It's an extensional context if substitution works. — Banno

OK. It's just that I'm not sure that it does work. But perhaps that's beyond our scope here.

I don't believe so. The idea is that we learn what some thing is, name it, and then discover that everything we knew about it was false. — Banno

There's something very odd about saying that we learn what some thing is, and then discover that what we have learnt about it is false. What is the "it" here?

What this shows is that we don't manage to pick out Thales in virtue of what we know about Thales, a somewhat counterintuitive result. — Banno

Yes. But that means that we do know how to pick out Thales.

Try a different example. Homer. I'm sure you know about him, and that there are good grounds for thinking that he never existed. But those stories exist; someone must have written them - or perhaps they are folk tales with no author in the sense that we apply the term. So our expectations when we learn the Homer wrote those epics are disappointed. But not everything that we learnt when we learnt the name is false.

Good question. To my eye, it's clear that we sometimes do work out a reference from a description associated with it; it's just that we can show that this is not what happens in every case. Indeed, it should hardly be a surprise to learn that there is more than one way for a reference to succeed. — Banno

I agree with that. One alternative way is by means of an ostensive definition - which, of course, isn't a definition at all by the usual standards. Nonetheless, it works.

What this doesn't rule out is the sort of view that might be seen in a Wittgensteinian account, in which reference is an aspect of the more general language games in which we participate, or even a sub-game within those games. On such a view a reference may be counted as successful if we get on with what we are doing, regardless of how it managed to denote it's target. — Banno

I agree with that. I'm still a bit puzzled about why I think that "how it managed to denote it's target" is not a answerable question, but "how do you know that Thales is not Homer" is.

A bajillion theories of reference (or supposition) have developed over the years; apparently it's a tough question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you suggesting that you think it is not a tough question? If so, I would love to know more.

The "problem of the many" strikes me as only particularly problematic for a certain sort of supervenience metaphysics for instance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, the cloud issue is just a sorites paradox. You're right, it makes very specific assumptions, which, IMO, are, let us say, unhelpful.

It seems obvious that people have things in mind that they intend to refer to in most cases. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is indeed. But explaining what that means is less clear.

In an extensional context, a=b iff for any string, substituting a for b does not change the value of that string. — Banno

Forgive my ignorance. That suggests that you have an independent definition of "extensional context". But I thought that intersubstitutability was the definition of an extensional context. ?

If we did find out that everything we knew about tigers were mistaken or in error, that would nevertheless be a discovery about tigers. It follows that "tiger" does not refer to tigers in virtue of some description that sets out their characteristics. — Banno

Are you possibly confusing "All the propositions that we think we know about tigers are false" with "Each of the propositions that we think we know about tigers may be false"? Consider the discovery of black swans. How did they know that those black birds were swans? Similarly, a big cat with no stripes might not be a tiger.

Notice that reference remains intact despite the failure of each description. Hence reference is not achieved by using descriptions, nor by essences. — Banno

So now I'm wondering how reference is achieved.
I seem to remember that Kripke thinks it is achieved by an unbroken causal chain between the original christening and my use of the term. That might work for the purposes of logic, but it doesn't seem a likely candidate for explaining how we achieve reference. Any history we have of the term might also turn out to be false. So how is it achieved?

Right, religious faith is based on personal experience and culturally mediated interpretation of that experience. My whole argument is that personal experience and cultural mediation are relativistic and so do not constitute good evidence for the truth of propositional beliefs, although of course they do motivate and condition beliefs. — Janus

Personal experience and cultural mediation are the basis for all beliefs, aren't they? So why do you distinguish between false religious beliefs and true beliefs, as, for example, in science. There must be an additional element that isn't taken account of in this model.

I think Hume was merely pointing out that inductive reasoning is not like deductive reasoning in that conclusions necessarily follow from premises in the latter, but not the former. We have good reason to trust inductive reasoning because it works almost all of the time and we have a vast, exceedingly successful and coherent body of knowledge based on it. — Janus

Well, I would debate some of that, but the outline is clear. The relevant question is what do you mean by saying that induction "works" and "successful"? I would be inclined to take that as some kind of pragmatism. (?)

I see the distinction, I wasn’t thinking of lifestyle as a choice so much as a direction of travel that one had arrived at. That lifestyle, or practice that is adopted initially would develop into a way of life through an evolution. — Punshhh

I see your point. It's an important feature of most (all?) religions.

There are due to their origins a number of schools(philosophies/religions) through which a believer/aspirant may come to their faith. Some more orthodox, some more devotional, some more meditation based. Some in which a deity is front and centre, others where any deity is barely defined. — Punshhh

Lots of different kinds of ways. I don't see that as a problem, in itself. It's the claim to exclusivity that makes the difficulties.

Also their are people who explore a number of schools and then follow their own path and people who follow a path, unaware that they are, thinking perhaps that they have no faith, or interest in religious, or spiritual matters at all. — Punshhh

Yes. Everyone is following some path or other, even if they are making it up as they go along.

So, I have no argument with believing just on the basis of faith (or feeling, or intuition) ―and the best outcome I can imagine in a dialogue between religionists and secularists would be agreement on the epistemology. — Janus

Well, agreement on the epistemology would be good. It would be even better if that agreement gave a basis for tolerating other religions. I realize that in many, perhaps most, places, there is already a great deal of toleration, and even co-operation through cross-religion links of one kind or another. But in another sense, it is very hard to see how there could possible be agreement between theists and atheists - or even between one religion and another. But if that could be accepted, a great deal of hot air and wasted time would be avoided.

The difficulty for some religionists is that they don't seem to want to acknowledge the obvious―that there can be no substantive evidence for belief in the existence of what cannot, even in principle, be observed. — Janus

It depends what you mean by observation. I don't want to over-generalize, but many religious people do claim that their faith is based on experience. Some of it is mystical, some not. Religions are a way of life, a practice based on a way of looking at - interpreting - the world. So they govern how experience is interpreted. That's partly why arguing as if the questions were simply empirical is a waste of time.

