Three guardrails that discipline justification

If justification is a standing within a practice, it still needs discipline. Not every chain of support confers standing, and not every true belief that happens to be well supported counts as knowledge. In the paper I use three guardrails to mark common ways justification fails, even when a belief looks respectable.

No False Grounds (NFG)....

Practice Safety...

Defeater Screening... — Sam26

I'm trying to think of how I would translate this into a way to approach this issue from an engineering, or at least pragmatic, perspective. I guess I would call your No False Grounds guardrail "quality control and assurance." These are the procedures you follow and standards you apply to assure the quality of the data you use as input. For engineering or scientific activities, these procedures and standards will generally be formal, concrete, and mandatory. For less critical activities, they will be applied less formally, although the general principles are similar. This is a complex issue and is at the heart of my understanding of "truth." Here's something I wrote years ago that might shed some light, keeping in mind this is just a small part of the issues to be addressed by an overall quality control program.

Say I have data--chemical laboratory analysis and data measurements for 100 water samples for 10 chemical constituents. So I have a 10 x 100 table of data. Is it true? What does that even mean? What can possibly go wrong?

• It's the wrong data.
• The data was tabulated incorrectly.
• Samples were collected incorrectly in the field.
• Samples were not packaged correctly - refrigeration.
• The wrong analytical methods or detection limits were specified.
• Samples were not analyzed within holding times.
• The analysis was not performed in accordance with standard operating procedures.
• The appropriate quality assurance procedures were not followed.
• The analyses did not meet the laboratory's quality assurance standards.
• And lots more.

These issues would be addressed by use of what are called standard operating procedures (SOPs) during data collection. Data validation would then be performed after data collection and reduction to verify procedures have been met. To put this is more general terms for situations where this level of formality is not required--for all the "grounds" you use to establish truth, you must know where it came from, how you know it, and what the uncertainties are,

I guess your Practice Safety guardrail could be comparable to an engineering standard of practice. These are formal requirements established by regulations, codes, technical standards, and administrative standards created by governments, industry groups, engineering societies, and other organizations.

I'm not sure how I would fit your "defeator screening" procedure into the system I'm describing.

The “propositional” layer can be treated as a partial extraction from the model, for example, predictions, constraints, and consequences that can be checked. That is often how the model earns and keeps its standing. — Sam26

Yes, this is headed into the direction that I find most useful.

When you respond to a post, pick one concrete engineering example of a conceptual model and say how it is justified in your sense. Then we can map it onto my vocabulary without forcing it into a single sentence: — Sam26

Here is something I stole from a post I made a few years ago.

A site conceptual model is just a description, image of the site which lays out all the information gathered during the investigations. To me, the most useful way of presenting a SCM is visually, using figures. Data tables are also needed. There will also be calculations e.g. groundwater flow direction and velocity, contaminant degradation rates, averages. On the figures, you can show the locations of the sources of the contamination and how it has moved and is presently distributed across the site. You can also show the expected distribution of contamination in the future based on groundwater and fate and transport modelling. You can also show the locations of existing and potential human and environmental receptors.

Typical data points include boring logs; analytical results of soil, groundwater, and sediment samples; visual observation of site conditions; topographic and bathymetric surveys; geophysical surveys; and wetland surveys. Going deeper, there are assumptions associated with laboratory analytical methods. Which in particular are you talking about?

I’m going to be gone for a while

Also--I am not really familiar with Wittgenstein, so my comments will not be in terms of his way of seeing things.

When I use the word “justification,” I am not talking about something private, a feeling of confidence, or a mere report of how things seem from a subjective point of view. I mean justificatory standing, the sort of standing a belief has when it is supported by the standards that govern a practice, standards for what counts as evidence, what counts as error, and what counts as correction. — Sam26

I've read all seven of your chapters. Just for workability, I'm going to respond to each chapter separately. This may mean that what I have to say will be a bit disjointed. We'll see.

