Perhaps the OP is a but dry. So let's cut to the good bit:This article kills relativism. — Banno
Perhaps the OP is a but dry. So let's cut to the good bit:This article kills relativism. — Banno
(my bold)it [the free-energy formulation in box1] shows that free energy rests on a generative model of the world, which is expressed in terms of the probability of a sensation and its causes occurring together. This means that an agent must have an implicit generative model of how causes conspire to produce sensory data. It is this model that defines both the nature of the agent and the quality of the free-energy bound on surprise.
(my bold again)This formulation [also box1]shows that minimizing free energy by changing sensory data (without changing the recognition density) must increase the accuracy of an agent’s predictions. In short, the agent will selectively sample the sensory inputs that it expects
The question of the locus, nature and potence of "a common coordinate system" ought to be fleshed out. — ZzzoneiroCosm
This article kills relativism. — Banno
"The dominant metaphor of conceptual relativism, that of differing points of view, — ZzzoneiroCosm
Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them; — ZzzoneiroCosm
Conceptual schemes, we are told, are ways of organizing experience; they are systems of categories that give form to the data of sensation; they are points of view from which
individuals, cultures, or periods survey the passing scene.
There may be no translating from one scheme to another, in which case the beliefs, desires, hopes and bits of knowledge that characterize one person have no true counterparts for the subscriber to another scheme. Reality itself is relative to a scheme: what counts as real in one system may not in another.
Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common coordinate system on which to plot them; yet the existence of a common system belies the claim of dramatic incomparability. What we need, it seems to me, is some idea of the considerations that set the limits to conceptual contrast. There are extreme suppositions that founder on paradox or contradiction; there are modest examples we have no trouble understanding. What determines where we cross from the merely strange or novel to the absurd
We may accept the doctrine that associates having a language with having a conceptual scheme. The relation may be supposed to be this: if conceptual schemes differ, so do languages. But speakers of different languages may share a conceptual scheme provided there is a way of translating one language into the other. Studying the criteria of translation is therefore a way of focussing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes.
We may now seem to have a formula for generating distinct conceptual schemes. We get a new out of an old scheme when the speakers of a language come to accept as true an important range. of sentences they previously took to be false (and, of course, vice versa). We must not describe this change simply as a matter of their coming to view old falsehoods as truths, for a truth is a proposition, and what they come to accept, in accepting a sentence as true, is not the same thing that they rejected when formerly they held the sentence to be false. A change has come over the meaning of the sentence because it now belongs to a new language.
We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated
Neither a fixed stock of meanings, nor a theory-neutral reality, can provide, then, a ground for comparison of conceptual schemes. It would be a mistake to look further for such a ground if by that we mean something conceived as common to incommensurable schemes. In abandoning this search, we abandon the attempt to make sense of the metaphor of a single space within which each scheme has a position and provides a point of view.
What would applying the arguments here to moral discourse entail? — Banno
It is strange that conceptual schemes which are posited as incommensurable nevertheless can be contrasted in the forms they give to experience. — fdrake
It is furthermore not a mere revision of belief (X believes that P mapping to X believes that not P), because truth or falsity of a proposition given an interpretation thereof is fully within the scope of the first conceptual scheme. It is a transformation of meaning rather than a revision of belief. — fdrake
Attitudes are already interconnected – causally, semantically and epistemically – with objects and events in the world — ZzzoneiroCosm
What the Davidsonian account of knowledge and interpretation demonstrates, however, is that no such distinction can be drawn. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Attitudes are already interconnected – causally, semantically and epistemically – with objects and events in the world; — ZzzoneiroCosm
I don't 'see' a load of photons, I 'see' a dog, because I'm expecting a dog to be there. — Isaac
This article kills relativism. — Banno
Again, this paragraph appears the most troublesome. Open to anyone's thoughts on it: — ZzzoneiroCosm
Correspondence theories rest on what appears to be an ineluctable if simple idea, but they have not done well under examination. — Davidson
As regards total failure, Davidson claims "we cannot make sense of [it]." Perhaps taken to imply the impossibility of total failure. To say "we cannot make sense of [it]," is not to say "it cannot occur." It can possibly occur regardless of our ability to make sense of it. Davidson concedes that though it may be impossible to "make sense" of a "total failure of translatability" neither is it the case that "all speakers of language...share a common scheme": — ZzzoneiroCosm
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