If you are interested in a serious discussion of epistemology that follows what you consider pragmatic, you can join Bob Ross and I here. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9015/a-methodology-of-knowledge/p1 The first two pages of responses are primarily junk, but when Bob Ross joins, we have a serious discussion. — Philosophim

I don't remember seeing it before. I'll take a look.

Resist falling under the spell of socialism, if you can. — NOS4A2

Yes, and get rid of Social Security and Medicare while you're at it.

Present your case in whichever way you like. — universeness

As I noted, it isn't my job to make the case, and you haven't done it. You've made claims about the way things happened without any references or backup other than the book you're discussing and "seems to me."

It's also perfectly fine for you to choose to pick up your ball and remove yourself, if you don't want to play. — universeness

You've misunderstood the purpose of philosophy and of the forum. Criticizing your ideas is part of the game. It is playing. If you want me to pick up my ball, I suggest you don't respond to this post. If you do respond, that's an invitation for me to continue.

The west interpreting the east in a western way. This doesn't say anything about the actual ideas. — Noble Dust

Perhaps you're right, but I don't see eastern philosophies, at least not Taoism as formulated by Lao Tzu, as esoteric at all. As I always say, to me, it's meat and potatoes philosophy.

Yes, it is a requirement, and some people treat it as an inconvenience: "I understand the problem, and I have a solution. Why should I be wasting my time on writing it down for the sake of bureaucracy?" Software engineers are free-spirited and they despise inefficient processes. A part of my job is to teach them to embrace this process, because I'm convinced that writing design docs benefits the author even more than the reader. — pfirefry

Civil engineers are not so different. Not so much free spirited, maybe, as lazy. If you want to be an artist, sometimes you have to clean the paint brushes.

Unless you mean to exclude pragmatics like Dewey and James, in a pragmatic view. knowledge is a conceptual model that can be more or less USEFUL. — Joshs

Agreed.

You mentioned forms of philosophy reliant on truth propositional logic as not pragmatically meaningful, but I assume you would also include many Continental philosophers. — Joshs

I'm not familiar with the works of those philosophers in more than a casual way, so I can't comment specifically. Are there any philosophers other than the pragmatists who focus on the usefulness of knowledge rather than truth? Or, I guess, who define truth in terms of usefulness.

There is a danger that ‘normal human beings’ becomes synonymous with ‘ human being who can understand the philosophy’. — Joshs

That certainly isn't how I mean it. I mean Joe Sixpack, Joe the Plumber, John Doe, John Q. Public, Hugh G. Rection, Ben Dover, Harry P. Ness.

But the greatest works of continental philosophy, from Plato to Descartes, Spinoza, Hegel and Nietzsche, were initially and for the most part still to this day meaningful to only a small segment of the population. But such ‘useful’ philosophies became the basis for interpretations by mathematicians and scientists (Newton, Frege, Gauss, Heisenberg, Godel, Turing, Darwin, Freud) who produced models influenced by these ideas which in turn led to new technologies, therapies, sciences. So the usefulness doesn’t happen as a direct communication from abstract philosophy to ‘normal human beings’ , it happens in stages, by being translated into more and more pragmatically articulated versions over time, accessible to increasingly large segments of the population. — Joshs

Good point. How to respond... How about this - The scientific method is about as pragmatic as you can be. It was the model for the process I described in the opening post. I was never claiming that all the philosophers before Peirce and James weren't of value.

Good post.

In software engineering, we have a practice of consolidating knowledge in Design Docs, also called RFCs (Requests For Comments). E.g. Google, Uber. Overall, it is similar to SCM. When someone needs to build a new feature or change an existing system, they will write the proposal in a design doc and assign relevant stakeholders for a review. — pfirefry

The design docs you are talking about seem like what we call basis of design memoranda (BDM). BDM are usually prepared when data collection is complete, although design investigations required to gather specific additional information my be described. The BDM summarizes all the information required to complete the design including the goals of the design; performance requirements; required data analyses and modelling; a data summary; the SCM; and operation, maintenance, and monitoring requirements for the completed design.

