And the two metaphors combine naturally: how do you know if some place is a place you'd like to go until you've been there? Do you decide based on what other people have said about it or what?

I think all human beings have experience of knowledge, error, and being aware of one's own ignorance. So, there is already an epistemic orientation. If there wasn't this sort of orientation, then there wouldn't be anything to differentiate epistemology as a distinct pursuit.

There is a Meno Paradox element of: "how do you know what you're looking for in a specific case," of course. I don't think this applies to "why not prefer falsity over truth or ignorance over knowledge?" though.

They all lead somewhere, but is it where we want to go?

Is this still supposed to be a metaphor for epistemology? Or is it philosophy more generally? Presumably, in the case of epistemology we want to head in the direction of knowledge and not ignorance, right?

So I am not sure how there are multiple destinations, or what that would represent. Are the many destinations sui generis "types of knowing?' Would that suggest many different, incommensurate truths or types of truth (which would mean many different incommensurate beings)?

It seems to me that, even were this so, the goal would still be all of the destinations (not from a practical standpoint, but from a theoretical one). Whether or not this is achievable would be a different question.

Whereas, even if there is only one destination, the question of if any road leads to the destination would remain.

the question of if any road leads to the destination would remain — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, yes, yes, that was the whole point. I thought this was perfectly clear.

Take @Leontiskos's anxiety about distinguishing science from pseudoscience. Let's say we all just agree that we prefer science to pseudoscience. Hurray for us. What good does that do? Does it help you determine whether what you're doing is science or what someone else is doing is pseudoscience? No, it does not. You need more than a preference for that.

Now let's grant your single goal, the singular world that we desire knowledge of. Now let's suppose we have some worldview, ideology, episteme, framework, or conceptual scheme ― and the idea is to look at these thingies as potentially veridical or at least truth-engendering, and so also potentially misleading or falsifying. I hope that's clear enough.

My city business was supposed to ground the question of which one to pick by assuming that you already have one ― you already live somewhere not nowhere ― and you need somehow to evaluate the alternatives and decide whether you've got the desired knowledge-producing worldview (or one of the several that will do so, we don't have to commit immediately) or you've got one that engenders error, distortion, and all the stuff we don't want.

Reason was offered, I believe, as a means of determining whether some other framework might be better than the one you're already using, the one you have right now. The city you currently live in. Or maybe it would tell you everything's fine, you already live in paradise.

It's no help at all to say, "I want the one that produces knowledge." We already know that. How do you know whether you've already got that one, or whether it's one of the other ones?

And so it is with roads. You want to go to the Grand Canyon. Which road do you take? "The one that goes to the Grand Canyon" is not a useful answer. The question is, how do you know which one that is?

Maybe there is no road there. Maybe the Grand Canyon is a myth. We can play lots of games here, but that's not what I was trying to do.

The plan was to approach the problem of relativism in a particular way, by acknowledging that you are already relying on some particular worldview (etc) when you face the question of whether some other worldview is "acceptable" or in some other way good. It's not like going shopping for something you don't have yet. (Hence the usefulness of the metaphor of where you live, since you must already live somewhere ― although I guess your thorough-going skeptic or cynic just wanders, "no fixed abode," which I guess we will now get dragged into talking about.)

The sorts of issues I wanted to raise seem obvious to me: you've got a worldview, and presumably it provides the framework within which you will evaluate alternative worldviews ― smart money is on finding that you've already got the best one and the others are crap. Even leaving that aside, what are you even evaluating? Is it a genuine alternative? Or is it that alternative as understood in the categories you're already using? It's an issue of translation, right? You have to translate the other framework into yours ― how do you evaluate the fidelity of that process? Is it even possible to access a different worldview that way? (Can you know a city the way the locals do without just being one of them?)

Which brings us back to the claim that reason can deal with this challenge, reason can enable you to understand and evaluate other worldviews untainted by your own perhaps faulty one. And the question I wanted specifically to leave open was, whether this is so.

It's very repetitive, I'm sorry. I thought this was all clear before, so I've probably overexplained now.

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. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am starting to see the dialectic as between process oriented (with no clear goal) (like this thread Banno set up), and goal oriented (with a clear process) (like proponents of truth like).

Or maybe a dialectic between working from the inside out (like Banno repeating how all is already within a language), and working in a straight line (like those of us actually want to get somewhere when we speak do).

