So we have him baulking at the the diagonal and rejecting incompleteness as a result. Yet I am in agreement with his constructivist views, as set out above. I was bothered that the one might necessitate the other; however it seems now that they are unrelated. — Banno

I get the sense from the SEP article that Wittgenstein will allow what modern philosophers of mathematics call potential infinites. It looks like Witty would be okay with, e.g. saying that the successor function can be applies an infinite number of times.

I'm not sure how problematic this really is. "There is no set of all the real numbers" is only true from this perspective if we regard the set as an extension. What's stopping us from just paraphrasing it as shorthand for what can be done with an intention and a finite extension(s)?

EDIT: nevermind, I derped. Obviously you can't do that with the reals 'cause they're uncountable. So you have to junk the reals.

I don't see what these koans have to do with what is being discussed, unless you insist on interpreting my words super-literally. — SophistiCat

Okay, let's try it again.

A belief about a probability is not identical to a probability. Kind of like how a movie about you is not you. I have beliefs about the Milky Way, but my beliefs are not identical to the Milky Way. A biography of Otto von Bismarck is not the same thing as Otto von Bismarck, because he's a person, not a book.

This isn't a "koan." Insisting that this is somehow cryptic or hard to grasp is disingenuous in the extreme. This distinction is literally on the same level as telling colors and shapes apart and being able to count. So, if you can't grasp it after this, then I'm done.

No, that is not a given.

What is the probability that it's not a given?

You appear to be confusing "I can always ask about probability" with "every belief has a probability," which I never said.

If you did not, then what is this question supposed to mean? — SophistiCat

A picture of a pipe is not a pipe. A belief that a probability is 50/50 is not a probability.

I can believe that a squirrel is an animal. That does not mean that my belief is an animal. I can use my brain to think about a chair. My brain is not a chair. And so on.

You already channeled the discussion towards Bayesianism when you identified beliefs with probabilities. — SophistiCat

Did I? I think you can always ask a person what they believe a probability to be, but that doesn't make their belief a probability.

Why would they do that? — Baden

Why not?

What you have constructed is a contradiction; they can't both claim to be adding in the way we do and that 2+2=5 — Banno

Same as my question to Baden. Why do we assume that radical translation must yield the same thing we have?

And to both of you: I'm not just being difficult. It's all quite relevant, I think.

Counting this way is correct, because we make it so. And there are cultures that say, "One, two, many," and don't go past a certain number.

But suppose there were a culture that said, "2 + 2 = 5," and their definitions of two, five, equality, and addition were the same as ours. If they all agree, they can't be wrong, can they?

Not quite. I'm saying that one might do either, that the choice of to flip or stand is not rational. — Banno

I agree. It's outside the scope of this thread, but I think there's a point to be made here about epistemic relativism. Maybe elsewhere....

You're saying it's more rational to suspend judgment than to flip a coin. But why?

Perhaps this will help: which part of your argument is about Bayesian mathematics, and which part is an epistemology based on Bayesian mathematics?

I can believe that Bayesian statistics does not see questions about probability as sensible unless they're couched in terms of a person's beliefs/knowledge. What I don't believe is that any sensible epistemology of probability must be Bayesian, in that sense at least.

That is to say, it makes sense to me to say, "In Bayesian probability, you can't say that you don't know the probability of something." I can accept that as a feature of the formal system. But I can't accept an epistemology of probability that won't let me say that there are probabilities I don't know.

Apart from a certain intellectual dishonesty... — Banno

Whether or not one suspends disbelief in the face of equally-probably alternatives has to do with one's priorities. Is it more important to have true beliefs, or to avoid false ones?

Not with Bayesian probability it isn't. You don't know if the coin will land on heads or tails. That makes the probability 50/50. — Isaac

I'm not a statistician by any means, but as I understand it, Bayesian theory defines probability by how strongly one believes that something is/will be true. If a consequence of this is that I cannot say, "I don't know the probability of that," then I'm not sure what to make of that. There are probabilities I don't know. The probability of a coin landing on heads is not exactly 50/50, but I don't know what the exact ratio is. Does Bayesian probability make it impossible for me to say that?

There are probabilities I don't know. If your Bayesian epistemology can't accommodate that, then so much the worse for your epistemology.

The error here is assuming that belief is some identifiable bit of data lodged in the brain somewhere, that of any given object (once described to me) I will create a byte of data corresponding binomially to whether I believe it or no — Isaac

Well, I don't see what I said that presupposes that. I can ask you whether you believe something, and I can ask you what the probability is. The presence of some piece of data in the brain is not implied by asking you either of those things, as far as I can see.

