It's just the way that I feel. I could try to put into words why I feel that way, but I can't explain it beyond it's emotional foundation. — S

Cool.

That's understandable to some extent. As you know, I haven't posited an equivalence in value. I'm just saying that, the way I judge it, it's valuable enough to warrant, at the very least, more than a careless disregard, as though it's nothing or just some kind of biological waste matter that we can simply dispose of without a second thought. — S

I think we'd actually agree here in all except for where you say "to some extent". For myself it seems foolish to compare the worth of a person to anything else, hence why I say its infinite -- it's not something that's really quantifiable or qualifiable. It's more like a beginning for ethical thinking. So there is no extent about it.

But, yes, I don't think careless disregard is the quite right attitude either. For instance I don't think it would be morally permissable to impregnate yourself in order to sell a developed fetus for stem-cell research. Legally, by my lights, sure -- since I don't think the law and morality are one -- but I'd put that pretty squarely in the "wrong" category as having no respect for human life.

And I don't view an acorn as an oak tree. I wish that people would get out of that mindset. But the value of an acorn obviously relates to the value of an oak tree, even if they're not of equal value, and even if there's quite a difference between them. The crazy thing that some of the people in this discussion seem to be neglecting to properly consider is that, all things being equal, a planted acorn grows into an oak tree. Imagine if someone judged oak trees to be of infinite value, yet, being ignorant and failing to see the value in acorns, when given one, they just throw it out of the window into their garden. Then imagine that they move out and don't return until fifty years later. They look out of their window, and to their surprise, there's an infinitely valuable oak tree! "How did that get there?", they wonder. After it had been explained to them, don't you think that they would think that they had misjudged the value of acorns? — S

Sure, I'd agree with this.

This rules-based approach allows for the cutting out of subjectivity. "If we follow this rule, then it's not of value, so there's nothing to worry about". — S

Heh. I don't want to get too sidetracked -- put this aside for another discussion? It seems to me that it's a bit tangential.

I wouldn't say that it's a grey area. I would judge it on a case-by-case basis, and I would say that some cases are more clearcut than others. — S

Okie dokie. Well, at least you can understand what I'm saying, I think. I judge it to basically fall squarely in the middle insofar as we're talking about prior to birth -- to myself, it's the sort of thing that one has to weigh and judge for themselves more than it is for us to all judge and think about for others -- unlike, say, murder, which is clear cut.

activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments — Rank Amateur

So in murder these are the future-goods which are deprived, according to your rationale for murder being categorized as wrong.

Now I would say a bird has activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments -- eating, building a nest, whatever the now feels like to a bird, and the pleasures of birds. Dogs too. Animals of all sorts have a future of this sort. And they also have a value.

But I would say that animals are not as valuable as humans. I don't say this with respect to their biology -- as clearly humans are just animals as all the rest -- but because of the ethical category they fall into.

For myself I would just say murder is the immoral and intentional killing of a person -- immoral because sometimes the killing of person's is warranted, even if it is not praiseworthy. It is permissable -- such as cases of self-defense, in cases of war, and in cases of euthanasia (in order from less to more controversial). Whether a person has a future or not, such as the case where a person does not wake up from a coma, is not relevant to my thoughts -- the person has value regardless of their future.

Now for some they do not acknowledge a moral difference between beasts and persons. I don't know where you fall on that spectrum. But for me, I do -- I don't think it is immoral to own a dog, but I do think it is immoral to own a human regardless of how well treated. I don't think it is immoral to kill a deer for food, but I do think it is immoral to kill a person for food no matter how humanely done. These are some of the advantages, if we believe there is a moral difference between person's and beasts at least, of the personhood approach: it acknowledges that there is something almost infinite in the worth of others and that they, as ourselves, are owed consideration if we are to count our moral tokens (be they actions, thoughts, or character) as good.

Another advantage to this approach is that it is common sensical: Generally speaking we think other people are worthwhile. Why? Well, we can invent any rationale we want, but there isn't as much a why as there is a who or a what. Whether it be because the body has a soul, because love is all there is, because they are ends in themselves, or what-have-you the metaphysical basis for our actions doesn't matter as much as making the judgment about who is treated like this.

To me it seems that your own argument sneaks personhood, of this sort, in by referencing the activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments -- things which, say, a stone or an apple will not have. It just misses some of the important things that makes us specifically persons, rather than just beasts, and then tries to write off personhood accounts by saying the personhood of such-and-such does not matter, its the future of such-and-such that does. For msyelf the history matters ethically because it's the history of persons -- its not just any future, its the future of persons. But maybe there is some way of construing the future in a way that does not reference activities, projects, experiences, and enjoyments -- or maybe there is some way to differentiate this from animals while at the same time not resembling what most of us mean by persons. But I'm not seeing how.

Funnily enough it actually seems to resemble your argument, @Rank Amateur, only it looks at time in the reverse rather than forward.

Gotta think on that.

I think that's how this works. :D Give a criteria, respond with a counter-example, give a criteria -- and so forth.

