Well that's your ineptitude.

It's something to do with world, there is the black standard but there are good things which would be quite a confusing topic to explain. When world is included with consciousness, there are good things and truthfully good things it can do.

Well, I'll just have to take your word for it. I've recently been entreated to trust experts in the field, perhaps this would be a good place to start. I shall henceforth earnestly attempt to do good things by the black standard.

Well no good means you're up to no good. It's not beneficent. People are intellectually annoyed.

The answer is like the opening of a womb. It's quite a complex shape to register afterward.

Well no good means you're up to no good. It's not beneficent. People are intellectually annoyed. — Qwex

I'll be sure to bear that in mind.

Cheers and while you're at it keep up the good posts.

Before we continue this no doubt highly fascinating discussion, I ought to point out that we've strayed far from my original point and that this discussion has little to do with it.

The philosophically engaged and interested laypersons that are suggested by your objections are not the same as the people I was mentioning. I was talking about people who want to simultaneously maintain that philosophy is both too hard/heady for them (therefore inaccessible) but also just a matter of opinion (therefore infinitely accessible). Clearly these positions cannot be maintained simultaneously.

I was talking about people who want to simultaneously maintain that philosophy is both too hard/heady for them (therefore inaccessible) but also just a matter of opinion (therefore infinitely accessible). Clearly these positions cannot be maintained simultaneously. — Artemis

Yes, that is the exact point I'm disputing. It is possible to create a set of rules, the inclusion of each member of that set being nothing but opinion, whose full modalities are nonetheless too complex for a person of only moderate intelligence to grasp.

whose full modalities are nonetheless too complex for a person of only moderate intelligence to grasp. — Isaac

In which case they cannot have an opinion thereof.

In which case they cannot have an opinion thereof. — Artemis

Indeed. But that doesn't prevent them from having an informed and valid opinion about the origin or scope of those rules, that's the point.

I am not well versed enough to have anything but the most superficial understanding of the full modalities of the rules of chess. I am nonetheless quite sure, and justifiably so, that the rules of chess are entirely someone's opinion.

Indeed. But that doesn't prevent them from having an informed and valid opinion about the origin or scope of those rules, that's the point. — Isaac

They cannot both maintain that they cannot have an informed opinion and think they have an informed opinion.

Rules of chess =/= someone's opinion?

Not in the present tense.

When someone create chess, they use rules of square-form and other mathematics.

Much better board games could be made using the element of mysticism.

They cannot both maintain that they cannot have an informed opinion and think they have an informed opinion. — Artemis

Yes they can. One is an opinion about the modalities of the rule set and the other is an opinion about the meta data. Two different areas of knowledge/opinion.

Yes they can. One is an opinion about the modalities of the rule set and the other is an opinion about the meta data. Two different areas of knowledge/opinion. — Isaac

a: What is your opinion on the Jabberwocky?
b: Pretty negative.
a: Do you know what the Jabberwocky is?
b: Not a clue.
a: That means you have no idea what you have a negative opinion about or what it even means to have a negative opinion thereof. Basically, your opinion is not really an opinion at all, because it is about nothing and means nothing.

No.

What is your opinion about the deeper meaning in the poem 'the jabberwocky'?

Don't know, I've never read it.

What is your opinion about the contribution the jabberwocky has made to astrophysics?

I'm almost certain it's made no contribution at all. I've never read it, but I do know that it's a poem, not a theory of astrophysics.


Data - the meaning, metre, syncopation of the poem.
Meta data - the fact that it is a poem.


It takes expertise in poetry to know the data, it does not take such expertise to know the meta data.

Yes they can. One is an opinion about the modalities of the rule set and the other is an opinion about the meta data. Two different areas of knowledge/opinion. — Isaac
a: What is your opinion on the Jabberwocky?
b: Pretty negative.
a: Do you know what the Jabberwocky is?
b: Not a clue.
a: That means you have no idea what you have a negative opinion about or what it even means to have a negative opinion thereof. Basically, your opinion is not really an opinion at all, because it is about nothing and means nothing.


