Given modus ponens as an inference rule. (And thus not a theorem.)

Actually constructing arguments requires some system of deduction, not just the definitions of the logical constants.

What is the relevance here? (And don't say it's a non-sequitor, I thought we decided about those :rofl: )

I was responding to the claim that good arguments are just those arguments where "all that is necessary is that one agrees with the rules of logic." That and the stranger claim that if an argument is in a valid form we should be persuaded by the argument and that "must accept the entailment, regardless of whether [we] accept the premises.

What is the relevance here? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe none. I only skimmed the exchange you were having with @Isaac, and don't want to take sides. It's just that this caught my eye:

This is a logically valid argument. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In other discussions, it wouldn't have bothered me, but since we're talking about what makes an argument acceptable, I thought it a somewhat misleading phrase.

Probably not important.

I honestly don't know how to reply. You seem to have placed a series of things-which-are-true, next to some unrelated quotes of mine.

I'll do my best to formulate a response, but I've very little idea what you're trying to say...

We're not talking about disagreements about scientific theories. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Did I say 'scientific theories' anywhere in my post? Why are you denying something I haven't said?

I've yet to come across any radically different versions of how thermodynamics, etc. were developed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So? Are you saying there are no radically different theories of history, just because there are no radically different theories of how thermodynamics was developed? I don't really know how to respond to that. If you're really going to double down on a claim that there aren't any disagreements about historical narratives, then I just can't help. Perhaps read more than one history book...?

But per your view, how can we actually know why a scientific theory was advanced or why others were rejected? — Count Timothy von Icarus

We can't. I just becoming increasing baffled as to why you can't seem to grasp the idea that intelligent people disagree. Have you ever been to a university?

when Einstein says he added the Cosmological Constant to have his theory jive with the then widely held view that the universe was static I think that is a good reason to believe that is why Einstein added the Cosmological Constant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? When Trump said he cut taxes for the rich to stimulate the economy was that a good reason to believe that's why Trump cut taxes? you may trust Einstein to be honest, but as far as the history of ideas goes, are you suggesting he's an example of the norm? That people are almost universally honest about their motives with a tiny, insignificant number of outliers? I mean, that's a lovely world view you have, but...

The pioneers of quantum mechanics published papers throughout their lifetimes, conducted interviews, were taped during lectures, and wrote memoirs, all describing how the theory evolved. In many cases, their personal correspondences were made available after their death. Most of this is even free.

Now tell me where I can get access to a free particle accelerator and a Youtube on how to properly use it so I can observe particle physics findings first hand? — Count Timothy von Icarus

The question was about verifying the narratives in textbooks on the history of ideas. Are you suggesting that such evidence troves exist for all ideas. Could we do this self-checking with the argument of the OP regarding post enlightenment thought? do we have some Russell biography I missed where hes says "...and then I deliberately re-framed Pierce as a realist to get rid of that damned idealism...grrr...hate that stuff"

I don't know where you're headed by providing these hyper-specfic examples which are not illustrative of the form in general. The last 50 years of so might be well-covered. The last hundred patchy at best, beyond that is basically little more than guesswork.

Einstein added the Cosmological Constant to fit current models is an empirical fact. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue is an empirical fact. The Catholic Church harassing advocates of heliocentrism is an empirical fact. People have had sensory experiences of those things and reported them. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Baffling. So I say that you're confusing empirical fact with narratives about socio-economic causes etc, and you list a load of empirical facts... I really haven't a clue what that was supposed to do here. Yes. some things are empirical facts. Did you think I didn't think there were any empirical facts? I'm lost.

When was the last time you wanted to learn something and held a double-blind clinical study? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Five years ago.

Do you replicate the experiments after you read a scientific paper? No. Then you're trusting the institution publishing it and its authors, right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. again, I've no clue what point you're trying to make here. People trust some institutions and not others. Is that a confusing concept for you?

Plenty of people don't trust the scientific establishment. This cannot be a good criterion for justification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What?

Unless you can make your arguments a bit clearer I can't see us making any progress.

the stranger claim that if an argument is in a valid form we should be persuaded by the argument — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where have I made such a claim? No - forget that, more importantly, what is it about my posting history on cognitive neuroscience, Bayesian inference modelling, social dynamics theories, Ramseyan epistemology...has given you the serious impression that that's the sort of claim I'm likely to have made?

I only skimmed the exchange you were having with Isaac, and don't want to take sides. — Srap Tasmaner

That's a shame, because what was an interesting conversation we here having seems to have fizzled out and been replaced by yet another truly bizarre argument against positions no-one in their right mind would have any reason to believe I'd ever hold. And this isn't even odd. Far from it, it's the standard pattern of threads (at least, those I'm involved in...).