It's not an argument for personhood, but it doesn't fall to your criticism either.

I'd have to ask you once you wake up. I'd probably believe whichever you said, with the caveat that you might be confused.

The thought experiment doesn't address the primary notion I highlighted which is the history of a person -- people have a history. The ship of Theseus is the ship of Theseus because of its history, not because of the specific boards that make up the ship -- though without any such boards the ship of Theseus would be no more.

Okay, so it's actually more general than just a straight line. It's just arclength of whatever manifold we're interested in.

I actually own that game. :D I just got to watch the video. It's a great game.

Here is the problem with personhood, in moral/ethical arguments -

The core issue is, is it biology or something else that makes us a moral actor? If biology, the answer is easy. If something else, what. And all criteria expect one fails on begging the question.

Entity A is not a person because it does not have characteristic X
However characteristic X is in entity B and entity B is a person
Then they modify characteristic X so it only applies to entity A

Leaving the logic: entity A is not a person because entity A is not a person

The exception is the embodied mind argument that our personhood has nothing at all to do with biology. We do not exist as persons until we are an embodied mind. Most often agreed to be sometime in early childhood. This argument is logical and persuasive, the only major issue is it allows infanticide, which as to your whole point above people generally reject. — Rank Amateur

Ehhhh... i don't think I agree with your logic here. But let's put that aside, because I think it would be a waste of time since I likely fall into your category of embodied minds.

The thing I tend to think of that really makes a person unique is that they have a body of their own, they have a mind of their own, they have social relationships, and they have a history. It's the history criteria that I think distinguishes between, say, a person in a coma and a fetus. And the fetus' body is contiguous with the mothers prior to birth so as far as I'm concerned drawing the line at birth is laying the line down on the safe side of things.

At least after birth we can say that there is a child with a body of their own, even if they don't have a mind just yet.

But, yeh, I don't think that personhood is strictly biological so I'd probably fall into the embodied mind camp, as you phrase it. It's an ethical category.

Talking about what other people are disagreeing over isn't necessarily relevant to my position and what I've ended up disagreeing with. You'll have to actually go into what I've said, who I've disagreed with, over what, and why. — S

I was using that mostly as a segue to talk about what I believe your position to be. If you want me to go through your posts and comment individually I will, but it seems like an odd request right off the bat when you could just correct my understanding.

But if you want I will. Just say so.

The one and the other don't have to be of equal value. The fetus just has to be valuable enough to prioritise alternatives to abortion in at least some cases, such as giving birth and keeping the baby, or giving birth and handing over control to social services. — S

Alright, fair enough. Then you consider the fact that the fetus can become a human to have enough value to warrant some sort of moral stop on abortion at some point.

But, why? Is it just a brute value for you?

I'm all for discouragement of the less advisable route and encouragement of better options. And I never endorsed intervention except in exceptional circumstances, and intervention doesn't necessarily mean strapping the mother down, completely taking away her freedom, and forcing her to give birth. I certainly wouldn't be in favour of that kind of extreme intervention. Intervention can take many forms. I'm talking about some form of intervention in the case of red flags, like grossly irresponsible behaviour.

See, to me this seems to be less about the value of the fetus, then, and more about the moral worth of the parent's actions in relation to the fetus. So if someone is irresponsibly pregnant then the fetus has more value than the woman's right to choose, whereas if someone is responsibly pregnant then the fetus has less value than the woman's right to choose, perhaps where the fetus is on a sliding scale of value of some sort depending on development and emotional commitment.

Is that a right or wrong way of interpreting you?

I raised the problem from the start about the ambiguity in "control", and there's ambiguity in "freedom", too. We would need to break these concepts down. But no one replied to my original comment and everyone else carried on regardless.

I guess my value is mostly with respect to a person. The woman is a person, which means they have moral autonomy -- they are the one's who weigh and deliberate in their own personal circumstances about what is right and what is wrong, because no one is better suited to the task than the person who is weighing that decision.

Would the choice effect some other person then the sort of infinite value I assign to person's would require some other means of deliberation -- but I really, honestly do not view the fetus as a person in the least. Value, I grant -- but not anything in relation to the value of a person.

Yes, I don't disagree — S

Cool. At least one point of agreement then :D.

I've been arguing that the outcome should be determined based on a valuation which allows for greater subjectivity than basing it on whether the fetus counts as a person, and then arguing over what criteria to go by. That depersonalises the situation, and makes it about rule following. But it's a very personal situation, and should account for feelings, values, desires, and the like. — S

I agree with your conclusion, but not how you get there. I don't think there's an opposition to be had between our emotive and cognitive capacities -- when it comes to judgment they work in tandem, and answering moral questions requires judgment.

Rules are proposed just because they give cognitive content that we can consider. Of course in so considering them we use our emotions, it's just easier to share linguistic expressions -- rules -- than it is to share our base emotions when we are in disagreement (clearly if we are in agreement this isn't as hard!)

