What is "nonepistemic fact" supposed to mean? — CabbageFarmer

I have a pet theory, but I don't know how good it is. So:

(a) It is particulars which are sensed. Sensing is not knowing. The existence of sense data does not logically imply the existence of knowledge. — Sellars

&

On alternative (a) the fact that a sense content was sensed would be a non-epistemic fact about the sense content. — Sellars

I take this to mean that while it is a fact that the sense-content was sensed (in sensing act x and/or by senser y), this does not imply that the senser gained any knowledge about the sense content. If you like, it's a fact in-itself, but not (necessarily) a fact for anyone (any knower.)

"not itself a cognitive fact": is "cognitive fact" here synonymous with "epistemic fact", or does it have, in addition, some phenomenological implication or connotation? — Cabbage Farmer

I think they're synonymous; Sellars himself appears to equate the two.

Finally, I will say of a sense content that it is known if it is sensed (full stop), to emphasize that sensing is a cognitive or epistemic fact. — Sellars

Glad to have you on board. I envisioned this thread as a kind of free-form reading group, but unfortunately I've since become too busy to participate regularly. As it stands, I suppose this thread could either become simply a 'place' to discuss Sellars' essay, or, if someone else wants to take the reins, could still remain a week-by-week, section-by-section discussion.

You've brought up plenty of good points/avenues of exploration, but, for now, I want to respond to just one. I, too, am a little confused by Sellars' distinction between sense content and sense data - or at least confused by the importance of making such a distinction. The possibility that he draws this distinction simply to remain neutral within a larger controversy makes sense, tho, if that is the case, I wish I understood that controversy and what was at stake (or believed to be at stake) in it.

That said, the distinction between data and content is put into action in section 2 ('Another Language?'):

No one, of course, who thinks -- as, for example, does Ayer -- of the existence of sense data as entailing the existence of "direct knowledge," would wish to say that sense data are theoretical entities. It could scarcely be a theoretical fact that I am directly knowing that a certain sense content is red. On the other hand, the idea that sense contents are theoretical entities is not obviously absurd -- so absurd as to preclude the above interpretation of the plausibility of the "another-language" approach. For even those who introduce the expression "sense content" by means of the context ". . . is directly known to be . . ." may fail to keep this fact in mind when putting this expression to use -- for example, by developing the idea that physical objects and persons alike are patterns of sense contents. In such a specific context, it is possible to forget that sense contents, thus introduced, are essentially sense data and not merely items which exemplify sense qualities. Indeed, one may even lapse into thinking of the sensing of sense contents, the givenness of sense data, as non-epistemic facts. — Sellars

This analysis leads me to think that the importance of the distinction is that sense contents are something like qualities, something universal, while sense data are something fundamentally immediate (keeping in mind the Hegelian point that to deal with 'qualities' is already to deal with universals and mediation.) (Perhaps too, the sense of 'content' in 'propositional content' is analogous? We might say that a proposition expresses some propositional content (we can understand why one wouldn't want to reduce the propositional content of some proposition to that particular proposition, or the particular relation whereby a particular proposition expresses some propositional content)

What do you think? I'm still shaky on this, but that's the best way I've found to understand it so far.

What did you see as the parallels in those parallels though? I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.

The USSR? wtf?

C'mon BC. Look at the posts that led up to this. Do you see the parallel? You can't just follow the details, the texture, the anecdotes. You have to see the line of thought.

Now I respect and admire figures like e.g. Joan Didion, people who say, like she does, that they are constitutionally averse to giving into the Hegelian impulse, to the need to see the universal in the concrete. People who say that they, instead, see the way things are, that they see the world in all its particular glory. I appreciate that (tho I think that people who say things like this are often more Hegelian than they're aware of) but that doesn't change the fact that you're on a philosophy forum, arguing philosophical points. You have to trace the argument itself.

Not trying to dodge it, but I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with this question.

If the USSR won some global economic war it could also claim, as you did, that the US today (in the 'today' where the US is communist) is based on the same damn principles and institutions as the USSR at 'that time' (i.e before the US became communist). 'There was always a firm understanding of what the US would become' the USSR intelligentsia would say, 'there was no other alternative.'

The latter, of course.

Ok, I'll draw from his essay.

We have reason to conserve certain basic institutions (systems of property or political rights, family structures, etc.) not because these are intrinsically valuable, but because we have little knowledge about both the actual consequences of existing basic institutions and the potential consequences of alternatives. — Marquez

It's quite clear that he considers systems of property or political rights to be 'institutions.' And I think it would be very hard to argue that the plantation/slave system of the south wasn't a system of property or political rights

Nonsense. The south today is based on the same damn principles and institutions as the north at that time: free trade, non-slave labor in the agricultural industry, etc, so there was always a firm understanding of what it would become. There was no other alternative.