My biggest overall issue--JTB generally applies to propositions but most of the knowledge we have and use is not really expressible in that form. As an engineer, I usually talked about "conceptual models," which means an overall picture of the situation--in my case it was real estate properties and the soil and groundwater characteristics distributed across the site and at different depths. Models like that will generally be judged and justified as accurate rather than true. As I indicated, as I see it, the way we use knowledge on a daily basis tends to be more like how I've described it rather than just the truth of propositions.

This is highlighted by your discussion of the idea of standards of practice which are used to justify truth. In general, I think that's right, but how standards are applied under JTB (or JTB-U) is different from how various practices apply their standards. How do I apply an engineering standard to a simple declarative statement?

So, I worry that I am going to send your discussion off on a tangent. Now that you've seen some of the substance of my thoughts, should I continue?

I will wait until you’ve posted everything and I’ve had a chance to read it. Then we can see where it goes from there.

An interesting, well thought out, and well written OP. I have an overall question to help me decide whether to participate and then I’ll wait till you've posted everything.

These issues are things I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I'm trying to figure out if my way of seeing things compliments or contradicts yours. I take a very pragmatic approach--knowledge is meant to be used to decide how to act. Both your understanding and mine focus on what it means to justify potential knowledge. For me, the requirement is adequately justified belief. I define "adequate" as providing enough certainty about outcome for us to make a responsible decision. I have particular standards to apply to determine that.

So--does it make sense for me to participate?

Should we comment as you go along or wait till you've presented the whole thing?

Just to point out—this thread is seven years old.

Perhaps, perhaps not. I still think it might be considered necessary to have the capabilities to send people into space, including to other planets or celestial bodies.

I can think of a couple of reasons. First, there are lots of resources in space and getting them will probably require people going out to the asteroids. That work will probably be critical if we ever have to address impacts from extraterrestrial objects.Second, military. Whoever has control of space will have a major advantage in future conflicts. Whether or not you think those are good reasons, they probably seem like compelling ones to many people.

Does that mean that the world is fundamentally self-contradictory? — bizso09

You seem to be saying the world is the same thing as our experience of the world. As Lao Tzu might say—the world that can be spoken is not the eternal world.

Good to know — I’ve never seen it — Mikie

The book is also one of my favorites. I gave it to two people for Christmas this year.

Moonstruck is great. I loved it when I was 17 and watched it recently — still love it. — Mikie

When people ask who is the most beautiful actress, I always say Cher in Moonstruck.

How old are you? I’m 44. I consider myself old, so… — Mikie

74. My daughter is 44. We call people like you “youngsters.”

I have a hard time watching movies (or TV for that matter) these days. I haven't seen a movie in a theater in about 20 years. I really don't think they make them as well as they used to. Sequels, remakes, and superheros. Narrativeless plot lines like grapes suspended in jello. I do love watching movies with my kids. My son, his partner, and I have just agreed to watch a different movie every two weeks. Then again, I definitely have old coot syndrome.

PT Anderson — Mikie

Loved "Licorice Pizza" although the ending was very disappointing.

Woody Allen, — Mikie

Every fifth movie is wonderful, you're right though, noting really recent--"Annie Hall," "Manhattan," "Hannah and Her Sisters," "Radio Days," "Crimes and MIsdemeanors," "Everyone Says I Love You," "Midnight in Paris," Amazingly prolific.

My own theory is that for some of us only have a limited number of films we can watch before the entire enterprise becomes dull. — Tom Storm

Yes, I kinda ran out of steam. You may also be an old coot like me.

it’s become common to shit on Dances with Wolves — Mikie

I'm here to add more to the pile--"Little Big Man" is so much more humane, funny, and moving. Also, I have a visceral and unreasonable aversion to Costner.

You definitely have different taste than I do, although I can't believe how good "Goodfellas" is.

What are your top 3 or 4 movies? — Tom Storm

Yes, I know you didn't ask me, but here they are anyway. More than 4. Nothing before 1975.

