Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

This was my "battle of the bands" example too. I think it even goes beyond a question of practical usage. For many types of comparison, "the best" makes no sense -- apples and bands, for instance.

But not for all. @Fire Ologist, I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think.

So sans action, have you actually made up your mind? Or is there still the possibility of your deciding otherwise? — Banno

I'm surprised to see you use a phrase like "actually made up your mind"! :wink: What can I say? I don't know how actual it is, but when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, but it doesn't retroactively show that my mind wasn't in fact made up.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? I was using it to refer something pro-tem. I can make up my mind to go to the store tomorrow, then decide not to. Was my mind actually made up? Yes, on my usage. And then it wasn't. But I'm open to other terminology.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too, — J

So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you?

:wink:


It's a bugger of an argument.

Unless you want to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" amounts to? — J

That's what Wittgenstein would do - look at how we use "making up one's mind". Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you get up and go to the shop... the act.

A bugger of an argument.

Gotta love it.

Point is, of course, that we can't check to see if we do all use the same categories...

Perhaps Kant's categories might be seen as a precursor to charity.

For my part, I just don't much like Kant's transcendental arguments. Fraught.

Genreral structure:

• The only way we can have A is if B
• We have A
• Therefore, B

And that first premise is very hard to substantiate, very easy to break.

when I make up my mind about X, I generally know it, and if I change my mind, I know that too,
— J
So you say... but as Wittgenstein points out, what if it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you? — Banno

I'll grant the remote possibility; I don't know it for certain. But this is on a par with Descartes's evil demon, isn't it? A chance so unlikely that it's not worth worrying about.

Was my mind actually made up? It was. And then it wasn't. So was it ever? The only way to decide this is if you go to the shop... — Banno

That's one way. Another method is to fine-tune what "making up one's mind" means. Having done that, I'll know what to say, no matter if I go to the shop or not. With this method, the arrow goes the other way: I don't find out from going to the shop whether I'd made up my mind. I find out from a certain construal of "make up my mind" what not going to the shop means, in that regard.

TBC . . . my eyes are closing.

May you not have dreams of Descartes' evil daemon...

'cause you are still not sure... not until you act.

Banno,

I can see you are being patient with me and I appreciate it.

If I sound like I am repeating myself, it is because 1) I don’t think you are seeing what I’m saying and therefore 2) your replies aren’t hitting the mark for me.

We are in the middle of so many philosophical works right now so I think it is worth the pain.

Even if no “best” exists, you can still say one thing is better than another. — Banno

You said “thing”. As to a thing, in hand, “even if no ‘best’ thing exists, Incan still find one thing is ‘better’.”
I agree with that.

I then ask “what do I really mean when I say this thing is ‘better than’ another?”

Now I can put the thing down and conceptualize the measuring stick in my mind and then, post hoc, affix “better” to that thing.

Is “best” always explicit or cognized when we judge better? — Banno

My answer is yes. I have to know the concept (absent any exemplar ‘thing’) of “best” when I use a measuring that identifies any thing as “better” - the measuring stick, my concept, is “worst-better-best”. There is where best lives, in my concepts, as the measurement itself.
‘Better’ is a measure of “bestness”.

The ideal may be an asymptotic or regulative concept, not a concrete one: Perhaps “best” is a kind of horizon we approach but never fully reach. We use it as a guide, not necessarily as a fixed known point. — Banno

That sounds like something I would say. I have some areas I would want to clarify, but, this is basically it.

Practical usage often doesn’t require the best: When choosing between two apples, you don’t need to know the best apple in the world; just which one tastes better. — Banno

But here we fall back to earth (or focus not on the conceptual but instead on the concrete) and lose sight of the measuring stick where best most perfectly stands. Here I would fall back and say who cares about the rest of the world - there are two apples, give me the best one.

The “scale” might be constructed post hoc: Sometimes we impose a scale after seeing the comparisons, rather than having it given beforehand. — Banno

The scale is definitely post hoc. The two apples sitting there with no minds applied to them each think they are perfect, and they are. We build the scale. We apply it to the apples. But the scale isn’t lesser greater greater still. The scale, like the apples, is finite and simple and identifiable as one scale, with a start at ‘worst’ going all the way to an end at ‘best’.