Artemis

19 minutes ago — Artemis

What you are talking about here is internal self-consistency, which is certainly an important criteria for any philosophy or system. . But that is not the only criteria that is required for a meaningful philosophy; it must be explicitly connected, presumably empirically, to the real world. If it is not, then it is only of interest to people who want to explore those ideas and worry about its relevance later, ie philosophers.

For non-philosophers it may appear no more than an academic exercise. and a meaningless one at that.

Way to miss the point.

it must be explicitly connected, presumably empirically, to the real world. If it is not, then it is only of interest to people who want to explore those ideas and worry about its relevance later, ie philosophers.

For non-philosophers it may appear no more than an academic exercise. and a meaningless one at that. — A Seagull

I think there's a couple of false assumptions implicitly wrapped up in here.

For one, there are philosophical debates that don't seem to have "real world" applications (I'll get back to that in a moment), and sure that means that the layperson may not have much interest in them. But A) that does not mean they are not important topics, and B) that doesn't really matter in the context of what a layperson can and simultaneously cannot contribute to.

Back to the "seem" part. I think most, if not all philosophy is useful in ways for "real world" problems. That's usually why these questions are posed in the first place. Philosophers start from some real world issue, like abortion, get into discussions about God's existence, and suddenly they're debating how many angels fit on a needle head. Taken out of context, the debate seems to have no real world relation, but really it's turns out to be one of the fundamental questions that needs to be answered before we can settle the larger, real world issue. (And, yeah, I totally just pulled that example from thin air for humor's sake.)

I have the impression that most people don’t even know what philosophy is about. — Pfhorrest

You just described me. I don't have the answer to even one philosophical question. Many answers, yes, but not one, congruent, definitive answer.

Way to miss the point. — Artemis

The 'point' was you saying that people could not coherently hold a position that philosophy was really hard and yet simultaneously dismiss it as 'all opinions' - that philosopher's ideas are not based on a body of knowledge.

That is exactly the situation I described in my analogy - not knowing the full modalities of the content of a subject, but knowing what sort of proposition that subject contains.

I know that the rules of chess contain a series of made-up proscriptions, that none of them reflect the actual physical constraints on the movement of the pieces. I know this without having to actually know what the rules of chess are.

I know that the study of physics deals with the derivation and testing of theories corresponding to experiments on physical matter and forces. I can know this without knowing what any of those theories actually are, nor understanding a word of them. IF someone asks me if physics is 'just opinion' I can justifiable answer that it is not, on the basis of this meta data without needing to understand any of the actual data.

Likewise, if someone were of the opinion that subjects which have no intersubjective consensus do not have a body of knowledge, they could justifiably put philosophy into that category simply using the knowledge that philosophers do not use intersubjectivitiy to test their theories. They do not need to know what those theories actually are, not understand any of their internal complexity to justify this conclusion because it is not based on the content of the theories, it's based on the methodology by which they're derived and tested.

Navel-gazing, time wasted.

Navel-gazing, time wasted. — NOS4A2

They may be right (it's up to the philosophers to decide that), but oh, how sweet this navel-gazing is.

They may be right (it's up to the philosophers to decide that), but oh, how sweet this navel-gazing is.

If they only knew. It should be a part of early childhood education.

I'll start off by quoting myself to someone else on this forum just the other day:

"It helps when we do away with the need to "know with 100% certainty" and accept the fallibalistic realist position that "fairly confident" is the maximum anyone can be about most things in this world.

This is a tangent, but I see the demands for certainty over and over on this forum and elsewhere... I think it probably comes from a really naive understanding and application of science, where we think the answer has to be known with certainty to be true. But most of the time, even,in science (!) we're working with a theory which is just "to the best of our knowledge/understanding," and which is better or more plausible than any other theory.

All this is just to say, I think once you try to demand absolute certainty, you're asking the wrong questions"

But if you insist on comparing the certainty of philosophy versus physics, I'll just point you in the direction of the entire discipline of Logic. There is nothing in the universe we know with more certainty than that, because logic is the foundation upon which all coherent thought (including in Physics and Chess!) rests. You can question gravity before you can question a=a, and if you question the latter, you're simultaneously questioning the former.

Spend too much time with the eternal skeptics on a forum like this, and you might get the impression that logic is not certain, or that it is also just opinion... But apart from just being kind of silly, like I said it also does away with your holding up physics as some paragon of "known facts."

Interesting post but I'm afraid I'm at a loss to understand how it relates to anything I'm saying. I'm talking about the distinction between knowing the modalities of a subject and knowing it's scope - content vs methodology, if you like. You seem to be talking about certainty and the problems of scientism. I can't see the link between the two, perhaps you could join the dots for me.

By way of some reply, I agree that the search for certainty is misguided. I do, in fact, believe (silly or not) that logic is just a method of thinking, not a truth of the universe, and as such is very much open to question and improvement, as are all models in physics. It's just, as I say, I'm not sure how any of this relates to what we've been discussing.

This is all to counter the idea that you could call philosophy an opinion but not physics. As you suggested above.

Mode of thinking sounds just like another way of saying opinion, btw. But a=a is a fact of the universe. A law which all things abide by. A more certain law than any of the things physics could possibly point to.

This is all to counter the idea that you could call philosophy an opinion but not physics. As you suggested above. — Artemis

I see, so this is hinging on what we mean by 'just opinion'? I mentioned my interpretation of that phrase in my earlier posts, but my writing is not always that clear I'm afraid. Given my belief in model dependent realism, there is no sense in which something is fact, as opposed to opinion, other than in degree. So for me (and I think colloquially many others) the degree of intersubjectivity determines the place on the fact-opinion scale.

Physics deals (mostly) with highly intersubjective data, the behaviour of matter and forces predicted by its theories are agreed upon by all observers, hence we're more likely to declare its results to be facts. Philosophy makes propositions which are not verifiable by reference to intersubjective observation. It appeals to intuition, elegance, adherence to rules of thought... Most are not widely agreed on and so we tend to declare the propositions 'opinion' rather than 'fact'.

My main point, contrary to what you'd written, is that one need not know the modalities of a field to know that it contains what they'd justifiably call 'opinion'. They only need know the methodology.

In my experience academics involved in any kind of science generally separate themselves from philosophy. "What would make a neural net self aware?" - philosophical speculation, as it requires a what is seen as a non-scientific concept of self awareness.

Despite that, you can trigger academics when not-even-wrong philosophical speculation crosses over into the science, like "Does Evolution have a purpose?" annoys researchers.

The combined effect on academics I think is it's either useless, error borne from lazy thinking and lack of education in their field, or not related to their research at all.

Of course there are exceptions, and you can find authors who bridge gaps; like Dennet, Metzinger, Rovelli, Merleau-Ponty, Rota and Priest.

Given my belief in model dependent realism, there is no sense in which something is fact, as opposed to opinion, other than in degree. So for me (and I think colloquially many others) the degree of intersubjectivity determines the place on the fact-opinion scale. — Isaac

But before you said this:

IF someone asks me if physics is 'just opinion' I can justifiable answer that it is not, on the basis of this meta data without needing to understand any of the actual data. — Isaac

So please make up your mind what your position is.

This is all to counter the idea that you could call philosophy an opinion but not physics. As you suggested above.

Mode of thinking sounds just like another way of saying opinion, btw. But a=a is a fact of the universe. A law which all things abide by. A more certain law than any of the things physics could possibly point to. — Artemis

You seem to be suggesting that 'a=a' is somehow fundamental to philosophy and hence not an opinion and hence philosophy is not opinion.

But what does 'a=a' actually mean?

I will tell you: It means that in a logical system 'a' can be substituted for 'a' without affecting the validity of the logical process. And also, by inference, that any string of symbols eg 'xyz' can be substituted for the same string of symbols 'xyz' without affecting the outcome of the logical process. In this way the substitution of 'xyz' for 'xyz' is a null operation, it changes nothing.

So 'a=a' is really nothing special, it can only be used within some logical system and hence cannot be foundational.

So please make up your mind what your position is. — Artemis

I'm not seeing the disparity you're drawing between those positions. One says that whether something is a fact or an opinion is a matter of the degree of intersubjectivity of its veracity measurements, the other states that physics is not at the 'opinion' end of this scale.