08-09-2005 06:27									#61
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quote: I have no idea what a "non-representational view of belief" is supposed to mean, but the complaint is very relevant to what, if anything, one can know of objective reality. And you've still not explained why it matters whether beliefs are part of the physical world or "fairy dust".

If you have no idea what it is supposed to mean, why are you bothering arguing, since you are making yourself look a fool?

It matters because people tend to treat beliefs as mirrors set up to reflect the world. Treating them like anything else in need of explanation such as gases or whatever changes that.

quote: This would seem to have unpleasant implications wrt voices in one's head. Anyway, if congruence is goal of belief, the truth of the belief "the weight of an electron is 83kg" depends not on properties of the electron, but on the beliefs of those with those with whom I communicate. Correct?

Your belief is caused by the electron, but this is a coherence theory, so non-beliefs cannot justify beliefs (that's another story).

I'd like to see how an electron could justify a belief, since it is patently not a belief itself.

quote: So, the way to defeat skepticism is to redefine truth to congruence with others' beliefs, while abandoning any hope of knowing anything about the inanimate world? If so, that's a victory that looks remarkably much like a surrender.

Only to someone who doesn't understand that your conception of truth has little resemblance to the way the term is actually used. And please don't put words in my mouth. I said nothing about not knowing anything about the world. We know a lot about the world. It's just that the causal relations between the world and our beliefs are irrelevant to justifying them.

I don't think you really understand the implications of what I'm saying anyway. You seem stuck in an antiquated mode of thinking.

	08-09-2005 09:36									#62
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: I have no idea what a "non-representational view of belief" is supposed to mean, but the complaint is very relevant to what, if anything, one can know of objective reality. And you've still not explained why it matters whether beliefs are part of the physical world or "fairy dust". If you have no idea what it is supposed to mean, why are you bothering arguing, since you are making yourself look a fool? It matters because people tend to treat beliefs as mirrors set up to reflect the world. Treating them like anything else in need of explanation such as gases or whatever changes that. quote: This would seem to have unpleasant implications wrt voices in one's head. Anyway, if congruence is goal of belief, the truth of the belief "the weight of an electron is 83kg" depends not on properties of the electron, but on the beliefs of those with those with whom I communicate. Correct? Your belief is caused by the electron, but this is a coherence theory, so non-beliefs cannot justify beliefs (that's another story). I'd like to see how an electron could justify a belief, since it is patently not a belief itself.

Part of the reason we are so dismissive of this particular kernal of philosophical insight is that people who rely on the scientific method to build their working model of the universe do not concern themselves with this sort of justification and what's more have no incentive to do so. We don't look to electrons or anything else to justify our beliefs because justification is not truly part of the scientific method. The scientific method functions independant of any such justification.

Admittably, the scientist may take the working model of the universe generated by the scientific method and smugly dismiss as meaninginless any conflicting models of the universe derived by processes other than the scientific method on internet forums, but that isn't truly a philosophical claim any more than placing a bet on the outcome of the hockey season or even a bet on the loss of information entering a black hole would be making philosophical claims. It is simply an expression of confidence in the soundness of the scientific method which does not rely upon or look to formal philosophical analysis to justify that claim. We are not going to become less smug simply because philosophers don't think we have constructed a philosophical justification for ruling out non empirical mechanisms for creating models of the universe.

quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: So, the way to defeat skepticism is to redefine truth to congruence with others' beliefs, while abandoning any hope of knowing anything about the inanimate world? If so, that's a victory that looks remarkably much like a surrender. Only to someone who doesn't understand that your conception of truth has little resemblance to the way the term is actually used. And please don't put words in my mouth. I said nothing about not knowing anything about the world. We know a lot about the world. It's just that the causal relations between the world and our beliefs are irrelevant to justifying them. I don't think you really understand the implications of what I'm saying anyway. You seem stuck in an antiquated mode of thinking.

It is not truly an "antiquated mode of thinking", because it is a mode of thinking which remains productive and replacing it would in no way increase any sort of productivity. You may be justified instead in calling it an antiquated philosophical claim but I doubt any believers in the scientific method will actually care.

	08-09-2005 10:00									#63
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quote: Part of the reason we are so dismissive of this particular kernal of philosophical insight is that people who rely on the scientific method to build their working model of the universe do not concern themselves with this sort of justification and what's more have no incentive to do so. We don't look to electrons or anything else to justify our beliefs because justification is not truly part of the scientific method. The scientific method functions independant of any such justification.

Then what business do you have making ill-informed comments about Descartes? And why is it that so many scientists seem wedded to his bizarre theory of mind? That is the tragedy of the whole business: too many people in science are good at what they do, but make astonishingly ignorant comments when it comes to questions about knowledge and belief and so on.

quote: Admittably, the scientist may take the working model of the universe generated by the scientific method and smugly dismiss as meaninginless any conflicting models of the universe derived by processes other than the scientific method on internet forums, but that isn't truly a philosophical claim any more than placing a bet on the outcome of the hockey season or even a bet on the loss of information entering a black hole would be making philosophical claims. It is simply an expression of confidence in the soundness of the scientific method which does not rely upon or look to formal philosophical analysis to justify that claim. We are not going to become less smug simply because philosophers don't think we have constructed a philosophical justification for ruling out non empirical mechanisms for creating models of the universe

It doesn't matter what scientists think about this. They make use of non-empirical mechanisms for creating models of the universe every day. The fact that they believe that they don't is evidence of their own ignorance.

For example, if more science students actually studied the origin of the subject they would realize that some of the assumptions they unthinkingly make were simply not made by ancient peoples for example. There's no point in calling these people stupid or criticizing them for not paying attention to empirical data, because they simply didn't have the conceptual armoury to do so - it was literally unthinkable for them. Although he exaggerates and his main thesis is in my opinion incorrect, this is one thing that Kuhn is somewhat correct about.

