@Jamal, any chance of closing this thread, here?

Seems an appropriate point.

Analytics do hold to a standard of consistency. — Leontiskos

I agree. That is the important contribution of the analytic school to the philosophic enterprise. Rigor.

Added: Precision. And so clarity.

Rigor — Fire Ologist

mortis. :wink:

:grin: Nicely done.

Banno killed the thread.
And like rigor mortis, I just wouldn’t stop.

Up for an autopsy?

it would only result in more arguments about what ‘dead’ means.

would only result in more arguments about what ‘dead’ means. — Wayfarer

No that’s wrong. :razz:

It’s how ‘dead’ can coherently be used when referring to this thread.

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. — Joshs

A feeling is an activity?

You can change the way things "strike" you. You can influence your emotions through will (up to a point), while your actions stay the same.

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. — Leontiskos

I think you successfully show that we can't make a sharp distinction between moral and non-moral norms such that anti-realism closes the door on only the former, and that people always act morally in the sense that their acts might be subject to moral scrutiny (which I think is a bit of a trivial truth). I don't quite understand how this gets us to the claim that people all have (implicit, I assume) moral beliefs. I would like to know if you're even interested in justifying a particular set of norms (rational, moral, whatever) rather than just proving that they are implicitly assumed.

You should be ashamed — Srap Tasmaner

Consider a story

You see a thread about two different ways to do philosophy. Looking closer, you find that the subtext reads, "The right way to do philosophy and Srap Tasmaner's way to do philosophy." Soon enough it becomes clear that the premise is even simpler, “Srap Tasmaner is an authoritarian.” This isn’t surprising to you, given that the duo who produced the thread has been consistently doing this sort of thing for over a year now.

So you enter the thread and push back, also giving arguments and asking questions with respect to the thesis. The duo refuses to consider your arguments or answer your questions. For 22 pages they even stonewall a premise of your most basic argument, namely <p v ~p>. So the duo won’t consider your arguments, they won’t answer any questions, and all the while they maintain their thesis, “Srap is an authoritarian.” At one point one of them actually says, “My answer to your questions is, ‘I don’t know.’ And you’re still an authoritarian.” A banana republic. Splendid.

But then someone who is more serious enters the thread: someone who agrees with a speculative thesis that the duo believes supports their moral thesis. He is willing to hear your arguments and answer your questions. He is not neutral, but he is at least genuinely trying. You point out some of his non-neutral presuppositions, and he tries to reconfigure his analogies. He is intent on turning a blind eye to the moral nature of the central accusation and wants to keep to the speculative thesis. That’s fine. At least he is answering questions and exchanging arguments. He is the first person to do that on the duo’s behalf, and he is offering the first real arguments for anything resembling the thesis of the thread.

Then he sees you give an argument for why the duo are themselves authoritarian.* He takes umbrage, refuses to continue, and says, “You should be ashamed.” All because you argued that someone was an authoritarian. Imagine how fucking crazy that would be. :meh:

(In the end you think wryly to yourself, “Maybe I should have just called them authoritarian instead of arguing the point. Surely that’s what makes all the difference.” :grin:)


* What you mistakenly took me to be explaining I have indeed explained elsewhere in the thread.

The irony, as I have pointed out before, is that this thread is rooted in a self-contradictory moral accusation. It says, “It is morally impermissible to be so certain that one then accuses others of being wrong; I accuse those who do this of being wrong; and I am certain that they are wrong.” This is bad enough even before the rider is attached, “And I refuse to give arguments for my accusations, or offer 'due process'.”



What you are doing here is very similar. You have decided to ignore me because you think I should not treat any “witness” as “hostile,” even if they are hostile. Such a decision to ignore is inevitably based in an overarching standard, namely one regarding the treatment of witnesses. So in this thread, your exclusionary practice is oddly enough a position taken with respect to the OP. You are another person who excludes and attempts to shame those you disagree with (both directly and through inflammatory insinuation), even though you claim to deny the very standard that such a practice depends upon. This is self-contradictory. You are of course welcome to try to shame me based on your selective readings, but you cannot at the same time eschew the overarching standard that such shaming presupposes.

This is why the promoters of the thesis that there are no overarching standards end up as tyrants. It is because that extreme form of self-righteousness is inherently tyrannical, with an inherent double standard (“There are no overarching standards, but nevertheless my judgments are absolute, beholden to no standard!”). When someone like @Count Timothy von Icarus, @Fire Ologist, or myself tell another that their position is wrong, we provide the standard upon which our judgment is based, and to which appeal can be made. Hence truth and standards are the very things which prevent tyranny. The reason we are happy to answer questions and consider objections is because our will is not absolute.

