If no one knows what "X" means, let X be a metaphysical claim, then no one can know that it is unable to be checked, for no one would have a clue what they would be looking for. That's the point I'm making, and it seems you've agreed, but I'd like to be sure.

In order to be verifiable, a statement must be meaningful. The same is true with being unverifiable. Thus, in order to know whether or not a statement is verifiable or not, the judge must know what the statement is saying(what it means), for that is precisely what determines what to look for.

Agree? — creativesoul

No, but @Janus has already replied with pretty much what I was going to say. Basically, not being able to understand what a statement means is a cause of unfalsifiability. A statement which is too vague for it's meaning to be agreed on is unfalsifiable for that reason alone.

If you object to the pragmatic definition of 'unfalsifiable' (something which, in practical terms, does not seem possible to falsify), and would rather have a theoretical definition (something which logically cannot be falsified), then we can use another term. It doesn't alter the argument. There is something about these types of statement which prevents them from actually being falsified which is not so present in more scientific statements, we can call that something whatever you want to call it.

Questioning them as a layperson without (so far as has been presented here) any evidence to do so, and thus exposing children to your own (seemingly) crackpot theories, is what I would call scary, actually. — NKBJ

So what's the alternative, that isn't simply submitting to authorities? You suggest we absolve all moral autonomy to institutions. I'm not an economist, so I must buy and sell exactly as the Central Bank tells me, I'm not a nutritionist so I must eat whatever the government health agency tells me to, I'm not a social scientist, so I must conduct my friendships however the APA tell me, I'm not a psychiatrist, so I must do whatever they tell me will make me happy.

Is there any room left for autonomy, or would you have us become complete automatons simply acting in whatever way the current trends in science would have us act?

Since children are exposed to aggressive advertising everywhere — NKBJ

Are they? Mine aren't. We have no television, I've blocked social media sites at the router, blocked internet advertising using ad-blocking apps, they don't go to school, and so far, their friends are all home-educated too. I don't think my kids have seen a single advert, maybe the odd billboard in town, certainly not the kind of frankly monstrous crap aimed at children.

their own biological drives tell them to consume calories — NKBJ

Nope, we have chocolate in the house because my daughter likes a bit every now and then. My son doesn't touch it, he doesn't like sweet food. We had a few conversations about what sweet foods do to your body when they were young and that was enough.Treat them like idiots and they'll grow up to be idiots.

Drug addicts, smokers, and drinkers are proof that humans of all ages do not necessarily heed the fact that things have been labelled "dangerous." — NKBJ

Drug addicts, smokers and drinkers have all been raised in a society which screws them up from childhood. Even your masters at the APA don't presume that addiction is a simple matter of human genetic weakness but a complicated consequence of psychological issues built up over time.

We have an obligation therefore to steer our most vulnerable and inexperienced in the right direction, and until they are old enough, that includes making decisions for them. — NKBJ

How do we choose the 'right' direction for an autonomous human being with their own desires and personality? How do we know what's going to be best for them? If I told you what to do on the basis of what I thought was right, do you think it would yield a life that you'd be happy with? So why's my idea of what makes a good life any more likely to give my children what they want?

On what basis should I have told my children when to go to bed? Has a certain bedtime been scientifically proven to yield happy adults in all cases? What about chores? Is there some scientific study I'm unaware of linking an exact amount of vacuuming with universal happiness?

Here's just an example study demonstrating a direct link between sedentary behaviour in childhood and a significant range of health problems. So when your kids says "I don't want to go to school, it's boring and they make me sit down all day", the correct response according to your 'make decisions for them for their own good' mantra would be to keep them off school so that they can run around in the garden.

Here's One of many articles linking frequent testing with mental health issues, so when your kids says "I don't want to go to school today because of the test", the correct response would be to keep them home to limit the scientifically demonstrated negative effects on their mental health.

This idea that authoritative parents are setting all these rules for the child's own good is absolute crap. They set rules to make their life easier and turn the child into something they want it to be with little or no consideration given to the toll it takes on the child's physical and mental well-being.

Most of the crap we tell our kids to do has nothing whatsoever to do with their well-being and everything to do with turning them into a little trophy we can show off to our friends, ensuring that they end up good little obedient consumers when they're older who'll hopefully just do some crappy job without complaint and buy whatever they're told to buy to keep the whole economy grinding away.

By "you" and "we" I mean someone has to know what the claims mean in order to know that they are unverifiable. Be careful which source you place your trust in. — creativesoul

I'm not sure I see what difference this makes. Even if no one knew what the claim meant it's still inductively true that if it has not been verified despite 2000 years of trying, it is probably unverifiable. The claim doesn't rest on the reason why it's unverifiable. It could be because of the nature of the claim (and you're right to say that you'd have to understand what it means in order for you to know this), or it could be because no one understands what it means. Either way the empirical evidence points to the fact that it's unverifiable.

But this can't be it. You'd accept something short of a Vulcan mind-meld as communication, yes? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I've not been clear enough in that comment because, I didn't think it necessary in the context of what CS was saying, but as a statement out on it's own, it should read more like mutual 'proximate' agreement. I don't need a Vulcan mind-meld, but, that's not the point I was trying to make. The point is really contained in the second half of my post above, but broadly, It follows the Venn diagram description there.

The meaning of a word as intended by the language user (the point of saying it) might be the centre of a circle, not a point, because I don't think we're always clear on what it is we mean, but a small circle representing what it is we might mean. The size of the circles represents all the things we could mean within the language game. "Dog" can mean anything from a four-legged furry animal, to a not very nice person, but it virtually never mean a tall square pink box. It has quite a small circle. The boundary of the circle is not clearly defined, it simply gets more transparent until it fades out. The rough position of this boundary is set by common agreement among language users. If what I tend to mean by a word is somewhere in that circle I'm using the term correctly, if it's way out, I might fairly be told I'm using the term wrongly.

So, where, the circle of possible meanings is so large (which is what I mean by no mutual agreement) that the range of possible meanings is not much smaller than the range of "all things its possible to say on the matter" then the word hasn't really done anything, and as you rightly say, there must be some purpose.

So, if I could borrow your Jesus-expounding youth. Notwithstanding his intention, even if he and the deacon had some mutual interest, there is a limited range of things a speaker could possibly (or is likely) to believe about Jesus. The language game they're playing constrains the range of possible beliefs that either is likely to express. If the terms used are so vague as to do virtually nothing to narrow down that range, then the youth's actually saying them has served no purpose, the deacon is no clearer about what the youth believes than he would have been by simply thinking about the constraints of all the things the youth might conceivably believe.

As I'm sure you will have encountered, even such a bold statement as "I don't believe Jesus exists" does not tell you much compared to "I believe Jesus exists". The concept of what Jesus is and what it is for something to exist are so vague that either statement could be interpreted as resulting in almost any state of intentionality. Now consider two statements closer than the polemic example I just gave and you hopefully will have an idea what I meant.

The more important point here is that we must also know what is meant in order to know that it is unverifiable. — creativesoul

I'll get to your main point next, but I just wanted to explain my position on this one first. I don't think we do need to know what a proposition means in order to induce that it is not verifiable. We can induce that it is not verifiable simply by the fact that it has not been verified, in the time it's been around and no-one can conceive of a method by which it could be verified to the broad satisfaction of the community of speakers.

I infer that the multi-verse theory is not verifiable. I haven't the faintest idea what all the words 'mean' I'm not a physicist and most of them are gobbledegook to me, but I've read that it has not yet been verified, and I've read that there are no experiments anyone can think of that would verify it. Those two empirical facts are enough for me to reach a strong inductive conclusion that the theory cannot be verified without having to understand what a single word of it actually 'means'.

This is very much the case with most metaphysical claims. None have yet been verified (to the satisfaction of the community they are aimed at), and no one has yet proposed a means by which they could be verified (again, to the satisfaction of the community they are aimed at). Therefore, it is entirely reasonable of me to inductively conclude that such statements are unverifiable without my having to understand what they 'mean'.

---

To your paragraph. It's a good enough choice because it does indeed represent the sort of statement I'm talking about, but what I'd need also to demonstrate my point, is an example of the statement that the proposer is considering to be 'wrong'. The reason I'd need this, is because what I'm saying hangs on the fact that when meanings of terms become sufficiently vague as to be widely interpretable (as they do in metaphysics) virtually any statement can be interpreted in such a way as to make it fit virtually any criteria. It is for this reason, that 'wrong' becomes meaningless, by presuming that 'the meaning of the statement' and 'the way things are' can be conceived of with such accuracy that they can be seen to have no overlap (ie the statement is 'wrong'). But I don't see any evidence that this is the case. If 2000 years of philosophy has shown us anything, it is that 'the way things are' is very difficult to clearly conceive and that statements about 'the way things are' are very difficult to interpret.

Not for the first time, I'm wishing I could draw on these posts, it would be so much easier to explain what I'm thinking, but I will have, instead, to describe the diagram I want to draw. Imagine a Venn diagram. One circle is 'the way things seem to be'. The centre of that circle is 'the way things actually are', the size of the circle represents the vagueness of any conception we might be able to have of it with our limited brains. The other circle is a statement about 'the way things are'. Again, the centre is the actual meaning of the statement as the author intended (the content of their thought), and the size of the circle represents the vagueness of the terms used, the extent of possible interpretation.

So, with simple empirical facts and treatments of objects we treat as if they were real, the circle of 'the way things seem to be' is quite small. To understand this, I need you not to think in terms of how different theories sound (like Solipsism and Realism, which sound radically different), but how different they are in effect, they way we treat the material universe. The circle representing 'the way things seem to be' in this example is the circle of the way things are treated as if they were. In effect, both the Solipsists and the Realist are going to respond to the material world similarly, so their treatment of it is never far from some central point. With empirical facts, the size of the circle representing a statement about the way things are, is also quite small. "The door is over there", can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but none of them too far from what I intended to mean by it. This is my description of we call science, and the small size of both circles is the reason why its theories are so widely agreed on.

The definition of 'wrong' here is when the two circles either do not overlap, or barely overlap (I pretty much think everything in the world is fuzzy around the edges, so you won't get a sharp definition out of me of anything). Not overlapping means that the statement about 'the way things are' does not correspond at all (or not enough) with any widely held conception of 'the way things seem to be'. If I say "the door is over there" and all you see (and all anyone else sees) is a wall where I'm pointing, then I am wrong to say "the door is over there", at least, that's how we commonly use the word 'wrong'. The circle of reasonable interpretation of my statement, does not overlap with the circle of reasonable responses to the empirical evidence of our eyes (we don't see a door).

Just want to interject at this point to emphasise the fuzziness that is in this description even of empirical science. The circles might be small, but they are of some size and so there is room for a degree of overlap. even at this stage it's not really 'right/wrong' sharply divided like that, but it's close enough to make the terms useful in communication.

Now to metaphysical propositions. Here, both circles are very large. 'The way things seem to be' circle when we're talking about metaphysical concepts is very large, Our conception of 'the way things seem to us (the size of the circle), is vague and varies widely. Our experience of the metaphysical world depends a lot on how we think about it, and our own disposition. Some may 'feel' the hand of God as clear as day, others may feel nothing of the sort, and so have no such feeling to explain.

Also, with metaphysical propositions, the circle representing the reasonable interpretations of the meaning of a sentence is very large. The terms are vague, easily misinterpreted or re-interpreted and do not directly refer to objects that the reader necessarily treats as real at all. All this is empirical fact borne out by the acres of scholastic work trying to interpret what philosophers have said, and the continued disagreement over that project.

So, finally (if you're still awake), the word 'wrong', for me, is used to mean that the two circles don't overlap. The statement circle does not, under any interpretation, overlap enough with the 'way things seem to be' circle. For example, I claim an object is there, it doesn't seem to be there, I'm wrong to make that claim.

What I'm saying, is that with metaphysical conceptions of the way things seem to be, and possible interpretations of statements about metaphysical concepts, the circles are so large that they will always overlap to a substantial extent within the logical space of all that is possible. If we define 'wrong' as meaning that the circles don't overlap (and I think we do), then it is simply nonsensical, or meaningless, to use the term in a situation where we know that the circles are so large that they will inevitably overlap to some substantial extent.

As a personal thought, it maybe is appropriate to think a proposition is wrong, after all, your personal thought represents pretty much the centre of those circles. The way the world actually is for you, and what the statement actually means to you, might be quite small circles (though still not actual points I think). In this sense, and this sense only, I think I would concede that "proposition X is 'wrong'" has meaning, in that it contains psychological information about the speaker. But in public discourse (which all written and spoken language surely is), the circles are too large to allow 'wrong' to mean anything.

I'll also just try to quickly refer you back to my previous comments. I'm not saying that all propositions of that form are meaningless, it is specifically the ambiguity about the term 'wrong' and what saying someone's position is 'wrong' implies that underlies my position. Phone's literally going to switch itself off now.

Running out of battery on my phone so only time for one more comment, so I'd just like to agree that not all metaphysical positions resting on unverifiable claims are meaningless.

It can be both, that a listener doesn't grasp the meaning of the speaker and the speaker's words be meaningful. — creativesoul

It seems like we're getting back to the semantic issue again, we're going round in circles. If you want to define 'meaningful' in such a way as to include sentences which, by virtue of their disagreement over terms, actually communicates no information to the listener, then that's fine, but there is some difference in utility between these kinds of sentences and those which are well understood. What you want to call that difference is irrelevant, it's the fact that they're different that means they need to be treated differently.

What is the criterion which - when met by a candidate - counts as that candidate being meaningful. — creativesoul

But I can understand and find meaning in all of those statements;

The first one is metaphorical and describes the draining of pond likening it the draining of hope in Trump's America.

The second one is talking about how capitalism seems to demand that literary works be analysed for their meaning to promote a move away from the a focus on purely material gains.

The third means that the use of the term 'is' is not clearly defined (ie, what it is for something to be.

I mean, I'm well aware that it's all just computer generated garbage, but I think most of Heidegger is just garbage too. What is it about those statements which makes them meaningless? I can find some meaning in them. No less than I can find meaning in Derrida or something.

We were discussing an example of a speaker and a listener who share common language. — creativesoul

There's no such thing as a common language when using ambiguous terms. The commonality of language is based entirely on mutual agreement. Where there's no mutual agreement, there's no commonality. I can honestly say that at times I have no idea what some young people are saying, they're speaking English, but the terms don't mean to them what they mean to me, so they've communicated nothing of any use to me.

There are no meaningless statements. — creativesoul

So what does the word 'meaningless' do if there are no statements for it to be used on. Why do we even have the word?

So if I were to speak in German to a non-German speaker, my action would still be of high utility?

We can verify that different senses of the same term are being used as a means to measure the truth of the opposing argument. — creativesoul

Yes.

Hence, the debate consists of two conflicting notions of what counts as being wrong. — creativesoul

Yes.

Both are meaningful. — creativesoul

This just seems like bare assertion. How did you arrive at this conclusion from the statements above? What definition of meaningful are you using? What would be an example of a statement which was not meaningful?

Your post is basically just saying "Give me the evidence, but oh, if you do, I won't believe it anyway cause it's just a matter of interpretation, and even if there was undeniable evidence, I wouldn't care anyway and would insist that my way is better." — NKBJ

No, it's asking for the evidence so that I can reach my own conclusion about its meaning rather than simply accept whatever the APA says as gospel truth, you're making it sound like it's unreasonable to question authority groups...scary!

if I came across a study that said something I'm doing towards loved ones has some sort of adverse effect I was unaware of, then I would seriously reconsider my actions. — NKBJ

Reconsider, maybe, blindly follow what they say without question...that's another matter.

For example, you stop toddlers from eating sweets, because they are not mature enough to stop eating when they get sick from it or when they gain unhealthy amounts of weight. — NKBJ

No, you stop toddlers from eating sweets by not eating sweets. They don't just randomly do unhealthy things, they copy. If you're stuffing your face with chocolates and telling the child not to, you're on a hiding to nothing. If you keep using sweets as a reward amplifying the child's sense that these are 'good' things, then you'll have a life-long problem. Don't eat sweets yourself, don't have excessive amounts in the house and don't use them a rewards for your preferred behaviours and you won't have children who eat too many sweets. Mine don't, but then I forget, my children are unique genetic misfit who are pre-programmed to behave well despite my negligent parenting.

Eat what you want" is heard as "I don't care about your health." — NKBJ

So, explain how this works. In order to interpret things this way, the child must know that earing certain foods is bad for their health. And yet apparently if I say "eat what you like" the child will happily eat anything. What could possibly motivate a child to eat something they know is harmful to them? Not something they've just been told is harmful but see other adults doing all the time so don't really believe it, that wouldn't have the psychological effect you're claiming. In order to have this effect the child must really believe the food will do them harm (so as to be upset by their parent's lack of concern for their welfare), so why would they eat it?

if you continually re-negotiate reasonable boundaries with them, they hear "I respect your growing autonomy, but I still care deeply about your well-being and want you to be healthy and safe." — NKBJ

Why would the two be in conflict? Unless you're also saying "you're a moron who can't even make decisions close enough to right to remain healthy and safe". And us adults are the arbiters of what's healthy and safe? Have you seen the world recently?

I'm waiting for an elucidation upon the criterion for what counts as being meaningful. — creativesoul

@Marchesk has opened a thread on this, but whilst fascinating, I don't see how it gains its importance here. As @Janus has pointed out, it just becomes a matter of semantics. There is some property of a sentence with a disputed term in it which causes it to have a significantly different utility to a sentence containing only widely agreed on terms. If I say "go to the door", the verb 'to go' is widely understood and the noun 'door' is also The effect on the willing listener will be that they will go to the door. The sentence has the same utility no matter which competent English speaker is hearing it. This is significantly different to my saying "God will guide you on the right path". Depending on whom you are speaking to, this could have any number of effects. There is not a widely agreed upon response to 'God', 'guide', or 'right'. Whether you call this difference a difference in meaning or not is irrelevant, you can call it what you like, but the difference is evidently there, and my contention is that sentences of the form "Your unfalsifiable metaphysical proposition X is wrong" are of the latter sort, so much so that the effect they have is completely unpredictable to the speaker and so of very low utility.

Decidability is remarkably different in that we are the ones who decide. We decide whether or not it makes sense to use words in certain ways and not others. — creativesoul

If this is decidability then no metaphysical arguments are decidable because "We" evidently haven't decided. and if "we" do decide, then a comparison of the sense the author imputes with the sense that "we" have decided becomes an entirely verifiable proposition.

Here again though, even after claiming that you do not equate being unverifiable with being meaningful, you've just called debates over unverifiable statements meaningless. If they are not meaningless as a result of being unverifiable, then what is it that makes them so? — creativesoul

They are meaningless as a result of their undecidablility, and their unfalsifiability is the reason why they are undecidable. That does not mean that unfalsifiablity is the only reason why a pair of propositions might be undecidable, nor does it mean that all unfalsifiable statements are meaningless.

I'm claiming that statements of the form "Your unfalsifiable metaphysical proposition X is wrong" are meaningless. No other statements, no other debates, just those.

If you want a rigid formulation of my position, I am arguing that in the child-mortality/lifespan metric, the contemporary west (1st world) performs better than any other known group. I'm also arguing that the contemporary westerner is less likely to die from violence (this is something different than appraising violence in culture, and while there may be a few very specific examples of groups who suffered less from violence on average, the average fare even for hunter-gatherer societies includes an increased chance of death from violence compared the contemporary west). — VagabondSpectre

OK. Your position seemed a lot different and certainly included a lot of extraneous points to this specific one, but I will, of course, take you at your word and presume any other interpretations are the result of my misunderstanding.

So, I entirely agree with you that the average child mortality and lifespan in the contemporary West is higher than that in virtually any hunter-gatherer society past or present. I think the evidence for this is strong. I also agree with you that hunter-gatherers, both past and present are probably more likely to die as a result of violence-related injury or than the average contemporary westerner, though I think the evidence for this is less strong.

What I disagree with is that either of these things are a measure of the success of a civilisation.

As we skirted around earlier this seems to be a far more significant issue between us than the details about hunter-gatherer lifestyle over which we still disagree. I have limited time to put to things like this (as I'm sure have you), despite the enjoyment I get from engaging in these discussions, so might I suggest we focus on the disagreement over appropriate metrics of success (which can be done philosophically), rather than on an exchange of citations about the measurement of those metrics, which, whilst fascinating, is very time-consuming (particularly for me as most of my sources are still in paper format and I have to try and track down the Internet equivalent) and I'm not sure it's actually getting us anywhere in this particular discussion because I think we would still disagree even if we reached agreement over the facts.

I'd like, if it's OK with you, to try and bring the discussion back to what I think are the salient points (correct me if I'm wrong).

1. What are the measures of a successful (or a disastrous) civilisation?

I propose suicide rates (the closest measurable proxy for happiness we have), sustainability and fairness (that it doesn't gain its success at the expense of others not having it). Basically I'm arguing that if the members of a society aren't happy, there isn't any point in it. If it isn't sustainable then it hasn't really worked (it's trivial to give the extreme of a society where everyone is really happy but dies out after one generation to see this), and if it gains its success at the expense of others, then it's not really it's own success, it's being given success, rather than having made it itself.

So why is it you think mortality and the causes of mortality are so much more important a metric for the success of a civilisation compared to those I've suggested? A man kept in a cage on a drip feed of balanced nutrients and antibiotics with his muscles stimulated at exactly the right rate to avoid atrophy would live longest. No disease, no accidents, no suicide. But that's not what you want is it? So where's the other measurements that you'd have to include?

2. Do other civilisations do better then us on our chosen metrics?

This is where we get mired in an exchange of sources, but I already agree that by your chosen metric (as specified above), western civilisation is doing best, so there's no need to continue proving that.

Do other civilisations have a lower suicide rate than us? - Yes most definitely they do, our civilisation last year, for example.

Are other civilisations more sustainable than us? - Yes, most certainly they are. Hunter-gatherers have lived for more than 200,000 years without having any appreciable impact of the global ecology (megafauna extinction possibly, and localised habitat modification).

Are other civilisations more fair than ours? - This is where I think the points you made are worth arguing. So you seem to be saying that the plight of the poor is not the fault of the rich (or at least not mostly?) and that they are free in a way that hunter-gatherers in an egalitarian society are not.

This is the point I'm completely failing to understand. 'Free' to me means the ability to do what you want to do without constraint. Any constraint limits freedom. I don't see what the difference is between being unable to lie in the sun all day because you need to earn enough money to pay for your house/food etc, and being unable to lie in the sun all day because you will be castigated for not doing your bit in an egalitarian group. I don't see the difference between being unable to eat the whole of your slaughtered cow because you need to earn money from selling most of it, and being unable to eat the whole of your hunted cow because society pressurises you into sharing it.

I don't see how the type of restriction makes any meaningful difference. It's only the degree of restriction that matters. So a society which allowed the maximum equality of opportunity to achieve one's desires would be the fairest. Are you arguing that ours is such a society, despite the fact that all land is in private ownership and the richest 1% own 82% of the wealth (according to Oxfam)? It seems hard to draw from that the conclusion that the poor are basically free to do whatever they choose without restriction.

3. To what extent can the choices people make indicate their universal preferences?

This question rather presumes that happiness is a metric and you seem to disagree there so this might not be relevant, but you've made mention of it so I will add it here. If hunter-gatherers choose freely to continue with their traditional lifestyle rather than accept what western civilisation has to offer them, to what extent can this not be taken as a sign that they prefer that lifestyle and therefore undermine the principle that western civilisation is universally better? You say that people might choose to stay out of comfort for the world they know, but if that were a common metric when people make choices about lifestyle, there would not be such a huge migrant population. Somehow we need to account for that fact.

I realise I haven't addressed your post point by point, but I hope I've picked up on all the themes.

Absolutely, this seems so fundamentally obvious to me that I'm genuinely baffled when people seem to think that children need to be drilled into line to prevent their full psychological breakdown. With the obvious caveat that some element of biology will constrain the range of available options, the choice from within that range is determined by the child's environment.

All children learn from disciplining is that those with more power should tell those with less power what to do.

I don't want to answer for Pseudonym, but only for my interpretation of what Pseudonym appears to be arguing. — Janus

Just to let you know, for what it's worth, that your interpretation of my position is pretty much bang on, so feel free to carry on as if it were, without need for further caveats, if you wish.

That's not the argument s/he made, so that sort of reply wouldn't be appropriate for me. However, if s/he had made such an argument, then that response would certainly be warranted. In such a situation, someone like yourself, judging from the sidelines, would be poisoning the well solely by virtue of putting such a question to me. It would succeed only if the reader weren't well-versed in spotting fallacy in the wild, because there's not a thing wrong with the response you're aiming to discredit if it follows the claim that all metaphysical arguments are meaningless. — creativesoul

(Just for ease of future writing, I'm a 'he'. It's slightly painful to see it laboured over, I really wouldn't have minded being wrongly assigned, but I know others do so I appreciate the extra effort.)

The claim that all metaphysical statements are meaningless is an entirely falsifiable empirical claim. One only need produce a metaphysical statement which has meaning. If one disputes the meaning of 'meaning', then the alternative claim is also verifiability false, it cannot be the case that all metaphysical statements are meaningful since we do not know what 'meaningful' means. It can only be the case that metaphysical statements may or may not be meaningful, pending our discovery of what 'meaningful' actually means. Either way, the claim that all metaphysical statements are meaningless is either meaningless itself because of the ambiguity over term 'meaningless' (but that in turn would render it true, since all metaphysical statements suffer from the same problem of ambiguity over terms), or its is not a metaphysical statement at all since we can resolve what the term 'meaningful' means and at that point it becomes and entirely falsifiable empirical claim.

For example, it is clear that s/he is working from a questionable conception of thought and/or belief. The evidence for that is in the paragraph above when s/he confirmed that I had understood the argument s/he was making. — creativesoul

You'll need to expand on this, I don't see either the link you're making, nor the relevance I'm afraid.

Both, s/he and Carnap, conflate what it takes to be meaningful with what it takes to be verifiable/falsifiable. — creativesoul

I'm pretty sure I've said probability a dozen times now that I do not consider all unverifiable statements to be meaningless, only those statements containing a word which the party the statement is aimed at does not agree on the meaning of. A statement relying on a word which, for the recipient, does not have the meaning the speaker intended, might as well be meaningless. It would be pointless to apply one's own definition of the term since that would not carry the meaning the speaker intended (you might as talk to yourself). It would be pointless to apply the speaker's own definition because, you have already rejected that and so would gain no meaning from the sentence in your own mind. The only alternative I can see is that the sentence be regarded as meaningless.

Since then Psuedo has taken the reigns from Carnap and argued that all metaphysical debates were meaningless as a result of being unverifiable/unfalsifiable — creativesoul

No, again I have specifically said, in direct communication with you, as well as others, that I consider there to be a gradation from meaningful debates where the metric of decidability is widely agreed on, to meaningless ones where it is not. At no point have I said that all metaphysical debates are meaningless (unless by rhetorical accident, in which case I have made it abundantly clear since that that is not my position).

It is still the case that our discussion here consists of arguing over what counts as being meaningful. My position on that has been neither elucidated nor changed during the course of this thread. It seems that Psuedo's has. It looks like a clear cut case of Psuedo's moving the goalposts. That is, in the beginning s/he worked from a criterion for what counts as being meaningful that required the candidate(a metaphysical debate in this case) to be verifiable/falsifiable. Since then, the criterion for what counts as being meaningful has been expanded to include being decidable. — creativesoul

Decidability and verifiability are relatively closely related. What difference do you see between the two which significantly moves the goalposts? @Janus's introduction of the term was, quite rightly, to show that it is the lack of any method of decidability that renders such debates meaningless (one where one side is trying to 'prove' the other wrong). The only widely agreed on method of decidability I know of is empirical falsifiability, but that's not necessary for the argument. If it is true that metaphysical debates (of the particular sort Janus and I are referring to) are meaningless because they cannot be decided by any agreed means, then it is also true that such arguments over statements which are not falsifiable are probably meaningless, that being the only method of decidability we currently all agree on. We could argue over the minutiae, but I really don't see how it massively moves the goalposts.

The operative underlying general problem is the conflation of truth and meaning. — creativesoul

You'll need to expand on this, I don't see how the notion of truth enters into it, both Janus and myself have consistently (I think) been careful to talk about that which is widely agreed upon. Truth hasn't entered into it.

Heraclitus' position is untenable. — creativesoul

I can't examine it if you don't tell me which of Heraclitus's positions you are referring to.

The God of Abraham and Epicurus' fatal observation of the problem of evil shows inherent self-contradiction. — creativesoul

Are you seriously suggesting that there are no responses to the problem of evil? There's the idea that evil is necessary for the growth of the soul, that evil doesn't even exist, that evil is there to prevent a greater evil, that God only created the universe but them 'became' it and so had his original omnipotence constrained, that evil is the work of humans as a result of being given free will...etc. The argument from evil is a strawman, knocking down a simplistic view of God that no Theologian actually holds. And why does no theologian actually hold such a simplistic view? Because they're not stupid and its not a difficult job to see obvious logical flaws. As I said. I'm not claiming that it is impossible to come up with a metaphysical theory which has the flaws you mention. What I'm claiming is that none of the currently existing metaphysical theories (nor any future ones written by intelligent people) can be decided on this basis.

Methodological naturalism. — creativesoul

Methodological naturalism is not a metaphysical theory, it's a pragmatic approach to scientific investigation. It's not claiming that there are no supernatural causes, only that investigation of them is fruitless.This is an empirical claim - investigation of supernatural causes has so far yielded no concrete results.

But let's, for the sake of argument, presume someone put forward such a claim as a theory of The way things are' - that there are no supernatural causes (causes beyond the ability of science to investigate). I take that to be a single assumption, since it cannot be proven. So what is it's opposite? That there may be supernatural causes. That is still a single assumption. The assumption that it is possible for causes to be somehow permanently beyond out ability to detect them. I'm not seeing the alternative theory with fewer assumptions here.

Many folk who believe in some form of cosmic justice or another will be forced to conclude that bad/good things happened to someone or another, and so they must have somehow 'deserved' it. — creativesoul

No, as I mentioned before, they could also conclude that God is bound in some way by his own choices (say by his preference for free will), that god is 'testing' them to see if they deserve to get in to heaven where they will be rewarded for their perseverance, that God is forced to allow the harm in order to prevent a greater harm, that God is allowing the harm not as a form of punishment, but as a method of spiritual growth...etc. The responses are limited only by the imagination of the responder.

if one holds to the historically conventional epistemological conception of belief that s/he must deny that non-linguistic animals have thought and belief. — creativesoul

Again, this is trivially surmounted. One could hold that our language use supplanted a previous form of belief which animals have, that animals have an internal language which carries their belief propositions, that animals in fact have a language, just one that we can't understand...etc, as earlier, it's really only limited by the imagination of the responder.

It can also be the case that the logical consequence conflicts with knowledge. — creativesoul

Then it would cease to be a metaphysical claim and become a scientific one.

Maybe you're avoiding my initial charge. You are involved in precisely what you've called a meaningless debate. That seems incoherent, at best. I'll let it go though. — creativesoul

I don't see how I haven't directly answered your charge. I submit that this debate is not meaningless because empirical evidence can be drawn into it (such as the complete lack of agreement on metaphysical matters despite 2000 years of debate), that many of the terms used and logic employed are so widely agreed upon that most people involved will agree on what they mean, and that even if there is some difficulty in producing an entirely decidable answer, the effort of using rhetoric to argue the case is worth it because of the consequences. I've also suggested that, even if the debate were completely meaningless, that doesn't in any way preclude me from taking part in it. Why should I restrict my activities only to those which are meaningful?

An entire generation of well-educated intelligent people can be wrong, and history shows that they have been any number of times. — creativesoul

Yes, that's the point. If well-educated intelligent people can be wrong en masse, then in what way does the logical conclusion of an intelligent well-educated person on the question of coherency, self-consistency, enumerating assumptions, and calculating logical consequences have any bearing on how 'right' an argument is. We've just determined that the conclusions of intelligent, well-educated people on such matter can be, and regularly are, wrong. So when you (presumably an intelligent, well-educated person) have finished your analysis of an argument, how do you then know you're right?

I think it's pretty stupid to ask for evidence and then, upon being told the evidence, questions all science and psychology, not just one study or one aspect, but the totality of it. — NKBJ

You haven't provided me with the evidence yet, you've provided me with the theory which claims to remain unfalisifed by the evidence. Have you no idea how science works? The opinion of the APA is not evidence. Evidence is the survey results, the psychological experiments, the twin studies, and the statistical analysis done on each. What the APA think all of that evidence means is an opinion, not a fact. If the evidence shows a correlation between one measure of one parenting style, with some other measure of "rebelliousness" (whatever the hell that is), then it is the opinion of the APA that the one causes the other and the opinion of the APA that each measure they've used is a reliable one. The evidence is only that they are correlated. Being good scientists, I've no doubt they will continually test their theory and try to control for complicating factors, but being humans I've also no doubt that they will suffer from confirmation bias, spotlighting, experimenter bias and all the other biases which go into supporting the current paradigm. That's why I asked for the evidence, not the opinion of those interpreting it. I cannot question "just one study" because you have not provided me with "just one study" to support your claim.

You realise that the results from the majority of psychological experiments cannot be replicated under the same conditions, let a lone slight varied ones which aim to control for some complicating factor or other?

Do you conduct your friendships on the basis of the best available scientific advice about how to befriend people? Do you conduct your love affairs according to the latest scientific study on interpersonal relationships? No? Then why on earth would you expect anyone to conduct their relationship with their children according to what a single academic association happen to be thinking at one point in time in a field notorious for its inability to produce reliable theories?

It's hardly a deeply personal revelation. I've outlined my parenting style in a short paragraph, not published my diary.

And if you think asking for evidence to back up a claim and pointing out that science is not immune to paradigms, is "reacting allergically" then I can't imagine how you think a less "allergic" debate would proceed.

For sure, I think providing children with the right environment is key.

Yeah, have you ever read a parenting book from the 50s? All that was 'fact' at the time too.

But one family working out despite poor parenting choices cannot outweigh the fact that the majority of such families do not fare as well. — NKBJ

It's a 'fact' now is it? You should have no trouble laying your hands on the evidence then.

Well, I'll be sure to tell my children who are currently considerate, confident, calm, look after themselves and have achieved great things. They must be doing something wrong.

So the argument is that when two opposing/contradictory metaphysical camps have contradictory criteria for what counts as wrong, when either calls the others' argument "wrong" the calling itself is meaningless as a result of the lack of agreement regarding what counts as "wrong"? — creativesoul

Yes, but it's not just 'when' they have contradictory criteria for what counts as 'wrong', it is virtually inevitable that they will (if only in some small way). These are relatively clever people, they're not gong to present an argument they can see is wrong. It's most likely that they have a different idea of what constitutes wrong. It's the default position rather than an occasion misfortune.

I don't experience "chaos of the senses". I experience an intelligible world. This is something Heidegger pointed out. The chaos of the sense which the mind has to make sense of to form an intelligible world is something we infer after the fact. It's not something primary in our experience. — Marchesk

I'm not sure I see the relevance of this. I'm quite happy with the fact that we infer the chaos of the senses. What I'm saying is that the intelligent sense we make of them does not have and objective value. Just because you interpret your senses one way, it does not mean that any other way is less right.

Because they're refusing to acknowledge points made in a straight forward argument. I've seen and done this myself in dumb arguments about sports or movies before, where metaphysics or the "chaos of the senses" isn't a point of contention.

People want to win arguments and confirm their biases. This is well known. — Marchesk

So this goes back to Van Inwagen, whom I've mentioned before, but not in this context I think. If a view contrary to mine is held by one of my epistemic peers (someone of equal intellect and knowledge to me), then one of us must be wrong about the way things are. Yet if one of us is wrong about the way things are, then that proves someone of my intellect and knowledge can be wrong about the way things are despite feeling that one is right. If it is possible for someone of my intellect and knowledge to be wrong about the way things are, how do I know that it is not me?

Coherency(lack of self contradiction) is yet another. — creativesoul

But lack of self-contradiction is easy. Name me an argument in metaphysics that is self-contradictory. Anyone who understands basic grammar can construct one, this leaves virtually all metaphysical theories still in play.

We can assess which one works from the fewest number of unprovable assumptions — creativesoul

Can we? How would we go about enumerating the assumptions? Again, do you have an example from metaphysics where a theory has been discarded because it has one more assumption that a competing theory?

We can also follow the logical consequences. — creativesoul

And then do what with them?

There's a bit of irony here however with Pseudonym, in that the subject of contention is what it takes to be meaningful. As far as I know, meaning is itself a metaphysical matter, at least in part. The case at hand has opposing sides. The one is arguing that if there is no agreed upon sense of the term "meaningful", and each side argues from their own sense, then the debate itself is meaningless.

That's exactly what's going on here. So, does Pseudo think that s/he is involved in a meaningless discussion/debate? — creativesoul

As I've said in my responses (possibly mostly to Moliere), there are three factors I think are relevant.

1. I'm not arguing that there is a sharp dividing line between meaningless metaphysical statements and meaningful scientific ones. I'm arguing (from Quine) that there is a gradation, and somewhere along that line statements become so vague that debating them is meaningless. Arguing about arguing, I think, is sufficiently empirical to be (just) on the right side of that line. We have empirical evidence of the way debates actually go and the consequences they have for the direction of philosophical thought. After all, It's a fairly simple empirical matter to point in the direction of a metaphysical debate where one theory was widely determined to be 'better' than another without any intelligent and well-educated detractors.

2. I think that the problem with arguing over matters that cannot be resolved by demonstration is a psychological one, it simply has a cost, that's all. If it's worth that cost, then maybe it's worth doing, if there's something at stake. I think there's something at stake here.

3. Maybe I just like arguing.

What methods of parenting do you use that are different than others? — darthbarracuda

I'm not sure a full discussion of parenting methods would be on-topic, but broadly I don't believe I have a right to tell my children what to do just because they're my children. So they don't go to school, I don't make them attend any lessons, they have no bedtimes, no curfew, can come and go as they please and do whatever they want to with their day. They choose what they want to eat, drink, wear and buy (with their allowance). I've don't think I've ever reprimanded the youngest, I've reprimanded the eldest on about five or six occasions a long time ago, but regretted it. Does that answer your question?

Interesting answer, with which I would tend to agree. Could you expand on that? — 0 thru 9

Perhaps in another thread. I think it might verge a little off topic here.

Seriously though, if I say that reasons for infanticide are backwards, why would you conflate that with all HG peoples? — VagabondSpectre

Um, because you said that Western civilisation was better than hunter-gatherers and you cited "backwards" reasons for infanticide as one of your reasons? Do you want to re-state your argument as "Western civilisation is better than some hunter-gatherers, but worse than others?"

You really need to get your argument straight. The question was whether Western civilisation has been a disaster. That would be proven if there were a civilisation better than ours which ours has replaced, or is replacing. In other words, things have gotten worse from some point, not better.

In order to counter this argument you need to demonstrate that conditions in western civilisation are better than those in all others, otherwise those other earlier civilisations are better then western civilisation and so things have got worse (ie a disaster).

So I'm either going to take your arguments as applying to all hunter-gatherers, or as being irrelevant to the topic. The question isn't "do some hunter-gatherers do some things we'd rather they didn't?". The question is whether Western civilisation replacing the civilisations which went before it (all of them) was a success.

Maybe you wish to make the argument that for some reason you can't have the good hunter-gatherer tribes without the bad ones. But even in that case, you'd have to show that the bad outweighed the food. Otherwise, I could just cite the slums outside of Rio and say that community represents Western civilisation.

If you would contend that of the 200k years or so of HG society, there are no examples that are more violent than contemporary western culture or prior to contact with agrarians, then you're rolling dice on some incredibly long odds, and the existing archeological evidence against you isn't as scant as you think. — VagabondSpectre

Again, why would "examples" be relevant here. The question is "are there better civilisations than our which we have replaced?". If there are/we're, then our replacing them had been a disaster, it has made people's lives worse than they would otherwise have been. To prove your point you need to argue that all hunter-gatherers are more violent than western civilisation, otherwise the ones which aren't are better than us and replacing them is a disaster.

Also, here is a paper arguing precisely that the archaeological evidence is as scant as I think. It opens with "Interpersonal conflict may be one of those causes [trauma] but the skeletal evidence itself is rarely conclusive and must therefore be evaluated in its individual, populational, sociocultural, and physical context." Of course, for those 'wanting' to see violence, it's easy, for those with a little less prejudice, it rarley yields such conclusive results.

Here's a link (pg 76-103) to a very interesting and comprehensive analysis of historical trends in violence of the Chumash people using remains at burial sites spanning over 7000 years of continuous Chumash habitation (sedentary hunter-gatherers of central and coastal California). It looks at various forms of skeletal trauma and bone health to establish long term trends in relative violence, and compares that to known climate data in search of correlations with climate events that could cause resource stress. It does find correlations with worsening climate, and subsequent debate and inquiry into the Chumash and other indigenous groups has expanded and refined their results. — VagabondSpectre

The Cumash are a sedentary people, I specifically and repeatedly limited my claim to nomadic hunter-gatherers. Notwithstanding that, I don't dispute that the environment may have an effect on violence, I'm disputing your claim that it therefore follows that pre-contact tribes must therefore have been more violent that western societies, there is nothing preventing their entire range of violence from being below that we experience, when measured fairly.

This cross cultural study seeks to find factors which predict the frequency of war among 186 societies, and indeed finds a link between violence/war and fear of resource scarcity/disaster/other groups. Their multivariate analysis yielded the finding that fear of disaster and fear of other peoples/groups were the best predictors of a rise in violence. Chronic and predictable food shortage was not a predictor of rising violence, but unpredictable resource stresses (the difference being the unpredictable is psychologically more upsetting) was. Likewise, fear of other groups or at least proximity to newly arrived migrants was a strong predictive factor. The overall conclusion is that war is predominantly a preemptive action taken by groups largely out of fear. — VagabondSpectre

I'm not quite sure how your citing this article supports your thesis. It basically just re-iterates the point I made earlier, that chronic resource limits (of the type that might make food-sahring a wise strategy, are not strongly correlated with warlikeness, and that far stronger correlations are the exact same one we experience today and were massively inflated during colonisation. Fear of disaster (global warming), unpredictable resources stress (peak oil), and fear of other groups (colonisation).

This article looks at the archeological evidence for warfare and violence among the natives of North-West coast of North America — VagabondSpectre

Again, in settled communities, not nomadic hunter-gatherers, but we'll push on. It still seems to point away from your idea that environmental factors alone predicate violence and instead point to a multitude of factors including very strong and cultural ones.

while it is not my position that hunter-gatherers are more violent than all other groups, it IS my position that the contemporary west is less violent than the average hunter-gather, or otherwise indigenous, historic or prehistoric, contacted or un-contacted, group. — VagabondSpectre

As I've been asking, what is your evidence for this claim?

yes a specific way of life can be dependent on a stable environment. Egalitarian nomads are so often found in harsh environments because food sharing/altruism is highly adaptive in such environments, and because egalitarianism helps to avoid the mutually destructive possibility of large scale/extended violence and conflict. — VagabondSpectre

Here's an article detailing what I'm saying about the stability of hunter=gatherer communities in the face of massive environmental change.

So far you've provided a few articles referring to wars in post contact tribes (but not comparing them with the number of wars in Western civilisation), violence in settled tribes (but again, not comparing it to western civilisation), and paleoanthropological evidence of violence-related injuries (but again, with no comparison to similar data from western civilisation). So I'm struggling to see how, from the data you've shown me, you've reached the conclusion that Western civilisation is less violent than nomadic hunter-gatherers on average. Very little of your data mentions nomadic hunter-gatherers, and that which does doesn't compare like-with-like metrics to Western civilisation.

but it does not necessarily mean that the west is overall less happy than societies with fewer suicides — VagabondSpectre

So induction is fine when you want to use it, but not anyone else? If lots of people are killing themselves it's not such a wild speculation to assume that lots of people are unhappy.

Same reason why hunter-gatherers choose to live in the huts, wigwams, lean-to's and long-houses that they live in: it's the best they can do. — VagabondSpectre

Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because even after all you've said, I don't believe you're really as right-wing as this sounds. The way you've phrased this (together with the fact that you're presenting it as a counter to my argument that the poor are not really 'free') sounds like you're saying it's all their fault, they're there because they cant do any better, as in the ones that could do better got out. I'm struggling to see how to interpret this charitably. I'd said that the poor are not really free because they too are constrained in their life choices and you answer with this?

I'd like to say in defense of the west that there are almost no slums in the contemporary western world. It is perhaps unfair to blame the existence of slums entirely on the western world. — VagabondSpectre

Are you implying that the trading policy of the western world does not have anything to do with the rapid urbanisation without infrastructure investment which is the root cause of slums?

Granted the very poorest and down-trodden of the west, including, for its part, the many far flung victims, live worse lives than the average hunter-gatherer. — VagabondSpectre

Right. How many people are in the position you admit is worse than the position of an average hunter-gatherer. Do you think its fair that the rest of society lives the life it does at the expense of these people? And please don't answer with more utopian bull about how how things are getting better for them, I'm talking about how things are now.

I would also much rather be a single mother living in a ghetto /w government assistance than a Yanomami woman (or warrior for that matter). — VagabondSpectre

So why is then that single mothers in ghettoes with government assistance are killing themselves in unprecedented numbers whilst Yanomami women are rejecting government settlement and risking their lives to fight to maintain their lifestyle?

I agree entirely with your intention here, but the trouble with such an approach is that to do anything about it (apart from antinatalism, which you specified should be set aside for now), one would have to hold that there existed a correct way to do it that everyone is striving for but fails to achieve.

Personally, I'm a naturalist, so I'm quite content to take an evolutionary position and say that such a method exists (not that this means I'm convinced that we could ever know it, but that we can get closer to it). But my naturalism is just a belief and others believe differently, so how could we ever possibly reconcile this?

I parent in a very different way to the rest of my society, in fact some of my parenting choices (like not sending my children to school) are so different that they're illegal in some countries and against the European Convention on Human Rights. The last thing I'd want is for the government, or some authority to tell me how to do it.

It's absolutely obscene the way some parents treat their children as objects of their possession which they can instruct and mould to their own personal satisfaction using whatever threats, bribes and blackmail get the job done. I hope that in years to come we will look back with disgust at the way we treated children in the same way we look back with disgust at the way we treated slaves. But I don't see how teaching people how to be parents would solve this problem because who would be the teachers?

The only way to tackle the problem that I can see is to raise your own children in the best way you see fit, and hope that others of like mind will join you, learn from each other etc.

There's also a movement fighting for children to have equal rights (I know, it sounds crazy that we're actually having to do this), but it's not a campaign group in the sense of trying to convince other people by argument (that's a lost cause as far as I'm concerned), It's using the fact that the law should be consistent to try and extend the rights of children beyond those of chattels.

The dictionary is a good start, but you will notice that some definitions are not perfect for they do not state the essential properties; they only give a vague description of the term, which is sufficient for most readers to understand the meaning, but not capture the essence. Look up the dictionary definition of 'knowledge' for example. — Samuel Lacrampe

How do you know that there are essential properties for such words to be found?

It is important in philosophy to find the essence of things in order to find essential truths about them. E.g., is x always y? — Samuel Lacrampe

Is it?

And the fact that the original definition held up for so long shows that it must have been close to completeness, otherwise people would have found exceptions earlier. — Samuel Lacrampe

This just repeats the same error; that people would have found some flaw if there was one to find. My examples surely must cause you to question that assumption?

Claims are made valid or not depending on if the reason that backs it up is valid or not. Gettier backed up his claim by finding counter-examples that aim to falsify the original definition. Whether he was successful or not is besides the point; the point being that even he used the Socratic Method. — Samuel Lacrampe

No, whether he was successful or not is exactly the point. If he used the Socratic method, but was unsuccessful in sufficiently backing up his claim, and if every other person using the Socratic method to make such claims was also unsuccessful in backing up their claim (empirically true, since no such claims have been taken to be unquestionably 'right'), then at least by inference that pushes us to conclude that the Socratic method does not work as a means of backing up a claim.

The assumption here is that there is a something that is the meaning of a word; and further, if this meaning-of-a-word were identified, we would all agree on it.

But there isn't, of course. — Banno

I don't think the argument requires that assumption. Concluding that because a method has attempted to do something for thousands of years but failed to do that thing, it is probably not possible to do that thing by that method, does not imply that it is possible to do that thing by some other method.

The fact that there is no meaning of a word, and that even if there were, we might not all agree, does not invalidate the argument that attempts to find such meaning and engender agreement on it via some particular method have failed.

Or have I misunderstood the point you were trying to make?

What is a one way passive event? What is a two-way active event that makes it more valuable? — Moliere

By one way and passive I mean that the philosopher holding the proposition plays no invested part in the process (one way) and that there's no competing, no right and wrong (passive). A two way, active event is one where the proposing party has a justified interest in changing the view of the receiving party, and vice versa (two way) and that each will consider the other to be wrong until they agree (active, or aggressive). I'm actually making the claim that the former is more valuable where the consequences would be irrelevant to each, the latter is more valuable where there will be consequences. Now, in order to engage in the latter (a fairly unpleasant and confrontational approach) I think ethically one should have a fairly good cause to believe the consequences will be manifest.

So, consider the latter first. I think gravity acts on objects to cause them to move toward the earth, and I build a bridge with that in mind. A fellow engineer thinks that gravity does not work that way, rather that it propagates like a wave and can be disrupted like one too. He intends to build a bridge with that in mind. There will clearly be manifest consequences if one or other of us is 'wrong', by which I mean 'does not correspond with our shared experience of the world'. The bridge based on the 'wrong' theory will fall down.

Now consider the former. Is a broadly Buddhist conception of the nature of reality more 'right' than a materialist one? Well, it doesn't seem to matter. There are happy Buddhists, there are unhappy Buddhists. There are happy materialists, there are unhappy materialists. It may make a difference in the real world (I'm not saying that they're equal), but that difference is certainly not demonstrable, and so I don't think the second techniques (two-way aggressive) is justified in these instances.

By 'aggressive' I don't mean only tone and language (although that's a big problem in places like this, it's much less so in academic philosophy), but I mean to include all forms of aggression such as hierarchy, idolatry, dominance, etc. The very notion of marking a philosophy essay is an act of aggression, in this sense, of dominance.

(and I've spent more of my life as the marker of essays than I have as the writer of them, by the way, just in case you might be tempted to think this position arises out of the bitterness of having just been given and 'F' for what I considered my magnum opus)

There is an art to it, and sometimes you use examples, sometimes you use empirical methods, sometimes you use thought experiments, and sometimes you use arguments. — Moliere

The important question is whether this is a meaningful art or a rhetorical one. A politician uses exactly the same mix to get elected.

