IDK, seems like grounds for a principle to me.

Can you give an example where just making up your data consistently leads towards knowledge? I would accept that as a strong counter example.

Can you give an example where just making up your data consistently leads towards knowledge? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, and that is exactly the point!

It's not some principle that leads to knowledge, but repeated, open, communal discussion.

It's not some principle that leads to knowledge, but repeated, open, communal discussion. — Banno

Where do you suppose principles come from?

No, and that is exactly the point!

So there are no examples where just making up your data consistently leads towards knowledge, but it still isn't a valid epistemic principle to not just make up your data? Why isn't it a valid principle?

But it would be if the community says so?

But it would be if the community says so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. The community is embedded in the world.

Again, it looks to me as if you are being disingenuous, this time by ignoring the triangulation.

That's not down to the community failing to accept a principle, but a mismatch between what the community says is the case and what is the case. It's a failure of triangulation, not of principle. — Banno

I'm really not sure what is supposed to be disingenuous here. It seems to me that if a principle holds with no imaginable counter examples, it's a solid principle. That's my only point.

We seem to be in agreement that there are no imaginable counter examples, so I don't know why the principle isn't valid?

So does whichever standards triangulate properly represent good standards, even if the community doesn't agree to them, or does the community have to agree to the standards and they have to triangulate?

I guess now I am trying to tell if the standards exist in virtue of triangulation prior to the community accepting them. If they do, then I would just say that those are what I mean by principles, and we have found some agreement.

I've been dithering about whether to get back into this. I've been looking for a way to do so without simply playing partisan to one side.

There are two questions:

1. Are there context-independent standards?
2. Are there context-dependent standards? — Leontiskos

I suppose we all agree the answer to (2) is "yes", though we may choose to interpret the question differently, hedge in various ways, and so on.

The conflict here is certainly about (1).

I would like to see this approached as an open question, but I'd like to frame it in a particular way, as a question about (1) (2), upon which we all agree.

Now, I've never read Kuhn, though I've been familiar with the gist of the original argument for years. We all know that the issue he addressed was the nature of paradigms in scientific research, and the replacement of one paradigm by another, which, he claimed, was never a matter of new observations invalidating one paradigm and ushering in another that was more adequate.

That's close enough to what I have in mind, only I'd throw in every sort of framework, worldview, evidence regime (or whatever it's called, @Joshs has mentioned this), and so on. If you like, you could even throw in language-games.

I'm not wedded to any particular view here, but I think it's simply a fact ― interestingly, a fact about our culture ― that since the rise of cultural anthropology, in particular, we are all of us now more knowledgeable about the existence of views quite different from our own, and have grown more sensitive to those differences, which shows up, for instance, in the way we talk about history now (the other another country). A certain sort of relativism comes naturally to Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic people.

We are also by now smart enough to know that the sort walled gardens imagined by early structuralists are a myth, and that neither are worldviews (et very much cetera) static.

So here's how I would want to address question (2) (1): is there some mechanism available for prying yourself out of a given scheme/worldview/framework, and is that mechanism the use of reason? We might see this as a step required for the change or evolution of a worldview (though not the only way), or as a mechanism for shifting from one paradigm to another, Kuhn be damned.

So there are two ways it could be anchored to issue (1) (2): either (a) as what connects one thingy (worldview, framework, conceptual scheme) to another, or changes a thingy noticeably; or (b) as something that enables you to free yourself entirely from the false prison of all thingies.

I want to add that it seems clear to me that the project of the Enlightenment hoped that reason could pull off (b), and much follows in its train (reason is the birthright of all, no one need ever again be beholden to another in areas of knowledge, and so on).

(With the discussion of pseudoscience, I found myself thinking about alchemy, and the place it is given nowadays as a crucial forerunner of chemistry; while its theory may leave something to be desired, its practice was not without merit. So how does chemistry emerge from alchemy? Was it the application of reason?)

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation?

Now you have added "imaginable". So now you are doing modal logic?

There is a difference between following some god-given principle and trying things out to see what works.

You appear to advocate the former, I advocate the latter.

I've been dithering about whether to get back into this. I've been looking for a way to do so without simply playing partisan to one side. — Srap Tasmaner

Well we owe you, because the thread is in need of such a thing. :up:

The conflict here is certainly about (1). — Srap Tasmaner

I agree.

I would like to see this approached as an open question, but I'd like to frame it in a particular way, as a question about (1), upon which we all agree. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, so we are searching for a question...

That's close enough to what I have in mind, only I'd throw in every sort of framework, worldview, evidence regime (or whatever it's called, Joshs has mentioned this), and so on. If you like, you could even throw in language-games. — Srap Tasmaner

So now we are asking, "Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?"

Is that the question you want to ask?

I thought "context" was too broad, and I am similarly worried that your question is too broad. I think I vaguely understand what you mean, though. When talking about this "question" (it is questionable whether it is a single question), I will try to use a single term to help us keep to the same page.

In the thread we have been talking about whether there is some criterion which applies to all ("scientific") fields, rather than only to a subset of them. I think that question is more manageable, but we can ask many. I am not averse to questions.

