Thanks.

Thanks — Mww

I think you could be the next Sokal, we're about due another.

You think? Oh. I’m happy for you.

Likewise. :smile:

Fair enough I suppose, but I can't see what the "point in agreement with Hume" that Russell made has to do with the nature of truth or determinism. If it's an abstruse association you are making, then further explanation may help.

Which moral belief. I say we begin with the universally formed and/or re-formed ones... You know, the ones we all have? Point of view invariant.
— creativesoul

OK. Good place to start... I’d be interested in what you think a possible universal moral belief would be... — Mww

Thought/belief about unacceptable/acceptable behavior that grounds all morality.

It is logically impossible to name anything whatsoever from a particular, re: my innate idea of a moral belief, to a universal, re: my innate idea of a moral belief residing in every similar agency, and have sufficient means to prove such must be the case. — Mww

What are you talking about?

Are you denying knowledge of pre and/or non-linguistic thought/belief? Are you denying the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief?

If coming to terms with everything necessarily involves common language use, how did we come to terms with common language... — Mww

By thinking about our thought/belief and the utterances/expressions thereof. We named it. There is no reason whatsoever to think that our language is not capable of taking proper account of that which existed in it's entirety prior to our awareness and/or account of it.

What are you doing here... now? Do you believe the things you write?

...my innate idea of a moral belief... — Mww

There is no such thing as an innate idea of a moral belief. There are ideas of moral belief. Those are existentially dependent upon language. There are pre-linguistic thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour. Those are not.

Ideas about pre-linguistic belief can be wrong.

Drawing a connection between another's behaviour and ourselves does not require common language acquisition. These kinds of thought/belief are moral in kind as a result of the content of correlation.

Morality consists entirely of thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Morality consists of moral belief. All moral belief is belief about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Some belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour is formed prior to language acquisition.

No pre-linguistic human likes being hurt by another. Every one dislikes it. These are not innate thought/belief about experience. They are formed after conception, after birth... the result of experience.

These experiences - including the thought/belief formation within them - are universal in that they are common to all humans that go on to use common language.

This report is of that which exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it(universally held moral belief), regardless of the individual particulars.

Which moral belief ought be prioritized and/or valued most?

Which ought be legitimized, nurtured, and/or enforced?

Which ought be outright rejected?

I think you could be the next Sokal, we're about due another. — Isaac

Funny, but also sadly true.

Fair enough I suppose, but I can't see what the "point in agreement with Hume" that Russell made has to do with the nature of truth or determinism. If it's an abstruse association you are making, then further explanation may help. — Janus

I suppose it was more of a related point to do with knowledge. I was just trying to think how we could know that theory to be true, and test out how it would work, and what the logical consequences would be. If a statement about what will happen has a truth-value, could we ever know what it is, prior to the event? Prior to the event, it seems susceptible to the problem illustrated with the Turkey example. It does seem to make some sense to say that it would become true or false after the event, but anything that seems to imply rigid determinism seems problematic to me. To me, it seems to make sense that, at the time, any outcome isn't absolutely set in stone. An outcome can be predicted, but can go this way or that way or another way, out of a number of possibilities. I find it more acceptable to consider such statements to be truth-apt than that they actually have a truth-value, i.e. that a statement of that sort is true (or false) at the time.

Are you denying knowledge of pre and/or non-linguistic thought/belief? — creativesoul

Yes. Nobody knows how what appears to be mind comes from what the brain does.
—————————

Are you denying the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief? — creativesoul

Yes. I’ve said before, to me they are the same thing. Or, I see no good reason to think they are not the same thing, and I get no help from you as means for granting the distinction.
—————————

It is logically impossible to name anything whatsoever from a particular, re: my innate idea of a moral belief, to a universal, re: my innate idea of a moral belief residing in every similar agency, and have sufficient means to prove such must be the case.
— Mww

What are you talking about? — creativesoul

He who says it first usually says it best:
“....When they propose to establish the universal from the particulars by means of induction, they will effect this by a review of either all or some of the particulars. But if they review some, the induction will be insecure, since some of the particulars omitted in the induction may contravene the universal; while if they are to review all, they will be toiling at the impossible, since the particulars are infinite and indefinite....”
(Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism)

I’m both surprised and disappointed you failed to connect your point-of-view invariant universal moral belief to my counter-argument against it. You must have failed to connect because you asked what I was talking about, instead of showing what I was talking about is wrong, or at least does not apply.

