If logic is "rules for stringing symbols together," then these rules can either be arbitrary or non-arbitrary. If they are non-arbitrary, then logic must itself be connected to the non-arbitrary determination of these rules.

I see that Russell defines logic in terms of the preservation of truth, so that's an interesting start. "Logics are theories of validity: they tell us, for different arguments, whether or not that argument is of a valid form" (SEP). (She appeals to the Generalised Tarski Thesis to define validity.)

I'm guessing I might agree with much of what she thinks. But 'logical pluralism' feels a bit like 'situation ethics', in that it gets at something true but mixes up epistemological and metaphysical spheres. I clearly think formalized systems have significant limitations, so if "logical monism" is the view that there is some formalized system without limitations then I am not a logical monist. It's not hard to think that two different 'logics' "can be getting things right."

Well, that would mean that, say, an uninterpreted explication of propositional calculus does not count as part of logic. — Banno

I added to my last post, "Logicians can temporarily and usefully prescind from truth, but entire detachment is something different." There are more proximate and more remote relations of logic to truth, but something with a perfect non-relation to truth is not logic.

The point here is just that logic is bigger than the preservation of truth in an argument. — Banno

This is an ignoratio elenchus, as I already noted.

"have a certain logic to them..." — Banno

This is a metaphorical use of the term, similar to what I pointed out <here>. Logic depends on order, and thus ordered things are sometimes called "logical." But logic is more properly an art of ordering, not mere order. You are appealing to usage, but the etymology and the historical usage point very clearly to logic as an art of reasoning.

They say that one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it. A few weeks ago I looked at your thread which is intended to teach propositional calculus (link). It's no coincidence that in your third substantial post you were already into truth tables. But even in your first substantial post you said, "What we want to do is to examine the relations between these propositions, rather than their contents." It seems to me that it would have been more apt to say that we want to examine the relations that obtain between these propositions based on their content. Relations hold or fail to hold in light of the content of the relata, and this has everything to do with truth.

Now a pedagogue might choose to introduce the rules of logic before introducing the purpose of logic, much like you could teach a child to kick a ball before introducing them to the game of soccer. Of course I am not convinced that this is sound pedagogy.

Logic has advanced somewhat since the middle ages. — Banno

Do you have any actual acquaintance with the logic of the middle ages?

Well, I never said that logic can only be defined in terms of preserving truth. But that someone makes up a formal system that has nothing to do with truth and calls it 'logic' is not much of a counterargument. Logicians can temporarily and usefully prescind from truth, but entire detachment is something different.

Best answer might be that it is rules of grammar; rules for stringing symbols together. — Banno

But logic is not merely rules for stringing symbols together. If I make rules for stringing symbols together I have not necessarily done anything related to logic.

Formalists need to take a step back and consider why the formal systems were constructed in the first place.

On the other side if your claim is supposed to question my claim that “the notion of ‘truth’ is built in the ‘logic’ rules themselves”, then you are failing since your own notion of logical system as a set of truth preserving rules is also grounded on the notion of “truth”. — neomac

If something is meant to preserve another thing, then it is not building or creating that thing.

I don't see how this fact could even be arguable, whatever we might think the implications of it are. — Janus

You underestimate the power of the Dark Si... erm, of Materialism. :naughty:

But Davidson says there are no psycho-physical laws, which I take to mean that there are no laws which detemine mental acts analogous to the laws which govern physical events... — Wayfarer

In the post of Feser's that you referenced above this seems to be related to, "3. There are no strict laws on the basis of which we can predict and explain mental phenomena." If I read Feser correctly, then it is more the idea that there are no laws that connect the psychic and the physical realms in a strict way (and this is based on the "Principle of the Anomalism of the Mental").

