The Worldly Foolishness of Philosophy
The philosopher is mostly a dunce in the eyes of a world assured of certain certainties. Philosophy is obviously just "a bunch of opinions." That this philosophical statement cancels its own authority goes unnoticed.
In our default thuggishness, we reluctantly concede that an otherwise unwelcome theory is not just an opinion only to the degree it threatens or seduces us practically.
The physicist is a wizard who summons nuclear fire, perhaps to destroy cities, perhaps to save the world with cheap energy. The biologist tweaks the code of life, perhaps to summon pandemics, perhaps to end aging forever.
What can the philosopher offer ?
Is the philosopher a life coach ? A spiritual advisor ? This philosopher is analogous to a nutritional supplement, --- a piece of technology, tested qualitatively like a new painkiller or piece of music in terms of the feeling he/ it gives us.
Or can we really take seriously the idea that a philosopher is essentially scientific in some radical, foundational sense ? Is the philosopher a kind of pure mathematician of existence as a whole ? I say pure because I want to highlight an impractical interest in truth for its own sake. Even an unpleasant truth is still good, because it is possessed as truth, because its worse --for people like 'us' -- to be confused or deceived.
I claim that philosophy in the grand ur-scientific sense outlives its gravediggers, because these gravediggers are themselves such philosophers in disguise (as post-metaphysical neopragmatists perhaps). I make the structuralist point that, call it what you will, we engage as human beings in some analogue of fundamental ontology, albeit more or less seriously in terms of openness to criticism.
Philosophy has made substantial progress, but this progress is not naked for outsiders in the way that progress in physics is naked via miraculous technology. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.
What Im trying to foreground is a style of tacit irrationalism, already in Francis Bacon, that conflates science and worldly power - in a word : sophistry. I don't pound at the gates of power and demand recognition. I try to articulate and even embrace the status of the transcendental buffoon. Of course the engineer and the sophist (also an engineer really) get better seats at the table. Let us recall the drink that was offered to Socrates for all his 'useless' clarification of our existence.
Please join me in some conversational research !
In our default thuggishness, we reluctantly concede that an otherwise unwelcome theory is not just an opinion only to the degree it threatens or seduces us practically.
The physicist is a wizard who summons nuclear fire, perhaps to destroy cities, perhaps to save the world with cheap energy. The biologist tweaks the code of life, perhaps to summon pandemics, perhaps to end aging forever.
What can the philosopher offer ?
Is the philosopher a life coach ? A spiritual advisor ? This philosopher is analogous to a nutritional supplement, --- a piece of technology, tested qualitatively like a new painkiller or piece of music in terms of the feeling he/ it gives us.
Or can we really take seriously the idea that a philosopher is essentially scientific in some radical, foundational sense ? Is the philosopher a kind of pure mathematician of existence as a whole ? I say pure because I want to highlight an impractical interest in truth for its own sake. Even an unpleasant truth is still good, because it is possessed as truth, because its worse --for people like 'us' -- to be confused or deceived.
I claim that philosophy in the grand ur-scientific sense outlives its gravediggers, because these gravediggers are themselves such philosophers in disguise (as post-metaphysical neopragmatists perhaps). I make the structuralist point that, call it what you will, we engage as human beings in some analogue of fundamental ontology, albeit more or less seriously in terms of openness to criticism.
Philosophy has made substantial progress, but this progress is not naked for outsiders in the way that progress in physics is naked via miraculous technology. A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign.
What Im trying to foreground is a style of tacit irrationalism, already in Francis Bacon, that conflates science and worldly power - in a word : sophistry. I don't pound at the gates of power and demand recognition. I try to articulate and even embrace the status of the transcendental buffoon. Of course the engineer and the sophist (also an engineer really) get better seats at the table. Let us recall the drink that was offered to Socrates for all his 'useless' clarification of our existence.
Please join me in some conversational research !
Comments (113)
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
[b]You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;[/b]
Sitting along the beds edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.[/i]
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44214/preludes-56d22338dc954
Brain storming/imagineering/musing/rumination! which is unrestricted by any notion of 'can't go there because.....'
Such, can cause thoughts in scientists that that they would otherwise, never have thought of.
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Reminds me of Popper's appreciation of metaphysics. I know also that some great scientists have loved philosophy.
Quoting plaque flag
Care to opine concerning the level or mode in which this openness to criticism takes place? What criteria have to be already in place in order for scientific criticism to be intelligible within any given community of researchers? And what sort of discipline is best suited to question and replace these criteria within which normative questions of truth and falsity, and correctness of method, gain purchase?
Philosophy is football with the universe as the ball, and everyman the referee.
The Goal.
Philosophers are the thought police; roping off the dead ends and directing the traffic, but going nowhere themselvesselves. Dutiful, taking pains, loving, hoping not to get run down today by a man in a hurry.
Yesterday, upon the stair,
A hurried man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
Historically, some professional philosophers have been known to pontificate : to speak from authority, but in complex abstruse esoteric language. That's why my indirect & superficial introduction to Postmodern philosophy sounded more like legalistic Sophistry, than Socrates faux humility "know nothing" set-up.
Unfortunately, some people want to get their wisdom cheap & revealed to them, pre-packaged, by wiser heads, in cryptic words that will make the dummy seem to be an authority. But then there are those (Trumpers) who merely want to be told --- in no uncertain terms --- what they already believe. So, who's the dunce here? :smile:
Pontificate : express one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic
Anti-Sophistry :
[i]"And this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men, that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know".
Note that here Socrates does not say that he knows nothing. Instead, he says that he does know little. The main point is not that he wants to glorify ignorance, but to expose those who pretend to know things that they dont.[/i] ___Socrates
https://daily-philosophy.com/quotes-socrates-knowing-nothing/
Since you mentioned nuclear annihilation and physicists - wouldn't it be the case that many people think philosophers have annihilated human values, unleashing relativism, hopelessness and nihilism? Scientists and experts are not much liked or trusted, but I would think poststructuralists and postmodernists have provoked as much popular outrage and disapproval as any other type of maven or wizard. Philosophy continues to slaughter gods, bringing with in the extermination of tradition and certainty. Turning cities into fireballs is one thing, but how about wiping out foundationalism and with it identity and truth... :razz:
Exemplary daily exorcisms of foolery (re: meta-ignorance (i.e. agnotologies (e.g. pseudo-discourses, sophistries)); expectations misaligned with reality (i.e. self-immiseration, alienation, dukkha); maladaptive habits of mind (e.g. mis/ab-uses of communication, judgment, knowledge), etc) aka "spiritual exercises".
Not much these days. But being philosophical might help smooth out the bumps in life.
The teaching of the sciences embodies the appropriate philosophical ideas for those subjects.
Did you ever look into Karl-Otto Apel ?
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/apel-karl-otto-1922
I first read about Apel in Zahavi's book on Husserl and intersubjectivity. I take him to be sketching a minimal foundationalism, relying primarily on the exclusion of performative contradiction. This is not so far from Brandom's coherence-aspiring subject. Behind it all is a quest for autonomy.
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Great quote. Like it or not, we seemed forced to do philosophy, and I include the possiblity of trying to avoid doing so, which just means a mess inherited unexamined beliefs.
Is the 'examined life' really Better ? I don't know. I can't help myself. Husserl talks in his introduction to the first English translation of Ideas about having fallen in love with philosophy -- as fateful as falling in love with a bad but beautiful woman.
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I love this classic. Just a hint of madness. Great parody. Wittgenstein might have included it in his unwritten book o' philosophical jokes. [ I think I saw it where the second line is 'I saw a man who wasn't there.]
I don't think it's that easy for a professor to speak from authority (they can be ejected for speechcrime), but certain movements seem to take certain assumptions / styles for granted.
Quoting Gnomon
Sometimes thinkers are saying simple things in a complicated way.
Sometimes thinkers are saying complicated things in a simple way.
Only insiders can tell the difference. I think this is a hard truth, because one becomes an insider --- able to genuinely follow and appreciate canonical works --- only with years of serious study. I don't pretend that insider-ness is an exact binary status, just to be clear.
Lately I use ontology as a synonym for philosophy because I personally like to stress its [ur-]scientific intention apart from the search from wisdom.
A person can be relatively wise and virtuous without caring much about the fussy details of ontology.
Excellent question ! For my money, the first big shock was just Voltaire and the wrecking crew of his time. The Enlightenment itself (atheism, humanism, autonomy, democracy) is what seems to trouble most people. Atheism implies/threatens nihilism. Even pluralism makes it hard to believe in my DIY household gods, because humans fundamentally need (are) community and recognition. In my view, this was 'bound' to happen in some way or another, given our nature as 'exponential' 'time-binding' primates. Is the issue that technology didn't bring Utopia ?That we are spoiled freed slaves who take our relative liberty for granted, use it primarily to cry for a return to slavery which is at least less lonely ? [ I'm against resentment. Virtue is its own reward. Hard to let go of wanting a pat on the back of course. ]
You reference more specifically what I'd call educated irrationalism. I see this as offending most people in exactly the same way that Voltaire does. A few others, like Husserl in his day, are offended by the treachery of these paradoxical clerics. More seriously, critical rationality was always already self-critical. Sometimes a daring self-critical thesis is revealed to be unstable or self-cancelling. Ideally this is revealed in conversational research and the thesis is patched or abandoned.