So here's how I would want to address question (2): is there some mechanism available for prying yourself out of a given scheme/worldview/framework, and is that mechanism the use of reason? We might see this as a step required for the change or evolution of a worldview (though not the only way), or as a mechanism for shifting from one paradigm to another, Kuhn be damned. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, so the premise here is that I'm stuck and I need to be pried out?

I haven't read Kuhn's book either, but perhaps we're asking if there is some common thread between the two paradigms in which the shift is effected.

So there are two ways it could be anchored to issue (1): either (a) as what connects one thingy (worldview, framework, conceptual scheme) to another, or changes a thingy noticeably; or (b) as something that enables you to free yourself entirely from the false prison of all thingies. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. We could also say (c) that there is some standard that is being followed both before and after the paradigm shift. A standard that is not affected by the paradigm shift. This is like (a) but it abandons the premise of prying out what is stuck.

I want to add that it seems clear to me that the project of the Enlightenment hoped that reason could pull off (b), and much follows in its train (reason is the birthright of all, no one need ever again be beholden to another in areas of knowledge, and so on). — Srap Tasmaner

Right.

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation? — Srap Tasmaner

What if we give our preliminary answers to the questions on the table before proceeding? Would that be a bad idea? Here is a collection of the questions:

• Q1. Are there context-independent standards?
• Old2. Are there context-dependent standards?
• Q2. Is there some mechanism available for prying yourself out of a given scheme/worldview/framework, and is that mechanism the use of reason?
• Q3. Is there some criterion which applies to all ("scientific") fields, rather than only to a subset of them?
• Q4. Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?
• Q5. Is there something that connects one thingy (worldview, framework, conceptual scheme) to another?
• Q6. Is there something that enables you to free yourself entirely from the false prison of all thingies?
• Q7. Is there some standard that is being followed both before and after a paradigm shift?

My preliminary answers, to the best of my ability and in a yes/no format:

• Q1. Yes, depending on what is meant by 'context'.
• Old2. Yes.
• Q2. Yes, and it will involve but not be exhausted by reason.
• Q3. Yes.
• Q4. Yes...ish. (yes/yes/eh/yes/yes/yes)
• Q5. Yes. (yes/yes/yes)
• Q6. No, even if we omit "the false prison of."
• Q7. Yes.

...Apart from that setting of the stage, I will add one thing. We can also think about this in terms of commensurability and communicability. For example, we could ask whether two people could communicate with one another even despite their different "languages." We could ask whether people from two different paradigms or epochs would be able to communicate despite that difference. We could ask whether someone before a paradigm shift could understand or anticipate the post-shift reality, and whether someone after a paradigm shift could understand the pre-shift reality. And so on...

(With the discussion of pseudoscience, I found myself thinking about alchemy, and the place it is given nowadays as a crucial forerunner of chemistry; while its theory may leave something to be desired, its practice was not without merit. So how does chemistry emerge from alchemy? Was it the application of reason?) — Srap Tasmaner

That would be an excellent research question which would probably balloon very quickly and have to be pared down. So naturally I'll answer it from the top of my head without any more work:

Beyond the lore that's spoken of in standard text books I have little knowledge of that transition. One thing I do know is that Newton practiced alchemy, and some of his experiments have been replicated in the modern day -- the problem with alchemy as contrasted to chemistry is that all the alchemists wanted to keep the secret of the philosopher's stone, or transmuting lead to gold, or immortality all to themselves. So they would write in a cypher. Part of recreating Newton's alchemical experiments was figuring out what he meant and what we meant by different words. Digging more into this would naturally lend itself to the conversation evolving here -- that's pretty much an example of translation between paradigms as clear as you're probably going to find.

But all this to say that it's a very interesting question that I don't know more than what I've said here.

So now we are asking, "Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?"

Is that the question you want to ask? — Leontiskos

Yes, that's the idea ― and I'm glad it's clear enough despite me mixing up the numbers. (Anyone who found the post deeply confusing should reload to see my edits.)

We landed at some point on questions like this: Are all narratives acceptable? I think it's clear no one wants to say that, but they mean different things when they answer. I understand the impulse of the question; when I was young and discovered Science, or when I was somewhat older and discovered Logic, I thought they were tools especially useful for ruling things out. But I'm older now, and I can't help but read that question and ask, acceptable to whom? in what context? for what purpose? And I understand the question as intending to be taken as "acceptable full-stop," or, if need be, "acceptable to Reason." And I can't help but wonder if anyone is ever in a position to stand nowhere and choose which town to go to ...

Hence my plan of grounding the question instead on the relations among thingies: how do you, given that you're currently in St. Louis, decide whether you might like Kansas City more? Whether Kansas City might be better (in some sense you could give substance to)?

I'm not immune to the claims of reason as the great tool of liberation from dogma and delusion ― and have disconcertingly frequent occasions lately to wish fervently for its wider embrace. Even though everyone knows (well, almost everyone, around here at least) reason has a shockingly poor track record ― despite its PR ― as a tool for freeing people from dogma and delusion, that only really applies to modern man in his natural state, not to reflective man trained in the use of reason (i.e., us). Sadly, I for one would expect a lot more consensus to have emerged in philosophy if that were so.

In other words, I want (1) to be an open question. Maybe my youthful faith in reason was warranted. Maybe not.

I don't want to, but in the interests of comity I will also answer your questions ― with the proviso that I'm not altogether happy about my answers.