"Annie Hall"
"Manhattan"
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People"--BBC versions with Alec Guiness
"Tombstone"
"Moonstruck"
"Long Goodbye"
"Fargo"
"Raising Arizona."

Enough. If I tried, I could name 20 more.

Small Things Like These is a historical drama whose plot focuses on the Magdalene laundries in Ireland. Since it is an Irish-based story, I also tag Baden, because he may know more interesting things about this controversial topic. — javi2541997

Thanks as usual.

There was a film a few years ago called Max that seemed to argue that Hitler might have remained a harmless artist, but after being rejected by art school, he did not abandon art so much as transform it into performance art through politics, with Nazism, and ultimately the Holocaust, conceived as a perverse aesthetic project enacted on society itself. Disturbing stuff. — Tom Storm

I think the movie you’re talking about and the book I’m talking about are covering about the same conceptual ground. Thinking about it, though I think Hitler was too much a genius to be held to such a small scope. I could see him going crazy or committing suicide, but I can’t really see him writing or painting or any other mundane occupation. I think he was too big, too great to be contained.

She spells it Чайковский. Czajkowski looks like the Polish version. — Jamal

My apologies to your wife.

Does anyone have any sci fi recommendations? I’m open to anything — an-salad

Here are some of my favorites. They’re all better than @Jamal’s suggestions. Also much more conventional.

To start, some books I read in younger days I'm still fond of:

• The "Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I was surprised to find it was written in 1941. A BIG IDEA book - the biggest. I reread it a few years ago and the writing stinks, but I still love it.
• "Tales from the White Hart"--short stories by Arthur C. Clark.
• "Starship Troopers"--I never liked Heinlein much--too macho/fascist--but I reread it a few years ago and really liked it. Much like the movie without the knowing smirk.
• "The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold. Good mind-blowing time travel book where the ramifications get more and more tangled when all the versions of the main character meet for a single permanent reunion.
• "The Lathe of Heaven" by Ursula K. LeGuin. Mind-blowing changing reality with your mind. Clever and well written. Chilling.
• "The Iron Dream" by Norman Spinrad. A book within a book. Adolf Hitler's putsch fails so he escapes and comes to the US and becomes a science fiction writer. In the inner book--"Lord of the Swastika"--he puts all his crazed racial fantasies into words instead of death. Clever but sort of a one-joke routine.
• "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. I like military science fiction and this is my favorite. But it's not like any other I've read. Hard to describe. The humans and aliens keep trying to battle, but time dilation keeps screwing up the timing. Clever.

More or less recent books. Generally very well written.

• The "Ancillary Justice" trilogy by Anne Leckie. Probably my favorite science fiction books. Good space opera but also strong and sophisticated social commentary. Humane and thought-provoking.
• "Murderbot" series by Martha Wells. A clever and quirky genderless android. Again--humane and socially sophisticated. Often funny.
• "Someday All this Will be Yours," by Adrian Tchaikovsky (or Czajkowski as Jamal's wife might spell it.) Over the years I've gotten very tired of time travel books until this woke me back up again. Very clever.
• "The City and The City" by China Mieville. A crime novel taking place in two cities that somehow overlap each other in time or space or dimension or something. Sounds screwy but it works. For me, Mieville is the best writer around. My favorite is "Railsea," but it mixes a lot of fantasy in with the science. Actually, all his books do.
• "Blindsight," Peter Watts. Very philosophical. We argue about consciousness a lot here. This book gave a good visceral glance at what it might be like to be intelligent but completely un-self-aware.

And so many more.

Interesting well written OP I'm Australian so forgive my somewhat tangential response, but your OP does suggest some questions to me. — Tom Storm

You were right, it is interesting and well written. It’s also complete fucking bullshit. Self-serving lying bullshit. I started laughing when he started talking about “fusionist coalitions.” And then I had to stop reading when he said “Trump is, for the most part, a pretty normal politician.” I don’t hate President Trump and I don’t think he’s a Nazi. What I do think is that he’s a very bad president and bad hollow man.

