Universality as warrant for relative truth value
Haines Brown
empiricism, scientists employ a wide range of criteria by which to
assess the relative truth value or attractiveness of competing
hypotheses that account for the same observational data. For example,
good Gestalt, heuristic production, generate new research programs,
Okham's Razor, aesthetic appeal, simplicity, robustness, etc.
One such criteria is that a hypothesis is to be preferred to the extent
it has a determinant relation with other levels of reality and other
fields of knowledge. That is, to the extent a hypothesis or theory
is universal in this sense, it is more likely to have greater truth
value. To what extent does a theory move us toward a Grand Theory of
everything?
I'd appreciate a few citations to the literature on the criterion of
universality as defined here. I'm interested in more recent journal
articles that are either critical of it or evaluate it from the
perspectives of critical empiricism, pragmatism or scientific realism.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
wrote:
Scope is one of the virtues of scientific theory. The more things a
theory predicts the more of the world it takes in. The broadest
theory would take in all fields of knowledge and the deepest would
take in all levels of reality. The ultimate theory would take in all
the world. Such a theory would be evident everywhere, no matter where
we looked. It would saturate all reality, pantheistically. The
theory would be there for all to see, in beautiful mathematical
simplicity, the telos of humanity, in 10 symbols or less, God's name
on paper.
Material dialectics and string theory claim this kind of thing
(although string theory is a bit longer than 10 symbols). The problem
is that they have no predictive or explanatory power, whatsoever. The
greater their scope, it seems, the less of a grip on reality they
have.
Pragmatists believe that truth and theories have different uses in
different discourses but they personally have no use for the idea that
they extends beyond the discourse, and conversely, that they reach
into something essentially human. For them it's not a question
whether it's turtles all the way down, it's a question of why this
talk about turtles at all? And once this has been answered, there is
nothing more to know.
Check out Rorty for a pragmatist's view on truth. He's one of the
greats that we, until recently, had the pleasure of having with us.
He set out originally to find a theory of everything... well, he uses
the worlds of Yeats, he set out to "hold reality and justice in a
single vision". The more he looked the more he saw the quest was
flawed.
Haines Brown
> On Jun 28, 4:37Â am, Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com>
> wrote:
>> As is well known, especially as a result of the failure of traditional
>> empiricism, scientists employ a wide range of criteria by which to
>> assess the relative truth value or attractiveness of competing
>> hypotheses that account for the same observational data.
>> One such criteria is that a hypothesis is to be preferred to the extent
>> it has a determinant relation with other levels of reality and other
>> fields of knowledge.
> Check out Rorty for a pragmatist's view on truth.
I'm not sure if you are kidding or serious ;-). My question had to do
with the philosophy of science, a subject for which Rorty is notoriously
hostile. If science does not yield knowledge of the world having truth
value, how can the scope of a theory have any relevance to its truth? In
fact, if anything, in Rorty's terms I should think that the more narrow
in scope and the more immediate to the observer is a theory, the greater
would be its potential truth value.
I was looking for a discussion within the framework of the philosopy of
science and perhaps should not have presumed that would be
understood. But if Rorty actually did develop an argument in these terms
regarding how the universality of a theory increased its potential truth
value in relation to the world, I'd be interested in a specific citation.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> with the philosophy of science, a subject for which Rorty is notoriously
> hostile. If science does not yield knowledge of the world having truth
> value, how can the scope of a theory have any relevance to its truth? In
> fact, if anything, in Rorty's terms I should think that the more narrow
> in scope and the more immediate to the observer is a theory, the greater
> would be its potential truth value.
>
> I was looking for a discussion within the framework of the philosopy of
> science and perhaps should not have presumed that would be
> understood. But if Rorty actually did develop an argument in these terms
> regarding how the universality of a theory increased its potential truth
> value in relation to the world, I'd be interested in a specific citation.
>
> --
>
> Â Â Â Â Haines Brown, KB1GRM
When you mentioned other fields of knowledge, depths of reality and
grand theories of everything, I assumed you were expanding science to
cover all reality, raising it to the status of a religion. I was
poking fun at the science god.
There are several virtues of a so-called "good" scientific theory in
the philsophy of science: scope, accuracy, fruitfulness, simplicity,
consistency, explanatory power and others. You would do better
looking at a combination of them, not just one. Scope alone can't
increase a theorie's truth value. For example, material dialectics
and string theory have massive scopes but no explanatory power. As
such, they're not "good" scientific theories.
Check out bayesianism, it may be what you're after. It offers a
measure for good scientific theories by accomodating ideas of scope
and its ilk. This way you can measure competing theories and see
which is "better". I can try and find my notes if you like, it's kind
of cool.
I'm not sure what you're doing, but you may do well touching on the
idea of truth in science as well. Realists (metaphysicians) say that
science aims at truth and instrumentalists (pragmatists) say that
science aims at usefulness. So, for example, would an instrumentalist
agree, albeit in different terms, with a realist with respect to a
theory with a wide scope? I.e. is "truth" and "usefulness" pretty
much the same thing when it comes to theory choice?
Haines Brown
> When you mentioned other fields of knowledge, depths of reality and
> grand theories of everything, I assumed you were expanding science to
> cover all reality, raising it to the status of a religion. I was
> poking fun at the science god.
Understood
> There are several virtues of a so-called "good" scientific theory in
> the philsophy of science: scope, accuracy, fruitfulness, simplicity,
> consistency, explanatory power and others. You would do better
> looking at a combination of them, not just one. Scope alone can't
> increase a theorie's truth value. For example, material dialectics
> and string theory have massive scopes but no explanatory power. As
> such, they're not "good" scientific theories.
I wasn't asking for a list of features that might make up
"robustness". Some of them are justifiable (accuracy); some are not
(aesthetics). However, I was asking about a specific criterion, the
why the potential truth value of a particular domain of scientific
knowledge is a funtion of its determinant relationship with others.
I see no relation of truth value and explanatory power. If I said the
moon consisted of cheese, the statement has the quality of truthfulness,
but has no explanatory power.
I would have no trouble definding this proposition, but wanted to know
what others thought, and so asked for citations on the issue.
> Check out bayesianism, it may be what you're after. It offers a
> measure for good scientific theories by accomodating ideas of scope
> and its ilk. This way you can measure competing theories and see
> which is "better". I can try and find my notes if you like, it's kind
> of cool.
Yes, once we understand that a theory has degrees of truth. Perhaps
Bayesianism can accomodate the factor of a theory's scope, but if you
had a citation to a discussion of this specific point, I'd be
interested.
> I'm not sure what you're doing, but you may do well touching on the
> idea of truth in science as well. Realists (metaphysicians) say that
> science aims at truth and instrumentalists (pragmatists) say that
> science aims at usefulness. So, for example, would an instrumentalist
> agree, albeit in different terms, with a realist with respect to a
> theory with a wide scope? I.e. is "truth" and "usefulness" pretty
> much the same thing when it comes to theory choice?
This comment raises a host of issues. My question presumed that
statements can have truth value, and I was looking for discussions of
that value might be linked to the scope of a theory. For example, any
kind of holistic theory I presume would agree with the correlation of
truth and scope, but I'm simply looking for citations regarding such a
correlation.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
wrote:
Right, I think I'm with you now. You're talking about a "coherence"
theory of (scientific) truth I believe (and perhaps theoretical
holism). Or at least that's the closes philosophical theory I've come
across that matches what you're saying. The idea is that the truth of
a theory is the degree to which it coheres with all the other theories
out there (fits in, is consistent with, entails, etc) with all the
other theories out there. Would this be correct?
If it is, then the idea of "scope" that I thought you meant doesn't
really apply. Avoid saying "relative truth value" because "relative
truth" has a special meaning that you want to avoid.
I don't have any references handy but if you have the right terms then
research should be much easier.
Haines Brown
> Right, I think I'm with you now. You're talking about a "coherence"
> theory of (scientific) truth I believe (and perhaps theoretical
> holism).
No. There are many coherence theories, but my impression they are all
semantic, and that is not the focus of my question, which brought up the
relation of knowledge and the world. I hoped my my holism example would
make this clear.
So let me put it into more concrete terms without getting sidetracked on
the holism problem: if we assume that systems are open (an isolated
system is a hypothetical limiting case not found in nature), then our
understanding of a system remains one-sided if we don't take into
account its relation with its environment. Since that relation brings in
influences that we cannot entirely know in principle (because it is not
bounded), our knowledge is necessarily partial. But at the same time it
has truth value because consciousness arises from matter which
constrains its possibilities. That is, the more we take into account,
the greater will be the potential truth potential of our
explanation. There's a lot that could be said about this, but I at least
hope my intention is clear. I was looking for citations to the
literature on this proposition.
> If it is, then the idea of "scope" that I thought you meant doesn't
> really apply. Avoid saying "relative truth value" because "relative
> truth" has a special meaning that you want to avoid.
I don't think I want to avoid it. I assume it is conventional these days
to say that our theories represent only approximate truths. The usual
two reasons offered are a) the epistemological belief that science in
fact relies heavily on inductive reasoning, and as a result conclusions
are never certain, b) the ontological belief that all things are
processes and therefore have a fuzzy state, while we necessarily
comprehend them in static terms because of the limitations of mind (this
is more general than the more commonly made point that some processes
are in fact intrinsically probabilistic).
As for any philosophical problems you might see in the expression
"relative truth value", I'll not enter into them here because I believe
the notion is quite conventional from both an realist and an antirealist
position, although they disagree about the meaning of "truth".
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> > theory of (scientific) truth I believe (and perhaps theoretical
> > holism).
>
> No. There are many coherence theories, but my impression they are all
> semantic, and that is not the focus of my question, which brought up the
> relation of knowledge and the world. I hoped my my holism example would
> make this clear.
It would be interesting to see how you avoid semantics. If you assign
truth values to bits of language then meaning is involved.
> So let me put it into more concrete terms without getting sidetracked on
> the holism problem: if we assume that systems are open (an isolated
> system is a hypothetical limiting case not found in nature), then our
> understanding of a system remains one-sided if we don't take into
> account its relation with its environment. Since that relation brings in
> influences that we cannot entirely know in principle (because it is not
> bounded), our knowledge is necessarily partial. But at the same time it
> has truth value because consciousness arises from matter which
> constrains its possibilities. That is, the more we take into account,
> the greater will be the potential truth potential of our
> explanation. There's a lot that could be said about this, but I at least
> hope my intention is clear. I was looking for citations to the
> literature on this proposition.
I kind of see where you're headed, but I don't have any citations for
you. My only contribution besides general discussion would be to
point out some of your assumptions and problems inherent in them. But
you may already be aware of them and/or not have a need for that.
> > If it is, then the idea of "scope" that I thought you meant doesn't
> > really apply. Avoid saying "relative truth value" because "relative
> > truth" has a special meaning that you want to avoid.
>
> I don't think I want to avoid it. I assume it is conventional these days
> to say that our theories represent only approximate truths. The usual
> two reasons offered are a) the epistemological belief that science in
> fact relies heavily on inductive reasoning, and as a result conclusions
> are never certain, b) the ontological belief that all things are
> processes and therefore have a fuzzy state, while we necessarily
> comprehend them in static terms because of the limitations of mind (this
> is more general than the more commonly made point that some processes
> are in fact intrinsically probabilistic).
>
> As for any philosophical problems you might see in the expression
> "relative truth value", I'll not enter into them here because I believe
> the notion is quite conventional from both an realist and an antirealist
> position, although they disagree about the meaning of "truth".
I'm refering to the infinite regress you end up with if you claim that
truth is relative. It sounds like you're talking about another kind
of "relative truth".
Haines Brown
> It would be interesting to see how you avoid semantics. If you assign
> truth values to bits of language then meaning is involved.
Of course. I meant "semantics" in the sense of a study of language as a
source of truth independent of the world. That may not be how you use
the word.
> I kind of see where you're headed, but I don't have any citations for
> you. My only contribution besides general discussion would be to
> point out some of your assumptions and problems inherent in them. But
> you may already be aware of them and/or not have a need for that.
My question was meant to be framed in terms of the current consensus in
the philosophy of science, or at least major positions today, and so I
didn't feel the need to offer any justification for it. Yes, some issues
in contemporary science are contested. For example, I was presuming a
realist position, and there are some antirealists who would disagree,
but realism and pragmatism seem the main alternatives today.
> I'm refering to the infinite regress you end up with if you claim that
> truth is relative. It sounds like you're talking about another kind
> of "relative truth".
While OT, let me reply. I assume that truth is a relation of the person
and the world. It emerges in consciousness and therefore is constrained
by the powers of the mind, although having a character of its own
distinct from both mind and brain. But consciousness also emerges
through our engagement with the world (in action rather than
observation), and so is constrained by the nature of the world and
thereby acquires truth value. It is subjective and truthful in relation
to self and truthful about the world at the same time. The potential for
truth value depends in part on universality, both in relation to the
world we engage, and in terms of our social location (class). I was
looking for discussions in the literature concerning the first half of
this proposition.
This is a simple and straightforward response to your remark, but I
realize that there are all kinds of issues it raises that would lead us
into a swamp. I only bring it up to help you understand where I'm coming
from. But for a standard discussion of one of my points, you might take
a look at a representation of how consciousness emerges from brain
matter: Gerald M. Edelman and Guilio Tononi, _A Universe of
Consciousness: How matter becomes imagination_ (New York, 2000).
As for the basic issue that I see lurking behind your remarks, I should
note that I give priority to our changing the world rather than just
understanding it (i.e., we understand it through changing it). I reject
Cartesian dualism, and this is an existential a priori for me because I
am committed primarily to a change the world. I do not happen to be a
member of an elite and so cannot indulge myself to mere armchair
speculation.
I appreciate your responding to my question, even though you were unable
to offer any citations. It is odd that in a newsgroup such as
sci.philosophy.meta that there is so little interest in such obvious
basic question in the philosophy of science as we have been discussing.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
wrote:
> jason <jasonkstev...@gmail.com> writes:
> > It would be interesting to see how you avoid semantics. If you assign
> > truth values to bits of language then meaning is involved.
>
> Of course. I meant "semantics" in the sense of a study of language as a
> source of truth independent of the world. That may not be how you use
> the word.
Okay.
> > I kind of see where you're headed, but I don't have any citations for
> > you. My only contribution besides general discussion would be to
> > point out some of your assumptions and problems inherent in them. But
> > you may already be aware of them and/or not have a need for that.
>
> My question was meant to be framed in terms of the current consensus in
> the philosophy of science, or at least major positions today, and so I
> didn't feel the need to offer any justification for it. Yes, some issues
> in contemporary science are contested. For example, I was presuming a
> realist position, and there are some antirealists who would disagree,
> but realism and pragmatism seem the main alternatives today.
You don't need to justify anything to me - unless you're asking me to
consider something. You're asking for citations, so I figured you
could be writing a philosophy paper. If you are, I'd recommend that
you table you assumptions. Otherwise no worries if you're following
consensus.
> > I'm refering to the infinite regress you end up with if you claim that
> > truth is relative. It sounds like you're talking about another kind
> > of "relative truth".
>
> While OT, let me reply. I assume that truth is a relation of the person
> and the world. It emerges in consciousness and therefore is constrained
> by the powers of the mind, although having a character of its own
> distinct from both mind and brain. But consciousness also emerges
> through our engagement with the world (in action rather than
> observation), and so is constrained by the nature of the world and
> thereby acquires truth value. It is subjective and truthful in relation
> to self and truthful about the world at the same time. The potential for
> truth value depends in part on universality, both in relation to the
> world we engage, and in terms of our social location (class). I was
> looking for discussions in the literature concerning the first half of
> this proposition.
So if I understand you, you primarily assume that truth is
correspondence between the world and what is presented to our
consciousness. You add to this idea that consciousness is constrained
by the mind which is in turn constrained by the world. And you assume
that truth is absolute or universal in the sense that it is grounded
by the world on the one end, and by society on the other. Would this
be about right?
> This is a simple and straightforward response to your remark, but I
> realize that there are all kinds of issues it raises that would lead us
> into a swamp. I only bring it up to help you understand where I'm coming
> from. But for a standard discussion of one of my points, you might take
> a look at a representation of how consciousness emerges from brain
> matter: Gerald M. Edelman and Guilio Tononi, _A Universe of
> Consciousness: How matter becomes imagination_ (New York, 2000).
Yes it does raise lots of philosophical issues, but most things do.
At the same time most people would agree with you I think.
Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness.
> As for the basic issue that I see lurking behind your remarks, I should
> note that I give priority to our changing the world rather than just
> understanding it (i.e., we understand it through changing it). I reject
> Cartesian dualism, and this is an existential a priori for me because I
> am committed primarily to a change the world. I do not happen to be a
> member of an elite and so cannot indulge myself to mere armchair
> speculation.
Okay. I don't think there's anything behind what I'm saying. I'm
trying to get to grips with what you're saying and I think my
background and the terms I'm use to using is getting in the way.
> I appreciate your responding to my question, even though you were unable
> to offer any citations. It is odd that in a newsgroup such as
> sci.philosophy.meta that there is so little interest in such obvious
> basic question in the philosophy of science as we have been discussing.
This newsgroup use to be good. I come back from time to time to seem
how it's shaping up, but it would be nice if more people contributed.
These days most of the posts seem to be about Islam or something
equally as random.
Haines Brown
jason <jasonk...@gmail.com> writes:
> So if I understand you, you primarily assume that truth is
> correspondence between the world and what is presented to our
> consciousness. You add to this idea that consciousness is constrained
> by the mind which is in turn constrained by the world. And you assume
> that truth is absolute or universal in the sense that it is grounded
> by the world on the one end, and by society on the other. Would this
> be about right?
It seems that most correspondence theories not only assert that a
truthful statement corresponds to the world, but that it it an accurate
copy of it. So I'm only partially a correspondence person: truthful
statements are analogs that only probabilistically and partially
correspond to the world, although truth nevertheless in large part
consists of that relation.
Coherence theory folks object that there are other determinants of truth
than simply mirroring the world, and these determinants constitute a
system. As I describe the position here, I would agree. Language, logic,
and the criteria that are existentially embraced such as simplicity. But
I'd not privilege these other determinants to the point I ended up an
idealist or rationalist. I suspect most coherence theorists see truthful
statements as an emergent property of the system that does not reduce to
any one determinant. I think I'd agree with the idea that truth is a
property of the whole that arises from the interaction of these
determinants, but particularly the one I bring up next which is usually
not included in a coherence theory.
I agree with constructivist theory in that truth is constructed by
social processes, although I'd not make these the sole determinant of
truth, but merely probabilistically related to the formation of a
truthful statement. I see social construction as necessary for the
creation of truthful statements about the world, and the universality of
one's social location as a measure of the potential truth value of our
statements, but I'd disagree with the the social constructivists who
hold that truth reduces to these social determinations.
And I'd definitely agree with pragmatic theorists that truth represents
a succession of approximations. Peirce, for example, suggested that all
truthful statements are necessarily one-sided and inaccurate, and urged
us to admit that right up front. I agree with this, and indeed it is why
I came out with my request for citations for discussions that the the
degree of the potential truthfulness of our statements is a function of
the universality of the domain of which we speak and our own social
universality. However, I'd disagree with Peirce's suggestion that we
test truth value of our statements by putting them into practice. If
this is a fair characterization of his view, I'd object that the proper
test is not observing the results of our practice (which is empiricist
and raises the issue of the measure of success [nicely discussed by
Timpanaro, _On Materialism_), but the power to engage in the practice in
the first place (that is, I'd disagree with his empiricism and make an
unobservable a test of truth: our having causal potency).
Finally, I've got to admit that the deconstructionists have some
important things to say in that we need to look critically at our
Enlightenment presuppositions and slough off some of the baggage of
presumptions we carry about us. However, I don't see that a
deconstruction should lead us to elitism, skepticsm, agnosticism, or an
abandonment of truth.
Sorry to drag you though this, but you want to put me into a
conventional philosophical category, and instead I kinda mindlessly find
virtue in all positions, but am too dense to be entirely persuaded by
any of them. Perhaps you can put me into one category or another based
on what I sketched above, but I avoid such categories myself, and simply
think of myself as a dialectical materialist.
> Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness.
Interesting statement. Would you mind telling me just what you mean and
why? The old empiricist position was to accept only brute facts that are
justified by direct observation. However, practicing scientist have
never held that position, and in the last couple decades even
philosophers of science have to a significant degree come around to
admitting the realist position that unobservables are real. This
"consciousness" is presumably such an unobservable.
The problem is, how do we warrant our claims about unobervables. Here I
take a narrow definition of unobservables (some, perhaps the
pragmatists, would argue that we shouldn't attempt the definition at
all), and feel that unobservables are causal potencies. As a result I
feel that the existence of unobservables can be inferred from processes
- not simply observing their outcomes, but from a knowledge that there
is a process at work. So, to warrant the existence of consciousness, I'd
assume that its presence is necessary to understand action in the world
and is a necessary condition for it (I'm a bit of an existentialist
here).
But I didn't put this forward to challenge your own position on
consciousness, but instead would really like to know more about your
position.
Yes, the reason for my raising the issue is that I'm writing a paper
(perhaps "The Incubus of Theory". You would have to be familiar with
historiography to understand the reason for "incubus" here). There's a
new e-journal in formation (http://history.theory.googlepages.com),
_Critical Studies in History_, and I've been asked to write a paper for
its premier issue which should come out later this year. This journal is
associated with a history and theory forum that meets in New York
(anyone having an interest in this forum should contact me privately for
more information).
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
Thanks for taking the time to put that down, I see I was barking up
the wrong tree. I'm trying to understand you in my own terms which
have been fleshed out in philosophy. I certainly don't want to box
you and I'm glad you can't be.
Do you agree with parts of Marx, Hegel or Gadamer's notions of truth?
I really like Gadamer's in that truth is fundamentally a movement.
That truth is the shock we experience when we come to a new
understanding bought about by communication with other people, art,
the world, etc. If I finally understood your notion of truth, the
"ah!" moment would be the synthesis of world-views in action.
A little while ago I was looking a correspondence theory of truth that
used language as the prime concept. The idea was that the world and
our understanding of it are linguistic in some critical sense. It
went something like: the world's "language" is far richer than our own
human language and as such can only cast a shadow onto it, like
Plato's cave analogy. We would each have our own idiom and so our own
unique cave and therefore shadows. My plan was to capture points of
view without going relativist, and to capture Gadamer's idea. I
spelled out the idea mathematically using Hilbert spaces and
projections onto sub-spaces. The account of truth becomes... not
really probabilistic, but hazy or partial. It accounts for dialectic
synthesis, the coming together of world views (idioms), as the union
of sub-spaces.
More recently I've abandoned the idea of truth all together and, like
consciousness, I don't really believe in it anymore.
> > Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness.
>
> Interesting statement. Would you mind telling me just what you mean and
> why? The old empiricist position was to accept only brute facts that are
> justified by direct observation. However, practicing scientist have
> never held that position, and in the last couple decades even
> philosophers of science have to a significant degree come around to
> admitting the realist position that unobservables are real. This
> "consciousness" is presumably such an unobservable.
>
> The problem is, how do we warrant our claims about unobervables. Here I
> take a narrow definition of unobservables (some, perhaps the
> pragmatists, would argue that we shouldn't attempt the definition at
> all), and feel that unobservables are causal potencies. As a result I
> feel that the existence of unobservables can be inferred from processes
> - not simply observing their outcomes, but from a knowledge that there
> is a process at work. So, to warrant the existence of consciousness, I'd
> assume that its presence is necessary to understand action in the world
> and is a necessary condition for it (I'm a bit of an existentialist
> here).
>
> But I didn't put this forward to challenge your own position on
> consciousness, but instead would really like to know more about your
> position.
I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
"consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something that
it is like to human", etc. A full picture can be expressed, at least
in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some "thing" that's
really quite ineffable. I don't think there is this hard problem of
consciousness. I think we've created the problem with the terms we
use and our assumptions they carry.
Same with "truth" and "knowledge". I don't think it exists outside of
human discourse. I don't think there are any propositions or ideas in
our head that correspond to the world. The terms are handy, but I
think we could live quite happily without their metaphysical
assumptions.
If pressed, I'm currently trying on the idea that consciousness is an
illusion, fully aware of the regress in there. It's not a position
though, it's a direction.
> Yes, the reason for my raising the issue is that I'm writing a paper
> (perhaps "The Incubus of Theory". You would have to be familiar with
> historiography to understand the reason for "incubus" here). There's a
> new e-journal in formation (http://history.theory.googlepages.com),
> _Critical Studies in History_, and I've been asked to write a paper for
> its premier issue which should come out later this year. This journal is
> associated with a history and theory forum that meets in New York
> (anyone having an interest in this forum should contact me privately for
> more information).
Great! I'd be interested to read it.
Haines Brown
> More recently I've abandoned the idea of truth all together and, like
> consciousness, I don't really believe in it anymore.
This is a philosphical position that many have taken. There are
problems that I perceive in such a position. One that happens to
concern me at the moment is that knowledge is a precondition of
action. I suspect you might agree with this, but then what is the
function or status of the knowledge we have?
For a discussion along these lines, there is Roy Bhaskar, Scientific
Realism & Human Emancipation (London 1986).
>> > Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness.
>>
>> Interesting statement. Would you mind telling me just what you mean and
>> why?
> I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
> "consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something that
> it is like to human", etc. A full picture can be expressed, at least
> in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some "thing" that's
> really quite ineffable. I don't think there is this hard problem of
> consciousness. I think we've created the problem with the terms we
> use and our assumptions they carry.
A tactic is to reduce our terms for unobservables by seeing if we can
do without them. Can we the idea that uses such terms by removing them?
That can be done, to some extent, but there's a heavy price, one of
which is explanation. I suspect that if you throw out such terms, you
also throw out explanation. Well, someone might reply, why should we be
troubled by that, to which there are some obvious answers.
> Same with "truth" and "knowledge". I don't think it exists outside of
> human discourse. I don't think there are any propositions or ideas in
> our head that correspond to the world. The terms are handy, but I
> think we could live quite happily without their metaphysical
> assumptions.
I assume you are using the word "correspondence" here in a very loose
sense. Well, what compels us to engage the world, truthful knowledge in
hand? What social class members possess the means for their own
development and so do not have to engage the world? What portion of the
world's population are not forced to make bare survival their primary
and even sole concern? If we live in a developed economy, to what extent
is that advantage the result of truthful knowledge embedded in means of
production and the labor of so many who create new value in their
relation to nature in labor? How can we be equipped to change this world
for a better one without a truthful understanding of what makes society
tick? How can we make moral judgements or fashion a moral behavor
without some truthful understanding of the basis for it? The list goes
on. My point is that if we abandon the pursuit of truthful knowledge,
that may be logical in philosophical terms, but it seems to me hardly
worth the enormous price that must be paid.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
wrote:
> jason <jasonkstev...@gmail.com> writes:
> > More recently I've abandoned the idea of truth all together and, like
> > consciousness, I don't really believe in it anymore.
>
> This is a philosphical position that many have taken. There are
> problems that I perceive in such a position. One that happens to
> concern me at the moment is that knowledge is a precondition of
> action. I suspect you might agree with this, but then what is the
> function or status of the knowledge we have?
I don't know about it being a precondition. I can see how knowledge
might be a "vector" for action, but we move on false beliefs,
illusions and delusions. We make choices based on feelings and
intuition. We decisively act even without language. We randomly move
and have reflex actions. I think we could survive without the term
"knowledge" here.
> For a discussion along these lines, there is Roy Bhaskar, Scientific
> Realism & Human Emancipation (London 1986).
I don't have a lot of time for metaphysical schemas that claim truth
is objective, that there are such things as absolutes, and statements
like "...are understood in terms of absence, as absenting absence on
absenting absence".
Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
communication, without strict opposites. People that touch on
dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
from shifts in perspective and meaning. They confuse what doesn't
need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
shifts.
> >> > Thanks for the reference but I don't really believe in consciousness.
>
> >> Interesting statement. Would you mind telling me just what you mean and
> >> why?
> > I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
> > "consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something that
> > it is like to human", etc. Â A full picture can be expressed, at least
> > in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some "thing" that's
> > really quite ineffable. Â I don't think there is this hard problem of
> > consciousness. Â I think we've created the problem with the terms we
> > use and our assumptions they carry.
>
> A tactic is to reduce our terms for unobservables by seeing if we can
> do without them. Can we the idea that uses such terms by removing them?
> That can be done, to some extent, but there's a heavy price, one of
> which is explanation. I suspect that if you throw out such terms, you
> also throw out explanation. Well, someone might reply, why should we be
> troubled by that, to which there are some obvious answers.
It's only a heavy price if a lot of value is assigned to the term
"consciousness". I think the term is over-valued because it doesn't
explain anything. It's use is an argumentum ad ignorantiam:
consciousness exists only because it has not been proven otherwise.
Or worse, we can't explain our experience of the world, therefore
there is this emergent or ghostly thing we know not what.
Work needs to be done if the term is to be removed, most definitelly.
Metaphysicians would ask for a new explanation and ironists would ask
how we came to start using the term "consciousness" to begin with.
> > Same with "truth" and "knowledge". Â I don't think it exists outside of
> > human discourse. Â I don't think there are any propositions or ideas in
> > our head that correspond to the world. Â The terms are handy, but I
> > think we could live quite happily without their metaphysical
> > assumptions.
>
> I assume you are using the word "correspondence" here in a very loose
> sense. Well, what compels us to engage the world, truthful knowledge in
> hand? What social class members possess the means for their own
> development and so do not have to engage the world? What portion of the
> world's population are not forced to make bare survival their primary
> and even sole concern? If we live in a developed economy, to what extent
> is that advantage the result of truthful knowledge embedded in means of
> production and the labor of so many who create new value in their
> relation to nature in labor? How can we be equipped to change this world
> for a better one without a truthful understanding of what makes society
> tick? How can we make moral judgements or fashion a moral behavor
> without some truthful understanding of the basis for it? The list goes
> on. My point is that if we abandon the pursuit of truthful knowledge,
> that may be logical in philosophical terms, but it seems to me hardly
> worth the enormous price that must be paid.
I find the assumption that we can /know/ things quite repugnant. We
assume we can somehow step outside of ourselves, our culture and our
history, past our perspective, our traditions and our 21st century
biases, and see "reality" laid bare before us. Who are we to claim
to /know/ the world and /judge/ morrality? We're no god.
If we humans got off our pedistal, stopped trying after omniscience
and instead saw ourselves as clever animals, then we might let go of a
lot of bigotry and arrogance we have towards one another. It doesn't
mean we can't stand with unflinching convictions. On the contrary.
We can stand up for what we think to be important, in the face of our
own falability. The difference is that when push comes to shove, we
may... just may... look again at ourselves.
Being free of propoganda terms like "knowledge" and "reason", terms
that have replaced the role of the priest and oracle, we will see each
other as peers that we have to get along with rather than subjects
that we have to "bring to justice".
Haines Brown
>> One that happens to concern me at the moment is that knowledge is a
>> precondition of action.
> I don't know about it being a precondition. I can see how knowledge
> might be a "vector" for action, but we move on false beliefs,
> illusions and delusions. We make choices based on feelings and
> intuition. We decisively act even without language. We randomly move
> and have reflex actions. I think we could survive without the term
> "knowledge" here.
Is not a "vector" a precondition in the sense that pointless action is
pointless, and that is not what we usually mean by action? What also
seems to muddy the waters here are two issues: a) whether it is a word
we are talking about, or the reality of what is referred to by that
word. b) Whether truth is implied when we speak of knowledge.
The dictionary shows that knowledge has two meanings. One implies truth,
but the other simply cognition. My point presumed the latter definition,
but perhaps you assumed the first.
So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking knowledge
as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge (cognizance)
of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon it. Note that
I slipped in the word intentional here (your "vector"), for there are
certainly unintentional actions, such as instinct or accident, but these
exceptions are trivial, for I'm not trying to formulate a universal law.
But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in which
case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of effective
action. Of course, an effective action can be based on a misapprehension
of the world, and a relatively true knowledge can nevertheless result in
failure. But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more
likely we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck. In
the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are used
to drive nails or even what a nail is.
You may agree with all this and perhaps you only mean that while
knowledge is necessary, the word "knowledge" is not. Perhaps so, but
that reduces the matter to semantics, and since it runs against
convention, doing without the word seems to require some
justification. You eventually give moral reasons for not presuming an
absolute truth, but so far the unconventional parameter truth being
absolute has not been specified any more than that the preferred meaning
of the word "knowledge" is not cognizance, but a sentence with truth
value. When we build an argument, we have to use words with meanings
that the reader shares, We get into trouble when we use words in
unconventional ways without explanation or justification, or when we use
words that have ambivalent meanings without specifying which is our
intent.
>> For a discussion along these lines, there is Roy Bhaskar, Scientific
>> Realism & Human Emancipation (London 1986).
>
> I don't have a lot of time for metaphysical schemas that claim truth
> is objective, that there are such things as absolutes, and statements
> like "...are understood in terms of absence, as absenting absence on
> absenting absence".
>
> Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
> communication, without strict opposites. People that touch on
> dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
> and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
> from shifts in perspective and meaning. They confuse what doesn't
> need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
> shifts.
There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
(correspondence in some sense) with the world. Why should one abandon
that view? Nearly everyone has always assumed it, and so justification
must be offered if you intend to jettison it. You express your position,
but seem to deny any need to justify it except for weak moral grounds at
the end.
Of course truth is also subjective (there's no necessary contradiction
between its being simultaneously objective and subjective), but you
apparently suggest it reduces to subjectivity. If so, it seems you
logically walk away from having to justify the truth of your position or
entering into social discourse. That is, it seems pathological (no
insult intended).
Dialectics is a broad term that can mean quite different things, and I'm
not clear about your objection. Dialectics can refer to a pedagogical
method (the original meaning), a discourse, looking at things in
systemic terms or a presumption that systems are emergent. Off hand,
none of these seem objectionable. I believe you have to indicate which
meaning you prefer and what your objection to it is.
Contradiction is also an ambivalent term, for it sometimes refers to a
basic principle of abstract logic, to a Kantian real opposition (as I
used the term above), and sometimes used in the Marxian sense of
contradictory processes (which can be stated in thermodynamic terms that
an emergent system depends on and is driven by its opposite, a
dissipation of its surroundings). But since these all except the first
speak of the world and are meant as truthful statements about the world,
I suppose you reject them all out of hand.
>> > I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
>> > "consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something
>> > that it is like to human", etc. Â A full picture can be expressed,
>> > at least in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some
>> > "thing" that's really quite ineffable. Â I don't think there is this
>> > hard problem of consciousness. Â I think we've created the problem
>> > with the terms we use and our assumptions they carry.
Not clear to me. Are you speaking of our need for words or of our
presuming there are objects referred to by them? Your examples mix
together unobservables such as mental states, examples of
essentialism. Perhaps you object to anything not empirical and reduces
to phenomena. Do you therefore insist that effective action in the world is
irrelevant? In any case, you use words that seem to refer to ideas in
your head, but at the same time deny any such correspondence or any
possible connection with the ideas that I also might have in my
head. What warrant is there that our mental lives have any
correspondence if there is no truth value? Your position seems
contradictory, but then you cast doubts on contradictions as well. Does
anything have any meaning outside your own private mental life at this
moment? Your extraordinary skepticism seems to deny it.
> It's only a heavy price if a lot of value is assigned to the term
> "consciousness". I think the term is over-valued because it doesn't
> explain anything.
Is it meant to explain something, or is it a sign for something that
exists? I guess I'm existentialist in that I privilege action in the
world and my relations with others, and philosophy gains value if it
serves those ends, while you seem to privilege philosophy and as a
result don't know that the world exists. That is, to put it most
conservatively, there is no warrant for our presumption that our
statements about the world, including its existence, have any truth
value or warrant.
> It's use is an argumentum ad ignorantiam: consciousness exists only
> because it has not been proven otherwise. Or worse, we can't explain
> our experience of the world, therefore there is this emergent or
> ghostly thing we know not what.
I don't see logically how one can prove the non-existence of things, but
you seem to doubt the truth value of logic, so that in your case this
may be valid. Do we accept the existence of things only because no one
has proved they don't exist? No one has attempted to disprove there's a
cup of coffee by my side, and that's the only reason it is there? That
is, my world and existence depends on the accident of someone with too little
interest and time to prove their non-existence? Since you said that
their statements have no truth value and one can't say anything is right
or wrong, they can't prove it one way or the other, and so my reality
simply does not exist.
While consciousness may be an elusive notion, it is a word that most
people believe refers to something. I am self aware and have
consciousness of the world, I hardly need to prove that consciousness
exists, any more than I need to prove to myself that I'm alive, for
consciousness is a precondition for speculation about its
existence. There are in fact feeble efforts to explain consciousness, so
it's not that it exists only by negation. Perhaps you are instead
suggesting that it is a word for a real mental effect but not an entity
- it is not itself ontologically real? But since you doubt a
correspondence between sentences and truth, I guess you wouldn't mean
that either.
> Work needs to be done if the term is to be removed, most definitelly.
> Metaphysicians would ask for a new explanation and ironists would ask
> how we came to start using the term "consciousness" to begin with.
But no one I know seems to feel such a lobotomy necessary. We all get
along very well with the existential presumption that we have
consciousness. True, it, like many other things, is very difficult for
philosophers and scientists to explain and there's no consensus over
what it is, but what should we make of this fact? That because there is
no certainty about what it is, we should abandon the idea? Solipsism is
a philosophical position that by definition can't be supported or
recommended to others.
> I find the assumption that we can /know/ things quite repugnant. We
> assume we can somehow step outside of ourselves, our culture and our
> history, past our perspective, our traditions and our 21st century
> biases, and see "reality" laid bare before us. Who are we to claim to
> /know/ the world and /judge/ morrality? We're no god.
I have a cup of coffee by my side. I know this to be true. Why does that
make me god? You seem not to doubt truth, but instead a universal or
absolute truth. But that's a red herring these days (outside
religion). Since Peirce, we all know that our statements of truth
correspond only approximately with the world. To deny that any statement
can have any truth value seems the kind of universal or absolute
statement to which you object.
> If we humans got off our pedistal, stopped trying after omniscience
> and instead saw ourselves as clever animals, then we might let go of a
> lot of bigotry and arrogance we have towards one another.
While I can see that a claim of absolute truth, as in religion, can have
pernicious moral consequences, I don't see that as relevant to the
approximate truths of our usual statements. How can we see ourselves as
clever animals without relying on the statements that we are clever and
that are animals having some truth value? An admission that our
knowledge is incomplete, is approximate, is often wrong would seem to
avoid the moral onus you suggest, but outside religion, logic, and
mathematics, no one seems to make that claim, and in these domains,
statements are (arguably) not being made about the world.
> Being free of propoganda terms like "knowledge" and "reason", terms
> that have replaced the role of the priest and oracle, we will see each
> other as peers that we have to get along with rather than subjects
> that we have to "bring to justice".
But knowledge and reason are not "propaganda" terms, for as far as I
know no agency is propagating them them for their own reason. Sounds
paranoid to me. That I have knowledge is a fact, and when I say I
believe this knowledge to be true, neither I or anyone else that I know
of (outside religion), makes a claim that the truth of this knowledge is
absolute. Today, (outside religion), absolute truth is irrelevant. The
people I deal with in daily life all normally necessarily assume their
statements have some truth value, but none are seem arrogant, divine, or
autocratic. The moral justification for your philosophical skepticism
seems vacuus.
For example, to defend solipsism on moral grounds sounds contradictory
to me. I believe this to be a truthful statement in part because it
seems reasonable, but you seen to cast doubts on reason. But since no
one as far as I know has tried to disprove it, it must be so. Talk about
contradiction!
Let me conclude this way. We all have beliefs that are private and may
be arbitrary or entirely subjective. We don't in general attempt to
communicate them to others because they are private, arbitrary and
subjective. Only those who love us have any interest in them. But we act
in the world, and such action depends on our employing socially
transmitted knowledge that has such warrants as being reasonable, having
truth value, a coherence with our other beliefs, or representing moral
rectitude. Our situation in life requires that our knowledge in our view
has such warrants, that we necessary communicate knowledge with others,
and that communication itself also depends on these warrants. It seems
to me that while logical alternatives to this set of propositions are
possible, they are arguably pathological, being socially and morally
destructive.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking knowledge
>as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge (cognizance)
>of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon it.
That reference to "mere cognition" is interesting, given that our
understanding of cognition is quite poor.
The scientist in the lab often finds that intentional action (such
as an experiment) is a precondition to knowledge. Your view seems
a bit simplistic.
>But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in which
>case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of effective
>action.
I'll go back to my example of the scientist in the lab. I am taking
"effective action" to mean action that has effects - perhaps that
isn't what you mean.
The scientist takes action, in form of experiments, so that the
effects can be used to develop an understanding (cognizance).
At other times the scientist performs the experiment looking for
specific effects that he can measure, leading to true statements
(knowledge as truth). In either case, the action can precede
the knowledge.
> But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more
>likely we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
>skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck.
I am not seeing what hammering a nail has to do with truthfulness
of knowledge. Surely, here, you are talking about knowledge as an
ability, rather than knowledge as truth. And pragmatic standards,
rather than standards of truth, are more appropriate when concerned
with abilities.
> In
>the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are used
>to drive nails or even what a nail is.
But, given the appropriate abilities, you will adequately drive that
nail with a hammer, even if you don't happen to know that the tool
you used was a hammer, nor that what you hit with it was a nail, nor
that the overall action is called "driving a nail".
>There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
>notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
>(correspondence in some sense) with the world.
Perhaps because at best it is vacuous, and at worst it is nonsense.
jason
> but the other simply cognition. My point presumed the latter definition,
> but perhaps you assumed the first.
Dictionaries aren't great for things like this, but yes I assumed
truth. The conventional theory is that knowledge is justified true
belief.
> So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking knowledge
> as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge (cognizance)
> of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon it. Note that
> I slipped in the word intentional here (your "vector"), for there are
> certainly unintentional actions, such as instinct or accident, but these
> exceptions are trivial, for I'm not trying to formulate a universal law.
So to re-cap, the problem of not believing in "consciousness" is that
it's a precondition of intentional action. The problem here is that
if I pressed you about the meaning of "intention", I'm sure it would
include the idea of consciousness. (For example, can robots have
intentional action?) If so it's a circular argument.
> But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in which
> case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of effective
> action. Of course, an effective action can be based on a misapprehension
> of the world, and a relatively true knowledge can nevertheless result in
> failure. But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more
> likely we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
> skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck. In
> the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are used
> to drive nails or even what a nail is.
I'm happy to accept utility in the place of truth. That is, we use
words because they are useful not because they are true. The more
useful they are the more value we place on them and the more we trade
them.
Note that this doesn't mean that the sentence "there is beer in the
fridge" is now "useful" instead of "true". It means that we find the
use of the statement to be, occasionally, a means to an end.
> You may agree with all this and perhaps you only mean that while
> knowledge is necessary, the word "knowledge" is not. Perhaps so, but
> that reduces the matter to semantics, and since it runs against
> convention, doing without the word seems to require some
> justification. You eventually give moral reasons for not presuming an
> absolute truth, but so far the unconventional parameter truth being
> absolute has not been specified any more than that the preferred meaning
> of the word "knowledge" is not cognizance, but a sentence with truth
> value. When we build an argument, we have to use words with meanings
> that the reader shares, We get into trouble when we use words in
> unconventional ways without explanation or justification, or when we use
> words that have ambivalent meanings without specifying which is our
> intent.
I suppose I've lost faith in the idea that theories represent nature
and that theories can be metaphysically true by virtue of there being
something out there called "truth". I don't think there is such a
thing called "blue" either, I'm a bit of a nominalist, but it doesn't
mean I deny that there are causes of our seeing blue. It's the same
with consciousness really.
> > Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
> > communication, without strict opposites. People that touch on
> > dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
> > and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
> > from shifts in perspective and meaning. They confuse what doesn't
> > need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
> > shifts.
>
> There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
> notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
> (correspondence in some sense) with the world. Why should one abandon
> that view? Nearly everyone has always assumed it, and so justification
> must be offered if you intend to jettison it. You express your position,
> but seem to deny any need to justify it except for weak moral grounds at
> the end.
There is no non-circular argument I can offer that will support an
alternative view, but I believe that this is the same with any view.
There is any number of criticisms I could throw at the correspondence
theory, but again this can be done to any theory.
Why should someone abandon the view? I'd have to answer that the
reason would depend on the situation. Maybe they shouldn't. There
isn't a great reason to drop the theory in general terms aside from
the fact that it's useless to have a general theory of truth - unless
one was looking for religion. I would recommend an alternative view
because I've found it useful, but that's not to say other people will.
It's our common sense view that the truth of a statement lies in its
relations to the world. However, beneath our common sense views lie
are our most hidden and entrenched assumptions. Unpacking these
assumptions can give us a sense of our historical positioning. It's
not a way to get your head above water, or a way to realise that there
is, in fact, water; but a place to find our hidden dogmas.
Doing this can be praised for all sorts of reasons like allowing us to
create one's self rather than being a replica of past lives, etc. But
I think these ideas are bogus. At the end of the day, by the theory's
own rubric, it is either useful or it isn't.
> Of course truth is also subjective (there's no necessary contradiction
> between its being simultaneously objective and subjective), but you
> apparently suggest it reduces to subjectivity. If so, it seems you
> logically walk away from having to justify the truth of your position or
> entering into social discourse. That is, it seems pathological (no
> insult intended).
I'm more than happy to enter into social discourse. I don't think
truth reduces to anything particularly. We all use the term in
different ways and any theory of what truth really is, is not my
argument. Suggesting that my view is the "truth" is to miss the point
altogether. I don't believe in truth and I assert that a notion of
truth isn't required to hold a position.
> Dialectics is a broad term that can mean quite different things, and I'm
> not clear about your objection. Dialectics can refer to a pedagogical
> method (the original meaning), a discourse, looking at things in
> systemic terms or a presumption that systems are emergent. Off hand,
> none of these seem objectionable. I believe you have to indicate which
> meaning you prefer and what your objection to it is.
Dialectics from material dialectics as you mentioned, from Marx's
twist on Hegel. My objection to it is that Hegel's "dialectic logic"
is confused. There are interpretations of Hegel that do make sense in
my opinion, but this tradition with statements like "negating negative
negation" etc are either confused of confusing. They have nothing to
say that can't be said in more sensible terms.
> Contradiction is also an ambivalent term, for it sometimes refers to a
> basic principle of abstract logic, to a Kantian real opposition (as I
> used the term above), and sometimes used in the Marxian sense of
> contradictory processes (which can be stated in thermodynamic terms that
> an emergent system depends on and is driven by its opposite, a
> dissipation of its surroundings). But since these all except the first
> speak of the world and are meant as truthful statements about the world,
> I suppose you reject them all out of hand.
Well, I reject propositions that rely on metaphysical assumptions. Of
course I assume there is a table in front of me, but I don't assume
"there is a table in front of me" has an actual relation somewhere out
there in the universe to the thing in front of me which gives it a
special status over "there isn't a table in front of me".
> >> > I believe that to explain human behavior, we don't need terms like
> >> > "consciousness", "awareness", "experience", "qualia", "something
> >> > that it is like to human", etc. A full picture can be expressed,
> >> > at least in principle, without the need to hand-wave at some
> >> > "thing" that's really quite ineffable. I don't think there is this
> >> > hard problem of consciousness. I think we've created the problem
> >> > with the terms we use and our assumptions they carry.
>
> Not clear to me. Are you speaking of our need for words or of our
> presuming there are objects referred to by them? Your examples mix
> together unobservables such as mental states, examples of
> essentialism. Perhaps you object to anything not empirical and reduces
> to phenomena. Do you therefore insist that effective action in the world is
> irrelevant? In any case, you use words that seem to refer to ideas in
> your head, but at the same time deny any such correspondence or any
> possible connection with the ideas that I also might have in my
> head. What warrant is there that our mental lives have any
> correspondence if there is no truth value? Your position seems
> contradictory, but then you cast doubts on contradictions as well. Does
> anything have any meaning outside your own private mental life at this
> moment? Your extraordinary skepticism seems to deny it.
I use the idea that words refer to things in the world, but I don't
use the idea that there is a reified relationship between words and
their referents. This doesn't meant there aren't things out there in
the world or that we're swimming in around in a semantic dream world.
Reality can be said to reach all the way into us and we reach all the
way into the world. Language can be seen as a tool rather than a
medium on which the world is represented.
I found it a difficult position to understand because so much of the
way we talk assumes a mind-reality gap. (I'm probably confusing
language use too which is making things difficult.) It certainly
appears contradictory at first: "there is no truth" => "is that the
truth?". It also must seem like I'm evading questions. I can't
directly answer some of them because to my mind they assume the very
notions I'm trying to debunk. Kind of like "did you or did you
not...?" questions, where it's not that simple to answer.
Science has found a system of symbols that allow us to predict the
world. Mostly we think that science has got it right, that these
systems have captured the truth about the world. I follow the idea
that science finds these systems useful, full stop.
> > It's only a heavy price if a lot of value is assigned to the term
> > "consciousness". I think the term is over-valued because it doesn't
> > explain anything.
>
> Is it meant to explain something, or is it a sign for something that
> exists? I guess I'm existentialist in that I privilege action in the
> world and my relations with others, and philosophy gains value if it
> serves those ends, while you seem to privilege philosophy and as a
> result don't know that the world exists. That is, to put it most
> conservatively, there is no warrant for our presumption that our
> statements about the world, including its existence, have any truth
> value or warrant.
I don't privilege philosophy, I find it interesting but I think it is
by and large a waste of time outside of a therapeutic role of
debunking dogma.
> I don't see logically how one can prove the non-existence of things, but
> you seem to doubt the truth value of logic, so that in your case this
> may be valid. Do we accept the existence of things only because no one
> has proved they don't exist? No one has attempted to disprove there's a
> cup of coffee by my side, and that's the only reason it is there? That
> is, my world and existence depends on the accident of someone with too little
> interest and time to prove their non-existence? Since you said that
> their statements have no truth value and one can't say anything is right
> or wrong, they can't prove it one way or the other, and so my reality
> simply does not exist.
I meant that our reasons for suspecting that consciousness exists is
an argumentum ad ignorantiam. We think it exists but have no non-
fallacious reason for it. We might appeal to common sense, but there
in lies lots of fallacious assumptions. I don't really have any
reasons /for/ its inexistence sorry, at least none that aren't half-
formed.
> While consciousness may be an elusive notion, it is a word that most
> people believe refers to something. I am self aware and have
> consciousness of the world, I hardly need to prove that consciousness
> exists, any more than I need to prove to myself that I'm alive, for
> consciousness is a precondition for speculation about its
> existence. There are in fact feeble efforts to explain consciousness, so
> it's not that it exists only by negation. Perhaps you are instead
> suggesting that it is a word for a real mental effect but not an entity
> - it is not itself ontologically real? But since you doubt a
> correspondence between sentences and truth, I guess you wouldn't mean
> that either.
"I", "self-aware" and "consciousness of the world" can easily smuggle
in the assumption that consciousness exists. I doubt there is any
special difference between a robot replica and a human.
> > Work needs to be done if the term is to be removed, most definitelly.
> > Metaphysicians would ask for a new explanation and ironists would ask
> > how we came to start using the term "consciousness" to begin with.
>
> But no one I know seems to feel such a lobotomy necessary. We all get
> along very well with the existential presumption that we have
> consciousness. True, it, like many other things, is very difficult for
> philosophers and scientists to explain and there's no consensus over
> what it is, but what should we make of this fact? That because there is
> no certainty about what it is, we should abandon the idea? Solipsism is
> a philosophical position that by definition can't be supported or
> recommended to others.
We shouldn't abandon the idea. We should look at why we started using
the term in the first place and see if there are other ways of talking
that dispense with the problem of consciousness altogether. We might
find that the problem is created by the way we talk rather than it
being a "real" problem.
> > I find the assumption that we can /know/ things quite repugnant. We
> > assume we can somehow step outside of ourselves, our culture and our
> > history, past our perspective, our traditions and our 21st century
> > biases, and see "reality" laid bare before us. Who are we to claim to
> > /know/ the world and /judge/ morrality? We're no god.
>
> I have a cup of coffee by my side. I know this to be true. Why does that
> make me god? You seem not to doubt truth, but instead a universal or
> absolute truth. But that's a red herring these days (outside
> religion). Since Peirce, we all know that our statements of truth
> correspond only approximately with the world. To deny that any statement
> can have any truth value seems the kind of universal or absolute
> statement to which you object.
There is a difference between believing there is a cup of coffee
beside you and believing in the truth of the statement "there is a cup
of coffee beside me". The former is the casual way we speak which no
one will sensibly deny. The latter assumes that there is such a thing
as truth. Now if you think that the truth of the statement is a
special relationship between the sentence and the cup of coffee, and
that this truth exists outside of human discourse, then to believe the
truth of the statement is known, is to believe is having a access to
that which lies outside of human discourse and our experience of the
world in general. The ability to see noumena is god-like.
> > If we humans got off our pedistal, stopped trying after omniscience
> > and instead saw ourselves as clever animals, then we might let go of a
> > lot of bigotry and arrogance we have towards one another.
>
> While I can see that a claim of absolute truth, as in religion, can have
> pernicious moral consequences, I don't see that as relevant to the
> approximate truths of our usual statements. How can we see ourselves as
> clever animals without relying on the statements that we are clever and
> that are animals having some truth value? An admission that our
> knowledge is incomplete, is approximate, is often wrong would seem to
> avoid the moral onus you suggest, but outside religion, logic, and
> mathematics, no one seems to make that claim, and in these domains,
> statements are (arguably) not being made about the world.
I hope you could by now hazard what I would answer to that question.
I admit that it has taken me quite some time to get to grips with the
idea - that there is no such thing as truth. I found it particularly
difficult since I was raised around logic, maths and science. Now
that I understand it mostly, I think it is much more appealing that
the belief in truth. I'm not sure I can explain things further, I run
out of words, but if you're interested I can point you at some
references. About their being no such thing as consciousness too,
although I'm much less familiar with that. These people can present a
much more coherent and appealing argument I'm sure.
> > Being free of propoganda terms like "knowledge" and "reason", terms
> > that have replaced the role of the priest and oracle, we will see each
> > other as peers that we have to get along with rather than subjects
> > that we have to "bring to justice".
>
> But knowledge and reason are not "propaganda" terms, for as far as I
> know no agency is propagating them them for their own reason. Sounds
> paranoid to me. That I have knowledge is a fact, and when I say I
> believe this knowledge to be true, neither I or anyone else that I know
> of (outside religion), makes a claim that the truth of this knowledge is
> absolute. Today, (outside religion), absolute truth is irrelevant. The
> people I deal with in daily life all normally necessarily assume their
> statements have some truth value, but none are seem arrogant, divine, or
> autocratic. The moral justification for your philosophical skepticism
> seems vacuus.
The terms aren't propaganda to most people. But after seeing how
foundationless and tenuous logic and reason are, and hearing people
say things like "you're not being logical" or "it's rational because
of X" without even using logical inferences, I see that we use the
terms (perhaps unknowingly) for our own reasons - which to me is about
persuasion, not the ideals that logic and reason first stood for.
Logic and reason are seen as unquestioned authorities dictating legal
steps in thought but when they're examined more closely, they are seen
to be hand-waved terms used to persuade.
Pragmatists admit this and so are chameleons that use any means
necessary to persuade, depending on their audience.
> For example, to defend solipsism on moral grounds sounds contradictory
> to me. I believe this to be a truthful statement in part because it
> seems reasonable, but you seen to cast doubts on reason. But since no
> one as far as I know has tried to disprove it, it must be so. Talk about
> contradiction!
Yeah... I'm not solipsistic, or at least don't mean to be. It's a
nominalist position that throws suspicion over things we've grown to
believe exist.
> Let me conclude this way. We all have beliefs that are private and may
> be arbitrary or entirely subjective. We don't in general attempt to
> communicate them to others because they are private, arbitrary and
> subjective. Only those who love us have any interest in them. But we act
> in the world, and such action depends on our employing socially
> transmitted knowledge that has such warrants as being reasonable, having
> truth value, a coherence with our other beliefs, or representing moral
> rectitude. Our situation in life requires that our knowledge in our view
> has such warrants, that we necessary communicate knowledge with others,
> and that communication itself also depends on these warrants. It seems
> to me that while logical alternatives to this set of propositions are
> possible, they are arguably pathological, being socially and morally
> destructive.
Surely it would depend on the alternative.
jason
> >notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
> >(correspondence in some sense) with the world.
>
> Perhaps because at best it is vacuous, and at worst it is nonsense.
I wouldn't go that far... it's our common sense view of truth. At
best the world is forced into a linguistic shape or our minds are
forced into reality's shape. At worst it doesn't work, but then again
it's probably the best theory of truth we have.
Not that we need a theory of truth, or at least one that assumes truth
is "out there".
tobetbaa
> > The dictionary shows that knowledge has two meanings. One impliestruth,
> > but the other simply cognition. My point presumed the latter definition,
> > but perhaps you assumed the first.
>
> belief.
>
> > So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking knowledge
> > as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge (cognizance)
> > of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon it. Note that
> > I slipped in the word intentional here (your "vector"), for there are
> > certainly unintentional actions, such as instinct or accident, but these
> > exceptions are trivial, for I'm not trying to formulate a universal law.
>
> So to re-cap, the problem of not believing in "consciousness" is that
> it's a precondition of intentional action. Â The problem here is that
> if I pressed you about the meaning of "intention", I'm sure it would
> include the idea of consciousness. Â (For example, can robots have
> intentional action?) Â If so it's a circular argument.
>
> > But more interesting is taking knowledge to implytruthvalue, in which
> > action. Of course, an effective action can be based on a misapprehension
> > of the world, and a relatively true knowledge can nevertheless result in
> > failure. But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more
> > likely we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
> > skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck. In
> > the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are used
> > to drive nails or even what a nail is.
>
> words because they are useful not because they are true. Â The more
> useful they are the more value we place on them and the more we trade
> them.
>
> Note that this doesn't mean that the sentence "there is beer in the
> fridge" is now "useful" instead of "true". Â It means that we find the
> use of the statement to be, occasionally, a means to an end.
>
> > You may agree with all this and perhaps you only mean that while
> > knowledge is necessary, the word "knowledge" is not. Perhaps so, but
> > that reduces the matter to semantics, and since it runs against
> > convention, doing without the word seems to require some
> > justification. You eventually give moral reasons for not presuming an
> > absolute has not been specified any more than that the preferred meaning
> > of the word "knowledge" is not cognizance, but a sentence withtruth
> > value. When we build an argument, we have to use words with meanings
> > that the reader shares, We get into trouble when we use words in
> > unconventional ways without explanation or justification, or when we use
> > words that have ambivalent meanings without specifying which is our
> > intent.
>
> I suppose I've lost faith in the idea that theories represent nature
> and that theories can be metaphysically true by virtue of there being
> something out there called "truth". Â I don't think there is such a
> thing called "blue" either, I'm a bit of a nominalist, but it doesn't
> mean I deny that there are causes of our seeing blue. Â It's the same
> with consciousness really.
>
> > > Dialectics is maddening unless it's understood in terms of
> > > communication, without strict opposites. Â People that touch on
> > > dialectical ideas, like Derrida, Nietzsche and especially Baudrillard
> > > and Hegel indulge themselves on the apparent contradictions that arise
> > > from shifts in perspective and meaning. Â They confuse what doesn't
> > > need to be, even though their task, at times, is to highlight these
> > > shifts.
>
> > There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
> > (correspondence in some sense) with the world. Why should one abandon
> > that view? Nearly everyone has always assumed it, and so justification
> > must be offered if you intend to jettison it. You express your position,
> > but seem to deny any need to justify it except for weak moral grounds at
> > the end.
>
> There is no non-circular argument I can offer that will support an
> alternative view, but I believe that this is the same with any view.
> There is any number of criticisms I could throw at the correspondence
> theory, but again this can be done to any theory.
>
> Why should someone abandon the view? Â I'd have to answer that the
> reason would depend on the situation. Â Maybe they shouldn't. Â There
> isn't a great reason to drop the theory in general terms aside from
> one was looking for religion. Â I would recommend an alternative view
> because I've found it useful, but that's not to say other people will.
>
> relations to the world. Â However, beneath our common sense views lie
> are our most hidden and entrenched assumptions. Â Unpacking these
> assumptions can give us a sense of our historical positioning. Â It's
> not a way to get your head above water, or a way to realise that there
> is, in fact, water; but a place to find our hidden dogmas.
>
> Doing this can be praised for all sorts of reasons like allowing us to
> create one's self rather than being a replica of past lives, etc. Â But
> I think these ideas are bogus. Â At the end of the day, by the theory's
> own rubric, it is either useful or it isn't.
>
> > between its being simultaneously objective and subjective), but you
> > apparently suggest it reduces to subjectivity. If so, it seems you
> > entering into social discourse. That is, it seems pathological (no
> > insult intended).
>
> different ways and any theory of whattruthreally is, is not my
> argument. Â Suggesting that my view is the "truth" is to miss the point
> > contradictory, but then you cast doubts on contradictions as well. Does
> > anything have any meaning outside your own private mental life at this
> > moment? Your extraordinary skepticism seems to deny it.
>
> I use the idea that words refer to things in the world, but I don't
> use the idea that there is a reified relationship between words and
> their referents. Â This doesn't meant there aren't things out there in
> the world or that we're swimming in around in a semantic dream world.
> Reality can be said to reach all the way into us and we reach all the
> way into the world. Â Language can be seen as a tool rather than a
> medium on which the world is represented.
>
> I found it a difficult position to understand because so much of the
> way we talk assumes a mind-reality gap. Â (I'm
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
You find truth in the oddest places --share it all, it's wonderful !
Haines Brown
Neil, thanks for your reply. I suspect we don't entirely disagree, but
some of your points don't make much sense to me.
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>
>>So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking
>>knowledge as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge
>>(cognizance) of the world is a precondition of intentional action upon
>>it.
>
> That reference to "mere cognition" is interesting, given that our
> understanding of cognition is quite poor.
By "mere" I only meant the simple meaning of cognition without the added
meaning that the content of knowledge have truth value. The dictionary
clearly implies these two senses of "knowledge". How does uncertainties
about the inner workings of mental like affect this conventional
(dictionary) distinction in meaning for the word knowledge?
I'm unclear how uncertainties about the workings of mental life cast
doubt on my suggestion that both cognizance and truthful knowledge of
the world is a precondition for intentional (non-accidental,
non-instinctive) action upon it. What is there about this proposition
that you find wrong? Until you specify what, my proposition remains
uncontested.
> The scientist in the lab often finds that intentional action (such as
> an experiment) is a precondition to knowledge. Your view seems a bit
> simplistic.
We agree on the first point (the lab represents a manipulation of the
circumstance of the experiment), but you don't specify what view was
simplistic in what way. Unless this is a minor point, please spell out
your objection.
>>But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in
>>which case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of
>>effective action.
> I'll go back to my example of the scientist in the lab. I am taking
> "effective action" to mean action that has effects - perhaps that
> isn't what you mean.
No, I meant intended effect. Are we miscommunicating here? My arm
accidentally brushes against and knocks over the beaker in the lab: this
is an effect, but not intentional (it does not require truthful
knowledge). I put the beaker of water over the flame and wait: heating
the water is presumably my intended effect (it requires truthful
knowledge of the likely consequences of putting water over a flame).
The truth that I infer from success (example of pragmatism) is inducted,
not deducted, and so is only probably true. This may be a minor point
(originally articulated by Peirce), but I wanted to make sure we are on
the same wavelength. No one disagrees with it, although they do sharply
disagree over the ontological status of that probability, whether it is
a property of the world or of mind.
> The scientist takes action, in form of experiments, so that the
> effects can be used to develop an understanding (cognizance). At
> other times the scientist performs the experiment looking for specific
> effects that he can measure, leading to true statements (knowledge as
> truth). In either case, the action can precede the knowledge.
If I understand, your first example is only data gathering (cognition),
while the second uses that data to come to a conclusion having truth
value. Fine, but your last sentence appears to run against the consensus
in the philosophy of science. All _intentional_ action presumes theory
having a warrant such as its truth value, such as a belief in the
relation of an action and its likely effect. I suspect you agree and
your sentence meant something else.
If you assume that the warrant here has nothing to do with the truth
value of our propositions, such as entailing their correspondence with
the world in some sense, you certainly must say so, for otherwise it is
hard to unpack your meaning. If you do believe this and raise it in
order to counter my remarks, don't you have to justify your counter
position in some way in order for it to have any weight?
>>But can't we say that the more truthful our knowledge, the more likely
>>we are to be effective? If I wish to drive a nail, I must apply a
>>skill, and if I entirely lack that skill, I will not have much luck.
> I am not seeing what hammering a nail has to do with truthfulness of
> knowledge. Surely, here, you are talking about knowledge as an
> ability, rather than knowledge as truth. And pragmatic standards,
> rather than standards of truth, are more appropriate when concerned
> with abilities.
Well, whether an ability or skill represents a truthful knowledge is an
interesting question. But in any case, the a priori knowledge of what
hammers and nails are for, and that exercising our skill will result in
the nail being driven, seem a truthful knowledge that precedes the
intentional action. You appear to counter pragmatic standards to a
standard of truth, but surely you do not. The point of pragmatism is to
infer the truth value of a proposition from the success of its
application (praxis). There may be problems with pragmatism, but those
difficulties hardly disprove some kind of correspondence theory. If
there were no correspondence at all, your practice would almost always
fail.
When we say "truth" today, (outside religion) we always mean relative
truth value, and the pragmatist Peirce is given credit for this. He felt
that our truthful statements are always one-sided, partial, and
approximate. By "truth" do you mean absolute Truth, but since (outside
religion) no one holds that position, I have no idea why you would bring
it up, and so must presume that by "truth" you mean relative truth
value.
>>In the absence of any true knowledge I will not know that hammers are
>>used to drive nails or even what a nail is.
>
> But, given the appropriate abilities, you will adequately drive that
> nail with a hammer, even if you don't happen to know that the tool you
> used was a hammer, nor that what you hit with it was a nail, nor that
> the overall action is called "driving a nail".
Sorry, this makes no sense to me. Someone from Mars may have all kinds
of skill, but never having seen a nail or hammer and not knowing what
they are for (perhaps coming from an environment with neither metal nor
wood), will not drive the nail except by clever innovation, which seems
highly unlikely. Why does one drive nails? What purpose does a nail
serve? Where do you hold the hammer and wield it? How much force you you
apply? What can go wrong and how do you prevent it? The answers to these
questions seem to take the form of truthful statements.
>>There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very conventional
>>notion that the truth of a statement consists in its relation
>>(correspondence in some sense) with the world.
>
> Perhaps because at best it is vacuous, and at worst it is nonsense.
There is a wide range of correspondence theories, including the crude
one we necessarily and universally apply in daily life. Some of these
theories seem naive or plainly mistaken, but to dismiss the idea of any
correspondence as "vacuous" or even as nonsense strikes me as
extraordinary. Since your suggestion that our beliefs about the world
have no relation to the world runs counter to common sense and to the
practice of science, you surely need some justification for it.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> That reference to "mere cognition" is interesting, given that our
>> understanding of cognition is quite poor.
>By "mere" I only meant the simple meaning of cognition without the added
>meaning that the content of knowledge have truth value. The dictionary
>clearly implies these two senses of "knowledge". How does uncertainties
>about the inner workings of mental like affect this conventional
>(dictionary) distinction in meaning for the word knowledge?
When I lookup "cognition", what I find is anything but simple.
And I certainly was not implying that truth value is required.
>I'm unclear how uncertainties about the workings of mental life cast
>doubt on my suggestion that both cognizance and truthful knowledge of
>the world is a precondition for intentional (non-accidental,
>non-instinctive) action upon it. What is there about this proposition
>that you find wrong? Until you specify what, my proposition remains
>uncontested.
I am saying that it is overly simplistic. The relation between
knowledge and intention is quite complex, and neither precedes
the other.
I'm sorry you missed the point of my science lab examples. So let's
look at another. When Lewis and Clark set out on their expedition,
as far as I know they did so based on intentions. That is, they were
not just taking a random walk. The whole purpose of their expedition
was to gain knowledge. So the intention came before the knowledge.
>> I'll go back to my example of the scientist in the lab. I am taking
>> "effective action" to mean action that has effects - perhaps that
>> isn't what you mean.
>No, I meant intended effect. Are we miscommunicating here? My arm
>accidentally brushes against and knocks over the beaker in the lab: this
>is an effect, but not intentional (it does not require truthful
>knowledge). I put the beaker of water over the flame and wait: heating
>the water is presumably my intended effect (it requires truthful
>knowledge of the likely consequences of putting water over a flame).
Now suppose you put that beaker on a stand two inches above the
ground. Then you deliberately knock it over so that it falls to
the ground. If it doesn't break, you raise the stand a little
higher, and repeat. This all seems to be intentional action, at
least as I use the term. And the intention is to gain knowledge
about the conditions for breakage of the beaker.
>If I understand, your first example is only data gathering (cognition),
>while the second uses that data to come to a conclusion having truth
>value. Fine, but your last sentence appears to run against the consensus
>in the philosophy of science.
Sorry, but much of philosophy of science is but a tall tale peddled
by philosophers who do not understand science, nor how science works.
> You appear to counter pragmatic standards to a
>standard of truth, but surely you do not.
Surely, I do.
Truth is an attribute of propositions. But many of the decisions
we make in life are not propositional in nature. We can still
make pragmatic judgements in such non-propositional issues, and we
often do. For sure, philosophers will then invent a proposition,
and claim that we were judging the truth of that proposition.
But that's only an after-the-fact rationalization, and has little
to do with how things actually work.
Somebody with no language ability (perhaps a deaf person who
never acquired a decent sign language) can still learn how to use
a hammer to drive a nail. What is the proposition to which truth
is being attributed?
>When we say "truth" today, (outside religion) we always mean relative
>truth value, and the pragmatist Peirce is given credit for this.
That seems like a sweeping generalization.
>> But, given the appropriate abilities, you will adequately drive that
>> nail with a hammer, even if you don't happen to know that the tool you
>> used was a hammer, nor that what you hit with it was a nail, nor that
>> the overall action is called "driving a nail".
>Sorry, this makes no sense to me. Someone from Mars may have all kinds
>of skill, but never having seen a nail or hammer and not knowing what
>they are for (perhaps coming from an environment with neither metal nor
>wood), will not drive the nail except by clever innovation, which seems
>highly unlikely.
Yet if someone from Mars were to visit Earth, and see a hammer
being used, presumably that Martian could quickly learn to use it,
without ever having to acquire our earthly concepts of "hammer"
and "nail". So what truth was involved?
I'll put it to you that "truth" is of linguistic importance.
When we describe an action in some sort of language, we use "truth"
as an attribute by which we evaluate the language description.
But "truth" is not applicable to the action itself, only to the
linguistic representation of that action.
>> Perhaps because at best it is vacuous, and at worst it is nonsense.
>There is a wide range of correspondence theories, including the crude
>one we necessarily and universally apply in daily life.
Cats and dogs seem to survive their daily life. Are you claiming
that cats and dogs necessarily and universally apply a notion
of truth? And what about mosquitos or amoebas - do they also
necessarily and universally apply a concept of truth?
> Some of these
>theories seem naive or plainly mistaken, but to dismiss the idea of any
>correspondence as "vacuous" or even as nonsense strikes me as
>extraordinary.
Perhaps because you did not understand the point I was trying
(unsuccessfully, it seems) to make.
> Since your suggestion that our beliefs about the world
>have no relation to the world runs counter to common sense and to the
>practice of science, you surely need some justification for it.
Sorry, but I made no such suggestion.
Haines Brown
>> The dictionary shows that knowledge has two meanings. One implies
>> truth, but the other simply cognition. My point presumed the latter
>> definition, but perhaps you assumed the first.
>
> Dictionaries aren't great for things like this, but yes I assumed
> truth. The conventional theory is that knowledge is justified true
> belief.
Yes. I only referred to the dictionary to capture the consensus over the
meanings of the word in daily life.
>> So let me rephrase my point in terms of both meanings. Taking
>> knowledge as being mere cognition, my point would be that knowledge
>> (cognizance) of the world is a precondition of intentional action
>> upon it. Note that I slipped in the word intentional here (your
>> "vector"), for there are certainly unintentional actions, such as
>> instinct or accident, but these exceptions are trivial, for I'm not
>> trying to formulate a universal law.
>
> So to re-cap, the problem of not believing in "consciousness" is that
> it's a precondition of intentional action. The problem here is that
> if I pressed you about the meaning of "intention", I'm sure it would
> include the idea of consciousness. (For example, can robots have
> intentional action?) If so it's a circular argument.
I don't see where we disagree. I don't doubt the existence of
consciousness, and since I do believe its existence, it would certainly
be a precondition of intentional action.
Perhaps what distinguishes human consciousness from that of a robot is
that humans are conscious of their consciousness and so can make it an
object of critical thought. A bird is conscious of the worm, but
presumably not conscious of his consciousness of it. Does intention
presume this self-consciousness? I'm not sure. The bird intentionally
pecks at the ground to get the worm. But I'm not sure how these
speculations are relevant.
>> But more interesting is taking knowledge to imply truth value, in
>> which case the truth is not the condition of action per se, but of
>> effective action. Of course, an effective action can be based on a
>> misapprehension of the world, and a relatively true knowledge can
>> nevertheless result in failure. But can't we say that the more
>> truthful our knowledge, the more likely we are to be effective? If I
>> wish to drive a nail, I must apply a skill, and if I entirely lack
>> that skill, I will not have much luck. In the absence of any true
>> knowledge I will not know that hammers are used to drive nails or
>> even what a nail is.
>
> I'm happy to accept utility in the place of truth. That is, we use
> words because they are useful not because they are true. The more
> useful they are the more value we place on them and the more we trade
> them.
That is correct. Truth is not a quality of words, but of the relation of
sentences to what they refer. But I'd not accept your criterion of
utility. History is littered with theories that were useful, but in
retrospect fundamentally untrue. To some extent we have theories that
may be true without there being test of utility. Historiography and
cosmology for example. Besides, is not a utility theory of truth OT in
the point under discussion?
> Note that this doesn't mean that the sentence "there is beer in the
> fridge" is now "useful" instead of "true". It means that we find the
> use of the statement to be, occasionally, a means to an end.
You seem to discount any truth about situations in which we don't
intervene. I read about world affairs in my newspaper and form opinions
about what is going on, and these opinions have truth value (even if
they happen to be entirely wrong, for error implies true value). There's
not a ghost of a chance I'll be able to intervene in world affairs, and
so my knowledge of the greater world has no obvious utility, but it is
still important that I have it and that be as truthful as
possible. Utility is limited to my time, place and circumstance, but
surely I have truthful knowledge beyond those limitations.
