it's amazing to see how Adorno, for example, connects the most abstract theories about epistemology and metaphysics with practical concerns. — Jamal

Well it would seem to me that if philosophy is to be useful it must be able to do this. Not that this is something I spend any time on, but those with the right dispositions and expertise probably should.

Would you say that Adorno holds that theory itself can be a form of resistance? — Tom Storm

Yes indeed, and I've just read a lecture of his in which he makes this point: theory and practice are not mutually exclusive, and thought is practical, even when it is not about the practical or directed towards it.

EDIT: It even extends into his writing style, in which he enacts the resistance to what he sees as the neat packaging of "clarity".

I've spent much of my life trying to reconcile theory with practice, in the world of psychosocial services, and I think I agree with him. But this would seem to limit many people from being able to fully participate. To be fully, comprehensively, deeply read and to be able to harmonize or integrate your knowledge into practice is hard.

is this 'emancipation' to be understood primarily in political terms? — Wayfarer

I now see you might have a contrast in mind between political and spiritual. I think Adorno would say the latter follows.

:up:

Thanks for a considered and sympathetic response. — Banno

I always try, when the person I'm responding to shows the same traits.

So better, perhaps, to say that agreeing with either p or ~p is what we do, rather than a rule. — Banno

Hmm, this may wind up mattering quite a bit, but let's not worry about it for the moment.

There's this, about (p v ~p): "My puzzle is: How is it that these are two phenomena, which resemble each other so closely yet have such different objects?" The trite response is that p and ~p are not phenomena. What they are has been answered at length and in different ways. But further, what is salient, and what we discussed in our previous conversations concerning Frege, is that we read (p v ~p) as about one thing, not two. That's part of the function of "⊢" in Frege. — Banno

Some confusion here, likely my fault. By "two phenomena" I didn't mean p and its negation, but rather 1. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as what I called a logical law, and 2. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as a description of what must be the case concerning objects in the world. (Again, by using words like "phenomena" or "objects" I'm only seeking neutral nouns; no metaphysical baggage implied.) So I think your response involving Frege, while true, doesn't address my puzzle. My puzzle wants to know how it is the case -- if it is the case -- that we can understand 'p' as referring either to a logical proposition or, say, a rock.

Our difference may be that I think there is a point at which our spade is turned, a point at which the only answer is "It's what we do", but that you would try to dig further. I take the "counts as..." function to be sufficient, so that putting the ball in the net counts as a goal, no further explanation being possible. You seem to me to want to ask why it counts as a goal, to which the answer is it just does.

Does this seem a fair characterisation? — Banno

Yes.

So I'll throw the ball back - can you convince me that there is a further issue here that remains unanswered? — Banno

In reflecting on this, I notice that the difficulty is similar to the one I pointed out concerning allegedly pseudo- or misfiring questions. How can one demonstrate that a question is legitimate? The temptation is simply to reply, "Well, if you've never been troubled by this question, what can I say?" but I think that is a bad response. Getting people to be troubled by questions they haven't heretofore been troubled by is a primary goal of philosophy! So let me try.

How about if, for starters, we both agree to eschew "game" analogies. I've often wondered if Witt understood the connotations of "game" in English. Certainly the implication that "It's all a game!" drives many people batty -- but I doubt he meant it that way, as a trivial pastime we could just as easily not engage in, or exchange for a different one. The point, surely, is about rules, and about how knowing the rules is a spade-turning experience.

Before I go further, does this seem OK so far?

Oh, and the obvious reason that LNC is taken as a metaphysical or epistemic principle is that it is a grammatical principle, and our language is common to both. Language underpins both. — Banno

This is interesting. But it's open to the objection: How do we know that it's the language that underpins the metaphysics and the epistemology, rather than the reverse -- that the language has developed to reflect the metaphysics and epistemology? This, by the way, wouldn't involve positing a pre-linguistic metaphysical practice of some sort. We could have been building the grammar as we went along.

