Given recent posts here at TSZ challenging the validity of presuppositions and self-evident truths I thought the following list might be worthy of debate.
Presuppositions of Science
1. The existence of a theory-independent, external world
2. The orderly nature of the external world
3. The knowability of the external world
4. The existence of truth
5. The laws of logic
6. The reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties to serve as truth gatherers and as a source of justified true beliefs in our intellectual environment
7. The adequacy of language to describe the world
8. The existence of values used in science
9. The uniformity of nature and induction
10. The existence of numbers
When critics object to the Logos as a presupposition and offer instead 10 other presuppositions, Ockham’s Razor flies out the window.
Our first thought was that a solipsist would publish in peer review for the same reason they might talk to their neighbor, something in their nature to do. On second thought, it also provides improved access to resources.
Is anything less certain than the claim that the Logos is the source of truth?
Glen Davidson
It seems you are back to saying that justified equals “What works” Why is this so in your world view?
In other words what criteria did you use to determine the proposition “the truth is defined as what works” was true?
Is the the proposition “the truth is defined as what works” justified?
Is it well supported?
Please be specific in your answer
peace
FWIW, I think this (regress argument) works. I agree with you–and foundationalists generally–that you have to start somewhere. Susan Haack, a self-titled “foundherentist,” is very good on this issue, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundherentism
Before we once again go down the road of unpacking my presuppositions why not share yours so I can know what sort of answer you are looking for.
What is truth in your worldview? Is truth necessary for knowelege? From where you sit how do you know if you have found truth?
peace
Again I’m not insisting on anything.
“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer to the question.
It’s just not particularly appealing from my perspective
It’s only an infinite regress if your answer is finite.
God if he exists could reveal stuff to you in such a way that it was impossible for you not to know it.
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
What is intellectually honesty to you? You’ve been asked a straightforward question, but you squirm rhetorically rather than answer it directly. You’re making claims, but refusing to support, or even explain, them, attempting instead to shift the topic to what others believe when they haven’t even made any claims.
How about just answering directly and forthrightly?
Said the pot to the kettle
OK—- Truth is what God believes.
The Logos is the image of the Father the exact representation of his being, his thoughts and beliefs.
Therefore the Logos is truth.
What is truth in your worldview? How would you know it if you found it?
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
If you can point to a question I’ve failed to answer about a claim I’ve made, please do. If you cannot, retract your accusation.
Assertions without evidence. Provide some objective, empirical evidence that your god exists, then we can get into the rest of your claims.
I think that that is right, and importantly right.
When I bring up “transcendental arguments”, I don’t mean “necessary conditions for the possibility of X”, but rather “necessary conditions for us to be able to X”. Transcendental arguments are indexed to our kinds of cognitive experience, but described in the most generic terms. For example: what must be the case for us to be able to do things like re-identify some determinate particular as the same determinate particular in different spatio-temporal contexts, classify determinate particulars according to degrees of both perceptual and relational similarity and difference, or successfully share a referent with another cognitive agent? And that’s where the phenomenological descriptions of embodied perception and intersubjective discourse become necessary — for explicating our abilities to have these kinds of cognitive experiences.
The whole point of being a “naturalized Kantian” — hence my nom de plume — is that the generic conditions of cognitive experience that Kant thought had to be purely formal can be identified with material processes with ecological, evolutionary, and neurophysical explanations. In Willem deVries’ phrase, “transcendental structures must be realized in causal structures”; I would perhaps put it as, “transcendentally specified roles must have causally efficacious role-players”. (This ties back to McDowell’s distinction between constitutive explanations and enabling explanations, since it was from McDowell that I initially learned how to be a naturalized Kantian, though my version of that position is not quite his.)
you have repeatedly stated that what counts as evidence is the “objective and empirical” Yet you have refused to say what objective and empirical evidence you used to determine that is what qualifies as evidence
IOW how do you know stuff in your worldview?
This is not a claim it is a presupposition. You don’t provide evidence for presuppositions you use presuppositions to tell you what counts as evidence.
peace
Yes, Haack is quite good — and she’s also a good Peircean. Her “foundherentism” is basically Peirce updated in light of BonJour and Davidson. (And I think she’d agree with that! )
But I’m not too clear on the difference between foundherentism and the Sellarsian thought that knowledge is a self-correcting enterprise — yes, we have to start somewhere, but no matter where we start, that starting point will be revised in light of future inquiry.
And indeed we see that in the history of human thought itself, since the desire for the arche that structures the history of Western philosophy and science from Plato & Aristotle through to Descartes & Kant is itself but a chapter in the longer story that runs from the australopithecines to us. The history of human civilization takes on a quite different hue and cast from the perspective of deep time!
fifthmonarchyman,
I pointed out at the time that you clearly didn’t understand what a category error is. You still apparently don’t.
This is where you are being intellectually dishonest, whether deliberately or not I don’t know. You are trying to give your religious beliefs a special status to insulate them from criticism and investigation.
It still comes down to Hitchen’s Razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
If you refuse to support your claims, there is nothing further to discuss. Your statements are empty and useless. If you have a shred of decency, you will not vote or otherwise impose your literally nonsensical beliefs on others.
Says the pot to kettle
Once again.
What objective empirical evidence did you use to determine that what counts as evidence must be objective and empirical?
What objective empirical evidence do you have for this claim? If you have none then we can we merely dismiss it
correct?
Peace
Yes — except that, as many here have been stressing, it is also the case that the criteria of good evidence are revised over the history of inquiry.
You want there to be solid foundations for knowledge, and you think you’ve got ’em. But I don’t think there are any, and we don’t need them.
Dispensing with the very need for foundations is the only way to solve Agrippa’s Trilemma. The way to do that is to re-describe our epistemic situation as a historical process of mutual criticism and self-criticism aimed towards successful cooperation in response to a shared world that is both stable and precarious, both regular and irregular. And this characterization of the epistemic situation is itself historically mediated by the failures of foundationalism.
Or, to put in Hegelian terms, even false theories have their place in the movement of the Concept!
I see
We can’t even discuss your unsupported claims.
Talk about giving your beliefs a special status to insulate them from criticism and investigation.
I’m pretty sure that is the sort of thing folks mean when they talk about intellectual dishonesty.
peace
What criteria did you use to determine that “successful cooperation in response to a shared world that is both stable and precarious, both regular and irregular.” should be the goal of your epistemology?
Please be specific and to the point?
peace
By reflecting on the history of failures of foundationalism to solve Agrippa’s Trilemma. It’s a historically mediated justification for the rejection of all attempts to transcend historically mediated knowledge.
And this means, among other things, subjecting even Hegel to a historically mediated critique by revising his anti-foundationalism in light of further inquiry, so that we can (for example) revise Hegel in light of Darwin, as Dewey did.
No doubt further inquiry in the sciences and humanities will lead future philosophers to revise even this conception of our epistemic situation. There are no “foundations”, and there never were.
fifthmonarchyman,
Look up category error. Seriously.
I explained at least twice so far what I mean:
You use the same criteria in your day to day life, except when making your special pleading for the beliefs you were indoctrinated with as a child.
So, how about you stop with the blatant attempts at obfuscation and avoiding your burden of proof. Support your claims or admit that you cannot.
What criteria did you use to determine that it was necessary for foundationalism to solve Agrippa’s Trilemma?
again please try to be specific and to the point
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, thinking that your demonstrated intellectual dishonesty was inadvertent, an artifact of your inability to consider your religious beliefs objectively. This makes me question giving you the benefit of the doubt.
I have made no claims that I’ve failed to support. Your accusation is dishonest. It is also yet another clear attempt to distract from your utter inability to support your claims.
After you’ve looked up “category error”, I suggest you peruse Proverbs 19:1 as well.
1) What criteria did you use determine that you need to be consistent in your use of criteria?
2) I am consistent in my day to day life, The whole beef against us Christians is that we constantly go to the Bible for guidance in our day to day lives
peace
fifthmonarchyman seems to have gone full OldMung. Never go full OldMung.
This question makes me wonder if you understand what Agrippa’s Trilemma is, even though I explained it pretty carefully a few days ago.
There’s no shame in asking me questions if I use terms you’re not familiar with.
Be that as it may: we actually do know that Descartes’ entire philosophical project was an attempt to reconstruct foundationalist epistemology in order to solve the Trilemma. This is not a terribly controversial point about Descartes’ motivations.
It comes about for Descartes because of how Catholic and Protestant theologians used the Trilemma against each other in the debates in the 15th and 16th century. Descartes saw those debates fuel the fire that erupted into the Thirty Year’s War. (Obviously it was not merely an epistemological debate.) The Cartesian Quest for Certainty is a deeply personal response to the horror of that war.
So we know that foundationalism was an attempt to solve Agrippa’s Trilemma by studying the history of philosophy.
Hey Patrick.
Why is it a category error to ask for you to give evidence for your claims about what counts as evidence?
Is it because these sorts of beliefs have special status?
think about it
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
No, the beef is that you never support your claims, yet you try to impose your beliefs on others.
You are not consistent. You apply different standards of evidence before deciding on whether to buy a house, or even to cross the street, than you do to your religious beliefs. You apply different standards to the religious beliefs you don’t hold than those you do (this is the whole point of the Outsider Test For Faith).
You are desperate to keep your beliefs from criticism and possible disproof. If you were consistent, you’d be willing to support them like any other major decision in your life.
fifthmonarchyman,
Because the criteria for what constitutes evidence is not the same as evidence.
I note again that theists attempt these kinds of distractions only when they are unable to support their claims. After Proverbs, check out 2 Corinthians 8:21.
I understand the Trilemma. My question was not about the Trilemma. It’s was about the general criteria you use for determining things.
peace
You are getting warmer. Think about this for a while
peace
Too good to pass up. So the way to avoid regress, circularity and assertion is via experience of the outside world – observing, testing and sharing reality?
fifthmonarchyman,
Still no support for your claims, I see. Put up or shut up.
I have no interest in continuing the discussion with FMM, he simply doesn’t understand the subject.
At least with Mung and others you can have the conversation even though we might not agree.
Granted. But for one thing, these aren’t my own personal criteria; it’s my acceptance of a Hegelian or post-Hegelian characterization of the epistemic condition that we are all in — even you! All of us! And I came to this acceptance by studying the history of philosophy very carefully for a long time. And within this tradition, the justification for the claim that all knowledge is historically mediated is itself a historically mediated justification.
Yes, though that works in tandem with a transcendental argument that solipsism is incoherent — that it’s actually not possible for a being to have subjective, self-awareness without also being aware of other beings like itself and a shared environment. Subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity all stand or fall together. We need that move in order to get off the ground the claim that what we can know, when we know at all, involves observing and testing our shared reality, and so the Cartesian attempt to solve the Trilemma through radical internalism can’t work.
But it is also the case that understanding our epistemic situation as essentially constituted by history, language, culture, politics, and knowledge — the whole antifoundtionalist picture — shows that we don’t need a foundation for knowledge in order for us to have any knowledge actually worth having. That silences the Trilemma because the Trilemma assumes that justification is formal, deductive, and internalist. A different conception of justification — that is, justification as norm-governed social practice that evolves over history — avoid the Trilemma entirely.
No.
The beef against Christians, is that when we ask them to explain, they say that Jesus is the explanation. And when we then ask them to flesh that out with more detail, they change the subject.
FFM:
I’m not a philosopher, so this is a personal take on the question you’ve been repeating.
Science has no foundation, or means to “truth,” analogous to the foundations you claim for your Christianity. Historically, human knowledge of the natural world, and ultimately the scientific enterprise, didn’t start at foundations – it started “in the middle,” so to speak, working downward, upward and outward from there. The contingent starting point was the biological evolution of animal sensori-motor and ultimately human cognitive and linguistic capacities, atop of which social practices and means to powerful “distributed cognition” have accrued through cultural evolution, particularly in the last few hundred years. There is no single scientific method that characterizes that enterprise, but rather myriads of methods, often specific to individual special sciences. If there is a thread running through those efforts it is the notion that claims about the world must be defeasible through observation and evidence. What counts as evidence refers back to the special procedures and practices, and quantitative methods, of each special science.
Any attempt to place a single “foundation” under all of this is a philosophical, not scientific, effort. That’s why the question you pose above question is inapt – it asks that a foundation for science that has been established by scientific means.
Clearly, such a foundation isn’t needed for the enterprise to succeed. The pragmatic successes both of physics and many of the special sciences justify continued scientific effort. Does that effort, absent an ultimate foundation, yield “knowledge?” When I view, to cite one of a thousand possible examples, the expression of those results though the combination of science and engineering that placed Curiosity on Mars, the answer for me is unquestionably “yes.” Does it do so infallibly? Unquestionably, “no.” It is a human enterprise, after all.
The Chirstianity you espouse presents the reverse. It claims foundations, although that claim is, from where I sit, utterly circular. Despite that claim of foundation, it generates no “knowledge” analogous to the unquestionable output of the still foundationless scientific enterprise. From that I infer that mere foundations are suspect, and overrated.
As Dr Johnson’s toe confirms!
A straightforward one! You said “Jesus is Truth”. I want to know what you mean, or at any rate understand, by that claim.
Well, at one level I have a fairly straightforward everyday understanding of truth. For instance, today we discovered our boat had a broken window that had been fixed up with tape. We don’t know how it was broken, or who fixed up. We are trying to find out. There are several possibilities – it was broken into, and some kind person, maybe an employee of the marinae repaired it for us; someone accidentally broke it (maybe the guy in the next mooring?) and repaired it. I am confident a specific series of events occurred, although less confident that I will find out what they were. I will try to find out – i.e. I assume there is a “true story” and that I have a reasonable chance of finding out more or less what it is.
And in a similar sort of way, I hold the same position wrt to science: I think there is a “true” story “out there” about how things work, and why certain things happen when other things happen etc. But then I don’t work in theoretical physics or cosmology. Once you get to questions about the very nature of existence, or causality, I’m not sure that the everyday meaning of “true” is applicable. It’s too coarse and approximate a construct for use in that context.
Another meaning of “truth” might be more like “wisdom” – as in what is the truly right course of action, for instance? In that sense I might agree that Jesus had the key, though it is not exclusive to Jesus: namely, the golden rule: Love your neighbour as yourself; do to others as you would have them do to you; even “whatever you do to the least of my brothers you do for me” – I do hold that our sense of being individuals is not so much a mark of our specialness, but a limitation on our perception. A truly wise person, or being, would be one that was privy to the griefs and desires of every living thing. So that would also be a kind of “truth”.
Does that help?
Reciprocating Bill,
Very nicely put! And I agree entirely!
I would add one small qualification: that what you wrote is itself a philosophical view, though one that I think is correct in large part because it is a philosophical view deeply informed by science and by history!
KN:
Alan:
Johnson’s kick was an attempt at refuting Berkeley’s idealism, not solipsism, and it failed.
Kantian Naturalist,
Seconded!
Cool,
So you would agree that you can’t find truth by means of empirical investigation?
peace
I think most of us agree that you can’t find truth by presupposing the Truth.
Glen Davidson
That you put knowledge in scare quotes is interesting.
walto defines knowledge as justified true belief and you have just granted that science can’t get you to truth. You can’t have knowledge without truth.
So would you agree that it’s very possible you don’t know anything?
That is what I continue to ask
How you know stuff in your worldview?
Perhaps you have a different definition of knowledge if so please share
peace
It failed to refute any absolute statement of solidity, but it confirms that any statement of the illusory nature of solidity will be ignored in everyday life. The experience of solidity is not an illusion.
Of course you can if your presupposition is also revealed truth
The Logos became flesh
peace
Ooh, we’re at “if wishes were fishes,” are we?
But if wishes were revealed truth, we’d live forever.
Yup, that’s all folks.
Glen Davidson
GlenDavidson,
I’m not sure how one could discover if a proposition about reality was true without empirical investigation.
Speaking for myself, I would happily accept Walto’s definition of knowledge as justified true belief. I’d add some caveats — I do think that there are some kinds of tacit knowledge that resist being put into propositional form, and I also think that animals can know things even though, lacking language, they don’t have beliefs. At any rate, JTB-style knowledge is certainly a very important kind of knowledge.
I do think that empirical knowledge cannot yield absolute truth, but that is because I do not think there is any such thing as absolute truth — certainly not in empirical domains, but also not in logic or in mathematics.
If one were to insist that knowledge of any kind requires the possibility of absolute truth, then I suppose I’d say that by that standard, no one can know anything at all. (That is, actually, the point of Agrippa’s Trilemma — it’s an argument for skepticism, or the view that no one can know anything.)
But I see no reason to accept that standard, for reasons previously given.
fifthmonarchyman,
I don’t see that Reciprocating Bill said any such thing. In fact, he provided specific examples of science successfully modeling reality — that is, reaching true conclusions.