Q1. No.
Old2. Obviously.
Q2. Evidently, and probably not.
Q3. Yes-ish ― this one is in some ways too easy and too hard.
Q4. No, and I intend this to be the same as Q1 ― a sort of "persistent context".
Q5. As with Q2, evidently.
Q6. No, and "false prison" is just rhetoric (drawn from a nice book about LW).
Q7. Same as Q3.

Here's my problem with The Criterion of Scientificity: what we're talking about is behavior, and largely social (rather than cognitive) behavior. What makes what you're doing science is, primarily, how careful you are about your work and your willingness to submit it to the review and criticism of others, but there are a number of other important points (the construction of an explanatory framework, for instance), and I think (a) we are really talking about a classic "family resemblance" here, where there are a great many criteria in play, an evolving set, and you won't find all of them or a consistent subset that identifies all and only science, and (b) science doesn't have a monopoly on any of the strands of the rope that binds the sciences together ― which is why identifying a few things common to all scientific practice (as I confidently do above) is not quite enough to identify only science (necessary but not sufficient). Every science may have this collaborative aspect I'm so insistent on, but so do other things; you need that plus a healthy subset of the other traits of science, which themselves are traits not exclusive to science. (Do painters not engage in careful observation? Do painters, on occasion, not observe and paint the exact same object under varying conditions? Etc.)

It is clear that people sometimes leave St. Louis and light out for Kansas City. It is possible, and the question is, first, what enables that move, and, second, how does anyone judge whether it was a good move, or the right move? (Anyone might be that person moving, someone who stayed behind, someone who already lived in Kansas City, or someone who lives in Chicago.)

We can also think about this in terms of commensurability and communicability. — Leontiskos

As if @Banno won't already be exercised enough by my use of "conceptual scheme".

I have very mixed feelings about the issue of "commensurability" but yeah, I would like everything you mentioned to be on the table. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether any of us can truly understand the ancient Greeks, say. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask a question like that even if I were later convinced that it's in some way a defective question.

An anecdote

I once saw a small flock of birds attempt to perch in a very small yellow-leaved tree. It was too small for all of them to light so they sort of swarmed around it, some finding a spot then taking to the air again moments later. They gave up after maybe five or ten seconds and set off to find a better spot, and left behind a nearly bare tree, the beating of so many wings and jostling about of all these little birds had caused nearly every leaf to fall. I felt, just for a moment, as if I had seen the tree ravished by Zeus, who had taken the form of a flock of birds.

science doesn't have a monopoly on any of the strands of the rope that binds the sciences together — Srap Tasmaner

Kicking myself for not noticing you had already used the same metaphor:

perhaps we're asking if there is some common thread between the two paradigms in which the shift is effected — Leontiskos

And the answer is almost certainly yes, but what's common is only part of what makes both science, or both the same science, or whatever, so it's not the whole explanation. Anyway, that's my hunch.

what the community says is the case… — Banno

Sounds authoritarian.

So now you are doing… — Banno

Count’s been doing one thing for about 10 pages now. Beating his head against the wall, where Banno says whatever he thinks will deflect from a direct answer and avoid an actual discussion (despite constantly talking about having a discussion.)

You’ve been spiraling and spiraling away from central moving issues, trying to avoid the contradiction you think isn’t a contradiction. Moving and moving the goal posts to avoid what is clear…

“Not arbitrary” That is your term. You want statements with some value to NOT be arbitrary. Banno’s law:

“Make sure to say ‘but not arbitrary’ about useful statements”. Enough said.

Anyone asks you why or how this law works, asking “Why not let all validity and truth be arbitrary, and if not, by virtue of what?”

And you won’t give answer. Post after post. It is obscured and avoided. As if we all can’t see what is in black and white right here in these pages.

When pressed anyway, as Count refocuses the evasions, in attempt to continue the “discussion” as we aspire towards, to sort of triangulate towards something “together” as you call it, we squeeze out like a midwife “context” and now “what the community says”.

But how that is not a new arbitrary, moving target (which Count keeps showing over and over is the case) simply avoiding the direct question, showing the arbitrariness of your positions?

How have we moved this discussion forward together at all as you want as our goal?

And that all isn’t rediculous. We aren’t smart enough to understand what is happening here?

And your methods aren’t authoritarian and tyrannical.

And that all of these pages and arguments are not useless to truly avoid the same issue over again: is every statement true/valid/non-arbitrary, or not?

Even if you want to reframe your issue Banno, it’s a simple yes or no question. You can deconstruct it after you answer it, so just answer it.

I don’t think you answer it, by design, and it’s a design flaw in a thinker who wants to avoid arbitrariness, or accusations of arbitrariness. So now there is no real telling what is your idea of the “arbitrary” or “not-arbitrary” or “context” or “determinate/absolute” Now we must add Banno’s version and context of “community triangulation.”

We have an endless attempt to begin a discussion, instead of an attempt to interpret what your OP said.




The thing is, I like “triangulation” with the “community” to test the value/truth/validity, or a statement/assertion/narrative. But the goal, IMO, has to be something about the world, if we are to avoid arbitrariness.

And the irony of it all is that, IMO, it is the absolute and truth alone that defeat tyrannical authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is about a person, not an idea. The absolute is knowledge, which makes you, the knower, your own authority. That is the beginning of any possibility of avoiding tyranny.