Similarly, if history is any guide, today's scientists will look like idiotic fools in a few hundred years for much the same reason: taking for granted as features of reality things which are really the result of our concept mongering activities. A naive belief in empiricism is one of these.

quote: It is not truly an "antiquated mode of thinking", because it is a mode of thinking which remains productive and replacing it would in no way increase any sort of productivity. You may be justified instead in calling it an antiquated philosophical claim but I doubt any believers in the scientific method will actually care.

This is like saying that belief in the mercy of the gods is a thinking that remains productive in many tribal societies. That doesn't stop it from being wrong. And in fact you are simply mistaken - the belief in naive empiricism has had very bad consequences. For one it makes a particularly puerile form of relativism easier to accept, and it also denigrates other areas of language such as ethics by trying to insist that these conform to the scientific model. In this respect they are the sophists of today.

	08-09-2005 10:56									#64
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: Part of the reason we are so dismissive of this particular kernal of philosophical insight is that people who rely on the scientific method to build their working model of the universe do not concern themselves with this sort of justification and what's more have no incentive to do so. We don't look to electrons or anything else to justify our beliefs because justification is not truly part of the scientific method. The scientific method functions independant of any such justification. Then what business do you have making ill-informed comments about Descartes? And why is it that so many scientists seem wedded to his bizarre theory of mind? That is the tragedy of the whole business: too many people in science are good at what they do, but make astonishingly ignorant comments when it comes to questions about knowledge and belief and so on. quote: Admittably, the scientist may take the working model of the universe generated by the scientific method and smugly dismiss as meaninginless any conflicting models of the universe derived by processes other than the scientific method on internet forums, but that isn't truly a philosophical claim any more than placing a bet on the outcome of the hockey season or even a bet on the loss of information entering a black hole would be making philosophical claims. It is simply an expression of confidence in the soundness of the scientific method which does not rely upon or look to formal philosophical analysis to justify that claim. We are not going to become less smug simply because philosophers don't think we have constructed a philosophical justification for ruling out non empirical mechanisms for creating models of the universe It doesn't matter what scientists think about this. They make use of non-empirical mechanisms for creating models of the universe every day. The fact that they believe that they don't is evidence of their own ignorance.

I don't know any scientist who assumes everything they think and do in their lives follows the scientific method. Rather they believe that a belief arrived at through a line of investigation other than the scientific method is intrinsically less useful than data collected through the scientific method or than even predictions based on theories that have been arrived at and examined through the scientific method.

quote: Originally posted by Agathon For example, if more science students actually studied the origin of the subject they would realize that some of the assumptions they unthinkingly make were simply not made by ancient peoples for example. There's no point in calling these people stupid or criticizing them for not paying attention to empirical data, because they simply didn't have the conceptual armoury to do so - it was literally unthinkable for them. Although he exaggerates and his main thesis is in my opinion incorrect, this is one thing that Kuhn is somewhat correct about.

Actually it's a good idea to call those ancient peoples stupid and to criticize them for not paying attention to empirical data when confronted by people who reject data or theories derived from the scientific method solely on the basis that it conflicts with beliefs of those ancient peoples. Also it gives the scientist a warm fuzzy feeling of superiority

quote: Originally posted by Agathon Similarly, if history is any guide, today's scientists will look like idiotic fools in a few hundred years for much the same reason: taking for granted as features of reality things which are really the result of our concept mongering activities. A naive belief in empiricism is one of these.

They'll look like idiotic fools if their failure to properly follow the scientific method caused them to pursue theories that proved useless. But not otherwise. Show me where history would suggest the contrary? One or two examples to discuss will suffice.

quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: It is not truly an "antiquated mode of thinking", because it is a mode of thinking which remains productive and replacing it would in no way increase any sort of productivity. You may be justified instead in calling it an antiquated philosophical claim but I doubt any believers in the scientific method will actually care. This is like saying that belief in the mercy of the gods is a thinking that remains productive in many tribal societies. That doesn't stop it from being wrong. And in fact you are simply mistaken - the belief in naive empiricism has had very bad consequences. For one it makes a particularly puerile form of relativism easier to accept, and it also denigrates other areas of language such as ethics by trying to insist that these conform to the scientific model. In this respect they are the sophists of today.

I think all of your objections are resolved simply by leaving the scientific method purely for the use of building a descriptive model of the universe that is as reliable as possible. Ethics for example is no more related to the scientific method than the decision of which beer to purchase.

	08-09-2005 11:18									#65
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I never thought I'd say this, but I think I like Agathon better when he just sticks to posting his usual nonsense.

	08-09-2005 13:11									#66
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Case: "The cat is on the mat".

Is this a fact or a proposition?

A fact corresponds to an actual event in the real world. You take a picture of a cat sitting on a mat, and that would be a fact. A fact has no truth value attached to it. It simply is.

A proposition, OTOH, can be true or false.

	08-09-2005 13:49									#67
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: I have no idea what a "non-representational view of belief" is supposed to mean, but the complaint is very relevant to what, if anything, one can know of objective reality. And you've still not explained why it matters whether beliefs are part of the physical world or "fairy dust". If you have no idea what it is supposed to mean, why are you bothering arguing, since you are making yourself look a fool?

Because that, despite your rather haughty attitude, I find the subject interesting.

quote: It matters because people tend to treat beliefs as mirrors set up to reflect the world. Treating them like anything else in need of explanation such as gases or whatever changes that.

Maybe so. You've quite failed to demonstrate how.

quote: quote: This would seem to have unpleasant implications wrt voices in one's head. Anyway, if congruence is goal of belief, the truth of the belief "the weight of an electron is 83kg" depends not on properties of the electron, but on the beliefs of those with those with whom I communicate. Correct? Your belief is caused by the electron, but this is a coherence theory, so non-beliefs cannot justify beliefs (that's another story). I'd like to see how an electron could justify a belief, since it is patently not a belief itself.

