Well, I’m not sure how we ended up just exchanging worldviews rather than arguing about something substantial, — Jamal

For me, metaphysics, which is the study of worldviews, is, along with epistemology, the most substantial aspect of philosophy - the most central to the reasons I'm here.

Good points ! We are like wicked children, who question what they are told, because it feels good. But we are also anguished adults, truly troubled about whether X is right and whether Y could be true. — green flag

Well, I am neither wicked nor anguished. I guess I'm just opinionated and stubborn.

Welcome to the forum.

I agree that you can’t separate us from the world, because we’re part of it, but I don’t agree with what I take you to really mean, viz., that humans are in some way constitutive of reality. I’m a kind of materialist, despite Kantian sympathies. — Jamal

I don't know if you've read any of my posts on metaphysics, which are universally rarely acclaimed as brilliant. If you had, you would know that, as both R.G. Collingwood and I see it, both materialism and the understanding that humans create reality are metaphysical positions. As such, they aren't true or false, we just pick the one that works the best for us. Sometimes I'm a materialist, I think an engineer has to be. Now that I no longer have to do anything for a living, I'm more often whatever it is that I am. I guess that means I'm a pragmatist - I use what works. Pragmatism is also a metaphysical position.

Again, you seem to be saying two different things: that we are part of the world, and that the world is human. I agree with the first part, and only agree with the second part to the extent that we are reciprocally bound to the rest of the world such that we see it, conceptualize it, and act in it necessarily in our own ways, owing to our cognitive endowments and social behaviour. But it’s not like there were no dinosaurs before humans existed. That’s a Schopenhauerian antinomy that I think we can avoid. — Jamal

As I see it, we are both part of the world and the world is human. One of the first threads I started here on the forum discussed whether the idea of an objective reality makes sense. My answer is the same as the one I gave earlier in this post - when I'm doing science, it does; when I'm examining our human relationship to reality, for me at least, it doesn't.

Just as we don’t want to separate person and world, neither should we separate valuing from doing. — Jamal

I guess I just think that values come first. Values tell us what we need and want. Based on that, we go and do stuff.

To be clear, it is not my intention to take this discussion off on a tangent by making it about what metaphysics means and which metaphysics is correct. On the other hand, I couldn't explain my position without bringing it up.

This makes sense, because it costs to doubt. Smooth operation is paused. I have to stop and make sure, 'waste time' questioning this or that, when I could be steaming ahead. Then there's the cost of feeding a complex nervous system, of calculating a massive model when a cheap model might be the better deal, all things considered. — green flag

This would make sense if real people making real decisions argued about things like this, but it's only philosophers. Philosophers have lots of time to waste. Pausing smooth operation is what they, we, do.

But the point is that the existence of something “merely” as a social practice or as an intersubjective attribution does not entitle someone to say it’s just an illusion. — Jamal

Yes, I agree, but in my time here on the forum, a feeling has grown that it doesn't make sense to talk about reality, or the world, or meaning without understanding that all of these things are human. You can't separate us from the world or the world from us. Although I'm sympathetic to the idea that our concepts are not ultimate reality, illusions, that doesn't work in our daily lives unless we are sages. The Tao Te Ching is clear that the multiplicity of the world is human. It's ours. It's real. It's where we live and work.

And somewhat against your point, I don’t think this depends on its being rooted in something basic, unless we say that everything we do is rooted in something basic (which is a fair point but doesn’t say much). — Jamal

I'm not talking about what we do, I'm talking about what we value. And I do think that goes back to basic human nature, something built into us. Instinct I guess, as modified by personal and social experience and our mental capacities. For what it's worth, I've been reexamining these beliefs recently. @apokrisis and many others don't see it that way. They see our values and behavior more as a reflection of our generalized conceptual capabilities processing our experiences. (Forgive me if I mischaracterized your position Apokrisis)

There's no doubt I am walking a bit on thin ice. My understanding of cognitive science and psychology is not technically extensive. A lot of what I believe is based on introspection and observing people.

