Padding the Case for the New Atheism

[Touchstone]

1. It seems that you assume a false dichotomy here. (If you really want to move beyond simplistic epistemological views, you might take more seriously questions such as, What is “the question”? What is thinking?)

It seems you are asking me to work both sides of the argument, while you stand aside here. Tempting, but no. If you have issues to raise or criticism to level, state them, and clearly. It seems you are now just being coy. If I’m being simplistic, that should be something you can show, and would to redound to your credit in the argument.

1. Is this claim here, about the “profound depths of meaning…”, falsifiable? Or are your own claims about “profundity of meaning” nonsense in terms of your own epistemological view (think Wittgenstein)? (Or are they perhaps just overpoweringly obvious by the power of their innate truthiness?)

By “meaning”, I’m not referring to magic or something nebulous. Rather, I mean that the graph of relationships between symbols and referents for us has a depth (“profound”) that is not producible with unfalsifiable explanations. Falsifiability is a layer of meaning itself, a relationship posited between statement and observation that has contingency on those observations. “True” obtains in the absence of observations that can contradict the statement as well as the presence of positive qualities (evidential fitness, predictive power, etc.).

Objectively, a falsifiable truth has a meaningful quality that an unfalsifiable claim does not; a falsifiable statement that stands despite risk of falsification tells the hearer something epistemically substantial about the world than the non-falsifiable statement. “True” has more meaning – not just as a preference, but more conceptual structure – when it hazards its own falsification than one that does not.

This relies on nothing like “innate truthiness” (whatever that means), but instead a review of what substantiates meaning for terms and concepts. Falsifiability is a concept that brings clarity and and precision to language and statements, “better tools in the toolbox” as Ludwig might put it. The word is not the referent, but an instrument of language, and “true” as a falsifiable concept (i.e. possibly false, but not actually false) is an instrument that promotes clarity and objectivity in making statements about the real world.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

It depends on the confluence of the epistemic grounding of the claim, and the practical utility or need for validating the claim. If I say “My favorite color is blue”, I don’t particularly value showing that to be knowledge in any real sense, because a) it’s not amenable such testing in the first place, and b) it’s not (so far as I can see) a matter of any practical import as “knowledge” in the first place.

Good call! Why bother even talking about it?

But “I love my wife” is a much different claim. It’s important to me that that claim is not “strictly internal”. It’s important that my wife finds agreement between that evidence as she sees it (and our kids, friends, her sister, etc.) matches my claim. Her actions toward me may (and I think should) depend on the congruence between “I love my wife” and my actions. It’s amenable to evidential analysis to some significant sense, and it is very important that that claim be credible outside my mind (in my wife’s mind, primarily, but also others).

So it’s “important” to you - why?

“I love knowledge” strikes me as very similar to a claim that I love my wife. It may be important to demonstrate that, practically, and its amenable to outside analysis by looking at what supports (if anything) my “love” for knowledge.

And here it may be important - why? Or is it, so far as you can tell, just your natural inborn truthiness at work?

Hmmm. I think I get your idea, but I don’t think “simple and clear” are good labels for minds. I will say, though, that some minds are much more self-satisfied by their own intuitions than others, which I think will produce an affectiveness that resembles your description. Some people are just more tightly wed to the depth and innate “truthiness” of their intuitions than others.

Sure, that might be true, “some people are just…”; but why? I’m getting the impression that what you mean could be fairly expressed by saying that “these people” just haven’t reached your level of depth and innate truthiness - but of course you are unable to formulate the problem thus to yourself, or at least you choose not to.

No, at least not in some way that avoids equivocation. Maybe this is why I resist “simple and clear” as labels for minds. I don’t think what I’m suggesting is simple at all, quite the reverse. I think my presence here is one of advocacy against the intuition as sufficient, and propounding an epistemology which is spectacularly complex and highly nuanced in contrast to the consulting of one’s intuitions. Sometimes intutions are all that’s available, and you can’t do what you can’t do in those cases, but my comments here on this thread are very much tied up in an epistemic commitment to “knowledge as a team sport”, and NOT just a team sport in the sense that people of like conclusions at the end get together and wear the same color jersey. Rather, a team method which incorporates intuition on the (name removed by moderator)ut side aggressively, but just as aggressively vets it with objective analysis and empirical testing.