It's not my view that it is morally acceptable to get an abortion for any reason whatsoever, no matter how irresponsible the reason, and the legislation here in the UK doesn't legally permit that. — S

Well, that draws the lines then. :D

Do you acknowledge a difference between morally righteous, morally permissive , and morally repugnant? I don't care about what words are used so much, but I do think there is a middle category between good and evil -- and I tend to think a great deal of our actions fall into that middle category, and abortion is one of those. (EDIT: I should add a fourth category, that of the non-moral, where many actions fall -- but it seemed a bit off course)

To find the simplest cases, I shall seek first an expression for manifoldnesses of n - 1 dimensions which are everywhere equidistant from the origin of the linear element; that is, I shall seek a continuous function of position whose values distinguish them from one another. In going outwards from the origin, this must either increase in all directions or decrease in all directions; I assume that it increases in all directions, and therefore has a minimum at that point. If, then, the first and second differential coefficients of this function are finite, its first differential must vanish, and the second differential cannot become negative; I assume that it is always positive. This differential expression, of the second order remains constant when ds remains constant, and increases in the duplicate ratio when the dx, and therefore also ds, increase in the same ratio; it must therefore be ds2 multiplied by a constant, and consequently ds is the square root of an always positive integral homogeneous function of the second order of the quantities dx, in which the coefficients are continuous functions of the quantities x.

Alright, I have a question about this. I thought I was following until the end here.

As I understand it what Reimann is saying is that the displacement of a line does not alter the length of the line -- it's not like the coordinates themselves follow some kind of progression where the space between 1 and 2 is smaller than the space between 3 and 4. The space is equidistant.

In the quoted bit it seemed to me that he was considering a manifold which is a straight line (segment?), and he is trying to establish the rate of change of x with respect to s (or vice versa?). But then I get lost when he is using the 2nd derivative, because by my figuring that would be equal to zero since he was considering a straight line?

The way I see it, I'm leading the race, followed by you, with Banno in his old banger trailing way behind in the distance, — S

Different ethical strokes for different ethical folks?

I see the inverse. :D

As far as I can tell you're saying that the fetus has value. Ok, so what? I don't think anyone has disagreed with you on that. The disagreement was over whether the value of the fetus is equal to the value of a person's autonomy, and I would agree that a person's autonomy has greater value than a fetus.

Many things have value, but we arrange these values into hierarchies or attempt to balance them when they are in conflict. And what both @Banno and @Hanover have done is attempt to provide some way of reasoning through that balance between conflicting values. But I'm not sure where you have done so.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I pretty much thing it is morally permissible to get an abortion at any time prior to birth. My general argument mirror's @Hanover, but my rough criteria make the line of personhood further along in development.

Personally I don't mind. I think at least getting a gist of the math is important for understanding the broader themes.

Yes! :D Reading him reminds me of an old math prof I had, actually -- his mind was so intuitively mathematical that what seemed like not worth mentioning to him was something that was crucially important for me to follow his reasoning.

I'm not giving up or anything. It's just taking time.

I'm mostly just "checking in" here to say I am reading along, but couldn't come up with much last Saturday.

But what about you, Moli? What would you say? — Banno

I don't mean to invoke humpty dumpty, it's just that to myself it seems that the invocation of atomic number is just as arbitrary as color in designating some aspect as a necessary feature.

For myself it does strike me as odd to say that the color of gold is known a priori. There's a sense in which I can make sense of it -- like, now that I think of Gold as golden it seems that I can think of gold in a purely conceptual sense and say that its color is now part of its concept. But, then, it seems to me that gold could have been other than golden.

However, from my perspective, it seems to me that gold could have been other than having 79 protons in its nucleus too. This was something we discovered a posteriori, and is not a necessary feature of gold -- that is, there is a possible world in which gold has more or less protons than 79. Your thought experiment would apply equally well here too -- imagine that we had some substance who retained the same ductility, the same color, the same melting point and freezing point, the same ratio for certain alloys, and in all other ways was the same as the gold we know in our actual world -- save for the number of protons we find in its nucleus.

Wouldn't we call this gold? Or would we call this something else?

To me I think it's similar to your color example. initially I wouldn't call something gold that happened to be red, but I'd say, perhaps, that it is red gold. And if we found some substance with a different number of protons in it then I'd say it is Gold-78 or some such, if I were being precise.

Sort of like how we came to know there are isotopes of various elements with differeing number of neutrons. They were similar in structure, but different in certain respects (and had different properties too because of that).

Yeah. I had to "push through" that one hoping that the latter parts might help. I'll try and tackle it again on Saturday.

You might say that life is indeed meaningless on such massive time scales such as of billions of years. What about the here and now? What about my life? Let's just focus on life right now, and forget what happens in the far distant future. Unfortunately the question of life's meaningfulness still remains. — Purple Pond

It remains -- but does it remain because of the heat death of the universe, or does the heat death of the universe happen to appear significant because the question of life's meaningfulness remains?

My suspicion is the latter. So a person who is not questioning the meaningfulness of their life will look at these facts and shrug, thinking them of no consequence.

And if that's the case then these facts have no bearing on whether life is meaningful or not. So there must be something else.

Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense -- Scott Crow

2+1=3 in all possible worlds. If it did not, we would not be talking about 2,3,+, or =.

Water is H₂O in all possible worlds. If it were not, we would not be discussing water. — Banno

If we can say this of numbers, and water, and even that the atomic number of Gold is 79 and to find something else would simply be to misuse the word "gold" -- why is it that color cannot function in the same way?

You say that it is a secondary characteristic. Perhaps because it just seems plausible that Gold could be some other color, perhaps if our eyes had different cones in them or something along those lines. But it seems to me that another could just insist that you're using the word "Gold" incorrectly if you're referring to something that is not yellow yet has all the other properties of Gold. They could insist that this is not Gold, clearly, because it is not yellow, but should be called Rold.

I mean why not?

Alright, I think I'm tracking now. I wasn't thinking of the line as somehow "fixing" position, and was caught up on thinking about how I'd actually find my position on the line -- sort of thinking about it like it is in a Cartesian coordinate: I know both yourself and @StreetlightX basically said to not do that, but them's where I was.

But the line example is more general than that -- it's not a function, per se, it's just a representation of a manifold which happens to have that shape. So if a manifold were shaped like a sphere, for example, and that sphere is already "given" in the sense that we already know how far each point is from the origin (if we so chose to express it in such and such a coordinate system), then we would only need 2 numbers to find our position on said sphere.

If this sounds right, then I'd say your circle example helped a lot -- I wasn't thinking of it as having already been "fixed" and was stuck on trying to figure out how I'd find where I was on a coordinate system.

A point of clarification for me. I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that you only need one number to specify your location on a 2-dimensional line.

The only way I can think that this is possible is if, on every point of the line there is a unique value for that line -- so that you really do only need 1 number to specify your location, the arclength (or whatever), since your position cannot be any other position due to every position being unique.

But otherwise I'm not tracking.

I was reading another paper about Reimann online, and from it I gleaned that I was sort of misreading "manifoldness" -- whereas I was sort of analogizing it with a vector before -- which I really only understand to be a magnitude with a direction -- it seemed to make more sense that Reimann is actually talking about the coordinate system itself. So Euclid or Cartesian coordinates are one example of a manifold, but the manifold could differ from these.

That probably should have leapt out as obvious from the beginning, since I know Reimann is associated with notions of space itself bending, but I thought I'd put that out there to see if others agree.

What do you make of the term "specializations" in the very next section?

I wouldn't say that water being H₂O is a priori -- that at least seems a posteriori to me. The oddity here, taking Kripke as correct and comparing to Kant, is that there is such a thing as a posteriori necessary truths. I don't know if it fucks up Kant, but I think it's an interesting query to compare the two.

Guess I'll have to stop being lazy and actually read Naming and Necessity with y'all before I say more.

@StreetlightX @fdrake

That contrast between space-as-concept and space-as-experienced helped me parse out the last paragraph a lot, so thanks for that. There is something I think I'd highlight in the intro, though, from the beginning:

It is known that geometry assumes, as things given, both the notion of space and the first principles of constructions in space. She gives definitions of them which are merely nominal, while the true determinations appear in the form of axioms. The relation of these assumptions remains consequently in darkness; we neither perceive whether and how far their connection is necessary, nor a priori, whether it is possible.

From Euclid to Legendre (to name the most famous of modern reforming geometers) this darkness was cleared up neither by mathematicians nor by such philosophers as concerned themselves with it.

I think that the "darkness" referred to above is the relations between the assumptions geometry has -- I take it he means the 5 postulates of Euclids system as the primary example, though he does allude to the thought that there can be other axioms. As I read him here it seems that Reimann is motivated to understand the possible justification for just these axioms, and wants to understand the relationship they have to one another -- whether they are necessary, whether they are universal, and whether they are even possible.

Nothing to disagree with here, just highlighting something that leapt out. It does seem, as we go on, that he believes that these axioms are not necessary a priori, but have to be justified by reference to experience -- and so the project changes to ask just how far we are justified in trusting just these axioms.

In particular why this leapt out for me was because of the next sentence I sat puzzling over for awhile:

it. The reason of this is doubtless that the general notion of multiply extended magnitudes (in which space-magnitudes are included) remained entirely unworked

I pretty much just had to take this on faith to keep on going, but I didn't understand why this was even the next step in the line of reasoning - much less why it was doubtless.

I look forward to it. I already got a head start, and I'll definitely benefit from reading with others on this one. It's pretty dense for me. :D

I will say that over time I tend to think of Kuhn as orthogonally to the other two. Feyerabend shared some of Kuhn's thoughts with respect to incommensurability, but their goals in writing were very different. Kuhn kind of goes back and forth between the sociology of scientific groups to how scientific thought functions, and because of his emphasis on the social aspect of scientific work he seems to be a lot more radical than he really is. Feyerabend is responding more specifically to certain strands of the philosophy of science, and is less concerned with scientists as much as he is concerned with scientism. And, given his early work, it always struck me that his concern was born out of a kind of self-criticism. But he is really focused on thinking about science, and less about the sociology of science.