What are you talking about? — creativesoul

A fair question, given his style of writing. Though hugely ironic coming from you.

Yes, reminds me of the joke. There's two cows in a field, one of them says "moo", the other turns to it exasperated and says "what do you mean 'moo'?"

Yes, reminds me of the joke. There's two cows in a field, one of them says "moo", the other turns to it exasperated and says "what do you mean 'moo'?" — Isaac

Hmm. More like a duck and a parrot. One's a quack and the other just echoes whatever Kant said! :lol:

We named it. — creativesoul

that which existed in it's entirety — creativesoul

WHAT did we name? WHAT existed?

You’re always saying we do this stuff, but never say what we’re doing it to. I suppose we name that which exists in its entirety as thought/belief, and the method for that naming is thinking about though/belief. That still leaves me wondering how the thinking in thinking about though/belief comes about, if we need it in order to explain what already exists. You’re using what you’re trying to explain the use of.

The intrinsic circularity of pure reason has been known for centuries. It is inescapable when reductionism is taken too far, which leads inevitably to illusions and manufactured contradictions. But it’s your theory; you’re more than welcome to expound it until the common understandings finally see the light.

WHAT did we name? — Mww

It.

WHAT existed? — Mww

That which is prior to language. In it's entirety.

If it sounds like nonsense, then that's probably because it is. Like I said earlier, he is trying real hard to make sense of nonsense, which is quite amusing.

But WHAT is a jabberwocky, my son??? WHAT 'twas brillig, and the slithy toves???

I’d be interested in what you think a possible universal moral belief would be...
— Mww

Thought/belief about unacceptable/acceptable behavior that grounds all morality. — creativesoul

I reject the notion that behavior grounds morality. Behavior may be said to ground ethics, which in turn may be said to be representative of subjective moral dispositions. But even if this idea of ethics is itself rejected, it still leaves open the claim that morals are subjective determinations, from which certain actions are chosen and which may or may not obtain as a physical behavior.

If you mean thought/belief grounds morality, I would say you’re closer to the basic idea. I’m more inclined to say morality is something we have, not something we do. It seems much more parsimonious to grant humans certain inherent abilities, perhaps your thought/belief or something like it, sufficient to inform us of how we must behave, and still be in accordance with the kind of person we have already determined ourselves to be.

Nevertheless, if you’re saying thought/belief about acceptable behavior is a possible universal moral belief, that doesn’t say anything. If it be granted every rational human is a moral agent, and we grant practical reason as thought/belief, than universal moral belief is given. Better said as universal moral believing, maybe, because every moral agent thinks about his moral beliefs. But that says nothing about that which is contained in the beliefs, what would be an actual universal moral belief, which is what I asked you about.

Are you denying knowledge of pre and/or non-linguistic thought/belief?
— creativesoul

Yes. Nobody knows how what appears to be mind comes from what the brain does. — Mww

The irony. Do you know what everyone knows?

Are you denying the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief?
— creativesoul

Yes. I’ve said before, to me they are the same thing. Or, I see no good reason to think they are not the same thing, and I get no help from you as means for granting the distinction. — Mww

Are your thought/belief about Empiricus' the same as Empiricus'?

What are you talking about?
— creativesoul


He who says it first usually says it best:
“....When they propose to establish the universal from the particulars by means of induction, they will effect this by a review of either all or some of the particulars. But if they review some, the induction will be insecure, since some of the particulars omitted in the induction may contravene the universal; while if they are to review all, they will be toiling at the impossible, since the particulars are infinite and indefinite....”
(Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism)

I’m both surprised and disappointed you failed to connect your point-of-view invariant universal moral belief to my counter-argument against it. You must have failed to connect because you asked what I was talking about, instead of showing what I was talking about is wrong, or at least does not apply. — Mww

So, because we might be wrong... we are?