I think we both agree that they have simply assumed a flawed ontology. It's crucial that science looks around any particular human subject. It's absurd to radicalize or misunderstand the first genuine necessity and (pretend one can) look around human subjectivity altogether.
I'm a fucking empiricist [ like Husserl, who experience conceptuality as we all do ] , and I can make no sense of human cognition peeping around human cognition. I use my body to see, my brain to think. I can, when I'm around, pretend that I'm not around, but that don't mean I'm not around.
Instead this individual can see farther or better (is less biased or incomplete) than that one.And our specialized knowledge is largely necessarily dormant ('viral' inscriptions) and distributed -- no room for it all in the living single subject. We have to trust one another.
So there's the human/environment dyad and the individual/community dyad in a difficult-to-untangle relationship here, hence the confusion ?
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Fair enough. I think all of are philosophical in the navigation of our identity. Who am I ? Who should I be ? Fundamental questions in a free-ish society. Probably literature is just as good if not better at this task (dramaturgical ontology, choice of the hero path, like a discipline or inflexible point of honor.)
I very much think that a mathematician or physicist or biologist can do genuine 'ontological' work themselves.
My OP would also apply to nonapplied sciences --anything that the outsider can't cash out in terms of the 'miracle' of technology. A certain kind of pure mathematician is in the same boat as the apparently useless ontologist. [ G. H. Hardy thought his own work was useless, but it became useful (I'm thinking of crypto's use of number theory.) ] But I think both characters are doing something 'scientific.'
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expectations misaligned with reality
To me this hints at ontology. What is this reality ? The sciences are a prime source of information, but I contend that the personality has to synthesize a 'grand narrative.' Your offering of what philosophy is for is a great example of that.
I'd call that ontology. I don't see how a specialized science could do the same job. To be sure, this kind of ontology might be called 'merely' a private spiritual practice. But I think you and I both aim for a truth that is not merely yours or mine.
It's better they are unaware that's what they're doing. :roll:
Whatever reality is, reality necessarily excludes negates unreality (i.e. ontological impossibles (e.g. un-condittionals, un-changeables, reified ideas ('ideals'), etc)).
You might be right. I'm supposed to be a mathematician (by formal education), but I mostly read and write philosophy. I'm corrupted.
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The necessary exclusion you mention is also my approach. A minimalist foundation (reasaonable starting point) is precisely the outlawing of performative and logical contradiction.
I've been thinking lately that positivism, phenomenology, Kantianism ---all of these movements share in this properly exclusive spirit. Don't talk nonsense.
But it's hard to get right. Because (I claim) it's necessarily ontological. Can't do 'pure' epistemology first, because there's always some at least implicit ontology one argues from to establish that epistemology.
Yet I'm confident about the general approach of excluding nonsense. The identity of critical thought is blurry but weighty and solid. The task is endless clarification.
I can definitely agree that anyone who wants to deeply understand reality is going to end up shoulder-deep in metaphysics. But it's almost a tautology. Foundation. Radicality. All of these metaphors of the basis and the basic.
I perhaps foolishly very much wave the flag of philosophy.
Yes, so it's very difficult. Rorty viewed [ critical, secular ] philosophy as essentially Kantian. It is theory of knowledge, of the structure of all possible inquiry or experience. It seeks apriori truths about the deep structure of human existence. I still embrace this project, but he saw himself as moving beyond it.
Your own statement features the complexity of the enterprise, because you are speaking to the necessity of the possibility of surprise. Braver's book on antirealism follows the 'explosion' of Kantianism into a thinking that is more and more historical. The transhistorical center of the subject is shrunken along the way. Less and less of the traditional universal subject functions as a reliable immobile center. More and more the subject is deemed a creature of its time --often to the point of performative contradiction, which is my fundamental gripe about some 'pomo.'
Yes, I agree. And this is why I like to use 'ontology' for the more technical-scientific aspect of philosophy. Husserl is, for instance, not writing self-help books. It's fucking hard work to get relative clarity on foundational concepts like subjectivity and meaning and so on. Fussy stuff that bores the average person to tears, akin to pure mathematics. Outsiders don't respect it much because where's the gear, bro ? And anyone can do it.
I don't think there's anything wrong with self-help books, just to be clear. I love Epictetus and Epicurus, etc. For those who don't choose the particular existential path of 'scientific' philosophy ('ontology'), the literary or dramaturgical aspect of philosophy is indeed to be preferred. I read Nietzsche intensely in my 20s. My problem then was figuring out what kind of person to be (ethics, values, authority, identity).
I'm not bored with such issues now, but I'm more interested in fussy conceptual details than I once was, probably because youth's identity issues are relatively settled for me.
Form and substance - the first dualism. I sometimes call them 'stuff and arrangements'. I would say that mathematicians explore the possible arrangements of anything- pattern, chaos, order, disorder, symmetry, asymmetry. whereas physicists and biologists look to explore the actual arrangement of stuff. Some mathematicians seem to think that there can be, or are arrangements of nothing. It makes no sense to me. Just as you cannot have stuff without it being arranged or disarranged in some form, so you cannot arrange or disarrange nothing. Form is the general, and substance the particular, and they are two aspects on one world.
Or we could talk about energy and information as the temporal unfolding of energy difference into informational complexity.
Quoting 180 Proof
Ontological impossibles are contradictions, limits on sensible talk. but if reality happens to be that particles are wavy and waves are a bit particular, talk has to conform itself to reality, because talk does not constrain reality at all (unless it's God's talk of course - 'Let there be light.' :wink: ).
Mathematicians are also "spiritual advisors", for mathematics and logic are normative disciplines. Going along with Hacker's interpretation of Wittgenstein, I think it is most useful to consider the academic disciplines of pure Mathematics and logic as not having subject matter in themselves, but as defining semantical norms of representation that facilitate the translation, coordination and comparison of language games that do possess subject matter. Many language-games that are partly mathematical, e.g the natural sciences, possess some degree of subject matter to the extent that they are applied disciplines that establish synthetic propositions.
As for philosophy itself, I think it is reducible to every other subject and their interrelations.
Yeah that sounds right !
Quoting unenlightened
As you may know, set theory brilliantly (weirdly) builds everything from the empty set. I visualized it as Bubbleverse. The empty set is an empty circle. So it's circles inside circles inside circles, and one can build up to the real numbers and beyond. Nothing but circles. Empty circle at the center.
Cantor used vertical bars above his symbols of sets to indicate an act of abstraction. I respect that he included the subject in this sense.
Anyway, I understand your objection, but I'm partial to something like mathematical structuralism. Numbers are basically roles in structures. Their essence is in their relationship to other such roles. Holism. We don't say what a number is without describing the whole system. Same with objects in the lifeworld and the meanings of linguistic concepts, in my view. A single continuous semantic blanket.
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That's a reasonable claim. I don't think it's the whole story though. I have some of Cantor's original work in translation, and it's very much an 'intuitive' enterprise. The structures are 'there' for other mathematicians and he's studying them ---does not see himself as an inventor or a formalist.
The enterprise is normative in the sense that a scientist strives for the truth. But he's like a naturalist counting spider's eggs. He is articulating or disclosing a reality that was there waiting for the light to find it. [ I'd say it was implicit in human cognition or something, avoiding all-out Platonism. ]
I don't deny that other workers in the field had very different intentions.
Again, reasonable. But I'm tempted to say that they articulate norms that are 'found' or 'given.' This is not to deny creativity altogether. I just personally think there's an 'intuitive constraint' on our freedom. I can't put it under a microscope of course.
I guess my issue is that this itself is a philosophical claim. Yet I don't care about academic departments. So I'm talking about a mode of discourse that digs into the most basic concepts.
Gödel studied Husserl. It's easy to understand why. One of the basic questions for me in philosophy is : what the f*** are we talking about, really ? It's not just whether a statement is warranted that matters, but also what it means in the fullest and most robust sense.
Mathematicians might use a minimal substance of symbols in order to play with form with the 'weight' of substance minimized.
It's been done before.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the empty set. Now the empty set was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. And God said "there is the empty set and it is the only one, so the set of sets is one, and thus there are 2 sets, the empty set and the set of empty sets. and god divided the light from the darkness, and called the darkness the empty set and the light he called 'one'.
Mathematics is fabulous!
Quoting unenlightened
It really is (even if there is some irony in your remark.) Ever look into Cantor's ordinals and cardinals ? Beautiful stuff. Just finding a way to enumerate the rationals. Or seeing that a single infinite sequence of bits is also (is easily read as ) a countably infinite list of sequences of bits.The impossibly of enumerating all such sequences. Seductive apriori formal-intuitive science.
Yes Cantor is even more Godlike than the set theorist. Perhaps Hindu mythology could relate to him? I don't know enough of it. But the diagonal proof is beautiful. No matter how many gods you worship, there are always more ...
