Comments

  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    I'm not refusing to talk about truth. I am only talking about truth. Truth is a property of sentences. Sentences do not exist as mind-independent Platonic entities. If nothing is said then there are no sentences, and if there are no sentences then there are no true sentences.Michael

    ...and if there are no true sentences, then there is no truth. In which case my description of your illustration is perfectly accurate, "That gold exists in universe B is true in universe A and neither true nor false in universe B."
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    - See:

    What I say is true, and is being said in universe A.Michael

    And sure, you continue to refuse to talk about truth and instead want to merely talk about utterances, but my whole point is that you need to summon up the courage to move beyond that. "But now you should go on to ask yourself how it is..."
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    Yeah. Can there be truth without a truthbearer? Seems to me a different question to whether there can be rocks on earth without humans.fdrake

    Right.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    I haven’t said either of those things.Michael

    Sure you have.

    You have substantially elevated the level of discourse in this thread, and I don't think the nature of truth is something that one can grasp in a day. For these reasons I will try not to complain. Curiously, fdrake's approach of setting out an argument beginning with two quasi-contradictory premises is thus far the best way of getting at the paradox:

    1 ) Take the world without humans.
    2 ) Imagine that nevertheless one human existed.
    fdrake

    His "modal context" workaround is apparently to say that it is not true that gold exists, but it would be true were there a mind. And there's no dinking around with the incoherent, "Gold exists but it's not true that gold exists." Such is a classical answer.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    - Okay, but your distinction between universe A and B is ad hoc for the purposes of predication. What began as a simple contradiction, "It is true and not true that gold exists," ended as a more complex contradiction, "That gold exists in universe B is true in universe A and neither true nor false in universe B." This use of "possible universes" is little more than a thin construct constructed to band-aid a contradiction.

    We can see this if we consider the simple and non-"universe"-scoped question of whether it is true that gold exists in universe B. The answer to this question is either yes or no. Truths are not scoped to universes in your sense that what is true about Asia in Europe is not true about Asia in Asia (to alter the metaphor).
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    ...ask, "What's good?"Moliere

    Right:

    What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophyMoliere

    "What does it mean to be good/virtuous" is not a question that begins (exists?) with the moderns. This is a wholly different issue than Hume's characteristically modern preoccupation with inscrutable oughtness.Leontiskos

    -

    There are two ways to go here. On the one hand we could say that ancients and moderns both ask what is good, but the moderns also do something that the ancients did not do (and that this breaks the supposed discontinuity between them). On the other hand we could observe that for very many moderns, asking what is good is a pointless and otiose question (Michael and Amadeus are two clear examples of this).

    Even @J's approach seems to challenge this continuity, for he thinks that Kant's view is uniquely correct. If Kant's view is uniquely correct and is not a continuation of earlier moral philosophy, then how could Kant be continuous with earlier moral philosophy?

    On it's face, this idea that there is strong continuity between ancient and modern ethics is false. I think you may be conflating it with a different contention, namely the claim that ancient remedies cannot solve modern problems.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    Here are three sentences:

    1. "Gold exists" is true
    2. It is true that gold exists
    3. Gold exists

    (1) and (3) do not mean the same thing; (1) describes a sentence as being true but (3) doesn't.
    Michael

    Here is what you said earlier, which is both better and contradictory to what you are saying now:

    3. "there is gold in those hills" is true is semantically equivalent to there is gold in those hillsMichael

    -

    But perhaps you want to say that...Michael

    I am saying that when you assert that gold exists you are involved in a truth claim. When you try to assert that gold exists while simultaneously eschewing all instances of truth/falsity, you are contradicting yourself.

