But it would be if the community says so? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. The community is embedded in the world.

Again, it looks to me as if you are being disingenuous, this time by ignoring the triangulation.

That's not down to the community failing to accept a principle, but a mismatch between what the community says is the case and what is the case. It's a failure of triangulation, not of principle. — Banno

Can you give an example where just making up your data consistently leads towards knowledge? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, and that is exactly the point!

It's not some principle that leads to knowledge, but repeated, open, communal discussion.

If the way the world is requires that epistemic communities follow certain standards to avoid false conclusions, that sounds a lot to me like the grounds for a principle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The world doesn't require anything.

"The way the world is makes it so that falsifying your data and lying isn't a good way to reach knowledge, but that doesn't make not just making up your observations a valid epistemic principle because..." — Count Timothy von Icarus

No!

Again, that is not what was said.

The way the world is will show that your data is made up, not that some mooted principle is true.

The point being made here must be very far form how you understand things to be, for you to repeatedly make such misinterpretations.

From that blog:

Commemorating a person is a little more ambiguous. What constitutes a monument to a person? Does it have to be an outsized bronze or marble statue in their likeness, placed at a major traffic intersection or gateway to a seat of government, poised on a high pedestal, surrounded by subsidiary statues and friezes, surmounted by a portico or canopy of marble and labelled with a brass plaque outlining his* achievements? Or does it mean all sculptural representations of a famous person in any communal space, such as a park, the atrium of a city hall or rotunda of a library? How about oil paintings in the halls of legislative and judiciary proceeding? Does it count as a monument when a school, library, garden, theater or community center is named for a person who contributed nothing to the establishment of that public amenity? — Vera's Blog

Sometimes one's posts are a monument.

Bugger.


Thank you, , for passing this on.

I don't think it would be. So, the issue isn't just about what some community agrees. If some community does agree that falsification is ok, they're going to tend to come to false conclusions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. That's not down to the community failing to accept a principle, but a mismatch between what the community says is the case and what is the case. It's a failure of triangulation, not of principle.

The language game of doing science is embedded in the world, which provides the boundary. It's the reason not just anything will go. The community doesn't reject making data up becasue it breaks some Grand Principle, but because doing so bumps up agains reality. It's a methodology, not a normative principle. Scientific communities don’t reject making up data because it violates a timeless rule; they reject it because it doesn’t work.

The question is, What's the difference between "reasoned rejection" and "methodological foreclosure" when it comes to defending the basic tenets of a philosophical system? — J

If the system being discussed is used to determine what counts as "reasoned rejection", then we have "methodological foreclosure".

In the example, the Aristotelian system sets out what it is to be reasonable as accepting LEM. So it methodologically forecloses on paraconsistent logic.

What happens next? If Aristotelian logic is taken as final, paraconsistent logic is anathema. Alternately, we could admit that paraconsistent logic is incompatible with Aristotelian logic, and carry on seeing where paraconsistent logic leads.

So if Aristotelian logic provides the "an absolute, context-independent standard in all cases" it forecloses on paraconsistent logic.

For this to work, things must exist as distinct entities. — tom111

Is this right? Or is it sufficient that we be able to treat things as distinct entities?

Couldn't this be mistaking method for ontology? Mistaking what we do for how things are?

So again, I'm far form convinced that you are not presuming your conclusion.

If I have it right, the OP starts by looking for an argument that the world is as it appears, and finds the case wanting.

Why not start with the premise that the world is pretty much just as it seems to be, and look for evidence to the contrary?

If you were to move from principles in the strong sense to heuristics, we might have some agreement.

“It’s not okay to make up data” is a good rule of thumb, yes, but the history of science is full of edge cases where selective, embellished, or even downright faulty data played a productive role. Galileo’s telescopic observations, Newton’s bucket, Eddington’s eclipse photos—all involved choices that wouldn’t survive a modern methods review.