> I suppose I've lost faith in the idea that theories represent nature
> and that theories can be metaphysically true by virtue of there being
> something out there called "truth".
But no one suggests that. Theories only represent nature in thought, and
while they have truth value, are not mirrors of nature, but models or
analogs having some truth value. Of course there's nothing out there
called "truth", for truth is a relation. But are we to conclude from
this false proposition that no one seriously holds, that our statements
have no truth value either?
> I don't think there is such a thing called "blue" either, I'm a bit of
> a nominalist, but it doesn't mean I deny that there are causes of our
> seeing blue. It's the same with consciousness really.
Of course, The "blue" is our mental sign for a sense impression
resulting from light of a certain frequency entering our eyes. But
nevertheless it is a fact that light of a certain frequency is being
reflected from the object of observation. In other words, the properties
of this object constrain our sense impressions and the sign we might
assign to that impression. That is, to say that the object is blue is a
statement that has truth value, and to say that the blue bird is orange
would have less truth value. I am conscious of the bird being blue
whether or not I'm also self-conscious about it. I stop for the red stop
light without consciously thinking about it. If I reduce the truth of
that light to nothing but mental operations, I'll soon be arrested. If
I'm frequently arrested it may be pragmatic evidence that I'm color
blind or indifferent to the law, but not evidence that the red light was
actually green.
>> There are a lot of different issues here. One is the very
>> conventional notion that the truth of a statement consists in its
>> relation (correspondence in some sense) with the world. Why should
>> one abandon that view? Nearly everyone has always assumed it, and so
>> justification must be offered if you intend to jettison it. You
>> express your position, but seem to deny any need to justify it except
>> for weak moral grounds at the end.
>
> There is no non-circular argument I can offer that will support an
> alternative view, but I believe that this is the same with any view.
> There is any number of criticisms I could throw at the correspondence
> theory, but again this can be done to any theory.
Well, I just gave you an example. If I go through red lights, I'll
probably be arrested. What is circular about this? Does not my
assessment of the dangers of running the light correspond to the
probability of being arrested? True, a crude and simplistic example, but
doesn't it warrant some kind of correspondence theory? My understanding
is that the problems lie with specific correspondence theories, not
correspondence in general, and that the only alternative to
correspondence in general is solipsism.
> Why should someone abandon the view? I'd have to answer that the
> reason would depend on the situation. Maybe they shouldn't. There
> isn't a great reason to drop the theory in general terms aside from
> the fact that it's useless to have a general theory of truth - unless
> one was looking for religion. I would recommend an alternative view
> because I've found it useful, but that's not to say other people will.
I can't make much out of this. You prefer a historicist theory of truth
to a general theory of truth, and I'm not sure I'd entirely
disagree. But I don't see that a general correspondence theory falls
under the aegis of one or the other. Doubts about particular
correspondence theories don't discredit all possible correspondence
theories; that our concepts are mental constructions does not reduce
them to nothing but mental constructions; that they are in part mental
constructions does not imply they have no determinant relation to the
world. If you advocate solipsism, it falls to you to show that
intentional action or moral responsibility is at all possible without
some kind of correspondence between our conceptions of the world and the
world.
> It's our common sense view that the truth of a statement lies in its
> relations to the world. However, beneath our common sense views lie
> are our most hidden and entrenched assumptions. Unpacking these
> assumptions can give us a sense of our historical positioning. It's
> not a way to get your head above water, or a way to realise that there
> is, in fact, water; but a place to find our hidden dogmas.
Yes. A logical or semantic analysis does this, but there are other ways
to find hidden dogmas. Why does your remark cast any doubt on some kind
of correspondence between our views and the world? Also, how does a
discovery that we carry some hidden dogma get us any closer to the
truth? Its exposure does not in itself generate better axioms.
> Doing this can be praised for all sorts of reasons like allowing us to
> create one's self rather than being a replica of past lives, etc. But
> I think these ideas are bogus. At the end of the day, by the theory's
> own rubric, it is either useful or it isn't.
I don't quite follow. I don't see how the discovery of some hidden dogma
implies a creation of ourselves. I don't know that there's a
contradiction between the burden of history (constraints upon us imposed
by traces of the past) and creative action (constructing ourselves as
unique individuals). There may be a positivist assumption that there is,
but it is obsolete. Not sure exactly what idea you consider bogus, and
and you don't seem to offer any justification for assuming any to be
such. To my justification for accepting some kind of correspondence
theory (effective action, moral responsibility, and, I add the
accumulation of knowledge), all you do is to deny it.
As I suggested before, not all true theory is utilitarian. I may have a
theory about the fall of the Roman Empire, and it is not useful in any
substantial, direct and unambiguous way. Students are dismayed by the
study of history because there seem so many theories that can
accommodate the empirical evidence, and they infer that none of them
have any truth value. This issue is much discussed in the philosophy of
science, and the consensus is that there's no warrant for such a
conclusion.
>> Of course truth is also subjective (there's no necessary
>> contradiction between its being simultaneously objective and
>> subjective), but you apparently suggest it reduces to
>> subjectivity. If so, it seems you logically walk away from having to
>> justify the truth of your position or entering into social
>> discourse. That is, it seems pathological (no insult intended).
>
> I'm more than happy to enter into social discourse. I don't think
> truth reduces to anything particularly. We all use the term in
> different ways and any theory of what truth really is, is not my
> argument. Suggesting that my view is the "truth" is to miss the point
> altogether. I don't believe in truth and I assert that a notion of
> truth isn't required to hold a position.
I realize you don't believe that we should assert "truth" as a property
of our statements, but so far I don't see why unless you bring in
Occam's Razor, which you really have not implemented.
I don't understand how we can enter into discourse without our
statements having no relation to the world. I use the word here
"discourse" and you know what I mean, and if doubt you look it up in the
dictionary to see what the consensus meaning is. It refers to a dialog
between people, which presumes a dialog takes place and there are
people, and these are truthful statements. If dialog or people were only
figments of your imagination, then my sentence would necessarily be
meaningless to you, and there would be no dialog. Or the presumption of
their meaning has some utilitarian value, then I'd ask what obvious
substantial utility lies in our discourse unless we work together to
arrive at some shared insight.
>> Dialectics is a broad term that can mean quite different things, and
>> I'm not clear about your objection. Dialectics can refer to a
>> pedagogical method (the original meaning), a discourse, looking at
>> things in systemic terms or a presumption that systems are
>> emergent. Off hand, none of these seem objectionable. I believe you
>> have to indicate which meaning you prefer and what your objection to
>> it is.
>
> Dialectics from material dialectics as you mentioned, from Marx's
> twist on Hegel. My objection to it is that Hegel's "dialectic logic"
> is confused. There are interpretations of Hegel that do make sense in
> my opinion, but this tradition with statements like "negating negative
> negation" etc are either confused of confusing. They have nothing to
> say that can't be said in more sensible terms.
It is your opinion that Hegel's logic is "confused", but that's surely
not everyone's opinion. Why you associate all kinds of dialectics to
Hegel, escapes me, and surely Marx's dialectical materialism (a term of
Engels') is not the same as Hegel's objective idealism.
>> Contradiction is also an ambivalent term, for it sometimes refers to
>> a basic principle of abstract logic, to a Kantian real opposition (as
>> I used the term above), and sometimes used in the Marxian sense of
>> contradictory processes (which can be stated in thermodynamic terms
>> that an emergent system depends on and is driven by its opposite, a
>> dissipation of its surroundings). But since these all except the
>> first speak of the world and are meant as truthful statements about
>> the world, I suppose you reject them all out of hand.
>
> Well, I reject propositions that rely on metaphysical assumptions. Of
> course I assume there is a table in front of me, but I don't assume
> "there is a table in front of me" has an actual relation somewhere out
> there in the universe to the thing in front of me which gives it a
> special status over "there isn't a table in front of me".
Some of my examples of contradiction may be metaphysical, but surely
some are not. Why tar them all with a metaphysical brush, and what's to
object to in metaphysics?
I don't understand your table example. If there's a table in front of
you, by convention it is assume that your statement that there's a table
in front of your because there's some kind of correspondence between the
fact and your statement. What does the universe have to do with
this. What "special status"? The assertion that there's a table in front
of you would be true; a contrary statement would be false. Neither has
"special status". If you place your cup of coffee on it, you assume that
your notion that a table is there is true, and it is not a presumption
based on utility if you have not been in the habit of using that table
to rest your coffee cup. You have in mind the conceptual categories of
tables and cups which are based on culture and ultimately the
persistence of certain of their qualities, and you know from experience
that you can place your cup on flat surfaces such as the table. Wherein
lies the metaphysical problem here? In fact, how is my description of
your action problematic?
> I use the idea that words refer to things in the world, but I don't
> use the idea that there is a reified relationship between words and
> their referents.
Like your problem with universality, this seems an imaginary
problem. The issue is not reified relationships, but the realist
assumption that _causal_ relationships are ontologically real. One might
make an argument that formal relationships are based on truths, but I
don't know of anyone who suggests that the formal relationship itself
can be reified as an ontologically independent thing. A formal
relationship is a statement about the things that we assert stand in
that relationship, not about any relation that is independent of those
things. I fear you may be shooting at a straw-man.
> This doesn't meant there aren't things out there in the world or that
> we're swimming in around in a semantic dream world. Reality can be
> said to reach all the way into us and we reach all the way into the
> world. Language can be seen as a tool rather than a medium on which
> the world is represented.
Your point obscure. Your statement that we are as real as the world
about us must point to some non-obvious truth, but I don't get it. That
language is a tool, no doubt, but it is also just as obviously a
medium. After all, what do we mean by the word "medium"? I in fact do
represent the world in words, such as by saying that you exist, and I'm
using the medium of the written word to convey that belief to you. Does
that belief happen to be true? Well, my basic point is that the
statement has truth value in that it is either false or at least
somewhat true. If its truth value lacked any warrant whatsoever, your
existence would only be in my mind, and I'd be wasting my time by
talking to myself.
> I found it a difficult position to understand because so much of the
> way we talk assumes a mind-reality gap.
Why do you say this? In daily life, I constantly use language that I
assume has truth value, and more specifically I assume that on the
whole, most of my statements have some truth in relation to the
world. While alternative beliefs are certainly possible, I know of no
one who presumes there's any kind of gap between what they say and the
world. This possibility is raised only by only philosophers, and their
doing so makes me think more about just what the relation is between my
words and the world, but in no way does a subcategory of philosophers
cause me or nearly anyone else to doubt that statements about the world
lack truth value.
> Science has found a system of symbols that allow us to predict the
> world. Mostly we think that science has got it right, that these
> systems have captured the truth about the world. I follow the idea
> that science finds these systems useful, full stop.
But if the findings of science are useful (a contentious point, but I'll
let it go), does that not imply that the findings of science contain
some truth? Why would the knowledge of science be cumulative unless it
had some truth value? Utility may imply some kind of truth is involved,
but certainly truth does not reduce to utility, for much much truth does
not entail purposeful intervention in the world. I belief in the
existence of atoms, because in this respect I see no reason to question
the content of my cultural heritage, but surely I can't warrant the
truth of my belief on any grounds that are utilitarian.
> I meant that our reasons for suspecting that consciousness exists is
> an argumentum ad ignorantiam. We think it exists but have no non-
> fallacious reason for it. We might appeal to common sense, but there
> in lies lots of fallacious assumptions. I don't really have any
> reasons /for/ its inexistence sorry, at least none that aren't half-
> formed.
There are many things that we believe without appeal to truthful
reasons. I just gave an example of my belief in the existence of
atoms. I believe I exist, but don't need any kind of argument to support
that belief. I believe in being kind to others, and am not aware of any
pragmatic or utilitarian reason for such behavior. I believe it is sunny
outside, not because of a reasoned argument, but because from where I
sit I can see the sunshine and know from the phenomena, without
conscious inductive reasoning that it is so.
The thread has to do with a warrant for belief in relative truth value
of our statements. You clearly don't agree, but I don't see why other
than that it might unnecessarily complicate our mental life. But you
offer no reason for a conclusion that runs counter to common sense, for
most people naturally assume that their statements have truth value. And
your suggestion of a utilitarian test for the truth of a statement
hardly counters the presumption that statements have truth value, but in
fact presumes that they do. That we can dispose of the word "truth" by
conveying the same thing in other ways is possible, but certainly
comments life, for "truth" means several things, and some of them seem
very useful, and you'd be throwing the baby out with the bath and force
people to abandon language with which they have been comfortable for
millennia.
> "I", "self-aware" and "consciousness of the world" can easily smuggle
> in the assumption that consciousness exists. I doubt there is any
> special difference between a robot replica and a human.
Ego is self-consciousness; my seeing the sunlight outside is
consciousness per se. I don't think we should confuse the two.
That I have self-consciousness seems a prima facie case for the
existence of consciousness. That is, the old (and discredited)
empiricism loved "brute facts". Our doubts about brute facts does not
imply there are no facts. My consciousness of myself as a conscious
being is close to being a brute fact. That is, any suggestion to the
contrary was to be powerfully supported. One can't just express
skepticism about what everyone else believes to be true and expect that
one's sceptical attitude will be persuasive or not ridiculed unless it
is accompanied by powerful justifications. It's interesting you don't
belief in truth, for I know no one else who feels that way, but so what?
How does one make that statement interesting or important without a
reliance on some kind of truth?
>> We all get along very well with the existential presumption that we
>> have consciousness. True, it, like many other things, is very
>> difficult for philosophers and scientists to explain and there's no
>> consensus over what it is, but what should we make of this
> We shouldn't abandon the idea. We should look at why we started using
> the term in the first place and see if there are other ways of talking
> that dispense with the problem of consciousness altogether. We might
> find that the problem is created by the way we talk rather than it
> being a "real" problem.
But there is no "problem". People seem to have had self-consciousness
right from the beginning (and perhaps even Neanderthal), and it seems
part and parcel of what we mean by being human. I see no way that we can
get along without using the word consciousness or self-consciousness,
and in any case, you don't propose any alternatives. What is the problem
to which you refer?
> There is a difference between believing there is a cup of coffee
> beside you and believing in the truth of the statement "there is a cup
> of coffee beside me". The former is the casual way we speak which no
> one will sensibly deny. The latter assumes that there is such a thing
> as truth. Now if you think that the truth of the statement is a
> special relationship between the sentence and the cup of coffee, and
> that this truth exists outside of human discourse,
You are not making sense. Everyone, including you, seem to agree that
the word "truth" has to do with the relation of our sentences and what
the sentence refers to. No one today would dream of suggesting that
truth is independent of our works and of the world. You set up a
staw-man.
> then to believe the truth of the statement is known, is to believe is
> having a access to that which lies outside of human discourse and our
> experience of the world in general. The ability to see noumena is
> god-like.
Yes, our experience of the world is always mediated, and our notions of
the world are one-sided, partial, approximations, analogs, etc. No one
believes today that our ideas of the world are simple reflections of the
world, and so why bring it up?
> I hope you could by now hazard what I would answer to that question.
> I admit that it has taken me quite some time to get to grips with the
> idea - that there is no such thing as truth.
But are you not arguing here against the notion of absolute or universal
Truth? This is not the issue under discussion.
> I'm not sure I can explain things further, I run out of words, but if
> you're interested I can point you at some references. About their
> being no such thing as consciousness too, although I'm much less
> familiar with that. These people can present a much more coherent and
> appealing argument I'm sure.
OK, since I'm having difficulty getting a clear idea of where you stand,
such references would be very helpful. Name a few books or authors that
you believe represent a position with which you are largely in
agreement.
> Logic and reason are seen as unquestioned authorities dictating legal
> steps in thought but when they're examined more closely, they are seen
> to be hand-waved terms used to persuade.
Well, logic and reason may not cover all situations, may lead to
falsehood, or be inadequate to arrive at truth, but isn't logical
coherence and semantic adequacy one reason we prefer one explanation of
things over others? "Unquestioned authorities." This may be a paper
tiger, for I know of no one who now holds that position. Surely the
reasonableness of an argument is not primarily a rhetorical device, but
a way to justify a claim a relative truthfulness of an argument. To
perceive that some logic choppers are using their skills to cover the
truth or to generate a simulacrum of truth for non-truths, does not mean
that being reasonable is always empty rhetoric. You can't infer a
universal from a number of particular instances, but I suppose that if
you deny the truth value of reason, you actually could do that. So you
might be right that there's no truth value in ratiocination, but by
definition you can't support that contention.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> > it's a precondition of intentional action. The problem here is that
> > if I pressed you about the meaning of "intention", I'm sure it would
> > include the idea of consciousness. (For example, can robots have
> > intentional action?) If so it's a circular argument.
>
> I don't see where we disagree. I don't doubt the existence of
> consciousness, and since I do believe its existence, it would certainly
> be a precondition of intentional action.
Well, you said that this was a problem not believing in consciousness
- which is like saying that the problem with no consciousness is that
there's no consciousness. I suppose this is true :)
> Perhaps what distinguishes human consciousness from that of a robot is
> that humans are conscious of their consciousness and so can make it an
> object of critical thought. A bird is conscious of the worm, but
> presumably not conscious of his consciousness of it. Does intention
> presume this self-consciousness? I'm not sure. The bird intentionally
> pecks at the ground to get the worm. But I'm not sure how these
> speculations are relevant.
Consciousness is the exact thing we can't be directly aware of.
> > I'm happy to accept utility in the place of truth. That is, we use
> > words because they are useful not because they are true. The more
> > useful they are the more value we place on them and the more we trade
> > them.
>
> That is correct. Truth is not a quality of words, but of the relation of
> sentences to what they refer. But I'd not accept your criterion of
> utility. History is littered with theories that were useful, but in
> retrospect fundamentally untrue. To some extent we have theories that
> may be true without there being test of utility. Historiography and
> cosmology for example. Besides, is not a utility theory of truth OT in
> the point under discussion?
I could equally say that theories don't have truth. Okay it is OT. I
don't like "warrant" either. It imports this idea of god handing out
tickets that give us the right to claim to knowledge. Except we've
replaced god with humans. Actually... I'm not here to argue against
your beliefs unless that's what you're after. I'd have to work out
more about your truth theory to give you sensible feedback. Is it
worth reading Roy Bhaskar's theory of truth to better understand
yours?
> > Note that this doesn't mean that the sentence "there is beer in the
> > fridge" is now "useful" instead of "true". It means that we find the
> > use of the statement to be, occasionally, a means to an end.
>
> You seem to discount any truth about situations in which we don't
> intervene. I read about world affairs in my newspaper and form opinions
> about what is going on, and these opinions have truth value (even if
> they happen to be entirely wrong, for error implies true value). There's
> not a ghost of a chance I'll be able to intervene in world affairs, and
> so my knowledge of the greater world has no obvious utility, but it is
> still important that I have it and that be as truthful as
> possible. Utility is limited to my time, place and circumstance, but
> surely I have truthful knowledge beyond those limitations.
No, it's not what I mean. There's a currency for world events and
even "useless" information. We all have our own reasons for wanting
to read or hear stuff.
> > I suppose I've lost faith in the idea that theories represent nature
> > and that theories can be metaphysically true by virtue of there being
> > something out there called "truth".
>
> But no one suggests that. Theories only represent nature in thought, and
> while they have truth value, are not mirrors of nature, but models or
> analogs having some truth value. Of course there's nothing out there
> called "truth", for truth is a relation. But are we to conclude from
> this false proposition that no one seriously holds, that our statements
> have no truth value either?
Give that truth has the same ontological status as a relation, and
that relations there no such thing as relations "out there", the in
what way do relations exist? What connects similar things? It's the
old nominalist/realist debate, which we're not about to settle here.
> > I don't think there is such a thing called "blue" either, I'm a bit of
> > a nominalist, but it doesn't mean I deny that there are causes of our
> > seeing blue. It's the same with consciousness really.
>
> Of course, The "blue" is our mental sign for a sense impression
> resulting from light of a certain frequency entering our eyes. But
> nevertheless it is a fact that light of a certain frequency is being
> reflected from the object of observation. In other words, the properties
> of this object constrain our sense impressions and the sign we might
> assign to that impression. That is, to say that the object is blue is a
> statement that has truth value, and to say that the blue bird is orange
> would have less truth value. I am conscious of the bird being blue
> whether or not I'm also self-conscious about it. I stop for the red stop
> light without consciously thinking about it. If I reduce the truth of
> that light to nothing but mental operations, I'll soon be arrested. If
> I'm frequently arrested it may be pragmatic evidence that I'm color
> blind or indifferent to the law, but not evidence that the red light was
> actually green.
Sure, there are causes for us to put our foot on the break. It leads
us to say "I saw the red light" as being true, but it's not the only
picture one could paint.
> > There is no non-circular argument I can offer that will support an
> > alternative view, but I believe that this is the same with any view.
> > There is any number of criticisms I could throw at the correspondence
> > theory, but again this can be done to any theory.
>
> Well, I just gave you an example. If I go through red lights, I'll
> probably be arrested. What is circular about this? Does not my
> assessment of the dangers of running the light correspond to the
> probability of being arrested? True, a crude and simplistic example, but
> doesn't it warrant some kind of correspondence theory? My understanding
> is that the problems lie with specific correspondence theories, not
> correspondence in general, and that the only alternative to
> correspondence in general is solipsism.
It can be explained as cause and effect. There is no need to reflect
on the situation and claim that the reflection has truth and warrant.
This reflection process can also be explained as cause and effect.
> > Why should someone abandon the view? I'd have to answer that the
> > reason would depend on the situation. Maybe they shouldn't. There
> > isn't a great reason to drop the theory in general terms aside from
> > the fact that it's useless to have a general theory of truth - unless
> > one was looking for religion. I would recommend an alternative view
> > because I've found it useful, but that's not to say other people will.
>
> I can't make much out of this. You prefer a historicist theory of truth
> to a general theory of truth, and I'm not sure I'd entirely
> disagree. But I don't see that a general correspondence theory falls
> under the aegis of one or the other. Doubts about particular
> correspondence theories don't discredit all possible correspondence
> theories; that our concepts are mental constructions does not reduce
> them to nothing but mental constructions; that they are in part mental
> constructions does not imply they have no determinant relation to the
> world. If you advocate solipsism, it falls to you to show that
> intentional action or moral responsibility is at all possible without
> some kind of correspondence between our conceptions of the world and the
> world.
If you discredit the idea of correspondence, then all correspondence
theories suffer, surely.
I'm happy to accept the world causes our beliefs, so our mental
construction aren't "nothing but" mental constructs. A causal
chain... perhaps this is your "relation", "correspondence" or
"truth" (non-rethorical question)? It sounds a little bit like what
reliability and warrant would attach to, and try and flesh out.
> > It's our common sense view that the truth of a statement lies in its
> > relations to the world. However, beneath our common sense views lie
> > are our most hidden and entrenched assumptions. Unpacking these
> > assumptions can give us a sense of our historical positioning. It's
> > not a way to get your head above water, or a way to realise that there
> > is, in fact, water; but a place to find our hidden dogmas.
>
> Yes. A logical or semantic analysis does this, but there are other ways
> to find hidden dogmas. Why does your remark cast any doubt on some kind
> of correspondence between our views and the world? Also, how does a
> discovery that we carry some hidden dogma get us any closer to the
> truth? Its exposure does not in itself generate better axioms.
It's exactly where logic and analysis do poorly. Typically, the
people that unpack what's beneath common sense use rhetoric to shake
things up.
My remark here doesn't cast any doubt on correspondence. It doesn't
get us closer to truth because that's exactly the idea I disagree
with. It's a remark to direct suspicion to common sense. It's the
foundation of our world views and the cause of a lot hand-waving,
"full of sound and fury". My question is, why do we base so much of
our views on something we almost never question? And once it does
take the witness stand, why is it full of contradictions, circular
arguments and blind assumptions?
> > Doing this can be praised for all sorts of reasons like allowing us to
> > create one's self rather than being a replica of past lives, etc. But
> > I think these ideas are bogus. At the end of the day, by the theory's
> > own rubric, it is either useful or it isn't.
>
> I don't quite follow. I don't see how the discovery of some hidden dogma
> implies a creation of ourselves.
It's not the discovery of hidden dogma but the letting go of this
dogma that's the important point. Once we do this, we are basically
letting go of the world view we've inherited and therefore free to
create our own. But as I say, I think this is just another bogus
schema. The whole idea for going down this road is to tear down the
old, on the grounds that there is no truth, and and replace it with
the new because it's more interesting. So it's quite happy to admit
it's bogus.
> I don't know that there's a
> contradiction between the burden of history (constraints upon us imposed
> by traces of the past) and creative action (constructing ourselves as
> unique individuals).
I agree.
> There may be a positivist assumption that there is,
> but it is obsolete. Not sure exactly what idea you consider bogus, and
> and you don't seem to offer any justification for assuming any to be
> such. To my justification for accepting some kind of correspondence
> theory (effective action, moral responsibility, and, I add the
> accumulation of knowledge), all you do is to deny it.
I though I did a bit more than just say "ah... no." For example,
question what ontological status correspondence has and if we can say
that it exists at all, the offering of an alternative view of things
that lives without the idea that is being refuted, etc.
I don't believe in morality, good and evil. I think they're social
constructs and meaningless outside of human discourse.
"Effective action" hasn't found traction on me for some reason. Maybe
because I'm not sure quite where it fits in.
My world view is that there is no foundations for truth and knowledge
and that it doesn't stop us from stopping at red lights, paying our
taxes or helping old ladies cross the street. If there is a theory
vacuume, then any theory will do - provided it doesn't claim to be the
one true theory - as long as it doesn't claim a higher status than its
predecessors. Note that my reasons for this equally have to claim to
truth. My reasons are, at bottom, emotive at best. I can't offer you
any constructive arguments, only critical feedback on constructions.
> As I suggested before, not all true theory is utilitarian. I may have a
> theory about the fall of the Roman Empire, and it is not useful in any
> substantial, direct and unambiguous way. Students are dismayed by the
> study of history because there seem so many theories that can
> accommodate the empirical evidence, and they infer that none of them
> have any truth value. This issue is much discussed in the philosophy of
> science, and the consensus is that there's no warrant for such a
> conclusion.
The thing you learn in history 101 is that there is not truth about
the past, just interpretation. That's exactly why it's not a
science. While science is only interpretation too, the interpretation
has observable constraints to offer a metric that lets them say it's
the /best/ interpretation so far.
> I realize you don't believe that we should assert "truth" as a property
> of our statements, but so far I don't see why unless you bring in
> Occam's Razor, which you really have not implemented.
I don't mind calling our statements true, etc. I mind the belief that
this truth we talk about exists and can be known.
> I don't understand how we can enter into discourse without our
> statements having no relation to the world. I use the word here
> "discourse" and you know what I mean, and if doubt you look it up in the
> dictionary to see what the consensus meaning is. It refers to a dialog
> between people, which presumes a dialog takes place and there are
> people, and these are truthful statements. If dialog or people were only
> figments of your imagination, then my sentence would necessarily be
> meaningless to you, and there would be no dialog. Or the presumption of
> their meaning has some utilitarian value, then I'd ask what obvious
> substantial utility lies in our discourse unless we work together to
> arrive at some shared insight.
That there are people in the world is different from saying "there are
people in the world" is true. Our reflecting over our own language
creates the idea of truth.
> >> Dialectics is a broad term that can mean quite different things, and
> >> I'm not clear about your objection. Dialectics can refer to a
> >> pedagogical method (the original meaning), a discourse, looking at
> >> things in systemic terms or a presumption that systems are
> >> emergent. Off hand, none of these seem objectionable. I believe you
> >> have to indicate which meaning you prefer and what your objection to
> >> it is.
>
> > Dialectics from material dialectics as you mentioned, from Marx's
> > twist on Hegel. My objection to it is that Hegel's "dialectic logic"
> > is confused. There are interpretations of Hegel that do make sense in
> > my opinion, but this tradition with statements like "negating negative
> > negation" etc are either confused of confusing. They have nothing to
> > say that can't be said in more sensible terms.
>
> It is your opinion that Hegel's logic is "confused", but that's surely
> not everyone's opinion. Why you associate all kinds of dialectics to
> Hegel, escapes me, and surely Marx's dialectical materialism (a term of
> Engels') is not the same as Hegel's objective idealism.
Well, if calling being nothing and nothing being isn't confused, then
what is? He claimed to know the mind of God before creation. Maybe
he did, but if so, God's pretty confused.
There are differences and different interpretations with Hegel's line,
making sense from his non-sense. There is also the religious version
in the Taijitu, Daoism, and the holy trinity. At the end of the day
you have to ask yourself if belief in any form of dialectics - outside
of the meaning of communication and dialogue - is an act of faith.
> > Well, I reject propositions that rely on metaphysical assumptions. Of
> > course I assume there is a table in front of me, but I don't assume
> > "there is a table in front of me" has an actual relation somewhere out
> > there in the universe to the thing in front of me which gives it a
> > special status over "there isn't a table in front of me".
>
> Some of my examples of contradiction may be metaphysical, but surely
> some are not. Why tar them all with a metaphysical brush, and what's to
> object to in metaphysics?
Belief in truth is a metaphysical belief if it reifies something that
may well not exist. It isn't metaphysical if it admits that it
doesn't exist outside of human culture. Metaphysics is objectionable
because it claims to be able to rise above human culture and teach us
the truth about the world, just like religion.
> I don't understand your table example. If there's a table in front of
> you, by convention it is assume that your statement that there's a table
> in front of your because there's some kind of correspondence between the
> fact and your statement. What does the universe have to do with
> this. What "special status"? The assertion that there's a table in front
> of you would be true; a contrary statement would be false. Neither has
> "special status".
By convention, out in the universe somewhere there is a truth relation
between a statement in human discourse and the object of this
statement, which lies outside of human discourse. It is said that
this statement has a special status because it is related by a
"truth", that transcends human discourse and touches its object.
> If you place your cup of coffee on it, you assume that
> your notion that a table is there is true, and it is not a presumption
> based on utility if you have not been in the habit of using that table
> to rest your coffee cup. You have in mind the conceptual categories of
> tables and cups which are based on culture and ultimately the
> persistence of certain of their qualities, and you know from experience
> that you can place your cup on flat surfaces such as the table. Wherein
> lies the metaphysical problem here? In fact, how is my description of
> your action problematic?
Metaphysics comes into it when truth is reafied as something that
transcends human discourse. The problem with this is legion.
> > I use the idea that words refer to things in the world, but I don't
> > use the idea that there is a reified relationship between words and
> > their referents.
>
> Like your problem with universality, this seems an imaginary
> problem. The issue is not reified relationships, but the realist
> assumption that _causal_ relationships are ontologically real. One might
> make an argument that formal relationships are based on truths, but I
> don't know of anyone who suggests that the formal relationship itself
> can be reified as an ontologically independent thing. A formal
> relationship is a statement about the things that we assert stand in
> that relationship, not about any relation that is independent of those
> things. I fear you may be shooting at a straw-man.
Right, now we're getting somewhere. First I'd like to say that my
picture of a realist is that they reify things, whereas they would
argue causes or something else. I don't mind which description we
use, but let's use cause.
If you admit that formal relationships based on truths are not
ontological, then I assume you mean that format truth isn't real. Is
this right? If so, why is casual truth any different? I think the
idea of truth is starting to find shelter in the idea of cause. I'm
happy to accept cause.
> > This doesn't meant there aren't things out there in the world or that
> > we're swimming in around in a semantic dream world. Reality can be
> > said to reach all the way into us and we reach all the way into the
> > world. Language can be seen as a tool rather than a medium on which
> > the world is represented.
>
> Your point obscure. Your statement that we are as real as the world
> about us must point to some non-obvious truth, but I don't get it.
It's not pointing at any truth. We don't need the idea of truth at
all, it's an entrenched common-sense assumption that is particularly
difficult to think outside of because most of our language uses the
idea.
> That
> language is a tool, no doubt, but it is also just as obviously a
> medium. After all, what do we mean by the word "medium"?
It's not obvious, it's common sensical. It doesn't need to be a
medium at all, just a tool. My medium, I assume we mean a kind of
substrate that carries impressions of the world. Or that kind of
thing.
> I in fact do
> represent the world in words, such as by saying that you exist, and I'm
> using the medium of the written word to convey that belief to you. Does
> that belief happen to be true? Well, my basic point is that the
> statement has truth value in that it is either false or at least
> somewhat true. If its truth value lacked any warrant whatsoever, your
> existence would only be in my mind, and I'd be wasting my time by
> talking to myself.
That all assumes truth before it begins.
> > I found it a difficult position to understand because so much of the
> > way we talk assumes a mind-reality gap.
>
> Why do you say this?
Because I found it difficult to understand and don't expect I can
explain it to a degree that will convince you easily.
> In daily life, I constantly use language that I
> assume has truth value, and more specifically I assume that on the
> whole, most of my statements have some truth in relation to the
> world. While alternative beliefs are certainly possible, I know of no
> one who presumes there's any kind of gap between what they say and the
> world. This possibility is raised only by only philosophers, and their
> doing so makes me think more about just what the relation is between my
> words and the world, but in no way does a subcategory of philosophers
> cause me or nearly anyone else to doubt that statements about the world
> lack truth value.
Amongst other things, philosophy looks at our assumptions about truth
values. Some decide that the assumptions are fallacious and that
truth is a social construct. It's a bit different to blinding
assuming that truth exists. The problem with dualism in the
philosophy of mind is exactly how the mind communicates with the
world. Most non-philosophical dualists wont consider that this is a
problem simply because they've never really thought about it before,
even though it's an assumption that can make or break their belief.
> > Science has found a system of symbols that allow us to predict the
> > world. Mostly we think that science has got it right, that these
> > systems have captured the truth about the world. I follow the idea
> > that science finds these systems useful, full stop.
>
> But if the findings of science are useful (a contentious point, but I'll
> let it go), does that not imply that the findings of science contain
> some truth?
No... why should it?
> Why would the knowledge of science be cumulative unless it
> had some truth value?
Why should the body of words science has accumulated have a truth
value? A stamp collector doesn't assign truth values to their stamps.
> Utility may imply some kind of truth is involved,
> but certainly truth does not reduce to utility, for much much truth does
> not entail purposeful intervention in the world. I belief in the
> existence of atoms, because in this respect I see no reason to question
> the content of my cultural heritage, but surely I can't warrant the
> truth of my belief on any grounds that are utilitarian.
Truth can't be replaced by utility given the assumptions of a belief
in truth. It can be replace by utility, or some other idea, given
different assumptions.
> > I meant that our reasons for suspecting that consciousness exists is
> > an argumentum ad ignorantiam. We think it exists but have no non-
> > fallacious reason for it. We might appeal to common sense, but there
> > in lies lots of fallacious assumptions. I don't really have any
> > reasons /for/ its inexistence sorry, at least none that aren't half-
> > formed.
>
> There are many things that we believe without appeal to truthful
> reasons. I just gave an example of my belief in the existence of
> atoms. I believe I exist, but don't need any kind of argument to support
> that belief. I believe in being kind to others, and am not aware of any
> pragmatic or utilitarian reason for such behavior. I believe it is sunny
> outside, not because of a reasoned argument, but because from where I
> sit I can see the sunshine and know from the phenomena, without
> conscious inductive reasoning that it is so.
>
> The thread has to do with a warrant for belief in relative truth value
> of our statements. You clearly don't agree, but I don't see why other
> than that it might unnecessarily complicate our mental life.
It simplified mine. Of all the conflicting statements out there, I
let go of trying to find the true ones. Useful ones are much easier
to find because they don't have such a high or universal criteria.
> But you
> offer no reason for a conclusion that runs counter to common sense, for
> most people naturally assume that their statements have truth value. And
> your suggestion of a utilitarian test for the truth of a statement
> hardly counters the presumption that statements have truth value, but in
> fact presumes that they do. That we can dispose of the word "truth" by
> conveying the same thing in other ways is possible, but certainly
> comments life, for "truth" means several things, and some of them seem
> very useful, and you'd be throwing the baby out with the bath and force
> people to abandon language with which they have been comfortable for
> millennia.
I still use the word truth and I don't think people should stop. I do
think it would serve us well to let go of the belief in truth though.
> > "I", "self-aware" and "consciousness of the world" can easily smuggle
> > in the assumption that consciousness exists. I doubt there is any
> > special difference between a robot replica and a human.
>
> Ego is self-consciousness; my seeing the sunlight outside is
> consciousness per se. I don't think we should confuse the two.
>
> That I have self-consciousness seems a prima facie case for the
> existence of consciousness. That is, the old (and discredited)
> empiricism loved "brute facts". Our doubts about brute facts does not
> imply there are no facts. My consciousness of myself as a conscious
> being is close to being a brute fact. That is, any suggestion to the
> contrary was to be powerfully supported. One can't just express
> skepticism about what everyone else believes to be true and expect that
> one's sceptical attitude will be persuasive or not ridiculed unless it
> is accompanied by powerful justifications. It's interesting you don't
> belief in truth, for I know no one else who feels that way, but so what?
> How does one make that statement interesting or important without a
> reliance on some kind of truth?
Self-awareness is often teased out to be the point at which a robot
would become conscious. I don't think this recursive relationship is
anything special. It certainly isn't in formal terms although it is
handy for proving the limits of things (ref. diagonalisation, halting
problem, etc).
> >> We all get along very well with the existential presumption that we
> >> have consciousness. True, it, like many other things, is very
> >> difficult for philosophers and scientists to explain and there's no
> >> consensus over what it is, but what should we make of this
> > We shouldn't abandon the idea. We should look at why we started using
> > the term in the first place and see if there are other ways of talking
> > that dispense with the problem of consciousness altogether. We might
> > find that the problem is created by the way we talk rather than it
> > being a "real" problem.
>
> But there is no "problem". People seem to have had self-consciousness
> right from the beginning (and perhaps even Neanderthal), and it seems
> part and parcel of what we mean by being human. I see no way that we can
> get along without using the word consciousness or self-consciousness,
> and in any case, you don't propose any alternatives. What is the problem
> to which you refer?
In the literature people talk of the "hard problem" of consciousness.
It's in reference to an explanation for it.
> > There is a difference between believing there is a cup of coffee
> > beside you and believing in the truth of the statement "there is a cup
> > of coffee beside me". The former is the casual way we speak which no
> > one will sensibly deny. The latter assumes that there is such a thing
> > as truth. Now if you think that the truth of the statement is a
> > special relationship between the sentence and the cup of coffee, and
> > that this truth exists outside of human discourse,
>
> You are not making sense. Everyone, including you, seem to agree that
> the word "truth" has to do with the relation of our sentences and what
> the sentence refers to. No one today would dream of suggesting that
> truth is independent of our works and of the world. You set up a
> staw-man.
Not independent of the world, just of our works.
> > then to believe the truth of the statement is known, is to believe is
> > having a access to that which lies outside of human discourse and our
> > experience of the world in general. The ability to see noumena is
> > god-like.
>
> Yes, our experience of the world is always mediated, and our notions of
> the world are one-sided, partial, approximations, analogs, etc. No one
> believes today that our ideas of the world are simple reflections of the
> world, and so why bring it up?
To highlight the problem with a belief in truth, I suppose.
> > I hope you could by now hazard what I would answer to that question.
> > I admit that it has taken me quite some time to get to grips with the
> > idea - that there is no such thing as truth.
>
> But are you not arguing here against the notion of absolute or universal
> Truth? This is not the issue under discussion.
Against truth altogether, as a thing beyond human discourse.
> > I'm not sure I can explain things further, I run out of words, but if
> > you're interested I can point you at some references. About their
> > being no such thing as consciousness too, although I'm much less
> > familiar with that. These people can present a much more coherent and
> > appealing argument I'm sure.
>
> OK, since I'm having difficulty getting a clear idea of where you stand,
> such references would be very helpful. Name a few books or authors that
> you believe represent a position with which you are largely in
> agreement.
Richard Rorty was my pied piper, in particular "Contingency, irony,
and solidarity" (Cambridge), the best I've read. His "Philosophy and
the Mirror of Nature" was very influential too, but for philosophers.
I haven't studied consciouness as much, but I enjoyed Daniel Dennet's
lectures on utube.
> > Logic and reason are seen as unquestioned authorities dictating legal
> > steps in thought but when they're examined more closely, they are seen
> > to be hand-waved terms used to persuade.
>
> Well, logic and reason may not cover all situations, may lead to
> falsehood, or be inadequate to arrive at truth, but isn't logical
> coherence and semantic adequacy one reason we prefer one explanation of
> things over others?
The interesting thing about a set-theoretic view of propositional
logical, is that there is nothing in the conclusions that isn't
already in the starting propositions. Agreeing on the starting
propositions is the tricky part.
> "Unquestioned authorities." This may be a paper
> tiger, for I know of no one who now holds that position.
Well how many people do you know that use deductive logic when they
think or reason about things? Unless you know many mathematicians or
logicians, I doubt you would know many any at all. In justice
systems, there is use of critical thinking, but that usual constrains
the way we argue to ways that most people would accept. For example,
they don't like arguments like "but he did it, so why can't I?", or
"she would do it because she's like that". These kinds of arguments
draw criticism so they're not labed as "good reasoning" or "logical".
Nobody question the kinds of statements we call "good reason" not
because the are special. Rather, these kinds of statements are
labelled as "good reason" because they aren't questioned. So as I
say, logic and reason are brands for statements that aren't questioned
and over time have taken on a mantel of their own as people study what
they have in common, as if there is an essence to their unquestioned
nature beyond human discourse.
> Surely the
> reasonableness of an argument is not primarily a rhetorical device, but
> a way to justify a claim a relative truthfulness of an argument. To
> perceive that some logic choppers are using their skills to cover the
> truth or to generate a simulacrum of truth for non-truths, does not mean
> that being reasonable is always empty rhetoric. You can't infer a
> universal from a number of particular instances, but I suppose that if
> you deny the truth value of reason, you actually could do that. So you
> might be right that there's no truth value in ratiocination, but by
> definition you can't support that contention.
The picture of reason being empty rhetoric is based on the idea that
it is full of truth preserving stuffing. Reason can be baked in other
ways that bring out its rich character.
Haines Brown
> Consciousness is the exact thing we can't be directly aware of.
Afraid I don't understand. What do you mean by "directly aware"? Do you
mean that we don't have sensory experience of consciousness? If so, is
this not an instance of the old "brute facts" theory? I don't accept
it, nor do most others. There are many things of which I have no direct
awareness, but certainly are real. I have the power of sight, but can't
see it; I'm in love; I have mental powers and know how to make my cup of
coffee, etc. If you are not saying that observation alone is the basis
of "brute facts", the only real facts, or the only reliably known facts,
then just what do you mean?
>> That is correct. Truth is not a quality of words, but of the relation
>> of sentences to what they refer. But I'd not accept your criterion of
>> utility. History is littered with theories that were useful, but in
>> retrospect fundamentally untrue. To some extent we have theories that
>> may be true without there being test of utility. Historiography and
>> cosmology for example. Besides, is not a utility theory of truth OT
>> in the point under discussion?
>
> I could equally say that theories don't have truth. Okay it is OT. I
> don't like "warrant" either. It imports this idea of god handing out
> tickets that give us the right to claim to knowledge. Except we've
> replaced god with humans. Actually... I'm not here to argue against
> your beliefs unless that's what you're after. I'd have to work out
> more about your truth theory to give you sensible feedback. Is it
> worth reading Roy Bhaskar's theory of truth to better understand
> yours?
I offered the conventional meaning of truth and suggested it does not
reduce to utility. You don't address the point I raised.
On what grounds do you say that no theory has any truth? If no theory
has truth, then your theorem that they have no truth is surely not
true. In other words, you are free to argue that no theory is true, but
you must justify that position, for it seems illogical and is surely
unconventional.
What does warrant have to do with god? I only meant the word in the
sense of justify. My dictionary definition for warrant does not mention
any gods.
On what grounds do you believe that no one knows anything? If that were
true, how could I discuss it with you?
I have no more theory of truth than is conventional, and I hope I've
stated it plainly enough. But just in case:
1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
correspond in some sense with the world.
2. This is because knowledge of the world arises from our intervention
in the world; the consciousness that emerges as a result of this
intervention is a product of the mind that is constrained by the
world.
3. The point raised in objection to point (2) is that knowledge of the
world is socially transmitted and is the emergent effect of past
intervention in the world and therefore does not reduce to
interventions. As social beings we accept social convention as being
true unless we have reason not to because it is the basis of our
development. Since we know that people develop as human beings,
whatever is the cause of that development must have some truth value
because otherwise such development would be miraculous.
4. The correspondence between statements of fact and the world is
approximate in the sense that a) it is the creation of the mind, not
of phenomena, and b) it is based on necessarily incomplete data. For
this reason, we speak of it as only an analog, a model, as being
one-sided, although our progressive power over nature and society
suggests that it is generally an ever better approximation.
5. That there is truth is warranted by successful praxis (in the sense
that we often achieve what we set out to achieve, where if there were
no truth in our knowledge, any success would be a miracle), and it is
a precondition for action, for while our map of the world may be false
in its particulars, it must be based on the reality that we are actors
in the world.
I set out to ask if universality of knowledge is one factor that
warrants our accepting the relative truth value of a statement. I did
not raise the issue of whether there is truth. My argument for this
proposition would be that since all processes are in principle open,
knowledge of a system must include knowledge of ifs surroundings, and
since these surroundings are not normally bounded, our knowledge of the
process is always incomplete in that it can't encompass all possible
environmental influences and because all things are in principle
processes that necessarily have no defined state (are fuzzy) except in a
short range or practical way. I did not present this argument because I
was interested in what others had to say about it, but so far no one has
said anything.
Based on point (3) above, I add to this ontological universality
argument an epistemological argument that our mental representation of
the world is constrained by our social location, and to the extent that
location is parochial or otherwise limited, the narrower will be our
ability to grasp features of the world. In other words, the working
class, being a universal class in the sense that a society that consists
of only the working class is conceivable, has a greater capacity for
approximating truth than any other class.
I've put these cards on the table here because so far I've not received
any constructive response to my question.
> Give that truth has the same ontological status as a relation, and
> that relations there no such thing as relations "out there", the in
> what way do relations exist? What connects similar things? It's the
> old nominalist/realist debate, which we're not about to settle here.
I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in that a
truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions constrained by
the world. What do you mean there are no causal relations out there?
Obviously there are, for there's all kinds of things going on of which
we presumably are unaware.
>> Well, I just gave you an example. If I go through red lights, I'll
>> probably be arrested. What is circular about this? Does not my
>> assessment of the dangers of running the light correspond to the
>> probability of being arrested? True, a crude and simplistic example,
>> but doesn't it warrant some kind of correspondence theory? My
>> understanding is that the problems lie with specific correspondence
>> theories, not correspondence in general, and that the only
>> alternative to correspondence in general is solipsism.
>
> It can be explained as cause and effect. There is no need to reflect
> on the situation and claim that the reflection has truth and warrant.
> This reflection process can also be explained as cause and effect.
Not sure, but I believe you are only taking the empiricist objection to
causal relations in that since they are only inferred and represent
uncertain knowledge, we are better to use a Humean definition of
causality in that it is a relation of events that are proximate in time
and space, etc. But you said you did not want to pursue this path. The
only basis for not accepting my own propositions is that a) you show why
they are wrong, or b) you offer an alternative that you show has better
features. You don't do either. If there is no reason to prefer the
empiricist over the realist position on causality, why did you bring it
up?
> If you discredit the idea of correspondence, then all correspondence
> theories suffer, surely.
Not my position. In fact, I thought it was you who doubted any
correspondence because you doubted that our statements have any truth
value.
> I'm happy to accept the world causes our beliefs, so our mental
> construction aren't "nothing but" mental constructs. A causal
> chain... perhaps this is your "relation", "correspondence" or "truth"
> (non-rethorical question)? It sounds a little bit like what
> reliability and warrant would attach to, and try and flesh out.
Not sure what you are talking about. I never said the world "causes" our
beliefs, but only that the world constrains them because they arise from
our intervention in the world. Our beliefs are indeed mental constructs,
but that does not mean they are unconstrained by the world or by the
powers of the brain.
> My remark here doesn't cast any doubt on correspondence. It doesn't
> get us closer to truth because that's exactly the idea I disagree
> with. It's a remark to direct suspicion to common sense. It's the
> foundation of our world views and the cause of a lot hand-waving,
> "full of sound and fury". My question is, why do we base so much of
> our views on something we almost never question? And once it does
> take the witness stand, why is it full of contradictions, circular
> arguments and blind assumptions?
No idea what you are talking about. Does the first sentence mean you do
accept a correspondence theory? But then does your second sentence deny
it? The third sentence make no sense to me in terms of English. Next do
you say that correspondence is the foundation of our world view (and so
good and necessary) and the cause of a lot of hand waving (ans so bad
and unnecessary)? Who doesn't question the truth of statements? I assume
everyone does it all the time. What is this about witness stand? What is
full of contradictions?
> It's not the discovery of hidden dogma but the letting go of this
> dogma that's the important point. Once we do this, we are basically
> letting go of the world view we've inherited and therefore free to
> create our own. But as I say, I think this is just another bogus
> schema. The whole idea for going down this road is to tear down the
> old, on the grounds that there is no truth, and and replace it with
> the new because it's more interesting. So it's quite happy to admit
> it's bogus.
I'm not persuaded. We don't develop by becoming detached, but by being
engaged. Otherwise, we would learn more by not going to school or
experiencing the world, but we know very well that the opposite is the
case. Detachment is death, not freedom. Yes, the Enlightenment came up
with an optimal decision theory in which rational action required a
minimalization of outside constraints, but that only applied to people
with property and who already had a power to act in the world, and the
outside constraints only referred to organized religion and to
unconstrained state power. To think that we better develop our human
powers in the absence of parents, of school and society is so contrary
to common sense that you need to give it some defense (not inviting you
to do so here because it would be OT).
> I though I did a bit more than just say "ah... no." For example,
> question what ontological status correspondence has and if we can say
> that it exists at all, the offering of an alternative view of things
> that lives without the idea that is being refuted, etc.
Well, OK. See my mention of radical empiricism above. Are you taking
that position vs. say, critical empiricism, pragmatism or realism? One
of these three, or a mix of these three, represent the consensus today
in the philosophy of science. So anyone who chooses to differ, needs to
justify their position. It does not mean anything to negate or caste
doubt on a position without any justification.
> I don't believe in morality, good and evil. I think they're social
> constructs and meaningless outside of human discourse.
Why do you bring this up now?
> "Effective action" hasn't found traction on me for some reason. Maybe
> because I'm not sure quite where it fits in.
Effective action is often taken as a warrant for the truth value of our
statements. You are free to disagree with this common view, but only if
you say why and justify that position.
> My world view is that there is no foundations for truth and knowledge
> and that it doesn't stop us from stopping at red lights, paying our
> taxes or helping old ladies cross the street.
The issue is what causes us to stop at the red light. What causes us not
to stop may be that we think we can get away with it, etc., which is not
the issue I raised. I made a simple point that my stopping at the red
light required that I have truthful knowledge about color, about the
rules of the road, about the brake pedal, etc.
> Note that my reasons for this equally have to claim to truth. My
> reasons are, at bottom, emotive at best. I can't offer you any
> constructive arguments, only critical feedback on constructions.
This critical feedback I don't see beyond a generalized nihilistic
skepticism. The question I raised had to do with the relation of the
universality of theories and their truth value. To doubt there are
theories, to doubt truth means anything, is hardly critical feedback.
> The thing you learn in history 101 is that there is not truth about
> the past, just interpretation. That's exactly why it's not a science.
> While science is only interpretation too, the interpretation has
> observable constraints to offer a metric that lets them say it's the
> /best/ interpretation so far.
Not true. Science does not have to do with absolute truth, but degrees
of truth. That is, the interpretation offered in History 101 is presumed
to have truth value, and the theorem offered in Physics 101 is supposed
to represent an approximate truth. Your notion of science seems
radically empiricist, when in fact it has not been for a very long
time. Some sciences, such as quantum mechanics, are not based on
observables at all.
> Richard Rorty was my pied piper, in particular "Contingency, irony,
> and solidarity" (Cambridge), the best I've read. His "Philosophy and
> the Mirror of Nature" was very influential too, but for philosophers.
Aha, you might have said this in the first place.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>jason <jasonk...@gmail.com> writes:
I'll intrude again. While I don't fully agree with jason, I think
his view is more to my liking than is yours.
>> Consciousness is the exact thing we can't be directly aware of.
I don't agree with jason on consciousness.
The real problem about consciousness is that it is a vague concept,
and people don't agree on what it means. Hence there is much
disagreement on statements that use the word "consciousness."
>> I could equally say that theories don't have truth.
There's a point where I agree with jason.
>I offered the conventional meaning of truth and suggested it does not
>reduce to utility. You don't address the point I raised.
The trouble with the correspondence theory of truth, is that it begs
the question of how we can tell whether a statement corresponds
to the way the world is. As far as I can tell, just about all
philosophical treatments of truth are question begging. It's the
largest section of the library that is almost entirely composed of
question begging works.
One exception is Tarski's theory. But that's because Tarski wasn't
discussing our ordinary notion of truth, but was instead discussing
how we can define "truth" in a formal language.
>On what grounds do you say that no theory has any truth?
I can't say what is jason's basis for this. I can only say what is
my basis. As far as I can tell, we accept scientific theories for
their pragmatic virtues. Then we simply declare those theories to
be true. If we later find a better theory - one which we find has
better pragmatic qualities (it make better predictions, for example),
then we abandon the old theory, and we cease asserting that the
old theory is true. Instead we declare the new theory to be true.
> If no theory
>has truth, then your theorem that they have no truth is surely not
>true.
That doesn't follow. I don't see jason's statement about theories as
a theorem. It is more an observation about how scientists behave.
And I see it as roughly consistent with Lakatos's ideas about
scientific research programs.
>I have no more theory of truth than is conventional, and I hope I've
>stated it plainly enough. But just in case:
> 1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
> correspond in some sense with the world.
But what is that "some sense". And how do you determine, in non
question begging way, whether a statement corresponds with the world?
> 2. This is because knowledge of the world arises from our intervention
> in the world; the consciousness that emerges as a result of this
> intervention is a product of the mind that is constrained by the
> world.
Personally, I think the mind is as much a product of consciousness,
as consciousness is a product of the mind.
> 3. The point raised in objection to point (2) is that knowledge of the
> world is socially transmitted and is the emergent effect of past
> intervention in the world and therefore does not reduce to
> interventions.
I have never understood the idea that knowledge is justified true
belief. It seems obviously wrong. My experience in life is that
knowledge cannot be transmitted. We can transmit information, but
not knowledge. Receiving information, even receiving justified
true beliefs, memorizing them, and believing them, never made
the memorizer knowledgable. If knowledge could be transmitted,
we would not need education, schools or universities.
> As social beings we accept social convention as being
> true unless we have reason not to because it is the basis of our
> development.
But it is the knowledgable who are best able to find reasons to
reject social convention.
> 4. The correspondence between statements of fact and the world is
> approximate in the sense that a) it is the creation of the mind, not
> of phenomena, and b) it is based on necessarily incomplete data. For
> this reason, we speak of it as only an analog, a model, as being
> one-sided, although our progressive power over nature and society
> suggests that it is generally an ever better approximation.
You are still begging the question of how we tell whether a statement
is in correspondence with the world.
> 5. That there is truth is warranted by successful praxis (in the sense
> that we often achieve what we set out to achieve, where if there were
> no truth in our knowledge, any success would be a miracle), and it is
> a precondition for action, for while our map of the world may be false
> in its particulars, it must be based on the reality that we are actors
> in the world.
I don't get this "warrant" business. It's as if you went to
God's court, presented your evidence, and God issued a warrant.
Isn't it time to get away from that kind of thinking? Okay,
I recognize that you are not intending "warrant" in that sense.
But to us non-philosophers, the word "warrant" as a noun always
suggests a document or other certifying token.
Why isn't it obvious that truth itself is but a pragmatic social
convention, adopted to make language work?
>I set out to ask if universality of knowledge is one factor that
>warrants our accepting the relative truth value of a statement.
What knowledge is universal? Why would we need to educate people,
if knowledge were universal?
>Based on point (3) above, I add to this ontological universality
>argument an epistemological argument that our mental representation of
>the world is constrained by our social location, and to the extent that
>location is parochial or otherwise limited, the narrower will be our
>ability to grasp features of the world.
Why not instead say that our mental representation is constrained
by our knowledge? That makes knowledge very different from a set
of mental representations.
> In other words, the working
>class, being a universal class in the sense that a society that consists
>of only the working class is conceivable, has a greater capacity for
>approximating truth than any other class.
I don't understand that at all.
>> Give that truth has the same ontological status as a relation, and
>> that relations there no such thing as relations "out there", the in
>> what way do relations exist? What connects similar things? It's the
>> old nominalist/realist debate, which we're not about to settle here.
That makes sense to me. That seems to be jason's way of pointing
out what I have described as the question begging involved in the
correspondence theory of truth.
>I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
>between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in that a
>truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions constrained by
>the world.
But it is only an apparent relation that depends on question begging.
>> My world view is that there is no foundations for truth and knowledge
>> and that it doesn't stop us from stopping at red lights, paying our
>> taxes or helping old ladies cross the street.
I'm again inclined to agree with jason (depending on what he
means by "foundation").
>The issue is what causes us to stop at the red light.
Pragmatic social convention.
> I made a simple point that my stopping at the red
>light required that I have truthful knowledge about color, about the
>rules of the road, about the brake pedal, etc.
But "truthful" seems irrelevant, here. It is not as if, when
driving, a statement about red lights pops into my head, and I am
required to evaluate its truth before deciding whether to stop.
If that were the way it worked, the traffic accident rate would be
far higher that it actually is.
Here's a relevant quote from Searle's "Intentionality (p. 150):
Skiing is one of those skills which is learned with the aid of
explicit representations. But after a while the skier gets better;
he no longer needs to remind himself of the instructions, he
just goes out and skis. According to the traditional cognivitist
view, the instructions have become internalized and now function
unconsciously but still as representations.
...
I find this account of what happens when the skier gets better
implausible, and I want to suggest an alternative hypothesis.
As the skier gets better he does not internalize the rules better,
but rather the rules become increasingly irrelevant. The rules
do not become 'wired in' as unconscious Intentional contents, but
the repeated experiences create physical capacities, presumably
realized as neural pathways, that make the rules simply irrelevant.
"Practice makes perfect" not because practice results in a perfect
memorization of the rules, but because repeated practice enables
the body to take over and the rules to recede into the Background.
It seems to me that Searle's view of skiing could just as easily
apply to stopping at a red light. And it does not depend on
"truthful knowledge."
Haines Brown
> I don't agree with jason on consciousness.
>
> The real problem about consciousness is that it is a vague concept,
> and people don't agree on what it means. Hence there is much
> disagreement on statements that use the word "consciousness."
There are many things that seem real mental states however vague they
may be. I mentioned being in love. Why does the vagueness of a concept
or disagreement over its meaning sully its reality? These features may
not make the word very operational, but that's no test of truth, surely,
but more likely the limits or mind or of language.
>>> I could equally say that theories don't have truth.
>
> There's a point where I agree with jason.
OK, I naturally look for your justification of a position that obviously
runs counter to common sense. Do I find it? Only in part, for you raise
a question about correspondence theory, but not about the notion of
truth, and you don't specifying with which of the quite different
correspondence theories you disagree, and you offer no reason why you
doubt the existence of truth. It's nice you feel that way, but you here
are in a position of trying to persuade others, and so an argument or
justification would be nice.
> The trouble with the correspondence theory of truth, is that it begs
> the question of how we can tell whether a statement corresponds to the
> way the world is. As far as I can tell, just about all philosophical
> treatments of truth are question begging.
Yes, but isn't that a result of making philosophy the criterion of
truth? Not many people would do that, or at least, no one I know does
that. All the examples of truth telling I can think of imply either a
correspondence theory or an intervention (praxis, pragmatism).
Your uncertainty may arise because I was speaking of a definition of
truth, not a warrant of a statement's truthfulness, and these are two
quite different things. A dictionary tells us what is conventionally
meant by the word truth, but not how we ascertain the truth of a
statement. I believe a correspondence theory is a definition, while
praxix is a method.
You would have better tried to point out that a praxical test is
circular, for there's no external standard of success. My answer to that
would be to admit the weakness of this empiricist use of praxis, but
counter that what we do know independently of the outcomes of our
practice are the conditions necessary for it to occur: the power to
act. That existentially posits the act itself as the test, rather than
an observational outcome. Put simply, if I know I have a good chance of
being successful in my activity, however I define that success, I know I
have a causal potency that is informed by my knowledge and that
knowledge is probably somewhat truthful. This is a realist alternative
to the empiricist praxical approach, but since I've not seen anyone
propose it, I've grave doubts it would stand up under close
scrutiny. But at least it is an answer to the circularity argument.
>>On what grounds do you say that no theory has any truth?
>
> I can't say what is jason's basis for this. I can only say what is my
> basis. As far as I can tell, we accept scientific theories for their
> pragmatic virtues. Then we simply declare those theories to be true.
> If we later find a better theory - one which we find has better
> pragmatic qualities (it make better predictions, for example), then we
> abandon the old theory, and we cease asserting that the old theory is
> true. Instead we declare the new theory to be true.
I don't understand. You start by implying that no theory has any truth,
and then proceed to give a pragmatic justification for the truth value
of our theories. You appear to be self-contradictory here. Jason offered
no reason for his skepticism, and you on the contrary appear to disagree
with him and offer a pragmatic test of a theory's truth.
>>If no theory has truth, then your theorem that they have no truth is
>>surely not true.
>
> That doesn't follow. I don't see jason's statement about theories as
> a theorem. It is more an observation about how scientists behave.
> And I see it as roughly consistent with Lakatos's ideas about
> scientific research programs.
I should have said "hypothesis", not "theorem". But my point remains
much the same. I was not so much pointing out the logically
contradictory character of Jason's statement, but that it just didn't
make any real sense. And surely his rule is not in any sense an
"observation". A general rule is not observational, and he was making a
categorical statement.
And I sharply disagree with your characterization of Lakatos. Lakatos
was not really a pragmatist. Put simply, if a theorem is heuristic, we
take it to be truthful. His reference to research programs rather than
simply say "heuristic" is because the former engages the world, and the
latter refers only to mind. Note that his position amounts to the same
as my point above about a realist response to the circularity of
praxis. Lakatos is not specifying the empirical content of the new
research program while waiting to see if it is realized (predicting the
outcome), but instead points to an enhanced power for creating new
research programs, whatever their specific empirical content. That is,
I'd see Lakatos as arguing an existential or realist criterion of
truth. In fact, if you read Lakatos' footnotes carefully - it's been a
long time, but I believe you'll find where he characteristics his
position as "existential".
>>I have no more theory of truth than is conventional, and I hope I've
>>stated it plainly enough. But just in case:
>
>> 1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
>> correspond in some sense with the world.
>
> But what is that "some sense". And how do you determine, in non
> question begging way, whether a statement corresponds with the world?
That is a question of how we know truth. I instead was defining
it. There are many correspondence theories, and I agree it is contested
turf, but see nothing that would at all justify a scepticism about there
being truth, only an uncertainty about how we warrant a claim about the
truthfulness of our statements.
>> 3. The point raised in objection to point (2) is that knowledge of
>> the world is socially transmitted and is the emergent effect of past
>> intervention in the world and therefore does not reduce to
>> interventions.
>
> I have never understood the idea that knowledge is justified true
> belief. It seems obviously wrong. My experience in life is that
> knowledge cannot be transmitted. We can transmit information, but not
> knowledge. Receiving information, even receiving justified true
> beliefs, memorizing them, and believing them, never made the memorizer
> knowledgable. If knowledge could be transmitted, we would not need
> education, schools or universities.
You are obviously using "knowledge" in a different sense than I. By the
word I meant the act or state of knowing; a clear perception of fact,
truth; cognition. If you choose the use the word in a sense not
supported by the dictionary, that's OK, but surely you then must not
only define the word, but offer some justification for your private
meaning.
>> 4. The correspondence between statements of fact and the world is
>> approximate in the sense that a) it is the creation of the mind, not
>> of phenomena, and b) it is based on necessarily incomplete data. For
>> this reason, we speak of it as only an analog, a model, as being
>> one-sided, although our progressive power over nature and society
>> suggests that it is generally an ever better approximation.
>
> You are still begging the question of how we tell whether a statement
> is in correspondence with the world.
No, I'm here characterizing truthful statements and not speaking of how
we verify their truthfulness, although obviously what we know about
their character will have a bearing on how we validate that
truthfulness.
A judicial proceeding is typically very uncertain about where the truth
lies, but it is based on the presumption that there is a truth. Without
there being a truth, do we go back to Renaissance torture to force the
political outcomes we find expedient without much concern whether the
statements we extract are true? What I'm hinting at here is that doubt
about the existence of truth has moral implications that seem
horrendous, and in fact the example most often brought up in this
context is the reality of the Holocaust and whether it was morally
pernicious. We can't reduce truth to philosophy, for it first and
foremost has to do with the appropriateness of our actions - with
morality and wise practice. To approach life from a purely philosophical
perspective seems pathological, for it promotes logic above life (which
is, I suppose, one reason that analytic philosophy fell on such hard
times).
>> 5. That there is truth is warranted by successful praxis (in the
>> sense that we often achieve what we set out to achieve, where if
>> there were no truth in our knowledge, any success would be a
>> miracle), and it is a precondition for action, for while our map of
>> the world may be false in its particulars, it must be based on the
>> reality that we are actors in the world.
>
> I don't get this "warrant" business. It's as if you went to God's
> court, presented your evidence, and God issued a warrant. Isn't it
> time to get away from that kind of thinking? Okay, I recognize that
> you are not intending "warrant" in that sense. But to us
> non-philosophers, the word "warrant" as a noun always suggests a
> document or other certifying token.
Well, my dictionary says nothing about a document or certifying token,
but that's OK, if you don't like the word I'll use another, such as
"justified". You add to your non-conventional meaning of the word some
kind of mysterious association between documents and divinities, and so
you of course you loose me and I'm sure everyone else.
> Why isn't it obvious that truth itself is but a pragmatic social
> convention, adopted to make language work?
And does that fact that it is a social convention make it untrue?
There's no logic here, for social conventions regarding what is true
could as well be true as false. Who suggested that truth reduces to
nothing more than convention? Again, you take the point that what we
take to be true is often a social convention to imply that truth does
not exist, but outside philosophers and sociopaths, who makes that
claim? And how would you prove it? Although, I suppose that if you doubt
the existence of truth, you don't need to prove or justify anything, but
what a heavy price is paid for that solipsism.
And why should anyone accept the linguistic turn implied here, that
truth, morality, love and all else reduces to language? I understand
that some philosophical anarchists argue this position, but why should
anyone take it seriously? Can we idly contemplate our own navels when
much of the world is in crisis? When sociopathic philosophers are
finally called to account, how will they justify themselves to their
fellow man?
As John Donne put it:
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes
me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
>>I set out to ask if universality of knowledge is one factor that
>>warrants our accepting the relative truth value of a statement.
>
> What knowledge is universal? Why would we need to educate people, if
> knowledge were universal?
You misunderstand me. By "universal" I'm not positing any hypothetical
(the entire universe), but merely use the term as the measure of the
degree to which something is open. That is, I mean the whole rather than
a part, open systems rather than bounded, as complete as possible rather
than arbitrarily partial, the general rather than the particular. This
meaning should have been obvious when I spoke of the degree of
universality, for universality in the meaning of everything can have no
degree.
All I was suggesting was that the more of the world that is encompassed
in our statements about the world, the greater their probable truth
potential. In practical terms, theories that treat things as open
systems are likely to be truer of the world than a theory presuming a
closed system.
This is a very simple idea, and I'm not clear why you have such a
problem with it. How did education get in here, and who suggested that
knowledge is universal? I only suggested that the more limited the world
represented in knowledge, the more one-sided it will be and therefore
have less potential truth value. This line of thought goes back to the
19th century (Peirce), and is broadly accepted. If you have a problem
with it, please say why.
>>Based on point (3) above, I add to this ontological universality
>>argument an epistemological argument that our mental representation of
>>the world is constrained by our social location, and to the extent
>>that location is parochial or otherwise limited, the narrower will be
>>our ability to grasp features of the world.
>
> Why not instead say that our mental representation is constrained by
> our knowledge? That makes knowledge very different from a set of
> mental representations.
This is what I meant by "Knowledge": The act or state of knowing; clear
perception of fact, truth, or duty; certain apprehension; familiar
cognizance; cognition. In simple terms, mind is the brain's faculty of
thinking, while knowledge is a particular specification of thinking that
engages facts, statements having truth value.
You wish to reverse this and reduce the mind and brain to nothing but
statements? Do you wish to reduce all reality to semantics? In the eyes
of most people, you need to offer some justification, but I suppose from
a semantic viewpoint, you don't have to justify anything you don't want
to.
>>In other words, the working class, being a universal class in the
>>sense that a society that consists of only the working class is
>>conceivable, has a greater capacity for approximating truth than any
>>other class.
>
> I don't understand that at all.
My point was contentious, but simple enough. Social "class" can be
defined in one of two ways: the empiricist view is that a class refers
to a group of individuals who happen to share certain "basic" empirical
properties. A Marxist or realist definition is that a class refers to a
group of social beings who share a common causal mechanism that accounts
for their development both as individuals and as members of society.
I use the second definition and add to it the fact that all society so
far has been based on contradictory social classes and I suggest that
the relative weakness of any capacity for development meant that
development could only be partial, both in regard to aspects of life and
to social classes linked to those aspects. However, today there seems to
be a possibility that development might encompass the entirety of
society (the belief that today's productive capacity is sufficient to
enable everyone to have a decent life and also to develop, which is a
relatively simple empirical issue), in which case, there need only be
one class, rather than a ruling class and an exploited class as has been
the case until now.
Again, this is a contentious point, but it explains what I meant by
suggesting the possibility of a universal class in the sense that all
people are members of that class and depend on one another for their
development as members of society and as individuals. Of course you
don't accept my definition of class here, but that's not the issue.
To repeat my point, to the extent that our knowledge is socially
constructed, a universal social location should offer greater potential
truth value than a narrow social location. I don't expect you to believe
this, but the context was only to represent my view of things. Were I
asked to justify my position, I'd have to refer to the nature of the
world and society as if truthful statements could be made about them,
but you appear to doubt such truth exists.
>>> Give that truth has the same ontological status as a relation, and
>>> that relations there no such thing as relations "out there", the in
>>> what way do relations exist? What connects similar things? It's the
>>> old nominalist/realist debate, which we're not about to settle here.
>
> That makes sense to me. That seems to be jason's way of pointing out
> what I have described as the question begging involved in the
> correspondence theory of truth.
But it doesn't make sense to me yet. When we speak of "relations", do we
mean causal relations or formal relations? Surely there are causal
relations beyond the narrow scope of our knowledge, and if you doubt
this bit of conventional knowledge, are you not thereby obliged to show
why nothing happens in the universe except in our minds?
Again, the term correspondence theory of truth can be used to define
truth or it can refer to the ways in which we verify that statements
correspond to the world. We often think of correspondence as entailing
some outside standard of measure, as indeed is often the case, so that
if we are speaking of a correspondence theory of truth in general,
there's no standard that is not located in either pole of that relation,
the world or the mind.
This philosophical difficulty has obviously not stopped most people from
adopting a correspondence theory of truth in some sense, and so one
wonders if everyone is wrong and a handful of philosophers know better,
or if it is the other way 'round. I suppose there are many areas in life
in which circular reasoning works just fine.
I already admitted that a praxical or pragmatist approach was circular
and one might suggest the same for a utilitarian approach. But a
utilitarian approach can say that logical circularity is irrelevant if
our beliefs work for us, even if our notion of working rests on our
beliefs. In other words, each side of the argument discounts the other
and justifies its own side in its own terms. But that's life.
I offered an existential argument that might get around this, but I
don't push it because it is unconventional. It remains speculative.
>>I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
>>between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in that
>>a truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions constrained
>>by the world.
>
> But it is only an apparent relation that depends on question begging.
Why is that relation "apparent". I make a statement about the world and
clearly there's a relation. It makes no sense to say it is apparent
unless you deny either the mind or the world, which I don't gather you
intend to do.
The question begging is not over the definition of truth, but the
verification of truth. These are two quite different things. No member
of the working class can afford to doubt the truth of the world, but
readily admits that it is often difficult to as ascertain that truth.
That the verification of truth may involve question begging hardly puts
in doubt what we mean by truthful statements. The question begging seems
only to warn us to be very cautious in how we would verify the truth of
our statements, but the logical difficulty has not convinced most people
we shouldn't try. Philosophers don't seem a reliable guide in life, and
while logic might be part of our search for truth, truth certainly does
not reduce to mathematics or logic (I have the example of contradiction
before, which is unproblematic in physical terms, but unacceptable in
logical terms. The problem was with the logic, which presumes a
non-existent static world).
>>> My world view is that there is no foundations for truth and
>>> knowledge and that it doesn't stop us from stopping at red lights,
>>> paying our taxes or helping old ladies cross the street.
>
> I'm again inclined to agree with jason (depending on what he means by
> "foundation").
Jason expressed his belief; he didn't seek to justify it. While stopping
at the red light may be only social convention at work, that I belief
the light is red and red means to stop unless I want to get ticketed is
a set of true statements that are not merely social conventions. If you
agree with Jason that I didn't see any color, and even if I had, the
color would have been meaningless, and that whether I go though the red
light has nothing to do with the likelihood of my being ticketed, these
denials of obvious facts need some justification.
No one has the slightest interest in our world views unless they
obviously contribute to their own lives in some way. To deny truth may
make Jason happy, but surely very few others, who not only have to make
a living that depends on truthful knowledge, but need to make moral
judgements based on truthful knowledge, are likely to be swayed. That
leaves Jason taking to himself (and to a handful of deconstructionists).
>> I made a simple point that my stopping at the red
>>light required that I have truthful knowledge about color, about the
>>rules of the road, about the brake pedal, etc.
>
> But "truthful" seems irrelevant, here. It is not as if, when driving,
> a statement about red lights pops into my head, and I am required to
> evaluate its truth before deciding whether to stop. If that were the
> way it worked, the traffic accident rate would be far higher that it
> actually is.
We may be going around in circles on this. I perceive the change from
green to red, and while that involves language or the tokens I associate
with different colors of light, these tokens do serve as labels for
objective properties of light, its frequency. Likewise, it is a social
convention to stop on red, but that it is a rule and that if violated
leads to real consequences are truthful facts. That something is a
social convention does not mean either that it is nothing else but a
convention or that social conventions are not real or do not have real
consequences. Jason seems to presume here the old positivist categorical
dichotomy between object and subject, but deconstructionists are
supposed to criticize these categories, not presume them. If Jason for
some strange reason is inclined to embrace a deconstructionist position,
he sure is not doing a good job at it.