All very well said. I agree. And I'm not a Platonist, because my ontology is resolutely anthropocentric. Not on principle, but just on logical necessity. Don't want to speak beyond my experience. I never could figure out how to look around all human cognition and peep at Reality naked. And then I questioned what naked Reality could even mean.
Quoting unenlightened
:up: :up: :up:
Have you read Lyotards The Differend? For Lyotard a differend is a wrong or injustice that arises because the discourse in which the wrong might be expressed does not exist. To put it another way, it is a wrong or injustice that arises because the prevailing or hegemonic discourse actively precludes the possibility of this wrong being expressed. To put it still another way, it is a wrong or injustice which cannot be proved to have been a wrong or injustice because the means of doing so has (also) been denied the victim.
As Shaun Gallagher explains:
Fascinating stuff.
Do I think any actual conversation is stably or reliably ideal ? No. But I don't think Apel does either. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of critical autonomous rationality. We await the descent of New Jerusalem.
Quoting Joshs
I mentioned an "ideal communication community that is in principle equally open to all speakers and that excludes all force except the force of the better argument."
Are you sure we are disagreeing ? Is the target bad or do you just think we'll never hit that target ? Because I don't think we'll hit the target often or at all. But I've never drawn a perfect circle either. Yet the concept of the circle helps make those imperfect circles circles to begin with. I grasp the failure of a communication structure in the light an ideal or telos.
I dont think there is a single target to hit. As Gallagher writes:
He imagines a dialogue like the following between Gadamer and Lyotard:
The above is just the horizonal-ideal 'we' already discussed, the we-to-come, the city of god.
I'm happy to grant that we are all in some sense misfits with idiolects. I'll grant that we have differing conceptions of rationality, but clearly there's enough agreement to debate about how much agreement there is.
It makes so sense to argue against the conditions of possibility for an argument. That means others in a world and a working language and rational norms. A true skeptic doesn't show up, actually feels and enacts his loss of hope in the possibility of communication.
Quoting plaque flag
Note: Philosophy is very broad and I'll be making some generalisations, I can acknowledge exceptions.
Philosophy does not have an impractical interest in truth, it's thought funnelled through a particular set of selection biases and rules which aim at creating particular moral conditions. Some of these include:
1. Philosophy is thought for the group, logic must succeed at providing desirable conditions for the group, and arguments compete in being the best at doing this.
2. Philosophy is thought-overriding, the logics of philosophy represents a commitment to the well-being of the group, and this objective is sacrosanct. Alternative objectives aren't accepted.
3. Truths are correct references, philosophy excludes the relevancy of most relevances, and the relevant ones have moral importance. Philosophical concepts tie back to point 1, they must be beneficial to the group.
4. While science and scientific endeavours can represent a concept that is good for the group, that's the extent of its relationship with philosophy. Where science wouldn't be considered best for the group, philosophy would reject it.
While philosophy is a broad term, I think there's a substantial difference between solitary thinking and discussing philosophy. However, so long as philosophy, refers to the use of these biases, it's not just critical thought. If we're preaching to the group, we need to offer something the group would be interested in, and that's what philosophy is.
To me, an important part of philosophy is the combining of the overriding quality of morality and the nature of group thinking with rationality. I have issues with the idea of rationality, but I mostly see it as useful in this way. Its role is in compelling us to act in the best interests of the group.
I do think it's generally true that what's best for oneself, is what's best for oneself and the group, and by agreeing to conditions that would work for the group, we're all served. Philosophy strives to argue for the benefits of this group-orientated thinking, that we should sacrifice some of our own personal goals because if we all did that, we'd all be much better off. Philosophy also provides us with a reason to hold others accountable for their actions, and fight for the benefit of others based on blind principles.
I'd argue that's what philosophy tries to offer to the world. Holding others accountable to do what's in the best interests of the group and figuring out the best conditions for the group to exist in.
I see why this view is tempting. It looks like a form of relativism. Is your own statement here trying to be true ? Or as you yourself trying to create a particular moral condition ?
This next example is not aimed at you.
Let's say a person hates the conceptual complexity of metaphysics and sees no bump in their feed for all their trouble. Aren't they motivated to embrace a relativism that denies the purity of the enterprise ? 'It's all useful fiction.' 'It's all contingently determined by our cultural inheritance.' But such claims must themselves be rationalizations or fated unfree interpretations of the world. Frankly I myself find such claims hard to deny, yet I see the logical issue, and (foolishly in worldly terms) point it out on a forum.
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Well said. I don't 100% endorse or agree, but you point out the crucial issues. Very like Rorty again, too. Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying. (Rorty). Since he got away with saying it....it must be true ?
The ethnocentric point is that we can't see around our own culture. But Rorty can't present this as a truth about human beings. Instead (for him anyway) it's only a useful tool, a speech act better understood as scratching an itch or opening a can of beans.
To me this is where your view shows some tension. Truths are correct references sounds like the assertion of truth's transcendence.
Do you believe that a community might generate a set of useful fictions ? or superstitions that are good for them in the short term ? For instance, Newtonian physics was once thought to be correct and not just an excellent approximation. People in that time were probably empowered by such a scientific triumph. Or a community might believe itself to be the center of freedom and justice on earth, even though it's mid or worse, which could help them expand their borders, since they are spreading the Best way to live.
We are in dark Nietzschean waters now questioning the will-to-truth itself. Does it not turn us back on our own intentions ? Do you understand yourself to intend truth ? To assert P looks irreducible to me. Articulation of world.
If you mean it's not perfectly critical thought, then I agree. As Habermas puts it, the ideal communication community is, well, ideal. It's the perfect circle we never achieve. Rationality and justice shine on the horizon. These ideas/ideals affect us even in their 'unreality.'
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I think overall your present a kind of group nervous system that has individual thinkers as cells. These cells are constrained by their membership in what they can and ought to say. And I pretty much agree. Though I still think there's a subtle issue in the 'feedback' of such claims. I think we intend the same kind of transcendence that such claims deny as we make them. So I earnestly assert epistemological limits and violate those limits as I assert them. That kind of thing.
Quoting plaque flag
There's no difference between the two. I would like to hear how you understand the idea of "truth" since you've heard mine and offered no counterargument, and yet you don't use the term the same as I do. We seem to have a fundamentally different interpretation of what a "useful fiction" is as well.
My views further my goals, certainly, why would anyone knowingly argue for unfavourable conditions? We can go into my ulterior motives at some point, but I'll leave it for later.
When I say truth is a correct reference, I mean that it's a quality given to a reference when considered appropriate or warranted, it's a product of logic. If the conditions are met for it to be okay to reference something as something, that creates truth. Without telling me what this other something is, or without the context making it clear, the statement is meaningless. There are many ways in which any single thing can be true, depending on the reference.
A dog is a dog, an animal, a mammal, a loyal companion, a sentient being, and man's best friend, and so on. What's the prerequisite that must be met for an animal to be a loyal companion? Well, it's pretty loose, especially compared to some of the other terms, but I can still argue that it's true that a dog is a loyal companion, using my understanding of the concept of loyalty.
My statement is general and vague, and it makes claims based on creative interpretations. Are my creative interpretations true? What would make them true?
Is it relevant to ask whether my statement is a fair characterisation of philosophy? If so, when is it correct to reference a statement as being a "fair characterisation"? It's very nuanced, complicated, and there are no clear rules, but I'd say it does matter. If my statement is not a fair characterisation of philosophy, my entire argument could be dismissed.
The idea of a "fair characterisation" is a useful fiction, since the idea of fairness is abstract, the rules for determining it are vague and can vary greatly. That doesn't stop it from being true whatsoever. Useful fictions are far more tenacious than you're making it out, and they're tied to things that matter to people. They're practically inseparable from each other, truth and useful fiction, they're one and the same. There's no truth without useful fictions and no useful fictions without truth.
To address this "infinite consensus" argument, to be frank, it's silly. To begin with, what we call consensus isn't actually consensus at all, rules are created and people abide by them. I abide by the norms of language non-consensually, I have no choice, the alternative is too impractical. I can establish a useful fiction and have you accept it in no time at all, just the basic courtesy of allowing me to define a new term and we've done it.
I permit you some rope to use terms in ways that I don't agree with, to think in ways I don't, to have opinions that I don't and to engage in the use of many useful fictions without feeling a need to ask for a vote. Language allows me a lot of leeway with when I use terms, why I use them, how I use them, what I mean by them, and the rules for using them, I don't need to ask for your permission, nor you for mine.
People disagree immensely on all the above factors, there's no consensus whatsoever. Truth doesn't require consensus, useful fictions don't require consensus, and although words may appear like they are a consensus, they're not. There are substantial differences, truly massive differences in how we use and think about our various words, ideas and concepts. We counter these differences often in philosophy.
Quoting plaque flag
So what I mean here, is that we're to ask whether it's true that a proposition is just, logical, rational and so on. There is no "truth that exists in relation to nothing". However, what makes it correct to call a proposition any of those things can differ from person to person. Both in understanding the concept "justice" and then interpreting a correct reference "this thing is just". Can you see how truth & useful fictions are literally the same thing? To call something true without anyone having any clue what you're referring to has little meaning.
