That argument was, you have wildly divergent views of what quantum physics means (realist, idealist, anti-realist etc), so how can you appeal to physics for a metaphysical thesis, when these foundational issues are still a matter of controversy. — Wayfarer

The divergence merely reflects that fact that the experimental results are counter-intuitive, which leaves it open for physicists themselves, who are not immune fomr having their own metaphysical preferences, to expound those preferences.

In any case science is not confined to physics, and I would also include everyday unbiased observation under the umbrella of science, since it is the basis upon which all conjecture and hypothesizing are founded.

They're known as 'citations'. — Wayfarer

Nothing wrong with citing actual arguments, but presenting bare statements made by experts certainly seems like an appeal to authority.

But if you allow that "universe" extends to all those aspects of reality which are hidden from the empirical sciences (a very large part of reality as Wayfarer has proven), then your claim that "we have no more reliable, or even any other reliable, guide, to 'how the universe truly is" than science', must be blatantly false. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you give an example of what the concept <universe> might be extended to in order to include things
other than what is either observable or the effect of something observable?

Therefore the guide must include evidence from the empirical sciences, but not be restricted to those principles, thereby employing a method which extends beyond them. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you acknowledge that science is a guide to metaphysical speculation. Can you cite another?

A priori means “prior to experience.” If you tell me you have seven beers in the fridge and I bring to another five to give you, I can know you have twelve beers without opening the fridge door. That’s a trivial example, but it illustrates the point: the truth of 7+5=12 doesn’t depend on checking the fridge. — Wayfarer

No, it's true by definition that if he has seven plus five beers he has twelve beers, and to know that seven plus five equals twelve it's either through having remembered the addition tables, counting mentally or on your fingers or whatever. In no way is your knowing prior to experience, other than in its analytic aspect, and even analytic definitions are learned.

Or we might conclude that "directly observing" and "having" are two ways of saying the same thing, so no actual reason has been offered. Then, if "I am having thought X" needs a justification, we'd have to look elsewhere. — J

If I am conscious of entertaining some thought or other, then I cannot be wrong about that awareness. So, I can say that I know I am thinking X, when I am aware that I am thinking X. I cannot justify that I have that knowledge to you, if you believe me you take it on faith.

He asserts instead that it is a matter of our enmeshment in a “form of life”, a hinge on the basis of which to organize facts rather than the ascertainment of those empirical facts by themselves. — Joshs

We can only organize facts, or even generate the concept of a fact because we have symbolic language. On the other hand we and the other animals observe many things without necessarily self-consciously or reflectively conceptualizing those observations, and of course it is only we (as far as we know)m that can verbalize facts as statements.

Kant in no way denied the fundamental role of language, I don’t think that would have ever occurred to him.

The ‘empirical doctrine of mathematics’ is associated with John Stuart Mill, although as I understand it, very much a minority view. — Wayfarer

Of course he wouldn't deny the role of language―he presents his ideas in language after all. But he didn't acknowledge or emphasize that language enables the elaborations of rules constructed on the foundation of what is perceptually recognized. (By "perception" I includes what is cognized just on the sheer basis of embodiment, I.e., proprioception and interoceptions of bodily sensations.

The idea that number is perceptually encountered is not exclusive to Mill, and I doubt that it is a minority view. Do you have statistics to back that claim up? In any case, even if if it were a minority view, so what? What matters is whether it is plausibly in accordance with experience.

If number is inherent to existence, which it seems it must be if more than one thing exists, then it seems plausible to think that its effectiveness is on account of its ontologically inherent and immanent nature

That shows arithmetic is not just “distilled” from perception, but depends on something prior in our cognitive framework — the capacity to represent number as such, and to apply operations universally and necessarily. — Wayfarer

I don't think it shows that arithmetic is not distilled from perception at all. Of course to have arithmetic, as a systems procedures and rules and you also need symbolic language.

So I don't agree with this:

But in Kant's terms, the idea of the 'synthetic a priori' is basic to the entire project of the Critique, and without it the possibility of mathematics and natural science as objective knowledge would be left unexplained. — Wayfarer

At least if "But in Kant's terms" is left out. I don't know what that phrase is doing there, unless it is meant to indicate something like "this is what Kant thought". But again, we don't have to agree with Kant unless his arguments are convincing; which I think in light of developments in philosophy since Kant, they are not. In my view, he makes too little of what can be derived from experience in combination with symbolic language. We don't need an "agent intellect" whatever that could even be―the ability to perceive patterns gives us the capacity to recognize regularities and generalities in Nature, and symbolic language gives us the capacity to reflect further on those and abstract out generalities and generalize laws.

Instead of thinking of the subject as a kind of dimensionless point of consciousness, I prefer to think of the subject as processually embodied in a world of other bodies and processes which present us with number, pattern and invariance, such that we could hardly fail to recognize them.

Oddly enough I didn't notice you had mentioned the Quine paper. Have you read it?

Such as the claim that 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about Nature'. How would you respond to that? — Wayfarer

I'd say that is a claim, not an argument. (Wasn't it Niels Bohr who said that, and why should we not see your use of it as an appeal to authority?) Can you provide an argument that supports it.