Overall, my stance is that knowledge exists in our heads. We use processes such as SCM and design docs to solidify our own knowledge and to align our knowledge with the knowledge of others. The artefacts of the process, such as SCM and design docs, don't fully capture the knowledge that we have, but they help their readers to form their own knowledge. Obtaining knowledge and sharing it with others requires investing time and effort. A pragmatic person knows how to balance the time spent researching and the time spent doing. — pfirefry

In the kinds of designs I have worked on, professional standards and standard engineering practice require that the basis of the design has to be documented in writing to justify design decisions that are made. The same is true of all subsequent design documents. At any time I should be able to answer the question "Why did you do it that way?" and provide backup for the decision.

Intuitively, we think that sharing knowledge is an altruistic act, because it takes away someone's time for the benefit of others. But I think oftentimes it is not the case. For example, this comment is an artefact of knowledge sharing. I expect that 90% of the value generated from this comment is for my personal gain, from organising my thoughts on this topic, and I can only hope that it will generate at least some value for others. — pfirefry

What goes on here is really different from what goes on in the design process. During design, sharing knowledge, or at least documenting it, is a fundamental requirement. It's not altruistic at all.

Sure, pragmatism pretends to drop the notion of truth in the hope of working instead only with belief. — Banno

I'll let what I've already written stand as a response to this. I've tried to be clear about my understanding of these things and I think I've succeeded. You're a smart guy. It's not that hard. You just like being contrary. That doesn't mean you have to agree with me.

But one does not have to drop the notion of truth in order to act in accord with your six methodological points. Indeed, it is clear from the first point that some things are to be taken as true in order to get the process started.

It would not do in your example to doubt the existence of groundwater and soil. These are presumed as constitutive of the activity in which you are engaged.

But further, it would not do to doubt that one can keep accurate records, that one can make measurements, that one can communicate these with others, that one's actions can make a difference to the environment. — Banno

That's it? That's what truth is needed for - to tell us the world exists? That's more metaphysics than knowledge.

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler — jamalrob

Did you ever see the film by Robert Altman with Elliot Gould? I guess a lot of people don't like it because of it's unconventional Phillip Marlow, but it's one of my favorites. I've always liked Gould.

You would have to elaborate and use examples to evidence your point of view. Otherwise what you have typed is mere simplistic opinion. — universeness

I think you have it backwards. You're the one who made the claims. It's up to you to provide evidence that they are correct. Everything you presented in your original post is what I call "seems to me" history, anthropology, political science, and economics. I know enough history and anthropology to know it ain't so.

Forgot to mention this. There's a neat program on Netflix called "The Midnight Gospel." It's animated, but the discussion is taken from interviews with interesting people with all sorts of esoteric beliefs. Clever, entertaining, and interesting. Very free-wheeling and funny, but respectful of unusual ideas.

But yes, I never argued that across time people have not also done (and still do) good things. — Tom Storm

I know you didn't, but sometimes I just want to say to people - "Stop with the hell in a handbasket/why, when I was a boy! The world is a wonderful place. We're lucky to be here."

I just mention that Plato and Newton were interested, and that remnants of the tradition are extant in Freemasonry, Theosophy, and such ubiquitous details as the number of days in a week. — unenlightened

I do read in the esoteric traditions, including theosophy and Hermeticism, alchemy, Rosucucianism and the ancient writers. I also try to keep sceptical and critical in the spirit of philosophical enquiry. — Jack Cummins

I must admit to skepticism about esoteric philosophical approaches. It seems like most phenomena can be explained based on human psychology. It's also true that many practitioners have been charlatans. Many others have developed their ideas without any disciplined process of study. I would be interested in discussing esotericism from a historical perspective. How did it develop? How does it fit with more traditional philosophies? It seems like there is a relationship between esotericism and eastern philosophies. I'd be interested in understanding that better.

It appears like you're describing knowledge in the context of a single individual. I would add that when it comes to collective problem solving, it's important to articulate thoughts promptly and succinctly. Knowing something well means being able to effectively explain it to others. It's also important to challenge others to help them solidify their own knowledge. — pfirefry

In my work, all of the activities described are typically performed by a project team of from three to 10 people. The process is specifically planned to use collective problem solving. One of the really good things about a well developed conceptual model is that it is very useful presenting a comprehensive vision of the problem to people who are not familiar with it, often including non-technical decision makers.

