I haven’t gotten as far as your quote from the end of the book, but I think I’ve shown sufficient evidence in the text that the vehicle of confusion may be things like: that words can still have meaning imposed on them despite being removed from context, and that analogy can force a conclusion simply because of shared premises, which are both logical errors, but that the cause, more motivation, which “results” in solipsism is the desire for certainty (e.g., wanting everything to have a reference like objects). The common reading that normally we misuse language or get tricked by it is usually followed by the conclusion that philosophy simply needs to impose its own, better, more logical, clearer, more certain, etc., criteria (though distinctions sometimes must be made). I think this argument plays out through the work. — Antony Nickles

Oh, I agree that that argument plays out through the work and beyond!
1. But it seems to me that further clarification is needed about "more logical, clearer, more certain .. criteria". These all have an application as psychological (hence subjective) terms as well as an objective sense - and there's that troublesome concept of self-evidence lurking here. There does seem to be wide agreement, at least amongst analytic philosophers, about their application, but that might be due to acculturation - training.
2. I can agree that the desire for certainty is a plausible motivation for solipsism. But I don't see any reason to suppose that's the motivation in every case. Why could it not be fear of transparent relationships with other people? Or a feeling of isolation from other people? Once one has started looking for psychological motivations, one has to contend with a pandora's box of them. In addition, we might start looking for a motivation for rejecting solipsism as well. At that point, whether we accept or reject, it seems that we are doing psychiatry rather than philosophy. Or could it be classified as phenomenology?

Calling it best practices, or a code of conduct seems fine but it also seems to remove the reflection on how those actions reflect on our character, as Socrates was trying to make his students better, not just more knowledgeable. — Antony Nickles

There is a difference between a character trait being of particular importance in some activities and it being important in life in general. The virtues required to acquire knowledge may not particularly relevant to those required to do good business or create good art.

It does seem like he starts mid-staircase (as with Emerson), and so it is maybe not so much a matter of where the muddle starts but why, and I think he would lay the blame on our desire for philosophy to be like science, to have the same kind of results, or that everything else be judged in that shadow. And this is not so much against common sense, or the results of our ordinary judgments, as removed from all our varied reasons for making judgments at all except scientific certainty. — Antony Nickles

I think I agree with this, and yes, if one remembers the context of logical positivism (with its links to the TLP), it seems very likely.
There is an irony here, isn't there? The desire to be scientific is in direct conflict with the desire for certainty - at least in the context of philosophy.

In fact, he appears to be creating an ethical standard for philosophy, or, ‘thought’, to be, at least, “worked out in detail”, not forced, with an individual/particular framework and workings. — Antony Nickles

I'm not clear why you call it an ethical standard. It looks to me more like a method - no, an approach - designed to clarify the use(s) of the terms at play and to enable us to see things in a less misleading way.

But we have to start from accepting that the solipsist, for example, is seeing things in a misleading way. How do we do that? It looks to me as if his diagnosis of solipsism is itself the reason for finding solipsism misleading. (Not that I disagree with it.)

The only other possibility is that solipsism contradicts common sense. But common sense is probably not a reliable criterion for misleading or not.

There is no common sense answer to a philosophical problem. — Blue Book, 59

That doesn't necessarily mean that common sense is immune from philosophical problems. Indeed, it may be common sense that gives rise to (some) philosophical problems.

What I'm suggesting is that W here is starting from philosophy as he finds it, and not paying enough attention to what gets philosophy started - which must be muddles that arise from common sense - or perhaps from science's search for causes.

Thus we sometimes wish for a notation which stresses a difference more strongly, makes it more obvious, than ordinary language does, — Blue Book, 59

If our disagreement with solipsism is just a question of notation, we seem to have no way of persuading solipsist to change their view. There must be more to it than that. (The same applies to the more persuasive analogy of the puzzle pictures, which I see turn up in the Brown Book (p.162).)

For clarity, I ask these question in the spirit of Augustine puzzlement about the nature of time. I do think that W is identifying important truths about philosophy and its practice. But that's not to say that I am not puzzled about them.

I'm not confident I remember the authors of the three JTB formulations Gettier set out in the beginning of his paper. Maybe... Ayer, Chisholm, and ??? Lol... It bugged me enough to go check... Scratch the third. :wink: It was just Ayer and Chisholm. I wanted to say Collinwood, for some reason. The 'third' formulation was a generic one from Gettier himself. Something tells me you already know this. :wink: — creativesoul

I did and I didn't. That is, I was expecting references to some of the critiques of Gettier's article, rather than Gettier's selection from existing formulations.

It is my next focus here. My apologies for not being prompt yesterday. Late dinner invitation. Nice company. Be nice to have another someplace other than a famous steakhouse chain with far too many people in far too little volume of space. And the noise! Argh... brought out the spectrum in me. — creativesoul

No hurry. I've never been happy in large, noisy, crowded (and drunken) parties and it's only got worse with age. People behave differently in crowds. There's a lot of research about that - largely with a public order agenda. The Greeks regarded it as a madness and explained it by reference to Bacchus and/or Pan.

For my part, "presupposed" is about the thinking creature. "Prior to" is about the order of emergence/existence. The latter is spatiotemporal/existential. The former is psychological. — creativesoul

Yes. I see that.

I'm setting out the basic outline/parameters of an autonomous biological process that amounts to a basic outline of all thought, from the simplest through the most complex. — creativesoul

There's a lot to be said for that. Stimulus/response and association of ideas do seem to be very important to learning. However, there's an important differentiation between Pavlov's model and Skinner's. (It's not necessarily a question of one or the other. Both may well play their part.) Pavlov presupposes a passive organism - one that learns in response to a stimulus. Skinner posits what he calls "operant conditioning" which is a process that starts with the organism acting on or in the environment and noticing the results of those actions - here the organism stimulates the environment which responds in its turn. There's another interesting source of learning - mimicry. I've gathered that very new infants are able to smile back at a smiling face - there's even a section of the brain that produces this mirroring effect. It is still observable in adults. Just food for thought.

Knowing which train is the five o'clock train is existentially dependent upon being talked about. — creativesoul

I think I can see what you mean. But it needs clarification because there are philosophers who will saying that knowing anything is existentially dependent on being talked about - because drawing distinctions in the way that we do depends on language.
Suppose we stipulate that knowing that it is 5 o'clock requires an understanding of a conceptual scheme that is not available without language. My dogs have always tended to get restless and congregate near the kitchen at around the time that they are fed. I think they know that it is time for dinner. If they were people, we would have no hesitation in saying that they know it is 7 o'clock (say). How do I know that people understand the background scheme? I know if they can tell the time at any time, for example - which does not necessarily require human language, but normally that is how it works. If a small child (who has not yet learnt to tell the time) appears in the kitchen at 7 o'clock, we will look for other clues to explain why they show up.

