As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher. — Janus
I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions. Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?” — Daniel Dennett
See if I have this right. I've said "it's not the case that anything goes". You understand this as implying that there must therefore be, amongst the Great List of statements, those that go and those that don't. And that further, if we know that there are some that go and some that don't, there must be a criteria for sorting the Great List in this way. And you chide me for not setting out that criteria
And this, looking around, seems to be what we do have. Discrete areas of expertise, either unrelated to each other, or addressing the same things in different ways.
The second alternative above, namely, that I claim knowledge about things in a delimited area, but make no judgment one way or the other regarding anything outside the limits, is at least apparently less presumptuous than the first, ironically because it does indeed admit that some of its knowledge is true.
The difficulty is in fact twofold. On the one hand, as we observed at the outset of this chapter, one can set limits in the proper place only if one is already beyond those limits, which means that to the extent that self-limitation is strictly a priori, and not the fruit of an encounter with what lies outside of oneself [or language], the limitation is an act of presumption: one is acting as if one knows what one does not in fact know. On the other hand, and perhaps more profoundly, to allow oneself judgment on one side of a boundary and at the same time to suspend judgment on the other side is to claim — again, in an a priori way, which is to say without any sufficient reason — that what lies on the other side does not in any significant sense bear on my understanding of the matter or matters lying on this side. But of course to make this claim without investigation and justification is presumptuous.
It does not in the least do to insist, “But I am limiting my claims only to this particular aspect!” because this begs the very question being raised here...
For example, one might isolate economics from politics as a closed system in itself, which is evidently misleading insofar as the “agents” of economic transactions are living members of communities whose choices inevitably reflect in a significant way the nature and structure of those communities. Perhaps less obviously, but with analogous implications, one might also separate politics from philosophical anthropology, anthropology from metaphysics, or metaphysics from theology. The problem will be there whenever one isolates a part from the whole in a way that excludes the relevance of the meaning of the whole to the meaning of the part, which is to say that one fails to approach the part as a part, i.e., as related to what is greater than it, and so one (presumptuously) makes it an absolute in itself.
So the critic is actually a builder? That's your solution? — Leontiskos
So the critic is actually a builder? That's your solution? "Critics don't need any builders, because they are builders too!"
You are conceding my point, namely that builders are necessary. You've merely conceded it by magically making the critic a builder. You are not contesting my point that critics cannot exist without builders. — Leontiskos
If Language games are incommensurable, all sorts of problems ensue. So I think we have to go with Davidson here, and reject the idea of incommensurability in such things. — Banno
Right, for me the great philosophers' ideas and systems have aesthetic value. They present us with novel ways to think about things―and they are admirable just on account of their sustained complexity of inter-related ideas. — Janus
As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher. I also see Hume as an immensely creative thinker and not at all a mere "nitpicker".
Although, more seriously, it is interesting that few thinkers are interpreted in more diverse ways. But if Hegel can produce Magee's hermetic sorcerer, Pinkard's Aristotleian "naturalist," Blunden's proto-Marx, Kojeve's liberal, Dorrien's theologian, Houlgate's ontologist, Pippen's logician, Harris' semi-mystic, or the proto-fascist Hegels of yesteryear, he can hardly be monolithic. Rather, all have issued from what he put forth in virtual form, and they shall all sublate one another on their return to Hegel as Geist. But they are each moments in the Absolute Hegel. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There might be a Scotsman lurking here...
At the risk of oversimplifying, best I make explicit that I did not deny having a world view, nor suggest that having a world view was a bad thing. I said that my worldview is incomplete, and that this is a good thing, since it allows for improvement, whereas those who have complete word views have no such luxury.
So back to the Scotsman. Is it that we truly have different world views when and only when we reject the results brought about by the tools of other traditions?
Otherwise, how do we tell that we truly have different world views?
The danger is that “different worldview” becomes a way of immunizing one’s beliefs from critique—you only truly have a different worldview if you reject mine outright. But there's that Scotsman, no? — Banno
But I can't say more. :wink: — Banno
Brilliant post. — Banno
Which is the same as saying that the program was written incorrectly and/or is handling input that is was not designed to handle.
— @Harry Hindu
Or, perhaps, the solution is not algorithmic. — Banno
I think it's monolithic in that it's a philosophy that swallows all philosophies, and one need only spend time studying Hegel to see the truth of that. In a way one cannot disagree with it -- they can only misunderstand it. — Moliere
The closure we're talking about is methodological. — Banno
Mathematics is not closed to contradiction, to criticism, to what is contrary to it. — Banno
Yikes. I hate it when that happens.Thanks, ↪Harry Hindu. I was writing a longish response, only to have it deleted whiel refreshing multiple windows. Bugger. — Banno
Commanding and asking are conveying information about one's intent. When someone yells, "Stop!" what they are doing is conveying information about their intent. What they are actually saying is, "I want you to stop!", and "Stop!" is really just shorthand for saying "I want you to stop!". We could just say, "I want you to stop!", or we could just say, "Stop!" (they mean the same thing), and let the other things in our immediate environment speak for us (context), like your hand signals or you reaching out to physically stop the person from stepping into a hole and breaking their ankle. Like I said, scribbles and sounds are just one of many things we use to represent what it is we intend to convey. Its just that scribbles and sounds are what are more commonly used as they are readily available.It was a list of the various points you made, and how I agreed or disagreed. The upshot was that I pretty much agreed with all you said, except for a few thigns.
