Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
Nobody can stop you: that’s for sure!
Indeed they are murky. I am still curious as to what you think “truth” is.
I’m a Tarskian. https://sites.ualberta.ca/~francisp/Phil426/TarskiTruth1944.pdf
Which is not the same as saying that all oughts are moral oughts. If you drop a rock it ought to fall down. I don’t say it’s immoral if it does not.
And if you think it is morally acceptable to say of something that is true that it is false, and to say of something that is false that it is true, why should I listen to you?
This is one messed up site. LoL.
Everyone here knows and acts as if it is morally unacceptable to say of something that is true that it is false, and to say of something that is false that it is true.
Can you list some “oughts” that are not true but that ought to be believed anyways?
What one ought to believe is a moral issue and what one ought not believe is a moral issue if they involve what is true and what is not true. Which is probably why people try so hard to avoid saying that something is either true or false.
It leads directly to objective morality. And we simply can’t have that, even if all evidence indicates there is such a thing.
As it would behoove Alan to have fewer theories, it would behoove you not to LoL when you’re contradicting yourself.
You’ve not met my wife! 🙂
OK! Thanks for that. My wife has just informed me we are taking a Christmas week break so I may not have the opportunity to respond meaningfully before the New Year. I did glance at the opening page and it does take things head on. But there is a difference between what is true and whether there is truth. In the everyday sense, things (in the broadest sense) could be described as true. Is there a coherent concept of truth is what I’m wondering.
If you drop a rock it does fall down. There’s no “ought” involved.
Just a quick point. I recall, I think StephenB of Uncommon Descent harping on a claim “error exists”. This seems equally baffling to me. Sure, errors exist but “error”? What is “Error”?
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a very helpful article (mentioning Tarski) which states:
Something that can be approximated? Hmm!
ETA synonym
I enjoyed Blackburn’s recent On Truth. It’s a semi-popular introduction and addresses things like pragmatism, end of inquiry, Tarski, correspondence approach, coherence approach, modes of inquiry, how truth figures in science, ethics, aesthetics, religion.
Make sure you get the 2018 publication. He has older books discussing truth and some of the reviews are of these. (eg any review pre-dating 2018).
Yes, fair enough. I did a poor job of summarizing the author’s more nuanced conclusion. From the concluson
[start of quote from SEP Objectivity]
However, one should not (as yet) throw out the baby with the bathwater. Like those who defend a particular explication of scientific objectivity, the critics struggle to explain what makes science objective, trustworthy and special. For instance, our discussion of the value-free ideal (VFI) revealed that alternatives to the VFI are as least as problematic as the VFI itself, and that the VFI may, with all its inadequacies, still be a useful heuristic for fostering scientific integrity and objectivity. Similarly, although an “unbiased” science may be impossible, there are many mechanisms scientists can adopt for protecting their reasoning against undesirable forms of bias, e.g., choosing an appropriate method of statistical inference.
[End of quote]
I read this as saying we should try to find ways to characterize science as objective in some sense, and the only sense that has a chance is VFI, which to me is a form of process objectivity.
Ah well, so much for that. I ought to have known.
I was trying to argue that process objectivity was something to be pursued in ethical inquiry, regardless of one’s view of the role of science in that inquiry and regardless of one’s view of whether and how morality referred to real world entities.
I would also defend a view that objectivity is worth pursuing even for non-cognitivists, although that would be inquiry about what set of moral attitudes/values a society should try to inculcate, and not about moral truths.
I understand that some people think product objectivity the only kind that matters.
Mung,
Here’s one for your library:
I have not read it — it’s somewhere on my list, but not near the top. I ought to read it before participating further in this sub-thread.
That seems reasonable to me.
If I understand you here, at least the CONCEPT of process objectivity has to be divorced from science. I.e., it’s a certain type of inquiry (VF) that’s likely to yield truth whether in science or elsewhere. Sounds like Leibniz’s gizmo or, I dunno, just logic. Anyhow, I have no objection except to mention its extreme sanguinity.
I naturally join you in wishing all the brave and cautious explorers luck in their meticulous search for truths. God bless them, every one!
Search for truth???
What is truth?
Yes, I was trying to say that from the beginning. Sorry if it was not clear.