Consider the sheer complexity of thought required in order to understand Gettier's obliteration of the J part of JTB... as held/articulated by three defenders thereof at the time. — creativesoul

This is a side-issue, but who are the three defenders you are thinking of?

Not all things(X's) exist in their entirety prior to being talked about. Some thought and belief existed in their entirety prior to being talked about. Some did not. Some cannot. It could be put a bit differently. Some thought and belief are existentially dependent upon being talked about. Some are not. — creativesoul

I may have misinterpreted "prior". I was treating it as meaning "presupposed" and thinking of the variety of preconditions that have to be satisfied to make thought and belief meaningful. Even new introductions have to be based on existing ideas if they are to be explained at all.
This takes me back to:-

All thought, belief and statements thereof consist of correlations drawn between different things. We and all other capable creatures think solely by virtue of drawing correlations between different things. — creativesoul

Here, you seem to be suggesting a single pattern of thought that explains all thought. But is that consistent with the variety of thoughts you specify? If some thought and beliefs are existentially dependent on being talked about, I don't see how the model of correlations drawn between different things applies.

It is this crucially important aspect that remains sorely neglected by conventional standards/notions of thought/belief, "rational thought" notwithstanding. — creativesoul

I agree with that. That's why I've taken such an interest in this topic. There's very little discussion anywhere, and yet, in my view, it's not only important for understanding animals, but also for understanding humans.

I have yet to have been exposed to a single conventional practice of belief attribution that has, as it's basis, notions of "belief" and "thought" that can properly account for the evolutionary progression of thought, belief, and/or meaningful experiences. — creativesoul

That's because philosophers seem to be totally hypnotized with thought and belief as articulated in language. They seem to assume that model can be applied, without change, to animals and tacit thinking and knowledge.

Berkeley's version of solipsism is precisely what is discussed in the latter portion of the Blue Book. Wittgenstein's effort differs from Kant who worked to counter the arbitrary quality of causality as presented by Hume. Kant put forth that all of our thinking requires the intuitions of space and time. This places the Cogito of Descartes in a particular "set of facts" that is psychological in nature. Wittgenstein, however, argues that solipsism results from misuse of language: — Paine

OK. I think I understand that. Thanks.

I think the key point is that giving to us an 'agent who thinks' is standing on the outside trying to look in: — Paine

This is an important connection than my merely trying to record the aghast commonly felt at what is seen as removing the self (just, as an object), when he is just following through the categorical error of the ‘strong temptation’ of causality. — Antony Nickles

This reminds me of the reaction to Berkeley's "removal" of matter or the entire physical world. A modern case is the outrage caused by "illusionism". I've never been quite sure whether the authors of those ideas deliberately chose a shocking formulation rather than the mundane version. What's that French phrase about upsetting the bourgeoisie?

I am curious about Paine’s thoughts on the relation to Hume/Kant. Obviously there is Hume’s “agent” and Kant removing the object (but not dismantling the framework that held it). — Antony Nickles

I have to confess, that I didn't really understand the connection that he identifies. I'm not saying that there isn't one.

“We are most strongly tempted to think that here are things hidden, something we can see from the outside but which we can't look into. And yet nothing of the sort is the case.” — Blue Book, page 6

There's a very strong echo of Hume's argument against scholastic "powers" here, isn't there? But Hume's argument has been generally taken to apply to scientific explanations, not to distinguish between philosophical and scientific explanations. (Saving the point that, in Hume's day, what we now call science was called "natural philosophy).

Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us. ...... All the facts that concern us lie open before us. — Blue Book p.6

In his immediately preceding argument, W does say that there is further work to do and I can see that. We live in a different intellectual climate now, and the excitement about neurological discoveries is often taken to be philosophically significant. Indeed, if brain studies can indeed supply - not necessarily objects, but physical processes associated with thought - it will make his arguments here considerably less convincing. Or is this another demarcation criterion between philosophy and science.

Coming back to this, I'm finding myself really confused.

The two mistakes are: 1. What the mind does (thought) is strange; so 2. How the mind works must be a mystery. Thus, we create the “problem” that we just need to get to where we can explain how it causes “thought”. But the “muddle” we got ourselves into was because we pictured thought as an object. Thought is not an object, and so is not “caused”; thinking is not a mechanism to be explained. — Antony Nickles

It seems to me that these mistakes are a different argument from the argument against hidden objects. My problem here is that I'm not sure that W can take for granted that the traditional dualistic conception of thought involves strange or queer objects. Traditional philosophers didn't find them strange, but entirely familiar. His tactic of taking seriously the idea that a thought is an object, and then showing that such objects cannot do what thought does is itself that argument that the traditional conception is wrong. Now, my question is whether that interpretation of the traditional idea counts as a new fact or not.

You've overestimated my upsettedness... That was also weeks back. — creativesoul

OK. So it's over. :smile:

Thinking about one's own thought and belief requires something to be thought about. That something existed in its entirety prior to being talked about. We use the terms "thought", "belief", "meaningful experience", "mind", etc. How do we think about our own thoughts, beliefs, dreams, meaningful experiences? With naming and descriptive practices. There's no evidence to the contrary, and there's plenty to support that. I think we agree on that much, so perhaps we can set that aside and attempt to move forward? — creativesoul

There are various points that I would qualify or put differently, but fundamentally this seems to me to apply to all thought. Some elaboration on "How do we think...?" seems to be desirable. There's an implied analogy with "How does one start a car?" or "How do you get to Rome?" or "How do we calculate the orbit of Mars" which could easily becomes misleading. But that is a starting point for a general discussion of thinking and language. However, I hope we don't need to get too far into the general issues.

Assuming that there is such a thing as non human thought or human thought prior to when language acquisition begins in earnest. In seeking to make sense of this, we're isolating/delineating/targeting/defining thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience that existed in its entirety prior to being talked about(prior to naming and descriptive practices). — creativesoul

I realize that you are aiming to define a context for our specific problem. Nothing wrong with that. But I wouldn't set about it in this way. We need to be more specific, because the idea that there is a single general model of our naming and descriptive practices shepherds us into thinking about specific cases in inappropriate ways.

BTW, I'm not clear how far you are committed to the idea of a single general model for all our linguistic practices, because you do talk about them in the plural. However that may be, I see our problem as specifically about certain practices, not all of them.