The leap from "no determinate causes" to "no reason at all" in particular still eludes me, too, and in particular because it "raises the unpleasant spectre of there being only one reasonable way to think and do". — Banno

The OP I started a while back, "Epistemic Stances and Rational Obligation," discusses this in some detail. Can't recall whether you and @Count Timothy von Icarus followed it. The debate there, between scientific realist Pincock and "voluntary epistemic stance" advocate Chakravartty, is a sharp one, and highlights the stakes. Essentially, what we want to know is whether "a reason" must cash out to "an obligatory cause" of holding a particular belief. This is troubling, as discussed on the thread.

Well I don't want to say that interpretations of mystical or religious experience cannot be correct, but I would say that there is no way of determining whether or not they are correct. — Janus

Yes, this is a good distinction. I stand by my hunch that those who firmly oppose such interpretations go further than you, and claim that they could not be correct. This moots the question about how we could determine whether they are.

It seems we have three sources of grounding for our beliefs, or if you prefer, the premises upon which we base our (hopefully) consistent reasoning―logic, perceptual observation, and reflection on and generalization from experience. The latter is what I would say phenomenology at its best consists in. — Janus

That third category is the problematic one. Is this where we'd put hermeneutics? Do you allow that hermeneutics can produce genuine knowledge? In its original sense of textual interpretation, we want to say that there can be better or worse readings, and that some readings can be known to be incorrect, and that some (perhaps quite small) group of readings can be known to be correct. Let's say this is so. Do we arrive at knowledge here by generalization from experience? I think so, but what kinds of experience? The experiences themselves are neither perceptual (that is, physical) nor logical.

Likewise we have no way of determining whether our beliefs about the reliability of others' judgements, or our scientific theories are correct, even though it seems reasonable to think we have a better idea about the veracity of those based on whether the predictions they yield are observed.

The only certainties would seem to be the logical, including mathematics, and the directly observable. — Janus

Yes, but I thought we agreed that this level of certainty is not what we require for something to count as knowledge. I know the special theory of relativity is correct, though I am not absolutely certain, because I can't do the math. On the JTB model, I think my belief is justified because of how I rate the scientific community which asserts it. I could be wrong. Just about all knowledge claims can be defeated. But I think it does violence to what we mean by "knowing something" to take this as a formal skepticism about non-analytic knowledge statements.

The "rule following argument," like the many other empiricist arguments from underdetermination, relies on presupposing empiricism's epistemic presuppositions and its impoverished anthropology (which denies intellectus from the outset). Since these arguments lead to all sorts of radical conclusions: that words do not have meanings in anything like the classical realist sense, that they cannot refer to things, that induction—and thus natural science—is not rationally justifiable, that we cannot know if the sun will rise tomorrow, that we don't know when we are performing addition instead of an infinite number of other operations, that nothing like knowledge as classically understood can exist, etc., one might suppose that the original premises should be challenged. Indeed, epistemic presuppositions that lead to this sort of skepticism would seem to be self-refuting; they cannot secure even the most basic, bedrock knowledge we possess.

That is, the rule following argument is itself a consequence of the reduction of reason to ratio.

Likewise, Kripke's queerness argument just assumes nominalism, and then points out that one cannot have access to universals because nominalism is true. I don't think these are instances of intentional questions begging, but they are nonetheless question begging.

If your first point is that rule-following alone does not equate to content, then we might agree. I'd answer this problem by again pointing out that one's understanding of any rule is to be found in the actions seen in following it or going against it. And here we might add that the action is what you call "content".

Action is not the content of thought; that's behaviorism.



Protagoras was consistent. Whatever anyone thinks is true is true for that person. Arguments from underdetermination against the possibility of virtually all knowledge are consistent. Arguably, if one starts from empiricist epistemic presuppositions, one is more consistent than most philosophers if one just commits to epistemic nihilism. That's fine though. Radical skepticism is also consistent. Whether it is wise or reasonable is another question.

Here, it might be helpful turn to G.K. Chesterton’s discussion of the “madman." As Chesterton points out, the madman, can always make any observation consistent with his delusions “If [the] man says… that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny [it]; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.” Expressing the man’s error is not easy; his thoughts are consistent. They run in a “perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle… though… it is not so large.” The man’s account “explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.”