    My claim is that in a world without language gold exists but there are no accurate accounts of the world.Michael

    Again:

    But now you should go on to ask yourself how it is that you are claiming, "(It is true that) gold still exists but nothing has the property of being true or false." You've highlighted sentence-Platonism, but you still haven't reckoned with your own truth-Platonism.Leontiskos

    The sentence-Platonism or description-Platonism is clear enough at this point, and it was salutary in canvassing Banno's blindspot. But I'd say you are still involved in truth-Platonism. So:

    In fact, I think "is true" can be replaced with the phrase "is an accurate account of the world" without issue. So, we have:

    1. "Gold exists" is an accurate account of the world
    2. It is an accurate account of the world that gold exists
    3. Gold exists

    My claim is that in a world without language gold exists but there are no accurate accounts of the world.
    Michael

    Our earlier exchange:

    • Leontiskos: When you say that gold exists are you not uttering a truth?
    • Michael: ...

    The adapted exchange would be as follows:

    • Leontiskos: When you say that gold exists are you not providing an accurate account of the world?
    • Michael:
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    This view of a continuity between ancient and modern ethics is similar to what I’ve been saying to Count TJ

    I think you and @Moliere are doing little more than trading in ambiguities. If you are not, then be straightforward about you claims. "Ancient and modern ethics are continuous/similar because they both ________."

    Moliere seems to be committing a straightforward non sequitur, "There are certain similarities between ancient and modern ethics, therefore Hume's 'guillotine' is not distinctively modern."
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    There's no such thing as the truth; there's only the truth of a sentence, so this remark doesn't make much sense.Michael

    And yet your view entails it. You say that in the cases we are speaking about, "gold still exists but nothing has the property of being true or false." When asked whether this commits you to the idea that it is true that gold still exists, you bury your head in the sand.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    Second, it possible that the demand that everything be reduced to univocal predication part of the problem? Univocal predication is proper to logic.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, and even in logic univocity founders. @J's thread on Kimhi, where the univocity of p in the first two premises of a modus ponens is questioned, is a perfect example of the way that strict univocity doesn't even work in logic. There have actually been a number of threads in the past months demonstrating in effect that univocal logical formalisms cannot even stand up to their own scrutiny.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    But I didn't say "it is true that gold still exists". I said "gold still exists".Michael

    And by that you mean that it is true.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    If nobody says anything then gold still exists but nothing has the property of being true or false.Michael

    But now you should go on to ask yourself how it is that you are claiming, "(It is true that) gold still exists but nothing has the property of being true or false." You've highlighted sentence-Platonism, but you still haven't reckoned with your own truth-Platonism.

    "true" and "false" are just adjectives used to categorize speech and writing and thoughts and beliefs.Michael

    What is needed is to move beyond propositions construed as reified and accidental.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    I am unsure what wasn't 'precise' in this?AmadeusD

    You're using a shotgun approach and hoping you hit something. I want a single criticism, not four.

    You can statistically predict anything, even if it's arbitrary.AmadeusD

    No, I don't see that one can statistically predict arbitrary outcomes.

    I think what you're trying to get into the discussion is that, given certain aims we can predict what people will say is good. For Muslims...AmadeusD

    No, I think we can predict what people will say is good regardless of their religion. People will say that food is good, for instance, whether they are Muslim or Christian. If we can predict that most all people will say that food is good, then we have no reason to believe that people's identification of food as good is arbitrary.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    P1. "there is gold in those hills" is true if and only if there is gold in those hills
    C1. Therefore, there is gold in those hills if and only if "there is gold in those hills" is true
    P2. If "there is gold in those hills" is true then "there is gold in those hills" exists.
    C2. Therefore, if there is gold in those hills then "there is gold in those hills" exists.
    C3. Therefore, if "there is gold in those hills" does not exist then there is no gold in those hills.
    Michael

    This is a helpful argument, but this is what I said earlier regarding C3:

    For the proximate argument, supposing that the only minds that exist are human, and all (human) minds cease to exist, it does not follow that the existence of other objects is necessarily altered. But the question of whether they truly exist at least becomes moot.Leontiskos

    That is, supposing the latter half of P1 represents a truth, the absence of minds does not result in a falsehood, it results in a non-truth. Your emphasis on sentences and propositions is very likely parallel to minds, but it may not be.