I’m not trying to play volley ball or tennis with you. I am honestly trying to work this out.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards.

I think it is worth the pain — Fire Ologist

I'm unconvinced.

I think the crux of the contention here is you are holding a thing, an apple, and don’t need or care about worst or best. If you would skip using ‘better’ and just say each apple is incomparable, I’d have no issue. But if you want to group two things and compare them, you have entered the metaphysical world of the ideal, and “appleness” becomes one of our questions, and with “better” among apples “best” becomes a measurement of one of our standards. — Fire Ologist

For my part, I just don't much like Kant's transcendental arguments. Fraught.

Genreral structure:
The only way we can have A is if B
We have A
Therefore, B
And that first premise is very hard to substantiate, very easy to break. — Banno

I think if we weaken their universality it's something of a common theme amongst philosophers: instead of the form we often say things more loosely like "This presupposes that" -- it may not be the case, but insofar that we agree upon the presupposition then the argument tracks well enough. Rather than structuring thought I'd say this structures dialogue: Less ostentatiously we could say that the first premise, if agreed upon, is to acknowledge the importance of the priority between two concepts.

I've seen it cast as a kind of "inference to the best explanation" as well -- where the transcendental part is the tentative "Well... this is the best guess I can think of for now, so until you have a better one..."


Though, really, it is just my idiosyncratic way of thinking through a philosopher -- I look for relations and analogies and such. It may not be relevant after all. It's something of a stretch, except for when I was reading Adorno talking about Kant as a kind of philosophical positivist, and that gave me some food for thought. (not in the analytic/continental sense, but the older sense of philosophy being able to establish positive knowledge -- at the very least of the sort that can state "and this is where you can go no further")

I think you can make a case that knowing an ideal type or goal is important in some kinds of inquiry. Why don't you try to construct such a specific case? -- it'd be worth doing, I think. — J

You know how when you walk down the street you can’t bump into “13” - it’s a concept only existing in the mind. Numbers painted are shapes and colors, but “13” is a concept.

“Best” is like that.
So is “better”.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help?

Why is “better” so damn useful? Because the people who use it know how to use “best” and “worst”. And when really known, I think, you see that best highlights worst and these both generate what is between them namely, the better or worse.

"inference to the best explanation" — Moliere

Poor mans' induction.

Bleh.

:D

You're not wrong.

But, descriptively, don't people sometimes reason in this manner? Or is it a philosopher's fiction?

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well. — Fire Ologist

I would say yes, sort of. We could imagine gradations of betterment that go on forever. It just keeps going. I don't know of any reason to deny this scenario.

But there's an obscure problem with this having to do with the fact that parts are always understood relative to a whole. If the whole is infinite, then it's undefined. For practical purposes of the intellect, there is no whole to give meaning to the parts. That means there's no way to say how much better x is than y.

On the other hand, if we set a limit, we now have a best, a whole, and a way to give the increments of betterment meaning. But how can bestness be other than arbitrary? Why can't we exceed our best?

Worms. Cans thereof.

Briefly and dogmatically, we can be pretty sure about our deductions; induction is deductively invalid; calling induction "abduction" doesn't make it valid. (There goes most of the philosophy of science, especially for the pragmatists, especially especially Peirce’s logic of science.)

But Ramsey's solution gives us something to work with. Instead of seeking justification for induction, he explains how we act as if inductive reasoning were valid. Wanna bet? If you say you believe the sun will rise tomorrow, wanna bet? How much? At what odds? Your willingness to stake something reveals your degree of belief, not some abstract epistemic warrant. Rationality, for Ramsey, isn’t about justifying beliefs from first principles, but about maintaining consistency between your beliefs and actions.

Davidson makes use of this in his latter work.

Mohism.

Mohism — Banno

Might push this. Both Davidson and the Mohists offer a vision of explanation and rationality that is causal but not mechanical, normative but not law-bound, and grounded in use and interpretation rather than metaphysical speculation.

