A thread at UD that was just beginning to get interesting was unfortunately cut short when Elizabeth departed.
As is oh so typical over at UD, those silly IDiots were appealing to obvious truths and the primacy of logical reasoning. Elizabeth, in contrast, was championing her empirical methodology.
During the exchange, Elizabeth made the following statements:
My method is the standard empirical method.
If you can’t establish the truth of the premises how can you know your conclusion is correct, however impeccable the logic?
My question to Elizabeth was simple. How did you arrive at the truth of that statement [assuming it’s a rhetorical question] using the standard empirical method?
I’d really like to give Elizabeth an opportunity to answer.
For reference:
A deductive argument is said to be valid if and only if it takes a form that makes it impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. Otherwise, a deductive argument is said to be invalid.
A deductive argument is sound if and only if it is both valid, and all of its premises are actually true. Otherwise, a deductive argument is unsound.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/val-snd/
Given the above explication of valid and invalid arguments and sound and unsound arguments, does Elizabeth’s question even make sense? IOW, logic does not and cannot tell us whether the conclusion is “correct.” Logic can only tell us whether an argument is valid. Logic cannot and does not tell us whether an argument is sound.
How do we discover these facts/truths of logic using Elizabeth’s standard empirical method? If they cannot be established as facts/truths using the standard empirical method, should logic be abandoned? If so, why?
William,
No. The former is just one specific way of achieving the latter.
Likewise, under dualism “convincing via rational argument” is just one specific way of “getting someone to believe X”.
Education is subversive, but it does not subvert the critical faculties as ideology and other forms of manipulation do. Rather, education (at any rate, education aimed at instilling critical thinking) subverts ideology itself, as Plato was the first to understand and has taught us ever since.
Yes, I agree with that. (But maybe that’s my ideology showing).
Hey, so do I!
(Just dropping by though, life has intervened again….)
William J. Murray,
At this point we’ve agreed that having a rational discourse with one or more persons (or thinking rationally to oneself) necessarily involves taking up what Dennett calls “the intentional stance”, or in Brandom’s terms, as treating the other person as capable of playing the game of giving and asking for reasons. This means that all agree to abide by norms about inference, warrant, evidence, justification, and so on. This functions as a transcendental presupposition of discourse and also of intentional action.
Now that we’ve established some agreement on that much, now what? We could quibble over terms, but that’s likely to become tedious within a few seconds.
One persistent theme here has been that materialists cannot, on pain of self-contradiction, take up the intentional stance. (And that they contradict themselves all the time by doing so.) I guess I’m not really clear on why this is the case, unless you just define “materialism” as “not being able to take up the intentional stance”. Since I’m not a materialist, for reasons I’ve given elsewhere and recently, I don’t care much either way.
But Ok, we agree that taking up the intentional stance is necessary for rational discourse, making possible both agreement and disagreement. Are there any implications you’re trying to draw from this?
One big lesson I’d like to draw from my thinking about the intentional stance is that the intentional stance involves not just treating the other as a subject, but also as treating oneself and the other as sharing a public world that is knowable through inquiry. Subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity are interdependent notions.
And while there are inferential norms shared by members of a discursive community, which are in turn can be represented by the techniques of formal and informal logic, canons of inductive reasoning, etc. it is also the case that each member has his or her own unique perceptual encounters with the world through which he or she is able to test beliefs against reality.
On this basis, I would say that “empiricism” and “rationalism” are both false when taken as the whole truth, but both are correct about one aspect of our total epistemic situation.
keiths,
Rationally convincing under a non-materialist perspective is not the same as physically causing under materialism. Also, I’m not making a case for dualism. I’m not a dualist, as I’ve explained before.
William,
You haven’t addressed the points I made in my last comment. I’ll reproduce it here for your convenience:
William,
Libertarian free will is incoherent even if the mind is immaterial.
Not so. Rational discourse is possible between any two entities that respond to reasoned argument, regardless of how that responsiveness is implemented — just as addition can be performed by any device or entity that takes numbers and sums them, regardless of how the summation is achieved.
Just like people. They produce whatever results they’re “programmed” to produce, and sometimes their answers are wrong, even when they think otherwise.
Even hotshoe_ gets it.
Elizabeth, when you get the chance, please read this post by Erik, and then let us know if you’re still confused by “primacy.”
[He uses the term a number of times in that post, hopefully you won’t be confused by that!]
Erik, I have to say, you’re quite the skeptic. William is right, but you won’t stand with him on that due to other beliefs he holds which you [apparently] find morally repugnant.
This thread has surpassed my wildest dreams. Some very nice posts [I have read them all, even (esp.) the lengthy ones – thanks KN], and much food for thought. I’d like to thank WJM for doing all the heavy lifting for me!
Elizabeth may have her empirical method and it may seem to be the greatest thing since Socrates, but what really, is it good for?
How do we discover these facts/truths of logic using Elizabeth’s standard empirical method? If they cannot be established as facts/truths using the standard empirical method, should logic be abandoned?
“Nature offers us no theories”
– Jakob von Uexkull
One would wish you interpreted this in accord with the standard philosophy of language, where it’s stated that material configuration of things contains no hints on how to interpret its origin or meaning. But of course, we have no such luck. Precisely because material configuration of things contains no hints on how to interpret it, you take it to mean that you are free to “detect design” in things.
I’m not a skeptic. Simply principled.
“Meaning is the guiding star that biology must follow.”
– Jakob von Uexkull
And given the context of the current thread your statements are just beyond bizarre.
I will admit that the philosophy of language is new to me. Does it define what language is and the purpose of language and it’s role in communication? How does it define meaning? Do electrons communicate with protons and what language do they use?
Another statement that is unfortunately lost on IDists.
One would wish IDists knew what context is. If they knew, the bastard idea of “design detection” would not exist.
Yes, it answers all these questions.
You evidently did not understand what I just said in the previous comment. Disappointing, but not surprising.
I missed those – could you give me a link or a precis?
KN said:
Well, that ones metaphysics should at least allow for it. IOW, there’s no sense having a worldview that denies that which is required for developing a sound worldview in the first place. Also, worldviews that deny primacy of mind and hold it to be a secondary effect necessarily devalue the concept of human-ness, responsibility, and reason, providing a slippery slope to all sorts of immoral, unethical behavior.
This also applies to certain forms of theism; if humans are nothing more than a means to an end, tools god can use to develop some plan, it leads to the devaluation of humanity, responsibility and reason. “God said so” can be used to justify anything that “humans are nothing more than animated matter” can be used to justify.
A proper worldview IMO must insist that mind be considered primary; that logic be considered an objectively valid means of arbiting true statements; that intention/will be considered transcendent/acausal and that it can impose upon/constrain matter at least in terms of deliberately changing internal brain-states. Also, that the individual be considered the seat of the mind to which we make our appeals to, and is ultimately responsible for their behavior (under normal circumstances) and such behavior cannot be reduced or assigned to natural law mechanism and chance.
We can call these “stances” in that they are not claims about what reality is, but rather represent manners of thinking about things that are necessary to properly guide and foster good human interaction and behavior. One of the possible problems in considering such things “stances” which one doesn’t actually believe as true is that it may still lead to a creeping increase in the chance of immoral/unethical behavior.
Which brings us back to morality and why one’s “stance” must also be that morality is an objective (absolute) commodity under which there are necessary consequences. It may not be the true nature of our existence, we must act as if it is true. But again, it can’t just be a “stance”, it must be an invested stance. One must be committed to it in a way that may not be available if one actually believes that reality is something other than what the stance would imply.
The same is applicable to the other “stances”; if one actually believes that humans are ultimately pointless meat-machines computing choices via mechanistic law and chance, then adopting a ‘stance” that they are “mind-primary rational agents with free will” may just be a smug charade that opens the door to the slippery slope of treating others badly.
There are some thing we must believe in whether they are true or not, whether we can explain them or not, whether there is evidence for them or not, in order to function properly as good human beings.
Examples?
I think this may be getting close to where the divide is between our views, William.
You appear to me (and of course I may again be misunderstanding you) to be saying that by taking the “intentional stance” we must “deny” a view of the world (materialism) that you think is incompatible with it, because under that world-view we are not truly intentional, but rather “pointless meat-machines”.
And so by taking such a stance we are denying our materialism implicitly yet still upholding it explicitly.
Am I getting warm?
I touched on that here, and it’s certainly relevant to the discussion I’m having in this thread with William about what I mean by a “stance” and what a stance does.
If one “actually believes” that, then one has failed to adopt the intentional stance. But what one “actually believes” is internal to the stance adopted.
When I adopt the intentional stance towards you, I actually believe that you will tend to act so to realize your desires in light of your beliefs about the world, that you will tend to revise your beliefs in light of evidence or argument, and so on. That’s simply what it is to adopt that specific stance.
When I adopt the design stance towards you, I actually believe that there are standards of correct and incorrect functioning of your physical, cognitive, and affective systems, and I behave accordingly. A doctor or psychiatrist adopts the design stance towards her patients.
Here’s a fun fact about me: often, when I’m writing, my blood sugar will plummet very quickly. When then happens, it is not, “hmm, what might I like as a snack?” but “alert! alert! organism requires fuel!” — in other words, I adopt the design stance towards myself. Is the design stance somehow a deeper truth than the intentional stance, or more true, etc? Hardly. The design stance (taken towards myself or others) is neither more or less “true” or “accurate” than taking the intentional stance towards myself (“what I believe about this author’s argument?”). The different stances are neither more or less accurate, true, correct, etc. — rather the different stances are all different ways of practical, successful coping with reality.
Now, this does raise to my mind a somewhat troubling question that no one has addressed: if the different stances are just different ways of practically coping with reality, then on what basis can we say that it is sometimes wrong to bypass someone’s rational capacities and engage with her at the design stance? What is the difference that makes a difference between what a physician does and what a propagandist does? (Plato worries about this problem a lot, especially in Gorgias.)
I think we all have an intuition that the physicians’ use of the design stance is legitimate, and the propagandist’s use of the design stance is illegitimate. But I am not entirely confident that Dennett’s framework is sufficient to vindicate this intuition.
KN: Regarding propaganda:
I would classify fiction and poetry as propaganda, in that they generally appeal to emotion rather than to reason. Works can be rated as subtle and deep or shallow and formalistic, but regardless, they appeal to emotions.
I would argue that fiction plays on our capacity for empathy, and it extends our perception by placing us behind the eyes of others. In that sense, it can build a scaffolding of common experience to support rational discussion.
In my family we talk about cultural literacy, which includes knowledge of everything to classic literature to pop music. Works of art and literature are not rational arguments, but they bridge the experience gaps separating people.
Elizabeth,
That’s certainly my understanding of William’s view, so if that’s not right, then we’re both misunderstanding him. But I’m not sure if my use of “stances” in this conversation does justice to William’s emphasis on necessary pragmatic presuppositions.
KN said:
I’m not sure If I’m understanding you correctly. IMO, there is a correct and an incorrect way to hold beliefs wrt honoring one’s nature as an intentional rational agent. It is incorrect to believe in a manner that makes one the tool of, or a function of, the belief. All beliefs, IMO, should be held intentionally (which goes back to my statements here long ago where I said I choose my beliefs, or I believe as I wish, not as I must). If you cannot choose your beliefs, you are not behaving as a rational, “mind-primary” agent (which, when I first came here, I referred to as being a “biological automaton”).
IOW, the stance investment towards the necessary propositions we’ve discussed, or quality of “soft belief” required, keeps one stationed between one end of the spectrum – hyperskepticism leading to nihilism – and the other end – committed faith ideology that renders one a tool of that which they believe. Which, in some cases, might be the same end. I call this middle ground the “intellectually satisfying intentional belief”, where one is comfortable but still skeptical with the belief-requirements of their “stance”.
That way, I can intentionally believe (act and argue as if true) that you are a rational agent with free will capacity to independently and objectively evaluate my arguments, without committing myself ideologically to that stance being a reality-truth-fact. However, i had to find an intellectually satisfying model for that stance-belief ( a way that others could be independent, intentional rational agencies) in order for me to have the grounding for actually behaving and arguing in a manner consistent with the stance, and for my expectations of the argument to have a reasonable foundation. To argue in good faith, I must have a “belief”, as outlined above, that I am honestly arguing for, even if I am not ideologically committed to it. It must be intellectually satisfying in order to be worth arguing about, but I cannot be so committed to it that cognitive biases kick in and blind me the value of the arguments of others.
So, materialism and command-authority theism are two ideologies that, IMO, cannot serve as a good basis for a successful intentionality stance. They both fundamentally obliterate the very perspectives we must assume to have rational discourse and to have a reason for rational discourse.
Not that self-described materialists actually act that way – they do not, usually – which is why I argue that they do not act in accordance with the logical ramifications of their ideology. (With the exception perhaps of Alan Miller, who finds it acceptable to physically reprogram other people via magical nonsense words).
KN said:
I’m not sure either, but maybe my post above will help clear it up.
Thanks KN and William. I’m still deep in exam-setting and marking, but will get back to this.
William J. Murray,
Thus far, the only major thing we disagree about is the claim that we can choose our beliefs. I think that this is far too strong, as an analysis of what we’re committed to by treating others (and ourselves) as rational agents. A rational agent is responsible for her beliefs, but in the vast majority of cases, we also acquire beliefs from our cultures, our upbringing, and our experiences.
Here’s an example: I didn’t choose to believe that there’s orange juice in my refrigerator. Rather I am, so to speak, “saddled” with that belief as a result of previous perceptual encounters (I saw it there a few hours ago) and prima facie plausible beliefs (that my memory is generally reliable, that no one has broken into my apartment and stolen it, etc.). I count as a rational agent, not because I chose to belief that there is orange juice in my fridge, but because I can produce reasons for my belief if that belief were challenged.
But I suspect that this difference between our views is indicative of our deeper disagreement between foundationalism and anti-foundationalism.
Yes, but the critical parameter of belief is the threshold of reasons for believe or not. And the freedom to believe is the freedom of settle that parameter.
Here’s my paraphrase of William’s argument:
I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what that means.
It seems as if you’re saying that each individual person is free to decide for him or herself whether he or she has met the criteria of sufficient evidence for his or her beliefs. If that is so, I don’t see how that is compatible with any commitment to reasonable discourse, aimed at revealing areas of agreement or disagreement, about what is the case. Rather, on that extreme individualism, everyone is just talking past each other all the time. And so the commitment to any kind of objectivity goes overboard as well, if one thinks (as I do) that the discovery of objective reality is a communal and collaborative enterprise. And the main reason for thinking that is that the very contrast between appearance and reality depends on intersubjective correction.
Here’s why: I don’t have a grasp on the concept of error if I fail to recognize that how things are is different from how they seem; other people can correct me about what I think is really the case, but they cannot correct me on what seems to me to be case. If I say, “that’s a penguin!” and it is a puffin, they can say, “no, you’re wrong” — but if I say, “that looks like a penguin to me!”, they cannot say that I am mistaken about my subjective experiences. If I say, “that’s a penguin!”, and my friend says, “no, you are mistaken, that’s a puffin,” I can say, “it looks like a penguin to me”. And then my friend can certainly say, “it may look like a penguin to you, but _________ [my eyes aren’t very good, I don’t know the difference between penguins and puffins, the LSD hasn’t worn off yet, etc.]” but she cannot say, “you are wrong about your own experience — it doesn’t look like a penguin to you!” That simply does not make any sense.
But if anyone’s grasp on objective reality — and so the very distinction between objective reality and subjective awareness of reality — depends on the possibility of correction from others who also inhabit a perspective on our shared reality, then it cannot be up to each of us to determine what is real or not, or up to us as to what the criteria are for sufficient evidence or reasonableness.
This is also why I’ve been resistant to Murray’s primacy-of-mind thesis. What is epistemologically or phenomenologically primary is the whole interdependence of self, others, and objects. It’s a three-legged stool; take off one of the legs, and you can’t make sense of the other two.
(This means I will need to think about “stances” as embodied as well as social, but more on that later.)
Some problems with William’s argument:
1. As I stated previously, to say that a physical system can’t really reason is like saying that a calculator or computer can’t really add. If a calculator can consistently take numbers and return their sum, it is really adding, despite the fact that it is a purely physical system. If we can consistently evaluate arguments, rejecting the invalid ones and assenting to the valid ones, then we are really reasoning, regardless of whether or not we are purely physical.
2. We don’t reason perfectly, and in fact there are certain logical errors that humans make systematically. That observation makes much more sense if we are physical entities with imperfect neural circuitry than it does if our minds are immaterial and have access to pure Platonic logic of some kind.
3. If the mind is immaterial, then the interaction problem looms: how does the immaterial mind influence the physical body?
4. I see absolutely no reason to treat other humans as “pointless meat-machines”, to use William’s phrase. I believe we are all “meat-machines”, but the word “pointless” is out of place. Why should we be considered “pointless”, or any less worthy of moral consideration, just because we are “meat-machines”?
By adding more evidence to the subject of my beleive or changing thetreshold of believing.
Can you explain the intersubjective correction process?
I a computer do not really or reject arguments add because the computer can´t do that unless it is programmed to do that.
keiths:
3. If the mind is immaterial, then the interaction problem looms: how does the immaterial mind influence the physical body?
How a mass attract other mass with a force equal to the product of the mases divided by the square of the distance?
keiths:
4. I see absolutely no reason to treat other humans as “pointless meat-machines”, to use William’s phrase. I believe we are all “meat-machines”,but the word “pointless” is out of place.Why should we be considered “pointless”, or any less worthy of moral consideration, just because we are “meat-machines”?
Probably purposeless is more accurate.
I don’t see why I would need to. I gave an example above — the fictional dialogue about the person who mistakes a penguin for a puffin — and, on top of that, the process of intersubjective correction is what we’re doing right here! We’re correcting each other’s beliefs so that we can get at truth!
If you’re not interested in rational dialogue, or at any rate, not interested in rational dialogue with me — if you’re only interested in quarreling, or arguing in the sense of Monty Python’s Argument Sketch — please be honest. That way I’ll spare myself the time of responding to you.
Blas,
Properly configured computers can add, just as properly configured human brains can. Mess up the brain and people can no longer add.
That’s a newtonian approximation, but the answer is general relativity, a theory with massive experimental confirmation. Meanwhile, what “theory” explains how an immaterial mind interacts with the body?
Humans provide their own purposes.
William J. Murray,
Except that
(1) I am not a “self-described materialist”. Just a ‘not-a-theist’.
(2) More that I found the notion of physically reprogramming people via magical nonsense words too incoherent to take seriously than that I found it acceptable. Though I do tend to find impossible things far more acceptable than possible ones. OTOH, I do affect people’s emotions with music – I do literally induce a physical change in their brain through sound. I have occasionally made people cry (usually ‘cos I’m murdering the heck out of their favourite song!). It doesn’t change their beliefs, of course. The idea that meaningless sound can do that is just a little too outré; perhaps you need a better example.
Then is rationality(mind) what reach the truth.
Yes, exactly. Meat and/or machine (or meat-machine combined) are at least as worthy of moral consideration as any ideal being with a supposedly “immaterial mind” or “soul”. Not least because meat and machines are intersubjectively agreed to exist. And things that actually exist are – logically – more worthy of consideration than things that don’t (or probably don’t) exist. Who ever would respect a man who spent more time worrying about the existence and character of leprechauns than he did about the welfare of his own human children?
There’s a reason why we mock the generations of worthless theologians who argued about angels and pinheads. There is literally nothing about theistic philosophy (or theistic morals) which has advanced one jot since then.
Computers add only if properly configured by a “mind” humans do not add only if their brain is defective.
How mass attract other mass?
Exactly, they do not have unless they provide himself their owns. But what purpose can set for himself a “meat machine”?
KN said:
I”m not sure how one can be responsible for that which they cannot choose. I agree that we often acquire beliefs from our culture, upbringing, etc., and those beliefs are often unexamined. Many people just go about their business never even questioning most of their beliefs.
But, responsible rational agents don’t get that luxury; they are, as you say, at some point responsible for their beliefs. This means they must start making choices wrt their beliefs – IOW: “I should not continue to believe that” or “I need to believe in something that helps me to treat other people correctly”.
Well, we have a definitional divide here. I don’t call the expectation that the orange juice is still in the fridge a belief, but rather an expectation based on the reliability of consistent experience. A belief, for me, is rather a conjectural model that is extrapolated from experience that describes something about the experience that is not itself directly experienced.
IOW, it is my expectation based on consistent experience that the sun will come up tomorrow; a model that describes the sun-earth relationship in space and tells me how/why it comes up every morning and predicts it is a belief. Expecting the sun coming up tomorrow is categorically different from believing that the earth orbits the sun blah blah blah and thus we get a consistent sunrise every morning. Or, believing that Apollo pulls the sun through the sky blah blah blah. Those are beliefs that are supposed to provide the justification for my expectations and be rationally consistent with other beliefs, worldviews, etc.
I can have an expectation based on consistent experience; I can then have a model that explains, justifies, predicts that experience/expectation; and then I can have a larger worldview belief structure within which the beliefs and the expectations logically (and hopefully evidentially) fit.
At the basic level, you and I have expectations about what is going on when we debate as rational agents. I don’t consider those expectation to be formal beliefs because they may not even be recognized or articulated by many people when they debate/discuss. However, once recognized, one should challenge themselves – do my beliefs justify me having these expectations? Do I need to choose different beliefs which can accommodate these expectations? Or, do I need to change my expectations?
And the fact that our purposes are not “divinely-inspired” or “objective” or “immaterial-mind-based” is just fine. Really, it’s fine to move ourselves. And we give each other permission to move in one direction or other. There’s no sign that we need to wait for permission or inspiration from god to do so.
The persistent theist devaluation of humanity, their persistent claim that if my own self-purpose is not (ultimately) grounded in something god wants, some spiritual foundation, then my purpose is of no more standing than purposelessness ? That’s a stupid attitude. It’s both baseless (because no evidence of immaterial mind, anywhere) and anti-human (because witch-burning, gay-bashing, etc follow directly from the theist claim that our purpose must align with what — they believe — god’s purpose for us happens to be).
Blas,
Suppose that humans were physical entities configured by God. Would you agree that they these physical entities could be configured to add and reason?
I’m not going to explain general relativity to you. However, I’m interested in your answer to this question:
keiths:
Blas:
Why should being a “meat-machine” prevent someone from providing purposes for him or herself?
Blas, are you trying to imply that immaterial mind interacts with physical body in exactly the same way that mass attracts other mass? Really? That’s what you think is a relevant question here? Why do you keep repeating this question?
William,
Expectations are beliefs. You believe that you will have the experience of the sun rising tomorrow.
It is of note that the moral preoccupations of the little owner-operators supposedly guiding these ‘meat-machines’ revolve largely around their meaty doings – their sex lives, their wellbeing, sufficiency of care and nutrition and freedom from harm. It’s curious that such independent minds should be so preoccupied with the shells that will be discarded on death.
Souls as truck drivers. 🙂
It reminded me of this:
Interview with the German who pilots George W. Bush
It’s interesting that William has the relationship between belief and science exactly backwards here. “Expecting” the sun to come up again, based on a previous string of “it came up before, as far back as I can remember” is exactly the same kind of belief as expecting the coin to come up heads again, based on a previous string of “seven in a row so far, it’s my lucky night”. It’s literally unreasonable belief until you give a reason, that is, a model, which is what William foolishly decries as being “a belief”. Although the sunrise turns out to be true and the coinflip turns out wrong, they’re both equally unreasonable beliefs UNTIL you show their basis (or lack of basis). No matter how consistent the previous experiences have been, a person’s “expectation” can’t advance beyond mere belief UNTIL they have some model of how the events have occurred and why they can be expected to re-occur (or stop occurring). You don’t have to have an accurate mental map of the Earth orbiting around the Sun but you have to at least have a story which tells you why god won’t suddenly make the sun stand still or take it away forever. This story-which-allows-for-reasonable-expectations is, if not science or even folk-science, at least proto-science.
Now, we have evidence that we’ve been doing this explanation-turning-belief-into-expectation as humans for 50,000 years or more, but I’m not surprised that WJM still hasn’t caught up.
Oh god, that was awful. Er, funny, I mean. Awfully funny. Or maybe funnily awful. 🙂
Except it’s not like saying that at all.
Just like a calculator. got it.
You’ve just argued that reasoning is not like calculating.(like a computer or calculator do), while also claiming it is like just that very thing.
Sorry, that’s just silly.
You said:
That’s the stance a doctor takes, else why become a doctor.