When can we be said to know something, and how should we reliably construct and justify beliefs? — Cidat

To me, Justified True Belief, including the Gettier problems, shed no light on how people actually come to know things. What follows is something I wrote in a recent thread on pragmatic epistemology. It isn't a very popular view, but I thought I'd add it to the discussion.

For me, my experience as an environmental engineer lays the groundwork for how to see knowledge. You start with data - unprocessed observations, measurements, counts, photographs, and recordings. The data is then processed to be put in a more usable form, e.g. tabulation, graphing, and statistical analysis, what we call information. Information does not become knowledge until it has been further processed to be put in the context of a conceptual model of conditions of interest. Conceptual models are not true or false, they are accurate or inaccurate.

This is a simplified description of a more complex process, but I think it gets the point across. The process described is iterative. Development of a conceptual model raises new questions, which sends us back to the beginning of the process.

In a similar manner, Philosophers have developed a different vocabulary (thoughts, feelings, cognition, reason) for describing the Mind, from that of scientists analyzing the Brain (see image below). :yum: — Gnomon

I haven't had much luck getting my point across on this issue, so I plan to start a new thread soon to discuss a broader application of my understanding in this area, but focused on the scientific hierarchy.

I haven't been following this thread, but I read something I thought people might be interested in. It's an article by Andrew Bacevich, one of my favorite writers - a strongly antiwar conservative who says harsh things about America's foreign policy under all the recent presidents. He writes well and reasons well.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ukraine-invasion-nothing-compared-iraq-afghanistan/

there is no way to prove whether or not this could be the case. — Benj96

I fail to see what difference "Last Thursdayism" makes. — 180 Proof

I'm with 180 Proof. I there is no way to determine whether a proposition is true or false, even in principle, then it is meaningless. Another example is the existence of the multiverse associated with one interpretation of quantum mechanics. It may also be true of string theory, although I guess that is still an open question.

Good post. I can't judge if it's an accurate representation of Schopenhauer's positions, but it's clear and well-written. I've never been able to figure out what he was saying, but then again, I never tried too hard.

Welcome to the forum.

No, you'll notice I attempt to empirically describes things that are true, while you do nothing. Metaphysical claims are not falsifiable by science, but that does not mean that metaphysical claims that contradict science directly, as is often how you and your pals operate, are going to be permitted intellectually. — Garrett Travers

Your post didn't respond to what I wrote. My assertions are 1) Reductionism is a metaphysical position 2) You are a reductionist 3) Metaphysical positions are not verifiable by empirical means 4) You attempt to verify reductionism by empirical means in many of your arguments.

Materialism is a metaphysical position concerning ontology, and so it cannot be answered by empirical means in virtue of its very nature. So science cannot falsify or verify materialism: in fact, materialism is not a scientific hypothesis: it is a philosophical one.
— Kuro

A very astute point, my friend. — Garrett Travers

Reductionism, your favored approach to knowledge, is also a metaphysical position, but you attempt to justify it empirically all the time.

it's clear that micrsocopes were the X factor. — Agent Smith

I was following up on this and came across a discussion of Louis Pasteur's work, which took place at roughly the same time as Snow's. Pasteur did use microscopes extensively.

Materialism is a metaphysical position concerning ontology, and so it cannot be answered by empirical means in virtue of its very nature. So science cannot falsify or verify materialism: in fact, materialism is not a scientific hypothesis: it is a philosophical one.

This goes for idealism, dualism, et. cetera. None of these are the kind of theses that can truly interact with empirical investigation. — Kuro

You will find that many disagreements here on the forum center around the misunderstanding you describe. When you're talking ontology and epistemology, many becomes most. The fact that metaphysical positions have no truth value is something I've argued many times here without convincing anyone.

Welcome to the forum.

it's clear that micrsocopes were the X factor. — Agent Smith

I don't think it's clear at all. John Snow is known as the father of epidemiology. His main claim to fame is that he traced a cholera epidemic in London in 1854 to a specific contaminated well. His methods were observational - he mapped occurrences of cholera and determined they centered around the well. He solved the problem by removing the handle from the well. No microscopes involved.

