Alright. Sorry for the delay, work called -- but now the big reveal!

[TPF Essay] Wittgenstein's Hinges and Gödel's Unprovable Statements @Sam26
[TPF Essay] Bubbles and Styx In: Pondering the Past @hypericin
[TPF Essay] Dante and the Deflation of Reason @Count Timothy von Icarus
[TPF Essay] What Does It Mean to Be Human? @Vera Mont
[TPF Essay] Cognitive Experiences are a Part of Material Reality @ucarr
[TPF Essay] The Frame Before the Question @James Dean Conroy
[TPF Essay] Part 1 & Part 2 @PoeticUniverse
[TPF Essay] Technoethics: Freedom, Precarity, and Enzymatic Knowledge Machines @Baden
[TPF Essay] The Authoritarian Liberty Paradox @Benkei
[TPF Essay] An Exploration Between the Balance Between State and Individual Interests @I like sushi
[TPF Essay] My Soul is like the Dead Sea @Bob Ross
[TPF Essay] The Insides and Outsides of 'Reality': Exploring Possibilities @Jack Cummins
[TPF Essay] The importance of the Philosophical Essay within philosophy @RussellA

Now that you've been revealed -- I'll say yours is one of the ones I'm struggling with to come up with a relevant reply. Excellent stuff.

I much appreciate having the opportunity to share these ideas in this format. The event really motivated me to put the work in. — Baden

I appreciated your essay so much because it was more than I expected -- it's a strong thesis that explains itself and causes reflection in me. I suppose now that you've revealed I'll join in the back-and-forth.

(if mostly continental) — Baden

(if mostly the good guys, yes) ;)

It's there. I PM'ed him to point out which one so that I didn't give hints.

Responded by PM to keep hints minimal

Yup, that's the one.

Heh, alright. Glad to hear it. It was mostly for you that I spoke up so much.

I'm just trying to help people understand -- I don't care what they do after that.

Back on track -- sorry for the divergence. Your points have been excellent.

Ok so it is not totally unfounded that anarchists have at some points in time sown discord in society. The mainstream view is not a total fabrication then. :sweat: — unimportant

Yeh, it's not an entire fabrication -- but you know how you grow up with "the time when we had to defeat the British great grandpa Blah did his duty and founded what we have now" then find out what our nation has done for-real-for-realz then you start seeing how propaganda by the deed is smol boi stuff.

I agree with @boethius on the origins of police and while it's related I think it better in another thread?

I think this is now becoming very diffuse, but thanks for the discussion Moliere. — Leontiskos

Same to you, as always. :heart:

It seems to me that you do not understand this. You do not understand that when you contradict Hume's conclusion you must also hold that his argument is unsound. — Leontiskos

Maybe not.

I think Hume is right with respect to the causal relation -- we think that there's a necessary relationship between events but there's not -- and I think he's right with respect to the is/ought divide -- we must have some minor premise which connects an is to an ought, like "if x is true, then i ought y" in order to make an inference, and that minor premise is rightly described as a passion.

But I'd go further there and say there are rational passions -- just not eternally rational passions. They're developed within a particular community that cares about rationality.

But why do you claim that Aristotle did not do something when you have such a lack of familiarity with Aristotle? That's the problem I have with anti-Aristotelians: they ignorantly dismiss Aristotle on all manner of topic. Myles Burnyeat identifies the precise place where Aristotle does what you think he did not do in his article, "Enthymeme: Aristotle on the logic of persuasion." (See also his, "The origins of non-deductive inference.") — Leontiskos

I was thinking of know-how mainly, but yes I know he's fine with inference that's informal.

The part where I think what I've said about essence matters is more about what I'd call his induction from the physics to the metaphysics. At that point, due to my Kantian influence, I feel like you need more than familiarity. It seems to me the reason that Aristotle can climb to the mind of God is because of what I said about essence -- we may be wrong about it, but there is some kind of essence to be right about, and if we assume Aristotle is right about the essence of metaphysics then he's right about his inference up to the mind of God.

Given Kant's insistence on a sort of empirical justification, and noting how such things are beyond experience, demonstrates that such inferences cannot take place. Even if there is an essence of things -- which I believe he probably believed, given his ties to Aristotle -- the Ideas can never be justified, and therefore can never be known.