"Pragmatic Excellence" is one of the engineering values at the company where I work as a software engineer. I endorse pragmatism a lot. To me, being pragmatic means making decisions despite the lack of knowledge or sometimes even against what I know. Knowledge and pragmatism can conflict. This makes me wonder if it's safe to combine the terms "pragmatic" and "epistemology" together. — pfirefry

I don't know much about software engineering and how it compares with what I did for a living. If what you are saying is that sometimes you have to make decisions based on limited and uncertain knowledge, then I agree. If you mean something different than that, then I don't understand.

One thing I haven't discussed is how the information we incorporate into the conceptual model is evaluated, justified. Justification comes in the steps where we evaluate the SCM. We need to answer these questions:

• Does the information we have provide adequate support?
• Can we identify and document the source of that information?
• What are the uncertainties in our knowledge?
• What are the consequences of us being wrong?

It's easy to arrive at a contradiction with "pragmatic epistemology". If we all adopt a pragmatic attitude towards knowledge, then we will stop pursuing the knowledge that is far removed from our everyday lives. However, if we look back at the past, we will see that our modern everyday world is grounded in the scientific projects that didn't offer any practical value at the time they were carried out. — pfirefry

I don't see how that is a contradiction of anything, but I do think it is a valid criticism. I addressed it in a fairly half-assed way in a previous post. I said that curiosity is a pragmatic drive that leads us to try to gain a wider understanding of the world so we can address changing conditions. That's true, but weak. Here's the important point for me - even when scientists and others are studying phenomena with no known practical use, they still use methods similar to those I've described. The goal of any research is to develop conceptual models of the conditions being studied. Quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics, and relativity are all conceptual models.

Strikes me as simply good method. What is it that makes it specifically pragmatic? — Banno

I like this definition of "pragmatism," which is from Wikipedia:

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.

My example shows one way that knowledge can be used for "prediction, problem solving, and action." The most important issue here for me is the different definitions of "knowledge" required for the two approaches. When we talk about knowledge here on the forum, we usually talk about truth, with truth defined as something that applies to propositions, statements. The famous, maybe infamous, example of that is justified true belief. Again from Wikipedia:

The concept of justified true belief states that in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe the relevant true proposition, but also have justification for doing so. In more formal terms, an agent S knows that a proposition P is true if and only if:

• P is true
• S believes that P is true, and
• S is justified in believing that P is true.
  

I've always found this view of knowledge unsatisfactory. It's misleading and doesn't reflect how people really use knowledge. The fact that the definition can be undermined by something as silly as the Gettier problems shows me how weak it is.

As I stated previously, the definition of knowledge I prefer is information incorporated into a conceptual model that reflects the phenomena of interest. I think you could argue that this is similar to a coherence theory of truth. I have no problem with that. The important difference is that a pragmatic theory of knowledge always focuses on the use knowledge will be put.

To summarize, again - Philosophers mostly talk about knowledge as a proposition that can be true or false. In a pragmatic view, knowledge is a conceptual model that can be accurate or less accurate.

It's not hard to understand - many artists do mainstream, compromised work for the money and exposure. This often annoys and frustrates because anything they might want to do with a richer imaginative vision is simply a risk and unlikely to sell. Audiences are frustrating and this often breeds contempt for the stuff which sells. — Tom Storm

And yet the world is full of wonderful, beautiful music, visual art, poetry, literature, architecture....

What did you engineer? — Raymond

My degree is in civil engineering. I worked for environmental engineering companies investigating and cleaning up contaminated properties.

So what you are describing in the method you set out presupposes that we already know stuff.

I assume the process is iterative? — Banno

At a contaminated site, we generally know stuff before we really start a formal investigation. We observe the site, look at historic maps and aerial photographs, and talk to people living or working at the site. We check government databases to see if there have been any reports of environmental issues on the property or nearby ones. That limited information can be used to prepare a preliminary SCM which gives us enough to get started in planning additional investigation activities.

So, yes, it is an iterative process.