Here is the OP’s big lie— since the late 60s and early 70s, the Republican party has a self-consciously and cynically set out to split American society along racial and social lines in order to gain political advantage. What we see now is the end product of that disgusting, intentional strategy.

That’s all I’ll have to say in this thread. I don’t think I could hold my lunch down to say anything else or to listen to any more of the lies. Of course OP has the right to say these things and what he’s written doesn’t violate any of the site guidelines as far as I know. Still, this discussion is a blight on the forum.

I would make a prediction, but, since I’m always wrong, I won’t.

they really don't have anywhere else to go in the short term. And the US will realise that they can't take on the world on their own after all, so my guess is they will find a way to make it work, at least for now. — ChatteringMonkey

You have more faith in rational self interest than I do. Even if NATO continues going forward for now, that doesn’t mean it isn’t already being dismantled as an effective force.

I don’t want to distract from the main subject of this thread, but does any of this really matter? Strikes me that the really big deal is Trump‘s dismantling of NATO, leaving Europe to face Russia alone, and making the world a much more dangerous place. Are there any consequences in Latin America that come anywhere close to that?

Oddly, enough, as a (panen)theist, I actually agree that 'things' arise thanks to a rational mind that is able to distinguish, classify 'things' etc. However 'we' are not responsible for that differentiation.
Also, if 'our' minds are responsible for differentiation, how could we arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated (?) world? — boundless

I don't think what the Taoists call "the 10,000 things," i.e. the multiplicity of the world, arise only from rational thought. Our minds are doing a lot we are not fully aware of. I am strongly drawn to the idea we are all subject to human nature--both ours as human beings and our own as individuals. Taoists call this "Te." As I understand it, our human nature includes a structured mind that limits and directs us to a particular relationship with, particular knowledge of, the world, including a particular division of the Unity, whatever you call it, into the vast universe of things we find ourselves in.

If that's right, or at least plausible, I don't understand why we still can't "arise as distinct beings from an undifferentiated world."

This is very similar to Ven Nagarjuna's views (however, Nagarjuna would perhaps disagree that what remains after 'erasing' objectiification is the 'Tao'*): — boundless

Interesting. I had never heard of Nagarjuna. So, what is left after objectification? The Tao is also known as non-being and is often not considered a thing at all.

The philosophy I am most drawn to isTaoism, but I have been surprised to find how common ideas such as this are found in many different philosophies—both eastern and western.

A thought-provoking OP. Here are some of the thoughts it provoked.

the world comes into existence only with the "first eye that opens." — Wayfarer

You and I are both familiar with this way of thinking about the world, reality. Lao Tzu wrote:

Tao that can be spoken of,
Is not the Everlasting Tao.
Name that can be named,
Is not the Everlasting name.

Nameless, the origin of heaven and earth;
Named, the mother of ten thousand things.
Non-being, to name the origin of heaven and earth;
Being, to name the mother of ten thousand things. — Lao Tzu - Excerpt from Verse 1 of the Tao Te Ching. Ellen Marie Chen translation

For Lao Tzu it is naming--something human consciousness does--that brings the world into existence. It arises up out of non-being and into being.

The "pre-history" objection baldly states that there was a time before any observers existed, and that this fact alone is sufficient to show that mind cannot be fundamental. But what is taken for granted in this conjecture, without any real argument, is that temporal succession itself - "earlier", "later", "before", "after", and "duration" - is real independently of perspective. — Wayfarer

If we accept what Schopenhauer and Lao Tzu were saying, doesn't the inconsistency you've identified disappear? If consciousness is needed for all of reality to exist, doesn't the "pre-history objection" become irrelevant without us ever having to bring time into the matter at all?