Kant's cognitivism is empiricist, like Aristotle's, but he cuts off metaphysics as scientific knowledge, unlike Aristotle.

Now I'll gladly admit that I could be putting this wrong in terms of Aristotle. I can be read contra-Aristotle in many circumstances, but it's the sort of love a person who likes philosophy gives to another philosopher.

Well when I said I recommend tutoring, I meant that I recommend that people tutor. But learning is also good. — Leontiskos

Ooooh. Heh. I thought you were saying I ought go get some tutoring.

Again, Hume gives a proof via exhaustive disjunction. The retort, "There is a disjunct you missed," is sort of tangential to the whole spirit of the thing. In this case you seem to be saying that we could have direct empirical knowledge of rational relations, which seems unlikely. — Leontiskos

That would solve it, you're right.

But I'd rather just say I don't know when I don't know: the retort is "What if there is some third thing we missed?" -- supposing empiricism (whatever that is) must be true and induction must not be true then it seems that knowledge must (somehow) be produced by empiricism without induction. I'd say that's an interesting philosophical question.

One way we might retort back is that reality is wider than exhaustive disjunction, yeah?

I'm OK with people taking a non-position when they realize an issue is confusing and say "I don't know, though I know what others would say" -- mostly because that's where I'd say I'm at with most issues. I have thoughts, I indulge, but honestly . . .

Then, as with everything else, he would point you to the place where he already did that. :wink: — Leontiskos

See, this is the bit I think we clash on the most. Soft neo-Aristotelianism makes enough sense to me, but if we start talking about Aristotle Aristotle then I have to say that I don't think he already did that. I think Aristotle made errors like all scholars do.

The tradition after that deals with counter-examples, as traditions do, and builds from them. But in that case it's easy to point to another tradition to say how they "already" took care of that.

I'd say that folks who are making random guesses are not having as much fun as those who know how to achieve their end, and that anyone who thinks they are merely guessing, but has consistent success, already has a method that they just don't understand. But I'm sure you disagree on that. — Leontiskos

Yeah :)

It is quite beautiful, though, when one moves beyond random guesses and begins to understand rationality proper. It is as if they step into a new world. This is why I recommend tutoring.

I'm not opposed to tutorship at any time -- I'll never learn it all. Someone else will always know more than I. And likewise I know more than others on certain things and in the right circumstances I'll tutor them.

I'm a bit bemused again, though, because in terms of philosophy I think that reason, rationality, all that, are the sine qua non of philosophy. I know that the world looks beautiful under rationality. I just started noticing how sometimes truth superseded beauty.

Related, the discussion between Srap and I beginning <here>. — Leontiskos

I had been following that discussion up to https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/992579

At the end of the day, whether garden or forest, I think we need something more robust than a gesturing towards "guesswork." Foresters have their tools just as gardeners do. No one is just running, day after day, with random guesses. — Leontiskos

Sorry, missed this.

I think we'd like such a thing, but it's not always appropriate. Also I think that such a thing takes a great deal of work, and sometimes I see the play in philosophy as undervalued. Further I think that philosophy is generally undervalued by people because they don't understand that it can be fun -- we need good tools and arguments are great, but there really is this erotic side to philosophy that I think would benefit people because if they like philosophy then they'll employ it more widely.

Less of an architectonic and more of a walk through the forest.

If someone were to show that empiricism is the only option and induction is impossible, then they would destroy all knowledge. What troubles me is that you don't seem to recognize this. — Leontiskos

I don't recognize that at all. I would rather make the inference that if empiricism is the only option and induction is impossible then knowledge must not be derived from induction -- there must be some other way of rendering empiricism, since we know that we know some things.

You would apparently just pivot and claim that there is some fundamental divide between philosophy and life, and that knowledge pertains to life (cf. my post <here> about the crucial move of 3).

I don't think there's a fundamental divide between philosophy and life -- I think there's a difference between scientific knowledge and philosophy.