You keep using strawmen. If I say, "we can be justified about some historical facts and narratives," you respond with "so, you don't get that people can disagree over historical facts and narratives?"

If I say, "we must sometimes rely on the authority of institutions and base our beliefs on trust because it is impossible for one person to conduct more than a minute fraction of all experiments in the sciences," you respond with "so you always blindly trust authority?"

No, I never implied anything of the sort. "Some x are y," is not equivalent with "all x are y," nor is it refuted by "some x aren't y." Actually, I agree with you more than you seem to think re: why we have reason to doubt some facts more than others and why we need to be open to revising our beliefs. TBH, this is a very frustrating trend in all our exchanges. I appreciate your effort and I think you often bring up a bunch of good points about credulity and justifications for knowledge, but there is always this move to bleed out any nuance and turn things into binaries.

I will give you a specific example. I claimed the history of ideas is sometimes useful in explaining theories and making arguments about them. I said that this is the reason why introductions to a theory usually begin with a historical overview.

The question was about verifying the narratives in textbooks on the history of ideas. Are you suggesting that such evidence troves exist for all ideas.

Obviously not. This is yet another "some x are y," being taken as "all x are y."


I think our main points of disagreement come down to:

A. I agree with your reasons for doubting historical narratives. However, I don't think the problems you point out are at all specific to history. A zeitgeist (paradigms) colors how people interpret empirical evidence, political pressures shape how scientific data is reported, or if it is reported at all. Culture influences science; e.g., the role of culture/norms is the best explanation for why the replication crisis is such a massive problem for sociology, but not as much for other social sciences (with some social sciences not fairing any worse than "hard" sciences.)

Trust in both individuals/institutions and in the process of scholarship is just as essential for science. We're counting on others to call out cherry picking, fake data, etc. E.g., there is only one LHC; if you do not go to CERN you cannot observe super high energy physical reactions firsthand. Even if you do visit CERN, you cannot vet if they are doing what they say they are without a ton of specialized knowledge and permission to inspect the LHC in detail. By contrast, for some historical issues, a wealth of easily accessible data exists.

Point being, the degree to which we must rely on trust is variable and I haven't seen a good argument for why historical claims necessarily require more trust than many scientific claims. To head off another binary, I am not saying all historical claims can be backed up, We can also have relative degrees of certainty about them.

The point that "anyone can make up historical claims," is trivially true for science as well (see Flat Earthers). I would absolutely agree that the sciences, in general, tend to have a better peer review process, and higher barriers to entry. It is harder to convincingly fake a scientific paper due to the unique vocabulary that fields employ, but this is a problem of degree IMO.

The question of how "hard science," "soft science," and research-focused humanities differ in terms of justification is a very interesting one, but outside the scope here. My brief take is that as you get into very complex systems, e.g. international relations, quantitative analysis becomes increasingly less convincing due to the nature of the data involved, making documentary evidence more relevant but also forcing us to look probabilistically at claims. Arguments are sometimes negative, and it often isn't hard to show that some historical narratives are highly unlikely, even if it is impossible to show that just one is right; good history often does this.

Yes. again, I've no clue what point you're trying to make here. /quote]

The point above. I would be convinced by your arguments if you could show me why claims about the history of some idea are specially unknowable such that: "We cannot make any compelling arguments about the history of ideas, why a theory was adopted, etc."

Could we do this self-checking with the argument of the OP regarding post enlightenment thought?

In almost every post ITT I have said "some historical arguments aren't good." This is the same reduction to a binary of all/none.

I don't know where you're headed by providing these hyper-specfic examples which are not illustrative of the form in general.

Ok, now we're getting somewhere! You agree that, some beliefs about the development of a theory can be justified? Sometimes these are helpful for proving a point. In which case, our disagreement is simply a matter of degree. My argument is simply this: "if the history of an idea is sometimes relevant, and if we can sometimes have justified beliefs about the history of ideas, then sometimes arguments made from the history of an idea are relevant. Whether we accept or reject the argument should be based on the data supporting the premises and if the conclusion actually follows from the premises."

I take it we will disagree on how difficult it is to support some of these premises, no matter.


B. I think that knowing why a theory was adopted is central to the scientific project. If we cannot know why a theory developed, science is in big trouble precisely because there is a sociological element to the project.

Baffling.

IDK, you said the difference between historical claims and scientific ones was that the latter used empirical facts. I was just pointing out that this isn't the difference between the two, that historical arguments are also based on empirical facts. I was pointing out simple examples to show that, presumably, you do accept some historical facts, which could be used in premises.

