So none of them then.

Its not "some random standard I decided to come up with" it's how I actually live my life so I get pretty offended if someone starts up a thread telling me it is categorically unethical.

The thread has been a consistent mush of arguing that all meat eating is immoral by comparing the worst form of meat farming to the best form of vegetable growing.

If you're convinced that even the best forms of meat farming as I've outlined still cause more harm than vegetable farming, then make that argument. If all you want to do is shut down the discussion with derisive remarks when it gets difficult for you then you've done a fine job.

I have just posted some of the most authoritative studies on the subject, and they all contradict you. — Uber

Really? Which one of them compares a chemical assisted vegan diet to a fully organic omnivorous diet which includes only wild, agroforesty, upland, or scrap-fed meat?

All other studies I have come across say he highly overestimated the numbers.... So I was actually just being conservative in your favor. — NKBJ

No, because you are a vegan. The "all other studies" are going to be studies trying to prove veganism, just like Davis's was trying to prove meat eating. Its confirmation bias, we all have it. All we can say without bias is that there are arguments for either case presented by intelligent, well-informed experts. Therefore, no case is unequivocally correct from an ethical pont of view.

But since you're the one who falsely claimed both that you would need whole hectares of food to equal one deer, and that there are hundreds of deaths per hectare.... Do you have any research to back it up that you can show us here? — NKBJ

Yes, Davis's study. The mere existence of counter arguments does not render a study no longer evidence. As I've said dozens of times already, it depends how you measure harm and what harms you're prepared to accept as consequenses of a particular land use. If you can find me the article in which Davis and other ecologists making the same argument (like Farleigh), all put their hands up and say "fair cop, we were wrong" then I maintain that there exist a range of arguments in this matter.

Re:2-4, as previously stated, veganism requires less land to be used for agriculture; we already have permanently changed the landscape so the best we can do is reforest a few areas; — NKBJ

Again, we can't "reforest a few areas" unless we manage deer numbers, and I'm not, nor ever have been, talking about land that could be used for arable. I think the use of good arable land to grow corn to feed cows is both deplorable and stupid. I'm talking about meat from Woodlands (both natural and timber-growing) and uplands (all lamb production in England, for example), animals which undergraze (chickens and cattle in agroforestry systems), and animals which are scrap-fed (our pigs). None of these systems use land which could be used for growing arable crops, so if you don't eat these forms of meat you are directly requiring a greater quantity of land to be taken up with agriculture.

This is what I was responding to:

The use of wild or grass fed animals to supply protein kills just one animal, to grow the equivalent quantity of legumes requires the deaths of hundreds, not to mention the destruction of the habitat of thousands more. — Pseudonym


I very directly addressed and refuted your point. Sorry, not sorry — NKBJ

Yes, and I explained that the point is that far from being a cut and dried ethical issue, it is a complex issue requiring agreement on many technical points;

1. How do we count an animal that was 'killed' because of growing vegetable protein? Just the ones the farmer actually kills? The ones who die of starvation and disease due to direct habitat loss? The ones who die from starvation and disease due to indirect habitat loss (such as eutrophication)? The ones who die as a result of prey species loss from pesticides and pest control? The ones who die as a result of the actual production of the mechanised and chemical means of modern arable farming?

The source you give is clearly a biased, single, source. anyone with even a modicum of understanding about how to assess evidence would know that you do not reach unequivocal conclusions based on a single biased source. The article isn't even a piece of original research, it's a critique of another scientist's original research which he claims (and still claims) proves the exact opposite. As I said in my previous post, the point is not to argue that I'm right (or that Davis is right) it's to point out that it's obviously complicated.

Can you not conceive of the idea that in a few month's time an article might be published showing how Middleton has actually made an error in his calculations and in fact the total number of deaths turns out to be higher in arable afterall? Then another article showing how that critique missed a key point and Middleton was right afterall, and so on ...

Articles are not regularly produced showing how gravity actually doesn't exist afterall, or how electricity is actually magic like we first thought. Some things are so widely agreed upon as to be reasonably taken as absolute fact, other things are contested and we have to accept it is reasonable for rational people to base their ethical behaviour on any of the currently supported conclusions.

Notwithstanding the complications in how to count animal deaths, there are other ethical issues the simple death count does not address ...

2. What value (in terms of harm) do we give to habitat loss compared to actual deaths, are we to ignore completely the loss of biodiversity simply because those animals never lived rather than were actually killed?

3. Are we to give any value at all to the 'naturalness' of a landscape as an intrinsic value of it's own?

4. Are we to give any value at all to the 'naturalness' of human interaction with that landscape - Hunting/gathering vs. mechanised farming?

I'm not arguing against Veganism, I think it's a perfectly reasonable response to the situation we find ourselves in and a perfectly ethical position. What I'm arguing against (and I think I can say this for everyone who's contributed to this thread) is this overly simplistic notion that it is the only ethical position.

You're missing the point.

1. The Forestry commission already kill the 30,000 deer for the good of the forest, so my comparison is not with an already established crop, but the cost of destroying the natural landscape currently occupied by large herbivores to make way for lentils, which I can guarantee wiil cause more than your 15/hectare deaths.

2. Much more importantly (for a philosophy forum) we're already trading disputed figures and methods for measuring the net harm. Do you trust the Forestry commission's opinion on whether the deer need to be culled (you've already indicated you don't)? Do I trust your 'they' who've apparently measured all deaths from arable farming and come to a figure of 15/ha? No, not on face value I don't. So far from being this cut and dried ethical issue it has been painted as, it turns out its an extremely complex ecological issue with varied harm calculations depending on which metrics you use and which experts you trust.

This is the point of avoiding making every decision on the basis of strict consequentialist ethics. Our knowledge of the consequences of our actions is always limited and open to alternative views.

I take a default position. Do not interfere unless you have to. Carnivores eating herbivores is a natural process, I'm not about to advise playing God and re-arranging the ecosystems of the world on the reckoning of a few scientists who've done a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the total number of animals killed in either scenario. You don't take a 3.5 billion year old system and suggest we could do better after five minutes of looking at it.

people suddenly turn into health and environmental experts when the topic of Veganism is brought up, while rejecting the actual scientific evidence. — chatterbears

I've literally just given you the scientific evidence. The UK forestry experts agree that deer need to be culled in order to allow natural regeneration of woodland. Killing a wild deer causes one death, farming the equivalent protein quantity of legumes requires the deaths of tens, if not hundreds of potential pests (deer, moles, voles, rabbits etc). Not to mention the fertilisers, eutrophication, pesticides, herbicides, habitat loss, soil degradation, etc. Wild or grass-reared meat is better for the environment because it's the best way to manage open space, it causes least deaths overall, and it provides healthy meat. So please don't accuse me of ignoring the scientific evidence. I have a degree in ecology and a masters in countryside management I know how ecosystems respond to grazing and I know how they respond to intensive arable treatments.

are you going to assist me in finding the door? Or are you about to decree that there is no door either? — Marcus de Brun

Well, for an exercise in clarity and precision, we're not off to a very good start, looking for a metaphorical 'door'. Perhaps to start with you could define, in plain English, what this investigation you talk about is actually trying to achieve.

Further exposition becomes imprecise only as a failure of the use of precise language, or the failed usage, not as a consequence of axiomatic failure. The axiom fails only where it is verifiably false. — Marcus de Brun

I agree with this entire proposition except for your use of the word 'only'. I see no 'only' about it. Philosophers have been using language to express ideas for more than 2000 years and have got absolutely nowhere by your measure of eliminating the unreasonable. All major philosophical ideas that have ever been expressed are still held to be reasonable by at least one of our epistemic peers.

Far from being 'only' about imprecise language, the project is permanently and irrecoverably crippled by it.

I'll put it simply. Mark Balaguer believes in indeterminism. He doesn't believe in it randomly, and he's at least as intelligent and well read as you or I. So if I come to the conclusion that determinism must be true, yet he (despite having access to the same empirical facts as me) is able to intelligently come to the conclusion that determinism is not the case, one of us must be mistaken. That means it's possible for an intelligent person despite rigorously analysing the facts, to be wrong. So how will I ever know that that person is not me?

No, sorry didn't get any of that. I mean, I can tell all the words are English but I'm afraid I cannot derive any meaning from them when put together. The best I've got so far is...

If you follow truth it heads your path, you seek to follow it. However, if you follow self then you seek to have truth follow you and you may end up trying on "philosophies" like they are going out of fashion. — Jeremiah

... People who seek truth are more willing to change their minds than people who don't?

Lovers of opinions over indulge in authoring their own realities from the self. — Jeremiah

... Really struggling with this one. Is there a right amount of indulgence in authoring our own realities? How does one go about authoring a reality from the self? My best guess - lovers of opinion describe the world in terms that complement their descriptions of themselves?

Lovers of truth want to see beyond self, even if seeing beyond self becomes an impossible task their desire still pushes them towards the impossible and in doing so they grow. — Jeremiah

... Lovers of truth seek it even if its impossible to find?


Presuming I've translated that right...

I'm certain that the most fashion-conscious teenagers change their minds pretty frequently and willingly to suit the latest trends, I'm not sure I'd single them out as truth-seekers.

I'm also fairly sure that a large number of dedicated scientists nonetheless have a world-view which places science (and by definition scientists) pretty highly. I'm not sure that makes their work little more than opinion.

Finally, do not the religious seek a knowledge of the divine which, for us rational atheists, is impossible to find. I'm not sure that turns them into truth-seekers either.

If there is a difference between truth and opinion, I'm not sure your caricatures have got us any closer to it.

Surely it is the job of the Philosopher to inform the 'citizen in the room' that he is in fact 'in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there.' Thereby the seeker might look for a door that might lead him to a cat. — Marcus de Brun

Just did... job done.

We incarcerate humans because they have a higher ability in thought, and can understand a deeper level of right and wrong. — chatterbears

We eat animals because they have a lower ability in thought, and cannot understand a deeper level of right and wrong.

Would it be possible for you to grow some of your vegetables, grains, nuts, etc...? And whatever you cannot get, buy at a local store? — chatterbears

Of course it would, I'm pretty much self-sufficient in leaf and pod vegetables, but to grow enough legumes to meet my protein requirements would require the clearance of another few hectares of land. Plus all deer, rabbits, pigeons, and squirrels threatening the crop are shot and eaten, moles, mice and voles are controlled by lethal trapping if required (I don't eat them, but perhaps I should?). All this death would have to be expanded to expand my vegetable growing. Any food I buy at the store simply entails someone else doing all that killing for me, except I expect most of their meat just goes to waste.

Pain and death go hand in hand, as they are both causing harm. — chatterbears

No, they don't. For many people living in pain is worse than death, a short but happy life may be considered by many to be preferable to a long but miserable one. Pain and death are most certainly not sufficiently similar that an argument about one can be substituted for an argument about the other. It is perfectly legitimate, for example, to argue that the shorter but comfortable life of an humanely farmed cow is preferable to the perhaps longer but less comfortable (diseases, fear of predators, variable food supply) life of that same animal in the wild. I personally would not agree with that argument because I value autonomy and the freedom to express our natures and so I extend that value to sentient animals, but it's certainly not as cut and dried as you're making out. If your argument is to minimise net harm you could easily argue that that could be satisfied by taking an animal from the wild and rearing it for meat, giving it a shorter but much happier life. That is why, philosophically it so important to get at the distinction between death and suffering.

If it were possible for all 7.6 Billion of us to kill one deer and live off the protein for months, it would be much better than both vegetable farming and meat farming. But since that is not possible, vegetable farming is the lesser of the two harmful industries. — chatterbears

The Forestry commission in Scotland alone kill 30,000 wild red deer every year and that is still not quite enough to keep their population stable (numbers are still increasing and they're also spreading geographically). One deer produces about 9kg of meat, enough to meet a persons protein requirements (by RDA) for half the year, so Scotland's forestry estate alone could feed 1% of its population. Since the forest Estate occupies less than 1% of Scotland, a move to greater consumption of wild meat would be far from insignificant, yet your advocacy of vegan ism would have us ignore such a valuable contribution.

If you add to this the amount of grass-fed and scrap-fed animals in farming (almost the entire world's lamb production, for example, is grass-fed), you can see why people are accusing you of fundamentalism. You've taken a very sound argument against mass production of corn-fed beef, caged chickens and factory pork, and concluded that it's therefore immoral to eat all meat. The way meat is grown seriously needs reforming. The way vegetables are grown seriously needs reforming (see the impact of pesticides on the world's bee population, for example), and all of this can be affected by our consumer choices, but none of it requires that we give up eating meat.

A number of philosophers have tackled this question. David Chalmers did a good lecture on it which I think is on YouTube, Peter Unger has written an entire book about it called 'Empty Ideas', Peter Hacker and Peter Van Inwagen have both written quite extensively about the subject and would be well worth your time reading about if you have the inclination. (more interesting though would be answering the question why such an unreasonably high proportion of those interested in the subject are called Peter)

In summary though the answers all converge on the same general problem;

The only propositions that can be expressed with absolute clarity are axiomatic and so can be disputed without recourse to argument, once certain premises are agreed upon, further exposition become sufficiently imprecise that counter-arguments can be presented to absolutely any argument simply by the interpretation of meaning.

Basically, anyone looking to philosophy to provide some kind of 'true' answer is (to paraphrase) like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat ... which isn't there

There are two types here; lovers of opinion and lovers of truth — Jeremiah

So what is the difference between opinion and truth when it comes to philosophical propositions? How are you distinguishing the two?

Unless you are willing to only eat those animals who have died of natural causes, the eating of one implies killing it. Killing is a form of harm. The consequence of getting the flesh you want to eat is therefore harming a sentient being. Harming a sentient being is causing more harm than good. — NKBJ

I'm not going to write it all out again, so please see my comment above. The use of wild or grass fed animals to supply protein kills just one animal, to grow the equivalent quantity of legumes requires the deaths of hundreds, not to mention the destruction of the habitat of thousands more. Farming anything causes more death and destruction than obtaining meat from the wild, or from landscapes which are ecologically grazed by herbivores.