Q1. Are there context-independent standards? — Leontiskos

No.

Old2. Are there context-dependent standards?

Yes

Q2. Is there some mechanism available for prying yourself out of a given scheme/worldview/framework, and is that mechanism the use of reason?

Possibly so -- though I don't like calling it a mechanism.

Q3. Is there some criterion which applies to all ("scientific") fields, rather than only to a subset of them?

No.

Q4. Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?

No.

Q5. Is there something that connects one thingy (worldview, framework, conceptual scheme) to another?

Depends on the thingy. The alchemy/chemistry example brought up shows how the two had at least some overlap since we were able to translate alchemy-speak into chemical-speak to see what they tried. So in that case it could be said that the elements were what was common to them, while their meanings about the elements diverge widely.

Q6. Is there something that enables you to free yourself entirely from the false prison of all thingies?

No.

Q7. Is there some standard that is being followed both before and after a paradigm shift?

Yes. Though they need not be the same standard. For me it'd depend upon how meaning relates to standards -- it could be that the standards changing just is the paradigm shift, after all, but it could also be more of a conceptual shift than a shift in one's evaluative tools. Also it's very tricky to define a paradigm in a general way -- most of the time it just ends up looking like "disagreement", which doesn't exactly have all of the radical implications that incommensurability and paradigm shifts can evoke (not necessitate, but evoke).

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't believe so, but this isn't fatal to knowledge or philosophy. It even helps explain their use -- we'll always have some perspective so it's good to hear what others think. Their view may be better than yours in certain circumstances, and I can't think of any other way to be somewhat cognizant of one's own worldview without having encountered ones that are sincerely held but different.

Also I'm wondering why we would want such a liberation? What are we liberating ourselves from in stripping ourselves of a worldview?

So is it possible to set aside all worldviews, frameworks, and schemes, by the use of reason? (To achieve, in that much-reviled phrase, a "view from nowhere".) Is reason the crucial means by which one jettisons the current framework for a new one? Or is there something other than reason that can allow such transition or liberation? — Srap Tasmaner

Something I discovered through Buddhist studies is that one of the defining virtues of a Buddha is the capacity to see “things as they truly are.” This is conveyed by the Sanskrit term yathābhūtaṃ, often translated as “in reality,” “in truth,” or more emphatically, “really, definitely, absolutely.” According to my lexical research, cross-cultural equivalents include the Platonic alēthēs epistēmē—true knowledge—and the Latin veritas rerum, the truth of things.

An obvious objection comes to mind: But isn’t that a religious claim? Buddhism is a religion, so this is just another worldview—precisely the kind of thing we’re meant to be questioning.

This brings to mind the distinction in anthropology between emic and etic perspectives. An emic perspective interprets a culture from within, using concepts meaningful to its participants; an etic perspective observes from outside, applying supposedly neutral, cross-cultural terms. But as thinkers like Thomas Kuhn have shown, the etic stance is still a perspective. It never quite attains the neutrality it claims, despite its scientific aspirations. So where does that leave us? Are we doomed to an endless relativism of schemes?

Interestingly, from the emic standpoint of early Buddhism, this isn’t an irresolvable dilemma. In fact, the Pāli texts repeatedly describe the Buddha as having abandoned all views—what they call the "thicket of views," the tangle of conceptual proliferations (MN 2). The Buddha is said to have transcended not only wrong views, but view-taking as such. From this perspective, he does not occupy a standpoint but has relinquished all standpoint. Naturally, from the outside, this may sound like just another doctrinal claim—of course Buddhists would say that! But the Buddhist tradition also provides a strong philosophical rationale. They hold that the Buddha is perfectly disinterested: having eradicated every trace of craving, aversion, and delusion, he sees without distortion or agenda. He has no ‘dog in the fight.’ In this sense, his insight is not a matter just of detached observation but of existential transformation.

There is an intriguing Western parallel here. In The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Peter Harrison argues that early modern science emerged not from naïve rationalism but from a deeply Augustinian concern: that human reason, corrupted by original sin, was no longer capable of grasping reality as it truly is. Science, then, became an ameliorative discipline—a method to correct fallen perception and restore, as it were, the veritas rerum that Adam once possessed.

One could dismiss this too as merely a Christian rationalization. But what interests me is the shared intuition: that true knowledge is not just a matter of method but of moral or spiritual purification and insight. In both cases, the obstacle to seeing things as they are is not merely intellectual error but an egological distortion.

From a Buddhist point of view, the condition for seeing yathābhūtaṃ is not a superior argument but the cessation of clinging. And from Harrison’s perspective, scientific reason arose not in spite of man’s flawed nature but because of it—as a response to the failure of pure insight in a fallen condition.

Both views reflect what might be called the sapiential dimension: that wisdom is not simply the correct deployment of reason within a framework, but the transformation of the knower. It is precisely this dimension—where epistemology shades into ethics and spiritual practice—that tends to be overlooked in the analytic tradition, but which I think is essential to this discussion.

why we would want such a liberation? — Moliere

I tried to suggest two reasons: one identifies your ideology (etc) with dogma and delusion, which prevent you (as @Wayfarer notes) from seeing things as they are; the other is transitional, and based on the intuition that to put on a new pair of glasses you must be able to take off the old ones. In the latter view, you might, in that moment where you have no glasses on, not see perfectly but rather not see at all (Kant's "intuitions without concepts").

