I think parsimony isn't the only game in town though. Explanatory power which would include completeness also matters, right? — TheMadFool

In other words, is it just manifestly rational to get a good deal? — norm

The rivalry between geocentrism and heliocentrism is a perfect example of this. — Enrique

The best theory best compresses the data — norm

it seems the observion must take place over time - not just a point in time — Don Wade

And yes, I'd love to hear how philosophy could contribute to that. — TaySan

That may be what you (and many others) are aiming at. It's very far from what I'm interested in. Those who have this inevitably reductive and eliminative aim tend to project that aim onto others or insist that it's the only worthy aim and that all should agree with it. — Janus

Such models are inevitably reductive and eliminative. — Janus

I'm talking about experiences and judgements, not curves and data, though. — Janus

Why must all the things that people experience be reconcilable? — Janus

Perhaps, there's a difference, subtle or not, you be the judge, between observation and belief — TheMadFool

So that means that "nothing matters", being an objective claim, also doesn't matter. — Albero

most people would say life is worth it. Despite the circumstances. — khaled

knowing how (knowledge of the prescriptive domain, so called) involves knowing how to make use of what is in order to sensibly conform to contextually relevant prescriptions. — Pierre-Normand

That's a lot a references and name dropping but maybe I can highlight the gist of this broad line of thinking about facts/values, descriptions/prescriptions, objectivity/subjectivity, etc., by means of an appeal to the Kantian/Aristotelian distinction between theoretical reason and practical reason. Aristotle suggested (this may have been either in On the Soul, in Nichomachean Ethics, or both) that theoretical reason, which aims at knowing what is true, and practical reason, which aims at deciding what to do, are different employment of the (unique) faculty of reason that are distinguished by the direction of their employment, as it were, from the specific to the general, in the case of theoretical reason, and from the general to the specific, in the case of practical reason. Hence, theoretical sciences could be viewed as aiming to generate principles that find application in the development of general statement suitable as to serve as major premises in theoretical syllogisms. Practical wisdom, as well as virtue, on the other hand, enabling an agent to select both a general premise (pertaining to ends) and a particular premise (some statement of need and/or opportunity) for concluding in some more specific practical requirement and, ultimately, in a particular action. — Pierre-Normand

I don't get this logic. How would one party acquire power if there are no parties? I'm going to need you to walk me through that in order to properly answer your question. — Harry Hindu

What resources do you expect to tap into other than those of our mental processes? ... If a whole load of intuitions, gut feelings and empathetic emotional states, all processed by various rational algorithms didn't solve the problem — Isaac

I don't see taking an academic interest in people's posts as an unethical thing. — Isaac

So you think progress beyond the impasses we've been stuck at is impossible, then? — Pfhorrest

Yes. — Isaac

It seems very odd to expect charity from others, but when those others misinterpret or misunderstand you, your default explanation is that they're doing so deliberately out of malice. — Isaac

You're not teaching me, you know that, right? — Isaac

I'm not in the least bit interested in what your philosophy actually is. [...] So please don't put yourself under any obligation to ensure that I've understood you properly unless you want to. — Isaac

That's what those slew of reasons are there to do. Help you work that out. — Isaac

Why would the only point in arguing be for me to change you from something right to something wrong? — Isaac

I could, for example, offer alternatives. I could help you strengthen your argument so you feel more confident about it. I could resolve internal contradictions which would otherwise cause cognitive dissonance. — Isaac

I could enjoy the game (like chess, which is equally combative, but both parties benefit). I could have a passionate academic interest in how people defend their beliefs and how that approach has been changed by online social media... — Isaac

where does that leave us? — Pfhorrest

Pretty much the place human(-like) social relations have been for the past few million years. — Isaac

The kind of responses I would find most pleasant to get would be "oh hey that's a neat similarity you've observed there, never noticed that before" or "huh that's an interesting approach to that problem I've not heard of before". I'm not looking for people to tell me that I'm right, like you always seem to suggest, but just for people to find the approaches I mention curious, interesting, and worth further consideration — Pfhorrest

So "well done you" then? — Isaac

that thread you started on epistemology had Janus, Banno, Srap and a few others all take your comments in this supposedly 'strange' way — Isaac

Again, if you're simply assuming that my reading of background assumptions and the wrong conclusions they would lead to are erroneous, then you've just assumed you're flawless from the outset. — Isaac

Why would you be perplexed. It's obvious what's happening there. One of us has made a mistake identifying apples. — Isaac