Briefly and dogmatically, we can be pretty sure about our deductions; induction is deductively invalid; calling induction "abduction" doesn't make it valid. — Banno

Agreed on both counts.

I'm prone to thinking of induction as a kind of myth. Not the bad kind, but the good kind -- that is still a myth.

But Ramsey's solution gives us something to work with. Instead of seeking justification for induction, he explains how we act as if inductive reasoning were valid. Wanna bet? If you say you believe the sun will rise tomorrow, wanna bet? How much? At what odds? Your willingness to stake something reveals your degree of belief, not some abstract epistemic warrant. Rationality, for Ramsey, isn’t about justifying beliefs from first principles, but about maintaining consistency between your beliefs and actions.

Davidson makes use of this in his latter work. — Banno

Let's take this model up with the idea Williamson seems to be presenting here -- suppose philosophers formed a sort of betting ring on their particular philosophical ideas.

Does this make for a rational activity? Or is it not the betting, but the conclusion that's important? I.e. no the story you started with, but rather the "Rationality...[is] about maintaining consistency between your beliefs and actions"

My thought is that rationality is a collective practice whereby we check one another's beliefs through some agreed upon rough notions. Would that even be contrary to Ramsey, or could it be framed in terms of maintaining consistency between beliefs and actions?

Mohism — Banno

It looks interesting, from the wikipedia page.

All I’m saying is that if you invoke “better” about any thing or as any concept, you have invoked “best” and “worst” as well.

Does that help? — Fire Ologist

No, sorry. You seem to be simply restating your position.

I suggested an example -- the battle of the bands -- in which we don't appear to need a constitutive idea of "best" in order to choose a winner. (Remember, we're both agreeing to reject that other reading of "best" which simply defines it as "top choice." That's not constitutive. That would be like saying that piety is what the gods love. It provides no content.)

I said that I thought there were probably some cases in which having an articulated, constitutive version of an "ideal" or a "best" would be helpful in inquiry. I suggested you might want to construct such an example, so we could compare it to the band example.

Was the "13" example meant to be this? If so, you'll need to say more. How does an abstract number analogize to "the best"?

A nested judgment-stroke would not violate Frege’s logical vision; — Banno

You simply do not know what you are talking about. For Frege the notation is unified and continuous. The horizontal represents the content and the vertical represents the judging or asserting of that content. There is no such thing as a double vertical or a nested judgment-stroke. Here is Kimhi:

Since the vertical does not belong to the functional composition of a proposition, it has no referential import. This distinguishes it, within the Begriffsschrift, as the sole syncategorematic expression. The whole symbol governed by a judgment-stroke, for example, “⊢p,” is itself a syncategorematic unit since it cannot be embedded as a functional or predicative component within a logically complex whole. (In particular, it cannot be either a subject or a predicate term in a proposition.) As such, it cannot be repeated in different logical contexts, but can only stand by itself. — Irad Kimhi, Thinking and Being, 41-2

In J’s threads on Frege you were too busy projecting your own preconceived beliefs on everyone, instead of learning from Kimhi, Rombout, and Frege himself about Frege’s logic. That’s why you still don’t know what you are talking about now.

And here is Plato:

VISITOR: I think I see a large, difficult type of ignorance marked off from
the others and overshadowing all of them.
THEAETETUS: What’s it like?
VISITOR: Not knowing, but thinking that you know. That’s what probably
causes all the mistakes we make when we think. — Plato, Sophist, 229c, tr. Nicholas P. White

I already said what I did say... — Banno

Here it is again. Can you answer a simple question?

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims, then how do you avoid the implication that philosophy is aimless? — Leontiskos

you were too busy projecting your own preconceived beliefs on everyone, instead of learning from Kimhi, Rombout, and Frege himself about Frege’s logic. That’s why you still don’t know what you are talking about now. — Leontiskos

That made me laugh.

If you reject the notion that philosophy has aims... — Leontiskos

Again, I don't

You are a long way from the topic of this thread.

No, sorry. You seem to be simply restating your position. — J

Yes. There doesn't seem to be much point in going over this again.