This can be extended to cover all needs and wants, whether basic or not. All of this valuing, whether based purely on need or additionally on conventional observance (“deciding”), is real. Things really are valuable, in our hands or in the market. — Jamal

I think all the values we think of on a daily basis - the value of money, status, expensive toys, etc. have their source in those basic values. The manifestations may represent themselves in the market or our fantasies, but that's not where their root is.

Trying to be nice, for ↪T Clark. — Banno

Thank you.

It could be that to the extent we value rightly, we're in tune with the Mind of God. — frank

I see values related to God as less basic, although I know a lot of people disagree with that. This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God. — Verse 4, Tao Te Ching - S. Mitchell translation

all the little parts of your body act like they're in a community and they work all day long to make the community endure — frank

Sounds like comuhnism to me.

We don't decide to give value to food and shelter, so in this case value is rooted in basic needs and desires which we don't control. — frank

I think this is the heart of the matter. We can argue about why I like Chinese food or why I vote Democratic, but there are a set of foundational values I think are much more basic. Security, safety, maintaining what we need to live. Family. I'm tempted to say that all the less basic values can be traced back to those more basic ones, but I'll have to think about that.

And where do those basic values come from? Instinct? Learning? Experience? Physiological reaction? I guess all of those tossed together into the blender of our cognitive machinery.

The metaethical one has tends to greatly shape (I would argue) peoples’ normative ethical theories. — Bob Ross

Thanks for your response. I must admit I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I don't think I believe in normative ethics, at least not as something driving our behavior. I see moral rules more as a reflection of personal and social judgements. If nothing else, your thread has helped me realize that.

I don't want to send the discussion off on a tangent, so I'll leave it there.

consensus was, leave it, as there have been responses already. I'm not suggesting deletion because of the subject matter, only on the grounds of quality, or absence thereof. — Wayfarer

You're right, given it was you, I shouldn't have played the anti-religion card.

The way this question is phrased amounts to meaningless internet blather. There may be a legitimate philosophical issue at stake, but the wording is poor and the reasoning specious. I'm flagging the thread for deletion. — Wayfarer

I don't think it's reasonable to delete this thread. It's true it was a bit unclear, but I thought it was interesting. [T Clark's usual spiel] There have been many atheist threads much less clear than this. Religious threads should be treated the same.[/T Clark's usual spiel]

So, lef us say it is all physical as you said. Only substance. — Raef Kandil

I didn't say that.

Is this a response to me? It's hard to tell. Here's a link to a page that will show you how to tag your responses to posts and specific quotes.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13892/forum-tips-and-tricks-how-to-quote/p1

Does God exist...If all the rest is created, the need for a supreme higher power is real and therefore whatever way to decide to refer to it, it is all the same. We are referring to the same real need. — Raef Kandil

Welcome to the forum. I enjoyed your post.

The forum is a fraught place to take up the existence of God. Most people here, or at least the loudest, are committed atheists. I don't think they will care much for your nuanced views. Many will see your position as irrelevant to the question of God's existence. My thoughts are in sympathy with yours, although I see things a bit differently.

For me, god is a metaphysical entity, by which I mean its existence isn't a matter of fact, but a way of looking at the world. For me, it represents the fact that many humans experience the world as a living thing. Although I am not a theist, I have no particular religious belief, I often find myself thinking that way. I feel grateful for the world and all the things it has given me. I think many religious believers feel that living connection much more strongly than I do.

I find the metaphysical basis of those feelings consistent with the way I see things. If, as you note, much of our reality is constructed by us, that means the idea of objective reality is misleading. The world as we see it is half human. That's not really all that radical a view. The writings of philosophers like Kant and Lao Tzu point in that direction. My understanding of my readings in psychology and cognitive science tell me that the structure of our minds and our thoughts is not just a function of the world outside, but also of our physical nature, our bodies, our nervous systems, our humanity.