Your first paragraph is close to my view, that reason serves the social function of comparing different views so that we can triangulate our perspective on the world using the perspective of others. We are naturally adept at two things: rationalizing our own views and finding fault with the views of others. You can leverage that. And if you institutionalize and formalize the process, you get science. Roughly.

There is a difference between following some god-given principle and trying things out to see what works.

You appear to advocate the former, I advocate the latter. — Banno

Trying what things out?

Count is talking about developing a thing to try out.

(Not trying to follow it or claim it is from from god.)

You go from “god-given principles” to “things”.

What things? Any old arbitrary narrative? Or something more about the world itself and able to be meaningfully understood by more than one person?

Once we see what this “thing” or “principle” is, and see how it can develop and how it works, then we “try it out” or “follow” it.

We are at the thing creation stage.

Banno, I get that you want the principle to emerge out of the doing, that “it’s a process” is your answer to every “where are you going with this” question. Count’s question is “will you ever get somewhere or know it when you get there?” “Is it going to be called a principle or what whenever you get there?”

And you are always the one on these threads who sees God lurking.

I’m going to move on to the Srap-Leon conversation, with Moliere and Wayfarer, where people seem to be working together.
Not just digging further into their entrenched positions and not listening to anyone who merely disagrees.

Nice not talking to ya.

So now we are asking, "Are there [paradigm/framework/worldview/evidence regime/language game/scheme]-independent standards?" — Leontiskos

Talk about "language on holiday".

It seems to me that you're simply asking if realism is the case. Is it?

Yes, that's the idea ― and I'm glad it's clear enough despite me mixing up the numbers. (Anyone who found the post deeply confusing should reload to see my edits.) — Srap Tasmaner

Ah, I understand it better now ...I think. Some of this relates to my point about the part-whole relationship, where each implies the other.

We landed at some point on questions like this: Are all narratives acceptable? — Srap Tasmaner

Right: "narratives" was another of the words floating around in this ocean of a discussion. :smile:

To be fair, in many of these discussions I feel like someone drives their truck into a giant swamp, and we're all watching from the sidelines. They inevitably end up stuck in the middle of nowhere, and when they look around for help everyone is sort of scratching their heads and staring at each other, wide-eyed.

What this means is...

Hence my plan of grounding the question instead on the relations among thingies — Srap Tasmaner

...I want to ask specific and clear questions. For that reason I am wary of the word "thingies." It's not a good combination when the words are vague and everyone is looking for an excuse to claim that they are correct.

I don't want to, but in the interests of comity I will also answer your questions ― with the proviso that I'm not altogether happy about my answers. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, thanks. I think it will serve as a helpful starting point to orient us and clarify misunderstandings. It's something I can come back to and reference if I become confused about your position, and it allows us to see if we've actually changed our minds or not in the end.

I like your discussion of "scientificity" since it is so focused, and because I know what you're talking about:

[When it comes to the sciences...] I think (a) we are really talking about a classic "family resemblance" here, where there are a great many criteria in play, an evolving set, and you won't find all of them or a consistent subset that identifies all and only science, and (b) science doesn't have a monopoly on any of the strands of the rope that binds the sciences together ― which is why identifying a few things common to all scientific practice (as I confidently do above) is not quite enough to identify only science (necessary but not sufficient). — Srap Tasmaner

This is presumably related to Q3:

Q3. Is there some criterion which applies to all ("scientific") fields, rather than only to a subset of them? — Leontiskos

First, to (a) I would say that we have to think about abstraction here. What the opponents of myself and @Count Timothy von Icarus have consistently refused to do is engage in more encompassing abstractions (see my post <here>).

Let me try to illustrate this with a very simple example:

• "Tables have no single thing in common, because some have three legs, and some have four legs and some have five legs, etc."
• "It is true that if we confine ourselves to the genus, "Number of legs," then tables have nothing in common. But what if abstract beyond the number of legs and think instead about the fact of legs? Even if all tables have a different number of legs, once we pry ourselves out of that confined genus we can see a commonality: namely that all tables have legs."
• "But not all tables have legs!"
• "Perhaps not, but do you see how we can abstract by expanding our thinking beyond a single confined genus?"

Now note that you have to omit "and only" from (a) if (a) is not to collapse into (b). And note that Q3 asks precisely whether there is something common to the sciences, not whether there is something that is only common to the sciences. This is a good example of why I want to pay attention to the questions that we take ourselves to be answering.

Your preliminary answer to Q3 was, "Yes-ish ― this one is in some ways too easy and too hard." Now is it too easy when we ask what is common to the sciences, and too hard when we ask what is restricted to the sciences? Or is there a different reason why it is "too easy and too hard"?

I think the question is easy because it asks what is common to the sciences (and I think that is what the thread has been focused on, namely the possibility of "overarching" characteristics or norms). We've already identified some of the commonalities recently, for example here:

I think I'm okay with restricting science to a strategy for learning what can be known, and I also want to say it is something like the distillation of everything we have learned about how to learn what can be known. — Srap Tasmaner

Now regarding (b), I sort of agree with you. I am happy to agree for the sake of argument, given that I don't think (b) bears on Q3 or this thread. I think it is a separate question, and I don't want this thread to balloon more than it already has. But let me know if you think we need to answer (b).