That is to say it is logically impossible for Popper's criterion of demarcation to be false? Or do you mean to say that because it plays a prescriptive role it does not make sense to say his criterion is true or false? Or what?

However, because of the Popperian influence of the sciences, these people are criticised beyond belief and noone takes their theories seriously. — Pelle

I'm not sure that it's because of Popper. I'd say it's just because of argument.

If we were to apply Feyerabend’s doctrine of science to the academies however, we would have a problem. The poor scientific performance of these pseudoscientists could be rationalized by ”pluratiy of method” and ”anything goes”. Science would infected by improductive forces. That is my primary concern — Pelle

Is it a doctrine of science? I don't think that's quite right. In a sense, yes, but also it's a description of science at the most general level. There is a sense in which Feyerabend argues science shouldn't be so constrained as it is now. And the counter is the point out some fairly uncontroversial examples of non-scientific thinking that could then be part of the academy. But my thought is just -- so what? For you, at least, your concern is about productivity. I'll respond to that below.

Also, I feel as if you’re being very uncharitable about what could be considered useful. In my opinion, anything that brings us closer to the truth is fundamentally useful, which includes philosophy, language study and the Humanities. — Pelle

It's more that "useful" is a group-relative evaluation. Useful could be construed broadly, and it can also be construed narrowly -- but it's certainly relative to whatever goal or value a group or person happens to hold. Though "use" isn't Popper's criteria, so I don't think he falls to such a criticism. For him it's simply that his prescriptions don't mimic obvious examples of productive science, so his prescriptions need to be more limited than what he sets out. But if that be the case, then he hasn't answered the question of the criterion which he set out to answer.

I suspect the question he sets out for himself is not answerable really, at least for the standards that he sets for himself. "Science" is one of those things that can't be crystalized into a method because it is a human activity which includes novelty, human emotion, and so forth. It's often more like an art than a science, except we call it science because of its dedication to clarity, precision, empiricism, and other broad values of knowledge production where art has no such commitments (and it need not to). It may not be exactly like a family resemblance term, but "science" does seem like a family resemblance term.

There is: The Criterion of Demarcation. — Inis

I take it that here you'll refer me to my copy of LSD? :D

But you can answer the question too. Suppose the criterion of demarcation does not hold, and not only that that there is no such criteria. What would be the more honest approach? To invent a more elaborate theory of science with better fidelity, or to point out that there is no such theory?

This would be against the Scientific Method, and ruled out by the criterion of demarcation. — Inis

I think this sets out a beautiful example of just how the criterion of demarcation works in practice. We have the pure and the impure, and the impure? We need not consider them.

But I would say that good old fashioned arguments are good enough to sort out the good and the bad, and we don't need some criteria to say which is worthy and which is not worthy of our consideration.

Which isn't to say we need to consider everything. We could just not be interested in it. But that's a different stance than from one on high.

well, along as universities are publicly funded I don't want my taxes to go to something that will ultimately lacks usefullness. Science is about solving problems, but Marxism nor Creationism solve problems: they merely provide explanations taken directly from their ideological framework (which is essentially a set of conclusions). Basically, their work festers in confirmation bias, which I think would be dangerous for academia and civilization as whole — Pelle

Usefulness is a dangerous cudgel. For one there are many pursuits whose fruit are only born on the wave of seemingly useless inquiries -- consider philosophy, the study of foreign language, history, art, or even many of the sciences. There are scientists who study some phenomena not because it relates to the cure for cancer, better batteries, more incredible bombs, or more efficient processes but simply because it interests them. Anything useful is appended after the fact as an act of justification to appease the masters of utility that hang their crosses around academia.

Further, usefulness is relative to a group. Marxism or creationism are useful to Marxists and creationists. And naturally, should they gain power, they wouldn't find the bourgeois or atheist sciences terribly useful. Should they be allowed to ban them on this criteria of usefulness?

I believe they'd even be able to provide arguments that their work is, in fact, falsifiable while the work of bourgeois scientists and atheist scientists is mired in the preconceptions they are unable to let go of and is really just an elaborate way to emphasize their own bias.

Then, for two, what's better is for people to simply be motivated by curiosity and to explore questions.


Science is about a lot of things aside from problem solving, and there are many other subjects that don't fall into its purview which also get funding. If research institutions are to be free then it seems to me that usefulness, and other criteria, are just cudgels to exclude said freedom. Reason, in all its fallibility, is good enough to sort out bad arguments. We don't need criteria to sort out the pure from the impure.

I realize that his intent was to multiply knowledge by multiplying metod — Pelle

Hrmm? I don't think I said anything about intent, or that he was multiplying knowledge -- only that his approach isn't anti-knowledge, but rather against some over-arching methodology which characterizes science universally. Something like Popper's project, in fact, as that's exactly who he's responding to.

, but his unwillingness to outline what science is is a huge issue.

What if there is no specific set of criteria that captures all science? Wouldn't it be more honest to not describe it if that were the case?