More specifically, it is about how far we can sensible apply our practice in explaining human action to creatures that are like us but not human, and specifically do not have human languages. It seems inevitable that our practice needs to be modified. The question is what modifications are needed.

I think we agree on that much, so perhaps we can set that aside and attempt to move forward? — creativesoul

It would be annoying to try and thrash out all the issues before proceeding, so can you proceed with your argument on the basis of a provisional agreement? Then we can just sort out the differences that matter to our discussion. That itself would be an achievement.

_________________________

However, looking more closely at your example does give me pause:-

A growl in a familiar life scenario has all the context necessary for creatures to draw correlations between the growl and other directly perceptible things... fear, say. ..... The creatures learn how to react/respond/behave/survive. Could this be the simple basic building blocks of societal constructs such as language like ours? Sure. No metacognition necessary. No thinking about themselves and others as subject matters in their own right necessary. Does this constitute shared meaning in close to the same sense as described above? — creativesoul

I'm very mistrustful of your language in "draw correlations between the growl and other directly perceptible thing .... fear, say". But the scenario is undoubtedly a relevant case and one could say that we learn the correlation between the growl and danger and fighting - hence also fear.

But "correlation" does not distinguish between a Pavlovian response and an action - something that the dog does. When the bell rings and the dog salivates, that's an automatic response - salivating is not under conscious control. It is part of an automatic system which governs digestion. Growling is under conscious control - even a form of communication, counting as a warning. I'm not saying that the distinction is crystal clear, but rather the difference is a question of which mode of interpretation we apply to the phenomena. The Pavlovian response is causal; growling functions in a scoial context. (Even that needs further explanation). But the fact that it has a social function suggests that some awareness of the awareness of the difference self and others is necessary.

I look forward to your reply.

Good catch! :wink: — creativesoul

Thanks. However, I'm a bit hesitant about taking this up again. I didn't intend to upset you before, so I'm concerned that I might do so again. I shall try to keep everything that I say impersonal, in the hope that will suffice.

I'm sorry I have taken to so long to reply. I have had some distractions over the last few days. Nothing problematic, but things that needed to be attended to. But I'll put something together tomorrow.

That would be good.

But it is clear here that it is not language which fools us, but our temptation to treat words as objects (like “time”), and it is this desire that mystifies us, as, on page 7, he shows how analogy allows us to mistakenly infer there is a place for thought because there is a place for words. — Antony Nickles

Are those the two mistakes in your headline for this section? I mean the temptation to follow the grammar of language (as opposed to philosophical grammar) and the temptation to be fooled by false analogies - or by over-extended analogies.

I had forgotten that. Sorry.

You are right that our discussioin has become unproductive and annoying. We aren't making progress. That's a shame but it's probably best if we leave it where it is. Thank you for your time and patience.

There is no agent here that is analogous to the hand that writes or mouth that speaks. We might say that in this case it is the mind that imagines, but we do not think with the mind in a way that is analogous to thinking with the hand or mouth. — Fooloso4

Yes. I had read all that when I posted. My problem is quite simple, Normally, we would say, when I calculate using pen and paper, that I am calculating, not that my hand is calculating. Why? Because my hand does not understand mathematics and so is incapable of calculating. So I'm interpreting W as saying that when I imagine calculating there appear to be nothing that fills the blank in "I calculated by..." (except possibly imagining that I was calculating). That's why there's a temptation to talk about mental acts or events. You quote PI 364, which amplifies a bit.
I'm also a bit confused by what he means by calculating by imagining I am calculating. Do you think he means what I would call "calculating in my head"?
It isn't a big thing. It's just that he so rarely says things that are not clear (in my opinion), that this paragraph stood out as unusual. It could be a translation glitch - not a problem at all in German..

We are misled by language, or, more precisely, the grammar of our language, when we regard 'mind' as we do 'hand' or 'mouth'. Grammatically all are substantives. They are nouns. As such we may be led to assume that they all name particular things. — Fooloso4

Yes. But...

But it is clear here that it is not language which fools us, but our temptation to treat words as objects (like “time”), and it is this desire that mystifies us, as, on page 7, he shows how analogy allows us to mistakenly infer there is a place for thought because there is a place for words. — Antony Nickles

I think this puts it better.

Another way to put this is that science isn’t going to tell us what thought or meaning or understanding are. Thus, “it is misleading to talk of thinking as of a ‘mental activity’.” — Antony Nickles

This is an extra ordinary remark. Thinking is a paradigm of a mental activity. Surely, what he needs to argue is that mental activities, in particular thinking, is not the kind of activity it suggests, because of the contrast with physical activities. Is doing a calculation with pencil and paper a mental or a physical activity?

Thus the reason he says trying to find the place of thinking must be rejected “to prevent confusion”. (p.8) — Antony Nickles

But on the previous page he says:-

Now does this mean that it is nonsensical to talk of a locality where thought takes place? Certainly not. This phrase has sense' if we give it sense. — Blue Book p.7

His suggestion is a way of giving "the locality of thinking" a sense that many people would find perfectly satisfactory.

“I can give you no agent who thinks.” (p.6) This seems speculative at this point (and needlessly provocative), and I take it to mean so far that if there is no casual scientific mechanism, then it is the (“external”) judgment of thought that matters, not its agent (though this belies responsibility). — Antony Nickles

His use of "agent" here is unusual. When I think by writing, the agent is my hands. When I think by imagining, there is no agent. I don't know why the obvious agent - me - doesn't count.

But it is clear here that it is not language which fools us, but our temptation to treat words as objects (like “time”), and it is this desire that mystifies us, as, on page 7, he shows how analogy allows us to mistakenly infer there is a place for thought because there is a place for words. — Antony Nickles

Yes. His concluding remarks about one's visual field nicely demonstrate how that is possible.

The 'is' in that sentence should not be read as the 'is' of identity. — Clearbury

If it was the "is" of identity, everything that is true of the person would also be true of the animal and of the machine. Which is not the case.
The only possibilities in philosophy seem to be reductionism or emergentism. I don't think that either are particularly attractive. As far as I know there hasn't been much work on the logic of cross-categorial relationships, beyond observing that descriptions in one category cannot be meaningfully applied in another category. In the case of human beings, we very much need to understand this.

I do blame him for endorsing one particularly horrific practice. — Vera Mont

Where does he say that?

Probably, most of the inquisitors didn't personally heat the pincers, but they understood the use of hot pincers and published theological justification for their use. — Vera Mont

Now I'm confused. Are discussing the wickedness of Descartes or of the Inquisition? Perhaps you just mean that they are a parallel case. In which case, where does Descartes publish a justification for the use of nails and planks on animals?

