The solipsist claims that it's wrong to think there's something we can be wrong about. — Pie
Wait a minute. Are we on the same page ?
Anyone who makes claims about our world-in-common (such as what's in it or claiming 'it's all water' ) presumably aims at getting something right about it. — Pie
I confess that it's a toy issue, but I maintain that solipsism, asserted philosophical/rationally, is incoherent. — Pie
Again, you're trying to deploy externalism against it. That's only satisfying until you realize you are your world, as Witt states. — Tate
It'll help me if you spell out your general view. — Pie
My position is that we are radically primordially social, that 'I' is a token in a game that transcends the meat it's applied to. — Pie
I get that. For me, this is one of many views. I understand it, but I also know it's 'language on holiday'. — Tate
Fair enough, but I'd argue that it's incoherent to deny the sociality of reason. To be sure, the details are endlessly debatable, but it's absurd to deny the debate within the debate, no? — Pie
It's not a matter of details.
Note the meaning of "sociality". Like left and right, north and south, it only means something relative to it's opposite. — Tate
But consider, sir, you are reasoning with me. Am I bound to regard your logic ? If so, why ? And do I not (mostly) understand your words ? I agree that 'sociality' is caught in a network of differences. Is this not a claim about norms for concept application that apply to both of us ? Was it not inferred implicitly through the examples you offered of North and South ? — Pie
There is no sociality without privacy. There is no 'we' without 'me'. You're doing the same thing solipsism is doing: you're saying yes to the two-sided coin, but then declaring one side to be illusive. — Tate
There will indeed be cases in which only the agent can say whether she is pondering, imagining, dreaming, letting her mind wander, calculating, solving, planning, or rehearsing. But the sort of privacy in which only she can say whether she was doing any of these or other particular things is not the sort of privacy that gives rise to philosophical conundrums like the problem of other minds and the problem of necessarily private languages.
For Brandom, sentient beings, such as the cardinals, react differentially to their environments. But they do not count as sapient because they are incapable of the kind of responsibility and authority for their acts that is characteristic of being obliged, prohibited, and permitted, (and being committed to a certain course of action or entitled to something), and which, on his view, is necessary if an agent’s inferences are to be appropriately appraisable. The cardinals’ behavior amounts to an implicit categorization of the features of their environment, but this behavior does not depend upon the birds performing inferences to or from the applicability of those categorizations. It is his distinctive analysis of the nature of inference and of the practice of drawing and evaluating inferences that forms the core of Brandom’s understanding of rationality. An agent is rational in Brandom’s preferred sense just in case she draws inferences in a way that is evaluable according to the inferential role of the concepts involved in those inferences, where the inferential role of a concept is specified in terms of the conditions under which an agent would be entitled to apply, or prohibited from applying, that concept, together with what else an agent would be entitled or committed to by the appropriate application of the concept. This articulation of the content of concepts in terms of the inferential role of those concepts, and the specification of those roles in terms of proprieties of inference, is combined with a distinctive brand of pragmatism. Instead of the content of a concept providing an independent guide or rule that governs which inferences are appropriate, it is the actual practices of inferring carried out in a community of agents who assess themselves and each other for the propriety of their inferences that explains the content of the concepts.
Rejecting the myth of the given is not yet a positive epistemology. Sellars can abandon the myth of the given only if he gives us a positive theory of non-inferential knowledge to replace it. (There must be non-inferential knowledge, that is, knowledge that is not acquired by inference, even if its epistemic status depends on its inferential connections to other knowledge.)
The paradigm cases of non-inferential knowledge are introspection, perception, and memory [IPM] beliefs (see MGEC). According to Sellars, such beliefs have epistemic status because, given the processes by which language and beliefs are acquired, they are likely to be true. IPM beliefs are reliable indicators, like the temperature readings on a thermometer. This is a reliablist or externalist condition on such knowledge. A chain of empirical justification can properly start with IPM beliefs because they are noninferential reliable indicators of the truth of their contents.
Privacy' is a public concept, else you could not make a point about it (could not be right or wrong.) I don't claim that privacy is illusion, just to be clear. It has a use in our language ('don't make private phone calls on company time.') — Pie
On the 'I' or 'me' issue, do you not recall our previous conversation ? The self does indeed play an important role. You and I as individuals are 'tracked' and evaluated for logical consistency, for instance. I am responsible for defending the implications of my claims but not yours. We both ought to keep our story straight, not call the same thing white and black, public and private, etc. — Pie
So 'private' would get its meaning from the inferences involving it that we (in an ideal sense, a community making its own new rules in terms of the old) license and forbid — Pie
For some reason you're evading my point. — Tate
The solipsist says, "The word 'public' has a use in my language. — Tate
In the same way, solipsism can't attack externalism. The externalist can just say, "Yes, I use the word 'private', it's such a great word, but nothing beyond that." — Tate
To whom ? Himself ? For what else is there ? To what norms could he refer ? About what world could he be wrong or right ? You basically put a world in a vat, pretend a community shares a language, but make that community a mirage at the end. — Pie
Consider the difference between 'I'm not sure if I'm dreaming right now' and 'we ought not assume that we're not dreaming.' The second is a claim about norms that apply to all rational agents. — Pie
You keep mentioning externalism, but that's not quite it (and not my word.) — Pie
I contend that the epistemological solipsist makes a claim about community norms, invoking that which transcends him in order to deny it. — Pie
The solipsist tries to reason with his fictional friends. It's fun. — Tate
In epistemology, epistemological solipsism is the claim that one can only be sure of the existence of one's mind.The existence of other minds and the external world is not necessarily rejected but one can not be sure of its existence.
This 'one' is implicitly universal. A rational person ought to recognize that the existence of something other than the mind (like other minds) cannot be certainty established.
In other words, the epistemological solipsist claims that it's wrong to assume that there's something one can be wrong about. — Pie
That's a substantial step back from 'solipsism is wrong because the self needs the Other for the sake of rationality and language.' — Tate
I will say that our social situation is logically primary, simply because saying otherwise is incoherent. If we aren't in some underspecified sense in the same world with the same concepts, then rational conversation is impossible.
We debate claims about our world. Any beginning 'less' than that seems to be nonsense, though we can and do endlessly explicate what we mean by these keywords.
Which is your point, that solipsists are inappropriately searching for certainty? Or that solipsism is incoherent due to a lack of "real" social interaction? — Tate
Solipsism isn't a self without a world. It's that the world is the Self. — Tate
I never understood duality. Sorry Heraclitus. — Agent Smith
Apparently. (He probably wouldn't accept your apology.)I never understood duality. Sorry Heraclitus. — Agent Smith
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