This would seem to make the justification of beliefs rather irrelevant. What one'd like to know, after all, isn't whether a belief is justified according to some philosophical framework, but whether one's belief is in accordance with the nature of the electron.

quote: quote: So, the way to defeat skepticism is to redefine truth to congruence with others' beliefs, while abandoning any hope of knowing anything about the inanimate world? If so, that's a victory that looks remarkably much like a surrender. Only to someone who doesn't understand that your conception of truth has little resemblance to the way the term is actually used. And please don't put words in my mouth. I said nothing about not knowing anything about the world. We know a lot about the world. It's just that the causal relations between the world and our beliefs are irrelevant to justifying them.

You claim we know alot about the world, but you refuse to address how we can know anything about it.

quote: I don't think you really understand the implications of what I'm saying anyway. You seem stuck in an antiquated mode of thinking.

Gratuitous insults are always appreciated.

	08-09-2005 14:46									#68
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon The idea that there is a distinction between statements that are true because of the way the world is, and statements that are true because of the content or meaning of concepts (so called analytic truths) is required to support any form of empiricist justificatory project.

How would you answer the criticism that such a divide (analytic vs synthetic truths) is ill-founded, a la Quine?

What about an extreme form of empiricism, maintaining that all knowledge comes from experience alone?

	08-09-2005 23:00									#69
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger Is this a fact or a proposition? A fact corresponds to an actual event in the real world. You take a picture of a cat sitting on a mat, and that would be a fact. A fact has no truth value attached to it. It simply is. A proposition, OTOH, can be true or false.

The problem is that we have no way of determining about how such facts figure in our reasoning. Facts can of course cause our beliefs, but that is different from justifying them. We know this because drinking beer can make me believe that I am seeing pink elephants. However it isn't true that there are pink elephants in the vicinity.

Only a belief can stand in inferential relations to other beliefs. That means that for purposes of justification we are stuck within the circle of belief.

Empiricists have tried to get around this via the myth of the given. The idea that there are certain cognitive episodes called sense data that provide a foundation for all our other beliefs.

The problem with this view is that it doesn't work for two broad reasons. The first is the one I already stated: only beliefs can stand in inferential relations to beliefs. We cannot get outside our circle of belief to check its correspondence with the world, since even if we could the result would simply be more beliefs, so we would be back where we started. So we say that such knowledge must be belief + a justification. Then is the justification another belief or not? If it isn't we can't know it, if it is we are back where we started.

The second reason is underdetermination. This is what drives both sceptical arguments and conspiracy theories. There is always going to be an infinite number of theories which fit the "evidence". If there were pure episodes of empirical knowledge then underdetermination would be impossible. But the intractablility of sceptical arguments show us that it isn't. Meaning and evidence are not sufficient to determine the truth.

The way out of this is to stop thinking of belief as modern philosophers did and most people still do, and look at how the concept of belief actually functions. It turns out that belief and meaning are interdependent concepts that we use to effect communication. That's what they are for.

There is no matter of fact about what your or I believe. When we interpret someone, there are always an infinite number of translations of their utterances we could give. Of course we don't do this, since we stick to the familiar for reasons of utility and familiarity, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone who attempts to interpret anyone else must hold that person's beliefs to be largely true - otherwise they couldn't interpret them at all. Is is simply in the nature of beliefs that most of them be true.

It's a waste of time worrying about correspondence. Even facts are suspect - there are objects and events in the world, but facts are a metaphysical creation. It's also a waste of time worrying about our private experiences vs reality since beliefs are public property. The concepts of belief and meaning operate objectively - because language is a means for people to communicate with each other, and we couldn't do that unless we could observe peoples' publicly scrutable behaviour and interpet them based on that. But that is just what we do.

	08-09-2005 23:06									#70
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quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist Because that, despite your rather haughty attitude, I find the subject interesting.

Why bother, since you don't seem to understand it?

quote: Maybe so. You've quite failed to demonstrate how.

I showed how so above. You just engaged in denial without any substantive argument. It's no argument to repeat the slogans that are being questioned, as you did.

quote: This would seem to make the justification of beliefs rather irrelevant. What one'd like to know, after all, isn't whether a belief is justified according to some philosophical framework, but whether one's belief is in accordance with the nature of the electron.

Then please explain how something that is not a belief can justify a belief without resorting to the disproven myth of the given, and allowing for underdetermination.

It would be a waste of time to worry about such things as electrons anyway. If history is any guide, no one will believe in them in 200 years time.

quote: You claim we know alot about the world, but you refuse to address how we can know anything about it.

How is demonstrating that our beliefs must be, by virtue of what they are, mostly true failing to show this? I have provided a conception of belief that actually accords with what people use the concept for. You are trying to pretend it is something else.

quote: Gratuitous insults are always appreciated.

In this case it is a statement of the obvious. Try attacking the actual argument instead of engaging in simple denial. The argument is that belief isn't what you think it is. Retorting with slogans based on your questionable concept of belief is not argument.

	08-09-2005 23:10									#71
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quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger How would you answer the criticism that such a divide (analytic vs synthetic truths) is ill-founded, a la Quine?

By saying that this is in fact the same argument. The underdetermination thesis should have given that away.

quote: What about an extreme form of empiricism, maintaining that all knowledge comes from experience alone?

Can't be done. It requires the analytic/synthetic distinction since the synthetic propositions are what are supposed to do this. People often think that the consequences of Quine's argument pertain solely to analyticity, when the fact is that they pertain to the distinction.

If underdetermination is true, there can't be knowledge that comes from experience alone, since it would make no sense of how we could articulate a theory.

