and

What bearing on anything does the fact that most people consider it to have no benefit have?

You know that you could interpret that statement more charitably, right? There are facts about what's generally considered a benefit — S

Which has what to do with whether something is a benefit?

That's no different--for rhetorical purposes--from simply saying "Joe Smith doesn't consider x to have any benefits"

Hate speech has virtually no benefit to society. — Isaac

You know that there aren't any facts as to whether something is a benefit or not, right?

Absolutely no ideas are being restricted because it is possible to express every idea in non-hateful ways, — Isaac

This is very odd to say because it suggests that the problem has nothing to do with semantics but rather quite literally with word choices, with the sounds or looks (if written) of certain words.

Take the example of someone who has the belief that we should "gas the Jews." There would be countless ways to express that idea. So, you'd be saying that some of those ways to express the idea are kosher (so to speak); you'd not be saying that the problem is that the idea is expressed (in whatever the kosher way to express it would be . . . and of course this is assuming that very different expressions can exist that don't make much if any semantic difference)

What counts as acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour(speech). — creativesoul

On my view, nothing counts as morally (or legally) unacceptable thought, belief or speech.

Speech acts are statements of thought/belief. — creativesoul

They're not literally thought or belief. As long as we're saying that they're correlated to thought or belief, or we're just speaking very loosely/rather metaphorically, I'm fine with "speech acts are statements of thought/belief" though.

Thought/belief have efficacy. They lead to patterns of thinking, habits, and acts. — creativesoul

I'd agree that they can lead to that in the bearer of the thought/belief in question, although sometimes in rather unpredictable ways.

We can talk about the Feldman paper, although it's a lot to go into, and I don't agree with much of it, including that I think the premise is rather incoherent. If you know something there's no need to "know that you know," anymore than if you're running, say, you need to "run that you run." "Knowing that you know," among other things, seems to suggest that there is, or needs to be, something certain about knowledge, and as I've expressed a few times, that is a mistake.

On my view, by the way, both justification and truth are subjective, although particularly with truth, it takes a while to explain why I think that. Again, it's a lot to get into, in the sense of needing to talk about a bunch of different issues to get there.

On my view you can know, at time T1, that P, where either some other person at time T1, or where yourself at time T2, declare(s) P to be false. (At time T1, however, you'd of course assign "true" to P.)

I'm not knowledgeable enough to give my opinion on just what it is they *are* within that framework — Paralogism

I explained this already. They're knowledge claims. Knowledge doesn't imply certainty or proof.

Why do you think that claims "need to (ultimately) justify themselves"?

If global skepticism holds, then we have no more reason to believe in scientific claims than any other type of claim. An assertion about feldspars would be based on faith. — Paralogism

Again, the question is about what you understand scientific claims to be. The ultimate aim of this is to explain why certainty/proof or nothing is a false dichotomy.

So your understanding of scientific claims has been that they're faith claims?

Being "mean" to people is honest, if that's what someone is thinking.

I like people who are honest and expressive.

Well I'm blunt, and you're an idiot, so we're a match made in heaven. — S

Right. Of course I return the favor. ;-)

No one would ever dare to call me an idiot. — uncanni

You need some new friends.

Definitely some people you know are going to think you're an idiot sometimes. If they don't tell you that, they're not being honest with you.

Since this is a thread about lying/honesty, I see people not expressing just what they're thinking, including when they try to "tactfully" temper or spin what they're thinking, as dishonest.

I prefer hanging out with people who are honest/unfettered.

You don't hang out with people who say "You're being an idiot" if they feel you're being an idiot?

Do you not think that you're overcomplicating things when you go to such lengths — S

Probably not, right? Or I wouldn't do things that way I do them. I probably do things the way that I do them because I think it's a good way to do them/I like it, etc. Unless you think that I don't like what I'm doing/the way I'm doing it and I just can't figure out how to do things differently.