It is clear that people sometimes leave St. Louis and light out for Kansas City. It is possible,... — Srap Tasmaner

Let me lay my cards on the table regarding these questions of "switching positions with someone else." Humans are enormously adaptable, and they all have the same nature. I think we can switch positions with others, whether linguistically, culturally, scientifically, etc. There are a few limitations and immutabilities, but when we are speaking about volitional realities I don't see much in the way of per se impossibility of switching positions.

I have very mixed feelings about the issue of "commensurability" but yeah, I would like everything you mentioned to be on the table. I think it is perfectly reasonable to ask whether any of us can truly understand the ancient Greeks, say. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask a question like that even if I were later convinced that it's in some way a defective question. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, good.

I once saw a small flock of birds attempt to perch in a very small yellow-leaved tree. It was too small for all of them to light so they sort of swarmed around it, some finding a spot then taking to the air again moments later. They gave up after maybe five or ten seconds and set off to find a better spot, and left behind a nearly bare tree, the beating of so many wings and jostling about of all these little birds had caused nearly every leaf to fall. I felt, just for a moment, as if I had seen the tree ravished by Zeus, who had taken the form of a flock of birds. — Srap Tasmaner

Very nice. That's part of why I wanted to bring up commensurability and communicability - precisely because they are not agonistic. They presuppose no "prying out what is stuck." Of course one could pick up "commensurability" and revivify the metaphor of stuckness, but I want an optional lens that does not presuppose stuckness.

I actually think the thread—at least this part of it—has largely been considering the question of whether scientists in two different fields can be said to be doing the same thing, rather than whether a scientist can pry himself out of his field and embed himself in a different field. For example, it could be asked whether a scientist's opinion with regard to a foreign field is capable of being worthwhile, or whether a non-scientist's opinions about scientific questions are of any worth. The thread has also been concerned with normativity, e.g. "criteria." So we have been asking whether there are common threads that are criteria.

Kicking myself for not noticing you had already used the same metaphor: — Srap Tasmaner

I'm glad you pointed it out because I think it's the same metaphor applied differently. I.e. "common thread" vs. "binding thread." Or, "Is there some thread common to all the sciences?," vs. "are there threads that run through the sciences and through nothing else?" Note that the first question is neither about the necessary or sufficient conditions of science. It is simply about whether there are things that all the sciences share. For example, if we accepted that all tables have legs, it would not follow that nothing else has legs. The idea that this criterion must therefore have to do with "necessity" is bound up with (Kripke's, among others) modal essentialism, which I don't find helpful.

And the answer is almost certainly yes, but what's common is only part of what makes both science, or both the same science, or whatever, so it's not the whole explanation. Anyway, that's my hunch. — Srap Tasmaner

Right, that's exactly what I was just trying to say. :nerd:

"Is there a common thread?," is different from, "What threads must [this] have in order to call it 'this', or in order to be [this]."

Count’s been doing one thing for about 10 pages now. Beating his head against the wall... — Fire Ologist

Yes:

This is why I effectively ↪told him, "There is very little evidence that Banno and @J are interested in playing basketball at all." — Leontiskos

And the irony of it all is that, IMO, it is the absolute and truth alone that defeat tyrannical authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is about a person, not an idea. The absolute is knowledge, which makes you, the knower, your own authority. That is the beginning of any possibility of avoiding tyranny. — Fire Ologist

Exactly. Those who are bound to the truth are not bound to any person's will. Truth is the only thing that liberates from authoritarianism, as we have seen especially in Communist regimes.

And you are always the one on these threads who sees God lurking. — Fire Ologist

Was the OP just an attempt to supply an argument for the predetermined conclusion that religious thinking is bad? It doesn't seem to have succeeded.

The irony here is that Banno does a 180 when he goes after religion, relying on unimpeachable principles that religion has supposedly transgressed. "Any stick to beat the devil."

I’m going to move on to the Srap-Leon conversation, with Moliere and Wayfarer, where people seem to be working together. — Fire Ologist

Good choice. It's not a coincidence that my first serious post in the thread was written to @Srap Tasmaner. In fact, in writing my Last rigorous thread, I tried to wait to post it until Srap or fdrake were around, and I literally went out of my way to post it in the early morning, when I knew Banno was asleep in Australia. It was all for naught, given that he sabotaged the whole thing anyway. The only threads where you can do <this> would be threads like Jamal's, where the owner writes the thread.

Looking at these recent responses, I don't think it's useful to set up a dialectical between "contextlessness" as a "view from nowhere/everywhere" on the one hand, and admitting the relevance of context on the other. This sort of thinking is, as far as I can tell, something that largely emerges in the 19th century and had cracked up by the mid-20th century. It relies on certain metaphysical presuppositions that are endemic to much modern thought, but which I don't think hold water.

I think it is more helpful to think in terms of priority. For instance, human nature is prior to human culture. This is not to say "temporally prior." No humans have ever existed outside of a culture. Human culture always shapes psychology and people's understanding of the world. And yet human culture requires that there be humans, and "what humans are" necessarily always shapes every human culture.