So here’s an idea: don’t formulate simple/simplistic summaries of your position if your position is not in fact simple/simplistic! Please understand: talking about how “spectacularly complex” your epistemological position is (can you say hubris?) only accentuates the fact that your formulations of this position are disappointingly (and inconsistently) simplistic.

It ain’t simple. I hope to be as articulate as I can be, but these are difficult concepts to wrap one’s head around. And they aren’t just conceptual difficult, they are emotionally difficult, requiring a level of discipline and rigor in that area that make the heuristic all the more difficult for us humans, who are, after all, highly emotional beings.

I think you’re on the right track with this one.

Sure, that’s trivially true. You can just cut to the chase there and say "one who isn’t aware of ‘other kinds of truth’ won’t except claims predicated on those other methods as truths’. Of course, by definition that is true, just like saying “all bachelors are unmarried”. That’s how you’ve chosen to define ‘bachelor’.

Trouble is it’s relevant, TS, unlike bachelors!

Here, if you want to help yourself to a definition of ‘truth’ that fits some other model than that of an empirical/rational epistemology, be my guest. But then we are simply at a loss to communicate further – an impedance mismatch, as they say in the electronics world. Once ‘true’ gets plastic and squishy like that, the basis for communication breaks down, at least in dealing with statements about the real world.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump (or his ma): Plastic and squishy is as plastic and squishy does.

 

[Betterave]

It seems you are asking me to work both sides of the argument, while you stand aside here. Tempting, but no. If you have issues to raise or criticism to level, state them, and clearly. It seems you are now just being coy. If I’m being simplistic, that should be something you can show, and would to redound to your credit in the argument.

Huh? Here was my charge: “false dichotomy.” This is your response? What’s coy about an allegation of false dichotomy? Or a suggestion to reflect on the meaning of the terms you are, apparently naively, deploying? I don’t get it. You want this “cheap and easy”, don’t you? You don’t want to have to think. But of course you don’t have to. That’s the way it works! Nobody can be forced to question, at least not in an honest way, and certainly the ability to question in a mature way, with a depth of understanding of what is at stake in “the question”, of the breadth of the “the question”, where it starts and what it encompasses, is something that is granted to very few. Teams are always necessary in some sense, but on some questions they can only do so much. Here it comes down to you, just you, like it or not. Evidence, in your sense, obviously doesn’t matter, is not performative. We’re talking about a fundamental elaboration of concepts. It’s not about evidence that can be mastered and made to appear and is performative in terms of political power (that’s really what you’re getting at with your talk of a self-correcting team sport). It’s about evidence that must be received with graciousness, even with a certain kind of reverence. It’s the kind of evidence that must be allowed to speak, must be cultivated. Is that plastic and squishy enough for you? Or do you think that’s me being coy? No stubbornness is needed here (as you claimed upthread); but only because oblivion does the trick just fine.

 

[doughnut]

Do you suppose homosexuals would generally affirm this claim?
It’s profoundly different. It’s the equivalent of telling a heterosexual s/he must be celibate his or her whole life, not by choice, but by fiat, and that that person cannot ever participate in the most intimate and profound kinds of loving sexual intimacy, because… well, because that’s what a barbaric God wants.

-TS

a man born blind or deaf was also subjected to a life without sight, or hearing. would that be that the “BARBARIC” God wanted it for the blind/deaf man? any more that he is BARBARIC for creating homosexuals?

there are plenty of celibate unmarried people and never participated in the “most intimate and profound kinds of loving sexual intimacy” and still lead happy lifes. Of course God isn’t barbaric. You have a choice. You may either choose to listen to God’s recommended lifestyle, or choose your own, due to personal indulgence.

 

[Touchstone]

So it’s “important” to you - why?

Because I desire the benefits and pleasures of such mutually supportive relationship, of course. Being able to support “I love you” with actions goes a long way toward soldifying the relationship. It’s then grounded in evidence, action observable, and not just an internal quale, like something “appearing greenly”.

And here it may be important - why? Or is it, so far as you can tell, just your natural inborn truthiness at work?

Well, my ability to extract knowledge from complex systems and the world around me is the basis for my income. That’s how I feed myself, my wife and my kids. That’s probably enough right there to support that as an objective. It’s a tool, tricky to use, but effective and rewarding. It’s gratifying to build real knowledge.

