Unless the OP can cite evidence for the primary claims, this thread is a non-starter. I'm tempted to just close it.

The study and article linked to in later posts do not "suggest we are becoming less intelligent".

But it's obvious. From your not knowing that the capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila it doesn't follow that it isn't true that it's the capital. To question a claim to know is not "by extension" to question the truth of what is claimed to be known.

Things are somewhat different in the case of hinges, but you haven't shown relevantly how. How does it follow "almost by necessity"?

:rofl:

It was true that Stan had two legs, even before there was any question about it.

If W. is saying that Moore's use of know is senseless, then by extension truth is included, for what are we talking about, if not the truth of Moore's propositions. — Sam26

This is incorrect. W is talking about the claim to know, and your "by extension" isn't supported. It's precisely because we can say that the statements are true that there is an issue about whether Moore can also know them.

What else would knowing mean in Moore's context, if not, that his propositions are true? — Sam26

What else? Knowing is more than truth, it's justification as well.

So, again, when W. attacks Moore's propositions, he is not only attacking the use of the word know, but all that goes along with it, including truth and justification (repeating for emphasis). — Sam26

You haven't made an argument for this. It doesn't follow. It's also clearly not what W is saying. I was hoping not to have to get into exegesis.

It would be like asking, while coming up with a rule in chess (as the game is invented), "Is it true that bishops move diagonally?" It's just a rule. It's not about true or false. Now later, in a given context, you can speak of the truth of a rule, but note this is only after the rule has been established. — Sam26

But hinges already have this kind of status. It makes sense to ask "Is it true that bishops move diagonally?" I don't understand why you've introduced this temporal dimension. We were not talking about the moment of hinge formation (and I wouldn't talk of such a thing anyway).

The rule that bishops move diagonally is a kind of ground for the game, a bedrock statement. It has nothing to do with truth. — Sam26

Again, this doesn't follow at all from anything else you said. Bedrock statements, as all statements, are true or false.

You can ditch truth only if you also ditch belief itself. That is, you can't take the route you're trying to take without abandoning the concept of belief.

not having a real Russian tradwife like another particular member presumably does — The Opposite

As far as I can see this is just your prejudice about Russian women.

However, I commend you for this:

Upon initially going through this thread I felt like insulting those I believe to be backing Putin [...] however, this ultimately gets no one nowhere. — The Opposite

:up:

This kind of history is totally absent from almost any mainstream discussion on this topic, the latter of which is slavishly regurgitated by people on this forum, among others. — StreetlightX

And yet they make a hand-wringing show of being concerned, worried, etc. It's hard to stomach. Liberals :roll:

It's not going to happen, and I think it's a bad idea. I'm not going to bother saying why, partly because I think it's obvious, but also because there is no clear and serious argument here in its favour.

Yes. Hinges are not known, not because they are not true or false, but because they are not justified. That is, justification is not what we do with hinges.

The book is about certainty. Particularly, it's about those certainties that we hold to be true before we go on to know things. These certain beliefs do not stand in need of justification; justification here can never be as unquestionable as the belief you're trying to justify.

But I think I do understand the confusion. What is a belief? How can we talk of propositions (or propositional attitudes) that we somehow "have" but which we would never think to state, that obviously do not, as entities in the head or whatever, form an epistemic foundation for our knowing? If we can talk of such a basis then it is in the nature of ways of acting in a particular form of life. It's difficult to assign truth to something that really only exists as a set of practices.

The answer I think is to recognize that a belief just is a post-hoc rendering of these behaviours--and attitudes, in the sense of orientations--in the form of statements. To say that someone has a belief is not to say that they have an individuated statement-shaped object inside them. And yet, to talk about certainties and beliefs at all is to talk about statements/propositions.

And the fact is that we can and do pick out and individuate statements that we believe, that are true, even though it hadn't occurred to us to think of them before. I am certain that here is one hand and that the Earth did not pop into existence the moment I was born. These are true statements.

Make sense @Sam26?