I'm not sure that we do disagree. You presumably agree that modelling assumptions , which are ultimately causal or logical, aren't empirically verifiable, and that on the other hand, unless modelling assumptions are made, to speak of learning from data is meaningless. — sime

I'm not sure if I understand. A site conceptual model is just a description, image of the site which lays out all the information gathered during the investigations. To me, the most useful way of presenting a SCM is visually, using figures. Data tables are also needed. There will also be calculations e.g. groundwater flow direction and velocity, contaminant degradation rates, averages. On the figures, you can show the locations of the sources of the contamination and how it has moved and is presently distributed across the site. You can also show the expected distribution of contamination in the future based on groundwater and fate and transport modelling. You can also show the locations of existing and potential human and environmental receptors.

There are certainly assumptions that go into calculations and computer based modelling. Is that what you are talking about? There are also assumptions required by the fact that most of what is going on takes place underground and the number of data points we can provide is limited. Typical data points include boring logs; analytical results of soil, groundwater, and sediment samples; visual observation of site conditions; topographic and bathymetric surveys; geophysical surveys; and wetland surveys. Going deeper, there are assumptions associated with laboratory analytical methods. Which in particular are you talking about?

I am under the impression that epistemological pragmatism is being defined here in terms of the practicality of the problem pursued, rather than in terms of the method of inquiry — sime

The distinction that's important to me here is the one between one way of seeing knowledge and another. Typically, knowledge is defined based on the truth value of a proposition. Except in relatively simple situations, that type of knowledge isn't adequate to deal with practical problems. For that, information has to be incorporated into a comprehensive summary, what I called a site conceptual model. As I noted, SCMs aren't true or false, they are accurate or not.

which at every step hangs upon intuition regarding non-verifiable assumptions of causality. — sime

Please explain.

Ah I see. Sorry. Do you have a reference for a Site Conceptual Model? — fdrake

Here's a link to where you can see a copy of U.S.EPA's "Guidance for Conducting Remedial Investigations and Feasibility Studies Under CERCLA." CERCLA is the law that created the Superfund program. This really is the source for all the work we did doing site cleanup. I always thought EPA did a good job with this guidance. States and other agencies often wrote their own guidances, but this provided the model for much of that. EPA called it Conceptual Site Model. I don't know why we always called it Site Conceptual Model.

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe/10001VGY.TXT?ZyActionD=ZyDocument&Client=EPA&Index=1986+Thru+1990&Docs=&Query=&Time=&EndTime=&SearchMethod=1&TocRestrict=n&Toc=&TocEntry=&QField=&QFieldYear=&QFieldMonth=&QFieldDay=&IntQFieldOp=0&ExtQFieldOp=0&XmlQuery=&File=D%3A%5Czyfiles%5CIndex%20Data%5C86thru90%5CTxt%5C00000003%5C10001VGY.txt&User=ANONYMOUS&Password=anonymous&SortMethod=h%7C-&MaximumDocuments=1&FuzzyDegree=0&ImageQuality=r75g8/r75g8/x150y150g16/i425&Display=hpfr&DefSeekPage=x&SearchBack=ZyActionL&Back=ZyActionS&BackDesc=Results%20page&MaximumPages=1&ZyEntry=1&SeekPage=x&ZyPURL#

I don't think my list starts far back enough to be a general guideline. Most questions aren't even precise enough to get numbers associated with them! — fdrake

I didn't mean to imply the processes you and I described were the same. I was using it to show that the way I was presenting things was not limited to just one kind of knowledge.

And there seem lots of ways that philosophy is not transcribable as any kind of engineering. But that imo in no way disqualifies an engineering approach to philosophic matters. Expectations of utility have to be modified, to be sure. But salient is the command to think, think through, test and analyze, evaluate (& etc.), rinse and repeat until done. — tim wood

Engineering is nothing special. It's mostly just figuring stuff out and then deciding what to do. I'm using it here as a stand-in for all the regular stuff all people do every day. People need to know things in order to make decisions about what needs to be done. It bothers me that all the philosophical talk about knowledge and truth never gets around to the reason we need knowledge in the first place. We need it because we need to know things in order to do things. The knowledge we talk about here on the forum has very little to do with the knowledge I use, all of us use, on a day to day basis.