I think you are affording Kant less ambiguity than his actual writings display. In the SEP article Kant's Philosophy of Mathematics is this:

"The central thesis of Kant’s account of the uniqueness of mathematical reasoning is his claim that mathematical cognition derives from the “construction” of its concepts: “to construct a concept means to exhibit a priori the intuition corresponding to it” (A713/B741) "

What Kant seems to gloss over is that this kind of a priori reasoning is distilled from perceptual experience, so it counts as a kind of a posteriori insight regarding not particulars but generalities. "7+5=12" is tautological just as 'all bachelors are married" by virtue of the meanings of the words "7+5" "equals" and "12".

You should read Quine's 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism" where he, among other interesting critiques, questions the very distinction between the synthetic and the analytic.

I'm not attacking a strawman - you’re treating “the facts of science” as if they were metaphysically transparent, a window to 'how the universe truly is', when they are plainly not. — Wayfarer

This is a strawman simply because we have no more reliable, or even any other reliable, guide, to "how the universe truly is" than science.

Who are you showing this to? Yourself? Me? If it's me, then it's only worth my time if you are trying to convince me, rather than just "witnessing" it to me (like the Jehovah's witness tells me, when I answer the door). Otherwise we're just stating our positions and reacting to what the other person says- a waste of our time. — Relativist

If you are waiting for Wayfarer to provide an actual argument you'll be waiting a long time, perhaps forever. I have never seen a genuine argument form him―all I've seen is dogma and cut and paste passages from supposed authorities.

That last category was Kant’s unique insight. Mathematics is built around it — “7+5=12” is not analytic, because “12” isn’t contained in “7+5,” but it’s still a priori. — Wayfarer

It may be said to be analytic because 7+5 is one of the 6 ways that 12 can be divided up into two groups. Just as 'bachelor' is a name for an unmarried man, so '7+5' is one of the seven 'paired' ways of defining '12' (if you don't count 12+0). Or it may be said that it is a posteriori, because if you have twelve pebbles you can divide them up into all the possible pairs. It comes down to different possible ways of looking at things, so there is no absolute fact of the matter as to whether mathematics is analytic or
synthetic.

What Kant writes here can be interpreted to support the idea that mathematics is analytic:

In all judgments in which the relation of a subject to the predicate is thought (if I only consider affirmative judgments, since the application to negative ones is easy) this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something that is (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies entirely outside the concept A, though to be sure it stands in connection with it. In the first case, I call the judgment analytic, in the second synthetic. (1787 [1998], B10)

the predicate concept '7+5' certainly seems to be (covertly) contained in the concept '12'.

Nowadays, there is debate over whether there really are laws of nature — Wayfarer

There are obviously invariances in nature. The "laws of nature" simply codify the observable invariances. Also, as per Peirce, what look like invariances to us, whose horizons of observation, both temporally and spatially speaking, are so tiny, may not be timeless and fixed, but evolved habits.

I'm good with all that. Just wanted to make the case that almost anything we claim to be true requires some (potential) justification. — J

I agree that when it comes to claims of knowledge, justification is required. On the other hand I know many things with certainty that require no justification simply because they are directly known―in these cases justification just doesn't enter the picture.

the truth of things which are true by definition and logical self-evidence is simply obvious, and just needs to be pointed out to be established in conscious understanding.
— Janus
It is obvious to us. But we have learnt how to do reasoning as part of learning language and interacting with people. — Ludwig V

Right of course, but I think it is also the case that some things that are self-evident are already so before their self-evidence becomes reflectively conscious. In other words I think there are basic logics inherent in perception itself that forms the primordial basis for reasoning, and can be seen in the kind of basic reasoning revealed in animal behavior.

So, if we know p could be false, then we don't know that it's true, but we may well believe that it's true.
— Janus

Then on the premise that we know that every p (epistemological truth) could be false, we cannot know any p. — Leontiskos

Strictly, allowing for radical skepticism (Brain-in-vat, might-be-a-dream, Evil Demon) I think that is true, and we should not speak of knowledge (except in the know-how sense) but, more modestly, of belief―so not 'knowing that' but 'believing that'.

But I also think that is too strong and that we do know some things with certainty, because I don't think skepticism based on the bare logic possibility of error should be taken seriously.

The ideal situation is where both sides of the bargain feel the deal being struck is fair. A win-win. I get to do anything I can imagine wanting to do ... to the degree that I can also rely on everyone else being there to bail me out when I stuff up. And everyone else says I'm free to stuff up as much as I like, but there is a limit to the bail-out that the community is willing to provide. In the long run, my free action has to be judged as being a positive contribution to the community. — apokrisis

Yes, the problem is that the power elites and the financial elites tend to make their own rules, the comfortable-enough turn a complacent or blind eye, and even the disadvantaged mostly don't seem to see the big picture well enough not to support the right of the exploiters to exploit at will.

Nice elaboration on the cycle of life. No one wants to die or to lose those close companions of course, but unfortunately there are still many who cannot face the hard reality, and cling to the hope of eternal life or personal salvation in some form or other. Not that I'm advocating the abolition of organized religion, but as psychologically necessary as it might be to many, it does seem to be overall a detriment to human flourishing in general.

psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (trying to pronounce that name might produce a flow state.)) — Wayfarer

Verbal diarrhoea?