It is important to start with science, because if only process objectivity is needed to do science, it seems to me to be quite reasonable to call that type of objectivity sufficient for truth-seeking inquiry in any domain.
Earlier, I linked without explanation to Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology. The reason is that I see him as doing that in the first four lectures of the book. That is, justifying how we can make true statements without the need for them to refer to or represent some property of objects.
I also mentioned Blackburn’s 2018 (note date!) On Truth to Alan. Blackburn is also Tarskian about truth. Much of the book covers the nature of truth-seeking inquiry. He applies it to ethics even though he is a sort of non-cognitivist (quasi-realist, although I don;t think he likes the term).
50th anniversary of one of the most famous Christmas Messages:
stcordova,
Zoroastrianism, plain and simple! 🙂
BruceS,
I liked Putnam’s remark quoted by Stanford. Appreciate your forebearance.
I agree.
PS except for “truth-seeking”. Knowledge-seeking, perhaps?
BruceS,
The Blackburn book sounds good. The last book I picked up on truth was Gerald Vision’s “Veritas”–which I liked, but which reviewed terribly favorably.
That’s tricky. If you insist on that, then, again, you rule out other types of obective2 inquiries.
walto,
Such as?
I mean nothing needs to ruled out. Invisible pink unicorns? We can investigate!
It’s a popularization; a serious one, but still likely nothing new or interesting for you. But it was a nice summary for me.
His older books addressing truth might be more in the serious philosophy category.
I don’t understand your point. If your point in the above quote is that the process would vary across domains, I’m OK with that.
But then why call such a domain-specific process ‘objective’? I’m taking ‘objective’ in the sense of impartial, unbiased, impersonal, not in the sense of objective reality, which product objectivity addresses.
Scientific processes meet that definition of objective through the Mertonian norms (Wiki summary at end of note) which are commonly presumed to apply. Science has further norms, eg consistent with physics (MN), falsifiability, simplicity, and of course empirical testing.
Other domains might have other norms, although perhaps the Mertonian ones would be universal (eg do they apply to philosophy?).
Here’s Wiki on the Mertonian norms:
communism: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm.[3]
universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants[4]
disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for the personal gain of individuals within them
organized scepticism: scientific claims should be exposed to critical scrutiny before being accepted: both in methodology and institutional codes of conduct.[5]
I don’t like “Let us calculate” as an analogy as for me that misses the need to make objectivity subject to norms which must be weighed by the domain community for each case.
A secularist would ask for Peirce’s blessings.
Blackburn’s book pushes a combination of coherentism and pragmatism in his analysis of truth. To be true, our beliefs need to be both coherent and subject to testing by active inquiry.
For KN if he is lurking: Blackburn’s approach resonates for me with the Friston view of free energy minimization as a general principle for understanding successful perception and action. Free energy minimization optimizes our model of the world by improving our priors (coherentism) and by acting to align the world and model (pragmatism).
If we take knowledge as Justified True Belief, and ignore the belief part, then the difference is the J part.
Usually Justification is analysed either as having gathered and assessed the appropriate evidence or as having followed a reliable process.
Perhaps process objectivity can be factored into either analysis.
Or maybe I am just building castles in the Sand(box).
I really don’t understand what you’re saying. Maybe it’s the “only” there? Do you need to rephrase that?
Thank you.
So you’re the one who thinks all oughts are moral oughts.
stcordova,
Hey Sal,
It just hit me! I remember once you were telling me something how Sanford and the gang believe in YEC because of something related to light speed or something like that…Can you navigate me to some of that stuff, please?
I have come across some weird stuff about the light speed not being constant and all…
I’m not sure but it seems that QM could put in doubt the age of the universe and CMBs the actual big bang model… While the two together will probably not make the Earth and the universe 6000 yo it can make the current model look like a mega- exaggeration…
The universe may be only 12 billion years old!
What is this calcualtion based on? The constant speed of light, isn’t it?
BruceS,
No harm in that. Have a good holiday.
Mung,
Nope. I’m the one thinking morality is human invention.