All statements of thought/belief come via language.

Now... Show me the black swan.

Nobody knows how what appears to be mind comes from what the brain does.
— Mww

Do you know what everyone knows? — creativesoul

I don’t have to know what everybody knows to know there is at least one thing nobody knows. As bad as when I said, “It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that”, and I get back, “if it’s that simple....”.

(Sigh)
———————-

Are your thought/belief about Empiricus' the same as Empiricus'? — creativesoul

I don’t think about Empiricus. I think about what Empiricus thought, and as our thinking systems are identical, whatever he thought I could think just as well. In no other way can humans understand each other.
———————

Show me the black swan. — creativesoul

Assuming you’re not joking, it’s not my burden to show you a black swan, but it wouldn’t be difficult to show you that which falsifies the notion of universal moral belief. You would have to prove a universal moral belief is possible without considering a particular example of what one would be, in order to circumvent the induction principle.

OK, I think I see where you are coming from with the 'turkey thang' now. You seem to be relating the idea of truth to the idea of our knowing of it. Leaving aside the question of our knowing, the idea that a statement about the future could be true now would seem to depend on the idea that either rigid determinism or eternalism with regard to time is the case.

Also, truth in that view would be understood to be totally independent of our knowing of it. So the objection you presented to the idea:

If a statement about what will happen has a truth-value, could we ever know what it is, prior to the event? — S

is based on thinking that our knowing or believing does have some bearing or purchase on truth, which is the basis of pragmatism.

Well, not quite. It could be true (or false) regardless of our knowledge of it, but when it comes to making sense of it all, I think in terms of, "How could we know that to be the case?". And I can't think up an adequate answer to that question. So I accept the possibility, but that's as far as I can get. I can't get to the conclusion that it actually is true (or false) now. Truth-apt? Okay. But actually true (or false)? Can't accept. The best I can come up with is, "Could be, but I just don't know".

We are addressing only the logic of our own thinking about truth. And the logic of our thinking about truth tells us that a statement about the future which it seems must become true or false one day, for example "The Sun will go nova in 2 billion years" may or may not be true now. That just is "making sense of it all" as best we can, as far as I can tell anyway. I think the "How could we know that to be the case" has already been ruled out as irrelevant in this thinking of truth as being independent of our knowing or believing.

Just a footnote...rhetorically speaking....thought you might be interested. If you didn’t already know. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, first put to print in 1878 is taken directly from the form developed as the hypothetical imperative by......you know who.

We are addressing only the logic of our own thinking about truth. And the logic of our thinking about truth tells us that a statement about the future which it seems must become true or false one day, for example "The Sun will go nova in 2 billion years" may or may not be true now. That just is "making sense of it all" as best we can, as far as I can tell anyway. I think the "How could we know that to be the case" has already been ruled out as irrelevant in this thinking of truth as being independent of our knowing or believing. — Janus

Okay, so we're in agreement that it's a, "Could be, but don't know".

Yes, indeed, it seems we are! Is that a first?

I didn't know that; sounds interesting, though. Would you elaborate?

Yes, indeed, it seems we are! Is that a first? — Janus

It's the first in quite some time. I recall that we agreed on much over linguistic meaning, but we disagree substantially over ethics.

Kant called hypothetical imperatives “counsels of prudence”, whereas the categorical, or moral, imperative is a “command of reason”, both grounded in maxims. Peirce knew both The Metaphysics of Morals, from which came the imperatives and maxims, and CPR, from which came the term “pragmatic anthropology”. There is no record of him saying as much, but apparently he took each of those ideas and constructed the beginnings of a new philosophy out of them, with the pragmatic maxim as a tenet.

“....Pragmatism. The opinion that metaphysics is to be largely cleared up by the application of the following maxim for attaining clearness of apprehension: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object....”