Sure, that might be true, “some people are just…”; but why? I’m getting the impression that what you mean could be fairly expressed by saying that “these people” just haven’t reached your level of depth and innate truthiness - but of course you are unable to formulate the problem thus to yourself, or at least you choose not to.

As a Christian, my mind had the same capabilities it does now, so far as I can tell, and maybe more then than now – my memory definitely isn’t what it used to be, for example. But embracing one heuristic over another gets rooted in preference and desire. I want to rely on epistemic methods that emphasize discipline and objectivity because that provides the best performing models of reality of any I can assess. But that is not a foregone objective for humans. Even for me, it wasn’t an object of my desire for a long time. Indeed, I avoided it with some determination, afraid of what the conclusions produced might mean for me, socially and emotionally.

The desires may well be innate to some degree, but what we embrace epistemically is grounded in goals and desires. It’s trite to say “everybody just wants to know the truth”. The evidence – here, for example – indicates otherwise.

So here’s an idea: don’t formulate simple/simplistic summaries of your position if your position is not in fact simple/simplistic! Please understand: talking about how “spectacularly complex” your epistemological position is (can you say hubris?) only accentuates the fact that your formulations of this position are disappointingly (and inconsistently) simplistic

It’s not my epistemology in any proprietary sense, and I harbor no vain notions of ownership or invention regarding it. It’s just the best-performing algorithm out there if based on the goal of matching evidential explanations and predictions to the real world in a falisifiable (in principle) way.

You keep saying you’re seeing simplistic summaries, but you remain unwiling or unable to show me what you mean by that. Can you tease that out a little bit, and show me there’s some substance behind the charge? Thanks!

Trouble is it’s relevant, TS, unlike bachelors!

Your tautologies are? Upthread you said:

Now obviously from a certain parochial point of view, from the point of view of someone who is simply unaware that certain terms he uses are not as obviously unproblematic as he takes them to be (which claim would be verifiable, in case you’re wondering), it simply doesn’t matter to him that his point of view is parochial, and thus probably doctrinaire and shallow.

That’s an utterly trivial observation. It can be said about anybody, anytime, no matter what terms he or she uses. It’s easily turned right back upon you, no matter what you claim – we can just imagine that whatever your views, your just simply unaware of the problematic nature of the terms you invoke, hence your views are doctrinaire and shallow!

It’s not a grounded statement. It’s just naked assertion, a “what if” that is just trivially true in a hypothetical sense. If I was a unicorn… then I’d be a unicorn, yeah. But that doesn’t have purchase on anything actual. So I do affirm that your “what if” is a what if, and true in a “what if” way, and only in that way. But that seems precisely as irrelevant as “all bachelors are unmarried”, unless you have some way to connect that to the actual, here, which you conspicuously have not done.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump (or his ma): Plastic and squishy is as plastic and squishy does.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Huh? Here was my charge: “false dichotomy.” This is your response? What’s coy about an allegation of false dichotomy? Or a suggestion to reflect on the meaning of the terms you are, apparently naively, deploying?

Well, if I see a false dichotomy being deployed, I try to identify what they other viable options are, which demonstrates the falsehood of the lemmas given as exhaustive. That is, if you show me false dichotomy “A | B”, I would point out C, or D or whatever others were relevant to show the inadequacy of “A | B”.

This is not what you are doing. Instead, coyly, you ask: don’t you see your false dichotomies? Well no, I wouldn’t offer them if I understood them to be false choice sets. So you’d be “uncoy” and honor me to point them out, thank you.

I don’t get it. You want this “cheap and easy”, don’t you? You don’t want to have to think. But of course you don’t have to. That’s the way it works! Nobody can be forced to question, at least not in an honest way, and certainly the ability to question in a mature way, with a depth of understanding of what is at stake in “the question”, of the breadth of the “the question”, where it starts and what it encompasses, is something that is granted to very few.

Ugh. Again, such vagueries. What do you mean precisely by an “honest way” of questioning? It sounds like some method that just happens to produce conclusions you approve of. This is reinforced in my reading by the language you follow that up with, emphasizing that some unspecified understanding of “stakes” and “breadth” needs be in place for said “honesty”. You may be have some good idea in there, but you’re being exceedingly oblique about what it is, if so. Tell me what qualifies as “honest way” and “mature way” of questioning with the proper view of the “stake”, “breadth” and scope.

