There are (I guess) a nearly infinite number of configurations a universe could take on. Each one would be (I guess) just as likely as any other. We just happen to live in a Royal straight flush of a universe, i.e. one where human life could evolve. If it hadn’t worked out that way, there’d be nobody around to wonder, or at least nobody like us.

As for the article you linked, my understanding of what it said is that, although the universe is fine tuned, it was not tuned by something from the outside. It was tuned by itself.

Yet if one constant in the universe was off by the tiniest margin then the universe would be unstable. — kindred

By unstable I mean the universe would simply collapse after only existing for a brief amount of time. — kindred

Can you explain how you know this is true. It certainly doesn’t seem that way to me.

Yet if one constant in the universe was off by the tiniest margin then the universe would be unstable. — kindred

What does that mean—unstable? A universe with different properties would be a different universe, not an unstable one. I don’t know how the underlying principles of our universe get established, but they had to be something, right? If I deal from a deck of cards, some hand has to come up. A royal straight flush in spades is exactly as likely as a two of clubs, seven of diamonds, queen of diamonds, five of hearts, and nine of spades. Neither is anything special unless we decide that they are for our own reasons. Those reasons are not the universe’s reasons.

The way I see it there are two explanations, the naturalistic one and the divine one. And the fact that life emerged into this lifeless universe enforces my view of the latter. — kindred

As I see it, this is a complete non-sequitur.

It does not represent order but a rule. And it there’s rules there gotta be a rule maker right ? — kindred

A rule says how things have to behave. A pattern says how things do behave. The world doesn’t have to behave in any particular way, but it does behave in a particular way. I don’t see why you need a god for that.

f it’s not random then there’s an intelligent order in the universe. The ability for the universe to organise itself would imply as much. — kindred

If I climb a ladder with a ball, and I drop the ball from the top of the ladder, and it falls to the ground, I would call that non-random behavior. Does that represent intelligent order? Are you saying that any order is intelligent order? Any pattern at all requires intentional action?

So, 8 billion people x 24 hours x 500 angles. How does the video get processed? Where does it get stored? Who decides what is criminal and what isn’t? Who judges whether a particular behavior constitutes a crime?

The universe organizes itself— emergence, self catalysis, evolution, self organization. It’s not random. Some pathways have a much higher probability than others. Read up more on abiogenesis. Here’s one book that might be of interest—“What is Life?: How Chemistry Becomes Biology,” by Pross. Kind of pop sci. but made me think differently.

Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it’s not there to be got.

Nothing here solves the problem. "Do unto others" is unworkable. Not everyone agrees with other's take on that. T Clark is being far, far too simplistic. — AmadeusD

Oh, afraid to tag me. Afraid I will bring my massive intellect to bear. Slowly I turn, step-by-step, inch by inch. Niagara Falls!!

For me, morality doesn’t require codifications or prescriptive rules like this. — Tom Storm

I agree, but then “listen to your heart” isn’t really what I would call a codification.

For example, if I, personally, were a rapist or sadistic murderer--remember, I am approaching this from the deep perspective of my present self, not that hypothetical, I, who is the rapist--I would want someone to kill me. — ENOAH

Sorry, this is silly. Treating someone in the manner you’d like to be treated yourself means to treat them with respect and compassion in the same way any normal person would like to be treated.

Rigid over-literalness is one of the things that gives philosophy it’s deserved bad reputation.

Definitely recommended. — Jamal

A beautiful legal argument was the exam — AmadeusD

I love reading good legal arguments. They’re like the best scientific articles. Every step has to have a reason and has to connect to the steps before it. You can’t leave any steps out. I had the same feeling when I read “Origin of Species.”

Some great thoughts here. — AmadeusD

My favorite discussion on the forum by far. It used to bring tears to my eyes when I wrote and read things here.

A beautiful legal argument was the example, but one could say a beautiful proof... But once i'm in it, understanding the nuances and seeing where it lands up, I get feelings very similar to the internal non-descripts of seeing a sunset which is striking. — AmadeusD

As an engineer, I have made the argument that technical specifications and drawings are beautiful---forms of art.

Sounds fun. — Jamal

I’ll put it on my list. Give us your thoughts when you’re done.

Girl with Peaches by Valentin Serov. — javi2541997

I’m going to visit my family in Washington DC in February. When I go, I always bring gifts for my nieces, Cameron and Piper. I just went back and looked at the painting again and it really reminds me of Cameron. I think I’m going to bring a print of that for her for a present this year.

Thanks for the inspiration.

Very nice. I want to buy prints of all the paintings you show us. I remember the little girl sitting at the table with peaches.

