The basis upon which Error Theory rests comes under its own scrutiny. To look upon the logical basis of Error Theory as not-being-a-thing, meaning framed in idealised abstractions, show just as much the item under consideration to be in error as it does error theory itself. A metaphysical rug has been pulled out from beneath us and then its existence has been denied.

That's an interesting point. I wonder how far that sort of thing could be expanded, since there are similar moves made against truth and beauty.

Historically, the original Empiricists were skeptics. The idea was to work one's way towards skepticism as a way to achieve dispassion. Hume was aware of this tradition, but it's less clear that later thinkers in the modern tradition were. Ultimately though, it's unsurprising that the tradition tended towards skeptical conclusions re value, aesthetics, the authority of reason, knowledge, meaning, reference, etc., since that's what the original intent was.

The empiricist arguments that are used to radically redefine truth and knowledge, i.e., truth as coherence with whatever we just so happen to already accept as "true," or truth as merely the use of the term "true" in the context of games and systems, etc. (which are arguably equivocating on these terms and simply denying truth and knowledge) don't strike me as all that different from those that deny value in their general approach.

I suppose my rejoinder would be that, on the face of it, if an epistemology results in us rejecting all our most obvious beliefs (e.g. anti-realism re truth and value, eliminativism re consciousness, etc.), that's a good indication that the epistemology is defective. At the very least, if an argument leads to apparent absurdity, the first step is to check if it is valid, and then one checks of the premises hold up. But often, the idea is instead to build something like Kripke's "skeptical solutions," where instead we "learn to live," with the absurdities.

There are many reasons for this. The culture where this philosophy is strongest prizes idiosyncrasy, the counterintuitive, and novel, particular within academia. It's also politically expedient to privatize values in some contexts, or to render them illusory. But I think there is also a sort of conflation, intentional or not, between "empiricism" (in its more austere forms) and "the scientific method."

Given some commonly accepted starting points, I think it's quite possible to give a good argument for rejecting the reality of practically anything, making it a mere error. And we see this in philosophy, with eliminativism re causation, reference, meaning, languages, goodness, the knowing subject, consciousness, truth, metaphysics as a whole, the targets of scientific theories, discrete objects , biological species, sex, or even "reality" itself. Often, the alternative is "pragmatism" based on what is "useful," but then I find myself asking "useful for who?" and "truly useful, or only apparently so?" The latter question seems to be rendered unanswerable in some cases, depending on what is being denied.

Historically, the original Empiricists were skeptics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would hope that all philosophical positions are held with a healthy degree of scepticism rather than dogma. The whole point of philosophy, in particular, is to play with the questions rather than adhere to some universal maxim as far as I can see. That said, we all undoubtedly fall into one pit of obsession at one point or another and the ability to scramable out of such positions may require more scepticism than some people are happy to play with?

I see it all as lens and perspectives. The better an individual understanding across as many fields of interest as possible the less idealised they become, and the more open to looking at avenues others dismiss out of hand.

There is the old story of a Man coming home due to a mechanic not fixing his car properly and finding his wife cheating on him, then proceeding to commit murder. The reason for the murder can be viewed as being due to the mechanic, the cheating wife, the heart stopping, etc., with the overall point being NONE are incorrect yet NONE alone are the whole story.

I would hope that all philosophical positions are held with a healthy degree of scepticism rather than dogma.

Agreed. But, against the ancient skeptics (or at least most of them), I don't think it's a useful goal in itself. That is, apatheia and ataraxia, even if they are worthy goals (and I think they are only intermediate goals, rather than final ends), can be achieved better through other methods. In part, this is because it seems difficult to impossible to avoid becoming skeptical of that sort of all-encompassing skepticism.

It's a tricky business. Some, but of course not all, pronouncements of skepticism—or of the need for or feasibility of, "bracketing"—have their own sort of (often hidden) epistemic presumption (i.e. lack of humility) grounding them. "Value" is often relevant here. For example, supposing that we must bracket out all questions of value, of "the good life," how we "become good people," or "what is good for man," (i.e., that we must remain skeptical on these questions), while still being able to do political theory (i.e., that we can still make prescriptions for how society ought to be run) itself requires some implicit gnostic claims about the human good, value, etc. to make sense, and also gnostic claims about what others are capable of knowing. But these tend to get obscured by the appeal to skepticism. Yet obviously, we don't want to be making pronouncements about how society should be run from sheer ignorance (at least, I would think not).

:grin: Sceptical of scepticism!