For Chesterton, the mark of madness is this combination of “logical completeness and a spiritual contraction.” In the same way, a view of truth that is limited to the confines of individual language games explains truth in a “small way.” Reason is no longer ecstatic, taking us beyond what we already are. Rather it runs in tight, isolated circles. On such a view, reason represents not a bridge, the ground of the mind’s nuptial union with being, but is instead the walls of a perfect but hermetically sealed cell.

It seems clear to me that of all our kinds of beliefs those based on religious and mystical experiences are the least grounded, are in fact groundless, and are thus purely matters of faith. I understand that it may be hard for some to admit this―however I don't see this as a bug, but rather a feature. If people generally understood this, there would be no evangelism, no religious indoctrination and no fundamentalism, and I think we would then have a better world.

Do you think witness testimony should be admissable in trials? Or, because it might be based on one person's perceptual experiences, should witness reports and unrecorded confessions be thrown out as lacking in epistemic warrant?

Assuming the events of Exodus happened as recorded, would the Hebrews, who saw the sea split for them, the sky raining blood, a pillar of fire following them every night, water come from a stone, etc. still lack any epistemic warrant for believing God exists?

Here is a potential confusion. We might say we think or do something "for no reason at all," when what we really mean is "we acted without any rational deliberation." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Causes and reasons are fairly synonymous in some senses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

“There is a reason that X . . .” is different than “I have a reason for X,” when X is some belief or action. In the first case, it’s closer to saying “Something caused X”; in the second case, it’s saying, “Here is why I chose X.” So, while I agree that the equivocal overlap in usage can create the sense of synonymy, it’s usually more perspicuous to keep them distinct.

This can also be brought out with another example. You give me a string of numbers and ask me to add them up. I do so, and say, “Fifty.” Have I been caused to say “Fifty”? Or would we say that I can give my reasons for saying “Fifty”? And if I’ve added incorrectly? My reasons, as we’d ordinarily understand the word, for saying “Fifty” can’t be the same as what caused me to say “Fifty.”

Yes, that's a useful distinction, although I don't think the two are unrelated. The numbers you are adding up play a role in the second sense of "reasons." They are the reason you add those numbers and not any other. The signs on the paper are the content determining cause of some of your thoughts. That's the causality unique to signs, to make us think one thing instead of any other.

The priority of metaphysics over language is the priority of being (more general) over signs (specifying). Not all signs are stipulated (e.g., smoke as a sign of fire). This is metaphysical priority, but there is also a causal historical priority here to.

Consider the question above about what is prior, language or metaphysics? Even if we say that the stipulation, "this counts as an ant" is prior to there being any ants (although we can say that there is evidence that "what counts as an ant" has been around for millions of years) we will still have the problem of determining why there is a stipulation of this (the ant) instead of any other thing. Why are all ants grouped together? Why this instead of any other of the infinite combinations of sense ensembles we could stipulate things of? This gets to the problem of ordinary objects. Why did all cultures create names for organisms in their environment but absolutely none created names for the bizarre objects of 20th century philosophers (e.g. 'flouts' as discontinuous fox and trout halves)?

If we say it comes down to use, this just leads to the question, "why was "any" useful everywhere but never "flout?" The most obvious answer though is that "ant" is useful because ants, wolves, etc. are organic wholes prior to stipulation, and appear phenomenologicaly as such (which also explains why teaching children the name of a new animal is easy, while the "flout" is likely to be met with blank states).

Historically then, being is prior to phenomenal experience, which is prior to stipulation. Phenomenal experience must come first, or else there is nothing to stipulate about.

Now, in modern thought, we have the wrinkle you suggested in the form of a dualism between subject and object, mental and physical. Of this CSP writes:

"The question, therefore, is whether man, horse, and other names of natural classes, correspond with anything which all men, or all horses, really have in common, independently of our thought, or whether these classes are constituted simply by a likeness in the way in which our minds are affected by individual objects which have in themselves no resemblance or relationship whatsoever."

Peirce thought this was a false dichotomy. Act follows on being. The way things interact with us reveal something determinant about their being. They cause us to think "this" and not anything else. That's enough to ground realism. Realism, afterall, doesn't declare thought about being infallible. It doesn't say the mind has access to everything knowable. Indeed, in a Pentecost homily, St. Thomas says all the efforts of human thought will never exhaust the essence of a single fly. It just says that things' actions upon the mind cannot be arbitrary, cannot emerge from sheer potency, but must correspond to prior actuality.

Well I don't want to say that interpretations of mystical or religious experience cannot be correct, but I would say that there is no way of determining whether or not they are correct. — Janus

Yes, this is a good distinction. I stand by my hunch that those who firmly oppose such interpretations go further than you, and claim that they could not be correct. This moots the question about how we could determine whether they are. — J

More candidly: If there is no way of determining whether something is correct then how could it be said to be correct?

More candidly: If there is no way of determining whether something is correct then how could it be said to be correct? — Leontiskos

P's truth aptness isn't determined by whether we know a way to verify P.

P's truth aptness isn't determined by whether we know a way to verify P. — frank

Why not? And is "truth-apt" the same as "correct"? @Janus said it could be correct, not that it could be truth-apt.

Well I don't want to say that interpretations of mystical or religious experience cannot be correct, but I would say that there is no way of determining whether or not they are correct. — Janus

I know Janus isn't a big fan of formal logic, but he seems committed to saying that the following claim is possible:

<This religious experience interpretation is correct, and there is no way of determining whether this religious experience interpretation is correct>

<C(r) ^ ~D(r)>

The contrary claim is as follows:

<If we are able to say that this religious experience interpretation is correct, then there must be some way of determining that this religious experience interpretation is correct>

<S(C(r)) → D(r)>

But a conjunction is a double-assertion, and therefore the first conjunct, i.e. C(r), is being asserted or said. Ergo: Anyone who says <C(r) ^ ~D(r)> is also saying C(r), and therefore <(C(r) ^ ~D(r)) → S(C(r))>

This means that (1) and (2) cannot both be true:

1. <C(r) ^ ~D(r)>
2. <S(C(r)) → D(r)>

(2) seems sure whereas (1) seems dubious. That is the problem with @Janus's approach to these issues. It flies in the face of the psychological PSR. Specifically, one is not rationally permitted to claim that something is correct if they have no grounds for claiming that something is correct.

Janus sees himself as doing a kindness to religion when he says things like that, and maybe there is a sense in which there is a subjective or short-term kindness, but it looks as if this "kindness" involves straightforward irrationality.

(The only available response seems to be doubling down on (1), "There are some things which are correct and yet can never, even in principle, be determined to be correct." That's a wild claim.)

not? And is "truth-apt" the same as "correct"? Janus said it could be correct, not that it could be truth-apt. — Leontiskos

Truth aptness is just about whether P can be true or false.

The rain is colorblind.

The above statement is not truth apt because it doesn't make any sense.

The rain is drizzling.

The above statement is truth apt, because it can be true or false. Once we verify it, we'll know which it is. Let's say that for whatever reason, verification of this P is beyond our abilities. We would say it may be correct, but we can't verify.

There are those who deny that unverifiable P's are truth apt. This is related to their conception of truth as a social utensil.

Yes, that's a useful distinction, although I don't think the two are unrelated. The numbers you are adding up play a role in the second sense of "reasons." They are the reason you add those numbers and not any other. The signs on the paper are the content determining cause of some of your thoughts. That's the causality unique to signs, to make us think one thing instead of any other. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm glad the distinction makes sense to you as well. I may not quite be following what you say next, though. The numbers -- that is, the specific marks on paper -- are the reason, in the sense that I would give as "my reason," for why I perform that particular addition and no other. You're saying, as well, that these signs (presumably uninterpreted?) cause some of my thoughts, that they "make me think one thing instead of any other." Does this process stop with the identification of one number? Or does it also compel the first sum, then the next, then the next . . .? It's that kind of physical-ish causality that I'm leery of, if you really do mean that I had no choice other than to "think one thing." But before I go on about that, tell me whether I've grasped your point.

Truth aptness is just about whether P can be true or false. — frank

Yes, I know. My questions remain.