Do you have specific information that shows a connection?

How are Enlightenment values not Romantic values? — Athena

Sorry, forgot to respond.

When I think of Enlightenment, I think of reason. When I think of Romanticism, I think of feelings and ideals. Maybe I've got that wrong.

We're talking about the same thing, but using different terminology. — Gnomon

No, unless when we're talking about what kind of pie to have, we want to talk about the hypanthium, endocarp, and mesocarp of the pome.

Brain function is just as illusory as mental function.
— T Clark

I'd be interested to know what you mean. I would take "brain function" to include for example patterns of neurons firing, and "mental function" to include for example me thinking now about what I'm going to write.

Neither of those is illusory. But perhaps you meant something different. — Daemon

I don't consider either brain function or mental function illusory. They are both useful ways of thinking and talking about human experience and behavior. Garrett Travers seems to believe that mental function is illusory. The point I was trying to make is that, if mental function is illusory, then brain function is too.

It's a question of level of organization. Saying that mental phenomena are fully explained by neurological phenomena is the old reductionist "nothing but" argument. Another example would be to say that biological phenomena are nothing but chemical phenomena. If you want to apply that standard comprehensively, then all phenomena are nothing but interactions between sub-atomic particles. At some level that's true, but it is not a very useful way of trying to understand the world.

You can feel free to convey that information and we'll have a look. — Garrett Travers

No thanx.

As I understand your point, you are drawing a distinction between a scientific model and a philosophical representation. — Gnomon

No, I'm talking about different levels of organization. When we talk about the nervous system, we talk about neurons and synapses. When we talk about the mind, we talk about thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. They're not the same thing whether we talk about them scientifically, philosophically, or just in an everyday manner.

No, if you read my post, you'll notice that my specific assertion was that brain functions are mental functions and psychological phenomena. There's no difference. — Garrett Travers

As I indicate, I disagree.

No, we shouldn't. We should be talking about the systems that produce these phenomena at the macroscopic level where they exist and abide by the laws of classical and relative mechanics. QM doesn't have a single place here in this conversation. And using quanta to derail discussions of science is not an approach that I'll be entertaining. — Garrett Travers

You've misunderstood my argument. Don't worry about it. I don't think we have anything else to discuss.

That's precisely what it would indicate. That doesn't mean that thoughts 'aren't' something else, technically speaking. But, what exactly is on offer to describe what we think thoughts 'are,' technically speaking? If we know the brain gives rise to them, and we know executive function includes memory retrieval, pattern-recognition, and conceptual abstractions from recurrent data feedback loops, then it stands to reason that what we 'think' are thoughts, conceptually, are actually just neural computations that are being recognized and stored in memory, patterns, and recurrent analysis. Which would be 100% consistent with all known data on the subject. What's your postulate? — Garrett Travers

By your standard, talking about neurological phenomena as an explanation for mental processes is just as futile than talking about psychological phenomena. To get to the real answer, technically speaking, we should be talking about quantum mechanics and particle physics. Brain function is just as illusory as mental function.

It would just look like what modern neuroscience tells us it does. Current research suggests, and I mean all of it suggests, that consciousness is produced via the operation of 80 billion neurons across all of the sophisticated structures of the human brain, with a particular emphasis on the operations of the dorsolateral prefrontal, orbitofrontal, and medial prefrontal cortices. This network conducts operations in symphony with the main-brain and emotional processessing networks, which generally have pathways to the rest of the brain, to produce metacognitive functions such as:

"the ability to anticipate the consequencesof behavior, self-awareness, the temporality of behavior (i.e., understanding andusing time concepts), controlling cognition (metacognition), working memory,abstraction, problem solving, and similar complex intellectual processes." — Garrett Travers

I don't disagree that the processes you describe, or some like them, are the source of mind. That's different than saying that they are mind. The processes that make up the source of life are chemical, but biology is not chemistry. When I talk about mind, I talk about thoughts, emotions, knowledge, imagination, perception.... Just because I can pinpoint the locations in the brain that light up when I do those things, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

This assumes that mind resides outside the neurons, like temperature resides outside particles. — EugeneW

Temperature is a property of a large group of particles. A parallel would be if mind is a property of a large group of neurons. I'm not sure what to say about that. Mind is not a property, it's an entity, a phenomenon. Can you expand?