I've encountered a few intelligent posters who keep insisting that we go back to original research, because there's just not enough evidence to support the theory of evolution. I do think that's wilful ignorance. It's their loss; I don't punish them for it. I probably do the same regarding subjects I don't care about. — Vera Mont

It is indeed wilful ignorance, although they are something of a public nuisance. On the other hand, we all have to pay the price of the anti-vaxers' wilful ignorance.

Without consideration, or further inquiry? — Vera Mont

Sorry, I thought the need for further inquiry and consideration was a given - subject to the priority that you give to the issue.

It depends on why you're doing it: to protect potential victims, or to benefit from the deception - from laudable to trivial to reprehensible. — Vera Mont

Yes. I still think that disapproval is the default position. But that's just a detail.

Sure. But let's try to be accurate in our observations and honest in our assessment.
It's for their God, not me, to absolve them for their motives or toss them into The Pit for their crimes. — Vera Mont

Accurate and honest, certainly. Are we including fair and balanced as well? I hope so.
If it's for God to absolve them, isn't it also for their God to judge them?

There is no value judgment here of the worthiness of the goal or the cause of the problem. Whether it's aimed at a better cancer treatment or a more effective weapon of mass destruction, the thought process is rational. — Vera Mont

That's fair enough. There's a nasty gap, however, in how one assesses the worthiness of the goal or what's a problem, rather than a feature. But let's leave that alone, for now.

It mattered when the prevailing practice was questioned, opposed, justified on philosophical grounds and therefore continued. In this, he was greatly influential. — Vera Mont

It would take an angel to be on the right side of every debate at the same time. But then, you have high standards, it would seem.
He was indeed influential. But that doesn't necessarily mean that he approved of everything his followers did. I don't think anyone knows (unless you've got a source) what he thought of his followers in Amsterdam. For all we know, he would have disowned them.

Can you possibly imagine none of these intelligent men knew what the screaming signified? — Vera Mont

Yes and no. In the '50's, there was (in the UK) a big scandal about a toxicological test that involved dropping chemicals in the eyes of rabbits to find out what dose was required to kill 50% of the subjects. It was known as the L(ethal) D(ose) 50 test. The goal was, no doubt, desirable, but involved a great deal of pain for the rabbits. So they didn't report that the rabbits screamed in pain, but that they "vocalized". The defence, no doubt, was that it was important to preserve scientific objectivity. So they reported only the facts, without any subjective interpretation. Another example of how indoctrination with an ideology is at least as dangerous, and arguably more vicious, as old-fashioned vices like greed and sadism.

I never understood why you introduced the moral component. — Vera Mont

But why is lying a immoral? — Vera Mont

Unfortunately, our language is not neatly divided between facts and values. Some concepts incorporate an evaluative judgement as well as a factual component. Murder is not simply killing, but wrongful killing. Pain is not simply a sensation but a sensation that we seek to avoid and that, if we have any humanity, we will help others to avoid. And so on.
Actually, you are right - not all lying is wrong; we even have an expression (at least in my possibly rather archaic version of English) for lies that are OK - white lies. Nonetheless, deliberately leading someone to believe something that you know to be false is generally disapproved of. Ditto for hypocrisy.
So I thought you introduced the moral element and I was responding to that.

Obviously, stating one's belief is not lying. It only becomes so if one is exposed to the truth and rejects it. Making oneself believe what isn't true is lying to oneself, whether it's said to anyone else or not. Nobody believes falsehoods through simple carelessness, though they may repeat what they've heard because they don't care enough to reflect. That may be trivial or criminal, depending on the falsehood and its effect on the world. — Vera Mont

That sounds rather hard on people. Surely, if I'm exposed to some evidence for an idea, but there's not enough evidence to justify believing it, I am right to reject it, even if it turns out later to be true. In any case, there isn't enough time to live a life and think carefully about everything we need to know.

I don't believe there has ever been a sane adult in the world who is or was morally pure, or entirely truthful or altogether devoid of hypocrisy. None of our heroes and role models are so much more perfect than we are. Why is that a problem? — Vera Mont

I don't think it is. The best we can do is to try to avoid the biggest failures. So forgiveness becomes important, to prevent pursuit of the good turning into the tyranny of perfection.

It troubles me greatly that Aristotle thought some people are born to be slaves and slavery is an important part of family order, — Athena

The conventional defence is that nobody in the world at that time had any doubt about slavery. It's asking a lot of someone to come up with a revolutionary idea like that - indeed, it took centuries for human beings to develop the ideas that we take for granted.
What troubles me more than his ideas about slavery is that there appear to be some people around who are trying to promote his argument as a justification of slavery today.
If you look at the details, though, you'll find that his version of slavery strips out a great deal of what makes it so objectionable. It can be read as a promotion of decent treatment for slaves, including the opportunity to learn how to be free and a ban on enslaving free people.

Who is going to buy the stuff that makes corporations rich, if the people can not afford it? — Athena

Good question. I keep wondering who will buy all the products when production and distribution are completely handed over to robots and AI. I suppose the machines could sell things to each other, but they can only pay if they are paid for their labour.

When Adam Smith wrote of economics he also wrote of morality and explained the importance of good morality to economic success. — Athena

Yes. The problem is that it is in the interest of everyone to work out a free ride on everyone else's virtue, and it is against the interest of everyone to behave well and get ripped off. Race to the bottom.

Thrift Books has a few books written by Adam Smith for very little money. — Athena

I'm sure it would be quite an eye-opener to see what he actually said.

Yes, I agree that every species is unique in some way. For us it just happened to be symbolic language (unless there is at least one other species that unbeknownst to us also possesses it). — Janus

Some people think that there are number of factors working together. That seems a very likely possibility. Our bipedalism allowed our front feet to develop into hands which enabled us to handle objects in a much more precise way. Our large (for our body size) brain allowed us to develop our kind of language. Not to mention the critical importance of our being a social animal, without which our technologies could not have developed.

If we knew enough about the brain, we - the scientists - could stimulate a flower without us - the experimentee - ever having seen one. In this case, the "external object" merely verifies our criteria, the flower itself is not the ground of our judgment (or our asking about it), rather the "red flower" is something which fits our criteria. — Manuel

But there is no external object, so there is nothing to verify. There is no "flower itself" to be the ground of our judgement, so there is no ground for our judgement and nothing that fits our criteria. There is a temptation to fill the gap, but the fillers are mysterious magical objects and we end up with a philosophical labyrinth that we cannot escape from. Best not to start.

