You can’t make sense of anything without a little priming of the conceptual pump. We are born with an innate natural logic that allows us to think about our observations and draw lessons from them, as well as with a capacity to model a Euclidian space (which is why non-Euclidian geometries are counter-intuitive). — Olivier5

We've all been saying things at least a little like this in this thread. I'm not sure there's much alternative, but it also makes me a little uncomfortable.

Suppose I ask, how can a child learn to speak her native language? One answer is: the ability to learn a language is a gift from God. Maybe I find this unsatisfactory, so I keep asking. Another answer is: it is a gift from Darwin, i.e., it's how our species has evolved. But that says nothing at all: however we are is however our species evolved. Since we can demonstrably learn languages, we must have so evolved.

In the period of classic British Empiricism, the options were: (a) it's a gift from God; (b) I made it myself. We didn't have a natural process that could fill the role of the Great Bestower, though of course Hume, he of the preternatural insight, would drop a remark here and there that seems eerily to anticipate the theory of evolution by natural selection. If there is a spirit of empiricism, it's related to this:

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. — Russell

The honest toil of empiricism is to explain how we could have the conceptual apparatus we have -- objects and causes and all the rest -- without just stealing it from the gods like Prometheus. The updated version of rationalism (if we may speak this way) is just to get whatever you need from Darwin's Emporium.

Unfortunately, the middle ground is somewhat unsatisfactory: to justify, in the sense of "rationalize", reliance on evolution, we tell just-so stories of the fitness value of this and that, to make it plausible that the invisible hand would have selected for the traits we need to postulate. We can be sophisticated about this too: we can argue that what we think of as an innate ability to do such-and-such, where this seems an unlikely candidate for providing a survival benefit, is actually the repurposing of an ability originally "selected for" for quite different reasons. I like those stories, but if they're not testable, they're not hypotheses they're just stories.

Honest toil then, under this paradigm, would be restricting yourself to claims you can test. We're scientists after all. Thus if you want to claim, we can do A because there's a clearish survival value to being able to do B (which we can't test, that part remains a story), and A can borrow the mechanism that Bs, you want to test whether people who can't do A also can't do B. Neurobiologists can do some stuff like that with lesion studies, for instance: see whether people known to be unable to A turn out to be unable to B. Psychologists can also try to design experiments to test whether performing A-like tasks is related to performing B-like tasks. There's at least something like honest toil going on here.

What are the philosophers doing while all this is going on? There are always chunks of early modern philosophy, Hume being a pretty good example, that I find a bit tedious because they look a lot like armchair psychology, and we have the real thing now. I don't need Hume to figure out how memory works, say; my tax dollars are doing that, right? If we decide our role as philosophers is to "check up on" scientists, keep them honest, make sure their theories are conceptually up to snuff, we often look a bit ridiculous, like Jerry Fodor insisting that the way far too many biologists talk about evolution is insidiously circular. Mostly, they don't need us for that.

It's tempting to think the role of philosophy is to provide some goals, figure out what needs explaining. I've been tempted now and then to think of philosophy as in fact a sort of (armchair, but maybe it needn't be so) social science, a social science of reasoning. But that turns out to be economics. Kahneman and Tversky, for instance, show pretty definitively, it seems to me, that you needn't waste my tax dollars looking for the brain mechanisms that allow us innately to understand probabilities, because we don't. We suck big time at probabilistic reasoning.

What then is the role of philosophy? We can restrict ourselves to understanding the workings of System 2 -- finding our way around the conceptual apparatus we are just presented with by System 1, we know not how nor for what reasons. I like that well enough; that might be a descriptive metaphysics of the sort Strawson (and, I understand, Collingwood, and kind of everybody) advocated. But it's not clear to me, if we're going to let evolutionary psychology and cognitive science have their say, what a doctrine like empiricism has to offer. What's the point?

On my model, the disputes can be internal to one person. There are multiple options and you're not sure which to believe: how do you choose? It's the same exact problem as different people with different opinions trying to decide which if either is correct. — Pfhorrest

Hold that thought, if you would. -- I don't think we've at all given intersubjectivity its due and it's not immediately in the offing. I will say your claim that it's the "same exact problem" has not been considered very convincing over the years. Point being: doesn't matter unless we do spend some time on intersubjectivity.