If you're not claiming at least one of those three things, you could clarify just what your justification would be for accusing someone of lying when they assert whatever they're asserting.

I learned that when online anonymity is guaranteed, some people feel free to be cruel. They don't just disagree with others; they're cruel. It's called toxic disinhibition when online commenters insult or bully others, or otherwise behave in ways they would not if their identity were known (Suler). — uncanni

I'm actually exactly the same way in person as I am online . . . which I'd be happy to demonstrate to anyone via a telephone conversation or an in-person meeting if you even happen to be in the NYC area (when I'm home and not traveling).

That isn't an epistemological claim. The phrase 'I know' is being used colloquially, in the context of common sense. You have to first build up a whole epistemology to assert that the scientific method and our perceptions are generally accurate. — Paralogism

Re this by the way, you're claiming that when we say we have scientific knowledge of something, we're not making an epistemological claim?

So science doesn't claim to be knowledge in any epistemological sense. You're seriously claiming that?

At any rate, I still want you to answer if what I described is not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point. And if it's not, we need to figure out just what the heck you believe we've been doing via scientific claims.

Here is another way of formulating the problem: — Paralogism

I don't want to move away from what I was asking you yet.

Could you answer the question I ask you here first (bolded in the copy-pasted text below):

So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?

So there's this thing called probability. You may have heard of it. — S

You know that I'm not a realist on mathematics, right? (Or physical laws for that matter.)

Re probability, Bayesian probability is complete garbage in my view, and probability in general doesn't justify heuristic conclusions in contexts like this.

So just to clarify, in this thread, people are actually claiming at least one of the following:

(1) If people typically believe that P (or maybe iff the vast majority of people typically believe that P), then we have good grounds for concluding that someone asserting not-P must be lying,

(2) If S (some subject) has a history of asserting that P, then we have good grounds for concluding that S is lying if S asserts not-P.

(3) If S claims that Q where Q is a very unusual, highly implausible assertion relative to what most people assert, and/or relative to what S has asserted in the past, then we have good grounds for concluding that S is lying.

I can just imagine you making sure you have 2.3 kids.

What does the number of people with a specific belief have to do with anything? Why do you keep going back to what most people do for every single thing?

So scientific statements like those (1) are not asserting certainty or proof, and (2) are not saying "we know nothing about this."

But they're knowledge claims, no? We say that we know that feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight, for example.

Is that not the way you've understood what scientific claims are doing to this point?

Again, empirically, "folks believe all sorts of wacky crap"

Is it? Can you show another alternative? — Paralogism

Sure, first re alternatives, how have you parsed scientific claims to this point? For example, take claims like "Feldspars are a group of rock-forming tectosilicate minerals that make up about 41% of the Earth's continental crust by weight," or "Brown recluse spiders are usually between 6 and 20 millimetres (0.24 and 0.79 in), but may grow larger." What have you taken these sorts of claims to be?

Yes, but you also say that you seriously think that I could right now believe that I'm on the moon, or an ostrich, etc., etc., so now there's little reason trying to reason with you over anything at all. If you can believe that, then you can believe anything. You've lost all credibility. — S

Whereas I'd say that claiming that any arbitrary person couldn't believe any arbitrary thing is not at all justifiable (and suggests little experience with a wide variety of people, because folks believe all sorts of wacky crap)

Think about it this way: why worry about/focus on certainty or proof?

Also, isn't "P, a proposition about x, is certain or has been proved, otherwise we can know nothing about x" a false dichotomy?

So, without cracking any jokes, you really think that I'm the kind of person who could right now believe that I'm on the moon with Chevy Chase? Or that I'm an ostrich? Or that space whales are about to launch an imminent attack on humankind? — S

If you say you believe those things, sure.

You're the type of person who believes that (we can show that) speech is causal to others' actions, for example, right? I'm not joking when I say that I find that patently absurd.

How is this not simply a matter of you having the misplaced concern--focusing on proof/certainty?