I could give you a plastic red flower, indistinguishable from a real red flower, and it would still fit your criteria. — Manuel

If it is a plastic red flower, then it is distinguishable from a real red flower. Of course, I might be deceived and treat it as a real red flower, but it isn't one. So my judgement that I'm holding a red flower is false.

Which is why I said I was a bit surprised to be included in this discussion. I'm well aware I'm quite likely in the minority view. — Manuel

Nothing wrong with being in the minority. What matters is the discussion.

That's just how he did justify the moral position held by a minority of thinkers at the time that it's wrong to torture animals. — Vera Mont

So I've learnt something to-day. Thank you for the link. I have looked through it, but not read it carefully yet.

I'm losing my grip on what our disagreement is about. Perhaps you'll forgive my not following the convention of linking my comments to quotations from what you say. Instead, I'ld like to offer an analysis of where we are at.

We seem to be using "hypocrisy" in slightly different ways. I think I can best explain through a different case. Many people seem to use the word "lying" to mean simply saying what is false. Whether they attach a moral judgement to the word is not clear to me, but my understanding of it is that saying what is false, knowing it to be false and with intent to deceive is morally reprehensible.
So, for me, saying what one sincerely believes to be true, even if it turns out to be false, is not lying. There's an exception, that one might sincerely believe something because of wishful thinking, or carelessness; but saying that it is true is a different moral failing, for which we don't have a name (I think). In the same way, you seem to call behaving in ways that are inconsistent "hypocrisy" but you seem to exempt some hypocrisy from moral criticism, if it has a rational justification.

But then, there is a difficulty about the intersection of rationality with morality. We like to think that they don't conflict. But when you say that Descartes was hypocritical but rational, I conclude that you are saying that the rationality of his hypocrisy justifies it, or at least exempts is from moral censure. I find that very confusing.

I believe it is the case that Descartes never indulged in the vicious torture of nailing animals to planks, but that some students who followed Descartes did. Furthermore, it seem that he also kept a companion dog in his house, which seems incompatible with believing that the animal was just a machine. Here's my opinion. The students were guilty of consistency, illustrating how rigid adherence to a ideology can lead one into really vicious moral errors. Descartes, on the other hand, was technically inconsistent with his theoretical beliefs, but exhibited good sense in not following through from his theory to his practice.

I hope at least some of this makes sense.

The flower is the stimulus, but without judgments ascertaining if what I gave you is correct, then the flower is quite useless. — Manuel

Yes, but without the flower, judgements about it are meaningless.

Well, the most immediate example would be of a blind person asking for a red flower. But then since they can't see, it would be strange for them to ask for a red one, as opposed to just a "flower". — Manuel

Some blind people have visual images - it depends whether they have had vision earlier in their lives. People born blind, I'm not so sure. But Wittgenstein's point is that one can bring you a red flower without a visual image.

So, I don't find the phrase "have in mind" to be particularly problematic in the least. — Manuel

Well, I think you'll find that not everyone interprets that phrase in the same way - especially in philosophy.

And yet... The Economy of the Hive — T Clark

Yes, quite so. I realized after I signed off that I was wide open to that. If economics is about allocation of resources in a system, then an economy will be an aspect of any society.

Tentatively, I wondered whether any animals have an equivalent of money and I'm a bit sceptical about the claim that bees indulge in trade.

If we are human animals, and human animals are persons, we ought to extend personal identity to the limits of the human animal’s life instead of limiting its application to the fleeting moments of psychological awareness or memory. — NOS4A2

I hadn't thought about this. I guess I assumed that a given human is the same machine, the same animal and the same person throughout their life - normally and paradigmatically. But there are questions about psychological identity (self-identity) and social identity that make it more complicated than that.
Worse than that, many animals have capacities that are at least person-like and a certain (complicated\) moral status - though no-one, so far as I know, thinks that they are morally responsible agents.
But I do agree that the identity of persons (and animals and other creatures) ought to be defined in terms of a life-cycle, not as something that is unchanging throughout life. I also think that my identity as a person is, to a great extent, a moral and a social question, not a psychological one.

But by this criteria, personhood is something that has to be fostered and developed. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that's certainly true. The phenomena around feral children seem to confirm that and, in my understanding, suggest that there is a "window" in our development when those abilities need to be learnt, or are best learnt.

I didn't know people denied this. Certainly not here at TPF. Most here take it further, and say there is no difference between us and the other species. — Patterner

Yes, some people do say there is no difference. But if that were true, the species homo sapiens could not be defined. The issue is what the significance of the differences is. The objection is to the idea of human exceptionalism; I mean the attitude that thinks that animals have no moral claim on us and can be treated in the same way(s) that we treat any other physical resource.

The argument seems to be more of an assertion and seems to employ zero signficant logic in coming to its conclusion, — noAxioms

That may be because the debate is not really about a matter of fact, but a question of attitude and values.

Yes, I agree. For me, the main point is that it is a matter of values and not a matter of fact. In that case, it becomes a question of whether humans should be considered animals rather than whether they are or aren't. — T Clark

Yes, for the purposes of biology, h. sapiens is just another species. But it would be absurd to apply economic theory to a hive of bees or termintes. But it is not a question is once-for-all; it is pragmatic. For example, people need food and shelter, just the same as their animals; they suffer and die from diseases, just the same as their animals. But it would be absurd to grant animals the right to vote; that belongs to people. Again, in the context of athletics, working out how best to throw a discus requires regarding the body as a machine; for many medical purposes the heart is just a pump. And so on.

Why are you going on out on a plausibility limb to defend a hypocrisy that can't be sanctioned or punished at this late date? It served his purpose, so that was the rational path. — Vera Mont

Well, if you said that Galileo was a hypocrite, I would agree on the basis that it was, technically, but justified on the basis that being tortured or burnt at the stake was an unreasonable price to pay for following a purely academic line of research and so lying was a rational way to get out of his situation, even though, if you are a Kantian, lying is always wrong. Why? Because he explicitly contradicted himself. Descartes' case is much less clear. I'm just calling it as I see it.

I was skeptical, too. But it's what he claimed as the object of the exercise: get to the truth by doubting everything he'd ever been taught or believed. (Except that.) — Vera Mont

There's a genuine argument against radical scepticism, that no-one can seriously doubt that he is now sitting beside a stove, which will burn one if one isn't careful. Descartes isn't quite in that bracket because he frames his doubt as "merely" theoretical.

Was he unable to see the dog's responses as being like his own, or he did he choose to ignore the similarity because it wasn't convenient? — Vera Mont

There's not way of knowing, and consequently no evidence that it was just a matter of convenience.

