So do you see an individual, even if she's not aware of it, as essentially doing science all the time? That is, as having a working theory that produces predictions and directs the acquisition of new data via sense experience? Is that the force of "springs from"? — Srap Tasmaner

Indeed.

And yes, I am all for empiricism. When combined with rationalism, it makes for good science.
— Olivier5

That sounds to me like you have something to say that for reasons I can't fathom you've chosen not to say. — Srap Tasmaner

My reasons are that empirical observation springs from reason, is framed by reason, and comes back to reason when analysed. So when blended with a fair dose of rationalism, empiricism makes sense. When it doesn’t make sense is when it claims to be the sole fount of knowledge, as others have pointed at.

Historically, English-speaking philosophers have borrowed heavily from Latin, Greek, Arabic, German and French writers. And that’s a fact. Vice versa, English speaking philosophers have influenced what the Brits call, comically as well, ‘continental philosophy’. I like how it sounds like a type of breakfast...

And yes, I am all for empiricism. When combined with rationalism, it makes for good science.

As has been pointed out already, Luther was rabidly antisemitic and his teaching is probably one of the factors that ultimately led to the Holocaust. The Catholics at the time used it against him: they painted him as a dangerous firebrand by pointing at his antisemitism.

the crown jewel of English-language philosophy — Srap Tasmaner

I find the idea of an ‘English language philosophy’ amusing, as if philosophical ideas were chauvinistic, or unfit for translation.

I've got one in my backyard. It's infinitely small — Metaphysician Undercover

Does it help reduce cleaning cost?

It seems that Craig is following Hilbert (and others) on this, which is to make a distinction between the mathematical idea of infinity, which he accepts, and its existence in nature, which he rejects. — Andrew M

Well if all they wanted to say is that hotels with an infinite number of rooms cannot exist outside of our imagination, I could have spared them the effort: they don’t exist for obvious reasons of lack of feasibility. Like where would you put them?...

Maybe discussions on the internet are failing because people want them to fail.

They are perhaps a pair of fundamentalist christian theologians. 'nough said. — Banno

Mmmmmokay..... <:mask:

Whoever Craig and Mooreland are, they might wish to take a college-level course in mathematics. There’s no paradox that I can see here, only a metaphor for some bijections from N to a subset of N.

I don't know how it will pan out for the UK, but 1) my money has been on a no deal Brexit from day one, on account of the blatant incompetence and bad faith of the UK side; 2) I think Brexit is a chance for the EU to reform and improve, so as a European, I take it as a blessing in disguise.

Maybe I was overly dramatic. Some concepts are easier to fathom than others. They can be pointed at, envisaged from different angles, apprehended to some degree through wit and poetry and even in philosophy, at least by philosophers not afraid to use their right brain.

And then the master:

An interesting cover of Go Down Moses:



Armstrong, I'm not black - Armstrong, je ne suis pas noir
For my skin is white - Je suis blanc de peau
When one wants to sing about hope - Quand on veut chanter l'espoir
What a lack of luck! - Quel manque de pot !
Yes, I can see the sky, the bird - Oui, j'ai beau voir le ciel, l'oiseau
But nothing, nothing, nothing shines up there - Mais rien, rien, rien ne luit là-haut
Zero angels - Les anges, zéro
'Cause my skin is white - Je suis blanc de peau

Armstrong, you crack a joke - Armstrong, tu te fends la poire
We can see all your teeth - On voit toutes tes dents
Me, I'm rather in a black mood - Moi, je broie plutôt du noir
Black mood inside - Du noir en dedans
Sing for me, Louis, oh yeah - Chante pour moi, Louis, oh oui
Sing, sing, sing, it keeps me warm - Chante, chante, chante, ça tient chaud
And I'm cold, oh me - J'ai froid, oh me
Whose skin is white - Qui suis blanc de peau

Armstrong, life, what a story! - Armstrong, la vie, quelle histoire !
It's not very funny - C'est pas très marrant
Whether we write it white on black - Qu'on l'écrive blanc sur noir
Or instead black on white - Ou bien noir sur blanc
We mostly see red, red - On voit surtout du rouge, du rouge
Blood, blood, without truce or rest - Sang, sang, sans trêve ni repos
Whether one is, I guess - Qu'on soit, ma foi
Black or white of skin - Noir ou blanc de peau