Quoting Judaka
To what does this truth relate ?
Let me offer something I found illuminating in my recent study of Husserl.
https://iep.utm.edu/huss-int/#SH1a
For Husserl, we can just see the plums in the icebox. But we can also intend that state of affairs from a distance (an 'empty' not-yet-fulfilled intention.) "There are plums in the ice box" is true because there are plums in the icebox --and meaningful in terms of potential fulfillment. To be sure, things get messier when concepts refer to concepts, but is our intention still transcendent ? Beyond utility ? The plums are there. And 2 + 2 =4. We can just see it, etc.
Direct realism helps here. We see the world as always already conceptually organized. I see plums and not purple balls. I see clouds and not white clumps. It's only philosophers whose theoretical analyses got us believing the world was actually reducible to pieces. Ontology is holist in its intention. But much of life is happy with useful reductive fictions or maps.
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Language meaning is changing all the time, culture is changing all the time, and it's possible to understand words and ideas differently despite the culture you're living in. We see this in different political affiliations within the same country, as they are sure to understand words and concepts differently, in ways that reflect their political views. Culture does have an impact though, sure.
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It is critical thought, with a particular set of biases and goals attached. It's just how it is, but I'm unsure on what "not perfectly' refers to.
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I think language needs to allow for expression of differences in perspective, I'll defend this against motivation. Philosophy as overriding must have its limits.
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Yeah, I agree, though I'm surprised to hear you say this. Isn't this the very performative contradiction you're so damning of? Why aren't you defending your infinite consensus argument? I always aim to strike where I think our disagreements lie, just to always find thin air.
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It relates to my argument, which I established earlier on.
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Motivations might involve values and ideas with intrinsic value - as opposed to utility, and we make a lot of compromises, there's also some implicit intention that could be argued against. An unthinking person might just accept the concepts they're given, and apply them without question. Not quite sure what you're asking though, usefulness can be more or less directly involved, and our motivation is almost certainly accompanied by other concepts, interpretation is subjective.
I wasn't speaking in my own voice, but from within the perspective that I am indeed criticizing. My use of 'I' was rhetorical, in other words.
Yes, and that of course is part of the ideal of rationality --- autonomy of the individual and of the community at large. So we work together to decide what to believe and do as a whole ---without dissolving completely into the crowd.
...He argued that human interaction in one of its fundamental forms is communicative rather than strategic in nature, insofar as it is aimed at mutual understanding and agreement rather than at the achievement of the self-interested goals of individuals. Such understanding and agreement, however, are possible only to the extent that the communicative interaction in which individuals take part resists all forms of nonrational coercion. The notion of an ideal communication community functions as a guide that can be formally applied both to regulate and to critique concrete speech situations. Using this regulative and critical ideal, individuals would be able to raise, accept, or reject each others claims to truth, rightness, and sincerity solely on the basis of the unforced force of the better argumenti.e., on the basis of reason and evidenceand all participants would be motivated solely by the desire to obtain mutual understanding. Although the ideal communication community is never perfectly realized (which is why Habermas appeals to it as a regulative or critical ideal rather than as a concrete historical community), the projected horizon of unconstrained communicative action within it can serve as a model of free and open public discussion within liberal-democratic societies.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jurgen-Habermas/Philosophy-and-social-theory
I should add that I think all entities are related inferentially, so I very much embrace a certain crucial kind of relationalism (structuralism, holism).
But do our asserts 'intend' the world or not ? Beyond utility, etc. I think they do. I don't dream of denying that people can be deluded or wrong. But to be deluded is still to intend the world (empty intention) in a way that cannot be 'fulfilled.'
That is the question. But if you say that nothing makes them true, where does that leave your claims ? Are sentences 'really' as meaningless but somehow as useful as teeth ?
I think you are seeing the community from the outside in Darwinian terms and forgetting your own position as a speaker about the world interpreted through this vision. The issue is whether you believe what you say, whether you really think the world is one way or another way.
There's enough consensus for you to say so. 'Communication is impossible' is a performative contradiction. I know you didn't say exactly that, but you are getting close.
One can also not prove the untrustworthiness of logic.
I think Husserl pretty much got it right. The world is conceptually articulated. So I can talk about situations that aren't in front of me. I can claim there's money in the banana stand. We can check. We can see directly whether my intention is fulfilled. Or at least we understand the meaning of the claim in terms of such a check which may be practically impossible at the moment.
Note that there's more to this : vision isn't perfect, language can be ambiguous, ...
As a former 'radical' instrumentalist and ironist, I'm open to such claims. I used to argue for them, and I still find them to be important partial truths.
But P is true is not used in the same way that P is useful to believe is used.
I think pragmatic versions of truth are inspired by a questionable imaginary perspective on communities from above. We look down on them and see their beliefs as tools. But we gaze on this vision and describe it in a 'naive' way, forgetting to apply the insight to ourselves.
A consistent pragmatist is a potentially dangerous character. Judge Holden from Blood Meridian, who takes War for his deciding god, is happy to 'argue' the finer points with you. It's also easy to imagine a sophisticated esoteric fascism. Or a 'proletarian Logic' that justifies the cost-minimized extermination of counterrevolutionaries.
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:groan:
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I see this as largely tangential so I'll resist going into any more detail on it.
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I'll tell you one thing for sure, whatever does make them true, it's certainly a relatively narrow perspective, and hardly stringent, well-thought-out rules. Just a sense of "Yeah, that makes sense" would suffice for most.
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You've brought up the truth a lot, so I respond, as befits my understanding, I don't really care about it. Truth is abundant, overwhelmingly so, I don't seek it, I'm interested in power, useful knowledge, and useful understanding. I think "seeking truth" is asinine, and anyone who says they are, always remains guided by biases that end up resulting in the search for power and utility. Much of my interest falls outside the spectrum of philosophy, as I said, here, I play by those rules, but that doesn't mean my philosophical views represent me. But if that isn't a good answer, try explaining your point in greater detail and I'll try for a better response.
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Language is just a bunch of claims as words, there's sufficient freedom left for my claims. Of course, I can prove the untrustworthiness of logic, it is easy. If you hide behind "truly logical", I'm left stumped as to what you consider truly logical, and if you then say "Logic can be critiqued and improved upon as it's proven wrong", then I'm unable to critique any logic to prove my point, since even if I could find bad logic that was yet "truly logical", it'd just be part of the process of logic being improved. Give me something real, rather than a concept with "good" in it, and I'll show you how untrustworthy logic is, and how weak it is. If logic implies it is good logic, well, that's cheating.
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What about a claim that can't be verified by perception alone?
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I'm struggling when you start talking about "pragmatic versions of truth" because I still have no idea where we disagree on the topic of it.
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I'm a nihilist and a pragmatist, I know very well. Had I sufficient power, so much of my philosophical ideals would lose their usefulness to me, and I would abandon them for that. I think it's a big part of why power corrupts, it invalidates the usefulness of the group logic of philosophy, to the powerful, they're a hindrance. I believe philosophers should take this to heart, systems must never rely on the goodwill of the powerful.
Hey that's just my OP. Only foolish philosophers wipe their asses till their assholes bleed.
Yes. I have written many OPs from just such a perspective. That's what Trump believes too. If you are so smart, why aren't you a billionaire ? But I think this is an insincere pose, at least for those who aren't sociopaths. Part of me is Hearst in Deadwood. Part of me understands why the judge in Blood Meridian dresses in white. Let's throw in some brutal social Darwinism, esoteric elitist bloodrites, the mystic horn sigil, whatever you like. But fortunately for the community and my own survival as an outnumbered individual, easily put down by the local Leviathan, I'm mostly 'indifferent honest' like Hamlet.
But it's not only an insincere pose in my opinion: it's also self-cancelling. If we are all just rationalizing monkeys, then the claim that we are such rationalizers is itself a rationalization --- flattering the 'sophistication' of its confused or (best case) ironic purveyors. Please note that I don't intend rudeness. You are blunt, so I'm being blunt, but not out of a lack of respect. This is good conversation on a crucial topic.
Is it now ?
Quoting Judaka
I'm not a pragmatist. P is not true because it's useful to believe P. Though it is often useful to believe the truth. To say that P is true is primarily (ignoring the metacognitive extras) just asserting P.
The plums are in the icebox [math] \ne [/math] it's useful to believe that the plums are in the icebox.
You haven't addressed my Husserlian approach yet.
Yes. And the Englightment is to some degree what happens when folks wake up to the lack of a god to make sure they behave. On a practical level, I'm outnumbered. So I have to make a case. I can't just give orders.
Would a god study pure mathematics ? You imply maybe not. But I'm not so sure. I think we like to SEE. We have lots of other motives, but we also desire to know, to understand.
Is this true or just a useful fiction ? See the issue ? Surely you intend it as a deep truth about our shared reality. This is the problem with earnest pragmatism. It can't remember that it doesn't believe in truth.