Maybe creating those models is an innate feature of our brains. Maybe creating the models is subconscious. Would that fit your idea of a conceptual framework generated along empiricist lines? It seems like this formulation requires an innate capability rather than a blank slate. Can you lay out a scenario that is illustrative of your concept of a conceptual framework that is generated along empiricist lines? — flaco

Oddly enough I think I can! Maybe. (And I do think empiricism is fine with there being some inborn capacities, often reason, psychological mechanisms like "association" and memory, all that. Just no knowledge, no conceptual framework. So I think a modeling capacity in the brain is fine, so long as you're not born with a model that exceeds your experience in utero.)

This is more or less the territory I expected us to end up in, and part of what I wanted to explore was whether this sort of view is a sort of empiricism (most empiricisms also feature some sort of representational realism, for example) or if it's hostile to empiricism somehow.

I'd really like to see us begin, a little, to approach the big stuff: space, time, causality, induction, persons and objects. One of those has a particularly memorable role in the history of empiricism.

We have these two levels; the classic empiricists didn't. — Srap Tasmaner

Hume takes himself to have shown that there is, and can be, no rational justification for our reliance on induction. And then he offers his "sceptical solution": habit.

Now here we are, talking in part about stuff that System 1 gets up to that's below our level of awareness -- certainly not the result of any conscious reasoning, and we know not always conforming to our standards of rationality -- and what in particular is System 1 the home of? Habit.

So we could, without too much special pleading, look at Hume's empiricism as recognizing how System 1 grounds the conscious rational work we do in System 2. And if that's reasonable, then maybe the modern view is exactly the sort of empiricism Hume had in mind.

But is it? System 1 chugging along -- it's responsible for our model of reality right? We might be able to see how habit underwrites induction -- there would be mechanisms there honestly below my level of interest -- and maybe, maybe, maybe that gets us somewhere near causality, maybe even persons and objects, but space and time? There I hit a wall. It's not hard to see how these would be part of the model -- it's hard to see how they could not be! Or, rather, it's hard to imagine what a model even is if it doesn't just assume these. But does the model "come up" with them? I can barely make sense of the question. (And I don't remember offhand how Hume dealt with space and time!)

20 minute TED talk — flaco

I didn't even watch the talk. I don't care about Hoffman -- just an example. I brought him up because there's a lot of "Bayesian brain" talk these days.-- in other words, don't worry about it, your brain is doing math for you that you wouldn't even understand, it's got this covered. Oh, and Darwin, QED.

For me, that would be science. Formulating models. Doing experiments. And then arguing about the results with lots of people with different black boxes. Hoping for transcendence. — flaco

Yeah that's not bad at all. And you and @Pfhorrest both end up talking about resolving disputes, though Quine's model on its own has that classic me-alone-figuring-out-the-world feel. Hence radical translation and all that.

The last part you quote -- I'm just trying to see if we can tie it back to old school empiricism. We've tabled, you'll recall, the issue of where concepts and theories come from. I was just wondering if we could imagine an arrangement that feels to us like we just have this conceptual framework, but underneath it is being generated along empiricist lines. We have these two levels; the classic empiricists didn't. We've also been considering the opposite arrangement!

I'm not sure what you mean by that. — Pfhorrest

I was thinking we have competing theories. Turns out you're talking about one theory and competing hypotheses, and the whole Quine-Duhem holism underdetermination thing. All good.

I want to see what everyone else is up to, and then maybe we can talk about that some more. I also find a lot to like there.

Where are all the forum's Kantians, do you suppose?

we don't really know what's going on in that subconscious mind. I suspect that what we perceive as an instantaneous jump to a conclusion may have extensive experience and analysis underlying it. — flaco

But that lack of transparency doesn't sound much like science either. Remember a couple years ago when Donald Hoffman was pushing that "desktop" metaphor? He was arguing that this subconscious is systematically lying, because evolution would have selected for rapid threat identification and against accurate perception. Whatever the merits of his position, people can tell different stories about what's going on in the black box, and different evolutionary psychology stories about why. Do we need a way to assess these stories? What would that be?

Now what about the part we're aware of? Is it conceivable there is something like an old school blank slate empiricist agent that we experience consciously as feeding us a complete conceptual framework, already assembled, such that we might as well have been born with it?

(Your first paragraph I want to hold off on.)