In metaethics, it is exceedingly common to divide views into two subcamps: anti-realism (i.e., that there are no categorical imperatives) and realism (i.e., that there are categorical imperatives). Although I find this to be an intuitive distinction (as an approximation), I am finding the distinction blurring for me the more precise I analyze my metaethical commitments. — Bob Ross

Are there consequences depending on which approach you pick? I mean moral consequences, differences in what behavior you consider moral and, more importantly, how you behave.

broad agreement — Banno

No, I don't think so. For me, any definition or description that doesn't take into account how people use knowledge on a day to day basis is misleading. You call it pragmatism and I'm ok with that.

You married and started a family in the post WWII era of wide-spread prosperity and very good long-range economic prospects. A lot of people in China are not having more than 1 child because the cost of housing, medical care, and retirement is too high to make a commitment to 2, 3, or 4 children.

AT this point in time, upwardly mobile women understand that having a large family means interrupting or halting their careers, and upwardly mobile families want their children to be upwardly mobile too -- which amounts to a fairly expensive project. — BC

Whether or not people can afford to have children is not the question on the table as described in the OP. It is talking about the effect of fewer children on the retirement system. As for financial issues with child rearing, we did take those into account. My wife and I didn't have children until we were financially secure enough to raise them.

Preparation for Kazakhstan: — Jamal

Eat some apples, ride a horse. That's where they came from. In a world, or at least a country, full of geographical ignorance, I think Central Asia is the geography we're most ignorant of.

Sorry, can't help. But the subject seems interesting, so I'll pay attention.

It may be just a linguistic issue, but I prefer to say, not that knowledge is uncertain, but that we know less than we think we do. — Ludwig V

As I noted previously, you and I seem to agree on most of the substantive issues, [joke]so I'm going to forgive your misconceptions about the language.[/joke]

A well thought out post. Looks like you've paid a lot of attention to this issue. Thanks.

You and I never seem to have productive discussions. Our posts don't seem to be very responsive to each other. I think we just think about things too differently. The things you think are important I don't and those I think are important you don't.

It's unclear how many couples take into account the financial impact of having a child on their retirement plans. If they were to do so, the calculations would be rather discouraging. In fact, it could be economically beneficial for a couple to not have children while others continue to do so. — maytham naei

I have three children, all adults. I can tell you that the concerns you express had no part in our decision to have them, and they shouldn't, and they don't in most people. People have children because they want them. People want children because it's something people do. We're built for it. That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't choose not to have them.

Birth rates have been falling. In some countries they are already far below the replacement rate - China, Japan, Korea, Italy. The US is holding steady right about at the replacement rate - 2.1 children per woman. It is my understanding that lowering birthrates are a result of increased industrialization incomes. Demographers predict that the human population will stabilize at the end of this century at about 11 billion.

Engineers and scientists need to be careful and accurate. Lawyers, with their concept of "beyond reasonable doubt" are similar. I don't have a problem with philosophers adopting the same policy. Ordinary life will no doubt continue with its rather slapdash ways. — Ludwig V

It looks like you've missed the point. Slapdash ways are appropriate when the consequences of being wrong are minor. Engineers often work in situations where the consequences are significant, so more stringent justification is required. It's not the difference between engineering and everyday life, it's the difference between minor consequences and significant ones.

But if there is some poisonous chemical contaminating your site, do you say that maybe it isn't a poison after all? You would be asked for evidence. You don't have any. You know that compound XYZ is poisonous, and you would have a bad time in court if you messed about with the process of removing it. Of course, you wouldn't ever just say it is poisonous. You would say it is poisonous at such-and-such a concentration and you would have evidence what the concentration is. If there was doubt about it, that would have to be mentioned and rationally justified as well. All those things are things that you know. Perhaps the problem is not that knowledge is uncertain, but that it is complicated. — Ludwig V

This whole part of our conversation started because you said:

So when you create a site conceptual model, you must be certain that there is some contamination. Right? — Ludwig V

I just explained why it wasn't as simple as that. So, yes, it's complicated, but it's complicated because of the uncertainty in our knowledge.

