Demanding Evidence

[TheAtheist]

Wow, so this is what people do with their spare time. Anyway, a little birdy mentioned the following to me, something i actually feel capable of commenting on since its more about science and less philosophy:

A perfect example of this is your elimitavisim toward the subjectivity of mental states. The world described by physics, neurology, and the methodologies of science leave undescribed the irreducibly subjective character of conscious mental processes, whatever may be their intimate relations to the physical operations of the brain, but you continue to insist that the problems do not lie in our methodologies, but in our postulation of the very existence of mental phenomena! That’s not a healthy objective skepticism; that’s a presumptive dogmatism!

That’s classic Daniel Dennett. And if i understand my colleagues in the neuroscience department, its also a view that they tend to roll their eyes at. As it stands, at least in terms of the philosophy of the mind, its either him, John Searle, or David Chalmers. If i understand it correctly, even the Dalai Lama has also staked out a position via the Mind and Life Institute: mindandlife.org/.

But in truth, consciousness may not be the best topic to debate about. Its literally one of the fields that’s at the fringe of our current understanding of things.

I mean i suppose you could take one of four possible attitudes:

1.) Solving the problem is just around the corner. ie: Triumphalist Scientism

2.) There is no problem - what John Searle calls “Denying the Data” and what he actively accuses Dennett of.

3.) Ah ha, with this particular hole in current science i can jam my own personal philosophy in!

4.) The Problem is Unsolvable - This is Colin Mcginn’s viewpoint.

Consciousness studies is like a growth industry at this point. Everybody seems to want to get in on the ground floor and postulate something, even though there’s currently no means (if there will be any means) to validate or invalidate their statements.

 

[Betterave]

I didn’t refuse any request like that.

You never answered my question below before…

I was trying to refer back to the previous discussion with “map and territory”.

Uh, yeah, I think I know that - that was my point - that that discussion didn’t end with you successfully defending your distinction.

It’s more precise. It is explicit in declaring the provisional/evidential basis for the claim (“the only basis known…”, “we are not aware…”), and I find “refer to that which is STEM-based” to problematically ambiguous. I think that could be read to say that the referents of some concepts are both a) extant and b) non-STEM-based, implying that I am supporting the notion of extant things outside (whatever that might mean) of STEM.

“The only basis known for extant concepts (‘maps’) is STEM (‘reality’), and we are not aware of any coherent basis for concepts outside of STEM.”

Ok, so can we work with this then? Analyze for me “known” and “not aware.” I don’t know what you mean by these (I have my fallible intuitions about it, but I don’t want to trust those).

Betterave wrote:
…ergo, the doctrine of empiricism and statements that claim to be grounded in empirical methods are not based simply on “the reality of reality” (obviously not - that’s not a meaningful thesis) nor are they based simply on the immediacy of our sensory reactions, the ones that reality dictates to us in hand-in-fire type situations.

TS replied:
They are “based” on just that. A house is “based” on its foundation. The second floor is NOT the foundation, but it is based on it. All of the higher-order descriptions and analyses are based on our sensory experiences (see my regular reminder about humans as products of evolution, though, and as such arriving at birth with innate, hardwired responses and commitments – a newborn baby knows before birth how to suck in order to eat… it’s innate, instinctual, biological), of the very same kind as putting one’s hand in a flame, albeit less painful, most of the time (hopefully).

It’s a thesis rich in mean, as meaningful as any understanding we have, for it is the base, the foundation of our understanding, the predicate for all the higher level understandings and semantics we might develop.

Adverbs modify verbs. “Simply” is an adverb. It is rich in semantic content. Don’t ignore such words. Doing so leaves you very confused.

A house is constitutively based on its second floor just as much as it is based on its foundation. You are equivocating here.

 

[Betterave]

What I meant to say about the house analogy might not have been clear.

