Indeed so. Annoying, but i completely agree with this. — unenlightened

Hah! Nudnik wins again.

This might be specific and not general — Hanover

Yup. Edited.

In fact, I'd go as far to say that there is an equivocation error throughout because the word "trust" changes meaning when the prepositional phrase is added. I trust you to be here at 9 am means I expect you'll be here at 9 am. It has nothing to do with an assessment of your veracity, but just my expectation. But, if I say "I trust you," that's an assertion of my belief in your honesty.. — Hanover

Firstly, trust in general is not limited to an assessment of veracity. I trust the military not primarily because they tell me the truth but because they can protect me. The word changes sense with context. Secondly, the "trust you to do/be" is an implied extension, even when not specified. If trust is about veracity then it is not just "I trust you" but also 'I trust you (to be truthful with me)" and "I expect you to be truthful with me". In trust there is an implied expectation. I trust my wife means I expect her to be faithful and honest etc. But I guess when we use the word "trust" we imply some further emotional investment, some deeper significance than mere expectation. Still, it's there. So, there's no equivocation, just shades of meaning.

Edit: I'm impressed you almost know what a prepositional phrase is except it's not but an object complement made up of a non-finite clause in which is embedded a prepositional phrase.

Companies are even more predictable than the weather as long as you know what feeds the bottom line. You can trust Google as long as its profits align with your interests. Period. The trick is figuring out if, how, and when they do.

Edit: I'm impressed you almost know what a prepositional phrase is except it's not but an object complement made up of a non-finite clause in which is embedded a prepositional phrase. — Baden

Thank me for giving you an opportunity to use your otherwise useless knowledge.

Thanks :up: Not wasting my 10,000th post on you though, so don't expect an encore. :fire:

Edit: I'm impressed you almost know what a prepositional phrase is except it's not but an object complement made up of a non-finite clause in which is embedded a prepositional phrase. — Baden

This kind of talk makes me so wet. Said nobody ever.

That's a funnier comment so I added it.

Companies are even more predictable than the weather as long as you know what feeds the bottom line. — Baden

Then you're saying a company is an inanimate thing. Knowing it makes it trustworthy. The weather is predictable if you know "the bottom line". The problem with human influence is that what feeds "the bottom line" might change, but with the weather it always stays the same. The question then is how much of this is publicly disclosed, or to what extent can the company hide the exact nature of what it feeds on. A company must be endowed with some capacity for privacy to provide competitive equity.

Then you're saying a company is an inanimate thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's a sense in which a company can be seen to have agency. Loosely, we speak of companies making decisions and so on. But they're better viewed as systems of opportunities and constraints closer to weather events than human agents in my view. Market forces are transparent enough for that to be the case.

The problem with human influence is that what feeds "the bottom line" might change, but with the weather it always stays the same. The question then is how much of this is publicly disclosed, or to what extent can the company hide the exact nature of what it feeds on. A company must be endowed with some capacity for privacy to provide competitive equity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, companies can maintain privacy on certain issues and can mislead and manipulate us, but the 'rules of the game' are largely transparent and the playing field in full view. We can make intelligents presumptions on risk/return of deceitful behavior etc. So, yes, they might fuck around a bit with our data but they won't deliberately give us the wrong result when we search for a cake recipe. In other words, the contours of the trust landscape are well-defined.

Yes, companies can maintain privacy on certain issues and can mislead and manipulate us, but the 'rules of the game' are largely transparent and the playing field in full view. — Baden

This bring us around to the human influence. It's human beings who interpret the rules, know their extent, and plan strategies. The untrustworthy person looks for loopholes, and new activities, places to take advantage of others, where the rules don't yet extend.

So, yes, they might fuck around a bit with our data but they won't deliberately give us the wrong result when we search for a cake recipe. In other words, the contours of the trust landscape are well-defined. — Baden

I don't agree with this. It's been very obvious with advancement in technology that the rules tend to follow well behind the advancements. And so, people are taken advantage of, and then rules are created to prevent this from happening again. The "contours of the trust landscape" can only be mapped after they are navigated, and we have to look at what type of people might navigate this landscape. The untrustworthy see a lot to gain from navigating this landscape, and they are the ones who are inspired to navigate it.