Davidson says:

There can be no "psychophysical law" in the form of a biconditional, ' (x) (x is true-in-L if and only if x is Φ) ' where, ' Φ ' is replaced by a "physical" predicate (a predicate of L). Similarly, we can pick out each mental event using the physical vocabulary alone, but no purely physical predicate, no matter how complex, has, as a matter of law, the same extension as a mental predicate. — Davidson, Mental Events, p. 141

It seems that he is saying that the "mental" truth predicate, 'true-in-L', is not reducible to the "physical" Φ. This seems right to me, because universals have greater extension than particulars.

But your statement “Logic is a set of formal systems; it is defined by the formalism” (which is neither a logic formula nor a logic tautology) seemed to offer a definition for “Logic”. And valid definitions should not be tautological in the sense that what is to be defined should not occur in what is defining. Yet your other claims made your definition of “logic” look tautological (even claiming “Logic is all about tautologies” would sound tautological if it equates to “Logic is all about logic”). — neomac

I think this is exactly right. "Logic is a set of formal systems," does not approach a coherent definition of logic. The question that immediately comes to mind is, "Which set of formal systems?" It's much like saying, "Hyenas are a set of animals." It gives the genus without a specific difference. The specific difference of logic is related to (2), namely that logic aims to provide us with a means of reasoning well and arriving at previously unknown truths.

Those who study formal systems as some sort of end in themselves are doing meta-logic, not logic. It would be like if a traffic engineer became so interested in traffic lights that he comes to focus on the lights themselves, independently of traffic. At that point he is no longer a traffic engineer—he is just a guy who studies a specific sort of light. I think this sort of detachment from reality is a big problem in contemporary philosophy.

If the thread is about cataloguing the different ways that the word 'logic' is used, then (1) has a place. If it is about logic, then I think it doesn't.

But there is no way for me to make sense of “true” as applied to “logic” since the notion of “truth” is built in the “logic” rules themselves, in other words the meaning of “truth” is determined by “logic rules” too. — neomac

On the other hand, I don't agree with this. Logic can be said to be true insofar as it does what it is supposed to do: aid us in reasoning well. Currently our central criterion is validity, where the truth of the premises ensures the truth of the conclusions. So if I take a logical system and I scrupulously follow the rules, beginning with true premises, but then arrive at false conclusions, the logical system is bad or false. It is false in the sense that it is not doing what it was meant to do (i.e. preserve truth). Truth is not built in logic; it transcends it.

That's pretty well it. — Wayfarer

And thus I come to understand the basis of your worries. The colloquial and etymological sense of 'supervenience' lends itself to epiphenomenalism, so it should come as no surprise that recasting it as a "philosophical term of art" failed to fully insulate it from that broader semantic context. Much of what I have said in this thread presupposes SEP's claim that it is merely a technical term of art. Now I'm not so sure if this can be granted.

...I think the case can be made that Aristotelian Thomism is a Western form of perennialism... — Wayfarer

I think so too.

On the other hand, I do recognise that space needs to be given for discussion of the modern mainstream... — Wayfarer

I agree again.

(BTW that last quote attributed to me is from Ed Feser, although I'm in furious agreement with the thrust of it.) — Wayfarer

Fixed. :wink:

Thank you, I read the whole thing and it was helpful. I am not familiar enough with Davidson's thought to confidently interpret short quotations, so Feser is a good mediator.

What's interesting to me is the Aristotelian-Thomistic maxim that, "Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses," and the way it parallels the thesis that the mental supervenes on the physical. I don't think Aristotelians can ultimately hold to such supervenience, but it is an interesting parallel.

I searched Feser's blog posts for 'supervenience' and this is the first thing that came up:

In his book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim puts forward the following characterization of the materialist supervenience thesis:

I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence – a sense of dependence that justifies saying that a mental property is instantiated in a given organism at a time because, or in virtue of the fact that, one of its physical “base” properties is instantiated by the organism at that time. Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. (p. 34) — Edward Feser | Supervenience on the hands of an angry God

This is almost exactly what you were worried about, no?