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As I argued previously, philosophy is thought funnelled through biases of justice, morality, group benefit, logic, rationality and so on. To me, it's absurd to call it impractical interest in truth, our biases show what we're aiming to do, and I call that utility. I look at a concept such as rationality and don't for a second bother to ask if it's true - a senseless question, I ask what it does, whether is it useful, useful to whom and under what conditions. Utility is defined by our ambitions and values, it's present for the noblest goals and the most self-serving, not just the latter.
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Rationalising? We're talking about literal truth here, that's all it is. A correct reference. I don't understand your argument.
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I don't think P is true because it's useful to believe P either. I think whether P is true depends on whether it's correct to reference it as true, which depends on what it's being referenced as, and the rules of the reference. It's these two latter things which are useful to believe, not P itself. A dog is a dog, that's true, I don't believe it's true because it's useful, it's merely true. But what's a dog? That's just made up, a useful fiction.
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It's the same as mine, except, much less. It's not dealing with the concepts themselves, or where their correct use requires more than just sense data. Tell me when it's true that something is useful, or when it's true that something is funny, something like that, or alternatively, something more vague, a question which might have an answer but testing it would be difficult. For example, my claim about "systems must never rely on the goodwill of the powerful", what would make that true? Explain it.
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I told you useful fictions and truth are one and the same, you must be misunderstanding me, though, that might be my fault. Usefulness is truth because it's true that it's useful.
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I enjoy the discussions and I don't mind bluntness.
Quoting Judaka
goes with:
Quoting Judaka
To me it's like you are saying the world makes statements true (true statements 'refer' correctly to states of the world? ) and then that truth is just useful fiction.
I think this is fascinating path. In my view, it requires a weird ironism. You have to become a kind of metaphysical zen clown, with your speech acts never completely earnest, aiming more at a mood than a stable theory.
It's one thing to point out the historical contingency of concepts, but I think you are assuming a radical split between human concepts and some 'pure' preconceptualized world. But that itself is 'just made up' --- a classic philosophers' fiction or thesis. Just look around the room you are in. You see familiar objects, the tools of life. This is what's truly given, not sense-data, etc. The concept of the dog is just part of our recognition of a dog as such and of course of our justifications of claims involving dogs.
You are talking as if you can see around your own enculturation, as if you can strip dogs of their doghood without already understanding their doghood.
Assertion is irreducible. That statement would be true if indeed systems must never rely on the goodwill of the powerful.
Famously, 'snow is white' is true if and only if snow is [actually] white.
That's the issue of meaning. Irreducible, no ? If I say it's true that the sky is blue, I just mean that the sky is blue. The articulation of reality is so fundamental that I'm not sure what else can be said, for whatever I say will also be an articulation of reality.
To be fair, more conceptual statements get more ambiguous, but I don't think that changes their reality-articulating intention.
Another issue is that of justification.
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Yes, true statements refer correctly to states of the world, that's what truth is. If I make up some crap, for example, "If a human being has less than 10 fingers then they're a 0d0f0fj, and all 0d0f0fj should receive 1000 dollars from the government every week", then whether you're a 0d0f0fj or not is simple, we check how many fingers you've got. It wouldn't be true that I'm a 0d0f0fj, there's no arguing about it, I don't meet the prerequisites, since I've got 10 fingers. It's part of "truth" now, but it's also a useful (or not very useful) fiction.
I would love to hear an example that doesn't involve sense data, you keep giving me simple examples, which I don't want. How do we know when something is useful? Is it true that things can be useful? Give me an example like that, I'm uninterested in universally accepted statements like the sky is blue, such examples obscure the subjectivity of truth claims. It comes from the concepts and their application, so don't pick the most stable concepts with the most stable methods of verifying them.
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Truth is primarily a function of logic for me, it's not "that which is in accordance with reality", we're on the same page about that, right? I am feeling misunderstood.
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I'm not aiming to contrast human concepts and a pure pre-conceptualised world whatsoever.
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"Indeed"? As in, there's some objective truth on the matter? There are a hundred reasons why systems must not rely on them and hundred reasons why it might be fine for systems to rely on them. If I believe one of the hundred reasons that says we shouldn't or if I believe one of the hundred reasons that said it's fine, isn't that what matters? Also, you could just reject the claim as vague, since without guessing what I'm referring to, there's not enough information to go on. I don't know what "indeed" refers to here.
That's not pragmatism or truth-as-utility. That's truth as truth.
Quoting Judaka
It's not a fiction. A fiction is a claim, a story. It's just a created category or status. It exists in the world like being-married and being-baptized.
[math] \sqrt{2} \notin \Bbb Q [/math]
Sure, but didn't you yourself stress the dependence of meaning on context ? I have a rough idea of what you meant. The point is your intention to articulate the truth. God is love is also vague, but people who say it are trying to tell me about the world (in particular about God.)
Quoting Judaka
?
For what it's worth, I think your views are quite reasonable on an existential level. So I'm just being a stickler on a few technical issues that interest me.
Maybe this is what you've been trying to say:
Habermas now proposes instead a pragmatic epistemological realism (2003a, 7; 1998b, chap. 8). His theory of truth is realist in holding that the objective world, rather than ideal consensus, is the truth-maker. If a proposition (or sentence, statement) for which we claim truth is indeed true, it is so because it accurately refers to existing objects, or accurately represents actual states of affairsalbeit objects and states of affairs about which we can state facts only under descriptions that depend on our linguistic resources.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/#TheComAct
If so, I agree. We choose categorizations for their utility, but we intend the state of the world in our assertions in terms of those categories.
I agree with the spirit of your OP, but then what do you make of the all too common opposition to correspondence theories of truth? Do you think the objections have merit? Do you hold to a correspondence theory? Thanks.
Thanks for stopping in and asking a good question !
At the moment, I'm impressed by Husserl. There's an empty intention that the a-sliced-apple-is-on-the-counter that I can mean/have when I'm out in the yard. This intention can be fulfilled or disappointed by my going on and looking at the counter. In this sense I probably embrace the correspondence theory. A meaningful 'signitive'/empty intention can 'correspond' with the world in the sense of such fulfillment.
As a phenomenological direct realist, I think the world as a lifeworld is always already meaningfully and conceptually structured. So I don't have to deal with the mess of pure meaning prestuff somehow being glued on to pure nonmeaning urstuff.
Note that a Husserl-influenced direct realism allows for every kind of falliblity, and I also include mental entities in my ontology with no need for dualism (the categories of mental and physical are not absolute or central, but just the usual fuzzy ordinary language distinction.)
Okay, thanks, that makes sense. I have had only limited exposure to Husserl, but maybe I will try to find an entry point when I have some extra time.
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In case it's helpful: Zahavi's little intro book is pretty great. Also there's a cheap highquality paperback copy of Ideas.
Cool, thanks for the recommendations. :up:
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Glad to hear it. It's clear that some miscommunication occurred, I delayed my response so we'd have a chance to collect ourselves. Unlike in most conversations, our need for a precise understanding in discussing philosophy makes miscommunication easier, but also more problematic. On top of that, we lack the precise language other disciplines may have, so, I take it as part of the game, we try to avoid it, but alas, it's unavoidable. I'd like to not worry about who is responsible for the miscommunication, though if you want to address that, I'm okay with it, but I'll just cover some areas where I think it happened and hopefully, we can resolve it.
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This is at minimum, very close to my view, and has the possibility of being the exact same. I'll address some possible differences, but first, I'll address this:
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Marriage is a good example of something I was referring to as a "useful fiction", but from now on, I'll call it a "created category", as I like that. Although I thought calling marriage a useful fiction was normal use, I can see how it could include more than just "created categories", so this term is much better for me. You could re-read whenever I said "useful fiction" as "created category" instead, as that's what I was talking about.
Hopefully, that alone clears most things up.
I'd like to hear what you consider "useful fiction". Would "useful falsehood" work as an alternative? Perhaps give me some alternative names, that might help.
Returning to Habermas. If we're including any created category or concept, such as marriage or justice, then, while he's maybe not saying the exact same thing as me, I do 100% agree with him. This quote says "proposition/statement for which we claim truth", which could imply that we have to be intending to make a statement about what is true, and if that were the case, then I wouldn't go that far.
For me, a single word works just as well as a proposition/statement. I've made the example of "dog" which I consider a created category, if it's correct to refer to an animal as a dog, then it's true that it's a dog. This is what I meant by "useful fictions create truth", now replacing that to be "created categories create truth".
I include typically subjective categories such as "beautiful" or "just". If it's correct to refer to a thing as beautiful, then it's true that thing is beautiful. To clarify, by "correct" I mean, one agrees it's beautiful, not just agrees it's a correct use of the word grammatically.
All of this means that "truth" doesn't tell us how the world actually is, and one's interpretation, one's logic, and one's concepts, all matter in determining what's true and what isn't. In scientific disciplines, norms and rules attempt to limit the flexibility of interpretation, there's a specific and carefully selected logic that must be used, and concepts have a clear and specific meaning. In those contexts, "truth" has a specific meaning and weight to it, but in other contexts, the truth could just reflect a single person's whimsically formed opinion.
