I'm not keen on explaining Kant's errors again here. — Banno

Now THAT I might find interesting. Direct me to it? To read, not to argue, promise.

I've never said that matching everyone's observations is the sole sufficient criterion for accepting a theory, only that it's a necessary one.

Literally my next thread I had planned after the conversation you're thinking of was to be on another criterion that would adjudicate between just such sets of theories as those. (Hint: it has to do with parsimony). It still would never pin down exactly one theory as the definitely correct one, but it would give reasons to prefer some of those theories over others so long as they still match all observations.

But just going around and around on whether or not it's ever possible to pin down one theory in particular as definitely the unique best one or else (as is my position) that we can only ever narrow down the range of possible theories, was so goddamn exhausting that I gave up on that series of threads for a while to focus on all of the many, many other things in life sucking up my limited time.

And now an idle comment in another thread that wasn't even mine has spun out into yet another interminable conversation with you that sucks up hours of every day, and when that's done I'll probably be too burned out to start anything new for even longer than I would have been before.

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would.

that we can ... narrow down the range of possible theories... — Pfhorrest

...is what I was disputing. We can't, as my example shows. Same will be true of parsimony, elegance, explanatory power, or any other such system you care to come up with. You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons and you'll come up with whatever post hoc rationalisation is required to make you feel comfortable with it.

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would. — Pfhorrest

That seems an odd thing to say. I can't think why you'd want to post your ideas on a forum and then complain about them being discussed. Did you just want everyone to say "wow, well done you"?

Math is also not dependent on being shared. — frank

I quite disagree with that; when applied to mathematics in total. It looks too much like the specialised language of a type of inquiry for me to think mathematics itself is not dependent upon being shared.

Would you call it objective?

Yes, if I wasn't splitting hairs like in this thread I'd have no bother calling it objective. It's not objective in the way you can "go out and look" at a ball's behaviour, say, but you can go "out and look" to see if a proof works. The autonomy of mathematical objects seems to derive from the fact that whether a statement implies another given its assumptions does not depend on who checks.

I don't know if that autonomy is more like the autonomy of nature or the autonomy of language, but I'd suspect it's closer to the latter; the moves humans make in logical+deductive inference games can be quite well modelled by a syntax of production rules.

Our talk about the word is conjured into being by use engaging in conversation — Banno

That's like sewing the form of life and nature into language, "our talk of the world is conjured into being by engaging in conversation", I stub my toe and scream "Ow!" - I refute it thus.

It seems to me that one cannot say what it is that is not shared; and hence that it is irrelevant to the discussion. — Banno

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it. I think that's where you are becoming confused; you think because you cannot talk about (in the sense of share) what is not shared, that it is irrelevant. It may well be thought to be discursively irrelevant, just because it cannot be a part of discourse if you cannot share it, but on the other hand, it is anything but irrelevant to the individual, and it comes into play in discourse in indeterminable ways.

So it is relevant even though it's relevance cannot be explicated. For example if someone is in severe pain that will likely affect their level of discourse in indiscernible ways, even though they cannot share their actual pain, beyond telling you about it.

I always try to be clear. An observer is subjective, hence fallible. A claim is not an observer. A claim can just be true or not. — Olivier5

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not.

You are the sole reason I don't engage here as much as I otherwise would. — Pfhorrest

Should be 'you are the sole reason I don't engage with you as much as I otherwise would'. I could relate to that; I feel that way myself when arguments are ad nauseum repeatedly distorted and I have to keep correcting misinterpretions only to have those corrections misinterpreted in turn.

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not. — Janus

Yeah, I wondered about that.

