Ok, it's not solipsism. Now: "There is a reality independent of my perceptions,.." and "Snakes and trains, like the particles of physics, have no objective, observer-independent features..." And he doesn't answer Wittgenstein's objections. That's all my complaint. Otherwise, it's cool.

Just as there are no snakes, so there is no Donald Hoffman with objective observer-independent features. There is only my Donald Hoffman and your Donald Hoffman, which are acceptable solutions to the problem of telling me how to act in a situation. And my Donald Hoffman is talking like someone who has never encountered my Wittgenstein. What's anyone else's Hoffman saying?

This is the trouble with this kind of talk. It is without sense but the lack of sense takes a bit of fine surgery to unpick. That's why we need Wittgenstein - a real one, with objective, observer-independent features 'n' all.

"Period" means "No more discussion". Starting a thread means "Let's have a discussion". It's an apparent case of a speech-act (in this case, starting a thread) undermining the speech-content. But the thread title is in part a quotation - a mention of a speech-act rather than the performance of one.

I was treated kindly and well by a woman and ever since then I have given my trust completely to all women. Same with men: I got kindness and now I trust them all. Big mistake. It seems that the inference is mistaken whether it's good treatment or abuse we are talking about. Generalising from too few cases is one logical error.

Another logical error that crops up a lot in this corner of the battle of the sexes is affirming the consequent. All rapists are men. So all men are rapists.

Yes, I think you're right. The Opening Post criticism of Gettier is that he conflates entailment of propositions with entailment of beliefs about propositions. But I don't think Gettier does that. His characters happen not to be confused or irrational AND they have justified true beliefs AND they do not have knowledge.

Personally I don't think Gettier counter-examples knock down JTB, although they do make us analyse the 'J' part rather more closely.

Michael: I can believe that the post office is open, that it's Sunday and that the post office is always closed on Sundays. So I'm confused and irrational, as people sometimes are. "I must believe the post office isn't open" - this "must" means "should, ought to, rationally would" believe. Even if a proposition follows necessarily from another, my believing anything does not follow necessarily from my believing anything else. If beliefs were like that then we would never hold irrational or inconsistent beliefs - but we occasionally do.

I'm not so sure about that, Michael. I would have to hold inconsistent beliefs but I reckon that is not too unusual a condition to be in.

I think it's an example of two games going on at once.

1 thought they were all playing 'tag'. 2 was actually playing 'get 4', a quite different game.

Similarly, a cricketer who misses hits in order to lose a match and get a reward from a betting syndicate is apparently playing cricket but is actually playing 'beat the punters'.

"I think if something causes a lot of unnecessary pain that thing is immoral."

That's interesting. I can easily avoid the pain of paying money to Tesco by shoplifting. Queuing up and paying causes me unnecessary pain. I'm a very good shoplifter and never get caught. So shopping and paying for stuff is immoral. Hmm. Something to think about there.

"According to the law of identity, if A=B then what is true of A is true of B and vice versa."

That's worth thinking about. Suppose Jim is a burglar who has not been detected. The police know the burglar committed the burglary. But they don't know that Jim committed the burglary. So something is true of the burglar that is not true of Jim. And Jim is identical with the burglar.

Ach, no, not just another first world problem. A big problem. Get off the internet and get face to face help from someone you trust. And if you trust no-one find a helpline. You don't need philosophical theory at just this point, you need help. Theory later.

You have had that education and you haven't been brainwashed - witness, your post. So why do think anyone else has been brainwashed? Maybe because you are smarter. That's the usual implication of the 'it's all brainwashing' argument we hear everywhere from politics to science to media. "Everyone is taken in by the deception - except me, 'cos I'm smarter than everyone else." It raises the question: are you really?

Four questions about the capital that we are going to redistribute. (1) Who does it belong to currently? (2) How are we going to get it off them? (3) Who are we going to give it to? (4) Who are 'we' - I mean, who will do the redistribution?

One answer is: 'we' are the state and we take everyone's capital off them through taxation or confiscation and we redistribute to everyone according to their need. It's an experiment that may happen in your lifetime but it is also one that has already been tried in the lifetime of previous generations.

Now don't be sore. It's only food for thought.

You complained that the statement ' "Correspondence" is not the same as correspondence' makes no sense. I explained that it does makes sense, what sense it makes, and how. So that addresses the complaint.

It's a reasonable point that "correspondence" is not (necessarily) the same as correspondence. A *so-called* thing is not necessarily the thing itself. Dismissing that point may be the *end* of a debate. I pointed out that it is not much for a *beginning*.

I'm one thousandth of a sparkly sequin. And that's way better than being a speck of dust. That's why I act all la-di-da on these forums.