I asked how historical arguments are different and you made an appeal to logic and empirical facts. But historical arguments can be put into valid logical forms and they are often based on empirical facts, so this doesn't seem like a difference in kind. Nor is it clear that all scientific empirical claims are easier to verify than many historical fact claims.

See:

And to emphasise, this is not the case with arguments relying of basic rules of thought and empirical observation.

History is so open to interpretation that virtually any theory can be held without issue. Not so with empirical facts, not so with informal logic (not so with formal logic either but that wasn't my point).

I would ask though, why does science have so many less narratives? It seems to me like the reasons are largely social. This is why I mentioned Quine, Kuhn, and holism. Most theories are underdetermined. There are, what, 9 major competing interpretations of quantum mechanics, all with identical empirical predictions? QM isn't unique in allowing the possibility of multiple interpretations, it's the way that science is practiced that closes off the proliferation of alternate explanations. This is why the history of ideas is so relevant in the sciences.



That's why I asked for clarification about it originally. See your posts below:

For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic. I could not, of course, but it's not a big ask.

For an argument from analogy to have persuasive force, like the one you presented, I'd need to already agree that the situations are, indeed, analogous....


Exactly. It has persuasive force. If we just swap out all the premises for letters and produce a long, non-obvious, logical argument that, say , if A> B and B>C then A>C, that has persuasive force. I can look at that and think "yes, that's right, A is greater than C in those circumstances" I've been persuaded by the presentation. The longer an more complex the argument, more likely it is to draw out entailment from believing one logical move on other logical moves. I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises.

What I found weird was the claim that "[if] I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises," which seemed to imply that the logic alone was persuasive. But a valid argument with false premises isn't persuasive. I didn't, and still don't really know how to take the claim that: "For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic." That doesn't seem true, and most of your posts seem to be arguing that you have to accept the premises of an argument to be persuaded, which I would agree with 100%.

Example: is anything flawed with the logic of the following?

We should accept well-justified historical facts as true premises.
"Einstein created the theory of thermodynamics," is a well-justified historical fact.
Thus, we should accept "Einstein created the theory of thermodynamics," as a true premise.

I don't think so, per common rules of inference anyhow. But we shouldn't find it persuasive because a key premise is not true. So, I don't get how your argument is about logic rather than the ability to justify a certain class of premises.

As I pointed out, that two things are analogous is normally itself a premise. Was the claim then that analogies cannot be put into a formal format?

IDK, I take it you meant "if there are lots of premises and a valid argument I can accept the conclusion even if some premises are false?" That makes sense, especially when we're working with claims we assess in terms of probability of their being true.

Also, why couldn't you put a historical argument into a long formal argument? You could absolutely take all your fact claims about history and assign them to letters and put them into a valid statement. All your arguments about the merits of historical claims have been about the ability to justify their factualness. That is, you reject the premises, so the argument isn't persuasive, so I didn't understand the digression into logic re: analogies and historical claims.

what was an interesting conversation we here having seems to have fizzled out and been replaced by yet another truly bizarre argument — Isaac

So still on topic.

My eyes glaze over when there's a lot of "That's not what I said," and "That's not what I meant."

To coin a phrase, Why should we talk about the history of this conversation?

Why should we talk about the history of this conversation? — Srap Tasmaner

Because there is more to philosophy than argument, and conversations that are all argument are not generally worth going over, but even here, there is other stuff; rhetorical questions, genuine questions, opinions wise and foolish, misunderstandings and understandings, eyes glazing and rolling, and occasionally even some communication. This, for example, is an opinion not an argument, to be considered or not according to taste. I will make no attempt to prove it, and I recommend that no one bothers to try and disprove it. Sorry to clutter up your thread, but you asked, and i have an answer, and this is it.

If I say, "we can be justified about some historical facts and narratives," you respond with "so, you don't get that people can disagree over historical facts and narratives?"

If I say, "we must sometimes rely on the authority of institutions and base our beliefs on trust because it is impossible for one person to conduct more than a minute fraction of all experiments in the sciences," you respond with "so you always blindly trust authority?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. Both those arguments are about what we can be justified in believing. Absolutely nothing in this entire thread is about what we can/cannot be justified in believing. It is about the mechanism of persuasiveness. The 'rules' of argumentation. These are at best only tangentially related to the question of what we're justified believing.

For example. I'm justified in believing that you have a deep knowledge of physics. I'm justified in believing that because of your posting history. Now let's say you were arguing against someone who thought you knew nothing about physics because you don't hold to [insert some fringe theory here]. The claim is "your posts are all just parroting mainstream textbooks, the latest theories show you don't know what you're talking about". The response "I do, look at my posting history" is a poor, unpersuasive argument. It would be outside of the 'rules of discourse' because it doesn't address the claim. That has no bearing whatsoever on the fact that I might still quite rationally use your posting history to justify my belief that you do, in fact, know what you're talking about.