Covid is a bad analogy because it is something real that could kill you. — Janus

I chose it deliberately because it is not a religious phenomenon. The cognitive content of emotions is fundamental to all emotion, not just religious emotion. (Moods, such as anxiety or depression are a somewhat different kettle of fish.) My account here is only intended as an indicative summary of the line of argument.
See Stanford Encyclopedia - Emotion or
Internet Encyclopedia - Emotion

So, to be sure the fear has conceptual content, but there is no coherent concept, in the sense of something drawn from actual experience, of what hell could be. Same obviously applies to God. — Janus

In one way, of course, you are right. But there are descriptions and images of hell in plenty, and they are drawn from experience. As for God, the ideas about God do seem to me to be drawn from experience. God as Lord and Master, God as Father (or Mother). Your criterion of coherence seems to me to be unduly restrictive. The idea of a unicorn or dragon, or even of heaven and hell may nor may not be coherent in some sense. But there is sufficient coherence to enable people to react to them emotionally.

By 'faith" I mean 'feeling'. I can believe something simply because "it feels right" or "it rings true". That is what I think faith is. — Janus

I wouldn't argue with that.

I don't think authority is good evidence for the existence of anything unless it is based on sound observations. — Janus

To be sure, authority can be, often is, wrong. But much, or most, of what we know is based on it. I feel a bit like Hume recognizing that induction doesn't provide a sound basis for knowledge and recognizing that we are going to continue to use it anyway.

This is very much about lifestyle and practice(service) — Punshhh

I agree with a lot of what you say. I guess that, for a non-believer, a religion or ideology, can be regarded as about life-style and practice. However, there's a difference, I suppose, between a life-style and a way of life. It seems to me that a life-style is usually regarded as an option, not fundamental. But it seems clear to me that, for a believer, their religion or ideology, is fundamental, not just an option. It's the difference between choosing to wear certain kinds of clothes because of how they look, and perhaps, of the cultural messages they send and choosing to wear those same clothes because they are necessary for how one lives. (I'm not pretending this is a rigid distinction, but the difference is important.)

The difficulty is that, in a multi-faith society, religion or ideology needs to recognize the legitimacy of other religions or ideologies and that blurs the distinction that I'm trying to draw and that is quite difficult for believers.

So, believing in the unseeable is believing in the indeterminable, which means the belief itself is without determinable content, which is really the same as saying that it is without conceptual content, but may have affective content, which is to say it is nothing other than feeling. So believing in the indeterminable is merely the feeling of believing. — Janus

I'm afraid I was not very clear here. My immediate point was that dialogue between believers and non-believers cannot take place, or cannot take place productively, if each side digs in to its own position and exchanges arguments in the way that has become traditional in modern times. It is (or at least it seems to me to be) a completely unproductive exercise. A more productive approach to park the question whether God exists or not, leaving a space in which, perhaps some clarity about what God is supposed to be (in Christianity or Judaism or Spinoza's thought). That opens up some prospect of mutual enlightenment. Conversion or not, it seems to me, will happen elsewhere.

But I also think that your argument chain here has too many steps that are unclear or dubious to be convincing. Perhaps the weakest link (although it may seem entirely normal to many philosophers) your move from "without determinable content" through "without conceptual content" to "may have affective content". This rests on a strong contrast between cognitive (true/false) content and feelings, which are regarded as non-cognitive, because neither true nor false. But this is simplistic. Fear of COVD, for example, is a reaction to various facts/truths about COVID; it is a combination of cognitive and non-cognitive content (which rests on values or needs). More than that, fear is more than a matter of feelings, but is about certain kinds of behaviour - it is about how one reacts to the facts. So I do not see why affective content does not count as determinable content or even as conceptual content? The existence of some god is not just a neutral fact, but requires a reaction. For those reasons, I'm afraid I can't attribute any content to the "feeling of believing".

If you look again at the context "faith is evidence based knowledge" you will see that I was not agreeing with that, but disagreeing with it. — Janus

I looked again and saw that you are right. I was careless and I'm sorry.

I see beliefs determined by evidence and beliefs determined by faith (or feeling in other words) as being on a continuum, — Janus

The phrase "beliefs determined by faith" sounds as if faith is somethiing separate from belief, but surely what you mean is (roughly) "beliefs not determined by evidence"? I would agree that there is a spectrum there, from conclusive evidence through partial evidence. I think that beliefs based on authority are diffeerent in kind. In a sense, of course, authority can be regarded as a kind of evidence, but it is a rather different kind of evidence - being, as it were, evidence that the source is trustworthy. So beliefs based on authority require faith, in a rather weak sense. There are also beliefs that are not based on empirical evidence, but on, let us say, the meanings of the words in them, or the (logical) grammar of language. It doesn't seem to me quite right to say that these are based on faith. But religion doesn't quite fit in to any of these categories.

There is faith in God, faith in redemption, faith in society and human interaction. Faith in oneself, faith in truth. Faith as a tool used in mysticism, or by the ascetic. — Punshhh

Once one raises one's head from the rows about religion, faith turns up all over the place.

If religion is about the fundamentals of how one inteprets the world and how one lives in it, I think we should be thinking of faith as not merely a peculiarity of some people, but as about the foundations of whatever form life a human being pursues - however inchoate and unreflective.

That's another way to come at the subject. There's room for both, I think.

When one researches something, one has to have an issue in mind. What is the issue regarding researching God? — Astrophel

Interesting question. I was thinking about the question whether religion is a force for good. My answer is that there are lots of other similar questions. But also lots of expertise and good and bad practice to learn from. One problem is that something may count as a good thing for believers but not for non-believers. Attracting larger congregations would be an example. Some other things might count as a good thing for one side and actually a bad thing for the other side. The multiplicity of critieria creastes another problem because any overall judgement must be complex and balanced. (It's hard enough with a good car or a good house, but this is a whole different level).
The really tricky problem is the idea of researching God. Of course, it is not hard to see what researching Zeus (or Rhea) would be. There are the stories, the accounts of the relevant practices and so forth. But it's a different thing when you come to God, (or Allah, etc.). A non-believer will follow the same methods as for the research off Zeus. But, for a non-believer, who is looking to develop a relationship with God that is at least akin to a relationship with another person, so it involves a whole different dimension - not merely knowing what the non-believer knows, but learning to take part in the practices - especially the liturgical practices - and taking part in them, not to mention various disciplines designed to train (or re-train) oneself for the new life.
Does that help?