A house is constitutively based on its second floor just as much as it is based on its foundation. You are equivocating because you imply that the second floor (your scientistic second floor, that is) is (approximately) based on the foundation in an (approximately) reductive sense. This is obviously false from the perspective of the analogy you suggest. It’s like saying that the foundation determines (in a strong sense) what the second floor will be like - it doesn’t. Now obviously it constrains it, but we all know that already, so you don’t need to bother pointing it out. (Also, when we build a house, we lay the foundation ourselves… think about it.)

 

[Touchstone]

Now, I might be shamefully wrong, but a priori knowledge can be subdivided into two specific types. 1) Knowledge of something gained by no sense data whatsoever, and 2) Knowledge of something gained by sense data not of the thing but of something else. There are probably more technical and concise terms for these (I got to read up on this more … but I read it somewhere). #1 would be innate ideas, which Aristotle rejected. #2 would be something like reading about Asia and gaining knowledge about it, despite never having experienced or observed Asia yourself.

Would empiricism also deny this second kind of a priori knowledge?

I don’t recognize that as a priori knowledge. We might call that “vicarious knowledge”, knowledge predicated on the credibility of third party reports (and a whole lot of our knowledge is sourced this way), but it’s gated through our senses, a product of our experience – we experience the reports, and recall previous experiences that get integrated into a judgment about the credibilty/plausibility of the report. All of that is *a posteriori *conclusion though.

When we speak of a priori knowledge, the constraints are severe; it is that which we can “know” prior to any external influences or stimuli. Reports from the field do not conform to that constraint.

Is it possible to explain where exactly you part company with Aristotle on his epistemology and/or metaphysics?

It is, but I think you would be dissatisfied with what I’m able and willing to cram in, here. If you want to spin up a new thread, I think that’s an interesting subject (Aristotelian empiricism), and would be happy to hash that out there in some depth. It can be a two-person thread that just scrolls off the page quickly, if need be, but let’s give ourselves a little room; that’s too much work to reduce what you are asking for to a paragraph here that is clear and defensible on its own.

I am amused by your analogy … but I’m afraid it’s not exactly helpful in p(name removed by moderator)ointing your divergence with the philosopher. I know that might be a surgically detailed thing to ask of you … on the other hand, maybe not. Nah, I think it’s fair.

I think it’s fair, but warrants a spawned thread, if you want to pursue it.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

But you are missing the point. A great deal is essentially connected to a particular point of view, or type of paradigm, and however virtuous our attempts may be to give a complete account of the world collectively, as you say, in objective terms detached from these perspectives, these very attempts, if pushed far enough, inevitably lead to false reductions and outright denials that certain patently real phenomena exist at all, which is precisely what your parochial “objectivism” does, since in the same tongue that you express disdain for particular perspectives you forget your own efforts to arrive at a completely detached point of view are entirely dependent on your own subjectivity as a fundamental feature of reality too.

That is a sentence I can appreciate – it’s huge, but holds together! Two points in reponse to that.

1. You’re right that attemps to give a “complete” account of the world collectively are doomed to fail. “Complete” is undefined, we wouldn’t know it if we reached it, right? There’s always another layer of abstract, another meta-explanation. “Complete” is a vanishing point that we aim at but cannot reach. We instead try to build more knowledge than we had, and provide more performative and robust models as we go, indicating relative progress.

Insofar as you are imposing “complete” as a goal on me, or empiricists, I think the criticism breaks down right there. That is an undefined concept. If we knew what “complete” meant in that context, we would have complete knowledge!

1. There’s an important understanding baked into the aphorism “all generalizations are false”. We can say the same for analogies – all analogies break down at some level… the must else were not engaging in analogy but identity.

So yes, if you push any method “too far” the “too” in “too far” starts to create problems, and big ones, often enough. Even so, I’m struck by the “patently real” claim struck in there. Of course, a method that aims at “real” yet denies the “patently real” has a big problem, but that’s the very issue in question, and I think “patently real” here is hard to class as anything more than begging the central question, here. Maybe you can expand on what you think is “patently real”, which is being denied by empirical methodologies, and what invests its ‘patent-ness’ in its reality.