Do you see the difference? @Srap Tasmaner's post was quite carefully put together and focussed on the part that historical analyses such as the example response played in argument. That's why it was so disappointing to get slew of responses from people who'd read the term 'history' and apparently no further.

So almost none of your comments are addressing the post (specifically the aspect of it I'm honing in on here) which is the persuasiveness of an argument, the method by which an appeal to the history of ideas is supposed to actually persuade, is supposed to be a response, in argument format, to a proposition. That's the issue.

I don't think the problems you point out are at all specific to history. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The claim isn't that they are specific to history, it is that history is at the further end of a spectrum.

It is difficult for me to deny most empirical facts. Maybe not quantum physics, maybe not cosmology, but most basic empirical facts would require a very odd set of commitments for me to deny them.

By contrast, it is easy for me to deny, say, the Marxist analysis of history. It's done all the time by perfectly intelligent economics professors. Likewise, it is easy for me to deny the idea that religious study drove the growth of philosophy in the middle ages. Again, plenty of intelligent people deny such things.

Establish rules of inference, logic, mathematics, and established empirical facts are difficult to deny and remain consistent. Narrative arcs from history (such as the history of an idea) are easy to deny and remain consistent. Note 'hard' and 'easy'. Terms I've been using throughout. Nothing about 'hard' and easy' denotes binary. 'Hard and 'easy' are two ends of a scale, the scale of difficulty.

Trust in both individuals/institutions and in the process of scholarship is just as essential for science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't want to derail the thread (see above - this is not about justification, but about persuasion), but this is simply not true. Science has considerably more highly visible tests. It is virtually impossible to tell if Marxist historical analysis is actually right. If the rocket crashes, to rocket scientists calculations were probably wrong. We may not understand the maths, but we can very often see when it doesn't work. Scientist says "this should now turn green" (or whatever) and it doesn't. The two are radically different. It's why old scientific ideas are totally dead, but old economic ideas, or metaphysical ones, or historical ones are still very much alive and kicking, it's virtually impossible to resoundingly disprove them.

But this is only relevant to the discussion insofar as it affects the persuasiveness of arguments using those fields and how they form responses to propositions.

My argument is simply this: "if the history of an idea is sometimes relevant, and if we can sometimes have justified beliefs about the history of ideas, then sometimes arguments made from the history of an idea are relevant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good. That's a nice succinct argument. So my issue with it is that you haven't linked having justified beliefs about the history of ideas to arguments using that history being relevant. Why does being able to rationally hold justified beliefs about a subject automatically make it a relevant, persuasive, counter in an argument?

The range of rational reasons to believe a proposition is larger than the range of coherent responses to a contrary proposition.

Whether we accept or reject the argument should be based on the data supporting the premises and if the conclusion actually follows from the premises — Count Timothy von Icarus

Exactly. A potted history of ideas contains neither. It is the theory, not that supporting data, nor the logic connecting it to the conclusion. "Russell re-invented Pierce to sound more analytical" (I'm paraphrasing), is neither 'data' nor 'logic'. What 'data' could we find about Russell's intent (unless he maybe wrote a diary entry like "Hehe, today I intend to re-invent Pierce to sound more analytical - that'll show those damned idealists". Analysis of historical trends is not data-heavy. It's speculation-heavy.

this doesn't seem like a difference in kind. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It isn't. Recall 'hard'/'easy'. Not 'on'/'off'.

Nor is it clear that all scientific empirical claims are easier to verify than many historical fact claims. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Probably not. Again the argument is about how hard or easy it is to deny them. I don't doubt there are exceptions.

What I found weird was the claim that "[if] I'm persuaded by the argument that I must accept the entailment, regardless of whether I accept the premises," which seemed to imply that the logic alone was persuasive. But a valid argument with false premises isn't persuasive. I didn't, and still don't really know how to take the claim that: "For a logical argument to have persuasive force it is only necessary that I agree with the rules of logic." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I see the problem. By 'a logical argument' I mean an argument in logic, of the form I presented. I don't mean an argument about facts of the world which happens to be 'logical' (meaning logically valid). I'm saying that it is possible to present an argument in logic (mathematics might have been a clearer example, on reflection), where one is persuaded to accept the conclusion merely because of the rules of logic one is committed to. The 'entailment' is not the same as 'the conclusion'. The 'entailment' is those other commitments that come along with accepting or denying a theorem. If I accept 1+1=2 (whatever argument demonstrates it) I am thus committed to also accept that 2+2=4, the one entails the other (depending, of course on how it is proven, but assume a fairly standard approach).