In philosophy, "contingent" doesn't mean "open to rational doubt". It means it is not self-contradictory to assert the opposite. — Ludwig V

Yes, my use of the word "contingent" was based on everyday usage. Here are some definitions from the web:

• Possible but not certain to occur; possible.
• Dependent on other conditions or circumstances; conditional: synonym: dependent.
• Happening by or subject to chance or accident; unpredictable: synonym: accidental.

The bolded one is closest to what I was trying to convey.

There is a category of doubt that Hume calls "excessive"; for Hume it was invented by Pyrrho, the ancient Greek. It's very liek Cartesian doubt. He recommends ordinary life and concerns as the best cure for it. He also identifies "moderate" doubt, which I would call a healthy scepticism. Hume thinks it is an excellent policy in general life. — Ludwig V

I guess it comes back to this - doubt isn't the question. Calling it "moderate doubt" doesn't always work in real life. When possible consequences are significant, you need more. You need knowledge of the likely facts and understanding of the level of uncertainty. There, there's your definition of "knowledge" - Understanding of the likely facts and their level of uncertainty. Here's one of my favorite quotes. I use it all the time. It's from Stephen Jay Gould and I've already used it once in this thread - "In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.'"

Descartes' arguments for scepticism consist of an invalid argument and a paranoid fantasy. That's about it. It's not enough to establish what he wants to establish. — Ludwig V

As I noted, he was a bit over-excited, but not wrong.

So when you create a site conceptual model, you must be certain that there is some contamination. Right? — Ludwig V

Certain? Sure, I guess. I generally worked on sites that had been investigated before, so there was existing data. But when I'm looking through the data I'm given for a site, I definitely look at all the data to verify that levels of contamination in soil and groundwater actually exceed regulatory levels.

Many real estate transactions require what is called a preliminary site assessment at properties where no previous environmental investigations have taken place. For investigators who are first on the site, they have to identify locations where there might be contamination, but they don't assume there has been any.

Then you will also also know that your justification was insufficient and will stop having faith in it. At that point, you will want to say that you did not know, after all. — Ludwig V

You say the justification was insufficient. I don't say "sufficient," I say "adequate." "Adequate" means known at an appropriate level of uncertainty. I'll say again - knowledge can never be 100% certain. From an engineering perspective, we never just know something, we know it with a given level of uncertainty. Maybe that's the solution.

All that anyone can ask of you is that you do your bit, and you clearly do that. But I don't think it follows that the outcome (success/failure) is always defined by that. Sometimes success or failure is assessed by other people. You can try your best to win the race. Whether you do win or not is not in your control. For me, knowledge is a success and other people are entitled to assess that for themselves. — Ludwig V

If I'm taken to court as an engineer, I'll have to show what I did was in accord with appropriate engineering practice, including the quality of the data I used. I don't have to show I was absolutely certain. That's the best that it's reasonable to expect.

You speak as if you had been practicing and become a champion doubter! Or is it that you can ask yourself of any empirical proposition whether it could possibly be wrong and answer "Yes" just because it is not self-contradictory to do so. — Ludwig V

Look, @Banno is right that there are lots of things out there we take for granted, and with good reason. But that doesn't mean they are absolutely certain. I gave a couple of examples where that might be the case. You can't use any real world event or phenomenon as an example of something that is absolutely true. This is not a new idea. Maybe Descartes took it a little too far, but he wasn't wrong, just a bit overexcited.

I don't doubt that we are all writing in English and I don't think about it except when prompted by philosophical questions, but I know all truth, all knowledge, is contingent.