It's as if we have these propositions existing in some metaphysical realm that are true, but we don't know their true. We can say that of facts, but not of truths, which are just claims by themselves that can be either true or false. — Sam26

A fairer response to this...

As far as we can talk about the existence of propositions, then yes, they exist when they're stated, or rather, they're part of various language games. Statements are made about things we don't know, and those statements are either true or false (if they're sensical). That is, some of them are true, whether we know them or not.

Nope, you've got this wrong.

there are facts that are unknown — Sam26

If I'm interpreting you correctly then you're agreeing to this. But this is to say that there are true statements that are not known. It's saying the same thing.

How could you say it's true if you don't know it? — Sam26

I can't say it's true, but it might be true. I think you need to look at this again.

It's as if we have these propositions existing in some metaphysical realm — Sam26

No, this is coming from you alone.

"It might be true that there is life on other planets", an everyday, conventional thing to say, is to say precisely that "there is life on other planets" might be true--not that it might be true in the future, exactly at the moment when we find out.

It's just how the concept works in the language.

I can't make any sense of the idea that there are propositions that are true, but I don't know if their true — Sam26

You would deny, upon seeing said boulder, that one of these is true?

The weight of the boulder is 5000 kg
The weight of the boulder is not 5000 kg

Before you tell me that we don't normally talk like that etc., try this one: there is life on other planets. It could be true as far as we know. If it is, then it's currently true but nobody knows it yet.

We sometimes seek to prove statements to be true. This doesn't make any sense without this concept of truth. Your position implies that a proposition becomes true only when we come to know it, which seems confused.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Cool.

:up:

a paywall kept me from reading the whole thing. — frank

I caught it before the paywall kicked in. Anyway, sushi's video pretty much covers it, and even though it's from 2015 it's remarkable how much it all still applies.

Is there some overlap between political realism (from the article) and realpolitik? — frank

Yes, in internal relations they use the term realism or political realism now for what I was referring to as realpolitik. I'm not sure there's much difference. Maybe it's theory vs practice, respectively.

There is a good deal of information here on the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 — I like sushi

Good video. This article in Foreign Policy from a few days ago makes the same points:

Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis

It seems the most reasonable assessment, and this is from American academics. It goes back to what I was saying over a year ago here, that there's a basic disconnect between the (ostensibly, at least) ideologically-driven American foreign policy and the Russian realpolitik.

I can't find it in the change log. When did you post it? Was it a discussion thread opening post, or a post in someone else's discussion? If the latter, which one?

I can see a couple of your posts about free will here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10364/libets-experiment-and-its-irrelevance-to-free-will/p2

:up:

I'm always totally willing to pretend to listen to the masses.

Sorry Tiff, I don't get it. Sponsoring people? Betting?

Well unless someone can make a case for a subscriber-only area, I don't think it'll happen.

The "Swear Thread" is what made me become a Sponsor and then I made donations as I lost bets to Hanover — ArguingWAristotleTiff

This isn't helping your case. :grin:

We already have social areas, and we're not desperate for a new fundraising solution, so I guess I don't really see the point. What is it that makes you want to see the return of the Green Room? You haven't really made a case for it.

Ah, green as in dollars? Finally it makes sense.

I guess you mean a subscriber-only section of the forum. Well, it's an idea. Not sure about it.

Thanks to our several generous members, subscriptions usually cover the cost all right, and when they don't it's like you say: I channel my porn funds in this direction (it's good clean healthy porn btw).

I don't know what a Green Room is in this context, or how it would help raise funds. I remember seeing one on the old site but I didn't know what it was.

Yes, one of my favourites too. I don't mind that he's different from Chandler's Marlowe.

Kind of feels like lots of people fear the big questions. They have trouble as we all do with the humdrum stuff so thinking about our significance as a people is just too much to think about. — TiredThinker

In my experience, most people who address the big questions are bores. Much more interesting and original are those who take up a unique stance on "the humdrum stuff".