And, importantly, whence this claim that such, however you define it, is “granted to the very few”? There’s so much obscured here, all I can do is ask you provide some content in filling this out.

Teams are always necessary in some sense, but on some questions they can only do so much.

OK. What sense do you believe “knowledge as a team sport” is necessary. It seems we can “bank” this bit of accord if I can understand what you’re referring to.

Here it comes down to you, just you, like it or not. Evidence, in your sense, obviously doesn’t matter, is not performative.

I’m tempted to object, but I can’t be sure what word you left out, there. Did you mean:
*
Evidence, in your sense, obviously doesn’t matter, **IT *is not performative.

Evidence is not performative, then, you’re saying, here?

We’re talking about a fundamental elaboration of concepts. It’s not about evidence that can be mastered and made to appear and is performative in terms of political power (that’s really what you’re getting at with your talk of a self-correcting team sport).

Concepts are not “inherently grounded” or otherwise performative epistemically, just by virtue of being concepts, no matter how much elaboration we might apply. Correct? So, elaboration is good for… elaborating – developing a detail, nuanced view of the subject and objects that stand in relation to them, but without grounding in the real world, it’s… ungrounded. Think, again, about some exotic, novel mathematical geometry we might concoct. It can be arbitrarily complex, conceptually, and we can elaborate on it till the cows come home, but unless and until it gets grounded in observation and sense experience, it remains completely detached.

If we are interested in those concepts being resolved against the real world then – if this fits our concept of “truth”, a correspondence between the model and the experiential and predictive record – then it is about more than just concepts and their elaboration.

It’s about evidence that must be received with graciousness, even with a certain kind of reverence. It’s the kind of evidence that must be allowed to speak, must be cultivated. Is that plastic and squishy enough for you? Or do you think that’s me being coy? No stubbornness is needed here (as you claimed upthread); but only because oblivion does the trick just fine.

I do think that is being coy. What else do you want to call it? Should be dress it up and drape “ineffable” around its shoulders? There’s been good, productive parts of the exchange here, but this part strongly signals to an effort to avoid speaking clearly and positively… a mystical approach to evidence, I guess.

It’s hard to type out and read back without it sounding like a smart***, but these are the words you are using on me, here. If I’m sufficiently reverent about (or towards?) the evidence, it will “speak”??? In my view, it’s a reverence for the evidence that makes knowledge contingent on its agreement, and I know no other way to let the evidence “speak” for itself than through the methods of discounting our subjective passions, and emphasizing objectivity in “hearing” it out.

-TS

 

[Betterave]

[It’s important to me that that claim is not “strictly internal”. It’s important that my wife finds agreement between that evidence as she sees it (and our kids, friends, her sister, etc.) matches my claim. Her actions toward me may (and I think should) depend on the congruence between “I love my wife” and my actions. It’s amenable to evidential analysis to some significant sense, and it is very important that that claim be credible outside my mind (in my wife’s mind, primarily, but also others).] I asked: “Why is it important?” Your answer: Because I desire the benefits and pleasures of such mutually supportive relationship, of course. Being able to support “I love you” with actions goes a long way toward soldifying the relationship. It’s then grounded in evidence, action observable, and not just an internal quale, like something “appearing greenly”.

Hmm, that’s interesting. I thought maybe you would want your love-claim to be more than strictly internal because if that’s all it was, your claim would simply be false. You would have misunderstood the concept of love. But not so? Instead you believe that it is important that your love-claim be credible to others because if it was not, you would miss out on the benefits and pleasures of love-based mutually supportive relationships, which you just happen to desire? Of course! (“Of course” means what? “I can’t think of any other possible answer to this dumb question - what a dumb question”?)

“I love knowledge” strikes me as very similar to a claim that I love my wife. It may be important to demonstrate that, practically, and its amenable to outside analysis by looking at what supports (if anything) my “love” for knowledge." So corroboration of the claim “I love knowledge” is important to me because…] Well, my ability to extract knowledge from complex systems and the world around me is the basis for my income. That’s how I feed myself, my wife and my kids. That’s probably enough right there to support that as an objective. It’s a tool, tricky to use, but effective and rewarding. It’s gratifying to build real knowledge.

So here we have the basis revealed for your rigorous development of an epistemological position: you find it gratifying and you make money off of it! Of course! Wow! Why didn’t I see that! And of course all of your co-workers have the same epistemological views as you.