I wanted to distinguish clearly between knowledge and fallible knowledge, which, as you may have noticed, I do not consider to be knowledge. — Ludwig V

You and I seem to agree on most everything except this one linguistic issue. I don't think our differences are substantive except in one sense - My way of seeing things focuses on the most important thing - the adequacy of justification.

Well, we're agreed on that, then. However, I'm not sure I would consider JTB a definition in the strict sense. — Ludwig V

I guess I was unclear. I do not consider JTB as useful definition of knowledge. I do not think knowledge has to be true, only that I believe it is true and am justified in that belief. Those are the only things I have control of.

And there are innumerable things that we take as undoubtable. I've already given the example of this post's being in English; to bring that into doubt is to bring into doubt the very basis on which one can doubt. There are simpler examples - One can't play nought and crosses if one doubts that three in a row is a win; One can't doubt that the brakes will work on one's car if one doubts that it has wheels. — Banno

Your three examples are trivial. Of course I can doubt if my post is in English. Of course I can doubt that three in a row wins in tic tac toe. Of course I can doubt if my car has wheels. I can doubt anything. I'm not going to waste my time doubting them because my level of certainty is adequate for the purposes at hand. When she was taking French in school, my daughter sometimes spoke French in her sleep. When I try to talk French, sometimes German words end up in the mix. If I didn't know that naughts and crosses is the same as tic tac toe, I would doubt that three in a row wins.

So, in constructing a site conceptual model one does not doubt that there is a site... — Banno

It is quite common when we start a new project to have a new survey prepared. When we do that, it is not uncommon for us to find that the limits of the property are not where we thought they were. Sometimes when we investigate a property, we find there is no contamination. A property with no contamination is not considered a site under site cleanup regulations.

Nothing is absolute. There can always be doubt. It only matters how uncertain things are.

I'm always envious of people who have models or texts they admire and are guided by. I've never really had that. I enjoy essay writers, but mainly because of their capacity to use language, not so much as a guide or inspiration. — Tom Storm

You've written about how much some music means to you. I don't have that. I do like music, but not to the same degree.

Interesting observations about the engineering process. — Tom Storm

Is the process I described all that different from how you decide things in your life and work? In engineering we tend to be more formal, with required documentation, but for me, the overall process of knowing and deciding is the same one I use in my life outside work.

Can you outline what you have in mind here? Do you mean using experience to make assessments and decisions? — Tom Storm

Much of what I write here on the forum comes from personal experience, introspection, rather than reading philosophers. The philosophers I like are those who's general understanding is consistent with my own, but who can help me to expand my understanding and figure out which way to go next. That's why Lao Tzu means so much to me. A lot of people come to the Tao Te Ching with an understanding based on a formalistic, logical reading. For me, Lao Tzu is pointing us toward an experience, trying to show it to us. The words are just the tools he has to work with and he acknowledges upfront that they are inadequate.

Also, for 30 years as an engineer, I used information from many different sources to help decide what needed to be done and the best way of going about doing it. One of the first jobs on any project was to put all the information from all the sources together into what we called a site conceptual model (SCM). Nowhere in that process or in the results were there any propositions that were true or false. A SCM is not true or false, it is valid or it's not. And it's validity doesn't depend on one piece of information, rather on all of it together. I think that's the way humans deal with knowledge on a real day-to-day basis.

Surely certainty is important to logic, math and in your game - engineering? — Tom Storm

I guess in math and logic, as long as you leave out any contact with the real world, you can get certainty. As for engineering, as I described above, we have to work with limited amounts of expensive information. We have to do the best we can with what we have. Civil and environmental engineering always involves data with lots of uncertainty. That generally gets handled by putting big fudge factors, called factors of safety, on all our calculations. There may be other branches where that is less so.