If you really want a dispositional analysis, then we can posit a disposition to say certain things, if that's how it has to work.

Interesting. Can I get an example where the non-equivalence holds?

I agree that there is no contradiction between ~Bp and ~B~p.

Now, kindly answer: does B~p imply believing that the probability of p is 0, and/or vice versa?

But that doesn't happen. So either Witty diagnosed some really deep and difficult problem with philosophy. One that's hard to root out. Or his approach doesn't work for long standing and well known disputes, because maybe they're about something more than proper use of language. — Marchesk

I have often suspected that Wittgenstein, when we finally "get over him," will be ignored rather than refuted.

I see the computer with my eyeballs. It's not inside of my eyeballs, or inherently eyeballish.

I used to think that vagueness and subjectivity pervaded every statement to some small degree.

But, that's really a silly assumption. Is there any serious objection to my statement that I am currently using a computer?

The stuff about Wittgenstein's beetle is amusing. I think that Wittgenstein would have found people's arguments over how to interpret that example quite funny, or perhaps frustrating.

"You can't imagine something that is not in a mind." <-- what is that, other than a claim that everything is mental because I can't think of anything that isn't?

I also like this.

And it brings Kant to mind. What would he have said? He could perhaps acknowledge (at least the possibility) that the mind is a fold in the fabric of reality. What he could not have accepted was the mind as a product of phenomenal reality. Where do you stand there, if anywhere?

Personally, I think that it's worthwhile to bracket phenomenonal reality, even though I can't fall into the transcendental illusion of saying that I know what's on the noumenal "oustide" of things. But yes, you can bracket it somehow, and the possibility of this bracketing is one means of escape from idealism, for all that idealists love phenomenology.

I think that idealism survived so long partially because its proponents set an impossibly high bar for its falsification: find me something in your mind that is not mental. But, as you pointed out, that's not a good bar to set. It shouldn't work like that.

I like this.

What I had in in mind - and of course this isn't systematic, which is why it's in the misc forum - is how idealistic philosophy seems to proceed. Berkely, for example, rummages around his mind looking for something that isn't mental, can't find anything, and declares that all is mental. Somebody else refutes him by not thinking or arguing at all, but just by kicking a rock. The process paints a picture of some guy disappearing into his own mind sitting in an armchair, until somebody beans him with a spitball and suddenly he's back to his body.

But perhaps things are different than they were in Berkeley's day. Or perhaps you and the good bishop are just two different guys.

Of course, many idealists are also more sophisticated than that. They rummage around their mental locker looking for something they can know that is not in their own minds, and find nothing. Accordingly.... you get the picture.



True. But notice this thread is in the misc forum. I want to explore a point here about the relationship between idealistic philosophies and "being inside your head." I'm sort of playing around, but also sort of not.

I mean, I agree in one sense: nobody, especially wealthy politicians with a big stake in the economy, wants the shutdowns to go on.

That being said, legislation that would ordinarily provoke an outcry can pass without note right now because of the coronavirus. Politicians can, and will, take advantage of it while it lasts.

I don't think there's this sinister plot to make our countries into police states. It's that politicians will act on our fears and when there's the technology and ability to do something, they will do it. — ssu

Precisely. There is nothing conspiratorial about the observation that the State is opportunistic about extending its control

The thing I'm worried about is government using the coronavirus panic as a cover to pass draconian legislation.

I strongly suspect that the CCP is lying about the present number of coronavirus cases. Given their prior dishonesty in trying to cover it up, there is no reason to believe that they are being honest now.

No new infections. Suuuuuuure.

Let me make sure that I have understood you: you want to say that there is some kind of variation, or change, or flux, or difference, whatever we want to call it, that is primary, out of which everything else arises, and for which there is no account.

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I guess I don't understand this. What does this variation/change/flux/whatever consist in? You say:

I think part of the confusion here stems from working with an inadequate vocabulary ('change' is possibly even worse than 'flux' insofar as change implies a *thing* that changes, subordinating difference once more to identity!) — StreetlightX

And "variation" (your term) implies a thing that varies. And "difference" (also your term) implies two things that are different, and a third thing with respect to which they are different. What puzzles me is that you consistently criticize the words I use, but your own terminology seems to have the same problem. Of course, perhaps I'm being uncharitable here: when you said "inadequate vocabulary," perhaps you meant that the philosophical vernacular itself lacks the terminology to describe what you want. But still, you really ought to introduce a term of your own that doesn't have the same problems that my terms do. And the language you've been using so far, it seems to me, doesn't escape any of your own criticisms.

