Again, the issue is that your probabilistic, limited definition of truth is not what we mean by truth. It does not apply to our relationships with our partners and friends; to the rules of the road; to art; to music. — Banno

Continuing the effort to flush out the contrasting epistemic positions here - not being one to bottle a debate - we can see that Banno is channeling the metaphysics of Wittgenstein circa the Tractatus here.

So there is the reasonable belief that: “The great problem round which everything I write turns is: Is there an order in the world a priori, and if so what does it consist in?”.

Inductively, we can sense that reality does have a deep pattern. There is a rational, logical or mathematical structure at the heart of existence. And so "a theory of truth" becomes philosophically fundamental. It is not merely an epistemic issue. It is potentially ontological. Understanding rationality is understanding nature.

Wittgenstein famously came up with his own metaphysical position on truth. As a property, it belongs to the class of statements that are either tautological or empirical. The logical positivists loved that bit. But then Wittgenstein added there are also all the unspeakable truths that "manifest" as life's "mysteries".

Some folk feel that was a brilliant insight. It gave philosophy a reason to continue to be, safely separate from the utilitarian concerns of science. Philosophy could be the study of ineffable values. It could become a democratic and pluralistic exercise in which everyone could have their own truth systems, even pretty irrational ones.

Other folk might instead think that this was a gigantic cop-out. Natural philosophers for instance. Rather than truth being cosmopolitan and PoMo, or Biblical and "obvious" (Banno's version), truth would be still unifiable under a common metaphysics.

Natural philosophy would take the view that all Wittgenstein's dichotomy was doing was enshrining the distinction between the observer and the observables - the truth-teller and the truths told. And this is the motif that runs through all Banno's replies. The observer can be taken dualistically for granted. Banno doesn't even want to deal with the difference between the objective and the subject. He doesn't want to deal with the way purposes must shape inquiries and therefore what can count for the answering "facts". By dividing truth in terms of the empirical vs the axiological, value judgements are made safely transcendental and disconnected from the natural world.

Science is tied to the world by the strictness of a method. But then "philosophers" are free to just get on with being naive realists, simply assert their beliefs about what is real and certain as far as they are personally concerned, without needing to defend whatever opinion just came to mind. When pressed for justification, they can hang up a notice on the door - "out to lunch".

Anyway, my natural philosophy approach - the systems science or holistic approach that traces back to Aristotelean four causes metaphysics - is different in an important way. Apart from it just presuming the unity of nature.

The problem for a logicist's approach to metaphysics is that it presumes that reality is a structure. The hidden order of reality is some closed, eternal, fixed sort of pattern. It exists.

By contrast, a metaphysics that arises out of the natural view is that of emergent process. Things develop. They begin vague, formless, chaotic. But regularity or habit emerges to reduce this initial boundless variety. Reality becomes structured with time. It settles into a coherent and rational pattern.

As said, this is induction in a nutshell. A chaos of the particular becomes formed into definite and regular being via its own emergent self-regulation. Generality emerges to turn the particular into local actions that serve an ongoing weaving of a pattern. Constraints create reality as an average of what was possible.

So induction - in that general sense of being how probability works - is metaphysically basic. And deduction - as the mechanical story of classically absolute constraint - is then how the process of self-organising development looks once it has become so highly developed that it is almost completely formed by its general laws or habits.

At the end of time, a process manifests a mathematical-strength structure. Logical necessity finally appears to rule. And we can measure that in the lack of spontaneity or surprise to be found in the system. By the last stage, reality might as well be deductive or computational as any continuing action in the system has been ruled random, meaningless or entropic by the principle of indifference. All that remains once a system hits equilibrium are differences not making a difference.

So what we have here is a clear clash of ontologies. It is a metaphysics of existence or being against a metaphysics of development or becoming.

And Peircean semiotics then slots in as the holistic view of logic as a general semiotic mechanism - the trick by which development and the emergence of regular habits could even take place.

That process view is then logically robust enough - in terms of being a "theory of truth" - to unify the empirical and the axiological. We don't have to tolerate the debate-avoidance tactic of those who want to say there is scientific truth but then also - just as ontically - whatever is my own personally obvious subjective truth. The one that is unspeakable and manifests in private revelation. Often when I'm out to lunch and doing some serious unbottling.

Banno is channeling the metaphysics of Wittgenstein circa the Tractatus — apokrisis

No. That's again Straw Banno.

To which you have added a Straw Wittgenstein.

So the anatomy of the black bird was sufficiently similar to the white bird called "swan" for that word to be used in the new case. Those similarities in anatomy are real, if not decisive. — Banno

Sufficiently similar for whom?

Again, the world does not arbitrate in the absolute way you want to suggest. There has to a self with a purpose at the other end of the semantic relationship. And that is the holistic deal that a "theory of truth" needs to deal with.

So again, you point at the world in a bid to deflect attention from the other half of this story. Someone had to make a judgement about "yes, similar enough vs no, much too different". And epistemically, that judgement would have to be secured by being able to point at a reason - a general intention - that was served in this particular instance.

If you like, we can take the foundations into account in our measurement. And sure, the units we use are conventional. We can set up conventions for the measurement of the height of the tower. HTe conventions are part of our language, not part of the tower.

What Apo's position leads to, although he will not say it, is the conclusion that the tower has no height apart from the measurement.

I don't agree with that. The tower has a specifiable height. To say otherwise is to fail to have language engage with the world. — Banno

Keep misrepresenting. My position is that "height" is a theoretical quality or generality that we can then quantify or measure in particular instances.

So going around measuring heights is a simple everyday pragmatic affair. Peirce's job as a scientist was doing just this at the level of international bureau of standards work. He was responsible for creating practical definitions for your standardised ruler or clock.

A mountain doesn't "have" a height. Height is an abstract or theoretical notion that we can go out and measure for a reason.

Jeez, you rail often enough against metaphysical realism - the existence of universals - and yet you talk way more realist than me. :)

So yes, I will always make the distinction that height is a theoretical construct when you come lumberingly along, talking naive realism about these things.

No. That's again Straw Banno. — Banno

Straw is all there is. You described you own profile statement as straw Banno. Lordy.

The SEP has an article specific to transcendental arguments, as well. I enjoyed reading it.

Wikipedia is still good for a general introduction that's fast to read, though. Just thought I'd note it. (I'm enjoying your exchange w. Janus)

My position is that "height" is a theoretical quality or generality that we can then quantify or measure in particular instances. — apokrisis

A mountain doesn't "have" a height. Height is an abstract or theoretical notion that we can go out and measure for a reason. — apokrisis

So yes, I will always make the distinction that height is a theoretical construct when you come lumberingly along, talking naive realism about these things. — apokrisis

So again, for you a mountain does not have a height until it is measured.

For me, we measure the height of the mountain.

Your account fails to be about the world.

That's why I am not keen on it.

They are rather neat, aren't they? It's that second premise that is the killer. For Apo that's something like...

• The world is ordered
• The only way to understand order is to adopt the whole Peircean philosophy
• Therefor in order to understand the order of the world we must adopt the whole Peircean philosophy.

Although the emphasis changes sporadically, this is the basic framework. Peirce is too perfect to be subject to analysis, let alone critique.

I'm enjoying your exchange w. Janus — Moliere

Me, too.

Of course it did. The imaginative hypothesis that the two patterns are related by an unseen structuring principle or force (law or force of gravity) is abductive reasoning, and the thought that if this is true then the same invariant patterns will always be observed is inductive reasoning. According to inductive reasoning apples will always fall, and the motions of the planets will be predictable as long as the current balance of natural laws and forces holds. — Janus

But let's not pretend that calling it "abduction" suffices to show its rationality. It's not the case that abduction is universally accepted. I invite you to read the SEP article on abduction and on Peirce's view of abduction. For a start there is the distinction between generating an hypothesis and justifying that hypothesis. If you want to call generating an hypothesis abduction, well and good. But I think that more is needed to justify the hypothesis. Induction and abduction are insufficient to justify a claim.

So again, for you a mountain does not have a height until it is measured. — Banno

Again, the difference is that my approach speaks about "the world that has us in it". It makes it explicit that "truth" applies to a modelling relation.

So for example, did Uluru have a "height" for the Anangu people before the white fella arrived with his Cartesian notion of a co-ordinate space?

An aboriginal form of life would measure Uluru in terms of the time it would take to scale it. Within that culture, what makes obvious sense is to speak about a degree of personal effort.

This keeps the two sides of the modelling relation front of mind. There is of course a big fat rock with a waterhole on top that is a significant landmark. But if you showed up back then, belligerently demanding of everyone you met, "deny that it is true that Uluru has a height of 863m", then you can appreciate what a crass move that might be.

Any notion of a measurement has to be motivated by a reason, a point of view. Measurements are not an objective feature of the world. They are a theory about the world that can be used to form statements which we can then confirm or challenge by some suitable act of observation. We can imagine the world in terms of a systems of signs - like a metre ruler, a ticking clock, an ergometer - and then read off a number that tells us about the quantity of some quality.

So in pressing me to confess that some tower or mountain has some measured height - in the naively realistic sense that height is an actual property of the world rather than a property of a modelling relation with the world - you are just making the same kind of cultural faux pas.

You are belligerently demanding that I bow to your ingrained white man Cartesian rationalism, saying that I have no right to the view that these kinds of "truths" are all relative to some purpose, some point of view.

Now of course, not just a couple of posts backs, you were trying to argue for that kind of socially constructed or PoMo notion of truth. You wanted to say that music, love and breakfast are so tied up with values that measuring them is more art than science.

Again, I can't make excuses for your inconsistencies. You lurch from one side of the debate to the other because you just haven't succeeded in thinking things through in a unified way.

But eventually you may start to see the point of actually having a modelling relations approach to epistemology. You will see that naive realism fails utterly. Just as does dyadic representationalism. You have no real choice except to up your game and understand "truth" as an irreducibly triadic epistemic relation with the world.

Your account fails to be about the world. — Banno

It's more subtle than that. Or at least you find this surprisingly difficult to understand.

What we are trying to arrive at is not a re-presentation of the world - the noumenal view - but instead a world, an umwelt, that is the world as it is useful for us to understand it. That is, the phenomenal view.

So if it is useful to see a tower in terms of height, then that is how we learn to see towers. And clearly, for white men with a grand project to rule the world, understanding reality in terms of Cartesian co-ordinates was a real plus.

But would you deny the Anangu chap his truth when he puffs out his cheeks and replies he doesn't know about your metres of elevation, but the Eiffel Tower looks a bloody effort to climb. Better start now before the day gets too long.

Again, that is not to say that science can't have the goal of a rigorously objective epistemology. There is a world out there, as well as whatever theoretical image we form of it.

Despite your attempts to make that the issue, a modelling relations approach is quite explicit that it believes there is a world - the Kantian thing-in-itself - to be modelled.

However then what is justified, what is believed, what is certain, what is true, is the image we form - the image that is the "world with us in it". Between the interpretance and the world stands the sign - the umwelt. And it connects both sides of the deal in fixing the idea of the "observing self" along with the "observable world".

The world may be recalcitrant. But it "has" that property only in the light of the fact that it refuses "our wishes". And in your naive realism, your white man cultural supremacism, you are failing to acknowledge that knowledge of the world is grounded in the third thing of the umwelt, the system of sign, that arises in the middle to fix some particular "truth" relation.

Epistemology must always recognise that fact

It is great to have the goal of complete scientific objectivity - or alternatively, to want to have the complete subjectivity of the poet, gourmet or lover. However to justify belief properly, we have to understand why complete objectivity and complete subjectivity are themselves impossible. They are the limiting extremes of a common mediating relation.

Get that straight and all the naive epistemic nonsense and inconsistency will just melt away.

Apo only has a Peirce-shaped hole, into which he tries to squeeze everything.

An aboriginal form of life would measure Uluru in terms of the time it would take to scale it. — apokrisis

I doubt that, since the Rock is sacred and climbing it is something contemptible that German tourists do.

Doubtless its height has changed over time; the stomping of German tourists may have reduced it somewhat over the last few years. And yet, if its height has indeed changed, then by that very fact, it has a height.

I can't begin to contemplate how you would go about saying in pragmatic terms that Uluru is not as heigh now as it was two hundred years ago.

Was the term "An aboriginal form of life" meant to be insulting? or just gratuitous?

Models. I'd refer you to Davidson again, but it is apparent you can't squeeze him into your Peirce-shaped hole either. Again, in Pragmatism all you have is the model; it never links to the world. Whereas the ordinary folk talk of chairs and cars and rocks, you understand that they are really talking about models-of chairs and models-of-rocks. The best way to deal with someone who thinks there are no rocks might be to stone him until he is more agreeable.

You lurch from one side of the debate to the other because you just haven't succeeded in thinking things through in a unified way. — apokrisis

Thank you. Yes, I am making it up as I go along. I find such creativity preferable to blandly spouting doctrine.

Hah. Your replies so fail to engage with my argument that it ain’t worth a response.

Read what I actually wrote and try again.

Indeed, as I said, they do not fit your Peirce-shaped hole.

Are you able to read other philosophies with any sympathy?

I had a quick look through the diatribe you wrote contra the notes from the profile page. I entirely agree with you that they are different from Peirce. I don't think you have made any significant effort to understand Wittgenstein or Davidson or Searle or any of the other thinkers I use - or indeed, any other thinkers. You've found the answer and that's that.

First year philosophy classes consist in exposing novices to a wide range of ideas, working with those ideas until they really feel the bite, and then forcing them to criticise those ideas. You missed all of that by coming to philosophy sideways, through engineering. You are not a philosopher.

Well, good for you. Enjoy your intellectual retirement.

They are very neat. :) I can't deny their sway.

I also admire your continued parlay with apo. Not that I'd do it in the same way, or even agree with your arguments -- but simply the fact that you continue to argue. It's actually helped me to understand apo a bit more; not just your commentary but also apo's responses. Something I didn't have the patience for, but really should (philosophically speaking).

Cheers.

In the end I will have to walk away. I don't have the time he has.

If it is a consequence of natural law that all swans must be white, then all observed swans will be white. — charleton

This is deduction. not only is it NOT induction but it is wrong, indcutively
"Swans" are what we call some birds. There is no natural law defining human speech.
If we define swan as a type of white bird then black swans are not even swans. Nature does not give a hoot what we want to call things.

Was the term "An aboriginal form of life" meant to be insulting? or just gratuitous? — Banno

What are you talking about? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_life_(philosophy)

The best way to deal with someone who thinks there are no rocks might be to stone him until he is more agreeable. — Banno

So you are a pain realist? It exists in the physical world? Throw the rock at a wall and pain is also going to occur as a consequence?

Not a lot of thought goes into your posts.

Ah, It was gratuitous.

Gratuitous? That I used the appropriate Wittgensteinian terminology?

You really need to make up your mind. Either I'm guilty of being dogmatically Peircean or I in fact acknowledge where the later Witti recapitulates the essential epistemology of Peirce.

As you know, aborigines had a very different relation to their landscape than the one you are insisting upon as the rightful and uncontradictable ground of signification. They didn't look and see objects they needed to measure with rulers so they could give legitimate answers to questions about "height".

Sure they lived in the same world as us. But they had their form of life, and we have ours. And why would we insist in some crude fashion that ours is the correct conception of the world.

It might certainly be the appropriate one for a modern western way of life dominated by engineering of course. Engineers are meant to be able to be measure the world with your unambiguous Cartesian certainty. :)

In the end, you can attempt to justify your white man/Cartesian rationalist language game in terms of its "scientific objectivity". But as I keep reminding you, that very objectivity derives from an epistemic cut that makes a break between "the mind" and "the world" - ie: the observer and the observable - in dualistic fashion. You are relying on the very Cartesianism that you claim to have put behind you.

And that is what we keep seeing in all your posts on the issue. You keep trying to trap people into speaking with white man/Cartesian rationalism. You point at the Eiffel Tower - an engineered object being obviously your best example - and demand I acknowledge it has "a height". Either I play your elitist language game, share your cultural form of life - conform to your "wisdom" - or else I "other" myself, demonstrate that I won't play that game and so can be treated as some crazy dark-skinned sub-human pagan outsider. A Peircean worshipper, in your words. ;)

It is this attitude of yours that I find (amusingly) offensive. By claiming that language games/forms of life are essentially unanalysable truths, you then assert a hegemonic right to have yours treated as the correct cultural representation of reality.

If someone won't simply just answer the question in the form in which you present it - say it is true that some edifice or other "has a height", as the height is a notion that has been "actually measured" - then they are part of the out-group, not part of your in-group, and rightfully get everything they deserve for that.

Is it not at all disturbing that you failed to acknowledge the semiotic right of first Australians to their own authentic form of life when given the opportunity? For some reason, you think that to be a "gratuitous" point?

A neat sift. As if form of life had only one meaning.

Directing us away from the debate.

@apokrisis So where are we with the debate?

We had agreed that induction was (deductively) invalid. You didn't see that as an issue.

We agreed that your Pragmatic doctrine suffers an extreme anti-realism, to the extent that it can only talk about measurements, and certainly not rocks or towers or such.

We agreed that I was making it up as I went along, while you believe you have all the answers.

How's that?

A neat sift. As if form of life had only one meaning.

Directing us away from the debate. — Banno

But it was you who made a fuss about my use of "form of life". You asked - confusingly - whether that was an insult (to aborigines?) or gratuitous (so in what possible sense gratuitious?).

For once take some responsibility. You directed the conversation to this new focus. But nicely, it reveals the essential problem I have with your standard "othering" rhetorical strategy. You simply try to bully people into submission by constructing an in-group/out-group dynamic.

You will go on and on about apo - some mythical apo - who is an engineer with no philosophical background, who is "religious" about some mystic figure whom you distain to actually read, who seems to have too much time on his hands to have a worthwhile life.

I'm not objecting to this game playing. I really enjoy it from an anthropological point of view. It is very revealing about the exact issue we are discussing.

But I will still point out that you do use the rhetorical strategies that are basic to colonialist and racist attitudes. Your form of life might be that of a white middle-class Aussie liberal, but here in this thread you are choosing to employ a different language game.

I just gave you the chance to explain yourself - to backtrack on your dog whistle appeals to rally against the "alien" in the group. It is interesting that you now very swiftly want to move away.

And of course that is how the net functions. You can rely on the fact people have forgotten anything posted three or four posts after it was said. When in trouble - instantly re-direct. It looks like you are engaged in a debate when really your only interest is in establishing who is in, who is out, in your little circle of friends.

So where are we with the debate? — Banno

Well I made my arguments. I also commented on what you had to say about yours, even though I had to pull it in from elsewhere. You have said nothing substantive against my position as far as I can tell. Now I'm commenting on your rhetorical strategy and the reasons behind it.

We agreed that your Pragmatic doctrine suffers an extreme anti-realism, to the extent that it can only talk about measurements, and certainly not rocks or towers or such. — Banno

No. That is your construction. And it is a deliberately obtuse one for rhetorical effect.

You already have all my arguments concerning why that is a misrepresentation of my position - if you want to actually engage in a debate and not merely a pissing game.

We agreed that I was making it up as I went along, while you believe you have all the answers. — Banno

More dog whistling.

Look at poor Banno. One of us. Look at nasty apo. One of them. Boo, hiss. Etc.

You already have all my arguments concerning why that is a misrepresentation of my position — apokrisis

Rhetorical strategies - you overuse this one, the pretence that you have already answered the question when you haven't.

Rhetorical strategies - you overuse this one, the pretence that you have already answered the question when you haven't. — Banno

Quote my reply and show how it didn't answer the question you posed.

OK, Apo - is there anything you would like to put forward as a point of agreement?

No, no. Finish what you started. Don't just keep deflecting.

Quote my reply and show how it didn't answer the question you posed. — apokrisis

Did you just make a joke?

Don't just keep deflecting — apokrisis

You mean like the way I keep going on about "Form of Life"?

I'm going to lunch. When I get back, I expect a post that is something worth a response.

In what sense is "height" real?

Sure there is a world out there - even if just noumenal. So this is not about idealism. It is about epistemology in the light of the practicalities of being in a modelling relation with that world.

In that light then, in what sense is "height" real?

Use the example you suggested and which I am happy to run with. We have aborigines and their relation to landcape features like Uluru. We have white europeans and their relation to feats of engineering like the Eiffel Tower.

Compare and contrast what "real" means in such differing "forms of life".