Phantom limb pain is real pain in a phantom limb. There are subjective truths. — unenlightened

You keep begging the question.

How is your proposition regarding truth being an attribute of the assertion advanced in any way by this subjective/objective distinction?

It seems to me that this distinction is (as always) just getting in the way and muddying up the waters.

And is that not a central claim of the original post?

Is this arguably unnecessary and continually introduced distinction proof positive that Posty McPostface is correct, at least in this instance?

Within the context of philosophical discussion groups, I have never seen a demand for empirical "proof" from any one regarding a philosophical proposition with which they agree. Not. One. Time.

So, the issue is about fulfilling criteria? — Posty McPostface

No. The issue is the criteria to be applied, if any, given the nature of the premise. I have little patience for people who demand their music taste like pizza.

no. Though I don't disagree with that.

I do not disagree. But certainly the nature of the proposition should indicate to most whether a demand for empirical "proof" is appropriate. And scientific propositions and philosophical propositions are not the same. I go out of my way to avoid advancing philosophical propositions amenable to empirical proof. I leave those to science. That is their thing and they are good at it. I do not apply to music the criteria I use for assessing the quality of pizza.

I disagree.

perhaps a good name would be "What do you take for your Cartesian hangover?" The unenlightened one and you have senses of humor, give me some ideas for names. Humor draws them in. Of course, any one who goes by the handle Posty McPostface already knows that. :-)

that which actually is — Pattern-chaser

And in what way is that which actually is different from that which is?

And what about that which really is?

I can't believe you walked right in to that one.

Or are you messing with our heads?

:smile:

I was equating each school of philosophy with a single tool, — Pattern-chaser

I know. I extended your metaphor.

Metaphor's invite that.

Your examples prove my point. There is very little in the major fields of philosophy that are amenable in any significant way to resolution by empirical evidence.

Demanding proof of reliability of the senses one relies upon is a self revealing absurdity.

How do these people get to work in the morning?

I d

Hmm, why is that? — Posty McPostface

I try and avoid the internal/external baggage that comes with subjective/objective.

It is like taking aspirin for my Cartesian hangover.

It is better than hair of the dog.

Well who is in a position to make the call for the pain in an amputated leg? We all agree that the amputee does not have the leg any more than you or I have it. What position counts as a position? — unenlightened

I do not know who it is but I know it is not me.

If there is a person in a position to make a final determination of true/false, calling the decision subjective/objective does not make it any less true/false.

Just saying.

if I were a mechanic, I suspect the contents of my toolbox would be significantly different than the contents of a carpenter's tool box. And though I might use a carpenter's tool once in a while, I am not expend resources to acquire a complete set of carpenter's tools.

I use philosophy in pursuit of an ever deepening understanding of the nature of being. My philosophy tool box is going to be full of tools that best enable that pursuit. And if most of those tools come from a particular school of philosophy (a particular hardware store? a particular hardware brand? from a particular hardware department?), then those are the tools that are going to be in my tool box.

And I am not young. And I have acquired and discarded various tools over many years. And most of the tools now in my tool box are from a particular school of philosophy. But I did not acquire them because I "subscribed" to that school of philosophy. I acquired them because they facilitate my philosophical pursuit..

I enjoyed reading this thread.

Now that you mention it, maybe I should. . . . Gotta run!

I agree. But it is not just that "evidence" may be terminologically better than "proof", it is also the "demand"ing nature of the response.

The OP was prompted by a discussion I was following about "what happens after you die." Someone commented to the effect "we do not know if the soul is a material thing. it could be that it lives on after the body dies."

The comment was met with the one word demand "proof!"

I was struck by the rudeness of the response in light of the personal and intimate nature of the comment.

Not only was the response rude, the person making the demand knew there would be no proof forthcoming.

It is anti-philosophical.

Why would anyone do that?

it seems to me that your subject/object distinction could just as well be handled by saying some people are simply not in a position to make the true/false call. If you assert your back is sore, I am in no position to make a true/false assessment of your assertion. If you say your back is sore and you then start doing cartwheels, I am in a position to see that the entity toward which the assertion is directed is not showing itself as asserted.

What entity is this assertion directed towards? I need to see if it is as asserted, before assenting to it. — unenlightened

I use the word entity rather than object.

Stick around a while and you will see why.

An assertion is true if the entity (object) toward which the assertion is directed shows itself as it is asserted.

The assertion that the car (entity, object) is blue is true if the car shows itself to be blue.

So, I'm saying, of those situations you are taking issue with, many fall into one of two camps, both of which can actually be defended. — Pseudonym

very few fall into the camp of amenable to empirical "proof."

And none of mine do.

I leave to science the empirically provable.

That is their thing and they are good at.

You have entreated us to "not demand proof" — Pseudonym

my choosing the word "demand" was no accident.

it is nonsensical to expect me to tell you what I am saying when you are continually telling me what I am saying.

of course. But as I stated in the OP, when a particular proposition reaches the point that it can likely be resolved by empirical evidence, then they are likely to become scientific propositions and philosophy will move on.

That is why science split from philosophy in the first place. It was the place to go with those ideas amenable to empirical proof. Aristotle is not Plato and no one expected Plato to provide "proof." Plato was a philosopher. Aristotle was a philosopher very much interested in science. And the rest is history.

As for solipsism, there are few adherents and empirical evidence is not the reason.

There are no criteria of validity in science. — tom

Almost as if there is no such thing as the scientific method or controls or stuff like that.

I will let my boss know and we can all go home. Of course, we will to find new jobs. But whatever.

We code scientific research papers.

Most of them do meet our requirements.

One of the keywords for rejecting papers is CRITERIA.

And guess what that means?

yes.

And it is the example that motivated the OP.

There was a discussion this morning regarding what happens after we die.

I do not believe I participated in the discussion. If I did, it was tertiary.

One comment was to the effect:

that the soul is not a material thing so it could certainly live on after our material death.

that statement was met with the one word demand "proof!"

It just struck me as extremely rude to demand "proof!" when the person making the demand knew there was no such proof to be had and to thereby perfunctorily dismiss such a personal and intimate statement.

Because the methods of criticism available are different. — tom

I would say because the criteria of validity are different.

Has it occurred to you that I chose the word "demand" (as opposed to request) for a reason?

I am rarely bothered by a reasonable counter argument that raises the issue of empirical "proof" in regard to a reasonably argued philosophical proposition.

But yes, I am always pained when a reasonably argued philosophical proposition is met with a "demand" for empirical "proof."

Aren't you?

So, if I understand this correctly, you're saying that some calls for proof may be less valid in philosophy than they would be in science. — Pseudonym

No, that is not what I am saying.

It is the nature of the proposition that determines whether a demand for empirical "proof" is appropriate.
And a philosophical proposition is different than a scientific proposition.

As a result, applying criteria developed for evaluating scientific propositions to philosophical propositions is not a good idea.

No one would suggest we apply the criteria developed for evaluating music to evaluating pizza.

I'm having great trouble understanding what it is you're saying. — Pseudonym

You are free to read it as many times as you wish.

So truth is objective. And 'objectively true' is a tautology, like 'truly true'. — unenlightened

Or actually real? Or really true? Or truly real? Or actually true?

I love the classics. :smile:

Truth(or falsehood) does not depend on assertion, it is a property of assertion. — unenlightened

And if there is nothing asserted, then indeed there is is nothing of which it can be further asserted that it is true or false. — unenlightened

The above strike me as inconsistent.

If I had said, the existence of truth (or falsehood) depends upon the existence of an assertion, would you have agreed? I do believe that would reconcile the apparent inconsistency in the above statements.

I think we are close.

I restate my notion: an assertion is true if the entity toward which the assertion is directed shows itself to be as asserted.

I am uncertain as to what subject/object adds to the discussion. Feel free to enlighten me in that regard.

Whereas arguing that "... it is a red herring and you know it" is a much more reasonable example of a counter argument? — Pseudonym

No. It is a simplification of my thesis.

Going forward, there is no need for you to continue telling me what I am saying. I know what I am saying.

If you want to argue with what I say rather than what you say I am saying, feel free to do so.

But if you want to argue with what you say I am saying rather that with what I am saying, you will be arguing with yourself.

Have a good weekend.

A demand for "proof" is not a counter argument to a reasonably argued philosophical proposition. Instead, it is a red herring and you know it.

I disagree. If truth is dependent upon an assertion, then absent an assertion, there is no truth. And if you believe in the subject/object dichotomy, then you would agree that objects do not make assertions? Subjects make assertions. There can be no truth in the absence of a being that makes assertions.

But aside from the fact that people use the words I don't know I'd go so far as to say there is some advantage to using them -- they are ambiguous and often seem to result in more misunderstanding than understanding. — Moliere

I agree. They are symptoms of our Cartesian hangover. We have essentially grown up in a culture that long ago adopted the idea that we are self-sufficient minds (res cogitans-subjects-internal) that through the miracle of transcendence are able to interact with self-sufficient matter out there in the world (res-extensa-objects-external). Simply put, we consider ourselves to be on the outside looking in.
Yet we are the consummate insider. We know of no other being that is more inside the world than us. And so we are on the inside thinking we are on the outside looking in and then we wonder why we are so confused by what we see. Significant cognitive dissonance is built in to our Cartesian culture.

The first five words of my post are "Though I concede an overlap"

Your third sentence says "What you're saying is that demanding proof of a philosophical statement is meaningless because it deals only with that realm which cannot be proven." Emphasis added.

1. At no point did I say it was meaningless. Instead, the more reasonable interpretation of my argument is that a demand for empirical "proof" is less likely (perhaps significantly so) to be valid within the realm of philosophy than in the realm of science. Consequently, there is reason to suspect the demand may be less meaningful in one realm than in another. So your claim that I said a demand for proof is meaningless is at best an unreasonable interpretation of my position.

2. And staying within just your third sentence. At no point did I say that philosophy deals "only" with propositions that cannot be proven. What I did say is "by and large" those are the types of statements with which philosophy deals.

I also went on to say to the effect that most of philosophy is not data driven though some is while most of science is data driven though some is not.. So even if you mistakenly interpreted me as meaning "only" when I clearly did not say only, such an interpretation is clearly unreasonable in light of what I actually said.

So we are only into your third sentence and you have offered two extreme terms to characterize my non-extreme position and you have offered two unreasonable interpretations of what I actually did say. As a result and with all due respect, would it be unreasonable for me to suspect that you may be trying to make my position appear more extreme than it is? I sure hope you are not doing that.

I agree.

I am a research scientist though by education I am a lawyer. I work for a company who has acontract with the EPA. We assess and code scientific papers. Very of few of the papers meet our criteria for coding. There are very few papers rejected for lack of empirical proof. There are many papers rejected because there method is unsound. And most of those rejected as unsound contain sufficient empirical proof.

For me, I always considered the greatest common ground is the focus upon the nature of reality (philosophy?) and/or the reality of nature (science?).

By asking about the place of proof in philosophy, you have sort of answered your own question. But I would rephrase as what is philosophy's place in relation to scientific proof. And first and foremost, it is not philosophy's place to provide it. And for the most part, science adequately self polices itself regarding its own standards of proof.

And consistent with my OP, I assert it is philosophy's place to discuss when and where a demand for "proof" is reasonable, unreasonable, helpful, harmful, necessary, unnecessary, made in good faith, intended to obstruct, and so on. . .

Perhaps the thread will go in some of those directions.

I guess we will see.

I want to start an argument obviously. That is going to be hard if you won't disagree — apokrisis

I disagree.

You couldn't be more WRONG!!

Starting an argument with me is as easy as riding a bicycle.

And when I knock you off of that bicycle, you need to just back on keep going until I knock you off again.

You nailed it. "Scientism" is the word. Thank you. :smile:

Note that the Socratic Dialogues themselves are discussions about the meaning of various terms; working out what we mean is pivotal to philosophy. If we begin by simply stipulating meaning, then arguably we are not actually doing any philosophy. — Banno
It's the kind of meaning I was referring to. I'd say that we can't sensibly start going into a philosophical discussion without those being clear. Whether the defining is part of the philosophical discussion or preceeds it, I don't really care, as long as it happens. — Tomseltje

Well said by the both of you.

They are called dialogues for a reason.

In my experience, people unwilling to define their terms when asked do not know what they are talking about and when the discussion gets tough, they will be the first to call you a name while they are running for the exit.

He was very well aware of contemporary developments in science, — SophistiCat

I conceded the overlap in my first sentence. My experience tells me that those interested in philosophy are more likely to be aware of developments in science than the average person and that those interested in science are more likely to be aware of the history of philosophy than the average person.

Most philosophy is not data drive while some is. Most science is data driven while some is not. And that matters when discussing science and that matters when discussing philosophy.

And besides, we all know the person demanding "proof" rarely makes such demands regarding ideas they agree with. In that sense, it is a form a fallacious reasoning that relieves the person making the demand of their philosophical duty to make a counter argument and to actually give some thought to ideas they do not like.

It is fallacious in the sense the it's motivation is to suggest that the argument being made is to be dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with the soundness of the argument. And that is anti-philosophical.