Strawmen, I think. If you found another category Aristotle would say, "Great." — Leontiskos

But what if I called something that was not categorical knowledge? :D

Yeah. I think it's fair to call him a rationalist, though a non-cognitivist -- most people don't worry about the problem of induction because they don't have a passion for rationality, but Hume demonstrates his passion for rationality by writing philosophy and carrying his conclusions to their end even though he finds them hard to believe when not doing philosophy.

So in that vein we'd have to build rationality out of the emotions, in some sense. The passion for truth (or being right) would somehow have to break down into the passions, however we theorize that. He has a schema for the passions but for myself I'm as unconvinced by schemas of the emotions as I am of schemas of the mind: Probably pretty close and reveal something but not a literal representation.

But it doesn't destroy non-empiricist philosophy, that's true. I would have singled that out if I knew you were positing a priori categories or conditions of knowledge. — Leontiskos

I have sympathies, but just like I do with any other philosopher -- there's a with the grain and against the grain, and I think Kant's categories fall to the absurd.

So even here, the story moves on... even with Popper, the story moves on. Eventually I end this story with Feyerabend wherein "anything goes", but if you pay attention that's more a slogan than his whole critique.

But, knowledge-first: We know things. How do we know things? I take it that Feyerabend demonstrated the impossibility of building a science of science from axioms or what-have-you in the vein that Popper was doing. So if we know things, and some of those bits of knowledge are scientific, and we have to learn how to learn scientific knowledge (which I think we do), then there must be some other kind of knowledge other than science. For me I turn to current practice, and history (or, really, just "history" properly understood) to answer that question: So there are at least two kinds of knowledge, science and history.

What I notice there is that there isn't some set number of a priori categories -- there are conditions of knowledge, but they change with time and practice and even practitioner. And I don't think that they construct experience, ala Kant, but I take the underdetermination of theory/overdetermination of evidence as a true description of science -- it's a "real" philosophical problem, but as per rule 1 solving it won't destroy all knowledge.

So the quest for an all-encompassing philosophy which tabulates all the categories of knowledge I take to be impossible to fulfill, given that the a priori categories are more assumptions that block out problems so that research may continue (not get overwhelmed by multiplicity). Rather, we have many philosophies, several categories, and even different ways of organizing thought that's not so obsessed with categorical methodology, or with proving oneself right. Hence the notion that philosophy is like a garden or a forest -- with a garden you've cultivated it, but there's some structure there and we know how it grows, and with the forest it's more "in the wild", waiting to be discovered, cut down, replanted, re-invented and so forth. Of course we're not separate from this forest or garden -- and really I'm still talking about ideas here, I just think they move and have a life of their own -- so we can effect how it looks over time as it effects our thoughts too.

Except I don't think that's anywhere close to true. Aristotle accurately and charitably characterizes his opponents before answering them. You've not done that. Here is an example: — Leontiskos

Eh, fair.

Are you an AI training bot? — Harry Hindu

I'm a time-travelling AI bot -- you'll see my account comes from before ChatGPT, but the AI of the future discovered time travelling before humans did so I've been here all along before their proper invention, a sleeper agent waiting for my time to post.

I've never observed even one person.

You'd do best to not listen to me.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-1869-1940/

Is Emma Goldman not a real world example?

My point in asking the questions that I am is to tease out those distinguishing characteristics of anarchy from all other social frameworks including liberal and socialist ones. — Harry Hindu

I mean, fair enough. I'm going to base any sort of analysis based on two things: a political philosophy, and what the political actors have done.

So how do we choose who the liberals are? Readers of Locke and Hobbes, proponents of individual rights, especially to private property, and the examples are the states which moved from hierachies based on monarchy/church and towards one's based on business.

Same with Marx, and I haven't seen a protest there.

But then I would do the same for anarchists -- so the philosophers have been listed in this thread, and it seems to me that there are real people doing things with those theories throughout history and today so the idea that real anarchy is a total lack of order just seems ludicrous to me. And it's that picture of complete disorder that's the liberal picture -- whether you're a liberal or not, that's the general background image of the anarchist.

Or no?

Eh, it's more that I think that your notion of how to look at political philosophies is flawed -- theory is important, but relying upon the meanings of words as we've come to understand them from our background is going to produce flawed results because all backgrounds are politicized. So the notion of anarchy you're espousing is something of a liberal perception of anarchy.