This is the difference between tyranny and rule of law. In a tyranny you get locked up because the tyrant said so, and the tyrant is beholden to no overarching standards. Where there is rule of law you get locked up on the basis of a standard, and if you can show that the standard does not apply then you will not be locked up. Only where there is tyranny is there no recourse; only where there is tyranny can someone simply say, “Don't bother defending yourselves. [My will is absolute].” Similarly, only where there is tyranny is there a self-elevation above rational discourse, where one says, “I refuse to answer your questions and engage your objections, but I will at the same time pretend and act as if I have done so.” This latter is tyranny even when it is covered over by a thin veneer of politeness.

The ironies of this thread are endless.

I think you successfully show that we can't make a sharp distinction between moral and non-moral norms such that anti-realism closes the door on only the former, and that people always act morally in the sense that their acts might be subject to moral scrutiny (which I think is a bit of a trivial truth). — goremand

Okay, thanks.

I don't quite understand how this gets us to the claim that people all have (implicit, I assume) moral beliefs. — goremand

Do all people make non-hypothetical ought-judgments?

I would like to know if you're even interested in justifying a particular set of norms (rational, moral, whatever) rather than just proving that they are implicitly assumed. — goremand

I wouldn't try to justify some to someone who doesn't see that they are already making others. Does that make sense?

Jamal, any chance of closing this thread, here?

Seems an appropriate point. — Banno

@Jamal, I would prefer that the thread stay open. Banno keeps making his bed. Why not let him sleep in it? <Here> is his newest iteration; his newest bed which will similarly disintegrate and which he will also eventually ask to be closed. He is making threads that are little more than excuses to crap on other members; he craps freely; he refuses to engage; and then he asks for the threads to be closed. I want to say that this habit of "thread"-making is a problem.

I agree. That is the important contribution of the analytic school to the philosophic enterprise. Rigor. — Fire Ologist

mortis. :wink: — Wayfarer

:lol:

The Analytic is analytic. He is a knife: he cuts. He is very good at dividing, separating. He is not good at ...really anything else. So yes, he dissects, criticizes, and accuses; but he is evidently unable to construct, synthesize, or build up. Too often he is someone whose skill with a knife is over-developed, and whose skill elsewhere is underdeveloped.

Oh, not by choice -- not a priori -- but a posteriori I started to note how they're different.

It's certainly odd. I recognize that what I say is odd. — Moliere

Well they have something in common and they have something that is different. The question is whether the difference excludes historical study from being scientific, and we would need arguments for that thesis. Obviously the assumption that historical study is altogether unscientific would help preclude the possibility that there is some common thread between history and "science" (what are we including under that heading...?), but that's precisely the sort of assumption that needs to be argued.

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? — Joshs

No, it's really not close at all, beginning with the idea that human nature is the ability to understand the world from someone else's perspective. I don't think that's what human nature is, although human nature includes that (which is why we answer arguments and questions).

If someone thought the only thing humans have in common is the ability to empathize, so to speak, then the opposite of what you hold would follow: there would be no possibility of disagreement; there would be no possibility of distinguishing one's own perspective from another's. There would be one lump of merged view, one over-mind that does not distinguish persons. If all we could do was empathize (so to speak), then there would be no possibility of disagreement at all.

Contrariwise, if we could not say to someone, "You are wrong,"—whether for moral reasons or for some other reason—then we would simply not be intellectual beings with individual views who are able to grow in knowledge and understanding. This so-called "compassion" ironically snuffs out all contexts and perspectives, which is yet another reason why the "contextualism" counter involves non sequitur.

A feeling is an activity? — frank

:up:

Or more generally, "A passion is an action?"

A feeling is generally seen as something that happens to us, whereas an activity is generally seen as something we do. To define feelings as activities is a bit like saying, "Internal things that happen to us without our doing anything are things that we do."

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. — Leontiskos

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

I offered what I see as a non-question-begging way to approach the question <here>. Consider now another.

What does @J want? My guess is that if you asked him another simple question, such as, "You want people to avoid authoritarianism. What, precisely and concretely, are you asking them to abstain from?," he would again have no answer. Be that as it may, it is easy enough to point to the kernel of this thread and what @J (but perhaps not @Banno) is ultimately opining on.

So if someone wants a world with low ERBs, but they also want a world where people reason together, then the asymptote of rule 3 will not be ideal. (This is literally one of the fundamental conflicts in J's thought). — Leontiskos

He wants at least two things: niceness and the possibility of growing in knowledge as a community. Prescinding from @J's premise of truth as intersubjectivity, the question is about how and in what ways the two values of niceness and intellectual rigor ought to coexist.

This is closely related to Aquinas' ST II-II.60.4 - "Whether doubts should be interpreted for the best?" This is a kind of limit case or paradigmatic question regarding the topic, and it is closely related to the discussion about the relation between truth and goodness from earlier in the thread. It relates to the so-called "principle of charity," yet without the thoroughgoing vagueness and ambiguity that "principle" inevitably carries.

It's actually worth quoting the article in full, given that it is so relevant and perspicacious. What Aquinas says here is offered as fodder for argument, as always. It may or may not be correct, but at least it is providing real arguments and attempting to answer the question at hand:

Article 4. Whether doubts should be interpreted for the best?

Objection 1. It would seem that doubts should not be interpreted for the best. Because we should judge from what happens for the most part. But it happens for the most part that evil is done, since "the number of fools is infinite" (Ecclesiastes 1:15), "for the imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). Therefore doubts should be interpreted for the worst rather than for the best.

Objection 2. Further, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 27) that "he leads a godly and just life who is sound in his estimate of things, and turns neither to this side nor to that." Now he who interprets a doubtful point for the best, turns to one side. Therefore this should not be done.

Objection 3. Further, man should love his neighbor as himself. Now with regard to himself, a man should interpret doubtful matters for the worst, according to Job 9:28, "I feared all my works." Therefore it seems that doubtful matters affecting one's neighbor should be interpreted for the worst.

On the contrary, A gloss on Romans 14:3, "He that eateth not, let him not judge him that eateth," says: "Doubts should be interpreted in the best sense."

I answer that, As stated above (Article 3, Reply to Objection 2), things from the very fact that a man thinks ill of another without sufficient cause, he injures and despises him. Now no man ought to despise or in any way injure another man without urgent cause: and, consequently, unless we have evident indications of a person's wickedness, we ought to deem him good, by interpreting for the best whatever is doubtful about him.

Reply to Objection 1. He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man, because in the latter case an injury is inflicted, but not in the former.

Reply to Objection 2. It is one thing to judge of things and another to judge of men. For when we judge of things, there is no question of the good or evil of the thing about which we are judging, since it will take no harm no matter what kind of judgment we form about it; but there is question of the good of the person who judges, if he judge truly, and of his evil if he judge falsely because "the true is the good of the intellect, and the false is its evil," as stated in Ethic. vi, 2, wherefore everyone should strive to make his judgment accord with things as they are. On the other hand when we judge of men, the good and evil in our judgment is considered chiefly on the part of the person about whom judgment is being formed; for he is deemed worthy of honor from the very fact that he is judged to be good, and deserving of contempt if he is judged to be evil. For this reason we ought, in this kind of judgment, to aim at judging a man good, unless there is evident proof of the contrary. And though we may judge falsely, our judgment in thinking well of another pertains to our good feeling and not to the evil of the intellect, even as neither does it pertain to the intellect's perfection to know the truth of contingent singulars in themselves.

Reply to Objection 3. One may interpret something for the worst or for the best in two ways. First, by a kind of supposition; and thus, when we have to apply a remedy to some evil, whether our own or another's, in order for the remedy to be applied with greater certainty of a cure, it is expedient to take the worst for granted, since if a remedy be efficacious against a worse evil, much more is it efficacious against a lesser evil. Secondly we may interpret something for the best or for the worst, by deciding or determining, and in this case when judging of things we should try to interpret each thing according as it is, and when judging of persons, to interpret things for the best as stated above. — Aquinas' ST II-II.60.4 - Whether doubts should be interpreted for the best?

(It is worth noting that if Aquinas' position requires religious premises—and it may well do so!—then it remains to be seen how such a position could be justified without those premises. This is another irony of this thread, which is anti-religious in spirit. But I digress...)

Oh, an argument? If science were history then they would be in the same department at the university. They are not in the same department at the university, therefore science is not history.

Oh, an argument? If science were history then they would be in the same department at the university. They are not in the same department at the university, therefore science is not history. — Moliere

Okay, well that is certainly an argument. :up:

"science" (what are we including under that heading...?) — Leontiskos

So I have never heard of a university with a science department. "What are you studying?" "Science." "Hmm?"

I mean, many universities offer a Bachelor of Science degree in history, so what do you make of that?

I think they're using "science" in the old way of "an organized body of knowledge", rather than the 19th c.-contemporary way of "performing experiments to generate data to test hypotheses" -- i.e. before people thought science was distinct at all.

has argued over a number of posts that the soft sciences or social sciences are also sciences. What do you make of those arguments?

I think soft sciences, whatever we happen to include ( and could argue about if we wanted), are just as scientific as the so-called "hard" sciences. What unites them are assumptions in methodology, but then the particulars of that assumption -- the stating of the assumption within the research program -- will differ dramatically from other sciences. The "general" description of science doesn't really say very much at all so it's easy to group all of these together and say "Yeah, they're pretty much science"

Sticking with particular examples: If you look at Gilderhus' History and Historians and compare it to any of the scientific papers out there now you'll see that the methods are not the same.

A feeling is generally seen as something that happens to us, whereas an activity is generally seen as something we do. To define feelings as activities is a bit like saying, "Internal things that happen to us without our doing anything are things that we do."

Well, a person's passions are their passions. They are also something we can have more or less control over, through the cultivation of habits (virtues/vices) and the will's ability to overcome the passions.

So, I don't think I would locate the passions outside of us, or we wholly something "we don't do." However, I would at least locate some of them outside the will. For instance, when a man cheats on his wife, even though he wished he hadn't (giving in to an appetite/passion), we say he has suffered from weakness of will, and perhaps even that his act was not fully voluntary. Whereas, when a man doesn't cheat on his wife because he sees this as truly worse, we don't say that he suffers from "weakness of passion."

The passions are properly ordered to the will and intellect. When they "happen to us," as often is the case, the opposite is happening to some degree. I wouldn't describe this as "coming from without" though, but rather, as Plato does, as a lack of unity. That is, what we have is warring parts, and a whole that is less unified in its aims (less perfected).

I think soft sciences, whatever we happen to include ( and could argue about if we wanted), are just as scientific as the so-called "hard" sciences. — Moliere

Okay, but isn't history a "soft science"? If so, then by your own concession history must be just as scientific as any other science. And yet you've said otherwise...?

I wouldn't describe this as "coming from without" though — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, and neither would I.

For instance, when a man cheats on his wife, even though he wished he hadn't (giving in to an appetite/passion), we say he has suffered from weakness of will, and perhaps even that his act was not fully voluntary. Whereas, when a man doesn't cheat on his wife because he sees this as truly worse, we don't say that he suffers from "weakness of passion." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is because of the difference between receiving and doing that I pointed out. Your word "suffer" is similarly passive. Passion/passio/pathos are all etymologically related to suffering. If an action is something an agent does, then a passion is something an agent endures. Similarly, if I use a shovel to move a pile of dirt, then the shovel is active and the dirt is passive. The shovel is moving and the dirt is being moved.

They are also something we can have more or less control over, through the cultivation of habits (virtues/vices) and the will's ability to overcome the passions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I want to say that, at least in general, we only "control" the passions indirectly. For example, you can't just make yourself angry with the snap of your fingers, even though you can just snap your fingers. A passion is not an action. Snapping your fingers is an action; anger is a passion. In order to get angry you need to perceive injustice, and we cannot directly command ourselves to perceive injustice. We can make ourselves angry by doing things like searching out injustice, or focusing on injustice, or magnifying our perception of an injustice, but this is all indirect.

Passions pertain to passivity; actions pertain to activity.

Here's Aquinas, maybe more than we need:

The word "passive" is used in three ways. First, in a general way, according as whatever receives something is passive, although nothing is taken from it: thus we may say that the air is passive when it is lit up. But this is to be perfected rather than to be passive. Secondly, the word "passive" is employed in its proper sense, when something is received, while something else is taken away: and this happens in two ways. For sometimes that which is lost is unsuitable to the thing: thus when an animal's body is healed, and loses sickness. At other times the contrary occurs: thus to ail is to be passive; because the ailment is received and health is lost. And here we have passion in its most proper acceptation. For a thing is said to be passive from its being drawn to the agent: and when a thing recedes from what is suitable to it, then especially does it appear to be drawn to something else. Moreover in De Generat. i, 3 it is stated that when a more excellent thing is generated from a less excellent, we have generation simply, and corruption in a particular respect: whereas the reverse is the case, when from a more excellent thing, a less excellent is generated. In these three ways it happens that passions are in the soul. For in the sense of mere reception, we speak of "feeling and understanding as being a kind of passion" (De Anima i, 5). But passion, accompanied by the loss of something, is only in respect of a bodily transmutation; wherefore passion properly so called cannot be in the soul, save accidentally, in so far, to wit, as the "composite" is passive. But here again we find a difference; because when this transmutation is for the worse, it has more of the nature of a passion, than when it is for the better: hence sorrow is more properly a passion than joy. — Aquinas, ST I-II.22.1 - Whether any passion is in the soul?

No, history isn't a soft science. If you compare sociology, say, to history you'll see that the methods are quite different. Where sociology tries to explain social phenomena through theories which, in the ideal, are predictive history deals in causes from a narrative standpoint: When a historian talks about the causes of the civil war they may reference some economic or sociological theory to justify their telling of the story, but another historian will choose some other theoretical device and tell the same story in a different way, and though the causes and stories of the civil war are different between the historians -- i.e. both could not be true of an object -- they are both legitimate historical papers. That diversity of the story is what fleshes out historical events. In addition the attention to the particular, to the experiential is widely different from the sciences -- individual stories and anecdotes are the body of evidence on works with, and there's no "resetting" the war to see if you modify one thing -- say that Franz Ferdinand was not shot -- to see if that was the root cause of said war.

But with a scientific account you attempt to get down to the root cause (if it is possible), and if it's not possible to try and simply as much as you possibly can. You also get to repeat things under conditions to see if you're right. The assumption there being that the world is not just objective and real, but there's an element to the world that allows us to see a sort of rational order to it -- where our idealizations begin to appear more than idealizations, but rather abstract instantiations of a higher order. So the sociologist or the economist of world war 1 will look for trends in population data that predict wars of the sort that world war 1 was. Think Emile Durkheim here who very much wanted a positivistic science of social organisms -- also Karl Marx sort of fits in here, who thought that history could be studied in the "scientific" manner and also treats social organisms in the same manner that a chemist treats chemicals.

But the historian will look to the stories of the people that lived through it, the government documents left in archives, and -- of course -- other histories of the event to attempt to tell the story of world war 1.

And there is this temptation in both disciplines, I've noticed, to "universalize" these methods to a kind of ontology. I think the ontology you get with science is some kind of indirect realism that the guesses approximate towards, at least with respect to our representations (know-that) rather than know-how. I think the ontology you get with history is like a constantly evolving reality that's never still.

Just to give you an idea of what I think, at least. I'll be real and say I'm not too interested in convincing people, but will share what I think and why. Ultimately though I'd just point to some textbooks because some of the "why?" isn't so well formulated as to be a philosophical theory, but rather is a beginning of philosophical wonder for me -- it was a surprise to me when I started to realize this difference.

Of course I could just be wrong about the difference and then all of this is bunk. But I'm not persuaded ;)

No, history isn't a soft science. — Moliere

Oh, that's an interesting claim. I will have to come back to this, but you said you agreed with Srap, and he clearly takes history to be a social science:

When you turn to the social sciences, there are additional impediments to a scientific approach. The sciences of the past (history and archaeology) face unavoidable limitations on what can be observed... — Srap Tasmaner

That's the most proximate reason I assumed you would accept history as a social science.

Is the framework that supports the realism of other minds and their contents context-de/independent? — Harry Hindu

By calling it a "framework" I think we are already presupposing that it is contextualized, aren't we? I think realism presupposes that not every knowledge-claim is reducible to a framework, or is even able to be captured by framework-talk.

By calling it a "framework" I think we are already presupposing that it is contextualized, aren't we? I think realism presupposes that not every knowledge-claim is reducible to a framework, or is even able to be captured by framework-talk. — Leontiskos

I don't know. Is solipsism a framework, or the state of reality, or both?

Ahhh, OK. That'd be an interesting conversation to tease out. Generally Srap and I agree and I admit I only glanced over the post you linked. I was thinking about our recent conversations about science, though it looks like we'd disagree on history -- or, perhaps, not disagree even, but would probably try to find out what it is about what example that leads us to say the things we do just to see if it's a substantive disagreement or more an issue of terminology.