If Feyerabend's ideas were to be applied to the scientific enterprise, things with merely heuristical (if even that) use would appear a lot more in the academies like Marxist Science, Creation Science and Astrology. — Pelle

I guess the response here is -- so what? If someone wants to run a research program on Marxist Science, Creation Science, and Astrology, who cares? I can tell you the specific reasons why I don't believe in this or that set of beliefs. But there's no reason to have an over-arching theory of knowledge to safeguard the sanctity of academia. I can respond in kind to any sort of research program or argument.

Creation science, for instance, can be best characterized by William Dembski, I think. I can go through his paper and I understand the argument and I understand why I disagree with it, rather than simply say "well, he's a creationist, and so it is not scientific, and so it is unworthy of academia, and so it is bad" -- putting him to the side without ever engaging him. I don't really care if he has a research program. What harm could possibly come from it?

As far as I'm concerned science is about having fun exploring questions and answers. Once you lose that then it's just another day job with a little bit more math thrown in.

how could we ever know anything? — Pelle

I don't think that Feyerabend is quite so anti-knowledge as you're putting it. Rather, his stance is one that emphasizes a multiplicity of ways of knowing, rather than having some arch-method by which we can designate good from bad knowledge. His epistemic anarchy or dada-ism has more to do with a hesitation to generate a general theory of science or knowledge as a whole than it does in being against knowledge.

What he undermines is not knowledge, but universality or hierarchy of knowledges where there is a queen of all knowledge. The phrase "anything goes" is one which describes his universal theory of knowledge -- or, in a way, is just a way of saying there is no universal theory of knowledge or a queen of knowledge.

But that doesn't mean we know nothing.

To some extent -- sure. But not a universal prescription for all science. That's why I was saying that Popper's problems are one of scope and prescription.

What sort of prescriptive things do you not like? The requirement to be open to criticism, and to subject one's ideas to the harshest of tests? How a bout the requirement to not appeal to any authority, or that a scientific theory must yield testable statements about reality? — Inis

All of the above! Things should certainly be immune to criticism, and easy tests are far superior. Authority should reign supreme, and testable statements about reality are bunk.

:D

Actually, I am hesitant about "Must yield testable statements about reality", though I am responding with sarcasm here.

More seriously: generally speaking, I don't feel keen on prescriptive theories of science at all -- that science should fit a philosopher's conception of knowledge for his particular concerns about knowledge is just too a priori for me. I prefer a more historical, and therefore empirical, approach to understanding the beast called science.

There are more subtle requirements, like given the choice of two theories, one should choose the one with higher empirical content, because it will be more falsifiable. — Inis

Feyarebend uses this requirement with respect to Galileo. If you haven't read Feyerabend then I'd really recommend it. He was, after all, heavily influenced by Popper. He knew what he was talking about.

Of course, this is only a superficial account, but these ideas seem rather good to me. — Inis

They do! The only problem is that they do not resemble how science is actually done in a universal sense.

The problem with Popper isn't that he influenced some people to think differently. That is what good philosophy does, and while I disagree with Popper I certainly think he is a good philosopher -- that is, he is worth reading.

On one angle I suppose I feel frustrated with Popper not because of Popper, but because of Pop-Popper. "Falsification" is a quick and easy word which pop-science writers latch onto without context and use as a kind of universal criterion for scientific knowledge, which is just not the case.

But that is more the result of just not reading Popper, and doesn't have much to do with Popper himself.

More philosophically -- the problem with Popper is the scope of his claims, and the prescriptive nature of his project. He's making a normative project for scientists, and doing so not just for a few scientists who feel inspired but for scientific knowledge as a whole. And while Popper's method gets at some aspects of scientific thought, it does not meet the burden it sets for itself -- and yet still demands that science should be performed in accordance with his particular epistemological concerns.

Feyerabend demonstrates this by placing Popper's method alongside Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems -- an example which surely everyone would agree is properly scientific, and even good science, yet does not follow Popper's method. So either Galileo is wrong about how to do science, or Popper has overstated the scope to which his method applies. (at least, if we agree with Feyerabend's analysis, of course -- we could set out to save Popper by trying to reframe Galileo in Popperian terms. But I'm fairly well convinced by the arguments in Against Method)

Copout.

:D

Isn't Lukács usually read through the lens of the discovery of Marx's early writings and the debate between 'early' and 'later' Marx? — John Doe

Just a quick note here -- I couldn't tell you. I was interested in reading the selection because of my ignorance of Lukács :)

Interesting! My reason for thinking that Lukács is dealing at bottom with what he takes to be a moral concern is that Kant explicitly states (if I read him correctly?) that his metaphysics is ultimately justified on moral grounds (in the First Critique). I guess it's probably impossible to come to any definite conclusion about this underdetermined aspect of Lukács's paper but I would love to pursue the point a bit.

Basically, my reasoning for thinking that Lukács finds an inherent connection between idealism and bourgeois morality (which perpetuates a politically retrogressive ideology) was that he's playing off of this connection that Kant draws between his morality and his metaphysics.