It was a moral issue in Descartes' time. — Vera Mont

Cudworth thought (as did More) that Descartes’ view of animals as mindless machines was implausible.

I had heard of Cudworth. But I didn't know he crossed swords with Descartes. However, his critique is milder than yours, in my book.
I would expect, however that Cudworth did not think that animals had souls and did think that because they did not, they were of less or no moral value and consequently eating them was perfectly OK.

I was referring to a more modest capacity—the ability to articulate that we can use words and construct sentences. I wasn't claiming that we can articulate in any comprehensive sense how it is that we are able to do that. — Janus

Well, yes. Animals cannot articulate anything in that way. But that takes us back to the question what the significance is of the various species-unique abilities we can learn - given that every species is unique in some way.

I agree but he is taking his time drawing out this side here first. And my recollection of TLP is shoddy but I was trying to draw the parallel of his, as you say Atomism there, and the “queer”-ness of the mechanism here. — Antony Nickles

I don't quite understand the parallel. But perhaps it's better if I just wait and see how things develop. As you say, it's at a very early stage.

In any case, listing differences between us and other animals does not necessarily bear on whether we are animals. Animals differ widely between each other too. Corals are animals and so are apes. The argument could be made that there are more and more striking differences between apes and corals than between us and apes and yet both are indisputably animals. — Baden

That's exactly right. So the question becomes why it matters, one way or the other. One obvious candidate is the belief in some version of the immortal soul. Another is some version of the idea that the animal world, like the mineral one, is just there for us to exploit or, more politely, to adapt to our values and needs.

It's not a metaphysical claim, it's a linguistic one. We can define an animal as anything we want. It's a question of values - some people want to separate humans from animals for social, religious, or spiritual reasons. There is no scientific reason to do so. — T Clark

Well, there couldn't be a scientific reason for a definition that was made only for social, religious or spiritual reasons. But there might be good social, religious or spiritual reasons for some definitions. It all depends on what one considers a good reason to be - and, as you say, that comes down to a question of values.
What puzzles me most is why there is no recognition here that a given organism always falls under several classifications. In biology, there are species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain. The method of classification of animals and plants (called cladistics) is according to the proportion of measurable or like characteristics that they have in common. The agenda behind this (or part of it) is that it is assumed that the higher the proportion of characteristics that two organisms share, the more recently they both came from a common ancestor.

I suppose if some one said that human beings are machines, they might be taken to say that human beings are just machines. But that's a misunderstanding. We can think of ourselves as machines for certain purposes in certain contexts, and as animals for other purposes in other contexts, and as people, not to mention as male/female, adult/child and so on. So the substantive question becomes when it is useful or appropriate to think of human beings as animals and when is it not useful or inappropriate to think of them as something else.

I would tend to agree with Philip Cary that a defining feature of the ancient/medieval and modern splits is:
- Modern man worries about becoming a machine.
-Ancient/medieval man worries about degenerating into a brute. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that seems right. But nothing is that simple. There is also the comfortable reflection that, thank God, we are not either.

But what actually settles the issue in this case are the criteria you asked for, not the flower itself. — Manuel

But I asked you to bring me the flower itself. The criteria are only a means to an end.

If the flower I give you does not satisfy the conditions you have, then it does not match what you have in mind. The problem is not in the object, but our interpretation of it. — Manuel

"Have in mind" is a problematic phrase in this context. Let's say "it is not what you asked me to bring you." The blue flower that I bring you is not a problem in itself. But there is a problem with it in the context of your request to me. It's true that my interpretation of your request is a misinterpretation. Is that what you mean?

Yes, but the position he is sketching out is like the counter-voice of the interlocutor in the PI. It is also his own experience from the Tractatus (claiming all “state of affairs” are objects Tract 4.2211). — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's why I'm suggesting that scepticism/certainty is not the only issue in play in this text. BTW, I'm a bit puzzled by "all states of affairs" are objects. I thought one of the main planks of the TLP was that the world is all that is the case - facts, states of affairs - and not objects. It follows from the idea that the atoms are propositions, since a word only has meaning in the context of a sentence.

Yes, Descartes thought his way through to radical skepticism, but what we are dealing with here is the first part, which is wanting certainty (thinking of the whole world as objects we should be able to “see”, or know, as we do trees, etc.), which is the desire that starts the spinning. — Antony Nickles

OK. One can see it that way. But I don't see a lot in the text that suggests that this was explicitly on W's agenda here. Whereas we know that at this time he had found his way out of the TLP and was developing his next steps.

a lot gets added onto it when we want that to be an object, of certainty, of knowledge, that a “queer mechanism” “associates”—in terms of necessarily equates—it to the world; that there is a mechanism in us that accomplishes that. — Antony Nickles

But he doesn't want to deny that "red" is associated with red things in the world. What he's after is that the meaning is the use. "But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use." (p. 4)

The point is that it is not entirely clear to me what the term "mental image" encapsulates. I don't know if it includes solely pictorial stuff, or if it includes semantic terms as well. I suspect it does play a role. — Manuel

For me "mental image" is just pictorial stuff. The semantic stuff is not inherent in the image, but is the use we make of it. I don't think he denies that there are such things or that we might make use of them. But he does insist that this is only one way that we might find the red flower.

It's hard to parse out, there is a lot of stuff going on when we speak about a "red flower", which includes not only the words, but the word order, any mental associations we may specifically have, assuming that what is asked for is a "real red flower" as opposed to a "plastic red flower", if you don't know the language and someone asks you for a red flower, you could end up buying a brand that is spelled "red flower", and on and on. — Manuel

I'm sorry, I don't see your point. Of course there are a lot of assumptions and background conditions. Of course, things go wrong sometimes. The point is that whatever is in my mind can't prevent those. More than that, there seems to be no guarantee that I have the right mental image or that I do not misinterpret the mental image that I do have. Whatever is going on in my mind, the test is whether I get it right and come up with the red flower I was asked for - and that is not settled in my mind.

In short, there is a lot going on, and it is not evident to me that mental images don't play an important role. Also, what "mental images" specifically covers can be subtle. — Manuel

Does that mean that it is evident to you that mental images do play an important role? What might that be?

I say this because it's just as queer to think that we need mental content as to say that we don't need it, — Manuel

That's true. It's a common problem with philosophical ideas, because, at least in logical positivism they are (supposed to be) logically analytic, which means to assert or deny them is either trivial or nonsense. But I don't think that's what Wittgenstein is after here. It's not whether we have or don't have something going on in our minds when we pick a flower or obey an order. He's pointing out that whatever is in our minds, it can't do what philosophers have supposed it does. There's a moment of arm-waving and hocus-pocus when we are told that a mental image tells us which flowers are red or an internal map that we follow when we are going to the shops. Whether the image is mental or physical, it has to be read - interpreted. That's his target.