	09-09-2005 01:15									#72
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon Why bother, since you don't seem to understand it?

I find it intensely amusing to be told by a philosopher I should not try to understand something because I do not understand it.

quote: quote: Maybe so. You've quite failed to demonstrate how. I showed how so above. You just engaged in denial without any substantive argument. It's no argument to repeat the slogans that are being questioned, as you did.

You said (paraphrasing) if we think beliefs are part of the material world, we can study their causation and nature by natural science, and it's thus not a problem for philosophy. That's no explanation at all. It just brings us back to if and how we can know we can trust our results.

quote: quote: This would seem to make the justification of beliefs rather irrelevant. What one'd like to know, after all, isn't whether a belief is justified according to some philosophical framework, but whether one's belief is in accordance with the nature of the electron. Then please explain how something that is not a belief can justify a belief without resorting to the disproven myth of the given, and allowing for underdetermination.

Whether I can do that is 100% irrelevant to whether your idea of justification of belief is relevant or interesting. There is no guarantee that there is a relevant or interesting justification of belief.

quote: It would be a waste of time to worry about such things as electrons anyway. If history is any guide, no one will believe in them in 200 years time.

I wouldn't bet on that. People still believe in Newtonian gravity (as a limit case), 300+ years on.

quote: quote: You claim we know alot about the world, but you refuse to address how we can know anything about it. How is demonstrating that our beliefs must be, by virtue of what they are, mostly true failing to show this?

Because you redefined truth to mean congruence with others' beliefs. We could all have the same ideas that are out of accord with the world.

Your hypthetical omniscient being doesn't help - there's no guarantee he could communicate with us. Maybe everything we say would unintelligible nonsense to him.

quote: I have provided a conception of belief that actually accords with what people use the concept for. You are trying to pretend it is something else. quote: Gratuitous insults are always appreciated. In this case it is a statement of the obvious. Try attacking the actual argument instead of engaging in simple denial. The argument is that belief isn't what you think it is. Retorting with slogans based on your questionable concept of belief is not argument.

Whether belief is what I think is pretty much irrelevant to whether your system makes sense or is useful.


I maybe should clarify what I meant by "we're stuck being empiricists or crazy". It's simply this - quite regardless of whether there is a such thing as an observational given, an experimentalist has to take his measurements as given in order to be able to do anything.

	09-09-2005 02:51									#73
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quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist I find it intensely amusing to be told by a philosopher I should not try to understand something because I do not understand it.

Good for you. Now try harder. You are failing badly so far.

quote: You said (paraphrasing) if we think beliefs are part of the material world, we can study their causation and nature by natural science, and it's thus not a problem for philosophy. That's no explanation at all. It just brings us back to if and how we can know we can trust our results.

It is an explanation. A naturalistic explanation. That's why it is called naturalized epistemology. The question of justification is separate from the question of explanation, and justification is guaranteed for groups of beliefs via semantic holism. Do I have to repeat myself again?

quote: Whether I can do that is 100% irrelevant to whether your idea of justification of belief is relevant or interesting. There is no guarantee that there is a relevant or interesting justification of belief.

Jesus Christ... you are the one complaining... the alternatives to coherence don't work for the reason I stated. Added to that, the holist explanation works. You are just denying rather than arguing.

quote: I wouldn't bet on that. People still believe in Newtonian gravity (as a limit case), 300+ years on.

But not in the same way.

quote: Because you redefined truth to mean congruence with others' beliefs. We could all have the same ideas that are out of accord with the world.

I didn't redefine anything. You have misunderstood the argument. Truth is both accordance with others beliefs and is about the world. There is no stark difference as you seem to think, without arguing for I might add.

I have provided a reason for thinking belief and meaning are as I say. You have provided nothing substantive in response other than reiterating the old view that is in question.

The idea that beliefs are somehow set over against the world rather than being part of it is the one I reject. I said so at the beginning. Now you think it is possible for everyone to have beliefs that are out of accord with the world. You are again smuggling in the view that I rejected earlier on. It is impossible for anyone to have mostly false beliefs due to the nature of belief.

quote: Your hypthetical omniscient being doesn't help - there's no guarantee he could communicate with us. Maybe everything we say would unintelligible nonsense to him.

There are no untranslatable languages either. That is a well-known consequence of the interpretative stance I have sketched.

quote: Whether belief is what I think is pretty much irrelevant to whether your system makes sense or is useful.

No it isn't. You are just in denial again. It is wholly relevant. The point of the argument is that a misunderstanding of what belief is leads us into your position.

quote: I maybe should clarify what I meant by "we're stuck being empiricists or crazy". It's simply this - quite regardless of whether there is a such thing as an observational given, an experimentalist has to take his measurements as given in order to be able to do anything.

No ****... but it is one thing to regard these measurements as theory independent, and another thing to argue that they aren't. That is what is in dispute here.

	10-09-2005 21:25									#74
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: Originally posted by Last Conformist I find it intensely amusing to be told by a philosopher I should not try to understand something because I do not understand it. Good for you. Now try harder. You are failing badly so far. quote: You said (paraphrasing) if we think beliefs are part of the material world, we can study their causation and nature by natural science, and it's thus not a problem for philosophy. That's no explanation at all. It just brings us back to if and how we can know we can trust our results. It is an explanation. A naturalistic explanation. That's why it is called naturalized epistemology. The question of justification is separate from the question of explanation, and justification is guaranteed for groups of beliefs via semantic holism. Do I have to repeat myself again?

Repeating that it's an explanation doesn't turn it into one. It is not. You're assuming your conclusion.

quote: quote: Whether I can do that is 100% irrelevant to whether your idea of justification of belief is relevant or interesting. There is no guarantee that there is a relevant or interesting justification of belief. Jesus Christ... you are the one complaining... the alternatives to coherence don't work for the reason I stated.