Half the world's grain crops are fed to the world's 65 billion farm animals. How many insects/worms do you think are killed in the process of harvesting these crops for the farm animals? — chatterbears

Here goes the second of your two regular vacillations.First you switch between death per se and pain/suffering to suit your argument, then you switch to the environmental impact of factory farming when we talk about the impact of farming vegetables. Please try to stick to one issue at a time so we can determine what your line of argument actually is.

To be clear absolutely no-one here is suggesting that modern factory farming of animals is fine and needs no intervention to make it better, so would you please stick to the argument that's actually being had, not the one you'd like to have. we're all trying to debate the morality of eating meat, the killing and consumption of another species of animal.

I only eat meat that I have either shot myself, someone I know and trust has shot, or has been locally reared on grass or kitchen scraps. So, if you're concerned about total number of deaths, one Red Deer shot in the wild causes one death (that of the deer), absolutely no impact on the ecology whatsoever (in fact it benefits it slightly) and will keep me in protein for months. To grow the equivalent amount of legumes you'd need to clear five acres of otherwise wild ecosystem, destroy all above ground life within that five acres, kill every single insect, mole, rabbit, deer, mouse that threatens that crop. Then you'd have to but it in a series of lorries and ships to transport it half way across the world, pack it, ship it again before it finally yields it's protein. There is no way the killing of one wild deer causes more environmental harm and animal death than the farming of five acres of legumes, so if you're using an environmental harm or total sentient deaths argument, then you should be advocating wild game and grass fed, free-range meat as part of a balanced diet.

I don't see how we could reasonable judge whether or not it became unnecessary for a lion to kill a gazelle. — chatterbears

I've already given you the exact circumstances under which we can judge that - surplus killing. It clearly was not necessary for their survival for the wolf pack to kill those 18 Elk, they just left them there. So let's stick to the philosophical issue. Would you incarcerate or kill those wolves (in the same way as we would incarcerate or kill a psychopath) in order to prevent them from killing more elk that were beyond their food requirements?

B will still have some indirect pain/death associated with it, such as the field mice that die during the harvesting of our crops. But the pain/death associated with B, is not even remotely similar to the pain/death associated with A. — chatterbears

You see this is where you keep changing the terms of your argument. On the one hand you talk about the pain/suffering of creatures who can feel pain (this is how you avoid the reality that vegetable farming kills billions of insects/worms etc). But then when the idea of humane animal farming is raised, such that the farmed animals feel no pain, you go back to the idea that it is simply the killing that's wrong for purely ethical reasons (to avoid having to concede that humane animal farming would solve the problem).

Decide which is the wrong you wish to avoid - pain and suffering, or the taking of innocent life, and then we can continue the debate based on that.

The lion requires the consumption of the gazelle to survive. This is a necessary evil for the lion to survive. The mentally disabled person does not require the killing of whomever they wish in order to survive. This is an unnecessary evil for the mentally disabled person to survive.

Hence I go back to the factory farms, which are an unnecessary evil, and is not required for humans to survive. — chatterbears

It's not about the morality of the lion or the psychopath, it's about the morality of the person with the ability to prevent either killing. In order to be consistent you would have to hold the view that, if at any time if became unnecessary for the lion to kill the gazelle we are as morally obliged to prevent it as we are to prevent the deaths caused by the psychopath. So, what do you do about excess killing? Would you be in favour of the destruction of the Wolf pack responsible for the killing of 18 Elk without the need for food in order to prevent them from doing it again?

it raises the issue of "fashion" in the other sense, changing tastes over time. I remember when I discovered there was such a thing as fashion, in this sense, in philosophy, and I was not exactly shocked but certainly disappointed. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm reluctant to admit I hadn't even thought of that, I just used fashion designer as a convenient example of someone wishing to 'sell' a concept, but yes, one of the more subjective of the criteria for judging ideas is how well it fits with the current paradigm (this even extends to science according to Kuhn, but I'm not convinced myself how deep his analysis goes).

This runs deep, and I'd want to pull in Grice here somehow. — Srap Tasmaner

As in 'Defence of a Dogma', or in the context of the authority of language users you mentioned earlier?

Where does PVI talk about this? — Srap Tasmaner

An article entitled “It Is Wrong, Always, Everywhere, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything, Upon Insufficient Evidence.” In Faith, Freedom, and Rationality, edited by J. Jordan and D. Howard-Snyder, but he expanded on it in an interview I heard with him once a long time back, I'm afraid I can't quite remember exactly who he was speaking to or where. He was talking mainly about the same subject as the paper though, just really warning philosophers that the disagreement of any epistemic peer must be taken as evidence that one's concepts can't be unequivocally held and that on almost every topic in the history of philosophy there is disagreement among epistemic peers. He basically summed up by saying that anyone who thought philosophy was about finding some 'truth' might as well not bother. He's not quite so grumpy in the actual paper, must have caught him on a bad day.

That's pretty much a definition of consequentialism. So to be consistent you'd have to take a consequntialist approach to the eating of meat too, so where's the argument that the killing of animals for food causes more harm than good for the foseeable future based on current knowledge? Not factory farming, just any killing of animals. More importantly, where's the argument that it does so with such incontrovertible certainty that the moral choice is as unavoidable as it is being painted here?

So this is the difficulty with your ethical position. You're saying we have a moral obligation to prevent the death of every sentient being with no restriction other than our knowledge of the potential consequenses. Do you realise the risk that obligation entails by referring to nothing more than our current knowledge to judge the infinite future consequences of our actions? Do you really trust our current knowledge that much?

Absolutely. If it's not stretching the fashion designer analogy too far, I'd say that what you're describing is the equivalent of something like fit. We all have a similar, not entirely subjective view on whether an item of clothing fits. Something too small or too big is obvious to anyone, and all designers will produce clothing within those parameters. That doesn't mean that 'fit' automatically gains the status of objectivity, it's still too open to opinion at the finer scales, but it's something like objective.

Peter Van Inwagen talks of the agreement of our 'epistemic peers', which I think is similar to what you're describing. What's interesting is that he goes on to warn of the dangers in accepting that proposition. If an idea can be held by any of our epistemic peers, then we are bound (by the same principle we used to raise our subjective opinion to a higher epistemic status) to accept that the idea has some merit. No longer can we claim that the power of agreement amongst our epistemic peers confers a truth-like value to what we think and at the same time dismiss as nonsense an idea sincerely held by a minority of them.

Arguments therefore too often dismiss the concepts, which in the end are all too easily rebuked, and rarely interrogate the sincerity with which the ideas are actually held, which I find more often to be the weak point in many questionable positions.

Saving the ecosystem is a greater good than saving the gazelle, though both are good. Since I cannot save both at this moment in time, I have to choose the greater good. When it becomes possible to do both, I should do both. — NKBJ

This sounds insane to me, so I thought I'd better double check. You're actually saying that you see nothing morally wrong with humans completely altering the ecosystems of the entire planet (should they ever be technologically capable of doing so) in order for us to create an artificial utopia where nothing ever died?

You might ask whether that would lead to the conclusion that we ought to intervene on the gazelle's behalf. The problem there is that the ecosystem relies on the balance of all of these animals behaving in just the ways they do, and if we intervene, it could lead to widespread disaster. We would be causing more death and suffering than we averted.
This might lead you to ask about the overpopulation of deer and the necessity for humans to hunt. Note that if this were true, we'd still have to get rid of all factory farms, and only a tiny percentage of the population would be able to eat meat on a very rare occasion. But it's also not true, because there are numerous avenues we can explore for population control that have been widely ignored so far. — NKBJ

You sidled from moral culpability to practicality. Are you saying that if a practical method arose by which we could prevent the lion from eating the gazelle without harming the ecosystem we would be morally obligated to do so? Ie, is your argument that the impractical or undesirable consequences are the only thing preventing us from having a moral obligation to prevent all predators from killing their prey?

If so, then the issue ceases to be a moral one (presuming you are a consequentialist) and becomes an entirely scientific one. What are the consequences of meat-eating on the ecosystem? Not factory farming, not even farming per se. What's being discussed here is the ethics of eating meat. If you're saying that Ethics should be consequentialist, then you need to provide evidence for the negative consequences of eating meat (regardless of how it is obtained).

You (more @chatterbears) seem to make a rights-based argument when it comes to eating meat, but now you're switching to a consequentialist argument when it comes to our obligation to prevent the murder of the gazelle by the lion. Since the entire debate has centred around consistency as a measure of ethical standards, should we not at least stick to one consistent ethical framework?

There is a major contradiction in your argument which is that you on the one hand claim that there is no significant trait which separates humans from other animals sufficient to justify our variable treatment, but on the other you claim that the lion is not 'wrong' to eat the gazelle because it cannot conceive of 'right' and 'wrong'.

Now, you may argue (indeed you have) that the trait that justifies killing animals cannot be knowledge of right and wrong because it would not be justified to kill a severely mentally disabled person simply because they did not have the capacity to know right from wrong.

So far so good. The problem for your moral consistency comes about when deciding what to do about the severely mentally disabled person and the lion. If we conclude that it's OK for the lion to kill the gazelle because it doesn't know right from wrong, then, in order to be consistent, we must also conclude that it's OK for the mentally disabled person to kill whomever they wish because they don't know right from wrong.

If, alternatively, we intervene to prevent the string of murders which might otherwise be committed by our brain-damaged psychopath, are we not equally obligated to prevent the gazelle's unfair death?

So, to turn the question back to you, what is the trait that makes us morally obligated to prevent the unfair deaths of our psychopath's would be victims, but confers no such obligation to prevent the gazelle's death at the hands (or teeth) of our amoral lion?

You seem to be stuck on the distinction between what philosophy actually is and what it is sometimes presented to be. Philosophy is about ideas, ways of categorising and connecting all the 'facts' that science (or simple empirical observation) delivers us. The act of 'doing' philosophy, is the act of presenting one of these ideas to others. Imagine the idea is a new piece of clothing you've designed, you then have three ways to present it;

You can simply make it available in a shop and if people like it, they'll buy it, if not they'll walk out. We presume, in this scenario, that people buy clothes simply on the basis of some gut instinct about what they like based solely on the look of the thing. The fashion designer need do no more than present clothing.

Alternatively we could work on the idea that people have reasons for selecting one piece of clothing over another, but that these reasons remain subjective. In this case a fashion designer might want to 'present' their clothes in the best light depending on the client and open them up to testing. They might allow people to try them on, feel the cloth, compare them to other clothes they like etc. There's still no 'right' or 'wrong', but the clothes have to be tested by the prospective buyer against their own criteria, which means the fashion designer has to make the available for such testing.

Finally there is objective testing. If the clothing in question is an item of fireproof protection which must resist temperatures of 1200C, then the clothing could be subjected to 1200C and should come out unharmed. This is a method available to people who all agree what '1200C' is, what 'unharmed' is and that both can be reliably measured.

You seem to think that philosophy is either type one or type three, either plain opinion which people simply select by preference or objectively testable for its proximity to 'Truth'. In my experience, philosophy is far more often of the second type. Philosophical ideas are tested, but they are tested using the subjective testing methods of the people who are considering adopting the idea. In order to do this, you need discussion, interrogation and critique, but you should not expect any of this to reflect anything other than the personal testing methodology of the one doing the interrogation. They're 'trying on' the idea to see if it suits them.

The purpose of 'actual philosophy' then, probably should be to provide a forum for people to 'try on' ideas using whatever criteria they personally feel marks an idea as one they might like to adopt.

The problem people experience is that such a forum is not as open as it would need to be to function this way. In an ideal world, anyone would be able to 'interrogate' any idea by whatever criteria they prefer their ideas to meet and the owner of that idea (like the fashion designer) simply does their best to answer that interrogation, to present their offering in the best light to that particular client.

Unfortunately this is rarely what happens. People presenting ideas resent the fact that others might dismiss them based on their own criteria. Fashion designers who've spent weeks perfecting the drape of a particular shirt get really pissed off when customers simply say they don't care two figs about the drape and just want to know if it's washable at 60C. Likewise philosophers (or those espousing a particular philosophy) tend to anger quickly when the long and complicated justifications they've constructed by one particular set of criteria are dismissed as irrelevant by someone interrogating their idea by a different set.

The opposite also happens on sites like this. People deliberately interrogate ideas they have no intention of even 'trying on' simply for the intellectual high of being able to shoot anything down if you judge it by standards it was never even designed to be judged by. Anyone can expose the painstakingly designed silk shirt to 1200C and then say 'see, it doesn't even stand up to the standard fire-proofing test'. Likewise someone could put an item of fireproof clothing on a model and metaphorically rip it shreds for it's poor fashion design. This kind of thing makes people feel intellectually superior, a feeling which most people enjoy.

There is no such thing agreed thing as 'Actual Philosophy', there's the presentation and interrogation of ideas by whatever methods the critic and philosopher might agree on, and then there's the game some people play of finding whichever method of interrogation makes any given idea look like meaningless rubbish. Personally, I've indulged in both. Some ideas are important enough to need serious interrogation, but the game is undeniably great fun.

Thus, Logicial Positivsm assumes criteria regarding meaning, and subsequently simply employs it. Everything that doesn't meet the verification principle, is meaningless. — Nop

Why do you accuse Logical Positivism of 'assuming' criteria regarding meaning. I think positivists over the years have written a quite some length detailing the exact argument as to why they consider that meaning is only present in verifiable statements. They haven't just 'assumed' it.

You assume criteria regarding meaning, and reject Nietzsche on the grounds that he doesn't meet your criteria — Nop

As above, I haven't just 'assumed' it, I've asserted it with some arguments outlined here, but mostly off the back of the work done by modern positivists, none of whom you seem to have even heard of (let alone read) but all of whose conclusions you seem nonetheless willing to dismiss, not only as wrong, but as so wrong as to be deserving of derision.

Let me be clear so we don't keep going round in circles.

Positivists argue (by substantial logical argument) that we do not need to know the content of a philosophical work in order to determine its meaningfulness, we only need to know the methods by which it has been derived.

You (and philosophers like you, I'm not sure if there's a collective term) argue, with equally substantial logical (or otherwise persuasive) arguments that one cannot tell the meaningfulness of a philosophical work by its method alone, one must analyse its content.

Two different positions, both supported by logical (or otherwise persuasive) arguments, both supported by a wide base of epistemic peers.

I'm persuaded by the first position, you are persuaded by the second. The difference, which I am struggling in this thread to understand, is that you don't just disagree with the first position, you treat it (and those who agree with it) with derision. Why?

Do you honestly think comparing the capacity of ballroom dancing judges to say something meaningful regarding ethics, with philosophy, the discipline that has invented contemplation on ethics, is a useful comparison? — Nop

Yes, otherwise I wouldn't have made the point. You are begging the question by already presuming a position on ethics (that it is not naturally occuring) and that philosophy has generated that position (as opposed to simply reporting it). Without those presumptions you would have to demonstrate that philosophy has actually contributed to the normative function of ethics before you can raise you own personal incredulity to the level of actual evidence.

The people on this forum are so arrogant when it comes to repeating the received wisdom of popular philosophy as if it were fact and then presuming anyone who disagrees with popular opinion must be ignorant, it beggars belief for a group of people supposedly striving for open-mindedness. Have you read Michael Friedman, JJ Smart, Crispin Wright, David Wiggins, Pete Unger... All of whom disagree to varying degrees with Quine's conclusion that you think was so irrefutable. It may well be what you learn at bachelor level, try reading about what you learn at doctoral level, you'll find it's rarely that simple.

nobody can force you to invest time into understanding the position you are attacking — Nop

You've mistaken my position, and that of the Logical Positivists for that matter. The claim, that this bulk of philosophical statements are meaningless, is not made on the grounds of having looked for some meaningful statements and found none. Were it made on those grounds you could justifiably say "well you haven't looked here, or you haven't understood the meaning here" and make the claim that we should read Nietzsche (or do so again, but more charitably). But that's not the argument that's being made. The argument is that philosophy, simply by virtue of it's means of investigation, cannot say anything meaningful in that way. This claim does not require anyone to read or understand the results of those investigations, the argument is not about the result, the argument is about the means. As I said to Agustino, you do not need to know anything about the pronouncements of ballroom dancing judges to know that it doesn't have anything meaningful to say about ethics. You can argue that it has nothing meaningful to say about ethics simply on the grounds that examining a couple's dancing and comparing that to a series of 'perfect' set moves with an added element of innovation will not yield any meaningful information about ethics. You do not need to know or understand the information it actually does yield in order to make this judgement.

So Logical Positivists (or rather their descendants) are making the claim that the methods of philosophical investigation are such that in most contexts it can yield no meaningful statements. You feel quite at liberty to dismiss that proposition in derogatory terms despite that fact that you admit to not having read any of the arguments which support it, and yet you demand that anyone making the proposition not only read all the arguments against it, but all the results of the investigations which took place under the presumption that the proposition is false.

This is like demanding that someone who wishes to make the claim that the astrology is meaningless read, not only all the arguments of astrologers, but all the star-sign predictions that have been written presuming astrology is true, all the while allowing that the astrologers demean normal predictive sciences without having read anything about them.

When faced with this kind of argument, philosophers always seem to retreat to the "meaningful to the individual" position - the one you're taking now. That I'm falsely determining that because it's not meaningful to me, by my criteria, it's not meaningful objectively. They claim that because philosophy might be meaningful to someone, it is therefore valid. This is all very well, but then philosophy cannot have it's cake and eat it. If the claim is that a text must only be meaningful to someone, in order to be taken seriously, then Harry Potter is a work of philosophy, lots of people find the struggle written there meaningful, especially school kids dealing with the same issues on a less fantastical scale. But when it comes to entry to, and discussion of, the philosophical canon, philosophy reverses it's subjective "meaning to someone" definition and tries to hold an objective "this is good, this is bad" position. It cannot be both. Either arguments are good or bad based on objective criteria (in which case it is possible to critique those criteria without having to read all the arguments based on them) or it is not good or bad at all and no meaningful discussion can take place on those grounds.

Fairly straightforward, if Hawking claims that he is making a true proposition, I take him at his word. If Nietzsche is claiming that he is not concerned with 'truth' and 'falsity', I take him at his word. — Nop

Well, that's very magnanimous of you. If Hawking claims he's making a truth statement, I take it to be brave attempt to further our understanding, If Nietzsche claims he's not interested in Truth or falsity, I tend to think he's talking rubbish in order to immunise himself form criticism so he can spout whatever garbage comes into his head and not have to worry about whether it's actually true or not. But maybe I'm just cynical.

Though Nietzsche rejects correspondence theories (he has a different perspective, a thing which Scientism finds hard to grasp in general). — Nop

Interesting, How exactly does he reject correspondence theories if he's not interested in truth and falsity. Does he reject them because he doesn't like them much?

if Nietzsche questions the justificational force associated with the notion 'truth', showing its contingents roots in history, he problematizes the justificational force associated with the notion 'truth' as being self-evident. — Nop

No, he only does that with the answer to his question, not the question. He presumes that the question is a valid one, otherwise it is again like me asking if the speed of light really is 299,792,458 m/s. I don't undermine anything by asking. But ultimately, I have no problem with the idea that there is no such thing as 'Truth'. If you read the rest of my posts, that's exactly what I've been saying. It's the idea that some philosopher truthfully has something meaningful to say that I'm arguing against. The statement that all philosophy is just empty ideas is either a perfectly reasonable statement to make, or it is you who are claiming some 'truth' value. The 'truth' that philosophy in fact does have something meaningful to say.

All I've evr tried to argue in this whole post is that the idea that philosophy does not have anything meaningful to say, that no philosophical position can be shown to be 'better' than any other, is a reasonable position, not that it's true. It's everyone else who are arguing that the position is not even a reasonable one, that the meaningfulness of philosophy is such a verifiable 'true' fact that it is not even possible to hold the opinion that it isn't and remain rational.

Again, you are exemplifying what Scientism means to me. You think from a Logical Positivist perspective, have not invested serious time into understanding Nietzsche and Genealogy in general, yet make bold claims about Nietzsche. — Nop

So have you read all of Alex Rosenberg's works? Peter Unger?, JJ Smart? Yet you seem quite happy to cast aspersions about what Scientism is, what it can and cannot grasp, the intentions and limitations of its proponents.

No, you simply don't know what you're talking about at this point. — Agustino

Well that didn't take long did it, we're back to just insulting your opponent's intelligence - "You don't know what you're talking about"..."No you don't"..."No you don't". I'm not wasting my time on this type of playground argument.

Finding the truth value of a statement requires observation of the world primarily, — Agustino

No, because you still need a theory which ties you subjective experience of those observations to the objective reality you posit exists.

One way is to take my wallet and look into it - ever thought about that? — Agustino

Firstly, I'm in England, bit tricky to look in your wallet. Secondly, as above I'd still need a theory which tied my subjective experience of seeing $100 dollar to my proposition that $100 existed in objective reality. Have you never heard of optical illusions? Seeing the $100 would put me in exactly the same situation as I described. I would have toa priori hold a theory about the relationship between my observations and reality, therefore conclude a 'truth' resulting from both my actual observation coupled with my theory about how such observations relate to reality. There is no way to access reality directly other then through theories which model it.

If you're looking for something, you must know what you are looking for, otherwise even if you find it you will not know that you have found it. So this needs to be settled. If I am looking for a Martian, I know what I am looking for - I am looking at minimum for a living creature from the planet Mars. — Agustino

You can't observe that a creature is from Mars, you have to infer that fact. So how do you infer such a fact when you don't know what features would indicate that a thing is from Mars?

Oh reallllyyyy? I've read some of Unger's work and I don't remember him being a Positivist. — Agustino

No, well done, I just made that up, but you caught me out, nice work Sherlock! Google 'Empty Ideas'.

I have no a priori reason to believe that ballroom dancing can provide a meaningful contribution to ethics. — Agustino

Are you seriously suggesting that your opinion about ballroom dancing is a priori?

If you think that means we have tested it, then you don't understand what testing something means scientifically. — Agustino

I never said I was testing it scientifically, that's the whole point.

I can answer all these questions, but you're not serious anymore. So I won't bother. You clearly are running out of meaningful things to say, and so you resort to this pretence of an engagement with what is being said to you. — Agustino

Nice cop out.

So presumably you are aware that you are engaged in this fallacy. Why don't you stop then? If you are aware, you can stop. You can say, I will stop with these stupid rationalizations, regardless of what other people are doing, and I will suspend judgement, because I know no better. — Agustino

"Man can do whatever he wills, but he cannot will what he wills"

A whole host of criteria. One simple criteria is that they feel hungry and they want to eradicate the pain of hunger, so they want to eat. And so on. — Agustino

So did they want to be hungry?

In fact, you recognise that you have no reason to be a naturalist over and above a Cartesian Dualist, but yet, lo and behold, you stick blindly with one of them. — Agustino

I have a perfectly good reason to be a Naturalist over a Cartesian Dualist. I like Naturalism.

This "random" story is quite coherent, that's why you're capable to have goals, pursue them, and fulfil them most of the time. If you want to find food, you know to go look in the fridge. So it's not a "random" story at all. You really should think more about what you are saying. — Agustino

Back to the insults again. Read David Eagleman, Bruce Hood, Vilynor Ramachandran .. basically any neuroscientists or modern psychologist, then come back and discuss whether the stories our concious brain makes up are actually coherent. You don't even see half the world, your peripheral vision is actually black and white (your brain just makes up the colours), stuff can happen right before your eyes and your brain just blanks it out if it wasn't expecting it, your memories can be manipulated and even implanted just by suggestion, self-reports of just about any sensation you care to mention are universally shown to be inaccurate. Your brain is just making this all up.

Accepting evolution has almost zero to do with naturalism. You can be a theist and accept evolution. Also accepting evolution has nothing to do with believing in freedom or in strict determinism. — Agustino

Have you read anything I've written? I'm not claiming that any set of empirical data 'proves' any metaphysical position. Of course you can be theist and believe in evolution. You can twist any set of evidence to support any metaphysical position, that's the point of what I've been saying all along. No metaphysical position can be demonstrated to be better than any other, no evidence can be brought which cannot also be twisted to support the other argument, no logic can be applied for which there is no counter-argument, nothing whatsoever can be done to demonstrate that one metaphysical position is better then another, only the arguments for them can be improved, but never defeated.

So can't you disobey? You are aware of it, so this isn't a reflex that you cannot stop, the way if I hit your knee with a hammer you cannot but move your leg. — Agustino

Yes, that's right. Again, I advise you take a look at literally any psychological experiment ever.

You'd be more rational to begin with? — Agustino

And what benefit would that bring me?

:rofl: - for real? Until now you were telling me that your instinctive brain forces you to accept it. So now you've dropped that ridiculous theory? — Agustino

No, I said 'wants', not 'forces'.

I affirm that I can determine the truth of metaphysical propositions. — Agustino

Well, that's settled then. If you have some magic way of determining the truth of metaphysical propositions, then its pointless discussing them with you isn't, just use your magic and tell us all what's right and what's wrong. Do you seriously think you're more capable than Kant, Hume, Strawson, Wittgenstein, Russell, Unger, Carnap, all of whom vehemently disagree with each other about the very propositions you're claiming to have worked out the truth of?

This is amatuer psychoanlysis. People have all sorts of motivations, — Hanover

People have all sorts of motivations. This is amatuer psychoanlysis.

The phrase “There are no facts, only interpretations” is not a proposition, as Nietzsche did not make the claim that this phrase is 'true'. — Nop

And yet Hawking's claim "philosophy is dead" or Unger's claim that "philosophers proceed to write up these stories, and they’re under the impression that they’re saying something new and interesting about how it is about the world, when in fact this is all an illusion.", or when Rosenberg claims that "Science is the best tool to discover reality" ; these are propositions such that you could claim them to be false? What exactly is it about the context that you are using to divine whether a person is making a statement and claiming it to be 'true' or whether they are just... Whatever it is Nietzsche is doing... Making conversation?

So only practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge which can be translated into practice can contribute to our understanding of the world? — Nop

Yes, how else will we know if it is 'understanding' and not just 'stuff we reckon'?

That is the question which Nietzsche asks when undermining the notion of 'truth'. — Nop

Nietzsche can't undermine a notion by asking a question, he can only undermine a notion by demonstrating it to be false. I don't undermine the notion that rain is wet just by saying "yes, but is it?".

was talking about you and the statements you made in this threat, as I took you as a Scientism-ist. — Nop

I am, and we're back to the claims you made at the opening of your post. What is it that compels you to 'correct' my claims, which you've clearly taken to be truth claims (although I don't consider them to be) and yet when considering Nietzsche he is afforded the generous self-immunising status of one who is merely saying stuff, not actual propositions, so we can't point out how useless it is.

Because then they stand a better chance of a promotion. That might not necessarily be enough of a motivation, but that's part of why I've been putting in the effort over the years. And have I gotten that promotion? No. Life's a bitch. — Sapientia

Exactly. "you're a slave to the money then you die."

Would it be fair to say that in making this claim, you reduce the history of philosophy and philosophical literature to analytic philosophy? — Nop

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
― Albert Camus

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
― Albert Camus

“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

Sound like questions to you? They sound an awful lot like a series of propositions to me.

So do you think that Russel´s attempt to ground mathematics in formal logic, has contributed to our understanding of the world, even though it failed? — Nop

No, we act no differently now than we did before Principa Mathematica was even started. How can it possibly have contributed to our understanding of the world? Maths does exactly the same job now as it has always done. People still act as if maths were real, so the idea that it is founded in something is still around and new arguments have come about as to how that concept might be supported. Our ability to predict remains unchanged, our attitudes towards one another unaltered, I can't observe a single change that has happened in the world as a result of Russell's investigation. It's interesting, but the world would be no worse off without it.

Nietzsche isn't concerned with notions of ´truth´ and ´falsity´. — Nop

So is the statement

“We do not consider the falsity of a judgment as itself an objection to a judgment; this is perhaps where our new language will sound most foreign”. — Nop

neither true nor false then? If so, why would we act in any way on it, what does reading it give us if it is neither true nor false?

you express a opinion on Nietzsche, without making the effort to grasp his philosophy in his own terms. — Nop

And your opinion on, say, Rosenberg (a self-proclaimed Scientismist) is based on an effort to grasp his philosophy in it's own terms. Have you read his papers? Do you 'understand' them in their own terms? You seem quote happy nonetheless to reach the conclusion that Scientism approaches philosophy with "closed-mindedness". I'm curious as to how you think you can support that assessment after only a cursory look at the claims these people are making from your self-professed 'continental' perspective.

Please explain to me what you mean by "proven", since I don't understand what you're saying. I don't follow what it would take for a metaphysical statement to be 'proven' true. — Agustino

I get that you become interested in its truth once you see how it is useful to you, but how do you find out about its truth-value? — Agustino

You can't, not in the dedective sense you're thinking of. I'm talking about abductive reasoning. I believe that when Agustino tells me he has $100 in his pocket, he has $100 in his pocket. Agustino has just told me he has $100 in his pocket, therefore he has $100 in his pocket. If, on several occasions I find that after you've declared that you have $100 in your pocket, you in fact don't have, then my theory is no longer useful. The truth value of whether you actually have $100 in your pocket at any given time doesn't enter into it, it's simply an unknown. It's the theory that has a utility value, not the results it predicts.

I don't know. Its like asking what a Martian would look like and then claiming that I can't say I haven't seen one because I can't give a description of what it is I haven't seen. I haven't seen anything I would call a proof of a metaphysical theory. I know what isn't a proven metaphysical theory - one that perfectly intelligent people can provide rational reasons to disagree with for a start. That alone covers all of current metaphysics.

That's not enough. — Agustino

Not enough for what?

But I know that philosophy has some useful things to say, because I have studied philosophy. — Agustino

No, you think philosophy has some useful things to say. Peter Unger, a published professor of philosophy recently wrote a book detailing exactly how metaphysics says nothing at all of any value. He's definitely studied philosophy, so either he's lying, or you do not know the philosophy has some useful things to say because you have studied philosophy. You simply believe philosophy has some useful things to say and you have studied philosophy. The one did not cause the other, it was incidental to it.

Therefore I can freely speak about ethics, what I cannot do is speak about whether neuroscience is capable or not to make contributions. — Agustino

Then I have no argument with you on that score. So what would you say if I asked you whether ballroom dancing had any meaningful contribution to the study of ethics? Still sitting on the fence because you don't know anything about ballroom dancing? What about sewage engineering? Anything meaningful to contribute to epistemology? Still can't say because you don't know the intricacies of sewage engineering?

Clearly you can't have it both ways. — Agustino

Of course I can. The first theory is that eating grass cures cancer in that person, the second you are leaping to is that eating grass will cure cancer in other people. Two different theories. We've already tested the first. To test the second we'd need some other people.

It means that I want you to clarify what sense a particular term or belief has. What are its truth conditions, how do you determine them, etc. — Agustino

What do you mean by 'clarify'? What is the 'sense' of a term? What do you mean by 'truth conditions'? And what would constitute having 'determined' them?

Questions are inquiries into something, a particular matter that, for whatever reason, we are interested in. — Agustino

What is an 'inquiry'?

We know we have answers when what is looked for in the question is found or understood. — Agustino

What does it mean to 'find' what is looked for and how do we know it has been understood?

An account is a reason to believe it. That it is not contradictory or incoherent is NO REASON whatsoever. It's not contradictory or incoherent that the sun will not rise tomorrow, or will disappear, etc. That's not reason to believe it. — Agustino

OK, so what is a reason to believe something?

I am quite sure that is a fallacy called rationalization. So if that's how you operate, I certainly recommend a change of operating system. — Agustino

I'm quite sure that's a fallacy called rationalization too, doesn't mean its not what everyone is doing nonetheless.

This makes absolutely no sense. It is ridiculous. Look at it. Re-read it. Look at it seriously. When someone is deciding on their view they must decide also on what it is that they want. — Agustino

You're presuming that people decide what they want. If they do, what criteria do they use to decide? What they want to want? then how do they decide that? What they want to want to want?

It's not like our wants are immediately given — Agustino

Where do they come from then?

This makes absolutely no sense. It is ridiculous. Look at it. Re-read it. Look at it seriously. ... If you look how this happens, you will see that the reasons and desires arise simultaneously, as the result of investigation. — Agustino

And we're back the the SLX approach, no actual argument, no evidence brought forward, just 'look at it, re-read it' like the only reason you can think of that I might hold a different view to you is that I can't have looked at it properly. Are you even considering the possibility that you might not have looked at it properly?

How did you arrive at holding this belief? What was, phenomenologically, the process? — Agustino

I can give an account if you like, but I think phenomenology is nothing but the study of the random stories our concious brain makes up to make sense of the disparate and often contradictory messages we receive from the various parts of the brain so I hold absolutely no useful information is contained there. My experience, however, goes something like - All the people I know who seem intelligent in areas I can judge also seem to believe that we evolved through a process of evolution through natural selection so I find myself drawn to that opinion, I check it is not utter nonsense against empirical observations and find it isn't, so I'm happy to hold that belief. I wonder how our brains work, philosopher disagree on just about every aspect of that question and I can't see any mechanism by which they could know in any way that could actually make useful predictions, so I turn to neuroscientists. I might first have a theory that I'm in charge, but find no reason why I should be (given the evolutionary theory earlier adopted) and no evidence of that in neuroscience. Again, I listen to people I trust developing theories I already seem drawn to like David Eagleman and Bruce Hood, they seem like they should know what they're talking about and have no reason to develop a theory which contradicts empirical observation, so I'm happy to adopt their theories for now.

No. I've asked you to suspend judgement with regards to a theoretical matter, not a practical one. — Agustino

I know, but my instinctive brain doesn't, hence it wants me to decide.

If it really is true and you don't have a reason to prefer naturalism over Cartesian dualism, then you ought to suspend judgement. That's the natural thing to do. — Agustino

Why? What benefit is it to me to suspend judgement? I'm obviously not going to maintain my view in the face of empirical evidence or a model which better predicts the world, that's exactly the scientific approach I've adopted, so what possible benefit is it to me to suspend judgement, on what grounds do you determine that it's the 'natural' thing to do, and what exactly would someone whose suspending judgement sound like on a forum such as this? Do you read any comments which are suspending judgement about the question of whether philosophy has anything meaningful to say here?

I know that philosophy has some useful things to say, — Agustino

Clarifying what terms mean is important. — Agustino

It is ridiculous. — Agustino

An account is a reason to believe it. That it is not contradictory or incoherent is NO REASON whatsoever. — Agustino

it is absolutely preposterous to say that reasons just justify a worldview that is chosen a priori - no. — Agustino

Do they sound like someone suspending judgement when faced with an opposing world-view?

Pseudonym, if the discipline of philosophy is characterized as being concerned with questions, not answers, would you dismiss the discipline of philosophy? — Nop

No, but;
a) That is clearly not the case. Philosophical literature is not a series of questions (at least not since Plato) it is either a series of propositions supported by arguments from axioms, or a series of counter-arguments to dispute a previous proposition.
b) Even if that were the case, there would still be little point in the discipline as a whole unless it had some objective measure of success at asking the 'right' questions or 'better' questions, otherwise we can all ask questions, no need for a separate discipline dedicated to it.

In addition, lets say that hypothetically, Russels's paradox regarding set theory fundamentally cannot be resolved, would you be consistent and say that you would dismiss Russels's paradox, as you do with Nietzsche on the same grounds? — Nop

Russell dismissed Russell's paradox, that's the point. He set out to provide a justification for our belief in mathematics and failed (by his own admission) to do so. Nietzche (and his supporters) think he had a sound justification for his philosophy which rendered other philosophies false. That's an entirely different claim. The if you want to put them on the same footing you have to describe Nietzsche as having set out to justify a certain type of Nihilism but failed by his own admission to do so. Then I would say they could both be dismissed on the same grounds, but that's clearly not what happened.

Hemlock perhaps? Your questions are exemplary Socratic ones, after all (the bloke who founded, y'know, Western Philosophy). — StreetlightX

Toga, sandals and beard it is then.

Yes, keep going, soon enough you might actually have an inkling of how philosophy operates. — StreetlightX

Do I get the beret and the black polo-neck yet?

But what is an 'excellent' question? What is a 'question' at all, and how could it possibly be excellent, what is it excelling in? How do we know what a 'question' is meant to achieve such that we can tell it is excelling in it's task? Can a question have an objective at all? What do we mean by 'objective'? What do we mean by 'have'? What do we mean by 'mean'?... Oh look, we're back where we started.

When I tell you that I have $100 in my wallet, is the truth of this proposition granted by its usefulness? If so, what is usefulness? Is it usefulness to me? Usefulness to who exactly? — Agustino

Yes, I believe so. I can't think of any other reason why I would be interested in the veracity of the statement unless I intend to do something about it, and so it is useful for me to be able to include your wealth in my calculations. Useful to the person holding the theory, of course.

Right, as are the other metaphysical beliefs. Is your belief that "metaphysical beliefs cannot be justified" itself a justified belief? If not why should we prefer it, as opposed to the opposite? — Agustino

No, I think that;s a sound empirical theory. There are no metaphysical beliefs which have been proven to be true, there currently is no mechanism by which a metaphysical belief could be proven true, it's a good scientific theory to hold, therefore, that metaphysical beliefs cannot be proven true.

I am sure that you will agree that in order to determine if something is useless, you must go into it, you must investigate it, and do so seriously. Otherwise how can you know if it is useless? — Agustino

I didn't say we should not investigate it, but it is not necessary to know all of its details, otherwise you're setting up an unfalsifiable premise (popular among philosophers). Anyone criticising philosophy can be automatically disregarded without having to actually engage with their arguments on the grounds of some canonical detail they were unaware of. "Ah, but did you not know that Kant accidentally misspelled 'Zwecke' in the first draft of the Critique of Practical Reason? No? Well I don't have to take any notice of anything you say then, you obviously know nothing about philosophy", it's a lazy cop out. If there's a sound argument against what Hawking has said, it should be easy to make, there should be no need to brandish his poor reading of Epicurus, only correct it.

That should be seen as a problem for those philosophers who want to say that neuroscience cannot provide any help in resolving moral conundrums. — Agustino

Yes, but it isn't. If it were, we would have to declare the whole of ethics a closed subject. Philosophers are no longer allowed to discuss it because they are not fully immersed in the details of neuroscience, and neuroscientists are not allowed to talk about it because they are not fully read up on philosophy. Metaphysics is out of the window too, unless all metaphysicians are fully trained quantum physicists, and physicists are expert metaphysicians, no-one is entitled to comment. Philosophy of mind goes the same way, as does epistemology. So what's left to discuss?

Alternatively, we could just take people's statements seriously and if some lack of knowledge on their part is actually undermining their argument, we can point that out. If it isn't then we can stop using it as a stick to beat them with in order to avoid actually having to engage with them.

Who would be able to prove that philosophy is playing such a role, and what would proof consist in? — Agustino

Nobody and nothing, I'm fairly certain that it would be unprovable. If there is even a single person who derives some comfort from some philosophy, then it has achieved that task.

Suppose there is a man who has cancer, and he refuses all medical treatments, and claims that eating grass will cure him of cancer. And he eats grass and he is indeed cured of cancer (let's say it is spontaneous remission). It clearly worked for him personally, in that he did reach the result he was aiming for. What will we say if he now intends to market and promote his idea to other cancer patients? — Agustino

This is basic science, we hold a theory that eating grass cures cancer, we test that theory in controlled trials during which we find out it doesn't, end of story.

What would it mean to prove that naturalism is true? What does that even mean? — Agustino

This is the same trick that SLX used, I thought you were above that. What does it even mean to ask what does it mean? What would the answer to the question "what does it mean?" be like? What does it even mean to 'be like' something? What does 'something' even mean? What are questions anyway? How do we know when we have answers? What do we even mean by 'answer'?... I presume you're wearing a black polo-neck, a beret, and chain-smoking in a French cafe whilst asking this?

No, I have not actually seen you provide an account for it. You have merely been arguing that it's a possibility, there is nothing incoherent or contradictory in being a naturalist — Agustino

That is an account of it. The best we can do with a belief that cannot be proven is demonstrate that it is not self-contradictory or incoherent. As PA pointed out in his post (though we got slightly crossed wire over argument vs. conclusion), it's just about the only thing we can say about a philosophical argument, that it is not incoherent or contradictory.

But you haven't provided any reason for why anyone, including yourself, should be a naturalist as opposed to, for example, a Cartesian dualist. — Agustino

That's because there isn't one. I've been saying this in different ways for the past 10 pages, but perhaps I've not been clear enough because it's a paradigm that people seem to struggle to get out of. It does not go - argument->testing of argument->conclusion. It goes conclusion (the thing you've already decided to believe)->argument (to justify that belief)->testing/refinement of that argument (by debating with others). The only point at which one might change their world-view if if the testing/refinement of their justification for it went so badly it could not be repaired. This rarely happens.

I have no intention of providing reasons why someone should be a Naturalist, that would be a complete waste of my time. I simply don't believe that people derive their world-views from the strength of the argument in favour of it. They justify the world-view they've already decided they want. If I had some absolutely watertight argument for Naturalism that was so powerful that people would feel stupid believing anything else, then I might go on that mission, but I don't.

Why not? If you perceive so clearly as you say you do that metaphysical propositions cannot be true, why is it that you cannot suspend judgement with regards to their truth, but rather prefer to choose one position amongst the available range? — Agustino

I just can't. I believe this to because we have evolved to form models of the world and our brains simply do this without any concious thought. Suspending judgement until it is needed is a dangerous tactic, it means that when a decision is needed, you have to slow your brain down to decide what model of the world it's going to use. If you're on a runaway train and it's about to hit a broken bridge, you'd better decide pretty quickly if you're a realist, if you're going to take Hume's problem of induction as sorted, if you're going to believe the scientific account of physical forces, you can't be working all this stuff out as the train plunges off the cliff.