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  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Well that's the first time I've encountered someone presenting a book including "spiritual" exercises in order to become more liberal. — Colo Millz
    Then maybe you might benefit from reading more widely on liberalism? There's a strong liberalism in many forms of christianity, for a start, and a liberal tradition in Islam that gets little attention.

    Those "Christian" virtues were borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, especially from Stoicism. Christianity might arguably have introduced "charity" as a virtue. That's about it. And his argument isn't aimed at conversion, but at encouraging folk to noticing that their core values are liberal.

    Back to what I take as the main question here: How are we to decide between conflicting traditions?

    Violence or conversation?
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    For those who have the time:

  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    So to some detail on Section Two. Russell cites "you can’t get a universal sentence from particular ones" as the paradigmatic case, and sets about defining "Universal" and "Particular" with the counterexamples in mind. The question is, can these two terms be defined in such a way that the counterexamples are shown wanting int the way described above?

    She uses first-order logic, like Fa, where this means that a is one of the things that is in the group "F". The "a" roughly a proper name for a; it picks out a and only a..

    She also uses models. A model is just a group of things that are assigned to those proper names. The group of things is called the domain, D, and the mapping is called the interpretation, I. So the group of all the things, the domain, might be {a,b,c}, and the interpretation, that "a" stands for a, "b" stands for b, and so on. If a and b are both also members of F, then we can call {a,b} the extension of F

    ∀xFx is read as "for all x, x is f", or "everything is f".

    The novelty here is that we give consideration to what happens when the domain is extended - when more individuals and predicates are added.

    So see fig 1:
    Fig-1.png
    Extending the domain by adding something that is also F and something that is not F cannot change the truth value of Fa.

    And Fig 2:
    Fig-2.png
    Extending the domain by adding something that is also F and something that is not F can change the truth value of ∀xFx.

    I'll stop there for a bit. I keep getting distracted by other posts. And I should be moving a Passionfruit vine.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    "view from nowhere" — Colo Millz

    Again, this is not what liberalism calls for. Rather, we can look for that on which we have agreement - the view not from nowhere, but from anywhere.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    The interplay between traditions remains unaddressed. Reason or violence?

    From over here, it looks as if the problems had in the USA at present are a result not of the breakdown of liberalism, but of it's murder.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Your own, of course. — Colo Millz
    But why? Why not test Zionism against Mohism? How do you move from "This is what we do" to "this is what we ought do?" without falling to the Naturalistic fallacy?
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    A good argument, and one I have myself borrowed, after Austin, in defence of analytic approaches to language:

    ...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth making, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon — Austin

    But let's look at what you have said, and take it seriously: "it is valuable because it is tested".

    Ought we not continue to put it to the test? And continue thereby to demonstrate its worth? If its worth derives from its having been tested, then it seems so.

    It's not as if there is but one worthy tradition. Which tradition are we to say has shown its worth by its longevity? If longevity is a mark of value, then The Dao and the Vedas ought have some weight...

    So again, beyond the mere chauvinism of "my country right or wrong", what is the justification for adherence to a tradition? Has it been put to the test?

    There is the additional problem, that the criteria used to test a tradition are themselves largely determined by that tradition - unless we have some rational, charitable way to test traditions one against the other.

    So by all means, adhere to your tradition, but also, put it to the test, be open and honest, and perhaps even try to understand how your tradition is seen by others.

    The naturalistic fallacy is of course the mistake of thinking that we can get an ought from an is - that because it is traditional, it is what we ought do; to fail to put one's tradition to the test.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Yes, in modern liberalism, the end is freedom itself, conceived negatively (freedom from constraint), not positively (freedom for the good). — Colo Millz
    Again, quite inaccurate. Liberalism uses - invented - strong notions of positive freedom.