The issue isn’t that anything goes, but that what counts as "okay" or "not okay" is itself historically and contextually shaped. There is no algorithm for scientific legitimacy, but a community negotiating standards as it goes.

So I agree it’s not acceptable to misrepresent positions—but even that relies on shared context and trust, not a principle mechanically applied.

it's useful for what? Constructing a metaphysics?

The metaphysics you said was neither true nor false?

Given the misrepresentation in your last reply to me, I'm somewhat reticent to bother continuing this chat.

What progresses science is not adherence to some set of rules.

"Ah!" Says Tim, "but what do you mean by progress... if you are going to progress, you must already know what progress is..."

Yawn.

No, Tim, you don’t need a final theory of progress to recognize when something works better, explains more, predicts more reliably, or opens new avenues of inquiry. Scientists manage to get on with things without resolving metaphysics every morning. Progress is what happens when a community, through criticism and collaboration, refines its grip on the world—even if it never gets a God’s-eye view of it.

What's that, then?

Why presume a difference between "in here" and "out there"?

, @Moliere,

Somewhat famously, Feyerabend argued that Galileo manipulated or selectively interpreted his data—particularly with regard to the telescope—to press the case for heliocentrism. At the very least, Galileo made use of rhetorical and polemical tools to press his case.

The discussion has moved on to scientific method. I'll argue that there is no algorithmic method that produce science, that rather science is a social enterprise involving open criticism and shared information, a poster-boy for Davidson's triangulation.

If you think there is an algorithmic scientific method, all you need do is present it.

Eugenics or racial anthropology, 100 years ago, were given a respectful hearing, but also immediately questioned and debated. — J

Good response.

There's also the problem, that if "sciences are based on per se predication", we need an explanation of "per se predication". I've not seen a satisfactory account.

Are you seriously advancing the epistemic position that no one is ever wrong but that the two options would be: "yes I agree," and "I don't know?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not at all.

Here come the tu quoque replies.

They are logically questionable. They attack the person, not the claim. They shift focus from argument to biography. But mostly, tu quoque's a continuation of that very authoritarianism - If only the perfectly consistent may critique others, no one may critique anything - except the philosopher kings. This is at best a recipe for epistemic paralysis — no norms can be defended, because any attempt to do so can be deflected with tu quoque.

Your logical fallacy is...

So I'll go back to this:

My suspicion is that (the Grand Theory Of All) provides a rhetorical tool for authoritarianism. It's the elite philosopher kings who really understand which flower is beautiful and which plain. — Banno

The danger is not just when those in authority tell themselves stories free of critique, but stories that only reinforce their authority, not justifying it so much as entrenching it; stories that silence dissent, or only permit dissent of a certain, agreeable sort.

Imagine an Aristotelian who only allows the use of Aristotelian logic.

This Aristotelian insists that all valid reasoning must proceed via syllogism, that the law of non-contradiction is inviolable, and that every proposition must be either true or false — no tertium quid. No paraconsistent logic, no many-valued systems, no relevance logic, and certainly no quantum superpositions.

Anyone presenting a counterexample is either misled or misusing language. If it seems like a contradiction can be true, the Aristotelian says, you must have failed to grasp the essence of the terms.

This Aristotelian doesn’t just believe in Aristotle’s logic — they’ve made it a gatekeeping method. No proposition that requires another logical system can even get in the door. That’s not reasoned rejection; it’s methodological foreclosure.

Of course, that would never happen.

What do you have in mind when thinking of Hume as a builder? — Moliere

His History of England, surely!

It is relevant because the thread has veered into the question of authoritarian versus liberal thinking. — Janus

The topic is philosophical method. Your posts are bang on topic.

...we seem to be dealing with arguments for authority. Could such arguments stand without also allowing arguments from authority to stand? — Janus

That's a fine question.