I take it that the desire for wanting necessity causes us to reach for an explanation that has certainty, like: in the case of ‘seeing an object’. What I think we miss is that: in order to have an answer that is necessary, certain, we have to create a particular kind of answer. — Antony Nickles

I don't disagree with you. But isn't there more to all this than radical certainty? For example, the insistence that it is the system that gives meaning to the word implies moving away from atomism (as in the Tractatus) towards a kind of holism or contextualism. Again, his claim that meaning is use directs us away from the pursuit of an abstract system in an abstract heaven back toward our everyday rule-governed behaviour.

I do hate what he and his cohort did to our relationship with nature and other species, the two hundred years of suffering they inflicted on helpless animals — Vera Mont

That's fair enough. I actually agree about the suffering. It's just that I doubt that he and his colleagues made much practical difference. It's not as if animal welfare has ever been a moral issue before our time.

I was referring to his very sensible use of God to avoid confrontation with the Inquisition. — Vera Mont

That's a question of his motivation. There's a passage in the Discourse on Method where he says that while he is subjecting his beliefs to methodical doubt, he sticks to conventional views. That can certainly be read as pragmatic rather than sincere.

He just pretended to rediscover it after ridding himself of all learned beliefs — Vera Mont

It would prefer "after supposedly ridding himself of all learned beliefs". It is hard to believe he hadn't read Aquinas' Five Ways and it wouldn't be surprising if he did a bit of cherry-picking through the rubbish.

So we might agree that other animals don't have a symbolic language in the sense that the language has the kind of syntactic and semantic properties that human verbal language has. — jkop

I see our language capability as a hyper-development of abilities that (all? most?) animals have to a greater or less extent. Other species have hyper-developed other abilities, such as the hyper-development of echo-location in bats and dolphins or vision in hawks and other predator birds.

Descartes God was a creative invention, just like his clockwork world. It's easy to play back-and-dorth with fiction; take no principles at all. — Vera Mont

H'm. You seem to really have it in for Descartes. He is iconic and takes a lot of stick. But he wasn't the one who invented God, or even the argument he used to argue for the reality of that God. True, he contributed massively to the clockwork world, there were many others involved as well. But still, you're not wrong.

I think it is plausible to think that we and the other animals may have an instinct to copy behavior. So some behaviors may be a combination of instinctive and learned. Learned not in the sense of deliberately taught but in the sense of acquired by mimicry. — Janus

That's perfectly true and I think that mimicry is more important to our learning that is generally recognized. People seem to prefer to emphasis association. I don't know why. Aristotle knew better, of course, and I think he may be alone amongst the canonical philosophers in that.

I think part of what I would count as the possession of symbolic language consists in the ability to explicitly understand that such and such a sound, gesture or mark conventionally stands for whatever it symbolizes. — Janus

There's a bit of a problem with that. Articulating our understanding of how to use words and construct sentences is much more difficult than it seems. For the most part, mostly our use of language is underpinned by skills that we do not, and often cannot, articulate.

After Galileo had his little confrontation with the good fathers - and quite rationally stood down from his heretical belief in the Earth moving around the sun - every thinker in Europe had some difficult moments rethinking their strategy. So Descartes has his big truth-seeking exercise: purges his mind of all beliefs, everything he's ever been taught, delves way down in there for one incontrovertible fact and comes up with "I exist" OK... "But wait, here's another incontrovertible truth: God. Didn't learn about God; it wasn't a belief: I just happened to find Him in here at the bottom of my completely empty mind. And now, I shall proceed to unfold my theory of a mechanistic universe, only God's winding all the clockwork animals. Oh, and people are a mechanistic body with a completely independent, immaterial soul.
Are you convinced of his sincerity? — Vera Mont

Oddly enough, I am convinced of Descartes' sincerity. It is Galileo who gets himself into a morally complicated situation. (I mean that he could be accused of hypocrisy, but I think he was (rationally and morally) justified in what he did.)

Galileo, as you say, recanted. The inquisitors forbade him from teaching or even discussing his heretical theory. However, the story goes that, as he left the Vatican, he paused on the steps and said (to himself) "Even so, it moves". If he had said that in the hearing of the inquisitors, he would thereby have recanted his recantation. But he kept that remark to himself, thus leading the inquisitors to believe that he had rejected the theory that he actually believed - the essence of hypocrisy. But I agree with you about the need to survive as best we can, so I have no criticism of him.

Descartes' position is also complicated, but much less black-and-white than Galileo's. Of course, I don't question the repressive regime that all these guys lived under, and his position is not entirely clear; I don't deny that he may have been influenced by it. But the key point is that his scepticism is a thought-experiment. He presents his story in the Meditations as if he is really believing the sceptical conclusions. But his introduction makes it clear that he doesn't, and the reader knows perfectly well that he is going to go on and rescue the situation. The genius of the Meditations is that it is a story with a plot exactly like every adventure (thriller) story - disaster looms and seems inevitable, but our hero risks everything in order to dash in and rescue the situation. There are arguments, to be sure, but the suspense of the plot does the real work of persuasion. True, the world will seem different, but we are safe and that's the important thing. T.S. Eliot says it well - after all our wanderings we will come back home "and know the place for the first time"; there may even be toast and honey for tea. It is very odd that Descartes and Hume are both classified as sceptical philosophers, when actually, they are nothing of the kind.

The difference between the two is that Galileo pretended to accept that his theory was an erroneous hypothesis when he believed that it was a true account and while Descartes never pretended that his scepticism was more than a possibility; he was exploring it n order to refute it.

You can't be moral when you're dead - so you compromise to stay alive. That's rational. The same person who made that compromise might still be honest with his friends, faithful to his wife, accurate in his court testimony, prompt in the payment of his debts and play a clean game of billiards.
Why insist that anyone be pure in both thinking and probity? That's just not human. The insides of our heads are never swept clean like Descartes imagined that one time. — Vera Mont

Yes, I agree with you. There's a kind of morality that makes black-and-white judgements and refuses to acknowledge complexity and ambiguity. Everyone has to duck and cover in order to get along. But without that society could not function. Keeping the peace and the show on the road are practically and morally important goals both for individuals and for the collective.

You seem to keep going around circle of deviation — Corvus

I agree. I don't even understand what you mean by a circle of deviation. I was indeed deviating in the sense that I was trying to break out of your circle of repetition. Best wishes to you as well.