For example, from the closing sections of the first Critique: "Hence theology and morality were the two incentives, or better, the points of reference for all the abstract inquiries of reason to which we have always been de­voted" (A853/B881).

So I think you're right that since I'm not a Marxist I may be missing the fact that thinking of metaphysics and morality as in this sense more fundamental than politics and ideology is a distinctly bad way of reading a Marxist thinker.

I like your way of looking at this but wonder if you might expand a tad? Definitely curious about how to work within the Marxist framework here to think through the difference between morality and the political order, as well as whatever personal views you might have about tensions in Marx's nihilism. — John Doe

Well, I also want to say that I don't want to offer any kind of definitive way of reading Marx too. These are just my opinions I've developed after reading him, but it's not something like a how-to on thinking through a Marxist framework, and like a lot of thinkers which write interesting things; well, there's more than one way to fry an egg.

Getting that off my chest. . .

I think that morality is usually conceived in Marx as a tool of bourgeois power -- and really of all power structures. Morality is the code of conduct taught to people to ensure the order of things. If you can teach people to not just mind the police but even to police themselves then you entrench your position even more.

I think that highlighting Kant is noteworthy, but I'd use it as a foil. Whereas a liberal capitalist at the time would appeal to moral intuitions, a Marxist would appeal to one's position within the social structure. So these neo-Kantians that Lukács criticizes are sort of on the side of established power by bringing things back to moral consciousness or authenticity or idealism. Where a Kantian would point out the relationship between metaphysics and morality, a Marxist (again, according to my reading) would draw that relationship from metaphysics to the social order -- idealism being one fairly esoteric method of justifying God, morality, and a spiritual world which are all the sorts of stories those in power tell those without it to encourage them to police themselves.

The tension I see is pretty apparent in Capital -- while he is mostly drawing a descriptive picture of the mechanisms of capitalism, he also frequently cites horrid conditions of labor that he sees at the time, including child-labor. That is, rather than just making an appeal to one's social position, their historical mission to overthrow class structure, and the fetters of bourgeois morality he seems to make implicit appeals to moral intuitions. In the manifesto he lampoons bourgeois morality, but he does so by pointing out its hypocrisy with itself. Then the overall thrust of his work seems to be getting at a more humane way to live and be human -- an interpretation of Marx is to say that human essence is found in work and technology, and his appeals for a world owned by workers is based upon this essence.

At the same time, though, Marx seemed to believe that capitalism was a necessary stage in human progression, so his nihilism is also somewhat necessary. Capitalism generated both the wealth which would be required for a communist society, and it generated its own instruments of destruction through the creation of a proletarian class. So while there is a tension between his implicit claims and his outright declarations of nihilism, nihilism is sort of a part of the package too in that the evils which Marx highlights are necessary evils for human progress.

I think that for Lukács materialism is seen as an important metaphysical position for proletarian revolt because it focuses the person on what they see, here and now, and notes that what is real are the things we work upon, and not the ideas or spirits of another world or some kind of grand moral order to which they should conform to think of themselves as good persons -- a moral order which, on the whole, is something taught by churches which tend to encourage submissive behavior to authority figures, which includes the bourgeoisie. Hence the emphasis on politics and power over morality -- morality is a kind of tool, and nothing more, and to focus on it is to give up ground to the enemy.

I'm just inclined to say that this is a sort of hinge. One can make moral appeals, and one can make appeals to one's social position. I'm not sure it's actually important -- both, to me, seem more like a framing device than something with factual content. And how one effects or affects people is more of an empirical question.

Typed that kind of quickly, but those are my first thoughts! I hope I addressed some of what you're interested in.

I don't know, do you buy this reading? If so, what do you make of his attack on 19th and 20th century non-materialist philosophies as merely 'neo-Kantian'? — John Doe

I do! It's his broad treatment of thinkers that sort of allows his logic to go through, too. Though I might say that the criticism isn't bourgeois morality as much as it is that neo-Kantian thought inhibits the working class and helps the bourgeois political order to justify itself. A bit of a slight difference, but I think I'd at least try to frame things in terms of political power and not morality (though there is an interesting tension in Marx showing here between his avowed nihilism and the fairly apparent moral impulse that generates the project in the first place -- not un-resolvable, but a tension)

I don't exactly buy the argument that idealism and the bourgeois order are linked. I think even materialism can be framed to justify the bourgeois order. As you note this point is not demonstrated at all -- it's sort of an assumption of Lukács that neo-Kantian methodology justifies idealism justifies the bourgeois order, because the working class's beliefs are turning increasingly materialistic.

I mean, I can get the gist of why someone who is a materialist might be inclined to take their role in the (public, political) world more seriously, and why someone who is an idealist might be inclined to remain focused on the (private, personal) world. So I don't think it's entirely out of left field. For myself it's just a matter of reflection: if I could think of some way to link idealism to an anti-bourgeois, public, and political life then the assumption -- on the philosophical level, at least, though perhaps it might in a general way for how it motivates people -- doesn't hold.