    Similarly:

    1. If Michael is flying a black kite, then I will see a kite.
    2. I do not see a kite.
    3a. Therefore, Michael is flying a non-black kite.
    3b. Therefore, Michael is not flying a kite.

    When we are construing <there is gold in those hills> as a truth vis-a-vis minds, the absence of minds does not prove that there is no gold in those hills (which would be an opposed truth). Instead, it negates the truth's assertoric force. It is like the man who goes blind and concludes that someone turned out the lights. That he has gone blind does not prove that the lights have gone out. But they may have gone out. He doesn't know.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    What this is meant to highlight is that just because you have some is-statements -- a "What is it for this kind of creature to be good?" -- that doesn't remove the conflict found in modern philosophyMoliere

    "What does it mean to be good/virtuous" is not a question that begins (exists?) with the moderns. This is a wholly different issue than Hume's characteristically modern preoccupation with inscrutable oughtness.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    Moral good is not its own sort of good here, distinct from the good of a "good car" or "good food." All related to flourishing.Count Timothy von Icarus

    I was listening to Edward Feser recently, and he argued that the modern abandonment of teleology left morality in a lurch. Severed from its teleological foundation, morality became inscrutable, as it is in both Hume and Kant.

    The Dark Knight was Batman right to hide (to lie about) the fact that Harvey Dent degenerated into the monstrous Two Face? That seems to be what the film would lead us to believe.Count Timothy von Icarus

    And yet the sequel takes that in a different direction, where the lie about justice erupts into full scale anarchy.

    Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? Are syllogisms vacuous because all conclusions are contained in the premises? Is deterministic computation vacuous because its results always follow from the inputs with a probability of 100%?

    We might think "2+2" is just another way to say "4," and "1 ÷ 3" just another way to say "1/3," but "179 ÷ 3 " is "59 and 2/3rds" seems genuinely informative unless you're an arithmetic prodigy.

    Plus, not all circles are viscous circles. I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence.
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yes, good points. It is curious how little folks around here understand logic, argument, and how knowledge is created. In the air is the vaguely Wittengenstenian idea that a good argument is nothing more than a tautology.

    I know of no similar move in the Eastern tradition or among the Islamic scholars,Count Timothy von Icarus

    Perhaps not in the East, but Islam provides an antecedent for Hume in its late-Medieval forms of Voluntarism and Occasionalism. I believe Alfred Freddoso has written on this.

    I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

    "If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good."
    Count Timothy von Icarus

    Yep. :lol:

    You only get to a position where it possible for it to be "choiceworthy" to prefer "what is truly worse," is if you have already assumed that what is "truly worse" is in some way arbitrary or inscrutable in the first place.Count Timothy von Icarus

    And as far as I can tell the people who go around spouting Hume's arguments are usually lying, saying things they don't believe to be true. Hume himself was more interesting insofar as he recognized that he could not uphold strong skepticism while keeping a straight face:

    And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind... — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, § xii, 128
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    I don't quite grant your premise, anyway. [...] This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time.AmadeusD

    So are you saying that you do not grant the first premise? You think the argument is valid but the first premise is false?

    Better to give a precise critique than to attempt to throw the kitchen sink at my short post.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    because they desire the breadMoliere

    To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    Again, fabricating stuff. Try reading.Banno

    Fortunately at this point in the thread everyone is simply ignoring your plea to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Such is always only a matter of time.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    So I'm asking:
    1 ) Take the world without humans.
    2 ) Imagine that nevertheless one human existed.
    3 ) Get that human to look at Boorara.
    4 ) Imagine that human asserts "There is gold in Boorara".

    The assertion in ( 4 ) would then be a true assertion, right? But there were no asserters in ( 1 ), so no assertions, so no true assertions. But that process still gives you a roundabout way of mapping a state of affairs (the gold being in Boorara) to an assertion ("There is gold in Boorara"), albeit now through modal contexts.
    fdrake

    But what is continually happening is that folks are sneaking in (2) despite (1). So there is a human in a world without humans, and there is language in a world without language, etc.

