Yes, but it's not just 'when' they have contradictory criteria for what counts as 'wrong', it is virtually inevitable that they will (if only in some small way). These are relatively clever people, they're not gong to present an argument they can see is wrong. It's most likely that they have a different idea of what constitutes wrong. It's the default position rather than an occasion misfortune. — Pseudonym
I'll be glad to help. — creativesoul
[I'm arguing that]...the truth of metaphysical conjectures is undecidable, the notion that one position is the correct one and the other is the mistaken one is without sense, in other words incoherent and meaningless... — Janus
[I'm]...not arguing that the exchange of metaphysical ideas is meaningless per se... — Janus
I agree with you that metaphysical debates could be decidable in the sense that like-minded people within a certain language game could come to agree with one another, once they had ironed out their differences,confusions, or mutual misunderstandings. I think that is a more relative kind of decidability than the decidability of empirical propositions and theories, though. — Janus
But it is worth noting that there is no ultimate decidability in any domain of inquiry.
Mathematics probably comes closest to complete decidability and metaphysics remains the most distant, with ethics and aesthetics and the human and natural sciences located at various imprecise points along the continuum.
Heraclitus' position is untenable. — creativesoul
The God of Abraham and Epicurus' fatal observation of the problem of evil shows inherent self-contradiction. — creativesoul
Methodological naturalism. — creativesoul
Many folk who believe in some form of cosmic justice or another will be forced to conclude that bad/good things happened to someone or another, and so they must have somehow 'deserved' it. — creativesoul
if one holds to the historically conventional epistemological conception of belief that s/he must deny that non-linguistic animals have thought and belief. — creativesoul
It can also be the case that the logical consequence conflicts with knowledge. — creativesoul
Maybe you're avoiding my initial charge. You are involved in precisely what you've called a meaningless debate. That seems incoherent, at best. I'll let it go though. — creativesoul
An entire generation of well-educated intelligent people can be wrong, and history shows that they have been any number of times. — creativesoul
Is that a true account? — creativesoul
I'd say that what you propose is something which is relative to a particular background of beliefs -- that decidability is relative to our beliefs, or community, rather than it being a feature of the subject matter. — Moliere
That's not the argument s/he made, so that sort of reply wouldn't be appropriate for me. However, if s/he had made such an argument, then that response would certainly be warranted. In such a situation, someone like yourself, judging from the sidelines, would be poisoning the well solely by virtue of putting such a question to me. It would succeed only if the reader weren't well-versed in spotting fallacy in the wild, because there's not a thing wrong with the response you're aiming to discredit if it follows the claim that all metaphysical arguments are meaningless. — creativesoul
For example, it is clear that s/he is working from a questionable conception of thought and/or belief. The evidence for that is in the paragraph above when s/he confirmed that I had understood the argument s/he was making. — creativesoul
Both, s/he and Carnap, conflate what it takes to be meaningful with what it takes to be verifiable/falsifiable. — creativesoul
Since then Psuedo has taken the reigns from Carnap and argued that all metaphysical debates were meaningless as a result of being unverifiable/unfalsifiable — creativesoul
It is still the case that our discussion here consists of arguing over what counts as being meaningful. My position on that has been neither elucidated nor changed during the course of this thread. It seems that Psuedo's has. It looks like a clear cut case of Psuedo's moving the goalposts. That is, in the beginning s/he worked from a criterion for what counts as being meaningful that required the candidate(a metaphysical debate in this case) to be verifiable/falsifiable. Since then, the criterion for what counts as being meaningful has been expanded to include being decidable. — creativesoul
The operative underlying general problem is the conflation of truth and meaning. — creativesoul
I don't want to answer for Pseudonym, but only for my interpretation of what Pseudonym appears to be arguing. — Janus
I'm pretty sure I've said probability a dozen times now that I do not consider all unverifiable statements to be meaningless, only those statements containing a word which the party the statement is aimed at does not agree on the meaning of. A statement relying on a word which, for the recipient, does not have the meaning the speaker intended, might as well be meaningless. It would be pointless to apply one's own definition of the term since that would not carry the meaning the speaker intended (you might as talk to yourself). It would be pointless to apply the speaker's own definition because, you have already rejected that and so would gain no meaning from the sentence in your own mind. The only alternative I can see is that the sentence be regarded as meaningless. — Pseudonym
It is still the case that our discussion here consists of arguing over what counts as being meaningful. My position on that has been neither elucidated nor changed during the course of this thread. It seems that Psuedo's has. It looks like a clear cut case of Psuedo's moving the goalposts. That is, in the beginning s/he worked from a criterion for what counts as being meaningful that required the candidate(a metaphysical debate in this case) to be verifiable/falsifiable. Since then, the criterion for what counts as being meaningful has been expanded to include being decidable.
