Good stuff.

has rediscovered Popper's World 3, which in turn is yet another version of Plato.

i'm rather taken by Searle's account of how "...counts as..." brings such things about.

SO while the OP is somewhat muddled, there is much that can be said here.

, prior to Kant there were various approaches to philosophy that tried to derive metaphysical, and even physical, facts from first principles by mere deduction. Kant's Antinomies might best be seen as a nascent version of the realisation that logic, on it's own, does not lead to any conclusions.

The Antinomies derive from the logical simple that if you posit P you can also posit ~P, for any proposition (sentence, assertion, statement...) P. Mere deduction cannot get us to the truth of P or ~P, we have to tie them in to the world in some way - usually some sort of observation is required to tell us how things actually are.

And the same goes for the various abstract physical theories to which Hossenfelder objects. So the widespread – indeed, pop – acceptance of multiple universe interpretations of quantum stuff remain quite unfounded, despite winning at the Oscars. One would think it accepted science, but of course it isn't, and I think Hossenfelder's lack of enthusiasm for what is in the end a misapprehension of her field of expertise is justified.

But there ought be a place for what we might call speculative physics, just for the fun of it, as Janus says, but also because it has folk playing with beautiful mathematics – as you have shown in your diagrams – and that in itself may lead to testable ideas. Consider Dr. Higgs.

It's just the ever-present temptation to jump to a conclusion, to believe one has the answer before the arguments are finished, that is to be avoided.

I gather that you are using "idea" in some special way. For the rest of us, an idea usually does have some propositional content - so we speak of the idea that..., where the ellipses leads to something at least statable. Ideas are not obviously problematic, a view contrary to what you say here:

An idea is a “problematic conception”, a singular representation of the understanding, for which the intuition of an object belonging to it is impossible, or, the representation of an object inferred as belonging to it, does not relate, re: the idea is unintelligible. — Mww

...in an ugly sentence with a half-dozen sub-clauses.

I can't tell if you are continuing something of the abortive discussion with Janus. @Wayfarer is never so obtuse.

As soon as one realizes no words are ever spoken that are not first thought, all language philosophy loses its stranglehold on our intelligence. — Mww

It seems your thoughts are to remain inexpressible. Then we have no grounds for supposing that you even have thoughts.

We'll have to leave you to your solipsistic brilliance.

I pointed out the error in the one case, where the initial condition was an idea but you forced in a proposition, supposing something of the one would apply to the other, re: negation. — Mww

I do not understand what this is about.

Which case? What was the initial condition? What was "forced in a proposition"? Did you mean "forced into a proposition"? Which something "of the one" applies to what other?

Much as Wittgenstein pointed out in On Certainty. Being deceived is already participating in a language game - and so being deceived is participating in a world, and involves other people.

...truth and knowledge are observer relative evaluations, limited by our current observations. — Nickolasgaspar

I don't see how to make sense of this.

If we decide that something is true on the basis of some observation, and subsequent observations show that it is not true, then we were wrong.

Our observations do not generally change what is true, but what is believed.

A good account. Any decent discussion of knowledge needs not only to acnowledge, but account for, the relation between knowing that... and knowing how... Seems to me that knowledge as demonstrated application does this quite naturally.

One historical mistake certain philosophies have made is this search for certainty instead minimizing error for a purpose. — Richard B

And another mistake is to suppose that we cannot be certain of anything. On Certainty shows this clearly.

Somethign on which we do not disagree. But it would be an error to conclude that therefore we are, or may be, always deceived.

So I'll join with .

So what is the perfect definition of knowledge? — Cidat

Definitions do not work in that way.

You know that there are two ways to approach definitions, by stipulation or by description, and that definitions by stipulation set out how one ought use a term, while definitions by description set out how one actually does use a term. That difference in approach is found between Webster's and The Oxford dictionaries. Which is perfect? Well, it depends on what you are doing; hence, neither is quite perfect.

The "justified true belief" stuff comes from Plato, but even he wasn't happy with it, ending the Theaetetus in aporia. Still, some folk like it, and as a working definition it has its uses. The Gettier examples serve to show that treating justified true belief as a stipulated definition is fraught with difficulties.

The most common problem hereabouts comes from those who confuse what we know with what we believe. It should be apparent that we can only know things that are true, whereas we can believe things that are false.

So one cannot know something that is not true. Additionally, if you know something, you know that it is true, which is just another way of saying that you believe it. One cannot know something one doesn't believe to be true.

On this last, one might well express surprise or incredulity by saying one knows such-and-such, but "I don't believe it!" That's a turn of phrase rather than a counterexample.

So if one knows something, then that something must be both believed and true. Hence the "True belief" part of the justified true belief account.

The "justification" part comes from our not being able to know stuff that does not fit in with our other knowledge. What we know has to be consistent - and if it isn't something has gone wrong.

So 's amusement is to some extent misplaced. Perhaps coming from outside of philosophy he doesn't see the issues that the JTB account is actually addressing.

And it's not hard to see problems with defining knowledge as "useful information". We all know stuff that is not useful, unless one is going to specify utility in such broad terms that anything is useful—at which point being useful becomes moot. And there is useful information that is false - Newtonian physics, for example.

Philosophy is, generally speaking, a lot harder than it perhaps seems.

A last point to note is the difference between what knowledge is, as given by this or that definition, and how we "find a solid way of forming knowledge". JBT is not a method for deciding between competing beliefs.

Anyway, that might go some way towards broadening the discussion here beyond mere utility. Cheers.

No one asked for it. — Mww

:meh: then I'll leave you to your games.

Not at all sure what the lesson was there.

Ellipsis can be an eloquent tool, when use, for instance, to point to what can be shown but not said.

When folk try to put words in the place of what is being indicated, trouble ensues.

And although you have well-argued, and may be right, that this was what Kant was doing, others have taken his ideas as if they were arguments, or sometimes facts, not indications.

anyway, I've said that I do not understand whatever point it it you wish to make, and you seem uninterested in clarifying your account, so...

Cheers. It remains that much of your post could not be understood, and what could be understood was, as argued, wrong.

We can continue to trade insults if you like: what you say is at least the evidence for what you think, and if what you say is incomprehensible or incoherent, that does not bode well for what you think.

You would have us enquire into how we thinking with scant reference to how we say it, as if philosophy could leave logic behind. But language is the tool of the philosopher, and we ought at least understand something of how it works, and seek to use it well.

Pumice is a stone.

One cannot, with consistency, declare the category 'spider' to contain all creatures with eight legs and then also claim there's some 'real' grouping 'spider' whose properties we're only guessing at. We just christened the group 'spiders' and in doing so we determined it's properties. — Isaac

:grin: Yep!

You're full of shit, Banno. — Janus

And yet you come back for more.

Cheers. I'm done. — Banno

I'm old-school. I'm not going to watch a two-hour video. I'll read the book. But thanks anyway.

A writer can present his views in a logical linear manner. But, when challenged man-to-man & face-to-face, a "superficial grasp of the issue" might begin to unravel to reveal kinks in the logic. — Gnomon

I like logical and linear. It seems to me that a "superficial grasp of the issue" is more likely from a video than from a book. An interesting difference in opinion.

So back to the question of this thread : is it a bad thing for serious scientists to dabble in "trivial" philosophy? Is philosophy the underachieving poor relation of science? — Gnomon

Philosophy is difficult. Hopefully the "dabbler" will begin to see this. But more often, they fail to grasp the breadth or depth of the issues involved.

As a "naive realist"... — Gnomon

Not sure form the context whether it is Hoffman, you or both who were "Naive realists". The term is problematic, with those who claim the title often using it in a different way to those who reject it. There's thread after thread after thread on that topic in this forum alone.

An idea is a “problematic conception”, a singular representation of the understanding, for which the intuition of an object belonging to it is impossible, or, the representation of an object inferred as belonging to it, does not relate, re: the idea is unintelligible. — Mww

I don't understand what this says.

A proposition is a subject/copula/object synthetic judgement, necessarily containing a plurality of conceptions in a relation to each other, and is for that, a cognition. — Mww

While there is no one definition of a proposition, it at the least can be represented by a statement with a truth value. Not all propositions have the structure subject/copula/object, nor are all propositions synthetic, and while a proposition my be judged true or false, it does not follow that a proposition is a judgement. You might argue that claiming a proposition to be true or to be false involves a judgement, but that's not the same as a proposition's being a judgement.

To contain the seed of its own negation merely indicates the principle of complementarity intrinsic to the dualistic nature of human intelligence, insofar as the complement for any such problematic conception, is given immediately in the thought of the original, the complement, being immediately given, requires no thought at all, insofar as its representation is precisely whatever the original’s is not. — Mww

I can't see that this says anything but what I already pointed out - that it is a simple fact of grammar (or logic, if you prefer) that any proposition can be negated.

The negation of a proposition, on the other hand, is never given immediately by the construction of the original, but is itself a different judgement predicated on different conceptions, or different modalities of the same categorical conception, all of which, without exception, must be cognized as such. — Mww

This appears to be a constipated way of saying that one might judge either a proposition or its negation to be true. Yep. Of course the negation of a proposition is given "immediately by the construction of the original" (sic.), simply by understanding negation. If you can propose (write, accept, believe, posit, suggest, guess, demand, command...) P, then you can propose ~P.

To posit the notion that an idea contains the seeds of the negation of a proposition, is a gross misunderstanding of the constructs of theoretical a priori human reason, to which the conflict properly belongs, by the insinuation of analytic language philosophy, to which it doesn’t. — Mww

I can't decide if this is agreeing or disagreeing with what I said.

I understand that you are a fan of Kant. Perhaps what you are setting out here makes sense in Kantian terms, but for me it remains very unclear. Most especially, and as we have discussed previously, I think that logic and philosophy of language have moved on considerably over the last two hundred years, especially with the advent of formal logic.

The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. — Gnomon

Just to be sure, you do see that it does not follow from this that there is no "independent reality"?

That was a ways back. I don't recall participating.

we ask questions we can't know the answers to... — Wayfarer

Which is fine, so long as we don't pretend to have those answers...

Yep. Do you think that a vicious circularity?

I wondered how you got on with the second chapter. Beauty as a chemical reaction.

I laughed at his use of a Wittgenstein quote (p. 19 of paperback). I don't think he read it the way I would...

Needs its own thread.

Go back to the beginning. you said

every idea contains the seeds of its own negation, — Janus

I pointed out that this is no more than saying that we can put a negation in front of any proposition. It's grammar masquerading as profundity.

You insist that there is more, but what? Your

Kant's antinomies are based on metaphysical speculations. It's not merely a grammatical matter; the grammar reflects what is imaginable. Any speculative idea may be true or false, or at least so we might think. Scientific theories themselves are never proven; they can, and often do, turn out to be wrong. — Janus

is utterly hollow. You keep saying nothing of consequence, as if it were relevant.

Cheers. I'm done.

What do you want? Another bout of pointless disagreement? Let me know what the issue is we are supposedly discussing.

Or are you just here for the abuse?

Well, you see, there was nothing to rebut...

I just don't need to go fishing with you. If you have a case, something we haven't been over in our myriad previous conversations, let's see it. Otherwise, I see no point in continuing.

Cheers. Love you too.

I'll leave it at that.

I have an unending hunger to know about human cultures. Wrong information just gets in my way. — frank

Sure. But this isn't about you.

These are not an academic exercise.

Yep.


One way the "the oral traditions (are) broken down" is by pretending they are not there. That a people chooses not to tell you about their oral tradition does not mean they have none. So someone from outside suggesting that what is happening to Australian aboriginal peoples is the same as happened to American aboriginal peoples or Scottish aboriginal peoples is fraught.

I think I did.

I was going to start a thread on The Voice, but baulked because, you know, what first nations folk really need is more white fellas to tell 'em about themselves. Promulgating, or even addressing, the myth that they do not have their own history, isn't going to be helpful. Indeed, another criticism of Dark Emu is its failure to recognise the divergence in aboriginal culture.

I grew up on Anaiwan land, and was taught that the locals had been eliminated or moved to the coast. To some extent that was so, but there is now a strong community reestablishing Nganyaywana, and enough social history to fill a few books. It's tragic, yes, but it's quite unhelpful to simply dismiss the efforts of the many small local groups across Australia to maintain their integrity by lame claims from foreigners that they are appropriating each other's culture.

culture is determined partly by what it is thought to be — Jamal

Yep. It's not what it was before the whites came, but it's not a blur of Gamilaraay, Wiradjuri, or other Koori cultures. Frank's comment is — unhelpful, in belittling those efforts.

You are being far more polite than I would be, were I to respond to .

Yawn.

not sure who you think the "we" are — Janus

I suspect that precious few academic philosophers nowadays would count themselves Kantian. If you want a more sophisticated counterargument, you might first produce a more sophisticated argument. That is, it's not clear what is being posited here, by the OP or by your good self.

...you see him as using Hegel as a prop for stand-up comedy or some such? — Janus

Ha! Yes, that's the way.

I have read a couple of his books.

Arguably, Pascoe is using that narrative, of a linear progression, because it is foundational to the world view of his antagonists. See Inside story.

Pascoe is consciously using the proud words the invaders used about themselves, words that justified dispossession — farming, villages, crops — and here he finds them in colonial descriptions of the original inhabitants of Australia, who he is keen to show were not “mere hunter-gatherers.”

He is that clever a writer.

Yeah, But I don't see his argument against reality. Certainly in the stuff I've read, he is assuming reality, but saying that the really, really real is the wave functions or some such shit. As if a wave function were more real than a tree. It's the scientistic presumption that their description is the correct one.

...and I saw what you did there. Not saying any more.

when and if...

Right, we have no reason to think that it is or is not how it appears, or even that it might be one or the other. Precisely Kant's point; and nothing to do with bad language use. — Janus

Yeah, but we can move (have moved...) on. That very differentiation of how things appear as against how they are can be seen as a misapprehension of how language works. That's the lesson of Wittgenstein, Austin, and so on.

Zizek is an avowed Kantian (and Hegelian) — Janus

Of course. He makes use of Hegel, and is quite amusing (snuffle, pull t-shirt, whip nose on forefinger.) That's so much more interesting than talking about Hegel.

SO are you about to commend Evald Ilyenkov’s Cosmology: The Point Of Madness Of Dialectical Materialism to ? That might be fun. I really can't imagine what he would do with it.

Hoffman — Gnomon

Yeah. I'm reading that. Not so impressed.

There's a trend for engineers and physicist to move in to philosophy. What I've noticed is that they at first suppose that they have the answer to an age-old philosophical issue; they present this to the community, and are taken aback that it is not just accepted. Often, what happens is that they have only a superficial grasp of the issue, and so are not seeing the full breadth of the issue.

I'll have more to say when I finish Hoffman.

Back to . I don't think that it is helpful for either to put limitations on their domains. The intersection of cosmology and epistemology is quite interesting. But there is a tendency for physicist to underplay the conceptual problems involved.

Take a look at Philosophical Plumbing. If Midgley were around, she would eviscerate Hoffman.

In what possible world is there no suffering? — Wayfarer

In those possible worlds where there is no suffering. Obviously.

But yes, you are right that the standard picture of God is incoherent. Where we differ is in that I do not see a coherent alternative.

As I see it Kant doesn't offer the thing-in-itself as an explanation of anything, other than to point out that if something appears it seems to follows that there must be something which appears. and we seem to have no reason to believe that that which appears is the exactly the same as its appearance, or even anything at all like it. — Janus

...and no reason to think that it might be other than it appears. Kant is just using language badly.

I don't mind Zizek.

SO god invented evil in order to keep the plot interesting; like Tolkien torturing hobbits, but with the important difference that Hobbits do not actually suffer.

How is it that God is not culpable?

Nice of you to make the discussion about me, again.

We've done this before. Kant invents a thing about which we can say nothing, as if it were an explanation.

I'll stick to the stuff about which we can say things.

I think that's roughly Hossenfelder's approach, and in line with Wittgenstein.

So I don't seem to be alone.

To proceed, can we find a novel way to approach these issues?