An act of faith relies upon inferences and reasons that are defeasible and not undeniable (or indefeasible). — Leontiskos

Coming to a conclusion on the basis of non-conclusive evidence is a big part of our lives. Cases where we have conclusive evidence, I would say, are relatively rare. So there is nothing special here. Arguably, what makes Christianity special is prounouncements from believers like Tertullian, with his famous "I believe because it is incredible."
It seems to me that what makes religious commitment special is, first, that it is a decision to follow a way of life, not a mere fact. The belief that God sent his Son to redeem the world demands a radical response, which is not merely a belief, but a commitment. So giving up that belief is not like changing one's mind about what the weather will be tomorrow. It is more like ending a friendship or partnership. That is what differentiates faith from belief. But it is more than that. A religion structures one's entire life - it is, to coin a phrase, a way of life. Giving that up is giving up everything.

It is an interesting thing to say. I wonder how you think one should deal with this "complex question". Research? — Astrophel

Well, of course. What else? It seems to me that any serious attempt to answer it, will have to include emprical data, as well.

Are these extremely dangerous absolutes we should be open to reconsidering? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It depends how you interpret and apply them. More specifically, it depends you treat people who violate your principles. Ask yourself why the allies went to so much trouble to put Nazi leaders through an elaborate and difficult trial process, as opposed to shooting them out of hand or, possibly, sending them to their own gas chambers? Is it because there was any serious doubt about what they did?

At any rate, what you're saying clearly can't be "Absolutely True," itself, right? :wink: — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very funny. What will you do if I give you the wrong answer?

Yes, what I said deserves more careful expression and more detailed consideration.

PS You did notice that I didn't deny that there are truths? I'm just asserting that a certain caution and humility about our judgements that we have got hold of one is appropriate. Hume describes it as "judicious" and recommends it - as opposed to the "Pyrrhonian" scepticism so beloved of orthdox philosophers.

If they acknowledged to themselves that what they believed was not the Absolute Truth but merely an expression of their own predilections, then they might understand that others need not share their beliefs. — Janus

I agree whole-heartedly that the notion that one has grasped an Absolute Truth is extremely dangerous. It makes it impossible to acknowledge and tolerate any disagreement. I cannot think of a situation in which this might be a a Good Thing, but I can think of many in which it is clearly a Bad Thing. I do not confine this to religious contexts.

Based on what I've seen in philosophical fora over the last two years, I'm left seriously wondering whether it is possible - how it is possible - to philosophize about religion with people who do not agree with me in my core beliefs, There appears to be no neutral territory.

Surely, philosophy does require that the questions whether God exists or Religion is a Force of Good need to be suspended. I don't mean that actual scepticism is required. I understand that the Buddha said that the question of the existence of the gods is "undetermined". That seems to me the only possible basis for anything that might count as a philosophical discussion.

The fundamental mistake is to treat these questions - the existence of God, whether religion is a Force for Good - as straightforward empirical beliefs with straightforward empirical answers. I don't think that the question of the existence of God is an empirical belief in any ordinary sense. There's some room for philosophy there. Whether religion is a Force for Good does look like an empirical question. But it is a complex question requiring a good deal of analysis before any empirical data can be brought to bear on it. There's already a huge amount of research on this question. If there's space for philosophy there, It needs to take that work into account.

faith is evidence based knowledge — Janus

I can't see that, in the context of philosophical discussion, there is any clear meaning attached to this slogan. I really don't know where to begin with it. It seems pretty clear, though, that faith is not simply evidence-based knowledge. If it were, there would be no particular philosophical interest in discussing it.

BTW I do wish that we could get beyond the idea that religion and science are incompatible in some way. Many people are both religious believers and scientists.

I had no idea! Is this an outgrowth of the tradition (if I've got this right) that certain members of the royal family may not vote either? — J

The British Constitution is a wonderful thing. Strictly speaking, the royal family are entitled to vote; it's just that they think it would be tactless to do so. The same applies to the bishops of the Church of England, who are all classified as "lords spiritual" and are automatically working members. Nor (since 1999) does the ban apply to hereditary peers who have not been elected to be working members. But even those who are banned from voting in Parliamentary elections are allowed to vote in local elections.

The first law about this was passed in 1699. The official reason for the ban is that members of t[e House of Lords are there in their own right and so do not need a representative in Parliament. They can speak for themselves.

As for current arguments, the answer appears to be "both": — J

Yes. It all looks like a bit of a mess. It seems likely that the real reason the practice survives is that "votes for criminals" does not look like a vote winner.

Sorry. Posted prematurely by accident.

Sure, but isn't there a clear distinction to be made between "born with a speech impediment" and "born into poverty"? Most of the boundaries are fuzzier than that, agreed, but in principle I think it's a conception worth clarifying when we can. — J

Yes, but the outcome of having a speech impediment as an adult might well rest on both causes interacting, not only after birth, but even before (polluted environment). But I'm happy to think of a specfrum, which results from the interaction of the two causes.

I vote for both/and rather than either/or. Theory + political realities. — J

Well, yes. Thought experiments and idealizations have their place. But so does hard, practical experience. Perfect impartiality may be beyond reach in practice, but practical arrangement can achieve something, and good practical arrangments can do better than bad ones.

Can you say more about what the problem is, as you understand it? (The exceptions I had in mind are the various state laws about convicted felons voting.) — J

I wasn't thinking about the details. There are various categories of people barred from voting in the UK.

Sitting Members of the House of Lords.
Those in prison.
People convicted of electoral malpractice are barred for five years.
Those compulsorily detained in psychiatric hospitals cannot vote.

The arguments are slightly different in each case. But the reasons seem obvious, except in the case of those in prison. I'm unclear whether the reason is that those in prison are regarded as unfit to vote or whether loss of the right to vote is part of the punishment.