Interesting, but to be honest I don’t think that free-energy principle can secure the kind of objectivity that matters to Blackburn & others. At most the FEP tells us that cognitive systems can’t stray too far from whatever local affordances they need to be able to track; see “Self-organization, free energy minimization, and optimal grip on a field of affordances” by Bruineberg and Rietveld. The kind of objectivity that matters to Blackburn (and to Peirce for that matter) requires that cognitive systems be able to systematically compare how their own tracking of affordances is similar to and different from those of differently embodied/embedded cognitive systems with whom they must cooperate.
Hi KN: Of course you are right. I only meant that both ideas seem to share a structural similarity through a commitment to balancing the model with the world in some”right” way
I agree that structured cooperation between individuals is what science adds. Philosophy and ethics too, I think.
Thanks for the link to the affordances paper Did you see the Wired write-up on Firston I linked earlier?
https://www.wired.com/story/karl-friston-free-energy-principle-artificial-intelligence/
Next time you are in Toronto, we’ll smoke a joint and see if that helps with communication.
Ah, right, now I see what you had in mind. Yes, that seems right to me.
I think that the structured cooperation is a human universal that goes back many hundreds of thousands of years before anything like science or philosophy.
I hadn’t! Thanks for that!
There was a nice profile piece on Andy Clark in the New Yorker earlier in the year — maybe last spring? I can find it for you if you want.
Of course. My comment was too brief.
I was referring to the norms of that inquiry which I’ve been labelling process objectivity. Those norms are part of specifying that structure. Perhaps they differ between disciplines, but the claim is they all share support of the model/action concept.
That structure needs much more that intra-community cooperation. I think language and rationality at least need to be added. But is cooperation and the Bayesian brain and a bit of evolutionary luck/NS enough to provide an origin story for language and rationality?
Saw that, thanks.
I’m still puttering around with Friston’s math when I don’t get distracted by TSZ or PS. I came across this paper which tries to describe the link between the two concepts of information free energy and thermodynamic free energy in living organisms in Friston’s work. Mostly math free; I don’t think math is needed to follow the argument, which is presented as an accumulation of steps with clear English summaries at each step.
Information and efficiency in the nervous system–a synthesis
So are microwave ovens and O’Neill plays. Are they subjective?
Haha. Thanks.
That’s my working hypothesis, yes. I think there are lot of different accounts of the origins of cooperation out there. There’s been some excellent recnt works by Tomasello, Heinrich, Boyd, a few others — all pointing in roughly that direction. And there have been some attempts — by Friston and a few others — to integrate those ideas with cognitive neuroscience. I think that’s a very promising direction in which to go.
Very interesting — thank you!!
Are microwave ovens objective or subjective? Is an attempt at making a dichotomous distinction useful? The process of generating and transferring electromagnetic energy to water molecules in an enclosure equipped to contain them is based on scientific fact. The size, design and timing functions tend to follow consumer demand. Is that consensus or objectivity, or both?
Regarding a play written by anyone (O’Neill if you like, though I can’t say, never having seen seen one) I think that describing a play as either subjective or not without qualification carries little information or utility.
Still think it’s more useful think in terms of fact and opinion.
Anyway, I’m off on a Christmas break so no more from me on this.
Wishing you a good holiday and happy and prosperous new year
Same goes to all TSZ members and readers.
Alan Fox,
Same to you.
If anyone uses podcasts as I do as an intro to ideas and to decide whether to spend time reading any underlying book, here are two which are relevant to above discussions:
https://www.politicalphilosophypodcast.com/season-2
Philip Pettit discusses his naturalistic approach to ethics where he claims it is grounded in language and cooperation. He compares its reality to that of money: both emerge from a type of shared, normed cooperation. Podcast 22 sets some ground rules and discusses the money analogy; podcast 23 is the meet of his position.
—————————
https://newbooksnetwork.com/samuel-schindler-theoretical-virtues-in-science-discovering-reality-through-theory-cambridge-up-2018/
Schindler presents an argument for scientific realism based on the epistemic virtues of accepted scientific models/theories.
ok, but how does that preclude truth claims from being moral claims, or as I put it earlier “all truths are moral”? Who cares if either truth or morality, or both, are human inventions. That simply seems utterly irrelevant to what I wrote.
Do you think that other people ought to believe, along with you, that morality is a human invention? And if so why ought they believe it, because it is true?