I have not followed these debates in philosophy of mind, and therefore my exposure to the term 'supervenience' is more quotidian. I think this helps me in some ways but harms me in others, given that there are such bitter debates in philosophy of mind that hang on the precise meaning of supervenience.

The notion seems to rest on a category mistake, a failure to understand that the network of rationally-cum-semantically interrelated mental states is no more susceptible of a smooth correlation with a particular network of causally interrelated physical states than the content of a book can be smoothly correlated with a certain kind of physical format — Edward Feser

That seems exactly right to me.

Subtle, ain't it? — Banno

Wouldn't someone like Davidson just say that it is precisely through the different physical events and characteristics that we know the different [final causes] of the two lists?

Fair enough, . :up:

No, it fails to make sense because you left out an important part of the sentence, namely the leading IFF. — frank

Well, I left off the merely definitional part because we were already talking about the supervenience of A on B, "A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if..." But in fact you knew exactly what I meant, and you responded by claiming that the "quoted words do not describe supervenience."

Entailment and supervenience aren't identical, but supervenience can overlap entailment, causality, and dependence. — frank

Okay, I can agree with that.

This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties." — Leontiskos

Well, not to quibble, but because you left the IFF off of the beginning of the sentence, your quote from the SEP didn't make any sense. — frank

It would only fail to make sense if someone did not understand that we are considering the possibility of A supervening on B, but this should be apparent both because it is the standard usage which was present even in your OP, and because A and B were introduced explicitly via the entailment relation that you put forward.

But I think the reason "entail" isn't exactly equivalent to "supervene" is because the latter is proprietary wording and the former isn't. — frank

Hmm. Both terms have technical and non-technical senses. I don't think any mixture of those senses would support your idea that, "You could also say the music entails these actions." The SEP article covers the difference between supervenience and entailment in some detail.

Yes, that was the claim from that I first responded to (link).

Let me just repeat my claim now that you see that the definition is accurate:

I think this direction of entailment is necessary but not sufficient for supervenience. This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties." — Leontiskos

- Right :up:

I think someone could even hold to the [mental supervening on the physical] while also maintaining that the mental state causes the physical state. — Leontiskos

@Wayfarer - If I am right about this then it constitutes a stark example of the way that supervenience as a philosophical term of art differs from the colloquial or etymological meaning of supervenience. This may be part of the reason why the mental/physical debate gets so tricky. Another reason is probably that there are so many interrelated notions of supervenience, even in the philosophical sphere.

Effectively, the distance between the philosophical meaning of the term and the colloquial and etymological meaning biases the debate.

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That quoted words do not describe supervenience. — frank

It was a quote from the SEP definition of supervenience, in the introduction of the article you quoted from in your OP:

A-properties supervene on B-properties if and only if a difference in A-properties requires a difference in B-properties—or, equivalently, if and only if exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantees exact similarity with respect to A-properties. — SEP | Supervenience Introduction

If it's scientific knowledge, can't it ultimately be tested and therefore verified without AI? — NotAristotle

Sure, but in that case you are not "trusting AI," which is a central premise of my argument. If we fact-check AI every time it says something then the conundrum will never arise. I don't think we will do that. It would defeat the whole purpose of these technologies.

Some quotes:

To some extent supervenience is intuitive. The music created by an orchestra supervenes on the actions of the players. You could also say the music entails these actions. — frank

I think this direction of entailment is necessary but not sufficient for supervenience. This is because A can entail B without "exact similarity with respect to B-properties guarantee[ing] exact similarity with respect to A-properties."

If we think of supervenience as pertaining to propositions, the truth of "Orchestral music evolved" is true IFF statements about required activities at the lower level are true. — frank

Given the differences between entailment and supervenience, I am not convinced this sort of IFF correctly represents supervenience. But I suppose I would need more clarity on what you are saying here.

Scientific knowledge is verifiable, not to the layman but to the scientist. Verification is incredibly "pragmatically important" for scientific knowledge, and I believe AI will deeply undermine our ability to verify.