Hard for me to pinpoint. Indeterminacy revelers versus determinacy seekers.

I thought this insight was instructive:

Banno wants the assertions about the world to emerge out of the doing. What we do with words is the arche of what others might call human knowledge. Because of this, “it’s a process” is his answer to every question such as “where are you going with this?” (‘Are all narratives true or not’ was a ‘where are you going with this’ type question.) Our main question about his method is, “how will we know whether we are getting anywhere and whether we have reached the end and can say we now know something?” “Will you ever have a point to your dissection of everything?

The closest answer to these last two questions the process/dissection philosophers have given is “context” (although I have some catching up to do).

I think “context” is really their word for “absolute principle”. (So they are contradicting their methods by asserting non-arbitrariness grounded in context.). They think they are not contradicting themselves because they think the “context” can have as much flux and lack of permanence and indeterminacy as whatever the undefined thing has within that context. But context must be fixed or it does not do the work they think it does to avoid arbitrariness and they get nowhere when they’re trying to make a point (like this thread is getting nowhere, constantly moving away from any target that might begin to emerge).

“Con” means with.
“Text” means the language.

Context has to be outside the language, to be with it, or it is just more ill-defined indeterminacy and can’t provide sufficient context.

IMO, language itself is outside of the world, which is how it can be about the world. Language is meta-world. By speaking, the process lovers refute themselves and cease being doers. We can’t do language without referring it to the world.

We can make language it’s own object and speak about logic and let truth mean validity, but this is just a meta-meta-language, because language is already meta).

So when they discount all references to the world as metaphysical and vacuous and ill-conceived, in addition to contradicting themselves by speaking at all and situating themselves outside of the world in a language, they in effect make speaking meaningless. Which is, if they are conscious of it, why they devour all attempts to say anything.

If we parrot what they say about the world and say: “all is flux, but who really can say” - they will forgo the dissection process and allow our metaphysics to stand. They make all kinds of metaphysical claims as long as they are tied to flux and relation and process, and as long as they leave more questions unanswered when answers might emerge. And as long as they are spoken by accolytes and friends, as opposed to people like me. But as soon as they get a hint of those like me who seek to deconstruct deconstruction itself, they devour all meaning and references to the world and try to be more consistent and true to their process oriented, goalless metaphysic.

We probably should not allow the constant reframing of the central question.

I think that is the key to showing the weakness of just being Wittgenstein about things. They never can sit still. It becomes pretty plain that this is so by act of will, and not by conclusion of logic. (Srap is discounting reason itself, which I agree, we always must be careful with our human limitations of even reason, but it’s suspect to me in this context.)

I am not trying to win a debate. I am trying to be right, conform myself and my thinking to what is (as you say Count). I am utterly unconcerned with authoritarianism. Or, I am trying to be the sole authoritarian in my own life. (Trying to is important here.). They are trying to defeat our arguments and defeat their perception of our underlying motives. I will be happy to confirm all is only flux and that a man cannot step into the same river twice, or once, because then I will be able to live more successfully (or cease trying to succeed at living). I will also throw away all philosophy (as speaking refutes never standing still in the river). I happen to think flux is only half of the story language refers to, not all of it. I like Aristotle’s way of thinking so far as I can tell.

This thread will certainly never get there, which is ironic as they are stuck in the mud, mud being the clearest form and context for them.

Edit:
And it is not “us” versus “them” personally. I am happy to live in the world with them and respect them as I respect myself and you both. “Them” refers to “their arguments”. I’m drowning in mud as well, only struggling with it because I see lifelines in truth, and absolute goals, and ideals and good answers.

The plan was to approach the problem of relativism in a particular way, by acknowledging that you are already relying on some particular worldview (etc) when you face the question of whether some other worldview is "acceptable" or in some other way good. It's not like going shopping for something you don't have yet. (Hence the usefulness of the metaphor of where you live, since you must already live somewhere — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know. We are all born solipsists. When we reach 8-12 months of age we convert to realism by acquiring object permanence. Was realism and the idea of other minds a position the toddler already had, or did it just make more sense to the toddler that their mother (other minds) still exists when they are not seen or heard after interacting with the world over the past 8-12 months?