(I grant you that "change implies a thing that changes" sounds awfully stodgy - there is something Scholastic and Oxfordian about such an argument. But I am much more flummoxed by the reverse: "There is a primal difference which is not a difference between two things." How on Earth am I to make sense of a free-floating variance that is not the variation in anything in particular? Maybe you just "get it" and I don't. But if you "get it," then maybe you could introduce some terminology that works...?)

At any rate, your notion of change/flux/variance/difference seems to be awfully recalcitrant with regards to being expressed in words, although this may be simply my own failing and not that of your concept. Regardless, though, until it is neatly captured in words, it does not provide a sufficient reason for much of anything. And now we come full circle to the original point: how is variation/difference to provide a sufficient reason for things, if it lies outside of the space of justification? If something cannot be justified, it cannot meaningfully participate in inferential relations, including justifying other things.

Yeah, but in philosophy you use "intuition" in kind of a different way. :-)

I said the flux provides the sufficent reason for structure, not that the flux (I really dislike this word btw!) is accountable for in terms of sufficient reason (confusion of expalnanda with explanandum here). — StreetlightX

Why in the world would you appeal to a principle of sufficient reason, if change is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason?

The big problem here, as I see it, is methodological: there is no reason to appeal to a principle of sufficient reason if you're going to accept brute facticity. If change does not need a reason for the way it is, then the way things change (not that things change, but the specific way in which they change) is just a brute fact. And if you're going to say that patterns or tendencies in change are brute facts, then whither your prinicple of sufficient reason?

That's my problem. Your argument looks like this:

1. Change is primary over structure because it provides the sufficient reason for structure.
2. Change itself is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason.

The problem is that, from 2, it follows that:

3. The way in which things change is not accountable for in terms of sufficient reason.

Which is the same as saying that manner in which change happens is a brute fact: why does change happen this way, and not some other way? The answer you give appears to be "because that's just the way it is." But brute facts are not compatible with the PSR, by its very nature.

But this is not the only or even most perspicacious way of looking at it. The other, inverse, way of understanding it is as the expression of a positive fact about nature (and not just a negative limitation upon it): energy differentials are productive of order. That is, the second law attests to the fact that every form of organisation (structure, identity) requires the maintenance of difference without which it would collapse into nothingness.
...

The 2nd law, interpreted negatively, is derivative of this primary fact of nature, which, again, attests to the primacy of flux. The 2nd law is 'permanent', but it's permanence is parasitic upon the permanence of - you guessed it - change. — StreetlightX

I guess I don't see how re-interpreting it like this solves the problem. It is a positive fact about nature that organized systems require difference. But this is no less juridical than the negative interpretation.

And, importantly, this does not find sufficient reason for the law in the flux. Remember, the initial claim was that permanent principles have their sufficient reason in change:

Constancy is just ordered flux, the invariant in variation. I'll only add: both are perfectly real, only that the one furnishes the sufficient reason for the other.

But there is nothing about change that provides sufficient reason for this; the flux could just have easily
have worked differently. Why does the flux have this positive property, and not another? There is, as of now, no sufficient reason for this - which means there's no sufficient grounding for organizing principles in flux.

No, no. It's about the 'individual molecules'. Individual molecules are not 'change' (what would that even mean?) It's about the relations between them, the minimisation of forces between molecules. In other words: regulated change. Not relata but relations are primary. — StreetlightX

I may be deeply misunderstanding you, so let me back up here a moment.

You said, if I have understood you correctly, that flux (change) provides sufficient reason for permanency, or any appearance thereof. My question is, what is it in flux, or change, that provides sufficient reason for the permanence (or apparent permanence) of general laws, e.g. the laws of physics? The Second Law of Thermodynamics would appear to be permanent, for example. I grant you that the Second Law bears on change, but this does not locate the suffient reason for that law in change.

And there's nothing about the laws of physics which the primacy of flux denies: indeed, what do the 'laws of physics' bear upon? Chage. — StreetlightX

The question isn't about what the laws of physics bear upon, but what explains them. Your claim was:

Constancy is just ordered flux, the invariant in variation. I'll only add: both are perfectly real, only that the one furnishes the sufficient reason for the other. — StreetlightX

To substantiate this, the vital thing is to show how e.g. the individual molecules provide sufficient reason for the laws of physics, which are, after all, permanent.. Saying that the laws of physics govern molecules, such as those of soap bubbles, does not show that flux provides the sufficient reason for permanency. To explain the actions of flux (e.g. the change in the atoms of the soap bubble) you still have to appeal to general laws. But in that case, the general laws are supplying the sufficient reason for the flux in particulars, not the reverse.