Armstrong, one day sooner or later - Armstrong, un jour, tôt ou tard
We'll be just bones - On n'est que des os
Will yours be black? - Est-ce que les tiens seront noirs?
That would be fun - Ce serait rigolo
Go down, Louis, hallelujah - Allez Louis, alléluia
Under our ragged skin - Au-delà de nos oripeaux
Black and white are alike - Noir et blanc sont ressemblants
Like two drops of water - Comme deux gouttes d'eau

But this essence stuff - what does it do that is not done by being able to make use of a word? What does it explain? — Banno

It explains the existence of meaning and its elusiveness. Also the tension between what we mean (our intent) and what we say (our use). We cannot effectively express all of what we mean, sometimes. Miscommunication occurs. There’s also a loss of information in any translation between two languages, which I would find impossible to account for if language was only « use », if there was no transcendance to it in the form of a (admittedly elusive) meaning. So I find the distinction between meaning and usage important, if only to account for the occasional (frequent in fact) misalignment between them.

It was cluttering the post with useless points.

There is an essence, but it cannot be presented, examined, discussed. If that is so, what use is it? Why bother? — Banno

Not everything that matters can be expressed with words; some experiences are hard to convey through that sort of code we call a language.

E.g. a painting, and if you like it, your aesthetic emotion when looking at it, cannot be properly described by words used analytically. Only poetry can help. You’d have to be Proust to get anywhere near expressing your satisfaction at getting lost into a little patch of sublime yellow in a Wermer... It doesn’t make paintings useless. It’s a left-brain-right-brain kind of thing.

There are other experiences which point to the existence of a mental ‘hors texte’. Like the sensation of having a word ‘on the tip of your tongue’, or any other case when we are ‘at a loss for words’.

What we do have is the public record of what has been said and done with words, so if we are to reach agreement as to the meaning of a word, we must find it there. — Banno

I love dictionaries, and I like to compare different definitions from different dictionaries. No need to reinvent the wheel, it’s already been written up. Modern languages are well codified, by and large.

So what?

For me to go through this rather tedious charade, i would first need to figure out that you are trying to teach me some new game, which I don’t know how to play yet.

You can teach something to a kid, a dog or anyone else without being explicit about it. But you can’t do that with tic tac toe. Too complex.

You can also learn something new, which you didn’t know even existed before (so you were not aware that you didn’t know it), by reading the news in the morning. E.g. a new species of mollusc was discovered in someone’s backyard in New Jersey. It’s news to you, so you were not aware of it, nor even of your lack of awareness of it, until you read it. Still, you were objectively unaware of it and at that moment when you chose to read the article, you reckoned that this was something you were unaware of. Otherwise you wouldn’t have read it. Or if you had, you would not have learnt much from it (eg a few added details).

———————-

Anyway... I thought the best part of the OP lecture was its practical implication, that was left unsaid: it is very easy to derail or endlessly stall a philosophical discussion by going into ’semantics’. « Define freedom » can be used to kill any discussion about freedom. Not to say that we should never try to define the meaning of the words we use, but we should be aware that it’s impossible to do so perfectly. A good definition is always a good approximation of some unsayable, ineffable ghost of an idea that we call a concept.

That’s the best one can do: approach them. Human concepts are fuzy, relative, flexible, fluid. They are not easy to pin down. And as Pro Hominem said, that’s the beauty of them. So we shouldn’t indulge in semantics too much.

Popper’s approach, spelled out in the preface to the Open Society, is: Just try and get to the level of precision in language that you need in order to solve or at least describe the problem you are talking about. It’s all a matter of what works, of what’s good enough. Because your definitions are never going to be perfect.

Nope.

Edit: other than the pure logical contradiction, or semiotic maybe: « to learn » means « to learn something new ». Like if you already know that 2+2=4, it’s impossible for you to learn it again, unless you forgot it.

What’s the incentive to learn something if you believe you already know it?

to learn how to play tic-tac-toe, do you have to know that you don't know how to play tic-tac-toe? — Srap Tasmaner

You do.

I think there’s more than correlation: there is causation. And it goes both ways, as required by the law of action-reaction.

The mind is evidently physical to a degree: it can be in pain, for instance, which often indicates a physical issue somewhere in the body, and it can direct the body to do all sorts of physical things...

If thoughts are epiphenomena, then the thought that thoughts are epiphenomena is itself an epiphenomenon, therefore it means nothing, and therefore it cannot be true. So indeed, epiphenomenalism is self-contradictory, as are most versions of materialism.