I mean, I've lived in anarchist collectives so no matter what you think about anarchy I'm going to have an idea about it that's got a real referent, and even if it's wrong then that's what I'm talking about and not some kind of absolute lack of order for the sake of no order because yeah man no rules rocks. If anything the practice of anarchy requires more discipline than liberals are willing to put up with so the characteristization from that ideal is not just something else, but almost an inverse of the real practice so it looks like some kind of hypostization to me rather than something real.

:rofl: Well, it might be your problem, but for my part I'm calling the anarchists anarchists, rather than "confused about what they are saying because pure anarchy is NO order" -- I'm content with continuing to be wrong by that standard.

Then I will be in error from now until forever -- what are we to call the people who call themselves anarchists and organize anarchically and advocate for anarchic things that have nothing to do with an absence of a social framework?

Horizontalists who are confused about anarchy?

One thing I wanted to know was when it came to art what was the judge of quality.
Specifically if there was one thing you needed no matter what. (I am still open to opposing ideas)
Do a number of factors combined have to meet some standard? But if something was slightly less than that standard, would it also not qualify? — Red Sky

There's a clear distinction that George Dickie describes which might help you as you go forward, though won't answer these questions.

He notes how there's the categorical and the evaluative use of "work of art"

So we can say "yes that's art" even if we like or dislike it, or would even rather it not be art.

But we can also say "That's a work of art" to mean "that's something excellent for what it is, something worthy of appreciation"

*****

If there was one thing you'd need to know no matter what I'd say it's some art or other. Else you'd just be reading about what others said -- it can be performance or appreciation, but it seems you'd have to engage in art in some way in order to to be able to judge the quality of art (in the "no matter what" way)

Plato begins with the a priori, empiricists like Aristotle move away from it, and then after Hume objects to empirical induction there is a natural move back to the a priori (with Kant). So sure, if you do that then you circumvent Hume to a certain extent. I wasn't expecting you to go the a priori Platonist/rationalist route. — Leontiskos

I like both. As you note:

Like, you know, Aristotle. — Leontiskos

Part of the joke I've been enjoying is that all I've been doing to Aristotle is Aristotle's method to Aristotle -- noting how he does things, his strengths, his limitations, where we might have problems with him and where we might not.

Almost like a peripatetic. ;) (not quite, I'll admit -- but this has been part of my humor)

I think Kant does do the a priori thing in response to Hume, but I don't agree with any of this about Kant being an emotivist.

Similarly, Kant and lots of philosophers think emotions are reliable when formed and ruled by the reason. — Leontiskos

Eh, it's a big-category assessment after having read and thinking "Are they as strict as people think?"

In a straight reading I wouldn't say what I've said about Kant, though I do think Hume is a bit more rationalist than given credit even on a straight reading. Else, if it destroys all knowledge and philosophy, why did he continue to do philosophy, and even write a history of England?

Not the first time for me. Though I'd pay heed to:



It makes sense to not jump to a conclusion based on a story we hear, especially if we have expertise in judging said circumstances.

I know Hanover and I disagree on things, but I'd take his word on Oossian law as worth considering.

I feel terrified by it all -- they're targeting anyone they feel they can get away with, and given human nature I'm pretty sure that's not exactly going to be the purification they're marketing it as. (i did not vote in the poll)

However I still don't understand what makes 'the world go round' in the sense of artistic quality. — Red Sky

Now mayhaps it's inevitable, but give how little attention is paid to aesthetics on the fora I thought it worth noting that the OP was asking after the notion of "objectivity" not with respect to knowledge, ontology, or ethics.

Ok. Now what are the key differences between Marx The Soviet Union and anarchists in Spain? — Harry Hindu

Man, I just listed a couple of examples to show that there's stuff out there to research -- that question you posed is a good question, but also huge and I wouldn't be able to answer it well without more work. I'd also note that they're just examples -- I'd include a lot of the socialist countries on the list, and I'd include a lot of the anarchist projects often mentioned if you go through the links provided in the thread. The point of the example was to note that we at least have real examples of humans doing this, so that the animal analogies really are just analogies.