But all three of these things -- truth by definition, logical self-evidence, and the reliability of direct observation -- are ways of demonstrating justification. To understand this, imagine explaining any one of them to an intelligent child. They all involve steps, cogitation, judgment, insight. We don't simply see why they are true, or at least not usually. In fact, as you know, the reliability of direct observation can be challenged, and the challenge is precisely for a justification as to how such observations lead to truth. — J

I think life itself teaches us to trust our observations―animals do, so why shouldn't we? You are right that understanding definitions and logical self-evidence are taught, but all such teachings rely on the capacity of the student to "get it", which I think shows that the truth of things which are true by definition and logical self-evidence is simply obvious, and just needs to be pointed out to be established in conscious understanding.

Direct observation is challenged only by what I think of as trivial and ridiculous "mind in a vat", Evil Demon" or "you might be dreaming" scenarios, and I don't think those are to be taken seriously. That's why I say that what we know we know certainly, but only within contexts, not absolutely certainly.

Logical possibility allows any knowledge whatsoever to be subjected to radical skepticism, but I don't see a need to concern ourselves with such vacuous considerations.

But liberalism says questions of the human good are, for the most part, private matters. Public ethics must be built around liberal dogmas re pluralism and the unknowability of the human good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I disagree―since liberalism advocates both democracy and individual rights it does not accord any notion of my rights being any more important than yours. So, essentially the idea consists in saying that you are free to do whatever you want as long as what you do does not infringe on the rights of others.

The "Golden Rule' sums it up. Although I think it would be better formulated as "Do unto others as they would want you to do unto them". Individual flourishing is important and so is community flourishing. If you flourish at the expense of others then you harm the flourishing of the community.

You say liberalism entails or is built upon "the unknowability of the human good". This is false in my view. There is just one human good, and that is flourishing, but we must think of flourishing as having two poles―the individual and the communal.

You seem to be doing that black and white thinking. I haven't said that exclusive or even primary focus on accumulating wealth would be a good thing. It wouldn't because it leads to egregious exploitation of other humans, animals and environments.
— Janus

That post was written in response to your comment about practical philosophies that were "all about" the acquisition of wealth, hence my response. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Here is the passage you were responding to again.

Self-help teachings and practices, if they are effective, should help people to live better lives. Of course I realize some of them are all about how to achieve financial success, but is that really such a bad aim for someone if it doesn't degenerate into acquisitive greed, especially if they aspire to be a householder and parent? — Janus

Note that in that passage I said " if it doesn't degenerate into acquisitive greed". I was talking about practical self-help teachings and practices, not overarching moral philosophies that preach making money for making money's sake. Teaching people about how to make and manage money does not need to involve, should not involve, teaching people that all that is important is making money. All or nothing thinking again!

More desirable for whom? Certainly not for people who want to radically reshape the society, or for those who profit from or enjoy conflict. — Count Timothy von Icarus

More desirable for the majority―we are speaking about democratic principles after all. That there may be sociopaths is inevitable and lamentable. No society is perfect. people who want to radically reshape societies are ideologues who are usually quite prepared to impose their wills on others, and that is never a good thing.

Man as the political animal cuts both ways. Man might be naturally social and compassionate, but man also has a strong tendency towards overwrought thymotic passions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think most people naturally social and compassionate, and I acknowledge that there will always be a sociopathic minority who will tend to indulge "overwrought thymotic passions". If they indulge such passions and harm others in the process, they go against the flourishing of the community.

Natural selection needs random variety so it can continue to optimise a living and mindful structure of habit.
— apokrisis

"Optimize" how? This is a value-laden term, just like your earlier invocation of "Darwinian success." Now if there is no end being sought, and whatever is "adaptive" is just whatever just so happens to end up happening, all these value terms are simply equivocations. Indeed, "pragmatism" is itself an equivocation if there is no real end involved. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The end is survival and flourishing. Adaptive evolution does not have a prescribed end, but species that overuse resources will eventually pay the price. The balance is always restored, except in the case of us super-clever and adaptable apes that have been able to live almost everywhere. If the resources in one area are used up, affected animals can move to another area if possible, or if not their population will decline, allowing the resources to build up again. Since we have covered the Earth, if resources are depleted everywhere there will be nowhere left to go.

I meant to say it isn’t the conceptions themselves that earn the title, but the relation of them to each other. For those conceptions that don’t relate the title is lost, that’s all. — Mww

Right so one idea cannot on its own be tautologous, but rather a statement is tautologous that redundantly states something about two ideas that both share the same salient content.

Why two straight lines cannot enclose a space, is no longer a mystery. Even if it isn’t the case, it is still a perfectly logical explanation. — Mww

I'm not sure what you mean by "even if it isn't the case".

:up:

Wouldn’t we have to be able to separate J, T or B from the others to think we know something when in fact what we know is missing J, T or B? Or are all three destroyed, along with K, when we are in error? — Fire Ologist

As I said earlier, knowing we are justified in believing that some purported piece of propositional knowledge is true, and that we can thus be said to know it is true, also involves knowing that are other things apart from the piece of purported propositional knowledge are true.

We know analytic statements are true.
— Janus

But do we know this apart from the right justifications? I don't see how. Even something as clear as modus ponens can and must be explained and justified; we don't say "I just know it." — J

If something is true by definition or if something is logically self-evident, or if the proposition concerns something being directly observed, then I would say we need no further justification.

:up:

No. I know the cat is on the chair but it could have been on the mat. Hence "the cat is on the chair" is true but could have been false. — Banno

Ah, I see the problem now, it seems we've been talking at cross purposes—"could have been false" is not equivalent to "could be false".

It just makes sense that two straight lines cannot enclose a space but no one ever thought about the rational mechanism by which two unrelated, non-empirical conceptions can be conjoined to construct its own evidence, since Nature is never going to provide the universality and absolute necessity required for its proof. — Mww

Think about the ancient shepherds—if they put in just two parallel fence lines, it would have been obvious that would not keep the sheep in or the wolves out. Or a building with just two walls and a roof and the ends open, or even three walls—it is immediately evident that the spaces have not been enclosed.

Usually a judgement is termed tautological insofar as it is true by definition irrespective of its conceptual content, whereas analytical merely indicates that the subject/predicate conceptions as the content in self-evident judgements belong to each other, or that one contains the other within it. — Mww

I don't see how a tautology could be independent of its conceptual content—can you give an example?

Neither do I; in themselves they don’t. They are the conditions necessary in the form of a judgement, for the certainty in the relations of the conceptions which are its content. They don’t yield, or produce, certainty, so much as make it possible. — Mww

Right, certainty certainly could not be possible with logical possibility and consistency.

Sorry for the delay. I got doin’ Her Satanic Majesty’s Request, if ya know what I mean. Flower beds, of all things. The kinda thing the average joe’s hardly likely to get right. — Mww

No need for an apology, we all have other commitments and there are many things more important than philosophy. Getting flower beds right is something I take for granted, given that my profession as landscape design and construction. I also know that the downsides of not yielding to the requests of "Her Satanic Majesty" can be great. 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' is also an underrated Stone's album, one of my early favorites.

If we think we know something and it turns out to be false, then we didn't know it. — Banno

That's right. So, if we know p could be false, then we don't know that it's true, but we may well believe that it's true. Thinking we know something is not the same as knowing something.

It's not a matter of feeling, as much as you would like to cast it in that light. On analysis I judge it to be unjustified because it simply doesn't logically follow.

If you indeed know that p, then p is true. — Banno

Right, and if p is true then it cannot be false, no? Likewise if you know that p is true then you cannot know that it could be false, or so it would seem.

I think the idea of qualia is misleading. The way I understand it when I see something I don't see a quale or the experiential quality of what I'm seeing. I can make a post hoc judgement about the quality of my experience and then reify that into entities collectively referred to as qualia.

So, I agree with your characterization "an illusion with a representational character". If all perception and thought is neural activity, then being reflectively conscious of what is being perceived (or perhaps more accurately what has just been perceived) and not being reflectively conscious of that would be two different kinds of neural activity, each with their own effects, and hence being conscious would not be epiphenomenal.

For me, to claim that there is a non-physical aspect of mind would be to claim that there is something at work which is completely independent of the whole embodied energy economy of the percipient in its environment, and that seems not only implausible but even incoherent.

I agree that @Wayfarer seems to think that the inability of physical science to explain the felt quality of experience is a slam dunk refutation of physicalism, and to me that seems to be a completely unjustified conclusion.

If we know something is true we must know it is not false. That's not the same as that it cannot* be false. It's not knowledge that is defeasible, but belief. Everything we know is true - just like every fact is true. Some things we think we know, are false - and therefore we do not know them.

If we think we know it's true, but it turns out it is false, then we didn't know it was true in the first place.

See how it works?


*Are we going to look at modality again? Let's not. — Banno

You say that if we know something is true we must know it is not false. But is not knowing something is not false the same as knowing that it could not be false (aside from switching contexts or changes over time)? Was it something like the caveat in brackets that led to your mention of modality?

I agree that we know that we don't know in the case re alien species...There are also many truths we do know. The problem I see is that if we know something is true we must know it cannot be false, from which it seems to follow that knowledge is not defeasible.

↪Janus You prefer utility to truth? — Banno

No, I didn't mean that. I don't know how you got to that conclusion.

For example, we don't know whether there is sentient life on other planets, and it is good to know that we don't know that. The other day I was at a local market and one of the stalls selling aloe vera and other herbs displayed a Raëlian poster claiming that we need to prepare for the return of the Elohim. Raëlianism is the belief that humanity was created by an advanced extraterrestrial species known as the Elohim.

It is good to know that we don't know whether there are advanced extra-terrestrial species, but the actual truth or falsity regarding that is meaningless to us, since it cannot be (currently) determined.

The truth doesn't care about what is useful. — Banno

Actually the truth presumably doesn't care about anything.

which Banno has also picked up on, namely whether the T in JTB is doing any useful work.
— J

Of course it is doing useful work. — Banno

The distinction between something's being true and our knowing it to be true is of necessary and useful―it is useful to know whether we do know something is true or not― it's better than thinking we know something is true if we don't.

A question remains though― what use is something's being true if we don't know it.

When do I ever know something is true apart from having the right justifications? How can we make truth independent of justification -- make J and T genuinely separate criteria? — J

We know analytic statements are true. Given competence we know that mathematical proofs are true. We know that true propositions about directly observable states of affairs are true (if we observe them).

The problem with relying on justifications is that we would need to know the justifications are true in order to be valid as justifications, which would seem to introduce an infinite regress.

The world "spiritual" is not in the original quote. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I thought it was implied, that you were not addressing empirical truth.

Or, because this is unconvincing, you get anti-realism and an ethics of sentiment that collapses any distinction between what is currently desired and what is truly desirable.

This is precisely what absolutizes individual preference and privatizes any deeper notions of teleology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's really very simple, and no need for a law-giving God. There will always be a tension between individual preferences and societal desiderata. It seems obvious that in any community harmony is more desirable than conflict. Right there is the pragmatic basis for ethics.

You say "deeper notions of teleology": but there is no need to "muddy the waters to make them appear deep".

A focus on wealth (or career success as a proxy for status) as a primary aim seems to be a paradigmatic example of "putting second things first," no? Sure, wealth is useful. There are plenty of miserable wealthy people though. Wealth is only useful in parting with it; it's a proximate aim at best. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to be doing that black and white thinking. I haven't said that exclusive or even primary focus on accumulating wealth would be a good thing. It wouldn't because it leads to egregious exploitation of other humans, animals and environments.

Exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. The "privatization" part of secularization makes it essentially impossible to have any public teaching of ethics per se. Of course, ethics is still taught, just not directly and reflectively. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I disagree. I see no reason to think that ethics could not be taught to children without incorporating the threat of divine punishment and promise of divine reward. I think humans become naturally empathetic and compassionate, once they are able to attain a balanced view of their kinship with others, an understanding that we are all in this together.

Of course there will always be some percentage of sociopaths―no society is ever going to be perfect. Teaching ethics would mean instilling an understanding of the balance between competition and cooperation. I think it is fair to say that competition is overemphasized in many modern societies.

But the point of speculative metaphysical theory in general only extends to whether the parts of the method reflect certainty with respect to each other. It’s like….if this then that necessarily (the point)…..but…..there’s no proof there even is a this or that to begin with (beside the point). — Mww

So, what you seem to be talking about is not certainty, but consistency.

Non-analytic judgements are synthetic, and it is true no synthetic judgement possesses apodeictic certainty. But synthetic and synthetic a priori while being the same in form are not the same in origin. — Mww

I think we agree on this. Do you mean that syntheses are hypotheses, whereas synthetic a priori propositions are phenomenologically derived by reflecting on experience in order to establish its general characteristics?

There can be no synthetic apriori certainty.
— Janus

Of course there can, provided the method by which they occur, which just is that difference in origin, is both logically possible and internally consistent. And is granted its proper philosophical standing. — Mww

Now you seem to be contradicting what you said above. I don't see how either logical possibility or internal consistency can yield certainty. And I have no idea what "proper philosophical standing" could be.

Case in point: mathematics. How many pairs of straight lines would you have to draw, to prove to yourself you’re never going to enclose a space with them? — Mww

It is logically self-evident that a pair of lines cannot enclose a space, so I'd call that analytic, not synthetic.

Have you heard about the observation of (the effects of) colliding black holes? Talk about paling in comparison, everything I just said….. — Mww

I hadn't, so I searched on it...very interesting, said to confirm predictions made by Einstein and Hawking. The interesting thing about scientific theories is that it seems they cannot be confirmed to be true, even on account of their predictions being confirmed by observation.

You say that we have knowledge and that it may be overturned by new evidence. You say what we believed we knew is overturned, in which case it wasn't knowledge at all but belief.

Whether a belief is thought to be justified or not is a matter of how rigorous or extreme are the criteria we want to stipulate for our use that determine what counts as justification.

We have knowledge of how to do things, but that kind of knowledge is not true belief, whether justified or not, but rather understanding what to do and how to do it, and that kind of knowledge cannot be overturned but can be improved upon.

You know the saying "seeing is beleiving" well I prefer to say that seeing is knowing. If I am looking at a tree, I know I am seeing a tree (radical skeptical scenarios like I might be dreaming or being deceived somehow aside).

And I don't think any knowledge is absolute, it is all contextual.

Returning to your 'raining' example, would you have said that you know it is raining?
— Janus

Not if I accept JTB as the standard of knowledge. I can't say I know it's raining unless it's true that it's raining; truth is the third leg of the tripod. — J

Right, but I wasn't asking whether you would now, when you know it was not raining, say that you knew it was raining, but whether when you thought it was raining you would have said you knew it was raining. This relates to what I said above to Sam about the paradox involved in saying that we have knowledge, but that it may be overturned by further evidence.

On the strength of this paradoxical situation I would say we can only justifiably claim to have knowledge when we are certain that we do. I think this obtains when we can directly observe something to be the case, and also with analytic truths as in mathematics. But I am not saying any knowledge is absolute, so any certainty is contextual.

I have to be able to be justified yet wrong. — J

I agree. but then why say we have knowledge, rather than merely belief, if we are not certain? (And I repeat that I am referring here specifically to propositional knowledge, not to know-how).

A good question. Again accepting JTB, the answer has to be no, unless you're wanting to tweak how we understand "possess." — J

I was thinking about it in the context of JTB. The idea was to question the idea of justification. I imagine a situation in which I believe something to be the case on grounds that would count as justifiable, but I am nonetheless not confident enough to think I know, and unbeknownst to me what I believe is actually true.

This is the same problem as above, I think. What counts as "justified" is slippery. Also, your phrasing is a little ambiguous: Do you mean "turn out to be wrong that what we believed was justified" or "turn out to be wrong that what we named as a justification was incorrect"?

EDIT: Sorry, the last phrase should be "turn out to be wrong that what we named as a justification was correct." — J

I meant the latter―that what we thought counted as a justification was not. The very idea of justification for a belief must rely upon other beliefs which we take to be knowledge, even certain knowledge, because if we took them to be mere beliefs it would then be belief all the way down, meaning no knowledge.

The so-called “Gettier problem” rests on a sleight of hand. It trades on the difference between thinking one is justified and actually being justified. — Sam26

This is a profound problem. Of course I acknowledge a logical distinction between feeling certain and being certain, and between feeling justified and being justified, and I have raised this very point many times before on these forums. The problem is that if we cannot be certain about being justified, if there is no observable state of affairs or logically self-evident criterion for justification then what we have is really a house of cards.

Then we can only be said to know something if we can be certain (as opposed to merely feeling certain
) that we are justified in counting it as knowledge. Whenever the truth is not obvious, then we cannot be certain that we know what it is.

I'm not sure, but you seem to think that if knowing isn't absolute, it isn't knowledge. This is a classic misunderstanding of what knowledge is. — Sam26

I come back to this because I'm not sure whether by 'absolute' you mean 'certain' or 'context-free'. No knowledge is context free because it is couched in language for a start, and language is obviously itself a context.

On the other hand, I say that within the appropriate contexts anything that counts as knowledge must be certain, because if it could be refuted then it could not count as knowledge. You might say that I'm showing "a classic misunderstandings of what knowledge is" but the reality is I would just be advocating a different understanding than yours, and I think mine makes more sense. You of course don't have to agree, but if you cannot see the possibility of different perspectives on this then you are playing the dogmatist.

:up:

You’re probably phrasing this a little bit more strongly that I would but I think this frame resonates with me too. — Tom Storm

I like to be less than diplomatic at times―only for the sake of emphasis, mind...:wink:

In the Western tradition ascetic/spiritual exercises were meant to re-order the soul toward truth, goodness, and the divine. In Buddhism, mindfulness is embedded in the Eightfold Path and oriented towards liberation. By contrast, modern adaptations tend to treat these disciplines as mere tools for the self-interested individual, e.g., a means of coping, maximizing productivity, reducing stress, or achieving “authenticity.” I have seen this particularly in some pieces on Stoicism I've read that seem to be largely aimed at the "tech-bro" crowd. A commitment to truth gets shoved aside for a view of philosophy as a sort of "life hack." — Count Timothy von Icarus

The above was what I had in mind. What could knowledge of "(spiritual) truth, goodness and the divine" be but "esoteric knowledge" if not merely a matter of understanding ordinary truth and goodness as commonly conceived?

What could seeking liberation be but an esoteric pursuit if it is thought to consist in more than merely being and feeling free to be yourself without fear of the opinions of others? As soon as it becomes concerned with purported transcendental knowledge of course it is esoteric. Many of the so-called 'wisdom schools" were quite explicit about the difference between esoteric and exoteric religion. Whether or not people are community-minded is a separate issue.

The point I was objecting to is that you are denigrating modern self-help practices for their superficiality compared to the purported profundity of the genuine traditional spiritual schools, and I think the comparison is underdetermined, most particularly because we were not there to see what they were really like and also because claims to transcendental knowledge and wisdom cannot but be pretentious, whereas practical wisdom is shown in one's actions.

Ok, so then it wasn't supposed to be relevant to what I wrote? I didn't write anything about "esoteric knowledge," nor any necessary preference for the older over the newer for that matter.

There is a sort of "managerial" outlook here, where praxis reduced to a sort of tool. In a similar vein, I have seen the critique that modern therapy/self-help largely focuses on helping us "get what we want," but not so much on "what we ought to do" or the question of if "what we want" is what will ultimately lead to flourishing and happiness. That is not seen as the purpose of therapy or self-help. That might be fair enough, but then it also not seen as the purpose of education either. So, what does fulfill that function? It seems to me that nothing does, except for perhaps wholly voluntary associations that one must "choose" (where such a choice is necessarily without much guidance). Aside from "self-development," this seems problematic for collective self-rule and social cohesion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Self-help teachings and practices, if they are effective, should help people to live better lives. Of course I realize some of them are all about how to achieve financial success, but is that really such a bad aim for someone if it doesn't degenerate into acquisitive greed, especially if they aspire to be a householder and parent?

"What we ought to do" is of course important too. In Australia, several years ago there was a move to teach ethics in school, but the kibosh was put on that idea when religious organizations objected that ethics could not be effectively taught without God. :roll:

Wellness retreats, access to outdoor education, etc. all skew towards the high end of the income distribution, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I haven't studied the demographics of such things. I used to attend the Sydney Gurdjieff Foundation meditation nights and weekend workshops, and the people there represented a fairly even distribution of professions, trades and jobs.

In any case I wasn't referring to literal classes, but to a kind of intellectual snobbishness and classism shown in thinking that the old ways and practices were more pure, more "real' when the reality is we know nothing about what those ancient cults were really like. It seems to be just unfounded "Golden Age" thinking, and I think it more likely that all the same kinds of abuses were practiced in the old days as they have been in the modern age and are today.

Anyway, that aside, the presumption is that there was genuine enlightenment to be found then which is not to be found in the modern settings, and I think this betrays unfounded assumptions about knowing what is the reality of transcendent knowledge and wisdom. It's that puritanism that I referred to as "a certain kind of snobbishness and classism". The idea is that esoteric understanding is not for the uneducated masses. And I am not saying there are not such "schools" alive today either.

I am saying that the whole idea of such esoteric knowledge is bogus. Real wisdom is always pragmatically centered on this life― like Aristotle's notion of phronesis or practical wisdom. The only wisdom that matters is the wisdom that enables one to live happily and harmoniously and usefully with others. Focusing on seeking personal salvation cannot but be a self-obsessed "cult of the individual". And I've been there and seen it in action, so I'm not merely theorizing.

They were highly ascetic: they renounced wealth, lived celibately, ate only the simplest foods, devoted themselves to study of the Torah and allegorical interpretation, and practiced prayer and meditation. — Wayfarer

Of course such renunciate organizations were probably always supported financially by their communities. These sad, life-denying fools were essentially parasites living only on account of the good will of those who had to work hard to survive.

:up: Yep, philosophy can easily become a fetish.

This makes sense to me. I don’t know much about Buddhism. The only Asian philosophy I have experience with is Taoism. That has always struck me as a reasonably practical and down home philosophy. As I understand it, there isn’t much talk about inevitable suffering, self renunciation, or esoteric practice. God has always struck me as an afterthought. I never felt any conflict between how I knew the world as an engineer versus how I knew it as a reader of Lao Tzu.

My attitude towards all philosophies, eastern or western is that their primary purpose is to encourage self-awareness. That’s certainly true of Taoism. — T Clark

I agree. I love the Dao De Ching myself (although I bet I haven't read as many different translations as you have). Speaking of Buddhism, I was intensely attracted to Zen from the age of about 17 until I was about mid-twenties, and I've had other reading forays throughout the intervening years. I read everything I could find about Zen: D T Suzuki, the other Suzuki (Zen Mind, Beginners Mind) Alan Watts, Dogen and many many others that don't come to mind right now. Another text I got a lot out of is the Bhagavad Gita.

I never thought of any of it in terms of an afterlife, but rather in terms of living this live with clarity, equanimity and freedom, which of course also means, as you say, with self-awareness or perhaps more importantly, awareness of others. Anything that really helps people with that I would count as a good thing.

I quite like the old chestnut "the unexamined life is not worth living" and I also really resonate with the flipping of that: "the unlived life is not worth examining", and really I think the latter is the more important insight. There may be many people who live very good, yet largely unexamined, lives.

Properness is a requirement for consistency and coherency. Ambiguity produces equivocation. So if you really believed in consistency and coherency, you'd believe in grammar as well. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have it arse-about. We only know that something is a "proper" expression if it is consistent and coherent. The latter are the criteria for the former, not vice versa. If there are sveral consietnt and coherent usages of a term . then there would not be just one "proper" usage.

Yes, obviously it is all that important. If we don't use the words required to frame the conceptual distinctions, having the distinctions is pointless. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but again there may be more than one way to frame the distinctions, and of course if they are not framed consistently and coherently then they are not really framed at all, and we could not be said to "have" the distinctions.

It's generally not productive to say that two words are synonymous. This dissolves the difference between them making the choice of using one or the other insignificant, despite the fact that there is at least nuanced differences between all words. — Metaphysician Undercover

The nuances of words vary with the different associations different people have of them, which is reflected in the different usages. You might not like a particular usage, but that would just be your personal preference and does not preclude the usage being perfectly consistent and coherent with common usage.

The most common difference between two words which might appear to be synonymous, is a difference of category. — Metaphysician Undercover

I disagree―I think that words can be synonymous within one context and not within another. In most general usage in English I think that to say that something is is to say that it exists, and to say that something exists is consistent with saying that it is be-ing (as a verb) or a being (as a noun).

But whatever you say, someone will disagree. For example I might say 'love is' meaning that there is love. Then if I say 'love exists', also meaning that there is love, someone will objects that love is not an existent object. I might then say, in accordance with a common usage "love is a thing"., and then the objection will be that love is not an object. And yet we say things (see what I did there) like "the thing is...".

You are never going to get away from the ambiguities of language, and playing though police or speech police is an unreasonable and unhelpful move. Wisdom is not to be found in teasing out some supposedly pure and perfect usage.

Since "being" is most often defined by existing, and "existing" is usually defined by something further, we ought to consider that "existing" is the broader term. This would imply that all beings are existing, but not all existents are beings, because "existent" could include things which are not beings. Subtle distinctions allow us to keep our categories clear, and categories are conducive to deductive reasoning. — Metaphysician Undercover

What about "the most important thing is love" and "love being the most important thing". Love is being practiced every day. Love exists in the world? You know perfectly well what I'm saying there even thought the words used might not be consistent with your preferences.

You are not going to get everyone to share your preferences, because as I said earlier language is elastic and we all encounter differences emphases on "correct" usage as we grow up and throughout our lives.

In philosophy, as I see it, it's more important to focus on the consistency, coherency and plausibility of arguments than pedantically worrying about "proper" usage of terms. Whatever is serviceable for getting the ideas across will do.

I don't believe there is any hidden knowledge, to be found in word usage, there is just the knowledge of different usages in different contexts to be found.

Modern self-help programs often seem to be excessively self-focused. But I would argue that the same is true of many traditional spiritual practices. What is it that motivates a search for "salvation" or "liberation" or "enlightenment" if not a concern for one's own well-being or life project?

People speak about great enlightened sages such as Gautama saying that such greats do not seem to be around these days, and yet all we know of Gautama's life is contained in writings produced fairly long and some very long, after his death. How do we know he was not a pedophile, or that he didn't exploit his position of power to have sex with some of his young nubile followers?

People who acknowledge that they do not think of themselves as enlightened (or are they merely being falsely modest?) nonetheless take it as read that enlightened ones did exist, and may exist even today (however rare that might be) but how can this be shown to be more than merely a personal belief?

I think there is a puritanical elitist element in the idea that modern self-help programs are merely watered down caricatures of the ancient "true" practices. I mean, if these programs really do help people to live better, more fulfilled and useful lives, then what is the problem? Is it because they don't really renounce this life in favour of gaining Karmic benefit or entrance to heaven? Is the most important thing we can do in this life to deny its value in favour of an afterlife, an afterlife which can never be known to be more than a conjecture at best, and a fantasy at worst? There seems to be a certain snobbishness, a certain classism, at play in these kinds of attitudes.

I guess I’m asking how we should characterize a “JB” -- a belief that is genuinely justified, according to your criteria, but whose truth is still undetermined. Does a person who asserts a JB assert that they know it? Only the “know of conviction,” perhaps. — J

Returning to your 'raining' example, would you have said that you know it is raining? Justification is a slippery concept. It might be said that it would be natural to conclude that it is still raining if I see water falling. But then if I know there are high trees in the yard and that after sufficient rain water continues to drip from them, could I be said to be justified in my belief?

If it had still been raining would I then be justified in my belief, even though I didn't take into account that it could have been water dripping from the trees instead? If there had been no trees in my yard and I saw falling water and concluded that it was raining, would that have been a justified conclusion on the basis that events so unlikely as that the neighbor was spraying water over my roof with his hose need not be taken into consideration?

Assuming that we can say that some beliefs are justified, which might yet turn out to be wrong, and given that the truth cannot always be discovered, would it not be the case that sometimes we possess knowledge, but cannot know that we do? And doesn't that seem a little weird, that we might know something to be the case, but not know that we know?

Sure, we can propose a division between living and not living. But, by what principle do you propose that both are properly called "beings"? I believe that is the issue. What does "being" mean to you, and is it proper to call the moon a being? — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not a believer in properness, but rather in consistency and coherency. We humans are so humancentric that we tend to think of human being as the paradigm. We don't use the term 'animal being' so much but simply 'animal'.

Of course 'being' gets extended to 'living being', and 'sentient being' and perhaps it has become more uncommon to speak of non-living or non-sentient beings. But since such entities are existents and to exist seems to be synonymous with 'to be' I see no inconsistency in referring to the moon as a being.

If we have all the appropriate conceptual distinctions is it really all that important what words we use to frame them?

It seems the nub of our disagreement is that I think of minding as being a real physical (that is embodied, neural) activity and for me 'to exist' and 'to be real' are the same (and I think this reflects the most common usages). Perhaps the difference lies merely in choice of terminology.

On further reflection though, I want to add that, for example, it might be said that Bilbo exists as a fictional character, but that since he is fictional, he is not real. This seems to introduce a wrinkle in the tidy fabric, and shows that these terms are more elastic than is often allowed.

The "good reason" to believe there is something nonphysical involved is simply that set of issues that is referred to as the "hard problem of consciousness": fully accounting for all aspects of our subjective experience of consciousness. For example: how do feelings of hunger and pain, arise from the firing of neurons, or accounting for the perceived quality of some specific color. — Relativist

Okay thanks for explaining. I have a different take than you on this it seems. I think that conceiving the character of conscious experience in terms of "quales" is wrong-headed and based on "folk psychology".

As I asked a poster in another thread 'is there a difference between consciousness and being conscious?'. How could perceptions, functions of evolved sensory organs and neural structures, that reveal environments and open up the possibility of responding to signs from those environments, be effective if they were not experienced and carried no qualitative significance?

I think the sense and idea of being conscious has been reified into 'consciousness as real and non-physical', and that this reification is a natural artefact of our dualistic symbolic language. Mind, instead of being understood verbally as "minding", as an activity or process of a sentient physical being, has been hypostatized as a noun, and even considered to be an entirely separate substance.

Since we, as linguistically mediated beings with a sense of freedom of action, consider our thoughts, feelings and behavior in terms of responding to reasons rather than being causally forced, and since this seems natural, we develop an intuition that this characteristic shows that we are not merely physical beings, and I think this intuition is misleading. Also since we are so complex, understanding our behavior in terms of physics, although not impossible, would be such a laborious and counter-intuitive task that it is practically unfeasible.

But I don't think this unfeasibility lends any support to the idea that there is anything substantive in us beyond our physical natures. Anti-physicalist proponents will argue that mind is not a substance but that it is real and different from the physical nonetheless. The problem is that then they cannot say anything at all about what it purportedly is if not a separated substance―that is just how it could be real other than as an activity or process of a physical nature.

Of course I could be wrong, so this is just my own take on it. The problem is that it is not a question the answer to which can be empirically or logically demonstrated, and all things considered, it doesn't seem to be very important either, even if it is kind of fun to consider.