This is a problem for classical liberalism because, while there's arguably not much we can do about differences an individual is born with, the differences in economic status are systemic, not "natural," and could be ameliorated. — J

It seems to me that the project of disentangling nature from nurture is extremely difficult, if possible at all. The two interact during the whole of life and the prospect of separating them is very dim.

The idea is resilient, though, because you can correct and stretch it without breaking it and making it useless. — J

I think we would do better to consider the ways in which we negotiate this issue in real life and, with luck, working out improvements to those. More likely to be meaningful than something dreamed up in an armchair.

Now liberal democracies believe that all adult citizens (with some troublesome exceptions) indeed have this right. — J

Yes, they do. And it is a problem. Insofar as compulsory education can address the issue, that's all we have.

I would call this "heavily qualified," if you think about what he's actually saying. — J

Yes, I agree. All very interesting.

I wonder who does the specifying and adjusting? In real life I think that there is a great deal of consensus developing and then being enforce in the same kind of ways that the rules of etiquette are enforced - spontaneous, non-organized individual reaction.

I call this typical because his conception of a "capacity" is usually individual, such that "economic capacity" might not qualify -- though I think it should. And the "essential minimum degree" bit has generated a lot of debate, which would certainly have to be extended into the economic area as well. — J

I think the talk of capacities comes from Nussbaum. As to economic capacity, I assume that means the capacity to earn money. But the limits of what might earn money are quite wide; so it's a different kind of capacity from, for example, the capacity to drive lorries or raise cattle. Perhaps, in this case at least, it may be more a question of finding some capacity that each person has that people will pay money for, as opposed to a capacity like the ability to play music, where it is more a question of selecting among the population.

The question of education raises its head again.

Some cryptic answers there! — Janus

Yes. You do well to ignore them.

On the other hand if you mean that they don't miss it precisely because they have it just as the religionist does, then I agree. — Janus

That's part of it, which the secularist has, just as much as the religionis. But Berkeley attributes more to the religionist than that.

.....hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. — "

The secularist will not do any of that. But won't miss it.

I would say that this is, very broadly, the "free institutions" enshrined in Western democracy. — J

That's all very well. But doesn't he recognize that all these freedoms are heavily qualified?

I found Prospect Magazine 2018 - Rawls' Justice as Fairness

We arrive at “the property question”: is it reasonable to allow private ownership of society’s major means of production? If we agree to conceive political society as a fair cooperative system for mutual benefit, the answer must be No: these assets are such that private ownership inevitably endows the owner with inordinate political power.
Rawls was hesitant to state this conclusion. He wanted to leave open an alternative to liberal democratic socialism that he called “property-owning democracy.” These two “ideal regime-types,” as he called them, differ essentially only in how they answer the property question.

It seems to me that secularists and religionists are equally capable of seeing purpose, meaning, and beauty, as well as order and truth. — praxis

Of course. Both are equally human. Adopting a world-view, such as a religion, does not change that, except perhaps for some people, at the margins. For the most part, human life plays out, with all its faults through the framework. I know that many believers want very much to believe that they have a better handle on things and lead better lives as a result. That may or may not be empirically true, but there's no reason to assume that it is is.

Sure - I take worldview to include the quotidian and to be the source of our day-to-day choices and actions. — Tom Storm

Quite so. But that's where the analysis in terms of world-views shows an opportunity. The quotidian is what the religious and the secular share. It is not a choice. They bump into each other. So each needs to find an account of the other (or set about eliminating them from their world.)

What that characterizes the religious life do you think is missing in the secular life? — Janus

That's a brilliant question. I offer three answers.

1. Both saints and sinners would have the same choice - heaven for comfort and hell for company. (But, of course, neither would, in practice, make the inappropriate choice.) A secularist would not be present after death, so would never miss the opportunity.

2. If you consider the duck-rabbit as a duck, what is missing from the interpretation of the figure as a rabbit. Everything? or Nothing? Both answers are correct.

3. More seriously, consider Berkeley's account:-

As in reading other books a wise man will choose to fix his thoughts on the sense and apply it to use, rather than lay them out in grammatical remarks on the language; so, in perusing the volume of nature, it seems beneath the dignity of the mind to affect an exactness in reducing each particular phenomenon to general rules, or showing how it follows from them. We should propose to ourselves nobler views, namely, to recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the beauty, order. extent, and variety of natural things: hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of the grandeur, wisdom, and beneficence of the Creator; and lastly, to make the several parts of the creation, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation and comfort of ourselves and fellow-creatures. — "Berkeley,

The possibility that the religious can choose is indeed missing in the secular view. But a secularist will never miss it. Note the Berkeley manages, in spite of the fact that both world views comprise the same facts, to offer reasons why his view is preferable. Sadly, his world view prevents him from recognizing that the secularist will never miss what he sees.

WIttgenstein has a discussion that is relevant to this:-

The attitude towards the more general and the more special in logic is connected with the usage of the word "kind" which is liable to cause confusion. We talk of kinds of numbers, kinds of propositions, kinds of proofs; and, also, of kinds of apples, kinds of paper, etc. In one sense what defines the kind are properties, like sweetness, hardness, etc. In the other the different kinds are different grammatical structures. A treatise on pomology may be called incomplete if there exist kinds of apples which it doesn't mention. Here we have a standard of completeness in nature. Supposing on the other hand there was a game resembling that of chess but simpler, no pawns being used in it. Should we call this game incomplete? Or should we call a game more complete than chess if it in some way contained chess but added new elements? The contempt for what seems the less general case in logic springs from the idea that it is incomplete. It is in fact confusing to talk of cardinal arithmetic as something special as opposed to something more general. Cardinal arithmetic bears no mark of incompleteness; nor does an arithmetic which is cardinal and finite. (There are no subtle distinctions between logical forms as there are between the tastes of different kinds of apples.) — Wittgenstein, Blue Book, p. 19

Mostly I think it would be great if we could discuss religious topics without anti-religious evangelization constantly occurring. But that's the way it seems to go on the internet: the atheists require that every religious discussion must be reduced to a discussion (or assertion) about whether God exists. — Leontiskos

I do agree. One can only go over the same argument so often. Reducing religions to a single proposition distorts them and makes them almost pointless.