A lot of open doors being kicked in and unremarkable conclusions being drawn. None of them particularly offensive, but from a team of 12 experts I would expect more - especially given the annual funding Brookings receives. — Tzeentch

I don’t disagree, but I appreciate that it was the only article I could find that didn’t just focus on the wild mismatch between the Venezuelan and US militaries.

An interesting Brookings institution evaluation of the US operations in Venezuela. I generally trust the Brookings Institution more than a lot of other voices and the evaluation includes individual analysis from 12 commentators with very different attitudes.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/making-sense-of-the-us-military-operation-in-venezuela/

The OP doesn't want to discuss this topic further, so I am out from this thread. Thank you. — Corvus

Although I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

The OP doesn't want to discuss this topic further, so I am out from this thread. Thank you. — Corvus

No. I said I don’t want to discuss it further now. I didn’t say I minded if someone else does.

I don't see a point starting a new OP for it. It would be redundant and there wouldn't be much new material in it. — Corvus

I am not interested in participating in a discussion on this at the moment.

Sure, so I thought we could discuss on the meaningfulness of "absolute presuppositions" in critical way. The content of the absolute presuppositions seem very much metaphysical in nature anyway. — Corvus

As I indicated, I don’t think this is the correct threat for that discussion. If you want to start a new one, I will participate.

Knowledge sounds too subjective and loose. Science is a rigorous subject which pursues verified truth on reality and universe. My knowledge on Astronomy is rudimentary. I wouldn't say it has much to do with Science. — Corvus

Are you saying astronomy isn’t science? We’ve had discussion here before about what’s included in science and what isn’t. They’re never very fruitful.

You haven't answered my main question to you yet. — Corvus

That’s true. This thread is about identifying the absolute presuppositions of pre-1905 modern science, not justifying the value of metaphysics. If you want to start a new thread on that, I will participate.

Science and Metaphysics are the subjects which pursue truth. — Corvus

I don’t see it that way. Science looks for knowledge—not the same as truth. And as Collingwood wrote:

Metaphysics is the attempt to find out what absolute presuppositions have been made by this or that person or group of persons, on this or that occasion or group of occasions, in the course of this or that piece of thinking.

I still don't see an argument that supports a conclusion that any particular metaphysics or presupposition is needed in order to do science. — Janus

Clearly, I disagree, although many people feel is you do.

Now, I generally question the veracity of '[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy'. So, in so doing, am I engaging in pseudo-metaphysics? I'm pretty sure that's how Banno would see it. — Wayfarer

I don’t think so. If you were asking whether or not, it’s true, perhaps. But you don’t have to do that in order to reject it. You can just say it doesn’t work. It’s not the right approach to take here.

Beyond that, I don’t think Collingwood was taking a position on what absolute presuppositions were the best in particular situations.

His point about metaphysics is that it is not primarily concerned with being qua being, in the traditional sense. Rather, each school of physical science operates against a background of absolute presuppositions that shape what counts as an admissible question or explanation within that science. ' — Wayfarer

Yes, I think that’s right. I’m gonna put this from Collingwood in again. I’m pretty sure I posted it earlier in this thread. It really clarified things for me. I think it shows that an absolute preposition is nothing exotic or mystical. It’s something straightforward that we deal with every day.

[quote="T Clark;1032677"Ithem--"[An absolute presupposition] is a thing we take for granted in [our thinking]. We don't question it. We don't try to verify it. It isn't a thing anybody has discovered, like microbes or the circulation of the blood. It is a thing we just take for granted." [/quote]

@Corvus
I've been rethinking this exchange between us. I think I jumped on it to quickly.

I feel that Metaphysics must investigate the presuppositions for their truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable, and then present them to Scientific inquiries as the preliminary foundation for their embarking the researches and experiments and coming to establishing Scientific laws and principles, and further hypothesis on the subject of their inquiries.
— Corvus

Your understanding of metaphysics is different from Collingwood’s and mine. Or at least my understanding of Collingwood’s understanding.