What this needs, imo, is the addition of the word "possible." Possible implications, world, experiences, people. Nor even impossible ruled out, but perhaps qualified in some way. And primary value but not exclusive value. And thus such philosophy instead of being not useful - which of course in a sense it isn't - is instead denominated not especially useful at this time. — tim wood

If what you're getting at is that the knowledge we gather that seems useless may have a use we don't know of yet, I agree. Curiosity is a very pragmatic drive. It helps us build an understanding of the world beyond our current needs. That context helps make what we know more robust and provides additional information for when conditions change.

One cannot justify the usefulness of a model of data without first making ontological commitments. The concept of usefulness only comes after committing to some notion of truth, that cannot be pragmatically determined on pain of circularity. — sime

I think it's clear from what I've written that I don't agree.

A lot of the above discussion came from another discussion I participated in about four years ago. In that discussion, fdrake responded with a post I thought was interesting. Different from my way of looking at things, but with characteristics in common. I hope you don't mind me reposting this here, fdrake:

Can describe the steps in doing a standard statistical analysis (hypothesis test on model parameters) of some data in a similar way:

(1) Describe data collection method and problem data is being used to study.
(2) Identify derivable statistics for problem and their distributions.
(3) Aggregate derived statistics into a statistical model appropriate for research question.
(4) Model fitting - instabilities? weirdness? go to (1) .
(5) Model checking - violated assumptions? go to (1)
(6) Fit checking - what purpose is the model to be given?
(7) Impact assessment - what does the model mean for the problem at hand?
(8) Interpretive conclusions? Ambiguities? Quantificational results? Improvements for further study?
(9) Return to (2) until all avoidable violations and weirdness have been removed or accounted for and fit is adequate. — fdrake

If you want to actually pay respect to artists and their descendants - pay them enough in advance when they live! You are so willing to invest in so many s**ts and you don't want a single cent of deficit from an artist? Most corrupted bs I ever know. — D2OTSSUMMERBUG

Here's a link to a circular from the U.S. Copyright Office describing the rules for copyright protection.

https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf

It can be a bit complicated, but in general, copyright protection lasts for about 100 years. Is that reasonable? Well, when I die, my family gets to keep and use my assets. That's one of the reasons I've saved, so that there will be money for them after I die. Seems like artists should have the same ability. Is 100 years right? I don't know.

I think your; and I guess Robert Noonan's; understanding of history, society, and politics; is very naive and very inaccurate. It's a myth made up to promote a simplistic political cartoon. That doesn't mean things aren't unfair, just that that's not how it happened.

I'm saying “replicates <…> brain” because the fundamental mathematical model was influenced by how brain neurons work (each neuron receives multiple inputs and then emits own signal). — pfirefry

I don't doubt that the way the brain works has similarities to neural networks constructed by humans. I was questioning the specificity of your comment:

Personally, I think that this technology replicates the 'mindless' parts of the human brain. — pfirefry

Seems to me; and no, I don't have evidence; that it would model the whole brain. I can't tell if you say "mindless" because you want to leave a door open for consciousness to be something else.

From my perspective (an old mathematician) philosophy people looove to talk and write, sometimes going on for paragraph after paragraph elaborating upon a concept that I would have described in a couple of sentences. But I see that as my fault, being too concise, failing to expand and not enjoying writing as much as others do. The writing on this forum can be very impressive in both quality and content, but I fade away after reading a few lengthy paragraphs. — jgill

Density of conceptual content is inversely proportional to required message length. Fine distinctions with caveats, more words. — fdrake

[joke] Even your two takes on the subject are just long, convoluted ways of saying tl;dr. [/joke]

The problem I see with all of it, old fogey that I am, is that it becomes impossible to distinguish image from reality. Reality is, apart from anything else, painful. It is bloody, it is treacherous, it changes continually, and the pain that accompanies it is real. Whereas in the VR and AI worlds, there is no possibility of real pain, only simulation, and the difference is fundamental, but apparently not discernable to a great many people. — Wayfarer

I'm not sure if this is the same thing you are talking about.

We've been talking in recent weeks about art in different threads. One thing that struck me is that a lot of art is expressed within tight constraints of the rules and technical difficulties of the discipline and tradition. Working within those constraints requires subtlety and awareness. It provides a frame and structure. Seems like something similar probably takes place in life in general. Life without constraints is something other than human, for better or worse. I'm retired and I know I have to be aware of the attractiveness of sitting around doing nothing but reading and participating in intellectual video games like the forum.

Personally, I think that this technology replicates the 'mindless' parts of the human brain. — pfirefry

Evidence?

Are most people not very philosophical in their thinking and talking? I find it difficult to engage people in large topics that may not yield rewarding conclusions. Do philosophy people have a reputation? — TiredThinker

Your post is a little unclear. Are you talking about members of the forum or the general public? If you're talking about the general public, I've almost never had any trouble getting into a conversation with just about anyone about serious issues relating to values and world views. Just look for common values and experience and show respect and interest for their views. Not hard. Oh, yes, and stay away from politics.

Good post.

Why should it be given? They should just take it. — Raymond

Yes...well...why didn't I think of that?

So you are on the side that owning the means of production is the only way to get this equality.. rather than being independent aspects of leftist goals. — schopenhauer1

I haven't provided any idea of how to give people the power they need to ensure a decent life. That's because....well, I don't know how it should be done.

For example, for a piano concerto, I would pick a seat in the front row right before the piano, so that I could focus on the piano best. Or I would collect and compare different interpretations of the same piece, and I would get a thrill out of watching out for how each interpretation handled a particular passage. — baker

I've never put much effort into art, even fiction, which is where I've spent my time. Now, I find myself working to deepen my experience in a way that sounds similar to how you talk about music here. So, I envy you your experience. I think that's why I've enjoyed the recent discussions of art so much.

I also put in a vote for Kindle and other electronic reading apps. While I'm reading, I can immediately find out the meaning of words I don't know, track down historic references, see examples of works of art, and using Google Earth to get a better idea of relevant geography.

Men are as vital to (pro)creation as women — Agent Smith

Men provide genetic material. Women provide that, plus nine months use of their bodies as a place to grow. One man is all that's needed, but you need one woman per child.

Also, unlikely that the holy spirit is into men.

Ok cool. So needs met is more important than power differentials (only a few owners own the means of production)? — schopenhauer1

The problem is that without power, people won't get what they need or, if they do, it can be taken away.

I appreciate the feedback, and did not mean to come across that way. I will be more careful of attitude going forward. — Philosophim

As I noted, it was a good post.

Frankly it seems to me this pride is a complete fabrication by the gun manufacturing lobby for two treason.

First, the fact that individuals even need lethal self defense at all is really an appalling comment on the quality of our police. Other nations do perfectly well without it. — ernest

I think you're wrong about the kind of attitudes we're talking about being a result of political action and public relations. The attitudes have always been there. The NRA and others just use it as a lever. I also don't think the gun problem of the quality of policing. I'm not sure it's a problem policing can fix.

Second, it seems an enormously displacement of conventional ethics to be proud of the ability to kill. I can't really find any philosophical basis for it at all.

So it seems to me, if people instead thought it to be something that reflects their own inadequacy, to need lethal rather than nonlethal self defense, then it would be an enormous improvement. — ernest

Telling gun rights supporters that you see them as people who are using guns to deal with their inadequacies is not a winning strategy. They already know what a lot of Americans think of them. You're not giving them any reason to find a middle way.

But it would be helpful if the general public regarded shooting other people more as a sad last resort, that we all would rather avoid, than to trumpet it in parades while shooting off rounds of bullets and waving the flag. — ernest

I think more people would think and act the way you'd like them to if they didn't think that any sign of conciliation was an opening for gun control activists to make inroads.

Would that I could be more nuanced to say it, but frankly, it just looks completely insane to someone raised in Great Britain. I don't mean to offend anyone by saying it, but sorry, that's how it looks. — ernest

Most Americans don't care how it looks to people in Europe, on our domestic issues in particular. Maybe we should, but we don't.

I call it as I see it. — Agent Smith

So, calling it as you see it excuses you from having to justify opinions that are ignorant and disrespectful.