> Here's a relevant quote from Searle's "Intentionality (p. 150):
>
> Skiing is one of those skills which is learned with the aid of
> explicit representations. But after a while the skier gets better;
> he no longer needs to remind himself of the instructions, he just
> goes out and skis. According to the traditional cognivitist view,
> the instructions have become internalized and now function
> unconsciously but still as representations. ... I find this
> account of what happens when the skier gets better implausible, and
> I want to suggest an alternative hypothesis. As the skier gets
> better he does not internalize the rules better, but rather the
> rules become increasingly irrelevant. The rules do not become
> 'wired in' as unconscious Intentional contents, but the repeated
> experiences create physical capacities, presumably realized as
> neural pathways, that make the rules simply irrelevant. "Practice
> makes perfect" not because practice results in a perfect
> memorization of the rules, but because repeated practice enables the
> body to take over and the rules to recede into the Background.
>
> It seems to me that Searle's view of skiing could just as easily apply
> to stopping at a red light. And it does not depend on "truthful
> knowledge."
Funny, I was just reading Searle yesterday ("Rationality and Realism",
1993), and gagged because he uttered nonsense (in terms of his
historical presuppositions, about which I do know a little).
I don't see the point of the quotation of Searle here. He is speaking of
only a motor skill, and suggesting that the skill eventually becomes
hard wired in brain rather than be represented in the form of
unconscious rules. However, my stopping at the red light is not a motor
skill beyond the initial instinctive movement of my foot, for it quickly
becomes a conscious choice. But even if my foot movement was hard wired
in my brain, what does that have to do with the truth that the light was
of a frequency that distinguished it from the "go" color, or that if I
ignore it there are likely consequences? If my stopping was really and
entirely hard wired, then I'd not be able to go through the red light,
as I might do in an emergency. Further, I don't see the distinction
between "hard-wired" and "internalized rules". What, pray tell, is the
ontological status of these rules if not a property of matter (of
neurons, etc.)? This seems to create a false dichotomy that mind
(intentionality) is free while hard wired rules are determinant. I doubt
Searle is going in this direction, and it is a dubious contradiction in
any case.
Finally, and most importantly, the quotation from Searle is only a
hypothesis that is here not proved. What is the point of the quotation,
for no one has any reason for taking Searle's hypothesis seriously until
it is proved. True, Searle may well offer adequate justification for his
hypothesis elsewhere in his book, but even then, Searle is hardly an
authority. In the words of one reviewer of this book:
Searle's logical formalism may "pull-the-wool" over many people's
eyes, but his statements have garnered much negative criticism in the
eyes of his peers.
Perhaps the best way to sum up his book is that he believes there is
no difference between the mind and the body, and that the original
question is flawed, yet at the same time, he establishes the existence
of an intention, an entirely mental concept have physical
equivalences. This is really an uninspired type of answer, and is
largely considered a cop-out by most.
One seeks to justify a position in various ways, one is which is to show
that it is the position of a generally recognized authority in the
field. Searle is not a generally recognized authority, and his position
in the passage does not seem relevant to anything I've been saying.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> The real problem about consciousness is that it is a vague concept,
>> and people don't agree on what it means. Hence there is much
>> disagreement on statements that use the word "consciousness."
>There are many things that seem real mental states however vague they
>may be. I mentioned being in love. Why does the vagueness of a concept
>or disagreement over its meaning sully its reality?
What's your point? Or are you just trying to score debating
points?
I did not question the reality of consciousness. I mentioned
vagueness as a reason for why there are lots of disagreements,
not as a reason to question its reality.
>>>> I could equally say that theories don't have truth.
>> There's a point where I agree with jason.
>OK, I naturally look for your justification of a position that obviously
>runs counter to common sense.
It is not so much counter to common sense as it is counter to the
conventional wisdom. There isn't much point in wasting time trying
to argue this, since it is clear that you uncritically swallow a
lot of the conventional wisdom.
> Do I find it? Only in part, for you raise
>a question about correspondence theory, but not about the notion of
>truth, and you don't specifying with which of the quite different
>correspondence theories you disagree, and you offer no reason why you
>doubt the existence of truth.
There you go, attributing to me a belief that I do not have,
and then trying to pressure me into defending it. I never denied
the existence of truth. I specifically suggested that truth is a
pragmatic social convention, which seems far removed from denying
its existence.
>> The trouble with the correspondence theory of truth, is that it begs
>> the question of how we can tell whether a statement corresponds to the
>> way the world is. As far as I can tell, just about all philosophical
>> treatments of truth are question begging.
>Yes, but isn't that a result of making philosophy the criterion of
>truth?
Where have I made philosophy a criterion? Or is this another case of
you setting up a strawman that you can knock down?
>Your uncertainty may arise because I was speaking of a definition of
>truth, not a warrant of a statement's truthfulness, and these are two
>quite different things.
I was explicitly addressing your definition, and arguing that it
was question begging.
> A dictionary tells us what is conventionally
>meant by the word truth, but not how we ascertain the truth of a
>statement.
Actually, no, a dictionary cannot tell us what is meant, for meaning
is inherently subjective and not anything that can be printed in a
dictionary. At best a dictionary attempts to hint at the meaning,
but that's not the same as telling us what is the meaning. Oh,
in case you haven't noticed, dictionary definitions are circular.
> I believe a correspondence theory is a definition, while
>praxix is a method.
I believe that correspondence theory could not possibly be a
definition of "truth".
I don't actually disagree with saying that truth is correspondence
with reality. My disagreement is with calling that a theory
of truth. I see it as a theory of reality.
>You would have better tried to point out that a praxical test is
>circular, for there's no external standard of success.
That would not make it circular, though it might make it subjective.
For the case of scientific theories, there is a shared subjectivity
involved. By the way, you should not assume that I agree with
traditional empiricist views.
>> I can't say what is jason's basis for this. I can only say what is my
>> basis. As far as I can tell, we accept scientific theories for their
>> pragmatic virtues. Then we simply declare those theories to be true.
>> If we later find a better theory - one which we find has better
>> pragmatic qualities (it make better predictions, for example), then we
>> abandon the old theory, and we cease asserting that the old theory is
>> true. Instead we declare the new theory to be true.
>I don't understand. You start by implying that no theory has any truth,
>and then proceed to give a pragmatic justification for the truth value
>of our theories.
That's a misreading. I reported on how people seem to decide to
say that theories are true. It doesn't follow that I think this is
good practice. Unless you want to take consensus as a basis for
truth, I see no reason to conclude that scientific theories are
either true or false. What is important about them, is that they
define empirical practice in the field. That requires that they
be accepted as good practice, but it does not require that they be
either true or false.
>>> 1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
>>> correspond in some sense with the world.
>> But what is that "some sense". And how do you determine, in non
>> question begging way, whether a statement corresponds with the world?
>That is a question of how we know truth.
No, it is a question of how your definition could be meaningful,
Sigh. Once again, I'll remind you that I have not been skeptical
about whether there is truth. It's just that truth does not matter
for scientific theories. If you want to take a scientific theory to
a monastery, and see if you are given divine guidance on its truth,
that's your right. But it will make no difference to the science.
The gas laws from physics are false, and well known to be false.
They are usually called "ideal gas laws" in recognition that we
have to consider an imaginary ideal gas if we want them to be true.
But they are still useful for real non-ideal gases.
>You are obviously using "knowledge" in a different sense than I.
Sure. I thought I was pointing that out.
> By the
>word I meant the act or state of knowing; a clear perception of fact,
>truth; cognition.
You are the one who wrote of transmission of knowledge. We cannot
transmit the act or state of knowing. We cannot transmit clear
perceptions. We cannot transmit cognition. It seems that your
definition fits my use of "knowledge" better than it fits yours.
>> You are still begging the question of how we tell whether a statement
>> is in correspondence with the world.
>No, I'm here characterizing truthful statements and not speaking of how
>we verify their truthfulness, although obviously what we know about
>their character will have a bearing on how we validate that
>truthfulness.
No, you are not characterizing truthful statements. For that you
would have to first have characterised what it means for a statement
to be in correspondence with the world, and you would have needed
to present that characterisation in a way that did not depend on
the notions of truth and truthfulness.
Maybe you could say that you are taking "truth" and "correspondence"
as undefined concepts, and defining only how they are used in
statements. Mathematician often use that form of definition,
but they are usually quite clear about what they consider to
be undefined concepts. If you want to do it that way, okay.
But you should be clear upfront that that is what you are doing.
That way of defining does have the advantage that it would work
just as well for the solipsist as for the realist.
>A judicial proceeding is typically very uncertain about where the truth
>lies, but it is based on the presumption that there is a truth.
I'm not sure why you are bring that up. It seems to be a change
of subject.
> What I'm hinting at here is that doubt
>about the existence of truth has moral implications that seem
>horrendous, and in fact the example most often brought up in this
>context is the reality of the Holocaust and whether it was morally
>pernicious.
Watch out for Godwin's law "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law".
I'll remind you yet again that I have not expressed doubt about
the existence of truth.
> We can't reduce truth to philosophy, for it first and
>foremost has to do with the appropriateness of our actions - with
>morality and wise practice.
The word "truth" is used in widely disparate ways. One way has
to do with statements about reality. Use in moral statements is a
completely different use. Use in statements about meta-discussions
(such as we are having) is another quite different use. For sure,
people move easily from one form to another, based on context.
But in philosophical discussions we should at least recognize when
we are making such a switch.
>> I don't get this "warrant" business. It's as if you went to God's
>> court, presented your evidence, and God issued a warrant. Isn't it
>> time to get away from that kind of thinking? Okay, I recognize that
>> you are not intending "warrant" in that sense. But to us
>> non-philosophers, the word "warrant" as a noun always suggests a
>> document or other certifying token.
>Well, my dictionary says nothing about a document or certifying token,
>but that's OK, if you don't like the word I'll use another, such as
>"justified".
I'll assume you are familiar with Gettier, and the problem he found
with "justified".
>> Why isn't it obvious that truth itself is but a pragmatic social
>> convention, adopted to make language work?
>And does that fact that it is a social convention make it untrue?
>There's no logic here, for social conventions regarding what is true
>could as well be true as false.
It is hard to see that as anything other than an appeal to God
(or to a perfect truth determiner). Or perhaps I should see it
as an appeal to mysticism. How can people consider themselves
*analytic* philosophers, when they refuse to analyse and instead
make everything mysterious?
> Again, you take the point that what we
>take to be true is often a social convention to imply that truth does
>not exist, ...
Where have I suggested such an implication?
> And how would you prove it?
Proofs exist in mathematics, but not in real life.
>And why should anyone accept the linguistic turn implied here, that
>truth, morality, love and all else reduces to language?
No, I have not accepted the linguistic turn, and have clearly
disagreed with some of its implications.
>> What knowledge is universal? Why would we need to educate people, if
>> knowledge were universal?
>You misunderstand me.
Actually, I did not understand you at all, hence the question. It seems
that your terminology is poor for what you were trying to say.
>You wish to reverse this and reduce the mind and brain to nothing but
>statements? Do you wish to reduce all reality to semantics?
If anything, that would seem to describe what you have been doing.
-----------------
>Again, the term correspondence theory of truth can be used to define
>truth or it can refer to the ways in which we verify that statements
>correspond to the world.
But it cannot do either unless you have first developed a notion
of correspondence that is independent of your concept of truth.
> We often think of correspondence as entailing
>some outside standard of measure, as indeed is often the case, so that
>if we are speaking of a correspondence theory of truth in general,
>there's no standard that is not located in either pole of that relation,
>the world or the mind.
Then you are invoking religion, in the form of an appeal to a god
or perfect truth determiner.
>>>I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
>>>between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in that
>>>a truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions constrained
>>>by the world.
>> But it is only an apparent relation that depends on question begging.
>Why is that relation "apparent". I make a statement about the world and
>clearly there's a relation. It makes no sense to say it is apparent
>unless you deny either the mind or the world, which I don't gather you
>intend to do.
You measure the height of your desk to be 30 inches. Did you already
know that it was 30 inches, and that you can now say that the measurement
is true because it corresponds to the way the world is? Or did you have
to measure it first, to determine that it is 30 inches, and from that
you determined something about the way the world is?
I'm saying it is the second, and that correspondence is our theory
of reality, not our theory of truth. In this case truth of the
measurement is defined in terms of the measuring conventions, not in
terms of a correspondence. We cannot appeal to an outsider, for any
appeal has to be to somebody who knows the measuring conventions.
And since the measuring conventions are clearly a social construct,
such a determination is necessarily an internal one (internal to
the society that follows these conventions).
>The question begging is not over the definition of truth, but the
>verification of truth.
Wrong again. You continue to make that mistake.
>Jason expressed his belief; he didn't seek to justify it. While stopping
>at the red light may be only social convention at work, that I belief
>the light is red and red means to stop unless I want to get ticketed is
>a set of true statements that are not merely social conventions.
You are creating an intellectualist superstructure that does not actually
play any role in your stopping at the red light.
>> Here's a relevant quote from Searle's "Intentionality (p. 150):
>>...
>> It seems to me that Searle's view of skiing could just as easily apply
>> to stopping at a red light. And it does not depend on "truthful
>> knowledge."
>Funny, I was just reading Searle yesterday ("Rationality and Realism",
>1993), and gagged because he uttered nonsense (in terms of his
>historical presuppositions, about which I do know a little).
I never claimed that Searle was omniscient. I merely quoted him
to illustrate a point.
>I don't see the point of the quotation of Searle here. He is speaking of
>only a motor skill, and suggesting that the skill eventually becomes
>hard wired in brain rather than be represented in the form of
>unconscious rules.
Well, in that case, your stopping a the red light is a mere motor skill,
and truth is not involved in the exercise of that skill.
> However, my stopping at the red light is not a motor
>skill beyond the initial instinctive movement of my foot, for it quickly
>becomes a conscious choice.
Do you really think somebody can ski on a tricky slope without making
conscious choices? Do you really think Searle was suggesting that?
>Finally, and most importantly, the quotation from Searle is only a
>hypothesis that is here not proved.
I'll point out that your own posts are mostly hypotheses that are not
proved.
> What is the point of the quotation,
>for no one has any reason for taking Searle's hypothesis seriously until
>it is proved.
Nothing is ever proved in philosophy.
jason
>
> Afraid I don't understand. What do you mean by "directly aware"? Do you
> mean that we don't have sensory experience of consciousness? If so, is
> this not an instance of the old "brute facts" theory? I don't accept
> it, nor do most others. There are many things of which I have no direct
> awareness, but certainly are real. I have the power of sight, but can't
> see it; I'm in love; I have mental powers and know how to make my cup of
> coffee, etc. If you are not saying that observation alone is the basis
> of "brute facts", the only real facts, or the only reliably known facts,
> then just what do you mean?
Yes, the camera can't take a picture of itself analogy. You can't see
your power of sight, although in a lab you can see eye balls and the
part of the brain where the visual processing goes on. But it's the
experience of sight that's the bit we can't get at, not the impression
it leaves in our memory or the commentary "I know I'm seeing right
now". The subject pole of the subject-object axis, is the exact thing
that can't be the object of our awareness. If you take away the
object the awareness vanishes, in this picture of things. We can't
simply say that because we are aware of an object then there must be
awareness, because it's begging the question.
> I offered the conventional meaning of truth and suggested it does not
> reduce to utility. You don't address the point I raised.
I thought I did elsewhere. Talk of truth and utility are
incommensurable. Utility, from economics, doesn't just mean useful
but what we find desirable. For our own reasons of desire we trade
stories that we might call "true", so there is no reduction of truth
to utility and I haven't suggested there is one. I'm suggesting to
let go of using terms like "truth" and "knowledge" after the old
manner, and start using new terms in new ways.
> On what grounds do you say that no theory has any truth? If no theory
> has truth, then your theorem that they have no truth is surely not
> true. In other words, you are free to argue that no theory is true, but
> you must justify that position, for it seems illogical and is surely
> unconventional.
I'm not asserting my theory is true, like I said, assertions are
possible without the idea of truth.
Logic relies on the idea of truth, so under logical analysis you would
get a contradiction. But why do we need an artificial language and a
system of symbol manipulation to tell us how to think? I'm surely
being unconventional too, but since when is popular vote good criteria
for argument?
> What does warrant have to do with god? I only meant the word in the
> sense of justify. My dictionary definition for warrant does not mention
> any gods.
I used "god" as a marker pen for where the idea of warrant departs
human durastiction and so can only be followed by faith.
> On what grounds do you believe that no one knows anything? If that were
> true, how could I discuss it with you?
I'm not saying that the truth is there is no truth, or that I know
that we don't know. I'm not looking for the grounds under which to
support truth, or the grounds in which the tree of knowledge can be
planted. There is no such garden of eden. Moreover, this doesn't
mean I believe our claims of truth and knowledge stand over an abyss.
I'm abandoning this whole picture of a grounds altogether because it
is a religious one, and adopting a more mundane picture of things; at
this point, one that involves the idea of utility.
It doesn't mean we can't talk about things either or that we should
stop using the terms. I'm trying to get across that the whole picture
of truth and knowledge is so entrenched in our cultural word game that
we've lost the ability to do without them, and that there are other
word games that we might play, ones that do without religious
beliefs. These beliefs are a relic from times when it was thought the
world was spoken into existence, a time when it was thought that
language mediated reality.
Well, if I believed in truth and knowledge, then I suppose I'd have to
say yes to your question. If I understand it correctly that it. The
more points of view you have on the world the richer its apprehension,
so presumably, if you have many points of view agreeing then you've
covered off more potential reality.
Someone might argue that many points of view are open to propoganda
effects or that truth isn't decided on popular vote, but they
shouldn't be difficult to curtail.
> > Give that truth has the same ontological status as a relation, and
> > that relations there no such thing as relations "out there", the in
> > what way do relations exist? What connects similar things? It's the
> > old nominalist/realist debate, which we're not about to settle here.
>
> I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
> between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in that a
> truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions constrained by
> the world. What do you mean there are no causal relations out there?
> Obviously there are, for there's all kinds of things going on of which
> we presumably are unaware.
As far as I'm aware, this is the first time you've started to get at
the nature of your truth correspondence relation.
You say truth is a causal relation but it is also caused by the mind.
Does the mind cause a causal relation or do you mean that this causal
relation, if we traced it, would be the truth relation? (although
reading what you say below I'm not sure either are right)
> >> Well, I just gave you an example. If I go through red lights, I'll
> >> probably be arrested. What is circular about this? Does not my
> >> assessment of the dangers of running the light correspond to the
> >> probability of being arrested? True, a crude and simplistic example,
> >> but doesn't it warrant some kind of correspondence theory? My
> >> understanding is that the problems lie with specific correspondence
> >> theories, not correspondence in general, and that the only
> >> alternative to correspondence in general is solipsism.
>
> > It can be explained as cause and effect. There is no need to reflect
> > on the situation and claim that the reflection has truth and warrant.
> > This reflection process can also be explained as cause and effect.
>
> Not sure, but I believe you are only taking the empiricist objection to
> causal relations in that since they are only inferred and represent
> uncertain knowledge, we are better to use a Humean definition of
> causality in that it is a relation of events that are proximate in time
> and space, etc. But you said you did not want to pursue this path. The
> only basis for not accepting my own propositions is that a) you show why
> they are wrong, or b) you offer an alternative that you show has better
> features. You don't do either. If there is no reason to prefer the
> empiricist over the realist position on causality, why did you bring it
> up?
Hey, what happened to c?
I remember objecting to the idea that truth and warrant are necessary
preconditions for the possibility of stopping at a red light. I
figured causality was enough.
> > If you discredit the idea of correspondence, then all correspondence
> > theories suffer, surely.
>
> Not my position. In fact, I thought it was you who doubted any
> correspondence because you doubted that our statements have any truth
> value.
Sorry, by "you" I meant anyone and everyone.
> > My remark here doesn't cast any doubt on correspondence. It doesn't
> > get us closer to truth because that's exactly the idea I disagree
> > with. It's a remark to direct suspicion to common sense. It's the
> > foundation of our world views and the cause of a lot hand-waving,
> > "full of sound and fury". My question is, why do we base so much of
> > our views on something we almost never question? And once it does
> > take the witness stand, why is it full of contradictions, circular
> > arguments and blind assumptions?
>
> No idea what you are talking about. Does the first sentence mean you do
> accept a correspondence theory? But then does your second sentence deny
> it? The third sentence make no sense to me in terms of English. Next do
> you say that correspondence is the foundation of our world view (and so
> good and necessary) and the cause of a lot of hand waving (ans so bad
> and unnecessary)? Who doesn't question the truth of statements? I assume
> everyone does it all the time. What is this about witness stand? What is
> full of contradictions?
Yes, re-reading it its poorly written. I'm saying firstly that I'm
not trying to prove correspondence right or wrong - just remove the
need for it. The best I can claim to do is make it look
unattractive. I certainly don't accept it because of the assumptions
it has. I think it can be made to work, but the price to be paid is
too high. Second, that our common sense is full of contradictions,
circular and blind assumptions, so it's a poor choice for grounds for
a theory.
> > It's not the discovery of hidden dogma but the letting go of this
> > dogma that's the important point. Once we do this, we are basically
> > letting go of the world view we've inherited and therefore free to
> > create our own. But as I say, I think this is just another bogus
> > schema. The whole idea for going down this road is to tear down the
> > old, on the grounds that there is no truth, and and replace it with
> > the new because it's more interesting. So it's quite happy to admit
> > it's bogus.
>
> I'm not persuaded. We don't develop by becoming detached, but by being
> engaged. Otherwise, we would learn more by not going to school or
> experiencing the world, but we know very well that the opposite is the
> case. Detachment is death, not freedom.
I'm sure the buddhists would disagree with you :)
Well, I'm not persuaded either so at least on this we agree. I don't
believe in the idea of development however, unless by development you
mean getting better at surviving.
> > I though I did a bit more than just say "ah... no." For example,
> > question what ontological status correspondence has and if we can say
> > that it exists at all, the offering of an alternative view of things
> > that lives without the idea that is being refuted, etc.
>
> Well, OK. See my mention of radical empiricism above. Are you taking
> that position vs. say, critical empiricism, pragmatism or realism? One
> of these three, or a mix of these three, represent the consensus today
> in the philosophy of science. So anyone who chooses to differ, needs to
> justify their position. It does not mean anything to negate or caste
> doubt on a position without any justification.
I suppose I'm a pragmatist at the moment, but my main "position" is
that I don't really believe in the truth of positions, only in their
current utility, which will is personal and will inevitably change. I
doubt I'll come back to truth however.
> > I don't believe in morality, good and evil. I think they're social
> > constructs and meaningless outside of human discourse.
>
> Why do you bring this up now?
Oh. You meantioned morality a few times... just a passing comment.
> > "Effective action" hasn't found traction on me for some reason. Maybe
> > because I'm not sure quite where it fits in.
>
> Effective action is often taken as a warrant for the truth value of our
> statements. You are free to disagree with this common view, but only if
> you say why and justify that position.
If I were to disagree, I'd say that effective action is close to
sounding like useful action, and if useful action warrants us to say
that a sentence is "true" then it sounds to me like it's a realist
position couched in the language of a pragmatist. Let's call this
position the "new realist" (after the "new right" from politics). So
I'd probaby say great, that sounds good, but why bother with the word
"true"?
> > My world view is that there is no foundations for truth and knowledge
> > and that it doesn't stop us from stopping at red lights, paying our
> > taxes or helping old ladies cross the street.
>
> The issue is what causes us to stop at the red light. What causes us not
> to stop may be that we think we can get away with it, etc., which is not
> the issue I raised. I made a simple point that my stopping at the red
> light required that I have truthful knowledge about color, about the
> rules of the road, about the brake pedal, etc.
Yes, I understood you mean that. I was generalising to say that we
can live our lives quite happily without the notions of truth and
knowledge.
> > Note that my reasons for this equally have to claim to truth. My
> > reasons are, at bottom, emotive at best. I can't offer you any
> > constructive arguments, only critical feedback on constructions.
>
> This critical feedback I don't see beyond a generalized nihilistic
> skepticism. The question I raised had to do with the relation of the
> universality of theories and their truth value. To doubt there are
> theories, to doubt truth means anything, is hardly critical feedback.
If I just said "truth and theories don't exist", you'd be right. But
I come with a story of why we use words like "truth" and "knowledge",
that their notions aren't needed to make sense of the world and that
there is another set of notions that could replace them. Under the
view I offer, what I'm offering you is critical feedback. What you
see is contradiction, non-sense and nihilism, which I appreciate
because I felt the same way when I first started trying to make sense
of it.
> > The thing you learn in history 101 is that there is not truth about
> > the past, just interpretation. That's exactly why it's not a science.
> > While science is only interpretation too, the interpretation has
> > observable constraints to offer a metric that lets them say it's the
> > /best/ interpretation so far.
>
> Not true. Science does not have to do with absolute truth, but degrees
> of truth. That is, the interpretation offered in History 101 is presumed
> to have truth value, and the theorem offered in Physics 101 is supposed
> to represent an approximate truth. Your notion of science seems
> radically empiricist, when in fact it has not been for a very long
> time. Some sciences, such as quantum mechanics, are not based on
> observables at all.
You'll find that some physicist appreciate that "truth" is a tenuous
notion. Many mathematicians and logicians realise that "truth" is a
techincal term particular to their field.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes: >Neil W Rickert
><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
>>> The real problem about consciousness is that it is a vague concept,
>>> and people don't agree on what it means. Hence there is much
>>> disagreement on statements that use the word "consciousness."
>
>>There are many things that seem real mental states however vague they
>>may be. I mentioned being in love. Why does the vagueness of a concept
>>or disagreement over its meaning sully its reality?
>
> What's your point? Or are you just trying to score debating points?
>
> I did not question the reality of consciousness. I mentioned
> vagueness as a reason for why there are lots of disagreements, not as
> a reason to question its reality.
Oh, Sorry. I misunderstood. I had the impression that the reality of
consciousness was being questioned.
>>>>> I could equally say that theories don't have truth.
>
>>> There's a point where I agree with jason.
>
>>OK, I naturally look for your justification of a position that
>>obviously runs counter to common sense.
>
> It is not so much counter to common sense as it is counter to the
> conventional wisdom. There isn't much point in wasting time trying to
> argue this, since it is clear that you uncritically swallow a lot of
> the conventional wisdom.
Your paragraph puzzles me. Are in you fact saying that theories lack
truth value, and that this lack of truth value is not only conventional
wisdom, but also common sense? Could we be suffering from a gross
misunderstanding here? If you ask the average physicist whether the
special theory of relativity represents a truth about the world, surely
he would say yes, and chances are it is because it is conventional
wisdom in his field (although it runs counter to common sense).
I should note that my dictionary tells me that English writers often
confuse the words theory and hypothesis, so that the word theory can
mean simply a conjecture. I assume we aren't making this mistake.
I find it hard to justify my point that theory has truth value because
we mean by "common sense" what is intuitively obvious to us rather than
what is supported by proof and evidence. Common sense seems to apply to
the experience of daily life, in which the theoretical component remains
implicit. So my remark that your proposition that theory lacks truth
value is runs counter to common sense is not easy to defend in principle,
for theory tends to be what common sense tends to ignore.
But in practical terms I think I can defend it. My point was that common
sense suggests that when we speak of the general principles or the
scheme of things (first two definitions for "theory" in my dictionary),
we don't intend to invent fictions, for what then would be the point of
it?
My dictionary definition for "theory" uses the example of the general
principles behind musical practice. So are you suggesting that it is
obvious on the face of it that the general principles of music lack
truth value in that music has no general principles? Doesn't common
sense suggest that there are general principles in music to which the
term musical theory refers? I once was married to a woman who studied
music theory at BU. Why would she have spent her money on tuition if she
was not learning something she felt was truthful about music?
The final thing I find strange about your paragraph is the suggestion
that I should not swallow conventional wisdom. Why not? My feeling is
that I am woefully too little in command of conventional wisdom. What is
wrong with conventional wisdom? Most of it, most of the time, will be
reliable and useful. Shouldn't we contest convention only when there are
contradictions that compel us to do so? To ferret out unconventional
positions just because they are unconventional strikes me as very odd
and culturally parochial. Even academic departments are in fact very
intolerant of real innovation, although they like minor deviation from
the norm because it offers a simulacrum of
creativity. Deconstructionism, for example, is neo-Kantianism warmed
over and hardly new to the Cartesian dualism of Euro-American
Enlightenment culture over two centuries old.
> There you go, attributing to me a belief that I do not have, and then
> trying to pressure me into defending it. I never denied the existence
> of truth. I specifically suggested that truth is a pragmatic social
> convention, which seems far removed from denying its existence.
Not necessarily "far removed". Thomas Kuhn, for example, is noteworthy
for the position that truth is a social convention and was agnostic, if
I recall correctly, about its correspondence to reality. But you are
right, for to speak of truth as a social convention does not necessarily
imply it is nothing but social convention. I'm sorry to have
misunderstood you by infering you denied the truth value of
propositions.
But keep in mind that you, or more likely, Jason brought up the name of
Richard Rorty as his inspiration. Rorty felt that we make a big mistake
to assume that our mental conceptions have truth value in relation to
the world to which our conceptions refer. Given this, it is natural for
me to have taken a statement that truth is a social convention to mean
that it is nothing but a social convention and has no truth value in
relation to the world. If I confused your position with that of Jason or
Rorty, I apologize.
>>> The trouble with the correspondence theory of truth, is that it begs
>>> the question of how we can tell whether a statement corresponds to
>>> the way the world is. As far as I can tell, just about all
>>> philosophical treatments of truth are question begging.
>
>>Yes, but isn't that a result of making philosophy the criterion of
>>truth?
>
> Where have I made philosophy a criterion? Or is this another case of
> you setting up a strawman that you can knock down?
While you seem to imply that the truthfulness of statements is not
something to be resolved by philosophical understanding, you seem to do
the opposite in practice. For example, either you or Jason mentioned a
utilitarian theory of truth, which I take to be the philosophical
position that the test for truth is utility. I'm not talking here in
circles. Mere practice can't give rise to the issue of the truth value
of our statements; only philosophy can do that. If I set up a straw-man,
I apologize, but then where do you stand? If I have to make guesses
about it, I'm naturally going to end up with straw-men.
>>Your uncertainty may arise because I was speaking of a definition of
>>truth, not a warrant of a statement's truthfulness, and these are two
>>quite different things.
>
> I was explicitly addressing your definition, and arguing that it was
> question begging.
>
>> A dictionary tells us what is conventionally
>>meant by the word truth, but not how we ascertain the truth of a
>>statement.
>
> Actually, no, a dictionary cannot tell us what is meant, for meaning
> is inherently subjective and not anything that can be printed in a
> dictionary. At best a dictionary attempts to hint at the meaning, but
> that's not the same as telling us what is the meaning. Oh, in case
> you haven't noticed, dictionary definitions are circular.
It wasn't _my_ definition, for I used convention. My dictionary says
that truth is conformity to fact or reality; a statement concerning the
real state of things; and established principle, a fact that has been
verified, a statement about the world that is not false, etc. The
dictionary, which presumably represents convention, implies a
correspondence theory of truth. In other words, a correspondence theory
is conventional. This means I don't have to justify it, and the burden
falls on those who doubt it.
But now you don't even like the conventional meaning of the word
"meaning"! Yes, my dictionary says that meaning is what one has in mind,
what one signifies, indicates, etc. So my dictionary's "meaning" of the
word "truth" is that conventionally, people mean by it some
correspondence with reality, and this is what they have in mind, and so
is their meaning.
To say that something is subjective (a valid point raised by
deconstructionism is that traditional binary opposites, such as
self/world, lack sufficient justification), does not necessarily mean
that that implying the binary when saying that statements are entirely
subjective and not also determined by the world is necessarily
meaningless. The conceptual categories we create, such as self/other,
mind/matter are not false, but one-sided. That is, they capture some
truth about things, but under the crirical scrutiny of the
deconstrutionists, it seems increasingly little of it. It is one thing
so say that such binaries as being/becoming, true/falsity,
determination/freedom are socially constructed and ideological, and it
is another to suggest the are not one-sided and have no truth value
whatsoever.
I've already suggested that the truth value of our mental constructions
arises from the constraint imposed by the world on the actions in the
world from which consciousness arises. This position can be challenged
of course, and I was hoping you would do so, but so far you have not
tried. Positing your counter position does not challenge my own unless
you provide your own with justifications that are not themselves
contentious.
But, of course, if you feel that convention carries no weight, then
there can be no such conventional justifications for your own position,
whatever it might happen to be. Without your own justification, it
reduces to just your personal opinion, which I suppose is just as good
as anyone else's whimsy. In contrast, my own position depends on a
social connectedness in which is conventional enough to be called upon
for its justification. If there is complete anomie, how can one expect
to communicate anything or speak of truth or effectively counter the
views of others?
>>I believe a correspondence theory is a definition, while praxix is a
>>method.
> I believe that correspondence theory could not possibly be a
> definition of "truth".
As I showed, it is in fact presumed by the dictionary definition. When
one says that a statement is true because it corresponds in some way
with reality outside the mind, is that not a definition of truth? Is
that not the dictionary definition? I must be misunderstanding you
here. Yes, one might object that the dictionary definition is circular,
but even so that does not mean that the dictionary definition is not the
conventional definition of the word "truth". I suppose that many of our
meanings entail circularity.
Of course, if one insists there is no reality independent of mind or
over which the mind has some influence, then I suppose a
correspondence theory makes no sense. Or one could say that while
there's a reality out there, we have no hope of knowing anything about
it. I have no reason to know whether you hold to these positions. Can't
think, off hand, of any other alternatives that might undercut the
implied axioms presumed by the dictionary definition of truth. Are you
saying either that a) there's no reality that is largely independent of
mind, or b) we cannot know anything truthful about that reality?
But surely these two alternatives are counter-intuitive, contrary to
common sense, and contrary to convention, and as such must be justified
somehow, although logically it seems that the only possible
justifications in this situation would be internal ones, such as Occam's
Razor, non-contradiction, good Gestalt, etc. But if everything comes
down to just that, are we not caught up in solipsism?
> I don't actually disagree with saying that truth is correspondence
> with reality. My disagreement is with calling that a theory of truth.
> I see it as a theory of reality.
The correspondence theory of truth is conventionally considered a
"theory" of truth, as is a rationalist theory of truth or a coherence
theory of truth. See Wikipedia.
You don't object to the content of the correspondence theory, but to
characterizing it as a theory, for you say a correspondence theory is
actually a theory of reality. Sorry, this makes no sense to me at all. A
theory of reality is usually called an ontology; the word "truth" is a
property of our _statements_, as the dictionary makes clear, not a
property of the world.
>>You would have better tried to point out that a praxical test is
>>circular, for there's no external standard of success.
>
> That would not make it circular, though it might make it subjective.
> For the case of scientific theories, there is a shared subjectivity
> involved. By the way, you should not assume that I agree with
> traditional empiricist views.
Well yes. I meant by "circular" that it was its own test. As you point
out, it is also subjective, although with the proviso that utility
entails worldly constraints and so have some truth value.
I apologize if I implied you agreed with traditional
empiricism. Generally, I can't make that assumption at all. First, I've
little idea of where you stand. I originally brought up an aspect of a
coherence theory of truth to ask why it might contribute to the
potential truth value of statements, and I got back a barrage of
opinions about the dubious status of truth. While neither you nor Jason
expressed any standpoint or tried to defend one, my impression was that
at least one of you favored a deconstructionism, and many of your
statements seemed to lend support to that impression. Deconstructionism
_usually_ is not considered traditional empiricism.
>>> I can't say what is jason's basis for this. I can only say what is
>>> my basis. As far as I can tell, we accept scientific theories for
>>> their pragmatic virtues. Then we simply declare those theories to
>>> be true. If we later find a better theory - one which we find has
>>> better pragmatic qualities (it make better predictions, for
>>> example), then we abandon the old theory, and we cease asserting
>>> that the old theory is true. Instead we declare the new theory to
>>> be true.
>
>>I don't understand. You start by implying that no theory has any
>>truth, and then proceed to give a pragmatic justification for the
>>truth value of our theories.
>
> That's a misreading. I reported on how people seem to decide to say
> that theories are true. It doesn't follow that I think this is good
> practice.
OK
> Unless you want to take consensus as a basis for truth, I see no
> reason to conclude that scientific theories are either true or false.
> What is important about them, is that they define empirical practice
> in the field. That requires that they be accepted as good practice,
> but it does not require that they be either true or false.
Do I understand you to be adopting an instrumentalist position, with an
agnosticism about whether our theories happen to be true or not?
You understand that there are objections to instrumentalism and the
suggestion that our hypotheses are merely hendy fictions, since its
origin in the 17th century. Am I wrong to associate instrumentalism with
empiricism?
Here from the (arguably) best standard text today on the philosophy of
science:
"Logical empiricism is thus essentially instrumentalist position: it
holds that the synthetic content of a scientific (or other) theory or
doctrine is exhausted by the set of observable predictions deducible
from it. It purchases its critique of metaphysics at the cost (if it
is a cost) of denying, for example, that in confirming the atomic
theory of matter scientists have confirmed a theory about unobservable
atomic constituents of matter!" (p. 7)
"I think that it is fair to say that, given the difficulties which
plague empiricist antirealism in the philosophy of science, the only
philosophically cogent reason for rejecting scientific realism in
favor of instrumentalism, or some other variant of empiricism, lies in
the conviction that only from an empiricist perspective can one be
faithful to the basic idea that factual knowledge must be experimental
knowledge, that is, to the grain of truth in knowledge empiricism."
(p. 218)
This from Richard Boyd, Philip Gasper, and J. D. Trout, eds., _The
Philosophy of Science_ (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995). Now I suppose that
my appeal to authority might fail if there is no authority at all and
truth were merely a private whimsy. But such a radical skepticism would
seem to pull the rug from under any discussion at all. But short of that
radical skepticism, it seems that my association of instrumentalism and
empiricism is well founded. Now whether you are an instrumentalist, of
course, I'm uncertain, for you have not taken or tried to defend any
position.
>>>> 1. Truth refers to a quality of statements of fact in that they
>>>> correspond in some sense with the world.
>
>>> But what is that "some sense". And how do you determine, in non
>>> question begging way, whether a statement corresponds with the
>>> world?
>
>>That is a question of how we know truth.
>
> No, it is a question of how your definition could be meaningful,
Some confusion here. The first statement is my own, but I'm not sure who
made those that follow. The final statement of your own seems to say that
my definition (the first quote) is not meaningful. I think I've already
addressed this by suggesting that it is compatible with the dictionary
definition and therefore perhaps meaningful, although perhaps open to
philosophical objections.
From A.R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy (New York, 1976):
"The correspondence theory is perhaps the commonist theory of truth,
partly because 'correspondence' can be interpreted strictly or
loosely."
"In its strictest form...this theory involves a relation between two
things, that which is true (a proposition, belief, judgement, etc.)
and that which makes it true (a fact, or perhaps a state of affairs or
event)."
So, according to Lacey, a correspondence theory is commonly
meaningful. I don't see, and he doesn't suggest, that because the
theory's "correspondence" is a rather fluid notion it causes the theory
to loose meaning. So far no one has offered reasons why a contention
that there's no world out there about which we can make truthful
statements need be taken seriously. Of course, if our aim is not at all
a pursuit of intersubjective truth, then I suppose we need not justify
our positions.
> Sigh. Once again, I'll remind you that I have not been skeptical
> about whether there is truth. It's just that truth does not matter
> for scientific theories. If you want to take a scientific theory to a
> monastery, and see if you are given divine guidance on its truth,
> that's your right. But it will make no difference to the science.
Sigh ;-). I don't understand what you mean by saying that truth does not
matter when it comes to scientific theories. It obviously means a lot to
those who propose them, for they think of themselves in a quest for
truth. I suspect it means something to the man on the street, who not
only is inclined to assume that money spent on scientific research is
spend on a quest for truth about the world, but is deeply affected every
day by the fact that scientific theory has truth value (he drives an
automobile to work which is a product of the so-called Second Industrial
Revolution that is characterized in part by the application of science
to production).
Are you saying that truth does not matter in scientific theories, but is
important in non-scientific theories? And where does this divine bit
come in? No one has suggested that there's a transcendental entity out
there we call "Truth" that we can somehow capture, or as Marx put it,
merely open our mouths so that the roasted pigeons of pure science might
fly in. A correspondence theory of truth is a statement about the
_relation_ of statements about the world and a world that is only
presumed to be real. There's a big difference between saying that
something is real (an ontological statement) and saying that something
is true (a property of a statement). I hope you are not making this
error.
Or perhaps you are suggesting that the notion of truth conventionally
presumed by scientists can be logically reduced to sentences that do not
contain the word. If so, what are we to infer from this fact? There are
many circumlocutions, but that they are possible does not imply anything
about the relation of our sentences to the world. I could get rid of the
word "world" here and convey the same meaning: "...relation of our
sentences to our surroundings". My getting rid of the word does not
significantly change the meaning of the sentence.
But perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. Your hesitation about taking
a stand naturally lends itself to difficulties figuring out just what
you mean. For example, you say you have no problem with the notion of
truth, but you adamantly deny that it is a property of the world. But no
one (outside religion) suggests this, but you also seem to object to its
conventional (dictionary) definition. So just what, then, do you mean by
the word truth, since you use it? You do not accept the conventional
meaning of truth as a property of our statements in daily life, and so
what is it? If I don't know what you mean by it, how can I figure out
why you object to it in scientific theories? Whatever this means, it is
only your personal opinion, not an intelligible proposition for which you
offer justification.
> The gas laws from physics are false, and well known to be false. They
> are usually called "ideal gas laws" in recognition that we have to
> consider an imaginary ideal gas if we want them to be true. But they
> are still useful for real non-ideal gases.
The gas laws are approximate truths, are they not? Any why are they
useful? Because they are a hypothetical limiting case, an attractor
around which actual experiments will gravitate. Contrary to what you
have yourself insisted upon, you seem to deny here that gas laws are
true because they are not an absolute truth. In fact, they only offer
confidence that we can predict probabilistic observational macro
behavior from unobservable unequivocally deterministic micro-behavior
(i.e., statistical mechanics), and so an empiricist would have to remain
agnostic about their truth value (about any theorem, for they all
contain axioms about unobservables), but you said you were not a
traditional empiricist.
Who (besides yourself) says the gas laws are false? Any causal
explanation entails a boundary and so is necessarily one-sided (as
Peirce pointed out long ago), but we don't therefore conclude that all
explanations are false, but only that they are approximately true. Only
an absolute notion of truth, which belongs to the world of traditional
theology, not current science, could possibly suggest that since our
statements do not exactly reflect the real world, they are necessarily
false.
>>You are obviously using "knowledge" in a different sense than I.
>
> Sure. I thought I was pointing that out.
>
>>By the word I meant the act or state of knowing; a clear perception of
>>fact, truth; cognition.
I've lost the thread. I have no problem with the definition you offer.
> You are the one who wrote of transmission of knowledge. We cannot
> transmit the act or state of knowing. We cannot transmit clear
> perceptions. We cannot transmit cognition. It seems that your
> definition fits my use of "knowledge" better than it fits yours.
Of course, when we speak of the transmission of knowledge, we imply the
transfer of statements that have truth value. Truth is a property of
statements that is independent of whether we assign that property. If I
make a statement that everyone, including myself, know to be false, but
actually turns out by some fluke to correspond with reality, wouldn't
that be a true statement which is a property intrinsic to statements and
independent of our beliefs about those statements. If I said the world
will come to an end tomorrow, no one believes that, but it may turn out
to be true, even though I knew I was lying. I find very strange any
suggestion, if this be the case, that statements are not constructed and
truthful knowledge transmitted.
Another way to put this, the properties of my statements may not be
entirely my own creation. Just because a statement representing a mental
state is transmitted, does not mean that all the properties of that
mental state are necessarily transmitted by that statement. A fact in my
mind might have all kinds of personal or emotive attachments for me, but
they don't go with my transfer of a statement of the fact unless I make
a special effort to convey those properties. At the same time, people
can infer from the statements of others properties that the maker didn't
assign to them. A person making a racist statement often claims he is no
racist!
> No, you are not characterizing truthful statements. For that you
> would have to first have characterised what it means for a statement
> to be in correspondence with the world, and you would have needed to
> present that characterisation in a way that did not depend on the
> notions of truth and truthfulness.
No, I don't think so. In the correspondence theory of truth, there are
many kinds of correspondence, but difficulty defining just which is
meant does not deconstruct the definition of a correspondence theory of
truth. It may mean, though, that I'd have to give some examples to
convey the meaning to you in less abstract terms. My dictionary offers
five definitions of "truth", all but one or two of which imply an
underlying correspondence theory, but the dictionary remains agnostic
about what the relation of a truthful statement to the object of that
statement might be. It uses works like "conformity", "exact accordance",
"close correspondence", "faithfulness", and so admits a wide range of
possible correspondences, which are not without ambivalence.
But even were I to define this correspondence, can I not do so without
dragging in the notion of truth? For example, if I suggested that a
model of the solar system is an analog of the solar system, am I not
saying that in some respects the model corresponds with the reality
without using the word truth? There may be involved here statements that
I'm assuming to correspond to reality, but truth in the abstract
is not itself present. Is your problem that you assume that people use the word
"truth" to refer to some kind of real abstraction, an ontological entity
that is independent of statements rather merely a property of
statements? But of course no one does that, including my dictionary. To
say that a statement corresponds in some way with the world does not
presume truth or even constitute it, for that correspondence may exist
before even if I meant it as a falsehood. If I say the earth has a moon, that
is merely a statement, but in terms of correspondence theory, its truth
does not depend on whether anyone happens to believe it. People believe
it because it is the consensus or because they verified its truth to
their own satisfaction.
> Maybe you could say that you are taking "truth" and "correspondence"
> as undefined concepts, and defining only how they are used in
> statements.
No, I'm accepting the dictionary definitions of truth and correspondence
because doing so generally best supports dialog. If I had a problem with
the dictionary definitions, I'd say so and try to justify an
alternative. But the point is, they are not undefined or undefinable on
the face of it. That they are subject to different definitions seems to
me an entirely different issue, for that people employ different
meanings for a given word does not mean that the word doesn't refer to
something real. It could refer to multiple realities or just as well
different aspects of a single reality.
>>What I'm hinting at here is that doubt about the existence of truth
>>has moral implications that seem horrendous, and in fact the example
>>most often brought up in this context is the reality of the Holocaust
>>and whether it was morally pernicious.
>
> Watch out for Godwin's law
> "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law". I'll remind you yet
> again that I have not expressed doubt about the existence of truth.
Your warning is well taken. People often associate postmodernism,
deconstruction and cultural relativism, and this is frequently said to
lead to Holocaust denial (Heidegger, for example). But the issue is by
no means so simple. Of course, I was not saying that postmodernism led
to the Holocaust or Holocaust denial, but that others often make this
connection.
For one thing, I hesitate to see ideas as a simple cause of action. But
I won't pursue that point here, but instead the more conventional
framework in which the issue is addressed.
Arguably, the Enlightenment tradition founded moral truth on history,
and any position that denies the significance of history might seem
therefore to deny any justification for morality. That Western values
are historically based is something that I'll assume is agreed upon. But
does postmodernism necessarily mean cultural relativism and does
cultural relativism necessarily mean moral nihilism? Many historians
think so; postmodernism defenders deny it. These are biased opinions, of
course. Historians are not favorably inclined to any position that
denies the significance of their chosen occupation, history, while
postmodern defenders feel that the Holocaust is simply an instance of
Enlightenment values.
As an historian I am biased toward the view that our morality must be
historically grounded and that any denial of history's significant
implies uncertainty about moral values. I realize that this point is not
self-evident, but I believe I could justify it, at least to my own
satisfaction. There are innumerable people in the world today who regret
the lack of moral compass today, but that is obviously not the effect of
a intellectual dispute within a few American English graduate
departments. I find it doubtful that deconstructionism is responsible
for immoral behavior, although it may make the historical or
philosophical establishment of moral norms more difficult. But the
reality seems that global moral uncertainty is primarily result of the
growing social mobility associated with globalization.
However, uncertainty about moral values is not, in my mind, the same
thing as immoral behavior. In fact, I am doubtful that an absence of an
implicit and justified moral compass is a cause of immoral behavior. I
suspect a good part of immoral behavior is perpetuated by folks who
possess a very explicit moral compass, and they behave badly because
their compass is insufficiently historically and socially grounded.
Given all these caveats, it remains that no deconstructionist I've ever
read offers reasonable grounds for moral values, but this may be only
due to my ignorance. While I'd be interested in how a postmodernist
would justify moral behavior, it would clearly be OT here, and since you
don't claim to be a postmodernist, you should not rise to the occasion.
>>> I don't get this "warrant" business. It's as if you went to God's
>>> court, presented your evidence, and God issued a warrant. Isn't it
>>> time to get away from that kind of thinking? Okay, I recognize that
>>> you are not intending "warrant" in that sense. But to us
>>> non-philosophers, the word "warrant" as a noun always suggests a
>>> document or other certifying token.
>
>>Well, my dictionary says nothing about a document or certifying token,
>>but that's OK, if you don't like the word I'll use another, such as
>>"justified".
>
> I'll assume you are familiar with Gettier, and the problem he found
> with "justified".
Sorry, I was not familiar with Gettier, probably mainly because I've
never taken neo-Kantianism very seriously. The grounds of my belief are
action in the world and history, not semantics and philosophy.
>>> Why isn't it obvious that truth itself is but a pragmatic social
>>> convention, adopted to make language work?
>
>>And does that fact that it is a social convention make it untrue?
>>There's no logic here, for social conventions regarding what is true
>>could as well be true as false.
>
> It is hard to see that as anything other than an appeal to God (or to
> a perfect truth determiner). Or perhaps I should see it as an appeal
> to mysticism. How can people consider themselves *analytic*
> philosophers, when they refuse to analyse and instead make everything
> mysterious?
Not at all clear here. So let me recall the context. I had originally
asked for justifications for the coherence theory suggestion that the
potential truth value of a theory is a function of its
universality. Perhaps my "potential" here disqualifies my question being
about coherence theory, but no one has made that objection, and in any
case I did not originally represent it as a coherence theory. You do
seem to object that my question is invalid because its terms presumes
truths that you fund unacceptable. While you stumbled on my word
"universality", I replied with a clarification to which you so far do
not apparently object. But you really don't like any reference to
"truth". Your reason, apparently, is that a use of the word implies the
existence of a supernatural. Well that would be a serious objection if
you had in fact successfully defended this position, which as best I can
make out you have not tried to do. I might add that my question is a
very conventional one, using conventional terms and meanings, and so an
objection that the question itself is illegitimate requires a powerful
argument.
> Proofs exist in mathematics, but not in real life.
That's right. Proofs in a narrow sense of being absolute, unequivocal or
rigid, exist only in logic and mathematics, which might suggest that
they are faulty in some respect. But we use the word "proof" in a looser
sense as warrant, justification, etc. For example, my dictionary says
that "proof" as a noun can mean any process or operation that is
designed to establish or discover a fact or truth, a test or trial; a
degree of evidence that convinces the mind of any truth or fact and
produces belief. Interesting, the only one of the seven definitions
mentions math, where it only says that proof in math is a test of the
_accuracy_ of an operation! If I'm being cautious, I'd say that logic
and evidence, among other things, help _justify_ a claim that a
statement corresponds with reality, but in daily speech, we simply say
"proof". I assumed you understood that.
>>And why should anyone accept the linguistic turn implied here, that
>>truth, morality, love and all else reduces to language?
>
> No, I have not accepted the linguistic turn, and have clearly
> disagreed with some of its implications.
No, not clear to me at all - perhaps my fault. You don't seem to have
any position that I can make out, but you seem to offer a semantic
argument against there being knowledge and truth, and if so, my
impression is that this is usually seen as part of the "Linguistic
Turn."
> Actually, I did not understand you at all, hence the question. It
> seems that your terminology is poor for what you were trying to say.
Lost the context, so can't respond by offering a clarification.
>>You wish to reverse this and reduce the mind and brain to nothing but
>>statements? Do you wish to reduce all reality to semantics?
>
> If anything, that would seem to describe what you have been doing.
Interesting comment.
>>Again, the term correspondence theory of truth can be used to define
>>truth or it can refer to the ways in which we verify that statements
>>correspond to the world.
>
> But it cannot do either unless you have first developed a notion of
> correspondence that is independent of your concept of truth.
This seems circular. If I define truth as the relation of statements and
the world where the statement corresponds to that reality in some sense,
then where's the problem? I'm only labeling a kind of
relationship. Suppose I say that I've typed this reply. The statement
itself is meaningful in the sense that everyone understands in a general
sense what I mean. It is a statement about my activity. There is good,
but not incontrovertible evidence (I could be pasting my reply from
somewhere else), that my claim corresponds to a kind of activity that
takes place at a particular time and place. That is, in prinpiple there
could be empirical evidence that I am engaging in that activity, and I
don't see that any logical principle is being abused.
You seem to say that to define truth presumes the existence of a
transcendental Truth, where in fact truth is only a label we invent to
point to an attribute of the statement of the relationship between
specific statements and their referents. You have to offer an
explanation why any claim of such a correspondence presumes a
transcendental notion of truth, if that indeed is what you are
claiming. Surely you can readily provide such an argument. By
"transcendental" do you mean detachable from statements? If so, why do
you say that?
>>We often think of correspondence as entailing some outside standard of
>>measure, as indeed is often the case, so that if we are speaking of a
>>correspondence theory of truth in general, there's no standard that is
>>not located in either pole of that relation, the world or the mind.
> Then you are invoking religion, in the form of an appeal to a god or
> perfect truth determiner.
You may misunderstand me. I said that "often" an outside standard is
used. If I say the pencil is eight inches long, the outside standard
would be a ruler. But the use of this ruler is to _verify_ the truth of
the statement, it is not the meaning of "true statement". Whether my
pencil is 8" long does not depend on my actually measuring it, but is a
matter of fact. I suggested that the meaning of correspondence, not the
verification of a particular claim, refers to a kind of _relation_ of
world and mind, not something outside them such as an absolute or
supernatural.
I certainly did not explicitly mention a supernatural or any kind of
perfection, and in fact I have explicitly denied the relevance of
either. So it remains to you to justify your presumption that my quoted
paragraph implies them. Please do so.
OK, maybe here you try:
> You measure the height of your desk to be 30 inches. Did you already
> know that it was 30 inches, and that you can now say that the
> measurement is true because it corresponds to the way the world is?
> Or did you have to measure it first, to determine that it is 30
> inches, and from that you determined something about the way the world
> is?
When I measure my desk's height, I find that my desk's height corresponds
to about 30 units on my measuring stick, and a statement to that effect
has been verified. However, if prior to this measurement I had first
estimated my desk to be 20" high, it would have been a false statement
regardless of my subsequent measurement. Yes, until I did the
measurement, my statement was only a hypothesis or conjecture, but it
even then was either approximately true or false. In other words, my
conjecture about the height of my desk has truth value before its truth
has been verified. Our statements about the world either do or do not
correspond to the world even before our verification of their truth or
falsity. To suggest otherwise either assumes the non-reality of the
world (or that the world lacks properties) or the non-existence of
statements until their truth verified. If I say I'm in love, that
statement has truth value (is either approximately true or false) even
though I provably will never verify it.
I don't see how my method for establishing a correspondence
necessarily invoking some absolute or supernatural. You infer that from
my quoted paragraph, but don't bother to justify that inference.
Or are you saying that truth reduces to observation? What about
falsehoods compatible with known observational facts (e.g., the history
of scientific knowledge)? What about truths that are not directly
observable, such as my being in love, or that 1+1=2, or the existence of
gluons, or force fields, or that causal potencies really exist? The
scientific consensus is that such unobservables can be real, and so to
adopt the opposite position requires doing some work trying to justify
it.
> I'm saying it is the second, and that correspondence is our theory of
> reality, not our theory of truth. In this case truth of the
> measurement is defined in terms of the measuring conventions, not in
> terms of a correspondence. We cannot appeal to an outsider, for any
> appeal has to be to somebody who knows the measuring conventions. And
> since the measuring conventions are clearly a social construct, such a
> determination is necessarily an internal one (internal to the society
> that follows these conventions).
I'm unpersuaded. What do you mean a "theory of reality"? That
correspondence theory is a species of ontology? News to me. If one
assumes that there's a reality out there about which we know nothing (a
conventional view, and you have not explicitly said anything to the
contrary), in what sense can it "correspond"? First, I assume
correspondence refers to a _formal_ relation, and for this reason is in
part subjective, which suggests correspondence is not an ontological
statement, but remains in the eye of the beholder even it if happens to
be objectively true. Second, a correspondence of a hypothetical (unseen,
unknown) entity to what else? We can't assume there is anything
else. So I assume that "correspondence" refers to statements by a human
observer about the world and is not a primitive feature of either matter
or of language.
To suggest that correspondence theory is not a theory of truth runs
counter to the conventional phrase "correspondence theory of truth", and
so such a suggestion requires explanaation and defense. Instead you
speak of measuring conventions, although clearly not all statements that
purport to represent truths entail measurement, such as "chickens exist"
or "I'm in love".
You next suggest that the verification of a truth statement implies an
appeal to social conventions. Well, I'm sure that's often the case, but
a) I can think of plenty of situations in which that is not so (Robinson
Crusoe's inference that Friday lived on the island), and b) that I might
make use of social conventions in the verification of a proposition does
not show that the statement itself lacks truth value (Thank God it's
Friday! That it's Friday is both a socially constructed periodization
convention and also one that happens to be true on Friday). Our
statements about the world are representations of the world in thought
and no one suggests thought reduces to the world or are reproduce
it. Everyone agrees that they are approximations or analogs of the
world, and so have a subjective component, but scientists probably agree
that there's also an objective component in the sense that if our
knowledge arises from an interaction with the world, the world will
constrain the possible content of that knowledge, and to that extent it
will have truth value. There's a lot more that could be said about this,
but my aim is to draw you out, not to build a case for myself.
You seem to say that statements of truth entail social conventions in
some way. I would accept this in principle. I am a social being, and my
capacity for thought is socially constructed. But who is suggesting
otherwise? Does the fact that truth statements tend to be social
constructs mean that they have no objective truth value? My measurement
of the desk as being 30" high is obviously a social construction. for
"inches" is a social convention, but that its height corresponds roughly
to thirty units on my measuring scale is also objectively true. To
suggest that objectivity and subjectivity are categorically
contradictory seems a position that people abandoned long ago. But I've
no reason to assume this is your position, for you don't state any
position.
>>The question begging is not over the definition of truth, but the
>>verification of truth.
>
> Wrong again. You continue to make that mistake.
I understand you disagree with this conventional view, but the point is
that you lend some support your contention. I have no objection to
unconventional views, and in fact hold a number muyself, but when I do
put them forward, I know I also have to explain them very clearly and
offer as much justification as is appropriate.
>>Jason expressed his belief; he didn't seek to justify it. While
>>stopping at the red light may be only social convention at work, that
>>I belief the light is red and red means to stop unless I want to get
>>ticketed is a set of true statements that are not merely social
>>conventions.
>
> You are creating an intellectualist superstructure that does not
> actually play any role in your stopping at the red light.
True, digging into this example may seem intellectualist
("superstructure"?) nit-picking, but that is often how we can expose
more basic disagreements. However, I would defend each sentence you
quoted on common sense or practical grounds. It is in fact a social
convention (the law) to stop on red, and that may be the principle
reason I actually do stop. My belief that the light is red depends on a
combination of things, but hardly one to raise the philosophical
shackles of most folks. We all know a red light when we see it and what
it implies. That the social convention is for me to stop does not mean
that I will indeed stop, but I know I run certain risks if I do not, and
so can I make a decision rather than rely on instinct. All this is
simple minded, not intellectualist. What may be intellectualist is going
into such boring picky detail as I've been forced to do. However, since
you left off the question this simple minded example was meant to
address, your point is also lost. Also, I hesitate to debate with you
what Jason may or may not have meant, for he needs to speak for himself,
and I have no reason to assume you aggree on much.
> I never claimed that Searle was omniscient. I merely quoted him to
> illustrate a point.
How can your quote "illustrate" a point? The issue is not whether Searle
is omniscient, but whether he is an authority in a relatively
uncontested field of knowledge, and he is clearly not, representing a
view that is generally contested. So how can he "illustrate" anything?
He may only illustrate what fools we mortals be.
>>I don't see the point of the quotation of Searle here. He is speaking
>>of only a motor skill, and suggesting that the skill eventually
>>becomes hard wired in brain rather than be represented in the form of
>>unconscious rules.
>
> Well, in that case, your stopping a the red light is a mere motor
> skill, and truth is not involved in the exercise of that skill.
If stopping is indeed hard wired (assuming Searle is not speaking
nonsense, which is unlikely), indeed it is merely a motor reaction. But
why is truth not involved? It became this hypothetical motor "skill"
because I habitually made the decision to stop in response to the
stimulus, and for good reason that depended on my truth estimations,
such as the likely consequences of not doing otherwise. So I still don't
see the point of quoting Searle.
>>However, my stopping at the red light is not a motor skill beyond the
>>initial instinctive movement of my foot, for it quickly becomes a
>>conscious choice.
>
> Do you really think somebody can ski on a tricky slope without making
> conscious choices? Do you really think Searle was suggesting that?
I don't ski, but I imagine that were I to ride a bike, my movement of
the handlebars to preserve my balance is more or less instinctive,
although originally learned through the school or hard knocks. I don't
know what Searle was really suggesting. It was you who brought him up.
>>Finally, and most importantly, the quotation from Searle is only a
>>hypothesis that is here not proved.
>
> I'll point out that your own posts are mostly hypotheses that are not
> proved.
Granted (I'd prefer the word propositions). But my original aim was to
get input about an aspect of coherence theory, and no one seems able or
willing to address that question in a constructive manner. Instead, a
lot of other issues came up for debate, and in the course of responding
to them I often made statements that were merely my positions and not
justified. I tried to put forward conventional views because one does
not have to justify them, and the reason was that my aim was to get an
answer to my original question, not enter into an extended philosophical
debate peripheral to it. So I tried to cut things short by taking the
easy way out.
I still haven't the foggiest idea of where you stand, except that
perhaps you deny that our statements have truth value, which in effect
would tend to make my original question illegitimate. But surely your
questioning either the coherence or the correspondence theories of truth
have to be spelled out and justified, for, being unconventional, they
otherwise carry no weight. Because these issue seemed only sidetracks, I
did not try to offer a developed position (and justify it), but only a
fairly conventional response that I didn't need to justify. Of course,
you could say either why my characterization of the convention is in
fact in error, but you don't attempt to do that. You could also give say
that the conventional view is wrong, but then the burden of proof (oops,
sorry, justification) is surely on your shoulders. Simply to posit your
own views without justification means nothing. You might be surprised to
know that I'm interested in your views, but only to the extent you
justify them.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Haines Brown
> Yes, the camera can't take a picture of itself analogy. You can't see
> your power of sight, although in a lab you can see eye balls and the
> part of the brain where the visual processing goes on. But it's the
> experience of sight that's the bit we can't get at, not the impression
> it leaves in our memory or the commentary "I know I'm seeing right
> now". The subject pole of the subject-object axis, is the exact thing
> that can't be the object of our awareness. If you take away the
> object the awareness vanishes, in this picture of things. We can't
> simply say that because we are aware of an object then there must be
> awareness, because it's begging the question.
Excuse the picky point, but try taking a picture of yourself looking at
a mirror ;-) . But you are right, you can't see your power of sight, for
it is an unobservable. I can get a direct experience of sight in that
I'm conscious of myself seeing and the effect it has on my mind. So I
don't quite get your point.
I never brought up the "subject-object axis", but only that I can see
the relation of my statements and the world. If I state that I'm now
typing, I am aware of the words in my mind, I can I can see my fingers
going and the consequent formation of equivalent written words on the
screen. I see the correspondence between the thought and what appears on
the screen, and is correspondence between them is why my statement that
I'm typing my thoughts I call true. The word true, in correspondence
theory, refers to the formal relation of things (statements and the
world), and when there is such a formal relation, I can know it
directly. I verify the its truth that way, but the word truth is not an
observed feature of any particular thing. Is that what you are saying?
>> I offered the conventional meaning of truth and suggested it does not
>> reduce to utility. You don't address the point I raised.
>
> I thought I did elsewhere. Talk of truth and utility are
> incommensurable. Utility, from economics, doesn't just mean useful
> but what we find desirable. For our own reasons of desire we trade
> stories that we might call "true", so there is no reduction of truth
> to utility and I haven't suggested there is one. I'm suggesting to
> let go of using terms like "truth" and "knowledge" after the old
> manner, and start using new terms in new ways.
I probably agree that truth does not reduce to utility. Your example
from economics is unfortunate, for to suggest that utility is merely
desire is ideological (is a probable function of social class). I'm not
saying you are wrong here, but only that your statement can't lay claim
to being universally true.
But we are being drawn into side issues. You want to get rid of the word
truth and knowledge. That can mean a) they are misleading encumbrances
that are unnecessary, so that we can make true statements or possess
truthful knowledge without their use, or b) there is no such thing as
truth and knowledge, or c) truth is entirely subjective and so entirely
relative. You not only have to indicate which you mean, but also to the
extent that your position deviates from convention, offer some
justification. Casting doubt on the word "utility" in economics seems at
best only relevant by implication concerning your point that we not
speak of truth or knowledge. Give me a good reason.
>> On what grounds do you say that no theory has any truth? If no theory
>> has truth, then your theorem that they have no truth is surely not
>> true. In other words, you are free to argue that no theory is true,
>> but you must justify that position, for it seems illogical and is
>> surely unconventional.
>
> I'm not asserting my theory is true, like I said, assertions are
> possible without the idea of truth.
Assertions are possible without the idea of truth? Again, not sure how
to take this. That we can assert something without realizing that we are
making a truth statement? That a statement can be true without there
being any definition of truth? If so, I'd be inclined to agree. And
there's the semantic argument that truth statements have nothing to do
with truth, but with our personal relation to the statement, and with
this I'd disagree for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it runs
against convention. Since it is not embedded my dictionary or in
scientific texts, it must be spelled out and justified by who ever
offers it.
> Logic relies on the idea of truth, so under logical analysis you would
> get a contradiction. But why do we need an artificial language and a
> system of symbol manipulation to tell us how to think? I'm surely
> being unconventional too, but since when is popular vote good criteria
> for argument?
I've no idea what it means to say that logic relies on the idea of
truth. I'm aware of the suggestion that logic makes the truth value of
our statements more probable, but that's not what you are saying. But to
be honest, I don't know what logic is. My dictionary suggests it is a
description of the powers of mental reasoning with the requirement of
coherence. That makes sense. But what does that have to do with truth,
since truth conventionally is a relation between a product of mind and
the world and so is not a feature of the mind or of its operations. But,
again, I'm ignorant about all this.
>> What does warrant have to do with god? I only meant the word in the
>> sense of justify. My dictionary definition for warrant does not
>> mention any gods.
>
> I used "god" as a marker pen for where the idea of warrant departs
> human durastiction and so can only be followed by faith.
Not sure if I understand. When we claim that a statement is true, we are
commonly making a statement about its correspondence with the
referent. It is commonly felt that our justification for this claim, our
warrant for it, entails more than just the mind (its product in our
statement), but involves the world. Are you saying that a) statements of
truth are entirely mental (a coherence theory) and b) when we try to
relate it to the world we presume unsubstantiated facts? Perhaps, but it
would be useful if you were to specify just why. An empiricist would say
that the facts of observation can verify (or falsify) the truth of our
statement, since we can observe its compatibility with the known facts,
and he would insist that no observational theories are entailed. I'd
agree there are problems with this point, one of which is that it
entails unproven ontological assumptions. But empiricists today respond
to this criticism.
>> On what grounds do you believe that no one knows anything? If that
>> were true, how could I discuss it with you?
>
> I'm not saying that the truth is there is no truth, or that I know
> that we don't know. I'm not looking for the grounds under which to
> support truth, or the grounds in which the tree of knowledge can be
> planted. There is no such garden of eden. Moreover, this doesn't
> mean I believe our claims of truth and knowledge stand over an abyss.
> I'm abandoning this whole picture of a grounds altogether because it
> is a religious one, and adopting a more mundane picture of things; at
> this point, one that involves the idea of utility.
I find you hard to follow. You are not denying truthful statements and
you are not trying to justify claims of truth. You seem to say simply
that there are no grounds for us to claim our statements are true. OK,
then you must have some objection to the dictionary/correspondence
theory of truth, presumably because it entails unsubstantiated
axioms. However, there's a world of a difference between pointing out
that we assume our axioms are true and stating that they represent
something unnatural.
All theories entail axioms that are presumed true, and often the reason
for this presumption is convention. But in looking for your objection,
all I find is this reference to religion, which I take to mean the
presence of something non-natural or supernatural. But are our axioms
beliefs that we accept because of convention, or because they represent
the best current theory, or because of utility, or because they prove to
be instrumental, pragmatic, etc. etc.? None of these reasons seem to
presume anything unnatural, and on the contrary I assume they probably
assume their justification is quite natural. An axiom of my behavior is
that to harm others is wrong. I can justify this belief without recourse
to anything non-natural.
> It doesn't mean we can't talk about things either or that we should
> stop using the terms. I'm trying to get across that the whole picture
> of truth and knowledge is so entrenched in our cultural word game that
> we've lost the ability to do without them, and that there are other
> word games that we might play, ones that do without religious beliefs.
> These beliefs are a relic from times when it was thought the world was
> spoken into existence, a time when it was thought that language
> mediated reality.
Up to a point I'd agree. However, that we presume truth does not seem a
word game, but rather how we define it and perhaps verify it. A newborn
learns to react to its mother in a certain way prior to the acquisition
of language (yes, there's a classic debate over whether knowledge arises
first from our action in the world or from language, but I fear this
debate presumes an unwarranted reductionist distinction between
individual and society). I have no reason to presume that the "word
games" we imbibe from our culture are necessarily non-natural
("religious") or why a replacement word game is likely to be more
natural.
I'd agree with the conventional wisdom that our truths are one-sided
approximations of reality, and that for some time (since the end of
Cartesianism) we try our best to justify our beliefs in naturalistic
terms. That our beliefs turn out in the long run to have been wrong only
means that they are incomplete and in response to deepening
contradictions we invent ways of representing reality that is somewhat
less one sided.
I don't know of any time except now when people believed the world was
simply thought into existence other than in an occasional parlor game. I
know a young autistic woman who is blind and can't speak, but she has a
very acute truthful knowledge of her world, such as being able to
identify who is entering the room from their footsteps, even if she has
not been in contact with that person for months.
Yes, there is a widespread sense that the world is terribly out of
joint, and most people associate it with
westernization/imperialism/trade liberalization/globalization, etc.,
which are natural causes. However, peoples' response is usually to turn
for relief to the supernatural, to a world that is purely an invention
of the mind. However, I consider this a pathological response because it
fails to seize upon the real (tangible) powers that in fact have been
brought into existence, which offers a real potential for their use to
create a better world. I can only assume this is because they
underestimate their potential real power because of localized awareness
and given the overwhelming enormity and alacrity of global change.
> Well, if I believed in truth and knowledge, then I suppose I'd have to
> say yes to your question. If I understand it correctly that it. The
> more points of view you have on the world the richer its apprehension,
> so presumably, if you have many points of view agreeing then you've
> covered off more potential reality.
In the quote of your passage above, you said you were not denying there
is truth, but here you imply you don't belief in truth. You loose me.
>> I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
>> between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in
>> that a truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions
>> constrained by the world. What do you mean there are no causal
>> relations out there? Obviously there are, for there's all kinds of
>> things going on of which we presumably are unaware.
>
> As far as I'm aware, this is the first time you've started to get at
> the nature of your truth correspondence relation.
Well, this is interesting. I brought in the idea that our statements are
caused by the operations of the mind, but that the mind is constrained
by matter in that it determines the probability distribution of the
truthfulness of our possible statements in relation to the world. I
would add that the world constrains our knowledge only indirectly,
though the medium of action in the world. The idea is a creation of the
mind, not of the world.
I hesitated addressing the specific nature of the correspondence between
our statements and the world because there's a range of theories, and I
was not trying to evaluate their relative merits, but deal with
correspondence theory in general - that there is some kind of
correspondence between truthful statements and the world. What I
shouldn't have injected above was my own take on this
correspondence. Curious that it should come at all as a surprise to you.
> You say truth is a causal relation but it is also caused by the mind.
> Does the mind cause a causal relation or do you mean that this causal
> relation, if we traced it, would be the truth relation? (although
> reading what you say below I'm not sure either are right)
The mind can't create the relation, for the _formal_ relation is between
statements and the world. It takes two to tango; you can't very well do
it by yourself. No, the statement itself is a product of the mind (a
_causal_ relation). However, the mind can't create statements entirely
at random, for the mind has limited powers, and, as you suggest, it
carries a specific culture, and so any statement expresses the limits
and powers of the mind in probabilistic terms.
Some of our statements we describe as has having truth value, not so
much in relation not to the mind as I have just described, but to the
world beyond the mind, and by that we mean that these statements
correspond in some sense (have a formal relation) with the world. That
simply defines a truth statement. As to why such a statement _can_ be
true is because we gather truthful knowledge about the world through
action in the world, and from that acquire knowledge; that is, the world
indirectly constrains the probable content of our knowledge of the
world. You can't say that fire will keep you cool on a hot day because
our experience suggests otherwise. The relation of the statement and the
world is _not_ causal, but formal. So a truthful statement is both
subjective (in that it reflects the powers of the mind and also what the
mind presumes is true) and objective in that it arises from actions
constrained by the world. The real causal relation is between mind and
our statements, and in the case of truthful statement, between ourselves
as actors and the world.
There's a major weakness in this little diatribe. We arguably have
knowledge of unobservables, and so what does it mean that a theory
entailing unobservables "formally" corresponds with the world? It can't,
for "formal" implies observationals. This is why, despite my elaborating
a correspondence theory, I ultimately don't agree with it. A common
alternative approach might be pragmatism, but I reject that as well, as
ultimately based on observation of outcomes to validate the truth of
one's theory (if I understand pragmatism correctly). So I take a rather
bizarre approach that might be called existential, but I'll not
elaborate it here, in part because I can't presume you are at all
interested. I got hung up on correspondence theory because it is the
most conventional notion of truth (is embedded in the dictionary and is
presumed by practicing scientists) and used it to counter a possible
suggestion that there is no truth outside the mind. So I found myself in
the unfortunate position of defending a theory I didn't entirely agree
with.
> Hey, what happened to c?
?
> I remember objecting to the idea that truth and warrant are necessary
> preconditions for the possibility of stopping at a red light. I
> figured causality was enough.