For that reason, Metaphysics is the central and critical part of Science. Science must not accept what is listed as "absolute presuppositions" without critical analysis and investigation into them before finding out on their truth and validities.
— Corvus

This is not how I see it. — T Clark

Yes, investigating absolute presuppositions is a worthwhile exercise. That's what we are doing here in this thread and what happens all the time on the forum. @Wayfarer is a strong voice for a non-physicalist approach. I tend to be somewhere in the middle, seeing the value of both physicalist and non-physicalist approaches. There are many others here I would call committed physicalists.

The difference for me is that the standard that gets applied is not "truth, falsity, unknowns and borders with knowable", it's usefulness--The fruitfulness of the work that is performed under it's banner.

There is only a contradiction because you don’t accept the possibility that mental processes can be understood in terms of physical, chemical, biological, and neurological processes.
— T Clark

I’m not denying that acts of reasoning are reliably correlated with physical, biological, and neurological processes. I’m denying that logical relations themselves—validity, necessity, entailment—can be reduced to physical causation. — Wayfarer

I didn’t mean what I said as criticism and I don’t discuss my relationship with my children in neurological terms. The message I get from Collingwood is that you choose your metaphysical and epistemological tools based on the specific work you’re trying to complete. I can be a physicalist when I want to do cognitive science and an idealist when I want to go out to lunch with my kids.

The point is, it's a glaring contradiction:

[1] We live in an ordered universe that can be understood by humans.
[2] The universe consists entirely of physical substances - matter and energy.
[3] These substances behave in accordance with scientific principles, laws.
[4] Scientific laws are mathematical in nature.

If reality is wholly physical, why is it necessarily and lawfully answerable to non-physical mathematical reasoning, and why does that reasoning carry binding normative force? — Wayfarer

There is only a contradiction because you don’t accept the possibility that mental processes can be understood in terms of physical, chemical, biological, and neurological processes. You and I agree that reductionist physicalist explanations for many phenomena are limiting and misleading. You just take it significantly further than I do.

He'd then be like someone who insists on moving the bishop along a column instead of a diagonal. Yes, he can do that, but it's not what we set out to do. — Banno

I like this metaphor.

A good explanation. It's a bit like setting up the domain of discourse to only include the physical, and sticking to that rule. What we ought keep in mind is that setting up the domain of discourse is making a choice as to what we include and exclude. — Banno

Agreed. Beyond that, just because you and I might agree that absolute presuppositions are not true or false, most people probably think they are. If that happens, their understanding of how the world works could be rigid and biased.

Corvus
...Collingwood is not saying these presuppositions are true, but that they underpin the method that was, historically, adopted. Further, if we instead of treating them as metaphysical truths treat them as methodological prescriptions, their truth is irrelevant. — Banno

This discussion has been great for me. There’s a bunch of things that have been bubbling around on the back burner that got brought out in the open. That has been really helpful.

The absolute presuppositions listed in the OP are all metaphysical statements deeply contentious in nature, nothing to do with or provable by Science itself. — Corvus

Agreed—none of them are provable. But keep in mind that neither Burtt nor I claim the absolute presuppositions in the list are correct or the best ones to use. We only say they are the ones that have been used by physicists between about 1600 and 1905.

You need to explain, how the contentious metaphysical statements can be claimed as "absolute presuppositions" in science, and what benefits they would bring into science. — Corvus

I’ll say this again— for Collingwood metaphysics is the study of the absolute presuppositions that people actually used for particular purposes. What Burtt put in his book is something similar. It’s not what should be, it’s what he, a renowned, historian and philosopher of science, determined to be the case. If you want to disagree with him, that’s fine. I found his ideas interesting and convincing.

This point is not about understanding Collingwood's or your understanding of Collingwood. It is about a general rational inquiry on the issue. — Corvus

Let’s be clear. I wrote the OP. In it, I laid out my intended point for this discussion. If you want something different, have at it, but don’t tell me what I need to do.