For me it often just comes down to worldviews. People can draw different inferences from the same evidence and arrive at opposite conclusions about the existence of God. Debate about the matter isn’t always helpful and often ends with disparaging the other person’s view. — Tom Storm

It isn't just a matter of world-view, but of ways of life. I mean by that, that it's not just an intellectual matter, but a matter of how to live one's life, day by day.

The other point of strong objection, I think, is that Rawls (and to an extent Habermas) believes this pluralistic situation is inevitable and irreconcilable at this moment on some moral issues. — J

Does tolerating different views necessarily mean reconciling them? Surely, if they could be reconciled, tolerating them would not be necessary. (One only tolerates views and actions that one disapproves of. It would be odd to say that one was tolerating a view or action that one approved of.)

1. You ought to be able to specify the grounds of toleration -- and we believe they're inconsistent and objectionable.
2. "Reasonable pluralism" is in the eye of the beholder.
3. What is it about "free institutions" that you think makes this outcome inevitable? — J

I'm afraid I must be missing something here. These don't look like objections to liberalism to me.
1. Surely, a liberal approach to toleration would be to tolerate unless there are grounds to do otherwise. If the grounds for tolerating something have to be spelled out, the default position will be not to tolerate. It's the different between whatever is not forbidden is permitted (liberal) and whatever is not permitted is forbidden (restrictive).
2. "Reasonable" does not mean the same as "subjective". To be sure, "reasonable" suggests a certain amount of flexibility and room for different opinions. But if the members of our society are the ones to determine how much pluralism is reasonable, what rational grounds for complaint might there be?
3. I don't see what institutions are considered to be free here and what status the others might have.

Not grossly, though we both know there are important nuances left out. And funnily enough, I associate the position that "government imposes on individual freedoms" with certain strands of conservatism, not liberalism. — J

I may be confusing liberalism proper with the neo-liberalism of the seventies, which, in my book, is a very peculiar variant of liberalism.

Mill was against the institution of slavery as practiced, on liberal grounds. However, in "Considerations on Representative Government," he calls for compulsion over “uncivilized” peoples in order that they might lead productive economic lives, even if they must be “for a while compelled to it,” including through the institution of “personal slavery.” This is very similar to Locke's justification of slavery as "freedom from indolence," many of the American Founder's justification of slavery as "temporary but necessary," and liberal justifications of colonialism up through the 20th century. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I realize that you made this point a while ago, but in this context, I need to comment. I do not seriously doubt that the attitude of Mill and Locke here includes an element of racism. But I think that the issue is a real one. We do not plunge infants into all the choices and responsibilities of adult life, but keep them in a special status until we think they have learnt enough for their choices to be meaningul - and we do not give them a choice in the matter.

Now, I wouldn't want to be caught suggesting that aboriginal people who have not had contact or experience of Western society are in any way like children. But, it seems to me, that the fact remains that they need to understand the society they are grappling with before their choices in that context can be regarded as meaningful. It seems to me that Mill (and Locke) at least recognized that problem and the responsibility of the new arrivals in managing their relationship, even though their solution was far from sufficiently respectful.

I daresay there are strands of liberal thought that downplay the role of societal formation, and imagine a citizen as being in a position to make some ideal free choices. All I can say is, Rawls and Habermas (if you count him as a liberal theorist) are painstakingly aware of the trade-offs here. — J

I have read some of both, but not enough, nor recently enough to venture a comment. But I'm happy to accept that some liberals, at least have also taken this seriously. I remember a good deal in Rawls about his veil of ignorance. I can accept that, to some extent at least, people can empathize with the situation of someone living in very different circumstances. That's not nothing. Whether it can balance the years of training for life in the circumstances I was "thrown" into is another question.
Actually, I'm inclined to think that liberalism may be the best way of coping with the fact that we have to work out how to proceed from where we are, with all our different perspectives, as opposed to drawing up something from scratch. Even the Founding Fathers of the USA didn't try to do that; they tried to build on what was already known and thought, but build better.

In particular, the influence of a sort of Humean anthropology, which is extremely dominant in economics (and thus has huge influence on liberal governance) leads to a view where passions and appetites "just are." Reason exists to help us satisfy them. It's just a tool. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a dilemma here, isn't there? On the one hand, reason as truth-directed can't help us when trying to reason about values - except perhaps in keeping us self-consistent. On the other hand, we can't pretend for long that value statements are all completely arbitrary - questions of taste, about which there can be no disputing. I take courage from the fact that we do argue about values and sometimes, at least, arrive at some sort of agreement or compromise. BTW, Hume's "Of the standard of taste" presents a more qualified, and more sensible, version of his views.

Such an anthropology cuts the legs out from under any coherent second-order volitions, the desire to have or not have different desires. But classically, virtue involved desiring the right things. We are virtuous when we enjoy doing what is right. We flourish more when we have desires conducive to human flourishing rather than self-destructive desires. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, I agree that we can evaluate our desires in various ways. Whether that process is best described through the machinery of second order volitions is another question.

Liberalism is only necessarily prudent if man has no telos or if his telos is unknowable, otherwise it represents unwarranted skepticism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I wouldn't venture to positively claim that humans have no telos or that any telos they do have is knowable. But there is much disagreement about what the telos of human beings is. So perhaps liberalism is prudent, after all.
Perhaps, though, we should have a couple of cautions based on what has happened in the last 30 years or so. First, acknowledge that tolerance has limits and it is foolish to tolerate enemies who will not return the favour. Second, recognize that liberalism, however tolerant, will appear intolerant to certain ideologies which do not seem to understand the practical wisdom of compromise. Third, there is nothing that guarantees that liberal values will be adopted by anyone who has not yet done so, and nothing to prevent people who have adopted them deciding to abandon them. Fourth, never forget that, even though negotiations and compromise are much to be preferred, they require co-operation from the other side, which may not be forthcoming; a plan B is often helpful. Neglecting those precautions seems to me to sum up the myopia of liberalism in recent decades.