Bit of a mouth full there, but Hegel seems like a good example of a philosophical way of linking idealism to just that. Not that Hegel was by any means a political radical, but the whole taking one's place in history towards a stateless society thing is a direct reflection of Hegel in Marx. And the step from Hegel to Marx doesn't require materialism for that to take placed, so it does seem to me that there is an example that disproves the assumption.

I have read the paper and took fairly extensive notes which I had planned to write up into a summary, so I am really sorry that I dragged my feet on posting about the paper. Was definitely unfair of me since I suggesting we go ahead and read the paper straightaway. — John Doe

No worries. :) We all have lives outside of books, and it's totally understandable -- I was late too.

(This leads him to make some eye-raising claims like Nietzsche is essentially a bourgeois working in service of the status-quo and the increasing focus on the role of embodiment is motivated by bourgeois self-absorption.) — John Doe

This is a bit astray, but something I thought about when reading his comments about Nietzsche was how Kaufmann's interpretation of Nietzsche had yet to appear when he made these comments, and even though Nietzsche as a thinker was not a fascist the German fascists did try to appropriate Nietzsche as a sort of philosophical foundation to their political program (mostly thanks to the efforts of his sister after his death).

That was a thought that occurred to me, at least, in thinking about his comments on Neitzsche -- but it's hypothetical at this point because I'm not really sure the extent to which Lukács would be influenced by Anglophone philosophy's reception of Nietzsche, which is largely what I'm basing this off of.

But I hear you about the categories -- I probably wouldn't lump everything together that Lukács is lumping together.

I think he does genuinely worry that it might define the epoch insofar as it could aid decades of bourgeois grandstanding and avoidance of taking a stand on the era's meaningful philosophical and social conflicts. — John Doe

That's true! I agree with your reading. Otherwise why would he be writing on it if he didn't think that existentialism presented a kind of wrong turn in thinking?

I thought it was really interesting in our own context to be reading this with the historical knowledge that existentialism, phenomenology and marxism will all become marginalized very quickly by both postmodern thought and an increasingly trenchant capitalist system. — John Doe

That is something that had not occurred to me, but now that you mention it that is interesting. We could take Lukács criticism of existentialism (as he conceives that term) as evidence of just how widespread the philosophy seemed at the time, even outside of strictly academic circles.

Mostly, I agree. I'm not sure the details matter because this is certainly the weakest aspect of his argument. He essentially hunts for the weakest thinkers then reads their neo-Kantianism into much stronger thinkers like Heidegger. — John Doe

Do you group Sartre in with the weakest thinkers?

I'm just curious. The other authors, to be honest, I have never read or even heard of prior to reading this paper so I have no opinion. But I never really thought of Sartre as a weak thinker, though I also didn't think he was really talking about what Heidegger was (not that we have to get caught up on this point!)

This is funny! I had the opposite reaction. That is the sort of thing I insert into an essay when I want to attack some big author or theme. I just sort of took that as short hand for "I think Sartre is b.s. but I have to acknowledge that I'm treating his arguments pretty flippantly." It would be interesting to know if he was sincere in thinking Sartre is worthy of a dissertation or not. — John Doe

This made me laugh :D. I hadn't thought of that, though you're probably right -- it makes sense of why he wouldn't want to spend the time with Sartre to detail where he fails.

One thing I was hoping he might jump onto is the relationship between Nietzsche's interest in "positive judgments" (what we would now probably call "value monism") and Sartre's focus on "negative judgments"

That'd be cool to read, I agree.

I am pretty sure that he is writing before Sartre's turn to Marxism and essentially encouraging that turn. — John Doe

Hrm! I wasn't aware of that aspect of Sartre interpretation, or my anachronistic thinking there. Thanks for the heads up

Again, a lot of this is not all that complicated or difficult to understand. But the fact that he locates all of these problems in fetishism is extremely interesting and I definitely want to re-read that section and post about that idea specifically. — John Doe

Looking forward to hear more.

I agree. In my view, I think there is a "third way" between materialism and idealism, which is best exemplified by Wittgenstein's work. To an extent I sympathize with Lukács's criticisms because I think he's right about the bad Kantianism that pops up time and again in a variety of thinkers in the early/mid twentieth century. (Hubert Dreyfus's attacks on Sartre mostly mimic Lukács here and went a long way to killing off interest in Sartre in the anglophone world.)

....

Yeah. Or, you know, perhaps we could actually just overcome the stupid materialism/idealism debate by drawing on phenomenology! Lukács merely posits the notion that this debate is necessary without offering much in the way of defense. And he attacks the 'third way' attempts to overcome this debate by dissecting and attacking inferior thinkers who, to my mind, exemplify the most feeble-minded aspects of the phenomenological tradition.
— John Doe

That definitely is the appeal I see in phenomenology -- since I don't think that a debate between materalism/idealism is really all that interesting. I think that a commitment to materialism might just be seen as important for a commitment to Marxism, which may be why it seems so important.

Really, my meta-philosophical outlook is pluralistic, too -- so I think there are fourth and fifth and so on ways. :D Materialism/Idealism is just one debate peculiar to early modern philosophy that seems to still be hanging around sometimes.