    For example:

    But gold does exist in the absence of language. It's very straightforward.Michael

    Michael is here trying to use language in the absence of language. He thinks it is straightforward to achieve the effect of language even in the absence of language.

    -

    Again, the issue here is about how truth relates to minds. Those who want minds to be accidental and unnecessary for truths are doing things like focusing on language or propositions or concepts, and saying that because such things do not cause what they describe to exist, therefore it is true that such-and-such exists even if propositions or language or concepts do not. This is a failure to grapple with the issue at hand. It is a superficial approach to truth, apparently common among Analytics. It is the idea that free-floating truths exist, even when minds do not.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    @Janus, here is a different but related idea that Paine cited two years ago:

    It is also worth considering how time can be related to the soul; and why time is thought to be in everything, both in earth and in sea and in heaven. It is because it is an attribute, or state, of movement (since it is the number of movement) and all these things are movable (for they are all in place), and time and movement are together, both in respect of potentiality and in respect of actuality?

    Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be some one to count there cannot be anything that can be counted either, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted. But if nothing but soul, or in soul reason, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if movement can exist without soul. The before and after are attributes of movement, and time is these qua countable.
    — Aristotle, Physics, 223a15, translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    Because it's the herd that I'm most concerned with.Moliere

    Basically Hume's guillotine still chops.Moliere

    I don't think Hume's guillotine ever chopped, and it certainly doesn't chop for the herd. If you place food in front of a poor starving person, they will eat it. If you try to argue that 'is' does not imply 'ought' before allowing them to eat it, they will still eat it, but will also think you are crazy. :smile:
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    Lets grant the proposition.

    How would that connect with any extrinsic facts?
    AmadeusD

    1. What people deem to be good is predictable.
    2. What is predictable is not arbitrary.
    3. Therefore what people deem to be good is not arbitrary.

    So as a first step we should be able to say that it is not arbitrary, as you have claimed.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    But you can't split them. You're trying to divide or separate knowledge from what is real. I say it's because you're taking a view above or outside both the subject (you) and the object (world) - or trying to (cf Nagel's 'view from nowhere').Wayfarer

    It is interesting that Banno looks like a Platonist, with self-subsistent truths floating independently of any minds. There is something about this that is resonant with analytic philosophy, and in particular its pre-critically scientistic metaphysics. This is curiously on-point for your project.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    But I am saying that.Wayfarer

    Sorry, I committed and then fixed a bad typo, but apparently not quickly enough. Cannot can.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    - Nah, you are just begging the question again. That "truth" is a meta-truth of the possible world space that we are conceptualizing, not necessarily a truth internal to that world.

    If you think that a world without any minds has the truth that there are no minds, then we have another example where you hold that there can be truths without minds. This is the overstepping of transcendence that I spoke of earlier.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    That I take as the point at issue.Wayfarer

    If that is the point at issue then presumably you disagree with what I take to be uncontroversial, no? In that case you would claim that <existence can be meaningfully affirmed or denied even without the involvement of mind>, which does not seem like something you would say.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    You guys seem not to understand the difference between affirming that something is true and it's being true.Banno

    So are you are saying that a world without any minds still has truths, just not affirmations?
  • The Mind-Created World
    None of which is to deny the empirical fact that boulders will roll over cracks and into canyonsWayfarer

    Okay, and do you also agree with this:

    The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape.Leontiskos

    You cite Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Are you agreeing with them in toto?
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    This is the same point we debated in the mind-created world thread, about the objective properties of boulders.Wayfarer

    There I believe we argued over whether the shape of a boulder is mind-dependent in the sense that it relies upon perception.

    We can't really know whether an unseen object exists or not...Wayfarer

    We can infer that balls keep rolling and that boulders retain shape even when they are not perceived.