I only know one other book of his, Michaelmas, which I also loved — Srap Tasmaner

I read and enjoyed Budrys's Who? after being haunted since childhood by the memory of the film adaptation starring Elliot Gould.

You should enter the web address of the image, not the page. In Chrome you can right-click on the image, and "Copy image address".

Ubik, no. That's one of his maddest isn't it?

My relationship with Dick is ... complicated. I think highly of Castle and Sheep, but after trying some others I just got fed up with the bad writing. He wrote in a hurry and it shows. I know, I know, we should read him for the imagination, the ideas, and so on. I'll probably come back to him one day.

I like weird too, so maybe it's the forgetfulness after all.

Same question to you both. Any thoughts? — Noble Dust

No thoughts from me, as I can't even remember it. How much that's forgettableness, and how much forgetfulness, I'm not sure.

Roadside Picnic - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky — Baden

What did you think? I thought I was a fan of theirs but since I read this and Hard to be a God a few years ago, I've forgotten everything about them. Could be the problem was me, I don't know.

Recently and currently:

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon

:cool: :up:

So far, I've listened to 3 of the 40 chapters — Amity

Don't worry, the plot will get going in a couple of chapters. :lol:

Seriously though, I never even found it slow when I was reading it. Just totally absorbing.

One of the most interesting new albums I've heard recently. — Noble Dust

I like that.

Wonderful, bleak, lovely, tedious, beautiful, unrelenting

Six stars. Eleven stars. 432 stars. Tedious and bleak and beautiful. Funny and moving. Wonderfully written and very, very, very slow. Then suddenly, disorientingly sensual. Gormenghast the castle – miles long; dank, moldy, full of hundreds or thousands of unused rooms packed with useless and peculiar things. A tower where the death owls live. A giant dead tree with painted roots growing out the side of the castle. Lives ruled by inflexible, all-encompassing, oppressive, and unrelenting tradition. Gormenghast the land – always raining, too hot or too cold. Gormenghast the mountain – the peak always hidden by clouds.

The people - Lord Sepulchrave, 76th Earl of Groan, Countess Gertrude, the wonderful, pitiful twins Ladies Cora and Clarice Groan, Mr. Flay, Dr. and Irma Prunesquallor, Swelter, Nannie Slagg, Sourdust, Barquentine, Keda, Rottcodd, Pentecost, The Poet. The Grey Scrubbers. The Mud Dwellers who live outside the castle and spend all their time making beautiful carvings, most of which will be burned. The best of which will be placed in a museum that no one visits. And stuborn, 15-year-old, clumsy, and maybe doomed Lady Fuchia, whom I love with all my heart. And nasty, scheming, capable, admirable, and maybe evil Steerpike. And 1 1/2 year old Titus – 77th Earl of Groan. Everyone; almost everyone; odd, eccentric, and unhappy.

The plot doesn’t matter – for what it's worth, there is Titus' birth, scheming, betrayal, murder, suicide, a deadly knife fight, bodies eaten by owls, endless ceremonies, drunken revelry, and a toddler standing alone on a raft in the middle of a lake in the rain. The writing, the place, and the people do matter. The words grabbed me by the neck and forced me through the slowest, hardest sections. It felt like the hood of my jacket had gotten caught in a subway door and I was being dragged down the platform. I love this book. — T Clark

I don't want to take this thread off-topic, but I just want to say that this is a beautiful review of one of my favourite books, though I totally disagree with the oft-heard view that the plot doesn't matter.

A belief is an account of the cat's behaviour in intentional terms. — Banno

So if we asked the cat, "do you believe the bowl is empty?", we're asking the cat for its account of its own behaviour in intentional terms, rather than asking it to express something inside (a thought, perception, or attitude)? Is this the same sense of "belief" as when I ask the cat "do you believe in God?"

Hi tricky, and welcome! :smile:

Hi thaumasnot, and welcome to the forum :smile:

The way it works is that members can't send PMs until they've posted 20 times on the forum.