The question, rather, was why a desire for individual freedom, in and of itself, should be suspect. ..... I was asking why talking about "freedom" as the freedom for an individual to flourish seemed wrong-headed to Count T. — J

I don't know about wrong-headed. But I do think there are difficulties about understanding it, especially as the liberal view seems to suggest that social intervention in the actions of individual is, in principle, a Bad Thing.

The problem with this is that it seems to believe that we individuals spring into life fully formed, ready to make choices. But that is not the case. We are born, we grow up and learn what we need to know about our environment, including our society; only then are we capable of exercising the freedoms that our situation affords us.

Roughly, my view starts from understanding an individual as a member of society, which not only defines the freedoms and restrictions that individuals live with, but educates and trains them to do so. What counts as flourishing depends on the options enabled by the environment and the society in which one lives.

Liberalism has got one thing right - the point (telos?) of society is the welfare (flourishing) of the individuals who are its members. But the idea that the social context in which we live is some sort or imposition on us is a misunderstanding.

I realize that's grossly over-simplified, but starting from the premiss that society and government are impositions on us is a mistake. The society in which we live is the condition of the possibility of flourishing (or not) and of our being free (or not).

So what is it about "freedom" that seems so wrong-headed to you? — J

For my part, I find the slogan "freedom" annoying in this context because of it's extreme myopia. It is all too easy in the context of a society to notice the restrictions on what one may do and so to wish for freedom. But freedom from social (and hence governmental) constraints means the loss of all the freedoms that are the result of social and governmental constraints.
To begin with the trivial, a universal rule that we should drive on the left (or right) side of the road restricts us all, but also gives us freedom from the dangers of negotiating traffic in the absence of such a rule. The laws restricting our freedom to break contracts give us the freedom to make contracts, and the restrictions on what one may do with other people's property give us the freedom to own our own property (and do what we like with it). The restriction on my ability to enforce my desires on other people means that I don't have to be continually battling with other people who wish to enforce their desires on me. And so on.

When faced with criticisms of liberalism, it seems to me that most apologists seem unable to try to justify liberalism outside its own terms. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was very puzzled by this remark. It seems to me that any comprehensive, or would-be comprehensive, theory of this kind will be unable to justify itself except on its own terms. I must be missing something. A counter-example would help.

Often, champions of liberalism (I speak here of political theorists and popular authors) utterly fail at seeing even the haziest outlines of the apparent unfreedom critics see in liberalism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is exactly right. On the other hand, I have noticed that people who hold different theories often seem to have a similar difficulty in seeing the problems that liberals see in their theories. Finding the common ground on which disagreement can be articulated and dissected is very hard.

But the biggest issue with liberalism was neatly identified by Popper (I think in "The Open Society"). Liberals can tolerate anything, except intolerance.

This begins to explain the power of mercy, I think. An impartial, unmerciful judge would treat all of us justly -- and what a terrible fate that would be! — J

If the punishment prescribed for various crimes is disproportionate, then it is unjust punishment. Mercy doesn't come in to it.

Here's another way to think about it: Justice = being given what you deserve. Injustice = being given less than you deserve. Mercy = being given more than you deserve. — J

Very neat. But you are over-simplifying. Injustice sometimes means being given less than you deserve (e.g. damages) But sometimes it means being given more than you deserve (e.g. punishment).

Disagree with each other over what? The definition of a word? — goremand

Perhaps "definition" is the wrong word here. I just meant that people disagree about what a good life for human beings is. But those disagreements are taking place in a context where some things are agreed, or not contested. For example, there would need to be broad agreement on which creatures are human beings.

Faith involves an unspoken, invisible promise, one that is not made by ourselves, but by the other, e.g. god, science, philosophy, tradition, institutions, other people etc. — Pussycat

There's a good case for saying that if such promises are entirely one-sided, they are flawed. God does propose a covenant with Israel. But it is a pretty much one-sided deal - take it or else! On the other hand, friendship is not a partnership contract - voided when it's terms are violated. It's more complicated than that.

Faith is not always a good. If your faith is strong enough for you to fly a Boeing into a building, or to fire rockets indiscriminately into a city, then something has gone astray. — Banno

I wouldn't disagree. Faith and loyalty can be misplaced and lead one astray. I've always liked Aristotle's interpretation of virtue as a balance between extremes.
Maybe I'm just naive, but I've never quite understood what such actions are intended to achieve. They are good at attracting attention and causing chaos. But they certainly don't seem to be particularly successful at winning wars.

A person who believed this would have to be committed to saying there is no suffering in hell, which is a statement I don't believe I've ever heard. And I mean "hell" as in fire and brimstone, people wailing in pain etc. Imagine looking at that and saying "no suffering detected". — goremand

You are quite right. But it seems to me, nonetheless, that there are important differences between the suffering of those who are in hell because they have sinned and the suffering of those like Job, who have done nothing wrong. It is the latter's suffering that cries out for a justification, or at least an explanation. Don't you think?

Yes -- the reconciliation of justice with mercy. I may be wrong, but I get a flavor of this in some versions of Buddhism as well. The bodhisattva deserves to be released from the wheel of dharma -- that would be just. But they choose to show mercy on unenlightened beings by returning to help them. — J

That's very good of them. What puzzles me is that mercy is so often represented as a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card that is handed out more or less at random to those who don't deserve it. How is this a good thing? Surely, it can only work if the suffering of unenlightened beings is undeserved. But if that's the case, their suffering is not just.

I take this to be saying that humanity has a single agreed-upon definition of goodness, and that misery is bad according to that definition. I think that is obviously false. For example, there are people who think that it is good for sinners to suffer. They think this not because they are irrational, but because they have a different idea of goodness than you do. — goremand

I don't think that there is a single agreed-upon definition of a good life for human beings. But there is sufficient agreement for us to understand that those who have different definitions disagree with each other, which requires a background of agreement.

although we can't be sure the God of theologians even exists, we would be wise to bet on the "house" to win. — Gnomon

I've always wondered what God would make of someone who only obeyed the commandments as an insurance policy. Wouldn't that be a species of pretending to accept them?

I take philosophy to be primarily about how best to live. — Janus

Well, yes. But then philosophy is in direct competition with religion - or, maybe, religion is a species of philosophy for those who don't grasp the point, or importance, of reason.
What people don't seem to face up to that even asking that question presupposes a complex conceptual structure which needs to be in place to enable potential answers to be articulated and evaluated.
I also have serious difficulty that our problem is in any way articulated as a list of options on a menu, from which we choose. Who writes the menu? Perhaps we live as we must and the only question is how far we can mitigate the down-sides that turn up in every item on on the menu.

But it’s a very deep question. — Wayfarer

It is sad how often it is the deep questions that get postponed. This one is so deep that I have no idea how to approach it.

Are you suggesting that it is (only?) through religion, and not through philosophy that we can come to terms with suffering? — Janus

It depends what you call philosophy and what you call religion. Boethius (and many others in his time) certainly thought that philosophy could provide consolation. How would you classify his attempt? Ancient philosophers seem mostly to have been confident that philosophy can help us to cope with suffering. But since the scientific revolution, that project seems to have been more or less abandoned and so left to religion (where humanism would count as a religion).

I do want to high-light the difference between two projects, but I don't want to over-simiplify it.
Consoling someone in distress is not the same project as someone analysing the causes of that distress, even though the two projects play into each other.

This is not something I have thought through, but something I am working out.

Karma is really a kind of watershed between Eastern and Semitic religions. ..... It is only ever beneficial as what Kant would have described as a ‘regulative principle’, something to guide one’s own actions. — Wayfarer

It is indeed a watershed. I don't rule out the possibility that there may be more interesting interpretations availble that might make more sense to a Western person like myself. But I don't feel competent to discuss them. The regulative principle idea does seem to have possibilities.

I will say that the narrow conception of moral responsibility at work in much Western moral discourse seems to me just as much of a myth as the (naive) doctrine of karma. On the other hand, there are many Biblical quotations about the sins of the father being visited on the children.

I think that faith is linked to some promise. — Pussycat

I'm not sure that we can identify a clear distinction between faith and trust on this basis.

But I do think that there is an important difference between trusting or having faith in something or someone based on an evaluation of them - which we will and should change if the evidence changes and being faithful to them because we have promised to do so. In the latter case, we are expected to stick to the promise even if circumstances change. A faithful friend remains a friend even when one does something wrong, but one trusts a car only as long as it works for me. But this is not a hard and fast distinction. If my friend defrauds me of my pension, it is hard to remain a friend, and one may continue to trust a car even when it has ceased to be reliable.

The relevance of this is that adopting a religion may involve accepting certain beliefs, but it also involves adopting a way of life, promising to abide by the relevant laws and customs. Those promises commit one to more than just assenting to propositions, whether on the basis of evidence or not. If philosophy can only discern truth and falsity, it may be constitutionally difficult for it to recognize what a religion is about.

Choices made a long time ago. Also known as karma. — Wayfarer

Sure, Isn't the concept of karma precisely intended to reconcile the apparently random distribution of good and evil into the mora/ethical order? It may succeed psychologically, but does it stand up philosophically?

I guess it's a matter of this quartet: Random, Causality, Logic, Math. You don't exist before you start to exist. You can only decide when you are there, but then it's too late. — Quk

That seems to me one of the points that Kierkegaard is exploiting here. It is completely inappropriate to review our situation in life as if it were a holiday that we booked and which is not meeting our expectations. If we don't like where we are in life, it's no good trying to complain to the Manager.

At first I thought you were saying that "suffering is bad" is a priori true. Then I thought you were saying "suffering is bad" is a universally held belief. Now it seems you saying "most people think suffering is bad" which is a trivial and irrelevant claim. — goremand

This discussion seems to me to have suffered from an ambiguity about whether suffering can be justified or not. Some suffering may have a justification (a beneficial effect), in which case, it might be classified as not suffering, but something else. "Suffering" would then be only "unjustified suffering" and that, it seems to me, can only not be understood as a Bad Thing by someone who doesn't understand what suffering is. To put the point another way, suffering is a Bad Thing unless it is justified.

The three-in-one Christian god-head is still popular among the masses, but waning with the intelligentsia, — Gnomon

I may have the wrong end of the stick, but I have the impression that the difference between the God of the masses and the the God of the philosophers goes all the way back to Xenophanes in the earliest years of philosophy in Ancient Greece.

Right, given that we already find ourselves thrown into a world of potential suffering, then actually encountering suffering may be considered to be the only way to learn to come to terms with it. Of course they also presume reward in the afterlife for the pious. — Janus

Perhaps the problem here turns on the difference between recognizing suffering and coming to terms with it. Philosophy emphasizes recognizing it; religion is primarily concerned with coming to terms with it.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

Your post reminds me of this quotation from Kierkegaard. Did you have it in mind when you wrote it? (I don't have a proper reference, but found it included in Kierkegaard - AZ Quotes)
Kierekegaard is criticizing the argument, not because it is invalid or unsound, but because it is inappropriate. We are thrown into the ongoing world. Approaching it from our beginning in this way displays the arrogance of a new-comer turning up in a community and criticizing it without taking the time or effort to understand it. Or, at least, something along those lines. I don't think this is a slam-dunk, conclusive answer, but might at least us to be a bit more suspicious of the idea that the traditional problem of evil is a slam-dunk argument against anything that a believer can recognize.

Christianity, as a universal religion, must speak to all people and cannot be elitist. It must present its insights through parables and imagery accessible to the widest possible audience. — Wayfarer

This is one possibility - that Christianity, like other religions, cannot be understood as philosophy, but as a different kind of enterprise, directed at persuading us to adopt a way of life, and a culture, rather than a collection of doctrines. Its project and its methods are not those of philosophy. Perhaps the philosophical problem of evil is perfectly correct, so far as it goes. But then it misses the point of the religious practice, creating a God quite different from the God of philosophy.

I'm not making claims about humanity but about most people.All I can think if you really believe many people think it is good to be miserable is that you live your life with eyes closed. — Janus

You are right, of course. But people do sometimes suggest that being miserable can have good consequences. "What does not kill us makes us stronger".
The paradox here is that Christianity, like other religions, needs to make us feel that we are miserable wretches, in order to create the opportunity for God's intervention to save us from our misery. Evil is not an optional extra here, but an essential part of the project.

I'm afraid that I have some pressing business to take care of. I won't be able to give this the attention it needs for a week or so. So I have to bow out. It's been a good discussion and I'm sorry to have to disappear.

I'm afraid that I have some pressing business to take care of. I won't be able to give this the attention it needs for a week or so. So I have to bow out. It's been a good discussion and I'm sorry to have to disappear.

Enjoying red wine isn't an ethical question. This truly strikes me a bizarre objection. — AmadeusD

Perhaps I just wrote it badly. It wasn't intended as an objection, exactly. The question was genuine - how does emotivism distinguish between emotions that are reactions to judgements of taste and emotions that are reactions to judgements of ethical value? It is true, though, that the answer was not obvious to me, and I might have had objections to any answer offered.

The entire point of ethics is that it delineates actions which effect other people from actions which don't, either do much of anyhing, or have any tangible externalities. — AmadeusD

Yes, that's the standard account. There's a lot to it. The trouble is that the border country between actions that affect other people and those that don't is hotly contested.

After writing this post, I found this -

If ethics is the study of the human good, human flourishing, or "living a good life," there will be many such facts that are relevant. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I sense that this is not quite the same question as the question what rules are required for us to live well together. Should I distinguish between ethics and morality? If not, how to these two questions fit together?

Anyhow, I would just ask: are the empiricists' premises inviolable? They certainty aren't justified by empiricism themselves. Second, is the burden of proof shifting fair? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This was most enlightening. But I think you are being a bit demanding when you comlain that empiricists conduct their critique on some other basis that empiricism. What other basis could they have used? On the other hand, you are justified in pointing out the weakness of the traditional empirical doctrines. These seemed to have survived much better than I thought they would twenty years ago.
Burden of proof arguments don't seem to be very productive. Obviously each side prefers the burden of proof to be on the other and there's no judge to make a ruling. It is better to try to work out what the two sides agree on and frame the debate from there.

Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. People very often misunderstand what an illusion is, mistaking illusions for hallucinations or dreams.

These are all "empirical reports" in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience. And they're clearly relevant to conceptions of beauty and nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite so. But surely, these days, we are all acutely aware that how we experience things is heavily structured and conditioned by our approach, in the fullest sense. I suggesting that our conceptions of beauty and nature will affect how we experience things as beautiful or not, as our conception of nature affects how we experience that.

Schindler rejects the notion that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder, that is has no connection to objective reality.

I wonder if it is possible that beauty is in the eye (and brain) of the beholder and connected to objective reality?

In response to this, Schindler proposes his creative retrieval of the transcendentals.

.. and this is where I begin to part company with you. What little I understand about the concept of the transcendentals does not enthuse me. I've not yet understood how it helps me to understand Beauty, Goodness and Truth. I have an obstinate conviction that if they exist at all, they exist in the everyday world that I actually live in.

Whereas, as I hope was clear, my question was a genuine one: It's very important that we understand how values like beauty and moral goodness are recognized -- and very difficult to give a good account of this. — J

When you say "are recognized", I conclude that we need to let go of the philosophy for a while and watch what actually goes on, allowing the phenomena, in some sense of the word, to show us how beauty and moral goodness are recognized. (Unless you think that we all already know...) The account (in whatever form seems appropriate) should then follow without too much difficulty.

What is this faculty (sc. the intellect), and how does it do what it does? Just giving it a name doesn't help. — J

Oh, I do agree that slapping a label on the multifarious business of coming to understand these things does not help.

So, going back to your question -

Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty? — J

Considering specific incidents looks like a much more productive approach than discussing the transcendentals, so this is a good question. I'm sure one could conjure up an answer from what he says elsewhere about why the waterfall is sublime. It would function as an ostenstive definition.

To disagree with "This is pretty" if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said "I feel sick" Coleridge would hardly have replied "No; I feel quite well." — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is a most helpful remark. It shows something of what taking part in the practice/language game requires.

So we are not talking about a relationship between two objects, we are talking about a relationship between an object (the sign), and what the sign means (what is signified). — Metaphysician Undercover

OK. Then I want to say that when we know what the sign means, what we know is how to use it. That means not only understanding the conceptual structure that gives is meaning, but what it requires us to do (and not to do).

Many of the objections to my account of that case involve the idea/claim that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working. Yet, my account lends itself very well to experiment in which S will admit to believing exactly that after becoming aware of it. — creativesoul

Well, the idea that S cannot believe that a broken clock is working is a play on the intentionality of belief. "Broken clock" is an inappropriate description to use to articulate what S believes.

If we treat Smith’s belief as a justified false belief (because at the point of justification, the actual truthmaker is not in view), JTC interprets this as a prime example of epistemic fragility. The justification is disconnected from the actual truth conditions — DasGegenmittel

But surely, if Smith's belief is a justified false belief, it is not going to count as knowledge. So what is fragile is not Smith's knowledge, but his belief. That's not a problem.

To say, “S cannot believe that a broken clock is working,” misrepresents the belief. “Broken clock” is an external diagnosis, not necessarily part of S’s belief content. — DasGegenmittel

I think it is important to say more about this. My view is a trifle unorthodox. It comes down to what description works for different characters in the story. Smith is thinking ot the clock, as a (working) clock. Who wouldn't? But we readers who are in the know, are thinking of it as a broken clock. Of course we are - the author of the story has told us so and authors are never wrong about what is happening in their own stories. Smith obviously cannot possibly be describing (thinking of) the clock as broken and it makes nonsense of the story to attribute such a belief to them. In order to understand the story, we have to be capable of grasping the difference and its significance. There is, so far as I can see, there is no way round that.

It follows that the context of belief is not fully intentional. I've never seen such a concept elsewhere in philosophy, but the facts are clear. In some circumstances, we must respect the believer's description of their own belief. In others, we need to understand (and use) another description - the truth (as we see it, of course).