But there is also no inclusion of those notions, and so the overlap is accidental. In this thread we often see overlap mistaken for identity. For example, in your previous post you incorrectly imply that logical supervenience guarantees entailment (via your 'if-an-only-if' definition). For the most part supervenience brings with it entailment, but entailment does not suffice for supervenience.

. . .The upshot is that the logical supervenience of property set A on property set B will only guarantee that each A-property is entailed by some B-property if A and B are closed under both infinitary Boolean operations and property-forming operations involving quantification. — SEP | Supervenience and Entailment

Leontiskos - can you throw any light on my query? It seems related to the last paragraph you quote from the SEP entry but I’m struggling with putting it together. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, supervenience and causation are two different things:

Neither of these property realization relations is the supervenience relation. A property can supervene on other properties even when it is not the kind of property that has a causal role associated with it, as is the case with pure mathematical properties, for instance. Nor is property supervenience required for property realization in either of the above senses. — SEP | Supervenience and Realization

The concrete point here is that just because a mental act supervenes on a physical state, it does not follow that it is caused by that physical state. I think someone could even hold to the supervenience while also maintaining that the mental state causes the physical state, for example.

Reason/explanation is also a bit different from supervenience:

Supervenience claims, by themselves, do nothing more than state that certain patterns of property (or fact) variation hold. They are silent about why those patterns hold, and about the precise nature of the dependency involved. — SEP | Supervenience and Explanation

See also, "Supervenience as a philosophical term of art."

I am glad that you two are sussing out some of the ambiguity between supervenience, cause, reason, etc. Much of the language in this thread is being used too loosely.


Sidenote: I did not receive a notification that you mentioned me, which is why I am late to this. I think it might be because you added the mention in an edit. If so, I think this is a quasi-bug that would be good for the forum wish list.

So you take it that supervenience means a cause but a non-essential cause? — Hanover

Relevant excerpt:

Grounding and ontological dependence are distinct from each other. The simplest way to see this is by means of the kinds of case that revealed to David Lewis that causation is distinct from causal dependence (1973): preemption and overdetermination. Just as cases of causal overdetermination and preemption involve causation without causal dependence, so too do cases of ‘grounding overdetermination’ and ‘grounding preemption’ involve grounding without ontological dependence. For example, the fact that I exist grounds the fact that something exists, but the obtaining of the latter fact does not depend upon the obtaining of the former; the fact that something exists is massively overgrounded. — SEP | Supervenience, Grounding, and Ontological Depdendence

So when you say that, "Without B there is no A," you seem to be positing an ontological dependence which overlooks the possibility of grounding overdetermination. Nevertheless, ontological dependence and grounding are both separate from supervenience.

Regarding the relation of entailment to supervenience:

Nonetheless, that B-properties entail A-properties is neither necessary nor sufficient for A-properties to supervene on B-properties. (The notion of property entailment in play is this: property P entails property Q just in case it is metaphysically necessary that anything that possesses P also possesses Q.) To see that such entailments do not suffice for supervenience, consider the properties being a brother and being a sibling. [...]

To see that supervenience does not suffice for entailment, recall that supervenience can hold with only nomological necessity. In such cases, there is no entailment; thermal conductivity properties do not entail electrical conductivity properties, for example.

But what about supervenience with metaphysical or logical necessity? Even that does not in general guarantee that there are B-properties that entail the A-properties. At best, the logical supervenience of A on B means that how something is B-wise entails how it is A-wise. But it does not follow that every A-property is entailed by a B-property, or even that some A-property is entailed by a B-property. Consider two examples... — SEP | Supervenience and Entailment

I'm going to find an essence one of these days, I swear! :sweat:

There's a break in the symmetry that I think some have not recognised... — Banno

A lot of the confusion in this thread is addressed in the SEP article. Here is an excerpt on the fact that supervenience is non-symmetric:

However, supervenience is neither symmetric nor asymmetric; it is non-symmetric. Sometimes it holds symmetrically. Every reflexive case of supervenience is trivially a symmetric case; consider also the case of the volume and surface area of perfect spheres mentioned in Section 3.1. And sometimes it holds asymmetrically. For example, while the mental may supervene on the physical, the physical does not supervene on the mental. There can be physical differences without mental differences. — SEP | Supervenience and Entailment

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What's wrong with "dependence?" — T Clark

Here is an excerpt on dependence:

A second way to see that supervenience is not identical to either grounding or ontological dependence is to note that the latter two relations are widely (though not universally) thought to be irreflexive and asymmetrical. Nothing can ground or ontologically depend upon itself, and nothing can ground or ontologically depend on something that also grounds or depends on it. But as we have seen, supervenience is reflexive and not asymmetrical (see Section 3.2). (For challenges to the claim that dependence and/or grounding are irreflexive and asymmetric, see Jenkins 2011, Bliss 2014, Wilson 2014, and Barnes forthcoming; for a reply to these challenges, see Bennett 2017, sect. 3.2).

A third way to see that supervenience is not the same as either grounding or ontological dependence is that the following conditionals are false:

$\quad\bullet$ if A supervenes on B, B grounds A
$\quad\bullet$ if A supervenes on B, A ontologically depends on B
— SEP | Supervenience, Grounding, and Ontological Depdendence

What is at stake here is the nature of implication, not the meaning of material implication. We are questioning whether material implication is an adequate account of implication. No one is confused about how material implication works.

I don't see an issue. — Banno

Here's an introduction:

An oddity [of material implication] pointed out early by MacColl (1908) is the observation that of any two sentences of the form “not A or B” and “not B or A”, at least one must be true. Assuming the equivalence with the material conditional, this implies that either “if John is a physician, then he is red-haired” or “if John is red-haired, then he is a physician” must be true. Intuitively, however, one may be inclined to reject both conditionals. Similar complications, known as the paradoxes of material implication, concern the fact that for any sentences A and B, “if A then B” follows from “not A”, but also from “B”, thereby allowing true and false sentences to create true conditionals irrespective of their content (C. I. Lewis 1912). Another peculiarity looms large: the negation of “if A then B” is predicted to be “A and not B”, but intuitively one may deny that “if God exists, all criminals will go to heaven” without committing oneself to the existence of God (cited in Lycan 2001).

A fourth complication is that conditional sentences in natural language are not limited to indicative conditionals (“if I strike this match, it will light”), but also include subjunctive conditionals used to express counterfactual hypotheses (“if I had struck this match, it would have lit”). All counterfactual conditionals would be vacuously true if analyzed as material conditionals with a false antecedent, as pointed out by Quine (1950), an obviously inadequate result, suggesting that the interplay of grammatical tense and grammatical mood should also be of concern to understand the logic of conditionals.

To a large extent, the development of conditional logics over the past century has thus been driven by the quest for a more sophisticated account of the connection between antecedent and consequent in conditionals. — SEP | The Logic of Conditionals

This seems like a general problem with the truth functional approach, in this case the truth functional approach to entailment. Teleology crops up like weeds. ...Or crops!

"Anything" is a remarkably vague category! That might also be what Allison is getting at -- we started with "Anything", and didn't draw out the deduction that "Action" is an anything. — Moliere

The argument could also be read syllogistically, in which case 'anything' makes more sense:

1. All appearances are known mediately
2. No first-person actions are known mediately
3. Therefore, no first-person actions are appearances

Of course this is also valid.

Another way to read the first premise would be via quantification: < $\forall$x(Appearance(x) $\to$ KnownMediately(x)) >.

As Janus alluded to, Allison might be thinking that there is a subtle equivocation on 'known'.

Some people lean into it. — schopenhauer1

Right! "Queer as folk," as the old saying goes.

But I only interjected to take exception to an unfair characterization of Wayfarer's claim. It went about as well as could be hoped for. :smile:

Why not? — Banno

Well when you or Searle say that, "A is a better X than B," you could either be stipulating that it is better or asserting that it is better. If you are stipulating then you are apparently claiming that it is better according to some arbitrary standard that you have chosen. If you are asserting then you are doing something more, and you are making a claim that could be right or wrong, true or false.

As I have pointed out numerous times, the reason we know Searle is not merely stipulating is because of what he says about his claim:

It is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to philosophy and cognitive science by the mistaken view that "believe" and other intentional verbs name relations between believers and propositions. — John Searle

Seems that "real definitions" are mere stipulations. Is it a better pair of scissors because it is sharp, or because it is harder to cut yourself with them? — Banno

This is the elementary difference between a substance and an artifact. According to Aristotle, artifacts have no essence, although they can be usefully imagined to have quasi-essences in various ways. "Sharpness," for example, has a determinate and normative notion that is not merely stipulative, and we can assess artifacts according to this notion.


I think my previous posts are clear enough, but to try once more: when Searle says that his conception of belief is better than the prevailing conception, and that his own conception avoids the great "damage done to philosophy and cognitive science," he is not making a merely stipulative claim.

I'm glad we're on the same page.

Everyone can claim they are engaging in good faith, especially those who aren't. What we have, I believe, is not good faith argumentation but rather post hoc rationalization in support of some variety of scientism. Hence the equivocations, the goal post shifting, the vague allusions to empiricism, and finally the descent into superficial eristic with the kamikaze wielding of arguments that undermine your own position as well (e.g. “The participants in your intersubjective agreement could be lying!”). I would simply want to call such an approach unserious. Good luck.

The possibility for public demonstration is the same as intersubjective testability and emprical verifiability. If I claim that it is raining, right here, right now the truth of that is publicly demonstrable, intersubjectively testable and empirically verifiable to those who are able to come and see. The same goes for any claim about observable phenomena. — Janus

Why don't you go ahead and try to actually define what you mean by these terms, and in the process show us that the various claims you are making are not tautological?

To take one of the claims, it seems fairly clear that not everything that can be tested by other subjects admits of the possibility for public demonstration (i.e. the possibility for public demonstration is not the same as intersubjective testability). This is because public demonstration is apparently premised on a shared (publicly available) object of inquiry, such as a single thermometer that everyone present can simultaneously read. But intersubjective testability in no way requires this shared object. The Buddha's claim can be tested by other subjects, but it cannot be a public object of simultaneous inquiry. Of course these arguments are based on my own understandings of the concepts, for you have provided no definitions for these terms you keep bandying about.

Insinuating that my views are not rigorous is a suspect move. Attempt instead to address the arguments I make with rigorous counterarguments and then you will be attempting rigorous philosophical investigation. — Janus

The point is that not everyone is equally worth talking to, and not everyone is equally capable of discussing certain subjects. Quixodian was right in implying such a truth, hard as it may be.

Subjective states are not empirical in the sense of being publicly observable. — Janus

But "empirical" does not mean "publicly observable." You are mushing together terms again. A state of consciousness is an empirical reality, but it is not publicly observable.

Buddhism claims that the altered states of consciousness that are called "jñāna", understood as 'direct knowing' may be achieved through practice, and I beleive this is true having experienced such states myself. — Janus

Then you have successfully tested the empirical claim. Therefore you know it to be both testable and empirical.

None of this can be confirmed, the possibility of self-delusion is always present I believe. But even if it is accepted that it is possible to know such things, it is not possible to demonstrate that they are known. It is also not possible to demonstrate that someone is in such a state; they might be faking it. If you think I am wrong, then explain how such things could be known to be known. — Janus

These are vacuous objections, just like your earlier objection that the participants in my putative intersubjective agreement "Could be lying." They are vacuous because they equally apply to your own claims and theories, and to level them at me or Quixodian requires a double standard. My answer is therefore simple: tu quoque.

The other problem is that you are uncritically conflating different topics. We began talking about intersubjective agreement, and then we moved on to intersubjective confirmability, and now you have flown to another new topic of "demonstrating that someone is in such a [subjective] state." What does this have to do with intersubjective agreement or intersubjective confirmability? Gish gallop is not something that I entertain for overly long.

This is simply not true, and certainly not according to my own reasoning; how could anyone possibly know the truth of the Buddha's claim, unless they were in the same state as the Buddha. — Janus

Right, they enter the same state, just like you did when you said, "I beleive this is true having experienced such states myself."

How could they know they were in the same state, and how could they possibly prove to the public that they were? — Janus

Again, these are two different topics that you keep conflating. To the first: the same way you did when you confirmed the existence of such states. If you did it, it must be possible. To the second: the same way the astrophysicist proves his theory to the hoi polloi (or doesn't). As I said earlier, if "the public" doesn't possess the requisite capacity to confirm a claim, then they will not be capable of confirming it. It is the same for scientific claims, and Arhats are as unconcerned to prove their claims to the hoi polloi as astrophysicists are.

Are you going to give some actual argument or counterexamples or are you just going to leave your statement that my assertion that intersubjectively testable claims (I should add "if true" of course) constitute (I should add "actual or potential" of course) public knowledge. Obviously, a claim must be actually tested and proven true to become actual public knowledge, and I took that as read. — Janus

You have just admitted that the claim was false by redacting it from (1) to (2):

1. ...Intersubjectvely testable claims [...] constitute public knowledge.
2. Intersubjectively testable claims, if true, constitute actual or potential public knowledge.

(1) is substantially false, and it seems that you now recognize this. The reason (1) and (2) are drastically different is because public knowledge and potential public knowledge are two very different things. Intersubjective testability does not get you to public knowledge. It gets you to potential public knowledge, but that is a long ways from public knowledge! So this is another example of the way you are conflating these terms.

And again, you try to use aspersion instead of argument; "I would be surprised if you yourself have any rigorous idea of what you mean by public knowledge". — Janus

Well, go ahead and tell us what you mean by it.


(Out for a few days... Your next reply might be the last word on this.)

:clap:

The point was that it is not possible to publicly demonstrate whether... — Janus

In general I am doubtful of whether your views on this subject are particularly rigorous, and this is because you are uncritically shifting between all sorts of different terms and concepts. Some include: intersubjective agreement, public demonstration, intersubjective testability, and empirical verification. These are all very different concepts, and the slipping back and forth from one to another will tend to preclude rigorous philosophical investigation.

Yes, I am saying that some claims can be definitively confirmed by empirical observation and others cannot. — Janus

I should think this is an uncontroversial claim, although "definitively confirmed" is another of those slippery concepts that you are shifting between. But in fact the claim in question is about a subjective state, and subjective states are empirical. Buddhism is, in fact, a highly empirical religion, and this is why it fits well in the West. The whole point of the original post was that, "It can be validated first person," and this is because it is based on a reproducible (and empirical) experience.

I would not count that as a metaphysical truth, but as a phenomenological truth. — Janus

Okay, fair enough.

We can be certain of intersubjectvely testable claims, barring extreme skepticism, such claims constitute public knowledge. — Janus

Well we can test testable claims and verify verifiable claims, and we are also capable of according a high degree of certitude to our own personal tests. But again, the Buddha's claim is verifiable. That's the whole point. So according to your own reasoning the Buddha's claim is something we can be certain of, and it "constitutes public knowledge."

But of course your assertion that "intersubjectively testable claims" constitute public knowledge is false, and furthermore I would be surprised if you yourself have any rigorous idea of what you mean by public knowledge.

To round off my thoughts, difficulties of epistemology lead people to fall back from talking about knowledge to talking about intersubjective agreement. But intersubjective agreement is a very weak criterion, and it does not satisfy the belief that some intersubjective agreements are better than others. The quality of intersubjective agreement, taken in itself, can only be a matter of quantity (i.e. how many people agree). Once we begin to vet the subjects, we have introduced a second notion (expertise) that really goes beyond the simple idea of intersubjective agreement.