Should be 'you are the sole reason I don't engage with you as much as I otherwise would'. — Janus

Nah I meant “here”; I’ve refrained from posting new threads a lot because of fear that they will turn into intractable time sinks going around and around with Isaac specifically clarifying exactly how it is that I don’t mean any of the crazy things he thinks I must but only something much more mundane. Only one other person here has been like that and he hasn’t posted for maybe a year now.

that we can ... narrow down the range of possible theories... — Pfhorrest

...is what I was disputing. We can't, as my example shows. Same will be true of parsimony, elegance, explanatory power, or any other such system you care to come up with. You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons and you'll come up with whatever post hoc rationalisation is required to make you feel comfortable with it. — Isaac

So your view is that there is no way at all to judge one belief to be better or worse than any other, and all there is is the fact that people believe different things and so whatever it's not like any of them are any more correct or incorrect?

Why are you arguing about anything then? My beliefs are different than yours, but it seems on your view they can't be any worse, they're just different, and there's nothing to do about that.

I can't think why you'd want to post your ideas on a forum and then complain about them being discussed. Did you just want everyone to say "wow, well done you"? — Isaac

No, but I want to get on with the meat of the things I’m trying to talk about instead of getting bogged down defending myself from the strange presuppositions you seem to uncharitably read into everything. It’s as though I was to tell an anecdote that began with “So I was at the store one day...” and you objected that I presume there exists only one store because I said “the”, and then we spend weeks arguing about what articles mean and the ontological commitments behind them and then maybe we eventually move on to whether it was really “one” day given that it was simultaneously a different day in America than it was in Australia and...

All I meant to say was that perhaps you shouldn't allow anyone's tedious logic-chopping to stop you engaging here (on the Forum), but should allow it to stop you engaging them.

I certainly don't want to be the fly to the flypaper of such "interlocutors", and I understand it's sometimes hard, but I believe you can learn to resist the temptation.

I'd say that objectivity is the limit of any series of increasingly comprehensive intersubjectivities.

In other words, as you take into account more and more different perspectives, as your intersubjectivity gets more and more comprehensive, you get closer and closer to objectivity, and "at infinity", i.e. if you could ever perfectly account for absolutely every perspective, that would be objectivity. — Pfhorrest

This is reminiscent of Peirce's definition of truth as consisting in what the community of inquirers come to believe at the end of inquiry. And since the end of inquiry can never be reached but only asymptotically approached, truth never becomes absolutely determinable. (Hopefully I've remembered that in a not too distorted way).

Claims are said to be fallible precisely insofar as they can be true or not. — Janus

Irrelevant to anything. The point was that individual observers are fallible, hence the power of intersubjectivity. Banjo keeps trying to misunderstand this very simple idea that two minds are better than one. Don't play his games.

So your view is that there is no way at all to judge one belief to be better or worse than any other, and all there is is the fact that people believe different things and so whatever it's not like any of them are any more correct or incorrect? — Pfhorrest

I don't know where you'd get that from, it's literally in the quote "You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons". Does that sound like "no way at all"? I'm struggling how you can read "a whole slew of ... reasons" as "no way at all".

Why are you arguing about anything then? — Pfhorrest

I'm not arguing about anything. I'm critiquing your position. I assumed that's why you posted it. I haven't posted anything, not a single thread.

My beliefs are different than yours, but it seems on your view they can't be any worse, they're just different, and there's nothing to do about that. — Pfhorrest

I didn't say there's nothing to do about that. just that there isn't one single correct thing to do about that.

It’s as though I was to tell an anecdote that began with “So I was at the store one day...” and you objected that I presume there exists only one store because I said “the”, and then we spend weeks arguing about what articles mean and the ontological commitments behind them and then maybe we eventually move on to whether it was really “one” day given that it was simultaneously a different day in America than it was in Australia and... — Pfhorrest

So you wouldn't find it weird if I came to you with a mathematical proof and you said I'd made a mistake in step one and I said "I don't want you to say anything about step one, I know step one is right, I just want your view on steps two to ten"? My suspicion is that you'd just say "Why come to me at all then, if you already have an infallible means of checking the soundness of your steps?"

This is a perennial problem I see with a vast proportion of the threads here. Logic is not that hard, pretty much anyone with a graduate education (or intelligent enough to get one), can follow through the logical consequences of a position, from given premises. It's the premises that are interesting. You're an intelligent person, and you've clearly given this a lot of thought. I very much doubt you've made any glaring errors in following the logical consequences of your premises, I suspect, had you done so, you'd have spotted it yourself on the second reading and corrected it. But the hidden assumptions in your premises are a lot harder to spot, we all have our own blind spots for what seems right to us because the mental effort of dealing with cognitive dissonance is something we're programmed to avoid. The help other people can be is that they have different blind spots to you, so they can show you yours (and you theirs). These are all in the premises, these are all in imported assumptions, right at the start.

It's like you're presenting "if A then B, A therefore B" and you want us all to 'get into the meat' of "therefore B". Any stoned undergrad can do that. Hell, you can program a computer to do that bit. The bit that matters, the bit where others will have something interesting to say is "if A then B". Right at the start.

If you're just going to assume that every problem raised is a 'strange presupposition' or 'uncharitable reading' then you've simply assumed you own premises. Well then the rest follows flawlessly - well done.

I don't know where you'd get that from, it's literally in the quote "You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons". Does that sound like "no way at all"? I'm struggling how you can read "a whole slew of ... reasons" as "no way at all". — Isaac

The "you'll believe whatever you want to believe" part sounds like you think there is no way of correctly figuring out for sure which of several different beliefs that several different people all believe for that slew of different reasons is more or less correct to believe.

This is the crux of pretty much all of the disagreements you and I ever get into. When the question of "how should we do such-and-such" comes up, your answer is always "people do so-and-so". Okay, yeah, and? That's an answer to a different question entirely. It's like you just flatly refuse to express any prescriptive viewpoint at all, and go out of your way to try to read every question about one, or proposed answer to such question, as descriptive instead, so you can give your descriptive answers that I've little doubt are quite accurate but are nevertheless totally non-sequitur.

I'm not arguing about anything. I'm critiquing your position. — Isaac

A critique is a kind of argument. You are presenting things that you appear to think are good reasons to reject what you take my position to be. That's an argument.

If we all just think what we respectively think and there's no sorting out who's right or wrong, then there's no point in arguing, unless, as I'm beginning to suspect, you are not arguing in good faith, in pursuit of figuring out or convincing others what actually is true or false, but just as a way of metaphorically poking an anthill for idle fun, to watch the bugs react. That's the definition of an internet troll.

I didn't say there's nothing to do about that. just that there isn't one single correct thing to do about that. — Isaac

So if we think different things, and do different things about that disagreement, and neither the different things that we think nor the different things that we do to sort out that disagreement are any more or less correct than the other, where does that leave us?

Logic is not that hard, pretty much anyone with a graduate education (or intelligent enough to get one), can follow through the logical consequences of a position, from given premises. — Isaac

Most people here don't have a graduate education, and many are probably not intelligent enough to get one. (No offense intended to the nobody in particular who match that description). Highlighting the logical consequences of things may be too low-brow for you, but it's still something that many people here would likely find productive.

And aside from that, the things that I find most interesting, and am usually working toward highlighting, are neither the truth of the premises nor the logical inferences from them, but the parallels between different facets of philosophy as a discipline, like isomorphisms in mathematics. Not always between descriptive and prescriptive sides of philosophy either, but also entirely within one side of that divide, between different parts of it.

Also I enjoy just bringing attention to little-known views in philosophy, whether they're of my own invention or just things that I found buried in dusty corners of my recreational reading that were completely glossed over in my academic classes' surveys of all the prominent positions.

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration, which I hope would then spawn some back-and-forth between different people discussing their merits without having their minds yet made up either way.

If you're just going to assume that every problem raised is a 'strange presupposition' or 'uncharitable reading' then you've simply assumed you own premises. — Isaac

My contention is not just that you're doubting the truth of premises I start with -- that's fine (although NB that premises are definitionally assumptions made at the start of argument, so saying I've assumed them is kinda missing the point) -- but that you seem to take my starting premises to mean something much stranger and less plausible than what seems a quite natural reading of them would be. Charitability in argumentation means interpreting an argument in the way that makes the most sense of it, but you seem to do exactly the opposite of that, and the whole conversation on my side then becomes trying to figure out exactly what other weird background assumption you're reading into my views that enables you to interpret what I'm saying in a way that would entail such obviously wrong conclusions that I am in no way endorsing.

You know the trope where a man compliments his wife somehow like "you look beautiful in that dress" and she responds "oh so I don't look beautiful normally?" and now he's on the back foot trying to figure out how to convey what he originally meant (and would charitably have been understood to mean) while she finds more and more ways of still interpreting him as insulting her? This feels a lot like that (though the misinterpretation of course is not as an insult, but as an absurdity or obvious falsehood).

Or, for another illustration: if I handed you an apple and you said “yuck! I hate apples!” that would be one thing, but if I hand you what I’m sure is an apple and you say “yuck! I hate eggplants!” then I’m going to be very perplexed about what is going on here. I hate eggplants too, but... this is an apple. Isn’t it? I wouldn’t offer you an eggplant, I agree those are gross. Why do you think this is one?

The "you'll believe whatever you want to believe" part sounds like you think there is no way of correctly figuring out for sure which of several different beliefs that several different people all believe for that slew of different reasons is more or less correct to believe. — Pfhorrest

That's what those slew of reasons are there to do. Help you work that out.

When the question of "how should we do such-and-such" comes up, your answer is always "people do so-and-so". Okay, yeah, and? That's an answer to a different question entirely. It's like you just flatly refuse to express any prescriptive viewpoint at all, and go out of your way to try to read every question about one, or proposed answer to such question, as descriptive instead, so you can give your descriptive answers that I've little doubt are quite accurate but are nevertheless totally non-sequitur. — Pfhorrest

It's not a flat refusal, but we have to set the parameters first. If you asked "how should I get to the pub?" and I answered "Just fly", or "Wish that you were there" or "Click your heels three times and think of beer", I think you'd quite justifiably say "No, how do I really get to the pub?", meaning that my answer about how I should behave needs to be within the parameters of how humans actually do behave. No matter what you say here, no matter what you think ... unless you are some Buddhist master, you are going to process moral dilemmas in the ways I've outlined, you can't not. So any solution to how we should carry out that processing must be within the parameters of how that processing is going to take place regardless of what we think.

If we all just think what we respectively think and there's no sorting out who's right or wrong, then there's no point in arguing — Pfhorrest

I don't see how that follows. Why would the only point in arguing be for me to change you from something right to something wrong? I could, for example, offer alternatives. I could help you strengthen your argument so you feel more confident about it. I could resolve internal contradictions which would otherwise cause cognitive dissonance.

a way of metaphorically poking an anthill for idle fun, to watch the bugs react. That's the definition of an internet troll. — Pfhorrest

I don't see how that follows either. I could enjoy the game (like chess, which is equally combative, but both parties benefit). I could have a passionate academic interest in how people defend their beliefs and how that approach has been changed by online social media...

So if we think different things, and do different things about that disagreement, and neither the different things that we think nor the different things that we do to sort out that disagreement are any more or less correct than the other, where does that leave us? — Pfhorrest

Pretty much the place human(-like) social relations have been for the past few million years.

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration — Pfhorrest

So "well done you" then?

premises are definitionally assumptions made at the start of argument, so saying I've assumed them is kinda missing the point — Pfhorrest

I specifically said 'hidden assumptions'. The interest is in being shown the ones you didn't even know you had.

you seem to take my starting premises to mean something much stranger and less plausible than what seems a quite natural reading of them would be — Pfhorrest

Think about that. How are you judging 'natural reading'? I'm not the only person here who's taken your comments this way, that thread you started on epistemology had Janus, Banno, Srap and a few others all take your comments in this supposedly 'strange' way, and you judge it to be 'strange', how? Because it's not how it seems to you? Well, duh! That's why we present these things to other people, precisely because thing always seem clear to you, if they're the things you're saying, the point of putting out into the public is to see what they mean to others.