This is precisely why we find your rendering of “objectivity” a very conspicuous form of blindness, since it is an idealist presumptive strain running throughout all your views, namely that *what *there is and *how *things really are could not go beyond what we can in principle, think or conceive in terms of the extant fruitfulness of scientific methodological paradigms.

Reality (logically speaking) can be, might be far more… expansive, or convoluted, or irrational than our epistemic faculties can apprehend. I don’t see any basis for ruling that out as a logical possibility. But it’s nothing more than notional for us so long as we are, in fact, bound by the epistemic faculties we have.

Let’s suppose there is some … “reality beyond” which we will just stipulate is “actual” and “fully real” somehow, and yet which is beyond our epistemic reach. This is very much like the scenarios involving event horizons in physics. In some setups, we understand matter, energy and the interactive events between them to exist over the event horizon (e.g. outside a black hole we are falling into), but for us as observers in that situation, they are perfectly out of reach. There is no way, even in principle, to send or receive information across that barrier.

If there is some ‘other reality’ over our epistemic horizon, or maybe I should call it our reality horizon, then it is what it is, but there’s perfectly nothing more to do, say, or think about it. You can call that “blindness”, and I think that’s apt in the same sense a black hole produces “information blindness”. But that’s the circumstance, not an error we could correct. It’s not that we are just not clever enough to “see inside a black hole” or “think with open minds about getting at information over the even horizon”. It’s an insuperable limitation of the environment we are operating within.

If you think this is wrong, then it seems there is a very straightforward and compelling way to discredit this view – produce the “other knowledge” or the “other reality”, and demonstrate that is available and not over the epistemic horizon after all. Critics of empiricism are routinely claiming there can be “more, and beyond”, but they conspicuously fail – across the board, at all times and instances – to show this to be the case.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Syntax:

Your “scientism” is a special form of idealism since it puts only one type of understanding in charge of the rest of universe.

I understand that you are committed to reading me as pledge to some *a priori *exclusion of knowledge that might obtain outside of empirical methods. I have no such rule, and never have. I do insist on some nominal coherence for the terms we use, and that is in some cases a very big problem for “alternative epistemology” proponents (they tend to fail just in formulating their epistemology in coherent terms, never mind supporting it as an effective epistemology), but so long as we have some basic semantics in place for the terms, there IS NO A PRIORI BAN on extra-empirical or non-empirical sources of knowledge.

My conclusion, a posteriori, is that the only claims of knowledge that stand up to scrutiny and testing, those that are meaningful as knowledge, all happen to grounded in empirical sources and methods. That produces the same end result – all available knowledge is empirically-sourced, but it is arrived at by analysis and conclusion, not by *a priori *exclusion.

Consider a claim about swans: *All swans are white. *If all of our available evidence, all observed swans, are in fact white, this is a true statement in terms of known facts. But it may also be a categorical claim. It’s based on induction, and subject to all the risks that inhere in induction, but nevertheless, it would be a general claim about swans based on our empirical analysis.

Now. *All swans are white *in this case is not the result of a “rule” we set up initially. There’s no up front exclusion of black swans, a tautology that asserts that if it is a swan, it must necessarily be white. Rather, we are open, and looking at the swans we know about. Some of them might have been non-white. But, as it happens, all the swans we know about are white, and so we apply induction.

It just takes one black swan (famously) to discredit that claim, to invalidate the inference. The claim is at risk of falsification, and that is a good thing, epistemically.

If the analogy isn’t clear, empiricism does not rule out “black swans” up front. Instead, it looks backward and at the present and understands that given the best of our knowledge, all swans are white. It’s a post-facto conclusion.

So no arbitrary exclusions as you seem wont to complain about here are in place.

I find it bizarre that in spite of your allegedly “skeptical outlook” you continue to deny the existence of certain entities as if the current methods already in existence have already solved all the problems for which they were not designed to solve to begin with.