Even the concept of epiphenomenon is illogical, as it contradicts the law of reaction. If the brain can have an effect on the mind, THEN it follows necessarily that the mind can have an effect on the brain.

more and more objects will fall into the domain of every single world until there's nothing left and every word would mean every other word. — TheMadFool

This will never happen, because "in language there are only differences". Concepts don't mean anything in and by themselves. Instead, they draw their meaning from their relationship with other concepts. To quote Saussure more extensively:

"Within a given language, all words that express neighbouring ideas are mutually limiting one another: synonyms such as “to dread”, “to fear” and “to be afraid” draw their own value from their opposition; if “dread” did not exist, all its content would go to its competitors."

-- Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de Linguistique Generale
https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Cours_de_linguistique_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale/Deuxi%C3%A8me_partie

Similarly in a system of weights and measures, each unit is defined by its relationship with other units rather than as something in and by itself (e.g. a centimetre is one hundredth of a metre). Or in economy, a currency's value is defined in relation to other currencies, or in relation to its purchasing power for goods such as food. "One dollar" has no value in and by itself, it has only an exchange value.

Wittgenstein's idea of language games depends on minor misuse of words being considered proper usage and since we've demonstrated that that leads to, as per the sorites/heap paradox, a situation where all words will have the exact same extension viz. the entire universe itself, something unacceptable, it follows that minor misuse can't be considered proper usage and ergo, Wittgenstein's language game concept has no leg to stand on, is not true. — TheMadFool

Wittgenstein was dull. His ideas are always half-cooked. You should study actual linguists instead, like Saussure. He would help you understand that concepts are connected with one another through contrast, differences, nuances, such as the nuance between stool and chair, and that when we define concepts, we often must demarcate them from nearby concepts.  

« In language, there are only differences. »

We can easily point to the difference between a stool and a chair: a stool is higher, meant for the sitter’s eyes to be more or less at the same high than someone standing. In other words, a stool is for sitting while still being able to talk to a person standing next to you, without having her towering over you. A chair is lower because it is meant (generally) to sit comfortably at a table.

So I can easily demarcate chair from stool, and explain the demarcation to eg a child. That’s a sort of negative definition: « a chair is NOT a stool ». That’s how I can recognise a chair when I see one: i can understand the fence of the concept, its limits. What is much harder if not impossible, is to define positively the essence of a chair.

I still think there is such a thing as the essence of a concept, in our mind, but these essences remain forever elusive, intuitive, almost impossible to express precisely. There are literally beyond words, because (IMO) they are the basis for words.

He does make a mention of the possibility that words could be, well, misused but that doesn't square with his belief that the word "chair" is undefinable. — TheMadFool

Not really. It can be recognisable yet undefinable. That is to say: I know a chair when I see one; so if you show me an elephant and tell me it's a chair, I can call that a misuse of the term and still not be able to define a chair perfectly.

Come closer, listen to me little boy
I will tell you the story of the human being

In the beginning there was nothing, everything was fine
Nature was going its own way and there was no path
Then man came along with his big boots
A few kicks in the face to gain some respect
He started to line out one-way roads
The arrows on the plain started to multiply
And all the elements had to witness their domestication
In a blink of an eye history took shaped
We aren’t going back anytime soon
We have even started to pollute the desert

You have to breathe — easier said than done
You're not going to die of laughter — that’s an understatement

A few years from now we will complete the process
And your grand-children will have just one eye
And they're going to ask you straight on
Why do you have two of these, you’ll look like a cunt
They will ask you why you let all this happen
And you will try in vain to explain, in a low voice
That it’s not your fault, it's your ancestors' fault
But there will be no one else to blame
You will tell them of the time when you could
Eat fruits while lying in the grass nearby
There were animals all over the forest
In the springtime the birds would return...

You have to breathe — easier said than done
You're not going to die of laughter — that’s an understatement
You have to breathe — tomorrow things will be worse
You're not going to die of laughter — that’s an understatement

The worst thing about this is that we are all slaves
And also assassins to a certain degree, incapable
To look at the trees without feeling guilty
We’ve half given up, a hundred percent miserable

So you see, little one... This is the story of the human being
It's not so nice and I don't know how it ends
You weren't born under a gooseberry bush
Rather in a hole, filled up everyday like a cesspit

Mickey 3D - Respire

Thanks. Hard to find a good poet nowadays.

thus we are not really free. Now my question is what does the absence of freedom mean for ethics and how can our actions be judged if we cannot really control them. — Leiton Baynes

I’ve read Spinoza’s ethics as well and enjoyed its brilliance, though I don’t buy the idea that there’s no such thing as human agency. But IF you buy that idea that humans are puppets to their emotions, needs, upbringing, biology etc, THEN that includes judges. They judge because they can’t do otherwise, they are programmed to judge, PERIOD.

you will have to go without a further explanation — Frank Apisa

So will you, apparently. You don’t seem quite certain about what you mean by ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ knowledge.