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Where I've been struggling is in your usage of "truth" or "the truth". Truth is a correct reference, it requires two parts, the thing we're referring to, and the thing we're calling it - or the claim.
It doesn't make sense to me to talk about "articulating the truth", I don't know what that means, especially in the way you're using it. Here, if you think that God isn't love, then you assert it's untrue, if you agree that God is love, then you agree it's true. The reason you change your mind could be anything. A different perspective, a new argument, a revision in your understanding of God or love, or whatever else. Truth isn't just about the world, it's a function of logic, and without pointing out a single new thing about the world, one can change their logic, concepts or created categories and reach a different conclusion.
If I argue "systems should never rely on the goodwill of the powerful", for this to be true, only one thing needs to happen, you need to agree. You can pick any reason, any argument, it doesn't matter. Regardless of if you agree because of reason A or B or Z, all that matters is that your reason shows that systems shouldn't rely on the goodwill of the powerful, and then the statement is true.
But if the claim is specific and measurable such as "The population of Sweden is less than 5 million", then it's a completely different story.
Every example you've worked with while explaining truth has been extremely specific and measurable, such as whether plums are in a box or not. They're the most straightforward, clear-cut, specific and measurable claims we can talk about. They're not representative of the types of claims made in philosophy, which deal with complex concepts and objectives, and require sophisticated interpretation and thinking.
You might agree with a philosophical argument because "It's true that it represents the best option I've heard of". That would be perfectly reasonable. Philosophy is a set of biases, of things that must be true. There's a competition, where "It's true that this approach is likely to succeed at maximising the outcomes I care about" might decide which ideas are best. The "truth" part can be forcibly added, but it's trivial.
Let me know where you agree or disagree, or where more clarity is needed.
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Here's a tricky part in bold.
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How does one hold up a meaning (the meaning of an assertion) against the world to compare that meaning with a state of affairs right ? To me this is a deep question. An answer for the more mundane and concrete cases is IMO given by Husserl.
There's an empty intention (a 'belief' that might be more like an image) that a-sliced-apple-is-on-the-counter that I can mean/have when I'm out in the back yard. This intention can be fulfilled or disappointed by my going in and looking at the counter. It can be fulfilled because the world (the lifeworld, the nonabstract familiar emcompassing world) is always already meaningfully structured for us. I think we agree that once a 'form of life' [a culture ] adopts the category of dog, we can 'just see' a dog walking on the sidewalk as a dog, 'immediately.' Heidegger is great on this stuff. We can actually see 'peripherally' or 'circumspectively' a world that's full of useful things, so we plop down on a couch 'without thinking about it.' For him, this is more fundamental than sharp theoretical positing.
I'm trained in math, and this kind of thing happens in the mathematical world too. It's a function of training and experience. But the symbols are very much a meaningful hieroglyphics, even tho much of mathematics can in principle be automated (formal proofs, which 'nobody' actually writes, are machine checkable.) But people like it because they get insight into a virtual world of forms (even if these forms only exist within/for human cognition.)
Quoting Judaka
We may be on the same page.
I think there are two issues entangled.
When I call an assertion true, I am basically endorsing or repeating that assertion.
Bob : It's raining.
Alice : That's true.
So Alice might as well in this context have repeated Bob.
Bob : It's raining.
Alice : It's raining.
Do we agree up to here ? The use of 'true' doesn't do anything in this simple case that repetition can't do.
The next issue is whether it is raining.
Now I claim that --- 'it either is or it isn't raining.' But that weirdly is a claim about the state of affairs. It has to be an explication of a logic we mostly use transparently. So it's not totally unlike checking for that apple on the table. It's just a different kind of looking at our own conceptuality. You and I can debate the details, but we can strangely intend the 'object' of our own default conceptuality.
Quoting Judaka
I think that phrase of mine was awkward. I meant describing the world [accurately.] I 'intend a state of affairs' as 'actual.' I tell you Joe is a solid guy. Even tho this is ambiguous, I intend to let you see through my eyes something essential and relevant about Joe, albeit ambiguous or spare. As Feuerbach puts it, thinking is essentially social. I imagine early human tribes having 100 eyes, because as long as they trusted one another, each member could use the claims of another member as a kind of extended nervous system.
So the tribe as a whole (if the cry goes out) perceives a wolf -- perhaps mistakenly. But the mistake is only corrected by further reports and investigation. We can't get behind interpretative assertions. So we can say that P is true, but that should be interpreted perhaps as seeing the state of affairs in a certain way. I intend the state of affairs (that which is the case), but I might be persuaded to see the state of affairs in another way. The world (not the planet but all of logical space) is a bit like an infinite object that we can't help talking about, can't help looking at, perhaps mistakenly. But the mistake can only be 'cleared up' by another corrective seeing which could also turn about to be mistaken. So changing our beliefs is like seeing that infinite object from a different angle, getting what we now hope is a better look at it. It's the point at infinity that links up all of our talk. I hope some of this makes sense. It's a weird and fascinating issue.
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I think I understand and mostly agree. It's like you are imaging holding the world fixed and changing the concept system. That violates my holism a little bit, but I get your intention well enough not to quibble.
:up:
Yes, it gets trickier up in the clouds. We can talk about our talking about our talking. We build new metacognitive self-referential concepts on the fly. So it's an infinite game. I still think there's the same intentional structure, but the objects involved are lost in deep fog.
I agree with Wittgenstein and Brandom that much of meaning is ground in public norms, especially inferential norms as in what claims are justified by what assumptions. But I think as individuals we can have genuinely new insights that are hard to express. So we reach for metaphors, abuse language suggestively. I'm inclined to say that good conversation involves a kind of 'seeing' where the other person is 'coming from.' Gadamer writes about a fusion of horizons. Basically I have to learn your lingo and you mine. One of my favorite of his insights is that I come to know my own self as listener by seeing what my prejudicial misunderstandings were as the situation is clarified. For Gadamer, following Heidegger, our interpretative prejudices are otherwise invisible to us. We think they are the world, but they are glasses we can take off. To me that's beautiful. A big part of philosophy is converting false necessity into optional contingency ---a journey toward greater freedom and a wider view.
I probably make such a fuss because Brandom gets from Kant the big insight that statements / claims
/ complete thoughts are the minimal unit of responsibility. So I thought of a fiction as a complete thought and not just a category / concept by itself.
I will say that there are probably limits on our category choices as we get closer to the sensory world. We are almost bound to grasp the dog as a unity and not as 4 legs that live together in a little tribe under a brown cylinder umbrella. So it's the higher levels, etc., that look more flexible. Which, as you mention, things get ever trickier.
I think we agree, at least on ambiguous cases. We want the best beliefs. We tend to want them to be true without having a way to know finally and certainly whether they are. In fact I've argued in other threads that we probably never know exactly what we mean. So philosophy to me is as much about clarification and intensification of semantic grip as anything else.
You might like this essay on the topic. I do think Brandom is great in general.
Why Truth Is Not Important In Philosophy
Your response covers a lot of ground, and I am starting to lose track of what we're arguing for/against. I'll focus on debating what truth is for now, but I'm a bit unsure as to what your motivations are. To clarify, I am unhappy with philosophy being understood as an impractical interest in truth, or thinking of logic in philosophy as exemplary of what's "truly logical". I see it as having its particular biases and objectives, and I believe that's how it should be understood. There are advantages and disadvantages to its approach, and a philosopher can be understood as someone who believes in the project and its merits.
I think what I can offer in discussions can be rapidly diminished as I'm overwhelmed by different topics, contexts and objectives, and maybe I'm already overcapacity, so apologies in advance.
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I'll just stick with what I've been saying, that truth is a correct reference. What that actually means is ambiguous, it depends on the word or claim. All of the rules for language use are invented, including for words such as "rain". The reference is correct when the conditions for it to be correct are met, and that's what truth is.
Words reference and nothing more, and what they're referencing is tied to the conditions of the reference being correct.
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You're agreeing the reference is correct in a linguistic sense.
It's only correct to reference the weather as raining under such strict conditions, the claim is very testable, and the meaning is quite specific. So, there are very few cases where one person would think it's correct to say it's raining, and another would disagree. Such simple examples can obscure the subjective nature of truth.
Just as with "systems should never rely on the goodwill of the powerful", you can agree it's correct to say this, but the assertion probably isn't the same. It's just too vague, who qualifies as powerful? What does it mean for a system to rely on the goodwill of the powerful? We can say the same words, but what we mean isn't the same, and I think the assertion is in what we mean, but let me stress, my reasons for saying this are definitely pragmatic.
To give an example close to the heart of philosophy, I criticise the way we agree to condemn moral terms such as oppression, racism, theft and so on. Since, generally the thing we're referring to needs to be immoral for it to be correct to reference that thing using one of these moral terms, the consensus is hollow. We can both agree that oppression is immoral, but it's a rather superficial agreement, especially if we refuse to reference the same conditions as "oppression".
I agree we don't "intend" to find things to be something like oppression, but I worry that you're trying to extrapolate from simple examples such as rain. I'm sure you're not extrapolating as though there's zero difference, but I'm unsure about the differences you do perceive.
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Just to clarify specifically, I disagree with this, it's just a matter of whether it's correct to reference the weather as raining. The nuances of this are far more apparent when dealing with a word such as oppression.
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Can you clarify what you mean? What & why?
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I don't think truth is a word about describing the world accurately. When you attempt to describe the world, it's only correct to reference that description as true when it's accurate, which is what creates this meaning of the word. So, it depends on the context. "God is love" is almost certainly not trying to accurately describe the world, if that's what you had meant, I thoroughly disagree. This claim is about interpretation and understanding, it's sophisticated thought.
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I'd be interested to hear more about this, as I'm not quite sure what you're referring to here, but perhaps this represents our disagreement. What do you mean by "glasses we can take off"? How would "glasses we can take off and exchange for other pairs" work as an alternative?
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Could you clarify what you mean?
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I am ADHD and thus struggle to follow even small essays, but I am going through it. How much of this paper coincides with your understanding? Anywhere you notably disagree with it?
I see the difference as massive, so it's largely a logical point about how language works. 'Oppression' has a role as a token in a 'game.' It's like a virtual object in conceptual space. People see this object differently. The word has different meanings for people. The argument is about how the token/word ought to be understood and used. It's my private perspective on this 'object' that I want foisted on everyone else. I want 'them' to see oppression as I do ('correctly.')
No one sees it apart from all perspectives. So the 'truth' about 'oppression' is what oppression looks like from an ideal subjectivity --- from a purified or unbiased or fully informed and rational perspective.
If you clarify this I might agree.
But let me offer this:
Does
The assertion that it is raining is warranted.
mean
It is raining.
?
:up:
Yes. Tricky issue, but 'true' describes belief. To call a statement true is to tell you about my belief. If you trust me, it's also telling you about the world. From your perspective, the world is changed by the news I bring. You see the world differently, perhaps in a way you'll come to regret or further update.
Quoting Judaka
Personality is a lens. We always project/expect as we interpret. We read in the light of these expectations. Our whole past, what we think of as behind us, leaps ahead in the form of prejudicial expectation.
These prejudices are at the same time, as a system, the organ of understanding itself.So doing away with all prejudice is doing away with the self altogether as a system of interpretive habits --- like understanding what a screwdriver is for. I 'am' my past in the mode of no longer being it. So prejudice is simultaneously enabling and limiting. Because I know without even thinking about it how this or that 'must' be used, what he or she 'must' mean. I always project my best guess of the total meaning of a person's message as I decode the details in terms of this projection. I have to continually revise this blurry total interpretation as the details confirm or threaten it.
I can remember how my total interpretations change and learn to see my own 'automatic' self in my only-now-visible 'assumptions.' I took certain aspects of reality to be necessary rather than optional. I assumed maybe, without even thinking about it, that all numbers are rational, but then someone shows me a proof that [math] \sqrt{2} [/math] is not.
More of the above. People make 'assumptions' that they don't even realize they've made. Maybe there's a trapdoor under the rug, but no one has bothered to check, because it never occurred to anyone to postulate the possibility.
This might be the essence:
So long as we pay sufficiently close attention to the reasons that can be offered for and against various claims, their truth will take care of itselfor at least, we will have done everything we can do about it.
As philosophers we seek the best beliefs. I can tell you about my belief by saying that a claim is true. Or I can just make the claim. 'True' is useful for talking about beliefs in complicated situations. 'If that is true, then so is this other statement, which we thought was false.' As we talk to one another, we can only discuss beliefs ---sometimes using the word 'true.' Our duty is to be careful about the beliefs we hold and try to get others to adopt. That's all we can do. A warranted or justified belief tends to be acted upon. If I believe that it is raining, then I prepare for rain.
I see 'the way things are' to include the fact that it is raining. To believe something is to experience the world in a certain light. The world for me is structured by my beliefs.
I think there is a single world out there, but it's only seen from perspectives. So it's like an object that's seen imperfectly from billions of perspectives at once. I can persuade you to see the world differently than before, and you can change my perspective.
To me it's no small fact that the world is only given perspectively. We have the useful fiction of the scientific image which is a model of the world seen from nowhere or anywhere in Euclidean space. But this is just a highly important cultural product. A tool. Or it's fair to view at as an extra layer of beliefs that help us see tables as also lots of atoms and so on. But all of our beliefs exist in a single inferential network. Because we explain toothaches in terms of protons and protons in terms of experiments on roomsize instruments and scientific norms and university restrooms, etc.
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This question really shows a significant problem with truth in my opinion. The answer is, of course, yes. A correct reference is correct because it's correct or in other words because the conditions were met for the reference to be correct. If it's correct to say it's raining, then it's correct to say it's raining, which is what your question is asking.
This might also explain some of your usage of the words truth and the truth that I can't make any sense of. You cannot say "it is raining" in a non-linguistic way. There is no "actually raining" or "actual state of raining". Let's explore some of the nuances here.
To borrow ChatGPT, I asked it : What must be true in order for us to say it's raining? It's reply:
Without bothering to ask whether I agree with this or not, it's illustrative of a set of conditions that must be met for it to be correct to reference the weather as raining. We can assume these were met if it's correct to say it's raining.
We can also contrast, where although the conditions for saying it's "raining" were met, it could still be incorrect because "drizzling" better captures the kind of rainfall we're referring to. "it's incorrect to say it's raining because it's drizzling" and I'm sure the distinction between raining and drizzling has been made. What's reasonable to do or not do because it's raining isn't the same as what's reasonable to do or not because it's drizzling, and it's different again for "pouring" which implies heavy rain.
Thus, there are many arguments I can make for why "raining" is an incorrect reference, even if it's technically true. "Rain" is a straightforward concept, it obscures most of the subjectivity at play in language and truth, which is why it's wrong to extrapolate from them.
The effect isn't just produced because "rain" is closer to sense data, it's that examples using sense data are typically very straightforward. Is it correct to reference "rain" as a word that starts with the letter R? Is it correct to reference "rain" as a noun? They're just as obvious - because they're straightforward, simple and use stable concepts. The truth of the correct reference is so compelling, it's so inconceivable that anyone could disagree, but that's not what truth is. It's just an extreme on a spectrum, nothing more, unfortunately, I think it's a nameless spectrum, but maybe "objectiveness" is close.
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I prefer the word bias to prejudice, though for some shitty reason, both words have negative connotations but nonetheless, I agree. Selecting good biases is essential, one of the most important aspects of thinking. Philosophy is its own pair of glasses, each pair has its own pros and cons.
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I see. I mostly agree with your characterisation, but for the sake of clarity, I'll explain that the word "oppression' is still true when it's correct as a reference. The difference between it and a word like "rain" is in the conditions. For it to be correct to reference something as oppression, it must be unfair, and that's why the word is so contentious. That the conditions for something to be "fair" are so vague and open to interpretation is part of why the word oppression is so contentious.
The conditions for a reference to be correct exist for all words, and truth is created when they're met. That tells us all we need to know about truth, it has only a single quality, that of correct reference. Which is my point, why should anyone care about a disorganised list of correct references?
It's trivially true that truth matters, it's so abundant, and self-asserting, just like logic. That's what makes truth & logic so fickle and worthless. The questions to which we want truth are value-laden, it's all about the conditions. I ask a question I want an answer to, "How can I get the best results in X" or "How can I most efficiently accomplish Y". My question and the conditions for knowing truth are what matters, the value of truth is entirely dependent upon their good qualities. To talk of my search for answers as a search for truth is asinine, it's misleading, my questions are pragmatic, they're about doing, about use. My conditions for truth aim to ensure its usefulness.
Truth and logic have as their primary qualities abundance and mixed and unreliable relevance and quality. I assume any thinker, and especially one as advanced as yourself understands this problem, the need for good questions, good truth conditions, good biases and objectives. Yet, I think it's wrong to only talk about truth & logic, assuming these things were done well, we're attributing our successes to the wrong things.
:up:
I basically agree with you. And I was trying to say something like this is my own way. The world is only given perspectively. It's like an object seen from many angles, through many pairs of eyes. But in this case the eyes are linguistic and conceptual, gazing at the intelligible structure of world.
'My' current beliefs about the world are how the world is for me at that time ---my view on the world and not some private image in my head. For this idea of the image 'only in my head' assumes some Real World apart from and behind the way it appears to discursive subjects ---literally nonsense. Belief articulates the world (not an image of the world) from a certain perspective, possibly very badly, very 'incorrectly' from someone else's perspective.
Direct realism with 'fallibility' [disagreement, revision of beliefs] and perspectival limitation is much better than indirect realism.
If 'you' tell me that I am wrong a belief, that 'I' am daydreaming, then you simply see the same world differently. You call one or my beliefs false. I call your own differing belief false. No one gets to look around their own linguistic perspective to see the world absurdly from no perspective at all.
All we ever have is belief. But we use 'true' and 'false' to endorse or dispute beliefs. Establishing which beliefs are warranted/ justified is where the real work happens, except that our discussion is valuable for making all of this clear to ourselves, getting the power cord untangled.
How does that sound ?
I think we can use the transcendent intentional object approach and just emphasize that the object can be almost impossible to see with any clarity.
If we have a community that cares about God and believe in God, then someone saying 'God is love' is sharing their own conceptual view of this entity.
I include every possible entity that can be involved in inference in my ontology. I even let in round square and fictional characters, even pineal gland gremlins. Determining their actual nature is part of the conversation, but they are welcome from the beginning as 'tokens' that humans might use to explain themselves and justify claims.
So maybe I think God is only a concept. That's my view on this entity then. Another person now claims that God is love. This metaphor is bold and vague. We need not be happy with it. But I think it still has the structure of the description of a more mundane object. How well God can be seen at all is part of the conversation. Someone may believe that God is just a projection. Some will say that there is no God, but they aren't denying the entity as conceptually accessibly, just specifying it a certain way (only a concept, etc).
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I agree that all we ever have is belief, but truth is technically a function of logic, the term does not endorse or dispute but affirms or denies the conditions as being met. This allows us to talk about truth conceptually, as that which would meet the conditions, regardless of whether we know of it. Context helps us to guess what conditions are being employed, should be employed or are being referred to. "True" might not be an endorsement of a belief, but an assertion that the conditions were indeed met, and that one is sure of this.
To say that something can be correctly referenced as something is to say something about it, and the logic of what one should do if something is something is also part of the idea of truth.
A central idea in philosophy is fairness, but arguably, this term tells us absolutely nothing about the world. Also arguably, what matters more about the word fairness, isn't what it describes, but what it means must be done. If something is unfair, it's wrong, so it shouldn't be done. To me, this part of unfairness is entangled with the concept, as if I can provide a compelling justification for why something is beneficial or practical, we mightn't want to call it unfair, as it would mean we'd have to stop.
We could point out how unfair the capitalist business structure is, practically a dictatorship, characterised by an immense imbalance of power. Yet, the merits of the system would get brought up against this argument, the productivity, the efficiency and so on. This doesn't seem to make sense, until noting that pointing out how unfair and immoral it is would demand condemnation and cessation of the practice. If you can point out a good alternative, suddenly, people are happy to condemn it as unfair. I'd argue the same thing happened with the ramping up of industrialisation and the end of slavery.
The philosopher has their tools, for example, "rationality, "responsibility", "free will", "morality", and so on. How is a critique of these tools handled? What is the usual response? Your experience might be different, but for me, they start talking about consequence and utility. These ideas, and their truth, are as contingent upon their usefulness as anything else. A compelling argument against the utility of their understanding would suffice to convince them to change, and it's this I meant, though truth is not usefulness, usefulness is truth or a prerequisite to truth.
Essentially, it's important to note that the conditions for establishing truth are often selected for pragmatic reasons, the reference is made for pragmatic reasons and the term is defined pragmatically. On top of that, we may assert a reference as true or false for its implications, as a reason for doing something. Even in our summary of truth, you may resist mine and I may resist yours, not because of a flaw in the other's understanding but because we're paying attention to what serves our own ends best.
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I think "God is love" is a good example of how truth is pragmatic, and I don't for a second believe such a vague claim inspires belief for any non-practical reason. The subtext of the claim is more important, what are they trying to get you to do because God is love? What are they trying to get you to think? Why is it important to them that God is love? Probably, the argument can be whatever suffices to convince belief, and if their objective was better served by some other argument then they'd use that instead. Well, I'm undoubtedly a cynic, but what's useful too often coincides with what's true, the two go hand-in-hand.
I think you were more correct when you said something seemingly very different:
Quoting Judaka
To me it seems like you are wavering between trying to explain what makes a true statement true and how 'true' is used. But I don't think the first mission is possible.
It does not work to talk about prelinguistic stuff making linguistic stuff true. It gets paradoxical, because 'prelinguistic stuff' is linguistic stuff.
The world just HAS a conceptual aspect for human beings, in the same way that it has a color aspect. We have a 'conceptual' sense in the way we have eyes, but really all of our senses work together to give us a meaningfully structured lifeworld. Not an image of one, but the world itself, which depends on us as we on it.
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I don't understand the criticism of "prelinguistic stuff making linguistic stuff true". What is prelinguistic stuff?
To clarify, rain is a created category, as we agreed, it doesn't exist in reality, and there is no "actual raining". I understand truth as a correct reference, in other words, it can't be disentangled from language. Truth is a function of logic, but that isn't the "logic of reality", it's the logic of our language and concepts.
What refers to what ? I thought you meant a word referring to nonword stuff.
Our understanding of the word would, I claim, be an understanding of part of the world. As conceptual beings, we live not only in colorful objects but within meaningful institutions.
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The opposite. A dog is a dog, an animal, a mammal, a loyal companion, a pet, but not a building. It's not true that a dog is a building, it's an incorrect reference. Even if dogs went extinct, it changes nothing, the rules are all made up, and they only change if we change them.
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I agree, the concept of fairness certainly is part of anyone's understanding of the world.
OK.
But my point is that all we have is belief. The world is grasped as meaningfully structured. Humans may make up languages over time, but for the most part a child learns a language & then 'has' the world in terms of it. So I see my-keys-on-the-table-ness immediately. I hear my-alarm-clock-going-off. I watch that-Karen-being-a-bitch.
I'm saying that belief is like this seeing of my-keys-on-the-table-ness. I could turn out to be wrong, but the world from my perspective, while I believe my keys are on the table, does indeed feature, in its conceptual aspect, my keys on the table. I may also know god-is-love-ness. The world for me has God who is love in it. I'm talking about the same world and even the same God when I tell you this. The intentional token in the game is what links us and allows us to compare beliefs. You have your own perspective on the world. You tell me God is not love or that shit's too vague. [ I'm being playful here. I don't myself claim that God is love, tho it's not a terrible definition -- at least it's friendly.]
The point is that we all just have a perspective on the world which includes a conceptual aspect which is the belief of whoever has this perspective on it. There is no need to paste language on the world because the world is always already meaningfully conceptually structured. All we can do is compare, discuss, and modify such structures ---seek for better beliefs. Seek to see the world from a more better 'place' in 'belief space' or 'personality space' or whatever we want to call it. It includes even normal space, like walking around a building to literally see the back door, or whether there is one.
I have agreed that all we have is belief, and I agree that our concepts are part of our understanding of the world. I can talk about dogs, but that's it, I can only refer to a concept, and think in terms of concepts.
I think your explanation of "true", as endorsing or disputing beliefs, risks misrepresenting the concept. I could dispute a belief for any number of reasons, but to call something untrue is a particular type of dispute. Truth has a particular quality given to it because it's a function of truth, it should be clearly distinguished from belief. I won't say more than that, I doubt I can tell you anything that you don't already know.
How is me disagreeing with you more than me expressing my own belief ?
I think (?) your are implicitly picturing some naked reality (from no perspective, but really still yours) that MAKES a statement true or untrue. But I'm saying that reality is only give to/thru perspectives, and that beliefs just are that given reality in its 'conceptual essence.' In that sense, all beliefs are true, as an expression of how the world is seen by the mind by a person at that time --- but only about their view on the world.
Discussing is people working together toward better beliefs. [People might say 'truer,' but this leads to confusion, because 'true' is simply [mostly] used to agree with 'mere' belief.]
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Why?
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When you have the concept of a plum, and the concept of a box, and the conceptual understanding of what it would mean for a box to contain a plum. And you then believe that a box has a plum in it, and you open it up, and it doesn't, then your belief is wrong, right?
As a function of logic, truth relies on concepts, it's an expression only possible in language (inclusive of mathematics/symbols). Logic works the same regardless of where the data comes from, and yes, our perspective is given to us, and the only data which gets inputted into my logic comes from my brain. Nonetheless, a specific claim can still be invalidated by new information, I can believe something that is false.
That new information can come from "naked reality", in so far as the plum does actually refer to something real, as does the box, and if the plum isn't there, maybe we could call that "naked reality', idk. As a word, reality has its uses, but it's vague, I'm not too interested in discussing what is or isn't in it.
I wonder, has your position changed since we first began speaking? How firm is your commitment to your current understanding? Do I need to reconcile what you say now with what you've said in the past?
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"True" validates correct reference, as for what makes a reference correct, that depends on the logic. This means that what's "true" could be unknown, such as if I ask which poster on this forum has the highest number of posts. I don't know the answer to that, but I believe there is an answer. I don't want a "better belief", I want to know the truth, and the true answer isn't just whatever I believe.
I figure I must be misrepresenting you somewhere, but at the same time, here you are telling me that "better beliefs" are equivalent to "truer beliefs". I'm a bit lost, and perhaps that's my fault, I have difficulty tracking long discussions. I do aspire for better beliefs, but what's better is guided by what's pragmatic, my objectives, what's the logic you're using to define "better'?