To do this, a basic training in the fields of science and art is required. — MoK
Philosophy is describing the workings of practices in which we already share interests (in the practice; thus their normativity) so it’s just a matter of agreeing on the explication of the criteria. — Antony Nickles
To say you can speak intelligibly and have reasons doesn’t mean you can say anything you want (intelligibly) in claiming, say, how an apology works (or how knowing does). Again, we might not end up agreeing, nor circumscribe every case or condition, but it’s not as if anything goes. — Antony Nickles
people who throw cabers — Antony Nickles
[Specific criteria] hardly transcends the local interpretative predispositions of various cultural communities on earth, — Williams, 302-3
If we insist on removing a topic from its context and specific criteria, then we lose the ability to judge a thing based on its own standards.
— Antony Nickles
Agreed, but why would speaking from an absolute conception have to involve this kind of removal? Wouldn't a genuine View from Nowhere provide, along with many other things, an account of those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment? — J
I just did “account for those standards, and why they can serve as a basis for judgment.” — Antony Nickles
We can’t with one hand give that there are a multitude of criteria and with the other require that the judgment of each thing requires the same “basis”. It depends on the thing whether the judgment is “absolute” or not. — Antony Nickles
[The absolute conception] should be able to overcome relativism in our view of reality through having a view of the world (or at least the coherent conception of such a view) which contains a theory of error: which can explain the existence of rival views, and of itself. — Williams, 301
Judging a good shoe and what is considered a planet are different in kind, not hierarchy, or scope. — Antony Nickles
But how philosophy is done, and what even counts as philosophy, is always an internal struggle of the discipline — Antony Nickles
This is the benefit of looking at the tradition as a set of texts, and not necessarily a set of problems. — Antony Nickles
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. — TLP 6.41–6.522
And yet philosophy (in its reflective capacity) can’t help but trace the contours of what it cannot fully name — whether it’s called the unconditioned, the transcendental, the One, or the Ground. Not a thing, but not nothing. — Wayfarer
his 'that of which we cannot speak' is not the 'taboo on metaphysics' that the Vienna Circle took it to be - as Wittgenstein himself said:
There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
— 6522 — Wayfarer
Philosophy may talk about science by looking at scientific criteria; the assumption is that philosophy's criteria for how to do this are not on the table. But when the inquiry turns inward, we don't have the luxury of bumping any questions of judgment or method to some off-the-table level. — J
Not a thing, but not nothing. — Wayfarer
↪Joshs Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was saying the opposite: Self-reflexivity is virtually definitive of philosophy. I was contrasting this with what I took Antony Nickles to be saying -- that there is no difference between the problem situation of reflecting philosophically about, for instance, science, and reflecting philosophically about philosophy. — J
The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality. — J
Life is a great teacher! Your knowledge is developed through your interaction with mental events. Uncertainty in life allows us to learn from our mistakes, so we face new things every day, including new challenges, which keep our minds engaged and entertained.I lived life is not something one can learn though. — I like sushi
Very correct!Not everyone gains much wisdom with age but I doubt no one gain any whatsoever. — I like sushi
Philosophy of art, for example, is a branch of philosophy. Without an art training, you cannot philosophize about art.A basic education can easily lead someone down a blind alley just as it can broaden horizons. Awareness of this is knowledge, whilst understanding it is ourselves who are certainly succumbing to blind alleys or overreaching beyond the horizon is where wisdom lies. — I like sushi
Could you please provide a few short quotes from him?Ironically it seems tha failiure is the only way to make any kind of progress in life. Bravery is learning to keep on keeping on. I believe this is why Sisyphus was regarded as the wisest of all. — I like sushi
The problem is that while "we all" can indeed make intelligible and rational claims in support of a given framework, another group of "us all" can dispute them, with equal rationality.
— J
How to you determine that every claim is made "with equal rationality"? — Leontiskos
Yes. No work can be done or progress made if one believes “equal rationality” applies to both sides of any dispute.
Rationality may exist on both sides, but how “equal”? The inequality of the rationality is what constitutes any dispute, whether one side (or both) are making invalid arguments and/or using unfounded facts. — Fire Ologist
The moral of the story is that if someone takes up Chakravartty's stance voluntarism, then they must give up their ability to "encourage others... to see things our way." By definition, the stance voluntarist has no reasons for why someone should "see things his way." — Leontiskos
the View from Nowhere puts some very peculiar demands on us as denizens of "the world." If "all happening and being-so is accidental," nothing we say in philosophy can escape this. It's all "local," in Williams' terms. "What makes it non-accidental [that is, what makes the Absolute Conception absolute, or unconditioned] cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental." So, how could we meet this demand? — J
Whether one tries to find an ultimate ground inside or outside the mind, the basic motivation and pattern of thinking is the same, namely, the tendency to grasp. In Madhyamika (Middle Way Buddhist philosophy) this habitual tendency is considered to be the root of the two extremes of "absolutism" and "nihilism." At first, the grasping mind leads one to search for an absolute ground — for anything, whether inner or outer, that might by virtue of its "own-being" be the support and foundation for everything else. Then, faced with its inability to find any such ultimate ground, the grasping mind recoils and clings to the absence of a ground by treating everything else as illusion. — The Embodied Mind, Varela, Thompson, Rosch, First Edition, p143
It's the view from anywhere. — Banno
The “view from nowhere” isn’t a critique of what scientists do, but of what scientific objectivity aspires to — a standpoint purified of subjectivity. — Wayfarer
The view from anywhere. — Banno
It means precisely the same thing. — Wayfarer
It is true that relativity theory and quantum theory undermine the idea of absolute objectivity. — Wayfarer
'Reference frame' is from relativity theory. It is true that relativity theory and quantum theory undermine the idea of absolute objectivity. That's one of the sources of the very anxiety that this thread is about. — Wayfarer
Lorentz (1892–1904) and Larmor (1897–1900), who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, also looked for the transformation under which Maxwell's equations are invariant when transformed from the aether to a moving frame. They extended the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis and found out that the time coordinate has to be modified as well ("local time"). Henri Poincaré gave a physical interpretation to local time (to first order in v/c, the relative velocity of the two reference frames normalized to the speed of light) as the consequence of clock synchronization, under the assumption that the speed of light is constant in moving frames.[8] Larmor is credited to have been the first to understand the crucial time dilation property inherent in his equations.[9]
In 1905, Poincaré was the first to recognize that the transformation has the properties of a mathematical group, and he named it after Lorentz.[10] Later in the same year Albert Einstein published what is now called special relativity, by deriving the Lorentz transformation under the assumptions of the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light in any inertial reference frame, and by abandoning the mechanistic aether as unnecessary.[11]
Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer. — Banno
...that idealised observer... — Wayfarer
That "perspectiveless abstraction, stripped of embodiment, situatedness, or any first-person particularity" is a philosopher's invention. — Banno
Science is not trying to give an account of what the universe would be like were there no observers. It is trying to give an account of what the universe is like for any observer — Banno
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