But wait… Perhaps something doesn’t add up here. I used to work as a mechanical engineer and I had all sorts of colleagues who were very competent at extracting knowledge from complex systems and from the world around them, their knowledge was clearly performative, even just in your narrow sense of the term, and yet they didn’t all share the same epistemological views; and this means, of course, they didn’t all share your epistemological view. My brother is a very accomplished engineer and he happens to not give a fig about the general nature of knowledge and he is managing to provide quite handsomely for his family. Does my mentioning these obvious facts about reality indicate to you anything strange, idiosyncratic, even inconsistent, about the alleged rational grounding of your position? (If you’re wondering, asking questions is a way of inviting you to think for yourself instead of trying to force feed you, it is not just a matter of my being coy.)

As a Christian, my mind had the same capabilities it does now, so far as I can tell, and maybe more then than now – my memory definitely isn’t what it used to be, for example. But embracing one heuristic over another gets rooted in preference and desire. I want to rely on epistemic methods that emphasize discipline and objectivity because that provides the best performing models of reality of any I can assess. But that is not a foregone objective for humans. Even for me, it wasn’t an object of my desire for a long time. Indeed, I avoided it with some determination, afraid of what the conclusions produced might mean for me, socially and emotionally.

So are you saying that you avoided thinking about the best performing models of reality because you were afraid that the best performing models would have unpleasant consequences for you? What kind of a Christian were you (besides an immature and neurotic one)? Are you sure you have overcome the fear-of-truth that characterized you as a Christian? Do you blame Christianity for inducing this fear in you? I think most people are afraid of and/or indifferent towards the truth. How about you? I think when people are unable to speak in a fair and cautious way about certain subjects that that is usually a manifestation of fear of the truth. When you want to address enormous theological questions in three sentences, I take that as probable evidence that you are scared of the truth in such matters. When you dismiss a brilliant thinker like Thomas Aquinas as just so far beneath you (not the ‘authentic’ you, of course, the ‘inauthentic’ one), because, poor him, he lived so long ago and was unable to benefit from the awesome insights on performativity that are espoused by a particular school of modern epistemology which you endorse, that’s again evidence that you don’t love the truth.

 

[Betterave]

The desires may well be innate to some degree, but what we embrace epistemically is grounded in goals and desires. It’s trite to say “everybody just wants to know the truth”. The evidence – here, for example – indicates otherwise.

It’s trite? Or it’s false? “The desires”? Which ones? All of them? Is this claim supposed to elucidate of your spectacularly complex epistemological view? Or is there another purpose?

Is it trite to say “everybody wants to know the truth”? False? Contrary to the evidence?

It’s not my epistemology in any proprietary sense, and I harbor no vain notions of ownership or invention regarding it. It’s just the best-performing algorithm out there if based on the goal of matching evidential explanations and predictions to the real world in a falisifiable (in principle) way.

“It just is.” Yeah! Okay thanks! Because you say so! At this stage of the discussion, this is obviously not the kind of claim that would allow us to take seriously the claim that you love knowledge qua evidence-based team sport (rather than just your own opinions about knowledge) and that it is important to you that this not just be an internal impression. The evidence provided by this claim you make is that your doing contradicts your saying.

You keep saying you’re seeing simplistic summaries, but you remain unwilling or unable to show me what you mean by that. Can you tease that out a little bit, and show me there’s some substance behind the charge? Thanks!

Do you read all of my posts? I know you said your memory’s going, but seriously, I’ve pointed to instances of this trait in what you say in a number of very specific places.

Your tautologies are? Upthread you said:

Quote:
Now obviously from a certain parochial point of view, from the point of view of someone who is simply unaware that certain terms he uses are not as obviously unproblematic as he takes them to be (which claim would be verifiable, in case you’re wondering), it simply doesn’t matter to him that his point of view is parochial, and thus probably doctrinaire and shallow.

That’s an utterly trivial observation. It can be said about anybody, anytime, no matter what terms he or she uses. It’s easily turned right back upon you, no matter what you claim – we can just imagine that whatever your views, your just simply unaware of the problematic nature of the terms you invoke, hence your views are doctrinaire and shallow!