I'm prone to thinking of induction as a kind of myth. Not the bad kind, but the good kind -- that is still a myth. — Moliere

Sure.

suppose philosophers formed a sort of betting ring on their particular philosophical ideas.... Does this make for a rational activity? — Moliere

Very much so. Ramsey can be seen as providing a way to compare partial beliefs. If we treat beliefs as things that come in degrees, then betting behaviour provides a way to compare and measure those degrees. The degree of a belief is measured by the degree to which we are prepared to act on it.

The degree of a belief is measured by the degree to which we are prepared to act on it. — Banno

Here I'd go to the facts of betting behavior. There are those who show up for fun and behave in the manner Ramsey says.

But betting behavior isn't about the truth as much as it's about the thrill of winning.

I doubt philosophers would fare better here. As soon as money is involved we're speaking about an extrinsic motivation -- something done for the sake of whatever -- rather than an intrinsic motivation -- such as, what I take you and I to agree upon, the desire for clarity for its own sake.

While this sounds like a toy, I'm thinking there's an analogy to science here -- how the desire to be The Scientist actually interferes with the process of science. So it'd go with the gambler who believes they can outsmart others on their bets.

If I could persuade people to sign a contract that somehow, through a series of deductions, proved to a judge that they all really agreed to the consequences of "The sun will not rise tomorrow", then it doesn't matter much what the truth of people's beliefs are. What matters is winning.

Ramsey's assumptions are pretty specific. We could finesse the betting process in all sorts of ways. But the point is not the bet so much as the ability to compare partial values - from simple preferences among hypothetical bets or wagers, we can uncover both the subjective probability a person assigns to a proposition and the utility they assign to outcomes.

Truth And Probability (1926)

Anyway, here we are moving into the whole area of Bayesian epistemology, not a small step.

That sometimes folk sometimes bet poorly is as relevant as that folk sometimes will argue invalidly.

Anyway, here we are moving into the whole area of Bayesian epistemology, not a small step. — Banno

I'm likely in error -- but when I think of Bayesian epistemology I think that it's the attempted "cure" to induction. So rather than a truth it's part of the myth.

That sometimes folk sometimes bet poorly is as relevant as that folk sometimes will argue invalidly.

Fair.

I suppose it's the notion of competition of winning that I thought I saw, but it could be wrong to say of Ramsey -- I'll certainly take your word on what he says.

I think of Bayesian epistemology I think that it's the attempted "cure" to induction. So rather than a truth it's part of the myth. — Moliere

It bypasses induction - it doesn't make use of induction.

Induction tries to show that, given some beliefs f(a), f(b), and so on, we can induce Ux(fx) for some domain. This is invalid.

Ramsey instead saysgiven f(a) and f(b),* how much would you bet that f(c)? and develops a logic around this.

There's no claim that U(x)f(x) is true - no induction.

It replaces belief in a general law with a degree of belief, as used for an action.

This parallels the other discussion in this thread, again showing that we need not work with the general law, but can instead work with the local belief, contra Tim's apparent suggestion.

*There's no need for this, so struck through... Ramsey is just asking, apart from or including other evidence, how much would you bet that f(c)?

It bypasses induction - it doesn't make use of induction.

Induction tries to show that, given some beliefs f(a), f(b), and so on, we can induce Ux(fx) for some domain. This is invalid.

Ramsey instead says given f(a) and f(b), how much would you bet that f(c)? and develops a logic around this.

There's no claim that U(x)f(x) is true - no induction.

It replaces belief in a general law with a degree of belief, as used for an action. — Banno

Ok. Then I'm not understanding it well enough.

Your explanation of induction is clear. I'm hesitant about the literal betting expression -- is it a metaphor or a mechanism?

This parallels the other discussion in this thread, again showing that we need not work with the general law, but can instead work with the local belief, contra Tim's apparent suggestion. — Banno

Here I believe we agree -- we can work with local belief.

Transcendentally, since there is no other way to work.... :D

is it a metaphor or a mechanism? — Moliere

Quite literal.