I assume you meant "probability" not "possibility". I can always stop at
a red light if I see it and if my breaks work. What causes me to stop?
Habit, of course, but habit based on my knowledge of the situation
(likelihood of accident or arrest if I run the light). It is also a
choice because I know that if for some reason I wish or need to run the
light, I can do it. So my action was presumably caused. There is a
variety of causal factors, ranging from the force of habit, to my
truthful assessment of the situation that there is a light, that I
should stop at the light, and how to do it (correspondence), and by
choice based on a cost/benefit analysis of the probable outcomes of my
choice (pragmatism). The last two involve truthful assessments. It seems
off hand that my assessment of the situation and of probable outcomes of
my choice involve statements that I must presume are true if I am to
act on them.
> Yes, re-reading it its poorly written. I'm saying firstly that I'm
> not trying to prove correspondence right or wrong - just remove the
> need for it. The best I can claim to do is make it look unattractive.
> I certainly don't accept it because of the assumptions it has. I
> think it can be made to work, but the price to be paid is too high.
> Second, that our common sense is full of contradictions, circular and
> blind assumptions, so it's a poor choice for grounds for a theory.
Yes. Understood that you are not launching a critique of correspondence
theory so much as suggesting that it is an unnecessary encumbrance. I
suppose one would do this by two means: a) suggesting that our
statements have truth value gets us into trouble, b) an avoidance of
truth statements results in a language that is utilitarian, efficient,
appeals to common sense, etc.
You haven't really been clear about (a) or (b). Just how do statements
of truth get us into trouble? There's a school that suggest that when we
say something is true we are really making a statement about our
personal relation to the statement, not its truth. Fine, but what ill
would such a re-interpretation correct? As for (b), you have not been
specific about any alternative. I say, "Your honor, I did see the
suspect, and he was wearing a yellow hat". The defense counsel
challenges me, Did you really see the hat?" He is asking me to verify
that was what I saw, and I reply "Yes". It is important for the jury to
know if my statement is truthful or not. What difficulty arises because
this judicial procedure aims to establish the truth or falsity of my
statement? And how could the cross examination occur without presuming
that statements of fact have truth value? Or is my example too
simplistic?
>> I'm not persuaded. We don't develop by becoming detached, but by
>> being engaged. Otherwise, we would learn more by not going to school
>> or experiencing the world, but we know very well that the opposite is
>> the case. Detachment is death, not freedom.
>
> I'm sure the buddhists would disagree with you :)
Well yes. While I have respect for Buddhist teachings, that doesn't mean
I feel they are appropriate today.
> Well, I'm not persuaded either so at least on this we agree. I don't
> believe in the idea of development however, unless by development you
> mean getting better at surviving.
No, I mean development of our power to act (for good or ill). This power
is constrained by social structure and productive powers, and does not
mean progress in the Enlightenment or the positivist senses. That is, I
don't give it moral value. I don't want to get into this issue here, but
just to give a hint of where I'm coming from, I see existing societies
as being contradictory, and the structure that supports development of
social capacities at the same time means these capacities fail to meet
the emerging social needs caused by development. So we are in effect on
a treadmill that would get nowhere (stagnation) if it were not that
emerging capacities reach a point that a restructuring becomes possible
and necessary (periodization in history). Through such restructurings,
there is a potential for new capacities and new needs, but at a "higher"
level in that these capacities accumulate and are quantitatively greater
and needs shift toward a development of our social rather than our
biological being.
> I suppose I'm a pragmatist at the moment, but my main "position" is
> that I don't really believe in the truth of positions, only in their
> current utility, which will is personal and will inevitably change. I
> doubt I'll come back to truth however.
I'm trying to make sense of this. Are you saying that your concern is
not whether your take on life happens to be true, but you feel that at
best you only somehow manage to muddle through? I find this
disappointing for two reasons. It implies that that you are incapable or
or uninterested in any critical position. This in turn is a hint that
you feel rather powerless in this world and/or discouraged about trends
over which you have no control.
The concern of the Enlightenment for truth was not new, for certainly in
feudal Europe people were very concerned about truth as well, although
its source was not primarily natural human powers, but the power of
god. In both cases, however, the ideology of truth was closely
associated with power. In the Enlightenment, it was assumed that the
only person who counted was a person in private possession of means for
self-development, and in fact, that was a fair assessment of the real
situation. A large percentage of the population did own means of
production, and they could expect to improve their lives by their
reasoned employment (the word "rational" was cooked up at the time, and
it referred to actions that would likely result in an increase in one's
"talents"). The difference today is that there is a relatively very small
percentage of people who have enormous power, and the great majority
have no power at all based on private possession, but can only develop
through their social relations. But to the extent one does not realize
that potential, there is a disjuncture between one's own situation and
the reality of the world, and so one therefore does not see truth as
being crucial. Scientists see truth as important because they feel they
have some power in their field of knowledge.
> If I were to disagree, I'd say that effective action is close to
> sounding like useful action, and if useful action warrants us to say
> that a sentence is "true" then it sounds to me like it's a realist
> position couched in the language of a pragmatist. Let's call this
> position the "new realist" (after the "new right" from politics). So
> I'd probaby say great, that sounds good, but why bother with the word
> "true"?
I fear you may be making things unduly complicated. Effective action I
suppose only means that our active has the effect we intend. There may
be reason to suspect that effective action implies we have truthful
knowledge of the situation in which that action takes place. That is the
common assumption, but of course there are exceptions. A realist
position is that reality does not reduce to observables, and we can gain
true knowledge of a reality that includes unobservables. But the
validation of such a claim can take a number of forms, including a
pragmatist test of saying that if our theory that includes unobservables
supports our predictions, one can infer the presumption of the reality
of unobservables has warrant. There are problems with is line of
argument. On the other hand, why say a useful action is true? I made a
cup of coffee this morning and that was useful. But other than the
trivial truthful knowledge was present in the technique of making
coffee, one can't say on any obvious sense that my action was
truthful. For one thing, it is not a statement about the world, but
merely an action in the world. And as for realist positions being
couched in the language of pragmatism, that charge is often made, and
when it is, it suggests that the person doing it is really a pragmatist
who ultimately validates a theory by an observation of its predicted
outcome, which is essentially empiricist; prediction is essentially
empiricist the sense that it presumes closed systems in which outcomes
are unequivocally determined by their initial state, both of which are
defined in static empiricist terms. So "realism" can be a tricky term. I
suspect (but won't elaborate here) that scientific realism should be
confined to a presumption that everything is a process, which in turn
implies unobservables in the form of the causal potency that makes
everything a process rather than whatever outcome the process might
happen to result in.
> Yes, I understood you mean that. I was generalising to say that we
> can live our lives quite happily without the notions of truth and
> knowledge.
Think about my suggestions about power and truth. First, I'm skeptical
that anyone who is aware and has moral responsibility, can really be
happy these days. Most of use have an enormous sense of wrong and of not
being able to do much about it. One can bury one's head in the sand, or
become an egocentric hedonist and find a kind of contentment, I suppose,
but I can't quite translate that into happiness, which I feel only comes
from engagement.
> If I just said "truth and theories don't exist", you'd be right. But
> I come with a story of why we use words like "truth" and "knowledge",
> that their notions aren't needed to make sense of the world and that
> there is another set of notions that could replace them.
But have you in fact shown this? Have you shown that words like truth
and knowledge are not needed? Have to offered an alternative set of
notions? Not that I can see.
> Under the view I offer, what I'm offering you is critical feedback.
> What you see is contradiction, non-sense and nihilism, which I
> appreciate because I felt the same way when I first started trying to
> make sense of it.
No, I understand that to point out the flaws in a particular theory or
way of seeing things and to offer an alternative that appears better in
some explicit ways that are intersubjective is a valid criticism. My
objection is not to that, but to your not having pointed out the flaws
of the existing world view (other than to say that words like truth and
knowledge may be unnecessary, but that has neither been demonstrated nor
shown to be significant), and not having offered an alternative world
view that does not rely on statements of truth or knowledge, that has
something to recommend it that you can readily persuade others of its
truth. I realize that you reject truth statements, but then why
shouldn't I just conclude that you shoot your self in your own foot?
> You'll find that some physicist appreciate that "truth" is a tenuous
> notion. Many mathematicians and logicians realise that "truth" is a
> techincal term particular to their field.
Well, yes, some physicists are philosophically inclined and may well
appreciate that truth is a challenging notion. But _all_ scientific
practice presumes truth, and most physicists that are philosophically
inclined adopt a correspondence theory of truth, and now the consensus
among philosophers of science is either that truth can be approximately
known or or can't be known for sure, but not that there is no truth.
I happen to be interested in this question at the moment, and so would
really like to see a substantiated argument that, contrary to some
authoritative statements I've seen, natural scientists don't on the
whole accept a correspondence theory of truth and have ontological
(rather than epistemological) doubts about there being truth.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
Lots of snippage. I only quote enough to provide context for my
responses.
>Your paragraph puzzles me. Are in you fact saying that theories lack
>truth value, and that this lack of truth value is not only conventional
>wisdom, but also common sense?
I am saying that the conventional wisdom takes theories to be true.
I don't think we can generalize about common sense, because it
does not seem to be common. That is, what one person derives from
common sense can be different from what another derives. Or, to
say it differently, common sense is common in that it is not rare -
just about everybody exhibits common sense. But it is not common
in the sense of being shared (something held in common by all).
>I should note that my dictionary tells me that English writers often
>confuse the words theory and hypothesis, so that the word theory can
>mean simply a conjecture. I assume we aren't making this mistake.
I am not making that mistake. I was using "theory" in the sense
of "scientific theory".
In any case, let me give an example:
Suppose I develop a theory of automobile driving. Part of that theory
will be the rule that we drive on the right side of the road (except
for one-way roads).
If the British were to develop a theory it would be similar, except that
it would say that we drive on the left side of the road.
If theories have truth value, which of those theories is true - the British
one, or ours?
My view is that theories are pragmatic constructs, and that
saying the theory is true adds nothing (though it might be good
marketing strategy). What matters is that practice be consistent
with the theory.
>My dictionary definition for "theory" uses the example of the general
>principles behind musical practice. So are you suggesting that it is
>obvious on the face of it that the general principles of music lack
>truth value in that music has no general principles?
I certainly think that music has no general principles. But you
will probably misunderstand that. By way of comparison, I also
have been known to say that natural languages have no grammar,
and that there are no laws of nature.
> Doesn't common
>sense suggest that there are general principles in music to which the
>term musical theory refers?
That's an entirely different question, unrelated to whether music
has general principles, though people often take them to be related.
Humans organize their world. In organizing our world of music, we
introduce principles. I am saying that those are human principles
for how we should organize music (or our study of music), and
that those principles are not a natural property of music itself,
independent of our organizing.
Getting back to scientific theories, let's use the example of
special relativity that you mentioned. SR contains or implies
the statement E=mc^2. I am not at all questioning whether that
statement is true, or has a truth value. It is the theory as a
whole that I say is neither true nor false, hence has no truth value.
The theory introduces terminology, and determines the meaning
of the terms introduced. It also sets standards for evaluating
the truth of statements made that use the terminology. Under the
standards of truth set by SR (as a theory), E=mc^2 turns out to be
a true statement.
As I see it, SR (as a theory) is not making statements about the
world. Rather, it is making statements about its own terminology,
about how to use that terminology - roughly speaking, it is making
statements about empirical practices to be followed when using
the theory.
I think my view is not too different from that expressed by
C.I. Lewis, "A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori" (a 1923 article
in J. of Philosophy, and reprinted in the book "A Priori Knowledge
(ed. Paul K. Moser)).
>The final thing I find strange about your paragraph is the suggestion
>that I should not swallow conventional wisdom. Why not?
You should question it. You might still follow it, even though
you question it. But questioning is good.
> Shouldn't we contest convention only when there are
>contradictions that compel us to do so?
That depends on what you mean by "contest". There could be parts
of the conventional wisdom that you question, but that you find it
not worth the effort to contest. I don't have a problem with that.
It's part of getting along in a community.
>But keep in mind that you, or more likely, Jason brought up the name of
>Richard Rorty as his inspiration.
That was jason. I haven't decided what to make of Rorty.
> Rorty felt that we make a big mistake
>to assume that our mental conceptions have truth value in relation to
>the world to which our conceptions refer. Given this, it is natural for
>me to have taken a statement that truth is a social convention to mean
>that it is nothing but a social convention and has no truth value in
>relation to the world. If I confused your position with that of Jason or
>Rorty, I apologize.
When I suggest that truth is a social convention, I have in mind
that this includes social conventions that (in some sense) connect
propositions to the world. That would include measuring conventions,
meaning conventions, etc. What I disagree with is the view often
seen in theological and philosophical literature, that seems to
treat truth as something that is completely human independent,
that we just have to somehow discover.
>While you seem to imply that the truthfulness of statements is not
>something to be resolved by philosophical understanding, you seem to do
>the opposite in practice. For example, either you or Jason mentioned a
>utilitarian theory of truth, which I take to be the philosophical
>position that the test for truth is utility.
I don't hold to a utilitarian theory of truth. I do hold to a utilitarian
basis for truth. Those are quite different.
Go back to that theory of driving. We adopt rules to drive on the
right side of the road because of its utilitarian value - it reduces
accidents if everyone drives on the same side of the road. Once we
have adopted those rules, the proposition "you were driving on the
wrong side of the road" has a truth value that is not dependent on
the utilitarian value of a particular instance of driving.
>> I believe that correspondence theory could not possibly be a
>> definition of "truth".
>As I showed, it is in fact presumed by the dictionary definition.
Dictionary definitions (so called) don't actually define. I expect
a definition to give some explicit principle that can be applied.
Otherwise it is not a definition. Perhaps my idea of "definition"
is influenced by my being a mathematician.
I have no problem with the broad idea of truth as having something
to do with correspondence. But, from my point of view, that is far
too broad to count as a definition.
In my spare time, I study questions related to human cognition.
One way to think about that, is to think about what would be
required to construct an artificial cognitive agent (or artificial
person) - note that this need not imply Artificial Intelligence
(computationalism). If I wanted to create an artificial agent, then
that agent would need some way to discern truth. It would also need
some way to apprehend reality. I expect definitions to provide some
guidance on such a construction. As I see it, the correspondence
theory does not provide any guidance at all to providing a way for
the agent to discern truth. And I seem to require that an ability
to discern truth is already in place before I can work on ways for
the agent to apprehend reality. That, roughly speaking, is why
I want a theory of truth that does not depend on correspondence,
and then to use a correspondence theory of reality.
-----
>> I don't actually disagree with saying that truth is correspondence
>> with reality. My disagreement is with calling that a theory of truth.
>> I see it as a theory of reality.
>The correspondence theory of truth is conventionally considered a
>"theory" of truth, as is a rationalist theory of truth or a coherence
>theory of truth. See Wikipedia.
>You don't object to the content of the correspondence theory, but to
>characterizing it as a theory, for you say a correspondence theory is
>actually a theory of reality. Sorry, this makes no sense to me at all. A
>theory of reality is usually called an ontology; the word "truth" is a
>property of our _statements_, as the dictionary makes clear, not a
>property of the world.
Sorry, I'm not understanding that.
Berkeley's theory of reality was idealism. According to Berkeley,
reality exists only as ideas in the mind, and there is no physical
existence. I am not understanding why Berkeley's ontology would
be significantly different from the ontology of a realist.
-----
>> Unless you want to take consensus as a basis for truth, I see no
>> reason to conclude that scientific theories are either true or false.
>> What is important about them, is that they define empirical practice
>> in the field. That requires that they be accepted as good practice,
>> but it does not require that they be either true or false.
>Do I understand you to be adopting an instrumentalist position, with an
>agnosticism about whether our theories happen to be true or not?
Not in the sense in which "instrumentalism" was used by empiricist
philosophers.
-----
>> Sigh. Once again, I'll remind you that I have not been skeptical
>> about whether there is truth. It's just that truth does not matter
>> for scientific theories. If you want to take a scientific theory to a
>> monastery, and see if you are given divine guidance on its truth,
>> that's your right. But it will make no difference to the science.
>Sigh ;-). I don't understand what you mean by saying that truth does not
>matter when it comes to scientific theories. It obviously means a lot to
>those who propose them, for they think of themselves in a quest for
>truth.
Many scientists consider themselves pragmatists, rather than truth
seekers.
For sure, scientists want to make truthful statements about the
world. But what does that have to do with the truth of the
scientific theories themselves?
When Newton gave us "F=ma", he was not making a truthful statement
about the world. Rather, he was giving his definition of mass,
a new concept. Having made that definition, he was now able to
express many true propositions that used the concept of mass.
But the purpose of the law itself was to introduce and define the
new concept, not to make a truthful statement about the world.
> I suspect it means something to the man on the street, who not
>only is inclined to assume that money spent on scientific research is
>spend on a quest for truth about the world, but is deeply affected every
>day by the fact that scientific theory has truth value (he drives an
>automobile to work which is a product of the so-called Second Industrial
>Revolution that is characterized in part by the application of science
>to production).
The man on the street doesn't even understand the word "theory"
(as used in "scientific theory"). He may indeed expect that
science produces true propositions about the world. But producing
true propositions about the world does not require that the theory
itself have a truth value.
>> The gas laws from physics are false, and well known to be false. They
>> are usually called "ideal gas laws" in recognition that we have to
>> consider an imaginary ideal gas if we want them to be true. But they
>> are still useful for real non-ideal gases.
>The gas laws are approximate truths, are they not?
Sure. But that does not make them true - it only makes them
approximately true.
> Any why are they
>useful?
They have proved to be useful in scientific practice. There is no
more to it that that. It's a mistake to try to find a philosophical
principle to explain their usefulness.
> Contrary to what you
>have yourself insisted upon, you seem to deny here that gas laws are
>true because they are not an absolute truth.
"Approximate truth" constrasts with "exact truth", and "absolute
truth" contrasts with "relative truth". You are mixing up the
terminology.
The distinction between approximate truth and exact truth is quite
important, and should be particularly important to philosophers.
For philosophers like to use logic arguments everywhere, and ordinary
logic does not work with approximate truth.
>Who (besides yourself) says the gas laws are false?
I think most physicists would agree with me on that.
-------
>> You are the one who wrote of transmission of knowledge. We cannot
>> transmit the act or state of knowing. We cannot transmit clear
>> perceptions. We cannot transmit cognition. It seems that your
>> definition fits my use of "knowledge" better than it fits yours.
>Of course, when we speak of the transmission of knowledge, we imply the
>transfer of statements that have truth value.
But why call it "transmission of knowledge", when it is information, not
knowledge, that is being transmitted?
> If I
>make a statement that everyone, including myself, know to be false, but
>actually turns out by some fluke to correspond with reality, wouldn't
>that be a true statement which is a property intrinsic to statements and
>independent of our beliefs about those statements.
That's a tricky question. Making a statement is an intentional
action. If your intention was to make a false statement, but what
you said was actually true, perhaps that would make your statement
doubly false in the sense that it didn't even match your intentions
in making that statement.
I think we can get by without having to settle such tricky questions.
>> No, you are not characterizing truthful statements. For that you
>> would have to first have characterised what it means for a statement
>> to be in correspondence with the world, and you would have needed to
>> present that characterisation in a way that did not depend on the
>> notions of truth and truthfulness.
>No, I don't think so. In the correspondence theory of truth, there are
>many kinds of correspondence, but difficulty defining just which is
>meant does not deconstruct the definition of a correspondence theory of
>truth.
A definition ought to be definitive. Otherwise the term "definition"
is not appropriate.
>> I'll assume you are familiar with Gettier, and the problem he found
>> with "justified".
>Sorry, I was not familiar with Gettier, probably mainly because I've
>never taken neo-Kantianism very seriously. The grounds of my belief are
>action in the world and history, not semantics and philosophy.
Okay. Gettier came out with some examples where beliefs could be
true and justified, yet obviously should not count as knowledge.
His 1963 paper title: "Is justified true belief knowledge?" Maybe
take a peek at "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_case".
--------
>Not at all clear here. So let me recall the context. I had originally
>asked for justifications for the coherence theory suggestion that the
>potential truth value of a theory is a function of its
>universality.
Yes, sorry. I don't really have much to say about coherence theories,
other than that I am skeptical of them.
>> Proofs exist in mathematics, but not in real life.
>That's right. Proofs in a narrow sense of being absolute, unequivocal or
>rigid, exist only in logic and mathematics, which might suggest that
>they are faulty in some respect. But we use the word "proof" in a looser
>sense as warrant, justification, etc.
That doesn't work for me. I see "warrant" and "justification"
as very tenuous ideas.
The broader sense of "proof" is that of a persuasive argument.
But whether a person is persuaded will vary from person to person.
You can say what you want about justification, but unless it
persuades me, I won't count it. When a court verdict found OJ
not guilty, many people accepted that verdict as a determinant of
future public policy toward OJ, but would not accept it as any kind
of proof because they were not persuaded.
>> No, I have not accepted the linguistic turn, and have clearly
>> disagreed with some of its implications.
>No, not clear to me at all - perhaps my fault. You don't seem to have
>any position that I can make out, but you seem to offer a semantic
>argument against there being knowledge and truth, and if so, my
>impression is that this is usually seen as part of the "Linguistic
>Turn."
No, I have not argued against there being knowledge and truth.
I have argued against the traditional accounts of what constitutes
truth and knowledge.
--------
>>>Again, the term correspondence theory of truth can be used to define
>>>truth or it can refer to the ways in which we verify that statements
>>>correspond to the world.
>> But it cannot do either unless you have first developed a notion of
>> correspondence that is independent of your concept of truth.
>This seems circular. If I define truth as the relation of statements and
>the world where the statement corresponds to that reality in some sense,
>then where's the problem?
It is so vague as to not be definitive, and therefore cannot be
a definition.
>You seem to say that to define truth presumes the existence of a
>transcendental Truth, where in fact truth is only a label we invent to
>point to an attribute of the statement of the relationship between
>specific statements and their referents.
I have no problem with truth as a relation between statements and
their referents. But I cannot find that in the correspondence
theory.
There is a substantial literature on truth, that attempts to define
it as correspondence, and which presupposes that we have already
settled questions about reference. And then there is another
substantial literature on reference, that attempts to define
reference in terms of an already presumed understanding of truth.
I am simply pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. The whole
thing is completely circular, and actually tells us nothing about
either truth or reference.
Now take a scientific theory. But don't take it as just a
self-contained set of propositions. Instead, look at it in the
context of science. That context includes the laboratory training
that students of science take, and where they learn the practices
of the particular science. I think you will see that a scientific
theory, looked at in this manner, is actually concerned with defining
terms and establishing reference for those terms. If you look at
special relativity, the purpose of the thought experiments that
Einstein gave was to help establish reference, as it was to be
used under SR. Looked at that way, you will see that the role of
a scientific theory is to setup the reference, such that it will
then become possible to have a truth relation between statements
and their referents. The theory is prior to being able to make
the statements for which we want there to be an attribute of truth.
> You have to offer an
>explanation why any claim of such a correspondence presumes a
>transcendental notion of truth, if that indeed is what you are
>claiming.
It requires a transcendental notion of truth, only when it
depends on a transcendental notion of correspondence. And the
literature on correspondence theory mostly seems to be dependent
on a transcendental notion of correspondence.
> Surely you can readily provide such an argument. By
>"transcendental" do you mean detachable from statements? If so, why do
>you say that?
You introduced the word "transcendental" to the discussion.
Don't ask me what you mean - I can only hope that I got it right
in my response.
-----
>You may misunderstand me. I said that "often" an outside standard is
>used. If I say the pencil is eight inches long, the outside standard
>would be a ruler. But the use of this ruler is to _verify_ the truth of
>the statement, it is not the meaning of "true statement".
Suppose I use a ruler to determine that the width of my window
is 30 inches. I then order window shades. I sure hope that the
store will use a ruler to determine the meaning of "30 inches".
I would not want them to just make wild guesses at how wide the
shades should be.
Sure, the ruler does not define "true", but it does define reference
(or this particular case of reference). My objection to the
correspondence theory is that you cannot define truth in terms of
reference, if reference is itself undefined. And once reference
is defined, that implicitly defines truth without a separate theory
or definition of truth being required.
>OK, maybe here you try:
>> You measure the height of your desk to be 30 inches. Did you already
>> know that it was 30 inches, and that you can now say that the
>> measurement is true because it corresponds to the way the world is?
>> Or did you have to measure it first, to determine that it is 30
>> inches, and from that you determined something about the way the world
>> is?
>When I measure my desk's height, I find that my desk's height corresponds
>to about 30 units on my measuring stick, and a statement to that effect
>has been verified.
Okay. But here you are establishing correspondence with a social
convention (the use of a measuring stick). What does that have to
do with correspondence with reality?
My view is that we use correspondence with such social conventions
as a way of establishing what we mean by reality.
The picture painted by philosophy is that the world is full of
propositions, and what we need to do is have ways of determining
whether those propositions are true. My alternative view is that,
absent humans, the world would be devoid of propositions. Humans
have to invent ways of producing propositions that describe the
world. To do that, they have to invent terminology and conditions
of reference for that terminology. And, in so inventing, they
implicitly provide criteria for truth of those propositions which
their inventions have made possible.
>Or are you saying that truth reduces to observation?
No. The use of "observation" is one of my objections to traditional
empiricism. If the world is devoid of propositions, until humans
invent ways of forming propositions, then it follows that observation
is impossible until after such invention.
The conventional wisdom sees science and knowledge as having to do
with determining whether propositions are true. I see science and
knowledge as having to do with finding ways of forming propositions,
which could not even have existed without the kind of activity that
humans engage in.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes: >Neil W Rickert
><ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
> Lots of snippage. I only quote enough to provide context for my
> responses.
Thank you.
>>Your paragraph puzzles me. Are in you fact saying that theories lack
>>truth value, and that this lack of truth value is not only
>>conventional wisdom, but also common sense?
>
> I am saying that the conventional wisdom takes theories to be true. I
> don't think we can generalize about common sense, because it does not
> seem to be common. That is, what one person derives from common sense
> can be different from what another derives. Or, to say it
> differently, common sense is common in that it is not rare - just
> about everybody exhibits common sense. But it is not common in the
> sense of being shared (something held in common by all).
Obviously I offered a hypothesis that was speculative and would be hard
to prove. Merely intuition. I suspect one consideration is how broadly
we use the word "theory". I was using it very loosely. My wife and I are
following a car on the highway late at night that is weaving. I say,
"That driver must be drunk". That's a hypothesis. Suddenly there's an
accident and reading about it in the paper the next day, the police
found that the driver was in fact intoxicated. Aha, I say, my suspicion
turned out to be true. I suppose my hypothesis was common sense, for
that what I saw most often corresponds to the kind of driving that we
associate with driving while under the influence.
> Suppose I develop a theory of automobile driving. Part of that theory
> will be the rule that we drive on the right side of the road (except
> for one-way roads).
But we do differ here about a theory. I take theory to be necessarily
explanatory. Your example, however, is descriptive, citing one of the
conditions (the rule) under which driving is done. If you had said that
in the US we generally drive on the right and suggest that this is
because of the law, then we have an explanatory theory.
> If the British were to develop a theory it would be similar, except
> that it would say that we drive on the left side of the road.
>
> If theories have truth value, which of those theories is true - the
> British one, or ours?
Actually, the explanatory theory would be the same, only the specific
conditions differ.
> My view is that theories are pragmatic constructs, and that saying the
> theory is true adds nothing (though it might be good marketing
> strategy). What matters is that practice be consistent with the
> theory.
If I said 1+1-3, that would be a false statement; if I said 1+1-2, that
would be true. Yes, these are not theories, but are an example where the
two statements have a property of truth value. There's nothing pragmatic
about this example, for we are not talking about oranges, but about
math. If we remove truth value from these two examples, we would end up
with mathematical anarchy.
A pragmatic test of truth seems to have several problems. First, it is
deductive, and deductive logic applies to precious few situations (the
lab, not the real world). In the real world, outcomes are not
unequivocally predictable from knowledge of an initial state. How can
one use a pragmatic test for an emergent system? Another problem is that
the test of an outcome is based on its observation and therefore
excludes such unobservables such as causal powers. For example, the
structure of a social system might be such that the real power of an
interest to shape the course of history is systemically blocked, so that
the observed outcome does not correspond to the observed initial
state. That is, the pragmatic test is empiricist and subject to all the
criticisms launched at empiricism. Another problem, is that it is well
known that for any given set of phenomena, there is a range of possible
explanations, and so which of them is validated by the observed outcome?
Of course, you might infer from that outcome which of the possible
theories was more likely to be correct, but then we are back to relative
truth value, and what is being tested is not the truth of the correct
theory, but a choice among competing theories. There is also an
objection that the pragmatic test can point to undesirable outcomes. In
Germany of 1943, one would have to say that Hitler was on the right
track. One could not infer from the situation at that time that his
entire project was fundamentally flawed because at that time he was
enjoying success. Another way of putting this is that it fixates on the
actual past and downplays the role of innovation; might makes right; it
is profoundly conservative. There are many other objections to a
pragmatic test for truth.
>>My dictionary definition for "theory" uses the example of the general
>>principles behind musical practice. So are you suggesting that it is
>>obvious on the face of it that the general principles of music lack
>>truth value in that music has no general principles?
>
> I certainly think that music has no general principles. But you will
> probably misunderstand that. By way of comparison, I also have been
> known to say that natural languages have no grammar, and that there
> are no laws of nature.
I take a course in "musical theory". What am I studying, then, if not
the general principles of music? What are scales, pitches, rhythm,
melodies, chords, chord progressions, phrases? It is obvious to any
musician that without some music theory, nobody will progress from
playing music to understanding and even writing it. What can you
possibly mean that music has no general principles? There is enormous
number of such principles and they are of considerable complexity.
By the way, not that in this example, theory is not really explanatory,
but comes closer to your rules of the road. It is often said that
scientific theory is necessarily explanatory, not descriptive, but I'm
not entirely confident this is true.
>>Doesn't common sense suggest that there are general principles in
>>music to which the term musical theory refers?
>
> That's an entirely different question, unrelated to whether music has
> general principles, though people often take them to be related.
I don't see that it's a different question unless by the word "theory"
you mean that its content must be coherent or organized (related). That
may not be true. My theory that the driver was drunk was ad hoc,
immediately and narrowly causal. In evolutionary sciences (meteorology,
cosmology, evolutionary biology, etc.), explanations are ad hoc and do
not rely primarily on covering law explanation. An explanation takes
into account boundary or background conditions and a multiplicity of
causal influences. We encounter not only the N-Body Problem, but the
fact that all things in principle are open processes, and so any theory
must be equivocal, fuzzy. Added to this, take, for example, the theory
of a thermodynamic engine: it involves the interdependence of opposite
processes, and so the theory must take unobservables into account if it
is to gain any coherence, but such coherence is non-empirical.
> Humans organize their world. In organizing our world of music, we
> introduce principles. I am saying that those are human principles for
> how we should organize music (or our study of music), and that those
> principles are not a natural property of music itself, independent of
> our organizing.
Music is, of course, unnatural to begin with. Do the principles of music
reduce to human whim? Of course not. It is the exercise of freedom
within constraints imposed by sound and the ear.
> Getting back to scientific theories, let's use the example of special
> relativity that you mentioned. SR contains or implies the statement
> E=mc^2. I am not at all questioning whether that statement is true,
> or has a truth value. It is the theory as a whole that I say is
> neither true nor false, hence has no truth value.
>
> The theory introduces terminology, and determines the meaning of the
> terms introduced. It also sets standards for evaluating the truth of
> statements made that use the terminology. Under the standards of
> truth set by SR (as a theory), E=mc^2 turns out to be a true
> statement.
>
> As I see it, SR (as a theory) is not making statements about the
> world. Rather, it is making statements about its own terminology,
> about how to use that terminology - roughly speaking, it is making
> statements about empirical practices to be followed when using the
> theory.
Sorry, I don't follow, You accept the truth of a formula that expresses
the relation of some variables and a constant. Then STR has a formula,
the Lorentz Transformation, where γ = 1/(1-(v²/c²)). Just another
formula with two variables and one constant. What's the difference. You
accept the first as a theory, but not the second. Why?
STR is conventionally taken to be statements about the world. I'll bet
99% of all scientists would agree. So why take the doubts of a
philosopher seriously? Is it that philosophers have something to say
about science? Well, of course they do, but these philosophers _of
science_ don't have the problem you mention.
I would take philosophers of science a lot more seriously than
philosophers outside the sciences (Rorty?). I'd rather follow Tarski
(his 1933 paper "one of the two most important developments in
mathematical logic in the first half of [the 20th] century". He provided
a linguistic analysis for what came to be known as the correspondence
theory of truth (the relation to Tarski's position is a bit contested)
to show that correspondence did not entail some questionable
metaphysics. The correspondence interpretation of Tarski's theory
underwrites the naturalistic conceptions of both realists and
empiricists.
Now a linguistic critique of the correspondence theory of truth is
certainly possible, Why should we consider it? a) contradictions in the
correspondence theory, b) advantages in the alternative theory. We would
be wise to employ these tests for our own private preferences, but we
might also have private reasons to prefer a theory. This is fine, but
when we engage others and present our alternative view, assuming that is
is not a conventional view within the discipline of which we speak
(science in this case), we must always justify our position by 1)
providing arguments in its favor that refer to considerations (a) and
(b), or by 2) citing a well recognized authority in the field. Rorty's
expertise lies in literature, humanities and philosophy, not in science
or the philosophy of science. We ought to read him for our private
amusement or edification, but we surely can't present his theory in the
context of science without sufficient justification.
I have the pleasure of holding some off-the-wall views, but when I
trundle them out in a context other than where such views are
conventional, I must always do so in the language and with the values of
the milieu I address. If for some reason I can't manage that, such as my
ignorance, my injecting my off-the-wall views will only invite
indifference or ridicule. It will have no rhetorical effect whatsoever,
which after all, is what is required of dialog.
> I think my view is not too different from that expressed by
> C.I. Lewis, "A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori" (a 1923 article
> in J. of Philosophy, and reprinted in the book "A Priori Knowledge
> (ed. Paul K. Moser)).
Interesting, I don't know this article, nor have I ever read anything by
Lewis. When he had influence after World War II, I was studying science,
but had no interest in the philosophy of science, and so missed him. His
reputation apparently declined precipitously after the War, and for your
own development, you might look in to why. I suspect Carl Hempel took
him seriously, and might explore Hempel a bit.
>>The final thing I find strange about your paragraph is the suggestion
>>that I should not swallow conventional wisdom. Why not?
>
> You should question it. You might still follow it, even though you
> question it. But questioning is good.
Undoubtedly. My ability to launch a viable critique of anything is very
limited. There's a (narrow) field in which I can speak with some
assurance; there's a few fields were at least I hopefully would not
appear the fool, but in most fields I'm profoundly handicapped. When I'm
looking into these fields, I'm obliged to accept the current consensus
as probably true, for doing so enables me to learn a bit. For me to
raise a question can't be to challenge others in a field in which I lack
expertise, but only to learn more. So I follow conventional wisdom
except where I see problems with it and think I have something
substantial to offer as an alternative.
> What I disagree with is the view often seen in theological and
> philosophical literature, that seems to treat truth as something that
> is completely human independent, that we just have to somehow
> discover.
Gosh, I don't know anyone who would say that. It is certainly not the
prevailing notion of truth in the sciences. Positivism perhaps, but
positivism is dead. Actually, I'm not sure if positivism suggested that
truth can be or is entirely objective.
>>> I believe that correspondence theory could not possibly be a
>>> definition of "truth".
>
>>As I showed, it is in fact presumed by the dictionary definition.
>
> Dictionary definitions (so called) don't actually define. I expect a
> definition to give some explicit principle that can be applied.
> Otherwise it is not a definition. Perhaps my idea of "definition" is
> influenced by my being a mathematician.
News to me. I thought dictionaries defined words. True, the definitions
tend to be empiricist or functionalist, but that's another issue. I take
a dictionary to define words as they are commonly used. Why should a
definition engage some principle?
I pick this up from that great font of wisdom, Wikipedia:
There are two types of definitions: A descriptive definition provides
to a term a meaning which is in general use. A stipulative definition
of a term carries a meaning which a speaker wants it to convey for the
purpose of his or her discourse. Thus, the term may be new, or a
stipulative definition may prescribe a new meaning to a term which is
already in use. A descriptive definition can be shown to be "right"
or "wrong" by comparison to usage, but a stipulative definition
cannot.
What is the mathematician's use of the word "definition"?
> Berkeley's theory of reality was idealism. According to Berkeley,
> reality exists only as ideas in the mind, and there is no physical
> existence. I am not understanding why Berkeley's ontology would be
> significantly different from the ontology of a realist.
I presume because the realist says that theoretical objects,
unobservables (and also observables) are ontologically real, and
Berkeley denies it.
>>Sigh ;-). I don't understand what you mean by saying that truth does
>>not matter when it comes to scientific theories. It obviously means a
>>lot to those who propose them, for they think of themselves in a quest
>>for truth.
>
> Many scientists consider themselves pragmatists, rather than truth
> seekers.
True, many pragmatists seem agnostic about the truth of their
explanations. But, assuming them not to be insane, are they not
nevertheless looking for truth, if only, "Eureka, it works!" That is, I
doubt any sane scientist feels the aim of his scientific career is to
write fiction.
> For sure, scientists want to make truthful statements about the world.
> But what does that have to do with the truth of the scientific
> theories themselves?
OK. I concede the point. A pragmatist is concerned with truth, although
agnostic about the truth value of his theories. Their truth is only that
they allow prediction, they work.
>>Who (besides yourself) says the gas laws are false?
>
> I think most physicists would agree with me on that.
Not in a commonsensical manner, I suspect. Again, resorting to
Wikipedia:
The gas laws are a set of laws that describe the relationship between
thermodynamic temperature (T), absolute pressure (P) and volume (V) of
gases. They are a loose collection of rules developed between the late
Renaissance and early 19th century.
Do you mean the laws are idealizations (represent a boundary case)? I
can think of no other reason why one might cast doubt on them. But are
ideal boundary cases "false"? In integral calculus, the whole thing is
ideal, of course, but it can entail boundary definitions, and there's no
suggestion that I know of that a solution for them is in error.
> But why call it "transmission of knowledge", when it is information,
> not knowledge, that is being transmitted?
Well, yes, it is certainly a transmission of information. But when I
inform you that the moon consists of green cheese, I am offering a
statement that constrains the properties of the moon. Or we can think of
information as the entropy state of a closed system. If I convey to you
the information that the moon consists of cheese or that a given system
has a certain information entropy, I'm conveying a fact having truth
value that can be empirically tested. Knowledge is a practical or
theoretical understanding of a subject, what is know of it, facts
concerning it. These also have truth value. While the two terms are not
quite the same, they are so broad and diverse in meaning that I don't
know that we can sharply distinguish them without imposing our favorite
definitions. If I >>make a statement that everyone, including myself,
know to be false, but >>actually turns out by some fluke to correspond
with reality, wouldn't >>that be a true statement which is a property
intrinsic to statements and >>independent of our beliefs about those
statements.
>
> That's a tricky question. Making a statement is an intentional
> action. If your intention was to make a false statement, but what you
> said was actually true, perhaps that would make your statement doubly
> false in the sense that it didn't even match your intentions in making
> that statement.
That's true, but not "doubly". My intentions are incidental because most
people usually listen to what I say rather than read my mind (it may be
different in a court of law where my credibility as a witness is
challenged). You start out with a presumption that truth lies in
language, not the relation of language and world, but you don't offer
any reason why I should accept that presumption myself. Because you do
not, my own bias stands.
>>Not at all clear here. So let me recall the context. I had originally
>>asked for justifications for the coherence theory suggestion that the
>>potential truth value of a theory is a function of its universality.
>
> Yes, sorry. I don't really have much to say about coherence theories,
> other than that I am skeptical of them.
Why skeptical? You strike me as naturally sympathetic to such
theories. People use coherence theories all the time, but I have trouble
finding any developed defense of them. Some time ago I asked about the
meaning of "robust" in this group, and got no useful replies. I'll have
to look into this theory (about which I'm ignorance) more deeply as time
allows, for it is clearly important and much used.
> The broader sense of "proof" is that of a persuasive argument. But
> whether a person is persuaded will vary from person to person. You
> can say what you want about justification, but unless it persuades me,
> I won't count it.
Of course.
>>> But it cannot do either unless you have first developed a notion of
>>> correspondence that is independent of your concept of truth.
>
>>This seems circular. If I define truth as the relation of statements
>>and the world where the statement corresponds to that reality in some
>>sense, then where's the problem?
>
> It is so vague as to not be definitive, and therefore cannot be a
> definition.
Ah, so that's your problem with this. But because there are different
ways to assess coherence surely does mean they all must be false
;-). Some ways are quite precise and specific. For example, a great deal
has been done with model theory. It gives me a headache, but at least it
aims at precision.
>>You seem to say that to define truth presumes the existence of a
>>transcendental Truth, where in fact truth is only a label we invent to
>>point to an attribute of the statement of the relationship between
>>specific statements and their referents.
>
> I have no problem with truth as a relation between statements and
> their referents. But I cannot find that in the correspondence theory.
?? That's the definition of correspondence theory. Let me give a simple
minded example (of congruence correspondence) borrowed from Wikipedia:
The cat is on the mat. Congruence means that our words refer to the real
entities of cat and mat, and their relation is what I state it to
be. I'm not advocating this (I'm a process realist and don't believe our
the referents of our statements can be reduced to objects of
observation), but the issue is whether the posited correspondence is at
all vague. The statement posits the existence of a cat and a mat, and we
can in fact observe them; it posits their relation, and that too we can
clearly perceive. So there is a correspondence.
> There is a substantial literature on truth, that attempts to define it
> as correspondence, and which presupposes that we have already settled
> questions about reference. And then there is another substantial
> literature on reference, that attempts to define reference in terms of
> an already presumed understanding of truth. I am simply pointing out
> that the emperor has no clothes. The whole thing is completely
> circular, and actually tells us nothing about either truth or
> reference.
Understood. When we have a correspondence theory, our statement posits
the existence of things or their structure, and the issue is, these are
being posited as truths, when in fact truth is what we are trying to
ascertain.
I can think of objections to this proposal:
a) It seems to rest on the proposition that the word "cat" in my example
statement is equivalent to the statement "There is a cat". However, it
is not. The word cat is an index, comparable to my pointing to it. To
say "is on" refers to a kind of relationship, not a statement of
fact. It is only their assembly into the statement that we have
something that we can compare with the world observed. True, both the
indices and the relation term involve low level observational or
ontological theories, so let me turn next to that.
b) To refer to the cat and mat and to posit their relation (or even if
we feel my point (a) is entirely incorrect about these terms not being
truth statements, there remains that our entire existence depends on the
relative truthfulness of much of the knowledge we acquired from society
or through personal experience. If the totality of our knowledge was in
fact randomly either true or false, we would effectively be insane. I'll
assume this is intuitively obvious. In other words, we have an
existential need for a presumably largely true fund of knowledge. If
these knowledges are embedded in my statement about the cat and mat, we
would have to admit that the truth of it has a conventionalist
foundation, but we can't do without it.
c) When we find a correspondence between our statement and the world, we
are not calling for any absolute or unequivocal truth, for an
approximate and rough an ready truth will do. If you object to my
example that the cat is not really on the mat, for there are atoms that
separate them, my reply would be, "You quibble, Sir". We are not seeking
absolute certainty, as in math, but a rough sense that the
correspondence is more truthful than not.
While I see much utility in a correspondence (and coherence) theory of
truth, let me remind you that I privilege another theory of truth, which
is centered on an action theory (not pragmatism). It is kind of like
Lakatos' position, but in many respects not.
> Now take a scientific theory. But don't take it as just a
> self-contained set of propositions. Instead, look at it in the
> context of science. That context includes the laboratory training
> that students of science take, and where they learn the practices of
> the particular science. I think you will see that a scientific
> theory, looked at in this manner, is actually concerned with defining
> terms and establishing reference for those terms. If you look at
> special relativity, the purpose of the thought experiments that
> Einstein gave was to help establish reference, as it was to be used
> under SR. Looked at that way, you will see that the role of a
> scientific theory is to setup the reference, such that it will then
> become possible to have a truth relation between statements and their
> referents. The theory is prior to being able to make the statements
> for which we want there to be an attribute of truth.
Don't follow this. My (dim) recollection of STR was that there were
contradictions in the received theory, and the Michelson-Morley
experiment forced them to the surface, and Einstein employed abductive
reasoning to generate a hypothesis which could resolve the
contradiction. But you need to explicate your general point above before
I can quite grasp it. It is true that the lab is an artificial construct
designed to yield the very artificial (one-sided) truth we call general
laws. But the positivist lab is hardly a model of normal scientific
practice, and more than is deductive reasoning the principle logic
(despite what kids are taught in school, for it had ideological utility
having little to do with science).
> It requires a transcendental notion of truth, only when it depends on
> a transcendental notion of correspondence. And the literature on
> correspondence theory mostly seems to be dependent on a transcendental
> notion of correspondence.
This comes as a surprise to me on both counts. Does this, for example
apply to my example of the cat being on the mat? The notion that
anything is transcendental strikes me as really bizarre (I hold to
materialistic monism, like nearly everyone else).
> Sure, the ruler does not define "true", but it does define reference
> (or this particular case of reference). My objection to the
> correspondence theory is that you cannot define truth in terms of
> reference, if reference is itself undefined. And once reference is
> defined, that implicitly defines truth without a separate theory or
> definition of truth being required.
And why can't we define truth in relation to this artificial standard of
the ruler. There is a correspondence between the height of the desk and
the number of units on the ruler. The ruler is not a truth any more than
the desk. By statement that the desk is 30" high remains relative to the
man-made ruler, but it is nevertheless true. If I told you that my desk
is 30" high, it would be bizarre to replay that this is not so because a
ruler is not transcendental. The reference here, the ruler, is defined
as a social convention, and the object of the ruler does not deconstruct
simply because its markings are a social convention. If I say, this is a
ruler", that of course is a truth statement, and so my measurement of my
desk entails auxiliary beliefs, but these beliefs I hold as true because
they are a condition for my taking the measure, and the utility of a
ruler for this is transparent and uncontested.
> Okay. But here you are establishing correspondence with a social
> convention (the use of a measuring stick). What does that have to do
> with correspondence with reality?
Aha! I've been using the word "world" here without troubling to define
it. The world is everything outside consciousness: the moon, breakfast,
the ruler, my brain. A social convention is real, is it not? Try
violating them and you get into trouble.
> The conventional wisdom sees science and knowledge as having to do
> with determining whether propositions are true. I see science and
> knowledge as having to do with finding ways of forming propositions,
> which could not even have existed without the kind of activity that
> humans engage in.
And how would you justify such a position? I don't mean to be cruel, but
an alternative perspective than the conventional one used by scientists
is of absolutely no interest or use (except mildly as a kind of
intellectual aphrodisiac) to anyone but yourself. The value of your
alternative perspective lies _entirely_ in its justification, such as
showing unequivocally, and in terms of the language understood by
scientists, that your perspective is obviously better than the
convention.
I apologize for the haste with which I am forced to reply to you.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> a mirror ;-) . But you are right, you can't see your power of sight, for
> it is an unobservable. I can get a direct experience of sight in that
> I'm conscious of myself seeing and the effect it has on my mind. So I
> don't quite get your point.
No, you're begging the question. We experience sight but when we do
this we're not experiencing the experience. We can argue that we're
capable of experiencing the experience of sight, but at this point
we're experiencing the experience of having experienced sight, and so
on. It's a regress. There is no vantage point from which experience
can stand back and see itself directly, so it's a vicious regress.
That is, we don't directly experience sight so we're not conscious of
seeing. We see, we reflect on seeing, we reflect on reflecting on
seeing, etc. but we never experience seeing, we are never conscious of
consciousness - only it's object. We can't wriggle out from behind
the camera.
> I never brought up the "subject-object axis", but only that I can see
> the relation of my statements and the world. If I state that I'm now
> typing, I am aware of the words in my mind, I can I can see my fingers
> going and the consequent formation of equivalent written words on the
> screen. I see the correspondence between the thought and what appears on
> the screen, and is correspondence between them is why my statement that
> I'm typing my thoughts I call true. The word true, in correspondence
> theory, refers to the formal relation of things (statements and the
> world), and when there is such a formal relation, I can know it
> directly. I verify the its truth that way, but the word truth is not an
> observed feature of any particular thing. Is that what you are saying?
Nope. You're playing a language game with the word "truth" in it.
That's what I'm saying.
> I probably agree that truth does not reduce to utility. Your example
> from economics is unfortunate, for to suggest that utility is merely
> desire is ideological (is a probable function of social class). I'm not
> saying you are wrong here, but only that your statement can't lay claim
> to being universally true.
I don't think my statement means to be universally true. At least not
if it had been listening what I was saying.
> But we are being drawn into side issues. You want to get rid of the word
> truth and knowledge. That can mean a) they are misleading encumbrances
> that are unnecessary, so that we can make true statements or possess
> truthful knowledge without their use, or b) there is no such thing as
> truth and knowledge, or c) truth is entirely subjective and so entirely
> relative. You not only have to indicate which you mean, but also to the
> extent that your position deviates from convention, offer some
> justification. Casting doubt on the word "utility" in economics seems at
> best only relevant by implication concerning your point that we not
> speak of truth or knowledge. Give me a good reason.
Ah! There's c! But now, where's e? My question is really, why is it
multi-choice? Why are you so certain you've exhaused all my options?
We can't see outside our own boxes at the best of times so I'm not
certain restricting others' options is the way to go.
We're not sheep, why should convention concern us?
Lets talk about screwdrivers. They're useful when you have screws and
walls and pictures. But let's say that all the screws have run out
and we now have a problem with pictures staying on the wall. We try
applying the screwdriver to nails, but to no avial. Any reasonable
person would throw away the screwdriver and reach for a hammer, but
here we are, stubornly refusnig to let go of the screwdriver.
You may not have a use for a pragmatist view of the world and maybe
you never will. But "truth" and "knowledge" are screwdrivers that
have long since lost their usefulness for me. I'm all out of screws.
> Assertions are possible without the idea of truth? Again, not sure how
> to take this. That we can assert something without realizing that we are
> making a truth statement? That a statement can be true without there
> being any definition of truth?
Assertion doesn't need to entail truth. Consider a truck asserting
itself into a space in front of you on the motorway that you would not
have normally considered a space at all. Conviction, determination or
sheer willingness to present an argument does not need to drag behind
it, kicking a screaming, the idea of truth. Truth is something people
talk about after all the action has already taken place.
> If so, I'd be inclined to agree. And
> there's the semantic argument that truth statements have nothing to do
> with truth, but with our personal relation to the statement, and with
> this I'd disagree for a variety of reasons, one of which is that it runs
> against convention. Since it is not embedded my dictionary or in
> scientific texts, it must be spelled out and justified by who ever
> offers it.
Trying to find out what "truth" really is, is a bit of a joke really.
We invented the term and people use it differently. It's its use that
shows up its currency, not the discovery of its essence hiding
somewhere in language and reality.
> I've no idea what it means to say that logic relies on the idea of
> truth. I'm aware of the suggestion that logic makes the truth value of
> our statements more probable, but that's not what you are saying.
Logic doesn't do this at all. It tries to be truth-preserving, so if
you start with a true statement x and end with y, then assuming you
followed all the rules correctly, y will also be true. But "truth" is
a technical term in logic, just a label. All in all logic is about
symbol manipulation. It's a tool for some people, a religion for
others. Even when it's a tool and used well, it has very limited
application.
> But to
> be honest, I don't know what logic is. My dictionary suggests it is a
> description of the powers of mental reasoning with the requirement of
> coherence. That makes sense. But what does that have to do with truth,
> since truth conventionally is a relation between a product of mind and
> the world and so is not a feature of the mind or of its operations. But,
> again, I'm ignorant about all this.
I'd get a new dictionary. Our so called "reasoning" is crap at best.
We already have our answers, most of the time is spent trying to
justify them.
> > I used "god" as a marker pen for where the idea of warrant departs
> > human durastiction and so can only be followed by faith.
>
> Not sure if I understand. When we claim that a statement is true, we are
> commonly making a statement about its correspondence with the
> referent. It is commonly felt that our justification for this claim, our
> warrant for it, entails more than just the mind (its product in our
> statement), but involves the world. Are you saying that a) statements of
> truth are entirely mental (a coherence theory) and b) when we try to
> relate it to the world we presume unsubstantiated facts? Perhaps, but it
> would be useful if you were to specify just why. An empiricist would say
> that the facts of observation can verify (or falsify) the truth of our
> statement, since we can observe its compatibility with the known facts,
> and he would insist that no observational theories are entailed. I'd
> agree there are problems with this point, one of which is that it
> entails unproven ontological assumptions. But empiricists today respond
> to this criticism.
In reply to a), no I'm not saying anything about the much coveted
screwdriver "truth" at all. I'm trying to kick the term out the door
in preference for other terms.
b) Some of us don't try to relate sentences to the world because we
can't see a use for it.
> > I'm not saying that the truth is there is no truth, or that I know
> > that we don't know. I'm not looking for the grounds under which to
> > support truth, or the grounds in which the tree of knowledge can be
> > planted. There is no such garden of eden. Moreover, this doesn't
> > mean I believe our claims of truth and knowledge stand over an abyss.
> > I'm abandoning this whole picture of a grounds altogether because it
> > is a religious one, and adopting a more mundane picture of things; at
> > this point, one that involves the idea of utility.
>
> I find you hard to follow. You are not denying truthful statements and
> you are not trying to justify claims of truth. You seem to say simply
> that there are no grounds for us to claim our statements are true.
I'm saying that the whole idea of there being a grounds at all, is
archaic. The "under" in understanding, the "foundations" of
knowledge, the "grounds" for truth. It's all a metaphor. Why should
we look at the world through a gardener's eyes and see problems, when
we can look through any other set of eyes and vanish these problems.
> OK,
> then you must have some objection to the dictionary/correspondence
> theory of truth, presumably because it entails unsubstantiated
> axioms. However, there's a world of a difference between pointing out
> that we assume our axioms are true and stating that they represent
> something unnatural.
I'm trying to abandon the whole idea of axioms. Again, they're
considered to be the "foundations" of an argument.
> All theories entail axioms that are presumed true, and often the reason
> for this presumption is convention. But in looking for your objection,
> all I find is this reference to religion, which I take to mean the
> presence of something non-natural or supernatural.
> But are our axioms
> beliefs that we accept because of convention, or because they represent
> the best current theory, or because of utility, or because they prove to
> be instrumental, pragmatic, etc. etc.? None of these reasons seem to
> presume anything unnatural, and on the contrary I assume they probably
> assume their justification is quite natural. An axiom of my behavior is
> that to harm others is wrong. I can justify this belief without recourse
> to anything non-natural.
You might be missing my point. If someone believed that science is
the source of all truth then I would say they worship the science
god. If someone thought that logic dictates how people should think
I'd say they believe in the logic god. Thank kind of thing. I'm
poking fun at a faith people have. And it is a faith. There is no
question begging argument they can offer that shows that science,
logic, realism, idealism, Karl Marx or Buddhism is the one true
religion.
> > It doesn't mean we can't talk about things either or that we should
> > stop using the terms. I'm trying to get across that the whole picture
> > of truth and knowledge is so entrenched in our cultural word game that
> > we've lost the ability to do without them, and that there are other
> > word games that we might play, ones that do without religious beliefs.
> > These beliefs are a relic from times when it was thought the world was
> > spoken into existence, a time when it was thought that language
> > mediated reality.
>
> Up to a point I'd agree. However, that we presume truth does not seem a
> word game, but rather how we define it and perhaps verify it.
Now you're in denial.
I agree. It's easier to lay blame and walk away than it is to take a
stand with few others and enter the fray. But hey, these judgements
are empty commentaries really, we're just promoting an attitude we
want to see more of. Like they are.
> > Well, if I believed in truth and knowledge, then I suppose I'd have to
> > say yes to your question. If I understand it correctly that it. The
> > more points of view you have on the world the richer its apprehension,
> > so presumably, if you have many points of view agreeing then you've
> > covered off more potential reality.
>
> In the quote of your passage above, you said you were not denying there
> is truth, but here you imply you don't belief in truth. You loose me.
My response was me assuming I believed in truth again and trying to
reply to you based on that. I though it was what you were after.
In general though, outside of my putting on my truth hat here, forget
the idea of truth when you're reading me, I'm not doing anything with
truth, I don't use it. You're looking for something that isn't there
and projecting.
> >> I don't understand what your problem is. Yes, truth is a relation
> >> between a statement and the world, but it is a causal relation in
> >> that a truth statement is caused by the mind under conditions
> >> constrained by the world. What do you mean there are no causal
> >> relations out there? Obviously there are, for there's all kinds of
> >> things going on of which we presumably are unaware.
>
> > As far as I'm aware, this is the first time you've started to get at
> > the nature of your truth correspondence relation.
>
> Well, this is interesting. I brought in the idea that our statements are
> caused by the operations of the mind, but that the mind is constrained
> by matter in that it determines the probability distribution of the
> truthfulness of our possible statements in relation to the world. I
> would add that the world constrains our knowledge only indirectly,
> though the medium of action in the world. The idea is a creation of the
> mind, not of the world.
>
> I hesitated addressing the specific nature of the correspondence between
> our statements and the world because there's a range of theories, and I
> was not trying to evaluate their relative merits, but deal with
> correspondence theory in general - that there is some kind of
> correspondence between truthful statements and the world. What I
> shouldn't have injected above was my own take on this
> correspondence. Curious that it should come at all as a surprise to you.
Yeah okay, maybe a bit of miss comm. But... if you believe in
correspondence but have no idea which one is the true one, then do you
admit you have a kind of "faith" in the theory?
Sure, I'm interested.
"'The moon is out' is true" is talking about the truth of a
proposition. It's simply asserting the moon is out, but some people
take this "truth" to be real in some sense which is silly. Calling a
proposition true is an empty complement. But we get caught up in
propositions and truth values thinking they have some metaphysical
status. So yes, I think this metaphysical assumption creates a
metaphysical problem - the problem of what exactly is this thing we
call "truth". Rather than try to solve this problem with more
assumptions, remove the assumptions that cause the problem to begin
with.
> As for (b), you have not been
> specific about any alternative. I say, "Your honor, I did see the
> suspect, and he was wearing a yellow hat". The defense counsel
> challenges me, Did you really see the hat?" He is asking me to verify
> that was what I saw, and I reply "Yes". It is important for the jury to
> know if my statement is truthful or not. What difficulty arises because
> this judicial procedure aims to establish the truth or falsity of my
> statement? And how could the cross examination occur without presuming
> that statements of fact have truth value? Or is my example too
> simplistic?
There is an infinite number of alternatives to truth, get creative.
I've tried to outline a pragmatist view by speaking in their terms,
but there are many others.
> No, I mean development of our power to act (for good or ill). This power
> is constrained by social structure and productive powers, and does not
> mean progress in the Enlightenment or the positivist senses. That is, I
> don't give it moral value. I don't want to get into this issue here, but
> just to give a hint of where I'm coming from, I see existing societies
> as being contradictory, and the structure that supports development of
> social capacities at the same time means these capacities fail to meet
> the emerging social needs caused by development. So we are in effect on
> a treadmill that would get nowhere (stagnation) if it were not that
> emerging capacities reach a point that a restructuring becomes possible
> and necessary (periodization in history). Through such restructurings,
> there is a potential for new capacities and new needs, but at a "higher"
> level in that these capacities accumulate and are quantitatively greater
> and needs shift toward a development of our social rather than our
> biological being.
Development as in a Marxianish synthesis of opposites?
> > I suppose I'm a pragmatist at the moment, but my main "position" is
> > that I don't really believe in the truth of positions, only in their
> > current utility, which will is personal and will inevitably change. I
> > doubt I'll come back to truth however.
>
> I'm trying to make sense of this. Are you saying that your concern is
> not whether your take on life happens to be true, but you feel that at
> best you only somehow manage to muddle through?
No. In your language it would be forced to say something like this:
"I have discovered a universal truth, which is the fact that there is
no truth." Clearly this is contradictory, because your language lacks
the means to describe what I mean. In my language I would say: "I
have no further use for the idea of truth and the truth of positions."
Listening from your language, this statement would sound like I'm
abandoning a large chunk of reality, because you are holding onto
ideas that I've abandoned and haven't got a replacement handy.
I have adopted new ideas, but there is no set of analytical steps that
can lead from one to the other because there is a translation of
meaning that needs to take place, which analytical argument doesn't
lend itself to. If you can make sense of the statement "the truth is,
there is no truth", without discarding it as non-sense, then you'll
probably see the statement as a vector or direction rather than a
position. You'll probably appreciate that there is a shift in meaning
in the sentence, two senses of the same word at play. If this is the
case, then you're on the right track to understanding where I'm coming
from.
> > If I were to disagree, I'd say that effective action is close to
> > sounding like useful action, and if useful action warrants us to say
> > that a sentence is "true" then it sounds to me like it's a realist
> > position couched in the language of a pragmatist. Let's call this
> > position the "new realist" (after the "new right" from politics). So
> > I'd probably say great, that sounds good, but why bother with the word
You say it's arguable that "effective action implies we have truthful
knowledge". How does this differ from saying "useful action implies
we have truthful knowledge"?
You say that effective action means that our action has the effect we
intend. How does that differ from our action having the use we
intend?
> > Yes, I understood you mean that. I was generalising to say that we
> > can live our lives quite happily without the notions of truth and
> > knowledge.
>
> Think about my suggestions about power and truth. First, I'm skeptical
> that anyone who is aware and has moral responsibility, can really be
> happy these days. Most of use have an enormous sense of wrong and of not
> being able to do much about it. One can bury one's head in the sand, or
> become an egocentric hedonist and find a kind of contentment, I suppose,
> but I can't quite translate that into happiness, which I feel only comes
> from engagement.
A reasonable thing to say. In my experience, there are many views of
the world we can adopt like postmodernists, interpretists,
positivists, pragmatists, who-cares-sists, user-defined 1, user-
defined 2, etc., etc. Depending on your world view, your attitude,
the metaphors you use, what you're looking at, what side of the bed
you wake up on, what time of the month it is, etc. the world appears
to you differently. If we spend a lot of time on one particular
position, expanding on it, enriching our vocaulary and schema about
it, it will become our default position. If we grow up in it, it will
not even be seen as a position but as common sense. In the end
though, it's just one of a lot of ways we can describe the world and
that description isn't the truth.
That's not taking anything away from your description, it's just
saying that it isn't the truth and it doesn't have to be seen that
way.
> > If I just said "truth and theories don't exist", you'd be right. But
> > I come with a story of why we use words like "truth" and "knowledge",
> > that their notions aren't needed to make sense of the world and that
> > there is another set of notions that could replace them.
>
> But have you in fact shown this? Have you shown that words like truth
> and knowledge are not needed? Have to offered an alternative set of
> notions? Not that I can see.
I'd have to say yes, but unless you see it too the point's mute.
> > Under the view I offer, what I'm offering you is critical feedback.
> > What you see is contradiction, non-sense and nihilism, which I
> > appreciate because I felt the same way when I first started trying to
> > make sense of it.
>
> No, I understand that to point out the flaws in a particular theory or
> way of seeing things and to offer an alternative that appears better in
> some explicit ways that are intersubjective is a valid criticism. My
> objection is not to that, but to your not having pointed out the flaws
> of the existing world view (other than to say that words like truth and
> knowledge may be unnecessary, but that has neither been demonstrated nor
> shown to be significant), and not having offered an alternative world
> view that does not rely on statements of truth or knowledge, that has
> something to recommend it that you can readily persuade others of its
> truth. I realize that you reject truth statements, but then why
> shouldn't I just conclude that you shoot your self in your own foot?
I've been highlighting problems with truth as correspondence,
knowledge and warrant, and offering a pragmatist kind of view. Just
because you disagree doesn't mean I haven't been doing it.
> > You'll find that some physicist appreciate that "truth" is a tenuous
> > notion. Many mathematicians and logicians realise that "truth" is a
> > techincal term particular to their field.
>
> Well, yes, some physicists are philosophically inclined and may well
> appreciate that truth is a challenging notion. But _all_ scientific
> practice presumes truth, and most physicists that are philosophically
> inclined adopt a correspondence theory of truth, and now the consensus
> among philosophers of science is either that truth can be approximately
> known or or can't be known for sure, but not that there is no truth.
Nope, you can get away without the notion of truth in science.
> I happen to be interested in this question at the moment, and so would
> really like to see a substantiated argument that, contrary to some
> authoritative statements I've seen, natural scientists don't on the
> whole accept a correspondence theory of truth and have ontological
> (rather than epistemological) doubts about there being truth.
I think part of the problem is that because you believe in truth,
you're looking for it.
Haines Brown
the form of a tree in which one limb leads to others, which lead to yet
others. As a result the trunk becomes obscured and problems don't really
get resolved. Interesting in detail, but not very constructive as a
whole. If you don't mind, I'd like to turn to the trunk at this
point. I'll offer a broad perspective that will necessarily be very
sketchy and perhaps problematic at points, but hopefully will help lend
some coherence to the whole.
In feudal Europe, the ground of meaning was God. That is, for those who
were inclined to worry about truth, everything could be in one way or
another linked to God's will or the divine nature.
At some point, the contradictions of feudal society become manifest,
broadly perhaps 13-17th centuries. This gave rise to a new kind of
social order in which the dominant social force was becoming the
bourgeoisie rather than aristocracy, and with the rise of a new class
there arose a new ideology, one which sought to displace the centrality
of the godhead with something else: human creativity.
The form this ideology located that creativity in terms of the private
possessions of the individual. In the Scottish Enlightenment, the
individual, the social atom, in possession of property (a property of
that atom) would truck and barter, and there would result an increase
his own "talents" (development of his properties). Promethean Man was
reborn.
The problem was that this bourgeois ideology was reductionist in that
the individual makes optimal decisions in terms of his private property
in a world of opportunities. And yet this world was not the source of
new value, but the human mind. The result was a profound contradiction
between mind and matter (Descartes). Because this binary was
contradictory, there could be no middle ground, no way to link mind and
matter or to muddle through. Apparent efforts to do so, upon close
inspection, preserve the contradiction.
This contradiction has been embedded in bourgeois ideology ever since,
and it is sometimes pointed out that postmodernism is simply a
manifestation of these contradictions rather than their transcendence.
Let me give an example of this contradiction. One of my favorite
historians was Marc Block, who being Jewish died in a German
concentration camp early in the Second World War. Historians, like
natural scientists, are by nature inclined to remain in close touch with
the facts of the world. Bloch's best known work is a little book very
worth reading, _The Historian's Craft_. The historian in his view was
like a virtuous craftsman who skillfully works his materials, the
evidence, to create a magnificent edifice of historical
interpretation. But, following Kant, the problem was that this evidence
is fragmentary and is culturally and temporally distant from us, and all
we really have is phenomena, not direct contact with any Ding an
sich. How do we bridge the gap between our own consciousness and distant
facts? We can't, really. So Bloch adopted to suggestion of Dilthey and
suggested this contact with the past had to be in terms of "Verstehen",
of putting ourselves into the mind of people living in the past to see
the world as they experienced it and understand how they reacted to
it. The ground of meaning is mentalité, not facts. Historicism might
suggest that the mentalité of the past is as alien to us as everything
else about the past, but Bloch countered that there was a commonality of
human nature (as you would say, a religious belief) that allowed us to
situate ourselves anywhere where there was a human mind at work. I
needn't point out that Bloch merely reproduced the contradiction in
bourgeois thought rather than resolve it, and reduced everything to
mind. The presumed objective reality of the past was preserved, not as
being meaningful, but as the background against which meaning is
developed through the action of the the creative mind upon it. The world
may be a mental construct, but Bloch nevertheless died at the hands of
the Nazis.
Such efforts to span the contradiction without a fundamental critique of
its presuppositions was doomed to failure, and as capitalist
contradictions deepen, such efforts seem ever more quixotic. So people
naturally explore the possibilities of a reductionism, to suggest that
mind (idea) is an artifact of body (matter), or body that of mind. The
former had its heyday in positivism and scientism, but that approach
collapsed, beginning in the late 19th century and by 1968 had died. The
alternative reduction is to reduce matter to mind, and that was
attempted by the German idealists in the nineteenth century, etc., but
is manifest today in postmodernism.
Sorry to imply that your position is merely the effect of a capitalist
contradiction, for it is not my intention to belittle it. However, it
does suggest why dialog between those who give primacy to experience of
the world (typically, historians and natural scientists) and those who
give primacy to consciousness (typically mathematicians, philosophers
and literary people) cannot hope to communicate, however good their
intentions and great their effort.
In our dialog, it took me a while for me to insert you into the
postmodern cubbyhole, and I do imply here a certain self-criticism, for
that is the kind of oppressive mental manipulation or intervention about
which postmodernists so rightly protest. But it is useful because it
helps expose the contradiction between those who make text or discourse
the foundation of meaning, and those who seek to find truth in the
world.
As for my own position, I'd (arrogantly, of course ;-)) like to suggest
that I'm looking at the contradiction itself with the aim of overcoming
it. As you might by this time surmise I do so in terms of process. In
terms of the philosophy of science, process is an unobservable in which
causal potency (an unobservable) and empiria (observables) are merely
its aspects and not ontologically separate. I'd define "process" as the
the empirical constraint on causal potency that determines the
probability distribution of its possible outcomes. In human terms, I use
this as the basis of an action theory. That is, we are not observers of
the world, but are creative actors in the world of which we are a part.
Let me inject a little aside at this point about scientific
realism. Practicing scientists have always been instinctive realists,
assuming that such unobservables as the atom are real. But philosophers
of science are not so lucky, for they have been caught in the Kantian
contradiction of bourgeois ideology (after all, they, like
mathematicians and historians, are petit bourgeois), and long found
reason to keep an idealism alive. However, the tendency in the last few
decades is for philosophers of science to embrace scientific realism,
pragmatism (agnosticism), or neo-empiricism, and often a blend of these.
However, realism has always been a bit more ambivalent than the
literature often suggests. One form is that we take the best among
current theories (Kuhn's dominant paradigm) as being real, but this
failed to explain scientific progress or basic change in
theories. Another form defined "unobservables" as real, where
"unobservables" referred to those things lying beyond direct
observation, such as force fields. The problem here is that we know that
direct observation is always theory-laden (Lakatos) and there is no real
difference between seeing the bird, seeing it through glasses, or
through a telescope, or some hypothetical future telescope of greater
power than those of today. And there is the form of realism that limits
the term "unobservable" to causal potency (such as Wesley Salmon).
However, I don't like any of these, for they seem to presume the
contradiction between matter and mind. Even to represent a causal
potency as real implies that there's an ontological category of
"unobservable" that contradicts that of observables; the binary
contradiction is perpetuated. So I suggest that causal potency and the
observable empiria are merely one-sided _aspects_ of one process, and it
is the process that combines both that is the ground of meaning. So I
invent the neologism (as far as I know) of "process realism" to label
this approach. I don't expect anyone to buy it, but at least I'm trying
to resolve the capitalist contradiction by focusing on a working-class
outlook that makes effective action in the world (not pragmatism or
instrumentalism, as I've discussed) the ground of meaning. Whether or
not I ever succeed, the effort seems worthwhile.
Well, thanks to your patience. Now let me turn to read your message and
respond to it briefly, skipping points which I belief I implicitly
address in my comments above.
jason <jasonk...@gmail.com> writes:
>> But we are being drawn into side issues. You want to get rid of the
>> word truth and knowledge. That can mean a) they are misleading
>> encumbrances that are unnecessary, so that we can make true
>> statements or possess truthful knowledge without their use, or b)
>> there is no such thing as truth and knowledge, or c) truth is
>> entirely subjective and so entirely relative. You not only have to
>> indicate which you mean, but also to the extent that your position
>> deviates from convention, offer some justification. Casting doubt on
>> the word "utility" in economics seems at best only relevant by
>> implication concerning your point that we not speak of truth or
>> knowledge. Give me a good reason.
>
> Ah! There's c! But now, where's e? My question is really, why is it
> multi-choice? Why are you so certain you've exhaused all my options?
> We can't see outside our own boxes at the best of times so I'm not
> certain restricting others' options is the way to go.
>
> We're not sheep, why should convention concern us?
> You may not have a use for a pragmatist view of the world and maybe
> you never will. But "truth" and "knowledge" are screwdrivers that
> have long since lost their usefulness for me. I'm all out of screws.
Your previous points I suspect I've addressed implicitly in my initial
comments, but I must pause here. If I understand correctly, you are
accusing me of creating categories and then forcing you to adopt one or
the other, which is totalitarian, curtails your freedom of choice.
If so, let me respond this way. First, I don't accept any conflation of
mutual determination and oppression. That we determine each other (in
the sense that what I do affects others) is part of the human condition
and in fact accounts for our development. Without it, we'd not be human,
but an intelligent animal. I reserve oppression or exploitation as a
specific kind of mutual determination that results in the
underdevelopment of the Other. I have no problem with the piano teacher
imposing discipline on his pupil.
Second, it was not my intention to impose conceptual categories on you,
but simply offer examples of ways one can define one's own position to
encourage you do do so. Without your defining your own position, there's
no discourse at all, for there's no common ground on which we
stand. Well, your response to this seems to be that the very project of
self-definition is unnecessary and undesirable. I could understand that,
but wonder why you seek to articulate and defend a position at all or
enter into any discourse.
For example, your distaste for being put into preconceived boxes is one
reason, I suppose, you remained vague about your position. You wanted it
to remain fluid and open to new possibilities. But it meant that I had a
devil of a time figuring out what I could say that would be meaningful
to you, for the "you' remained frustratingly foggy. So you seem to have
preserved your individual autonomy and virtue at society's expense. That
is, while it was not your intention, you made life a lot more difficult
for me ;-).
> Conviction, determination or sheer willingness to present an argument
> does not need to drag behind it, kicking a screaming, the idea of
> truth. Truth is something people talk about after all the action has
> already taken place.
The ecstasy of immediate experience, authenticity, etc., is an
intelligible position, I grant, but intelligible only within the
framework of capitalist contradictions. It seems to me, off hand, that
truth to some extent refers to what is intersubjective. If one rejects
any rationale or need for intersubjectivity, then I suppose truth and
knowledge can go out the window. Yes, I tried to elaborate (and
criticize, incidentally) a correspondence theory of truth, and here seem
to offer a Kuhnian conventionalist alternative. But I'd say that both
are manifestations of the capitalist contradiction. As you might
surmise, by intersubjectivity I'm not thinking of paroles, signs, words,
culture, etc., but of intersubjective actions as social beings, so that
it is a mutual determination that engages both mind and body, individual
and society, to include the ideas behind both the coherence and
correspondence theories of truth, but transcending their contradiction.
