I understand the critique of positivism or empiricism, or verificationism. Condensed: The empiricist's methods cannot be empirically verified, and so they have to ground what they're doing in something nonempirical. You can't verify verificationism, no. — csalisbury
I point out, that, despite your rejection of verification, you compulsively reference verified sources qua verified. Though you reject pure experience as authoritative, and refer to the non-empirical essence of a priori methodology, you always approach that methodology via empirically-derived understandings of which texts are authoritative. — csalisbury
what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. — csalisbury
I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy. — csalisbury
So you're saying it's self-evident that universals refer to nothing, and yet people have debated whether they refer to something. — Marchesk
The whole point of Bohr is that he's verified, that's why the quotes feel like they have a pique, or victory-oomph, when quoted, no? — csalisbury
But what's more interesting is what we're doing when we do this, and why. I've noticed I tend to talk compulsively about the things I most need, that I'm most scared of evaporating if I don't talk about them, which means I never really had them to begin with, and could only convince myself of their reality by arguing for them against an enemy. — csalisbury
maybe if I squint hard enough... — Snakes Alive
Show me someone, anyone, who draws and maintains the distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief... — creativesoul
My interest is in asking why we do all this. — Snakes Alive
This was actually known as Moore's Paradox in the earliest analytic philosophy (not the Moore's Paradox for which Moore eventually became famous) – why do philosophers say things they know to be false, or argue about things with which there is obviously no issue? — Snakes Alive
Yes, we're all pretending, and we know if we think for even a moment – even our friend Wayfarer knows why he really does this, and he gives his reasons here: — Snakes Alive
Yes, basically. — Isaac
Simply using terms cannot in of itself be held as demonstration that they are meaningful, otherwise the Jabberwocky is meaningful. — Isaac
The argument over universals is meaningless. — Isaac
You brought up the fact that what we might really be arguing about is... — Isaac
It's testament to the very matter under discussion, It think, that what we've had instead is a half-dozen sentences of hand-waiving and then paragraphs of engagement in the exact practices the thread is supposed to be examining from the outside of. — Isaac
The hand waving is happening on the side claiming there is no meaning. — Marchesk
I don't believe that. — Marchesk
So Wittgenstein was wrong? — Marchesk
Which is something odd between the world and our conceptualizing. — Marchesk
I think we come to rely on predictable patterns in life to take the edge of the scary unpredictable chaos of it. Metaphysics perhaps, offers a verbal trick whereby we can cement these patterns even when we're not living them, just by talking. Is that something like what you're saying? — Isaac
I think this is really interesting with regard to the topic. . Earlier I brought up the possibility that advancing empirical techniques created a fear in those not making the advances that power would be drawn away from them, and that this might explain the co-evolution of metaphysics with empirical investigation. In deferring to 'the text' we see the metaphysician borrowing from the empiricists handbook - appeal to the external. — Isaac
It's facile (and usually their only "comeback") for such enunciators to claim that those who claim that their claims are meaningless simply "do not understand". — Janus
Could adopting, or disposing of, a metaphysical belief, change our treatments of or action towards the world in any way, other than the way we talk, and any other attitudes and behaviors derivative from this? That is, do we do anything else, in accepting a metaphysical claim, other than deciding to assent to the truth of certain bits of language, and the actions derivable from that? — Snakes Alive
What if we take as example belief in a supreme, infinite, eternal and yet personal intelligence; what does it entail to hold such a belief? I think what is involved conceptually could only be understood for the most part by more or less loose analogical negation. A supreme entity is imagined as being greater than, and fundamentally different than, every other entity. — Janus
I'm not sure what you mean by "truth of certain bits of language" — Janus
Yes, but the claimants seem to believe that there is some "special" way of understanding which can justify their claims and yet not be discursively explicable. I believe that what they are saying really amounts to something like "you don't feel it"; they are conflating discursive understanding with feeling. It's just the same with poetry and the arts in general; there is nothing determinately discursive to understand; it is all a matter of feeling. — Janus
I think all that is good, as with any set of customs, so long as you don’t wall off what’s outside it out of fear. — csalisbury
When 'science' is pilfered for a deck of 'science-against-science' cards (quotes),it calls to mind someone in fear of a conquering civilization who believes what they hold dear can only be saved so long as members of that civilization reveal their angelic aspect and swoop down (condescend) to save. Tales of such salvific miracles (ala the 'good samaritan') are sought out, and then held dearly, as one collects stories of the saints, or centurions with a heart of gold. But the backdrop is always the conquering nation one has to stand firm against, relying on the strength of defectors from its ranks (strength derived from the conquering nation.) — csalisbury
Here is the problem, then: for a claim to be cognitively meaningful, and to meaningfully present the world in some way, is for accepting or denying that claim to have some effect on 'how we take the world to be.' But what exactly is it to take the world to be the way it is? A good first stab is, it's something like having one's own treatment of the world track the features of the world systematically, so that one's behaviors and attitudes change as the world changes, and for that reason. — Snakes Alive
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