Cool.

That's about what we do do, not what we ought do.

What ought we do?

I'm trying to figure out how you hurt your foot without accessing objective reality. Your perception of the table didn't cause an injury.

The red cup broke long ago. Funny thing is, I threw it into the fish pond, but when i had cause to move the pond across the yard last November there was no sign of it.

Idealising knowledge, as I do, I'd point out that we don't know anything that is wrong. We might believe it, and think we know it, but if it isn't true, we don't know it.

I know and your probably right; I don't subscribe to the proper definition of knowledge. I don't think it represents knowledge as we find it in nature. Do we know some things better than others? Edit: I mean to say; that the truth value is somewhat a statement of intent. If I wrote down "everything I know" some of it would be wrong. And you'd say I didn't know it then; which is fine I suppose. But, when it's the case that everyone when tasked with this hypothetical writes down something that isn't knowledge by your definition, then it's reasonable to call the definition into question.

Shame to hear about the cup, sort of had a lot riding on it.

I'm trying to figure out how you hurt your foot without accessing objective reality. Your perception of the table didn't cause an injury. — Cheshire

Of course it did. What is a nerve signal if not some form of perception?

Some to type of bio-electricity, it's a bit outside of my wheelhouse. But to simplify the matter. If your correct then it must be because there's something to be objectively correct about. No?

That's about what we do do, not what we ought do.

What ought we do? — Banno

I'm afraid psychology doesn't cover what we ought to do (despite the appearances to the contrary from some of the field's more nefarious representatives). So I don't think there's any fact of the matter about that question.

Personally, I think it's unavoidable and so there little different one ought to do other than carry on. It's possible to become more adaptable and less frightened of contrary (or absence of) information. That certainly reduces the backfire and continuous influence effect (respectively - hardening one's position in the face of contrary evidence, and seeking only confirmatory evidence - if you're not familiar with the colloquialisms).

But then, being adaptable becomes a paradigm in itself and you end up vacillating unnecessarily just because it fits your self-identity. You can't win. Just pick a good story to start with and be prepared to drop it in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but don't be too quick to drop it just because it's got a few cracks in it, everything has, and we need those stories to be quite robust and dependable. It's no good becoming a ruthlessly logical fact database at the expense of ones sanity.

That particular conceit of the philosopher, "you cannot say anything about Covid-19 if you do not first have an implicit or explicit criterion of what truth iis" — Banno

It's not the philosopher saying it, it's common sense. How can you say there is a dog if you don't have a criterion to decide what is a true dog from a false dog? At least implicitly!
The philosopher will never say when a scientific statement is true or false. At most, he will say what the implicit criterion of truth that science uses means. And as I said, even theoretical physicists are interested in it. It's not just a philosophical mania.

How can you say there is a dog if you don't have a criterion to decide what is a true dog from a false dog? — David Mo

If, when I pat it, my arm goes right through, it's probably a false dog.

But this is just tautology, as here 'false dog' just means 'one which my arm goes right through when I try to pat it'. We're just sorting things into classes and giving those classes labels - 'True Dogs', 'False Dogs' - according to some criteria of experience which seem to work for whatever we're trying to do with those classes at the time.

The substitution axiom is a mathematical axiom. I would like to know what it has to do with the existence of objects outside the mind and the possible knowledge of them. — David Mo

Yes, but not necessarily or exclusively. Substitution can also be a logical activity, insofar as the universal form of premises can be exchanged for the particular matter of them. If truth is the conformity of a cognition to its object, merely substitute what constructs a cognition, with the instance of that construction, and see if they match. The universal matter of truth, on the other hand, whether analytic or continental, can never be given from mere instances of particulars, but only each one in its own time, in accordance with the rule contained in the form.

We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist.

As for possible knowledge.....no such thing with respect to objects of cognition. Such objects are an experience. What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought. The aforementioned inseparability of the empirical/rational dichotomy writ large.

What kind of objectivity are you talking about? You seem to believe that even if humanity, the planet, the galaxy and the known universe disappeared, the Sicilian Defence would still exist. Is that so? In what kind of reality?

That's not what I'm saying. The sicilian defense is the sicilian defense merely by convention. It's just what we call 1.e4 followed by black playing c5. You could call that opening any number of things. Naming that the sicilian defense only helps us talk about chess/a common opening.