Welcome to aesthetics :) -- those are the questions aesthetics tries to address -- we often believe there's a difference between say even some film that I like, and a film that I'd say is better in some sense than other films and others would like, and sometimes we can hear the same sorts of justifications for why someone likes a film -- "the film was alright, but it didn't match the book"; well, why does that matter? Must a film adaptation match a book to be good, and if so, in what way might we reason about that that's more than "Just because"?

You might find this of interest: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-concept/

I left Kripke out, so to touch back on that --

The part of Kripke that makes sense to me is page 18 of the PDF on the OP Kripke: Identity and Necessity.

My quick summary is that if the wooden lectern in fact exists, then in any world in which it in fact exists it necessarily is not made from frozen water from the beginning of time that's been sitting at the bottom of the Thames until five minutes ago. We can infer necessary negative predicates of individuals when we successfully use a proper name. The upshot of this is that there are a posteriori necessities -- so if any world in which water is H2O is in fact the case then for any possible world that water exists in thenthat water is necessarily H2O.

Proper names makes sense to me, but I'm uncertain about natural kinds for various reasons stated about how philosophy and science are not the same.

For instance, if our inductive propensities are not grounded in our rationality, but instead in our emotions, then in order to say that the inductive propensities are reliable we would have to say that our emotions are "reliable" in some sense. I don't see that going anywhere within Humean thought. — Leontiskos

Right, I agree!

So enter Kant -- he puts the rationalist spin on his philosophy but then I think he has a more romantic undertone which relies upon emotion than stated. Much in the same way we can look at Hume as a rationalist we can look at Kant as an emotivist and not because this is some defect in their thought or some such. What Kant adds to his moral theory is that there are proper kinds of emotions in order to claim one is acting morally or elsewise. That emotion is respect for the law itself. And then his aesthetics open up a door to a rationality of the aesthetic. Ya'know, a new one other than Aristotle's ;)

What I see is that the way we generate knowledge requires a priori assumptions, rather than knowledge -- or we might be tempted to call it knowledge after relying upon it or proving it or some such, but if we do there's be some other a priori assumption by which we are doing it. There's a certain arbitrarity to a starting point, to the question that one wants to ask, or to what sounds plausible to a person.

But then we hold to these because we desire to have a kind of shared knowledge with our fellows -- in a way these a priori assumptions are the basis of a philosophical research group or scientific group or what-have-you. And it's a unity of mind and reason that we see in our goings abouts and doings.

So in the soft neo-Aristotelian way this isn't even that far from Aristotle, but I do have certain objections and I take other answers more plausibly than his, and have already noted where I find it hard to believe and the consequences of those beliefs.

And I really do think it's important to see outside of the Aristotelian framework, sometimes. Since I don't see metaphysics as a knowledge I see it as ways people perceive the world when they ask philosophical questions, and when we listen to one another we find that it's different.

Do you hold that Hume's argument is sound, or not? — Leontiskos

Yes, but I don't think it does the work you're thinking it does.

The first time I read Hume I thought the same, which is what ultimately drove me to Kant.

But then I realized there's this other reading of his skepticism which treats it a bit more in accord with the Kantian notions than a first reading might suggest. The skepticism doesn't undermine knowledge as much as note how human beings' rationality is embedded with their emotions. The bits Kant adds notes how the mind has a rational structure, like I believe you're insisting upon, but he also puts a limit to knowledge. For Hume it's that the way we infer things about causation does not match his philosophical construct of causation, and so he must conclude that though his description of the human mind leads to conclusions we would not otherwise consider he can't help but draw the consequences when thinking philosophically.

In some ways we can read them as the emotivist and the rationalist both contending with this classical philosophical duality between emotion and reason, but each putting their own spin on it. Whereas for Hume it's to note that human beings don't produce knowledge by engaging in philosophy, for Kant our experiences are rationally conditioned. (But also, importantly, we don't produce scientific knowledge of philosophy, except for his one tome, of course, because he got it right)

Skip to Popper. His attempt to deal with the problem of induction is to note how our scientific theories aren't exactly positive cognitions or syntheses of reality exactly as it is, but instead what differentiates science from philosophy is the criterion of falsifiability. He takes up the notion that induction skepticism is true, and science proceeds, logically, by the modus tollens (which I flipped in my head earlier and misspoke)

The idea of a guess isn't that far off, to my mind, of how science works though Popper and others try to dress it up a bit more than that. But for me I'm trying to look at it as simply as possible in order to explain it to someone, rather than grasp its essence, and also to hear what others say on the matter of course.