Yeah? So if the USSR said the US should become communist, the US claiming its own economic system couldn't - or shouldn't - transition into a communist system would be irrelevant? (note, please, this isn't a defense of communism. It's saying that you can't use the Northern attitude to the south without allowing that the validity of communist attitudes to a capitalist country. And if you want to make the point of 'well it worked, in the end, didn't it?', that line of argument doesn't jive with Marquez' in the least.)

Explain. — thorongil

Explain my understanding of basic institutions or the understanding of Marquez? (my understanding is more or less his, so it amounts to the same thing. But I also don't know what you're asking me to explain.?)

This is where you are. The "at" is not needed in this sentence. Pet peeve, sorry.

That's just not digging idiomatic usage, and idiomatic usage don't care. Sorry! All of American English is idiomatic usage, so it seems you've just cottoned to the way people talk in a certain time and place. I don't a give a pig's brisket what you think of it, it works, and that's all it needs to do.

Yea.. I wrote out a long essay and then deleted it. I'm also frustrated because this is an interesting topic to me. Repeatedly, though, I find that I can't invest in talking to you

I've been fair to both sides. I'll entertain any rational - or even persuasive - argument. I talked with you for a while. I understand - I really do! - if you don't find any benefit in talking to me. But I don't understand - I really don't - if you think what I'm saying doesn't fairly and earnestly address the OP.

I don't like it when people pull a few paragraphs out of a long text, and let that be the start of a discussion.

I think Kazuma chose to pull this section out of the text, because the author of the text states/signals that this is the main argument, the meat. Normally, I'd agree with you, there's something suspicious about excising one bit, setting it out, outside the rest. But it makes sense here. The author himself says this is the meat. And it is.

As to the rest, no one has been arguing in favor of slavery (or arguing that others are in favor of slavery), from the beginning. Maybe the testiness is due to anxiety around the ascendancy of populist movements, who knows, but, much as I agree that real, in the moment feelings, seep into forum convos, I can't see any good way to tie that into the convo.

So this is where I'm at. I'm frustrated that people don't understand the OP, the essay it draws from, or Un's response. I want to debate it, and I'm open to real debate, but no one seems to understand the ideas they're debating. There's a lot of posturing, mostly machismo, but no one, besides Un, seems to actually grasp the ideas and argumentation involved. I'll duck out until an actual response materializes.

Slavery did not avoid producing normatively intolerable outcomes. 600,000 Americans died. What caused the American Civil War? My guess is you have no clue.

Yes, but, how do we decide on what's normatively intolerable? Marquez (and the OP) provide an answer. Do you disagree with their answer? Is 600,000 Americans dying a priori normatively intolerable? I suppose it depends on the circumstances they die in, what they die due to. But if they don't die due to natural causes, if 600,0000 die due to the system they live in, yeah, that's a problem, I'd say. But what does the OP say, what does Marquez say? What do they say?

I don't know. There's definitely a lot of animosity. But there's also a clear argument in the OP, and a clear rebuttal in Un's post. It's not so messy, after all. What do you think?

That you clarify this now, albeit on page 6 of this thread, is most welcome.

I'm sincerely (sincerely sincerely, not just rhetorically sincerely) surprised people thought that I thought that anyone was defending slavery. I would have clarified earlier otherwise. I thought un's initial posts, making reference to slavery, poked a very serious hole in the OP's argument, but it would never have struck me that he was suggesting the OP (or the person the OP was drawing from) supported slavery.

That isn't clear.

Marquez says we shouldn't abandon the institutions we owe epistemic deference to unless we already have a firm understanding of a system to replace it, which would better deal with the 'problems' the old institution responded to. And we didn't, at all, have a firm understanding of what new institutions the south would have to create to deal with the vacuum caused by emancipation. The civil war alone would have made the shift unpalatable to someone who internalized the essay's points.

According to Marquez? You're playing a crafty game here, which you must realize.

According to my own understanding of 'basic institutions' and Marquez's.

That's fair, you did.

Well, idk, i grew up in Maine and spent plenty of time in the woods, and you spend enough time in the woods, and come back: people seem weird. Having been on the outside, you see people and their interactions (yourself included) in a new light. You get a sense of social patterns and why people do what they do. I know why you're sending me into the wilderness and that's fine.


In any case, people have presented good reasons to think the argument in the op is bunk and no one has addressed them except to say, as thornongil and emptyheady have, that theyre wrong bc the ppl presenting those arguments cant possibly poke a hole in the argument of someone with accolades, bc what gall. And that's fine, again, i know where that kind of rhetoric stems from, but it feels like vindication to me and that's where I'll leave things unless anyone wants to actually engage.