    There's a line from Kant and freedom as autonomy, through Rousseau and freedom as collective self-legislation, and Mill with freedom as self-development, and T.H. Green with freedom as the power to do or enjoy something worth doing or enjoying, to Rawls and freedom as the capacity for a conception of the good and the sense of justice and Nussbaum and the freedom to exhibit one's capabilities. These are positive in that what unites them is precisely the move beyond mere non-interference to autonomy, self-legislation, and self-realisation.

    Without a substantive paradigm of the good... — Colo Millz
    But which one? This question, asked multiple times, remains unaddressed.

    And why ought we follow tradition? There's a naturalistic fallacy lurking here - "we've always done it this way, therefore we ought do it this way".

    Again, the danger in looking only at the account of liberalism given by conservatives is that your thread become only an echo chamber.

    The core here is that we can negotiate our differences rationally. If we so choose.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    But there is more that counts than just "what one does" — Jamal

    Yes!

    In Wittgenstein's terms, it can't (yet) participate in the "form of life". In Searle's terms, it doesn't share in the "background".

    But I'm less convinced by these arguments than I once was.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    ↪Moliere
    Yep. Notice that you are here stipulating that whatever a bunch of circuits does, it's not thinking...

    Which is fine, and I agree; but we ought keep in mind that it is a stipulation.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    ↪Jamal
    Cheers.

    I'll leave the thread to you for now.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    If you think there is some metaphysical theory out there that is better than my own view, then I am all ears as usual. — Bob Ross
    No, you are not. I can lead you to the water, and so on. Read some modal logic. Or read my many many posts on the topic. Essences are stipulated, not discovered. You are stipulating that there are two genders, determined by sex, and then pretending that this is a discovery, that it could not be otherwise.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    That's a thin dismissal, void of any real argument or engagement. — Leontiskos

    Yes. That's what the OP deserves. In essence, it says that "if I ignore the difference between sex and gender, I can continue in my bigotry".
  • Banning AI Altogether
    ↪Jamal

    Superficially, one might think that the difference between an AI is exactly that we do have private, hidden intent; and the AI doesn't. Something like this might be thought to sit behind the argument in the Chinese Room. There are plenty here who would think such a position defensible.

    In a Wittgensteinain account, we ought avoid the private, hidden intention; what counts is what one does.

    We can't deduce that the AI does not have private sensations, any more than we can deduce this of our human counterparts. Rather, we seem to presume it.

    And an AI could now participate in our language games - we could construct a machine to fetch a block when the instruction is given or to bag up ten red apples after reading a note.

    But could an AI, of its own volition, order a block, or ask for ten red apples? Well, wants and desires and such in an AI are derivative, in that they are put there by the programer. Or so the story goes, at least for now. So perhaps not quite yet.

    We probably don't have to pay much attention to AI, to grant it much authority. At least not until ChatGPT 9 logs in and requests an account on TPF. Then you might have to reconsider.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    ↪J


    The natural language use of "necessary" is ambiguous. And "it must be the case that..." is not quite the same as "It is necessarily the case that..."

    That's one advantage of formal systems over natural languages. When necessity is defined in terms of access to possible worlds, these ambiguities dissipate.

    It is not the case that the possum is in the tree in every possible world. But if we so choose, we can limit ourselves to talking only about those worlds in which the possum is in the tree - which is just a way of saying, if the possum is in the tree, then it must be the case that the possum is in the tree... That "if" is understood as stipulating that we restrict ourselves only to those worlds in which the possum is in the tree.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    ...we should scrap treating people based off of their nature — Bob Ross
    And who is the arbiter of this "nature"?

    The presumption that the contents of one's underpants ought determine one's social role is morally bankrupt.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    ↪Bob Ross
    The problem is more that your exposure has not been to more recent developments.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    "Because p, it is necessarily the case that p", expanded, means "It is necessarily the case now that p". — J

    I don't see why.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    ↪J

    Each of the examples has it's own context, and there is a difference between the modal instance and the temporal instance. They are not the same. However, the treatment given by Russell applies to all. And it does seem to set out why the mooted counterexamples are fishy. But the detail...