— creativesoul
Decidability and verifiability are relatively closely related. What difference do you see between the two which significantly moves the goalposts? Janus's introduction of the term was, quite rightly, to show that it is the lack of any method of decidability that renders such debates meaningless (one where one side is trying to 'prove' the other wrong). The only widely agreed on method of decidability I know of is empirical falsifiability, but that's not necessary for the argument. If it is true that metaphysical debates (of the particular sort Janus and I are referring to) are meaningless because they cannot be decided by any agreed means, then it is also true that such arguments over statements which are not falsifiable are probably meaningless, that being the only method of decidability we currently all agree on. We could argue over the minutiae, but I really don't see how it massively moves the goalposts. — Pseudonym
The operative underlying general problem is the conflation of truth and meaning.
— creativesoul
You'll need to expand on this, I don't see how the notion of truth enters into it, both Janus and myself have consistently (I think) been careful to talk about that which is widely agreed upon. Truth hasn't entered into it. — Pseudonym
or its is not a metaphysical statement at all since we can resolve what the term 'meaningful' means and at that point it becomes and entirely falsifiable empirical claim. — Pseudonym
I'm waiting for an elucidation upon the criterion for what counts as being meaningful. — creativesoul
Decidability is remarkably different in that we are the ones who decide. We decide whether or not it makes sense to use words in certain ways and not others. — creativesoul
Here again though, even after claiming that you do not equate being unverifiable with being meaningful, you've just called debates over unverifiable statements meaningless. If they are not meaningless as a result of being unverifiable, then what is it that makes them so? — creativesoul
I'm waiting for an elucidation upon the criterion for what counts as being meaningful. — creativesoul
Decidability is remarkably different in that we are the ones who decide. We decide whether or not it makes sense to use words in certain ways and not others.
— creativesoul
If this is decidability then no metaphysical arguments are decidable because "We" evidently haven't decided. and if "we" do decide, then a comparison of the sense the author imputes with the sense that "we" have decided becomes an entirely verifiable proposition. — Pseudonym
We can verify that different senses of the same term are being used as a means to measure the truth of the opposing argument. — creativesoul
Hence, the debate consists of two conflicting notions of what counts as being wrong. — creativesoul
Both are meaningful. — creativesoul
There is some property of a sentence with a disputed term in it which causes it to have a significantly different utility to a sentence containing only widely agreed on terms. If I say "go to the door", the verb 'to go' is widely understood and the noun 'door' is also The effect on the willing listener will be that they will go to the door. The sentence has the same utility no matter which competent English speaker is hearing it. This is significantly different to my saying "God will guide you on the right path". Depending on whom you are speaking to, this could have any number of effects. There is not a widely agreed upon response to 'God', 'guide', or 'right'. Whether you call this difference a difference in meaning or not is irrelevant, you can call it what you like, but the difference is evidently there, and my contention is that sentences of the form "Your unfalsifiable metaphysical proposition X is wrong" are of the latter sort, so much so that the effect they have is completely unpredictable to the speaker and so of very low utility. — Pseudonym
This just seems like bare assertion. How did you arrive at this conclusion from the statements above? What definition of meaningful are you using? What would be an example of a statement which was not meaningful? — Pseudonym
There are no meaningless statements. — creativesoul
So if I were to speak in German to a non-German speaker, my action would still be of high utility? — Pseudonym
So what does the word 'meaningless' do if there are no statements for it to be used on. Why do we even have the word? — Pseudonym
What would be an example of a statement which was not meaningful? — Pseudonym
We were discussing an example of a speaker and a listener who share common language. — creativesoul
We were discussing an example of a speaker and a listener who share common language.
— creativesoul
There's no such thing as a common language when using ambiguous terms... — Pseudonym
The commonality of language is based entirely on mutual agreement. Where there's no mutual agreement, there's no commonality. I can honestly say that at times I have no idea what some young people are saying, they're speaking English, but the terms don't mean to them what they mean to me, so they've communicated nothing of any use to me.
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