The fallacy of arguments from authority is an informal fallacy - it's not a logical fallacy as such, not false becasue of the structure of the argument. it's not a fallacy to pay attention to the thoughts of someone who has authority...

Listen to your doctor, for fuck's sake. Then question them to make sure they have paid attention to you and know your circumstances and are up to date on the research!

Authority does not grant immunity to critique. Not even for priests.

But that for and from bit needs some thinking...

Would this not mean that some people might practice compassion even whilst holding an ostensibly intolerant belief system? — Tom Storm

One does what one can...

Say some more on this. — Tom Storm

Well, we might shift the philosophical weight from ontology or doxastic content to praxis and procedure.

What matters would not be the abstract truth of a belief, but how that belief functions within a system (logic, science, discourse); gets used (for justification, prediction, coercion); survives confrontation (with evidence, argument, or rival beliefs) and integrates with shared methods of reasoning or inquiry.

Ever hear of Fred D'Agostino? D’Agostino’s take: Instead of asking, “What do we all believe?” we ask, “What kind of practice allows us to live together with our differences?”

I was more thinking about whether having very strong beliefs in philosophical absolutes and/or first-principle-type foundations has to go hand in hand with deism or theism. — J

Oh, not at all. There's a lot here about foundational beliefs and relations to hinge propositions and so on that would be fun to go through.

And there is the tu quoque reply, of course, which is irrefutable, since we all have base beliefs.

I think the issue is methodological - not about what you believe but what you do with it.

I'm not sure what you mean — Sam26

Just that whatever constraint one puts on a language game, someone may find a game that undermines that constraint...

A puzzlement more than a point.

Cool.

It seems that the fundamental opinions of some are less malleable than those of others. I find that interesting and confronting. That resistance to revision one sees even in intelligent, well educated folk.

I guess it kinda grounds my OP - a moral preference for doubt.

What is your account? — Tom Storm

Not dissimilar, but i might place much more emphasis on the community than the individual. Not a "personal web of beliefs" - it's public, and learned, and shared.

And so available for discussion (and revision) in a way that private ideas are not.


Which is what we do, here.

I don't think the target statement ought to be framed in terms of criteria that are different in every instance. — J

I agree.

there are certainly facts within the discipline which will suggest to us what such criteria might be, including previous success in advancing the discipline and provoking exciting new questions. — J

Yes - doesn't this amount to insisting that the discipline at least be self-consistent?

We might even supose after Feyerabend, that a practice could be successful becasue of a disagreement on first principles, of the sort that Tim has in mind; that a tension between fundamentals might well lead to progress. Think of the tension in physics concerning wave-particle duality at the beginning of last century.

Feyerabend would say this is precisely how science often works: progress through pluralism, through the friction between incompatible paradigms or first principles. Agreement can produce stability, but disagreement can produce invention.

"But how does this keep arbitrariness out?" Consistency does this work, seems to me. That together with some variant on Davidson's triangulation, keeping the community - and we are talking about groups of people, not individuals - on a common topic.

I like the method suggested here - it fits in with my own desire to find common ground quite well.

So I suggest that we allow @Count Timothy von Icarus to choose the example, as an act of good will.

:lol:

There's nothing in belief in god that has to lead to this sort of... antagonism (?)

And nothing in disbelief, either.

I am guessing that you would put that down to being built on top of our emotional preferences, too. But the liberal/authoritarian dimension isn't an accepted emotional fundamental, so far as I am aware - more a part of pop psychology.

SO I don't think that philosophical differences are ultimately "explained" by psychology. I suspect you do?

I thinks the questions can be separated. It's perfectly possible to take a foundationalist approach while remaining agnostic... — J

Perhaps. I gather that would involve adopting a liberal attitude to interacting with others, accepting that they may have different foundational attitudes without actively engaging with them.

Still writing a reply to your other post.

Generally, when people hold foundational positions, they are like arrows pointing toward the place they want to arrive at. — Tom Storm

...and everyone holds foundational positions...

As you say.

So a large part of the discussion should be about what we can agree on, despite those differences.

And that is basically a liberal stance. As against the authoritarian stance, that one way or another we must force agreement.

Do you think such an approach is one that assumes theism and some of the philosophical scaffolding which supports it? — Tom Storm

Well, I was attempting to avoid god, but you asked.

Yep.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Tim and Leon are so adamantly disagreeing with the idea that one can coherently maintain an agnostic position.

It's odd, isn't it, to be arguing in a philosophy forum for the validity of saying "I don't know".

Odd that such an stance should need any defence at all.

Cheers. Others know even less about logic, but post their opinion anyway.

Kripke's account leads to forms of antirealism, with which I am not overly happy. So I'm not offering it as an absolute answer here - just as an example that shows the problem with Tim's attempt to equate not knowing something with not knowing anything.

Thus, they hit all your criteria for producing a correct narrative.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

This is where it goes wrong. — J

Yep.

Usually I find myself arguing against idealism or antirealism, but here I find myself against Tim's excessive realism.

There are various arguments that could be deployed against realism here, if it were to be explicitly expressed.

I've explicitly shown how Tim's reply is dependent on an invalid argument. Several times. I'm not sure there is more to be said.

Your habit of removing the automatic link on a quote - what's that about?

I don't know if OJ killed his wife or not. I've not paid the case much attention, not having much interest in the biography of self-entitled 'mercan celebrities. It's your example, not mine.

I am happy to work with whatever example you might choose, becasue it is the logic that is at issue. Choose another.

And again, your use of LEM needs explanation.

The case, for Tom Storm's edification, that corresponds to the notion "undecided" in denying LEM would not be: "I don't know the answer to 'idealism, psychophysical parallelism, god…,'" but rather "these positions are neither true, nor false." — Count Timothy von Icarus

That ain't so, for the reasons given in my reply to Tom, above.

I was merely making a joke. — Tom Storm

We don't do those. This is serious.

:wink:

Tim's reply makes quite a few assumptions. His reply is that we must assign "these positions are neither true, nor false". But that's not so. We have the option of not assigning a truth value at all.

Now this is exactly what Kripke does in his paper on truth. He begins by explicitly not assigning a truth value to any statement in his system; then assigning "true" to the tautologies; and "true" or "false" to other sentences as they are interpreted. The result is a set of true and false sentences and a set of sentence with no truth value.

The advantage is that liar sentences - "this sentence is false" - are never assigned a truth value. Quite clever, really.

Another interesting aspect is that assigning truth values becomes a process.

And yes, it is legitimate to think of these as the ones for which the truth value is unknown. That's just using Kripke's system to modal epistemic issues.

Glad that you are reading along.

This is still saying some positions aren't true/correct. To say "all positions are true or undecided, and at least some are undecided" is still saying that not every position is true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your comment was:

Well, in ruling out, "anything goes," you are denying some positions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You said that if a statement is ruled out, it is denied. Now you want to change that to if a statement is ruled out, it is not true. That is a shift in your position, a partial and begrudging acknowledgement of some of what has been said here, so we will count it as a positive move.

If you cannot ever tell anyone else they are wrong... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course we can sometimes tell when a statement is wrong. Nothing in what I or J has said says otherwise. So what you say here is way off.

Again, the point is the logical one, that we can say of a statement that it is true, and we can say that it is false, and thirdly sometimes we can say that we don't know it's truth value, and that doing so does not, as your statement quoted above implies, lead immediately to "anything goes".

I'll bold that, becasue it seems to keep being forgotten.

And so much of what you say after that is irrelevant, and misleading. It's just not what has been suggested.

If we are to continue this discussion, it might be kind of you to at least acknowledge the logical point bolded above. Then we might have a common ground. If you think there is an error in the logic, set it out. If, for instance, you think it violates LEM, set out how you understand LEM and how it is violated.