So Un made a very good post:

If the population regulated is helpless to reject the basic institution, as is nearly always the case, then their 'acceptance' as evidenced by the endurance of said institution has no value and no legitimacy, because everybody necessarily 'accepts' what they can do nothing about, however repugnant and illegitimate it is. — Un

This, to my mind, is a knock down argument.

Does anyone want to address it?

Or do we all agree Marquez is right based on his cv?

You're not very good at this are you? You lecture ppl about not having read the paper, admit to not having read all of the paper, and fail to give any other defense of it. Happy trails man

He thinks Xavier Marquez, BS in philosophy and mathematics, MA in political science, dissertation which won him the award Leo Strauss Award for Best Dissertation in Political Philosophy and well published author is unironically defending slavery. >:O

But he has got 800+ posts on The Philosophy Forum, that must count for something, so Marquez's arguments must be "blisteringly bad."

Here's an idea. Let's begin the discussion of any philosopher on the boards with a list of the awards they've won. And then if people disagree, let's not address the substance of their disagreement, but list the awards that philosopher's won, and point out their hubris. Do you, for instance, agree with Chomsky's political views? Wait, but do you know the amount of awards he's won? Do you think you're smarter than Chomsky?

This is bad stuff emptyheady, and again, I've never stated that I think the author is defending slavery. I'm quite sure he's against it.

He mentions it throughout the entire paper, and even dedicates an entire chapter to it: A Precautionary Principle for Institutional Change.

edit(2): I have read the paper as well up to page 14. — Emptyheady

A Precautionary Principle for Institutional Change starts at the bottom of page 14. The irony here is painful.

And the author, of course, does talk about change. A cautious change, where we have to know the risk we subject ourselves to in changing a system, to be quite sure that it will work better than the current one. Again, if everyone agreed with the author, emancipation never would have happened.

Slavery is such a silly (counter) example, because it is obviously intolerable. The author swept it away with such ease.

He doesn't 'sweep it away.' He literally doesn't deal with it, except to say he's not in favor of it. Which I believe, and have believed since reading the OP. I'm not, nor have I ever been, saying that I think the author is defending slavery. I'm saying that his argument for conservatism would apply perfect well to slave-owning systems. I'm saying his argument fails to explain why it would not apply to them. And that's a big problem.

tip: see Democrats VS Republicans (the great Abe)

But this is a bad answer, for two simple reasons.

(1)If those who opposed slavery had read and agreed with this article, they wouldn't have tried to change things, because they would recognize they owed epistemic deference to the old institutions and lacked sure answers to replace it.

(2) Further, if you think the ending of an institution means that it was, in fact, intolerable, and therefore didn't deserve epistemic deference.....well essentially every institution ever has ended. And therefore none of them deserved epistemic deference. So, by your own logic, unless our own present institutions are unlike all past institutions (an idea which is astoundingly radical and reluctant to draw form the past) our institutions too will fail, and deserve no epistemic deference.

Again, the argument is blisteringly bad.

How does "Slavery" destroy his paper? [/quote]
Well, one for the reason Un has already laid out

If the population regulated is helpless to reject the basic institution, as is nearly always the case, then their 'acceptance' as evidenced by the endurance of said institution has no value and no legitimacy, because everybody necessarily 'accepts' what they can do nothing about, however repugnant and illegitimate it is.

& 2, because someone defending, say, the US plantation/slave system could claim we ought be epistemically deferent to that system, for every reason the author gives. The only difference is that the author thinks we might not want to preserve slavery because it slavery is evil. Well and good, except what if opponents of a system he thinks we ought be epistemically deferent too, think that system is evil, and so intolerable?

Well, he disagrees it's evil, but just how intolerable is it? Can't be that intolerable - look how long it's been around! But then, again, that applies to who knows how many slave-owning systems.

The thing's a mess.

Thank you.

But I'm still confused why you think the responses to to the post are "hilarious" when they hit the mark exactly.

So I've read the paper, and the substance of the article is the argument in the OP, so the all the same criticisms apply. The author does, indeed, briefly mention slavery, to say, merely, that we might not want to preserve institutions that enable evil.

Yes, we might not.

I think your conservatism is a reaction to Amy Schumer.

lol

Again, the op presented an argument. The argument in the op was what people were criticizing, because that's how threads that present an argument in the OP work. I haven't criticized the author of the article from which the argument in the op was drawn anywhere, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

No, did you understand my post?

How?