Even thinkers who were at pains to deny human nature in their quest for "freedom as potency/power," end up having to bring some notion of it back in, e.g. for Sartre, faciticity, modes of being, etc. Because obviously cows don't learn French, only people do, nor do people reach puberty, spin themselves into a chrysalis, and emerge weeks later with wings. Human beings are something determinant, and what they are always plays a role in what they do, e.g. epistemological efforts. People might disagree on exactly how this works, the degree to which we can know what is prior, etc., but it seems hard to dismiss any notion of man as a certain sort of being. Yet the sort of being man is shapes all of man's cultural pursuits, hence "priority."

I think of reason and principles of knowledge in analogous terms to this example, not as a dialectic where one pole is "contextless." This means looking for unifying principles. For instance, the principle of lift is in some ways the same in different sorts of insect wings, bird wings, bi-planes, drones, fighter jets, etc. and yet it is clear that these are all very different and require a unique understanding. Likewise for principles in complexity studies that unify phenomena as diverse as heart cell synchronization, fire fly blinking, and earthquakes. Identifying a common principle is not a claim to have stepped outside a consideration of fire flies and heart cells, but rather a claim to have found a "one" that is present in "many." If such principles didn't exist, I don't know how knowledge would be possible.

Importantly there is a move in Descartes, Kant, etc. to have mental representations become "what we know" instead of "how we know." This gets carried forward into philosophy of science and philosophy of language, such that theories, models, paradigms, etc. are all primarily "what we know," instead of means of knowing. I think this is a pretty fatal error, but since it is popular, I think it's worth pointing out that it plays into the demand for the "view from nowhere."

On this view, the mental representation, theory, paradigm, etc. represent a sort of impermeable barrier between the knower and the known, and hence we always know the barrier and not what is on the other side of it. I think this is based on bad metaphysical assumptions that, because they are common, often go unacknowledged. I think it's an improper absolutization of the old scholastic addage that "everything is received in the mode of the receiver," and a neglect of the dictum that "act must follow on being," for being to be meaningful.

That's a whole different topic, I just wanted to throw out the idea that the "view from nowhere" need not be a pole of opposition, and indeed wasn't for most of philosophical history. I'd frame it instead in terms of principles and priority.

A good analogy is a light that passes through many panes of glass. From where we sit, we might always have to look through different panes, with different tints. So there is never a case of "looking directly at the light." And yet I wouldn't want to say here that man simply cannot ever see the light, but only "the light as filtered through the panes." The light "as filtered," is still the light. The panes are transparent to some degree. They let in more or less light, and one can move around to look through different panes, and some are further back, and so more fixed in our field of vision than others.

The critique of the thing-in-itself of modern process philosophers is relevant here. The thing-in-itself is not only epistemically inaccessible, because knowledge relies on interaction, but also entirely sterile, since how a thing is when it is interacting with absolutely nothing else, and no parts of itself, is irrelevant. To even formulate such a sterile being requires some dicey assumptions.

It seems to me that you're simply asking if realism is the case. — Harry Hindu

Why do you think that? The problem is that the "contextualists" presumably do not see their position as precluding realism.

Looking at these recent responses, I don't think it's useful to set up a dialectical between "contextlessness" as a "view from nowhere/everywhere" on the one hand, and admitting the relevance of context on the other. This sort of thinking is, as far as I can tell, something that largely emerges in the 19th century and had cracked up by the mid-20th century. It relies on certain metaphysical presuppositions that are endemic to much modern thought, but which I don't think hold water. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I think we're falling into Enlightenment categories. I don't think anyone here favors Enlightenment rationality (except perhaps when @J channels Nagel).

I think of reason and principles of knowledge in analogous terms to this example, not as a dialectic where one pole is "contextless." This means looking for unifying principles. For instance, the principle of lift is in some ways the same in different sorts of insect wings, bird wings, bi-planes, drones, fighter jets, etc. and yet it is clear that these are all very different and require a unique understanding. Likewise for principles in complexity studies that unify phenomena as diverse as heart cell synchronization, fire fly blinking, and earthquakes. Identifying a common principle is not a claim to have stepped outside a consideration of fire flies and heart cells, but rather a claim to have found a "one" that is present in "many." If such principles didn't exist, I don't know how knowledge would be possible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, this is well-stated. :up:

---

- Thanks for your answers. I will try to come back to this. :up:

We landed at some point on questions like this: Are all narratives acceptable? I think it's clear no one wants to say that, but they mean different things when they answer. I understand the impulse of the question; when I was young and discovered Science, or when I was somewhat older and discovered Logic, I thought they were tools especially useful for ruling things out. But I'm older now, and I can't help but read that question and ask, acceptable to whom? in what context? for what purpose? And I understand the question as intending to be taken as "acceptable full-stop," or, if need be, "acceptable to Reason." And I can't help but wonder if anyone is ever in a position to stand nowhere and choose which town to go to ...

That's not really how I intended it. I was trying to remain as broad as possible. Hence, not using "true" but the cumbersome "true/correct/acceptable/etc." The idea is that any sort of epistemology has to make judgements of some sort, and presumably judgements that are non-arbitrary, and so which make some sort of appeal to "reasons" in a broad sense.