Emergence is not a fundamental. Interaction is an epiphenomenon. — EugeneW

"Epiphenomenon" is not a word I've used. I looked up the definition, it has several related ones. This is the one that seems most relevant to this discussion - "A phenomenon which is secondary to another or others; a phenomenon which is a sort of by-product in no wise affecting other phenomena." Is that different from an emergent phenomenon? I'm not sure.

There is always a problem with discussions of consciousness. People don't define exactly what they mean. Two choices, 1) self-awareness or 2) experience, i.e. what things feel like. There are other possibilities. From what you've written, I think you mean #2. Is that correct.

Consciousness appears to be something we can only observe from the inside. It is private. It has to be private — lorenzo sleakes

I don't think this is true. I am observing your consciousness right now by reading what you have written. I'll let you observe mine - I am sitting in my living room. I see a brown reclining chair with leather cushions made in a pseudo-mission style. It's old, so the leather is cracked and discolored.

if consciousness is merely a by-product of physical processes then it cannot ever have any independent effect back to the physical world and therefore it cannot be detected or measured in any way. — lorenzo sleakes

I don't understand the logic of this.

No theory of a purely epiphenomenal mind can ever be tested. — lorenzo sleakes

As I've indicated, I don't think this is true.

Physicalism settled the matter definitively: diseases are caused by microbial invasion of the body. Evidence poured in from all the research labs in the world via microscopes. — Agent Smith

This is an oversimplification. Microscopes were invented in the early 1600s, but the germ theory of disease didn't become prevalent till the middle 1800s.

If I were a medical scientist back before microscopes were invented, I could have, with luck and imagination, hypothesized a purely physical explanation for diseases/illnesses thus: there exists disease/illness-causing agents that are too small for the eyes to see. In other words, before I actually discover the physical nature of sickness, I can construct a hypothesis of their physical nature. IE I have a picture of, I have an idea of, how illnesses could be physical. — Agent Smith

Scientists in ancient Greece and India hypothesized organisms or other factors too small to be seen as the source of diseases.

What would a physicalist explanation of mind look like? — Agent Smith

I think some clarification is needed. When people usually talk about this subject, they are talking about the experience of mind, or mind as experience. If, on the other hand, you are just talking about the mind as a mental process, I think the answer is pretty simple. Mind in that sense is an emergent property that arises from the interaction of the behaviors of neurons and other elements of the nervous system and other bodily systems.

Since I’m such a failure, why don’t you go start a successful thread so I can see what one looks like. — Joe Mello

Here's a link to one of my favorite threads in my time on the forum. Take a look and you'll be able to see how real, amateur, collegial philosophy is done.

Can this art work even be defaced? — Bitter Crank

So people who are satisfied with their lives say such things to others as you do here to us? — baker

Apparently.

You and ShowpanhourI called me a liar. Fekyez both.

Interesting. Thanks.

One can be a singing and writing painting counselor, visiting college in between running around from girl to girl, teach in the evenings, and build body in the weekends. While experiencing God. — EugeneW

I'm sure that's true, but I wonder if you can experience God while bragging about how wonderful you are and gloating about how much better you are than other people.

Yes, Joe. In the brief time we've known you, we've learned that you're quite a guy. Sorry, @Tom Storm, I couldn't stop myself.