I'm saying patterns and geometry inhere in the game. It doesn't matter if the players don't see it - it's still there. There was certainly a time when players just didn't grasp certain patterns but now that certain players (minds) do grasp them we'd say that these patterns were discovered, not invented. In other words, they didn't just spring into existence when they were first consciously grasped.

That's basically what I mean by "objective." If you want to argue that everything is mind-dependent and ultimately dependent on some type of universal mind that grounds all existence that's fine with me and your view is credible to me.

Yes, it’s a paraphrased conclusion having to do with human minds in general, given from certain pertinent tenets of a particular epistemological theory. It says here what minds are; what they do is elsewhere. And no, it isn’t a need, indicating some particularly beneficial inclination; it’s an interest, indicating merely some arbitrary persuasion. — Mww

So your words are about human minds, yet you say that the words are about some arbitrary persuasion. I don't see how they can be about both. Either it is about human minds from a view from no/every-where, or about your arbitrary persuasion (your view of human minds).

It seems to me that you are saying that it is a "want" vs. a "need". I see "wants", or "arbitrary persuasions", as cultural manifestations of our biological needs. We have a biological need to socialize, but also to know facts about the world in general to better survive in it. I'm trying to establish which one is the case here.

The false dichotomy is long-since reconciled, again, theoretically, and under all objectively real conditions, they are necessarily inseparable. Nevertheless, the human cognitive system is fully capable of pure thought, of which nothing empirical is cognizable because the conceptions are self-contradictory (an unextended body), or, that of which empirical cognition is possible but iff we can construct objects corresponding to the conceptions (a straight line connecting two points). To say nothing of moral dispositions, for which the actions are necessarily empirical, but the causality for them is given from pure thought alone. — Mww

It looks as if we mostly agree here, but I have to ask: How do you know that you are thinking of an unextended body or a straight line connecting two points if those concepts don't take some shape, some form, in your mind? How do you know that you are being rational or irrational if rationality and irrationality don't take some form in the mind? To assert your rationality, you must have some reason to assert your state of rationality.

...here's something of Wittgenstein's On Certainty: doubt has a background of knowing. One can doubt that it is raining, but only if one understands what it would be like for it to be raining. One can doubt that Sydney is the capital of Australia, only if one knows what Australia is and what a capital is...

(yes, I know it's Canberra...)

Doubt has a background of knowing; hence it is absurd to attempt to doubt everything. Indeed, it is absurd to attempt to doubt most things.

Hence the philosophical enterprise of nihilism undermines itself. — Banno

Yet, "doubt" is used to refer to a feeling of uncertainty.

There seems to be a stark difference between knowing that it is raining and knowing the capital of Australia. For the former, the truth lies outside of the mind(s) that is doubting or knowing. For the latter, the truth lies in minds. Canberra is a city, but being the capital of Australia is a purely human established truth, not a truth prior to humans evolving and thinking it.

One isn't doubting what rain is, but whether or not it is raining right now, and if you are doubting that it is raining right now, then you can't build any knowledge upon that doubt. In other words, you need to have knowledge as a foundation in order to build doubt on it.

Now, if it is absurd to attempt to doubt most things, then why philosophy? It seems to me that philosophy is about doubting everything because the very foundation of what we claim we know is being called into question (is solipsism or realism the case, the mind-body problem, something from nothing or something all the way down, etc.). If philosophy claims that your foundation has problems, then what does that say about all the knowledge you built on that foundation that you say is absurd to doubt?

If it is absurd to doubt most things, then why don't human beings agree on most things, or are we all mostly talking past each other? Or are you humbly implying that you know almost everything and anyone who disagrees with you knows mostly nothing?

Claiming knowledge is equatable to truth is easy if you haven't explained how one arrives at truth.