> b) Some of us don't try to relate sentences to the world because we
> can't see a use for it.
Which is why, although it may seem provocative to admit, I adopt a
working-class position. The working class starts off being in the world,
both in terms of economic production (creating new economic value
through engaging the world), and in terms of class struggle (developing
through social solidarity rather than private possession).
> I agree. It's easier to lay blame and walk away than it is to take a
> stand with few others and enter the fray. But hey, these judgements
> are empty commentaries really, we're just promoting an attitude we
> want to see more of. Like they are.
But how can you "take a stand with a few others"? Doesn't doing so imply
a commonality or the foundation of meaning that you wish to dismiss?
> In general though, outside of my putting on my truth hat here, forget
> the idea of truth when you're reading me, I'm not doing anything with
> truth, I don't use it. You're looking for something that isn't there
> and projecting.
Yes I am projecting. It is a reaching out to find common ground for
discourse. In effect I'm saying, here's a conceptual arena in which we
can join for discussion, or, if you don't care for my suggestions,
choose some other, and I'll join you there. You seem to respond that you
reject any such construction and can very well do without arenas.
> Yeah okay, maybe a bit of miss comm. But... if you believe in
> correspondence but have no idea which one is the true one, then do you
> admit you have a kind of "faith" in the theory?
Stepping back from the very abstract mode in which I've been speaking
and addressing your point here in more tangible and conventional terms,
I believe the conventional response would be, we don't know which theory
is true, but we have ways to decide which is "better" and should be
provisionally taken to be more approximately true. That is, your
objection is fully addressed in terms of the conventional philosophy of
science, I believe. That is, if I understand where you are coming from,
I don't think you need or should make this argument. To conflate
religious faith (a truth that is not contingent) with agreeing to accept
a theory as true (provisionally accepting a theory as being as close to
truth as we can currently manage to get in order to have some basis for
scientific discourse) is superficial.
>> So I take a rather bizarre approach that might be called existential,
>> but I'll not elaborate it here, in part because I can't presume you
>> are at all interested. I got hung up on correspondence theory because
>> it is the most conventional notion of truth (is embedded in the
>> dictionary and is presumed by practicing scientists) and used it to
>> counter a possible suggestion that there is no truth outside the
>> mind. So I found myself in the unfortunate position of defending a
>> theory I didn't entirely agree with.
>
> Sure, I'm interested.
I hope I've obliged you in my introductory comments here.
>> No, I mean development of our power to act (for good or ill). This
>> power is constrained by social structure and productive powers, and
>> does not mean progress in the Enlightenment or the positivist
>> senses. That is, I don't give it moral value. I don't want to get
>> into this issue here, but just to give a hint of where I'm coming
>> from, I see existing societies as being contradictory, and the
>> structure that supports development of social capacities at the same
>> time means these capacities fail to meet the emerging social needs
>> caused by development. So we are in effect on a treadmill that would
>> get nowhere (stagnation) if it were not that emerging capacities
>> reach a point that a restructuring becomes possible and necessary
>> (periodization in history). Through such restructurings, there is a
>> potential for new capacities and new needs, but at a "higher" level
>> in that these capacities accumulate and are quantitatively greater
>> and needs shift toward a development of our social rather than our
>> biological being.
>
> Development as in a Marxianish synthesis of opposites?
Yes, if I understand your question. However, I don't see Marxist
contradictions in Hegelian terms at all, but in terms similar to a
thermodynamic engine. The notion of Aufheben in Marxism is not really a
"synthesis" in the sense of amalgamation or combination of ideas, but a
material transcendence that builds on the past but is fundamentally
different from it. This is what I tried to express tangibly in my
paragraph here. The "opposites" are not logical categories, but opposite
real processes that are opposite with respect to the direction of their
change in entropy (emergence and dissipation). These opposites are not
amalgamated, but offer a foundation for a restructuring of the system (a
new "mode of production"), which acquires a new manner of development
and a new manner of dissipation. That is, I find a Hegelian conception
of Marxism not at all helpful. My paragraph hopefully should be
intelligible for a non-Marxist.
> I have adopted new ideas, but there is no set of analytical steps that
> can lead from one to the other because there is a translation of
> meaning that needs to take place, which analytical argument doesn't
> lend itself to. If you can make sense of the statement "the truth is,
> there is no truth", without discarding it as non-sense, then you'll
> probably see the statement as a vector or direction rather than a
> position. You'll probably appreciate that there is a shift in meaning
> in the sentence, two senses of the same word at play. If this is the
> case, then you're on the right track to understanding where I'm coming
> from.
Yes, you might be surprised that I do, although it took me a while to
get the blinders off. These blinders are in part because our dialog
takes place in a forum dedicated to the philosophy of science, and it
took a while to understand that your position is fundamentally hostile
to science. Also, your position (although you may reject any
"postmodern" label for it) seems to make a virtue of being
non-committal, of being specific, and to have ideas refer to
anything. Simply put, you are writing fiction.
> You say it's arguable that "effective action implies we have truthful
> knowledge". How does this differ from saying "useful action implies
> we have truthful knowledge"?
Not at all except that you reject the concept of truth altogether. If I
were to suggest (which I don't) that truth is nothing but convention,
relative, entirely subjective, you'd still reject it as an imposition of
the person making the claim on others. So your question employs a term
(actually, perhaps all its terms), that you assert are meaningless, and
so in principle there's no way I can construct an answer to it. It is as
if you posed your question in Sanskrit, a language I don't know, and ask
that I reply in Urdu, a language that presumably you don't know.
> You say that effective action means that our action has the effect we
> intend. How does that differ from our action having the use we
> intend?
A minor point, I believe. There are many things I do that are not
utilitarian in any obvious sense. I sat this morning watching some
finches as I smoked my ghetto cigar (these small cigars that are the
same price as a "loosie", but offer more - you would have to have an
urban existence to know what I'm talking about) and drank coffee (yes,
I'm really quite a sane person ;-)). I could offer a utilitarian
explanation for this action, but it would be clearly forced. Simpler is
to say that this early morning action was what I set out to do, and I
did it. Besides, to suggest it was utilitarian in purpose seems to
impose a kind of explanation having truth value ;-).
>> Think about my suggestions about power and truth. First, I'm
>> skeptical that anyone who is aware and has moral responsibility, can
>> really be happy these days. Most of use have an enormous sense of
>> wrong and of not being able to do much about it. One can bury one's
>> head in the sand, or become an egocentric hedonist and find a kind of
>> contentment, I suppose, but I can't quite translate that into
>> happiness, which I feel only comes from engagement.
>
> A reasonable thing to say. In my experience, there are many views of
> the world we can adopt like ... If we spend a lot of time on one
> particular position, expanding on it, enriching our vocaulary and
> schema about it, it will become our default position. If we grow up
> in it, it will not even be seen as a position but as common sense. In
> the end though, it's just one of a lot of ways we can describe the
> world and that description isn't the truth.
>
> That's not taking anything away from your description, it's just
> saying that it isn't the truth and it doesn't have to be seen that
> way.
But you missed my point, which was to distinguish a world view from
engagement (action in the world). As Marx said, the object is not just
to understand the world, but to change it. This is a working class
attitude and perhaps not natural for academics.
> Nope, you can get away without the notion of truth in science.
Yes, of course. But you can't get away very long without engaging the
world.
>> I happen to be interested in this question at the moment, and so
>> would really like to see a substantiated argument that, contrary to
>> some authoritative statements I've seen, natural scientists don't on
>> the whole accept a correspondence theory of truth and have
>> ontological (rather than epistemological) doubts about there being
>> truth.
>
> I think part of the problem is that because you believe in truth,
> you're looking for it.
Yes, I do believe in "truth". My first impulse would be to say that we
differ on the meanings of the word, but I believe there is more to it
than just this. I make foundational, not the operations of mind, but
social action. Arguably, social action requires a shared language
(words, concepts, and meanings), and action is only possible if it
presumes a knowledge of a world in which the action is supposed to take
place. To this knowledge we conventionally assign the word
"truth". However, the issue does not seem to be the word truth itself,
but behind it the two forms of engagement. When I earlier characterized
my position as existential, what I meant is that the preconditions of
living is an engagement both with the world and with others.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>If I said 1+1-3, that would be a false statement; if I said 1+1-2, that
>would be true. Yes, these are not theories, but are an example where the
>two statements have a property of truth value. There's nothing pragmatic
>about this example, for we are not talking about oranges, but about
>math. If we remove truth value from these two examples, we would end up
>with mathematical anarchy.
I'm not sure of your point there. I have not denied that statements
can be true or false. I was arguing that theories are neither true
nor false.
>A pragmatic test of truth seems to have several problems.
I have already said that I don't favor pragmatic tests of truth,
though I do think we make pragmatic tests of theories.
>I take a course in "musical theory". What am I studying, then, if not
>the general principles of music? What are scales, pitches, rhythm,
>melodies, chords, chord progressions, phrases? It is obvious to any
>musician that without some music theory, nobody will progress from
>playing music to understanding and even writing it. What can you
>possibly mean that music has no general principles? There is enormous
>number of such principles and they are of considerable complexity.
I was right, that you would misunderstand my point.
I won't spend further time on it.
>By the way, not that in this example, theory is not really explanatory,
>but comes closer to your rules of the road. It is often said that
>scientific theory is necessarily explanatory, not descriptive, but I'm
>not entirely confident this is true.
In most cases, at least for scientific theories, explanations don't
actually explain.
> We encounter not only the N-Body Problem, but the
>fact that all things in principle are open processes, and so any theory
>must be equivocal, fuzzy.
Evidently what you mean by "theory" and what I mean by "theory"
are two quite different things.
>> As I see it, SR (as a theory) is not making statements about the
>> world. Rather, it is making statements about its own terminology,
>> about how to use that terminology - roughly speaking, it is making
>> statements about empirical practices to be followed when using the
>> theory.
>Sorry, I don't follow, You accept the truth of a formula that expresses
>the relation of some variables and a constant. Then STR has a formula,
>the Lorentz Transformation, where γ = 1/(1-(v²/c²)). Just another
>formula with two variables and one constant. What's the difference. You
>accept the first as a theory, but not the second. Why?
You have to remember that SR is not just such statements. It changes
the concepts of distance and time, so that they are now dependent
on the inertial frame of the observer. The statements of SR
have to be considered in the context of those changed concepts.
If we interpret them in terms of the earlier Newtonian concepts,
then several of the statements of SR turn out to be false.
>STR is conventionally taken to be statements about the world. I'll bet
>99% of all scientists would agree.
That's tradition.
If you look at the history of what happened when SR was introduced,
there was a lot of argument about it, and quite a few scientists
wanted SR to be rejected. Max Planck supposedly said "A new
scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents
eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar
with it."
>I would take philosophers of science a lot more seriously than
>philosophers outside the sciences (Rorty?). I'd rather follow Tarski
>(his 1933 paper "one of the two most important developments in
>mathematical logic in the first half of [the 20th] century". He provided
>a linguistic analysis for what came to be known as the correspondence
>theory of truth (the relation to Tarski's position is a bit contested)
>to show that correspondence did not entail some questionable
>metaphysics. The correspondence interpretation of Tarski's theory
>underwrites the naturalistic conceptions of both realists and
>empiricists.
I'll disagree with that. I'm not disagreeing about the importance
of Tarski as a logician. I am disagreeing about the correspondence
theory. Tarski's theory of truth, as I understand it, was for
formal languages, not for natural language. I think it a mistake to
say identify Tarski's theory as the correspondence theory.
>> Dictionary definitions (so called) don't actually define. I expect a
>> definition to give some explicit principle that can be applied.
>> Otherwise it is not a definition. Perhaps my idea of "definition" is
>> influenced by my being a mathematician.
>News to me. I thought dictionaries defined words. True, the definitions
>tend to be empiricist or functionalist, but that's another issue. I take
>a dictionary to define words as they are commonly used. Why should a
>definition engage some principle?
Dictionaries are inherently circular - with the exception of
cross-language dictionaries.
>I pick this up from that great font of wisdom, Wikipedia:
> There are two types of definitions: A descriptive definition provides
> to a term a meaning which is in general use. A stipulative definition
> of a term carries a meaning which a speaker wants it to convey for the
> purpose of his or her discourse. Thus, the term may be new, or a
> stipulative definition may prescribe a new meaning to a term which is
> already in use. A descriptive definition can be shown to be "right"
> or "wrong" by comparison to usage, but a stipulative definition
> cannot.
>What is the mathematician's use of the word "definition"?
I guess with that terminology, mathematics and science would be
considered stipulative.
>> For sure, scientists want to make truthful statements about the world.
>> But what does that have to do with the truth of the scientific
>> theories themselves?
>OK. I concede the point. A pragmatist is concerned with truth, although
>agnostic about the truth value of his theories. Their truth is only that
>they allow prediction, they work.
Yes, that's the point. And many scientists see it that way.
>> But why call it "transmission of knowledge", when it is information,
>> not knowledge, that is being transmitted?
>Well, yes, it is certainly a transmission of information. But when I
>inform you that the moon consists of green cheese, I am offering a
>statement that constrains the properties of the moon. Or we can think of
>information as the entropy state of a closed system. If I convey to you
>the information that the moon consists of cheese or that a given system
>has a certain information entropy, I'm conveying a fact having truth
>value that can be empirically tested.
I am disagreeing with the idea that the knowledge is the facts.
> Knowledge is a practical or
>theoretical understanding of a subject, what is know of it, facts
>concerning it.
It's that understanding part that I see as the core of knowledge. It
isn't the facts.
For sure, somebody with knowledge in an area can come up with lots of
true statements. But someone with knowledge in an area is also very
capable of coming up with false statements. So instead of equating
knowledge with true beliefs, why not equate it with false disbeliefs?
I think it is the understanding, not the beliefs or disbeliefs, that
constitutes the knowledge.
>> Yes, sorry. I don't really have much to say about coherence theories,
>> other than that I am skeptical of them.
>Why skeptical? You strike me as naturally sympathetic to such
>theories. People use coherence theories all the time, but I have trouble
>finding any developed defense of them. Some time ago I asked about the
>meaning of "robust" in this group, and got no useful replies. I'll have
>to look into this theory (about which I'm ignorance) more deeply as time
>allows, for it is clearly important and much used.
Coherence is useful, perhaps important. But I don't see it as the
basis for truth.
>> I have no problem with truth as a relation between statements and
>> their referents. But I cannot find that in the correspondence theory.
>?? That's the definition of correspondence theory. Let me give a simple
>minded example (of congruence correspondence) borrowed from Wikipedia:
>The cat is on the mat. Congruence means that our words refer to the real
>entities of cat and mat, and their relation is what I state it to
>be.
"The cat is on the mat" is ink marks on paper, or illuminated pixels
on a screen, or vibrations of air.
Let's pretend that we are anthropologists from Mars, visiting Earth.
We see creatures making ink marks on paper. For some of them,
they say (or mark) "true". For others of those ink marks, they
do not say "true". A theory of truth should give a mechanism (or
processes, or whatever) that accounts for the distinction being
between different ink marks on paper.
The correspondence theory does not do that. And that's why I cannot
see it as a theory of truth.
>Don't follow this. My (dim) recollection of STR was that there were
>contradictions in the received theory, and the Michelson-Morley
>experiment forced them to the surface, and Einstein employed abductive
>reasoning to generate a hypothesis which could resolve the
>contradiction.
It is my understanding that Einstein was not actually aware of the
Michelson-Morley experiments at the time he was working on SR.
There were problems in the received theory, but I would not call
them contradictions. The basic problem was that Maxwell, in his
analysis of electricity and magnetism, had come up the differential
equation for wave motion (Maxwell's equations). And if you computed
the velocity of propogation corresponding to that equation, it seemed
to be pretty close to the velocity of light. This suggested that
light was electro-magnetic waves. The thing is, that Maxwell's
equations did not appear to depend on any aether.
> But you need to explicate your general point above before
>I can quite grasp it.
To a Newtonian, the way you measure the length of something is take
a ruler or measuring rod, and lay it along the thing being measured.
If that is how you measure length, then the length contraction that
SR discusses is quite impossible. Similarly, to the Newtonians,
time is determined by the mean rotation of the earth. If, when
you travelled, your wristwatch slowed down, that would just be the
wristwatch running slow. The time dilation of SR is quite impossible
with the Newtonian concepts. Einstein had to change the meaning of
"length" and of "time" before his theory could make sense.
>> It requires a transcendental notion of truth, only when it depends on
>> a transcendental notion of correspondence. And the literature on
>> correspondence theory mostly seems to be dependent on a transcendental
>> notion of correspondence.
>This comes as a surprise to me on both counts. Does this, for example
>apply to my example of the cat being on the mat? The notion that
>anything is transcendental strikes me as really bizarre (I hold to
>materialistic monism, like nearly everyone else).
As that Martian anthropologist, you see ink marks on paper. What
corresponds to what, and how could you tell.
You are really saying "we all know what 'truth' means. The
correspondence theory just says that truth is what we all know it
means." Except you wrap that up in an elaborate account so that you
can convince yourself that you are really saying something. But a
theory of truth should explain it to the Martian anthropologist,
to someone who is outside our shared subjectivity and who doesn't
already know what it means. And the correspondence theory fails
to do that.
>> Sure, the ruler does not define "true", but it does define reference
>> (or this particular case of reference). My objection to the
>> correspondence theory is that you cannot define truth in terms of
>> reference, if reference is itself undefined. And once reference is
>> defined, that implicitly defines truth without a separate theory or
>> definition of truth being required.
>And why can't we define truth in relation to this artificial standard of
>the ruler.
We could. That's what a theory of truth should do, in my opinion.
That's why I say that truth is based on conventions, but which I
mean measuring convention and such like. I'll call them "empirical
conventions", because they are conventions that deal with interactions
with the world, and not just intellectual statements.
But this turns philosophy upside down (which might be a good thing).
>> Okay. But here you are establishing correspondence with a social
>> convention (the use of a measuring stick). What does that have to do
>> with correspondence with reality?
>Aha! I've been using the word "world" here without troubling to define
>it. The world is everything outside consciousness: the moon, breakfast,
>the ruler, my brain. A social convention is real, is it not? Try
>violating them and you get into trouble.
People like to say that there is a certain way the world is, that
is independent of humans. Social conventions are not independent
of humans.
If you want to say that social conventions are real, then I think
that makes you a social constructivist.
It seems to me that most philosophers want to say that there is
a certain way the world is, expressed in abstract propositions.
When we use a ruler and get 30 inches, we are making a statement.
That statement is not the proposition, because it has human dependent
things (such as our measurement in terms of inches). So we don't
look at the natural language statement. Rather, we presume that
what it means is some abstract proposition that does not depend
on social conventions. And "truth" applies to these abstract
propositions, not to ordinary natural language statements.
That allows us to avoid social constructivism. But I think it
makes truth and correspondence transcendental.
>> The conventional wisdom sees science and knowledge as having to do
>> with determining whether propositions are true. I see science and
>> knowledge as having to do with finding ways of forming propositions,
>> which could not even have existed without the kind of activity that
>> humans engage in.
>And how would you justify such a position? I don't mean to be cruel, but
>an alternative perspective than the conventional one used by scientists
>is of absolutely no interest or use (except mildly as a kind of
>intellectual aphrodisiac) to anyone but yourself.
There are two different meanings of "used by scientists".
Meaning 1: Used by scientists when they write about science, or
after they transmute into philosophers of science.
Meaning 2: How they actually carry out their empirical science.
The two are different (in my opinion). That is to say, what
scientists think they do, and what they actually do, are very
different. But if you look at some of the history of science,
you can get an idea on what they actually do.
I believe what I suggested above is consistent with meaning 2.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
> In most cases, at least for scientific theories, explanations don't
> actually explain.
Most cases? I'm not sure. Perhaps you are right. I'm using to scientific
situations (spoken of as the evolutionary sciences in which the aim is
to explain a particular outcome rather than arrive at general laws. And,
yes, f=ma does not explain anything; it is a prediction based on a
generalization of experience.
> Evidently what you mean by "theory" and what I mean by "theory" are
> two quite different things.
Perhaps. In a scientific context, by theory I meant an exposition of the
general principles of a science or description of the organization of a
domain of our world that represents a broad consensus of experts in the
field, or an explanation of a situation for which there is a consensus
that it is as close an approximation of truth that we today are able to
achieve.
Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?
>>STR is conventionally taken to be statements about the world. I'll bet
>>99% of all scientists would agree.
>
> That's tradition.
That's correct, but not my point.
As to yours, the majority of scientists STR to represent an
approximately true description of reality. That is, it is necessarily a
tradition in a sense that any constructed (vs. accidental) consensus
represents transmitted knowledge. Without such transmission, there can
be no consensus, and this makes theory only an hypothesis.
There's a postmodern view that the authoritative weight behind an
established theory represents an imposition on the thinking of other
scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform. I don't
agree with this for reasons I'll not go into here, for you have not said
it is your position.
There's also a postmodern view that suggests that mind (logic, language)
is the sole foundation of knowledge, and I consider this just as
problematic as the old empiricist view that the world has that
function. I see them merely as the two poles of a contradiction in
capitalist ideology (Cartesianism) which, whatever one might think about
the proposed alternatives, has come in time to clearly represent an
intellectual failure.
>>News to me. I thought dictionaries defined words. True, the
>>definitions tend to be empiricist or functionalist, but that's another
>>issue. I take a dictionary to define words as they are commonly
>>used. Why should a definition engage some principle?
>
> Dictionaries are inherently circular - with the exception of
> cross-language dictionaries.
Defining words as they are commonly used is indeed circular, but
instrumental. That's the purpose of a dictionary, to support effective
communications, not to convey conventional truth. Encyclopedias do that.
> I am disagreeing with the idea that the knowledge is the facts.
>>Knowledge is a practical or theoretical understanding of a subject,
>>what is know of it, facts concerning it.
>
> It's that understanding part that I see as the core of knowledge. It
> isn't the facts.
OK, we are actually in agreement if you think about this exchange.
Remember, we are speaking here of the conventional meanings of words,
which are a precondition of meaningful discussion. True, we might prefer
to assign our own private meanings, which is OK only if the person to
whom we speak knows we are doing that and what our intended meanings
are. Otherwise we betray communications. I may have my own way to define
"fact", but that is irrelevant when the discussion is of the shared
meaning of a word.
To ascertain the generally held meaning of words we turn to
dictionaries. For example, I have a scientific dictionary that suggests
that fact is an event, phenomenon or fragment of reality that is an
object of man's practical activity or knowledge. This dictionary further
defines knowledge as the product of social material and intellectual
activity of people; an ideal reproduction in sign form of objective
properties and connections in the world, of the natural and the human.
Well, there is a difference here between the words fact and knowledge. A
fact refers to the object of knowledge, while knowledge is our
understanding of these facts. This seems to assume there's a relation
between what's in the mind and the world about which we are thinking,
and fact refers to one pole of that relation, while knowledge the other.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that positivism held to a fact/value
dichotomy that gave ontological independence to fact, while the
dictionary definition above does not and the fact is only that part of
the world at which we happen to be looking and is therefore partly
subjective. Is it not the consensus today that "fact" is both subjective
and objective at the same time? Or so I thought.
If you are willing to offer cogent and better definitions of fact and/or
knowledge, I'd be interested in knowing what they are. Since we are
speaking of the conventional meaning of words, I have every reason to
adopt them for myself unless an attractive alternative shows up.
> Coherence is useful, perhaps important. But I don't see it as the
> basis for truth.
Agreed. I think we need to distinguish both the foundation ("basis") of
truth and its meaning from our techniques to assess the relative truth
value of competing hypotheses. Coherence, correspondence and pragmatism
I see as pertaining to the latter. True, a coherence theory is often
definitional for truth, but I agree that using it both as a definition
and a test is circular. Likewise, things like empirical adequacy and
coherence offer tests, but they are not foundational for truth, only for
weighing the relative truth value of hypotheses.
A problem here seems to arise from a confusion of three things: a) How
do we arrive at truth; what is its foundation? b) What defines truth as
the word is conventionally understood? c) How do we know that a
statement is true? As I've indicated, I don't believe correspondence
constitutes truth; it is not a foundation for the construction of
truth. However, it is a conventional "definition", however constituted
or tested, and I see nothing wrong with that. And an empirically
testable correspondence seems unproblematic, where we establish there is
in fact an analogy between our sentences and the world to which they
refer.
As for the foundation of truth, there are various suggestions, such as
that of Kant, Bishop Berkeley, and postmodernists who apparently deny it
(I hope I don't meet one in a dark alley ;-)). I personally see action
as the foundation of truthful knowledge, not in the sense of a pragmatic
test of the truth value of a hypothetical, but as the beginning point
and necessary condition for the construction of truthful statements.
I must admit that there are ambiguities in my position, and so I would
appreciate criticism of them. There is ambiguity concerning the word
fact. I have suggested that facts are constructed and so would appear to
reside in the mind, but at the same time I suggested that facts refer to
the object of knowledge that resides in the world. If we mistakenly
follow Descartes and assume that mind and body are ontological
categories, then perhaps one can't say there is a determinant relation
between them. But if we instead embrace a materialistic monism, then
that problem disappears, and facts are those aspects of the world that
are represented in the mind and that we (a community) can agree are
truthful because the sentence corresponds to its referent.
There's also ambiguity in my use of the word correspondence. If I say
that a bit of knowledge corresponds to the world in that its elements a,
b, and c refer to corresponding features of the world, I am testing that
knowledge for its truth value. But at the same time, I defined truth as
a correspondence of a sentence and the world, and so is not a test of
truth, but a defining of truth as a correspondence. So I've used
correspondence as both a test and part of a definition. Doesn't this
suggest that the word correspondence has two meanings?
> A theory of truth should give a mechanism (or processes, or whatever)
> that accounts for the distinction being between different ink marks on
> paper.
>
> The correspondence theory does not do that. And that's why I cannot
> see it as a theory of truth.
Please understand that I'm not defending correspondence theory, but
discussing what I take to be a common view. Not sure what "mechanism for
processes" is unless you mean causal mechanism. I'd agree that
scientific explanations usually mean an identification of a causal
mechanism, but, as I've said, I'm not sure that all theories are in fact
explanatory (I may have previously hinted otherwise, in which case I was
probably wrong).
Incidentally, when it comes to causal mechanisms, I unfortunately
complicate things:
a) A "causal potency" is a real potential for change for a
system. This potency can be internal to it, such as the system's being
far from equilibrium, or external, such as arises from its necessary
relation to the rest of the universe. I hold that all things have this
potential at least in principle; all things are in motion. That is, at
the very least they can in principle move to a state of higher entropy
and it seems ultimately will do so (heat death).
b) Actualized "causal relations" are a causal potency constrained by
the empirical properties of a system and are what make the system a
"process". These causal relations determine the probability
distribution of the possible outcomes of a process. So I would define
"process" as the probability distribution of its possible outcomes
arising from the empirical constraints on causal potency.
c) The empirical effect of a causal relation is an empirical "outcome"
of the process and it is necessarily unequivocal (lest there be actual
multiple worlds). That is, we necessarily one-sidedly collapse the
process in thought as a observable static state.
This set of definitions is only tentative and I'd sure like constructive
(i.e., not deconstructive) criticism of it.
> As that Martian anthropologist, you see ink marks on paper. What
> corresponds to what, and how could you tell.
I had suggested the word correspondence might be ambivalent, and your
question seems to imply the use of the word as a test of truth, not as a
definition for it. Keep in mind that I've not been defending a
correspondence theory of truth.
As for your example, I suppose that what the Martian misses is a
meaningful context in which to understand the import of dots on
paper. If the Martian has been around long enough to realize that there
is a human animal that produced a shape by placing dots on paper, and
that there's another bird animal, he might see that the shape of the
dots _corresponds_ to the shape of a bird and possibly infer that the
human can see, has consciousness, is referring to a bird, has knowledge
of a bird.
> You are really saying "we all know what 'truth' means.
I'm suggesting that truth is a correspondence between a sentence and the
world. I suggested that the man on the street understands truth in this
way, that it is the dictionary definition, and generally speaking this
is what the scientist means. Since your question is about the _meaning_
of the a word, I can in principle I go out to ask people what they mean
by it, and if there is a consensus we have the word's shared meaning.
It is something else to ask, "What is truth?" But that's not the
question you asked. You asked about the meaning of truth.
>>Aha! I've been using the word "world" here without troubling to define
>>it. The world is everything outside consciousness: the moon,
>>breakfast, the ruler, my brain. A social convention is real, is it
>>not? Try violating them and you get into trouble.
>
> People like to say that there is a certain way the world is, that is
> independent of humans. Social conventions are not independent of
> humans.
>
> If you want to say that social conventions are real, then I think that
> makes you a social constructivist.
The issue was the meaning of "world", not a "certain way the world
is". The latter seems to imply a truthful statement about some aspect of
the world. In this sense, you are right, for the truth being a statement
depends on consciousness. But neither I or anyone else seems to deny
this, and so I'm not sure of your point.
Constructivism is, like everything else, rather ambivalent. Sometimes
when people use the term they mean that reality _reduces_ to a social
construction (a dubious and unpopular view). Or it could mean that
knowledge is socially constructed in a necessary relation to the world,
which I assume most people find obvious. In either case, the
construction is real. If not real, what is it? I assume that the content
of consciousness represents a real state or property of the mind in that
it is contingent.
>>And how would you justify such a position? I don't mean to be cruel,
>>but an alternative perspective than the conventional one used by
>>scientists is of absolutely no interest or use (except mildly as a
>>kind of intellectual aphrodisiac) to anyone but yourself.
>
> There are two different meanings of "used by scientists".
>
> Meaning 1: Used by scientists when they write about science, or after
> they transmute into philosophers of science.
>
> Meaning 2: How they actually carry out their empirical science.
>
> The two are different (in my opinion). That is to say, what
> scientists think they do, and what they actually do, are very
> different. But if you look at some of the history of science, you can
> get an idea on what they actually do.
I suppose so. The first is a representation of what the scientist is
doing, and the second is their practice. While different, I don't know
that they are entirely separate. Any practice is a praxis in that a
practice is informed by consciousness; any representation of action is
informed by the action.
The "history of science" seems to be two things, about both the practice
and the praxis, and I suppose that an account of the history of science
takes both into consideration, although not necessarily both, of course.
There is a postmodern view (and you have not identified yourself as one
of that breed) that suggests that a) there is a meaningful hidden code
in a text representing what the scientists said they were doing, b) but
this hidden code necessarily contradicts the ostensible meaning of their
text, and c) it is exclusively preferred over any evidence of scientific
practice or the ostensive meaning of writings by scientists. I believe
the first proposition to be correct, but not the second or third. There
are successful histories that draw out hidden meanings in text, but none
that I know of that thereby precludes both any ostensive meaning of
texts and the traces of past practice as useful evidence. This strikes
me as dangerously close to occultism, or at last is profoundly
unhistorical.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
> And,
>yes, f=ma does not explain anything; it is a prediction based on a
>generalization of experience.
Oh, no, it isn't any kind of generalization. It is a *definition*
of mass, including the rule on how you measure mass. The concept
"mass" did not even exist at Aristotle's time. Its importance was
implicitly demonstrated by Galileo, and Newton gave us a useful
definition.
>Perhaps. In a scientific context, by theory I meant an exposition of the
>general principles of a science or description of the organization of a
>domain of our world that represents a broad consensus of experts in the
>field, or an explanation of a situation for which there is a consensus
>that it is as close an approximation of truth that we today are able to
>achieve.
>Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?
Theories come in different forms, so perhaps there isn't one
definition that fits all. But, generally speaking, what constitutes
a scientific theory is a set of empirical principles that serve as
a guide to scientists in that field (or subfield).
>There's a postmodern view that the authoritative weight behind an
>established theory represents an imposition on the thinking of other
>scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform.
To an extent, I agree with that. However, postmodernism takes that
too far.
>There's also a postmodern view that suggests that mind (logic, language)
>is the sole foundation of knowledge, and I consider this just as
>problematic as the old empiricist view that the world has that
>function.
"Sole foundation" does not have a clear meaning to me.
>Defining words as they are commonly used is indeed circular, but
>instrumental. That's the purpose of a dictionary, to support effective
>communications, not to convey conventional truth. Encyclopedias do that.
I don't know about that "instrumental" part. I would be more inclined
to use the word "simplistic".
>To ascertain the generally held meaning of words we turn to
>dictionaries.
That would be a mistake, IMO. For one thing, words do not have
meanings. People mean things, and use words to convey that.
But the meaning is not a property of words.
I might use a dictionary to get a preliminary idea as to what is
meant by the use of a particular word. But all I could get that way
would be a preliminary idea. I would need to study the scientific
literature, where that word is actually used, to get a better idea
of what is meant.
> For example, I have a scientific dictionary that suggests
>that fact is an event, phenomenon or fragment of reality that is an
>object of man's practical activity or knowledge.
That sounds like a useless definition.
>Well, there is a difference here between the words fact and knowledge.
I certainly hope so.
> A
>fact refers to the object of knowledge, while knowledge is our
>understanding of these facts.
That does not make sense to me. The "object of knowledge" would
seem to be the world. And facts are not the world. I see a fact
as simply being a true statement.
> This seems to assume there's a relation
>between what's in the mind and the world about which we are thinking,
>and fact refers to one pole of that relation, while knowledge the other.
> Is it not the consensus today that "fact" is both subjective
>and objective at the same time? Or so I thought.
I don't know what is the consensus. Typically, people take facts
to be objective. However, since facts depend on meaning, and since
meaning is subjective, facts cannot be entirely objective.
>If you are willing to offer cogent and better definitions of fact and/or
>knowledge, I'd be interested in knowing what they are. Since we are
>speaking of the conventional meaning of words, I have every reason to
>adopt them for myself unless an attractive alternative shows up.
I take "fact" to be just a true statement about the world.
Currently I am taking knowledge to be the ability to generate true
statements about the world, and to interpret statements about the
world that are received from others.
>A problem here seems to arise from a confusion of three things: a) How
>do we arrive at truth; what is its foundation? b) What defines truth as
>the word is conventionally understood? c) How do we know that a
>statement is true?
Those three things cannot be separated like that. They are closely
connected.
> I personally see action
>as the foundation of truthful knowledge, not in the sense of a pragmatic
>test of the truth value of a hypothetical, but as the beginning point
>and necessary condition for the construction of truthful statements.
I can't work out what that means.
>I must admit that there are ambiguities in my position, and so I would
>appreciate criticism of them. There is ambiguity concerning the word
>fact. I have suggested that facts are constructed and so would appear to
>reside in the mind, but at the same time I suggested that facts refer to
>the object of knowledge that resides in the world. If we mistakenly
>follow Descartes and assume that mind and body are ontological
>categories, then perhaps one can't say there is a determinant relation
>between them. But if we instead embrace a materialistic monism, then
>that problem disappears, and facts are those aspects of the world that
>are represented in the mind and that we (a community) can agree are
>truthful because the sentence corresponds to its referent.
I am not a dualist. However, there may be more problems with
materialistic monism than with Cartesian dualism.
Most of the atoms that today constitute your body, will be gone
within a few months, replaced by other atoms. Thus you cannot be
identified with a set of atoms. Unless I misunderstand what you
mean by "materialistic monism", I think that's a problem for the
view you embrace.
>Incidentally, when it comes to causal mechanisms, I unfortunately
>complicate things:
"Cause" is a tricky concept. I'm not sure I want to muddy the waters
by getting into that know.
>> As that Martian anthropologist, you see ink marks on paper. What
>> corresponds to what, and how could you tell.
>I had suggested the word correspondence might be ambivalent, and your
>question seems to imply the use of the word as a test of truth, not as a
>definition for it. Keep in mind that I've not been defending a
>correspondence theory of truth.
>As for your example, I suppose that what the Martian misses is a
>meaningful context in which to understand the import of dots on
>paper.
Doesn't that amount to saying that you can only define "truth"
for those who already know what it means?
>> You are really saying "we all know what 'truth' means.
>I'm suggesting that truth is a correspondence between a sentence and the
>world. I suggested that the man on the street understands truth in this
>way, that it is the dictionary definition, and generally speaking this
>is what the scientist means. Since your question is about the _meaning_
>of the a word, I can in principle I go out to ask people what they mean
>by it, and if there is a consensus we have the word's shared meaning.
Scientists send spaceships to satellites of Saturn. These space
probes send back information. We take that information to be true
because we have tested the equipment that gathers the information
for the accuracy of its processes. Once we receive the information,
we reach conclusions about the way things are on that satellite
of Saturn.
I take that as an example of where we assess truth based on our
conventions (as embodied in the instruments). And then we decide
the way the world (or the satellite) is, based on those true
statements. So we are using truth to indicate that the statements
are consistent with conventions, and we then use correspondence to
establish what reality is like.
I present that as an example of why I think it better to consider
the correspondence theory to be a theory of reality, rather than
a theory of truth.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
And,
>>yes, f=ma does not explain anything; it is a prediction based on a
>>generalization of experience.
> Oh, no, it isn't any kind of generalization. It is a *definition* of
> mass,
We are not disagreeing, at least not on the surface. It is, of course, a
definition, but it is also an abstract description of past experiments
that verified the truth of the relation of these variables. This
simple-minded conventional reply does not address the possibility that
you may be making a postmodernist point. However, if you intend one, I
can't respond unless you make it explicit. All you do is to deny my
statement, which in itself carries no weight.
>>Perhaps. In a scientific context, by theory I meant an exposition of
>>the general principles of a science or description of the organization
>>of a domain of our world that represents a broad consensus of experts
>>in the field, or an explanation of a situation for which there is a
>>consensus that it is as close an approximation of truth that we today
>>are able to achieve.
>>Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?
> Theories come in different forms, so perhaps there isn't one
> definition that fits all. But, generally speaking, what constitutes a
> scientific theory is a set of empirical principles that serve as a
> guide to scientists in that field (or subfield).
I find the word "empirical" here odd, for it would preclude the
unobservables that scientists regularly handle, such as gluons. So I'll
ignore it. You offer a definition that apparently refers to rules of
action (one meaning of the word "principle" and implied by "guide").
While I'd not necessary object to your definition, it is significant
that you disregard the three standard definitions of theory that I more
or less copied here from a standard authority that defined what the
term means to people and that might have the odor of truth value. Since I
happen to believe that theory can have truth value, I'd not be inclined
to drop the standard definitions and embrace only the one you
offer. This I would do only if you offer a convincing warrant for your
alternative, but for some reason you omit it. If you don't have one, you
are only "profiling" as they say here. Outside religious witnessing, to
agree or disagree is only a precondition for constructive discourse, not
a substitute for it.
>>There's a postmodern view that the authoritative weight behind an
>>established theory represents an imposition on the thinking of other
>>scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform.
>
> To an extent, I agree with that. However, postmodernism takes that
> too far.
What do you mean, "to some extent"? Do you agree with this bit of petit
bourgeois ideology (sorry for the provocative terminology, but it is
easy to argue that what I described as a postmodern view is simply
instance of that). So it becomes important just what your position is,
rather than merely say you agree and disagree simultaneously. To what
extent do you agree, and wherein do you disagree? You have not said
anything.
>>There's also a postmodern view that suggests that mind (logic,
>>language) is the sole foundation of knowledge, and I consider this
>>just as problematic as the old empiricist view that the world has that
>>function.
>
> "Sole foundation" does not have a clear meaning to me.
My understanding of the postmodern position is that it holds the
operations of mind to represent the foundation of meaning (words or
logic the independent variable, if you will, while the world is a
dependent variable), and not the world outside the mind (as in
positivism) or the relation of mind and world (as in critical empiricism
or Marxism). Do you hold to one of these three positions, or, if yet
another, would you specify what it is?
>>Defining words as they are commonly used is indeed circular, but
>>instrumental. That's the purpose of a dictionary, to support effective
>>communications, not to convey conventional truth. Encyclopedias do
>>that.
>
> I don't know about that "instrumental" part. I would be more inclined
> to use the word "simplistic".
How can you suggest that when dictionaries facilitate communications by
offering conventional meanings for words, it is unrealistic
("simplistic")? It may be unrealistic, but you don't say why, and so
your point is without substance. When I said "instrumental" I was using
the word in the conventional sense of a means to an end. You cast doubts
on the appropriateness of the word, but since you don't say why, I am
forced to disregard your comment, not by choice, but by necessity.
>>To ascertain the generally held meaning of words we turn to
>>dictionaries.
>
> That would be a mistake, IMO. For one thing, words do not have
> meanings. People mean things, and use words to convey that. But the
> meaning is not a property of words.
Well _finally_ you offer an unconventional point with some justification
for it, but I'm not sure the justification makes any sense, at least not
in conventional terms. When we say a word has a meaning we only
associate a meaning with a word and do not imply that the meaning is a
property of a reified word. The word is only a sign that points to
meaning. For example, when I say f=ma, the letter "f" is only a symbol,
and it is the force to which the "f" refers that has the properties.
If you disagree with this, please let me know why.
> I might use a dictionary to get a preliminary idea as to what is meant
> by the use of a particular word. But all I could get that way would
> be a preliminary idea. I would need to study the scientific
> literature, where that word is actually used, to get a better idea of
> what is meant.
>
>>For example, I have a scientific dictionary that suggests that fact is
>>an event, phenomenon or fragment of reality that is an object of man's
>>practical activity or knowledge.
>
> That sounds like a useless definition.
It is very useful, for when someone uses the word "fact," I've got some
idea of what they mean by it. Your point seems contrary to common sense
and is not accompanied by any justification, which means in principle
that it should be ignored. That is, if I said the moon consisted of
cheese, that would be an unconventional view, but if I don't offer any
justification for it, my statement means nothing except an indication of
my lunacy (if you excuse the pun).
>>fact refers to the object of knowledge, while knowledge is our
>>understanding of these facts.
>
> That does not make sense to me. The "object of knowledge" would seem
> to be the world. And facts are not the world. I see a fact as simply
> being a true statement.
We are not disagreeing. An object of knowledge is an aspect of the world
or that portion of the world to which a knowledge refers. Yes, facts are
true statements about an object of knowledge. I did not say that a fact
_is_ the world, but rather an object of (true) knowledge. A hypothetical
rock on the other side of the moon never seen by man is real, but not a
fact until it is seen. Our discovering the rock does not create it, but
establishes it as a known fact.
>>Is it not the consensus today that "fact" is both subjective and
>>objective at the same time? Or so I thought.
>
> I don't know what is the consensus. Typically, people take facts to
> be objective. However, since facts depend on meaning, and since
> meaning is subjective, facts cannot be entirely objective.
Again, you are not disagreeing. Who today suggests that facts are
entirely objective? When we say "objective fact", we don't mean they are
independent of consciousness, but, to the extent our consciousness of
them is constrained by the world, acquire truth value. Without that
constraint, facts don't exist; we have only fictions.
>>If you are willing to offer cogent and better definitions of fact
>>and/or knowledge, I'd be interested in knowing what they are. Since we
>>are speaking of the conventional meaning of words, I have every reason
>>to adopt them for myself unless an attractive alternative shows up.
>
> I take "fact" to be just a true statement about the world. Currently
> I am taking knowledge to be the ability to generate true statements
> about the world, and to interpret statements about the world that are
> received from others.
So where do we disagree?
>>I personally see action as the foundation of truthful knowledge, not
>>in the sense of a pragmatic test of the truth value of a hypothetical,
>>but as the beginning point and necessary condition for the
>>construction of truthful statements.
>
> I can't work out what that means.
Sorry. What I was suggesting was that as we engage the world and thereby
learn about it, what we learn acquires truth value because this
interaction is a mutual determination; truthful knowledge is an emergent
property of the mind that arises because of this interaction (this point
is disputed by those who suggest that our knowledge of the world is
socially constituted. However, I believe this is a false distinction
because as "social beings" our engagement with the world is at the same
time a social engagement).
Incidentally I was careful to say "engage" the world rather than observe
the world. To posit a person as gaining knowledge from passive
observation seems an artifact of Cartesian ontology. Our aim is not just
to understand, but to change it (Marx, roughly).
What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
knowledge. One might argue that this is a dialectical process in which
there is no priority ("chicken and egg"), but my answer would be that we
historically started out as biological entities that acted without
consciousness, and so consciousness seems the emergent property).
My objection to pragmatism is that the truth-status of knowledge
acquired from experience remains uncertain or hypothetical until we
perform a future test or observe a future outcome. The substantial
difference here is that action implies processes, which in turn entail
unobservables (in a realist view), while the future outcome is only
the empirical qualities of an observed state, leaving the status of
unobservables uncertain.
>>If we mistakenly follow Descartes and assume that mind and body are
>>ontological categories, then perhaps one can't say there is a
>>determinant relation between them. But if we instead embrace a
>>materialistic monism, then that problem disappears, and facts are
>>those aspects of the world that are represented in the mind and that
>>we (a community) can agree are truthful because the sentence
>>corresponds to its referent.
>
> I am not a dualist. However, there may be more problems with
> materialistic monism than with Cartesian dualism.
I did not mean to imply you were. On the contrary, I suspect you respond
to the Cartesian contradiction by a reduction of world to mind. But
since you don't state your position, that's only a guess.
> Most of the atoms that today constitute your body, will be gone within
> a few months, replaced by other atoms. Thus you cannot be identified
> with a set of atoms. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by
> "materialistic monism", I think that's a problem for the view you
> embrace.
Your point about the persistence of identity does not seem relevant to
the issue of materialistic monism. As an organic being, I'm an emergent
level that is not reducible to my constituents (atoms). In daily life,
people see persistence as the perpetuation in time of an association of
"essential" (vs. accidental) properties. While there are problems with
this, both scientific and philosophical, it does at least illustrate
that what I am that people see as being human is not my atoms, but
emergent properties that don't reduce to my atoms. To change the tire on
your car does not make it any less a car.
You seem to be uncertain about the materialistic monism that is the
consensus among scientists today. For this reason, your objection means
nothing without some kind of justification.
Monism is the metaphysical view that all reality is subsumed under one
fundamental category of being or existence. Off the top of my head,
there seem to be three possible monist ontologies: materialism,
objective idealism and supernaturalism. In the last, all observables and
unobservables are instantiations of a supernatural mode such as a
god. In idealism, matter and possibly the supernatural are
instantiations of objective ideas. In materialism, everything is an
instantiation of matter and emerges from it. But I'm only speculating
here on what the consensus view might be.
In any case, materialism holds that the only substance is matter, and
levels of reality emerge from its interactions. This, I believe, implies
that all things are systems and processes, which might also perhaps
distinguish materialistic monism from the other monisms. For example,
phenomena emerge from the relation of our senses and the world, and
consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. I tend to think that
what helps distinguish materialism is the point that all things are
contingent, are systems and processes.
A point about which I wish I was more certain is my presumption that
ontological modalities can't interact by definition. That is, efforts to
posit connections between the two modes in dualism seem to introduce yet
added modes of being that appear contradictory and problematic, such as
a demi-Urgos (Plotinus) or Great Chain of Being (as described by Arthur
Lovejoy). I believe Cartesian dualism has had the effect of positing a
mind-body dualism that such positions as critical empiricism try to
reconfile. It inherits a sense that consciousness and world are separate
categories in tension rather than merely two aspect of one catefory, of
one process. I would love to know reasons why this speculation is
unwarranted.
A materialist monism is the basis of science and is the consensus among
scientists as the metaphysic that is appropriate to science. A few
(Penrose, for example), are dualists, but even then they seem to put
their supernaturalism (and in the past, an occasional objective
idealism) into separate and isolated compartments of their lives, and so
it becomes more a personal solution than a coherent statement about the
world.
As you suggest, there may be problems with the metaphysic of a
materialistic monism, but it is so basic to our scientific practice that
it seems natural to most people. In any case, you once again only
question materialistic monism without offering any grounds for your
doubts.
>>As for your example, I suppose that what the Martian misses is a
>>meaningful context in which to understand the import of dots on paper.
>
> Doesn't that amount to saying that you can only define "truth" for
> those who already know what it means?
Yes, but not quite. There's a difference between the meaning of the word
"truth" and the possession of truthful knowledge. The Martian would not
know the word truth, of course, but presumably has truthful knowledge,
for otherwise it would not have successfully made the trip to earth.
> Scientists send spaceships to satellites of Saturn. These space
> probes send back information. We take that information to be true
> because we have tested the equipment that gathers the information for
> the accuracy of its processes. Once we receive the information, we
> reach conclusions about the way things are on that satellite of
> Saturn.
>
> I take that as an example of where we assess truth based on our
> conventions (as embodied in the instruments). And then we decide the
> way the world (or the satellite) is, based on those true statements.
> So we are using truth to indicate that the statements are consistent
> with conventions, and we then use correspondence to establish what
> reality is like.
>
> I present that as an example of why I think it better to consider the
> correspondence theory to be a theory of reality, rather than a theory
> of truth.
But the instruments are not just "conventions" but also exist as the
result of our interactions with the world. We test the equipment for its
ability to yield truthful information, yes, and these tests involve yet
other instruments that have the same status. Circular? Yes. However not
when considered in real, i.e, historical, terms. That is, a particular
instrument relies on other instruments, but instrumentation has evolved
from simpler instruments and ultimately the crudest tools of Homo sap,
and at each step of the way, success in the past warrants our confidence
in our current instrumentation (note that I'm speaking of measuring
instruments, not a scientific theory as a whole, which is an
abstraction).
You have a certain confidence in the fact that your typing your message
will have a certain effect in your computer and eventually your words
reach the newsgroup. Now I could play the schoolboy and say that your
typing is an illusion in the mind of a god on Mt. Olympus, just as is
your computer, the newsgroup and the rest of the world. Nothing
illogical about such a suggestion, but people don't adopt it for good
reason; logic is not the foundation of truthful knowledge. Also, it
would, in effect, amount to a kind of suicide. Such a solipsism would
necessarily be meaningless to anyone but oneself, and since we are
social beings, a position that contradicts our own existence is by
definition meaningless.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>>>yes, f=ma does not explain anything; it is a prediction based on a
>>>generalization of experience.
>> Oh, no, it isn't any kind of generalization. It is a *definition* of
>> mass,
>We are not disagreeing, at least not on the surface. It is, of course, a
>definition, but it is also an abstract description of past experiments
>that verified the truth of the relation of these variables.
Which past experiments?
You could not even talk about mass until it was defined. Of course,
Newton was doing experiments before he announced his laws of motion.
But it is likely that he was privately using his definition.
> This
>simple-minded conventional reply does not address the possibility that
>you may be making a postmodernist point.
It was already obvious to me as a high school student, that f=ma
was the definition of mass. And that was decades before I had even
heard of postmodernism.
> However, if you intend one, I
>can't respond unless you make it explicit. All you do is to deny my
>statement, which in itself carries no weight.
I explain my position. I cannot command you to accept it.
>>>Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?
>> Theories come in different forms, so perhaps there isn't one
>> definition that fits all. But, generally speaking, what constitutes a
>> scientific theory is a set of empirical principles that serve as a
>> guide to scientists in that field (or subfield).
>I find the word "empirical" here odd, for it would preclude the
>unobservables that scientists regularly handle, such as gluons.
I don't follow. Are you unaware that physicists carry out empirical
experiments to detect the various particles that they hypothesize?
>While I'd not necessary object to your definition, it is significant
>that you disregard the three standard definitions of theory that I more
>or less copied here from a standard authority that defined what the
>term means to people and that might have the odor of truth value.
I largely ignore philosophy of science, which I think of as little more
than a quaint collection of "Just So" stories.
> This I would do only if you offer a convincing warrant for your
>alternative, but for some reason you omit it.
I am presenting my viewpoint. It is not up to me to convince you.
The only thing that could convince you, would be for you to spend
some time studying the practices of scientists - not what they say
they are doing, but what they actually are doing.
> Outside religious witnessing, to
>agree or disagree is only a precondition for constructive discourse, not
>a substitute for it.
I cannot point to evidence that you are unwilling to see.
>>>There's a postmodern view that the authoritative weight behind an
>>>established theory represents an imposition on the thinking of other
>>>scientists in that it brings pressure upon them to conform.
>> To an extent, I agree with that. However, postmodernism takes that
>> too far.
>What do you mean, "to some extent"? Do you agree with this bit of petit
>bourgeois ideology (sorry for the provocative terminology, but it is
>easy to argue that what I described as a postmodern view is simply
>instance of that).
I'm not completely clear on what you are arguing here.
If you look at the conflict between Galileo and the church, it
is difficult to see it as other than attempts at imposing ideas.
If Galileo had been pointing to simple obvious facts, it is hard
to believe that the church would have reacted as it did. And if
the church were not imposing ideas, then Galileo's statements would
not have been seen as a problem for the church.
> So it becomes important just what your position is,
>rather than merely say you agree and disagree simultaneously. To what
>extent do you agree, and wherein do you disagree? You have not said
>anything.
We are both using words found in the English dictionaries, but we
seem to be talking in different languages. I really do not know
what it is with which I am expected to agree or disagree.
>>>There's also a postmodern view that suggests that mind (logic,
>>>language) is the sole foundation of knowledge, and I consider this
>>>just as problematic as the old empiricist view that the world has that
>>>function.
>> "Sole foundation" does not have a clear meaning to me.
>My understanding of the postmodern position is that it holds the
>operations of mind to represent the foundation of meaning (words or
>logic the independent variable, if you will, while the world is a
>dependent variable), and not the world outside the mind (as in
>positivism) or the relation of mind and world (as in critical empiricism
>or Marxism). Do you hold to one of these three positions, or, if yet
>another, would you specify what it is?
I'm not quite sure you are asking. However, I do see meaning as
inherently subjective.
>>>Defining words as they are commonly used is indeed circular, but
>>>instrumental. That's the purpose of a dictionary, to support effective
>>>communications, not to convey conventional truth. Encyclopedias do
>>>that.
>> I don't know about that "instrumental" part. I would be more inclined
>> to use the word "simplistic".
>How can you suggest that when dictionaries facilitate communications by
>offering conventional meanings for words, it is unrealistic
>("simplistic")?
Dictionaries don't actually give meanings. They cannot, for meanings
are subjective. Typically they describe usage, and it is up to us to
attempt to glean the meanings from that.
>>>To ascertain the generally held meaning of words we turn to
>>>dictionaries.
>> That would be a mistake, IMO. For one thing, words do not have
>> meanings. People mean things, and use words to convey that. But the
>> meaning is not a property of words.
>Well _finally_ you offer an unconventional point with some justification
>for it, but I'm not sure the justification makes any sense, at least not
>in conventional terms. When we say a word has a meaning we only
> When we say a word has a meaning we only
>associate a meaning with a word and do not imply that the meaning is a
>property of a reified word.
We cannot associate a meaning with a word, because "meaning" is not
a thing that can be associated.
> The word is only a sign that points to
>meaning.
I had thought it clear that I was explicitly disagreeing with that.
A word is an objective entity. Meaning is subjective. An objective
entity cannot point to something subjective.
> For example, when I say f=ma, the letter "f" is only a symbol,
>and it is the force to which the "f" refers that has the properties.
Which properties?
Incidently, I see Newton's science as redefining "force" -- that is,
changing what we mean by "force" (when used in scientific contexts).
>>>For example, I have a scientific dictionary that suggests that fact is
>>>an event, phenomenon or fragment of reality that is an object of man's
>>>practical activity or knowledge.
>> That sounds like a useless definition.
>It is very useful, for when someone uses the word "fact," I've got some
>idea of what they mean by it.
But surely you already had a pretty good idea of what people mean
by "fact" before you ever learned to read.
> Your point seems contrary to common sense
>and is not accompanied by any justification, which means in principle
>that it should be ignored. That is, if I said the moon consisted of
>cheese, that would be an unconventional view, but if I don't offer any
>justification for it, my statement means nothing except an indication of
>my lunacy (if you excuse the pun).
Your example is poor.
If we were walking around on the moon, and picking up bits of
the moon to savor the cheesy flavor, nobody would be asking for
justification. Or if we found it gritty and tasteless in the
mouth, nobody would be asking for justification. We don't normally
demand justification for what should be obvious from common sense
observations of every day life. My comment was about concepts
and meanings. The use of these are part of our common sense
observations of every day life. I don't think I said anything that
was outside of common sense experience.
Now it is true that philosophers have have developed some tenuous
theories about meaning and reference. And it does seem to be true
that philosophers use these tenous ideas so much, that they have
become part of the philosopher's common experience. It seems that
philosophers have lost track of how tenuous those ideas are.
>> That does not make sense to me. The "object of knowledge" would seem
>> to be the world. And facts are not the world. I see a fact as simply
>> being a true statement.
>We are not disagreeing. An object of knowledge is an aspect of the world
>or that portion of the world to which a knowledge refers.
As I see it, knowledge does not refer. Due to our knowledge, we are
able to make statements that do refer. But it isn't the knowledge
that refers, it is the statements we make using that knowledge.
> Yes, facts are
>true statements about an object of knowledge. I did not say that a fact
>_is_ the world, but rather an object of (true) knowledge. A hypothetical
>rock on the other side of the moon never seen by man is real, but not a
>fact until it is seen.
A rock is not a statement, and therefore could not be a fact whether or
not seen.
> Our discovering the rock does not create it, but
>establishes it as a known fact.
It does not make the rock a known fact, except in metaphorical use
(such as "facts on the ground"). It is statements about the rock
that could become known facts.
>> I take "fact" to be just a true statement about the world. Currently
>> I am taking knowledge to be the ability to generate true statements
>> about the world, and to interpret statements about the world that are
>> received from others.
>So where do we disagree?
Apparently, we have substantial disagreements. For you make statements
about knowledge that make no sense with how I defined it above.
> ..; truthful knowledge is an emergent
>property of the mind that arises because of this interaction ...
If knowledge is an ability, as I defined it, then "truthful
knowledge" makes no sense. Abilities are neither truthful nor
untruthful. Truthfulness is an attribute of representations,
not of abilities.
>Incidentally I was careful to say "engage" the world rather than observe
>the world. To posit a person as gaining knowledge from passive
>observation seems an artifact of Cartesian ontology. Our aim is not just
>to understand, but to change it (Marx, roughly).
I don't have a problem with "engage". I'm not sure that the idea of
knowledge from passive observation is just an artifact of Cartesian
ontology. It also seems to be widely assumed in empiricist writings,
and in the AI literature.
>What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
>knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
>knowledge.
I would change that.
We act first, and aquire useful abilities. Then we invent ways of
talking about the effects of using those abilities that we can use
to help us discuss those abilities with others. We apply "truth" to
some of the statements in our talk about the use of those abilities.
>My objection to pragmatism is that the truth-status of knowledge
>acquired from experience remains uncertain or hypothetical until we
>perform a future test or observe a future outcome.
By contrast, since I see knowledge as abilities, it has no truth
status. Pragmatism provides the only test of those abilities.
"Truth" applies to the statements we make using that knowledge,
but it does not apply to the knowledge itself.
>> I am not a dualist. However, there may be more problems with
>> materialistic monism than with Cartesian dualism.
>I did not mean to imply you were. On the contrary, I suspect you respond
>to the Cartesian contradiction by a reduction of world to mind. But
>since you don't state your position, that's only a guess.
Actually, that's a bad guess.
>> Most of the atoms that today constitute your body, will be gone within
>> a few months, replaced by other atoms. Thus you cannot be identified
>> with a set of atoms. Unless I misunderstand what you mean by
>> "materialistic monism", I think that's a problem for the view you
>> embrace.
>Your point about the persistence of identity does not seem relevant to
>the issue of materialistic monism.
Let me state it differently. We are not made of atoms. We are
not made of matter. Rather, we are made of processes. These are
material processes (matter is what is processed).
Maybe I should point out that matter is itself a rather tenuous
concept, as quantum physics makes clear.
>Monism is the metaphysical view that all reality is subsumed under one
>fundamental category of being or existence.
I am a skeptic of metaphysics.
>A materialist monism is the basis of science
I am not convinced of that.
> A few
>(Penrose, for example), are dualists, but even then they seem to put
I'm not convinced that Penrose is a dualist, either, though I
disagree with his views. I suspect that Penrose would deny that
he is a dualist.
>>>As for your example, I suppose that what the Martian misses is a
>>>meaningful context in which to understand the import of dots on paper.
>> Doesn't that amount to saying that you can only define "truth" for
>> those who already know what it means?
>Yes, but not quite. There's a difference between the meaning of the word
>"truth" and the possession of truthful knowledge. The Martian would not
>"truth" and the possession of truthful knowledge. The Martian would not
Again, I'll mention my objection to the expression "truthful
knowledge."
> The Martian would not
>know the word truth, of course, but presumably has truthful knowledge,
>for otherwise it would not have successfully made the trip to earth.
Are you implying that a lion has truthful knowledge, for otherwise
it could not have successfully made a trip to the watering hole?
>> I present that as an example of why I think it better to consider the
>> correspondence theory to be a theory of reality, rather than a theory
>> of truth.
>But the instruments are not just "conventions" but also exist as the
>result of our interactions with the world.
I don't see that as making them "not just conventions". Surely,
it only means that we justify our conventions with pragmatic tests.
> We test the equipment for its
>ability to yield truthful information, yes,
No. We test the equipment for its ability to yield *useful*
information, and then we declare the information produced by the
equipment to be truthful (unless the equipment is malfunctioning).
>You have a certain confidence in the fact that your typing your message
>will have a certain effect in your computer and eventually your words
>reach the newsgroup.
That has been known to fail, on occasion.
> Now I could play the schoolboy and say that your
>typing is an illusion in the mind of a god on Mt. Olympus, just as is
>your computer, the newsgroup and the rest of the world.
As long as it all works for me, that's good enough. As I said above,
I am a skeptic of metaphysics.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
> I explain my position. I cannot command you to accept it.
Then we have a problem. I mean this sincerely, as I am sure you did in
your reply. You believe you are responsive, but the person to whom you
offer an answer fails to recognize that you are responding.
There can be many reasons for this. If we disregard ad hominem ones
(stupidity, ignorance, lunacy, ill will, etc.), we are left with a
simple fact: what you say is often not conveying any meaning to me; your
communication often fails.
Complicating this issue is that people classified as "postmodernists"
for systemic reasons frequently deny that they are postmodernists. So
let me substitute a simplistic definition and ask if you embrace it and
not if you call yourself a postmodernist. If I said that there is a
position that reduces the foundation of knowledge the mind alone (to
logic, semantics, etc.), would that describe your position?
>>>>Apparently you use the word otherwise. What is your definition?
>>> Theories come in different forms, so perhaps there isn't one
>>> definition that fits all. But, generally speaking, what constitutes
>>> a scientific theory is a set of empirical principles that serve as a
>>> guide to scientists in that field (or subfield).
>
>>I find the word "empirical" here odd, for it would preclude the
>>unobservables that scientists regularly handle, such as gluons.
>
> I don't follow. Are you unaware that physicists carry out empirical
> experiments to detect the various particles that they hypothesize?
Of course they do, which is why practicing scientists are realists. That
is, they take as real things that are not empirical (according to my
dictionary, things that are not directly observable). These things are
not themselves the cause of phenomena.
I assume there are different types of realism, which take the following
to be have truth value: a) best current theory, b) entities that are
themselves beyond the range of our instruments to detect directly c)
causal potencies, and d) process (my own preference because it does not
make an ontological distinction between observables and
unobservables). My example of gluon is the second type here.
What is meant by "real" here? Well, I suppose either that a) the
production of outcomes can only be explained by a presumption of their
reality, or b) it is a condition for the production of outcomes. I
prefer the latter ontological view to the former epistemological one. In
realist terms I suspect unobservables are contingent and exert (I prefer
"necessarily exert" to "can exert" here) an influence over observables.
Let me say that I'm imposing categories here that are not necessarily
conventional, or at least I don't encounter such neat categories in the
literature regarding realism. But I hope they are harmless rather than
contentious.
You may be suggesting here that unobservables are indirectly detectable
as having empirical effect. If so, then you have put my concern to rest,
although your phrase "empirical principle" might be taken as being
self-contradictory, depending on just what you mean by it.
>>While I'd not necessary object to your definition, it is significant
>>that you disregard the three standard definitions of theory that I
>>more or less copied here from a standard authority that defined what
>>the term means to people and that might have the odor of truth value.
>
> I largely ignore philosophy of science, which I think of as little
> more than a quaint collection of "Just So" stories.
Well, your reply explains a lot. The original question was about an
issue in the framework of the philosophy of science, and for some odd
reason you chose to respond to my points even though you consider the
philosophy of science to be fictional. Why did you presume to do that?
That is, your aim is not to criticize my arguments, but to question the
meaningfulness raising philosophy of science arguments in the first
place. No wonder there is miscommunication! Do you wonder that I felt
you were not communicating much of anything? The reason turns out to be
that you were not trying to communicate within the framework of the
philosophy of science, but representing a position in a framework
entirely unrelated and hostile to it.
>>This I would do only if you offer a convincing warrant for your
>>alternative, but for some reason you omit it.
>
> I am presenting my viewpoint. It is not up to me to convince you.
> The only thing that could convince you, would be for you to spend some
> time studying the practices of scientists - not what they say they are
> doing, but what they actually are doing.
I have trouble grasping this reply. If your viewpoint on an issue in the
philosophy of science is nothing more that your private feeling about a
fiction, then what relevance could your suggestion to draw inferences
from the practice of scientists possibly have? I suggested above that
practicing scientists were realists, but you dismiss my inference as my
private fiction with which you reject, not as wrong, but as not
meaningful.
>>My understanding of the postmodern position is that it holds the
>>operations of mind to represent the foundation of meaning (words or
>>logic the independent variable, if you will, while the world is a
>>dependent variable), and not the world outside the mind (as in
>>positivism) or the relation of mind and world (as in critical
>>empiricism or Marxism). Do you hold to one of these three positions,
>>or, if yet another, would you specify what it is?
>
> I'm not quite sure you are asking. However, I do see meaning as
> inherently subjective.
Generally people would agree, but the real issue is whether there is
also an objective component. I crudely offered three positions; only the
first denies an objective component.
In reviewing my reply, I omitted a fourth possibility - one which which
I'm inclined to support, and that is that the ontological distinction of
mind and world may be unnecessary and pernicious, for both might better
be considered merely aspects of one process: our action in the world. To
be more explicit: in their activity, humans have a causal potency that
is constrained by the world and by the mind, and what emerges is the
effect of that action on both world and mind.
> Now it is true that philosophers have have developed some tenuous
> theories about meaning and reference. And it does seem to be true
> that philosophers use these tenous ideas so much, that they have
> become part of the philosopher's common experience. It seems that
> philosophers have lost track of how tenuous those ideas are.
Agreed, although I'd not go so far as to suggest that "tenuous" means
fictional.
>>Incidentally I was careful to say "engage" the world rather than
>>observe the world. To posit a person as gaining knowledge from passive
>>observation seems an artifact of Cartesian ontology. Our aim is not
>>just to understand, but to change it (Marx, roughly).
>
> I don't have a problem with "engage". I'm not sure that the idea of
> knowledge from passive observation is just an artifact of Cartesian
> ontology. It also seems to be widely assumed in empiricist writings,
> and in the AI literature.
I am assuming that a Cartesian ontology that makes world and mind
ontologically and modally distinct entities rather than aspects
(properties) of one process, underlies much of Western thought,
including empiricism.
I suspect your point might really be that knowledge based on passive
observation is not peculiar to the post 17th century West, and if so I'd
have to agree. I suspect the difference I was hinting at was that the
mind-body distinction that characterizes the West is not just
ontological, but also distinct in terms of modal logic, and it is the
latter that makes their interaction problematic.
Cartesianism is often taken to characterize the foundation Western
scientific thought (until now), and might suggest that his ontological
categories characterize Western thought. In any case, he broke with the
traditional ontological distinction of mind/body/spirit or matter/form
and substituted body/mind, with mind being ontologically autonomous. The
problem, I believe, lies in this autonomy. Mind makes sense in its own
terms and doesn't depend on its relation to the world. I'm speculating
here, and if you can offer corrections in terms of intellectual history,
I'd appreciate it.
It is this ontological autonomy and modality that I suspect is what
distinguishes the Cartesian tradition from those that are older or
non-Western, and it is this autonomy that I believe has proved to be
problematic in the course of western thought, not just recently, but
from the beginning.
>>What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
>>knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
>>knowledge.
>
> I would change that.
Why? If I speak fictions and your proposed change had the same status,
why would your alternative representation be at all compelling (produce
a "change") rather than represent merely an alternative private view?
>>> I am not a dualist. However, there may be more problems with
>>> materialistic monism than with Cartesian dualism.
>
>>I did not mean to imply you were. On the contrary, I suspect you
>>respond to the Cartesian contradiction by a reduction of world to
>>mind. But since you don't state your position, that's only a guess.
>
> Actually, that's a bad guess.
OK, and so my guess is wrong. So what is right? You still don't define
your position. But I'm beginning to suspect your point is that you make
a virtue of not taking a position and therefore that your comments on or
criticisms of my points are not meant to be meaningful or have truth
value.
>>Monism is the metaphysical view that all reality is subsumed under one
>>fundamental category of being or existence.
>
> I am a skeptic of metaphysics.
>
>>A materialist monism is the basis of science
>
> I am not convinced of that.
Again, I'm frustrated. My statement here about the basis of science I
assumed was the conventional view. Yes, there are other possible views,
and one might assume that you prefer one of them. But you don't tell me
a) what alternative you prefer, or b) justify it in any way. That is
what I original pointed out in this message was a failure to
communicate. It is impossible to make meaningful statements or offer
constructive criticism from a vacuous position; I suspect you are not
actually speaking from a vacuous position, but you seem to make a virtue
of appearing so.
>>Now I could play the schoolboy and say that your typing is an illusion
>>in the mind of a god on Mt. Olympus, just as is your computer, the
>>newsgroup and the rest of the world.
>
> As long as it all works for me, that's good enough.
Yes, my point exactly.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> I explain my position. I cannot command you to accept it.
>Then we have a problem. I mean this sincerely, as I am sure you did in
>your reply. You believe you are responsive, but the person to whom you
>offer an answer fails to recognize that you are responding.
>There can be many reasons for this. If we disregard ad hominem ones
>(stupidity, ignorance, lunacy, ill will, etc.), we are left with a
>simple fact: what you say is often not conveying any meaning to me; your
>communication often fails.
I certainly recognize a communication problem.
We are sometimes admonished to "think outside the box." I have been
doing that. And it turns out that those who think outside the box
have great difficulty communicating with those whose thinking is
still confined inside the box.
What it amounts to is that you, along with most people, are making
some assumptions. I am questioning those assumptions. However,
it is quite difficult to question those assumptions, because you
are probably unaware that you are making them. And that is what
makes for difficulties in communication.
>Complicating this issue is that people classified as "postmodernists"
>for systemic reasons frequently deny that they are postmodernists. So
>let me substitute a simplistic definition and ask if you embrace it and
>not if you call yourself a postmodernist. If I said that there is a
>position that reduces the foundation of knowledge the mind alone (to
>logic, semantics, etc.), would that describe your position?
You still haven't clarified "foundation of knowledge". And I cannot
answer until that is clarified.
Okay, let me try. I think you are asking whether I am a solipsist.
If so, that's easy. I most definitely am not a solipsist, nor am I
an Idealist (in the sense of Berkeley).
I'm not quite sure if that is what you are looking for. I have
the impression that postmodernists would probably deny that they
are solipsists, so I might be misunderstanding what you are asking.
Hmm, do you consider Kuhn and/or Feyerabend to be postmodernists?
Having raised that question, I'll say that while I appreciate the
criticism Kuhn and Feyerabend have made of traditional philosophy
of science, I also think that there are serious problems with their
own positions.
Perhaps I should add that in ordinary life, I am a naive realist.
But there are questions that naive realism fails to address, so
when studying human cognition, or science (as an example of what
is achieved by human cognition), I have to temporarily put aside
my naive realism.
>>>I find the word "empirical" here odd, for it would preclude the
>>>unobservables that scientists regularly handle, such as gluons.
>> I don't follow. Are you unaware that physicists carry out empirical
>> experiments to detect the various particles that they hypothesize?
>Of course they do, which is why practicing scientists are realists. That
>is, they take as real things that are not empirical (according to my
>dictionary, things that are not directly observable). These things are
>not themselves the cause of phenomena.
That clarifies your position. Previously you mentioned
"unobservables", but now you are talking of "directly observable".
I never thought that the direct/indirect distinction was particularly
important.
>What is meant by "real" here? Well, I suppose either that a) the
>production of outcomes can only be explained by a presumption of their
>reality, or b) it is a condition for the production of outcomes. I
>prefer the latter ontological view to the former epistemological one. In
>realist terms I suspect unobservables are contingent and exert (I prefer
>"necessarily exert" to "can exert" here) an influence over observables.
I take "real" to mean only what people take to be real. That is,
I take it to have no metaphysical significance.
>> I largely ignore philosophy of science, which I think of as little
>> more than a quaint collection of "Just So" stories.
>Well, your reply explains a lot. The original question was about an
>issue in the framework of the philosophy of science, and for some odd
>reason you chose to respond to my points even though you consider the
>philosophy of science to be fictional. Why did you presume to do that?
Perhaps I overstated my position.
You seemed to be asserting that I should take philosophy of science
as authoritative. I don't accept it as authoritative, because I find
too many problems.
That said, I do regularly read John Wilkins' blog
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
I also have a positive view of Nancy Cartwright's "How the laws of
physics lie" and of Ian Hacking's "Representing and Intervening".
Of course, that does not mean that I agree with everything they
write. However, I was not much impressed by Kitcher's book "The
Advancement of Science".
You make it sound as if I was being devious. That was certainly not
my intention. I was interested in discussion, though I recognize
the difficulty when you appear to be implicitly making assumptions
that I am questioning.
>I have trouble grasping this reply. If your viewpoint on an issue in the
>philosophy of science is nothing more that your private feeling about a
>fiction, then what relevance could your suggestion to draw inferences
>from the practice of scientists possibly have? I suggested above that
>practicing scientists were realists, but you dismiss my inference as my
>private fiction with which you reject, not as wrong, but as not
>meaningful.
It is my impression that most physical scientists are realists, often
naive realists. However some, particularly in QM, are anti-realists.
Many psychologists seem to be logical positivists, or at least they
describe their science as if they are logical positivists.
I'm not sure why you think any of that relevant. You have yourself
indicated the importance of *action*. Shouldn't we be basing our
ideas about science on the actions of scientists - what they do,
rather than what they say that they do?
>> I'm not quite sure you are asking. However, I do see meaning as
>> inherently subjective.
>Generally people would agree, but the real issue is whether there is
>also an objective component. I crudely offered three positions; only the
>first denies an objective component.
I'm not sure what "objective component" could mean here.
According to the conventional wisdom, "subjective" and "objective"
are two quite distinct things, and some people question whether
the subjective even exists as other than an illusion. However, if
anything, it is the objective that I find questionable. What we
describe as objective seems to amount to a shared subjectivity.
There are aspects of our subjective experience of the world where
there is a lot of agreement, and "objective" is the word we use
to describe that. And if that is right, then what does it mean
to say that there is an objective component, except perhaps to say
that there is some degree of mutual agreement?
>> Now it is true that philosophers have have developed some tenuous
>> theories about meaning and reference. And it does seem to be true
>> that philosophers use these tenous ideas so much, that they have
>> become part of the philosopher's common experience. It seems that
>> philosophers have lost track of how tenuous those ideas are.
>Agreed, although I'd not go so far as to suggest that "tenuous" means
>fictional.
I'll note that "fictional" is your word, not mine.
>> I don't have a problem with "engage". I'm not sure that the idea of
>> knowledge from passive observation is just an artifact of Cartesian
>> ontology. It also seems to be widely assumed in empiricist writings,
>> and in the AI literature.
>I am assuming that a Cartesian ontology that makes world and mind
>ontologically and modally distinct entities rather than aspects
>(properties) of one process, underlies much of Western thought,
>including empiricism.
Okay, good clarification.
>I suspect your point might really be that knowledge based on passive
>observation is not peculiar to the post 17th century West, and if so I'd
>have to agree. I suspect the difference I was hinting at was that the
>mind-body distinction that characterizes the West is not just
>ontological, but also distinct in terms of modal logic, and it is the
>latter that makes their interaction problematic.
I am rather agnostic about modal logic.
>>>What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
>>>knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
>>>knowledge.
>> I would change that.
>Why? If I speak fictions and your proposed change had the same status,
>why would your alternative representation be at all compelling (produce
>a "change") rather than represent merely an alternative private view?
"Fictions" is your term, not mine. I am objecting to "truthful" but
it does not follow that I am talking of fictions. I object to using
"truthful" when talking about my socks, but I don't suggest that my
socks are fictions. Rather, my socks are not the kind of thing for
which "truthful" is an appropriate adjective. In the same way, I am
not suggesting that knowledge is fiction, but rather am suggesting
that "truthful" is not an appropriate adjective for knowledge.
>>>I did not mean to imply you were. On the contrary, I suspect you
>>>respond to the Cartesian contradiction by a reduction of world to
>>>mind. But since you don't state your position, that's only a guess.
>> Actually, that's a bad guess.
>OK, and so my guess is wrong. So what is right? You still don't define
>your position. But I'm beginning to suspect your point is that you make
>a virtue of not taking a position and therefore that your comments on or
>criticisms of my points are not meant to be meaningful or have truth
>value.
My position about what?
My position about the mind, is that our idea of mind arises from our
experience, particularly our experience of thinking. But the mind is
not anything that requires explaining. What does require explaining
is the cognitive system, which I take to be the underlying system
that makes thought possible. Roughly thinking, you could say that
"cognitive system" is the same as "brain". I prefer to think of the
brain as the implementation details of the cognitive system, and to
think of the cognitive system as the processes that are implemented.
Or perhaps you are asking about my position on the world. But that's
a metaphysical question, and I eschew metaphysics.
My position on what we know about the world, and how we know it,
is perhaps the important one. I thought I had already commented
on that in the previous message:
We act first, and aquire useful abilities. Then we invent
ways of talking about the effects of using those abilities
that we can use to help us discuss those abilities with
others. We apply "truth" to some of the statements in our
talk about the use of those abilities.
>>>A materialist monism is the basis of science
>> I am not convinced of that.
>Again, I'm frustrated. My statement here about the basis of science I
>assumed was the conventional view.
Many scientists come to accept materialist monism as a conclusion.
If that is the basis of science, then it cannot be a conclusion,
it can only be an assumed dogma. I don't see science as requiring
that dogma. Really, I see science as a method of inquiry based on
the use of empirical evidence (and I won't try to define "empirical
evidence"). Scientists do investigate claims of the paranormal.
And they reject those claims, not because the claims have an
immaterial basis, but because the claims do not stand up to scrutiny.
>>>Now I could play the schoolboy and say that your typing is an illusion
>>>in the mind of a god on Mt. Olympus, just as is your computer, the
>>>newsgroup and the rest of the world.
>> As long as it all works for me, that's good enough.
>Yes, my point exactly.
My point is that I don't much care for metaphysics, and I cannot
see any one metaphysical claim as preferable to another metaphysical
claim.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
> We are sometimes admonished to "think outside the box." I have been
> doing that. And it turns out that those who think outside the box
> have great difficulty communicating with those whose thinking is still
> confined inside the box.
>
> What it amounts to is that you, along with most people, are making
> some assumptions. I am questioning those assumptions. However, it is
> quite difficult to question those assumptions, because you are
> probably unaware that you are making them. And that is what makes for
> difficulties in communication.
I understand and agree with what you are saying, but I see three
potential problems.
The first of these is that when we speak of thinking outside the box, we
refer primarily to the content of thought, not the language in which it
is expressed. Sometimes we must be innovative with language, but when we
do we have to be apologetic and plead our case. Otherwise, we must
always try to be as conventional with language as we can because our
moral duty is to communicate the best we can.
Second, the phrase "outside the box" unfortunately gives the impression
that there's a absolute distinction between being in the box and outside
it. If the inside represents the conventional thinking of most people
most of the time, we need to keep in mind that this thinking is
empowering, works for us, is constructive, has social value, etc. What
is taken outside the box of convention is only certain of our
assumptions, words or issues, not the entirety of thought. We always
remain in large part in the box; if we were entirely out of it, we would
in effect be insane.
Finally, there's no virtue in being outside the box. It gives us room to
cook up new hypotheses, but they remain only hypotheses, not the
theorems which are in the box and remain to some extent useful. There's
surely no implication that being outside the box makes us more creative,
more virtuous, or makes us part of an elite. Making a virtue of being
outside the box amounts to little more than intellectual masturbation.
> You still haven't clarified "foundation of knowledge". And I cannot
> answer until that is clarified.
Yes, perhaps that conventional term needs definition or
clarification. Although the word is often used, a quick investigation
indicates that its meaning is presumed and not contentious. So I suppose
a dictionary will do. I infer from it that foundational refers to our
axioms.
> Okay, let me try. I think you are asking whether I am a solipsist.
> If so, that's easy. I most definitely am not a solipsist, nor am I an
> Idealist (in the sense of Berkeley).
>
> I'm not quite sure if that is what you are looking for. I have the
> impression that postmodernists would probably deny that they are
> solipsists, so I might be misunderstanding what you are asking.
>
> Hmm, do you consider Kuhn and/or Feyerabend to be postmodernists?
> Having raised that question, I'll say that while I appreciate the
> criticism Kuhn and Feyerabend have made of traditional philosophy of
> science, I also think that there are serious problems with their own
> positions.
>
> Perhaps I should add that in ordinary life, I am a naive realist. But
> there are questions that naive realism fails to address, so when
> studying human cognition, or science (as an example of what is
> achieved by human cognition), I have to temporarily put aside my naive
> realism.
I hope I was not calling you a solipsist, but instead suggesting that
some of the positions you bring up could appear that way.
A definition of postmodernism is contentious, and so whether Kuhn or
Feyerabend are included depends on the definition.
I hope I made my own position clear, but in case not: It seems to me
that "postmodernism" is a response to the contradiction in bourgeois
ideology that is expressed in ontological terms by Descartes. It seems
that in the face of this contradiction in which the determinant relation
of mind and body is problematic because they are modally incompatible,
there are in principle four possible responses:
a) make the world foundational in that phenomena are unequivocally
determined by the world so that we can logically rely on them alone to
make true statements about the world,
b) represent the mind as foundational, so that the world constructed
by language and logic has no truthful correspondence with the world
(my preferred definition of postmodernism),
c) since option (a) died long ago, and (b) removes us from empiria
more than most scientists are inclined to go, there is left a variety
of efforts to bridge the poles of the contradiction, and this today
means realism, pragmatism and critical empiricism. I would argue that
none of them as presently understood actually fulfill their mission.
d) Or one might reject bourgeois ideology with its contradictions
(such as are manifested in binary opposite categories) and try to
offer a better alternative. This is the course I prefer. In
philosophical terms, I'd call my alternative a "process realism", but
this term is not conventional (although it can be seen as a blend of
scientific realism and probabilistic causality, I try to replace the
presumed ontological categories with the single category of process).
Sorry to drag you back over this ground.
In ordinary life I suppose we are all naive realists, but feel that when
we look beyond daily life, its limitations become immediately
apparent. I sketched for you my own approach. You, on the other hand,
say that you must curtail any naive realism when studying human
cognition scientifically. Fine, but you give no hint at all of what your
position is. That was my complaint in my last message.
>>Of course they do, which is why practicing scientists are
>>realists. That is, they take as real things that are not empirical
>>(according to my dictionary, things that are not directly
>>observable). These things are not themselves the cause of phenomena.
>
> That clarifies your position. Previously you mentioned
> "unobservables", but now you are talking of "directly observable". I
> never thought that the direct/indirect distinction was particularly
> important.
It is not important in my view, but it was assumed important for many
years. "Brute facts" are understood as factual truths that are imposed
on us by the world we perceive. We now all realize that all observation
is mediated, not only instrumentally, but by observational theories
(Lakatos) and by axiomatic theoretical presuppositions. The term
"observables" today seems to be used as the equivalent of empirical. So
unobservables is what is not observable, not empirical. But, as I
suggested, realists are not in accord over just what is an unobservable
and, unfortunately, tend to give examples rather than define it. I
offered before a fourfold classification of "unobservables" in an effort
to impose a little order on this ambiguity. I'm sorry that my dictionary
definition introduced this problem. My dictionary's definition of
empirical seems simplistic.
My last sentence, especially in the absence of context, might be
misunderstood. I hope I was making clear the point that empiria do not
in themselves cause phenomena; empiria can only constrain causal
potency.
>>What is meant by "real" here? Well, I suppose either that a) the
>>production of outcomes can only be explained by a presumption of their
>>reality, or b) it is a condition for the production of outcomes. I
>>prefer the latter ontological view to the former epistemological
>>one. In realist terms I suspect unobservables are contingent and exert
>>(I prefer "necessarily exert" to "can exert" here) an influence over
>>observables.
>
> I take "real" to mean only what people take to be real. That is, I
> take it to have no metaphysical significance.
Well, I'm not so sure. I think it is pretty well agreed that real refers
to what is of the world, particularly the world independent of
consciousness. That seems a consensus. But what of consciousness? If it
is seen as an emergent property of thought, which in turn is an emergent
property of the brain, it too would also be a part of the world, and not
a challenge to materialistic monism. This is one reason I don't care for
mind/matter as a fundamental or ontological distinction, for it makes
any suggestion that consciousness is a form of matter problematic. By
representing cognition and the world as merely constraints on the
process involved in human action, I believe we avoid the problem.
> You seemed to be asserting that I should take philosophy of science as
> authoritative. I don't accept it as authoritative, because I find too
> many problems.
Well, this is complicated ;-(. To the extent there is some consensus in
the philosophy of science (which is doubtful in some respects but not
others), then _by definition_ it is authoritative. I suspect that what
you mean, rather, is whether you should take it at all seriously.
Many practicing scientists do not, and they do just fine without
worrying about the philosophy of science. I suspect the philosophical
issues intrude themselves when the received wisdom appears
contradictory, or when theories appear underdetermined by empiria (a lot
of theories among which we cannot decide), or when we try to explain the
history of science.
I believe all three conditions now prevail, and so the philosophy of
science becomes important and necessary to investigate by someone
equipped and inclined to do so. If this is the case, an indifference to
philosophy, ignoring their general findings, becomes a shortcoming or
handicap.
> You make it sound as if I was being devious. That was certainly not
> my intention. I was interested in discussion, though I recognize the
> difficulty when you appear to be implicitly making assumptions that I
> am questioning.
Never thought you were "devious", only that it would be
self-contradictory to enter into a philosophical discussion when you
doubt such a discussion can be at all meaningful. I tried to make my
assumptions clear and to justify them when they were unconventional. You
have every right (and duty) to put my philosophical feet to the fire,
but if you deny the meaning of philosophy, you have denied there is a
fire with which to put them. If you were an instrumentalist (which I
recall your denying), then you would not be thinking of putting my feet
to the fire because it would be meaningless to get into a philosophical
discussion at all. To enter into a discusion that one assumes from the
beginning is entirely meaingless would appaer to be very odd behavior
and a betrayal of those who hoped they would learn something from the
discusson. You generally can't learn something from someone who makes
being meaningless a virtue (I exclude anyone of Buddhist persuasion
here).
> I'm not sure why you think any of that relevant. You have yourself
> indicated the importance of *action*. Shouldn't we be basing our
> ideas about science on the actions of scientists - what they do,
> rather than what they say that they do?
Action is informed by consciousness, and so to understand action, we
need to understand consciousness. Some consciousness is explicit, some
of it not. But in either case, it is important. Action in the absence of
consciousness, such as the beating of my heart, I don't find
particularly significant when it comes to understanding human behavior.
>>Generally people would agree, but the real issue is whether there is
>>also an objective component. I crudely offered three positions; only
>>the first denies an objective component.
>
> I'm not sure what "objective component" could mean here.
If I recall the context correctly, objective would conventionally refer
to the world beyond the mind. True, I questioned the world/mind
distinction as being real, but that only means that objective refers to
that aspect of action that is one-sidedly represented in thought as
being independent of consciousness.
> What we describe as objective seems to amount to a shared
> subjectivity. There are aspects of our subjective experience of the
> world where there is a lot of agreement, and "objective" is the word
> we use to describe that. And if that is right, then what does it mean
> to say that there is an objective component, except perhaps to say
> that there is some degree of mutual agreement?
I think you are mixing to different things here. We sometimes use the
word objective to distinguish our personal opinions from a
consensus. This usage rests on the distinction of individual and
society. But the word is often used to distinguish an opinion, whether
it be personal or social, from a world independent of any opinion. This
rests on a distinction of mind and world. This latter does raise the
question of whether the term "objective" should include the world of
which we are unaware, but it seems contradictory to refer to something
and at the same time suggest it is beyond consciousness. That is, while
there's a world beyond our consciousness, such as undiscovered planets,
I'd not be inclined to label it objective.
>>Agreed, although I'd not go so far as to suggest that "tenuous" means
>>fictional.
>
> I'll note that "fictional" is your word, not mine.
Yes, but I was only trying to pin you down to something. If you hold
that a consensus over some matter is "tenuous" (literally, rather thin),
it could mean only that it is not very certain, but it could also mean
that it has little substance at all, which gets awfully close to fiction
(fiction actually has a great deal of truth, for otherwise it would be
unintelligible).
> I am rather agnostic about modal logic.
Well, yes, modal logic stretches from the obvious to the obscure. I
assumed we could introduce the property of modality without embracing
the whole of modal logic. For example, we can justifiably distinguish
the truth of statements as to their possibility, probability, and
necessity. That seems to make common sense in terms of epistemic
modalities. However, I went further to represent modalities as having a
physical reality independent of mind rather than merely properties of
mind, and this does get onto thinner ice. To suggest that it is a
property of things to be possible (such as causal potency), probable
(such as in probabilistic causality), or necessary (unequivocal
causality) is a big step, although one that is hardly unconventional in
the scientific world. This "modal realism", I suppose it can be called,
is a position I adopt for myself to the extent that I infer that that
things having different real modalities are contradictory. This strikes
me as intuitively obvious, but I'm sure this assumption can be
contested. It does not seem to be the kind of thing usually discussed in
the modal literature, but I could be wrong there as well.
>>>>What I was getting at was that action is the mechanism from which
>>>>knowledge emerges. We act first, and as a result acquire truthful
>>>>knowledge.
>
>>> I would change that.
>
>>Why? If I speak fictions and your proposed change had the same status,
>>why would your alternative representation be at all compelling
>>(produce a "change") rather than represent merely an alternative
>>private view?
>
> "Fictions" is your term, not mine. I am objecting to "truthful" but
> it does not follow that I am talking of fictions. I object to using
> "truthful" when talking about my socks, but I don't suggest that my
> socks are fictions. Rather, my socks are not the kind of thing for
> which "truthful" is an appropriate adjective. In the same way, I am
> not suggesting that knowledge is fiction, but rather am suggesting
> that "truthful" is not an appropriate adjective for knowledge.
I thought you were challenging the notion of truth. If truthful
statements have no relation to the world, and if a consensus does not
represent truth either, what then do you mean by truthful statements? It
seems you rather deny truthfulness as a property of statements about the
world. That seems to reduce them, at best, to utilitarian or
instrumental fictions.
You seem to be tilting at windmills. No one says that your socks have
the quality of being truthful. The word "truth" refers to statements we
make about the socks, the relation of our statements and the world to
which they refer. If I say that your socks are black, that is either
true or false, or they are an ambivalent grey. The only statement that I
can think of that has almost no truth value is to index the socks, point
to them, but even this has some implicit truth value. Give me an example
of a statement about your socks that empirical evidence would not
suggest is true or not, or approximately true.
> My position about the mind, is that our idea of mind arises from our
> experience, particularly our experience of thinking. But the mind is
> not anything that requires explaining. What does require explaining
> is the cognitive system, which I take to be the underlying system that
> makes thought possible. Roughly thinking, you could say that
> "cognitive system" is the same as "brain". I prefer to think of the
> brain as the implementation details of the cognitive system, and to
> think of the cognitive system as the processes that are implemented.
I've got no serious objection to this. However, the brain (grey matter),
the mind (ability to process inputs and outputs) and cognitive system
(cognition) are all things that are seriously examined by scientists. So
you are apparently saying that, with the exception of the cognitive
system, you don't consider the findings of these investigations to be
terribly relevant to your concerns. Well, that's OK, for most other
people don't find any of the three sciences to be very relevant.
But I do fail to understand how you represent the relation of brain,
mind and cognition. Are you suggesting that consciousness is the
precondition of thought? Tell that to a mouse. The reduction of
cognitive system to brain, rather consider it a system that emerges from
the operations of the brain also seems highly problematic. Surely
thought precedes consciousness and the brain precedes thought. Your
statement leaves a lot of uncertainty. It seems to me that while the
brain's physical development is shaped by thought and cognition, that
cognition refers to something more than the physical matter of the
brain. I could study that physical matter all I want and still have
little inking of what you are thinking.
To understand your position, I'd have to get some idea of just what you
mean by brain, mind and cognitive system. Do these terms refer to
emergent levels, and if so, what is their relation and how did they
arise? Surely mind and consciousness do not reduce to the brain. That
is, in the brain of a foetus in its earliest stages, is there
consciousness or even much mind?
>>>>A materialist monism is the basis of science
>
>>> I am not convinced of that.
>
>>Again, I'm frustrated. My statement here about the basis of science I
>>assumed was the conventional view.
>
> Many scientists come to accept materialist monism as a conclusion. If
> that is the basis of science, then it cannot be a conclusion, it can
> only be an assumed dogma.
That's true, but I'd rather call it an axiom than dogma, for it is
presumed rather than taught in the science courses in school. A dogma is
a teaching or is a bit of knowledge that is true only because it has an
authoritative source. In other words, I doubt that neophytes adopt the
presumption primarily because an authority insists that it is so, but
because is an axiom presumed by scientic knowledge.
It can also be argued that it is a fair conclusion. That is, if our
experience of life does not demonstrate the existence of either a
supernatural or of abstract objective ideas, then we end up
materialistic monists. That is, if we think about the implications of
our experiences, most of us would have to conclude there is only one
kind of substance, not two or three.
> I don't see science as requiring that dogma.
No? Suppose I am a scientist, but reject the axiom that there's only one
kind of substance. That means if there's an event in the lab, it could
be the result, for example, of divine intervention. Perhaps that's
actually the case, but then how can I explain it in naturalistic terms,
the terms employed in science? I can't, and so I also can't translate my
very private mystical experience in the lab so that it might become
support an existing theory or become part of a new one, which are
necessarily public. So I'd conclude that that materialistic monism is
_definitely_ an axiom necessary to science, for otherwise science
becomes the equivalent to superstition, which is contrary to what we
mean by science.
When we say that modern science emerged in the 15-17th centuries, just
what do we mean? Folks in the middle ages were very technically inclined
and observant of the world, and they had a fair amount of truthful
knowledge of the world. But the old artisanry tradition gave way to
something new. Part of this was a metaphysical presupposition that the
world represents a coherent whole, and this was a statement of
theory. It also contradicted the supposition that everything is
ultimately an expression of divine will, as history shows. It seems a
materialistic monism was implicit from the very beginning of modern
science, but it took until the 20th century for the vestiges of
realigion and idealism to be pushed aside.
> Really, I see science as a method of inquiry based on the use of
> empirical evidence (and I won't try to define "empirical evidence").
> Scientists do investigate claims of the paranormal. And they reject
> those claims, not because the claims have an immaterial basis, but
> because the claims do not stand up to scrutiny.
Undoubtedly science includes a method of inquiry, but few today would be
inclined to reduce science to that method. For a full discussion of
this, see R. Harré, The Philosophies of Science (NY, 1984). Induction
and deduction are only scientific methods, which are incomplete and very
unreliable, and now usually are taken not to be what we mean any more by
science any more than a cathedral reduces to brick laying.
Most scientists don't investigate the claim of the paranormal because
they sense that it is irrelevant or even hostile to their work. Only a
few bother to subject paranormal beliefs to empirical test. That is,
most don't reject it on pragmatic grounds, but axiomatically.
> My point is that I don't much care for metaphysics, and I cannot see
> any one metaphysical claim as preferable to another metaphysical
> claim.
Well, I don't care for metaphysics, either. But in my efforts to solve
concrete problems, I found that conventional views were
contradictory. In trying to resolve these contradictions, I found that
the ultimate reason why progress wasn't being made in my field or why it
is in a state of crisis is that our fundamental axioms were getting us
into trouble. That dragged me into metaphysics as much as I'd prefer
dealing with the concrete issues.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> We are sometimes admonished to "think outside the box." I have been
>> doing that. And it turns out that those who think outside the box
>> have great difficulty communicating with those whose thinking is still
>> confined inside the box.
>> What it amounts to is that you, along with most people, are making
>> some assumptions. I am questioning those assumptions. However, it is
>> quite difficult to question those assumptions, because you are
>> probably unaware that you are making them. And that is what makes for
>> difficulties in communication.
>I understand and agree with what you are saying, but I see three
>potential problems.
>The first of these is that when we speak of thinking outside the box, we
>refer primarily to the content of thought, not the language in which it
>is expressed. Sometimes we must be innovative with language, but when we
>do we have to be apologetic and plead our case.
When the disagreement is over concepts, rather than facts (as is
often the case), communication can be difficult. It's what Kuhn
referred to as incommensurability.
>Second, the phrase "outside the box" unfortunately gives the impression
>that there's a absolute distinction between being in the box and outside
>it.
I'll certainly agree it is an ill defined expression. I was just
using it as a way of describing my situation.
---------
>> You still haven't clarified "foundation of knowledge". And I cannot
>> answer until that is clarified.
>Yes, perhaps that conventional term needs definition or
>clarification. Although the word is often used, a quick investigation
>indicates that its meaning is presumed and not contentious. So I suppose
>a dictionary will do. I infer from it that foundational refers to our
>axioms.
Sometimes people talk of a science being based on axioms. But I
don't agree with that. I see it as starting with empirical
principles. Perhaps we don't agree on the meaning of "axioms".
I tend to think of axioms as inherently abstract. Investigation
based on axioms is solipsistic, in the sense that it depends
only on those abstract axioms and the world becomes irrelevant.
Mathematics can be described as solipsistic, in that sense.
Now, in a sense, I can see that philosophy takes empirical principles
from science, and abstracts from them to yield abstract axioms.
Apparently, philosophers find the resulting solipsistic (or
methodologically solipsistic) form of study quite congenial.
But that's also what makes philosophy often seem to be circular.
It is the empirical aspect of science that prevents it from being
circular, and keeps it actually about the world. When philosophy
drops that empirical aspect, by abstracting the principles to form
axioms, it leaves an unconstrained circularity.
--------
>In ordinary life I suppose we are all naive realists, but feel that when
>we look beyond daily life, its limitations become immediately
>apparent. I sketched for you my own approach. You, on the other hand,
>say that you must curtail any naive realism when studying human
>cognition scientifically. Fine, but you give no hint at all of what your
>position is. That was my complaint in my last message.
It's hard to say what my position is, because it is too far outside
the box. I find it difficult to explain in ways that others can
understand.
Basically, I am questioning the default, and often implicit
assumptions of representationalism. I am not denying that we use
representations, but I am disagreeing with the view that everything
can be explained in terms of representations - and that seems to
be what people assume.
--------
>It is not important in my view, but it was assumed important for many
>years. "Brute facts" are understood as factual truths that are imposed
>on us by the world we perceive.
Well, in that case there are no brute facts.
If facts are true natural language statements, then the world comes
without such statements because it comes without natural language.
That's something we have brought to it.
I'm not really claiming that there are no brute facts. Rather, I
think your way of defining it puts too much emphasis on the world,
and not enough on us. Mathematicians might talk about brute facts
of mathematics, and it is hard to see where the world is involved
for that.
--------
>> I take "real" to mean only what people take to be real. That is, I
>> take it to have no metaphysical significance.
>Well, I'm not so sure. I think it is pretty well agreed that real refers
>to what is of the world, particularly the world independent of
>consciousness. That seems a consensus.
But I don't think that works. What do you make of platonist
mathematicians? They will assert in one breath that mathematics
is not about the world, and that numbers are not physical. And in
the next breath they will say that they are mathematical realists,
and that numbers are real.
> But what of consciousness? If it
>is seen as an emergent property of thought, which in turn is an emergent
>property of the brain, it too would also be a part of the world, and not
>a challenge to materialistic monism.
Many people find consciousness puzzling. I don't. But that's
probably because I am thinking differently about such things.
However, I'm not sure how your preferred materialistic monism deals
with abstractions such as numbers and other mathematical objects.
Those objects are surely immaterial, though I don't see them as
being problematic.
> This is one reason I don't care for
>mind/matter as a fundamental or ontological distinction, for it makes
>any suggestion that consciousness is a form of matter problematic. By
>representing cognition and the world as merely constraints on the
>process involved in human action, I believe we avoid the problem.
I have no problem thinking in terms of processes.
>> You seemed to be asserting that I should take philosophy of science as
>> authoritative. I don't accept it as authoritative, because I find too
>> many problems.
>Well, this is complicated ;-(. To the extent there is some consensus in
>the philosophy of science (which is doubtful in some respects but not
>others), then _by definition_ it is authoritative. I suspect that what
>you mean, rather, is whether you should take it at all seriously.
Okay, correction accepted.
>Many practicing scientists do not, and they do just fine without
>worrying about the philosophy of science. I suspect the philosophical
>issues intrude themselves when the received wisdom appears
>contradictory, or when theories appear underdetermined by empiria (a lot
>of theories among which we cannot decide), or when we try to explain the
>history of science.
I think it more that the language of philosophy is foreign to
scientists. They don't know what philosophers are talking about, and
wonder whether it is anything more than gibberish.
--------
>> You make it sound as if I was being devious. That was certainly not
>> my intention. I was interested in discussion, though I recognize the
>> difficulty when you appear to be implicitly making assumptions that I
>> am questioning.
>Never thought you were "devious", only that it would be
>self-contradictory to enter into a philosophical discussion when you
>doubt such a discussion can be at all meaningful.
As I have indicated, I am aware that communication is difficult. Think
of the discussion as my experimentation with ways to improve that
communication. I am not prejudging that it won't be meaningful - I
would be wasting my time if I were.
--------
>> I'm not sure why you think any of that relevant. You have yourself
>> indicated the importance of *action*. Shouldn't we be basing our
>> ideas about science on the actions of scientists - what they do,
>> rather than what they say that they do?
>Action is informed by consciousness, and so to understand action, we
>need to understand consciousness.
That's an interesting point. I am inclined to think that a
mosquito is capable of action, but I am not at all sure whether it
is conscious.
Come to think of it, my computer is capable of actions, and I am
quite certain that my computer is not conscious. So perhaps we
disagree about "action".
> Some consciousness is explicit, some
>of it not. But in either case, it is important. Action in the absence of
>consciousness, such as the beating of my heart, I don't find
>particularly significant when it comes to understanding human behavior.
I agree about the heart, but I'm not convinced that consciousness is
the critical distinction.
Okay, let me expand on the computer analogy. My computer has two
clocks. One of these is a "time of day" clock, that keeps running
even when the computer is powered off. I see that as analogous to
the beating of the heart, in that it is not particularly significant.
The other clock is the master oscillator that drives the flow of
instructions, and essentially drives all actions by the computer.
That one I do see as very significant.
--------
>> What we describe as objective seems to amount to a shared
>> subjectivity. There are aspects of our subjective experience of the
>> world where there is a lot of agreement, and "objective" is the word
>> we use to describe that. And if that is right, then what does it mean
>> to say that there is an objective component, except perhaps to say
>> that there is some degree of mutual agreement?
>I think you are mixing to different things here. We sometimes use the
>word objective to distinguish our personal opinions from a
>consensus. This usage rests on the distinction of individual and
>society. But the word is often used to distinguish an opinion, whether
>it be personal or social, from a world independent of any opinion.
But a world independent of any opinion is meaningless. Or, as the
wording of Genesis goes, it is a world without form and void.
(And now you will start wondering again whether I am a
postmodernist - but only because you will miss what I am really
trying to say here).
--------
>> I'll note that "fictional" is your word, not mine.
>Yes, but I was only trying to pin you down to something. If you hold
>that a consensus over some matter is "tenuous" (literally, rather thin),
>it could mean only that it is not very certain, but it could also mean
>that it has little substance at all, which gets awfully close to fiction
>(fiction actually has a great deal of truth, for otherwise it would be
>unintelligible).
Once upon a time, matter was simple. It was a homogeneous substance.
But then came the molecular theory of matter, and then matter was
no longer a substance, but was tiny billiard balls bouncing around,
with mostly empty space between the billiard balls. Then came
nuclear physics, and those billiard balls were mostly empty space,
with some electrons orbiting a nucleus. And then came QM, and
now it is all quantum particles and those seem to be able to pop
into and out of existence. That's what I mean by saying that the
concept of matter is tenuous. I'm not suggesting it is fictional,
only that it is hard to pin down what we mean by "matter."
--------
>> "Fictions" is your term, not mine. I am objecting to "truthful" but
>> it does not follow that I am talking of fictions. I object to using
>> "truthful" when talking about my socks, but I don't suggest that my
>> socks are fictions. Rather, my socks are not the kind of thing for
>> which "truthful" is an appropriate adjective. In the same way, I am
>> not suggesting that knowledge is fiction, but rather am suggesting
>> that "truthful" is not an appropriate adjective for knowledge.
>I thought you were challenging the notion of truth.
Not at all. I was challenging other ideas, most particularly
that of "scientific theory." But I doubt that we have any serious
disagreement of the notion of truth.
> If truthful
>statements have no relation to the world, and if a consensus does not
>represent truth either, what then do you mean by truthful statements?
I don't think I have suggested that truthful statements have no
relation to the world, though I think that case could be made
for truthful mathematical statements (or other statements about
abstract entities).
I am disagreeing that knowledge is truthful statements. I thought
we had been through that. Roughly speaking, knowledge is an ability
to produce truthful statements. It is not the statements themselves,
but the ability.
>You seem to be tilting at windmills.
I don't think so.
> No one says that your socks have
>the quality of being truthful.
Quite right. That's why I used it as a clear example to illustrate
my point.
I have been describing what I mean by "knowledge". And you have
been agreeing, and saying that's about what you mean too. But there
was no agreement, there was only miscommunication. I use examples,
such as the socks, to bring your attention to the fact that the
disagreement is still there. Note that I am not expecting you to
drop your own meaning of "knowledge" and adopt mine. But unless
you can recognize that there is a disagreement, miscommunication
will continue.
>I've got no serious objection to this. However, the brain (grey matter),
>the mind (ability to process inputs and outputs) and cognitive system
>(cognition) are all things that are seriously examined by scientists. So
>you are apparently saying that, with the exception of the cognitive
>system, you don't consider the findings of these investigations to be
>terribly relevant to your concerns. Well, that's OK, for most other
>people don't find any of the three sciences to be very relevant.
Some of that serious examination by scientists is examination
of the biology of neurons. That's quite valuable. Some of it
is psychology, which can also have value. But much of it is a
huge waste. Except for the neurology, psychology, little actual
progress is being made. There is a lot of publication activity, but
most of what it produces are theories that demonstrably do not work.
>But I do fail to understand how you represent the relation of brain,
>mind and cognition. Are you suggesting that consciousness is the
>precondition of thought? Tell that to a mouse.
I happen to think that a mouse has some, perhaps small, degree of
consciousness, and has some limited ability at thought.
> Tell that to a mouse. The reduction of
>cognitive system to brain, rather consider it a system that emerges from
>the operations of the brain also seems highly problematic.
I probably wasn't clear enough. One of the reasons I prefer to talk
of "cognitive system", rather than brain, is that I don't want to be
committed to the assumption that the brain is everything. That is,
I entertain the possibility (or likelihood) that cognition depends
on more of the body than just the brain, and perhaps also depends
on there being a world.
> Surely
>thought precedes consciousness and the brain precedes thought.
I'm not at all sure that is correct. Which came first, the chicken
or the egg? Which came first, the consciousness or the thought? Aren't
they tightly related to one another, so that neither preceded the
other?
As for the brain preceding thought - for humans, yes. But could
biology perhaps evolve a different way of doing things, where
thought would be possible but using something other than a brain?
> Your
>statement leaves a lot of uncertainty. It seems to me that while the
>brain's physical development is shaped by thought and cognition, that
>cognition refers to something more than the physical matter of the
>brain. I could study that physical matter all I want and still have
>little inking of what you are thinking.
There is a box on your desk, probably with a keyboard attached,
and you are typing into that keyboard. That box is an electical
or electro-magnetic appliance. Everything that happens in that
box could be described in terms of electro-magnetic activity.
You probably use the term "computer" for that box. But you likely
don't explain it at all in terms of electro-magnetic activity, and
you might be uncomfortable with my term "electrical appliance."
Instead, we typically describe the operations of the computer in
terms of logic operations. We describe what is going on in terms
of binary digits. But if you look at that electrical appliance,
you will find electrical currents, but you won't find binary digits.
The computer is a logical or abstract conception, and the electrical
appliance is a physical implementation of that abstract or logical
machine.
Analogously, I want to discuss the cognitive system as an abstract
system that deals with information, while I want to talk about
the brain as a system of neurons that transmit ion potentials.
That is, I think of a cognitive system as an abstract system that
deals with information, and I think of the brain (and other parts
of physiology) as a physical implementation of that abstract system.
--------
>> Many scientists come to accept materialist monism as a conclusion. If
>> that is the basis of science, then it cannot be a conclusion, it can
>> only be an assumed dogma.
>That's true, but I'd rather call it an axiom than dogma, for it is
>presumed rather than taught in the science courses in school.
Many scientists do agree with you, and that they call that axiom/dogma
"methodological naturalism." But when looking at scientific practice,
I don't see where it is necessary.
>> I don't see science as requiring that dogma.
>No? Suppose I am a scientist, but reject the axiom that there's only one
>kind of substance. That means if there's an event in the lab, it could
>be the result, for example, of divine intervention.
Why should that affect a scientist's evidence-based investigation?
I'm saying that science is based on evidence, not on assumptions
about natural/supernatural.
Your way of describing things presumes that the "world" is neatly
divided into two classes, the natural and the supernatural, and that
science ignores one of those classes (the supernatural) and treats
it as non-existent. But I don't see the evidence that scientists
work that way.
As I see it, scientists do evidence based investigation. What they
successfully explain, they then declare as natural. In other words,
there is no fixed division into natural and supernatural. Rather,
what we consider "natural" is decided after the investigation, not
before. And that part of the world we consider "natural" continues
to grow, while what is considered supernatural continues to shrink.
But take a specific example. For a long time, light propogation was
explained as wave motion in the luminiferous aether. And the aether
was consider to be natural (part of nature). We have since abandoned
that view of light propogation, and the aether is no long considered
to be part of nature, but instead is relegated to mythology.
--------
>When we say that modern science emerged in the 15-17th centuries, just
>what do we mean?
I think we mainly mean Galileo and Newton.
> Folks in the middle ages were very technically inclined
>and observant of the world, and they had a fair amount of truthful
>knowledge of the world.
Sure. The prime driver of science is human curiosity. And part of
what gave rise to science was economic change that gave some people
more time to indulge their curiosity. Improving communications were
also important, in that they allowed people to communicate about
their discoveries, and to thereby cooperate in their investigations.
The other part of what led to modern science was the increasing
tendency to be systematic in one's study of the world, instead of
haphazardly collecting facts. And it is really that systematicity
that I see as the heart of modern science.
> Part of this was a metaphysical presupposition that the
>world represents a coherent whole, and this was a statement of
>theory. It also contradicted the supposition that everything is
>ultimately an expression of divine will, as history shows.
I'm not so sure of that. As I understand it, Newton was a very
religious person, and may well have believed that he was exploring
the divine will.
>> Really, I see science as a method of inquiry based on the use of
>> empirical evidence (and I won't try to define "empirical evidence").
>> Scientists do investigate claims of the paranormal. And they reject
>> those claims, not because the claims have an immaterial basis, but
>> because the claims do not stand up to scrutiny.
>Undoubtedly science includes a method of inquiry, but few today would be
>inclined to reduce science to that method. For a full discussion of
>this, see R. Harré, The Philosophies of Science (NY, 1984). Induction
>and deduction are only scientific methods, which are incomplete and very
>unreliable, and now usually are taken not to be what we mean any more by
>science any more than a cathedral reduces to brick laying.
I pretty much reject the conventional wisdom on induction. To the
extent that induction is used, it is a weak method and rarely leads
to major scientific breakthroughs. The advancement in science cannot
be credited to inductionism.
>Most scientists don't investigate the claim of the paranormal because
>they sense that it is irrelevant or even hostile to their work.
I think they mainly see such investigation as a waste of time,
given that they have seen no credible evidence in support of the
paranormal.
>Well, I don't care for metaphysics, either. But in my efforts to solve
>concrete problems, I found that conventional views were
>contradictory. In trying to resolve these contradictions, I found that
>the ultimate reason why progress wasn't being made in my field or why it
>is in a state of crisis is that our fundamental axioms were getting us
>into trouble.
Assuming that your field is philosophy, I can agree that the
fundamental assumptions (or axioms, as you call them) of philosophy
are getting you into trouble. Yet you seem to be defending those
fundamental assumptions in this thread, and you don't like that I
am questioning them - or perhaps you cannot even see the extent to
which I am questioning them.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
> Sometimes people talk of a science being based on axioms. But I don't
> agree with that. I see it as starting with empirical principles.
> Perhaps we don't agree on the meaning of "axioms".
Fair enough. By axiom I mean a foundational fact or principle that is
assumed to be true or a given because it is conventionally accepted as
such within the framework (best current scientific theory) that one is
addressing, or it is intuitively self evident, or it is an existential
requirement (such as a condition for research or dialog).
My use of the word foundational may not be the same as your word
"based". By foundational I do not mean to imply that the content of the
science can be reduced to it, but that it operates as a constraint on
what is possible in that scientific conception. For example, a generally
shared meaning of words is foundational for meaningful discourse.
The issue you may be raising can be: a) Does a science depend on certain
presuppositions that are taken for granted? or b) Can a science be
self-contained and not rely on matters external to it, that are not
established by it? or c) Does a science reduce to those presuppositions?
I believe the answers to such questions are very conventional and well
understood and well supported.
What's an "empirical principle"? A methodology? A fact?
> I tend to think of axioms as inherently abstract.
What do you mean by "abstract". A generalization of empirical experience
such as a general law? Something that is not empiria and so does not
give rise to phenomena, and so is in some sense unobservable? What is
beyond _direct_ observation, such as a gluon? A form versus its content,
such as the formal relation of two square objects? An objective idea? A
term for a causal relation rather than a reference to the things so
related? Etc., Etc., Etc.
In a lab experiment in which we are testing f=ma, we take a to be
32ft/sec/sec as axiomatic in that it is presumed true within to
framework of the experiment. Is this empirical or not? Is this abstract
or not? Whether it be abstract or not, empirical or not, is it for those
reason any less true within the framework of the experiment?
> Investigation based on axioms is solipsistic, in the sense that it
> depends only on those abstract axioms and the world becomes
> irrelevant. Mathematics can be described as solipsistic, in that
> sense.
Research that rests on a set of axioms may be solipsistic in that it
presumably confirms, i.a., the validity of the axioms. But scientists
all insist that their science rests on a variety of axioms, are they
then saying that all science is solipsistic?
You seem to define "abstract" axioms as those irrelevant to the world,
and I have trouble thinking of any. Would you kindly provide an example
of an axiom that is unrelated to the world because it is abstract?
I note by the way that since we think in terms of words and concepts
that are human inventions, all thought ends up being solipsistic as
well. That may be close to Bishop Berkeley's position, but who still
defends it? What is wrong with this argument, or do you agree with it?
> It is the empirical aspect of science that prevents it from being
> circular, and keeps it actually about the world.
Sorry, but not many thoughtful people would at all agree with this. This
view seems an artifact of long discredited positivism, that "brute
facts" are uncontaminated by theory, are pure, and offer a certain and
sufficient foundation from which we draw inferences. The facts speak for
themselves. Just how does this empirical aspect of science prevent its
being circular?
> When philosophy drops that empirical aspect, by abstracting the
> principles to form axioms, it leaves an unconstrained circularity.
No idea what you mean by "abstracting the principles to form
axioms". This seems in reverse logical order, and so I wonder just what
it is you mean.
> It's hard to say what my position is, because it is too far outside
> the box. I find it difficult to explain in ways that others can
> understand.
Then I say you have a problem. I get the sense in the message to which
I'm responding that you are trying to explicate your position, and you
will see that the questions I raise about it are more specific. That
would seem to be a bit of progress.
But now you make this remark. I wish you would reconsider it. Positions
we take that are unconventional are always difficult to explain others,
but those that question the basic axioms or presuppositions of
conventional thinking are extremely difficult, almost impossible.
So how does one make the translation from one conceptual system to
another? An extraordinarily interesting discussion of this is offered by
Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, Magic, science, religion and the scope of
rationality (Cambridge, 1990). A more conventional discussion of the
reliability of science is Roger Trigg, Rationality & Science: Can
science explain everything? (Oxford, 1993). I'd suggest that if the
vocabulary, presuppositions, basic concepts and mode of reasoning relied
upon by your perspective are all completely intelligible to anyone else,
you've got a serious problem and should not persist until you begin to
resolve it.
How? I suggest you narrow your focus to one domain, dredge up for
inspection its most basic presuppositions (and ultimately their
presuppositions), and engage in dialog about those basics in a language
understood by others. I believe if persisted intelligently, openly, and
honestly, it will eventually begin to bear fruit. To establish some kind
of link to someone else, however narrow or elemental it might be, should
be your top priority, not satisfying yourself that you are moving in a
direction that makes more sense to yourself.
Incidentally, I should apologize for preaching as if I were an authority
or font of wisdom. My only excuse is my age, which has allowed me the
time to step out of many boxes and then reconnect.
> Basically, I am questioning the default, and often implicit
> assumptions of representationalism. I am not denying that we use
> representations, but I am disagreeing with the view that everything
> can be explained in terms of representations - and that seems to be
> what people assume.
A representational correspondence theory has not done well. Lenin has
been criticized, justly or not, for that position. In any case, I doubt
that anyone who is at all involved in the philosophy of science would be
inclined to adopt it, although it may be an artifact of daily life where
its assumption is less problematic under the circumstances, and we tend
to be more pragmatic about our beliefs.
>>It is not important in my view, but it was assumed important for many
>>years. "Brute facts" are understood as factual truths that are imposed
>>on us by the world we perceive.
>
> Well, in that case there are no brute facts.
>
> If facts are true natural language statements, then the world comes
> without such statements because it comes without natural language.
> That's something we have brought to it.
>
> I'm not really claiming that there are no brute facts. Rather, I
> think your way of defining it puts too much emphasis on the world, and
> not enough on us. Mathematicians might talk about brute facts of
> mathematics, and it is hard to see where the world is involved for
> that.
I was trying to give a conventional definition of brute facts, which is
a concept that has been broadly rejected since World War I. The reason
these facts are called "brute" is become meaning from from the world
rather than from thought. If you reject such an overemphasis on the
world, then you would do best to drop the term "brute" facts and find
some other.
I was rereading yesterday E.H.Carr's _What is History_, and he
distinguishes "facts about the past" (empirical traces left over from
the past), "potential facts of history" that are the result of working
up these traces to make then suited as the raw material for the
production of history, and "historical facts", which are facts that have
been accepted by the historical community as being true. I mention this
because I'm working on a paper that, i.a., criticizes Carr on this
issue, but it does illustrate how he (and many others) try to get around
the contradiction between body and mind, between a world that is defined
as Other, and the observer who is defined as Self. If self and other, or
mind and body, are contradictory, then how are we supposed to have
"true" facts?
>>Well, I'm not so sure. I think it is pretty well agreed that real
>>refers to what is of the world, particularly the world independent of
>>consciousness. That seems a consensus.
[I'm not altogether happy with my statement here]
> But I don't think that works. What do you make of platonist
> mathematicians? They will assert in one breath that mathematics is
> not about the world, and that numbers are not physical. And in the
> next breath they will say that they are mathematical realists, and
> that numbers are real.
But that's a problem for mathematicians. Although I agree that the
status of mathematical truth is highly ambivalent, I leave it to
mathematicians to resolve. When they come to a conclusion and justify
it, then I may find it to be relevant. If they claim to be mathematical
realists, but at the same time insist that math is not about the world,
then this seems merely self-contradictory unless what they mean it is
not about the empirical world, but about, say, the non-empirical
structure of the world. Then they could say they are non-empirical
realists. But I leave it to them to make such an argument, for I'm
ignorant about the philosophical implications of math.
>>This is one reason I don't care for mind/matter as a fundamental or
>>ontological distinction, for it makes any suggestion that
>>consciousness is a form of matter problematic. By representing
>>cognition and the world as merely constraints on the process involved
>>in human action, I believe we avoid the problem.
>
> I have no problem thinking in terms of processes.
Easier said than done. It has taken me much time and effort to define
just what "process" is, other than the obviously flawed definition that
it simply refers to an entity's change of state.
> I think it more that the language of philosophy is foreign to
> scientists. They don't know what philosophers are talking about, and
> wonder whether it is anything more than gibberish.
I wonder about this. Most philosophy of science was analytical up to the
1980s and 90s and seemed to represent a world irrelevant to
scientists. This has dramatically changed, and most philosophers of
science now speak the same language as scientists and there is mutual
intelligibility. On this I can do no better than recommend Richard Boyd,
Philip Gasper, and J. D. Trout, eds., The Philosophy of Science
(Cambridge, MA, 1991).
>>> I'm not sure why you think any of that relevant. You have yourself
>>> indicated the importance of *action*. Shouldn't we be basing our
>>> ideas about science on the actions of scientists - what they do,
>>> rather than what they say that they do?
>
>>Action is informed by consciousness, and so to understand action, we
>>need to understand consciousness.
>
> That's an interesting point. I am inclined to think that a mosquito
> is capable of action, but I am not at all sure whether it is
> conscious.
>
> Come to think of it, my computer is capable of actions, and I am quite
> certain that my computer is not conscious. So perhaps we disagree
> about "action".
No, I was referring to human action, not mosquitoes ;-). The mosquito
and computer have hard-wired purpose, but certainly not consciousness,
which I take to be self-reflexive in a special way. Actually, there are
reflexive computer programs that act upon the prior state of the system,
but when it comes to human consciousness, I'd argue there's a double
reflection: you are conscious of not just the past state of your system,
but of the past state of your consciousness of the past state of your
system. You see your consciousness itself as an object of thought
because consciousness emerges from mind, which emerges from the
brain. Not this point exactly, but nevertheless a good (and challenging)
read on the issue is Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi, _A Universe of
Consciousness: How Matter becomes Imagination_ (NY, 2000).
>>Some consciousness is explicit, some of it not. But in either case, it
>>is important. Action in the absence of consciousness, such as the
>>beating of my heart, I don't find particularly significant when it
>>comes to understanding human behavior.
>>I think you are mixing to different things here. We sometimes use the
>>word objective to distinguish our personal opinions from a
>>consensus. This usage rests on the distinction of individual and
>>society. But the word is often used to distinguish an opinion,
>>whether it be personal or social, from a world independent of any
>>opinion.
>
> But a world independent of any opinion is meaningless. Or, as the
> wording of Genesis goes, it is a world without form and void.
Of course, but I didn't suggest it was meaningful in greater sense than
existential. It exists independent of our thought unless you suggest
that nothing exists beyond our consciousness.
>>Yes, but I was only trying to pin you down to something. If you hold
>>that a consensus over some matter is "tenuous" (literally, rather
>>thin), it could mean only that it is not very certain, but it could
>>also mean that it has little substance at all, which gets awfully
>>close to fiction (fiction actually has a great deal of truth, for
>>otherwise it would be unintelligible).
>
> Once upon a time, matter was simple. It was a homogeneous substance.
I'm not using the word "matter" in the sense of physical material, but
in the far more abstract sense of that which is contingent. It is a
modal statement, not a description.
>>If truthful statements have no relation to the world, and if a
>>consensus does not represent truth either, what then do you mean by
>>truthful statements?
>
> I don't think I have suggested that truthful statements have no
> relation to the world,
I'm left uncertain about your position. If truthful statements have some
kind of relation to the world, then are we not at least in part
accepting some kind of correspondence theory? Perhaps not. In fact, I
argued that if correspondence is an empirical statement, not all
relations are a correspondence.
> I am disagreeing that knowledge is truthful statements. I thought we
> had been through that. Roughly speaking, knowledge is an ability to
> produce truthful statements. It is not the statements themselves, but
> the ability.
I don't buy this point. I pick up a book and read about the rules of
chess to the point I'm comfortable with them. I now possess truthful
knowledge of the rules of chess, and this knowledge consists of
statements in my mind having truth value. So far so good. But isn't
"knowledge" here specific rules rather than an abstract capacity? My
abstract capacity is to read and memorize, is it not, which has nothing
to do with truth.
>>Surely thought precedes consciousness and the brain precedes thought.
>
> I'm not at all sure that is correct. Which came first, the chicken or
> the egg? Which came first, the consciousness or the thought? Aren't
> they tightly related to one another, so that neither preceded the
> other?
No. You are looking at it logically, not historically. The chicken is
ultimately descended from the dinosaur. That is, the chicken is a
particular realization of potentials existing in dinosaurs, so we say
that the dinosaur came first or is a more general level of existence
than the chicken. It is conventional to see things in terms of emergent
levels, of which virtual quanta are apparently the first level, and from
them emerged everything else. Humans emerged from the biosphere and
mental activity from a development of the brain stem circuitry. To
suggest that consciousness existed before there were minds, brains,
humans, or earth is obviously counter-intuitive.
> Analogously, I want to discuss the cognitive system as an abstract
> system that deals with information, while I want to talk about the
> brain as a system of neurons that transmit ion potentials. That is, I
> think of a cognitive system as an abstract system that deals with
> information, and I think of the brain (and other parts of physiology)
> as a physical implementation of that abstract system.
I see nothing wrong with any of this, although not clear why you
describe thought as "abstract". I asked you above just what you mean by
the word.
> Many scientists do agree with you, and that they call that axiom/dogma
> "methodological naturalism." But when looking at scientific practice,
> I don't see where it is necessary.
It sure is! I walk into the lab, confident that it is really there. I
turn on a Bunsen burner, assuming that it will produce heat. I approach
the problem in the lab in terms of the best existing theory, either to
probe its contradictions or to confirm it. Or perhaps I encounter some
new evidence, but I can't think about it without dragging in other
knowledge that I presume to be true.
Take the discovery of x-rays. Eureka! Something unexpected has happened,
and so let me devise a hypotheses that might explain it. This hypothesis
must be compatible with the observed fact that the film was exposed
except for the area beneath the key that happened to lay on it. So I
infer that rays from the radioactive source impinged on film, but were
blocked by the key. To arrive at this hypothesis, I employ presumably
true and conventional knowledge about the nature of film, that when
exposed to radiant energy it goes through some visible chemical changes,
etc.
>>No? Suppose I am a scientist, but reject the axiom that there's only
>>one kind of substance. That means if there's an event in the lab, it
>>could be the result, for example, of divine intervention.
>
> Why should that affect a scientist's evidence-based investigation?
Because what he sees might be the result of divine intervention, for
example. Some fundamentalists deny evolution, for example. That is, the
evidence for it is ignored or explained away because it is incompatible
with god's revealed word. I doubt you could very well function at all as
an evolutionary biologist with views such as this. The evidence you
encounter is not evidence of bio-evolution at all.
> Assuming that your field is philosophy, I can agree that the
> fundamental assumptions (or axioms, as you call them) of philosophy
> are getting you into trouble. Yet you seem to be defending those
> fundamental assumptions in this thread, and you don't like that I am
> questioning them - or perhaps you cannot even see the extent to which
> I am questioning them.
Good heavens! What made you think my field is philosophy? Far from
it. I'm in no position to defend the fundamental assumption of
philosophy even if they existed and I knew what they were.
I do see you questioning, but not that you offer any real alternatives,
although you do a bit better in this message.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
I was about to disagree with your reading of me as a postmodernist,
but I suppose I am in so far as I reject modernism - which is all you
can really say about the postmodernists without them complaining.
Good insight. I suppose I started sounding like them in my last post,
omg.
Great post by the way.
I don't really see this contradiction you talk about though. The mind-
body divide is difficult to reconcile; do you mean that these
reconciliation attepts haven't worked?
> As for my own position, I'd (arrogantly, of course ;-)) like to suggest
> that I'm looking at the contradiction itself with the aim of overcoming
> it. As you might by this time surmise I do so in terms of process. In
> terms of the philosophy of science, process is an unobservable in which
> causal potency (an unobservable) and empiria (observables) are merely
> its aspects and not ontologically separate. I'd define "process" as the
> the empirical constraint on causal potency that determines the
> probability distribution of its possible outcomes. In human terms, I use
> this as the basis of an action theory. That is, we are not observers of
> the world, but are creative actors in the world of which we are a part.
Do you see the whole world throught the lense of the material
dialectic - where the whole universe unfolds in a process of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis? If so, do you see this trinity as the ultimate
knowledge or understanding of the world? (You address this below I
see)
Is the contradiction is reconciled by movement? Searching for
metaphors, the interacting, the toing and froing, the mental playing-
with the physical, the subject finding itself in object and vice
versa? And that it is this interactivity that is the basis of our
world views, the way we speak, meaningfulness, etc.?
Not really... it's not so much about you boxing me but about you
boxing yourself. When we try to understand a new position that
doesn't fit into our existing categories, we really have no choice but
to let the categories go. Of course if we've got lots of categories
that took a long time to build, then we usually keep trying to stuff
them in like too many clothes into a small suit case.
> If so, let me respond this way. First, I don't accept any conflation of
> mutual determination and oppression. That we determine each other (in
> the sense that what I do affects others) is part of the human condition
> and in fact accounts for our development. Without it, we'd not be human,
> but an intelligent animal. I reserve oppression or exploitation as a
> specific kind of mutual determination that results in the
> underdevelopment of the Other. I have no problem with the piano teacher
> imposing discipline on his pupil.
Interesting. I agree with your statement but disagree with your
reasons for the statement.
> Second, it was not my intention to impose conceptual categories on you,
> but simply offer examples of ways one can define one's own position to
> encourage you do do so. Without your defining your own position, there's
> no discourse at all, for there's no common ground on which we
> stand. Well, your response to this seems to be that the very project of
> self-definition is unnecessary and undesirable. I could understand that,
> but wonder why you seek to articulate and defend a position at all or
> enter into any discourse.
Since you drew a postmodernist likeness, I'll use that. You're
familiar with the dilemma of describing postmodernism. It's silly to
say we can't describe postmodernism because we can, but postmodernism
attacks the idea that we can find the true description. Not because
we're incapable of finding it, but because the very idea of truth is
rejected.
I've certainly tried to describe my position none the less, but you'll
have to bare in mind that I don't like the idea of having a position
at all. It doesn't mean that I'm left with nothing. On the
contrary. My "position" is less caged and more free-range.
> For example, your distaste for being put into preconceived boxes is one
> reason, I suppose, you remained vague about your position. You wanted it
> to remain fluid and open to new possibilities. But it meant that I had a
> devil of a time figuring out what I could say that would be meaningful
> to you, for the "you' remained frustratingly foggy. So you seem to have
> preserved your individual autonomy and virtue at society's expense. That
> is, while it was not your intention, you made life a lot more difficult
> for me ;-).
I don't mind being boxed at all. I'm a postmodernist, pragmatist,
ironist Rortian. If that helps you understand where I'm coming from
all the better. I'm trying to be as clear as possible, not foggy at
all. I haven't shifted positions. I have certainly tried different
descriptions of my position to try and find one from which you're more
familiar, but that's not the same thing.
While I say my position is free-range, it has stayed still for the
duration of this thread. It's free-range over many years, not weeks.
But again, I might change my mind later when you convince me that
there is such a thing as truth after all.
> > Conviction, determination or sheer willingness to present an argument
> > does not need to drag behind it, kicking a screaming, the idea of
> > truth. Truth is something people talk about after all the action has
> > already taken place.
>
> The ecstasy of immediate experience, authenticity, etc., is an
> intelligible position, I grant, but intelligible only within the
> framework of capitalist contradictions. It seems to me, off hand, that
> truth to some extent refers to what is intersubjective. If one rejects
> any rationale or need for intersubjectivity, then I suppose truth and
> knowledge can go out the window. Yes, I tried to elaborate (and
> criticize, incidentally) a correspondence theory of truth, and here seem
> to offer a Kuhnian conventionalist alternative. But I'd say that both
> are manifestations of the capitalist contradiction. As you might
> surmise, by intersubjectivity I'm not thinking of paroles, signs, words,
> culture, etc., but of intersubjective actions as social beings, so that
> it is a mutual determination that engages both mind and body, individual
> and society, to include the ideas behind both the coherence and
> correspondence theories of truth, but transcending their contradiction.
You've mentioned capitalist and working-class several times in the
context of truth and contradiction. I'm just starting to see what you
mean, I think, could you elaborate a bit about them? I'm enjoying how
you're using these ideas. Actually... you may elaborate below
anyway...
> > b) Some of us don't try to relate sentences to the world because we
> > can't see a use for it.
>
> Which is why, although it may seem provocative to admit, I adopt a
> working-class position. The working class starts off being in the world,
> both in terms of economic production (creating new economic value
> through engaging the world), and in terms of class struggle (developing
> through social solidarity rather than private possession).
>
> > I agree. It's easier to lay blame and walk away than it is to take a
> > stand with few others and enter the fray. But hey, these judgements
> > are empty commentaries really, we're just promoting an attitude we
> > want to see more of. Like they are.
>
> But how can you "take a stand with a few others"? Doesn't doing so imply
> a commonality or the foundation of meaning that you wish to dismiss?
I don't dismiss commonality or foundation of meaning unless they're
given a station above and beyond human culture.
> > In general though, outside of my putting on my truth hat here, forget
> > the idea of truth when you're reading me, I'm not doing anything with
> > truth, I don't use it. You're looking for something that isn't there
> > and projecting.
>
> Yes I am projecting. It is a reaching out to find common ground for
> discourse. In effect I'm saying, here's a conceptual arena in which we
> can join for discussion, or, if you don't care for my suggestions,
> choose some other, and I'll join you there. You seem to respond that you
> reject any such construction and can very well do without arenas.
Nope, I like arenas. We have a common ground but we spend most of our
time on uncommon ground.
I use to be into dialectics in a big way, with mind-body dualism.
Maybe we can go there for a bit.
> > Yeah okay, maybe a bit of miss comm. But... if you believe in
> > correspondence but have no idea which one is the true one, then do you
> > admit you have a kind of "faith" in the theory?
>
> Stepping back from the very abstract mode in which I've been speaking
> and addressing your point here in more tangible and conventional terms,
> I believe the conventional response would be, we don't know which theory
> is true, but we have ways to decide which is "better" and should be
> provisionally taken to be more approximately true. That is, your
> objection is fully addressed in terms of the conventional philosophy of
> science, I believe. That is, if I understand where you are coming from,
> I don't think you need or should make this argument. To conflate
> religious faith (a truth that is not contingent) with agreeing to accept
> a theory as true (provisionally accepting a theory as being as close to
> truth as we can currently manage to get in order to have some basis for
> scientific discourse) is superficial.
Fair enough, I'll drop the religious talk.
> >> So I take a rather bizarre approach that might be called existential,
> >> but I'll not elaborate it here, in part because I can't presume you
> >> are at all interested. I got hung up on correspondence theory because
> >> it is the most conventional notion of truth (is embedded in the
> >> dictionary and is presumed by practicing scientists) and used it to
> >> counter a possible suggestion that there is no truth outside the
> >> mind. So I found myself in the unfortunate position of defending a
> >> theory I didn't entirely agree with.
> >
> > Sure, I'm interested.
>
> I hope I've obliged you in my introductory comments here.
Yes, thanks. I enjoyed the post.
Yes, this does make sense. Although I don't see what you mean with
regard to entropy. From my understanding, change in entropy is only
in one direction.
> > I have adopted new ideas, but there is no set of analytical steps that
> > can lead from one to the other because there is a translation of
> > meaning that needs to take place, which analytical argument doesn't
> > lend itself to. If you can make sense of the statement "the truth is,
> > there is no truth", without discarding it as non-sense, then you'll
> > probably see the statement as a vector or direction rather than a
> > position. You'll probably appreciate that there is a shift in meaning
> > in the sentence, two senses of the same word at play. If this is the
> > case, then you're on the right track to understanding where I'm coming
> > from.
>
> Yes, you might be surprised that I do, although it took me a while to
> get the blinders off. These blinders are in part because our dialog
> takes place in a forum dedicated to the philosophy of science, and it
> took a while to understand that your position is fundamentally hostile
> to science. Also, your position (although you may reject any
> "postmodern" label for it) seems to make a virtue of being
> non-committal, of being specific, and to have ideas refer to
> anything. Simply put, you are writing fiction.
I'm sorry I come across this way. I am most certainly committed to my
position and don't reject your commitment to yours. I do reject the
belief in /right/ belief, but not belief itself. This avoids the
search for the correct position and throws a certain irony over
holding one, but it doesn't need to be vague and inspecific at all.
That's probably just me.
> > You say it's arguable that "effective action implies we have truthful
> > knowledge". How does this differ from saying "useful action implies
> > we have truthful knowledge"?
>
> Not at all except that you reject the concept of truth altogether. If I
> were to suggest (which I don't) that truth is nothing but convention,
> relative, entirely subjective, you'd still reject it as an imposition of
> the person making the claim on others. So your question employs a term
> (actually, perhaps all its terms), that you assert are meaningless, and
> so in principle there's no way I can construct an answer to it. It is as
> if you posed your question in Sanskrit, a language I don't know, and ask
> that I reply in Urdu, a language that presumably you don't know.
:) I was trying to lift you over to pragmatism, one term at a time.
I left truth where it was for the moment, I was just interested if
"effective action" can be stuffed into the pragmatist suitcase.
> > You say that effective action means that our action has the effect we
> > intend. How does that differ from our action having the use we
> > intend?
>
> A minor point, I believe. There are many things I do that are not
> utilitarian in any obvious sense. I sat this morning watching some
> finches as I smoked my ghetto cigar (these small cigars that are the
> same price as a "loosie", but offer more - you would have to have an
> urban existence to know what I'm talking about) and drank coffee (yes,
> I'm really quite a sane person ;-)). I could offer a utilitarian
> explanation for this action, but it would be clearly forced. Simpler is
> to say that this early morning action was what I set out to do, and I
> did it. Besides, to suggest it was utilitarian in purpose seems to
> impose a kind of explanation having truth value ;-).
Utility as "useful" is pretty limited I admit, but utility as "desire"
is pretty expansive. I'm sure utility could be replaced with other
schemas, like "surival" or "memetics" if the words could be become
polysemic enough to cater for the initial volley of protests. Even
modern proxy religions or pop-psychologies like "landmark education"
could replace the gap felt when truth is gone. We could even go back
to "rational" and even "true", if the words could be reclaimed from
the modernists and metaphysicians.
At the beginning of the day there is smoke and coffee. And it is
good. Why do we need to step back from this and say things like
"smoke and coffee is good" is true, and then spend a good chunk of our
lives trying to work out why.
> >> Think about my suggestions about power and truth. First, I'm
> >> skeptical that anyone who is aware and has moral responsibility, can
> >> really be happy these days. Most of use have an enormous sense of
> >> wrong and of not being able to do much about it. One can bury one's
> >> head in the sand, or become an egocentric hedonist and find a kind of
> >> contentment, I suppose, but I can't quite translate that into
> >> happiness, which I feel only comes from engagement.
> >
> > A reasonable thing to say. In my experience, there are many views of
> > the world we can adopt like ... If we spend a lot of time on one
> > particular position, expanding on it, enriching our vocaulary and
> > schema about it, it will become our default position. If we grow up
> > in it, it will not even be seen as a position but as common sense. In
> > the end though, it's just one of a lot of ways we can describe the
> > world and that description isn't the truth.
> >
> > That's not taking anything away from your description, it's just
> > saying that it isn't the truth and it doesn't have to be seen that
> > way.
>
> But you missed my point, which was to distinguish a world view from
> engagement (action in the world). As Marx said, the object is not just
> to understand the world, but to change it. This is a working class
> attitude and perhaps not natural for academics.
I don't think we're disagreeing here really. Marx's irony is that
sitting back talking dialectics isn't exactly engaging the world,
although I suspect it's directed at the non-engagers.
The "object is" the object for what? We have a purpose or goal? I
don't think so, not unless we make our own one.
> > Nope, you can get away without the notion of truth in science.
>
> Yes, of course. But you can't get away very long without engaging the
> world.
That's right, you don't go far without engaging the world. One might
not want to go far though, of course. I have this friend who's turned
lazyness into an art form. He has nothing to show for his life so
far, not even potential. But he's happy and who am I to tell him
otherwise or judge him by my own standards. Of course I am me to tell
him otherwise and judge him by my own standards. And I do. I just
don't take myself seriously.
> >> I happen to be interested in this question at the moment, and so
> >> would really like to see a substantiated argument that, contrary to
> >> some authoritative statements I've seen, natural scientists don't on
> >> the whole accept a correspondence theory of truth and have
> >> ontological (rather than epistemological) doubts about there being
> >> truth.
> >
> > I think part of the problem is that because you believe in truth,
> > you're looking for it.
>
> Yes, I do believe in "truth". My first impulse would be to say that we
> differ on the meanings of the word, but I believe there is more to it
> than just this. I make foundational, not the operations of mind, but
> social action. Arguably, social action requires a shared language
> (words, concepts, and meanings), and action is only possible if it
> presumes a knowledge of a world in which the action is supposed to take
> place. To this knowledge we conventionally assign the word
> "truth". However, the issue does not seem to be the word truth itself,
> but behind it the two forms of engagement. When I earlier characterized
> my position as existential, what I meant is that the preconditions of
> living is an engagement both with the world and with others.
I do like your position. It reminds me of Heidegger's "being-in-the-
world". We are beings-in-the-world first and foremost, not "beings"
that stand appart from the world. I can see how engagement with the
world can be what you need for a theory of knowledge or truth, but I
can't see how you avoid getting rid of the language-world distinction
in the process. At least without being stuck in the realist position
having to explain how mind supervenes on physical reality or language
represents the world.
Haines Brown
> I was about to disagree with your reading of me as a postmodernist,
> but I suppose I am in so far as I reject modernism - which is all you
> can really say about the postmodernists without them complaining.
Yes, the term "postmodernist" is ambivalent. Really, all it means is you
reject whatever one happens to define as a modern style in a particular
aspect of culture. As such, it is an entirely harmless term, for after
all, culture marches forward.
However, the disputes over post modernism are surprisingly acerbic, and
that is because postmodernists to some extent (the extent depends on the
field and the individual) put into question Enlightenment presumptions,
and that means they are threatening the ideology of the class in which I
assume most academics are found. This aspect was what suggested to me at
one point I might embrace the term postmodernism for myself, for I also
like to think of myself as questioning bourgeois ideology, but then I
thought better of it.
The main reason is that there's a big difference between undercutting
bourgeois assumptions and offering an alternative to them. To some
extent, the postmodernists succeed in the former, but I see no evidence
they do at all well in the latter. But as to your point, I see nothing
positive or negative about someone identifying themselves as
postmodernist as long as it is in the context of bourgeois culture and
as long as the label implies something specific being criticized rather
than just a negative (destructive vs. deconstructive) skepticism.
> I don't really see this contradiction you talk about though. The
> mind- body divide is difficult to reconcile; do you mean that these
> reconciliation attepts haven't worked?
Not only would I suggest that they have not been reconciled, but are
irreconcilable in the context of bourgeois ideology. However, while I
can demonstrate the former satisfactorily in my own field, the latter
point remains, unfortunately, tentative.
If this contradiction were only between words, I suppose the point would
be only different perspectives that need not be taken too seriously. But
in bourgeois ideology, the binary opposites are either ontological or
modal distinctions and are apparently irreconcilable and so ultimately
destructive of the whole.
For example, what can reconcile Self and Other? Certainly not dialog, in
which they have mutual influence, but remain in principle separate and
each remains essentially the same. The transcendence of this binary
seems to me clearly offered by the notion of "social being", which I'll
not define here but only suggest that in origin and in principle
necessarily falls outside bourgeois ideology. More pertinent in my field
is Mind and Body. In Cartesian terms, the Body refers to the world,
Kant's Ding an sich, independent of whether we are aware of it or have
truthful knowledge of it. It is real and autonomous. The Mind
(consciousness) comes into contact with something other than itself,
something alien, sharing no framework with self, no relation to self
such as enjoyed by mind, and the mind necessarily ends up a passive
observer of the world (and I don't here exclude pragmatists,
utilitarians, instrumentalists, etc. although they do engage the world
through interaction.)
In my field the main tendency since the collapse of positivism and old
fashioned empiricism, is to ignore the world itself as unknowable (and
any implications it might have for Self or mind), and to posit
intermediat levels. For example, a "fact" is neither really entirely
true to the world nor to the mind, but is a kind of raw material that is
worked up by us to make it suited to the production of knowledge. But
what is the relation of the world (Ding an sich) to this fact? That
can't be said, for this external world is more than what we can observe,
phenomena. The "facts" are in part our creation. What is the relation of
this fact to knowledge? That can't be said either because knowledge
does not reduce to an aggregate of facts (this surplus we can call
theory), and this excess or transcendental content, such as the
organization, meaning and explanation of facts, ends up being answerable
only to its creator, for the facts are not reducible to the world. We
end up contemplating our own theoretical navel.
I'd bring into in this line of thought such other binaries as
part-whole, universal-particular, observable-unobservable,
being-becoming, and individual-society. My approach is to treat such
terms not modally or ontologically, but as merely different aspects of
"process". Mind and world are not different things, but aspects of a
process that engages both. In other words, Ding an sich does not refer
to world in itself, but to a one-sided aspect of the world process. All
this, of course, is merely speculative and necessarily very
tentative. That is, don't take it too seriously.
> Do you see the whole world throught the lense of the material
> dialectic - where the whole universe unfolds in a process of thesis-
> antithesis-synthesis? If so, do you see this trinity as the ultimate
> knowledge or understanding of the world? (You address this below I
> see)
No. I think the term "material dialectic" is ambivalent, although I do
consider myself a dialectical materialist. That is, these are not quite
the same thing in my view. I'd define dialectical materialism, off hand,
as entailing certain presuppositions such as: a) materialistic monism,
b) that all things are "in motion", i.e., are processes, c) that all
things are systemic, are complexities that can have emergent properties,
d) that otherwise systems are dissipative, e) that emergence depends on
dissipation and the two are an interdependent unity of opposites called
a contradiction. What is interesting is that all these statements are
fairly conventional views in science today, only the last being a bit
unconventional, although not unconventional in substance.
I trundle all this out in order to have a framework in terms of which I
might address your question, although in principle I usually hide such
speculations under a rock because they are very tentative. First, the
term "material dialectic" might simply reduce to the word
"systemness". It is not quite a conventional phrase, and so I have to
guess as to your intended meaning. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis? I'm
not even sure this is Hegelian, but in any case it means nothing to me
because I'm a materialist. I could convert the notion to material terms
if I wanted to for some reason, such as "thermodynamic engine", and here
no one has any problems with it. The problem with Hegel was his
objective idealism, and Feuerbach took care of that; it is not relevant
to Marx except that his cultural roots are neo-Hegelian and so he upon
occasion uses Hegelian termology, just as we today are no longer
positivists, but still use some of the language.
And as for your last point, I'm not sure what "ultimate knowledge" is. I
suppose that's God's view of things. Don't we all follow in the
footsteps of Peirce and agree that knowledge is one-sided or approximate
(truths)? The initial question with which I started this thread had to
do with degrees of truthful knowledge. There are various conventional
ways that people assume help us choose among competing hypotheses, such
as coherence, good Gestalt, simplicity, aesthetic appeal, etc. My
question choose the conventional criterion that does not happen to be
transparently subjective or internal, but relates to the world. The
point I had in mind which never had an opportunity breathe is that the
degree of universality of our theory does not reduce to taking more of
the world or of theory into its purview (which undoubtedly is useful),
but to grasp that we are not observers of the world, but are embedded as
part of it through our practical activity, so that a more universal view
means not only taking more of a system's environment into consideration
and knowledge of other systems, but also ourselves. The mind is not a
reflector of the world, but an aspect of the world. All this gets a bit
hairy.
>> However, I don't like any of these, for they seem to presume the
>> contradiction between matter and mind. Even to represent a causal
>> potency as real implies that there's an ontological category of
>> "unobservable" that contradicts that of observables; the binary
>> contradiction is perpetuated.
> Is the contradiction is reconciled by movement? Searching for
> metaphors, the interacting, the toing and froing, the mental playing-
> with the physical, the subject finding itself in object and vice
> versa? And that it is this interactivity that is the basis of our
> world views, the way we speak, meaningfulness, etc.?
Not quite. The contradiction _is_ movement, is the interdependence of
two opposite processes. There might be a reconciliation of a
contradiction (Aufheben) in some particular area, but I personally
believe only by deepening the contradiction in the broader situation. I
follow Timpanaro's pessimism in that we will always necessarily have a
contradictory relation with nature, even if we manage to overcome the
social contradiction. Our contradictory relation with nature is the
ultimate engine of our development. Overcoming the social contradiction
(classes) is not just an interchange, which exists in any case, but a
restructuring of the system (otherwise known as "revolution"). As I
suggested above, the to-and-fro of mental and physical needs should be
seen, not as a dialectic of interacting things, but as aspects of one
process. Our world view, then, is one-side or an aspect of a process
that is not an interchange of mind and world, but a process that has
both aspects in practical activity.
> Not really... it's not so much about you boxing me but about you
> boxing yourself. When we try to understand a new position that
> doesn't fit into our existing categories, we really have no choice but
> to let the categories go. Of course if we've got lots of categories
> that took a long time to build, then we usually keep trying to stuff
> them in like too many clothes into a small suit case.
I'm not sure I don't want to be boxed in the sense of arriving at a
self-definition. I think it very useful to make my own position an
object of my own thought so that I might think about it constructively
and so that I might communicate effectively with others. Defining my
position does not at all preclude my being creative, imaginative, and
open ended, which to some extent all people actually are as they sit in
their boxes. The ordinary person on the street going about the dull
routine of daily life is surely creative, imaginative and open ended to
some extent.
But if by "box" we mean convention, then shouldn't we always have one
foot in it so that we communicate with others, and one foot outside so
that we are critical and creative? We need to be simultaneously student
and teacher. We need to engage others, but in a constructive way. We
must communicate in largely conventional terms, but for our
communication to be constructive, we need to be a bit unconventional. I
believe cultural anthropology handles this issue.
>> If so, let me respond this way. First, I don't accept any conflation
>> of mutual determination and oppression. That we determine each other
>> (in the sense that what I do affects others) is part of the human
>> condition and in fact accounts for our development. Without it, we'd
>> not be human, but an intelligent animal. I reserve oppression or
>> exploitation as a specific kind of mutual determination that results
>> in the underdevelopment of the Other. I have no problem with the
>> piano teacher imposing discipline on his pupil.
>
> Interesting. I agree with your statement but disagree with your
> reasons for the statement.
Not sure what the "reason" is in my comment. That mutual determination
is part of the human condition? All it means is that we can't live
without being affected by others and affecting them, and this is a good
thing. What we are arises from that interaction.
> I've certainly tried to describe my position none the less, but you'll
> have to bare in mind that I don't like the idea of having a position
> at all. It doesn't mean that I'm left with nothing. On the contrary.
> My "position" is less caged and more free-range.
It's a strange peculiarity of bourgeois ideology that lack of constraint
means freedom. I don't happen to accept this anarchist view. I happen to
be in love, and know that through the struggle of mutual determination
we end up being aspects of one process in which we don't loose our
individuality or become threatened by the demands of the other, but are
able to develop our humanity and individuality through that
process. Without it, love would end up merely a psychic state
(infatuation), biological (sex-drive) and otherwise shallow and
disappointing.
> While I say my position is free-range, it has stayed still for the
> duration of this thread. It's free-range over many years, not weeks.
> But again, I might change my mind later when you convince me that
> there is such a thing as truth after all.
I'm not sure I'm out to convince you that there's a truth, but trying to
better understand truth myself by engaging you in a dialog about it.
> You've mentioned capitalist and working-class several times in the
> context of truth and contradiction. I'm just starting to see what you
> mean, I think, could you elaborate a bit about them? I'm enjoying how
> you're using these ideas. Actually... you may elaborate below
> anyway...
If you are asking me to define the terms, that would be a big subject
and rather OT. So let me just give short answers without elaboration or
justification.
The term "working class", in lieu of specification, presumably refers to
the _modern_ working class. With the bourgeois revolution, the capacity
for development that the bourgeoisie, peasants and artisans had
(primarily their ownership or possession of productive property) was
placed in a system in which there was relatively unconstrained positive
feedback so that property would grow and became concentrated. This
necessarily left a growing portion of the population without ownership
or possession of productive property. This in part is what defines the
modern working class: those who do not own or possess significant means
of production. The positive side of the definition is that the
distinctive way that the modern working class develops can only be
through social solidarity (politically through _real_ democracy,
economically through the union).
As for capitalism, that's a bit more difficult. Perhaps we can start
with the notion of two kinds of systems: the sphere of production and
the sphere of exchange. The former, to put it into very abstract terms
is the creation of new economic value through the struggle of labor to
dissipate nature to produce improbable outcomes (use values). The sphere
of exchange is the marketplace exchange of use values on the basis
essentially of their costs of production, their exchange values; this is
a zero-sum game. Both systems had long existed, but with capitalism,
they become linked and interdependent so that the point of production is
primarily not use value, but exchange value, although exchange depends
on the existence of a commodity's having use value. This tying of
production to the sphere of exchange makes units of production
competitive, and therefore units of production are forced to enhance
productivity in terms of the exchange value of the commodities
produced. Capital is a process that has use value and exchange value as
its aspects; and it circulates between the two economic spheres,
alternating between having the function of use value and exchange
value. The means of production represents an example of capital's use
value; the commodities in the market represents its exchange
value. There's positive feedback as capital circulates between the
spheres of production and that of exchange so that value develops. I
could go on, but I think this is the hub of it.
>> But how can you "take a stand with a few others"? Doesn't doing so
>> imply a commonality or the foundation of meaning that you wish to
>> dismiss?
>
> I don't dismiss commonality or foundation of meaning unless they're
> given a station above and beyond human culture.
I don't understand. This commonality seems conventionality to _be_ human
culture.
> Yes, this does make sense. Although I don't see what you mean with
> regard to entropy. From my understanding, change in entropy is only
> in one direction.
I don't understand. Entropy either increases or decreases. Yes, in an
isolated system taken as a whole it always necessarily increases, but in
a subsystem, it can decrease. Human society, as a subsystem of nature,
certainly has decreasing entropy, for it comes up with new improbable
orders all the time, but at the same time our contradictory relation
with the natural environment deepens.
> I'm sorry I come across this way. I am most certainly committed to my
> position and don't reject your commitment to yours. I do reject the
> belief in /right/ belief, but not belief itself. This avoids the
> search for the correct position and throws a certain irony over
> holding one, but it doesn't need to be vague and inspecific at all.
> That's probably just me.
Without exploring the issue, I'm not comfortable with the notion that we
should be indifferent to whether our personal belief system is at all
right, true, preferable, virtuous, sensible, etc., and what is only
important is that our mind holds thoughts. I realize this is not what
you intend, but you need to block that possible implication.
Second, for reasons I've mentioned a bit, I think we start as
essentially social beings. So our private speculations, although good
and necessary, are not really where its at, but rather how the
speculations of others contributes to, enhances, validates, justifies,
etc. our own speculations. Our wonderful ideas are not our possession,
not sui generis, self-created, autonomous, but a private joy that we owe
primarily to others, not only because the foundation of these ideas and
their capacity to develop is socially transmitted to us, but because of
their potential contribution to social well being, which in turn
enhances our own capacities. It's like saying there's no joy in being
rich unless you can give it away and bring benefit to others. You can't
be in love without a partner.
> Utility as "useful" is pretty limited I admit, but utility as "desire"
> is pretty expansive.
Not sure I understand. A "desire" I take to refer to a feeling of
insufficiency or incompleteness that will be satisfied by an
acquisition. The term utility seems to refer to the function of the
acquisition to satisfy desire, not the desire itself.
> At the beginning of the day there is smoke and coffee. And it is
> good. Why do we need to step back from this and say things like
> "smoke and coffee is good" is true, and then spend a good chunk of our
> lives trying to work out why.
Well, this point is sometimes made, and it makes sense in that the word
"true" often substitutes for a kind of attitude we have toward
things. If I say that a statement is true, I'm not really saying
anything about the statement, but that I take it seriously, etc.
But there's another meaning of truth, also common, which is to say that
our statement corresponds to the world. No matter that this may entail a
bit of logical circularity, for how do we know the truth of that world
except through truthful statements about it (hence my suggestion above
about representing mind and world as aspects of one process). Logically
circular or not, this usage is obviously practical in terms of daily
life and intercourse.
That a cigar and coffee at the crack of dawn I see as good is a fact: I
have pleasure and reasonably infer it comes from the cigar and
coffee. The problem arises when I want to prove to someone else that a
cigar and coffee is good. I can't say that this is universally true, for
obviously it is not. All I can say is that for some people, a cigar and
coffee is a good experience. Does this statement correspond with the
world? In practical terms, it probably does. For example, I could ask
around and gather evidence that I'm not the only one who enjoys this
pleasure. The problem only comes up if I try to represent this in
abstract philosophical terms. Which is more important? What I know very
well to be at least probably and approximately true, or what logic
implies? Here we may part company. I'd favor the first, and use the
second just as a way to look at the first more critically, but no
substitute for it. In this case, does philosophy suggest that my
statement that some people gain pleasure from a cigar and coffee is
really (vs. philosophically) naive? I don't think so.
>> But you missed my point, which was to distinguish a world view from
>> engagement (action in the world). As Marx said, the object is not
>> just to understand the world, but to change it. This is a working
>> class attitude and perhaps not natural for academics.
>
> I don't think we're disagreeing here really. Marx's irony is that
> sitting back talking dialectics isn't exactly engaging the world,
> although I suspect it's directed at the non-engagers.
Although Marx might be represented as primarily an economic theorist, he
was also engaged in some political battles within the working-class
movement. He didn't "talk dialectics", but talked history and economics
and politics. His writings were an engagement in the sense that he
intended them to be a development of a working class outlook that he
intended as an intervention in the current affairs. His situation, I
believe, was quite different than that of an academic, who in principle
is being supported in a unique situation intended to free him of outside
demands so that he might pursue intellectual concerns. The academic,
speaking generally and objectively, is petit bourgeois in that his
development is due to his possession of an advanced degree, having
tenure, etc. Marx really possessed nothing and did not develop by virtue
of his possession of anything, although much earlier for a brief period
he did work as a newspaper reporter, commenting on German liberalism and
writing for a US paper articles on the Civil War. It is not the size of
his personal wealth that counts here, but the principle source of his
development as a person.
> The "object is" the object for what? We have a purpose or goal? I
> don't think so, not unless we make our own one.
I don't think Marx's point is complicated. He is merely saying that the
purpose of science is not simply to gather true knowledge, but to
acquire knowledge for the purpose of using it to change the world.
> That's right, you don't go far without engaging the world. One might
> not want to go far though, of course. ...But he's happy and who am I
> to tell him otherwise or judge him by my own standards. Of course I
> am me to tell him otherwise and judge him by my own standards. And I
> do. I just don't take myself seriously.
I meant by "engaging the world" a much more general way than
purposefully engaging it to achieve some end. This might imply some
moral obligation such as you mention, such as being lazy is anti-social
or not healthy for us. By engaging the world I only meant being _in_ it
so that the world affects us and we have effect upon it. I believe there
is no situation in which both of those causal relations would not be
present, short of death.
>> Yes, I do believe in "truth". My first impulse would be to say that
>> we differ on the meanings of the word, but I believe there is more to
>> it than just this. I make foundational, not the operations of mind,
>> but social action. Arguably, social action requires a shared language
>> (words, concepts, and meanings), and action is only possible if it
>> presumes a knowledge of a world in which the action is supposed to
>> take place. To this knowledge we conventionally assign the word
>> "truth". However, the issue does not seem to be the word truth
>> itself, but behind it the two forms of engagement. When I earlier
>> characterized my position as existential, what I meant is that the
>> preconditions of living is an engagement both with the world and with
>> others.
>
> I do like your position. It reminds me of Heidegger's "being-in-the-
> world". We are beings-in-the-world first and foremost, not "beings"
> that stand appart from the world. I can see how engagement with the
> world can be what you need for a theory of knowledge or truth, but I
> can't see how you avoid getting rid of the language-world distinction
> in the process. At least without being stuck in the realist position
> having to explain how mind supervenes on physical reality or language
> represents the world.
Yes, there is a link with Heidegger, and I take my position to be
existential. I think, as you suggest, that the problem is one of
language and philosophy, which I take to be secondary issues. That is, I
prefer to accommodate my philosophy (even logic) and language to my
action in the world as a social being, not the other way around.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> Sometimes people talk of a science being based on axioms. But I don't
>> agree with that. I see it as starting with empirical principles.
>> Perhaps we don't agree on the meaning of "axioms".
>Fair enough. By axiom I mean a foundational fact or principle that is
>assumed to be true or a given because it is conventionally accepted as
>such within the framework (best current scientific theory) that one is
>addressing, or it is intuitively self evident, or it is an existential
>requirement (such as a condition for research or dialog).
>My use of the word foundational may not be the same as your word
>"based". By foundational I do not mean to imply that the content of the
>science can be reduced to it, but that it operates as a constraint on
>what is possible in that scientific conception. For example, a generally
> For example, a generally
>shared meaning of words is foundational for meaningful discourse.
Okay, but that seems a strange meaning of "foundational".
I can agree that some kind of "shared meaning" is needed for meaningful
discourse. But I don't see it as foundational.
When you say "foundational", I tend to think of the solid ground
on which you erect a building, or perhaps concrete pillars in the
ground. But "shared meaning" isn't anything like solid ground.
It's rather ethereal, poorly exlained, and perhaps doesn't exist
(i.e. part of a poor explanation).
>The issue you may be raising can be: a) Does a science depend on certain
>presuppositions that are taken for granted?
Science depends on scientists, but I wouldn't call that "presuppositions".
> or b) Can a science be
>self-contained and not rely on matters external to it, that are not
>established by it?
Biology depends on much that comes from physics. But a lot of
physics can stand alone.
>What's an "empirical principle"? A methodology? A fact?
A principle is something that guides empirical practice. It's hard
to explain, because we seriously disagree about what science is.
>> I tend to think of axioms as inherently abstract.
>What do you mean by "abstract".
Independent of reality.
Richard Feynman wrote a book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". In it,
there is a chapter "O Americano, Outra Vez!" where he describes a
visit to Brazil. He found fault with the way science was being
done in Brazil. And, roughly speaking, I would say that the Brazilian
students were being taught physics as axioms, for all practical purposes
independent of reality. In particular, they could not say what their
science had to do with reality.
That's an example of what I mean by abstract.
Here is my attempt to explain how I see science:
You, and the conventional wisdom, see science as producing true
statements about reality. In fact, you see producing such
statements as the purpose of science (assuming I understand
your position). And by "true statement" you mean a statement
that corresponds with reality. The idea of "corresponds with
reality" presupposes that there is some kind of correspondence.
But, it is never explained where that correspondence comes from.
By contrast, I see science as establishing that correspondence.
That is, science invents ways of describing reality that were
not possible before. This requires new concepts, and requires
empirical principles on how to map reality into statements using
those concepts. I see that, the establishment of a suitable
correspondence, as the main role of science.
When you take science laws as axioms, the correspondence that science
has created becomes irrelevant. But your concern is only with
deduction you can make using those scientific laws. Your concern
is not about reality, or about how the scientific theory constructs
the correspondence that is needed if we are to talk about reality.
>In a lab experiment in which we are testing f=ma, we take a to be
>32ft/sec/sec as axiomatic in that it is presumed true within to
>framework of the experiment. Is this empirical or not? Is this abstract
>or not? Whether it be abstract or not, empirical or not, is it for those
>reason any less true within the framework of the experiment?
I have lots of problems with that.
Firstly, we cannot test "f=ma", because that law is what defines
mass. Secondly the 32 ft/sec/sec is data, but not axiomatic.
If you are just solving equations, without any actual measurments,
then no, that is not empirical. The world might just as well not
be there. You could just as easily be discussing Ohm's law "V=IR",
and taking the current I to be 32 amps. The letters you use for
the the quantities are different, but it's the same law if what
you are doing is not connecting it to reality.
Axiomatic:
V=IR and f=ma are the same law, just using different
symbols;
Empirical
V=IR and f=ma are very different laws, because they connect
with reality very differently.
Science - is mainly involved with connecting symbolic forms
of description with reality. Once science has established the
correspondence, anybody can use it. But before the correspondence
is established, that are large aspects of reality about which we
are unable to say anything at all.
I hope that gives you are better perspective of what my position is.
>> Investigation based on axioms is solipsistic, in the sense that it
>> depends only on those abstract axioms and the world becomes
>> irrelevant. Mathematics can be described as solipsistic, in that
>> sense.
>Research that rests on a set of axioms may be solipsistic in that it
>presumably confirms, i.a., the validity of the axioms. But scientists
>all insist that their science rests on a variety of axioms, are they
>then saying that all science is solipsistic?
I don't recall ever hearing scientists saying that what they do
rests on axioms. So I cannot comment on what they might mean if
they did say that.
>You seem to define "abstract" axioms as those irrelevant to the world,
>and I have trouble thinking of any. Would you kindly provide an example
>of an axiom that is unrelated to the world because it is abstract?
All of mathematics is built on such axioms. Or, perhaps I should say
that all of mathematics is said to be built on such axioms.
>I note by the way that since we think in terms of words and concepts
>that are human inventions, all thought ends up being solipsistic as
>well. That may be close to Bishop Berkeley's position, but who still
>defends it? What is wrong with this argument, or do you agree with it?
I somehow have the impression that Berkeley thought God directly
injected perceptions into peoples minds.
>> It is the empirical aspect of science that prevents it from being
>> circular, and keeps it actually about the world.
>Sorry, but not many thoughtful people would at all agree with this. This
>view seems an artifact of long discredited positivism, that "brute
>facts" are uncontaminated by theory, are pure, and offer a certain and
>sufficient foundation from which we draw inferences. The facts speak for
>themselves. Just how does this empirical aspect of science prevent its
>being circular?
You must have completely misunderstood, since I am not close to
the positivist position.
>> It's hard to say what my position is, because it is too far outside
>> the box. I find it difficult to explain in ways that others can
>> understand.
>Then I say you have a problem. I get the sense in the message to which
>I'm responding that you are trying to explicate your position, and you
>will see that the questions I raise about it are more specific. That
>would seem to be a bit of progress.
That's a fair assessment. When I say it is difficult to explain,
that doesn't mean that I have given up. I have learnt from
experience how difficult it is to explain, so I must frequently
change how I try to explain in an attempt to bridge the barrier.
>So how does one make the translation from one conceptual system to
>another?
That's actually not as hard as it sounds, as long as the two
conceptual systems are talking about the same thing. It is when
they are not talking about the same thing, that there is a problem.
>How? I suggest you narrow your focus to one domain, dredge up for
>inspection its most basic presuppositions (and ultimately their
>presuppositions), and engage in dialog about those basics in a language
>understood by others.
Perhaps my comments about science, earlier in this message, will help.
---------
>> But I don't think that works. What do you make of platonist
>> mathematicians? They will assert in one breath that mathematics is
>> not about the world, and that numbers are not physical. And in the
>> next breath they will say that they are mathematical realists, and
>> that numbers are real.
>But that's a problem for mathematicians. Although I agree that the
>status of mathematical truth is highly ambivalent, I leave it to
>mathematicians to resolve. When they come to a conclusion and justify
>it, then I may find it to be relevant. If they claim to be mathematical
>realists, but at the same time insist that math is not about the world,
>then this seems merely self-contradictory unless what they mean it is
>not about the empirical world, but about, say, the non-empirical
>structure of the world. Then they could say they are non-empirical
>realists. But I leave it to them to make such an argument, for I'm
>ignorant about the philosophical implications of math.
Many mathematicians do see some kind of reality to math,
though not in the physical world. It's called platonism, for
it is sometimes said that it is the reality of Plato's world of
ideal forms. Personally, I find that a bit too mystical. I take
mathematical objects (such as numbers) to be convenient fictions.
I take mathematics to be about methodology, not about objects.
The idea is that we invent these objects (as convenient fictions)
to exercise our methods in a idealized manner (i.e. without the
physical world intruding).
>> I think it more that the language of philosophy is foreign to
>> scientists. They don't know what philosophers are talking about, and
>> wonder whether it is anything more than gibberish.
>I wonder about this. Most philosophy of science was analytical up to the
>1980s and 90s and seemed to represent a world irrelevant to
>scientists. This has dramatically changed, and most philosophers of
>science now speak the same language as scientists and there is mutual
>intelligibility. On this I can do no better than recommend Richard Boyd,
>Philip Gasper, and J. D. Trout, eds., The Philosophy of Science
>(Cambridge, MA, 1991).
You are right, that there is more of trend for philosophers of science
to actually talk to the scientists. This is a good change.
>> Once upon a time, matter was simple. It was a homogeneous substance.
>I'm not using the word "matter" in the sense of physical material, but
>in the far more abstract sense of that which is contingent. It is a
>modal statement, not a description.
Contingent on what?
>> I don't think I have suggested that truthful statements have no
>> relation to the world,
>I'm left uncertain about your position. If truthful statements have some
>kind of relation to the world, then are we not at least in part
>accepting some kind of correspondence theory? Perhaps not. In fact, I
>argued that if correspondence is an empirical statement, not all
>relations are a correspondence.
I hope my earlier comments about science and correspondence helps to
clarify my position. I'm not objecting to the idea that truth has
something to do with correspondence. My objection is in considering
that to be a theory of truth, when the notion of correspondence is
more troublesome than the notion of truth.
>> I am disagreeing that knowledge is truthful statements. I thought we
>> had been through that. Roughly speaking, knowledge is an ability to
>> produce truthful statements. It is not the statements themselves, but
>> the ability.
>I don't buy this point. I pick up a book and read about the rules of
>chess to the point I'm comfortable with them. I now possess truthful
>knowledge of the rules of chess, and this knowledge consists of
>statements in my mind having truth value.
But the rules of chess are not true because they correspond to
the world. Rather, the rules of chess correspond to the world
because we have chosen to adopt those rules and to create a social
world of chess playing based on those rules.
Your knowledge of chess is not a set of beliefs (statements of
rules). Rather, your knowledge of chess is in how to physically
move pieces in accordance with those rules, how to judge that
current state of the chess board.
We might compare with chess playing computer programs.
Those programs only "know" the rules. They have no ability to
judge the current state of the chess board, except by means of a
computationally intensive trial and error of possible legal moves
to see what results from testing those trial moves.
> So far so good. But isn't
>"knowledge" here specific rules rather than an abstract capacity? My
>abstract capacity is to read and memorize, is it not, which has nothing
>to do with truth.
No, your knowledge here is your ability to form correspondences
between your thoughts and the current state of the chess board,
such as allow you to make generally good judgements about the
current state of the game.
> To
>suggest that consciousness existed before there were minds, brains,
>humans, or earth is obviously counter-intuitive.
I did not suggest that.
>> Analogously, I want to discuss the cognitive system as an abstract
>> system that deals with information, while I want to talk about the
>> brain as a system of neurons that transmit ion potentials. That is, I
>> think of a cognitive system as an abstract system that deals with
>> information, and I think of the brain (and other parts of physiology)
>> as a physical implementation of that abstract system.
>I see nothing wrong with any of this, although not clear why you
>describe thought as "abstract". I asked you above just what you mean by
>the word.
I'm not thinking of thought as abstract. I am thinking of the mind
as an abstraction.
>> Many scientists do agree with you, and that they call that axiom/dogma
>> "methodological naturalism." But when looking at scientific practice,
>> I don't see where it is necessary.
>It sure is! I walk into the lab, confident that it is really there. I
>turn on a Bunsen burner, assuming that it will produce heat.
If you walk into the lab, turn on a Bunsen burner, and it does produce
heat, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is really there.
What I am arguing is "it is really there" is a conclusion, not a
prerequisite assumption of science.
>Take the discovery of x-rays. Eureka! Something unexpected has happened,
>and so let me devise a hypotheses that might explain it. This hypothesis
>must be compatible with the observed fact that the film was exposed
>except for the area beneath the key that happened to lay on it.
But that is not how science works.
In practice, the scientist observes that the film behaves as if
exposed. So he tries to repeat his steps with fresh film, to see
if it happens again. Then he tries to eliminate some steps in what
he did to narrow down what happened.
At the end of this period of experimentation, he will conclude
that he has found something that is reliably repeatable. He will
conclude that this is natural, not supernatural. It's a conclusion,
not a starting assumption.
>>>No? Suppose I am a scientist, but reject the axiom that there's only
>>>one kind of substance. That means if there's an event in the lab, it
>>>could be the result, for example, of divine intervention.
>> Why should that affect a scientist's evidence-based investigation?
>Because what he sees might be the result of divine intervention, for
>example.
As long as it is reliably repeatable, why should the scientist care. If
there is divine intervention that is reliably repeatable, then the
divine being behaves in a reliably predictable way, so this particular
repeatable behavior can be considered natural, whether or not it
depends on divine intervention. Again, that it is natural is a conclusion,
not a starting assumption.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
>>My use of the word foundational may not be the same as your word
>>"based". By foundational I do not mean to imply that the content of
>>the science can be reduced to it, but that it operates as a constraint
>>on what is possible in that scientific conception. For example, a
>>generally
>
>>For example, a generally shared meaning of words is foundational for
>>meaningful discourse.
I agree, but suspect "foundational" has two meanings. The one which you
illustrate might abstractly be called the relation of levels; one level
is determined by or emerges from a level that is foundational with
respect to it. The other meaning is to suggest that a level is
axiomatic, an assumption upon which theories are constructed. Perhaps
something like the difference between a constant and a variable in an
equation.
> But "shared meaning" isn't anything like solid ground. It's rather
> ethereal, poorly exlained, and perhaps doesn't exist (i.e. part of a
> poor explanation).
Why "ethereal" in relation to solid ground. Long ago positivism
collapsed and with it the notion of "brute facts". Don't we all agree
that these facts are at least in part socially constructed? Shared
meanings are socially constructed as well, and to the extent the
meanings refer to the world, presumably are constrained by our
experience of the world. Poorly explained? Perhaps you mean poorly
defined or usually implicit rather than readily accounted for.
Perhaps shared meanings don't exist? Extraordinary. I'm (hopefully)
communicating something meaningful to you right now, but if shared
meaing didn't exist, I'd be talking pure gibberish. But you said
"perhaps", and so I let it pass by.
>>The issue you may be raising can be: a) Does a science depend on
>>certain presuppositions that are taken for granted?
>
> Science depends on scientists, but I wouldn't call that
> "presuppositions".
I was asking if the issue you raised depends on certain presuppositions,
not the existence of scientists. Your answer, to suggest that the
existence of scientists is not a presupposition of science, does not
seem obviously in response to my question.
>>or b) Can a science be self-contained and not rely on matters external
>>to it, that are not established by it?
>
> Biology depends on much that comes from physics. But a lot of physics
> can stand alone.
Again, you change my question. I was not asking if much of the knowledge
of physics can be represented as statements about matters pertaining to
physics, but whether the statements of physics depend on anything
outside those statements, such as an intelligible world, the successful
theories of physicists in the past, observational theorems, etc.
>>What's an "empirical principle"? A methodology? A fact?
>
> A principle is something that guides empirical practice. It's hard to
> explain, because we seriously disagree about what science is.
A principle can surely be a method, but to reduce principle to method
seems a bit strained. The scientist brings into his work not only a
method, but the distillation of all science to date, either to accept it
as axiomatic or to use it as a target for criticism. I see no reason to
challenge the dictionary definition of principle as an axiomatic
truth. Not all practices are empirical, but speculative, but surely
speculation is guided by principles.
>>> I tend to think of axioms as inherently abstract.
>
>>What do you mean by "abstract".
>
> Independent of reality.
The conventional meaning of "abstract" is separation, and in this case
separation from empiria or specificity. A causal relation, for example,
is a relation of specific entities and therefore abstracted from the
entities themselves. But by what warrent would you insist that such an
abstraction is non-real? How do you know? How would you justify such a
statement?
> Here is my attempt to explain how I see science:
>
> You, and the conventional wisdom, see science as producing true
> statements about reality. In fact, you see producing such statements
> as the purpose of science (assuming I understand your position). And
> by "true statement" you mean a statement that corresponds with
> reality. The idea of "corresponds with reality" presupposes that
> there is some kind of correspondence. But, it is never explained
> where that correspondence comes from.
That's true, but you will recall that I was critical of correspondence
theory. Other than your last sentence, I probably would agree.
> By contrast, I see science as establishing that correspondence. That
> is, science invents ways of describing reality that were not possible
> before. This requires new concepts, and requires empirical
> principles on how to map reality into statements using those
> concepts. I see that, the establishment of a suitable
> correspondence, as the main role of science.
But, while your point may have some truth, you skip over whether there
is a reality to describe and whether it is somehow
intelligible. Instead, reality here is a variable, merely a coat of
paint to put on our mental gymnastics. What is foundational (the
independent variable) is mind. Of course, we no longer believe the facts
themselves speak to us, but are constructed, and so where does the world
and mind really come together? I suggested only in action, but I've not
tried to develop that point.
You adopt a perspective that is admittedly unconventional among
scientists. So what warrant do you offer that might give it any
significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?
> When you take science laws as axioms, the correspondence that science
> has created becomes irrelevant. But your concern is only with
> deduction you can make using those scientific laws. Your concern is
> not about reality, or about how the scientific theory constructs the
> correspondence that is needed if we are to talk about reality.
If I understand you correctly, you are only pointing to the logical
circularity of correspondence theory. As I said before, this mixes
definition of truth with the method of verifying it. I entirely agree
with the circularity of the latter.
>>In a lab experiment in which we are testing f=ma, we take a to be
>>32ft/sec/sec as axiomatic in that it is presumed true within to
>>framework of the experiment. Is this empirical or not? Is this
>>abstract or not? Whether it be abstract or not, empirical or not, is
>>it for those reason any less true within the framework of the
>>experiment?
>
> I have lots of problems with that.
>
> Firstly, we cannot test "f=ma", because that law is what defines mass.
> Secondly the 32 ft/sec/sec is data, but not axiomatic.
It is indeed dara, but it is taken as a given here on earth. A formula
with three variables like this can hardly be solved, and it is really
used to see the relationship of two variables, given the acceleration as
a given.
> I hope that gives you are better perspective of what my position is.
I understand what you are saying, only you give me no reason whatsoever
to adopt your perspective, and I can offer practical reasons why
convention is preferable, if that's the only choice.
> I don't recall ever hearing scientists saying that what they do rests
> on axioms. So I cannot comment on what they might mean if they did
> say that.
What they do presumes axioms, does not derive from them.
>>So how does one make the translation from one conceptual system to
>>another?
>
> That's actually not as hard as it sounds, as long as the two
> conceptual systems are talking about the same thing. It is when they
> are not talking about the same thing, that there is a problem.
What "same thing"?
>>I'm not using the word "matter" in the sense of physical material, but
>>in the far more abstract sense of that which is contingent. It is a
>>modal statement, not a description.
>
> Contingent on what?
Nothing in particular: capable of change.
>>It sure is! I walk into the lab, confident that it is really there. I
>>turn on a Bunsen burner, assuming that it will produce heat.
>
> If you walk into the lab, turn on a Bunsen burner, and it does produce
> heat, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is really there.
But that's not realistic. One doesn't conclude the burner is there after
igniting it, but you ignite it because you are confident it is there.
> As long as it is reliably repeatable, why should the scientist care.
> If there is divine intervention that is reliably repeatable, then the
> divine being behaves in a reliably predictable way, so this particular
> repeatable behavior can be considered natural, whether or not it
> depends on divine intervention. Again, that it is natural is a
> conclusion, not a starting assumption.
Many ("evolutionary") sciences do not involve repeatable phenenoma, but
aim to explain unique outcomes. If you presume repeatability, then any
evolution must be the result of accident or divine intervention.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> But "shared meaning" isn't anything like solid ground. It's rather
>> ethereal, poorly exlained, and perhaps doesn't exist (i.e. part of a
>> poor explanation).
>Why "ethereal" in relation to solid ground.
That was in contrast to solid ground.
>Perhaps shared meanings don't exist? Extraordinary. I'm (hopefully)
>communicating something meaningful to you right now, but if shared
>meaing didn't exist, I'd be talking pure gibberish. But you said
>"perhaps", and so I let it pass by.
If meaning is "what is in mind", then it is inherently unsharable.
We have a shared communication system. That such a shared
communication system requires shared meaning is but a naive
hypothesis about how that communication works. In my opinion it
is a false hypothesis.
>>>or b) Can a science be self-contained and not rely on matters external
>>>to it, that are not established by it?
>> Biology depends on much that comes from physics. But a lot of physics
>> can stand alone.
>Again, you change my question. I was not asking if much of the knowledge
>of physics can be represented as statements about matters pertaining to
>physics, but whether the statements of physics depend on anything
>outside those statements, such as an intelligible world, the successful
>theories of physicists in the past, observational theorems, etc.
You asked an ambiguous question. I am just getting out of the way the
possible meanings that I expect you didn't intend. That's to avoid
future misunderstanding.
>>>What's an "empirical principle"? A methodology? A fact?
>> A principle is something that guides empirical practice. It's hard to
>> explain, because we seriously disagree about what science is.
>A principle can surely be a method, but to reduce principle to method
>seems a bit strained. The scientist brings into his work not only a
>method, but the distillation of all science to date, either to accept it
>as axiomatic or to use it as a target for criticism.
For the biologist, "all science to date" includes physics.
You objected when I allowed that biologists assumed physics.
But now you are making that part of your argument.
> I see no reason to
>challenge the dictionary definition of principle as an axiomatic
>truth. Not all practices are empirical, but speculative, but surely
>speculation is guided by principles.
I have been using the term "empirical principle". An axiom is not
empirical.
>>>What do you mean by "abstract".
>> Independent of reality.
>The conventional meaning of "abstract" is separation, and in this case
>separation from empiria or specificity. A causal relation, for example,
>is a relation of specific entities and therefore abstracted from the
>entities themselves. But by what warrent would you insist that such an
>abstraction is non-real? How do you know? How would you justify such a
>statement?
You seem to have missed the point. By treating something as
abstract, we are separating it from reality. That is to say, for
the purposes of discussion, we are ignoring connections with reality.
Whether it originated in reality is not the issue. It's a question
of how we use it, not a question of how it originated.
>> By contrast, I see science as establishing that correspondence. That
>> is, science invents ways of describing reality that were not possible
>> before. This requires new concepts, and requires empirical
>> principles on how to map reality into statements using those
>> concepts. I see that, the establishment of a suitable
>> correspondence, as the main role of science.
>But, while your point may have some truth, you skip over whether there
>is a reality to describe and whether it is somehow
>intelligible.
Of course reality is not intelligible. Science, or even ordinary
human learning, are there to make it intelligible. But that
intelligibility is not inherent in reality, it is something that
we must provide.
> Instead, reality here is a variable, merely a coat of
>paint to put on our mental gymnastics.
Then you must have completely misunderstood what I was suggesting.
> What is foundational (the
>independent variable) is mind.
That would seem to be a solipsist position.
>You adopt a perspective that is admittedly unconventional among
>scientists. So what warrant do you offer that might give it any
>significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?
My experience is that others don't find it attractive. I guess they
should stick to Cartesian dualism, since that is the best account
they are likely to find that is consistent with the conventional
view.
>> Firstly, we cannot test "f=ma", because that law is what defines mass.
>> Secondly the 32 ft/sec/sec is data, but not axiomatic.
>It is indeed dara, but it is taken as a given here on earth.
Hmm, no. The 32 ft/sec/sec is an approximation, and the actual
value varies from place to place on the earth.
> A formula
>with three variables like this can hardly be solved, and it is really
>used to see the relationship of two variables, given the acceleration as
>a given.
The 32.2 ft/sec/sec is the approx. accelleration due to gravity.
But "f=ma" is not limited to use in circumstances where gravity
is involved.
>>>So how does one make the translation from one conceptual system to
>>>another?
>> That's actually not as hard as it sounds, as long as the two
>> conceptual systems are talking about the same thing. It is when they
>> are not talking about the same thing, that there is a problem.
>What "same thing"?
When both are commenting on common experience, each can match what
the other says with his experience to gain a partial translation.
This partial translation can be later refined to improve
the accuracy. The translation does not need to be perfect -
communication is possible with a lot less than perfection, and
perhaps perfect translation is not possible.
>>>I'm not using the word "matter" in the sense of physical material, but
>>>in the far more abstract sense of that which is contingent. It is a
>>>modal statement, not a description.
>> Contingent on what?
>Nothing in particular: capable of change.
Opinions are capable of change. And immaterial opinions seem particulary
prone to change.
>>>It sure is! I walk into the lab, confident that it is really there. I
>>>turn on a Bunsen burner, assuming that it will produce heat.
>> If you walk into the lab, turn on a Bunsen burner, and it does produce
>> heat, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is really there.
>But that's not realistic. One doesn't conclude the burner is there after
>igniting it, but you ignite it because you are confident it is there.
In practice, yes. But that just shows that the Bunsen burner was a
poor example for you to introduce.
>> As long as it is reliably repeatable, why should the scientist care.
>> If there is divine intervention that is reliably repeatable, then the
>> divine being behaves in a reliably predictable way, so this particular
>> repeatable behavior can be considered natural, whether or not it
>> depends on divine intervention. Again, that it is natural is a
>> conclusion, not a starting assumption.
>Many ("evolutionary") sciences do not involve repeatable phenenoma, but
>aim to explain unique outcomes. If you presume repeatability, then any
>evolution must be the result of accident or divine intervention.
The phenomena might not repeat. Our interaction with the phenomena
needs to be repeatable. If I lookup and see a moon, and then lookup
again and don't see a moon, then I could conclude that the first
observation was merely an optical illusion. It is repeatability
of our interactions that we use to test our ways of observing.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
>>> But "shared meaning" isn't anything like solid ground. It's rather
>>> ethereal, poorly exlained, and perhaps doesn't exist (i.e. part of a
>>> poor explanation).
>
>>Why "ethereal" in relation to solid ground.
>
> That was in contrast to solid ground.
I don't have the context for my comment, but as it stands, it makes no
sense to me. Perhaps I was suggesting that "solid ground" can be
ethereal, poorly explained. I.e., so called "brute facts".
>>> A principle is something that guides empirical practice. It's hard
>>> to explain, because we seriously disagree about what science is.
>
>>A principle can surely be a method, but to reduce principle to method
>>seems a bit strained. The scientist brings into his work not only a
>>method, but the distillation of all science to date, either to accept
>>it as axiomatic or to use it as a target for criticism.
>
> For the biologist, "all science to date" includes physics. You
> objected when I allowed that biologists assumed physics. But now you
> are making that part of your argument.
We are talking at cross purposes. I don't believe biologists work from
the theories or axioms specific to physics, but only the biological
level is constrained by the physical.
My statement only meant that the biologist starts, not with a tabula
rasa, but with a highly developed array of theories which he accepts as
true, as given, so that he can present his investigation within some
kind of framework. For example, an observational theorem that what his
instruments tell him conveys truthful information about what he
observes. The observational theorem probably is not an explicit part of
his biological hypothesis and thereby considered tentative or to be
proven, but is taken as a given that is presumed to be true, an axiom.
>>I see no reason to challenge the dictionary definition of principle as
>>an axiomatic truth. Not all practices are empirical, but speculative,
>>but surely speculation is guided by principles.
>
> I have been using the term "empirical principle". An axiom is not
> empirical.
Empirical means based on observation. An axiom is a proposition whose
truth is presumed. A principle is a rule, standard or basic truth. So I
naturally inferred that a principle cannot itself be empirical since it
is not an observational. An axiom is a statement, which seems to be
observational and therefore empirical.
If you are using these words in a significantly different way than the
above, then it may be contrary to conventional usage. If so, you must
define your words and justify why you don't accept convention, or else
your sentences become meaningless to anyone but yourself. On the other
hand, if you think my shorthand definitions differ significantly from
what is conventional, then we can explore the issues.
>>>>What do you mean by "abstract".
>
>>> Independent of reality.
>
>>The conventional meaning of "abstract" is separation, and in this case
>>separation from empiria or specificity. A causal relation, for
>>example, is a relation of specific entities and therefore abstracted
>>from the entities themselves. But by what warrent would you insist
>>that such an abstraction is non-real? How do you know? How would you
>>justify such a statement?
>
> You seem to have missed the point. By treating something as abstract,
> we are separating it from reality. That is to say, for the purposes
> of discussion, we are ignoring connections with reality. Whether it
> originated in reality is not the issue. It's a question of how we use
> it, not a question of how it originated.
Again, you are playing with words by giving them unconventional
meanings. In my dictionary, there's no mention of any separation from
reality. It is a separation from matter, it is what is general rather
than particular. If you wish to define the word in your own way, until
you justify your private definition, your words mean
little. Specifically, by saying that something abstract we mean it to be
unreal is an extraordinary position that makes little sense. A general
law, for example, is conventionally taken to be an example of an
abstraction. While general laws don't bask the the glory they once did
under positivism, they still are generally considered a partial or
one-sided aspect of reality.
> Of course reality is not intelligible. Science, or even ordinary
> human learning, are there to make it intelligible. But that
> intelligibility is not inherent in reality, it is something that we
> must provide.
You are saying that intelligibility is not a property of things. Well,
who would suggest otherwise? When we say "reality is intelligible", we
are not assigning a property to things, but refering to a relation
between us and the object of investigation. You appear to have
difficulty communicating your points.
>>What is foundational (the independent variable) is mind.
>
> That would seem to be a solipsist position.
Yes, that was my point exactly.
>>You adopt a perspective that is admittedly unconventional among
>>scientists. So what warrant do you offer that might give it any
>>significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?
>
> My experience is that others don't find it attractive. I guess they
> should stick to Cartesian dualism, since that is the best account they
> are likely to find that is consistent with the conventional view.
You are mixing two different issues. One is the critique that most
people prefer to stick with convention, and so represening to them a
novel position becomes a challenge. The other issus is that "others"
find your position unintelligible. I seriously warn you against the
dangerous attitude that the reason others find your points unpersuasive
is because of a fault in them rather than yourself (or both).
Let me give a little advice. When communications fail, always assume
that it is part your own fault, and make self-rectification your first
priority. This applies to marriage, too.
>>>>So how does one make the translation from one conceptual system to
>>>>another?
>
>>> That's actually not as hard as it sounds, as long as the two
>>> conceptual systems are talking about the same thing. It is when
>>> they are not talking about the same thing, that there is a problem.
>
>>What "same thing"?
>
> When both are commenting on common experience, each can match what the
> other says with his experience to gain a partial translation. This
> partial translation can be later refined to improve the accuracy. The
> translation does not need to be perfect - communication is possible
> with a lot less than perfection, and perhaps perfect translation is
> not possible.
Well, yes. I happened to have been working on this today in a paper on
historiography. This "common experience" is what is called short-range
history, and the assumptions are based on daily life that are shared,
and so they tend to remain implicit and unexamined. Long-range history
is when we can't presume a common experience, such as in global history
or long periods of the past. The old answer to this dilemna (Dilthey)
was that we can understand (Verstehen) the mind of people in the past,
for there is a commonality of basic human nature or a deep seated ego
that all people share. Problem is that this is an abstration, and in its
application you tend to plug in your class, geographic or modern
experiences without thinking about it, so that the meaning of the past
becomes nothing more than an expression of one's own social location and
situation.
>>>>I'm not using the word "matter" in the sense of physical material,
>>>>but in the far more abstract sense of that which is contingent. It
>>>>is a modal statement, not a description.
>
>>> Contingent on what?
>
>>Nothing in particular: capable of change.
>
> Opinions are capable of change. And immaterial opinions seem
> particulary prone to change.
Yes, which is why opinions are a form of matter. Never heard of an
"immaterial opinion", unless we see it as a different kind of substance,
such as Hegel's objective ideas.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>> For the biologist, "all science to date" includes physics. You
>> objected when I allowed that biologists assumed physics. But now you
>> are making that part of your argument.
>We are talking at cross purposes. I don't believe biologists work from
>the theories or axioms specific to physics, but only the biological
>level is constrained by the physical.
Physics includes basic measurement, such as the measuring of length.
And biologists use that.
>My statement only meant that the biologist starts, not with a tabula
>rasa, but with a highly developed array of theories which he accepts as
>true, as given, so that he can present his investigation within some
>kind of framework.
But those theories did not pop into existence out of nowhere.
Biology wasn't always as heavily based on theory as it is now.
>> I have been using the term "empirical principle". An axiom is not
>> empirical.
>Empirical means based on observation. An axiom is a proposition whose
>truth is presumed. A principle is a rule, standard or basic truth.
Classic measurement of length used a measuring rod (or yardstick).
For a long time, this was based on a standard platinum rod kept
in Paris. Why are such specifications of how to measure length
not a principle? And what isn't empirical about them?
>> You seem to have missed the point. By treating something as abstract,
>> we are separating it from reality. That is to say, for the purposes
>> of discussion, we are ignoring connections with reality. Whether it
>> originated in reality is not the issue. It's a question of how we use
>> it, not a question of how it originated.
>Again, you are playing with words by giving them unconventional
>meanings.
I'm using "abstract" about the way it is used in mathematics,
and mathematicians are probably the most important users of the term.
Take the principles of measurement using that measuring rod, and
abstract them away from reality, and you finish up with Euclidean
geometry.
>> Of course reality is not intelligible. Science, or even ordinary
>> human learning, are there to make it intelligible. But that
>> intelligibility is not inherent in reality, it is something that we
>> must provide.
>You are saying that intelligibility is not a property of things. Well,
>who would suggest otherwise?
When you use terms in ways that are not clear, I question them as a
way to get clarification.
> When we say "reality is intelligible", we
>are not assigning a property to things, but refering to a relation
>between us and the object of investigation.
But you seem to be assuming that there is such a relation. My point
is that we start without such a relation, and it takes inventiveness
to come up with a suitable relation.
> You appear to have
>difficulty communicating your points.
I have already conceded that in an earlier message.
>>>You adopt a perspective that is admittedly unconventional among
>>>scientists. So what warrant do you offer that might give it any
>>>significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?
>> My experience is that others don't find it attractive. I guess they
>> should stick to Cartesian dualism, since that is the best account they
>> are likely to find that is consistent with the conventional view.
>You are mixing two different issues. One is the critique that most
>people prefer to stick with convention, and so represening to them a
>novel position becomes a challenge.
And I had thought I was giving an answer (an indirect one, I'll
admit) to your question "So what warrant do you offer that might
give it any significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?"
>Let me give a little advice. When communications fail, always assume
>that it is part your own fault, and make self-rectification your first
>priority. This applies to marriage, too.
I don't know what your point is there. I have been trying several
different ways to explain my point. It seems to me that I am
making many attempts at correcting the communication problem.
I don't think I have tried to blame anyone else.
Haines Brown
> Haines Brown <bro...@teufel.hartford-hwp.com> writes:
>>Neil W Rickert <ricke...@cs.niu.edu> writes:
>
>>We are talking at cross purposes. I don't believe biologists work from
>>the theories or axioms specific to physics, but only the biological
>>level is constrained by the physical.
>
> Physics includes basic measurement, such as the measuring of length.
> And biologists use that.
I said, "specific".
>>My statement only meant that the biologist starts, not with a tabula
>>rasa, but with a highly developed array of theories which he accepts
>>as true, as given, so that he can present his investigation within
>>some kind of framework.
>
> But those theories did not pop into existence out of nowhere. Biology
> wasn't always as heavily based on theory as it is now.
Yes and yes. I was speaking of biologists in the present, not
historically. I employ petty skills every day; I wasn't born with them.
>>> I have been using the term "empirical principle". An axiom is not
>>> empirical.
>
>>Empirical means based on observation. An axiom is a proposition whose
>>truth is presumed. A principle is a rule, standard or basic truth.
>
> Classic measurement of length used a measuring rod (or yardstick).
> For a long time, this was based on a standard platinum rod kept in
> Paris. Why are such specifications of how to measure length not a
> principle? And what isn't empirical about them?
My aim was to elicit clarification of your terms. Empirical is based on
observation, but the length of the rod in Paris was not based on
measuring anything, but set arbitrarily (somewhat). Why a standard
length is not a principle is a bit more complicated, but a principle
apparently guides action, while a measurement in terms of a standard
length seems more a result of action. The difference here may be subtle,
but to speak of measuring a length as a principle strikes me, and
perhaps others, as a strained usage that clouds meaning. I don't believe
you want to lend warrant to a philosophical position by bending words.
>>> You seem to have missed the point. By treating something as
>>> abstract, we are separating it from reality. That is to say, for
>>> the purposes of discussion, we are ignoring connections with
>>> reality. Whether it originated in reality is not the issue. It's a
>>> question of how we use it, not a question of how it originated.
>
>>Again, you are playing with words by giving them unconventional
>>meanings.
>
> I'm using "abstract" about the way it is used in mathematics, and
> mathematicians are probably the most important users of the term.
Perhaps, but I don't think mathematicians coined the word or can
monopolize its common usage. I don't have any idea of how math relates
to reality, and I gather mathematicians are very uncertain about it
themselves. Certainly one can't expect non-mathematicians to embrace a
mathematical definition of abstract, if as you suggest it posits a level
that is non-real and at the same time not fiction or fantasy. I suggest
you a) justify the suggestion that mathematicians are agreed that they
employ a category that it neither real or fictional, b) and you provide
some reason why folks outside mathematics should use such a category.
> Take the principles of measurement using that measuring rod, and
> abstract them away from reality, and you finish up with Euclidean
> geometry.
I've no idea what "principles of measurement" means. Superficially it
seems merely an action that entails a socially created standard of
measure that is compared against something else. Society is real; the
standard of measure is real; the object measured is real, my statement
about the measure is real. What is abstracted from reality? How is the
act of comparing the length of the rod and the object the exercise of a
principle?
When I say a cube is cubical, I am in thought abstracting the form of
the cube from its particular instance. The cube in fact is cubical and
thinking of it in that way does not counter reality, but reduces it to
its form. This mental representation of the cube is a one-sided view,
but why do you say that conception does not correspond to reality in
some way? Otherwise you could just as well say that the cube is
spherical, and that statement would have the same truth value as saying
it is cubical. You seem to be letting your speculations about the
ontological status of mathematics cloud common sense, simple reason and,
most importantly, your ability to communicate. Why should people outside
math worry about the philosophical implications of math? Gödel's Theorem
is interesting, but does it do anything more for our conception of
reality than what C. S. Peirce did? Both are talking about the world of
the mind, but surely that world is not unreal.
>>> Of course reality is not intelligible. Science, or even ordinary
>>> human learning, are there to make it intelligible. But that
>>> intelligibility is not inherent in reality, it is something that we
>>> must provide.
>
>>You are saying that intelligibility is not a property of things. Well,
>>who would suggest otherwise?
>
> When you use terms in ways that are not clear, I question them as a
> way to get clarification.
But I'm not using the term, you are. You brought up the terms reality
and intelligible to suggest that reality is not intelligible. I'm simply
countering that science and daily life presume that the world is
intelligible (capable of being understood). I'm using words in an
entirely conventional sense, and your statement that reality is not
intelligible seems contrary to what most people hold, and so the burden
falls on you to explain or justify your statement. To suggest that the
conventional use of words is ambiguous or misleading (which I think is
your real point) does not represent a justification.
>>When we say "reality is intelligible", we are not assigning a property
>>to things, but refering to a relation between us and the object of
>>investigation.
>
> But you seem to be assuming that there is such a relation. My point
> is that we start without such a relation, and it takes inventiveness
> to come up with a suitable relation.
That I have a relation to the world does not seem to be a very
adventurous presumption. If you hold otherwise, or more specifically
that my mental representation of the world is not a relation of my mind
to the world in which the world affects the content of my thought, I
believe the burden of proof falls to you because you are differing with
what most people and most scientists assume to be true.
>>You are mixing two different issues. One is the critique that most
>>people prefer to stick with convention, and so represening to them a
>>novel position becomes a challenge.
>
> And I had thought I was giving an answer (an indirect one, I'll admit)
> to your question "So what warrant do you offer that might give it any
> significance, makes it attracive to anyone but yourself?"
Not that I saw, although the fault could well be mine. I stick with you
in this overly long dialog because I sense that your intentions are good
and you are struggling to find ground on which to stand, not because you
are meaningfully representing a philosophical position with which I
might agree or disagree.
>>Let me give a little advice. When communications fail, always assume
>>that it is part your own fault, and make self-rectification your first
>>priority. This applies to marriage, too.
>
> I don't know what your point is there. I have been trying several
> different ways to explain my point. It seems to me that I am making
> many attempts at correcting the communication problem. I don't think
> I have tried to blame anyone else.
Not my point. You are obviously and admittedly floundering, and you
admittedly find it very difficult to communicate your position. You have
been trying to communicate, but not, as far as I can see, succeeding
very well.
My point was that we are essentially, first and foremost, social beings,
for that is the foundation for our development as individuals and being
able to think effectively. Our speculations are made possible by our
social existence. If our speculations put us out of touch with anyone
else, that is in a sense a pathological condition, a temporary
aberration. It is not that our stepping out on an intellectual limb
might not occasionally be useful and necessary, but that being out there
should be considered only an adventurous experiment, not a position that
we should adopt permanently for ourselves, think of as a virtue, or
consider a position superior to that held by others. Our intellectual
experiments only acquire value when we step back from that limb. There
is no virtue being "out of the box" as you put it, but only when we
bring back into it what we discovered when outside it; there is no
virtue in non-conformity.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
Neil W Rickert
>>>Empirical means based on observation. An axiom is a proposition whose
>>>truth is presumed. A principle is a rule, standard or basic truth.
>> Classic measurement of length used a measuring rod (or yardstick).
>> For a long time, this was based on a standard platinum rod kept in
>> Paris. Why are such specifications of how to measure length not a
>> principle? And what isn't empirical about them?
>My aim was to elicit clarification of your terms. Empirical is based on
>observation, but the length of the rod in Paris was not based on
>measuring anything, but set arbitrarily (somewhat). Why a standard
>length is not a principle is a bit more complicated, but a principle
>apparently guides action, while a measurement in terms of a standard
>length seems more a result of action. The difference here may be subtle,
I never suggested that the platinum rod was a principle. I was
referring to "specifications of how to measure length" which do
guide action.
I now conclude my participation in this thread.
Haines Brown
Understood (now).
> I now conclude my participation in this thread.
OK, it has probably gone on for too long. I appreciate your trying to
set forth your position, although it did not relate to my orginal
question.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> reject whatever one happens to define as a modern style in a particular
> aspect of culture. As such, it is an entirely harmless term, for after
> all, culture marches forward.
>
> However, the disputes over post modernism are surprisingly acerbic, and
> that is because postmodernists to some extent (the extent depends on the
> field and the individual) put into question Enlightenment presumptions,
> and that means they are threatening the ideology of the class in which I
> assume most academics are found. This aspect was what suggested to me at
> one point I might embrace the term postmodernism for myself, for I also
> like to think of myself as questioning bourgeois ideology, but then I
> thought better of it.
>
> The main reason is that there's a big difference between undercutting
> bourgeois assumptions and offering an alternative to them. To some
> extent, the postmodernists succeed in the former, but I see no evidence
> they do at all well in the latter. But as to your point, I see nothing
> positive or negative about someone identifying themselves as
> postmodernist as long as it is in the context of bourgeois culture and
> as long as the label implies something specific being criticized rather
> than just a negative (destructive vs. deconstructive) skepticism.
Postmodernism doesn't see the offering alternatives assumptions as
"doing well". Their apparent skepticism is a direction, not a
position, because positions are what they distrust. Their direction
isn't /just/ negative. On the contrary, their reasons are carefully
setup and deliberate. It's a bit like the building up of an illusory
picture whose sole purpose is to show the illusoryness of all
pictures.
Of course since you're looking to rest on certain assumptions for
whatever ends, postmodernism will wear the critisism for the means you
find lacking.
Self and other can be reconciled with a "human essence" we all share,
a "universal truth" that we can all come to on our own, or, not
exhaustivly I'm sure, a sharing of world views through play, movement
or communication - your "social being". A self-other dichotomy is the
typical identity of non-identities where the typical dialectical word
game ensues. But we should be careful that we're not setting up the
problem up in terms we want it solved. If you divide everything into
binaries then you can say the same thing about everything, just fill
in x and y. Of course the problem with abstraction is that a lot
rides on getting it right.
> > Do you see the whole world throught the lense of the material
> > dialectic - where the whole universe unfolds in a process of thesis-
> > antithesis-synthesis? Â If so, do you see this trinity as the ultimate
> > knowledge or understanding of the world? Â (You address this below I
> > see)
>
> No. I think the term "material dialectic" is ambivalent, although I do
> consider myself a dialectical materialist. That is, these are not quite
> the same thing in my view. I'd define dialectical materialism, off hand,
> as entailing certain presuppositions such as: a) materialistic monism,
> b) that all things are "in motion", i.e., are processes, c) that all
> things are systemic, are complexities that can have emergent properties,
> d) that otherwise systems are dissipative, e) that emergence depends on
> dissipation and the two are an interdependent unity of opposites called
> a contradiction. What is interesting is that all these statements are
> fairly conventional views in science today, only the last being a bit
> unconventional, although not unconventional in substance.
The big problem is a "unity of opposites" - resolving the
contradiction of the identity of non-identities. Typically it's
resolved through movement or a shift in perspective. In either case
there is a /change/ that takes place and the problem with change is
resolving the identity of identity and non-identity - or in less
confusing terms, solving the problem of persistence through change.
This presents a regress you'll probably need to sort out.
> I trundle all this out in order to have a framework in terms of which I
> might address your question, although in principle I usually hide such
> speculations under a rock because they are very tentative. First, the
> term "material dialectic" might simply reduce to the word
> "systemness". It is not quite a conventional phrase, and so I have to
> guess as to your intended meaning. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis? I'm
> not even sure this is Hegelian, but in any case it means nothing to me
> because I'm a materialist. I could convert the notion to material terms
> if I wanted to for some reason, such as "thermodynamic engine", and here
> no one has any problems with it. The problem with Hegel was his
> objective idealism, and Feuerbach took care of that; it is not relevant
> to Marx except that his cultural roots are neo-Hegelian and so he upon
> occasion uses Hegelian termology, just as we today are no longer
> positivists, but still use some of the language.
I'm referring to the dialecitc's unity of opposites, whether it be
marxist, hegelian, postmodern, or whatever. Phrases like "the sphere
of all meaning is meaningless", "the set of all sets is not a set",
"there is nothing to intuit in being, in fact, being /is/ nothing",
"... and the slave becomes the master", "truth is a lie", "be free",
"you are what you are /and/ what you are not", etc.
I probably haven't captured marxists language here, but I'm sure it
wont feel out of place at the end of the list.
> And as for your last point, I'm not sure what "ultimate knowledge" is. I
> suppose that's God's view of things.
I suppose what I'm asking is that if you see this unity of opposites
as a fundamental truth, how can you then use it as a theory of truth?
Wouldn't it have to be true on a higher-level, an ultimate kind of
knowledge?
> Don't we all follow in the
> footsteps of Peirce and agree that knowledge is one-sided or approximate
> (truths)? The initial question with which I started this thread had to
> do with degrees of truthful knowledge. There are various conventional
> ways that people assume help us choose among competing hypotheses, such
> as coherence, good Gestalt, simplicity, aesthetic appeal, etc. My
> question choose the conventional criterion that does not happen to be
> transparently subjective or internal, but relates to the world. The
> point I had in mind which never had an opportunity breathe is that the
> degree of universality of our theory does not reduce to taking more of
> the world or of theory into its purview (which undoubtedly is useful),
> but to grasp that we are not observers of the world, but are embedded as
> part of it through our practical activity, so that a more universal view
> means not only taking more of a system's environment into consideration
> and knowledge of other systems, but also ourselves. The mind is not a
> reflector of the world, but an aspect of the world. All this gets a bit
> hairy.
This is certainly a workable theory of truth if you beat out the terms
more.
I think there's any number of stories we can tell about the past. The
real test for the theory would be if you can predict what's going to
happen, not just in society but in any material process, like physics
and chemistry for example.
> > Not really... it's not so much about you boxing me but about you
> > boxing yourself. Â When we try to understand a new position that
> > doesn't fit into our existing categories, we really have no choice but
> > to let the categories go. Â Of course if we've got lots of categories
> > that took a long time to build, then we usually keep trying to stuff
> > them in like too many clothes into a small suit case.
>
> I'm not sure I don't want to be boxed in the sense of arriving at a
> self-definition. I think it very useful to make my own position an
> object of my own thought so that I might think about it constructively
> and so that I might communicate effectively with others. Defining my
> position does not at all preclude my being creative, imaginative, and
> open ended, which to some extent all people actually are as they sit in
> their boxes. The ordinary person on the street going about the dull
> routine of daily life is surely creative, imaginative and open ended to
> some extent.
>
> But if by "box" we mean convention, then shouldn't we always have one
> foot in it so that we communicate with others, and one foot outside so
> that we are critical and creative? We need to be simultaneously student
> and teacher. We need to engage others, but in a constructive way. We
> must communicate in largely conventional terms, but for our
> communication to be constructive, we need to be a bit unconventional. I
> believe cultural anthropology handles this issue.
Okay, it seemed strange that you were giving me a set of choices to
speak into, but I appreciate it could be for other reasons.
> > I've certainly tried to describe my position none the less, but you'll
> > have to bare in mind that I don't like the idea of having a position
> > at all. Â It doesn't mean that I'm left with nothing. Â On the contrary.
> > My "position" is less caged and more free-range.
>
> It's a strange peculiarity of bourgeois ideology that lack of constraint
> means freedom. I don't happen to accept this anarchist view. I happen to
> be in love, and know that through the struggle of mutual determination
> we end up being aspects of one process in which we don't loose our
> individuality or become threatened by the demands of the other, but are
> able to develop our humanity and individuality through that
> process. Without it, love would end up merely a psychic state
> (infatuation), biological (sex-drive) and otherwise shallow and
> disappointing.
Sure. I'm not really talking about freedom and constraint though, but
about position and mobility.
> > While I say my position is free-range, it has stayed still for the
> > duration of this thread. Â It's free-range over many years, not weeks.
> > But again, I might change my mind later when you convince me that
> > there is such a thing as truth after all.
>
> I'm not sure I'm out to convince you that there's a truth, but trying to
> better understand truth myself by engaging you in a dialog about it.
I think you will be interested in Gadamer's concept of truth, if you
haven't come across it already. It isn't the same as yours but shares
parallels and may have some intersting ideas.
Interesting, thanks.
> >> But how can you "take a stand with a few others"? Doesn't doing so
> >> imply a commonality or the foundation of meaning that you wish to
> >> dismiss?
>
> > I don't dismiss commonality or foundation of meaning unless they're
> > given a station above and beyond human culture.
>
> I don't understand. This commonality seems conventionality to _be_ human
> culture.
I don't mind a foundation that coheres but not one that underlies.
> > Yes, this does make sense. Â Although I don't see what you mean with
> > regard to entropy. Â From my understanding, change in entropy is only
> > in one direction.
>
> I don't understand. Entropy either increases or decreases. Yes, in an
> isolated system taken as a whole it always necessarily increases, but in
> a subsystem, it can decrease. Human society, as a subsystem of nature,
> certainly has decreasing entropy, for it comes up with new improbable
> orders all the time, but at the same time our contradictory relation
> with the natural environment deepens.
Okay.
> > I'm sorry I come across this way. Â I am most certainly committed to my
> > position and don't reject your commitment to yours. Â I do reject the
> > belief in /right/ belief, but not belief itself. Â This avoids the
> > search for the correct position and throws a certain irony over
> > holding one, but it doesn't need to be vague and inspecific at all.
> > That's probably just me.
>
> Without exploring the issue, I'm not comfortable with the notion that we
> should be indifferent to whether our personal belief system is at all
> right, true, preferable, virtuous, sensible, etc., and what is only
> important is that our mind holds thoughts. I realize this is not what
> you intend, but you need to block that possible implication.
All these words, right, true, virtuous, sensible, etc. can be replaced
with desireable (or some other word that does away with theory in
general). There is no indifference with desire.
> Second, for reasons I've mentioned a bit, I think we start as
> essentially social beings. So our private speculations, although good
> and necessary, are not really where its at, but rather how the
> speculations of others contributes to, enhances, validates, justifies,
> etc. our own speculations. Our wonderful ideas are not our possession,
> not sui generis, self-created, autonomous, but a private joy that we owe
> primarily to others, not only because the foundation of these ideas and
> their capacity to develop is socially transmitted to us, but because of
> their potential contribution to social well being, which in turn
> enhances our own capacities. It's like saying there's no joy in being
> rich unless you can give it away and bring benefit to others. You can't
> be in love without a partner.
Being-in-love is usually short-hand for being-in-love-with-someone.
Money only finds its worth with exchange. I don't mind hearing that
we're essentially social beings but I do mind the stronger idea that
we have a social essence within us.
> > Utility as "useful" is pretty limited I admit, but utility as "desire"
> > is pretty expansive.
>
> Not sure I understand. A "desire" I take to refer to a feeling of
> insufficiency or incompleteness that will be satisfied by an
> acquisition. The term utility seems to refer to the function of the
> acquisition to satisfy desire, not the desire itself.
Perhaps utility as in "desirable" works better. It's the idea though,
not the exact form of word.
> > At the beginning of the day there is smoke and coffee. Â And it is
> > good. Â Why do we need to step back from this and say things like
> > "smoke and coffee is good" is true, and then spend a good chunk of our
> > lives trying to work out why.
>
> Well, this point is sometimes made, and it makes sense in that the word
> "true" often substitutes for a kind of attitude we have toward
> things. If I say that a statement is true, I'm not really saying
> anything about the statement, but that I take it seriously, etc.
>
> But there's another meaning of truth, also common, which is to say that
> our statement corresponds to the world. No matter that this may entail a
> bit of logical circularity, for how do we know the truth of that world
> except through truthful statements about it (hence my suggestion above
> about representing mind and world as aspects of one process). Logically
> circular or not, this usage is obviously practical in terms of daily
> life and intercourse.
Sure, when we reflect on the world but then why do we need to reify it
is my question?
> That a cigar and coffee at the crack of dawn I see as good is a fact: I
> have pleasure and reasonably infer it comes from the cigar and
> coffee. The problem arises when I want to prove to someone else that a
> cigar and coffee is good. I can't say that this is universally true, for
> obviously it is not. All I can say is that for some people, a cigar and
> coffee is a good experience. Does this statement correspond with the
> world? In practical terms, it probably does. For example, I could ask
> around and gather evidence that I'm not the only one who enjoys this
> pleasure. Â The problem only comes up if I try to represent this in
> abstract philosophical terms. Which is more important? What I know very
> well to be at least probably and approximately true, or what logic
> implies? Here we may part company. I'd favor the first, and use the
> second just as a way to look at the first more critically, but no
> substitute for it. In this case, does philosophy suggest that my
> statement that some people gain pleasure from a cigar and coffee is
> really (vs. philosophically) naive? I don't think so.
Because we invent terms for speaking about language doesn't mean these
terms refer. They can instead be metaphorical tools for helping
others understand, or something else entirely. We don't /need/ a
theory of truth because "truth" doesn't necessarily exist and we can
quite happily get along without it.
> >> But you missed my point, which was to distinguish a world view from
> >> engagement (action in the world). As Marx said, the object is not
> >> just to understand the world, but to change it. This is a working
> >> class attitude and perhaps not natural for academics.
>
> > I don't think we're disagreeing here really. Â Marx's irony is that
> > sitting back talking dialectics isn't exactly engaging the world,
> > although I suspect it's directed at the non-engagers.
>
> Although Marx might be represented as primarily an economic theorist, he
> was also engaged in some political battles within the working-class
> movement. He didn't "talk dialectics", but talked history and economics
> and politics. His writings were an engagement in the sense that he
> intended them to be a development of a working class outlook that he
> intended as an intervention in the current affairs. His situation, I
> believe, was quite different than that of an academic, who in principle
> is being supported in a unique situation intended to free him of outside
> demands so that he might pursue intellectual concerns. The academic,
> speaking generally and objectively, is petit bourgeois in that his
> development is due to his possession of an advanced degree, having
> tenure, etc. Marx really possessed nothing and did not develop by virtue
> of his possession of anything, although much earlier for a brief period
> he did work as a newspaper reporter, commenting on German liberalism and
> writing for a US paper articles on the Civil War. It is not the size of
> his personal wealth that counts here, but the principle source of his
> development as a person.
okay well I might be wrong about him. I've read a little about him,
but not his works.
> > That's right, you don't go far without engaging the world. Â One might
> > not want to go far though, of course. ...But he's happy and who am I
> > to tell him otherwise or judge him by my own standards. Â Of course I
> > am me to tell him otherwise and judge him by my own standards. Â And I
> > do. Â I just don't take myself seriously.
>
> I meant by "engaging the world" a much more general way than
> purposefully engaging it to achieve some end. This might imply some
> moral obligation such as you mention, such as being lazy is anti-social
> or not healthy for us. By engaging the world I only meant being _in_ it
> so that the world affects us and we have effect upon it. I believe there
> is no situation in which both of those causal relations would not be
> present, short of death.
Well in those terms it's arguable that we cannot help but be in the
world, even after death.
Haines Brown
> Postmodernism doesn't see the offering alternatives assumptions as
> "doing well". Their apparent skepticism is a direction, not a
> position, because positions are what they distrust. Their direction
> isn't /just/ negative. On the contrary, their reasons are carefully
> setup and deliberate. It's a bit like the building up of an illusory
> picture whose sole purpose is to show the illusoryness of all
> pictures.
Yes, that I understand the point. I don't know that I'd use the word
"direction" so much, because that implies a goal, so perhaps tendency
would be better.
> Of course since you're looking to rest on certain assumptions for
> whatever ends, postmodernism will wear the critisism for the means you
> find lacking.
Sorry, I don't quite understand. Yes, I do rest on certain assumptions
for certain ends. That is, while certain assumptions might be subject to
deconstruction, that must serve to arrive at better ones, which is not
what postmosdernism seems aiming to do. And, yes, I'd cling to an end,
but not an intellectual end, but the end of social
solidarity. Vocabulary, conceptual categories and intellectual insights
I see as means to that end. Postmodernism seems to reverse this
relation.
Not sure what you refer to by "means that I find lacking" or
postmodernism "wearing the criticism." Perhaps a typo here. I find the
conventional categories insufficient, but conclude I need better ones,
better not only intellectually, but more fundamentally, better in their
support of social solidarity (the contradiction implicit here that
social solidarity is best served by the very conventions I and the
postmodernists reject, is only apparent because I left the phrase
"social solidarity" abstract, and the contest of categories is actually
in the context of social contradictions, so the conventions are
one-sided).
> Self and other can be reconciled with a "human essence" we all share,
> a "universal truth" that we can all come to on our own, or, not
> exhaustivly I'm sure, a sharing of world views through play, movement
> or communication - your "social being".
Now these are the very categories I question. The notion of human
essence is part of Enlightenment ideology, and its fairly well agreed
that the notion is vacuous. Marc Bloch once spoke of the deep seated ego
that is transcendent, but what is this ego if not simply a reference to
empirically diverse personalities? To speak of an essence independent of
empiria seems nothing but essentialism, which today is not only found to
be generally objectionable, but I assume would also be spurned by
postmodernists. Kind of reminds me of Newton's mysticism, that all
things have an essential sympathy.
Self and other can perhaps be reconciled if there were indeed an
abstract human essence, but this seems more a logical possibility than
pointing to anything real. In any case, it does not seem to have been
the point of the self-other categories when first cooked up, for the aim
was to represent the other person as merely a means to your private
ends, and social relationships were not seen as manifestations of some
kind of internal unity (in the manner, say, of John Donne), but external
and contractual, like the meeting of one person with another in the
marketplace. Newton's sympathies are akin to Adam Smith's "trucking and
bartering", which represents a relation in which the participants remain
essentially the same and separate.
> A self-other dichotomy is the typical identity of non-identities where
> the typical dialectical word game ensues.
Not sure I follow you here. I was speaking of concepts as they relate to
society, and you here reduce a dialectical relation to language. I don't
see how a self-other dichotomy represents an identity at all, but rather
the other is just an object of action or thought. For example, in
correspondence theory, a true statement corresponds with the world, but
no one employing it suggests that the statement and the world are one,
only that in some respect they are similar. A red apple and a red car
are similar in one respect, but that does not mean they are essentially
one.
But your "identity of non-identities" is ambivalent, for the phrase is
contradictory. Perhaps you are thinking of identity by negation, and
that I would agree amounts to a word (logic) game. But I don't think
"the other" was originally meant to imply the existence of "not-self",
and I suspect this way of representing the other came up only with
objective idealism, which few people find attractive. I don't think
mainstream (bourgeois) thinking can be tarred with this brush, but
rather an instrumental notion of the other.
> But we should be careful that we're not setting up the problem up in
> terms we want it solved. If you divide everything into binaries then
> you can say the same thing about everything, just fill in x and y. Of
> course the problem with abstraction is that a lot rides on getting it
> right.
I agree, but am not sure of your point. Binaries show up frequently (yin
and yang), but my concern here is not with binary thinking, which often
seems useful, perhaps only because of the limitations of thought, but
with bourgeois conceptual binaries in particular, which seem a
manifestation of a contradictory society. That is, binaries (up-down,
left-right, in-out, etc.) seem necessary to thought, but in the case in
hand, binaries conceptuals are not merely tools, but are ideological,
and that's where I'd see the problem, not with binary thinking per se.
I don't think "abstraction" can ever really "get it right". The
abstraction does not create things, but is a reflection of the
limitations of mind, depending as it does on inferences from sensation,
on phenomena, empiria.
I sense a certain ambivalence here between abstraction such as x, y,
which indeed can be anything, and an abstraction that is the relation of
things such as a causal relation. Here "abstract" refers to what does
not reduce to a particular, but a relation of particulars, and so isn't
entirely open ended, such as x and y. The problem of "getting it right"
seems a quite different issue in these two kinds of abstraction.
> The big problem is a "unity of opposites" - resolving the
> contradiction of the identity of non-identities. Typically it's
> resolved through movement or a shift in perspective. In either case
> there is a /change/ that takes place and the problem with change is
> resolving the identity of identity and non-identity - or in less
> confusing terms, solving the problem of persistence through change.
> This presents a regress you'll probably need to sort out.
But you seem to be defining "unity of opposites" in Hegelian terms, and
I'm not sure who would be inclined to do that. Let me give an example of
a unity of opposites that is not at all Hegelian. There's a conception
known as a thermodynamic engine, and basically it suggests that an
emergent process is driven by and depends on a dissipative process, the
net change in entropy of these two processes, which are opposite with
respect to the direction of their entropy change, must be negative. We
definitely have a unity here, since dissipation in the environment
drives emergence, and the emergence results in a greater environmental
dissipation; their unity is subject to the Second Law.
It is assumed here that emergence and dissipation are opposite in
respect to the direction of their entropy change, and this may at first
seem rather a parochial and of interest only in physics. But many
processes are entropy-like in their behavior. Information theory,
emergence of order, improbable outcomes, etc., which are general enough
to have wide significance.