(I would have responded sooner if you'd tagged me in your reply, by the way. If you don't tag me and I don't happen to be on the board, I might never see the reply.)

People very often say that they believe things that I think are patently absurd, with philosophy being one of the primary milieu culprits. So it's not as if I'm surprised at any crazy thing anyone believes.

People saying things that I think are patently absurd is one of the things that attracted me to philosophy in the first place, and it's pretty much what I focus on in my comments.

"I'm on the moon with Chevy Chase" isn't any more absurd than "meaning isn't subjective," "speech is causal to others' actions," etc.

Hahahahahahahaha, yes, it's so absurd that through common sense, which you act as though lack, we can know that I don't really believe that I'm on the moon with Chevy Chase! — S

If someone says, "I believe I'm on the moon with Chevy Chase," and you go, "Really? You believe that?" And they say, "Yes, I do," etc. then how would "common sense" tell you what they believe? How do you figure that works?

Aside from the nonsense of "Trump gave the KKK his support" (lol), what empirical studies are you using for "regular, 'supportive' coverage of racist stuff causes a surge of support for organizations like the KKK"?

So, if a notable media outlet (if it hasn't already slipped your mind, you'll recall that they have a wide audience) decided to publish a hate speech in full, then you would have no objection to that (given that you're totally against censorship), yes? — S

You didn't ask me, but of course I'd have no objection to that.

You're still not justifying your stance, because we can do that without literally opening up someone's skull and taking a look inside their brain where you presumably think their beliefs reside, and then comparing that with what they said. — S

That wouldn't work even, because mental content is only observable to the bearer, because it's what it's like to BE the brain in question.

We can know what someone believes through common sense? Hahahahaha

Talk about not justifying something

It seems like that should be obvious. To know that someone is saying something different than they believe, we have to be able to compare what they said with what they believe.

The bearing it has here is that lying is a matter of someone saying something that's contrary to what they actually believe.

??

When do we get to the part where we're observing their beliefs?

In other words, I am only trying to show that, according to our epistemological framework, nothing can be proven . . . the argument itself is very much like vanilla Cartesian skepticism: you could be mistaken about anything! — Paralogism

Insofar as empirical claims go, the above is one of the cores of science methodology. We can't prove empirical claims. Any empirical claim must be open to revision.

A well-accepted codification of this idea is Karl Popper's falsificationism.

What you're saying is also reasonably well accepted, by philosophers, at least, with respect to logic and philosophy of mathematics. The whole notion of proof that stems from those fields hinges on the system we're working within--the definitions, axioms, etc. of the system we've set up, where it's realized that at least partially incompatible systems are possible.

There's no real codification of this a la Popper's falsificationism, but a good book that talks about the relativity of logical systems is Susan Haack's Deviant Logic / Fuzzy Logic, and a good book that reflects these ideas more specifically for mathematics is Reuben Hersh's What Is Mathematics, Really?

None of this is seen as a liability, by the way. Rather, the need for proof/certainty is more often seen as a misplaced concern. And it doesn't undermine knowledge. Knowledge need not be certain or proven (after all, given that falsificationism is a defining characteristic of the sciences and always has been, the idea of scientific knowledge wouldn't even make any sense if we thought that knowledge had to be certain).

I hadn't bothered with the Trump thread much, as I don't like the typical opinions of either side--either the pro or anti-Trump folks.

I'll have to look at it to see what happened to spark this thread, though.

Terrapin Station, my friend. You have made a clear choice - meaning is an extrinsical issue, but alas, you have not argued for this position; — Daniel C

Meaning/purpose is intrinsic to persons. That doesn't need an argument. There's zero evidence of purpose or meaning in this sense occurring external to persons. We should need evidence of empirical claims to believe that they're the case.

If you want to make it more likely that someone sees your response, by the way, either click on "quote" or "reply," then they'll see a notification.