Let’s just say it: “Stupid is as stupid does.” That’s not a “bad thing” in my view (whatever you might suppose it would mean to say that Gump’s saying is a “bad thing”.). It’s not even tautological. Neither is it trivial. Its truth counts when we make evaluations of what counts as a stupid person. Now to say that my quote above is utterly trivial and tautological is to do a stupid, it seems to me. Please try to justify your wild assertions here. Are you trying to assert that IF x can be said about anybody, anytime, no matter what terms he or she uses, THEN x is trivial and tautological? This nonsense about “we can easily turn it back on you” amounts to what? The claim that the truth doesn’t matter? Or that it would actually be true to “turn it on” anyone, anytime, no matter what terms he or she uses? Or that we can literally only “imagine” how such a statement might apply, nothing else can be done with it? Please do explain!

It’s not a grounded statement. It’s just naked assertion, a “what if” that is just trivially true in a hypothetical sense. If I was a unicorn… then I’d be a unicorn, yeah. But that doesn’t have purchase on anything actual. So I do affirm that your “what if” is a what if, and true in a “what if” way, and only in that way. But that seems precisely as irrelevant as “all bachelors are unmarried”, unless you have some way to connect that to the actual, here, which you conspicuously have not done.

You’re obviously not even trying to engage with what I wrote (unless, with all due respect, you’re just not very bright when it comes to this kind of discussion, despite obviously being very bright in other ways). Now what “what if” are you talking about here? What do unicorns have to do with this? Is anybody actually a unicorn? Or should I connect this to your previous claim and assume that you think that it is trivially true of anybody, at any time, that he or she is a unicorn? Talk about ungrounded assertions! Anyway, perhaps for you it is not a grounded assertion (from what you say it sounds as if you’re just completely confused). That does not mean it is not a grounded assertion simpliciter. If you really want to say that it is ungrounded please explain this claim. I also don’t know what you take to be the “actual,” here, that I am not connected to. I assume you have taken personal offense and are not even thinking about epistemology any more but about how to defend yourself from attack. But my claim is not an attack, it is the truth. If you really can’t see the grounds for it, please just say so. We can try to take some baby steps together.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

Really? Why do you say that? Where it is you might have gotten this interpretation is far from clear. Are you being coy?

 

[Betterave]

Well, if I see a false dichotomy being deployed, I try to identify what they other viable options are, which demonstrates the falsehood of the lemmas given as exhaustive. That is, if you show me false dichotomy “A | B”, I would point out C, or D or whatever others were relevant to show the inadequacy of “A | B”.

Actually, TS, your showing me that the dichotomy was not exhaustive would be showing the false dichotomy. I would have made the FD, you would have shown it. If I point out a FD but you are still unable to see it, just say “I’ve tried but I can’t see it” - accusing me of coyness is sooo irrelevant.
**Originally Posted by Touchstone **
But where you have propositions that address the same question, and one explanation is perfectly unfalsifiable and the others are eminently falsifiable, no matter how the evidence bears out, there is a profound depth of meaning as a statement about reality in propositions that are falsifiable-in-principle that that unfalsifiable propositions do not have. To the extent one embraces an unfalsifiable explanation, one simply avoids the question, and accepts meaninglessness in favor of meaningfulness regarding the concepts of “true” and “know”.

1. It seems that you assume a false dichotomy here: Either one rejects ‘unfalsifiable [in your narrow sense] explanations’ in favor or meaningful questions or one accepts ‘unfalsifiable explanations’ and simply avoids asking meaningful questions; third option: one accepts ‘unfalsifiable explanations’ but does not reject meaningful questions about those explanations; fourth option: one rejects unfalsifiable explanations but still butchers meaningful questioning. (I can spell this out more in terms of an analysis of truth and knowledge if you like.)

Ugh. Again, such vagueries. What do you mean precisely by an “honest way” of questioning? It sounds like some method that just happens to produce conclusions you approve of. This is reinforced in my reading by the language you follow that up with, emphasizing that some unspecified understanding of “stakes” and “breadth” needs be in place for said “honesty”. You may be have some good idea in there, but you’re being exceedingly oblique about what it is, if so. Tell me what qualifies as “honest way” and “mature way” of questioning with the proper view of the “stake”, “breadth” and scope.

I’m not sure what you’re after here. Are you demanding the elimination of vagueness? That’s a rather vague demand. What do you think “honest” means? You’ve already talked about fear motivating your epistemic commitments - do you think that’s honest? What about ignoring evidence - is that honest? What about making sweeping claims about a controversial historical question without providing any evidence to support your claims - is that honest? Do I really have to explain this to you? Do I really need to explain what intellectual maturity is to you, or that an understanding of “stakes” and “breadth” (this is making me hungry) is important, even without specifying what the specific stakes or breadth in question are? I’m really not verbose by nature, so if you have a specific concern with what I’ve written, please state it.