True. I can't explain how a single word has two senses without first explaining one sense and then explaining the other. So, for example, 'leg' can be used to include tails or it can be used correctly to exclude tails. "Correspondence" can be used to mean what correspondence usually means; or it can be used to mean anything you like in order to shore up a theory that thought and belief are all correspondence. That was the original complaint by another poster. It's worth thinking about even if you don't agree with it.

Yes, it is indeed the same word. The scare quotes indicate that the same word is being used in two different senses, of which one is perverse or confusing. So to say that a "leg" is not a leg is to say that there are two senses in which the word is being used: one sensibly and correctly and the other equivocally and strangely. Same with "correspondence" and correspondence.

You can call anything you like whatever you like. But that is different from explaining it in terms that are to be understood. Scare quotes are a sign that an expression is being used in an unusual or perverse way. So "correspondence" may be quite different from correspondence; just as a "leg" may not be a leg.

Austin wrote, “In philosophy, there are many mistakes that it is no disgrace to make: to make a first-water, ground-floor mistake, so far from being easy, takes one form of philosophical genius." Proceedings of the British Academy, March 1956.

'Philosophy is stupid' is a philosophy of its own. I wouldn't say that it was stupid but perhaps not yet fully thought through. It's more an exam question than an exam answer.

And saying correspondence is not "correspondence" makes no sense whatsoever.

It means you can call anything you like "correspondence" but that does not make it correspondence. I can call a dog's tail a "leg" if I like but the dog still only has four legs.

You can say thought / belief = X and then you can define X in any flexible way you want so that whenever X pitches up in any discourse it's made to mean thought / belief. But all you've done is invented a new word for thought or belief and not explained anything about either of them.

"...false premises produce false conclusions."

All posts by MU are less than 100 words
This is a post by MU
Therefore this post is less than 100 words

Two false premises, valid reasoning, true conclusion.

Ok, but you could say a thin man not being in a doorway has nothing to do with a fat man not being there. Or, if they do have something to do with each other, then I guess we can drag in other locations, characters and even Julius Caesar. I'm talking about the problem of identity-criteria for facts.

Ok. And are they both the same fact as this: Julius Caesar was not born in 2015. If not, why not? If so, we are surely tending towards all facts being one - the one big fact that is all that is the case. And that has problems of its own.

One problem with facts is how to tell when one fact is the same as another. There's no fat man in my doorway. There's no thin man in my doorway, either. Two facts or one or none? Perhaps there's just One Big Fact to which all true statements refer - which gets around the problem of fact-identity. But if that is so then we can no longer talk meaningfully about facts in the plural. But if there are any facts then there are surely lots of facts - or we are not quite making sense.

There are certainly daisies and we have fairly reliable ways of telling them apart. We can count daisies and someone can point out that we have missed some or counted some twice. On the other hand, there are certainly clouds, but our ways of telling them apart can be a lot less reliable.

Which all establishes that facts are not daisies but they might be clouds. A modest conclusion, perhaps, but surely worth considering.

Yes, we can make up any old shit and it is all explanation of a kind. We can explain the origin of a flower by reference to a nymph who misbehaved. But we are interested in what makes a good explanation. Why should we reject some explanations and accept others?

I submit that a good explanation is one that is not vulnerable to any of the reasons why we reject explanations. That is, we should first look at what makes an explanation a bad one. For example: flowers exist and nymphs don't. Doctors are trustworthy and do not deliberately try to harm us. (The exceptions don't entirely vitiate the explanations, but they do mean that there is never a complete knock-down explanation of anything at all.)

Going back briefly to the beginning:

"His analysis is that there has to be some things for which there is no explanation that explain the things that do have explanations. Something must be brute."

But is that sound? I'm not sure. Suppose there exist no things that lack an explanation, at least in principle. Then there would be an infinite regress of both things to be explained and of explanations. Suppose we accept that possibility. In that scenario, whenever we find an explanation we also find a new thing to be explained. Well, that's exactly the way it's been for us so far. It might be that way just as long as we choose to go on and are able to find new explanations. It's an infinite regress. But it is not a vicious regress as far as I can see.

I think we are tempted by the notion of brute facts because it opens up the possibility that in the future anything that can be explained will have been explained; and that anything that has not been explained is beyond explanation. It's a comforting thought, perhaps. But there's no reason to suppose that we will ever reach that happy state. And even if we did reach it, we would never know that we had reached it, because we could never be quite certain that the things we presume to be 'brute facts' are not, after all, explicable by something else.

So perhaps the whole 'brute fact' idea is an illusion.

I think it's a different notion from the idea of underlying assumptions that held to be true beyond doubt. They are in a different case, I think. The argument there is that unless we hold some things to be true and beyond doubt we cannot even begin to make sense of any questions or uncertainties. I think there's a good case to be made for that view. But that's not about 'brute facts'.

What do we suppose Socrates knows that he doesn't know, which the others think they know, but don't?

