And I think the counter, the demand for universality, permanence, certainty [...] should just be ignored as juvenile. — Srap Tasmaner
To assess a narrative and judge it good or bad requires a standard. To assess a narrative and accept or reject it requires a standard which one takes to be somehow definitive or elevated. If there are no such definitive or elevated standards, then rejection is never permissible. We would never say, "This does not fulfill some (arbitrary) standard, therefore it is to be rejected." To reject something requires judging that it fails to fulfill some definitive or elevated standard. To judge that it is beyond the pale. — Leontiskos
Modifiable meaning that if your criteria can't evolve or aren't open to challenge or debate, you're doing it wrong. — Srap Tasmaner
We do. By talking. Sometimes negotations fail, though.
If I wanted to formalize it a bit, I might say that we're not advocating the abandonment of criteria tout court; useful, meaningful criteria (of value, of truth, et bloody cetera) are both local and modifiable. Local here meaning capturing as much of the context of their application as needed. (A question like "Is this a good car?" has no answer or too many without context.) Modifiable meaning that if your criteria can't evolve or aren't open to challenge or debate, you're doing it wrong.
And I think the counter, the demand for universality, permanence, certainty -- which will attack even what I'm saying here, "Are criteria always and everywhere like this? Then you're contradicting yourself!" -- should just be ignored as juvenile. This is not how serious people think. It's like lecturing Jerome Powell after taking Econ 101. — Srap Tasmaner
If one cannot offer any criteria for making this judgement, then the choice seems arbitrary. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Such a narrative will, we hope, be "reasonable." And it has no strict criteria. — J
Likewise, that we cannot rank all narratives against some final infallible standard does not entail that... — Banno
But I don't think I'm being unreasonable. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Yet even an appeal to internal consistency requires some sort of standard. — Count Timothy von Icarus
If you throw J's epistemic position into Chat GPT it identifies all the same issues I did, plus some others (although these seem ancillary to me). — Count Timothy von Icarus
Truth is said in statements or known in subjects and is about what is. Correspondence is part of it. Alignment of subject to object. Coherence and validity is part of this. Being is part of this. Identity and unity will be issues.
This is me avoiding the question. Truly. — Fire Ologist
Right, many of histories most bitter wars are ideological, so clearly debate can collapse into power relations. My concern about epistemic standards that are too loose is that they basically just fast forward us towards the collapse into power relations.
Talking is effective for different reasons, right? You have your old ethos, logos, and pathos, different sorts of appeals. But isn't a "good argument" one that tends towards truth, not one that tends towards conversion and agreement? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Where do you see your preference for dissection playing in here? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Right, many of histories most bitter wars are ideological, so clearly debate can collapse into power relations. My concern about epistemic standards that are too loose is that they basically just fast forward us towards the collapse into power relations. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Talking is effective for different reasons, right? You have your old ethos, logos, and pathos, different sorts of appeals. But isn't a "good argument" one that tends towards truth, not one that tends towards conversion and agreement? If it was the latter, then it would seem that we are always dealing with mere power relations. That is, of course , the thesis of some philosophers though.
I am not sure if we have "succeeded" if we have successfully talked others into accepting our own false opinions though.
Further, some of these debates are highly consequential. Consider the current debate over vaccines in the US. Or consider the example of a sui generis "socialist genetics" that led to famines that killed thousands, if not millions. The stakes in some debates are very high, and so I'm not sure "we talk and maybe we agree and maybe we don't" works in principle. That at least, isn't how things are often done in the wider world, again because stakes are often high. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Well I am mostly in favor of philosophy being useless. I wish it could be more useless -- but this is an aside.A question here might be: "can people be taught to better evaluate claims?" If they can't, then philosophy is pretty useless, or at least general epistemology is. If they can be taught, then presumably there are principles for evaluating claims and narratives that are more general. — Count Timothy von Icarus
We rely on authority to settle a lot of these issues, e.g. doctors carry special weight in the vaccine debate. But obviously there is an issue of proper authority. Doctors don't have authority on vaccines just because they claim it, or because it is yielded to them, else there is never "improper authority" in cases where people recognize authority. The idea of a "proper authority" that is distinct from whoever just so happens to hold authority seems to me to require an additional standard, and probably one that is general in its principles since we must adjudicate proper authority across disparate spheres. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The truth. Something absolute. Something not arbitrary. — Fire Ologist
Something said about the world, and not just about the speaker. — Fire Ologist
More or less that the skeptical position isn't inferior to the non-skeptics in terms of philosophical excellence. Both are valuable. Also there's a sense in which this delineation is quite soft, so even stating a preference for one over the other is a difficulty. As we see earlier Janus disagreed with my classifying Hume as a nit-picker, and @Hanover disagreed upon that. So far it seems to me that the idea is still quite hazy. — Moliere
You either become fascinated by the mechanics of dissection, or you resist it because you're in love with the project. :smile: — frank
do you think that kind of statement is available for all the areas that interest us as philosophers? — J
Third option, I project build, welcoming your dissection, to produce a well tested product.