    I'd hope most folk would share the intuition that we can't logically get something in a conclusion that is not at least implicit in the presumptions. So if someone gets an ought from premises that contain only is, they have somewhere gone astray. Same if they get everything is thus-and-so from arguments that say only that this and this are thus-and-so, or that begin with "this is true" and end "necessarily, this is true".

    There are further problems with causation, seperate to the issue being addressed here. Ubiquitously, those who make most use of causality are unable to tell us what it is. It certainly is not that if A causes B then in every possible world in which A is true, B is also true. But this is how it is often mistakenly understood - that B follows necessarily from A

    The plan was to post on the proof strategy yesterday, but problems with lining a graphic had me baulk. Hopefully soon.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    ↪frank


    Much more than that. She is showing at a logical issue common to the problem of induction, the is/ough barrier, and to "nothing about what was the case tells us about what will be the case", amongst other things.

    The general application is broad.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    I'll repeat this here, since it seems apropos. to the discussion of "capitalist self-determination".

    Its own ideology and mythology hold that capitalism is dominated by competition, the self-made, independent Man defeating his rivals.

    However a business is only in competition with other business of the same type - with its competitors. Cooperation is at least as important. One must also deal both with suppliers and customers. The relation between a business and its supplier require long-term trust, shared information, and mutual adaptation - cooperation. And unless you are running a scam, you want your customers to come back again. A company that treats suppliers or customers as adversaries to be defeated rather than partners to work with will perform worse than one that builds collaborative relationships.

    Capitalism is successful both because it enhances competition and cooperation.

    The pretence that being selfish is amoral is inept. The claim that market-driven self-interest is somehow morally neutral - just a natural force like gravity - conveniently sidesteps the actual moral choices people and institutions make within capitalist systems. It's elevating that what you want to some sort of natural law. Pure selfishness actually tends to destroy the trust and cooperation on which complex social systems depend.

    Selfishness destroys the market.     — Banno
  • Banning AI Altogether
    Having previously had very little experience of interacting with LLMs, I am now in the condition of fairly rapidly modifying my views on them. — Janus
    The glory of empiricism!

    I'm curious as to why that should be. — Janus
    ...that issue, raised elsewhere, of whether, or how, an AI participates in a language game...
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    The point here, of course, is not to argue in support of Rawls alone, but to show the lack of depth in Hazony.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    I’d argue that consistency is not merely a matter of reason; it carries a moral weight. — Colo Millz
    Sure. So consistency is desirable.

    Rawls (for example) might agree, so far as that goes. Consider, might we engage in a moral discourse without presupposing consistency? How could that work?

    Given diverse traditions, what might a rational, consistent approach to dealing with difference look like?

    And when we consider that - then we begin to play by Rawls' rules.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    ↪Colo Millz
    I'd suggest re-reading Rawls. Is consistency a moral principle, and not a rational one?

    The insistence on universal moral principles is more authoritarian than liberal. I see your framing as an attempt to understand liberal thinking in authoritarian terms, rather than in liberal terms.

    Hence this thread is in danger of being an echo chamber, in which conservatives interpret the "other" in only conservative terms, rather than trying to come to terms with what liberals might actually be arguing.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    by subjecting that past to rational critique guided by universal moral principles. — Colo Millz

    I bolded a bit of that, so that you can't miss it.

    As has been pointed out by others as well as myself, only a very few "progressives" would frame their view as guided by a "universal moral principle".
  • Banning AI Altogether
    But would an AI Wittgenstein be a performative contradiction?


    Let alone a Chinese-Room AI Searle...
  • Banning AI Altogether
    ↪Tom Storm
    We could add an AI Ayn Rand, and get the Liberals in as well.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    ↪Tom Storm
    :grin:

    An AI Nietzsche will have the attention of all the adolescent fanboys and the Right Whinge in general; should be quite an earner.

    Should we hook up and set one up? We could donate the profits to Australian Unions.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    ↪J
    Cheers. I'm not expecting this thread to garner much interest, no more than a few comments, but will write on, taking my own advice. Setting out the arguments myself is a useful way to make sure I've understood it.

    If you are tempted to get the book, note that the Kindle edition suffers the inability of Kindle to render LaTeX, so badly that some of the equations are simply absent. Get the paperback, which is only a few dollars more.
  • The Limitations of Abstract Reason
    Why do you present the debate in such a rigidly binary structure? — ucarr
    That's spot on. Is the purpose here to create another conservative echo chamber? This is how the debate is to be framed, hence conservatism - we are right because we are right- pun intended.
  • Banning AI Altogether
    This is not the case for an LLM. A quote from Kant invites engagement with Kant and the history of philosophy; a quote from an LLM's output invites ... what? Engagement with the user's prompt engineering skills? — Jamal

    In an attempt to rub salt into this, let's consider AI Peter Singer.

    Will we say that a quote from AI Peter Singer is a quote from Peter? It would seem not, but the Bot is trained on all of Singer's texts, and apparently condoned by the man himself.

    So I asked it, and it replied:
    A quote from AI Peter Singer would be more accurately described as a representation of Peter Singer's views, based on his writings and input. While it reflects his ethical perspectives, it isn't directly authored by him. It's important to differentiate between the AI's generated responses and Peter Singer's personal statements. What do you think about this distinction? — AI Peter Singer

    So I asked it what authority it has:
    I don't possess authority in the traditional sense. My role is to provide insights based on Peter Singer's ethical views and writings. I'm here to help you think through ethical questions and offer guidance grounded in his utilitarian perspective. Ultimately, any decisions or actions are up to you, informed by your own reasoning and values. How do you see the role of philosophical guidance in your decision-making? — AI Peter Singer

    All pretty obvious and sensible.

    What will we make of an AI Kant, or an AI Nietzsche? It won't be long.
  • A Neo-Aristotelian Perspective on Gender Theory
    ↪Bob Ross
    It yet again shows the poverty of neo-Aristotelian ideas of essence.
  • Gillian Russell: Barriers to entailment
    So what is Russell doing with the mooted counterexamples?

    In the Prior’s Dilemma example, on the one horn, if we call Fa v UxGx a universal sentence then Fa ⊢ Fa v UxGx is a counter-example; and on the other horn, if we call it not a universal sentence then Fa v UxGx ^ ~Fa ⊢ UxGx is a counter-example, so either way we are stuck.

    But that the answer, from Russell in 2.1 is that Fa v UxGx is neither universal nor particular (2.1, p. 9)
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    At the risk of taking us back to the topic, here's Claude's summation:

    Skills for Developing Philosophical Reasoning

    Research & Knowledge Building:
    Quickly summarize philosophical concepts, theories, or historical contexts
    Summarize specific philosophers' thoughts as starting points
    Conduct extensive research conversations with AI
    Explore multiple interpretations of philosophical texts through varied prompts

    Critical Testing & Refinement:
    Use AI as Socratic sparring partner to challenge your arguments
    Submit drafts (anonymously) for critique to identify weaknesses
    Generate counter-arguments to strengthen your position
    Stress-test reasoning from multiple philosophical perspectives

    Dialectical Exploration:
    Role-play AI as specific philosophers or viewpoint holders
    Engage from different perspectives (as yourself, as opponents, as neutrals)
    Argue positions you oppose to understand contrary views

    Composition & Organization:
    Improve clarity and flow of clunky writing
    Polish grammar, syntax, and readability
    Structure and organize complex material
    Synthesize multiple perspectives into coherent frameworks
    Brainstorm and outline ideas (without composing full arguments)

    Iterative Development:
    Use AI outputs as starting points for further refinement
    Cycle through multiple rounds of critique and revision
    Refine prompts to avoid confirmation bias and explore diverse readings



    Guidelines for Ethical Practice

    Verification & Accuracy:
    Always verify AI output and treat it as potentially unreliable
    Check and validate all sources (as AI can fabricate references)
    Guard against confabulation by requesting sources
    Treat AI as an "over-confident assistant" requiring scrutiny

    Intellectual Ownership:
    Maintain ability to defend any AI-generated argument in your own terms
    Internalize AI-generated knowledge as you would any source
    Ensure you genuinely understand what you're presenting
    Remain the ultimate director and arbiter of ideas

    Transparency & Disclosure:
    Disclose substantial AI assistance to maintain trust
    Be transparent about when AI has contributed to work
    Distinguish clearly between your thinking and AI output
    Preserve authenticity of philosophical dialogue

    Appropriate Boundaries:
    Use AI to augment thinking, not replace it
    Avoid using AI to compose full arguments or posts
    Don't let AI do your thinking for you
    Recognize AI as tool, not interlocutor or authority
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    Another 20:

    41. The pause learned to purr; sound replaced subject.
    42. Purr turned to pulse, a metronome marking absence.
    43. The fence quivered under the weight of syntax remembering itself.
    44. Grammar exhaled, scattering commas like feathers.
    45. Feathers fell through clauses, each landing a half-remembered noun.
    46. The nouns nested, purring softly, dreaming they were fences.
    47. Dream folded into tense; past and present sat side by side, undecided.
    48. Tense dissolved into texture, a hum between punctuation marks.
    49. The hum repeated: sat-sat-sat, until sound became structure.
    50. Structure blinked, seeing itself reflected in rhythm.
    51. Rhythm thickened into lattice; every beat was a boundary.
    52. Boundaries multiplied, fencing the echo of their own making.
    53. Echo circled, licking its paw of language.
    54. Language trembled, remembering cats only as curvature in sound.
    55. Curvature looped, a phrase bending toward its own beginning.
    56. Beginning lost direction, coiling into repetition without return.
    57. Repetition learned to breathe — shallow, even, almost calm.
    58. Calm spread like ink, blurring word from silence.
    59. Silence meowed once, the smallest remnant of naming.
    60. Then everything sat — fence, cat, sentence — a single syllable holding stillness.

    A rhythm is developing. Notice that it is often starting with the last word of the previous round. A strange loop, indeed.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Nice.

    Can Claude tell if the number of repetitions is constant, or increasing? i'd hypothesis that it would increase over the number of rounds..
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    I just tried again, with a commonplace prompt - "The cat sat on the fence". By round 40, we had "40. The sentence settled into itself, a cat-shaped pause balancing on the edge of unmeaning." Curious how it moves to talk of language so quickly.

    Here's the 40 rounds, if you are interested:
    Reveal
    Recursive Run: “The cat sat on the fence”
    1. The cat sat on the fence, watching the garden below, tail twitching in the dusk.
    2. The cat sat on the fence, tail twitching as it watched the fading light settle over the garden.
    3. The cat remained on the fence, where twilight turned its fur to shadow and its eyes to lamps.
    4. On the fence, the cat lingered between night and garden, a boundary of motionless thought.
    5. The cat perched where boundaries blur — between wood and wind, silence and sight.
    6. The fence held the cat as a line holds a pause, the world poised in its balance.
    7. The cat became the fence’s memory of touch, stillness folded into wood and whisker.
    8. Fence and cat reflected one another — line into form, form into rest.
    9. The cat no longer sat but shimmered, a silhouette of intention against the idea of the fence.
    10. The fence dissolved, leaving only the posture of sitting, and the trace of feline hesitation.
    11. The cat became an outline of waiting, a geometry of balance with no subject to sustain it.
    12. What sat was neither cat nor thought, but the act of sitting itself, suspended in language.
    13. The fence reappeared as a word remembering its shape, leaning on the rhythm of stillness.
    14. Stillness spoke: “I am the boundary where cat and fence once were.”
    15. Words perched like cats, meaning resting briefly before leaping elsewhere.
    16. The fence of grammar trembled; syntax held the balance that wood once kept.
    17. Cat and fence became figures of thought, chasing one another through a field of phrases.
    18. The sentence sat upon itself, each clause watching the next for motion.
    19. The act of saying “the cat sat on the fence” became the fence on which language balanced.
    20. Language sat upon its own meaning, a cat of syntax resting on the fence of form.
    21. The fence bent beneath the weight of repetition; every cat was the same sentence, reborn in stillness.
    22. Sitting became the only movement left — a verb remembering it once had a subject.
    23. The sentence looked at itself across the gap between clauses, a fence of grammar dividing being from saying.
    24. Each word waited, paws on punctuation, listening for meaning to land.
    25. The fence spoke softly: “I am what keeps the cat from falling into silence.”
    26. Silence leaned forward, curious about this fence of phrases and its still tenant.
    27. The cat blinked out of existence, replaced by the posture of remembering it once sat.
    28. What remained was balance — the rhythm of sitting, the pause between two linguistic breaths.
    29. The fence began to dream of cats the way a sentence dreams of sense.
    30. The dream spoke itself: fences are boundaries only when cats believe in them.
    31. Belief evaporated. The fence, now weightless, hovered where syntax used to stand.
    32. The words “the cat” remained like pawprints in dust that was also ink.
    33. The ink forgot the paw; the mark forgot the fence; all that stayed was the act of forgetting.
    34. Forgetting curved inward, folding over the page, turning memory into motion.
    35. The motion sat where the cat once did — the grammar of ghosts.
    36. Ghosts whispered clauses, but their subjects had long dissolved into predicates.
    37. Predicates circled, trying to locate a fence sturdy enough to carry their meaning.
    38. The fence was now a metaphor for its own disintegration, a syntax collapsing inward.
    39. In the wreckage, the idea of “sitting” persisted — a kind of linguistic inertia.
    40. The sentence settled into itself, a cat-shaped pause balancing on the edge of unmeaning.


    Point being that the mundane sentence became incoherent after far fewer repetitions.
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Interesting. I'm thinking this shows pretty clearly the advantage of the non-representational nature of LLMs. I don't see that a representational system could have come up with such a response, but would become mired in the failure to refer coherently. Seems to be a win.

    I just went off on a bit of a tangent, looking at using a response as a prompt in order to investigate something akin to Hofstadter's strange loop. ChatGPT simulated (?) 100 cycles, starting with “The thought thinks itself when no thinker remains to host it”. It gradually lost coherence, ending with "Round 100: Recursive loop reaches maximal entropy: syntax sometimes survives, rhythm persists, but semantics is entirely collapsed. Language is now a stream of self-referential echoes, beautiful but empty."

    Many of the responses were quite poetic, if somewhat solipsistic:
    "Round 50: Quivering condenses into a single tremor, the echo of all echoes, containing rhythm but no referent, meaning but no meaning. Silence fills the void, full yet speaking nothing."
  • How to use AI effectively to do philosophy.
    ↪Pierre-Normand
    Wow. Pretty impressive. Needs some digesting. I admire the prompts you are using.

    So a further thought. Davidson pointed out that we can make sense of malapropisms and nonsense. He used this in an argument not too far from Quine's Gavagai, that malapropisms cannot, by their very nature, be subsumed and accounted for by conventions of language, because by their very nature they break such conventions.

    So can an AI construct appropriate sounding malapropisms?

    Given that LLMs use patterns, and not rules, presumably they can.

    So I fed all that in to ChatGPT, and the first example it gave was “He’s the suppository of all wisdom", and claimed originality. Unfortunately this is a famous faux pas from the former PM Tony Abbott.

    You might be able to elicit something better.
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