the whole conversation on my side then becomes trying to figure out exactly what other weird background assumption you're reading into my views that enables you to interpret what I'm saying in a way that would entail such obviously wrong conclusions that I am in no way endorsing. — Pfhorrest

Again, if you're simply assuming that my reading of background assumptions and the wrong conclusions they would lead to are erroneous, then you've just assumed you're flawless from the outset. I don't see the point of engaging in those conditions, but hey, it's your output.

if I handed you an apple and you said “yuck! I hate apples!” that would be one thing, but if I hand you what I’m sure is an apple and you say “yuck! I hate eggplants!” then I’m going to be very perplexed about what is going on here. I hate eggplants too, but... this is an apple. Isn’t it? I wouldn’t offer you an eggplant, I agree those are gross. Why do you think this is one? — Pfhorrest

Why would you be perplexed. It's obvious what's happening there. One of us has made a mistake identifying apples. Difficult to believe with actual apples...very easy to believe with something as complex as philosophical frameworks. In fact I'd go as far as to say it should be the default expectation.

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it. — Janus

Just tell me what it is about the Newton's cradle that you cannot tell me, then.

It seems that all there is to your account is that One cannot see it from the exact same angle as Janus, at the very same time; trivial.

You go back to the pain example, which is not the source of disagreement. Sure, One does not feel the pain of another - mostly; that's not a point of disagreement here.

What it is about the Newton's cradle that you cannot tell me?

That's hilarious; you're asking me to tell exactly what it is that I cannot tell you!

This is a great topic, because it will always gather a dozen or so folk who insist that there is something about which we cannot speak, and who will defend this interminably without much success.

The obvious needs no defence; it's more a case of trying to find ways to help you see it.

↪Banno That's hilarious; you're asking me to tell you what I cannot tell you! — Janus

Yeah, I was surprised; but you said you could:

You can say what is not shared, but obviously you cannot share it. — Janus

So, if you can say what it is that is not shared, say it.

↪Banno The obvious needs no defence; it's more a case of trying to find ways to help you see it. — Janus

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems.

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems. — Banno

Primacy?

Yep.

Why else would so many folk feel the need to defend such a view?

To say it in the way you are demanding would be to share it. What I can't share is what I feel when I look at things; the aesthetic response. I don't believe anyone simply looks at an object without an aesthetic response, without subtle feelings and associations. That's where the pain analogy is apposite; we are feeling beings, each with our own unique responses. That's also why I used the analogy of drawing objects; the vastly different results show how differently people see things.

Why else would so many folk feel the need to defend such a view? — Banno

Don't you occasionally grant that there's ineffable stuff?

Well, perhaps; but it seems to me that this is the tip of an iceberg of philosophical nonsense. Giving primacy to a posited subjective, ineffable, private world creates philosophical problems. — Banno

I'm not saying the ineffable has philosophical primacy; how could it? The point is though that any philosophy which tries (per impossibile) to leave it out entirely becomes thereby one-dimensional, even incoherent.

any philosophy which tries (per impossibile) to leave it out entirely becomes thereby one-dimensional, even incoherent. — Janus

How could a philosophy not 'leave it out'. It can't be said. What would a philosophy do to 'leave it in'. Wink at it?

What I can't share is what I feel when I look at things; the aesthetic response. — Janus

But that's not right. We do talk about the beauty of the balls; the way in which the conservation of energy is so astonishingly evident in their clanging one into the other; the mathematical precision with which the balls bounce. This:

...and where it is ineffable, we can use poetry and art to share.

Here's the edge of the world, where language curls back on itself: "I love you more than words can say" says how much I love you, in words.

Even with pain, we are certain of the agony of the burnt hand.

Different people see things differently. And yet, we can understand what it is like to be in someone else's place.

It's not so private, is it?

Don't you occasionally grant that there's ineffable stuff? — frank

Oh, all the time. I don't like to talk about it, though. :rofl: