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

For the realist realism is not merely a framework; and for the solipsist solipsism is not merely a framework. To say "both" would require the adherent to claim that their own framework (e.g. realism or solipsism) is superior to other frameworks. I suppose they could do that, but it seems like the very idea of a "framework" would impede them.

For the realist realism is not merely a framework; and for the solipsist solipsism is not merely a framework. To say "both" would require the adherent to claim that their own framework (e.g. realism or solipsism) is superior to other frameworks. — Leontiskos

Right. To say "both" is saying that the framework more accurately reflects the state-of-affairs than other frameworks do and is what makes you a solipsist or a realist.

So is the question, "How can we know when a framework more accurately represents the state-of-affairs?" or "How can we distinguish between the framework and the state-of-affairs?", or something else?

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.

That's an interesting point. I'd generally agree. Historians can sometimes absolutize historicism and scientists of a certain persuasion can sometimes absolutize their inductive methodology into a presumption of nominalism and the idea that all knowing is merely induction. In the latter case, this is sometimes quite explicit, e.g. Bayesian Brains.

I'll just add that the classical formulation of the difference is that science deals with the universal and the necessary. History is always particular though. Indeed, it's the particular in which all universals are instantiated. This doesn't preclude a philosophy of history, but it does preclude a science of history. Jaques Maratain has a very short lecture/book on philosophy of history that makes this case quite compactly, and he's drawing on the "traditional" distinction (in the West) that was assumed for many centuries.

In terms of a logos at work in history, I certainly think we can find one, just not a science. Hegel's theory seems to explain some aspects of 20th century history quite well. There is a sort of necessity in the way internal contradictions work themselves out, and you see this same point being made in information theoretic analyses of natural selection that look at genomes as semipermeable membranes that selectively let information about the environment in, but arrest its erasure. Contradiction leads to conflict that must be overcome.

But you cannot predict this sort of thing in any strict sense, because it is always particular. A great image for this is in Virgil. Virgil is very focused on the orientation of thymos (honor, spirit) in service of a greater logos (the good of the community, the historical telos of Rome, and ultimately, the Divine). However, although his gods (themselves a mix of personified man-like deity and more transcendent Logos) set the limit of logos in human history, and characters only ever recognize them when they leave. I've been rereading the Aeneid and this seems true in almost every case; only when they turn to go, when we are "past them" in the narrative, are they recognized as gods by man. It's very clever, and works well with elements in the narrative that are skeptical of the ultimate ability of man to consistently live up to logos.

Hence, history can be more than Gibbon's "register of [the] crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." For instance, Gibbon's observation that the switch from citizen soldiers to professional legions "elevated war into an art, and degraded it into a trade," applies quite well to the United States after Vietnam—a recognition of a universal in the stream of particulars. (I like Durant's "every civilization begins like as a Stoic, and dies an Epicurean," too, even if it isn't always true).

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." — Leontiskos

I’m going to be lazy and let CharGPT summarize the postings that I’m drawing from:

Yes — you’re touching on a central idea in enactivist philosophy of mind, especially as developed by thinkers like Matthew Ratcliffe, Evan Thompson, and Shaun Gallagher. Enactivism challenges the traditional view that emotions and feelings are passive, internal states (like private inner “qualia”) and instead argues that they are ways of engaging with the world. Here’s a breakdown of the view, especially through Ratcliffe’s lens:

⸻

1. Emotions as Active, World-Involving Phenomena

Enactivism holds that cognition (including emotion) is not just something that happens inside the brain but emerges through dynamic interactions between an organism and its environment. Emotions, then, are:
• Not passive receptions of internal states
• Active orientations or engagements with the world

Ratcliffe’s Key Idea:

In works like “Feelings of Being” (2008), Ratcliffe argues that emotions are existential orientations — they shape how the world appears to us. For example:
• Fear doesn’t just happen in you — it discloses the world as threatening.
• Joy opens the world up as rich and inviting.
• Grief makes the world appear irretrievably altered.

These are ways of being in the world, not just internal reactions to stimuli.

⸻

2. Pre-reflective and Bodily

Enactivists argue that emotions are embodied and pre-reflective — you don’t always notice you’re feeling them in the same way you notice you’re thinking a thought.
• They are felt through posture, movement, action-readiness.
• For instance, anxiety might be an attunement where the world feels uncertain or unstable — not just a “tingling in your gut.”

⸻

3. Affect as World-Disclosure

Ratcliffe expands on Heideggerian phenomenology by suggesting that affective experience “discloses” or “opens up” a meaningful world. This view means:
• Emotions are not added on to an already-existing, neutral perception of the world.
• Rather, they are how the world first becomes meaningful at all.

So, when you love someone, the world is full of promise, vulnerability, and care. You’re not reacting to a neutral world with love — you’re experiencing the world through love.

⸻

4. Emotion as Situated and Contextual

Emotions are always situated in lived contexts and cultural practices — they are not the same everywhere, for everyone, in every moment. This supports the idea that emotions are interactive and historical, not static mental contents.

⸻

In Summary:

For enactivists like Ratcliffe, emotions are not inner states that “represent” the world; they are ways of being in the world — bodily, situated, affective orientations that actively shape and are shaped by our interactions with others and the environment.

This approach invites us to rethink psychology and philosophy by moving beyond a mind/world split — and seeing the self, body, and world as deeply intertwined in the experience of emotion.

I talked to @Pierre-Normand once about embodied consciousness. It's an interesting idea, but far from fleshed out enough to make assertions. You would want to frame it as a possibility that emotion can't be extricated from the organism-environment entity. That's certainly not the only way to view it.

Parts of this do seem consistent with the classical faculty psychology that dominated antiquity through the early-modern period though. The passions and appetites are an engagement with the world. The concupiscible appetites (pleasure/pain) are a sort of pull towards union or away from union (aversion).

So I don't disagree with . I was actually thinking of Saint Thomas because I read the section on the appetites and passions in ST for my incomplete paper on Virgil a few weeks ago. And indeed, a lot of Catholic thinkers (e.g. Sokolowski) pull together phenomenology, enactivism, Thomas, and Aristotle.

There is a sense in which the passions are something we do, as one of our powers/facilities, and yet another sense in which they happen to us, in that they are often involuntary, and indeed often run counter to the will. Likewise, it would be bizarre in most settings to say that having a heart attack is something we do, although in some sense it is still true.

The passions and appetites aren't like a heart attack though. They can be commanded by the will, even if they are often recalcitrant. And our ability to command them can be improved with training; that's one of the ideas of asceticism. So, the other writer I was thinking of is Saint John Climacus, who I have been reading at night, and this is precisely what the monk aims at with "blessed dispassion," not the elimination of the appetites and passions per se, but their right orientation and ordering (granted, it sometimes seems like the latter in some passages). This is why, if you pray the Horologian, you end up reciting Psalm 50 many times a day. It's the "cultivation of blessed tears" and repetence, as Climacus would put it, a right emotional state that is willed.

Emotions are always situated in lived contexts and cultural practices — they are not the same everywhere, for everyone, in every moment. This supports the idea that emotions are interactive and historical, not static mental contents.

Right, or just as all cats are different, or each cat in different moments—yet their still all cats. There is an idea in Aristotle, developed by Thomas that I really like, which is that the virtues are like universals for action. Hence, a virtue like temperance perhaps takes different forms in different cultures and epochs, or in each instance, yet remains a single principle. It's not a perfect analogy though, because obviously cultural standards can themselves be more or less temperate, and more or less conducive to virtue.

Or we could argue that for the most part emotions are the mind interacting with itself. Realizing that has the benefit of a kind of freedom.

Up for an autopsy? — Fire Ologist

What could have been an interesting thread was killed by the resident sophists who can be relied upon to prefer participating in culture wars over philosophy. Question their biases and they become nasty, obfuscate, misrepresent or just refuse to engage.

By refusing in turn to engage with them we give them no air...which is as it should be. Posturing erudition is no substitute for sound thinking and good will.

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. — Leontiskos

I’m am trying to salvage dialogue.

I pointed out from the beginning, we need to identify something whole before we have something to divide, we need both the metaphysical and the analytic, so I agree that when only focused on dividing we ignore half of the activity, but there I go trying to talk about the substance again.

The way I read many of these exchanges between those I will call the Wittgensteinians and the Atistotlians (although that is just to avoid naming people here, but you know who you are!), is the Aristotelians openly seek to understand the other position (or any position), so they can accurately analyze it; they ask specific questions about it, to both better understand it and to reveal the limits of their own understanding, and they provide restatements, to better ensure everyone is on the same page; they craft critiques, and offer positive alternate views. Whereas the Wittgensteinians may do these same things, but only when talking with each other - when someone disagrees with them who is perceived to be an Aristotelian, they act indignant and paranoid (emotional) and tired (as if dealing with their lessers), and argue about hidden meanings and bad-faith and psychopathy (authoritarian intent, myth-making, delusional), some of them making ad hominem comments, and position themselves as too smart to dignify such people.

It’s tedious to deal with but occasionally substance forms, so I keep trying.

But mostly, it seems clear to me that the Wittgenstinians who keep taking away their ball to go home and don’t want to play anymore, are doing so because they are constantly being beat, losing the arguments.

There is no reason to think analytics are the true philosophers and metaphysicians are just “making stuff up.” We haven’t gotten very far off of this bold (metaphysical) claim, and the Aristotleans have made it clear that Analytics First, the “Make Anslytics Great Again” crowd, is lacking any useful, explanatory power of “better” “ways to philosophize”.

It is all written in black and white here. There are so many unanswered arguments. So much left undeveloped. Seems clear to me, the Wittgensteinians are in no position to tell anyone “you are wrong” despite how often they say it.

But that is no reason for giving up. People are indeed wrong. I’d love to reengage on the substance.

We should be tolerant - truly more tolerant.

Wittegensteinians - you picked the fight - you lost the opening rounds - any response before you go home to your private messaging?

What could have been an interesting thread was killed by the resident sophists — Janus

I thought it was interesting. It was Banno who specifically asked to kill it. So are you referring to Banno as a resident sophist?

Question their biases — Janus

That’s not what I ever see. I see people avoiding a direct question, or changing the subject with an accusation “you are biased”. One person needs to ask a question at a time. That’s a dialogue.

You don’t always get to answer questions with a better question like “maybe you are actually an authoritarian because of your God delusion?” Or “I’ll answer your question as soon as you answer 10 of mine, even though I made the assertion you are questioning and you haven’t asserted anything yet.”

Real bummer.

It was Banno who specifically asked to kill it. — Fire Ologist

It was @Banno who requested that it be buried after the sophists (mostly you and @Leontiskis) had already killed it. As @Srap Tasmaner said "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves". But of course I understand why you won't be.

Thanks.

The thread became a bit of a shit show. But overall I'm happy with the result. Indeed, the passion of the response overwhelmingly carries the case in the OP.

You're right―it wasn't that the thread could have been interesting, it was interesting until it became a "shitshow".

By refusing in turn to engage with them we give them no air...which is as it should be. Posturing erudition is no substitute for sound thinking and good will. — Janus

Thanks for that. I agree, though not necessarily about the erudition; many people on TPF are indeed erudite about specific philosophers, no posturing. Such knowledge on its own isn't enough, sadly, to lead to thoughtful conversation.

the passion of the response overwhelmingly carries the case in the OP. — Banno

The OP was good, and could have been discussed intelligently, including by those who disagreed with your basic bifurcation, and/or your conception of philosophy. Disagreement, for some, leads to anger and personal berating, which is a shame.

Thanks for that. I agree, though not necessarily about the erudition; many people on TPF are indeed erudite about specific philosophers, no posturing. Such knowledge on its own isn't enough, sadly, to lead to thoughtful conversation. — J

It's true that there are quite a few people here who are well-read in specific areas. I see that as a good thing provided their erudition has not become ideology―but sadly, that is not always the case, even with the most erudite. My point was in line with your point about erudition not being enough to lead to thoughtful conversation―erudition displayed for its own sake just is posturing―it certainly doesn't count, at least not in my book, as good philosophy. It is prominently on display when people quote extensive passages as substitute for their own words.

resident sophists — Janus

Yes. Imagine what you did <here>, but multiplied over twenty pages and then combined with hypocrisy. It was a truly impressive display of sophistry. :wink:

The continue from those who have consistently failed to engage in dialogue throughout the whole thread. "If you can't beat them..." then I guess you do whatever the heck you can to calumniate them, all the while refusing to dialogue with them.

As Srap Tasmaner said "you ought to be ashamed of yourselves". — Janus

@Srap Tasmaner's outburst was <bizarre>, to say the least, utterly lacking in context. It's usually a bad idea to fall into that form of judgmentalism when you're such a newcomer to the thread.

↪Joshs I talked to Pierre-Normand once about embodied consciousness. It's an interesting idea, but far from fleshed out enough to make assertions. You would want to frame it as a possibility that emotion can't be extricated from the organism-environment entity. That's certainly not the only way to view it. — frank

The relation between affect and cognition has been my thing for a long time, and I’ve collected so much ‘flesh’ for the enactivist view it would make Buffalo Bill proud.

Just so you know, there was a new rule added which says, "AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part." In any case, I don't respond to purely AI posts.

, There was an opportunity to consider more of Midgley, which might have been quite helpful. @Hanover's move towards forms of life is interesting, and continues on Sam's thread.

The commensurability of conceptual schema remains one of my main philosophical puzzles.

I'd like to take the idea of treating dissection as a demarcation criterion a bit further - that the difference between, say, literature, myth, or religion on the one hand and philosophy on the other is the emphasis on dissection and critique; on iterative re-assessment of one's position.

↪Count Timothy von Icarus Or we could argue that for the most part emotions are the mind interacting with itself. Realizing that has the benefit of a kind of freedom. — frank

The key thing about affect is its character as change of disposition, as a being exposed to the world in a fresh way. That doesn’t seem to be adequately captured by the solipsistic connotations of a mind turning inward towards itself. Affect does the precise opposite, throwing us outside of ourselves by the way it affects us.

You don’t always get to answer questions with a better question like “maybe you are actually an authoritarian because of your God delusion?” — Fire Ologist

Good post. :up:

I think what you say about Wittgenstenians is natural to that worldview, which is more enclosed. But it's also worth noting that @Banno was the primary Wittgenstenian in this thread. @J and @Srap Tasmaner are not as exclusively interested in Wittgenstein.

Regarding the Analytic question, I think part of the difficulty is that cutting with a knife is most easy and most precise. Doing other things is truly much harder. In that way Analytic philosophy can generate agreement regarding its dissections. That can be helpful, but unfortunately it is a very limited agreement due to the fact that it lacks all manner of comprehensiveness, as the OP itself admits.

The relation between affect and cognition has been my thing for a long time, and I’ve collected so much ‘flesh’ for the enactivist view it would make Buffalo Bill proud. — Joshs

I agree that an organism and its environment are intertwined. I don't agree that stasis is an illusion. It's one pole of an opposition. You can't conceive of motion without it.

I don't think there is much flesh connecting any philosophical outlook to an explanation for consciousness because there presently is no explanation for it. All we do is speculate.

The key thing about affect is its character as change of disposition, as a being exposed to the world in a fresh way. That doesn’t seem to be adequately captured by the solipsistic connotations of a mind turning inward towards itself. Affect does the precise opposite, throwing us outside of ourselves by the way it affects us. — Joshs

I was referencing the fact that we model the world and react to the model prior to reacting to the world, but more physiologically, the most powerful driver of emotion is dopamine. Activation of dopaminergic pathways starts within the organism, most fundamentally in architecture contained in DNA.

Right. To say "both" is saying that the framework more accurately reflects the state-of-affairs than other frameworks do and is what makes you a solipsist or a realist. — Harry Hindu

Yes, that seems correct.

So is the question, "How can we know when a framework more accurately represents the state-of-affairs?" or "How can we distinguish between the framework and the state-of-affairs?", or something else? — Harry Hindu

I added this in an edit:

To say "both" would require the adherent to claim that their own framework (e.g. realism or solipsism) is superior to other frameworks. I suppose they could do that, but it seems like the very idea of a "framework" would impede them. — Leontiskos

I think what is happening is that you have two incommensurable ways of viewing something, and it is likely impossible to try to strike some neutral ground. This is almost certainly why @Srap Tasmaner's "St. Louis to Kansas City" idea failed.

So surely ampliation is required to understand the opposing view, and a rather abrupt and extreme form of it. This issue is explored a lot in the field of interreligious studies, where there can be significant limitations on one's ability to understand another view (and the same thing could be said to hold between secular and religious thinking). Religion and culture are the two biggies, where a form of conversion and life is required in order to truly understand.

- Okay. I just wanted to point back to that, since @Srap Tasmaner already did all my work for me, and I thought you might have read it.

- Coming back to the question of whether there is a common thread between history and, say, physics. Here is why Srap thinks so:

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

History would fulfill that criterion, so the question is whether Srap is mistaken about his criterion for what makes a science.

---

I'll just add that the classical formulation of the difference is that science deals with the universal and the necessary. History is always particular though. Indeed, it's the particular in which all universals are instantiated. This doesn't preclude a philosophy of history, but it does preclude a science of history. Jaques Maratain has a very short lecture/book on philosophy of history that makes this case quite compactly, and he's drawing on the "traditional" distinction (in the West) that was assumed for many centuries. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is an interesting and useful point. :up:

Perhaps when we now talk about "history" we are talking about "knowing what happened in the past." Is that the thing that Maritain is considering, or is he considering history in some other manner? And do you happen to know the text where he talks about this?

In terms of a logos at work in history, I certainly think we can find one, just not a science. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I agree with this.

But you cannot predict this sort of thing in any strict sense — Count Timothy von Icarus

So the issue here is apparently prediction of future events, or a determination of the principles that led from one point to another?

However, although his gods (themselves a mix of personified man-like deity and more transcendent Logos) set the limit of logos in human history, and characters only ever recognize them when they leave. I've been rereading the Aeneid and this seems true in almost every case; only when they turn to go, when we are "past them" in the narrative, are they recognized as gods by man. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that is a beautiful idea.

There is a sense in which the passions are something we do, as one of our powers/facilities, and yet another sense in which they happen to us, in that they are often involuntary, and indeed often run counter to the will. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. :up:

The passions and appetites aren't like a heart attack though. They can be commanded by the will, even if they are often recalcitrant. And our ability to command them can be improved with training; that's one of the ideas of asceticism. So, the other writer I was thinking of is Saint John Climacus, who I have been reading at night, and this is precisely what the monk aims at with "blessed dispassion," not the elimination of the appetites and passions per se, but their right orientation and ordering (granted, it sometimes seems like the latter in some passages). This is why, if you pray the Horologian, you end up reciting Psalm 50 many times a day. It's the "cultivation of blessed tears" and repetence, as Climacus would put it, a right emotional state that is willed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would argue that the Orthodox use of "passions" is at least somewhat different than Plato or Aristotle or colloquial usage. I would say that Orthodox "dispassion," very crudely, has to do with a state of self-possession and self-command. It is the idea that "thoughts" (again in a wide, Orthodox Christian sense) do not move you. So there is that connection of being unmoved by passions, and a desire to achieve a state of dispassion, but I don't see the Orthodox view contradicting the idea that passions are primarily things that happen to us in the postlapsarian state. That's why Orthodox on the whole view passions as bad and desire a state of dispassion (although I realize there are a few exceptions, who you have read). So my hunch is that the Orthodox might admit that the deified individual has motive powers similar to the passions, but that they would not generally call those things "passions."

The trick is that everyone agrees that unwanted passions happen to us in a way that desirable and cooperating passions do not, as Aquinas sets out in the text I gave. From this is eventually follows that the well-ordered individual's passions are part of him in a way that a disordered individual's passions are not. But these are all very fine and subtle distinctions.

The analogy of the wind may be helpful here. When the wind is with us, it flows into us and we become one with it. It facilitates our movement and combines with our will. When the wind is against us, it opposes us and pushes us in a direction we do not wish to go. Note too the Spirit/wind parallel.

Do all people make non-hypothetical ought-judgments? — Leontiskos

No, not necessarily. But most of all, I don't think it is a requirement for joining the rational community.

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

Yes, absolutely.

I think what is happening is that you have two incommensurable ways of viewing something, and it is likely impossible to try to strike some neutral ground. This is almost certainly why Srap Tasmaner's "St. Louis to Kansas City" idea failed.

So surely ampliation is required to understand the opposing view, and a rather abrupt and extreme form of it. This issue is explored a lot in the field of interreligious studies, where there can be significant limitations on one's ability to understand another view (and the same thing could be said to hold between secular and religious thinking). Religion and culture are the two biggies, where a form of conversion and life is required in order to truly understand. — Leontiskos

I don't know. Would this mean that it would be impossible for a person to convert from one position to another? When I was a Christian I had one framework but began to notice things like how what you believed often depended on where you were born and raised, which made me start questioning my beliefs. I eventually became an atheist. I had overcome my upbringing. What you seem to be saying that what happened to me is impossible. Or are you saying I'm not really an atheist because my original framework prevented me from understanding what it actually means to be an atheist?

The way I read many of these exchanges between those I will call the Wittgensteinians and the Atistotlians (although that is just to avoid naming people here, but you know who you are!), is the Aristotelians openly seek to understand the other position (or any position), so they can accurately analyze it; they ask specific questions about it, to both better understand it and to reveal the limits of their own understanding, and they provide restatements, to better ensure everyone is on the same page; they craft critiques, and offer positive alternate views. Whereas the Wittgensteinians may do these same things, but only when talking with each other - when someone disagrees with them who is perceived to be an Aristotelian, they act indignant and paranoid (emotional) and tired (as if dealing with their lessers), and argue about hidden meanings and bad-faith and psychopathy (authoritarian intent, myth-making, delusional), some of them making ad hominem comments, and position themselves as too smart to dignify such people. — Fire Ologist

(@Count Timothy von Icarus)


I ran across an idea that I found quite fascinating, both with respect to this thread and with respect to the Wittgenstein/Analytic Philosophy question. It was from the recent discussion between Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt, from 44:11-46:53. Go ahead and listen to those few minutes, but what Haidt eventually says, drawing on Piaget, is, “A video game is really like the junk food of games, in that it doesn’t have the nutritious part which is the disagreements, the arguments.” Peterson interjects, “Right, so there’s no meta-negotiation about the rules themselves. So one of the things Piaget pointed out […] And that’s also why Piaget wasn’t a moral relativist – he thought there was a hierarchy of morality. And that’s also why he thought Thomas Kuhn was wrong…”

They don’t talk about Wittgenstein, but I have never heard anything which hit the nail so perfectly on the head with respect to axiomatic thinking, such as Wittgenstein’s or Analytic Philosophy’s! It is the idea that if there is no ability to see the rules, jostle against them, and engage in meta-negotiation (with respect to, say, so-called hinge propositions), then there is a deficiency and a lack of robustness in the activity. complains that Aristotle’s “induction” is not (deductively) valid, but according to Piaget this is a feature, not a bug. I think this is why Aristotle is so much more robust than Wittgenstein: because he doesn’t set those a priori limits on what can be done, and also because he does not have a set color palette before he begins his painting. This is what makes him so much less contrived and artificial (and here others would argue that Plato is better yet). Note too how it is Piaget—in his observation of children, progress, and development—who sees what Wittgenstein is so blind to – the Wittgenstein who literally physically abused children because they weren’t “doing it right”!

Now some have been claiming that they want the ability to negotiate the rules, and I have been at pains to point out their performative self-contradiction. They say they want to negotiate the rules, but they don’t negotiate, they don’t engage in dialogue, they don’t answer questions forthrightly, and they in fact “take their marbles and go home.” On the other hand, the people they dub “authoritarians” are precisely the people who are doing all of those things: negotiating the rules, offering arguments, presenting objections, etc.

Note too how well this reflects Aristotle’s discussion of the PNC in Metaphysics IV. He in no way attempts to prove it. He allows his opponents to try to argue, but he also shows why their arguments are doomed to fail. This leaves it open for his opponents to try to argue and see for themselves how Aristotle’s prediction comes to pass. Anyone who has read the text seriously has probably done this for themselves. This closely parallels @Count Timothy von Icarus’ discussion with @Banno over the principle concerning the falsification of data, where Banno's rejection of the word "principle" eventually turned out to be ad hoc.

---

what sort of explanation is left in order to account for profound disagreements? — Joshs

The better question to ask is, “How do we come to agree to disagree?” I want to say that if two people are to agree to disagree, then there must first be earnest dialogue, there must be honest irreconcilability, and each party must understand at least in part the reasons which prevent the other from agreeing. It is easy enough to see why such a thing is not possible where dialogue at all, much less earnest dialogue, is refused.

No, not necessarily. But most of all, I don't think it is a requirement for joining the rational community. — goremand

I disagree on both scores. I have a whole thread disagreeing with the first claim. I would argue against the second claim on similar grounds insofar as we concern ourselves with intellectual ought-judgments, i.e., "You ought to believe that 2+2=4." But no one "joins" the rational community. They are already rational, and they are already bound by the truth that 2+2=4. Even and especially as they ignore such truths will they feel their binding force. We can't opt in or out of the fact that 2+2=4 will have an effect on us and on our lives, as for example is seen when consulting one's financial transactions.

Yes, absolutely. — goremand

Okay, good.

I don't know. Would this mean that it would be impossible for a person to convert from one position to another? When I was a Christian I had one framework but began to notice things like how what you believed often depended on where you were born and raised, which made me start questioning my beliefs. I eventually became an atheist. I had overcome my upbringing. What you seem to be saying that what happened to me is impossible. Or are you saying I'm not really an atheist because my original framework prevented me from understanding what it actually means to be an atheist? — Harry Hindu

I'm saying that no one is both a Christian and an atheist, straddling that line neutrally. A Christian can become an atheist, but if they do so then they are no longer a Christian. No one truly says, "I am both Christian and atheist in a neutral sense."

We could perhaps imagine someone who is neither and views both objectively and neutrally. I'd be fine with that, especially for the sake of argument.

(But note that @Srap Tasmaner was not "neither" when he appealed to the very same framework petitio principii that @J was appealing to less eloquently. In fact Srap is very deeply committed to that framework sort of relativism. Nevertheless, the difference is that Srap is much more capable of questioning his own presuppositions by engaging in dialogue and answering questions.)