Can libertarian free will (the idea that it's possible to have done something else in the past) exist in any universe whatsoever? My gut answer is no because it seems illogical to justify its existence. How can an exactly identical situation have multiple possible outcomes? If you try to explain what would make an agent choose one action over another, you seem to be reinforcing the idea that actions have a cause. — Cidat

My position on determinism is that, if we can't, in any feasible way, use current knowledge about the world to predict future human behavior, then a claim that there is no free will is meaningless. So, some human behavior is predictable to a certain extent. People who grow up in Japan will almost certainly learn Japanese. People who were abused as children are more likely to abuse others. People's behavior might be predictable to some degree from the results of Myers-Briggs or other similar testing. But those predictions of human behavior will work in only a very general and probabilistic way.

So, we have free will by default.

I agree that pragmatically we tend to strike a balance between the level of certainty we can achieve for an appropriate cost of achieving it - mostly with a strong inclination to put in as little effort as possible. That's a good strategy in most situations.

I agree that we often call the result knowledge. Knowledge has much more prestige than belief and consequently a claim to knowledge has considerable persuasive power among those disinclined to skepticism.

I agree moreover that such "knowledge" is often good enough in practice. — Ludwig V

I agree with all this, although I wouldn't put quotation marks around knowledge.

Could you explain to me exactly how "knowledge" of this kind differs from justified belief?

Do you have any idea why knowledge carries more prestige and persuasive power than belief? — Ludwig V

The first time I heard about JTB I thought it was wrongheaded. It doesn't reflect how people use knowledge to make decisions. I've thought about that a lot and come to the conclusion that knowledge is adequately justified belief for the specific purpose needed and the consequences of being wrong. So, yes - knowledge is justified belief with the condition that the justification is adequate.

It's funny. I strongly disagree with this:

I'd just say that if we counted something as knowledge and later it turned out to be false, then we were wrong, that it wasn't knowledge, and we have now corrected ourselves.
— Banno

That's perfectly true — Ludwig V

And strongly agree with this:

"God" (or even "gods") is not simply a fact, It is a way of looking at, or thinking about, or approaching the world. It's not in the realm of ordinary truths and falsities. — Ludwig V

Would it not be the case that as we go about our business we generally do struggle to achieve knowledge of the sort you describe — Tom Storm

I don't think we ever really try to achieve certainty in our knowledge. I don't even think it's a valuable goal. Most uses for knowledge don't require certainty—only a balance between level of certainty and cost of justification.

We find people who say they have knowledge of god though direct experience - how would you describe this type of claim? A belief? To call it a false belief would imply that we already have decided that knowledge of god is not legitimate. Or it begs the question that we can tell if someone has knowledge of god. — Tom Storm

I use personal introspection as one of the sources of my knowledge. I think that's legitimate. When I present that as evidence or think about someone else's experience, there are three approaches that make sense to me before rejecting it outright 1) Compare it to my own experience 2) Pay attention to who has had similar experiences and who hasn't 3) Take it as an interesting fact about different ways people experience the world.

Are you familiar with Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation by Roger Ames & David Hall? If so, what do you think of it? I've found it a much more insightful reading (between the lines) than any other version of Laozi's text. I've been meaning to reread it for quite some time ... — 180 Proof

Thanks for the reference. I hadn't heard of it. Went on Amazon. Bought it in Kindle.

I'm reading a new translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lin Yutang. Written in 1948, but new to me. I'm going to recommend this version to anyone who asks for my favorite translation. For each verse, it includes Yutang's translation, but also excerpts from the Chuang Tzu which are relevant. Chuang Tzu is the second founder of Taoism after Lao Tzu. He wrote a couple of hundred years after Lao Tzu. You should be able to find a free PDF version online.

Damn, ↪T Clark is on to me, despite my cunningly hiding my passive aggressive snot in an account of justified true belief. — Banno

This is fun, but we're unnecessarily cluttering up this thread. I'll let you have one last at bat if you'd like. That's baseball terminology. You can ask @Noble Dust for an explanation.