We don't need to speculate or suppose - we are told that it is the 'beautiful and good'. Being Plato's Socrates he isn't interested in particular examples, which are relative to context and not really knowable, but in beauty and goodness themselves, which are eternal and absolute and the only proper objects of knowledge. The ignorance that Socrates ironically professes is underpinned by an entire theory. It's not a theory that stands up to too much scrutiny. But this 'I don't know' stuff is more than a mere shrug of the shoulders. It's a threat to pin listeners to the spot and harangue them until they either admit the Theory of Forms or run away to get drunk. It's the ancient Greek equivalent of the cult enthusiast who invites you to meet his friends for coffee.

I think the reference is to the Apology:

" ...I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him - his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination - and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know..... At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom - therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was."

I don't think Lewis's trilemma works. He's trying to show that Jesus can't have been merely a great man, wise prophet, wonderful teacher etc. Some of the things he said were just too crazy. So either he was crazy - or an outright liar - or he was the son of God.

The problem with Lewis's argument is that somebody can be crazy and can also be a great man, wise prophet and wonderful teacher. Craziness comes and goes. Prophets can be profoundly wise one moment and stupidly dumb the next. Wise teachers can have funny episodes when they go completely weird and then go back to being wise teachers. Maybe Jesus was one of those.

I imagine lots of great people have been crazy when they are not being great. I don't think craziness makes you any more or any less great or that greatness is likely to make you any more or less crazy.
____

By the way, I'm a Christian who believes that Jesus was the Son of God. I'm making the point that Lewis's argument does not establish what he wants it to.

How do you define free will?

To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions.


One way of explaining it is to imagine yourself typing the following:

"How do you define free will? To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions."

Now imagine that as you type what appears on your screen is this:

"How do you do? I'm very well thank you."

Now you can imagine what free will is and what it is to have it thwarted.

Generally, if you know what a reasoned or purposeful action is then you know what free will is. And if you know what it is for a purpose to be frustrated then you know what it is for there to be an absence of free will. And anyone who does not know what a reasoned or purposeful action is a person who has not typed a post on this forum, because to type a post is to undertake such an action.

Slope of diminishing returns - yes, but still some returns and a variable slope. I think what I'm getting at is that there are not, on the one hand, 'normal people' who are self-regarding and don't care for others and then, on the other, 'enlightened people' (us, let us say) who are generous and compassionate. There's a trade-off for all of us and we are all pretty much in the same boat. Some are selfless saints and some are cynical egoists but most are wavering around between the extremes. Since we're bringing in some theology, then we're all sinners.

Corbyn is hated because he is envied. He is just like you were when you were a young socialist. Now you are old and disillusioned and no longer a socialist. And all the young socialists are looking up to Corbyn. And you feel aged and cynical and a wee bit ukippy. And it's not fair.

I'm fully persuaded that we should give to charity and also believe that if nobody gave to charity then life would be worse for us all. But still the most *profitable* (not the best) thing for any individual is to freeload on the charitable giving of others, to take all the benefits of social cohesion and to pay none of the costs.

I'm not so sure. If I buy the t-shirt for £2.50 and give nothing to charity then I'm winning. It costs me to give £7.50 to charity. A cost is a loss and a loss is against my interest.

Singer's argument is that our first moral duty is to maximise welfare. If we are rich we can do this by giving to the poor. Therefore we are obliged to give. Giving is a duty not a mere virtue. And there is no distinction between the distant poor and the nearby poor or between our own family and strangers.

Jesus's idea I think was that how we treat God's people is how we treat God; and all people are God's without distinction. I'd say the 'no matter who' and 'without distinction' aspect is similar. But Jesus does not seem to have been interested in redistribution of wealth in order to maximise welfare, despite the objections of some his disciples - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anointing_of_Jesus

Yes, Singer's view is not very widely held although much admired. People give to charity because they want a better world. They don't reckon they owe it. Singer thinks he owes his excess wealth to others just as much as you owe rent to the landlord.

Singer argues that because it is matter of justice (however rough), then it's a duty to give not just a matter of charity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml

True. The motive for charitable giving in this instance would be simply redistribution of income from the better off to the worse off in order to increase over-all welfare. An extra pound to me is neither here nor there but to someone else it means a meal rather than hunger. So every time I buy a t-shirt for £2.50 I should give £7.50 to someone in poverty. It will be a pretty rough justice but some kind of justice.

Ok, but still it's hard to stand completely aside from slavery and exploitation. When Naomi Klein spoke to US audiences about her 'No Logo' book and the exploitation involved in creating Nike trainers people asked - "Then what kind of trainers can we buy that don't carry this taint?" - and she found it hard to answer. Not all 'fair trade' is fair. So perhaps we should do our best in the situation we find ourselves. Perhaps like Peter Singer we should give large proportions of our income to charity.