Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

This was my "battle of the bands" example too. I think it even goes beyond a question of practical usage. For many types of comparison, "the best" makes no sense -- apples and bands, for instance.

But not for all. @Fire Ologist, I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think.

So sans action, have you actually made up your mind? Or is there still the possibility of your deciding otherwise? — Banno

I'm surprised to see you use a phrase like "actually made up your mind"! :wink: What can I say? I don't know how actual it is, but when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, but it doesn't retroactively show that my mind wasn't in fact made up.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? I was using it to refer something pro-tem. I can make up my mind to go to the store tomorrow, then decide not to. Was my mind actually made up? Yes, on my usage. And then it wasn't. But I'm open to other terminology.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, — J

So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you?

:wink:


It's a bugger of an argument.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? — J

That's what Wittgenstein would do - look at how we use "making up one's mind". Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you get up and go to the shop... the act.

A bugger of an argument.

Gotta love it.

Point is, of course, that we can't check to see if we do all use the same categories...

Perhaps Kant's categories might be seen as a precursor to charity.

For my part, I just don't much like Kant's transcendental arguments. Fraught.

Genreral structure:

• The only way we can have A is if B
• We have A
• Therefore, B

And that first premise is very hard to substantiate, very easy to break.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too,
— J
So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you? — Banno

I'll grant the remote possibility; I don't know it for certain. But this is on a par with Descartes's evil demon, isn't it? A chance so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about.

Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you go to the shop... — Banno

That's one way. Another method is to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" means. Having done that, I'll know what to say, no matter if I go to the shop or not. With this method, the arrow goes the other way: I don't find out from going to the shop whether I'd made up my mind. I find out from a certain construal of "make up my mind" what not going to the shop means, in that regard.

TBC . . . my eyes are closing.

May you not have dreams of Descartes' evil daemon...

'cause you are still not sure... not until you act.

Banno,

I can see you are being patient with me and I appreciate it.

If I sound like I am repeating myself, it is because 1) I don’t think you are seeing what I’m saying and therefore 2) your replies aren’t hitting the mark for me.

We are in the middle of so many philosophical works right now so I think it is worth the pain.

Even if no “best” exists, you can still say one thing is better than another. — Banno

You said “thing”. As to a thing, in hand, “even if no ‘best’ thing exists, Incan still find one thing is ‘better’.”
I agree with that.

I then ask “what do I really mean when I say this thing is ‘better than’ another?”

Now I can put the thing down and conceptualize the measuring stick in my mind and then, post hoc, affix “better” to that thing.

Is “best” always explicit or cognized when we judge better? — Banno

My answer is yes. I have to know the concept (absent any exemplar ‘thing’) of “best” when I use a measuring that identifies any thing as “better” - the measuring stick, my concept, is “worst-better-best”. There is where best lives, in my concepts, as the measurement itself.
‘Better’ is a measure of “bestness”.

The ideal may be an asymptotic or regulative concept, not a concrete one: Perhaps “best” is a kind of horizon we approach but never fully reach. We use it as a guide, not necessarily as a fixed known point. — Banno

That sounds like something I would say. I have some areas I would want to clarify, but, this is basically it.

Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

But here we fall back to earth (or focus not on the conceptual but instead on the concrete) and lose sight of the measuring stick where best most perfectly stands. Here I would fall back and say who cares about the rest of the world - there are two apples, give me the best one.

The “scale” might be constructed post hoc: Sometimes we impose a scale after seeing the comparisons, rather than having it given beforehand. — Banno

The scale is definitely post hoc. The two apples sitting there with no minds applied to them each think they are perfect, and they are. We build the scale. We apply it to the apples. But the scale isn’t lesser greater greater still. The scale, like the apples, is finite and simple and identifiable as one scale, with a start at ‘worst’ going all the way to an end at ‘best’.

I’m not trying to play volley ball or tennis with you. I am honestly trying to work this out.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards.

I think it is worth the pain — Fire Ologist

I'm unconvinced.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards. — Fire Ologist

For my part, I just don't much like Kant's transcendental arguments. Fraught.

Genreral structure:
The only way we can have A is if B
We have A
Therefore, B
And that first premise is very hard to substantiate, very easy to break. — Banno

I think if we weaken their universality it's something of a common theme amongst philosophers: instead of the form we often say things more loosely like "This presupposes that" -- it may not be the case, but insofar that we agree upon the presupposition then the argument tracks well enough. Rather than structuring thought I'd say this structures dialogue: Less ostentatiously we could say that the first premise, if agreed upon, is to acknowledge the importance of the priority between two concepts.

I've seen it cast as a kind of "inference to the best explanation" as well -- where the transcendental part is the tentative "Well... this is the best guess I can think of for now, so until you have a better one..."


Though, really, it is just my idiosyncratic way of thinking through a philosopher -- I look for relations and analogies and such. It may not be relevant after all. It's something of a stretch, except for when I was reading Adorno talking about Kant as a kind of philosophical positivist, and that gave me some food for thought. (not in the analytic/continental sense, but the older sense of philosophy being able to establish positive knowledge -- at the very least of the sort that can state "and this is where you can go no further")

I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think. — J

You know how when you walk down the street you can’t bump into “13” - it’s a concept only existing in the mind. Numbers painted are shapes and colors, but “13” is a concept.

“Best” is like that.
So is “better”.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help?

Why is “better” so damn useful? Because the people who use it know how to use “best” and “worst”. And when really known, I think, you see that best highlights worst and these both generate what is between them namely, the better or worse.

"inference to the best explanation" — Moliere

Poor mans' induction.

Bleh.

:D

You're not wrong.

But, descriptively, don't people sometimes reason in this manner? Or is it a philosopher's fiction?

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well. — Fire Ologist

I would say yes, sort of. We could imagine gradations of betterment that go on forever. It just keeps going. I don't know of any reason to deny this scenario.

But there's an obscure problem with this having to do with the fact that parts are always understood relative to a whole. If the whole is infinite, then it's undefined. For practical purposes of the intellect, there is no whole to give meaning to the parts. That means there's no way to say how much better x is than y.

On the other hand, if we set a limit, we now have a best, a whole, and a way to give the increments of betterment meaning. But how can bestness be other than arbitrary? Why can't we exceed our best?

Worms. Cans thereof.

Briefly and dogmatically, we can be pretty sure about our deductions; induction is deductively invalid; calling induction "abduction" doesn't make it valid. (There goes most of the philosophy of science, especially for the pragmatists, especially especially Peirce’s logic of science.)

But Ramsey's solution gives us something to work with. Instead of seeking justification for induction, he explains how we act as if inductive reasoning were valid. Wanna bet? If you say you believe the sun will rise tomorrow, wanna bet? How much? At what odds? Your willingness to stake something reveals your degree of belief, not some abstract epistemic warrant. Rationality, for Ramsey, isn’t about justifying beliefs from first principles, but about maintaining consistency between your beliefs and actions.

Davidson makes use of this in his latter work.

Mohism.

Mohism — Banno

Might push this. Both Davidson and the Mohists offer a vision of explanation and rationality that is causal but not mechanical, normative but not law-bound, and grounded in use and interpretation rather than metaphysical speculation.