Not sure where the point of disagreement is. I don't trust Google with my data, but I trust them to provide me with my cake recipe. Am I wrong on this? Or is there another specific sense in which the contours of the landscape are ill-defined. Give me an example.

Isn't data what they deal with, so ultimately you don't trust them, right? Your trust is misplaced. What you said is like saying I trust the thief to supply me with goods, but I don't trust that it won't be stolen goods. You really cannot trust that supply of goods, if it's wrongfully sourced, it's dishonest and not trustworthy, even though it might be reliable in that aspect.

When we trust a self-professed white supremacist to be what they claim, we are trusting the truthfulness of their testimony. That is... we are assuming sincerity in their speech; that they are being reliable 'truth'-tellers; that they believe (that)what they are saying(is true).

When we trust that one who denounces white supremacy is against it, we are trusting the truthfulness of their testimony. That is... we are assuming sincerity in their speech; that they are being reliable 'truth'-tellers; that they believe (that)what they are saying(is true).

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Along with some of the other considerations heretofore, trust is more completely and better understood in terms of voluntary and involuntary types of trust and/or situations when trust is operative/influential to the agent's subsequent thought and behaviour.

When we approach the cupboard to grab a cup, we trust that there will(or at least could) be one in there. There is no choice in this matter. We either believe that there is one, we believe that there is not, or we aren't certain. We do not approach the cupboard to get a cup when we believe that it is empty.

We do not approach a white supremacist looking for or expecting fairness or empathy from them for non whites, for that is akin to looking for a cup in a cupboard that we believe is empty.

When we swerve our vehicle to the left to avoid an accident, we are trusting our senses to be reliable sources of information about all the stuff happening around us. We believe that we just avoided an accident.

When we are first learning how to talk about the world and/or ourselves, we trust the trustfulness of the teachers' testimony. That is especially true when we're looking for confirmation that we're calling something by the right namesake. That unquestioned trust underwrites each and every language users' worldview across the board. Here again, there is no choice in the matter. We quite simply do not get to decide what the names of things are while we're learning what they are called.

This last bit sheds a bit of light upon trust as an inevitable precondition and/or prerequisite for the ability to acquire language, and supports Un's vein of thought concerning how deeply embedded trusting others can be and is for all humans due to our social interdependent nature.

Trust does evolve into different 'kinds' which may be better understood in terms of what we knowingly trust another to do and/or be(after realizing that not everyone and/or everything is trustworthy). We have no choice but to trust, until we're aware of our own fallibility. Then, some may learn to look a bit closer at whether or not something or another is dependable; at what can be counted on; at what can be confidently relied upon for some specific reason/purpose. In addition, we ought also think about further considering what - exactly as possible - ought we allow ourselves to be dependent upon them for...

Not all who are trusted for some things are trusted for all things. One who is always fashionably late may or may not be as dependable as can be expected for being a source of good entertainment...

When the same term is used on more than one occasion in the same argument or line of reasoning, that term must always be used in the same sense/acceptable use. When one fails to do this, they've committed the fallacy in thought called "equivocation".

The inevitable logical consequence of equivocation is self-contradiction on the face of what's said at two different times. Self contradiction is often prima facie evidence of an equivocation fallacy being hard at work.

Shades of meaning are wonderful. They do not require an equivocation of terms.

Assuming an agent with some semblance of what is often called a "mastery" of one's native tongue...

When we place trust upon another to tell us about the world and/or ourselves, we expect sincerity. That is true for everyone. We expect them to believe what they say.

Some however also expect truth. On my view, that sort of expectation is no different in content than expecting another to form, have, and/or hold nothing but true belief. The problem, of course, is that everyone forms, has, and/or holds false belief at some point in time. So...