For example, social development in the sense of creating an order that
addresses our needs can only take place because of a dissipation of our
natural environment. The name we give this dissipation of the
environment is economic production. So social development depends
ultimately on the economy in the sense that it is the economy that
constrains the probability distribution of any kind of possible human
creative action.
> I'm referring to the dialecitc's unity of opposites, whether it be
> marxist, hegelian, postmodern, or whatever. Phrases like "the sphere
> of all meaning is meaningless", "the set of all sets is not a set",
> "there is nothing to intuit in being, in fact, being /is/ nothing",
> "... and the slave becomes the master", "truth is a lie", "be free",
> "you are what you are /and/ what you are not", etc.
>
> I probably haven't captured marxists language here, but I'm sure it
> wont feel out of place at the end of the list.
A "unity of opposites" indeed depends on the context in which such a
phrase is used, and surely there's no commonality in Hegel, Marx,
postmodernists, etc. The words used may be the same, but what they refer
to quite different. In logic, it is a no-no. In postmodernism I suppose
the phrase is at fault because it presumes binary categories. In Hegel,
it made sense because a negation presumes an objective idealism. In my
example, I hope that the notion is not problematic. I suspect in
every-day situations, such as male-female, action-reaction, conservation
laws, etc., we can speak of a unity of opposites without too much
problem. But I agree that the list of example you offer do represent
problems because of language and logic. But I don't take them to be the
measure of reality, but a reflection of the limitations of mind.
I'm not sure what "Marxists' language" quite means. It was not so much
Marx, but Engels who worried about dialectical laws. That his
formulations strike us as inadequate (although I'd argue less so than
his critics suggest), that seems clearly a result of the culture of the
time. With Engels and subsequently _some_ Marxists have gone beyond a
simple systemic or dialectical view to discuss the metaphysics or
principles of matter per se, and if you are critical of these efforts,
I'd be inclined to agree to varying degrees. But Diamat was not really
what Marx was about, but an analysis of the world in terms that revealed
both the possibilities and limitations of class struggle.
>> And as for your last point, I'm not sure what "ultimate knowledge"
>> is. I suppose that's God's view of things.
>
> I suppose what I'm asking is that if you see this unity of opposites
> as a fundamental truth, how can you then use it as a theory of truth?
> Wouldn't it have to be true on a higher-level, an ultimate kind of
> knowledge?
I'm not sure I suggested that a unity of opposites was any test of
truth. Rather, I (tentatively) see the power to act effectively as a
test of truth. If a dialectical materialist analysis enhances our power
to act, then it is a useful tool and thereby has truth value. That one
can't bring up unambivalent examples where such a kind of thinking has
proven useful is not a pragmatic counter argument, in part for the
reasons I've been critical of pragmatic tests of truth.
>> The point I had in mind which never had an opportunity breathe is
>> that the degree of universality of our theory does not reduce to
>> taking more of the world or of theory into its purview (which
>> undoubtedly is useful), but to grasp that we are not observers of the
>> world, but are embedded as part of it through our practical activity,
>> so that a more universal view means not only taking more of a
>> system's environment into consideration and knowledge of other
>> systems, but also ourselves. The mind is not a reflector of the
>> world, but an aspect of the world. All this gets a bit hairy.
>
> This is certainly a workable theory of truth if you beat out the terms
> more.
Well, I hope I did somewhat "beat out" the specifics above. I need only
add that activity engages both mind and matter in one process, assuming
that activity is purposeful and takes place in the world. The agent and
world thereby become aspects of one process, practical activity, rather
than an ontologically separate and contradictory subject-object binary.
> I think there's any number of stories we can tell about the past. The
> real test for the theory would be if you can predict what's going to
> happen, not just in society but in any material process, like physics
> and chemistry for example.
Historians would disagree with this, for they lay emphasis on the
creativity of human behavior and to varying degrees explain history in
terms of human action. With an emergent process such as history (and
evolutionary sciences in general), explanation is not predictive,
although even in evolutionary processes one can predict somewhat, but
the aim instead is the discovery of the causal mechanisms at work in the
past, which historians tend (unfortunately) to refer to as causal factors.
Abductive/retroductive/retrodictive reasoning is characteristic of all
evolutionary sciences, including historiography. It looks at a known
outcome and considers what earlier conditions made that outcome
probable. So it's not predictive, but retrodictive, which is quite
something else. The issue is that any number of initial states could
account for and _explain_ the situation under study, and so one must
employ various means to decide which explanatory hypothesis is best. In
principle that is difficult; in practice, not so difficult, although it
means that you are likely to end with competing hypotheses, which makes
for more fun. Versus the postmodernist view, these competing hypotheses
are generally understood to be not just stories, but have different
degrees of truth value. As for physics and chemistry, they often, but
not always, deal with hypothetically closed systems, in which prediction
becomes possible _because_ of our imposition of closure (the lab).
>> But if by "box" we mean convention, then shouldn't we always have one
>> foot in it so that we communicate with others, and one foot outside
>> so that we are critical and creative? We need to be simultaneously
>> student and teacher. We need to engage others, but in a constructive
>> way. We must communicate in largely conventional terms, but for our
>> communication to be constructive, we need to be a bit
>> unconventional. I believe cultural anthropology handles this issue.
>
> Okay, it seemed strange that you were giving me a set of choices to
> speak into, but I appreciate it could be for other reasons.
I was addressing the human condition, not trying to imposes categories
on you. Hope you didn't misunderstand. In terms of ordinary language, I
was suggesting that we need to be both conservative and innovative,
which may be verbally contradictory, but surely not in practice, which I
believe we necessarily all are all the time. The alternative to a
sharing of words or meanings with others is insanity; the alternative to
a failure to innovate is absolute passivity, death.
>> Without exploring the issue, I'm not comfortable with the notion that
>> we should be indifferent to whether our personal belief system is at
>> all right, true, preferable, virtuous, sensible, etc., and what is
>> only important is that our mind holds thoughts. I realize this is not
>> what you intend, but you need to block that possible implication.
>
> All these words, right, true, virtuous, sensible, etc. can be replaced
> with desireable (or some other word that does away with theory in
> general). There is no indifference with desire.
Yes, perhaps in an isolated world of thought, but surely not if our
practical activity is central. If I'm trying to drive a screw, there's
surely a right way to do it that does not reduce to my wish to drive
it. My wish counts for little if I've got no idea how to use a
screwdriver.
> Being-in-love is usually short-hand for being-in-love-with-someone.
> Money only finds its worth with exchange. I don't mind hearing that
> we're essentially social beings but I do mind the stronger idea that
> we have a social essence within us.
It is you, not I, who bring in the word "essence". If I suggest that
people are instances of social process, there's no essence here, but a
real process that gives rise to the emergent properties we call
"society" and which develop the individuality of individuals. But both
are aspects of that one real process. That is, the term "social being"
is not at all essentialist, or at least I hope not.
> Sure, when we reflect on the world but then why do we need to reify it
> is my question?
More importantly, why _not_ reify it? That is the only significant
question. That is, that the world exists and to a degree exists
independently of my consciousness seems not only what people in all
times and places have always assumed, but is a precondition of for any
effective action in which nearly all people must engage. There may be an
elite, relatively insulated from the world, that has the luxury of
disconnecting their adventures in thought from the world, but it always
necessarily just an elite and so generally marginal and ultimately
irrelevant to anyone else. Not having the privilege of being a member of
such an elite, I can't be expected to take their speculations very
seriously until their critiques become meaningful in relation to my real
worldly and social existence.
Of course I am hinting at the insular world of the postmodernists. While
I believe that there is good reason to have academies in which thought
is unconstrained by practical concerns, such an academy is ultimately
responsible to the society that pays for it and tolerates it because in
some ultimate and indirect way it is socially useful. If an academy were
the seed ground of racism or fascism, my tolerance for it would quickly
evaporate, and I'd not be inclined to pay for it in the name of free
speech.
I am not a member of any such academy, and so have toward it an attitude
similar to that I have for poets. Without them the world would be a much
duller place, but the value of poetry ultimately comes down to its being
meaningful and rewarding for those who are not themselves poets. Poetry
that is really unintelligible is of no value whatsoever and is no better
than toilet paper.
> Because we invent terms for speaking about language doesn't mean these
> terms refer. They can instead be metaphorical tools for helping
> others understand, or something else entirely. We don't /need/ a
> theory of truth because "truth" doesn't necessarily exist and we can
> quite happily get along without it.
You argue the case but offer no warrant for it. That is, why should
anyone prefer to think of my using the word "coffee" as only a metaphor
rather than an reference to a real object? We can call the word coffee a
metaphor, an illusion, a fiction, or a screwdriver, in fact anything as
long as we remain in our private closets. But offering our private
usages publicly requires it be accompanied with justification. That one
says coffee is a fantasy is not a statement that we should embarrass
ourselves by exposing to others, and in itself it has no greater
significance than a poem written in a language no one understands. The
issue is not what kind of intellectual gymnastics we can perform, but
what their value might be to others. If our intellectual gymnastics give
us pleasure but we don't intend them to be ultimately understood by
anyone else, I suspect the word masturbation must apply.
> okay well I might be wrong about him. I've read a little about him,
> but not his works.
Marx could write well or could write terribly. He could be cryptic and
turgid, although when he was discussing something fairly obvious, he
could be good. Vol. I of Capital is intellectually exciting, although
often challenging. If you find time to read anything by Marx, I
recommend it, although others would probably point to other works.
>> I meant by "engaging the world" a much more general way than
>> purposefully engaging it to achieve some end. This might imply some
>> moral obligation such as you mention, such as being lazy is
>> anti-social or not healthy for us. By engaging the world I only meant
>> being _in_ it so that the world affects us and we have effect upon
>> it. I believe there is no situation in which both of those causal
>> relations would not be present, short of death.
>
> Well in those terms it's arguable that we cannot help but be in the
> world, even after death.
If this remark was meant critically, we are not in the world after
death, for there is no longer a "we". My comment was aimed to suggest an
alternative to the we-world categories and instead to represent them as
aspects of one process.
Just to make sure there's no confusion, the "world" aspect of this
process is not the entire world, but that part of the world with which
we happen to stand in a causal relation, that part of the world of which
we are aware. We have good reason to assume that the world unknown to us
is like the known world, but that assumption has often proven to be
unwarranted, especially in the early 20th century. But until there are
surprises or anomalies, we need to assume the unknown world will be like
the known world.
Also the "we" is not consciousness, but a material we as living
beings. Consciousness and knowledge emerge from our interaction with the
world, and as such acquire properties of their own, which can therefore
inform our activity in the world. Because of this dialectic, our
knowledge can acquire ever greater truth value.
Truth value, I suggest is therefore not a mind-matter correspondence,
but a condition of action. Even false knowledge presumes much more truth
than it is in error. It is a question of the development of a knowledge
that makes action efficacious.
However, I'm probably not offering here a utilitarian theory of
truth. For one thing, I suspect utilitarianism separates knowledge and
the world, while I see knowledge as an emergent effect of the activity
process that has world and we as its aspects. For another, a utilitarian
view seems to presume a functionalism. On the contrary, I presume the
world in which we act is contradictory, and therefore neither action nor
thought can be entirely functional or unambivalent. Informed action must
address the real possibilities and limitations of any situation, and so
our explanation of a situation must identify a causal mechanism in
relation to those limits and possibilities.
In historiography (which is not the subject here, I realize), the
historian studies a past that no longer exists. It is conventional to
suggest that the empirical traces of the past that happen to persist
into the present are the sources that the historian must work up to make
useful for the production of a conception of the past. However, there
are problems with this very conventional view that I'll not elaborate
here. I only suggest that the present and past refer to one global
process in which humans engage their world. The limits and potentials of
the present, which necessarily inform effective activity, are the two
aspects of a contradiction that can't be observed in the present, but
only by understanding history as a contradictory process that empowers
and constrains action. True knowledge of the past means exposing its
causal mechanisms in relation to a contradictory structure, and the
limits and possibilities in the present result from the operation of
past unobservables. Our action depends on knowledge of the system as
contradictory, and that reality is exposed only in the passing of time.
Please excuse this last paragraph. I indulged myself primarily for my
own self-clarification.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM
jason
> > "doing well". Their apparent skepticism is a direction, not a
> > position, because positions are what they distrust. Their direction
> > isn't /just/ negative. On the contrary, their reasons are carefully
> > setup and deliberate. It's a bit like the building up of an illusory
> > picture whose sole purpose is to show the illusoryness of all
> > pictures.
>
> Yes, that I understand the point. I don't know that I'd use the word
> "direction" so much, because that implies a goal, so perhaps tendency
> would be better.
Fair point. I'm sure they'd complain about anything directed at
them :)
> > Of course since you're looking to rest on certain assumptions for
> > whatever ends, postmodernism will wear the critisism for the means you
> > find lacking.
>
> Sorry, I don't quite understand. Yes, I do rest on certain assumptions
> for certain ends. That is, while certain assumptions might be subject to
> deconstruction, that must serve to arrive at better ones, which is not
> what postmosdernism seems aiming to do. And, yes, I'd cling to an end,
> but not an intellectual end, but the end of social
> solidarity. Vocabulary, conceptual categories and intellectual insights
> I see as means to that end. Postmodernism seems to reverse this
> relation.
>
> Not sure what you refer to by "means that I find lacking" or
> postmodernism "wearing the criticism." Perhaps a typo here. I find the
> conventional categories insufficient, but conclude I need better ones,
> better not only intellectually, but more fundamentally, better in their
> support of social solidarity (the contradiction implicit here that
> social solidarity is best served by the very conventions I and the
> postmodernists reject, is only apparent because I left the phrase
> "social solidarity" abstract, and the contest of categories is actually
> in the context of social contradictions, so the conventions are
> one-sided).
You find postmodernism distasteful, inadequate, going in the wrong
direction or undesireable for certain reasons. You might permit me to
say that you set postmodernism aside because it's not a means to your
ends. That these certain reasons aren't a means for you, isn't the
fault of postmodernism. And these reasons aren't critisisms of
postmodernism unless postmodernism claims to be such a means.
> > Self and other can be reconciled with a "human essence" we all share,
> > a "universal truth" that we can all come to on our own, or, not
> > exhaustivly I'm sure, a sharing of world views through play, movement
> > or communication - your "social being".
>
> Now these are the very categories I question. The notion of human
> essence is part of Enlightenment ideology, and its fairly well agreed
> that the notion is vacuous. Marc Bloch once spoke of the deep seated ego
> that is transcendent, but what is this ego if not simply a reference to
> empirically diverse personalities? To speak of an essence independent of
> empiria seems nothing but essentialism, which today is not only found to
> be generally objectionable, but I assume would also be spurned by
> postmodernists. Kind of reminds me of Newton's mysticism, that all
> things have an essential sympathy.
>
> Self and other can perhaps be reconciled if there were indeed an
> abstract human essence, but this seems more a logical possibility than
> pointing to anything real. In any case, it does not seem to have been
> the point of the self-other categories when first cooked up, for the aim
> was to represent the other person as merely a means to your private
> ends, and social relationships were not seen as manifestations of some
> kind of internal unity (in the manner, say, of John Donne), but external
> and contractual, like the meeting of one person with another in the
> marketplace. Newton's sympathies are akin to Adam Smith's "trucking and
> bartering", which represents a relation in which the participants remain
> essentially the same and separate.
Absolutely, I question them as well. You can see how they come about
though. Language is the flavour of the century, it's the new
idealism. It's often arrogated to the thing that sets us aside from
animals, the medium in which worlds can be re-presented, the medium of
understanding, etc. As such, human essence is Chomsky's universal
grammar; universal truth is how our minds come to mirror reality; and
the social being is the comming-to-understand-each-other through
communication.
> > A self-other dichotomy is the typical identity of non-identities where
> > the typical dialectical word game ensues.
>
> Not sure I follow you here. I was speaking of concepts as they relate to
> society, and you here reduce a dialectical relation to language. I don't
> see how a self-other dichotomy represents an identity at all, but rather
> the other is just an object of action or thought. For example, in
> correspondence theory, a true statement corresponds with the world, but
> no one employing it suggests that the statement and the world are one,
> only that in some respect they are similar. A red apple and a red car
> are similar in one respect, but that does not mean they are essentially
> one.
>
> But your "identity of non-identities" is ambivalent, for the phrase is
> contradictory. Perhaps you are thinking of identity by negation, and
> that I would agree amounts to a word (logic) game. But I don't think
> "the other" was originally meant to imply the existence of "not-self",
> and I suspect this way of representing the other came up only with
> objective idealism, which few people find attractive. I don't think
> mainstream (bourgeois) thinking can be tarred with this brush, but
> rather an instrumental notion of the other.
The identity of non-identities is meant to be clean scafolding for the
unity of opposites. It's not meant to be flattened into a
contradiction but a clear way of looking at the problem we're faced
with when we deal with the reconciliation of apparenly disparate
things. It's the language philosophers use when they talk about the
problem of change - not because the idea of identity and negation is
the correct way to frame change, but because it carries less bagage
than other words and it highlights the problem. And can also relate
to logic I suppose, which the analytics find attractive.
If there is a difficulty moving from unity of opposites into identity
of non-identities then this will also be illuminating. Bare in mind
that there is plenty of room to hang ideas on the scafolding, like
movement and process. It's just foundational in a clean-slate kind of
way.
> > But we should be careful that we're not setting up the problem up in
> > terms we want it solved. If you divide everything into binaries then
> > you can say the same thing about everything, just fill in x and y. Of
> > course the problem with abstraction is that a lot rides on getting it
> > right.
>
> I agree, but am not sure of your point. Binaries show up frequently (yin
> and yang), but my concern here is not with binary thinking, which often
> seems useful, perhaps only because of the limitations of thought, but
> with bourgeois conceptual binaries in particular, which seem a
> manifestation of a contradictory society. That is, binaries (up-down,
> left-right, in-out, etc.) seem necessary to thought, but in the case in
> hand, binaries conceptuals are not merely tools, but are ideological,
> and that's where I'd see the problem, not with binary thinking per se.
If you're a dialectical materialist the of course you wont see a
problem with binaries. If binary thought is a special mode that shows
up where problems are then that's an interesting claim. If you're
only saying that there is a contradiction in society, which is a
problem, then where does being a dialectical materialist come into it?
The old left and right wing governments aren't opposites although they
appear to be. One promotes equality and the other freedom. I think
that we all have attitudes and values that seem contradictory at first
but in the end are just different. I don't see the point in
describing a great divide, like left/right, and saying it's a
contradiction. It seems to be a big generalisation that distances the
reality of the situation.
> I don't think "abstraction" can ever really "get it right". The
> abstraction does not create things, but is a reflection of the
> limitations of mind, depending as it does on inferences from sensation,
> on phenomena, empiria.
I don't see why abstraction is a limitation. We're good at
generalising from the specific and it is very useful for finding
patterns in an otherwise chaotic scene. There are as many ways to
abstract things as there are patterns in them.
> I sense a certain ambivalence here between abstraction such as x, y,
> which indeed can be anything, and an abstraction that is the relation of
> things such as a causal relation. Here "abstract" refers to what does
> not reduce to a particular, but a relation of particulars, and so isn't
> entirely open ended, such as x and y. The problem of "getting it right"
> seems a quite different issue in these two kinds of abstraction.
>
> > The big problem is a "unity of opposites" - resolving the
> > contradiction of the identity of non-identities. Typically it's
> > resolved through movement or a shift in perspective. In either case
> > there is a /change/ that takes place and the problem with change is
> > resolving the identity of identity and non-identity - or in less
> > confusing terms, solving the problem of persistence through change.
> > This presents a regress you'll probably need to sort out.
>
> But you seem to be defining "unity of opposites" in Hegelian terms, and
> I'm not sure who would be inclined to do that. Let me give an example of
> a unity of opposites that is not at all Hegelian. There's a conception
> known as a thermodynamic engine, and basically it suggests that an
> emergent process is driven by and depends on a dissipative process, the
> net change in entropy of these two processes, which are opposite with
> respect to the direction of their entropy change, must be negative. We
> definitely have a unity here, since dissipation in the environment
> drives emergence, and the emergence results in a greater environmental
> dissipation; their unity is subject to the Second Law.
I'm suspicious when people start talking about entropy and quantum
theory, especially in the context of dialectics which claims to be a
theory of everything. They're both poorly understood even by people
who have studied them. There are nice formulas and various statements
we can make about entropy but at the end of the day it is still a
difficult concept to grasp. It may not necessarily refer to anything
in the world or have much meaning at all besides the equations and
interpretations that we play with. So while I appreciate you trying
to illustrate something outside of Hegelian terms, the illustration is
hazy because of the terms used. Emergent and dissipative processes...
I mean, these concepts sound riddled with problems. Where to begin?
Hegel didn't use the terms thesis, antithesis and synthesis, but the
idea of a unity of opposites can be said in any number of ways. I
don't see why the particular differences matter a great deal when I'm
suspicious about the idea in general.
> It is assumed here that emergence and dissipation are opposite in
> respect to the direction of their entropy change, and this may at first
> seem rather a parochial and of interest only in physics. But many
> processes are entropy-like in their behavior. Information theory,
> emergence of order, improbable outcomes, etc., which are general enough
> to have wide significance.
>
> For example, social development in the sense of creating an order that
> addresses our needs can only take place because of a dissipation of our
> natural environment. The name we give this dissipation of the
> environment is economic production. So social development depends
> ultimately on the economy in the sense that it is the economy that
> constrains the probability distribution of any kind of possible human
> creative action.
Entropy is a term used in science and maths. I would hate to apply
science to society where it traditionally doesn't have a lot of
traction. Even if it did, would we really say, for example, that just
because the equations of fluid dynamics does well at predicting
traffic behaviour, we should then to assume that we've captured
something essential about fluids and traffic?
> > I'm referring to the dialecitc's unity of opposites, whether it be
> > marxist, hegelian, postmodern, or whatever. Phrases like "the sphere
> > of all meaning is meaningless", "the set of all sets is not a set",
> > "there is nothing to intuit in being, in fact, being /is/ nothing",
> > "... and the slave becomes the master", "truth is a lie", "be free",
> > "you are what you are /and/ what you are not", etc.
>
> > I probably haven't captured marxists language here, but I'm sure it
> > wont feel out of place at the end of the list.
>
> A "unity of opposites" indeed depends on the context in which such a
> phrase is used, and surely there's no commonality in Hegel, Marx,
> postmodernists, etc. The words used may be the same, but what they refer
> to quite different. In logic, it is a no-no. In postmodernism I suppose
> the phrase is at fault because it presumes binary categories. In Hegel,
> it made sense because a negation presumes an objective idealism. In my
> example, I hope that the notion is not problematic. I suspect in
> every-day situations, such as male-female, action-reaction, conservation
> laws, etc., we can speak of a unity of opposites without too much
> problem. But I agree that the list of example you offer do represent
> problems because of language and logic. But I don't take them to be the
> measure of reality, but a reflection of the limitations of mind.
I find it hard to believe that there's no commonality between Hegel
and Marx with respect to a unity of opposites, their idealism-realism
distinction aside.
> I'm not sure what "Marxists' language" quite means. It was not so much
> Marx, but Engels who worried about dialectical laws. That his
> formulations strike us as inadequate (although I'd argue less so than
> his critics suggest), that seems clearly a result of the culture of the
> time. With Engels and subsequently _some_ Marxists have gone beyond a
> simple systemic or dialectical view to discuss the metaphysics or
> principles of matter per se, and if you are critical of these efforts,
> I'd be inclined to agree to varying degrees. But Diamat was not really
> what Marx was about, but an analysis of the world in terms that revealed
> both the possibilities and limitations of class struggle.
>
> >> And as for your last point, I'm not sure what "ultimate knowledge"
> >> is. I suppose that's God's view of things.
>
> > I suppose what I'm asking is that if you see this unity of opposites
> > as a fundamental truth, how can you then use it as a theory of truth?
> > Wouldn't it have to be true on a higher-level, an ultimate kind of
> > knowledge?
>
> I'm not sure I suggested that a unity of opposites was any test of
> truth. Rather, I (tentatively) see the power to act effectively as a
> test of truth. If a dialectical materialist analysis enhances our power
> to act, then it is a useful tool and thereby has truth value. That one
> can't bring up unambivalent examples where such a kind of thinking has
> proven useful is not a pragmatic counter argument, in part for the
> reasons I've been critical of pragmatic tests of truth.
Not a test for truth, but the idea of a unity of opposites as a true
assumption.
> > I think there's any number of stories we can tell about the past. The
> > real test for the theory would be if you can predict what's going to
> > happen, not just in society but in any material process, like physics
> > and chemistry for example.
>
> Historians would disagree with this, for they lay emphasis on the
> creativity of human behavior and to varying degrees explain history in
> terms of human action.
Not sure you got my point. I was (politely) passing off your
description of historical events by saying there are other stories we
could tell. The notion of truth and cause is a tricky one with
history. All we can really talk about are the facts - what we are
pretty sure happened and when - which is often sketchy. The rest is
interpretation.
Then I was saying that in order for a dialectical account of history
to be taken seriously, three things need justifying: the
interpretation of facts, how these interpretations are put into the
dialectical mould and finally the dialectical system itself. The
proof that this whole process is a good one is where you can
repeadedly predict what's going to happen - not just in society but in
any material process. Explanation only can be lame. For example,
"God did it" explains everything, but clearly you're going further
than this.
> With an emergent process such as history (and
> evolutionary sciences in general), explanation is not predictive,
> although even in evolutionary processes one can predict somewhat, but
> the aim instead is the discovery of the causal mechanisms at work in the
> past, which historians tend (unfortunately) to refer to as causal factors.
If dialectics has no predictive powers, only explanatory, then why is
it better than any other commentary? Or empty commentary?
I appreciate you don't need to have predictive powers to have a good
theory, but there needs to be some problem that dialectics solves that
other theories don't?
> Abductive/retroductive/retrodictive reasoning is characteristic of all
> evolutionary sciences, including historiography.
> It looks at a known
> outcome and considers what earlier conditions made that outcome
> probable. So it's not predictive, but retrodictive, which is quite
> something else. The issue is that any number of initial states could
> account for and _explain_ the situation under study, and so one must
> employ various means to decide which explanatory hypothesis is best. In
> principle that is difficult; in practice, not so difficult, although it
> means that you are likely to end with competing hypotheses, which makes
> for more fun. Versus the postmodernist view, these competing hypotheses
> are generally understood to be not just stories, but have different
> degrees of truth value. As for physics and chemistry, they often, but
> not always, deal with hypothetically closed systems, in which prediction
> becomes possible _because_ of our imposition of closure (the lab).
History is more than story telling, yes, but only to the degree that
science starts leaving the scene. But the level you were describing
history was from a socio-historical view, and society, let alone
historical society, doesn't yield at all well to the scientific
method. If your dialectical development of history is a schema that
captures how society actually unfolds, then you'll need to prove it so
that nobody disputes it. But the dialectical story isn't like that,
many people would and do dispute it, and for good reason. Why should
we proceed according to any schema? Why is a dialectical description
of the past better than another description of the past?
I imagine you would reply by getting into the idea of being-in-the-
world and changing it. Social action, etc. Of course acting and
changing society plays a good part in how events unfold. I wont
disagree with you there. I also wont disagree with a tale of how
there might be forces struggling against one another. But it's a big
leap to then suggest there are two main contradictory forces at work
that unfold according to a pre-defined dialectical schema.
> >> Without exploring the issue, I'm not comfortable with the notion that
> >> we should be indifferent to whether our personal belief system is at
> >> all right, true, preferable, virtuous, sensible, etc., and what is
> >> only important is that our mind holds thoughts. I realize this is not
> >> what you intend, but you need to block that possible implication.
>
> > All these words, right, true, virtuous, sensible, etc. can be replaced
> > with desireable (or some other word that does away with theory in
> > general). There is no indifference with desire.
>
> Yes, perhaps in an isolated world of thought, but surely not if our
> practical activity is central. If I'm trying to drive a screw, there's
> surely a right way to do it that does not reduce to my wish to drive
> it. My wish counts for little if I've got no idea how to use a
> screwdriver.
Desire is typically for the ends we seek rather than the means by
which we get there. If you're driving a screw, the right way to do it
is the way that best fulfills your desire to have it driven in.
"Right way" is a pragmatic matter that doesn't reduce to the desire
itself.
> > Being-in-love is usually short-hand for being-in-love-with-someone.
> > Money only finds its worth with exchange. I don't mind hearing that
> > we're essentially social beings but I do mind the stronger idea that
> > we have a social essence within us.
>
> It is you, not I, who bring in the word "essence". If I suggest that
> people are instances of social process, there's no essence here, but a
> real process that gives rise to the emergent properties we call
> "society" and which develop the individuality of individuals. But both
> are aspects of that one real process. That is, the term "social being"
> is not at all essentialist, or at least I hope not.
Well, you did say we start as "essentially social beings".
How do your "emergent" properties take shape exactly? I mean, there
must be certain conditions for the possibility of certain kinds of
emergence.
> > Sure, when we reflect on the world but then why do we need to reify it
> > is my question?
>
> More importantly, why _not_ reify it? That is the only significant
> question. That is, that the world exists and to a degree exists
> independently of my consciousness seems not only what people in all
> times and places have always assumed, but is a precondition of for any
> effective action in which nearly all people must engage. There may be an
> elite, relatively insulated from the world, that has the luxury of
> disconnecting their adventures in thought from the world, but it always
> necessarily just an elite and so generally marginal and ultimately
> irrelevant to anyone else. Not having the privilege of being a member of
> such an elite, I can't be expected to take their speculations very
> seriously until their critiques become meaningful in relation to my real
> worldly and social existence.
I'm refering to truth. Why reify truth. It only comes up when we
take a step back and talk about bits of language but there's no reason
to think or even expect that it actually exists. We don't need to
talk about the symbols we scribble or the grunts we make, but when we
do it's useful to use the idea of truth. But it's a meaningless idea
until we interpret the scribbles and grunts and decide if we agree
with them or not. We mistake this agreement for truth, but all that's
really happening is that we're agreeing that we would make the same
scribble or grunt. Not that there is a spooky, indescribable property
of the scribble or grunt called "truth".
You'll probably argue that we mean to refer to some yet to be defined
causal chain that makes us want to write that scribble down or grunt
in that way. Sure, we can call this process "truth" if you like, or
"belief causing process", or whatever. But it's not the discovery of
what truth really is or what what we must mean when we talk about
truth. It's just applying a label to summarise a description -
applying language to another bit of language.
> Of course I am hinting at the insular world of the postmodernists. While
> I believe that there is good reason to have academies in which thought
> is unconstrained by practical concerns, such an academy is ultimately
> responsible to the society that pays for it and tolerates it because in
> some ultimate and indirect way it is socially useful. If an academy were
> the seed ground of racism or fascism, my tolerance for it would quickly
> evaporate, and I'd not be inclined to pay for it in the name of free
> speech.
I agree, academies for dogma aren't an attractive investment.
Academic institutes in my opinion do a good job at encouraging people
to think for themselves, and should do.
> I am not a member of any such academy, and so have toward it an attitude
> similar to that I have for poets. Without them the world would be a much
> duller place, but the value of poetry ultimately comes down to its being
> meaningful and rewarding for those who are not themselves poets. Poetry
> that is really unintelligible is of no value whatsoever and is no better
> than toilet paper.
The value is personal. Someone might still enjoy unintelligible
poetry because they can identify with it ;)
> > Because we invent terms for speaking about language doesn't mean these
> > terms refer. They can instead be metaphorical tools for helping
> > others understand, or something else entirely. We don't /need/ a
> > theory of truth because "truth" doesn't necessarily exist and we can
> > quite happily get along without it.
>
> You argue the case but offer no warrant for it. That is, why should
> anyone prefer to think of my using the word "coffee" as only a metaphor
> rather than an reference to a real object? We can call the word coffee a
> metaphor, an illusion, a fiction, or a screwdriver, in fact anything as
> long as we remain in our private closets. But offering our private
> usages publicly requires it be accompanied with justification. That one
> says coffee is a fantasy is not a statement that we should embarrass
> ourselves by exposing to others, and in itself it has no greater
> significance than a poem written in a language no one understands. The
> issue is not what kind of intellectual gymnastics we can perform, but
> what their value might be to others. If our intellectual gymnastics give
> us pleasure but we don't intend them to be ultimately understood by
> anyone else, I suspect the word masturbation must apply.
Coffee's a drink, not a metaphor. The word "coffee" is pictured as a
post-it note sticking to those little morning gems - this is a
metaphor. We interact with post-it notes, know how to use them and
what to expect. We use this familiarity as a metaphor for how
language works but the philosophers take it literally, spend a good
deal of time and coffee trying to work out how the sticky glue works.
In reality, there's no reason for us to think there's actually a
language-ish post-it note sticking to coffee. When we use a metaphor
literally, the metaphor that starts using us.
We associate the word "coffee" with coffee. Psychologically, that's
pretty much the whole story. There's no need for us to reach out and
place this association into the world and call it "truth", sticking
post-it notes on post-it notes. We're the ones making the
association, not the world.
We associate "I'm drinking coffee now" with the experience that I'm
drinking coffee right now. It's a comparison of grunts or symbols
with an experience of the world. It's a comparison of seemingly
unrelated things as if there is something similar or equal about
them. This is exactly what a metaphor is.
We can't stand outside of a causal process with the world even after
we die. Worms act on the corpse and in turn the corpse acts to push
up daisies. Clearly you're saying that this kind of action doesn't
count because it's not "living", but we don't really know what this
means. Do you mean a sketchy scientific definition of life,
consciousness or perhaps the ability to have knowledge and to act
effectively? If the latter, then by who is it judged to be
effective? The daisies are pretty happy with the effectiveness of the
corpse.
> However, I'm probably not offering here a utilitarian theory of
> truth. For one thing, I suspect utilitarianism separates knowledge and
> the world, while I see knowledge as an emergent effect of the activity
> process that has world and we as its aspects. For another, a utilitarian
> view seems to presume a functionalism. On the contrary, I presume the
> world in which we act is contradictory, and therefore neither action nor
> thought can be entirely functional or unambivalent. Informed action must
> address the real possibilities and limitations of any situation, and so
> our explanation of a situation must identify a causal mechanism in
> relation to those limits and possibilities.
Well, I'm a nominalist so I see this kind of speculation as
meaningless word games. Making patterns by sticking labels on to
other labels.
> In historiography (which is not the subject here, I realize), the
> historian studies a past that no longer exists. It is conventional to
> suggest that the empirical traces of the past that happen to persist
> into the present are the sources that the historian must work up to make
> useful for the production of a conception of the past. However, there
> are problems with this very conventional view that I'll not elaborate
> here. I only suggest that the present and past refer to one global
> process in which humans engage their world. The limits and potentials of
> the present, which necessarily inform effective activity, are the two
> aspects of a contradiction that can't be observed in the present, but
> only by understanding history as a contradictory process that empowers
> and constrains action. True knowledge of the past means exposing its
> causal mechanisms in relation to a contradictory structure, and the
> limits and possibilities in the present result from the operation of
> past unobservables. Our action depends on knowledge of the system as
> contradictory, and that reality is exposed only in the passing of time.
What makes you think there is a contradictory structure at work?
Haines Brown
> You find postmodernism distasteful, inadequate, going in the wrong
> direction or undesireable for certain reasons. You might permit me to
> say that you set postmodernism aside because it's not a means to your
> ends. That these certain reasons aren't a means for you, isn't the
> fault of postmodernism. And these reasons aren't critisisms of
> postmodernism unless postmodernism claims to be such a means.
Yes, a reasonable argument. However, I don't know that I'd go along with
its premise that I am an absolute individual. That is, to put the point
crudely, we all "do our thing", and so if mine doesn't happen to
coincide with the postmodernists, well, that's fine, for they are free
to ignore me just as I am to ignore them. There's no truth, only points
of view, and our points of view are entirely private matters. Are you
saying this?
I would object to this line of thought because it obviously is not how
the world works. People communicate and depend on one another. We share
cultures; we work together. If there were no shared meanings or shared
truths, it would imply social anarchy, moral anomie, even worse,
solipsism. I realize that postmodernism rejects this charge, but I don't
know how they do it (ignorance).
The problem as I see it is that it posits private intellect first and
everything else becomes marginal to it. This might make sense for some
(academics for whom collegiality and teaching are relatively
unimportant), but not for the overwhelming majority of people.
Another problem is that it is clearly bourgeois ideology (social
atomism, self-other dichotomy), and is therefore a one-sided view of
things, which brings me back to the topic of this thread. If
intersubjective truth is not the goal, then surely the content of
thought becomes irrelevant. To put it in crueler terms: it is the
arrogance of a privileged elite living under advanced capitalism. Such
an elite seeks to deconstruct any foundation for a social critique of
the status quo of which they are beneficiaries, particularly
meta-narratives.
I've taken the liberty of this informal forum to put my point in cruder
terms than I would in polite company. But the issue remains: a
deconstruction is not liberating unless accompanied by something more
positive as an alternative. It is broadly acknowledged that the
postmodernists have usefully forced us to look more critically at our
presuppositions, but what do they offer that is positive?
>> Self and other can perhaps be reconciled if there were indeed an
>> abstract human essence, but this seems more a logical possibility
>> than pointing to anything real. In any case, it does not seem to have
>> been the point of the self-other categories when first cooked up, for
>> the aim was to represent the other person as merely a means to your
>> private ends, and social relationships were not seen as
>> manifestations of some kind of internal unity (in the manner, say, of
>> John Donne), but external and contractual, like the meeting of one
>> person with another in the marketplace. Newton's sympathies are akin
>> to Adam Smith's "trucking and bartering", which represents a relation
>> in which the participants remain essentially the same and separate.
>
> Absolutely, I question them as well. You can see how they come about
> though. Language is the flavour of the century, it's the new
> idealism. It's often arrogated to the thing that sets us aside from
> animals, the medium in which worlds can be re-presented, the medium of
> understanding, etc. As such, human essence is Chomsky's universal
> grammar; universal truth is how our minds come to mirror reality; and
> the social being is the comming-to-understand-each-other through
> communication.
Interesting, but I'm having trouble unpacking your point about language
being the flavor of the century and the new idealism. Are you referring
to bourgeois conceptual categories? If so, I'd object that the
categories were not just a passing fashion, but ideological. If you are
referring to these categories, I'd agree that it entails an idealism of
some kind, but not sure about your word "new".
Or are you speaking instead of language? If so, it is not simply
language that sets us apart from animals, which after all also have
language of a kind as well as a culture (socially transmitted patterns
of behavior). What seems to distinguish human mentality is symbol
systems, the ability to abstract and then think about the content of
thought (some animals can think abstractly, as a Scientific American
article of some months ago on crows' problem-solving ability shows). I
don't know that this point differs from your own or if you think it at
all contentious, but needed to make sure.
As for Chomsky's universal grammar, that indeed (if we were to accept
Chomsky's contested view) would suggest a human universality. But this
hardly gets us very far. Chomsky's concern was why humans pick up
languages so quickly, and any extension beyond that point into other
matters seems contentious. Secondly, the issue is not universality per
se (after all, we are universally biological beings as well), but a
universality that is meaningful in terms of adults living in a social
world, the real world of today.
And I don't understand your association of Chomsky's universal grammar
with universal truth. What do you mean by "universal truth" as mirroring
reality? Do you simply mean that humans live in one world, and so share
much of their mentality from that fact?
I get the feeling your "the social being is the
coming-to-understand-each-other through communication" is meant to bring
up the Verstehen/erklären distinction of Dilthey, which is another
conceptual contradiction I associate with bourgeois ideology. I won't
belabor the point if it was not your intent.
But taking your point as it stands, it seems to me that there can be no
such communication without the presumption of some initial ground that
makes it possible (shared experiences, culture, language, concepts,
etc.). If this ground of communication is social, which it obviously is,
then I don't understand how our social being can at the same time be
represented as the result of communications. The linguistic turn seems
to assume we live in a community, for it is about the language we share,
but at the same time seems aimed (in some cases) to deconstruct it.
You are still losing me. What is the point of reconciling apparently
disparate things? This could mean that disparate things are really one
although they appear (phenomenally) to be disparate, or it could mean
that they are really disparate, but acquire a unity at some higher
level. Did you intend one of these two possibilities?
Why is reconciling apparently disparate things a "problem"? In context,
there was reference to self-other. If so, why try to reconcile them? Is
the reconciliation to take place at the level of mind or of action, and
why? I see self-other as bourgeois contradictory categories (parallel to
Verstehen/erklären), and so my impulse is not to reconcile them, but to
transcend them (with "social being" represented as process).
Having worried about this for some time, I don't think philosophers have
anything useful at all to say about change, but this is undoubtedly a
biased view. Besides, I don't find change to be that problematic. I
assume that all things are processes, and it is rather persistence that
begs for explanation. This is the opposite of what most historians do,
but that may be part of their problem. In scientific terms, change is
universal, while persistence has to be explained, which is now usually
done in causal terms, which makes persistence a special case of
change. I don't see that this view carries much philosophical baggage,
while the notion of identity and negation seem to carry a crushing
weight of (idealist) baggage.
But I suspect most philosophers are not actually drawn into an idealist
swamp when it comes to dealing with change. For example, see the
excellent (and standard) work of D. H. Mellor, Real Time II (London,
1998). A very interesting and readable little book.
> If there is a difficulty moving from unity of opposites into identity
> of non-identities then this will also be illuminating. Bare in mind
> that there is plenty of room to hang ideas on the scafolding, like
> movement and process. It's just foundational in a clean-slate kind of
> way.
I'm still unclear just what this scaffolding is. The "identity of
non-identities" so far seems just words that on the surface are
contradictory and therefore of little use. Just what do you mean by
them? Besides a definition, examples and applications might help.
I add that to me the word "contradiction" can only refer to opposite
processes with respect to some property that can be encompassed within
the notion of entropy change. It is a real material contradiction that
carries with it no philosophical problems at all. The Hegelian/idealist
notion of contradiction I consider just an intellectual adventure having
no bearing on science today.
>> Binaries show up frequently (yin and yang), but my concern here is
>> not with binary thinking, which often seems useful, perhaps only
>> because of the limitations of thought, but with bourgeois conceptual
>> binaries in particular, which seem a manifestation of a contradictory
>> society. That is, binaries (up-down, left-right, in-out, etc.) seem
>> necessary to thought, but in the case in hand, binaries conceptuals
>> are not merely tools, but are ideological, and that's where I'd see
>> the problem, not with binary thinking per se.
>
> If you're a dialectical materialist the of course you wont see a
> problem with binaries. If binary thought is a special mode that shows
> up where problems are then that's an interesting claim. If you're
> only saying that there is a contradiction in society, which is a
> problem, then where does being a dialectical materialist come into it?
But what is the problem with the list of binaries I offered? Surely one
does not have to be a dialectical materialist to find the categorical
opposites up/down useful concepts. I suspect you have no problem with
them either, but rather to what you call "binary thought" or "binary
mode of thinking". I don't embrace such a mode of thinking, but perhaps
because I'm not sure that it means. When I (admittedly adventurously)
suggested that bourgeois self-other binary was ideological, I meant that
it was an artifact in the mind that arises from a social contradiction,
and not merely a conceptual Gestalt or passing intellectual fashion. In
my view, a contradiction has nothing to do with a kind of thinking, but
with de re natura.
That is, I am indeed saying that the contradiction is in society (and
I'd add, between society and the natural environment), and so you ask,
why drag diamat into it? The reason is simple: the object is not to
understand the world, but to change it. A contradiction in naturalistic
terms such as I've described sees the contradiction as giving rise to
emergent needs that structurally can't be met and of emergent capacities
that structurally can't be adequately used to address those needs. That
is, a naturalistic contradiction makes action in the world both possible
and necessary. To understand our world in terms of contradictory
processes and in systemic terms is exactly what diamat is about. In
terms of contemporary science, there's really nothing unusual or
problematic about it. But of course, it gives primacy to social change
through social means, and sees thought as primarily a means to that end.
I should add that there's no homogeneous notion of diamat, and some of
my views are a bit unconventional. That is, you might well entertain
doubts about some version of diamat, and I might well agree with
you. Friedrich Engels first articulated it in explicit terms, and while
I'm inclined to give him a sympathetic reading, at the same time I'm
quite ready to admit his limitations.
> The old left and right wing governments aren't opposites although they
> appear to be. One promotes equality and the other freedom. I think
> that we all have attitudes and values that seem contradictory at first
> but in the end are just different. I don't see the point in
> describing a great divide, like left/right, and saying it's a
> contradiction. It seems to be a big generalisation that distances the
> reality of the situation.
I agree that the old left/right categories may be a bit
artificial. However, I certainly don't accept your rough definitions for
them. The left traditionally referred to broadened democracy, not
equality except in law. The right has stood for a limitation of power to
some particular sector of society. "Freedom" in bourgeois ideology means
freedom from constraint, not a power of action, but with the actual
development of European society such that there was in fact equality
before the law, left/right came in practice to correspond to the degree
of government intervention to address social needs. It seems to me these
are minor policy differences affecting the bourgeois ruling class, and
are primarily rhetorical, for in fact the policy is primarily dictated
by circumstance (George Bush preaches a conservative line, but in fact
is more interventionist than his predecessors if we take the totality of
state functions. It is only in certain limited respects that he is
laissez faire, and the conservative folks are often not very happy with
him as a result).
I go into this to demonstrate that it is possible to discuss left/right
in concrete terms without getting hung up on binary opposites. I tried
to illustrate that they are opposite trends within the European
bourgeois order in terms of the relation of the state and society. To
drag in the issue of philosophical contradictions can only muddy the
water. So I'm agreeing with you, it appears.
But at the same time, I don't see how a deconstruction of binary
categories achieves anything at all. It does not and cannot impinge on
the real differences in bourgeois society. The terms left/right may be
problematic, as I suggested above, but their deconstruction only
deconstructs an ideological ground on which to challenge the existing
order with its ruling class for it follows there is no social interests
we might label the left (the good guys) and the right (the bad guys),
leaving no one to challenge anything. It sure ain't liberation.
>> I don't think "abstraction" can ever really "get it right". The
>> abstraction does not create things, but is a reflection of the
>> limitations of mind, depending as it does on inferences from
>> sensation, on phenomena, empiria.
>
> I don't see why abstraction is a limitation. We're good at
> generalising from the specific and it is very useful for finding
> patterns in an otherwise chaotic scene. There are as many ways to
> abstract things as there are patterns in them.
These are difficult waters. What I was thinking of was objective
idealism. That is, I tentatively don't accept the ontological existence
of anything that has no empirical aspect constraining it to an existence
in space-time. I'm perhaps open to the criticism that my proposed notion
of causal potency (vs. causal mechanism) is an abstraction disconnected
with empiria, but I'd reply that at least it represents a relation to
the cosmos. Causal potency that is really independent of the entropy of
the universe is only virtual (quantum fluctuation). I'm open to an
argument to the contrary, for I'm speculating off the top of my head.
What was implied in my statement is that there are things we cannot
adequately represent in thought, such as process, and so we deconstruct
them into one-sided notions. We can observe a process such as the
setting sun, understand it intuitively, but can't really describe it to
someone else (poets here excepted) except by one-sided conceptions such
as a change in a statically represented state in time. For example, in
scientific realism, a distinction is made between observables and
unobservables. Both are considered real. We can't observe unobservables,
although we know they are necessarily connected to observables and
together constitute a theoretical whole which is considered real. Again,
I'd appreciate any argument to the contrary.
Now you bring up generalization as an abstraction that does not seem a
limitation of the mind, and I must agree. A generalization is a mental
construct, but seems well founded on phenomena. Obviously we are using
the word abstract in different ways here. I guess I was speaking
ontologically (are there real abstractions?) and you were speaking
epistemologically (can we develop mental constructs that detach
themselves from empirical instances?).
> I'm suspicious when people start talking about entropy and quantum
> theory, especially in the context of dialectics which claims to be a
> theory of everything. They're both poorly understood even by people
> who have studied them. There are nice formulas and various statements
> we can make about entropy but at the end of the day it is still a
> difficult concept to grasp. It may not necessarily refer to anything
> in the world or have much meaning at all besides the equations and
> interpretations that we play with. So while I appreciate you trying
> to illustrate something outside of Hegelian terms, the illustration is
> hazy because of the terms used. Emergent and dissipative processes...
> I mean, these concepts sound riddled with problems. Where to begin?
True, and in addition we should be cautious about transporting insights
gained from one level of reality to another. However, despite the
ambivalence of entropy, particularly why quite different levels of
reality seem to adhere to the formalism of entropy, nevertheless it is
pragmatically true that the general principles of entropy change seem
universal. For example, if a system moves toward a less probable outcome
(emergence) than its initial state, we can only explain it by looking at
its relation to its environment (environmental dissipation toward a more
probable state). This seems a valid generalization and is expressed in
the Second Law. It seems not at all ambivalent; we can unambiguously
represent degrees of disorder in mathematical terms.
Let me inject that "dialectics" only implies "weak emergence", while
diamat entails a "strong emergence" - a "structuration" of the active
agents in the system, their development through participation in the
system. So I limit myself here to diamat and do not refer to dialectics,
which seems only to mean systemness.
I don't see dialectical materialism as a "theory of
everything". Scientists seem agreed that everything in the universe is a
contingent process. That is a universal ontological statement, a
theoretical axiom. But when we speak of a "theory of everything", don't
we mean by it an explanatory theory? That is, I don't see diamat as
explanatory, but as axiomatic.
>> For example, social development in the sense of creating an order
>> that addresses our needs can only take place because of a dissipation
>> of our natural environment. The name we give this dissipation of the
>> environment is economic production. So social development depends
>> ultimately on the economy in the sense that it is the economy that
>> constrains the probability distribution of any kind of possible human
>> creative action.
>
> Entropy is a term used in science and maths. I would hate to apply
> science to society where it traditionally doesn't have a lot of
> traction. Even if it did, would we really say, for example, that just
> because the equations of fluid dynamics does well at predicting
> traffic behaviour, we should then to assume that we've captured
> something essential about fluids and traffic?
I'm not clear here. True, entropy is a term used in thermodynamics,
information theory, etc. When you refer to the application of science to
society, do you mean science in general or entropy in particular? The
term science outside the Anglo-American world is understood broadly and
as such certainly applies to society, as in Geschichtswissenshaft, for
example.
Whether a particular concept drawn from the natural sciences can be
applied to society is another issue. I think it safe to say that human
development is constrained by biology and ultimately by physics, which
doesn't mean that it reduces to either or that what strikes us as being
significant about human life can be explained in terms of mechanics. But
when we realize that natural science has long foregone positivism and
deals with "creative" ("negentropic") processes, then the difference
begins to disappear. I do believe that the general axioms of the natural
sciences need to be held as axiomatic in the human sciences and see no
reason why they shouldn't be. They are only a portion of the axioms
employed and may not play as important a role. As to your specific
point, people have tried to apply entropy directly in economics,
anthropology and history as an explanatory principle, but the results
don't seem overwhelming. But I've not been suggesting we do that.
Minor point, but what is wrong with your example? If fluid dynamics do
allow us to predict traffic flow (I'll take your word for it, for I
don't know this to be true), what is wrong with using that information
in the design of highways? Perhaps the issue is what you mean by
"something essential".
> I find it hard to believe that there's no commonality between Hegel
> and Marx with respect to a unity of opposites, their idealism-realism
> distinction aside.
Well, I assume there is some commonality. Not only are both people
living in the same culture, not too distant in time, but Marx was at one
point (his youthful liberal days) affiliated with neo-Hegelians. But I
don't think much is gained by extracting a phrase like "unity of
opposites" from context. One could say that opposites attract in a
loving relation or magnetic poles without any thought of philosophy.
>> I'm not sure I suggested that a unity of opposites was any test of
>> truth. Rather, I (tentatively) see the power to act effectively as a
>> test of truth. If a dialectical materialist analysis enhances our
>> power to act, then it is a useful tool and thereby has truth
>> value. That one can't bring up unambivalent examples where such a
>> kind of thinking has proven useful is not a pragmatic counter
>> argument, in part for the reasons I've been critical of pragmatic
>> tests of truth.
>
> Not a test for truth, but the idea of a unity of opposites as a true
> assumption.
I've spoken of possible directions of change, emergence and
dissipation. Dissipation is universal; emergence is not. To speak of
this as a "unity of opposites" does not add anything new, for it only
says that when there is an emergence, there must be an environmental
dissipation upon which it depends. The net effect of these processes
moving in opposite directions, their unity, is a net dissipation. There
is an assumption here (an axiom) that the appearance of any novelty can
only be understood as part of a broader system that as a whole moves
toward a more predictable state.
Where "power" comes in is that the creation of order represents work
being done, and the driving engine of work is dissipation. Where I
perhaps differ from this conventional view is that I don't define "work"
as merely empirical change, but as change in a process, which means
change in either or both its unobservable as well as its unobservable
features.
An "assumption" is by definition true. I see diamat as a possible axiom,
and so is assumed true. I don't suggest it as an axiom because doing so
will pay off in pragmatic terms (in the future), but because it is an
existential requirement (in the present) for our humanity, for creative
action beyond the trivial. This is a bold statement, but I'll not try to
justify it here beyond the hint that it may be an existential
requirement for the working class rather than the ruling bourgeoisie.
> Not sure you got my point. I was (politely) passing off your
> description of historical events by saying there are other stories we
> could tell. The notion of truth and cause is a tricky one with
> history. All we can really talk about are the facts - what we are
> pretty sure happened and when - which is often sketchy. The rest is
> interpretation.
But your point is to a degree a conventional one. In all sciences, there
are a range of hypotheses that account for the known facts, and so the
question becomes, how are we to choose one over the other. That is, as
everyone today realizes, hypotheses are "underdetermined" by the
facts. There are some criteria offered in the natural sciences for
choosing among competing hypotheses, but the problem becomes acute in
historiography because the object of interest is not independent of us
and it no longer exists. There is a much more limited scope for testing
hypotheses. The jaundiced student complains that historical
interpretations are only idle speculations, but historians don't agree
with that and employ a range of methods to distinguish the relative
merits of explanatory hypotheses.
As for the "facts", historians are agreed that the facts have a
subjective component. There are selected; they are worked up by means of
"auxiliary sciences" to serve as the raw materials for the construction
of historical interpretation, and then they are subject to the consensus
of the community of historians before they become historical facts. The
notion of "brute" facts died with positivism a half century ago. The
facts are theory-laden, which does not mean they are not objectively
constrained by what actually happened, but that there is an inevitable
subjective aspect as well. As a result, there is no fundamental
distinction between the fact and and a interpretation based on those
facts, although there is greater leeway for the latter.
> Then I was saying that in order for a dialectical account of history
> to be taken seriously, three things need justifying: the
> interpretation of facts, how these interpretations are put into the
> dialectical mould and finally the dialectical system itself. The
> proof that this whole process is a good one is where you can
> repeadedly predict what's going to happen - not just in society but in
> any material process. Explanation only can be lame. For example,
> "God did it" explains everything, but clearly you're going further
> than this.
Not sure quite how to respond to all this. If diamat is axiomatic, I'm
not sure that I'd use the phrase, "a dialectical account" any more than
if I said process is axiomatic and then said to be offering a "process
account". Do we categorize our theories or interpretations in terms of
their axiom sets? I'm not sure, but in practical terms, making axioms
the sole basis of classification seems to impoverish the effort to
arrive at understanding.
I hope folks don't try to cram the facts into a dialectical materialist
mold, for that is generally seen as improper in the sciences (although
done all the time). We don't make the facts fit the theory any more than
we reduce theory to just the empirical facts. This point seems quite
conventional these days.
As for justification of such a theory, a pragmatic test is certainly a
common one. However, since I've cast doubts on such a pragmatic test,
I'm not sure who is the target of your comment, whether it is meant to
be critical of pragmatism or whether you are supporting the idea of
pragmatic tests. Same for prediction. Prediction has limited role in
evolutionary sciences such as historiography, where the object of study
is an emergent process. Again, not sure if you are characterizing a
position with which you disagree or offering your own take on the
matter.
>> With an emergent process such as history (and evolutionary sciences
>> in general), explanation is not predictive, although even in
>> evolutionary processes one can predict somewhat, but the aim instead
>> is the discovery of the causal mechanisms at work in the past, which
>> historians tend (unfortunately) to refer to as causal factors.
>
> If dialectics has no predictive powers, only explanatory, then why is
> it better than any other commentary? Or empty commentary?
I was speaking of historiography, not a diamat approach
specifically. Historical interpretations are generally not predictive
because the object of study is the past and not looking to a future
outcome, because history is the story of novelties that can only be
weakly predicted, and because historians generally aim to explain
novelties rather than what remains the same.
Clearly, if historiography is not predictive, what is the test of a
hypothesis? Most historians would be hard pressed to answer this
question beyond some vague criteria generally shared with the natural
sciences (Okham's Razor, etc.) A classic view in historiography with
which most historians would not disagree is that how we understand the
historical process bears directly on our situation in the present: if we
see history as an emergent process in which humans can exercise choices
that have some chance of having effect, then we can see ourselves in the
present as being able to shape our own future. I find this dangerously
vague, but it is conventional. While it is a standard view in
historiography, it is one that was originally coupled with a progressive
notion of history that has died. This is one reason historiography is in
crisis today. for it has neither pragmatic utility nor does it seem to
lend ideological support for liberation.
And yet I don't resign myself to this pessimistic view. I agree that the
late nineteenth-century view that historical consciousness is the
cornerstone of liberty does concern the present rather than the past or
future. But I see it as arising from an awareness of how the
interdependent objective limits and potentials of the historical
process. Diamat axioms are intended precisely to enable us to represent
this reality in thought, to see history as a contradictory process, and
so offers a the potential of a liberating consciousness for a class that
needs and wants change.
> I appreciate you don't need to have predictive powers to have a good
> theory, but there needs to be some problem that dialectics solves that
> other theories don't?
Yes, as I just suggested, a diamat axiom set offers the possibility for
a historic consciousness that has liberating potential for the working
class. Nothing automatic or foreordained in all this, of course. It's
just that if we don't have a clear sense of our unmet needs and a clear
sense of our real potentials for change, any why they don't just
naturally enter into a functional relation, we are unlikely to act
constructively in the present. We will see our needs as accidental; we
will no see our potential except as individuals, we will not understand
that, to use the words of Dr. Pangloss, this is the best of all possible
worlds.
> History is more than story telling, yes, but only to the degree that
> science starts leaving the scene. But the level you were describing
> history was from a socio-historical view, and society, let alone
> historical society, doesn't yield at all well to the scientific
> method.
Sorry to presume, but it looks like you are suffering from a mythical
"scientific method". Much is written about this, and I've made points
about it along the way, so no point in belaboring it now. I mentioned
the abductive method that is commonly used in the natural sciences, and
it is one habitually used by historians.
> If your dialectical development of history is a schema that captures
> how society actually unfolds, then you'll need to prove it so that
> nobody disputes it. But the dialectical story isn't like that, many
> people would and do dispute it, and for good reason. Why should we
> proceed according to any schema? Why is a dialectical description of
> the past better than another description of the past?
Not sure exactly how to reply. I suggested a dialectical materialist
axiom set should have social utility. You seem to raise a pragmatic test
whether it has in fact been useful. Well, of course, that's a difficult
challenge. But looking at things in such terms has arguably not proved
very useful either. The world today falls very short of our hopes for
mankind, and certainly not in terms of Enlightenment ideals. What
justifies a world view cannot be based on either the past or the future,
but on the present, and the present, I suggest, is clearly problematic
unless one gets into bed with the capitalists and suggests that this is
the end of history.
If I eat my Wheaties every morning, I should get stronger. But I don't
eat them in order to test the theory a couple of years down the road,
but because I reasonably believe that it will be the likely result. Is
that belief justified? Probably so, not based on empirical test, but on
my understanding of physiology.
The object is not to prove it so that no one disputes it. If there were
no dispute, the approach would become a petrified doctrine. In any case,
I know the bourgeoisie are not likely to welcome it. And what good
reason do you have in mind why people would dispute it? If we think of
the approach in purely practical terms, such as in terms of unmet needs
and underutilized capacities and their relation, that should make sense
to the man on the street. It is fairly conventional thinking in the
labor movement, for example.
Why should we proceed according to any schema? Because without a scheme,
we have a theoretical tabula rasa and don't proceed at all. Constructive
action is impossible without some conception of the world and of our
relation to it. Only a very reactionary position can be anxious to
deconstruct the tools with which we might build an alternative world,
and so that's why postmodernists are mostly members of the petit
bourgeoisie in an extraordinarily advantaged position. Sorry for the
sociological reductionism here, but isn't that in fact the case?
Why is the set of axioms associated with diamat better than any other
for understanding the past? Because it reasonably supports a notion of
the historical process that can facilitate liberation in the present,
and what other standard of success can there be? And there's no positive
alternative, for historical consciousness entirely lost that social
function in the course of the twentieth century.
> I imagine you would reply by getting into the idea of being-in-the-
> world and changing it. Social action, etc. Of course acting and
> changing society plays a good part in how events unfold. I wont
> disagree with you there. I also wont disagree with a tale of how
> there might be forces struggling against one another. But it's a big
> leap to then suggest there are two main contradictory forces at work
> that unfold according to a pre-defined dialectical schema.
There are two issues here. The first is that I prioritize action in the
world and see consciousness as arising from it. This action in the world
is what gives rise to a consciousness of the limits and potentials that
hopefully inform future actions. I don't see consciousness as a closed
and autonomous system, but as an emergent effect in mind of action in
the world. The opposite position seems to represent an idealism.
The other issue is whether a dialectical schema is a preconceived model,
and I've suggested it is not, although I suspect some have seen it that
way. For one thing, it is too abstract to have real explanatory power,
and so is better seen as an axiom set that structures how we go about
devising theories. Worth reading as an example is Marx's Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. This is an excellent history in anyone's
view; no one sees it as cramming the facts to fit a preconceived schema.
>> > Being-in-love is usually short-hand for being-in-love-with-someone.
>> > Money only finds its worth with exchange. I don't mind hearing
>> > that we're essentially social beings but I do mind the stronger
>> > idea that we have a social essence within us.
>>
>> It is you, not I, who bring in the word "essence". If I suggest that
>> people are instances of social process, there's no essence here, but
>> a real process that gives rise to the emergent properties we call
>> "society" and which develop the individuality of individuals. But
>> both are aspects of that one real process. That is, the term "social
>> being" is not at all essentialist, or at least I hope not.
>
> Well, you did say we start as "essentially social beings".
The problem is that the word essence can mean two different things. When
I say the apple is essentially red, I mean it is more red than any other
color. When I speak of essential human nature, what I refer to is a
supposed commonality behind surface appearances and separable from
them. When I suggest that we are essentially social beings, that is
simply shorthand for saying that the individual and the social whole are
merely aspects of one process, and that in empirical terms what makes us
distinctively human and supports our individuation is our social
existence. I'm not suggesting that in essence we are social beings in
the sense that an inclination to associate is genetically hard-wired,
although that may be true as well.
> How do your "emergent" properties take shape exactly? I mean, there
> must be certain conditions for the possibility of certain kinds of
> emergence.
The issue is not certain kinds of emergence, but emergence per se, the
condition for which is environmental dissipation. That is, the
dissipation of our natural or social environment is the engine which
makes our constructive action possible. This is simple thermodynamics
and certainly accords with our experience of the world. "Emergence" I'm
only defining as an outcome that is improbable in relation to some
initial state thanks to our constructive activity. When it comes to
"certain kinds" of emergence, that depends not on the particular
contingencies of time, place and circumstance, but also on the kind of
system in which we operate (conventionally called a mode of production
or socio-economic formation) and the "age" or "maturity" of that system
in terms of general systems theory or the depth of its contradiction in
Marxist terms.
In other words, to understand a particular instance of emergence we need
to look at particular circumstances and put the system as a whole into a
time frame. We need to wed empirical facts with a theoretical conception
of the whole. In this way a particular outcome is seen in relation to
the initial state in only probabilistic terms, and we account for the
deviation from that most probable outcome as the result of human
struggle. But this is just conventional wisdom, I believe.
> I'm refering to truth. Why reify truth.
But who reifies truth? In simple terms, truth refers to a relation of
our statements and the world. It is humanly constructed and has no
reality independent of humans. While a causal relation can be real, a
truth correspondence is a formal relation that is unconnected with how
we happened to arrive at that truthful statement. A formal relation can
be true only in terms of the specific parameters that we happen to
define for it.
> But it's a meaningless idea until we interpret the scribbles and
> grunts and decide if we agree with them or not. We mistake this
> agreement for truth, but all that's really happening is that we're
> agreeing that we would make the same scribble or grunt. Not that
> there is a spooky, indescribable property of the scribble or grunt
> called "truth".
If I understand correctly, I agree. Truth is not a property of the
sentence, but its relation to the world. Now how we construct truthful
sentences or justify them is an entirely different matter and one that
is not so easily addressed. But there are social conventions for
achieving that project. That there is contention over these conventions
does not mean that we can't arrive at sentences that people feel are
true. Remember, my basic point is that a belief that our sentences can
have truth value is a necessary condition for any constructive action in
the world. To really believe the world is illusory is tantamount to
insanity and moral depravity. Do you know any sane person who really
believes his conceptions of the world has no truth value whatsoever?
> You'll probably argue that we mean to refer to some yet to be defined
> causal chain that makes us want to write that scribble down or grunt
> in that way. Sure, we can call this process "truth" if you like, or
> "belief causing process", or whatever. But it's not the discovery of
> what truth really is or what what we must mean when we talk about
> truth. It's just applying a label to summarise a description -
> applying language to another bit of language.
If I understand, you are saying that "truth" is an artifact of language
and has nothing to do with the world. The world of language as well, I
suppose, for how can you convey to me any sentence about language that
has any truth value? It seems you don't just deconstruct a word, but
communications itself, including the linguistic turn.
>> Of course I am hinting at the insular world of the
>> postmodernists. While I believe that there is good reason to have
>> academies in which thought is unconstrained by practical concerns,
>> such an academy is ultimately responsible to the society that pays
>> for it and tolerates it because in some ultimate and indirect way it
>> is socially useful. If an academy were the seed ground of racism or
>> fascism, my tolerance for it would quickly evaporate, and I'd not be
>> inclined to pay for it in the name of free speech.
>
> I agree, academies for dogma aren't an attractive investment.
> Academic institutes in my opinion do a good job at encouraging people
> to think for themselves, and should do.
But how can you make such arguments if they don't hopefully represent
truths? Why shouldn't academies teach dogma if that is what tickles the
teacher's fancy? How can you teach people to think for themselves, if
you neither communicate through shared language, concepts and symbols
nor provide justifiable reasons for their doing so?
>> I am not a member of any such academy, and so have toward it an
>> attitude similar to that I have for poets. Without them the world
>> would be a much duller place, but the value of poetry ultimately
>> comes down to its being meaningful and rewarding for those who are
>> not themselves poets. Poetry that is really unintelligible is of no
>> value whatsoever and is no better than toilet paper.
>
> The value is personal. Someone might still enjoy unintelligible
> poetry because they can identify with it ;)
If it is really unintelligible, they can't identify with it beyond the
accident that the words might happen to make a nice pattern on the
page. Unintelligible means without meaning, and I'm not sure how you
could find something meaningful that is meaningless. A poem in Urdu
might be meaningless for you, but then I can't imagine how you can
"identity with it" (whatever that means) unless at least you know it is
human writing, that it is a poem, that it took some effort to
compose. Even a koan is meaningful at some level, and even its meaning
requires that you know what its words literally mean. I suspect you are
carelessly overstating your case in support of a philosophical point,
but the point can't be supported by an unrealistic assessment of
reality.
Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit esse
molestie consequat, vel illum dolore eu feugiat nulla facilisis at vero
eros et accumsan et iusto odio dignissim qui blandit praesent luptatum
zzril delenit augue duis dolore te feugait nulla facilisi.
Can you "identity" with this? It is nonsense even if you happen to know
Latin. Only if you know the function of this text in typography will it
make any sense to you, and then what is meaningful is not the words or
sentences, but only their function.
> Coffee's a drink, not a metaphor. The word "coffee" is pictured as a
> post-it note sticking to those little morning gems - this is a
> metaphor. We interact with post-it notes, know how to use them and
> what to expect.
The word coffee is a symbol. How does metaphor come in here? And the
symbol is stuck in our brain; how did it get stuck to the cup? The cup
is a real entity with certain properties. Those properties that are
persistent we assemble in thought as a conceptual category because of
daily activities. The conceptual category points to a real or
hypothetical cup of coffee so that we might think or communicate about
it. What's so mysterious or problematic about this?
> We use this familiarity as a metaphor for how language works but the
> philosophers take it literally, spend a good deal of time and coffee
> trying to work out how the sticky glue works. In reality, there's no
> reason for us to think there's actually a language-ish post-it note
> sticking to coffee. When we use a metaphor literally, the metaphor
> that starts using us.
And here you loose me. That a word indexes an object is obviously not a
"metaphor", and so I don't know what you mean. All the word does it to
point to something, which is a relation, not a metaphor.
And then you seem to suggest that because we are so used to employing
words "metaphorically", we spontaneously transfer the procedure to
language itself. I don't know what this means, either. Declarative
sentences are quite different than words. A declarative sentence that
happens to assert some truth about the world has truth value, and that
does seem to imply some kind of analog between the sentence and the
world. But what's wrong with this? If my oscilloscope displays a sine
wave, what wave is not the world, but is an analog of a certain feature
of the world. Does the sine wave convey a truth? Of course not, for I
need to view it and understand it as a one-sided analog.
A word indexes; a truthful statement refers to an analog. Both are
relations, but one only indexes and only implies the object stands in
some relation to the subject. The declarative sentence, however, has a
truth value relation to the world. Here the subject has knowledge of the
object. Truthful knowledge of the world only becomes a problem in
principle when closely scrutinized. For scientists it is rarely a
significant problem (example of an exception is some aspects of quantum
mechanics); for philosophers it may always be a problem, but why take
their problem seriously?
> We associate "I'm drinking coffee now" with the experience that I'm
> drinking coffee right now. It's a comparison of grunts or symbols
> with an experience of the world. It's a comparison of seemingly
> unrelated things as if there is something similar or equal about them.
> This is exactly what a metaphor is.
You didn't clear things up for me. In your sentence, the word coffee is
a symbol for an entity, not a truth statement. The sentence as a whole
is a truth statement about my action. There's no "comparison" here, but
a description of my act that has truth value. A symbol and a statement
about an experience are indeed two different things, but who suggests
otherwise? I fear you may be setting up a straw man.
>> Truth value, I suggest is therefore not a mind-matter correspondence,
>> but a condition of action. Even false knowledge presumes much more
>> truth than it is in error. It is a question of the development of a
>> knowledge that makes action efficacious.
>
> We can't stand outside of a causal process with the world even after
> we die. Worms act on the corpse and in turn the corpse acts to push
> up daisies. Clearly you're saying that this kind of action doesn't
> count because it's not "living", but we don't really know what this
> means. Do you mean a sketchy scientific definition of life,
> consciousness or perhaps the ability to have knowledge and to act
> effectively? If the latter, then by who is it judged to be effective?
> The daisies are pretty happy with the effectiveness of the corpse.
You stretch. Existentially I know I am alive. That is immediate
experience. For me to doubt it would be self-contradictory. I certainly
know what being alive means, if nothing other than my awareness of being
alive. A scientific definition of life, however uncertain it may be,
hardly casts a shadow over my existence. Consciousness is a side issue,
for I'm alive even in my sleep. The issue is whether I know I live, not
whether biologically I happen to be living tissue.
As for my "effective action", I was only being cautious. I only mean
that action in the abstract does not mean much, such as that I'm
breakfast for worms after my death. We are really only concerned about
action that is purposeful in relation to consciousness, not the blinking
of my eye, which is meaningful only in biological terms. The issue I
raised by saying "effective" is not that it is successful, but that it
is undertaken to have effect, it is purposeful. I'm not looking at
outcomes, but at what constitutes meaningful action.
>> However, I'm probably not offering here a utilitarian theory of
>> truth. For one thing, I suspect utilitarianism separates knowledge
>> and the world, while I see knowledge as an emergent effect of the
>> activity process that has world and we as its aspects. For another, a
>> utilitarian view seems to presume a functionalism. On the contrary, I
>> presume the world in which we act is contradictory, and therefore
>> neither action nor thought can be entirely functional or
>> unambivalent. Informed action must address the real possibilities and
>> limitations of any situation, and so our explanation of a situation
>> must identify a causal mechanism in relation to those limits and
>> possibilities.
>
> Well, I'm a nominalist so I see this kind of speculation as
> meaningless word games. Making patterns by sticking labels on to
> other labels.
You don't seem to address my (admittedly adventurous) comment. When I
suggest that the world is contradictory, I'm not playing a word game,
but would argue (successfully or not) that that's the way the world
is. Do you mean to reduce this to a play of words, rather than to
suggest, as well you may, that my representation of the world in such
terms has little truth value? When you say good morning to someone you
care about, is that only a word game, or do you really at some level
really wish them a good day? When someone says that to you, do you not
get a good feeling because you believe they really mean it? While we
certainly do play word games, to universalize this practice deconstructs
social relations and morality to become little more than a private
fantasy, which strikes me as profoundly arrogant and anti-social. Or do
I misunderstand?
>> I only suggest that the present and past refer to one global process
>> in which humans engage their world. The limits and potentials of the
>> present, which necessarily inform effective activity, are the two
>> aspects of a contradiction that can't be observed in the present, but
>> only by understanding history as a contradictory process that
>> empowers and constrains action. True knowledge of the past means
>> exposing its causal mechanisms in relation to a contradictory
>> structure, and the limits and possibilities in the present result
>> from the operation of past unobservables. Our action depends on
>> knowledge of the system as contradictory, and that reality is exposed
>> only in the passing of time.
>
> What makes you think there is a contradictory structure at work?
For the reason I said. It seems obvious that our world has enormous
potentials; it is obvious that there are great needs. Why are these
potentials not used to address the needs, which is also a matter of
observation? If for the sake of argument you take these features to be
empirically true, how can the contradiction be resolved? I suggested it
is most obviously resolved by looking at things historically and
structurally so understand why outcomes are not what people intend.
There are other hypotheses that might explain the above. For example,
the greed of the ruling class. It could (albeit very weakly) explain why
potentials have developed; it could explain why needs are not being
met. So it behooves me to show why my hypothesis is preferable to the
other. That I can do, but that's not the issue here. I only offer a
hypothesis, and it is one that draws on a somewhat conventional body of
accepted theory and (within the narrow constraints of this example), it
is in principle responsive to empirical evidence. That's all I need to
construct a hypothesis.
To justify that hypothesis is another matter. I can do by suggesting
that no other lends comparable support to human liberation. Why is human
liberation important? Because creative action seems a necessity for what
we think of as a distinctively human existence.
--
Haines Brown, KB1GRM