The sorts of issues I wanted to raise seem obvious to me: you've got a worldview, and presumably it provides the framework within which you will evaluate alternative worldviews ― smart money is on finding that you've already got the best one and the others are crap. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't know. If you start evaluating other worldviews are you not expressing some dissatisfaction with the one you currently have? Once you start evaluating other worldviews, can you say you are in a state of actually having one?

(My internet cut at <this post>, so this reply is directed to what came before.)

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 — Srap Tasmaner

I’m not sure about your premise, but either way I think the conditional is mistaken. One does not need to reliably pick out all and only sciences in order to exclude pseudoscience. All one needs is a single necessary condition in order to exclude something like pseudoscience.

It's just another way of talking about "all and only" — Srap Tasmaner

Whether or not that is correct, I don’t see the need to talk about “...and only.” If something doesn’t have legs then it isn’t a table (on that example I gave). We don’t need to claim that only tables have legs in order to make exclusions based on the necessary criterion of legs.

This is exactly why I moved to anchor the normative question to relations among or transitions between given epistemes (worldviews, frameworks, ideologies, whatever). — Srap Tasmaner

What do you suppose the normative question is? I gave my account <here>. I hope it was clear.

You are assuming that we have some species of activity and we need to define it in order to justify exclusionary practices. Let me show you a different way to think about it...

Again, I want to say that the central contention of the thread is, “There are no overarching standards by which we are bound.” A number of us are opposing that thesis. @Count Timothy von Icarus' example of falsifying data or evidence strikes me as an excellent counterexample, and the fact that @Banno resisted him shows that it does cut against the thesis of the thread.

I’m not quite sure what your analogies about St. Louis and Kansas City have to do with this central question. I can dream up ways to connect them, but those dreams involve lots of contentious assumptions.

I’m guessing you want to talk about necessary conditions because necessary conditions pertain to exclusion, and you seem to have assumed that someone is trying to “police” or “exclude.” Of course, Banno and @J are trying to police and exclude (certain levels of certainty), but I don’t think that’s what you meant.

A moral analogy might be helpful (and the thread is really just moral philosophy in the end anyhow). Compare law to morality, namely legal jurisdiction to the universal moral “jurisdiction.” If we say, “You’ve broken a law of Venezuela,” then we will of course need necessary conditions for what counts as Venezuelan jurisdiction. But if we say, “You’ve murdered someone,” we don’t need to figure out whether the guilty party was under Venezuelan jurisdiction, because murder is impermissible everywhere. The thread is precisely about such universal standards, such as a standard which says that one may not falsify evidence as a matter of inquiry. We are talking about standards that apply everywhere, so it doesn’t matter whether we move from St. Louis to Kansas City. The contextualists are saying, “There is nothing which is impermissible everywhere.” On this “different way to think about it,” we are asking about unconditional necessities, not necessary conditions.

Now there is real ambiguity in whether we are talking about excluding from some species of activity, or else opposing certain things regardless of the species of activity. I have been leaning towards the latter, as I think it is closer to the heart of the thread. Someone of your mind would naturally transpose any enunciation of the latter into some variety of the former, and I think @Count Timothy von Icarus’s points about falsifying data offer a good example of how to confront such an approach.

More precisely, I think ’s claim that view-from-nowhere thinking is more pervasive than we realize is correct, and that this is related to your own belief that <If there is no view from nowhere, then there are no standards or rules that apply regardless of the species of activity>. The central contention of the thread can still be denied even if there is no view from nowhere, so long as there is a common thread running through the entire domain of “contexts.” The quintessential example would be the principle of non-contradiction (PNC), which is not merely a psychological principle; it is something that we both can and cannot choose to obey or disobey. It is not merely elective or optional, and yet it is nevertheless normative. This is precisely to the point, given that the “real ambiguity” I spoke about exists because we are talking about “exclusion” from the rational community, and it is not at all clear that one can opt in or out of the rational community. It is not clear that in the face of an accusation of irrationality, one can respond, “Oh, I wasn’t attempting to be rational.”

(So much of this is closely parallel to debates about moral bindingness. I feel as if <my thread on the moral sphere> could be retooled for intellectual virtue rather than moral virtue, and it would address the central contention of this thread. In that sense we would say, “Whether or not there are binding and overarching standards, everyone believes there are.” Similarly, my <recent thread> says, “We all believe there are binding and overarching standards, but can we make sense of such beliefs?”)

-

Glancing at this:

Take Leontiskos's anxiety about distinguishing science from pseudoscience. — Srap Tasmaner

Note that I have literally not said a single word about "pseudoscience" in this thread, so you're clearly mixed up. What I think is happening is that you are projecting <this thread> and <this thread> into the one we are in now. ...Count has spoken about pseudoscience, but I take him to be speaking analogically, and I do not take him to be interested in that question per se, apart from the parallels it has to the more central question.

In that sense we would say, “Whether or not there are binding and overarching standards, everyone believes there are.” Similarly, my <recent thread> says, “We all believe there are binding and overarching standards, but can we make sense of such beliefs?”) — Leontiskos

Why bother? If we all believe there are such standards, justifying the claim that there are seems redundant.

Because one or two folks are denying it. Even their simple claim, "You are bound to not-bind people," is self-contradictory.

So by "making sense of such beliefs" you mean something like achieving coherence i.e. exposing the contradiction in denying it? I think that's a step short of justification.

So when they discount all references to the world as metaphysical and vacuous and ill-conceived, in addition to contradicting themselves by speaking at all and situating themselves outside of the world in a language, they in effect make speaking meaningless. Which is, if they are conscious of it, why they devour all attempts to say anything. — Fire Ologist

Good. This is almost exactly Aristotle's argument for the PNC in Metaphysics IV. "You are welcome to deny the PNC, so long as you never speak or use language."

I am starting to see the dialectic as between process oriented (with no clear goal) (like this thread Banno set up), and goal oriented (with a clear process) (like proponents of truth like). — Fire Ologist

The trouble is the fact that processes have goals by definition.

We probably should not allow the constant reframing of the central question. — Fire Ologist

Yes, and even more fundamentally, we should all be willing to state what we believe the central question is.

This thread will certainly never get there, which is ironic as they are stuck in the mud, mud being the clearest form and context for them. — Fire Ologist

The thread is another example of, "X is bad and I won't say why." It is very similar to the faith thread, "Faith is bad and I won't say why." Whenever they try to say why they end up utilizing strawmen of faith (or whatever it is). So you say, "What is faith, on your reckoning?" Or, "What is authoritarianism, on your reckoning?" And their response is prevarication. It's just tyranny, and you can't reason with a tyrant. They have to be open to rational argumentation and a defense of their views before you can reason with them.

---

And note that this entire line of posting was started by your conflation of "all narratives are true or they aren't" that is "all x are y or not all x are y," as being equivalent "each x is either y or not-y." — Count Timothy von Icarus

More than conflation. @Banno decided to stick his head three feet into the sand to avoid seeing what had been pointed out to him ad nauseum. That he still hasn't admitted the point is beyond belief, even for him.

---

So by "making sense of such beliefs" you mean something like achieving coherence i.e. exposing the contradiction in denying it? I think that's a step short of justification. — goremand

Have a look at the thread in question if you like. I would again liken this thread more to my thread on the moral sphere, where I try to show people that they already have moral beliefs.

(So much of this is closely parallel to debates about moral bindingness. I feel as if <my thread on the moral sphere> could be retooled for intellectual virtue rather than moral virtue, and it would address the central contention of this thread. In that sense we would say, “Whether or not there are binding and overarching standards, everyone believes there are.” Similarly, my <recent thread> says, “We all believe there are binding and overarching standards, but can we make sense of such beliefs?”) — Leontiskos

You're latching onto that last sentence, which is about a different thread.

The plan was to approach the problem of relativism in a particular way, by acknowledging that you are already relying on some particular worldview (etc) when you face the question of whether some other worldview is "acceptable" or in some other way good. It's not like going shopping for something you don't have yet. (Hence the usefulness of the metaphor of where you live, since you must already live somewhere ― although I guess your thorough-going skeptic or cynic just wanders, "no fixed abode," which I guess we will now get dragged into talking about.)

The sorts of issues I wanted to raise seem obvious to me: you've got a worldview, and presumably it provides the framework within which you will evaluate alternative worldviews ― smart money is on finding that you've already got the best one and the others are crap. Even leaving that aside, what are you even evaluating? Is it a genuine alternative? Or is it that alternative as understood in the categories you're already using? It's an issue of translation, right? You have to translate the other framework into yours ― how do you evaluate the fidelity of that process? Is it even possible to access a different worldview that way? (Can you know a city the way the locals do without just being one of them?) — Srap Tasmaner

It sounds like you're an investor with some initial capital and you're looking to improve your lot. "Maybe I should move to Kansas City. Hmm..."

Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with this thread. What is the normative question you believe to be at stake? How does this relate to what has been discussed in the thread?

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

Yes. Though they need not be the same standard. — Moliere

To be clear, "some" = "one."

Oh, so as in -- one standard that was there before the paradigm shift and one that was there after the paradigm shift such that we know that the new paradigm is better than the old paradigm due to the standards external to the paradigms of evaluation?

If so then "not always" is what I say -- and really I'd only focus on the cases where there's one set of standards being switched for another set of standards such that there wasn't some over-arching agreement which can settle which is better after all. Else you're just talking about disagreement within a set of standards which doesn't exactly do the work that "paradigm" is supposed to. There's nothing radically different about two rationalists disagreeing with one another over which is the better inference. The notion is that the ideas are different enough that such a path of disagreement fails. It's the ideas themselves, or the standards, which are in question rather than whether a person has followed the proper inference within an accepted set of standards.

Note that I have literally not said a single word about "pseudoscience" in this thread, so you're clearly mixed up. — Leontiskos

Hey you're right! I suppose it's all one big thread to me. We all end up saying the same things in every thread, myself included, though I keep trying to have new ideas...

Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with this thread. What is the normative question you believe to be at stake? — Leontiskos

I think that was @Count Timothy von Icarus's phrase. It's whether there are overarching standards we are beholden to and can rely upon when judging the worth of a narrative (all the etc). All I was trying to do is see what such a thing would look and act like when you are already committed to such a narrative, when you already live somewhere and the question is not the abstract "Where should one live?" but the more concrete "Should I move?"

Hey you're right! I suppose it's all one big thread to me. We all end up saying the same things in every thread, myself included, though I keep trying to have new ideas... — Srap Tasmaner

No worries. :lol:

I think that was Count Timothy von Icarus's phrase. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I added this in an edit:

...Count has spoken about pseudoscience, but I take him to be speaking analogically, and I do not take him to be interested in that question per se, apart from the parallels it has to the more central question. — Leontiskos

I see the pseudoscience question that @Count Timothy von Icarus has raised as an analogy for something that would be more generally considered beyond the pale.

It's whether there are overarching standards we are beholden to and can rely upon when judging the worth of a narrative (all the etc). — Srap Tasmaner

Okay, excellent. Thanks for setting this out. I agree. :clap:

All I was trying to do is see what such a thing would look and act like when you are already committed to such a narrative, when you already live somewhere and the question is not the abstract "Where should one live?" but the more concrete "Should I move?" — Srap Tasmaner

This makes the assumption that the person's starting point is not beholden to the the standard, no? It's a bit like, "Well I live in Brazil and I could move to Venezuela, but I'm going to have a look at the Venezuelan laws to see if it would be a good idea to move."

So I am worried that your scenario already assumes the thing that we are supposed to be proving. Obviously if we're thinking of moving from St. Louis to Kansas City, and St. Louis does not have the standard that Kansas City has, then that standard is not overarching. The question has already been answered.

This is really, really helpful, for I believe it highlights precisely what @J has been doing all along. It also shows how easy it is to get leverage on such things when someone just answers simple questions simply.

This makes the assumption that the person's starting point is not beholden to the the standard, no? — Leontiskos

My intention was absolutely to treat it as an open question.

I am worried that your scenario already assumes the thing that we are supposed to be proving. — Leontiskos

I actually worry about that too, especially with the stuff about translation that I posted.

I want, on the one hand, to leverage the recognition that people do not start from scratch every moment of their lives, but to avoid suggesting -- what is clearly false! -- that change is impossible. (That's why I have used words like "stuck" and "prison": they cut both ways -- as an extreme version of the relativist position and a jab at how extreme that position is.)

My intention was absolutely to treat it as an open question. — Srap Tasmaner

Understood.

I actually worry about that too, especially with the stuff about translation that I posted.

I want, on the one hand, to leverage the recognition that people do not start from scratch every moment of their lives, but to avoid suggesting -- what is clearly false! -- that change is impossible. — Srap Tasmaner

Okay. I suppose I can see how that recognition has leverage with respect to the central question, namely insofar as the premise which says we start from scratch would invalidate the possibility of an overarching standard.

Ultimately I think we need to give arguments for or against the central thesis of the thread. It seems like you're trying to present things that stay perfectly neutral with respect to the central thesis, but nevertheless elucidate the question. I think it is often possible to do that, but it is very difficult in this case. I actually think gave a pretty definitive argument, providing an example of an overarching standard. Perhaps everyone already agrees that the standard he presented is overarching...?

If I wanted to try to straddle the neutrality fence, then I would present an image that pertains to bindingness or beholden-ness. Such as, "Is this a question of Venezuelan jurisdiction or is it a jurisdiction-less question?" I struggle to see any way in which the example about St. Louis and Kansas City has even the capacity to support the position which holds there to be overarching standards. I could manufacture some possibility, but it will look weak given that predetermined setup. In other words, the very notion that someone would posit an overarching standard which says that someone must move from St. Louis to Kansas City is pretty outlandish.

Oh, so as in -- one standard that was there before the paradigm shift and one that was there after the paradigm shift such that we know that the new paradigm is better than the old paradigm due to the standards external to the paradigms of evaluation? — Moliere

Sort of. It's asking if there is a common thread between the two paradigms, given that each paradigm is made up of many different strands.

Here is how I would approach the topic. First, read to Banno, beginning with the words, "I concede..."

What I do there is identify a common aim that Banno and I share within that conversation. I want to say that the question of this thread is bound up with the question of whether we all have common aims, or more precisely, common ends. Let me be very explicit about how this relates to the central question: if we do not have common ends, then there is no overarching standard; if we do have at least one common end, then there is at least one overarching standard.

(Cf. Aquinas, ST I-II.Q1 - Man's last end)

In general I wouldn't define it onone way or the other but would leave it to the particular referent (the particular case of incommensurability) -- but I do think the more interesting case would be when we say "No, not even one strand relates but the referent is the same"

For this I just go to science and history -- they both speak about "the world", but in their own particular idioms and ways of making inferences. They both mean "reality", and they mean it in a realist way such as "reality outside of my particular opinions about reality, but rather what the best methods/values which produce knowledge say"

At least that's the example which impresses me the most because even theories of time and causality differ, but we're both talking about the same world, and we're talking about it in the realist sense where our ideas are supposed to conform to the world in some way, and our particular opinions about the world aren't what determine the truth -- in short, both easily lend themselves to a sort of objective realism about the world.

So the way I resolve that is to say they are different ways of knowing about the same thing. It'd be foolish to say either scientists or historians don't know anything because of the universalization of the standards of science or history exclude the other. Much better to shrug and say "I'm not sure how these guys relate -- perhaps we don't translate one into the other, but are about the same thing, and so demonstrate different facets of the same reality"

Do we agree that one can coherently say "I don't know"? — Banno

You're welcome to say "I don't know" when presented with ' question about whether all narratives are equal or some narratives are unequal. But if you really don't know the answer that question, then it is odd that you would write a thread claiming that dissection-narratives are better than discourse-narratives. You can't maintain your OP here while simultaneously saying that you don't know whether some narratives are unequal. :kiss:

the premise which says we start from scratch would invalidate the possibility of an overarching standard. — Leontiskos

Well, actually I meant the opposite.

I can put it another way: it's a question of whether the subject who judges things like narratives and paradigms and cities is thick or thin. In the thick conception, the subject comes with a history, a culture, a worldview, all that relativist business; in the thin view, he comes armed with rationality.

It's in that sense that taking the subject as a quite abstract rational judge is treating them as starting over each moment, entirely without the sort of baggage we all actually have.

I want first to recognize how this baggage constrains our judgments, second to recognize that this constraint is not absolute (sometimes paradigms are overthrown), and third to see if there's a role for rationality in setting down some of the load you're carrying, and even in choosing to pick up something new.

I think @Count Timothy von Icarus is especially interested in being in position to tell someone that they *should* put down some baggage they're carrying. The grounds for saying so would be (a) that this particular burden does not help you in making rational judgments, and (b) that Tim can tell (a) is the case by exercising rational judgment. (Stop thinking you need to sacrifice chipmunks to the river every spring so it will thaw, would be a typical Enlightenment example.)