Fair enough, but I think this kicks the can down the road. You're just reducing the regularity of the soap bubble to smaller regularities, which, in turn, beg the question of organizing principles. I guess you can insist that it's anarchic self-organization all the way down, but this ignores contextual constraint. The individual bonds are not indifferent to their context at all; if you don't believe me, swat a soap bubble with your hand sometime. If the left side of that soap bubble collided with the right side, those bonds would cease to exist. But they don't because it's a sphere.

More generally and simply: this all still relies on the laws of physics working a certain way. Hence my comment about organizational principles.

Swarm intelligence and pendulum entrainment and so on, that stuff is all very fascinating. But you're still left appealing to general laws to make any of it work. The laws of gravitation, or of interaction of particles, or the instincts of starlings, do not admit of reduction to flux without relying on brute facticity.

A thought: flux loses meaning without differentiation. This is one of those points where philosophers become very coy because it's a battle of the unstated assumptions each person has with that-stuff-we-can't-talk-about and that we all seem to be conscious of, to one degree or another, but can't say out loud because it ruins the game.

Regardless, though, flux-as-flux cannot be absolute. At the point where it all becomes white noise, you no longer really have a flux, so much as a nothing.


I suppose I don't agree with the sufficient reason bit, if only because consistency of behavior between invariant structures begs the question of an organizing principle. I am guessing that the assertion that flux provides sufficient reason for permanency hangs on the reducibility of organizing principle to descriptions of flux - but that relies on brute facticity, at which point sufficient reason is out as a methodology. If you want sufficient reason, then permanence has to inhere somewhere, or rather, something must inhere somewhere.

Is there a way to steer the ship between these? Doing so would necessarily involve dissolving the question somehow. But the dissolution must take some form more sophisticated than "Whatever, this is pointless." Nor can it be some Wittgensteinian version of the same.

Perhaps: these are translatable, transposable. Each stands in a peculiar relation to the other. Can an illusion fall out of a construction, which is constructed from that illusion? No - neat and dialectical and all, but that just stands us at square one. It does not satisfy. It's not a ship we can sail on. There are waters, yes, but there must be a reason to sail.

Perhaps: neither is valid from the point of the other, but this need not bother us because we're not shackled to one or the other. We can move freely (flux) but any such move requires an antecedent reason (being). But, this does not satisfy either. Just a glorified description of change disguised as progress.

Perhaps: we cannot put everything into one box. But, we are free to require some globalizing/universalizing apparatus to justify any move from flux to being or back. We need not globalize the same way every time. But, what does "globalize" mean here? I could say that it means we demand some context besides "useful for this one thing right now." But this requires a substantive ethics to make sense of. And without that, we're marooned again.

Puzzling.

What I mean is: in the first case, permanence is apparent because it always goes away after a while, no matter how permanent it looks. Whereas, in the second place, change is an illusion because it was never there to begin with.

Good question. If everything is flux, you make stuff out of the flux, although the permanence of the stuff you make is never true permanence. But if everything "just is," then any change is only apparent. That choice of words was very deliberate.

Then I can't help you.

Read the post.

Refusing to answer the question basically means shallower depth of consideration with regard to time, i.e. refusing to reflect on the issue in a philosophical manner.

In my stillness, I experience flux, in my variation, I see permanence. Each needs to assume the other as fundament.The same eye sees the hands of the clock move, and the ever-changing self sees always the same present. Don't make me choose. — unenlightened

Interesting. What happens if I put on my transcendental idealist hat?

Time is the form of our internal intuition, says Kant. My consciousness of my apperceptive unity as mine happens upon reflection, because I become conscious of the manner in which I am affected by my own reflection, but only as a posterior consequence, giving rise to the timeline whereby I organize my experiences.

The data stream would appear to be pure flux, if anything, although ultimately noumenal. The source of the form of intuition that I impose on it would appear to be eternal and static because necessary, although that too is noumenal, or at least, its source is.

I don't even know what either of these statements are saying. It seems like they make some substantive claims about reality, but when I try to nail these claims, they just slip out of my hands. — SophistiCat

Think Heraclitus and Parmenides. Unless this is a lead up to saying that both are nonsense, in which case we can just go outside and play golf or something.

I know, right?

It's kind of fishy. :wink:

To state what a belief is, you have to put it into a sentence with a subject/predicate form. So whether or not beliefs are propositional, you have to say them in so they sound as if they're propositional.