Omniscience is not required for honesty, sincerity, "telling the 'truth'", and thus trustworthiness. It is clearly unreasonable to expect otherwise. None of us are omniscient. Not one. Not any. All of us are not.

It follows from this reasonable, and still yet readily attainable, criterion for "truth telling" that...

Truth is not necessary for trustworthiness.

What sense does it make then? Well, sincerity is all it takes. The speaker must only believe what they say as well as believing that they've said all that's relevant to the matter. The takeaway here is that the very idea and/or notion of "telling the truth" conflates truth and belief or demands omniscience. Neither is acceptable. That's shameful - to put it mildly - given the influential power of it's use.

Truth is presupposed in all thought, belief, and statements thereof somewhere along the line. Telling the truth is simply stating all that you believe to be relevant to the matter at hand(whatever it may be).

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth...

...is an impossible criterion to satisfy at face value if everything said must be true. People could go to jail for saying exactly what they believed to be the case, simply because they expressed false belief. They would be convicted and sentenced for perjury simply for holding false belief, if counsel could convince the juror of perjury for giving false testimony, for not telling the truth.

Thus, to continue to expect any individual to always say true things shows an emaciated understanding of how thought and belief work. No one can do that.

A representative form of government carries along with it the people's expectation for the government to be trustworthy in making decisions that affect/effect one's own happiness and/or livelihood by virtue of being a decision that proves to be what's best for everyone involved. When such a government does it's job, the results are easy enough to put on display when the right questions are asked of everyone and the answers gathered and organized in certain way...

A representative form of government(a republic) is successful if and only if the overwhelming majority is better off as a result of policy and/or legislation passed. When far too few end up with all the power and the many have none, then it's not working properly.

That is the case in the US.

Am I now projecting?

:razz:

Shameful that the federal government has leaders that refuse to do what is expected of every American in order to stop the spread of covid19. Who on earth could still trust the American government when it consists of members who openly thumb their nose at such expert advice on this matter of human lives?

Not all members are guilty. Now is the time to separate them and respond appropriately to their demonstrable lack of caring about public health overall.

'My' shops frequented are chock full of people who are taking the actions necessary to best protect everyone around them including, but certainly not limited to, themselves. Smiling eyes escape the confines of the masks. Those people have earned my trust that they are willingly to do something that is otherwise uncomfortable and inconvenient as a means for improving the overall common good of everyone else. It's little price to pay for the safety and well-being of everyone.

:gasp:

Mr. President, Mr. Vice president...

Take fucking notes.

The administrative medical staff recently visited by Mike Pence has legitimate grounds for suit based upon the facts showing him knowingly and voluntarily placing their lives at unnecessary risk at his own whim, and against the advice given by the foremost knowledgable experts on the matter regarding everyone's new behavioural guidelines.

It's fucking despicable. What a fucking dangerous aire of superiority based in sheer ignorance, myth, and otherwise false belief...

Whew!

Sorry Un...

... jumps off bandwagon and exits stage left.

Sorry Un...

... jumps off bandwagon and exits stage left. — creativesoul

No apologies required. This is exactly where I want to end up. Lies, propaganda and the manipulation of beliefs are destructive of meaning and destructive of social relations. They kill. People are dying of lies. Be annoyed, Be very annoyed.

Conspiracy theories are the natural outcome of untrustworthy government and untrustworthy media. Nothing is trustworthy, so anything is believable. and a large portion of the blame lies with the moral relativism/nihilism of much modern philosophy.

Just sleep.

and a large portion of the blame lies with the moral relativism/nihilism of much modern philosophy. — unenlightened

I don't think so. If people are drawn to relativism and nihilism, it's because they're drawn to explanations that resonate with their life. I'd place the majority of the blame on what social/cultural features make that philosophy resonate in people when they read it. People do not give an iota of a damn about the prevailing mood of academic philosophy, because it's (seen as) all just worthless irrelevant intellectual masturbation; another pile of lies pretending to be a font of truth.

Well we disagree.