I'm not sure how close that is to your view (or if it is in fact Tim's), but that's the sort of thing I imagine is on the table when people say they want an overarching standard.

I agree, and this is the point of Goodman's that so impressed me, that there's no reason to regret history not being science, or biology not being physics, or art not being history. All are what he calls ways of worldmaking.

The trouble is the fact that processes have goals by definition. — Leontiskos

Unless you don’t believe in definitions.

Processes should have goals. But dissection focused philosophical styles are process for the sake of process. It’s eternal recurrence of the same…process.

I just think when a person asks what it's like to live in a city, they're asking how it feels to live there. You'd want to help them connect it to feelings they already know about. Wouldn't you want to describe scenes, rhythms, tastes, colors, etc? Compare and contrast to other locations? Yes, you probably gathered that information by doing things, but that seems incidental. Consciousness is filled with feelings, right? — frank

Feelings aren’t inner senses sprinkling their subjective coloration over experiences , but activities, doings. They are our ways of being attuned in situations, the way things strike us.

this is the point of Goodman's that so impressed me — Srap Tasmaner

I'm glad you brought Goodman in here. In one of his later papers, he says, "No firm line can be drawn between world-features that are discourse-dependent and those that are not." This connects with your discussion of the "thick" and "thin" subject. Goodman goes on to reject the "fallacy that whatever we make, we can make any way we like." In the context here, we might expand this: "There is no firm line called 'objectivity' which, if the 'thin' subject stay on one side of it, will produce only non-discourse-dependent accounts. But nor does the 'thick' subject who crosses that line find themselves confronted with discourse-chaos, an infinite multiplicity of arbitrary and equally plausible versions."

Goodman has a lot to say about how we do proceed, as a matter of practice. I like this pithy version; after rejecting "irresponsible relativism" of the kind I just sketched, he says:

More serviceable is a policy common in daily life and impressively endorsed by modern science: judicious vacillation. After all, we shift point of view and frame of reference for motion frequently from sun to earth to train to plane, and so on . . . We are monists, pluralists, or nihilists not quite as the wind blows, but as befits the context. — Of Mind and Other Matters, 32-33

Context again. Now the objection can be raised, "How do you know what counts as 'serviceable' or 'judicious'? Aren't these weasel-words for something much more foundation-like, such as 'objective' or 'rational' or 'truth-producing'?" And the response here, I think, has to be, "These foundation-like words are extremely important -- they are what prevents us from simply declaring that we can carry out a practice 'any way we like,' as Goodman says. But they are not understood outside of a context where something can be (for example) serviceable or not; there is no 'thin' subject who can pronounce upon them from a meta-position of 'baggage-less judgment.'" I would also call such a theoretical place a position beyond interpretation, one from which all interpretation is supposed to follow, while itself being uninterpreted.

You also raise the question of whether such personal, contextual baggage can be dropped or exchanged. I think the Goodmanian answer is, "Certainly, and rationality may be an important guide in doing so." But so, for instance, is compassion. Once again, we're forced to ask, "What is the contextless stance I should try to take, in considering this question? Will rationality always have the last word, as Nagel puts it? Or does he mean, the last word in philosophy?"

I wonder if there is a further justification for coming "armed with rationality" as the best choice the "thin" subject can make.

In any case, as you say, this is a thought experiment, since none of us is ever in such a contextless, baggage-less position. But that doesn't mean it isn't important. Trying to say what a view from nowhere would be is extremely important, if perhaps ultimately unsatisfactory.

Yeah, I recall us having this exact conversation before when incommensurability came up :D -- something like it at least.

I've still not read Goodman, to my detriment. But your description of him here looks similar to what I think. We should celebrate these different ways of knowing, and it even opens up a reason for philosophy to exist at all -- because no matter how much a person may know in a certain area it will always be worthwhile to talk to someone else that knows more in a different area, and the nit-picky philosophy is what's particularly good at finding the confusions in attempts to translate two different worldviews.

Not that it needs that to be good, of course. Everyone's just always (annoyingly ;) ) asking "What's the point of this philosophy?"

..,since none of us is ever… — J

Doesn’t it take a contextless, baggage-less posture to be able to say what you just said above?

Doesn’t it take a contextless, baggage-less posture to be able to say what you just said above? — Fire Ologist

I don't think so. In the context I find myself in no one has ever been in a contextless position. What's wrong with that?

Say more about this? I don't see why it would.

I think @Count Timothy von Icarus is especially interested in being in position to tell someone that they *should* put down some baggage they're carrying. The grounds for saying so would be (a) that this particular burden does not help you in making rational judgments, and (b) that Tim can tell (a) is the case by exercising rational judgment. (Stop thinking you need to sacrifice chipmunks to the river every spring so it will thaw, would be a typical Enlightenment example.)

I'm not sure how close that is to your view (or if it is in fact Tim's), but that's the sort of thing I imagine is on the table when people say they want an overarching standard.

Sure, in a very broad sense. If epistemology can never identify better or worse ways to achieve knowledge it is useless. Or, if knowledge is always wholly defined and contained within some paradigm, such that "sacrificing chipmunks truly thaws rivers just so long as you're a member of a certain community that currently accepts this," it seems perhaps to be equally pointless.

There do seem to be some epistemic "rules" that it is quite hard to think of counter examples for, e.g. "just making up observations to support your claims," is not a reliable way to achieve knowledge. More extreme, "intentionally sabatoging your research program" is not a reliable way to attain knowledge. Not accepting arguments from premises known to be false, or where the conclusion doesn't follow from the premises, might be others.

Likewise, there are habits that seem to be more or less conducive to attaining knowledge, i.e., "epistemic virtues." The opposite of this claim would be the idea that no habits (e.g. epistemic humility) can be said support epistemic success in general.

But note that this does not require the Enlightenment conception of reason as primarily a sort of discursive rule following, or a sort of "method," "system," or "game." Later critiques of reason tend to leave this assumption firmly in place and rely on it heavily. I don't think it's an adequate notion of reason, as demonstrated by where it leads.

To address your earlier question about the limits of reason, I would point out that the claim that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms or world-views is, of course, a gnostic claim. One presumably knows this if one claims it to be so. Yet to have recognized a boundary is to already have stepped over it.

Now, if we claim that reason is in a sense isolated within "world-views and paradigms," we face the odd situation where some world-views and paradigms resolutely deny our claim. They instead claim that knowing involves ecstasis, it is transcendent, and always related to the whole, and so without limit—already with the whole and beyond any limit. And such views have quite a long history.

Our difficulty is that, if reason just is "reason within a paradigm," then it seems that this view of reason cannot be so limited, for it denies this limit and it is an authority on itself. Our criticism that this other paradigm errs would seem to be limited to our own paradigm.

The positive gnostic claim, to have groked past the limits of intelligibility and seen the end of reason from the other side faces an additional challenge here if we hold to the assumption that any such universal claim must be "from nowhere," and itself issued from "outside any paradigm, " since it is also generally being claimed that precisely this sort of "stepping outside" is impossible. But perhaps this is simply a misguided assumption. Afterall, one need not "step out of one's humanity" to know that "all men are mortal." One can know this about all men while still always being a particular man.

So, that's my initial thoughts on the idea that reason cannot adjudicate between paradigms. It seems this must remain true only for some paradigms, and one might suppose that being limited in this way is itself a deficiency. After all, what is left once one gives up totally on reason as an adjudicator? It would seem to me that all that remains is power struggles (and indeed , some thinkers go explicitly in this direction). Further, the ability to selectively decide that reason ceases to apply in some cases seems obviously prone to abuse (real world examples abound)—in a word, it's misology.

But none of this requires stepping outside paradigms, except in the sense that reason may draw us outside our paradigms (and indeed this happens, MacIntyre—RIP—was drawn from Marxism to Thomism). To know something new is to change, to have gone beyond what one already was. That's Plato's whole point about the authority of the rational part of the soul. The desire for truth and goodness leads beyond the given of current belief and desire, and hence beyond our finitude.

I'll just add that the absolute, to be truly absolute, cannot be "objective" reality as set over and against appearances, but must encompass the whole of reality and all appearances. Appearances are moments in the whole, and are revelatory of the whole. Appearances are then not a sort of barrier between the knower and known, but the going out of the known to the knower—and because all knowing is also in some sense becoming—the ecstasis of the knower, their going out beyond what they already are in union with the known.