I personally think it's a mistake to conflate "good," or "useful," with "true," since then we have the questions of "good or useful for whom?" and "truly useful, or just currently assumed to be useful?" etc., but I didn't want to foreclose on that either.

It seems to me that there must be judgements of some sort, that there must be something like "reasons" to avoid the charge of arbitrariness, and that, if reasons are sui generis in every instance, or potentially so, it is hard to see how arbitrariness can be kept out. That was the basic idea.

Now, there is also an issue of separating the normative from the descriptive. The cultural construction of standards as a descriptive claim can stand alongside an understanding of superior/inferior normative standards. It would be something like the common moral anti-realist genetic fallacy argument to claim that there aren't superior and inferior ways to developed knowledge because such standards emerge from contingent social processes (although, I'd also challenge that such processes are ever wholly contingent).

At best, the descriptive observation might support something like a debunking argument to attack any warrant for claims of normative epistemic standards. Which is just to say that I haven't seen any way the normative question can be foreclosed on. And indeed, if it was foreclosed on entirely, and we said there were absolutely no better or worse epistemic methods, that seems to me to be courting a sort of nihilism. But neither does the existence of the normative question require "contextlessness" to address.

@Srap Tasmaner:

I actually think the thread—at least this part of it—has largely been considering the question of whether scientists in two different fields can be said to be doing the same thing, rather than whether a scientist can pry himself out of his field and embed himself in a different field. For example, it could be asked whether a scientist's opinion with regard to a foreign field is capable of being worthwhile, or whether a non-scientist's opinions about scientific questions are of any worth. The thread has also been concerned with normativity, e.g. "criteria." So we have been asking whether there are common threads that are criteria. — Leontiskos

Although it may sound partisan, the simple fact of the matter is that @Banno and @J have been trying to chastise a certain moral disposition:

I guess it kinda grounds my OP - a moral preference for doubt. — Banno

They think it is morally wrong to philosophically engage in a certain way (i.e. with a particular level of certainty).

The whole thread has a moral flavor. It is about whether we are allowed to do certain things, philosophically, and specifically whether we are morally allowed. Your posts are interesting, but they may be missing this central piece of the thread.

The moral thesis of Banno and J is something like, "It is impermissible to judge someone wrong simpliciter, because there are no unconditioned criteria that bind everyone." It is the idea that we can only ever say that someone is wrong according to such and such a standard, but that there are no overarching standards which can be said to bind everyone. And this is applied in a scientific or philosophical register, as for example in claiming that someone's philosophical position is wrong. My notion of, "Expectation of Rational Bindingness (ERB)," may be helpful, even though it is a rough sketch.

I am wary of the word "thingies." — Leontiskos

It was intended as an abstraction; if it doesn't hold up, I wouldn't mind or be surprised.

Now note that you have to omit "and only" from (a) if (a) is not to collapse into (b). — Leontiskos

I don't think so.

Your preliminary answer to Q3 was, "Yes-ish ― this one is in some ways too easy and too hard." Now is it too easy when we ask what is common to the sciences, and too hard when we ask what is restricted to the sciences? Or is there a different reason why it is "too easy and too hard"? — Leontiskos

My understanding was that if you're intent on policing the boundary between science and something else (art, sport, pseudoscience), you want to reliably pick out all and only sciences, you want necessary and sufficient conditions for some activity counting as science. I don't think you can have that. The "necessary" part is too easy -- "done by sentient beings" for a start. But that doesn't help much in narrowing the field of candidates. The "sufficient" part is too hard because of the diversity of methods and practices. Not all sciences perform experiments, for instance, or have to define "experiment" quite differently. (The universe is a population of 1, so cosmology has a problem right out of the gate.)

the same metaphor applied differently — Leontiskos

It was one of Wittgenstein's metaphors for how family resemblance concepts work.

I.e. "common thread" vs. "binding thread." Or, "Is there some thread common to all the sciences?," vs. "are there threads that run through the sciences and through nothing else?" Note that the first question is neither about the necessary or sufficient conditions of science. It is simply about whether there are things that all the sciences share. — Leontiskos

And of course there are.

The idea that this criterion must therefore have to do with "necessity" is bound up with (Kripke's, among others) modal essentialism, which I don't find helpful. — Leontiskos

It's just another way of talking about "all and only", just quantifiers. It doesn't implicate modal logic at all; on the contrary, the modal box and diamond thingies are just quantifiers understood to range over possible worlds. That's literally all they are, restricted quantifiers. So you've got this backwards.

Let me lay my cards on the table regarding these questions of "switching positions with someone else." Humans are enormously adaptable, and they all have the same nature. I think we can switch positions with others, whether linguistically, culturally, scientifically, etc. There are a few limitations and immutabilities, but when we are speaking about volitional realities I don't see much in the way of per se impossibility of switching positions — Leontiskos

The above caught my eye. Given that you believe humans have the same nature, and by this you apparently have in mind a powerful facility to understand the world from the other’s point of view ( linguistic, cultural, scientific), what sort of explanation is left in order to account for profound disagreements concerning ethical, epistemological and philosophical matters ( not to mention day to day conflicts with friends and family members)?

It seems that what is left falls under the categories of medical pathology, incorrect knowledge and irrationality, and moral failure. Is this characterization close to the mark?