if nothing of these is absolute, then what grounds them? One answer: their absolute presuppositions - their unarticulated, unexplicated fundamental axioms. These are both absolute and not absolute (but never relative). Absolute in that they are both cornerstone and keystone of any belief system, not absolute in that they evolve as cultures and systems evolve. — tim wood
[1] Provide a secure place for children
[2] Support families
[3] Protect weaker people from stronger ones
[4] Provide for the well-being of members of the group
[5] Promote the stability of the group
[6] Protect members of the group from hazards from outside — T Clark
Yeah, to even get at the concept of a unit that can be counted you need to learn to conceptualize things in a particular way. So it's basically noting a supposed uniformity a la "if you play the game of conceptualizing things this way, then you conceptualize things this way." — Terrapin Station
I think "play the game" is a little tendentious. There is uniformity, but we have no idea why. Maybe it's cultural, maybe linguistic, maybe it's hard-wired, maybe something else. Maybe evolution nailed it, and maybe it fucked us over. Maybe it's optional, maybe it's not. Maybe Davidson is right, and the very idea of competing conceptual schemes is incoherent. I don't think the dismissive description you give here quite captures the range of issues at stake. — Srap Tasmaner
I think if your approach to philosophy is such that there is nothing especially odd about mathematics, then you're doing it wrong. — Srap Tasmaner
I think "play the game" is a little tendentious. There is uniformity, but we have no idea why. Maybe it's cultural, maybe linguistic, maybe it's hard-wired, maybe something else. Maybe evolution nailed it, and maybe it fucked us over. Maybe it's optional, maybe it's not. Maybe Davidson is right, and the very idea of competing conceptual schemes is incoherent. I don't think the dismissive description you give here quite captures the range of issues at stake. — Srap Tasmaner
people (students mainly, because of the social circumstances) do disagree with conventional mathematics, all the way back to the beginnings of arithmetic — Terrapin Station
If you think that 2 + 2 might be equal to 5 rather than 4, then you have not yet learned what these symbols mean. — Srap Tasmaner
If you are upholding that facts are not relative to feelings and beliefs, but to themselves, how do you establish this to be the state of affairs—i.e., the fact of the matter—without also affirming that this appraisal is itself relative to your own beliefs and feelings? — javra
Proofs are simply relative to the formal systems we set up. A proof in system x is simply a matter of a conclusion incorrigibly following in system x, per the definitions, inference rules, etc. that we've set up as system x. — Terrapin Station
The degree of widespread agreement about it is typically overstated. — Terrapin Station
Well, empirical claims are not provable. Proofs only work in formal systems we've set up, within the context of which a conclusion can not be wrong.Would you grant that this is a somewhat different way of establishing the truth of a proposition than obtains in, say, physics, history, politics, bar-room linguistics, etc.? — Srap Tasmaner
Instead, my latest question can better be interpreted as asking how one justifies facticity without reliance upon a notion of something absolute (with "absolute" here interpreted as "something not relative that nevertheless is regardless of beliefs and feelings"). — javra
Can you name me one business, government, non-profit, in fact any institution of any kind anywhere in the world today that takes an "alternative view" of basic math. (I say "basic math" because few institutions are concerned with, say, axiomatic set theory.) — Srap Tasmaner
Then I don't really understand the idea. Facts do not need any sort of justification. They're simply the way that things are. That doesn't mean they're not relative (part of the way that things are is relative--for example, properties are relative to reference "points" (spatio-temporal points)). — Terrapin Station
The only facts that hinge on beliefs, feelings, etc. are facts of beliefs, feelings, etc. For example, the fact that Joe is sad that the Miami Heat weren't in the playoffs this year. — Terrapin Station
Nihilism (I define here): the belief and attitude that ultimately nothing matters, nothing has any ultimate or absolute value or significance. — tim wood
“Facts are simply the way that things are” means what in your own perspective? Is ‘the way that things are’ non-relative to beliefs and feelings (hence absolute as previously defined by me: — javra
I myself don’t follow this. If, for example, it is a fact that Joe is sad (at time A, for greater clarity), then Joe being sad at time A is a state of affairs that ‘simply is the way it is’ regardless of what anyone might believe or feel about it … including what Joe might self-delude himself into believing (and remembering) at a subsequent time B.
... In which case, facts about beliefs, feelings, etc., are not malleable by beliefs, feelings, etc. (Assuming I'm interpreting this last quote correctly.) — javra
R G Collingwood's view of metaphysics was that it involved asking a series of questions of any philosopher. Whenever their work answers a question, you ask a deeper question of their work. Finally you reach some sort of bedrock: the answer that provokes no questions. These answers for him are that philosopher's metaphysics: their absolute presuppositions, rooted in their historical situation and their personal outlook. Oddly enough Collingwood held such a relativist view and yet remained a practising Anglican. — Mcdoodle
What people do is attempt to come to some consensus based upon common experiences and call it a fact. Thus if it looks like a duck, and whacks like a duck, it's a duck-but maybe not. Consensus tends to change over time as perspectives change. — Rich
I've been going through a bunch of posts which ask what firm base relativists nail their facts to. I have my answer ready, but you've beaten me to the punch. It's consensus. Even if you believe there is some final, definitive, concrete ground of being, e.g. objective reality, which I don't, the only thing we have to work with on a day to day basis is agreement among them what knows. Consensus. — T Clark
But my thoughts are with the tougher problem of reality, what reality is, how that works with absolute presuppositions, and what about reality is immune from relativism. I'm persuaded that reality (here undefined!) is immune, and perhaps the only proof is that it had better be! — tim wood
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