Does that clear anything up?

So still on topic. — Srap Tasmaner

Very much so.

My eyes glaze over when there's a lot of "That's not what I said," and "That's not what I meant." — Srap Tasmaner

Understandable, but speaks very much to the comment you made about cost. What is meant is the important part and if we're to make a reasonable assessment of cost, then our charity is limited by our degree of trust. It has to be (the alternative being limitless charity, or perhaps random selection). So how can that trust be built here? In academic circles, it's simply qualification. I trust my colleagues not to be saying something completely not worth engaging with because they expended an awful lot of effort getting the qualifications they have. They're unlikely to waste even a private correspondence on saying something pointlessly dumb.

Here, I don't think there's any alternative than interrogating intent. That can be a bit personal, but what's the alternative? One could quietly make judgements based on other posts, but that seems like a rather weaselly way out, relying on others to do your dirty work. One could simply be super charitable to all, but I think we both agree that's simply not feasible time-wise.

Hence worrying about whether a post is indeed a 'proper' response (cost of engagement), and thus whether 'what was said/meant' is, in fact being addressed or rather simply misused. It's super annoying, and probably not worth the effort unless you're also (as I am) very interested in the nature of the responses.

Sorry to clutter up your thread — unenlightened

Heh. This thread is about clutter.

I agree with your remarks in spirit, the charming and damnable heterogeneity of it all, but I still think there is a thread (heh number two) of persuasion running through all the sorts of things we say.

Quine reports that Burt Dreben once told him that great philosophers don't argue -- the idea being that it's all about competing frameworks. Give people an approach they like better and it doesn't really matter whether the old one is still more or less tenable, it just becomes irrelevant.



This thread is still very much on my mind, so I'll probably come roaring back in another day or two.

D. H. Lawrence's first book of poems was called "Look! We Have Come Through."

Robert Graves reviewed it, saying, "Perhaps you have, and a good thing too, but why should we look?"

That was roughly the mood in which I wrote the OP.

Revising.

This thread is still very much on my mind, so I'll probably come roaring back in another day or two. — Srap Tasmaner

Cool. If there was an emoji of bated breath I'd be posting it.

(Who am I kidding, I've never posted an emoji in my life)

D. H. Lawrence's first book of poems was called "Look! We Have Come Through."

Robert Graves reviewed it, saying, "Perhaps you have, and a good thing too, but why should we look?"

That was roughly the mood in which I wrote the OP. — Srap Tasmaner

Good attitude!

Ten bonus unenlightenment points for mentioning Robert Graves.

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion. — Robert Graves, In broken Images.

That's perfect. Temperamentally I'm much closer to Graves, but, as he suggests, it's not always very satisfying.

And there's reason to doubt the capacity of analysis alone to get us to the understanding we want. Even though I don't think I can shake the habit of analysis, I'd like at least to supplement it with a thinking closer to image and myth. (Some of the philosophy that has left its mark on me is like this, Wittgenstein, Sellars, Heidegger, others.)

So while in one sense I started this thread as a protest against insufficiently analytical argumentation, my real motivation is more like overcoming analysis as a paradigm, or at least embedding it within something more varied and more flexible, but without giving up the rigor and precision of analysis, the things that make it useful and powerful.

On the original topic, IIRC Aristotle and Darwin are the two most cited individuals in biology. Why do you think this is the case? They're obviously aren't cutting edge. Even if I am recalling this inaccurately, I certainly see Galileo and Newton brought up all the time; Plato might be the most cited person in Springer Frontiers books I've read despite it being a series of books on the "cutting edge," or scientific issues.

I feel like it's a mix of tradition, appeal to authority, appealing to well known, canonical thinkers, and a desire to ground theories in some sort of foundation. The history gives a nice ready made structure for a literature review, but it also seems to do more. There is a sense in which all theories are arguments and the rejoinders become important.

I'll come back later but just briefly:



First, we might have to agree to disagree on arguments. In general, I think that, if you agree with the logic being employed, accept the inference rules, etc., if the argument is valid, and if the premises are all true, the argument should generally be persuasive. The general "type" of argument doesn't tend to make it more or less persuasive to me and I guess is the big difference here, the idea that some types are inherently less persuasive.

I won't hold that this is absolutely the case. Gödel's proof of God works off pretty innocuous axioms, but it doesn't tend to convince people for just one example.

The claim isn't that they are specific to history, it is that history is at the further end of a spectrum.

I agree that history is on the "more difficult to verify and falsify," side of the spectrum. I do think many questions of scientific and philosophical history are actually closer to the middle of this spectrum than many of the questions in social sciences though.

I mean, there are all sorts of reasons why any firm raises prices. Core concepts in economics are about how complex systems work in the aggregate, and this makes falsification very difficult because we admit that exceptions do exist and that other factors can overwhelm one sort of relationship.

International relations is even more fraught. It is in many cases easier to make a plausible argument for the core reasons why a given war occured, or at least rule out many explanations, than it is to elucidate a common principle by which wars tend to occur.

But I also think some degree of progress gets made despite these issues. However in these areas it's more about assigning probabilities to explanations than establishing certainty.

In general, I think that, if you agree with the logic being employed, accept the inference rules, etc., if the argument is valid, and if the premises are all true, the argument should generally be persuasive. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But it just isn't. This whole site is clearly evidence of that. Scores (if not hundreds) of people failing to convince others of positions they believe have valid logic and true premises. so the interesting question is why doesn't it work?

However in these areas it's more about assigning probabilities to explanations than establishing certainty. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's really interesting. How would you go about assigning probabilities. I assume (from your love of Clayton) that we're not talking about some 'how many times this kind of thing was right' frequentism. So how? What makes one theory more likely to be right than another and why?

In general, I think that, if you agree with the logic being employed, accept the inference rules, etc., if the argument is valid, and if the premises are all true, the argument should generally be persuasive.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

But it just isn't. This whole site is clearly evidence of that. Scores (if not hundreds) of people failing to convince others of positions they believe have valid logic and true premises. so the interesting question is why doesn't it work? — Isaac

It doesn't work because, even if there could be a fact of the matter as to whether the premises of arguments not subject to empirical testing are true, in the absence of the possibility of such confirmation their truth remains a matter of opinion.

I don't buy into stuff strictly verificationist epistemology because it's self-defeating and no one actually goes by those standards for most beliefs.

For example, presumably we can agree that "in 1986 the New York Mets won the World Series, and have sadly not won it since," even if we don't follow baseball. This isn't a testable claim, we can't go back to 1986 and, while Daryl Strawberry and Kieth Hernandez were great, I doubt the have championship baseball skills we can verify.

Now people did observe the games, but presumably plenty of us didn't and we still believe we can verify the claim from records. Of course, we have videos, which people used to generally except as a sort of gold standard of evidence (seeing is believing), but it's increasingly easy to fake that sort of thing convincingly (and it could be done before).

But obviously we don't doubt many facts based on records for claims that aren't able to be repeatedly tested. Which is just as well because, how do we know the results of most experiments? Records. Necessarily, most people don't have the time or resources to even begin replicating some substantial share of all experiments across the sciences.

I feel quite confident in some fairly distant historical claims. That Saint Augustine "had the intention to make Neoplatonic thought coherent with post-Nicean Christianity," seems plenty certain. He left more work behind than anyone else from antiquity, thousands of pages that pass textual analysis as to their authorship. He seems to be making earnest attempts at what the claim says he is doing (certainly convinced a lot of people), we have surviving transcripts of his comments at various councils, other letters referencing him. It hard to think of another candidate theory from abductive reasoning that explains all that writing. Maybe something more specific would be hard to verify, but this seems more sure than plenty of dubious findings in peer reviewed journals based on observations it's impractical to replicate.

The other thing is that: "the best way to ensure true future beliefs is to subscribe to verificationism," isn't a claim that can be verified by verificationism.

This isn't a testable claim, we can't go back to 1986 and, while Daryl Strawberry and Kieth Hernandez were great, I doubt the have championship baseball skills we can verify. — Count Timothy von Icarus

None of history is directly testable, but there are documents we presume to have been based on empirical observations.

In any case the subject is not historical claims, but phenomenological, psychological or metaphysical claims or questions, with which we apparently cannot do more than frame them in different ways depending on the presuppositions we start with.

The other thing is that: "the best way to ensure true future beliefs is to subscribe to verificationism," isn't a claim that can be verified by verificationism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you claiming that unverified beliefs about empirical matters could be more likely to be true than those we have verified. Say I believe it is raining somewhere without checking the weather reports for that region, or even if possible, going there to see for myself?

Or say I can hear something that sounds kind of like rain and then believe it is raining outside; would you claim that that belief could be as likely to be true as a belief based on having gone outside to look?

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, this is true.

That's a shame, because what was an interesting conversation we here having seems to have fizzled out... — Isaac

Do you think the fizzling might be somewhat a consequence of excessive politesse on your part?

I suspect that as a psychology professor you have insight into the topic of the OP that you haven't brought up in the thread. (And I understand there may well be ethical standards for someone in your position, and abiding by such standards requires limiting what you say.)

Thoughts?

Do you think the fizzling might be somewhat a consequence of excessive politesse on your part? — wonderer1

I suspect other members might have a very different impression of my tendency to politesse...

I suspect that as a psychology professor you have insight into the topic of the OP that you haven't brought up in the thread. (And I understand there may well be ethical standards for someone in your position, and abiding by such standards requires limiting what you say.)

Thoughts? — wonderer1

Yeah... I'm fully retired now, so I can say what I like really, and I tend to do so without too much restraint. But I've never had the sense that there's much interest. People don't like psychology as rule. I think there's something immediately offensive about someone claiming to know how you think. I'm more keen to just learn how different people respond to interrogation, that's my wheelhouse really (one of them, anyway). How people defend and attack beliefs in a social context - the rules of engagement, the tactics, the impacts... that sort of thing. It's a rare thing that a thread addresses this directly as this one has, but really, there's more meat to found on the ones that are talking about something else.

But also, @Srap Tasmaner has probably heard my 'insight' on these matters to the point of fatigue and I fear if I use the word 'narrative' one more time in any post I might well inspire physical damage.

That said, if you have a specific question, I'm happy to risk it, but fair warning, the answer will be about narratives and won't mention Freud once, unless in place of an expletive.

I suspect other members might have a very different impression of my tendency to politesse... — Isaac

LOL

If you have any particularly edifying examples, I'd be interested in taking a look. (But maybe PM?) I have autistic standards of politesse myself, so to me you seem fairly circumspect.

People don't like psychology as rule. I think there's something immediately offensive about someone claiming to know how you think. — Isaac

It does seem to be an acquired taste, and some psychologies make acquisition much less likely. Still, there are those times when you can lead someone to a more accurate understanding of their own nature and change the rest of their lives for the better.

I'm more keen to just learn how different people respond to interrogation, that's my wheelhouse really (one of them, anyway). How people defend and attack beliefs in a social context - the rules of engagement, the tactics, the impacts... that sort of thing. — Isaac

This has been a big interest of mine for a long time as well, albeit from a strictly amateur and eclectically educated perspective in my case.

It's a rare thing that a thread addresses this directly as this one has, but really, there's more meat to found on the ones that are talking about something else. — Isaac

I think I know what you mean. People behave in more informative ways in other contexts.

That said, if you have a specific question, I'm happy to risk it, but fair warning, the answer will be about narratives and won't mention Freud once, unless in place of an expletive. — Isaac

I'm really enjoying participating on TPF, and I've already received a warning for bringing up a psychological topic, so perhaps later in a different context.

But also, Srap Tasmaner has probably heard my 'insight' on these matters to the point of fatigue and I fear if I use the word 'narrative' one more time in any post I might well inspire physical damage. — Isaac

These days, I'm attempting to sing a different tune..

To wit, here's what I've been thinking about -- unfinished, but it's time to post something.

Being in the habit of telling each other what we know, I tell you something I think I know -- about the mind or reality or some philosophical thing -- but instead of thanking me, you disagree. This is shocking and bewildering behavior on your part. (Surprise.)

If I do not understand your position at all, that's the worst case for me, because what kind of action (i.e., talking) can I engage in in response? Anything is better than this, so my first step will be to substitute for your position a position I believe I understand and can respond to. (There's a cart before the horse here. Have to fix later.)

I want to bring your views into alignment with mine, and that's why I make arguments in favor of my belief. But I probably don't really know why I believe what I believe, so I'll have to come up with reasons, and I'll convince myself that if I heard these reasons I would be convinced. But really I have no idea, since I already believe what I'm trying to convince you of; it's almost impossible for me to judge how much support these reasons give my claim. Finding reasons for what I already believe presents almost no challenge at all.

This is all risky behavior though, because I've opened myself up to more disappointments: you might reject my reasons themselves, or you might reject that they provide support for my "conclusion" so styled, or deny that they provide "enough" support, whatever that is.

Denying the premises is really the least of my worries, because we're talking roughly about intuitions -- making this the fourth recent thread I've been in to use this word -- which I'm going to gloss here as beliefs I don't experience as needing justification. If you share my intuitions, we still have to fight about the support relation; if you don't, I can just keep daisy-chaining along until we find something we agree on. This is routine stuff, have to have common ground even to disagree let alone resolve such a disagreement.

But that still leaves the support relation. Not sure what to say about that. If you start from the idea that some people will just "get it", we're still talking intuitions; as you spell out more and more steps between what your audience accepts and what they don't, this is what logic looks like. The usual view, of course, is that "being logical" makes a connection a candidate for a step in the argument; the thing is, I think we spell things out only to the point where the audience agrees, which means something they accept without reasons -- and here we're talking precisely about the support relation that holds between one belief and another, and the sorts of things I come up with are just things that sound convincing to me as someone who already believes, which means my process for producing reasons is a kind of pretend.

It's entirely possible that logic is some kind of refinement of such behavior, a constraint placed on it, which is how we tend to think of logic, the guardrails of sound thinking. Dunno. One thing I think the description above gets wrong, now that I've written it out, is that the support relation really shouldn't be presented as another belief itself, but as a rule or habit for passing from one idea to the other. (I think empiricists and pragmatists would agree on that.) So the issue at each step I have to spell out is not whether you accept a proposed connection, but your behavior -- do you pass from antecedent to consequent as I predict or desire?

How does one respond to babble with a question mark at its end?

Like this.

I want to bring your views into alignment with mine, and that's why I make arguments in favor of my belief. — Srap Tasmaner

I have an atypical perspective on communication and strategies for communicating and I don't know how likely it is that I can convey much understanding of it, or that others will be able to make use of it. However, I'll give it a shot.

It seems that for me an aspect of being on the autism spectrum, is a lack of a model for 'the generic person'. This manifests as me tending to be very quiet IRL around people I don't know, because I tend not to see clear ways to express myself without some specific knowledge of the other person's way of looking at things.

I think an aspect of how I have learned to cope with autism is to be somewhat hyperattentive (in some regards) to what individuals say, and what that tells me about how that individual thinks about things, and (to some degree) what 'subconscious hooks' in their thinking I can make use of in conveying things to them. IOW, to have much ability to communicate fluently with someone I need to know something about how they specifically are likely to connect the dots.

For example, because of our exchanges in the past, in talking to you I can refer to Capablanca as making use of the subconscious/intuitive hooks of other expert chess players, to convey an understanding of a particular endgame, by setting up the relevant chess pieces in a particular way. An aspect of communication for me is a sort of planting of seeds in people's subconscious, such that an intuitive recognition might occur at some point. I see it as analogous to Capablanca setting up the chess position. If you had not written the things you did about Capablanca I'd guess that I wouldn't be writing this, because I would not know how to convey what it is I'm trying to convey to you.

Inasmuch as I'm talking about a communication strategy, I'll point out that it is often a long game strategy where I'm not expecting to have much impact on a person's thinking in the short term. In many cases I don't have much expectation of seeing results, because I'm relying on the other individual's life experience to fill in the 'intuitive dots' and perhaps result in an epiphany at a later date. I don't even expect people to recognize that I've set them up to have whatever epiphany they might have.

I've seen plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of this style of communicating in changing people's intuitions to some degree, though I'm not going to present the evidence because it would be too much like presenting psychological case studies of people I care about. Besides, if things work as I think they do, I think it likely that you will develop a recognition of how this style of communicating can be effective without anything additional from me.

That's a fair response!

a lack of a model for 'the generic person' — wonderer1

Very interesting!

One of things @Isaac and @Count Timothy von Icarus seem to have been arguing about for some reason circled around this "generic person" who is the target of the logically valid argument, the argument that any rational agent ought to accept.

One thing I was thinking about -- going back to that thread of yours -- was the difference between someone who shares your intuitions, so no argument is necessary, and someone who doesn't. My first thought was the thing about intuitions being tacit knowledge, and if that were the case, to explain something to someone who doesn't "get it" what you have to do is spell it out, you have to demonstrate some of the little steps you had skipped over. And that's very much the feel of doing things logically, clear little steps, everything implicit made explicit.

But of course that's wrong. Not everything is made explicit. Not everything can be made explicit. More importantly for this discussion, not everything needs to be made explicit; you only to need to spell out as much as the other person needs to "get it". How much is spelled out, how much made explicit is sort of negotiated.

At least that would be the plan, but when the plan fails, we point to the step-by-step-ness of our chitchat as if that's proof that we're right. And I'm saying the step-by-step-ness is an artifact of our negotiation process, not some standard of truth and justice. If I weren't talking to you, I'd hold the same beliefs without the step-by-step demonstration.

In short, yes, there's the generic person, the rational agent, like homo economicus, but we only pretend to craft our arguments to suit him, or we only invoke him when things go wrong. He represents an idea about what we do when we talk, but not even an ideal we try and fail to realize. --- I think this is one of those things everyone assumes is true (the way we use logic and respond to it) that if you could show them what that would really look like if we did it, they'd realize it's nothing like what we actually do.

Or I'm barking up the wrong tree. We'll see.