    The key issue is not whether unseen objects exist but whether their existence can be meaningfully affirmed or denied without the involvement of mind. That is where metaphysical realism and idealism differ. The former assumes that unseen objects exist in a way that is entirely independent of any observer or consciousness - although that is a presumption. Idealism emphasizes that to consider or speak of existence, we must already bring mind to bear on it.Wayfarer

    I am not familiar with these uses of "metaphysical realism" and "idealism." It strikes me as uncontroversial that existence cannot "be meaningfully affirmed or denied without the involvement of mind."
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    There may be gold in the hills, even if no one knows.Banno

    Sure, but that does not commit me to your claim that there are truths about the existence of gold even if there are no minds.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    But in any case, our usual way of speaking about it suffices. So, pedantic concerns aside, does it really matter whether it is said that when humans disappear it will still be true that there is gold or that when humans disappear there will still be gold? Surely the salient point is that there will still be gold.Janus

    My point applies either way. None of the alternative phrasings evade the fact that you are positing truths without minds. "Whatever the case, there will still be gold," is just another way of saying that it will be true that gold exists even when there are no minds, and that truth therefore does not require any mind.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong


    For the proximate argument, supposing that the only minds that exist are human, and all (human) minds cease to exist, it does not follow that the existence of other objects is necessarily altered. But the question of whether they truly exist at least becomes moot.

    But isn't the fundamental problem or challenge that all of this speaks to the fact that it appears possible for propositions to be true in the absence of any minds, which is inconsistent with the idea that truth requires minds?Clearbury

    Yes, and we are slowly getting at the transcendent quality of truth, namely the idea that truth transcends the thinking subject. Classically we would say that truth transcends the thinking subject without transcending mind itself, but that over-stepping of transcendence is understandable, especially in a post-theistic culture.

    Do you think that, that there is gold in the ground at Boorara is dependent on there being someone around who knows or sees or believes that there is gold at Boorara? Or do you think that there will be gold in the ground at Boorara despite anyone knowing or seeing or believing it?Banno

    This is basically the original error coming up again: conflating the presence of perceptions or beliefs with the existence of minds. One need not say that truth exists where there are no minds in order to say that a ball continues to roll when you look away from it.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    I would say instead:If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then there would still be gold in Boorara.Janus

    But you already said that <here>, and we already went on to talk about it.

    With your statement about the gold in Boorara you have with our condition "if everything else is undisturbed" guaranteed that it is true that there will be gold.Janus

    Yes, it begs the question as to whether truth is undisturbed when minds disappear. This was of course pointed out to Banno.

    Apparently the relationship between truth and actuality is a weird and tricky business.Janus

    Yep.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    These are meant to be devil's-advocate questions, but they do demand answers.J

    Do any devil's advocate questions demand answers?

    On a philosophy forum the question of the OP should probably be phrased, "Why ought one do anything at all?" Or, "Why ought one do any one thing rather than any other thing?"

    At that point we can whittle the contributors down to two groups: those who recognize that some things ought to be done, and those who won't. I'd say that only the first group is worth hearing. (And we could have another thread for the second group, which shows that anyone who does things believes that things should be done.)

    At that point everyone in the first group can contribute to a productive conversation given the common premise that some things ought be done.
  • Why ought one do that which is good?
    If something is Good, it's because you have personally understood/decided it is good. You couldn't support that with any extrinsic facts.

    The 'right' action is to do with achieving something. That something must be arbitrary, at base.
    AmadeusD

    Is one able to predict with some level of accuracy what others will deem good? If so, how could the good be arbitrary or disconnected from "extrinsic facts"?
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong


    @Janus has tried a few different tacks, but one of them is that a claim about the future can be true now even if it is not true in the future. I don't see him trying to parse out sentences/propositions in the way that you and Banno are prone to.

    But note that Janus has agreed with Banno and tried to defend his claims, even if not his exact wording.
  • Is the distinction between metaphysical realism & anti realism useless and/or wrong
    Janus and Banno seem to believe that (2) means the exact same thing as (1), and so that (2) is true only if the proposition “it is raining” exists tomorrow.Michael

    No, I don't think so:

    If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara.Banno

    This is a clear affirmation of truth where there is no proposition, and it is the basis of the discussion.