Ok, I think you're still confused about institutions. Slavery in the abstract is not a basic institution. The slave system in the american south was a basic institution.

No, but really, are you being sulky? I want to give you last one chance to show you're not being serious, before explaining how bad your line of thought is.

Am I honestly the only one who looked up the actual paper and read a reasonable amount of it? — Emptyheady

Utter nonsense. I was pointing out your unwarranted disposal of the principle of charity. — Terrapin

Look you guys, the OP presented an argument. In posting an argument, one invites others to address the argument on its own merits. That's what people did.

Good, so we're done here. — Thorongil

Are you just being sulky again or do you sincerely not understand? (Let me charitable and assume you're just being sulky)

I find it hilarious that people in this thread smugly believe that slavery is a defeater of the argument in question. Do you think Marquez, a trained philosopher, is going to reply, "Aw, shucks, you got me!" Or: "You're right, slavery is totally a basic institution I would defend." The uncharitable gall it takes to assume such things is astounding.

Could there be a more naked example of appeal to authority than this?

Secondly, defending slavery doesn't follow from his argument, for it isn't clear that it meets, or would meet on Marquez's grounds, the definitions of "basic" and "institution." A basic institution is not meant to refer to simply anything people have done for a certain amount of time. People have murdered, tortured, enslaved, etc other people from time immemorial, but to call these "basic institutions" is absurd and could only be done facetiously.

Slavery in and of itself is not an institution, sure, but specific instances of it, like the american plantation system, are. If you don't think the american plantation system was an institution, then we have very different understandings of what the term means.

Where do you think we're going wrong?

Seeing is sensation — Terrapin

Contextually, I think it's clear that Sellars is discussing seeing qua perception (and perception is not the same thing as sensation.)

And also if we're talking about veridicality versus non-veridicality, we're talking about how sensations link up with something that's not the sensation, which is the same, functionally, at least, as objects external to you. — Terrapin

Yep.

I missed this. You're wrong because the Peircean system is a hypothesis set up counterfactually. If it fails to accord with nature, then nature will make that plain....It could be wrong

Maybe I've misunderstood you, but I had the sense your model includes not just the world, but thought itself. Indeed, the two are inextricably bound together. The only we can think or make reasonable statements is is because thinking and reason are very precisely constrained, by the same whirling hierachical recriprocally-constrained processes and principles that govern everything.

So the very process of registering something as falsifying would operates according to those rules. But to integrate the falsification, to see that the model is wrong, would be to try to think outside of the very constraints necessary to thinking/reasoning, in other words it would be to not think at all. It would be as senseless as trying to think becoming without thinking being.

Do you see what I mean?

That system already at least half-exists (except in very rural areas) through (1)private schools and (2)property prices/cost of living variations across different neighborhoods.

Well, I want to discuss. I want folks to acknowledge that teaching and learning is more than can be specified by a curriculum and measured by test scores, and then I want space, time and freedom to be left for it to happen. It's a rather unfair question really to ask me to specify a method for achieving something that I have just characterised as impossible to specify, and set goals for.

Yes, but everyone here, with a personal qualification or two, is going to more or less agree with you. Feeling dissatisfied with the culture of standardized testing and the school-as-factory is a fairly pedestrian view. Folks' acknowledgment of your point, in a place like this, is a fait accompli. And if it's unfair to ask you to offer some way of changing things, then it's equally unfair (or meaningless) to complain about our school systems going about things the wrong way. You want it changed, but you don't want to be bothered about how to change it. So what do you want? To be recognized as dissatisfied? As valuing the right things in a world that doesn't?

"seeing that the facing surface of a physical object is red and triangular" isn't a sensation?

The former necessarily involves an object external to me. (An "ostensible seeing" involves a belief in an object external to me, whether that belief is correct or not.) Thus 'seeing that the facing surface of a physical object is red and triangular', while it may require a sensation, is not simply a sensation.

No 'phrase', but that quote taken in full. How do you understand that quote?

I'm not going to argue about the definition anymore.

What part clearly says anything about guaranteeing veridicality? — Terrapin

But, above all, it is the fact that it doesn't make sense to speak of unveridical sensations which strikes these philosophers, though for it to strike them as it does, they must overlook the fact that if it makes sense to speak of an experience as veridical it must correspondingly make sense to speak of it as unveridical. — Sellars

Yeah, all I'm saying is the op is a bad,bunk argument for conservatism. If you're truly interested in discussing my own failings as an avowed progressive - which are legion - pm me. They're not relevant to this thread, but I'm willing to discuss them, if you really care.

bc i like it.

Look, I know you think you have a promising new line - & its legit, in its own right - it just has no bearing on the op.