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Scientific observations are really only augmented empirical observations. Even the "hoi polloi" know how to test claims like "it is raining" or "there is a tree growing three meters from the shed" or :"the surf today is bigger than it was yesterday" and even they can look up tabulated information to determine whether it is true that there is currently global warming. There are countless such truths about the world we share that even the poor moronic hoi polloi can test.

You cannot deomstrate that it is possible to see "the deathless". You might be one hundred perecent convinced that you have seen it, just as I might be onehundred percent convinced I have seen a unicorn; my conviction is not intersubjective verification for anyone esles that I have seen it, even if there might be those of like mind who agree. — Janus

The intersubjective agreement will be wider when it comes to obvious realities that are immediately accessible to everyone. Are you saying anything more than this?

That altered states of consciousness happen and that they may sometimes be achievable via certain disciplines is not in question, but even if those states were reliably achievable that does not prove anything metaphysical speaking... — Janus

It proves that they exist and that they are achievable, which are metaphysical truths and are the point in question.

...it is not even possible for anyone to know with certainty that any particular claim to have achieved such a state is even true; they might be lying about it. — Janus

The subjects of your intersubjective agreements may all be lying too. Who cares? How does this cut against Buddhism any more than science?

You wish to talk about "certainty" but you won't venture beyond intersubjective agreement. Intersubjective agreement about a claim does not produce certainty about a claim. You continue to equivocate between intersubjective agreement and stronger claims, akin to knowledge.

This brings us back to the question as to how you would determine whether Osho was enlightened... — Janus

No, we are talking about Quixodian's claim about the Eastern Gatehouse sutta (link). Maybe you were talking about Osho with someone else. I am not him, and I am not interested in ad hoc tangents. Let's stay on topic.

No, they are not equal, but they are equally intersubjective. We have been talking about intersubjectivity, not knowledge, and I suspect that is because the parties involved are wary of making knowledge claims. The appeal to "competence" is likely a quasi-knowledge claim.

Ah, well that is helpful to know. Sorry, I must have misunderstood you.

No problem! This is such a recurring difficulty in our scientific culture that I was sure I would get pulled into these sorts of discussions eventually. :razz:

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Quixodian's post was about Buddhism, not Christianity, and I think Buddhism provides the easier case. As far as the Buddha is concerned, 'the deathless' can be seen and known by those who have been properly initiated, just as is the case with scientific knowledge. So I think there is parity here. I grant that your belief that planes fly is not a matter of faith, but of knowledge. But I am not going to enter into the question of Christian faith at this point, in large part because I will be out for the next four or five days.

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My claim is that the only definitive intersubjective testability we have of human knowledge is in relation to empirical observations, mathematical results and logic. This has nothing at all to do with the "hoi polloi". — Janus

It has everything to do with the hoi polloi. When you say that a scientific claim is testable you mean that you would subject it to the scientific expert for confirmation. You don't mean that you would find the average guy on the street and ask him if it is true. Yet when it comes to the Buddha's claim you are apparently content with the average guy on the street.

Much of it will come down to this claim of yours:

...and the competency itself can also be publicly demonstrated. — Janus

As Quixodian has pointed out, this sort of claim is circular. It is only demonstrable to those with the relevant presuppositions and training, and whether such presuppositions and training count as competence merely depends on who you ask.

If you are concerned with intersubjective agreement, then there can be little question that there is significant intersubjective agreement among Buddhists about the various states of consciousness, and that this is based on independent 'experimentation'. Or in other words, I don't think you will be able to sustain a coherent account of your, "definitive intersubjective testability." What you are reaching for is something beyond intersubjectivity.

Yes, I think that's right, and I think that idea is at the bottom of a lot of the back-and-forths in this thread. It's an important point that probably needs to be addressed more explicitly.