It is a very peculiar way of putting down your own definition on someone else's writing, making out as if it was written by someone else. — Corvus

Like a Amazon delivery van delivers what you have ordered from Amazon? I am not sure if that was what you meant. Hope not. You find out truth or falsity on something using reason. — Corvus

No, not like that at all. Your way of putting it is better.

Rationality is a method to finding truth, but rationality itself is not truth. — Corvus

Checking out you knew or not, that is the work of reason. Reason itself is not truth. — Corvus

But then, I just don't understand what you mean by these comments. Reason and truth are not the same thing. But they are connected. You seem to recognize that, but then deny it. I must be missing something.

I don't believe there such a thing as a great big all-encompassing Truth to which you can apply rational thought. You can think quite a lot about how to talk about Truth, but you can't comprehend it with reason; the Truth is too abstract to capture with anything but faith. (Not saying definitively that It isn't 'out there'; only that I can't believe in it.) — Vera Mont

Oh, I agree with you entirely about Truth. But I do think there are truths. (After that, it all gets complicated.)

You can only judge according to your own values. — Vera Mont

That's true. But I would only make judgement taking into account the situation or context of the action - especially when it is very different from my own. BTW, I've heard people commenting on Descartes' personal moral stance before, but I've never quite understood what the problem is.

A functioning democracy depends on education for that purpose. — Athena

Yes. Somehow, that important truth has got lost in public discussion in these days .

Welfare subsidizes Industry by providing the assistance low wagers need. Only we have very little understanding of this so we are not managing our reality well. — Athena

It is very curious that industry can be relied on to adopt the narrowest point of view. It's not as if industry doesn't end up footing the bill for their starvation wages. It doesn't seem to occur to them that they might have to pay smaller taxes if only they paid a decent wage and make bigger profits because they would have a larger market for their goods.

I'm not! Quite the reverse: I'm saying that those who didn't stick their necks out for what we consider "the truth" today were acting rationally. So are those who go along to get along now. — Vera Mont

I'm sorry I misunderstood you.

a career priest [Augustine] might propound Christian/Platonic values as a rational way to support the status quo. — Vera Mont

I understood that as saying that Augustine might propound Christian/Platonic values in order to support the status quo - which is true. But then he would be guilty of hypocrisy. I wanted to point out that it is also possible that he might propound those values because he believed in Christianity and Platonism, whether or not they supported the status quo.

There are many cases when it is very hard to assess people. Heidegger (support for Nazism) and Hegel (support for the Prussian monarchy) are particularly difficult cases. Descartes has also been suspected, maybe because of his explicit policy of accepting orthodox morality while he is applying his methodology of doubt. I'm just saying that I don't think we should rush to judgement. But I see now that you were not rushing to judgement and I was. So I apologize.

Rational thought is less often used in the service of Truth than in achieving goals. — Vera Mont

I'm not quite sure what you are saying here. Practical reason is inherently morally ambiguous; a bad actor can be entirely rational. It is only theoretical reason that is in the service of truth.

But there have always been rebels who spoke out against the wrongs in their society — Vera Mont

Quite so. But there it can be very hard to tell which of them has really put their finger on an actual wrong, as opposed to a perceived wrong.

The captives felt it was wrong to be captured, but when they had the chance, they would do the same to an enemy. — Vera Mont

That's certainly an acid test.

Sadly, they were. There are still many people like that. Slavery and genocide are still with us. — Patterner

You are right about slavery and genocide. The (rather few) days when we could all be confident in the eventual triumph of western liberal values are long gone. It's all been a big let down.
But one cannot aspire to moral standards unless they can be articulated in the world that one lives in and I don't think it is appropriate to apply the standards of other societies to lives lived in that way. For example, the first traces in history of human rights did not appear until the fifth century BCE - in Persia. It took a long time before the idea was articulated in the late Roman Empire and even longer before Thomas Paine was able to articulate them with some clarity in the 18th century CE.
All that can be expected or required of us is to get along as well as we can in the world that we know, with all its many imperfections. That's the only standard that it is reasonable to apply. The virtues of saints and heroes are supererogatory - beyond what is required or expected. Certainly, they are to be admired, but it is not necessary to imitate them in order to live a good life.

Yes, it is an inherent mental capability — Vera Mont

Yes, that's the idea that the psychologists are pursuing. But the evidence for the existence of such a mental capacity is thin, to say the least.
IQ tests were supposed to be such that one could not benefit from practising. But it turns out that you can, although it is also true that there is a limit to how much one can improve. It also turns out that IQ questions are culturally biased and it is very difficult to construct questions that are not biased in that way.

Everything that we learn to do is the result of our genes and our environment working together; one simply cannot disentangle one from the other.

Rational thought is less often used in the service of Truth than in achieving goals. — Vera Mont

Yes, that's true. But I don't think we should be too hard on people who go along with the conventional views in society. It's perfectly possible to accept orthodoxy, not because it is easier, but because it seems to you to be true or even because you can't conceive of an alternative. It took thousands of years for us to develop the idea that there is something wrong with slavery and racism, and it seems absurd to think that all those people were morally deficient in some way.

I'm motivated by the reflection that much of what we believe and take for granted is likely to turn out to be false, or at least to be replaced by some other orthodoxy by our children or children's children. So I think I'm living in a glass house and don't want to start throwing stones.

Your knowledge on something can be rational, but still be wrong. — Corvus

It is true that one can believe something on rational grounds, and be wrong. But if you are wrong, you didn't know it. Knowledge cannot be wrong. If someone believes that it will rain on Tuesday, and it doesn't, they didn't know that it will rain on Tuesday.

You have modified the content of my post with your own writing. That is not what I wrote in my post on what intelligence means. It would help clarifying the points if you could go over what intelligence means, and what reasoning means in general terms, and think about the difference between the two. — Corvus

You seem to be misunderstanding me. I didn't modify your post at all. I simply presented to you my own definition of intelligence, which is different from yours.

Truth emerges when your belief or knowledge is examined and verified by reason. Reason itself cannot deliver truth as you claim. — Corvus

If reason cannot deliver truth, then it cannot verity my belief or knowledge.

We were not talking about truth, and truth as a property of belief or knowledge has nothing to do with rational thinking. Your knowledge on something can be rational, but still be wrong. — Corvus

Clearly, we have different concepts of rationality. If rationality has nothing to do with truth, what is the point of it? How does it differ from reading tea leaves of consulting an astrologer?

There is certainly a problem about rational justification if one allows that someone can be justified in believing something and be wrong; it becomes even more confusing if you allow that someone can know something and be wrong. But the answer is to find a solution.