I have a degree in Philosophy, and a Graduate Degree in Professional Writing. — Joe Mello

I spent five years in a Catholic Monastery — Joe Mello

After 7 years as a mystic letting God do the talking, and acquiring a scholastic education at the same time, belief became knowledge, and the mystery became truth. — Joe Mello

I was a counselor for 12 years, so I was a therapist for 12 years. — Joe Mello

But only a scholastically trained philosopher has become philosophically advanced in learning how to think. — Joe Mello

have the philosophical clarity to think profoundly and without personal prejudices in the third degree of abstraction. — Joe Mello

All I did was spend years learning to understand it, and years seeing how every new scientific discovery only supported it and never refuted it. — Joe Mello

I sacrificed years to come to a knowledge and love of God. — Joe Mello

this baptism is a special gift God gives to those of us he desires to be close to. And close to God is where I have been ever since. — Joe Mello

I have spent decades experiencing God — Joe Mello

a scholastically trained academic — Joe Mello

To be truly philosophically adept takes talent and an openness that are both extremely rare. — Joe Mello

A truly disciplined and talented intellect — Joe Mello

disciplined and talented — Joe Mello

a great lover — Joe Mello

an amazing person who has spent a lifetime becoming skilled in something. — Joe Mello

I have been a professional painter for over 40 years and painted my first house 55 years ago. This summer, I painted a cape by myself in 6 hours. My business is more than half commercial, and I painted a long hallway in Titleist last month surrounded by people, and I organized the whole thing like a ballet, so no one got in each other's way. So, I really can't learn much from other painters. Maybe something, but not much. — Joe Mello

an academic with a Philosophy degree — Joe Mello

Oh, and I'm a vocalist. Sang Zeppelin in the 70s with a rock band called Mordor, and Prince in the 80s with a funk band called Chill Factor. And I love singing Frank Sinatra and Teddy Pendergrass today. — Joe Mello

I have a Graduate degree in Professional Writing — Joe Mello

philosophically trained mind — Joe Mello

When I was 24, I was a painter with a high paying job, 5 girlfriends, a sports car, and a bodybuilder running 10 miles 3 times a week. — Joe Mello

great adventurers — Joe Mello

I spent a decade on Sam Harris’ atheist forum and had only one personal thread that I was allowed to go on. The Administrator kept closing it down and starting a new one with derogatory titles, like The Dump and The Jar. All these threads became the most popular by hundreds and hundreds of pages. Then he shut down the forum and moved it to the old forum where it all began, and didn’t invite me, despite me having the most popular thread on that forum too. And now only about a half dozen posters go there once in a great while. — Joe Mello

I do have a Graduate degree in English and taught high school, — Joe Mello

You've done a good job providing strong arguments against GT's position.

Note that this short thread is four years old. I don't remember it at all. I don't think I have anything to add.

Maybe better: the particle moves in the wave. So a particle remains a particle, tough not an ordinary one. Surrounded by a mysterious wave. So particle and wave together! — EugeneW

If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, knock yourself out.

So not both at the same time. Which seems the most logical. When you describe the wave, you don't see the particle and vice versa. — EugeneW

If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that, knock yourself out.

lol. Be sure to observe the quotes I left from those journals just below your comment. In short, my position is reinforced by data, yours by opinion. — Garrett Travers

To repeat - none of the articles you linked to say anything about reason as the source of human values, no matter how ol you l.

So, the pfc's function, how the brain differentiates between data signals, and the recuurent neural networks that integrate data have no relevance... Gotcha. — Garrett Travers

The subject on the table is whether the source of human values is based on reason. You say yes. I say no. The articles you linked to have nothing to say about that.

Are you deliberately choosing not to read? Here, let me help. And remember, I said the conditions were that we do this right, no bullshit. So, let's not beat around the bush.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927039/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2017.00007/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/prefrontal-cortex#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20plays,prospective%20memory%2C%20and%20cognitive%20flexibility.

Start with these, it's a process of understanding what is happening with the brain. Much more where these come from. — Garrett Travers

I took a quick look. I didn't see anything applicable to the questions we are discussing.

We're not getting anywhere. I think we've carried this discussion as far as we can.

In your experience (accrual of data), values are not conceptual understandings (a conceptual understanding derived from data). You just contradicted yourself. — Garrett Travers

Now you're just being silly.