People do not give an iota of a damn about the prevailing mood of academic philosophy — fdrake

I agree with this, but philosophy percolates through social science that again most people ignore, and from there into think tanks, and so to political rhetoric and media headlines. "There's no such thing as society", "Greed is good." These are what resonate, and what people give a damn about, and philosophy opens the way to them, and gives them a veneer of plausibility.

Seems to me the prevalent mood of philosophy is deflationism and silentism on the big questions rather than nihilism/relativism. "Whereof one cannot speak..." etc. Whereas the prevalent mood among the populace is a mixture of obliviousness, confusion, and cynicism. The attitudes occupy complementary sections of a landscape over which neither has control, and the type of mistrust is distinct from an epistemic point of view. It's access to knowledge that leads the philosopher to self-circumscribe away from big-picture answers, whereas its a perceived alienation from knowledge that leads the layman to a similar (but more disconcerting from their perspective) position.

philosophy percolates through social science that again most people ignore, and from there into think tanks, and so to political rhetoric and media headlines. — unenlightened

Ha! I wish.

I can't think of a single occasion where any of the work I've done, nor that of any of my colleagues has been either informed by philosophy, nor had the opportunity to determine headlines and political rhetoric.

The politicians sometimes come asking for an opinion. If they don't like the one you give, they find someone else.

Seems to me the prevalent mood of philosophy is deflationism and silentism on the big questions rather than nihilism/relativism. "Whereof one cannot speak..." etc. Whereas the prevalent mood among the populace is a mixture of obliviousness, confusion, and cynicism. — Baden

I think there's a time lag. Of about 50 years. Which has to be added to the 50 years for, say, Wittgenstein to become the orthodox philosophy. So expect much sage nodding and silence from politicians in about another 30 years, in the meantime we are living with the politics of logical positivism. :vomit:

agree with this, but philosophy percolates through social science that again most people ignore, and from there into think tanks, and so to political rhetoric and media headlines. — unenlightened

This is not philosophy which percolates here, it's a lack of philosophy, a deprivation. But since a deprived philosophy is still apprehended and classified as one's "philosophy", just like a person's immorality is classified as one's "morality", we refer to this deprivation as "philosophy" even though we look down at it in disagreement as a lacking. So we judge an immoral person as having a "morality", though it's recognized as a deprived morality, and It's better called "immorality". Therefore, the deprived philosophy ought to have a better name like "unphilosophy" or something like that.

How to best govern a nation consisting of a variety of different sorts of people is philosophy.

Calling yourself a democracy or a republic or a representative form of government carries the burden of doing what's best for the overwhelming majority. It also demands an immediate redress and subsequent correction when it doesn't.

The evidence is overwhelming. When pieces of legislation result in demonstrable financial harm to tremendous swathes of the population, that does not count as evidence that the government is working. Rather, it counts as relevant adequate and more than sufficient evidence that it's not.

That's not philosophy. That's plain 'ole common sense. That's what makes a democracy what it is, or a republic, or a representative form of government... but only when when it lives up to the name.

Calling yourself a democracy or a republic or a representative form of government carries the burden of doing what's best for the overwhelming majority. It also demands an immediate redress and subsequent correction when it doesn't. — creativesoul

Thats a really attractive slogan. What of the protection of minorities? What you have there is the tyranny of the majority, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or rampant populism.

I'll give you another slogan. The form and makeup of a government is less important than its moral stature. A good king would be better than a corrupt and venal populism, which loves to persecute minorities as scapegoats.

Thats a really attractive slogan. What of the protection of minorities? What you have there is the tyranny of the majority, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or rampant populism.

I'll give you another slogan. The form and makeup of a government is less important than its moral stature. A good king would be better than a corrupt and venal populism, which loves to persecute minorities as scapegoats. — unenlightened

I think you start with the belief that all government is corrupt and dishonest and you institute rules that check its power. You water down everyone's power, make every attempt to use power checked by someone else's power, institute fundamental rules that cannot be changed and so on. And then when the government attempts to bring about major social change, you accept that it's extremely difficult due to all those checks on power and the distrust you've acknowledged from the outset.