This is not going to be a fun exchange. I'll need to put my first response last, because it was the most ridiculous and clearly antagonistic (possibly narcissistic) part of your response to me. I'm more than happy with the colour this intro adds to my response. I am feeling pretty dismissive of most of this, as its ... lacking, let's say. I will come across as such. It seems all you're doing is trying to talk shit about types of philosophy you don't like. Which is fine. But trying to make arguments in the way you have is embarrassing. — AmadeusD

Please don't be embarrassed. I know you don't like to read things that take inquiry down to the very ground from which they come, and this leaves out altogether the "meta" of metaethics. It also takes the meta out of ontology and epistemology, and this makes the analytic tradition pretty much washed up, and this is simply because our existence, at the level of basic assumptions, IS indeterminate, and for philosophy simply to move along as if this were not the case makes it a vacuous enterprise.

Nonsense, exactly as I had noted earlier. I assumed you'd clarify, but it just got worse and less clear what you're talking about. — AmadeusD

This is case in point: What if I asked you to "show" why it is that the "principle" of causality is, in its very nature, apodictic? This cup cannot move itself off the desk, and there is no stronger logical insistence imaginable, yet you are asked to give an exposition on why this is so, that capture in discursivity that which is makes it what it is. Of course, the request is nonsense, but why? Because prior to any account, what stands before inquiry is the essential givenness of the world, and this is where the problematic begins, for to "say" what this is, what is being explained has to be a language construct itself, but one "intuits" causality. One can of course, question the language that conceives causality, but not the unbreakable intuition.

Which brings me to reason your thinking cannot, or refuses to, grasp the same kind of simplcity in the logical bond between pain as such and ethics. Consider: it is literally impossible to reduce ethicality itself to what is itself not ethical in nature. The various ways we express regard for ethical matters, the yay or nay, the condemnation or approval, and so forth, entirely lack that which is play that makes the matter what it is, which is the pain itself. As I said: remove this value dimension of an ethical matter, a dimension that is revealed only in the content, and ethicality vanishes JUST LIKE THAT! And this is an analog to causality: remove the intuition of the apodicticity of the causal and causality vanishes. Even if one were to follow Leibniz's theory of a preestablished harmony, then it would be God investing causality with its coercive essence.

So the point is, when it comes of the basic assumptions of ethics, one encounters what will not be explained, and this is bad news for those who want nothing to do with metaphysics, because this yielding (gelassenheit) to the world IS the first order of philosophy: like a scientist, one has to observe first! Without this, philosophy becomes a self indulgent triviality.

It is. I don't really care about you asserting otherwise. This is the case. — AmadeusD

But then, not caring is not an argument, or really, anything at all. But it is a fascinating insight you're missing. Value (the general term for, well, the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to, as well as their affective counterparts) MUST have agency, and given that value is the essence of ethics (no value NO ethics--this has to be taken seriously if you want to understand metaethics. It is not about the judgments we make or the cultural institutions that inform them and the "relativity" this produces. It is about what makes for the very ethicality of ethics, its essence. This is where meta-questions go), agency is the essence of ethics. WE bring ethics into the world.

I can't even imagine a philosophical curiosity dismissing this. Of course, as with all things, one has to read into an understanding.

This is literal nonsense. — AmadeusD

But Amadeus, this is not an argument. Do better. This is a child's response.

I'll do a you: Nope. This is the case. This is what pain is in the mind. That's why people can handle it to varying degrees, often not suffering in light of it, where another would. That's enough on that. — AmadeusD

When I say it is deflationary, I am referring to the straw person argument that reclassifies something AS something else which is more tractable and agreeable to a particular view, thereby bypassing something problematic in the analysis. To me this is akin to what the church did to Copernicus and Galileo, nullifying evidence due to a perceived threat, and classifying this science as heretical, thus removing what is undesirable. Take the prima facie ethical injunction not to torture my neighbor and the "fact" of the pain it would cause as justification (OTOH, if my neighbor simply adores being tortured, this renders the injunction problematic. So what?---referring to your comments about "varying degrees"). Here, I am saying that when you refer to a pain as a sensation, this is an attempt to bring, say, terrible suffering to heel in a reduction by association with other ordinary sensations, as with "sensing" a smell or a sound, which, so characterized, has no ethical meaning at all.

That's enough on that!? Really? You DO sound like the church.

And look, if you say pain is in the mind, then how does this affect to ontology of pain? It IS in the mind, but then, you have no issue with affirming the weather, and that rain IS my front yard. What does locality have to do with it? Lava IS in a volcano, yet there is no issue on your part that this locality strikes out the existence of its features.

And of course, we all suffer and delight differently, with different intensities about different things. But this has no bearing here in this "meta" ethical discussion any more than how well, and to what degree, a person thinks affects what logic IS.

A sensation, delineated from other sensations. I've been over this. It seems like you're copy pasting rants from somewhere in response to buzz words like an AI. At the very least, you're not really reading my posts. — AmadeusD

I do read them. I think mostly you tell me how angry you are. You don't reason things through. You say what things are, like pains being sensations, but you don't really respond to objections, and you don't refer to ideas and you don't play them through.

Wait...your post disappeared. Errrrr, curious.