Not everything we do with words is communication, if communication is understood as the transfer of information. We also command, ask, promise, and so on. To be clear, I do not see how these can be reduced to just the transfer of information, and also, if they were, it would be very inefficient to talk about them in those terms. — Banno
Examples?And not every word is either a noun or a helper word. — Banno
And why wouldn't the Investigations not need to be superseded? Isn't his "language on holiday" from the Investigations? I've been using this to support what is found in the Tractatus in that language is on a holiday when we don't use words as they were intended - to convey something about the world, which includes your intentions. Anything else is just an artful use of scribbles and sounds.Generally, it seems to me that you are setting out much the same sort of approach as is found in the Tractatus, an approach that needs to be superseded for the same reasons that that book was superseded by the Investigations — Banno
I dunno, the aporetic dialogues of Plato seem quite useful. But we may be saying the same thing -- that aporia is an invitation to reconsider. My idea is that the reconsidering is a lot more radical than looking for a "bug" in the logic, because I think aporia is often a sign that we've set the whole problem up incorrectly.
— J
Which is the same as saying that the program was written incorrectly and/or is handling input that is was not designed to handle. — Harry Hindu
I would need an real-world example of a "solution" that was reached without an algorithm.Or, perhaps, the solution is not algorithmic. — Banno
As to Chalmers and Dennett―the latter seems to me by far the more imaginative philosopher.
— Janus
Interesting. I find very much the opposite. — Hanover
Which is why his book is called "Consciousness Denied". — Manuel
but the people who agree with him are just tiny. — Manuel
If a person breaks an arm, or gets shot or something horrible, would Dennett say "oh, that's just a broken machine, it's nervous system is sending pain signals to the brain, nothing to worry about". — Manuel
Moreover, if the principles contain moral elements, this will collapse the idea of "being wrong" as mistaken and "being wrong" as immoral, definitely an authoritarian move. — J
And stretching a point, you can even call this authoritarian: If you say otherwise on a test, the teacher will flunk you! But there's nothing pernicious about any of this. It comes with the territory of an accepted formal system. — J
That juncture between the intellect and the will when it comes to assent is a neuralgic point which seems to underlie a lot of the instability of these discussions. The great boon of a doctrine about how assent relates to both intellect and will, such as the Medieval doctrine, is that it allows us to think more carefully and countenance more honestly those assents of ours which are strongly volitional. — Leontiskos
D.C. Schindler might be my favorite philosopher currently putting out regular material (and he puts out a lot). I will say though that he has a tendency to sometimes be a bit too polemical on some issues, which I'm afraid might turn some people off. He also tends to be fairly technical, although I've only found his first book on Von Balthasar to be really slow going. — Count Timothy von Icarus
But if "not anything goes," then how is one not making a claim to a "true narrative?" Apparently certain narratives can be definitively excluded. In virtue of what are they excluded and why isn't this exclusion hubris?
Second, either all true narratives avoid contradiction or they don't. If they don't contradict each other, then they are, in a sense, one. If they do contradict one another, you need some sort of criteria for when contradiction is allowed (which all serious dialtheists try to provide) because otherwise, if contradiction can occur anywhere, then "everything goes" (and doesn't go). — Count Timothy von Icarus
There's a lot of truth in this, but I want to dwell on why it appears this way. Let's take math. Is math authoritarian? Is it structured to preclude objection? Well, yes, if by "objection" we mean an alternative correct answer in a given math language. Math is deductive, apodictic -- in some grand sense, if we could really understand numbers, we could have predicted the Mandelbrot set. Even incompleteness was "there from the beginning," from this perspective.
No, just the idea that "wisdom" cannot be vacuous or apply to everything equally.
— Count Timothy von Icarus
There's whole worlds between what is vacuous and what is determinate. That seems to be our point of difference. Those worlds are where we find the unknown, the unknowable, the mysteries and mystical, as well as scientific method and myth. — Banno
The metaphysician may only know more about the world by accident, and despite all of the rigorous arguments and language used to support what he thinks he knows, he is more truly taking shots in the dark. — Fire Ologist
If mathematical findings were "there from the begining" who exactly is the authority that is being "authoritarian" here? — Count Timothy von Icarus
<Anything which systemically favors [accusations of moral deficiency which bear on the deficient person's argumentation] is "authoritarian" in structure> — Leontiskos
Note your argument:
1. Any discipline in which quality is measurable is authoritarian
2. In mathematics the quality of contributions is measurable
3. Therefore, mathematics is authoritarian — Leontiskos
This is overly deferrential to analytic methods, exposing a bias towards its supriority — Hanover
I was looking at his books. What books or articles would you recommend as a starting point?
Well, Witt’s approach is air tight
If mathematical findings were "there from the begining" who exactly is the authority that is being "authoritarian" here? — Count Timothy von Icarus
The pluralist either recognizes some authority or else "anything goes," which in turn makes all their own positions immune to contradiction. — Count Timothy von Icarus
There's clearly something in this all-or-nothing position that seems incontrovertible to you.
What about the beauty of a late game home run? — Fire Ologist
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.