If true, this doesn't help you.

quote: Added to that, the holist explanation works. You are just denying rather than arguing. quote: I wouldn't bet on that. People still believe in Newtonian gravity (as a limit case), 300+ years on. But not in the same way.

So freaking what? You were saying you didn't think people would believe electrons in a few hundred years, not that our view of them may change. Heck, there isn't even one today's view of electrons, but a number of different interpretations of what they're exactly are.

quote: quote: Because you redefined truth to mean congruence with others' beliefs. We could all have the same ideas that are out of accord with the world. I didn't redefine anything. You have misunderstood the argument. Truth is both accordance with others beliefs and is about the world. There is no stark difference as you seem to think, without arguing for I might add.

May I remind you of this quote of yours? "There is nothing more to belief and meaning that ensuring congruence. That's what it's for. The concept of truth is also part of this practice." If that doesn't mean truth is about congruence, what the heck does it mean?

quote: I have provided a reason for thinking belief and meaning are as I say. You have provided nothing substantive in response other than reiterating the old view that is in question.

I'm not particularly interested in the nature of truth. As the saying goes, science doesn't deal in truth. What's interesting is if your view is useful for anything.

quote: The idea that beliefs are somehow set over against the world rather than being part of it is the one I reject. I said so at the beginning. Now you think it is possible for everyone to have beliefs that are out of accord with the world. You are again smuggling in the view that I rejected earlier on. It is impossible for anyone to have mostly false beliefs due to the nature of belief.

I still don't get why you think it matter whether beliefs are part of the world or not. It should be patently obvious that being part of the world is no guarantee of being out of accord with some other aspect of the world. If it were, it would be impossible to have any false beliefs if beliefs are part of the world, yet you hold beliefs are part of the world and accept that people can hold false beliefs.

quote: quote: Your hypthetical omniscient being doesn't help - there's no guarantee he could communicate with us. Maybe everything we say would unintelligible nonsense to him. There are no untranslatable languages either. That is a well-known consequence of the interpretative stance I have sketched.

I have dreary premonition that your definition of "language" is going to imply translatability. So, disappoint me - show how this follows without defining it into the concept of language.

quote: quote: Whether belief is what I think is pretty much irrelevant to whether your system makes sense or is useful. No it isn't. You are just in denial again. It is wholly relevant. The point of the argument is that a misunderstanding of what belief is leads us into your position.

I'm not quite sure what you think my position is.

quote: quote: I maybe should clarify what I meant by "we're stuck being empiricists or crazy". It's simply this - quite regardless of whether there is a such thing as an observational given, an experimentalist has to take his measurements as given in order to be able to do anything. No ****... but it is one thing to regard these measurements as theory independent, and another thing to argue that they aren't. That is what is in dispute here.

It's not readily apparent to me how a measurement (as opposed to its interpretation) could be theory dependent, but it doesn't matter either way.

	10-09-2005 21:37									#75
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quote: Similarly, if history is any guide, today's scientists will look like idiotic fools in a few hundred years for much the same reason: taking for granted as features of reality things which are really the result of our concept mongering activities. A naive belief in empiricism is one of these.

	11-09-2005 01:18									#76
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quote: Repeating that it's an explanation doesn't turn it into one. It is not. You're assuming your conclusion.

I'm not. I gave the usual reasons for why there are no pure observational judgements. You haven't responded to that argument at all. Once that is granted the rest follows, because there are no longer a type of propositions about knowledge and cognition that are distinct from those of natural science. What we call philosophy, on this view, is the discipline that deals with the most abstract issues, ones that we call "conceptual", even though there really is no sharp distinction between the conceptual and empirical.

quote: So freaking what? You were saying you didn't think people would believe electrons in a few hundred years, not that our view of them may change. Heck, there isn't even one today's view of electrons, but a number of different interpretations of what they're exactly are.

Which is why the naive view of correspondence is mistaken. You are so desperate to keep your conception of truth that you complained about the lack of correspondence to electrons, that you now admit are underdetermined.

quote: May I remind you of this quote of yours? "There is nothing more to belief and meaning that ensuring congruence. That's what it's for. The concept of truth is also part of this practice." If that doesn't mean truth is about congruence, what the heck does it mean?

It means exactly what I said it means. Truth, belief and meaning are concepts used to effect communication. When we look at how people actually communicate, we find that they are interdependent concepts that link in such a way as to ensure that most beliefs are true.

If you want to say that truth is something else, then you have abandoned our ordinary linguistic practices in favour of some metaphysical hokum.

As I said before, it also follows from this view that beliefs are part of the world. To study their (causal) connections to the world is the province of natural science, not philosophy. You assume that congruence (or coherence) and correspondence are mutually exclusive. There's no reason to believe that. Our beliefs can be both coherent (as they largely are) and correspond to the things we talk about.

quote: I'm not particularly interested in the nature of truth. As the saying goes, science doesn't deal in truth. What's interesting is if your view is useful for anything.

If you aren't interested in truth, then what the hell are you bothering for. If you want to argue about how our beliefs are justified, you need to understand truth, since knowledge is usually regarded as justified true belief.

The view is useful precisely for countering traditional scepticism, which holds that we can have perfectly meaningful beliefs, but all or most of them can be false. The holist view of belief provides a reason for thinking that this cannot be the case - belief and meaning are interdependent concepts.

quote: I still don't get why you think it matter whether beliefs are part of the world or not. It should be patently obvious that being part of the world is no guarantee of being out of accord with some other aspect of the world. If it were, it would be impossible to have any false beliefs if beliefs are part of the world, yet you hold beliefs are part of the world and accept that people can hold false beliefs.

It matters because many people have held a representational account of belief. If you think that is right, then we never have the ability to get outside our beliefs to check whether they match the world or not. If beliefs are part of the world and their causal connections are studied by natural science, then it follows that the kind of scepticism that traditional philosophy engaged in must be replaced by the more limited scepticism of the sciences. That sort of scepticism is manageable – the other one is not.

quote: I have dreary premonition that your definition of "language" is going to imply translatability. So, disappoint me - show how this follows without defining it into the concept of language.

It follows from the interdependence of belief and meaning. These are concepts we use to interpret the behaviour of other language users. There will always be an infinite number of translations that fit the behavioural evidence, and it is always possible to come up with some interpretation of a language user for this reason. People might worry that we can never find out what the other person really means, but there is in fact no such thing because of the underdetermination. An infinite number of translations will be correct, but we just choose the one that is easiest and effects communication the best.

The primary purpose of language is not to describe the world, but to communicate with other people. It is irreducibly social. False belief is a concept we use to make it easier to interpret the behaviour of others. When faced with a person who is saying strange things we have a choice: we can think that they have a strange language where words change their meanings in specific contexts, or we can choose to retain the meaning and attribute to them a false belief.

When you look at how language actually works, this is crushingly obvious.

quote: I'm not quite sure what you think my position is.

You keep raising objections that rely on the old correspondence or representational theory to make sense. That is exactly what is in dispute here. People think that sceptical arguments that stem from the old view are used by philosophers merely to be a nuisance. In philosophy we do not take scepticism as obviously true, but as a reason to rethink the problematic notions of truth, belief and meaning that are causing the problem. A good start is to look at how people normally use the words before constructing a theory about it. Otherwise the theory has no connection with reality at all.

quote: It's not readily apparent to me how a measurement (as opposed to its interpretation) could be theory dependent, but it doesn't matter either way.

Because every belief that you acquire by measuring depends on a whole other stack of beliefs about measurement to make sense. Please read up on semantic and epistemological holism before you respond.

The underdetermination thesis proves this. There will always be a number of theories that fit the evidence we have, and attempting to find some propositions that are just self evident and simply true and are dependent on having an experience fails because the traditional sceptical arguments have shown one thing: underdetermination goes down all the way to our observational beliefs.

	11-09-2005 02:28									#77
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon quote: Repeating that it's an explanation doesn't turn it into one. It is not. You're assuming your conclusion. I'm not.

Yes you are. You're saying we should find out how our beliefs are formed by natural science, when the trustworthiness of beliefs based on natural science is precisely what we'd like to establish.

quote: I gave the usual reasons for why there are no pure observational judgements. You haven't responded to that argument at all.

Why should I respond to it? Nobody is arguing there are pure observational judgements here.

quote: Once that is granted the rest follows, because there are no longer a type of propositions about knowledge and cognition that are distinct from those of natural science.

That does in no way establish the reliability of such knowledge.

quote: What we call philosophy, on this view, is the discipline that deals with the most abstract issues, ones that we call "conceptual", even though there really is no sharp distinction between the conceptual and empirical. quote: So freaking what? You were saying you didn't think people would believe electrons in a few hundred years, not that our view of them may change. Heck, there isn't even one today's view of electrons, but a number of different interpretations of what they're exactly are. Which is why the naive view of correspondence is mistaken. You are so desperate to keep your conception of truth that you complained about the lack of correspondence to electrons, that you now admit are underdetermined.

Science is about making models that predict - ie. corresponds to - the behaviour of real-world phenomena. Since real-world phenomena are always underdetermined, we can just as well throw science out of the window if underdetermination is a problem for correspondence. If all knowledge is scientific knowledge (as you seem to imply above), we can further throw out all knowledge.

quote: quote: May I remind you of this quote of yours? "There is nothing more to belief and meaning that ensuring congruence. That's what it's for. The concept of truth is also part of this practice." If that doesn't mean truth is about congruence, what the heck does it mean? It means exactly what I said it means. Truth, belief and meaning are concepts used to effect communication. When we look at how people actually communicate, we find that they are interdependent concepts that link in such a way as to ensure that most beliefs are true. If you want to say that truth is something else, then you have abandoned our ordinary linguistic practices in favour of some metaphysical hokum. As I said before, it also follows from this view that beliefs are part of the world. To study their (causal) connections to the world is the province of natural science, not philosophy. You assume that congruence (or coherence) and correspondence are mutually exclusive. There's no reason to believe that. Our beliefs can be both coherent (as they largely are) and correspond to the things we talk about.

No, I don't assume that. I do assume that congruence does not necessarily imply correspondence. You must agree with this, since you said two people can share the same false belief.

quote: quote: I'm not particularly interested in the nature of truth. As the saying goes, science doesn't deal in truth. What's interesting is if your view is useful for anything. If you aren't interested in truth, then what the hell are you bothering for. If you want to argue about how our beliefs are justified, you need to understand truth, since knowledge is usually regarded as justified true belief.

I got into this because you were complaining about how scientists think about truth and belief - I thought I might learn something useful about how to think about science.

Oh, and I like to argue.

quote: The view is useful precisely for countering traditional scepticism, which holds that we can have perfectly meaningful beliefs, but all or most of them can be false. The holist view of belief provides a reason for thinking that this cannot be the case - belief and meaning are interdependent concepts. quote: I still don't get why you think it matter whether beliefs are part of the world or not. It should be patently obvious that being part of the world is no guarantee of being out of accord with some other aspect of the world. If it were, it would be impossible to have any false beliefs if beliefs are part of the world, yet you hold beliefs are part of the world and accept that people can hold false beliefs. It matters because many people have held a representational account of belief. If you think that is right, then we never have the ability to get outside our beliefs to check whether they match the world or not. If beliefs are part of the world and their causal connections are studied by natural science, then it follows that the kind of scepticism that traditional philosophy engaged in must be replaced by the more limited scepticism of the sciences. That sort of scepticism is manageable – the other one is not.

You're again assuming the validity of natural science as a way to learn about the world.

(You're also appealing to causality, a concept whose applicability to the real world is rather suspect.)

quote: quote: I have dreary premonition that your definition of "language" is going to imply translatability. So, disappoint me - show how this follows without defining it into the concept of language. It follows from the interdependence of belief and meaning. These are concepts we use to interpret the behaviour of other language users. There will always be an infinite number of translations that fit the behavioural evidence, and it is always possible to come up with some interpretation of a language user for this reason. People might worry that we can never find out what the other person really means, but there is in fact no such thing because of the underdetermination. An infinite number of translations will be correct, but we just choose the one that is easiest and effects communication the best. The primary purpose of language is not to describe the world, but to communicate with other people. It is irreducibly social. False belief is a concept we use to make it easier to interpret the behaviour of others. When faced with a person who is saying strange things we have a choice: we can think that they have a strange language where words change their meanings in specific contexts, or we can choose to retain the meaning and attribute to them a false belief.

Nah, we assume they're speaking a foreign language.

That humans can, if with great difficulty, learn a foreign language without the help of bilingual tutors is because there are non-verbal aspects of human communication that are culture-independent. It seems uncertain whether we could ever communicate with an alien that did not share any communicational strategies at all with us - we'd probably never realize it was even trying to communicate.

quote: When you look at how language actually works, this is crushingly obvious. quote: I'm not quite sure what you think my position is. You keep raising objections that rely on the old correspondence or representational theory to make sense. That is exactly what is in dispute here. People think that sceptical arguments that stem from the old view are used by philosophers merely to be a nuisance. In philosophy we do not take scepticism as obviously true, but as a reason to rethink the problematic notions of truth, belief and meaning that are causing the problem. A good start is to look at how people normally use the words before constructing a theory about it. Otherwise the theory has no connection with reality at all. quote: It's not readily apparent to me how a measurement (as opposed to its interpretation) could be theory dependent, but it doesn't matter either way. Because every belief that you acquire by measuring depends on a whole other stack of beliefs about measurement to make sense. Please read up on semantic and epistemological holism before you respond.

That'll have to wait for another day, but you seem to've shifted the subject from measurements to beliefs formed by measurement.

quote: The underdetermination thesis proves this. There will always be a number of theories that fit the evidence we have, and attempting to find some propositions that are just self evident and simply true and are dependent on having an experience fails because the traditional sceptical arguments have shown one thing: underdetermination goes down all the way to our observational beliefs.

	11-09-2005 03:34									#78
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quote: Yes you are. You're saying we should find out how our beliefs are formed by natural science, when the trustworthiness of beliefs based on natural science is precisely what we'd like to establish.

Oh for God's sake.... I have said numerous times now that science is involved in the explanation of our beliefs and not their justification. If you want a justification, the holist explanation of the interdependence of belief and meaning is the only one available.

Please read what I write and think about it before posting obviously ignorant responses.

quote: Science is about making models that predict - ie. corresponds to - the behaviour of real-world phenomena. Since real-world phenomena are always underdetermined, we can just as well throw science out of the window if underdetermination is a problem for correspondence. If all knowledge is scientific knowledge (as you seem to imply above), we can further throw out all knowledge.

No we don't. Nor do we have to throw away language even if that is underdetermined. We simply choose the explanation that is easiest. Ockham's razor is not just a principle you can take or leave, it is in fact crucial to our ability to think.

All that the underdetermination thesis does is show that the underdetermination that applies to science in its ordinary sense (manageable scientific scepticism) applies to knowledge in general, including what used to be thought of as the province of philosophy.

quote: No, I don't assume that. I do assume that congruence does not necessarily imply correspondence. You must agree with this, since you said two people can share the same false belief.

WTF are you talking about? People can share the same false belief, but that doesn't make the belief true. However the fact that people can share the same false beliefs requires that most of their beliefs be true.

You are imposing an idealist requirement where there is none.

quote: I got into this because you were complaining about how scientists think about truth and belief - I thought I might learn something useful about how to think about science. Oh, and I like to argue

Unfortunately, your mode of argument seems to be the pointless Monty Python sort.

quote: Nah, we assume they're speaking a foreign language. That humans can, if with great difficulty, learn a foreign language without the help of bilingual tutors is because there are non-verbal aspects of human communication that are culture-independent. It seems uncertain whether we could ever communicate with an alien that did not share any communicational strategies at all with us - we'd probably never realize it was even trying to communicate.

Oh man... the whole point of radical interpretation is that it supposes that the only difference between interpreting a foreign language and your own is one of habit. The evidentiary resources are the same in both case. As for the alien example, it is possible that someone's language would be too complex or weird for us to notice, but that doesn't make it untranslatable per se. When philosophers say possible, they generally mean logical possibility and that is not the same as "we can't do it because of physical restraints".

quote: That'll have to wait for another day, but you seem to've shifted the subject from measurements to beliefs formed by measurement.

No I didn't. Look back again. I pointed out that only beliefs matter to justification. Other things can cause beliefs, but they cannot be appealed to in justification because only beliefs can stand in inferential relations to beliefs.

At least try to read what I write. It is becoming tiresome to have to keep pointing back to my original claims.

	15-09-2005 02:05									#79
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quote: Originally posted by Spiffor quote: Similarly, if history is any guide, today's scientists will look like idiotic fools in a few hundred years for much the same reason: taking for granted as features of reality things which are really the result of our concept mongering activities. A naive belief in empiricism is one of these.

Hey spiff, Agathon didn't want to explain what in history makes him believe that today's scientists will collectively look like idiotic fools but maybe you wouldn't mind explaining your reasoning?

	15-09-2005 11:14									#80
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quote: Originally posted by Geronimo Hey spiff, Agathon didn't want to explain what in history makes him believe that today's scientists will collectively look like idiotic fools but maybe you wouldn't mind explaining your reasoning?

Well, I don't think that all scientists (not even most of them) will look like "idiotic fools " in the future, because humans tend to be nice to their primitive ancestors. When we will be the "primitive ancestors", the peole will be amazed by the achievements we could achieve despite having so many wrong ideas


My point is more specific: I think that a blind trust in empiricism is a danger, and that too many scientists fall in that trap. Not all scientists are that naive, but sadly too many of them are.

Empiricism is essential to scientific progress (since science is about understanding the real world) but it is 1) insufficient and 2) flawed.

I don't have much time now, but basically, the reason why it's 1) insufficient is because you cannot understand the mechanics that underlie an observed phenomenon if you don't think about it. The human mind is feeble and can't directly understand the universe, which is why we have conceptual tools that we use to grasp it (words, mathematics, categories, logics etc.) These conceptual tools aren't perfect either, but they're absolutely essential to draw some sense from the observed phenomena.

2) It's flawed because our observation of the universe depends on our means of measurement. And measurements aren't really an easy thing to do. As a social scientist, I am confronted to the problem all the time. But "hard scientists" do have a problem as well (albeit less spectacularly), considering that their measurements are fully human concepts that they apply to reality: Reality doesn't care for meters, kilogrammes, or Kelvins. We invented these things, they are fully artificial.

If we remain aware of the limitations of empiricism, it's good, and we'll be able to improve on our methods. However, if we are naive about it, if we are arrogant in the scientific method, we'd be considered like asses. In my field, there have been quite a few" scientists" who believed to have found The Truth out of sheer arrogance. I'm sure we're not the only field of science where it is so

	15-09-2005 13:31									#81
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Now two philosopher-pedants are going for each other's throats in my thread . God , what have I unleashed ?

	16-09-2005 19:21									#82
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quote: Originally posted by Spiffor If we remain aware of the limitations of empiricism, it's good, and we'll be able to improve on our methods. However, if we are naive about it, if we are arrogant in the scientific method, we'd be considered like asses. In my field, there have been quite a few" scientists" who believed to have found The Truth out of sheer arrogance. I'm sure we're not the only field of science where it is so

My "Philosophy of Science" is that all theories are approximations of reality, and that the point of science is to get better aproximations. I think a major problem is that speculation ends up becoming dogma too way too easily if the scientist doing the speculating is well respected.

	16-09-2005 20:04									#83
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quote: Originally posted by Odin My "Philosophy of Science" is that all theories are approximations of reality, and that the point of science is to get better aproximations. I think a major problem is that speculation ends up becoming dogma too way too easily if the scientist doing the speculating is well respected.

How could you tell that was true, if all theories are approximations?

	16-09-2005 22:37									#84
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Agathon's in the right here. Hell, even a "fact" like "the cat is on the mat" relies on a whole slew of beliefs on spatial orientation, gravity, etc. We all share these beliefs, so "the cat is on the mat" is a coherent statement, but there's nothing to prevent me, given an identical physical state, from stating that "the mat is on the cat" in conjunction with alternate beliefs on spatial orientation, gravity, etc.

	16-09-2005 22:49									#85
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quote: Originally posted by loinburger Agathon's in the right here. Hell, even a "fact" like "the cat is on the mat" relies on a whole slew of beliefs on spatial orientation, gravity, etc. We all share these beliefs, so "the cat is on the mat" is a coherent statement, but there's nothing to prevent me, given an identical physical state, from stating that "the mat is on the cat" in conjunction with alternate beliefs on spatial orientation, gravity, etc.

how does it follow from that that todays scientists will collectively look like idiotic fools? What you are describing is quite different from what agathon is insisting.

	16-09-2005 23:01									#86
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They'll certainly look like fools if they insist that their "facts" are absolute. However, in my experience scientists (experienced ones, at least) don't make this error. Agathon's statement may be the result of having had to teach one too many Ashers in philosophy of science courses. It may also result from an erroneous belief about how scientists view the work of past scientists -- even when learning about "aether" and "phlogistan" and similar outdated theories in my physics courses it was never stated that the scientists who came up with these theories were stupid.

	16-09-2005 23:06									#87
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quote: Originally posted by loinburger Agathon's statement may be the result of having had to teach one too many Ashers in philosophy of science courses. It may also result from an erroneous belief about how scientists view the work of past scientists -- even when learning about "aether" and "phlogistan" and similar outdated theories in my physics courses it was never stated that the scientists who came up with these theories were stupid.

	17-09-2005 00:49									#88
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quote: Originally posted by loinburger They'll certainly look like fools if they insist that their "facts" are absolute. However, in my experience scientists (experienced ones, at least) don't make this error. Agathon's statement may be the result of having had to teach one too many Ashers in philosophy of science courses. It may also result from an erroneous belief about how scientists view the work of past scientists -- even when learning about "aether" and "phlogistan" and similar outdated theories in my physics courses it was never stated that the scientists who came up with these theories were stupid.

But it's often stated that people like the Presocratic philosophers were stupid, even though the same argument applies to their work.

It's true that aether and phlogiston are a lot less weird than saying that the world is made of water, but the argument applies to both. The Presocratics just didn't make the same distinctions we do.. these are useful distinctions to make, but that doesn't make them somehow magically responsive to an empirical "given".

	17-09-2005 00:58									#89
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quote: Originally posted by Agathon But it's often stated that people like the Presocratic philosophers were stupid,

Why would somebody call Thales and Democritus stupid just because they didn't have the technology to do particle physics?

	17-09-2005 01:00									#90
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quote: Originally posted by Odin Why would somebody call Thales and Democritus stupid just because they didn't have the technology to do particle physics?

I take it you don't read the OT much.