Science is a lot like this. The only difference is that science is institutionalized to be a certain way, whereas philosophy is broader and able to change traditional assumptions -- to make new traditions, if it happens to bear fruit. — Moliere

The only reason it's more decidable than all of philosophy is because it is a tradition, which holds certain things as true, wherein many people believe such and such and so are able to appeal to that bed of agreement to decide upon what is being disagreed with. — Moliere

No, I don't think so, the other difference is that science affects us all in a shared experience. Electricity is electricity. It works your computer and mine in a shared and entirely predictable way. To the extent that science speculates on matters that do not affect anyone in a shared and predictable way (like Multi-verses), then it is metaphysics. As I mentioned to Marchesk, I think we too often presume that our internal understandings must have some universality to them, but there's no evidence that that is the case.

I'd still insist that within the context of a tradition that a metaphysical belief can be decidable based upon what is being held T -- such as the belief that the universe is coherent, or the belief that we live in the best possible world, or something. — Moliere

So, back to my branching tree example, all the forks (decisions about competing possibilities) up to now represent "the tradition", where that tradition is at now is just one fork (the current question within that tradition that you're trying to decide). Only one of three possibilities exist as far as I can see.

1. All such forks are decidable - but then all the forks prior to it must have been decidable too and so whole traditions can be 'wrong' right from the first fork. This seems impossible since thousands of years worth of thought has not yielded such a conclusive answer. Either we're wrong here, or we're right but clearly do not have any mechanism whereby we can make such decisions.

2. No such forks are decidable - This allows all the different traditions to be equally 'right', or at least not 'wrong', but accepting it necessarily entails that the fork currently being debated within that tradition must also be un-decidable, making the two way aggressive debate (as defined above) pointless.

3. Some such forks are decidable, while others aren't - A classic have your cake and eat it position, but not one we can rule out only on its remarkable convenience for the status quo. The problem here is that, in order to justify an aggressive, two-way debate about a particular fork in this scenario, we'd need some agreed method of determining which type of fork this is, a decidable one, or an un-decidable one. This is exactly what Carnap was trying to do. I'm not saying he succeeded, but you can see from the range of possibilities and their consequences why he felt it necessary to try.

but having God experiences is not universally reported, unlike dreams, imagination, feeling pain, etc. — Marchesk

That's not what 'they'd' say though is it? They'd say that every tingling of conscience is God, every feeling of mystical beauty is God, every time you feel the warmth of the sun etc. I refer you back to @Srap Tasmaner's apposite Ramsey quote;


"I think we realize too little how often our arguments are of the form:-- A.: "I went to Grantchester this afternoon." B: "No I didn't."

We're forever presuming that the way we feel about something simply must have some deep significance, simply must say something meaningful about the world, but really I think its just the latest story we came up with to explain the chaos of our senses, and there's no sense in saying my story is better than yours because it 'feels' right. There's no sense in telling someone else their story is 'wrong' because it doesn't 'feel' right to you.

Subjectivity is universal. But when the nature of subjective experience is argued about it, some are convinced that it's an illusion and not something fundamentally hard to explain in objective terms.

Or they pretend they don't understand what having your own individual experiences means, and they argue about something else related that's third person, such as being awake and responsive, or reports. — Marchesk

So how do you determine whether someone is "pretending" to not understand. Is this not just narcissism?, Failure of a theory of mind? "how could anyone possibly think differently to me?"

It's been skirted around without specifically mentioning it, but a some point a huge chunk of the idea that metaphysics is decidable come down to a belief in the truth of one's own a priori intuitions, and this is just vanity.

But common usage IS the test used in the Socratic Method to verify or falsify a hypothesis definition. Thus we are not really in disagreement here. — Samuel Lacrampe

No, if it were then philosophers would have to be linguists and definitions could easily be resolved by the dictionary. The staff of the various dictionaries put a tremendous amount of effort into working out the most common way a term is used, but many philosophies deliberately question the common use.

Their opinion alone is not valuable without the reason to back it up. And that reason is finding counter-examples that falsify the definition, in other words, the Socratic Method. — Samuel Lacrampe

I wasn't commenting on the value, only that, contrary to your assertion, it is not the Socratic method which allows me to know when two philosophers disagree, a simple empirical study of their words does that. The expression "I disagree", for example, would do the job.

This means the original definition must have been mostly right if it held up for that long. — Samuel Lacrampe

No. Consider the earth-centred solar system, the flat-earth, humours as a cause of disease, phlogiston, creationism. An idea's persistence has no bearing on its rightness.

And finally, it was still the Socratic Method which allowed him to discover that some property was missing, by falsifying the definition with counter-examples. — Samuel Lacrampe

He didn't "discover" some property was missing. He claimed some property was missing, others disagreed, and still do. That's the point, he simply made a claim it was grammatically possible to make and no one had any means of determining if he was right or not.

the Socratic Method is nothing but the scientific method [observation, hypothesis, testing through verification and falsification, repeat] applied to definition of terms as used in the common language. — Samuel Lacrampe

Again, if that was the case then the work has already been done. The staff at the various dictionaries have already invested far more time than you or I ever could in determine exactly what the common usage of words is in the real world. So what more work needs to be done?

Well, they can both be right, insofar that we are clear on what we're saying. So if we're talking about "what it is like", then it does no service to a discussion to argue over what consciousness means -- it is, in that context, wrong to say that consciousness is something else. — Moliere

Exactly, now imagine this process like a decision tree (I wish I could draw in these posts, it would be so much easier). First fork in the tree is "what do we mean by conciousness?" and there's Nagel on one branch and Churchland on the other. And you're saying that once you've chosen Nagel's path, there's no meaningful discussion using Churchland's definition, because we're in a completely different framework. We're not going to decide between them "they can both be right" you say.

So now we're committed to Nagel's branch and he makes a proposition of the form "conciousness does not superveniene on the physical". Now we have exactly the same problem with 'superveniene on the physical'. One interpreter might think he means literally neuron/thought reduction, another might be more inclined to weak supervenience. We cannot say which is right. In fact, no differently to the first branch about what conciousness means, we must conclude that they are both right.

So now we commit ourselves to the "conciousness is like something which doesn't strongly superveniene on the physical" branch. Then we encounter some proposition of the form "conciousness, in not superveniening on the physical, must also be timeless". The third fork. What do we mean by timeless? Outside of time, without time, is it just metaphorical? Again we can't say that any one interpretation is right, indeed just like the two forks before us, they must both be right.

And so it goes on. The route you take through the decision tree is what became known as a Ramsey sentence (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs, it's just that Ramsey's not all that well known so I don't presume people are aware of him) . You can't meaningfully criticise another branch from the context of your own branch because the other branch is derived from all the one before it, not all the ones that you have committed yourself to.

But if, at each fork, we can only say "they are both right" then any discussion about which branch is most 'right' is meaningless. It a nonsensical contradiction as we cannot possibly determine the 'rightness' of the final result having determined each stage is indeterminable.

I can completely sympathise with your finding some value in 'testing' your beliefs against those of others, you might find another position more satisfying, or more robust, and we do seem to like our beliefs to be robust (well, some of us anyway) but that's a one way passive event. The philosopher only needs to 'present' you with their proposition, for you to do with what you will. But then there's no sense in which you're "studying" anything, there's no body of knowledge to learn (other than the entirely historical facts of who said what). No one is 'better' than anyone else, there's no sense in which some grammatically correct interpretation could be 'wrong' (again, other than in a purely historical sense that such an interpretation is unlikely to be what the author intended to say. Because what the author intended to say is a fact of history, not metaphysics).

As I say, I have a lot of sympathy for the value in the more mystical metaphysical propositions. I think I would even go as far as to say it would be virtually impossible for a person to go through life without taking a position on some of the most important metaphysical questions,and I'd love to be involved in discussing them as such, but that, sadly, is just not how it's done.