribed existential statement - one in which nothing is said about where or when the item in question occurs. This is the logical structure of many conspiracy theories.

Let's look at an example. The government is hiding evidence of alien landings. This asserts the existence of some thing - alien landings - but nothing is said here about where or when. However the government responds, it is open to the believer to maintain their position. If they open area 51 to inspection, the theorist can say that the evidence has been moved elsewhere. If they deny that there is any evidence, that reinforces the idea of a conspiracy.

Where is abduction here?

Is it irrational to embrace conspiracy theories? Consider MKUltra, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study or Watergate. These were conspiracy theories until the time and place of the incidents were fixed.

It is not irrational to believe in conspiracies.

Good stuff.

entertaining Aristotelian notions... — javra

...happens a lot more then it perhaps ought, around these fora. A favourite grump of mine.

But if I may advocate for the devil, let's look at gravity. It's the force of attraction between two masses, and explains all sorts of things, from balls falling to the motion of satellites... or does it describe that motion - that the motion depends on the combined mass and the square of the distance between the bodies... is that an explanation of what happens, or a description?

But gravity is the curvature of space-time! There's an explanation. Only that curvature is itself a mathematical description, one that as you note is incompatible with the other half of physics, which describes things in very different terms.

So we get to this:

We then use the notion of gravity to explain why an object thrown up into thin air will always come back down to earth... — javra

Does it explain why? Or does it just detail the description of the motion?

Now my point would be that it doesn't matter. What we get is a brilliant and useful way of working out what will happen - description or explanation, be damned.

there's a lot in that, a fair bit of it being quite agreeable, some less so.

Here's, I think, the first use of "abduction" in this thread:

Here's how I approach it: some explanation is needed for the constant conjunction of past regularities. I judge that the "inference to best explanation" for this is that there exist laws of nature that necessitate this behavior. Inferring a best explanation is rational - it's a form of abductive reasoning. — Relativist

Leaving aside why there must be such an explanation, a careful look will show that "abduction" doesn't provide such an explanation. "Inference to best explanation" is utterly hollow, until one sets out what a best explanation is. Further, is the mooted "natural law" an explanation of what happens, or just a description - "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction" sets out what happens; does it explain what happens?

It's apparent that many here think "abduction" provides an explanation, tricking themselves into not taking Hume seriously. Science does not gain its force from deduction, induction, or abduction.
Laws are descriptions, not explanations. What matters is the communal practice of testing, contesting, revising. “Abduction” just papers over the real philosophical problem (Hume’s), instead of answering it.

So there's good reason to question the use of abduction hereabouts.

Well, much appreciated. Kind of you to say.

Perhaps, but given it's abstruseness, I'm not sure we should even grant that.

Sure, science involves hunches, guesses, paradigm shifts — all the messiness Feyerabend loved. But dignifying that by calling it “abduction” is a mistake. To reduce the process to some syllogism like “C is surprising, A would explain C, so maybe A” is a derogation of what actually happens in science. And crucially, none of this rescues us from Hume’s problem. Surviving falsification, or being the most elegant hypothesis, does not make a theory more true. What drives science is not a special logic, but the interplay of criticism, communal testing, and background certainties.