This is a repeated tactic in your thinking and I've not understood it from the outset. Simply saying that X is like Y does not make X like Y, yet this seems to be the substance of your argument. You say "like with perception and reality we can..." I've given probably half a dozen reasons why moral talk (or moral thoughts) are not like perceptions and models of reality, yet this seems to have had absolutely no impact on your use of this strategy. So, is there a thing that is not like perceptions and reality, for you? Can everything be likened to it, just by saying so, do you have any criteria at all for these analogies? — Isaac

Yes, because we're hard-wired to assume a shared exterior source of our sensations, so our common language uses that when making declarative statements. — Isaac

No, because not being hard wired to expect an external source for our hedonic affects, our language does not make use of that, and we do not make moral declarations with that in mind. Some people might sometimes want you to disapprove, other times they might not care if you disapprove so long as you comply, other times they might simply be informing you and be indifferent to your reaction, other times they might be identifying their own values for group identity. — Isaac

Again, you're assuming your conclusion in your argument. You've not established that this is what moral claims mean, so how can you say that I wouldn't have agreed with it on those grounds? If the moral claim "murder is wrong" is to mean "murder is something which people will generally punish you for" then me thinking "don't let Forrest find out about any murders I do" is exactly me having agreed with it. — Isaac

you can't talk about the 'badness' of an event without including in that the state of mind {feeling bad about it}. You can talk about the 'tallness' of sequoias without including the state of mind {thinking that sequoias are tall} because we expect tallness to be an invariant property of sequoias in a way that we do not expect 'badness' to be an invariant property of doctors killing people — Isaac

You can't just claim things can be treated the same without addressing the ways in which they are different and showing those ways to be irrelevant. — Isaac

The point was that we cannot do this with thoughts that have no external behavioural reference because it would make them impossible to learn. — Isaac

What's the external behavioural referent which distinguishes thinking X is morally wrong and not wanting anyone to do X? — Isaac

yes, you could in turn have desires about your desires about your desires, ad infinitum, the more you thought over your decision-making process. — Pfhorrest

If so, then how? Presumably you agree that all of this takes place in a physical brain, so if you want to assert that this is possible, you'll need to posit a mechanism. — Isaac

You can perceive a pond of water in the desert, but because you know about mirages, disbelieve that there is actually a pond of water in the desert -- but that doesn't make you stop perceiving it. — Pfhorrest

It really does. — Isaac

The primary reason to abolish political parties is because it a form of group-think — Harry Hindu

I don't know where you'd get that from, it's literally in the quote "You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons". Does that sound like "no way at all"? I'm struggling how you can read "a whole slew of ... reasons" as "no way at all". — Isaac

I'm not arguing about anything. I'm critiquing your position. — Isaac

I didn't say there's nothing to do about that. just that there isn't one single correct thing to do about that. — Isaac

Logic is not that hard, pretty much anyone with a graduate education (or intelligent enough to get one), can follow through the logical consequences of a position, from given premises. — Isaac

If you're just going to assume that every problem raised is a 'strange presupposition' or 'uncharitable reading' then you've simply assumed you own premises. — Isaac

Right, but this is what you denied earlier, which is why I'm getting confused about your argument. You specifically said that moral language was not just providing the other person with some facts about the world for them to do with what they will, yet if moral language is just as you say above, then all it is doing is exactly that, providing facts (about the speaker's state of mind). So which is it? — Isaac

No we don't. That would require a private language which would be impossible to learn. We have words which refer to public effects of what we take to be 'emotions' which we use to convey our own propensity to those public effect. If there were no mediating public effects we could not possibly learn the words. — Isaac

It's your technical definition that I'm trying to work with. It was this which distinguished intent from desire. I desire state X, I intend to do Y to get it. If intend refers to the state we want to be the case, then what's left for 'desire' to do? — Isaac

In my scheme, an "intention" and a "belief" are each reflexive or second-order forms of "desires" and "perceptions", respectively. Each of them requires that you have awareness of your first-order states of mind, that you can perceive that you are perceiving and desiring certain things; and then also that you pass judgement on those first-order states of mind, that you desire to perceive and desire in that way or else differently.

So yes, on my account an intention, i.e. a "moral belief", is a second-order a desire, it's a desire that you desire to desire. This is more or less the same as Harry Frankfurt's conception of "will": your will is what you want to want. And yes, you could in turn have desires about your desires about your desires, ad infinitum, the more you thought over your decision-making process. Your intention, or will in Frankfurt's terms, is whatever the top level of that is: whatever you've concluded, after however much thought you've given it, that you want to want to want... etc.