I haven’t supported the “as if” you are pointing at here. Above it was “patent realities” and here it’s “certain entities” – would like to know what these are and how you classed them as such. Regardless, I unreservedly affirm that empiricism has not “solved all the problem”, and answered all questions, and understand quite well that it was never designed to do so. Nothing I’m aware of is credible or performative toward such an end – this is like hoping to invent a “perpetual motion machine” in physics… it misunderstand the limitations of our environment.

Just because empiricism doesn’t answer all and wasn’t built for that, though, does not mean other notions perform, or obtain at all. If they are actual and effective, then show them as such. It’s not empiricism’s job to do that. While my empricism makes no *a priori *claims to monopolies on knowledge, it does appear to have an de facto monopoly; I don’t know of any “non-white swans”, of anything that is meaningfully referred to as “knowledge” that doesn’t find its grounds in experience and observation (as always, my caveat about innate biology, and the dispositions we have through our DNA and biological environment – that’s often referred to as a form of knowledge; if so, that’s as “a priori” and non-empirical as it gets).

A perfect example of this is your elimitavisim toward the subjectivity of mental states. The world described by physics, neurology, and the methodologies of science leave undescribed the *irreducibly subjective character *of conscious mental processes, whatever may be their intimate relations to the physical operations of the brain, but you continue to insist that the problems do not lie in our methodologies, but in our postulation of the very existence of mental phenomena!

I don’t rule it out. It’s a hypothesis I embraced for a long time (I was a Christian for 30+ years). But it’s just not a needed hypothesis. It’s problematic in its own right, and more importantly, just superfluous against more economic models that don’t need it, and understand even the most personalized, purely subjective qualia or internal sense as being phenomenal in the same way everything else we observe is.

That’s not a healthy objective skepticism; that’s a presumptive dogmatism!

Why would you say that’s presumptive? Do you suppose that looking at all the swans, and finding them all to be white, and then at a thousand claims of black swans, all of which fail, and badly, to produce swans at all, let alone non-white swans, would be “presumptive dogmatism”???

-TS

 

[Syntax]

My conclusion, a posteriori, is that the only claims of knowledge that stand up to scrutiny and testing, those that are meaningful as knowledge, all happen to grounded in empirical sources and methods.

I don’t rule it out. It’s a hypothesis I embraced for a long time (I was a Christian for 30+ years). But it’s just not a needed hypothesis.Why? Because it doesn’t fit in with current methodological practice?] It’s problematic in its own right, and more importantly, just superfluous against more economic models that don’t need it [Our current models don’t need them, so we ought not to believe that they exist? This is boostrapping the plausibility and circumference of your models to other domains for which they were not intended to deal with. I will add that psychology is much more fruitful in its doman than neuroscience when it postulates the existence of subjective mental states], and understand even the most personalized, purely subjective qualia or internal sense as being phenomenal in the same way everything else we observe is…

You are just bootstrapping your rendering of the word “evidence” by claiming that scientific methodoligical practice is the only vehicle to count as genuine knowledge since it is “grounded in empirical sources and methods”.

Your principle is “we should not believe in entities for which there is no evidence.” If we should expect to see some evidence that an empirical thing exists, then the absence of any such evidence gives us grounds to think that emprical thing doesn’t exist. That seems right. If there is an absence of evidence for a pink elephant in this room, that constitutes good grounds for thinking no pink elephants exist in this room, since if there were pink elephant in this room we would should expect to see them, since elephants are those kinds of things which we can detect empirically.

But then you say, “If there were existent mental states, then we would have better evidence than we have.” By which standards? Mental states are not those kinds of things with which neurobiology and cognitive-science deals. So it is suspect to demand evidence for their existence within this kind methodological practice. Like I said, "the world described by physics, neurology, and the methodologies of science leave undescribed the *irreducibly subjective character *of conscious mental processes …but you continue to insist that the problems do not lie in our methodologies, but in our postulation of the very existence of mental phenomena. Yes, that is dogmatism about your paradigms, since those paradigms are not intended to deal with those kinds of entities from the start. The hypothesis that mental entities exist sounds absurd to your ears because you already assume they are physical entities that ought to be detected. But how do you know this?

 

[warpspeedpetey]

But in truth, consciousness may not be the best topic to debate about. Its literally one of the fields that’s at the fringe of our current understanding of things.

I mean i suppose you could take one of four possible attitudes:

1.) Solving the problem is just around the corner. ie: Triumphalist Scientism

2.) There is no problem - what John Searle calls “Denying the Data” and what he actively accuses Dennett of.

3.) Ah ha, with this particular hole in current science i can jam my own personal philosophy in!

4.) The Problem is Unsolvable - This is Colin Mcginn’s viewpoint.

at the risk of being accused of number 3.

conciousness cant exist as an emergent property of the physical brain. either the universe is deterministic, and every state is inexorably determined by the next, making a conciousness impossible, or the universe is indeterministic, random, making a reflexive impossible.

the universe is either deterministic or indeterministic. in both states a solely physical expalantion of mind seems impossible.

i dont think this is a current hole in science, i think its a permanent problem just as free will is, as no physical causation of free will is possible. i dont see how a physical causation for concsiousness is possible either.

now im no neuroscientist, but i took an anatomy class covering some neuroanatomy about a year ago, and when the issue came up, that prof said that volition couldnt be pinned down as far as causation.

 

[Syntax]

That’s classic Daniel Dennett. And if i understand my colleagues in the neuroscience department, its also a view that they tend to roll their eyes at. As it stands, at least in terms of the philosophy of the mind, its either him, John Searle, or David Chalmers…But in truth, consciousness may not be the best topic to debate about. Its literally one of the fields that’s at the fringe of our current understanding of things.

Yes! It’s good to see a neuroscientist on board. Hopefully, TS is aware of the following options you listed as possible alternatives to his Dennett-style elimitavism. TS’s conclusion is not so obvious as TS continues to think it is. And these other options have a wide range of applicability in other debated areas. So it is essential for our own understanding to recognize their import.

I mean i suppose you could take one of four possible attitudes:

1.) Solving the problem is just around the corner. ie: Triumphalist Scientism

2.) There is no problem - what John Searle calls “Denying the Data” and what he actively accuses Dennett of.

3.) Ah ha, with this particular hole in current science i can jam my own personal philosophy in!

4.) The Problem is Unsolvable - This is Colin Mcginn’s viewpoint.

Consciousness studies is like a growth industry at this point. Everybody seems to want to get in on the ground floor and postulate something, even though there’s currently no means (if there will be any means) to validate or invalidate their statements.

(1) is too presumptious. (2) might be a way of hiding your head in the sand since it is not addressing Chalmers’ coined distinction between the “easy problem of reflex, action, and control” and the “hard problem of consciousness.” (3) is just “What-the-Bleep-do-we-Know” kind of explanatory failure since it explains one mystery with another. (4) is a hopeless way of resigning.

So let’s not be committed to any of these views, but keep their import open in our investigations.

 

[Betterave]

When we speak of a priori knowledge, the constraints are severe; it is that which we can “know” prior to any external influences or stimuli. Reports from the field do not conform to that constraint.

I do hope you’re aware that the ‘prior’ here means logically prior, not temporally prior. Anyway, what field reports are you referring to?

 

[Betterave]

You are just bootstrapping your rendering of the word “evidence” by claiming that scientific methodoligical practice is the only vehicle to count as genuine knowledge since it is “grounded in empirical sources and methods”.

Your principle is “we should not believe in entities for which there is no evidence.” If we should expect to see some evidence that an empirical thing exists, then the absence of any such evidence gives us grounds to think that emprical thing doesn’t exist. That seems right. If there is an absence of evidence for a pink elephant in this room, that constitutes good grounds for thinking no pink elephants exist in this room, since if there were pink elephant in this room we would should expect to see them, since elephants are those kinds of things which we can detect empirically.

But then you say, “If there were existent mental states, then we would have better evidence than we have.” By which standards? Mental states are not those kinds of things with which neurobiology and cognitive-science deals. So it is suspect to demand evidence for their existence within this kind methodological practice. Like I said, "the world described by physics, neurology, and the methodologies of science leave undescribed the *irreducibly subjective character *of conscious mental processes …but you continue to insist that the problems do not lie in our methodologies, but in our postulation of the very existence of mental phenomena. Yes, that is dogmatism about your paradigms, since those paradigms are not intended to deal with those kinds of entities from the start. The hypothesis that mental entities exist sounds absurd to your ears because you already assume they are physical entities that ought to be detected. But how do you know this?

As I understand TS’s view, ‘evidence’ must be ‘performative’ (by definition). If it’s not performative, it’s not evidence. By definition, there is no evidence for anything that is not performative.

And ‘performative’ means… subsumed under some ‘evidentially’ supported conceptual framework. In other words, no evidence implies no performativity.

Is that helpful? We can’t disagree with that now, can we? (No and no.)

 

[Touchstone]

I do hope you’re aware that the ‘prior’ here means logically prior, not temporally prior.

Of course.

Anyway, what field reports are you referring to?

I was replying to Areopagite who said in this post:

Areopagite:

Now, I might be shamefully wrong, but a priori knowledge can be subdivided into two specific types. 1) Knowledge of something gained by no sense data whatsoever, and 2) Knowledge of something gained by sense data not of the thing but of something else. There are probably more technical and concise terms for these (I got to read up on this more … but I read it somewhere). #1 would be innate ideas, which Aristotle rejected. #2 would be something like reading about Asia and gaining knowledge about it, despite never having experienced or observed Asia yourself.

(emphasis mine)

The ‘reports from the field’ referred to these reports of what things are like in Asia. Reading, of course, is engaging the senses, and acquiring knowledge that way (to the extent the vicarious knowledge is knowledge). It’s not a priori knowledge.

-TS

 

[Syntax]

As I understand TS’s view, ‘evidence’ must be ‘performative’ (by definition). If it’s not performative, it’s not evidence. By definition, there is no evidence for anything that is not performative.

And ‘performative’ means… subsumed under some ‘evidentially’ supported conceptual framework. In other words, no evidence implies no performativity.

Is that helpful? We can’t disagree with that now, can we? (No and no.)

That’s correct. This is what I am objecting to. I call it “bootrstrapping” what one claims counts as evidence. And this is perfectly fine when talking about entities within a pre-established framework, so “performative for scientific practice” circumscribes what is supposed to count as evidence in the domain of scientific practice. But this circumscription of what counts as evidence oversteps its bounds when it claims to hold for all investigative domains. This dogmatism comes out when someone says that for all domains, “the fruitlessness of the hypothesis of existent mental states gives us little reason for thinking they exist.” Though this this way of talking is perfectly permissible within the framework of neuroscience and physics, it is inappropriate and dogmatic to talk this way outside of these domains. And TS switches back and forth in this respect. I don’t reject the former, I reject the latter way of talking.

 

[Betterave]

Of course.

I was replying to Areopagite who said in this post:

(emphasis mine)

The ‘reports from the field’ referred to these reports of what things are like in Asia. Reading, of course, is engaging the senses, and acquiring knowledge that way (to the extent the vicarious knowledge is knowledge). It’s not a priori knowledge.

-TS

Gotcha, thanks!

 

[johncbrainerd]

I have just discovered this discussion feature of Catholic Answers and find it very interesting.

As to Leela’s OP “Demanding Evidence,” she said it all when she said “…two people in question may be viewing an assertion from the perspective of applying it to different purposes.” In short, purpose controls what we see. However, a “philosopher’s perspective,” ala Kantianists, usually targets a universal rather than a specific purpose. Hence, the effort to find a universal argument for or against a demand for evidence is vain. Instead, if the purpose for looking in each case is identified, all else relates to whether that specific purpose is satisfied by the evidence or not. In short, the demand is both relative and absolute, relative as to the specific purpose in each instance, and absolute as to when the evidence indeed does or does not justify the purpose.

It’s all very simple in the end, but we so often get bollixed up in the quest for adequating the mind to reality that getting there escapes us. That’s what’s happened to her critics.

 

[Syntax]

I have just discovered this discussion feature of Catholic Answers and find it very interesting.

As to Leela’s OP “Demanding Evidence,” she said it all when she said “…two people in question may be viewing an assertion from the perspective of applying it to different purposes.” In short, purpose controls what we see. However, a “philosopher’s perspective,” ala Kantianists, usually targets a universal rather than a specific purpose. Hence, the effort to find a universal argument for or against a demand for evidence is vain. Instead, if the purpose for looking in each case is identified, all else relates to whether that specific purpose is satisfied by the evidence or not. In short, the demand is both relative and absolute, relative as to the specific purpose in each instance, and absolute as to when the evidence indeed does or does not justify the purpose.

It’s all very simple in the end, but **we so often get bollixed up in the quest for adequating the mind to reality that getting there escapes us. ** That’s what’s happened to her critics.

Yes, what is to count as evidence is circumscribed by the purposes and contexts at hand within a conceptual framework, but Rorty-style pragmatism takes it a step further by claiming that to be rational, one does **not **have to be committed to the view that the external world somehow offers any **normative constraints **on our beliefs and epistemic practices. I find this deeply problematic because by denying that the world provides any normative constraints on our beliefs, the decision about which system to adopt in the first place becomes entirely arbitrary since we have just undercut any hope for deciding which conceptual-system stands as the model system all others systems should take as their guide for rational practice. So we will have no way of deciding what is to count as *model rational behavior *from the start since “rational” is simply defined by what a community happens to stipulate at a given time instead of being defined as that which gets us closer to the truth.

Pragmatism, of course, doesn’t find this problematic at all since it says a kind of “meta-framework” independent of our goals and purposes is a nonsensical notion from the start. But is it? Pragmatism may be correct that creating a conceptual framework independent of our goals and purposes is impossible (and I *may *agree with this), but the notion, however “lofty” and “unrealizable” it may appear, is also a necessary presupposition for making sense of our epistemic notions from the start. After all, why would we engage in defending our positions if we didn’t think there was any real fact of the matter about the world however unreachable independent of our frameworks it is?

Though we may not have this kind of bird’s-eye-view on matters in actual fact, and we probably never will, the activity of science itself, for example, proceeds on the presupposition that the world can, and does, constrain our epistemic practices. We may not know the world in itself, but the postulated grounding presupposition of all scientific/philosophical activity consists in the idea that **the world as it really is simply won’t let us think or do anything we want about it **. So this is a necessary presupposition if we are going to make any sense of “warrant” and “justification” in the first place…otherwise, all our activities that we normally take to be rational would just consist of the successful following of rules within which whatever collective game we happen to find ourselves. If it is true that what we normally understand to be a “rational belief” no longer had anything to do with the world, but soley with whether or not we could effectively abide by the rules of discourse laid down by mutual agreement, I would be very deeply troubled indeed.

The relationship between the notions of justification and truth ought to be the exact opposite of what pragmatism takes it to be, such that, we decide which rules of discourse are rational because we think these rules most effectively get us closer to truth, rather than saying that belief X is true because it is what we have collectively stipulated to be “rational.”

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Yes, what is to count as evidence is circumscribed by the purposes and contexts at hand within a conceptual framework, but Rorty-style pragmatism takes it a step further by claiming that to be rational, one does **not **have to be committed to the view that the external world somehow offers any **normative constraints **on our beliefs and epistemic practices. I find this deeply problematic because by denying that the world provides any normative constraints on our beliefs, the decision about which system to adopt in the first place becomes entirely arbitrary since we have just undercut any hope for deciding which conceptual-system stands as the model system all others systems should take as their guide for rational practice. So we will have no way of deciding what is to count as *model rational behavior *from the start since “rational” is simply defined by what a community happens to stipulate at a given time instead of being defined as that which gets us closer to the truth.

Pragmatism, of course, doesn’t find this problematic at all since it says a kind of “meta-framework” independent of our goals and purposes is a nonsensical notion from the start. But is it? Pragmatism may be correct that creating a conceptual framework independent of our goals and purposes is impossible (and I *may *agree with this), but the notion, however “lofty” and “unrealizable” it may appear, is also a necessary presupposition for making sense of our epistemic notions from the start. After all, why would we engage in defending our positions if we didn’t think there was any real fact of the matter about the world however unreachable independent of our frameworks it is?

Though we may not have this kind of bird’s-eye-view on matters in actual fact, and we probably never will, the activity of science itself, for example, proceeds on the presupposition that the world can, and does, constrain our epistemic practices. We may not know the world in itself, but the postulated grounding presupposition of all scientific/philosophical activity consists in the idea that **the world as it really is simply won’t let us think or do anything we want about it **. So this is a necessary presupposition if we are going to make any sense of “warrant” and “justification” in the first place…otherwise, all our activities that we normally take to be rational would just consist of the successful following of rules within which whatever collective game we happen to find ourselves. If it is true that what we normally understand to be a “rational belief” no longer had anything to do with the world, but soley with whether or not we could effectively abide by the rules of discourse laid down by mutual agreement, I would be very deeply troubled indeed.

The relationship between the notions of justification and truth ought to be the exact opposite of what pragmatism takes it to be, such that, we decide which rules of discourse are rational because we think these rules most effectively get us closer to truth, rather than saying that belief X is true because it is what we have collectively stipulated to be “rational.”

pirsigs “metaphysics of quality” is a complete crock. they have a forum and people over there create accounts under different names here. you can run text searches and p(name removed by moderator)oint them. a friend turned me on to one from this thread. PM, if you want to see it.

 

[Syntax]

pirsigs “metaphysics of quality” is a complete crock. they have a forum and people over there create accounts under different names here. you can run text searches and p(name removed by moderator)oint them. a friend turned me on to one from this thread. PM, if you want to see it.

No thanks. I have no interest in what some unqualified new-age pop-icon such as Pirsig had to say about metaphysics.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

No thanks. I have no interest in what some unqualified new-age pop-icon such as Pirsig had to say about metaphysics.

exactamundo!

 

[1holycatholic]

You responded to “Leela”…

Since you take the liberty to quote from atheists, I thought I’d take the liberty to quote from a review of Plantinga’s book Warranted Christian Belief.

Liberty?

Wasn’t it your own Aquinas who said, whenever you reach a contradiction, make a distinction? That dictum shows just how easy it is to create a self-consistent philosophical system. They are a dime a dozen. You seem to be concerned with find the one true philosophical system. Whatever criteria you use to compare the available options, it seems that self-consistency can’t be one of them.

Best,
Leela

I asked for the source of the quote because AFAIK it’s not in Aquinas’ work.

“Leela” didn’t answer. So I went looking.

tinyurl.com/yalwj3f
Steven Peterson:

…
So what do we do? Do we follow Aquinas’s dictum “whenever you reach a contradiction, make a distinction”? Or should we follow Ayn Rand who said, "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises.
…]
Best,
Steve

That’s just downright creepy. “Leela” is pilfering from “Steve”, or “Steve” is pilfering from “Leela”, or “Leela” and “Steve” are one and the same.

The rest of the linked article is all too familiar. :doh2: