Instead of a reply why not reformulate your response to Weinberg's chicken soup and the king's touch based on what has been exchanged so far. — Frederick KOH
I did it twice already. — Pierre-Normand
Would you agree that they are different enough for a synthesis to be helpful? — Frederick KOH
I am sorry to say but your posts would resemble Trump's tweets rather more if they were just a bit longer and better articulated. — Pierre-Normand
So it could turn out that the culture that does not recognize the naturalistic/non-naturalistic distinction might end up convincing you of its point of view. What happens to your original response to the soup and touch then? — Frederick KOH
Basically, all you are suggesting here is that if my epistemic powers are fallible then that entails that anything that I now believe to be true could be shown to me to be false. The response to this argument is either to acknowledge it as such and endorse a form of radical skepticism or, maybe, counter it with something like McDowell's epistemological disjunctivism. I would favor the latter, but it could be the topic of another thread on epistemology. I don't see the relevance of this to our discussion of Weinberg's reductionism. — Pierre-Normand
Laying bare your presuppositions is all I did — Frederick KOH
You are seemingly trying to saddle with beliefs in radical relativism, magical thinking, or some such. — Pierre-Normand
What if I was using naturalism as a way to probe what counts as a valid defence in your eyes and do the same for Weinberg's reductionism? — Frederick KOH
Do it, then. Discussions would be much easier if you would lay your card down on the table, as I do. — Pierre-Normand
I don't know what your defences are. They changed enough that I felt a need to ask for a synthesis. — Frederick KOH
I don't know what your defences are. They changed enough that I felt a need to ask for a synthesis. — Frederick KOH
No. I've carefully read three book chapters and attempted enough explanations of what Weinberg's main argument is, and why I think it is unsound. My views didn't change in spite of the fact that I tried to meet you mid-way though following your numerous side tracks. Now it's your turn to explain what you take Weinberg's main argument to be and why you take this argument not to be invalidated by my challenges. — Pierre-Normand
What if I was using naturalism as a way to probe what counts as a valid defence in your eyes and do the same for Weinberg's reductionism? — Frederick KOH
BTW, I think this is what Weinberg was trying to do with the soup and touch story. — Frederick KOH
Yes, because he believes naturalism (construed as the rejection of magical thinking cum super-naturalism) to entail 'reductionism' — Pierre-Normand
Wrong. Not entailment. Structural similarity. Naturalism suffers from the same structural defects as reductionism. — Frederick KOH
It didn't seem to me that Weinberg believes his own brand of 'convergence-of-explanatory-arrows' reductionism to suffer from structural defects. Did you see him express self-doubts that I may have missed somewhere in those two book chapters? — Pierre-Normand
If the defects are the same as those of naturalism, he would not consider them defects. There is no conclusive argument against solipsism but we feel free to ignore it. — Frederick KOH
If Weinberg doesn't recognize them to be defects, then what relevant does this have to your assessment of his argument? Are *you* now acknowledging that Weinberg's reductionism is defective? — Pierre-Normand
If Weinberg doesn't recognize them to be defects, then what relevance does this have to your assessment of his argument? — Pierre-Normand
Naturalism is also defective. But you are still going to choose the soup. He is pleading at a court that doesn't have philosophers in the jury. The same jury that would laugh at solipsism. — Frederick KOH
OK, so your view is that he's just pretending to advance rational arguments in favor of reductionism but he's merely bulshiting. — Pierre-Normand
The similarity of his arguments to ones that would be used to defend naturalism. — Frederick KOH
You can offer rational arguments, but in many areas of life they are never airtight. People at the caliber of Weinberg know this. The gaps that can be attacked I just call them defects. You call them bullshit. — Frederick KOH
I call them bulshiting because you are characterizing them as being devised to gather approval from a jury who doesn't care one bit about their soundness and validity, because they purport to support preconceived notions uncritically accepted by this jury. — Pierre-Normand
intended for a jury of people who don't care about arguments at all — Pierre-Normand
The gaps that can be attacked I just call them defects. — Frederick KOH
Also, you seem to see the gaps that I have highlighted in Weinberg's pro-reductionism arguments to be minor defects akin to unfulfilled promissory notes. This could be said of the sort of "in principle" 'ontological reductionism' that often is claimed to be consistent with the falsity of merely 'epistemic reductionism'. Weinberg's true "final theory", for instance, could be claimed to lay, possibly, forever beyond the reach of human knowledge due merely to contingent limitations of human cognitive and/or computational powers. But those contingent explanatory "gaps" have nothing to do with the flaws I have highlighted in Weinberg's conception of reductionism. Those flaws rather have to do with his overly narrow conception of causal explanation, which leads him to ignore non-reductive causal determinations of emergent phenomena. Those gaps are actually wider than the argumentatively filled up space between then. They consist in Weinberg passing over, or downgrading (e.g. as mere reflection on historical accidents) large areas of fruitful and uncontentious scientific practice and understanding. — Pierre-Normand
Laughing at solipsism does no imply one is doesn't care one bit about arguments. — Frederick KOH
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