Yes, it’s a paraphrased conclusion having to do with human minds in general, given from certain pertinent tenets of a particular epistemological theory. (...) And no, it isn’t a need, indicating some particularly beneficial inclination; it’s an interest, indicating merely some arbitrary persuasion.
— Mww
So your words are about human minds, yet you say that the words are about some arbitrary persuasion. I don't see how they can be about both. — Harry Hindu

My words are about human minds in general because the theory is. Not being the author of the theory, the onus is not on me to defend it, but if the theory is interesting, my understanding of it accords with the interest the theory holds, and an arbitrary (because of all the theories with which I am familiar) persuasion (this one, as reflected in the words I use concerning human minds) arises.
——————-

How do you know that you are thinking of an uextended body or a straight line connecting two points if those concepts don't take some shape, some form, in your mind? — Harry Hindu

First of all.....you must surely understand the vast dissimilarity between thinking and talking about thinking. In that is found the worth of the theory, as the means to describe what the mind is doing when it’s not being talked about.

Second.....I can think whatever I want, and if you’re interested, thought is nothing but “...cognition by means of conceptions....”, and conceptions “...are based on the spontaneity of thought....”. Understanding is the synthesis of conceptions, so while I am not prohibited from synthesizing body with unextended in thought, the two conceptions so conjoined contradict the principles of causality for empirical objects, which all bodies, per se, must be. The human system absolutely mandates something from which certainty is at least possible, otherwise we have no ground for claiming any knowledge whatsoever, which in humans is the LNC. Therefore, even if I can think a contradiction, I must have in place some means to prevent any experience from ever following from it, in order to preserve my requirement for possible certainty, and by association, knowledge itself. This manifests in the fact that while I can think “unextended body”, I couldn’t possible describe the properties such a thing might be given, which means such a thing is not possible for me to know.

So to answer your question, there are forms of those conceptions, it is just impossible to cognize anything by the conjunction of them on the one hand, yet serves as justifiable criteria for the valid cognition of things like lines and points on the other.
——————-

How do you know that you are being rational or irrational if rationality and irrationality don't take some form in the mind? — Harry Hindu

Rationality is the quality of a rational procedure, the form of it given through its schema, re: sub-categories, instances, iterations, occurrences, etc. I may never know I’m being irrational, if I never understand certain schema do not actually reflect states of affairs in the world. I might be crazy but think I’m doing alright. Why shrinks drive Beemers.

Normally though, I would be irrational if I insist on knowledge proven to be illicit. If I insist I can demonstrate the reality of an unextended body, for instance. Or, if I insist the interior angles of any triangle cannot sum to greater than 180 degrees.
——————-

To assert your rationality, you must have some reason to assert your state of rationality. — Harry Hindu

Not sure what to do with this. Not sure rationality is something to be asserted. Exemplified, perhaps. Dunno.

Mostly agreeing.....always a good thing.

How can you say there is a dog if you don't have a criterion to decide what is a true dog from a false dog? — David Mo

Toddlers do this all the time. While it common for folk to think they need such criteria, it turns out that they usually don't. Can you tell a prairie dog from a hot dog?

But, Harry, we do agree on almost everything.

But, Harry, we do agree on almost everything. — Banno

Why do you believe that?

Charity.

Make a list of all your beliefs, from your presidential preferences down to the size of your shoe.

How many of those would we agree on?

Charity. — Banno

Charity says interpret to maximize agreement. That wouldn't explain why you think we mostly agree on everything.

Make a list of all your beliefs, from your presidential preferences down to the size of your shoe.

How many of those would we agree on? — Banno

I don't know. Isn't it possible that it just looks like we agree?

Isn't it possible that it just looks like we agree? — frank

And... that would be different from our actually agreeing?

Charity says interpret to maximize agreement. That wouldn't explain why you think we mostly agree on everything. — frank

It says let's start by assuming we agree on most things.

And... that would be different from our actually agreeing? — Banno

Why not?

It says let's start by assuming we agree on most things. — Banno

That's a little different from asserting that we do agree on most things.

Sure. Frank.

I don't see anything substantial in your comments so far. What do you want?

I think it's possible that we don't agree much. You say "rabbit" and I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but we get by with various nods and so forth like partially deaf people do.

In certain settings we get really precise, like in scientific endeavors, but that precision is pretty narrowly directed and rides on the shifting ground of unknowns and wild theories.

On the other hand maybe we really do agree on most things which would open the door to more questions. Have you ever read anything about the idea of the syntax-semantic interface?

Have you ever read anything about the idea of the syntax-semantic interface? — frank

I gather someone has made it part of their jargon...

But this is just tautology, — Isaac

Of course definitions are tautologies. But they are useful or not. It's a question of meaning and reference.

Yes, perception is a simple criterion. It's more or less useful in everyday life. But it is useless in propositions about electrons or force fields. This is where the problem of true propositions begins.

If you have thought that defining truth is simple, you are wrong.

We don’t use truth as a mark of existence of real objects, for they are necessarily presupposed by the cognition of them. It is, after all, impossible to cognize any real object that doesn’t exist. — Mww

You have simply transferred the problem of truth to the problem of "cognition". You've changed one word for another. "When I state a true proposition?" is equivalent to "When I have a cognition of a thing?" With the aggravated problem that you can't recognize and communicate a "cognition" if you don't speak about it through propositional language.

What they are an experience of, and thereby what they are known as, depends solely on the logical form of truth intrinsic to human thought. — Mww

Do you mean to say that my experience of an emotion and that of a lizard is subjective? This is what it seems to say, since the form of my cognition is something subjective, which does not depend on the known object. This does not seem to me to stand up. It seems that the object I know has something to say about the way I can know it.

Yes, perception is a simple criterion. It's more or less useful in everyday life. But it is useless in propositions about electrons or force fields. This is where the problem of true propositions begins.

If you have thought that defining truth is simple, you are wrong. — David Mo

But I wasn't talking about using perceptions to define 'truth'. I was talking about using perception to distinguish 'true dog' from 'false dog'. There is no general case which covers 'true x' and 'false x'.

When it comes to electrons, physicists are not even thinking in terms anything like the dog example. They're thinking in terms of fitting data to a model with predictive power (or elegance, or simplicity...). Here it's not 'true dog=pat it - false dog=run away'. It's 'fits the model=publish - doesn't fit the model=revise the model' (to put it very simply). In neither case does the scientist or the would-be dog patter need a general definition of truth to hold or perform either of those two algorithms. Experience is sufficient.

That's basically what I mean by "objective." If you want to argue that everything is mind-dependent and ultimately dependent on some type of universal mind that grounds all existence that's fine with me and your view is credible to me. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not trying to say that.
First of all, you have too much confidence in the absolute exactitude of chess computers. The possibilities for the development of the Sicilian Defense are endless. At one point in the '85 confrontation between Karpov and Kasparov the Whites played Bg2. Experts disagree as to whether this was a basic error or why. Neither do the chess computers. Therefore, if the best solution exists it is not in anyone's brain, artificial or otherwise. We have two options: whether it exists as a mere possibility of a current set of conditions of a conventional symbolic system or it exists in another world.

This last possibility has many disadvantages. For example: limiting ourselves only to the human brain, there is an infinite possibility of imagining formal systems from Tac-tac-toe to Ryemann's mathematics. Objectivity would be an infinity of infinities. Outside of human measurement. How do you know that infinity exists? What is your inhuman faculty that allows you to grasp its existence?

But I wasn't talking about using perceptions to define 'truth'. I was talking about using perception to distinguish 'true dog' from 'false dog'. There is no general case which covers 'true x' and 'false x'. — Isaac

There is no single method of reaching the truth, but there does seem to be a single concept of truth. It is universal insofar as it designates certain characteristics common to all methods of obtaining a true proposition. Leaving aside merely formal propositions, for now.
All methods of obtaining truth refer to propositions based on intersubjectivity, experience and prediction. That goes for your dog and for an electron. This is what we mean with "Give me a proof of this".

Then comes the discussion about whether the truths thus obtained are objective or not.

All methods of obtaining truth refer to propositions based on intersubjectivity, experience and prediction. That goes for your dog and for an electron. This is what we mean with "Give me a proof of this". — David Mo

Yes, I'll certainly grant that they have that very broad range of factors in common. But not all cases have all three. A mathematical truth has nothing of prediction or experience, a 'true' note in music has only inter-subjectivity and experience, the true statement of past events has nothing but inter-subjectivity alone.

Then comes the discussion about whether the truths thus obtained are objective or not. — David Mo

Why? What does this add to the methods we already have? And how could we possibly proceed in such a discussion when the truth of the solution can only be established by inter-subjectivity, experience and prediction?