I suppose you mean ‘absolutely certain knowledge’ vs ‘not-100%-certain-but-close knowledge’. If that’s the case, you’re saying ’we can’t be certain of much’, or ‘we never know anything for sure’.

That’s something I tend to agree with. But precisely for this reason, I don’t equate knowledge with absolute certainty. It’s all about the shades of grey, the nuances. There is a difference between an uninformed guess and an informed one, and between an informed guess and a conclusion based on detailed analysis of available evidence.

when I say I am certain of lots of things in response to what you asked, I am speaking in the informal sense of "I know." — Frank Apisa

Do you care explaining what you see as the formal and informal senses of the verb « to know »? For me it has one meaning only.

I would even venture to say that I know you understand what I am saying here... — Frank Apisa

I do. I understand you’re trying to draw me in some sort of word game. But I am more interested in talking to you.

Nouvelle Vague - In A Manner Of Speaking



In a manner of speaking
I just want to say
That I could never forget the way
You told me everything
By saying nothing

In a manner of speaking
I don't understand
How love in silence becomes reprimand
But the way that I feel about you
Is beyond words

Oh give me the words
Give me the words
That tell me nothing
Oh give me the words
Give me the words
That tell me everything

In a manner of speaking
Semantics won't do
In this life that we live
We only make do
And the way that we feel
Might have to be sacrificed

So in a manner of speaking
I just want to say
That like you I should find a way
To tell you everything
By saying nothing

Oh give me the words, etc.

Okkervil River - The War Criminal Rises and Speaks



The heart wants to feel.
The heart wants to hold.
The heart takes past Subway,
Past Stop and Shop,
Past Beal's,
And calls it "coming home."
The heart wants a trail
Away from "alone”
So the heart turns a sale
Into a well-worn milestone
The heart wants soft furniture,
Fought-for fast food,
Defended end table that
Holds paperbacks and back U.S. News.
The mind turns an itch
Into a bruise,
And the hands start to twitch
When they're feeling ill-used.
But you're almost back now,
You can see by the signs;
From the bank you tell the temperature
And then the time,
And the billboard reads some headlines.
The head wants to turn,
To avert both its eyes,
But the mind wants to learn
Of some truth that might be
Inside reported crimes.
So they found a lieutenant
Who killed a village of kids.
After finishing off the wives,
He wiped off his knife
And that's what he did.
And they're not claiming that
There's any excusing it;
That was thirty years back,
And they just get paid for the facts
The way they got them in.
Now he's rising and not denying.
His hands are shaking, but he's not crying.
And he's saying "How did I climb
Out of a life so boring into that moment?
Please stop ignoring the heart inside,
Oh you readers at home!
While you gasp at my bloody crimes,
Please take the time
To make your heart my home:
Where I'm forgiven by time,
Where I'm cushioned by hope,
Where I'm numbed by long drives,
Where I'm talked off or doped.
Does the heart wants to atone?
Oh, I believe that it's so,
Because if I could climb back through time,
I'd restore their lives and then give back my own:
Tens of times now its size
On a far distant road
In a far distant time
Where every night I'm still crying,
Entirely alone."
But the news today always fades away as you drive by,
Until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes,
Lit by evening sun - that, as usual, comes
From above that straight, unbroken line,
The horizon
It’s rising
Seems a given,
Just like your living.
Your heart's warm and kind.
Your mind is your own.
So our blood-spattered criminal
Is inscrutable;
Don't worry, he won't
Rise up behind your eyes
And take wild control.
Se, he's not of this time,
He fell out of a hole.

I am certain of lots of things. — Frank Apisa

Good for you. The topic of the thread being ‘how do you know?’, you might wish to explain ‘how’, or in your own terms ‘how is it even possible to know anything’.

Ok so you’re at least certain of one thing.

When I say I am guessing...I AM guessing. — Frank Apisa

I thought maybe you are guessing that you are guessing. Possible?