The above statement is not truth apt because it doesn't make any sense. — frank

So things which do not make sense are not truth apt. Is that the only time you would ever claim that something is not truth apt?

"The question, therefore, is whether man, horse, and other names of natural classes, correspond with anything which all men, or all horses, really have in common, independently of our thought, or whether these classes are constituted simply by a likeness in the way in which our minds are affected by individual objects which have in themselves no resemblance or relationship whatsoever."

Peirce thought this was a false dichotomy. Act follows on being. The way things interact with us reveal something determinant about their being. They cause us to think "this" and not anything else. That's enough to ground realism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

Forming a coherent question is half the battle.

So, while I agree that the equivocal overlap in usage can create the sense of synonymy, it’s usually more perspicuous to keep them distinct. — J

I don't see that the issue is 'cause' vs. 'reason'. In many traditions they are used synonymously. I wouldn't agree with @Count Timothy von Icarus's claim that all action is "determined by prior actuality." That looks like a tidy definition of determinism, which I don't think he accepts. See my post <here> on the PSR in Thomism. The idea is that even contingent events have proper explanations.

Yes, I know. My questions remain. — Leontiskos

:meh:

I wouldn't frame it in terms of some sort of dialectical of caused action versus free action. I think libertarian free will is incoherent, but that's neither here nor there. The point is not that the symbols on the paper somehow force you to add them, merely that when you add sums on a paper those signs determine which numbers you add. If you didn't want to add them and didn't need to, presumably you wouldn't. The intellect is informed by the senses, which carry the signs. The will is informed by the intellect (but informed by ≠ determined by).

It's just like how a stop light is casually involved in bringing your car to a halt. If the light (a physical thing) wasn't red, you wouldn't have stopped. But people intentionally run red lights all the time. The mechanism here is that the red light informs the habituated driver in a specific way, making them think one thing (applying the brakes in order to avoid an accident or ticket) versus simply driving through. Obviously, such informing can be subconscious as well.

There has to be some sort of "physical-ish causality," right? Else how could ink in a paper book (a physical object) lead you to have the very specific thoughts of War and Peace, or a light reliably make people apply their brakes?

Granted, this is a very hard thing for old school mechanistic, dualistic corpuscular materialism to handle, but information theory and semiotics offer ways to explain the transmission of intelligible content in ways that need not reduce to "little balls of stuff forcing other little balls to move by bumping into them."

you have to consider this in terms of the earlier, moral global assertion of skepticism:

Likewise we have no way of determining whether our beliefs about the reliability of others' judgements, or our scientific theories are correct, even though it seems reasonable to think we have a better idea about the veracity of those based on whether the predictions they yield are observed.

The only certainties would seem to be the logical, including mathematics, and the directly observable.

The question then for me for @Janus would be, regarding this:

I have the utmost respect for others' faiths. provided they don't seek to indoctrinate others. I have my own beliefs which are based on pure faith, but I don't want to argue for them because I see that it is pointless given that no intersubjectively determinate corroboration is possible in respect of them.

Shouldn't this apply as well to scientific or historical claims, for instance, claims of the superior intelligence of the "Aryan race," the natural perfidy of woman, whether or not the Holocaust or Holodomor occured, etc? Or all sorts of moral claims, e.g. about consent and sex, about abortion, theft, etc., or even claims about the value of tolerance and "avoiding indoctrination" themselves? That is, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and no one should try to indoctrinate anyone else re what is unknowable?

For, if being reasonable is just being consistent, then surely the Nazi can be reasonable.

Now if the response is that those things do fit the criteria for "intersubjectively determinate corroboration," then why don't religious claims? After all, if justifications for religious claims are not intersubjectively available, how do we explain the massive phenomenon of millions upon millions of conversions, the capacity of religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism to convince disparate peoples and cultures of their truth, or that most people, for most of history, lived in communities that largely agreed on religious matters?

It looks like the crux of this thread is the issue of first principles of knowledge. This is a live issue for anyone who believes that knowledge exists and that it requires reasons or grounds. It is also something that tends to be neglected on TPF, which is strongly influenced by Analytic philosophy.