The proposition has remained entirely unaddress by anything other than simple opinion that isn't consistent with any modern scientific understanding of nature. — Garrett Travers

I have gone back through all of your posts in this thread and I didn't find any reference to specific sources or references which would provide evidence about a "modern scientific understanding of nature" and how it relates to your position. You are just performing "seems to me" philosophy. I acknowledge I am doing the same, but I haven't made the type of definitive claims you have.

values are abstractions from data. Anything you use as a conceptual understanding of anything at all, is an abstraction from sensory data you developed, or was passed on to you. All conceptual abstractions are used to inform behavior. I'd start with recurrent neural networks if I were you. — Garrett Travers

In my experience, values are not conceptual understandings at all. As @Tom Storm points out, we can talk about them rationally, but that doesn't mean they developed that way.

If you have references that support your point of view, I'd be interested in seeing them.

Why do you not agree with the Wikipedia definition of the Enlightenment? — Athena

Where did I say I don't agree with it? I'm confused by your whole post. All I said is that Enlightenment values are not Romantic values.

You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.
— T Clark

No, I think that our only means of actually surviving in the world relies on it. That was the premise.

I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice?
— T Clark

Exclusively. — Garrett Travers

In your first response you say that our primary motivations are not based on reason. In the next one, you say you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice. I was using motivation as a near synonym for values. Maybe that's not how you see it.

Most people don't.
— T Clark

That's the problem. — Garrett Travers

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I disagree.

Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight.
— T Clark

This is different. Humans are an altricial species with a rearing period of about 20 years or so. It takes them a long time to develop their rational faculties. Love of family needs to be a rational choice if it can be determined through development that such people are antithetical to one's own happiness. That comes in time. — Garrett Travers

Mothers love babies before they're born. Parents don't decide to love their children for rational or any other reason, they just do. It's built into us. I tell you this as a father. There is no rationality behind my feelings for my children.

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason.
— T Clark

That's exactly what I said. Reason is where values come from, even if they've been passed on to you. — Garrett Travers

I think that's true of very few people. It certainly isn't true of me.

And cognitively there is no evidence to suggest that our values are not abstractions we develop from recurrent neural networks of sensory data constantly being processed and vetted for interests and pursuits, and thereby the data that is accrued from those interests and pursuits. — Garrett Travers

I'll say it again, this is not how I experience things. For me, and I think most people, values aren't abstractions at all. They are motivations for action we may or may not be aware of.

1) We have many means of survival. Our mental processes are only one. 2) I don't think it's correct to characterize human mental processes as primarily associated with reason.
— T Clark

What would it be then? What allows you to do anything? You'll need to expand this beyond internal confusion. — Garrett Travers

This is an appropriate subject for a thread of its own. There have been many on the forum.

You apparently believe that our primary motivations are based on reason. That seems like a completely unsupported and unsupportable contention. I think the ball is in your court to justify your claim.

I think the claim that we develop our values through our conceptual faculty of reason is incorrect.
— T Clark

Cool, explain. Where do we get our values if not from ourselves? Saying other people will simply just mean that reason constructed values that have been passed on to us. It will be the same process. So, where? — Garrett Travers

I guess I'll turn this around - do you really claim you value the things you do because you used reason to consider them and made a rational choice? Most people don't. Children love their mothers before they have any significant capacity for reason. Love of family is not a rational choice, although you can justify it rationally in hindsight. I'll say it again, your position is unsupported and unsupportable.

I think one of humanity's primary values results from our social nature. We value other people. We have empathy.
— T Clark

And only in the society described above can such values be freely expressed. These are not incompatible, but complimentary. — Garrett Travers

Perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you, speaking for Rand, were saying that our values were developed through reason. As I said, I disagree with this. If, instead, you were saying that we use our reason to express our values, I'll at least agree that it is one of the facilities we use to do so, not the only one and not the primary one.

I am heading out now and won't be back for a few hours.

Yo, Clark, no well-poisoning. The deal was, we were going to actually do this, and not act like a bunch of PhD's who have never taken a logic course. — Garrett Travers

Perhaps that was your deal, but you are not the original poster. I think my post was in the spirit of the original post. I also think it's reasonable for me to make my disdain for Rand clear.

That being said, I don't plan to interfere with your plan to have a reasonable discussion of Rand's ideas. See my previous post.