Except not here. Resisting it not on any principle but respecting the thread is maybe not the place. — Fire Ologist
This thread is about the process. Or types of processes. — Fire Ologist
How is it uncharitable? I copied and pasted the phrases. I get that we don't always "know it when we see it," but we sometimes do. (Yet such a claim seems hard to challenge whenever it is made). What would you change? — Count Timothy von Icarus
This is an appeal to bare personal preference. My argument is specific enough for me, how could it possibly be wrong? — Count Timothy von Icarus
do you think that kind of statement is available for all the areas that interest us as philosophers?
— J
Appreciate you.
I think it’s available for anything speakable.
I also think it is difficult to achieve. — Fire Ologist
What settles a philosophical dispute? Isn't the volume of words on this site alone enough to demonstrate that there is no such settling, once and for all? — Moliere
Of course it is, and it is a standard that Moliere has ↪explicitly refused within this thread. The fact that @Banno's championing of coherence clashes with @Moliere's ignoring of coherence is itself proof that those who favor the so-called "dissection" approach to philosophy disagree even among themselves about whether coherence should be applied as a criterion. — Leontiskos
And I think the counter, the demand for universality, permanence, certainty -- which will attack even what I'm saying here, "Are criteria always and everywhere like this? Then you're contradicting yourself!" -- should just be ignored as juvenile. This is not how serious people think. It's like lecturing Jerome Powell after taking Econ 101. — Srap Tasmaner
Likewise, I simply can't imagine a serious scholar or thinker saying, "How could I possibly be wrong?" — J
I promise this is the last time I'll mention it, but . . . . Chakravartty and Pincock? — J
Well, yes. If your commander gives an order, you are thereby under an obligation, even if you do not follow that order.You can intend to create an obligation for someone to stop when you say, "Stop!" but when they don't did you actually create an obligation? — Harry Hindu
That's right. When I say "Hello" to someone walking towards me on the mountain path, I'm not informing them that we intend to start a conversation. I'm too focused on getting up the mountain and don't really want a chat.but your response was that you simply didn't like what I was saying. — Harry Hindu
Yes. We say "They ignored my greeting".If you say, "Hello" to someone and they ignore you, did you greet them? — Harry Hindu
Are you saying all behaviour must be explained algorithmically? I won't agree.Are you saying that you don't have reasons to get married or scratch your nose? — Harry Hindu
Metaphysics takes a leap involving hypothesis based on assumption. Hegel had hubris claiming he saw the Absolute and giving it a capital “A”.
But I also see hubris in Wittgenstein. He made a similar mic drop move, but from the opposite pole.
— Fire Ologist — Moliere
One can be too proud or too humble, and we can think of extreme examples to make the point, but there is a kind of practiced back-and-forth in philosophical dialogue where sometimes we make the assertion and sometimes we take it back or think there's something else there. — Moliere
If I wanted to formalize it a bit... — Srap Tasmaner
And I think my question about how you negotiate the absolute/arbitrary chasm IRL offended you. — J
Please let me apologize. I meant no personal criticism, though I see how it could have landed that way. — J
But hubris is usually just bad. You need confidence in life, but not hubris. I’d say. — Fire Ologist
It does take humility. But not too much or you shrink from making the assertion. — Fire Ologist
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