So anyone who believes that knowledge exists and that it requires reasons or grounds will have an interest in wrestling with these issues. That includes most everyone, although @Janus and @J are interesting cases. Janus seems to think that some knowledge does not require reasons or grounds, and therefore he has a premade category into which to shoehorn difficult cases, such as first principles or "intuitions" (a terribly vague term). Still, he must reckon with the idea that his "public knowledge" is derived from "private" "intuitions." Then for @J, who regularly flirts with different forms of skepticism, it is not clear that he believes knowledge really exists. Thus for these two people there is less at stake, and there is less interest in wrestling with these issues. It's not as clear that their worldview has skin in the game when it comes to first principles of knowledge.

The foil here would be someone like Bob Ross, who both clearly believes that knowledge exists and that it requires reasons or grounds. When Bob Ross criticizes an account of first principles, he is left with a vacuum. He is moved to provide an alternative account. When J criticizes an account of first principles, he is confirming his a priori skeptical stance. He is not left with a vacuum and is not moved to provide an alternative account. Thus the motivations at play are significantly different in different cases.

The point is not that the symbols on the paper somehow force you to add them, merely that when you add sums on a paper those signs determine which numbers you add. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There has to be some sort of "physical-ish causality," right? Else how could ink in a paper book (a physical object) lead you to have the very specific thoughts of War and Peace, or a light reliably make people apply their brakes? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, I understand you better now. What I want to understand better for myself is whether this conception of causality must entail necessity and obligation. The numbers don't force me to add them (an action in the physical world), granted, but the question is, if I do add them (and only them, not some others), do they force me to have the reasons I have for my correct answer? It's the relationship between causes and reasons that I'm concerned with here, how we bridge the gap between physical-ish causes and thought-ish reasons.

Similarly, with War and Peace, the cause/reason question emerges at the connection between these abstract marks on paper and what they mean. Arguably, the introduction of meaning moves us from causes to reasons.

But let me think more on it, thanks for clarifying.

The question then for me for Janus would be — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think those are good questions too. I have asked some of them myself. Most recently we saw Janus effectively claim that the racist is not illogical, even if he lacks evidence for his claims.

That is an issue related to my thread ("Beyond the Pale"), namely that the skeptical philosophies people espouse on TPF are entirely inconsistent with their behavior in real life. At bottom this has to do with cases of expedience. Skepticism is useful for supporting liberalism and especially libertarianism ("Do not impose your obligations on me!"), whereas social justice moral positions are useful for supporting social cohesion and one's passions. But if you are consistent you can't pay obeisance to skepticism and then get all worked up about racism.

But practice changes too. I wonder if one of the criticisms of psychologism works against this Wittgensteinian view as much as it does against psychologism: if logic is relative to our practices then it's contingent. — Jamal

Well, there's a lot to unpack here.

Yes, practice changes, but there is the Davidsonian limitation that if it were to change to much it would cease to be recognisable as a practice. One supposes that in order to count as a practice it must be recognisable as such.

Then there's the difference between psychology and sociology. Treating logic as the result of psychological preference fails in much the same way as does grounding it in intuition - it doesn't take shared action into account. And then there's the further step of accounting for the normatively of logic, which might be doable if it is treated as a community activity. Logic is a shared, not a private, practice. seems to miss this point.

That's the classic Wittgensteinian response to accusations of psychologism or even behaviourism.

Then there's the problem that the conclusion - that logic is contingent - doesn't follow directly form the premise - that logic is relative. So taking the extreme, it doesn't follow, from logic being associated with practice, that logic is random.

So from Wittgenstein we might see logic as a practice, and from Davidson we might see it as a constitutive restraint. But you have drawn my attention to is that these views may not be mutually exclusive.

But you also have given me Adorno to think about. Damn your eyes.

Some confusion here, likely my fault. By "two phenomena" I didn't mean p and its negation, but rather 1. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as what I called a logical law, and 2. the phenomenon of (p v ~p) as a description of what must be the case concerning objects in the world. (Again, by using words like "phenomena" or "objects" I'm only seeking neutral nouns; no metaphysical baggage implied.) So I think your response involving Frege, while true, doesn't address my puzzle. My puzzle wants to know how it is the case -- if it is the case -- that we can understand 'p' as referring either to a logical proposition or, say, a rock. — J

This is difficult. And hence interesting.