Two for two!

Yes, the sample empiricism is deliberately old school.

And in the second quote I'm thinking of those types of models. But "System 1 is a machine for jumping to conclusions." That's a funny kind of science, isn't it?

That implies that the competing theoretical frameworks overlap, right?

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"?



Makes sense, not a distinction I had in mind when I asked. So how do you see the theory-ladenness of observation playing out when settling an empirical dispute?



See anything so far that sounds right or wrong to you?

I would define empiricism as the view that the correct way of adjudicating differences of opinion about what is or isn’t real is comparison to our empirical experiences. — Pfhorrest

Excellent! Thanks for actually claiming a version of empiricism you would defend.

One question -- only disputes about what is real? Or do we look to experience to settle disputes in general?

(Or would you prefer to leave it as you wrote it but with a translation manual so that all disputes are about whether something is real?)

There is some link between empiricism, a philosophical theory, and empirical science. What is that link?

Let's define an empiricism -- not the empiricism, but one of many: human beings use concepts, but they are born with no conceptual apparatus at all; therefore, a human being must be able to construct a conceptual apparatus out of the only material she has, her individual sense experience; some of this may occur naturally, through "association", say, and some of this construction is done by the use of reason, which may be inborn but only provides the tools to construct a conceptual framework, not the framework itself.

A conceptual framework is necessary to do science, but Weinstein suggests that many scientists don't do the work of building their own conceptual apparatus; instead they "borrow" an existing one. In some sense, then, they are in the position of the conceptual apparatus just being given, as if they were born with it; it is not something they have to construct. (In modern parlance, they are perhaps "externalists".)

So that's the opposite of my sample empiricism, isn't it?

But we're going to call it an "empiricism" because people working within an entirely given conceptual framework do something empirical in it.

Given the sorts of things people keep saying to me -- and what prompted this thread* -- maybe I should have just asked if

making observations = doing science = being an empiricist

* in part

I didn't define "empiricism" so everyone could put their own spin on it. I can't tell what your spin is.

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.

you may also be conflating two sense of the word empiricism — Pantagruel

Not at all. My intention was to conflate all senses of the word "empiricism".

Remember empiricism? That theory that had two remaining dogmas Quine took himself to have demolished? (And then Davidson found another worth demolishing.)

Empiricism? The theory Sellars took himself to have shown subscribed to the insidious Myth of the Given?

Verificationist theories of meaning? I recently spent an afternoon watching old Bryan Magee interviews, and there's a lovely one with Ayer where he explains what a bust that was.

What's left of empiricism? Just some vague notion that knowledge "comes from" experience? Is there any actual theory anyone's willing to defend here?

And I'm curious how people think cognitive science fits into this story. Quine was already happy to have lots of learning mechanisms wired in where classical empiricists only had "association" and that sort of thing. What does modern cognitive science say about concepts? Are any of them hard-wired? Are time and space? Is causality? Induction? Do we just point at Darwin and move on? Is there a concept-forming "organ" in the brain like Chomsky's language-learning thing?

(I'm deliberately making a hash of all this to take in as broad a swath as possible.)

My son excitedly brought me this video by Sabine Hossenfelder:

In Lost in Math, I explain why I have become very worried about what is happening in the foundations of physics. What is happening? you ask. Well, nothing. We have not made progress for forty years.

(Here's a nice review with quotes.)

Recently, there's also David Lindley's The Dream Universe: How Fundamental Physics Lost Its Way. (Curiously I read somewhere that Hossenfelder suggests physicists start collaborating with philosophers, and evidently Lindley frames his critique in terms of a resurgent Platonism. Maybe one day philosophers will start getting jobs again!)

I don't follow this stuff at all, but I know enough to know that since the beginning string theory has faced criticism that it's not even physics.

To my point in this exchange, it's clear that theory is a substantial piece of any story about how science is done.

It's not that the mathematics of myopia is wrong, it's that it results in myopic decisions and makes, for example, the interests of the environment, impossible to implement. — unenlightened

I have a lazy amateur's knowledge of game theory, but I do know there's a substantial literature on the tragedy of the commons -- part of the story of how we got in this mess -- and on the stag hunt, which is about getting people to forego a little individual short-term gain for a much larger collective long-term gain.

