Take, for example, Christians and their professed belief in the Ten Commandments, or their professed belief in "love thy neighbor". How would you go about measuring, assessing any of that, based on their words and actions?I am assuming that, empirically and socially, the actions of a person that are directed by a genuine belief must be measurably different from those of a person promulgating a false belief. Presumably things like long-term consistency, cogency of presentation, tendency to evoke comprehension in others. I am assuming that "the truth will out" in some sense, or more precisely, "the false will out," and reveal its own falsity. It is an hypothesis.
If you are dissimulating, you are intentionally mis-communicating. If you are practicing authenticity, then the possibility of understanding is greatest. That would have significance for coordinated group planning and action, for example. — Pantagruel
What exactly is the point of this though? — Darkneos
RGC's use of "presupposition". — creativesoul
This presupposes that RGC claims otherwise. He doesn't. Absolute presuppositions are but one part in the field of study.
Read the paper. — creativesoul
This presupposes that logic precedes thought. — creativesoul
I like the term 'hidden assumption'. It's better than " elief" imo because these are not really positive beliefs, that we adhere to consciously and defend. They are more like unconscious ideas that shape our examinations but are not themselves examined. — Olivier5
This is why I have no inclination toward reading the paper. It appears to inspire all sorts of nonsense like this, which I would simply reject and have no part of. Therefore it would just be a waste of my time. — Metaphysician Undercover
"belief" summons something consciously assumed true — Olivier5
. I would trust what people's actions reveal about their beliefs more than what they report their own beliefs to be. — Pantagruel
what is the absolute presupposition they express? You say it is causality; but what could it mean to presuppose causality — Janus
Once the concept of causality is formed, then the idea that it either obtains or does not obtain logically follows. — Janus
then the term "absolute presupposition" understood as being beyond truth aptitude, seems itself simply wrong, because causality is being proposed, even if not explicitly. — Janus
Which is why we're so thankful that you deigned to comment on it. — Pantagruel
Philosophy is a quest for knowledge. The true quest for knowledge starts from a lack of knowledge. That's why Socrates professed to not knowing. The "presupposition" is a bias which interferes with the true quest for knowledge, because it's an assumption of already knowing certain things — Metaphysician Undercover
That's laughable considering how you have approached me in this thread. — Janus
The "presupposition" is a bias which interferes with the true quest for knowledge, because it's an assumption of already knowing certain things... — Metaphysician Undercover
This is why I have no inclination toward reading the paper. It appears to inspire all sorts of nonsense like this, which I would simply reject and have no part of. Therefore it would just be a waste of my time. — Metaphysician Undercover
I haven't read Collingwood so can't comment much on this thread. All I want to say is that the term "belief" summons something consciously assumed true, while the "hidden assumption" vocable is more neutral and I believe more precise here. — Olivier5
This is why I have no inclination toward reading the paper. It appears to inspire all sorts of nonsense like this, which I would simply reject and have no part of. Therefore it would just be a waste of my time. — Metaphysician Undercover
if by that I mean in line with RGC. — creativesoul
I guess I’d first have to ask what you mean convention, consensus, to be the primary reasons for. Spontaneity and those are very far apart, so just wondering what they might have in common. — Mww
Whenever anybody states a thought in words, there are a great many more thoughts in his mind than are expressed in his statement. Among these there are some which stand in a peculiar relation to the thought he has stated: they are not merely its context, they are its presuppositions.
The priority affirmed in the word presupposition is logical priority. It is not a priority in time.
Only by a kind of analysis, when I reflect upon it, do I come to see that this was a presupposition was making, however little I was aware of it at the time.
Here lies the difference between the desultory and casual thinking of our unscientific consciousness and the orderly and systematic thinking we call science. In unscientific thinking our thoughts are coagulated into knots and tangles; we fish up a thought out of our minds like an anchor of its own cable, hanging upside down and draped in seaweed with shellfish sticking to it, and dump the whole thing on deck quite pleased with ourselves for having got it up at all.
Thinking scientifically means disentangling all this mess, and reducing a knot of thought in which everything sticks together anyhow to a system or series of thoughts in which thinking the thoughts is at the same time thinking the connexions between them.
Prop. 1. Every statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.
A question is logically prior to its own answer. When thinking is scientifically ordered, this logical priority is accompanied by a temporal priority; one formulates the question first, and only when it is formulated begins trying to answer it. This is a special kind of temporal priority, in which the event or activity that is prior does not stop when that which is posterior begins.
Def. I. Let that which is stated [i.e. that which can be true or false) be called a proposition, and let stating it be called propounding it.
Prop. 2. Every question involves a presupposition.
Def. 2. To say that a question does not arise is the ordinary English way of saying that it involves a presupposition which is not in fact being made.
Def. 3. The fact that something causes a certain question to arise I call the ‘logical efficacy' of that thing.
Def. 4. To assume is to suppose by an act of free choice.
Prop. 3. The logical efficacy of a supposition does not depend upon the truth of what is supposed, or even on its being thought true, but only on its being supposed.
Prop. 4. A presupposition is either relative or absolute.
In this context the word ‘presupposition’ refers not to the act of presupposing but to that which is presupposed.
Def. 5. By a relative presupposition I mean one which stands relatively to one question as its
presupposition and relatively to another question as its answer.
Def. 6. An absolute presupposition is one which stands, relatively to all questions to which it is related, as a presupposition, never as an answer.
I guess I’d first have to ask what you mean convention, consensus, to be the primary reasons for.
— Mww
Why do we assume the presuppositions that, often unconsciously, underlie our understanding of the world. — T Clark
Convention - I say "There is no objective reality." Everyone says, "What are you, an idiot?" — T Clark
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