Also, do you think that moral philosophers are motivated by control?
Without proper moral “control” in place, do you think immoral behaviours would just run rampant?
Lastly, are you including self control when you are talking about social control?“ — DingoJones

No, I don’t think moral philosophers are motivated by control.

As for the need for proper moral control— I don’t really care about immoral behaviors. What matters are behaviors that harm people and cause social disruption.

What I call morality relates to my own behavior. What do I think is the right thing to do? I guess that’s what you call self-control or conscience or what Taoists call “Te.”

Im curious how you would differentiate between social control and social responsibility. The responsibility IS the control? — DingoJones

Yes, I think this is right. Where does social responsibility come from? I can think of three sources socialization, desire to be thought well of, and an innate sense of personal responsibility. As I see it, only the last of these can be accurately called "morality."

Laws can go beyond ethics and address procedural issues. Ethics are taught in family and society. — Copernicus

The fact that not all social control is related to ethics or morality does not mean that ethics and morality are not types of social control.

I think you're confusing ethics with laws. — Copernicus

Ethics and morality are just fancy words for social control.

Laws are one kind of social control, but not the only or most common one.

If we agree that just because the majority says something doesn't make it right (in most cases, which can be mobocracy), why have we codified societal rulings on ethics and morals in our lives? — Copernicus

I’ll turn your comment around. It’s not majoritarian tyranny. It’s necessary social control to maintain societal equilibrium. That’s not to say it doesn’t squash people sometimes, but as a general matter, it’s inevitable and indispensable.

If you keep “adequate justification,” you haven’t really escaped JTB, you’ve just renamed it, and you’ve made key distinctions harder to state. — Sam26

No. It’s adequately justified belief. Truth isn’t in the equation.

Adequate justification” still presupposes a target. Adequate for action isn’t the same as adequate for knowledge. — Sam26

As I define it, adequate justification means sufficient to allow responsible decision making. So, yes. Adequate for action is the same as adequate for knowledge.

The real question isn’t JTB versus adequacy. It’s whether “adequate” stays vague, or whether you spell out the failure modes that make a belief look supported when it isn’t. — Sam26

You can make the standards for adequacy anything you want. It’s a question of risk management and liability.

Discarding JTB doesn’t remove Gettier, it relocates it. — Sam26

As I quipped previously, let’s not get into Gettier. I have strong negative feelings about the whole subject.

The “magically turns into not knowledge” worry comes from treating knowledge as if it had to be indefeasible. — Sam26

Which is exactly what JTB does. I understand you’re trying to modify it to address that issue, but I’d rather just toss the whole thing in the hopper.

We say, “I knew, given what I had,” and we also say, “I was wrong.” Those aren’t contradictions. They mark two different evaluations: what was justified at the time, and what we now know after a defeater has arrived. — Sam26

Those are fine things to say. So why do we need all the JTB trappings—with or without U. What I want to do is focus on the important part of the JTB formula—J. Adequate justification is what’s needed. It’s the best we can do. What does adequate mean? It depends mostly on the consequences of being wrong.

That's also why my guardrails matter. They're not demanding absolute certainty. They're making explicit the constraints we already use to separate knowledge from lucky success and from fragile support. Defeater screening, in particular, is not a demand to foresee every possible
counterexample. It's the ordinary discipline of not ignoring live alternatives and known failure modes. — Sam26

You talk about this with really different language than I do. That’s why I stopped participating in this discussion. As I said, I don’t want to try to make JTB work, I want to discard it entirely.

divorced from this wider thread's discussion (i guess) this seems a bit odd for me. — AmadeusD

I think you're right. If you look back at my first couple of posts in this thread, you can see it wasn't clear to me whether my input would contribute or distract from the OP's intended direction. When it became clear my thoughts weren't contributing, I dropped out of the discussion.

I don't think certainty is in play) then that fundamentally changes what we consider action-guiding information and the traditional concept of knowledge is lost. I have no intuitive problem with this, but it seems, like many problems, an attempt to semantically reduce an intractable. — AmadeusD

I think that's backwards. You call it "the traditional concept of knowledge," but it doesn't match how normal, everyday people use the word in their normal, everyday lives. Everyone knows we can't be absolutely sure of what we know before we act. So we do the best we can. In that context, JTB implies that every time anyone has made a mistake in the past what was knowledge then magically turns into not knowledge now. That means that "knowledge" is meaningless, valueless, pointless. That's the only intractable I can think of--the impossibility of knowing whether I know something. And it's not really intractable, it's just silly.

And don't get me started on Gettier.

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.