Just a little game theory could have been part of the solution. Of course, no one was interested because that would mean giving up a little (okay, in some cases a hell of a lot of) individual short-term gain. Catch-22. That's not the fault of game theory; it's the tragic impulse game theory might have helped us tame, if the right people hadn't blown off people like Binmore.

It's an inelegant phrase, guilty as charged.

Historically? I might stand by it.

And take a side! Empiricism: are you for it or agin it?

I disagree; I think invisible entities have always been prominent features of human thought; probably because the phenomenon of movement, which is everywhere in nature, cannot be explained in terms of anything visible. — Janus

I like just-so-stories. I could tell a different one, but what would be the point of that? Inherited religions are just that -- inherited. Aside from those, in the modern world, the positing of hidden forces and previously unknown types of entities is the province of science. I quite literally cannot imagine what you would have in mind as an exception.

This may be true of physics; and perhaps even chemistry. But they do not constitute the whole of science, and they are certainly not independent of observation. — Janus

Not following you here.

Assuming for the sake of argument that Issac is correct; how would he have found that out if not by observation, etc.? — Janus

Everyone makes observations. Everyone can make careful observations. Why does everyone think that means you're doing science?

How do you imagine science is done, and if you have an example of some different procedure than observation, hypothesis, prediction and further observation it would help if you could detail it. — Janus

Observation can be difficult, and expensive, may require technology you don't have yet; coming up with a hypothesis that will actually tell you something, and designing an experiment that does actually test exactly that hypothesis, can be tricky; results still tend to be messy enough to require a lot of analysis before you can even be sure whether the outcome you got was what you predicted or not; but even supposing you go through all that -- where's the theory?

The model you describe is, I think, more or less the one we all learned in school, and it's a nice starting point, captures some of the core values of a scientific process -- but it leaves out theory. Theory is the whole point. It's the intended result of all this work and it's the framework within which you do the work.

Okay here's a tiny example, because you want an example, and it's not even physics. I remember reading this a few years ago during the reproducibility crisis, which as you probably know hit social psychology particularly hard.

As someone who has been doing research for nearly twenty years, I now can’t help but wonder if the topics I chose to study are in fact real and robust. Have I been chasing puffs of smoke for all these years?

I have spent nearly a decade working on the concept of ego depletion, including work that is critical of the model used to explain the phenomenon. I have been rewarded for this work, and I am convinced that the main reason I get any invitations to speak at colloquia and brown-bags these days is because of this work. The problem is that ego depletion might not even be a thing. By now, many people are aware that a massive replication attempt of the basic ego depletion effect involving over 2,000 participants found nothing, nada, zip. Only three of the 24 participating labs found a significant effect, but even then, one of these found a significant result in the wrong direction! — Michael Inzlicht

The whole piece is worth a look. It's heart-breaking. And it's all about the theory, the posits of that theory, the explanatory framework, and the explanations that framework spits out. No one doing science is ever just doing observation-hypothesis-prediction-observation.

I thought Binmore made it pretty clear how he would feel about such a scheme. He gives several examples in the interview.

I don't see Kenneth Binmore as one of the bad guys, but I get why someone would.

the Disney forums — Pro Hominem

Yeah, compared to us that's a Mickey Mouse operation.

Cool. I am definitely going to distinguish between, I guess, careful observation, or technology-assisted observation and the heavy-duty theoretical framework stuff. Science does both, but only science does the latter.

I'm so glad you posted again, because it occurred to me there's a problem in my second post: there's the small sort of paradox, like the earth seeming flat and turning out to be round, and much bigger paradoxes like there being invisible forces that are "responsible" for what goes on around us. The first type don't result from positing new sorts of entities, don't require a fundamentally different framework, but the others do. (Again, the Feynman interview is crystal clear about this.)

I'm just reserving the word "science" for a more theoretical approach than you are. All science ends up there, but a lot of the work is just careful observation and careful inference.

I'm not sure how to deal with a committed flat-earth nut beyond arranging for him to talk to astronauts who've seen it.

(And I have a real soft spot for the video of Buzz Aldrin slugging that moon-landing-hoaxer.)

Oh! I missed my chance to say that this is another paradoxical result of science. The earth after all is big enough that locally it is at least awfully flat-ish. In our day-to-day lives we do behave as if the earth is flat and the sun goes around it, unless we are traveling great distances. You don't take the curvature of the earth into consideration when laying out a badminton court.

And I still think getting to look at video from above the Earth -- thank you, science! -- meets all the requirements of common sense. I love that an Apollo astronaut commented to Mission Control, "Just confirming that the Earth is round." I don't think I knew that.

People who today believe the earth is flat are people who've never been told otherwise or serious conspiracy loonies. Are the latter the target audience for your work? It's a pretty special case.

trying to convince my friend that the earth isn't flat — Hirnstoff

Excellent question!

First there are gorgeous videos. That's probably where I would start with my kids, or anyone's kids, if they just didn't yet know what the earth is like. We can now just look and see; we don't have to guess or theorize or calculate anything.

It's funny -- my first thought was to come up with a really practical, hands-on sort of game, where you have cut-outs of the continents and look up how long it takes to ship something from A to B, or how long it takes to fly from A to B, and have him figure out for himself that there's no way to arrange the continents on a flat surface and have the stuff that's near near and the stuff that's far far. I spent a long time writing about this, before it occurred to me to just look for video. That's really odd!

So how much resistance is he putting up? Off to google "argument that the earth is flat".

Yes, he was one the guys I took exception to, I think. — unenlightened

An interview with Kenneth Binmore.

Most people, at least in my mind, accept science as a good way to reach an objective truth about things. — Hirnstoff

In the sense you mean, it might be most, but it's not all, certainly not where I live: just glance at Wikipedia's summary of views on evolution.

There is much smaller group -- smaller, that is, than those who deny science for religious or conspiratorial reasons -- that includes, I should think, most working scientists and philosophers, a group that would also disagree, because reaching "objective truth" is not what science does. There is, in science, no Great Book of Truth; there is the Great Book of the Not Yet Disproven with a multivolume appendix, the Great Book of the Hard-to-say.

This is no minor quibble. It leads directly to televised hearings where climate-science-denying Senators buttonhole scientists with questions like, "But you can't prove that we're seeing anything more than natural variation, or that burning fossil fuels is changing the climate, can you?" to which the response is always, "No, I can't prove that, Senator, because that's not how science works, you fucking moron." (That last part sotto voce.)

If you want to argue that my attempt to improve online discourse, will inevitably lead to fundamental disagreements like this, I disagree, because I don't think that this is how most people think about the world and their pursuit of truth. — Hirnstoff

And I'm with you there. I'm not saying that you're going to end up debating the nature of science all the time instead of whatever else you want to do. But I am saying that because your views on the nature of science are detachable from the project, they ought to be detached. I say that in part because I disagree with those views; but also because I think there are approaches more likely to be more successful; and also because if you insist on fitting what everyone says into your framework,

I can still easily integrate each example you proposed into my existing philosophical framework — Hirnstoff

you're undercutting your own goals, you're failing to engage with people by finding common ground, you're treating your own view as the default, as the needed common ground, and it's not. Most of the objection to your approach is going to be garden variety religious or conspiratorial (big pharma created the coronavirus). I make an interesting test case because I object to almost everything you say despite being an outright science cheerleader.

Yet here we are. I hope you're still enjoying the discussion and I hope you find something worth thinking about in the views I've expressed. We do have common ground: it's just hard to see, and it's definitely not what you think it is, since in this case what you think it is is what we're debating.

Here's the classic Feynman interview I referred to above.

I've seen this interview taken as evidence (!) that science is bollocks -- here's a Nobel prize winner and he can't answer a simple question, blah blah blah.

Right, but I would say that the idea that things are not necessarily what they seem is itself an example of common sense. — Janus

But the difference is that in ordinary reasoning there being entirely new kinds of entities, and those invisible to boot, or entities not being what we thought at all but capable of entirely different behavior -- that's not on the table.

When we talk about evidence in every day life or in a court of law, we're asking what have the sorts of things we're familiar with been up to? And what they've been up to is selected from the sorts of things we know they generally do get up to.

By saying that science is common sense writ large, what I was referring to was the methodology, not the content — Janus

And my objection here is that it's not that simple: the content includes the theoretical framework, and what's more since Galileo that framework will be mathematical.

the methodology of common sense investigation being initial observation, prediction and experiment (or further observation to see if the predicted results do obtain) — Janus

Well @Isaac will tell you a lot of that predicting is done "on your behalf", so to speak, by systems in your brain -- it's System 1, not even within your awareness. But besides that -- while I like this story about how science works, it's a bit of a fairy-tale.

are you referring to natural law? — Janus

Goodness no, just ordinary criminal and civil law, common law, that sort of thing. This is also an institution where people gather evidence, reach conclusions, hopefully find the truth, etc.

I don't want to drag this out, as much fun as it is.

My "challenge", if that's the word, to @Hirnstoff was this: how much does the program of improving discussion on the internet depend upon some particular epistemology or some particular view of science? Or depend on accepting those views?

I happen to hold different views. So what? We're having an enjoyable conversation. Why does everyone want to convert me? Am I the only one that finds that a little odd given the topic of our discussion? @Dawnstorm tried to point out that just saying "tools" instead of "beliefs" wasn't going to get you there. We have since then been arguing over my divergent views of the tools. Why are we doing that?

Do you notice how you’re processing this, though? — Possibility

Yes, I do.

You’re looking for a purpose and situation to justify the function of covering your body. — Possibility

Or at least some purpose for which wearing clothes is necessary.

What's the alternative, for wearing clothes to be "in itself" necessary? Like it's just a tautology that people wear clothes? That doesn't even make sense.

But can we admit that we cover our bodies as a choice - conscious or otherwise - and NOT a necessity? — Possibility

Sure, people choose to do what they have to do if they want to ___. And they could choose not to, and go without whatever that is. Maybe they choose not to stay alive if killing someone else is the only way to do that.

Of course people are choosing, but that doesn't mean their decisions are arbitrary or without reasons.

science is basically just common sense writ large. — Janus

I know what you're getting at, and I said something similar earlier -- that science is common sense made systematic -- but it's really not, and that's clear for reasons in what you quoted: science produces results that have an air of paradox about them, that tables are not solid, that the air is billions of invisible things, that the earth goes around the sun. It all has to do not with how science makes inferences so much as the theoretical frameworks it produces within which those inferences are made. (See the classic Feynman interview.) And those frameworks posit objects that are not the medium-sized dry goods of our everyday worldview.

I allowed myself the "made systematic" comment because I believe ordinary reasoning is the start and it sustains the scientific enterprise, but one of the first things that happens is that the concept of evidence becomes terribly subtle, and again that's because of the theoretical frameworks.

Where it's not subtle but just complicated is in law, which very nearly is just common sense writ large, or ought to be. (Philosophers don't think nearly enough about law.)

fixed some typos

Okay so the one thing at a glance that clothing does, and competitors don't, is cover your body. And then we start all over right? What is the function of covering your body? Are there functions of that that something besides covering your body could serve.

Protection from the elements leaps to mind. When sleeping, maybe blankets (and a house!) can replace clothing, but if you live in the Sahara or the Arctic, if you're outside you need clothing. Maybe one day that could be replaced by a "force field", as they say in the movies.

Of course, people don't have to live in extreme climates, but they do. In most climates, clothing is better. And the few climates where clothing isn't necessary just to survive, we do find indigenous peoples who don't much bother with it.

Is clothing necessary for what?

You and several other posters have pointed out functions clothing serves, but the question can lead in at least two way different directions:

• Given some goal, is clothing necessary to achieve that goal, or would something else serve?
  
• Is it necessary to have that goal?

If clothing serves more than one purpose, and that seems clear from your first post and others, we might get to say there are competitors that perform one function better or a couple, but clothing wins because it performs the most functions well enough. Only to do that bookkeeping, you have to decide how to weight the various functions as well as how candidates perform them. If you're weighting some functions at 0 -- not a goal we need to have -- that probably has a noticeable impact on your rankings.

But is that the conversation you wanted to have?

Why do you bet on the Cowboys? Why do you even bet to begin with? Why this why that. Guide them into questioning themselves on their beliefs. — Alejandro

This is a pretty strange conversation to have with a friend.

Your friend mentions he wants to get home because he has money on tonight's game.

You point out that the team's star player is on the DL.

He understands the point of that. Either he forgot and he'll cop to being an idiot for betting, or he'll counter with another point that both of you understand perfectly.

You are implicitly relying on a shared understanding of the game, otherwise why have this conversation? There may be some "why" in here, but it's bounded.

People can get better at reasoning, sure, but it should be clear I think ordinary people already have intellectual standards that work just fine in their daily lives, and those standards are robust enough to handle novel situations, of some kinds at least, pretty well. We all have trouble understanding what goes on at Planck scale, but how hard is it to convince someone that if our best player is on the DL we're probably going to lose?

An untrained mind, a mind without support tools, like critical thinking, will always base its decisions on preferences or on irrelevant factors, so it may very well bet on its favorite team even if its not looking too good, be it by pride or by a sense of loyalty, or buy the same jar of peanut butter they have always bought because it is a tradition — Alejandro

Okay, yes, I like these examples. So how would you actually try to talk a friend out of betting on the home team, when you expect them to lose? Keep in mind that sports fandom includes people who get pretty sophisticated in how they use statistics, and people that think stats are, let's say, "overrated"?

Or how would you convince a friend to try a different peanut butter?

People do have these conversations without resorting to talk of evidence and Bayesian inference and the rest.

Not the place for that discussion.

Oh gosh no I don't feel insulted or anything. There's no personal animosity between us.

But if I now told you, as I believe, that classical empiricism died a long time ago, how would that affect the project? The spirit of empiricism lives on, but what you describe is not how children learn and is not how science is done.

Do you need that theory to do want you want to do?

Welcome to the forum.

If you don't hit the "reply" button or mention the author of the post you're responding to, the author of that post probably won't know you've replied to them.

Also: don't assume everyone here needs lessons in classical logic. It should be pretty clear when that sort of thing is called for.

So how's the project going so far?

I watched your video and liked it; I sympathize with your goals. You are now mostly telling me that I'm not doing what I think I'm doing and a lot of other people aren't either; we're all doing what you think we're doing but doing it badly.

So how's the project of fixing discourse on the internet going?

Remember, I'm sympathetic, and I'm suggesting you take a step back and consider whether this is the argument you want to be having, and whether this is how you want to conduct conversations.

I gave my actual opinions; I wasn't trying to trap you. But if you're having trouble dealing with someone like me, who's pretty well-versed in what you're talking about, and sympathetic to your program, that ought to tell you something.

It's a narrative technique.

There's an old documentary about cinematography called Visions of Light. In it, the cinematographer on Rosemary's Baby tells a story about Polanski telling him to set up a shot on Helen Hayes (I think) answering the phone in the next room. So he does, Polanski checks it and says, no no no, and moves the camera over a couple feet. When the cameraman checks it, he sees that she'll now be cut in half by the doorframe rather than centered in it. Half of her is blocked now, wtf?

But when he went to a screening and that scene came up, he said the whole audience leaned to one side a little to try to see around the doorframe -- and he realized that Polanski is a genius and he is not.

p is true =df p is true for me =df I believe that p is true. — MMusings

People who hold a view close to this (@Isaac) tend to be truth-deflationist:

p is true =df p is true for me =df I believe that p

without circularity.

Those two solutions are the same with a different label. — Hirnstoff

Broadly, I'm relying on Sellars's Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, though without much subtlety.

I think we are calling something common sense when the claim isn't extraordinary and therefore doesn't require extraordinary evidence. — Hirnstoff

That's definitely not what I'm saying. It's common sense that when you drop something it falls to the ground; it's science that when the electromagnetic fields counteracting the gravitational field associated with a massive body are rendered less effective, an object will move toward that mass's center of gravity. (Even that is really "sciency" rather than science.)

I think QAnon is a bullshit story nobody should believe and that does jack-squat to help them get through their day. You think it's a faulty scientific theory. I think I could prove to you, using whatever philosophy of science you like, that it ain't science. It is, as the saying goes, "not even wrong". We might agree that it is "attempted science", but I believe the attempt should not be made.

If you ask people why they were trying to do science -- for instance, QAnon interpretation -- what will the answer be? I don't know, but it has to do with tribe. We can say they've engaged in motivated reasoning and fallen prey to all sorts of cognitive biases, and that guarding against that can be taught. But it's a game of whack-a-mole. They'll come up with some different bullshit -- or, honestly, someone will come up with it for them. You hope to make people reason better, to inoculate them against the next round, and I can't argue against that. I just want to leverage the sort of reasoning they already do just fine, rather than expect them all to be Dick Feynman.