And, importantly, whence this claim that such, however you define it, is “granted to the very few”? There’s so much obscured here, all I can do is ask you provide some content in filling this out.

I’m talking about an appropriate and adequate education combined with natural intellectual endowment and disposition of the will.

 

[Betterave]

OK. What sense do you believe “knowledge as a team sport” is necessary. It seems we can “bank” this bit of accord if I can understand what you’re referring to.

All knowledge claims are constituted in a public sphere and are implicitly related to every other knowledge claim and so are subject in some sense to ‘team’ criticism. Nobody comes up with knowledge claims apart from a personal formation within a family and culture (team) and the culture itself is the recipient of a heritage (past teams). When we are talking about knowledge, this heritage is predominantly a conceptual heritage, which is just there, to some extent, but is also appropriated collectively and individually in different ways, with different degrees of ‘truth’.

Teams are always necessary in some sense, but on some questions they can only do so much. Here it comes down to you, just you, like it or not. Evidence, in your sense, obviously doesn’t matter, is not performative.

I’m tempted to object, but I can’t be sure what word you left out, there. Did you mean:
*
Evidence, in your sense, obviously doesn’t matter, **IT ***is not performative.

Evidence is not performative, then, you’re saying, here?

I said what I meant. The implied subject of the clause “is not performative” is the only subject present in the sentence: evidence, in your sense. The qualification here is important - you shouldn’t drop it.

I wrote:
"We’re talking about a fundamental elaboration of concepts. It’s not about evidence that can be mastered and made to appear and is performative in terms of political power (that’s really what you’re getting at with your talk of a self-correcting team sport).

Concepts are not “inherently grounded” or otherwise performative epistemically, just by virtue of being concepts, no matter how much elaboration we might apply. Correct?

Not correct. Your concept of a concept is incorrect. A concept is not a free-floating construction that gets applied to the world after it has been constructed apart from the world. Some concepts may appear to function like this but that is an illusion. Continued below…

So, elaboration is good for… elaborating – developing a detail, nuanced view of the subject and objects that stand in relation to them, but without grounding in the real world, it’s… ungrounded. Think, again, about some exotic, novel mathematical geometry we might concoct. It can be arbitrarily complex, conceptually, and we can elaborate on it till the cows come home, but unless and until it gets grounded in observation and sense experience, it remains completely detached.

Your confusion arises from thinking that because we can elaborate a concept which includes the notion of essentially being a mathematical construct that this is the normal status of concepts and that all conceptual elaboration is of a like nature to the conceptual elaboration of a mathematical concept. This is obviously false, is it not? I believe you’re unfamiliar with Hegel? This probably won’t be helpful, but I have in mind something like Hegel’s Begriff.

I wrote:
“It’s about evidence that must be received with graciousness, even with a certain kind of reverence. It’s the kind of evidence that must be allowed to speak, must be cultivated. Is that plastic and squishy enough for you? Or do you think that’s me being coy? No stubbornness is needed here (as you claimed upthread); but only because oblivion does the trick just fine.”

I do think that is being coy. What else do you want to call it? Should be dress it up and drape “ineffable” around its shoulders? There’s been good, productive parts of the exchange here, but this part strongly signals to an effort to avoid speaking clearly and positively… a mystical approach to evidence, I guess.

It’s hard to type out and read back without it sounding like a smart***, but these are the words you are using on me, here. If I’m sufficiently reverent about (or towards?) the evidence, it will “speak”??? In my view, it’s a reverence for the evidence that makes knowledge contingent on its agreement, and I know no other way to let the evidence “speak” for itself than through the methods of discounting our subjective passions, and emphasizing objectivity in “hearing” it out.

I wouldn’t worry about sounding like a smart*** - I’d worry about sounding like a dumb***.
If you want to know about subjective things, not just objective ones, i.e., if you want to know about the things that really matter, human values, which are not ‘objective’ in your sense of the word, then yes, you do need reverence. Does that frighten you? It would not be unnatural if it did. Humans are like that, we crave the truth, but we fear it. We are often paradoxical creatures.