Why to want things, and thus what to want to want, i.e. what to intend, i.e. what "moral beliefs" to hold, is a separate question from just what it is to have a "moral belief" / intention. Just like what to believe generally, descriptively, is a separate question from what it is to have a belief. (My answer in both cases, to the "what to think" questions, which we've been over and over already, could be summarized as "heed your experiences... and everyone else's too".)

(Again, think back like you are raising a child, or programming an AI. How do you want the child or AI to go about making these decisions, either about what is real, or about what is moral? How, generally, do you intend people to make those kinds of decisions -- regardless of how you believe that they in fact do make them? Now look at yourself in the third person, like you are parenting yourself, and ask: are you making those kinds of decisions in the way you want people in general to make them? Would you try to get someone else, who makes decisions the way that you do, to change the way they do that? If so, try to get yourself to change the way you do that, like you would anyone else.) — Pfhorrest

This is an important aspect of my differentiation between desire and intention. It's exactly like the analogous differentiation between perception and belief. You can perceive a pond of water in the desert, but because you know about mirages, disbelieve that there is actually a pond of water in the desert -- but that doesn't make you stop perceiving it. It still looks like there's a pond of water there, even though you have judged that perception to be incorrect.

Likewise, to have an intention, on my account, is to have a judgement about your desires, but that won't necessarily force them to change. — Pfhorrest

But if one of those facts about the world is about someone holding a prescriptive attitude toward some state of affairs, and the other fact is about the odds of that person's attitudes towards states of affairs being the correct ones to hold, then what you end up with is the adoption of a prescriptive attitude toward a state of affairs — Pfhorrest

People are not automatons. Those two factors alone would not be sufficient to end up adopting the belief. We have a thousand other factors coming in to play at once. — Isaac

The picture you're trying to paint of moral judgement not only is woefully simplistic, but even as a goal it would be throwing away millennia of evolved, finely tuned mental processes in hubristic favour of something you came up with. — Isaac

that we can ... narrow down the range of possible theories... — Pfhorrest

...is what I was disputing. We can't, as my example shows. Same will be true of parsimony, elegance, explanatory power, or any other such system you care to come up with. You'll believe what you want to believe for a whole slew of incredibly complex biological, psychological and sociological reasons and you'll come up with whatever post hoc rationalisation is required to make you feel comfortable with it. — Isaac

I can't think why you'd want to post your ideas on a forum and then complain about them being discussed. Did you just want everyone to say "wow, well done you"? — Isaac

Should be 'you are the sole reason I don't engage with you as much as I otherwise would'. — Janus

That's then not speech act theory or meaning as use. It's claiming that the meaning of a word is the psychological state it somehow embodies. — Isaac

Let us consider a man going round a town with a shopping list in his hand. Now it is clear that the relation of this list to the things he actually buys is one and the same whether his wife gave him the list or it is his own list; and that there is a different relation where a list is made by a detective following him about. If he made the list itself, it was an expression of intention; if his wife gave it him, it has the role of an order. What then is the identical relation to what happens, in the order and the intention, which is not shared by the record? It is precisely this: if the list and the things that the man actually buys do not agree, and if this and this alone constitutes a mistake, then the mistake is not in the list but in the man's performance (if his wife were to say: “Look, it says butter and you have bought margarine”, he would hardly reply: “What a mistake! we must put that right” and alter the word on the list to “margarine”); whereas if the detective's record and what the man actually buys do not agree, then the mistake is in the record — Anscombe

How? As above. If I wanted to do this, how would I ever learn what words to pick to achieve the task? — Isaac

I agree, but that's not what you said. Desiring that John do X is not the same as intending that John do X. If I desire that John do X I might intend to persuade him, show him, or force him, but I can't simply intend that he does. Intent is a plan of action, it can only refer to that which is in my control. — Isaac

But earlier you expressly denied that such moral language only gave the listener fact for them to do with as they will."what it is that you believe" is just a fact about you, as is your trustworthiness. So all we have is facts about the world. — Isaac

I don't see how you can infer from "it is not the case that humans tend to do this" to "it is not the case that humans should try to do this". — Pfhorrest

Relatively straightforward answer to this...ever come across the well-quoted definition of madness? — Isaac

See below about the difference in what we expect. we expect a shared world as an external source of perceptions, we don't expect a shared external source of hedonic satisfaction. It's a simple as that. We're born that way (or at least as far back as we can test - six month old so far). — Isaac

Yes, we learn to expect it, but it's not hard-wired like the expectation of an external source of sensory inputs seems to be. The expectation can take as much a three or four years to develop. — Isaac

Not so with negative hedonic responses. We've an incentive to avoid them, but we've two methods available to us. Change the event, or change our response. How do we choose which? — Isaac

What would a 'wrong' desire be other than a desire not to have that desire? — Isaac

Or else, on second consideration, it may be something like my take on the assignment of ownership, part of the deontological level of my ethics (which we haven't gotten to yet), which is parallel to my take on the assignment of meaning to words in my epistemology. A part of that deontology deals with what we might loosely call "analytic goods" (not that I actually call them that -- I say "procedural duties", but that's not important right now), which hinge entirely on the assignment of ownership, in the same way that analytic truths hinge entirely on the assigned meaning of words. — Pfhorrest

No. But an interesting read nonetheless. I won't comment on it her as it's off-topic.

If you and the grocer agree to trade some potatoes for some money, you have agreed that upon delivery of the potatoes the money becomes his property, so when he delivers the potatoes, the money now just is his property, "analytically" (by analogy), and you have no claims over it anymore. — Pfhorrest

So this is true, but...

If that's what Anscombe means — Pfhorrest

Not only that, but that the word 'ought' picks out this naturally/culturally occurring state. what we mean by 'ought' is that state. Thus the question often asked of naturalist ethical approaches "yes, but did we 'ought' to behave that way, just because it's social convention that we do" is dissolved. The question makes no sense because it's using the word 'ought' whilst at the same time claiming to not know what the word means. — Isaac

Physics by poll vote... — Banno

It is not the topic of this thread, to be sure; but it would make an interesting topic fro another thread. — Janus

provided the idea of separate magisteria is not taken to suggest that there is a spiritual domain separate from the physical — Janus

Is this just another way of inquiring into the so-called is/ought gap? — TheMadFool

Opinions don't have meanings, their just not the sort of thing it would make any sense to ascribe a meaning to. Words have meanings. Art has meanings, even actions sometimes have a meaning. Opinions don't. — Isaac

Another previously hidden crux of difference. It 'means' a completely and utterly different thing to think something than it does to say something. — Isaac

Words don't transfer the contents of a state of mind. They do things. When I speak words to you it is with intention that they have some effect on you, not that they faithfully carry the contents of by state of mind like some binary code. It would be categorically impossible for them to do s because if they did you wouldn't know what they meant. It simply doesn't make sense to talk about words transferring anything. — Isaac

You've either mixed subject here or this doesn't make sense. The thought "you should do X" seems to be referring to a second person, like "John should do X", but then you say it is equivalent to having the intention. One cannot have an intention for another. I cannot intend for John to do something. I can only only hope or strive to get john to do something. It doesn't make any sense at all for me to intend for him to, I don't control him. — Isaac

all you do is tell them that you have such a belief — Isaac

I can go along with all that you've said above this — Isaac

you either haven't heard of or disagree with things like speech act theory and meaning as use — Isaac

humans do not form beliefs via the process you outline here, so your assertion that it is the best of the available methods is as wrong as such assertions can ever be — Isaac

Basically, any such assessment is unlikely to yield anything other than the conclusion you wanted it to yield at the start, you'll simply interpret all the evidence you thus gain in a way that supports your initial feelings. I'd be very surprised if, after some global effort to do exactly this, a single person changed their behaviour as a result, certainly no large number would. — Isaac

We expect to be pleased and displeased by different things. We do not expect to see and hear a different reality. To the extent we are pleased and displeased by the same things, then I think there is some ground for ethical realism — Isaac

In addition I think you're mistaken to imply that it is only at the level of affect that we can no longer easily intervene. We have hard-wired desires too. Many of the methods by which we think we'll most likely reach our target affect levels are either hard-wired from birth or are wired in very early childhood and practically impossible to budge later. — Isaac

Lastly, there are many intentions that are simply the result of society's mechanisms - emergent properties, and this is what the naturalism of people like Anscombe seeks to capture. You ought to pay the grocer after he delivers you potatoes, not because of any hedonic reason whatsoever, but because that's what 'ought' means in that culture. It means the position you're in after the grocer has delivered the potatoes. It's a function of culture, not of individual hedonic values. — Isaac

Well, what are the differences between objectivity and intersubjectivity? — TheMadFool

In this thread I'm not trying to argue that my views are correct, but just to find out where other people's views fall, and it's clear that yours fall into what I intended option #1 to be. — Pfhorrest

I think you're missing the option 'one domain viewed from different perspectives'.
— Wayfarer

No, I don't agree with the first option. I think Wayfarer's right; that's the option I'd go for. — Janus

Also I was going to suggest that 'normative' might be a better term than 'prescriptive' - means the same, but 'normative' is more recognisable in the context. Not that it really matters. — Wayfarer