I'm stuck on a bit of pedantry, which I will have to set out before I move on. There are limits on what we can substitute for p in (p v ~p). It has to be truth-apt. So you can't treat 'p' as the name for a rock, becasue Fred the Rock is not truth apt.

And notice that these are limits on what we can do with (p v ~p). If you do substitute "Fred the Rock" for "p", then you have stoped playing the game that I had thought we were playing, and we ned to drop back a step and reconsider what the rules of the game are.

So if your puzzle is that you want to know how it is the case that we can understand 'p' as referring to a proposition and not a rock, then my answer will be the same... that's the game we are playing.

How about if, for starters, we both agree to eschew "game" analogies. I've often wondered if Witt understood the connotations of "game" in English. Certainly the implication that "It's all a game!" drives many people batty -- but I doubt he meant it that way, as a trivial pastime we could just as easily not engage in, or exchange for a different one. The point, surely, is about rules, and about how knowing the rules is a spade-turning experience. — J

...but, but...

No, Witti didn't mean it that way, and I agree that the term is overused, but it is so difficult to put up an alternative.

While I'm happy to talk about rules, you can guess where I will go: following a rule is ultimately a practice; it can't be rules all the way down.

But, ok, let's continue.

(trouble is that I get up as you go to bed, so the conversation here is always going to be interspersed with a whole lot of other stuff. Feel free to PM as needed - I do)

Damn your eyes. — Banno

I, for one, am happy to draw you back into Adorno. :D

In its original sense of textual interpretation, we want to say that there can be better or worse readings, and that some readings can be known to be incorrect, and that some (perhaps quite small) group of readings can be known to be correct. — J

It seems the problem with hermeneutics lies in specifying what criteria there could be for a reading to count as a correct reading. Would it be getting the intentions of the author right? Or something else? If it is the author's intentions, how could we find out? By asking the author? What if the author doesn't know what his intentions were, or what if the author were dead?

Yes, but I thought we agreed that this level of certainty is not what we require for something to count as knowledge. I know the special theory of relativity is correct, though I am not absolutely certain, because I can't do the math. On the JTB model, I think my belief is justified because of how I rate the scientific community which asserts it. I could be wrong. Just about all knowledge claims can be defeated. But I think it does violence to what we mean by "knowing something" to take this as a formal skepticism about non-analytic knowledge statements. — J

What could it mean to say I know the theory of relativity is correct beyond saying that there is reliable evidence that it works?

Here, it might be helpful turn to G.K. Chesterton’s discussion of the “madman." As Chesterton points out, the madman, can always make any observation consistent with his delusions “If [the] man says… that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny [it]; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours.” — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not clear on the purpose of this. It seems clear that some premises are more plausible than others, and the premise that all others are conspiring against one would count as one of the least plausible imaginable. I've already said that reason consists in conclusions being consistent with premises, and also that premises should be consistent with human experience taken as whole, since that is the condition into which we are inducted in growing up.

Science with its peer review is a microcosm of the human community as a whole. That doesn't mean that there are not people who cling to whacky theories, but it seems reasonable to think that, in general, such people are not being reasonable, if they don't have cogent evidence for their beliefs. It is also doesn't mean that some superstitious hangovers from pre-scientific traditions don't hold sway on the minds of many.

How do we know that it's the language that underpins the metaphysics and the epistemology, rather than the reverse — J

Well, I suppose that's a worthwhile point. Language takes it as granted that there is stuff to talk about, and true and false things to say, so maybe the conclusion is that we can't seperate these out.

...a pre-linguistic metaphysical practice... — J

Like the dog chasing the rat up a tree? Here's a minefield. Fine, but I'll insist that there can be no "pre-linguistic metaphysical practice" that we cannot put into words post-hoc; otherwise how could we be said to recognise it as a practice? I think this a swamp not worth approaching.

I followed your thread for a while, but couldn't get traction in the ideas involved.