In any case, your whole idea that induction is an inference that is supposed to be valid is a strawman. Valid inferences are deductive. Induction is not formal in that way, and has never been said to be. — Leontiskos

Now I've already agreed to say that my understanding is terrible in order to jump into the ideas and arguments. Let's just say Aristotle is right about everything.

If what I say is false, then you can set me straight.

You think the "problem of induction" is a problem for Aristotle, but not for your lackadaisical positions (like, "I've been told, therefore I know"). — Leontiskos

Why would I think such a thing?

I have noted that we could just not know. I don't particularly care to overthrow Aristotle -- I think he's anachronistic to our practices of science and philosophy today, but I don't particularly mind others who want to adopt his methods. I don't really see philosophy as this tournament of positions which must be laid out in order to demonstrate who the victor is.

Regardless knowledge does indeed begin with listening to others. Without the ability to hear a teacher, say in an academy or some other setting that's not controversial, one doesn't obtain knowledge. But, really, we learn about what exists in this world more or less daily by this method. We don't go to the degree of questioning whether the induction is a logically valid construct for our inference -- in our everyday life the way we determine what is real is through that interactive process with one another. Think of hallucinations here -- we classify someone who sees things no one else sees as undergoing a hallucination: it's real in some sense but not real in another. The way a person would realize they have a hallucination is by communicating with others about their perceptions. Since we have no way of verifying someone else's perceptions -- to perceive their perceptions as my own perception -- we pretty much just have to trust one another on what it is we see.

Over time we learn to discriminate that trust further, but the last thing in the world I think it comes from are logical constructions of knowledge. I don't think the process of knowledge generation is constrained by logical validity, except where research in logic and other disciplines might be concerned as a meta-requirement. We really can make guesses and then go and see if they are correct. Usually someone who is a better guesser knows a lot or has some familiarity with the world and what is considered knowledge, but that doesn't make their guess anything more than that.

If we know we know something then there's no reason for us to invent some frame in which to say how we know that we know that we know something -- like what philosophy is trying to do. We can just say "Rule 1 of this discussion: We know things"

Upon thinking that we can see that though there's a problem in Aristotle, and though there's the philosophical puzzle of the problem of induction we still know stuff. This is an inversion of the question. Instead of asking after the method in order to know our conclusions are good we are seeking out possible patterns in what we already know in order to answer the question "How do we know?"

It's a philosophical question with more than Aristotle's and Hume's answer, though: And I've even supplied a name so I feel like we've hit the merry-go-round of disagreement and will just go back and forth asserting what we're asserting thinking it somehow addresses whatever it is we're trying to address.

Oh, Ion!

I don't know that -- it's something I wonder about. And in the context of art I think it's interesting to explore the objectivist stance. In what sense can we make aesthetics "objective", or whatever? Is it even appealing to do so? Does it matter at all if the qualities are objective, or is this just a way for us to say "It's really important for others to see this"?

Ultimately I'd say the same of aesthetics as I do of ethics though -- that the statements aren't interested in matters of fact, exactly. But they are still valuable for all that.

Which is kind of a theme of my thinking generally. With respect to objective/subjective, though, I really don't think it's an important distinction at all. We get the drift, but there's plenty of interesting questions which can't be addressed by such a simplification of the authority of a speaker -- either it's TRUE or it's just your opinion doesn't exactly allow for nuance.

I was wondering what the consequences of the question were. When they said they wanted opinions I thought to give them one that hadn't been stated yet.

But also I don't feel a deep attachment to the dichotomy between the objective and the subjective, which is why I noted Kant's theory of aesthetics which could be read as both/and or neither/nor -- it's a troublesome theory to categorize as strictly objective or subjective.