On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

Right - and epistemology is the study of how we can reliably distinguish between truth and fiction. Thus any concept of rigour must emerge from epistemology. No it isn't, I won't accuse you of strawmanning me, or misrepresenting me. I simply say that you don't understand me if that is what you think I am saying. And they are basically derided by the consensus in philosophy of mind. Your link states:

quote:

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Criticisms of dualism have been very successful in modern science, and few if any neuroscientists would consider taking such a position...Nevertheless, there remains a practice, invisible but widespread in the social and biological sciences, in which a logic of dualism persists, and where an assumption of dualism can be demonstrated. This error is illustrated in the following example:

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If neuroscientists have adopted materialism over dualism, why does dualism persist in modern biological science?

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Pretty much what I said really - dualism gets heavily criticised. Says wiki: While Nagel is sometimes categorized as a dualist for these sorts of remarks, he is more precisely categorized as an anti-reductionist. Says wiki: Jackson used the knowledge argument, as well as other arguments, to establish a sort of dualism, according to which certain mental states, especially qualitative ones, are non-physical. The view that Jackson urged was a modest version of epiphenomenalism”the view that certain mental states are non-physical and, although caused to come into existence by physical events, do not then cause any changes in the physical world. wiki says: After the publication of this paper, more than twenty papers in response were published in the Journal of Consciousness StudiesHardly a collection of out and out Cartesian Theatre believers - and where it can be reduced to such a state - they get criticised. Committing fraud and outspoken racism is hardly the same ball park as an unpopular view that gets widely criticised. Heck - if every scientist that had their work criticized was stripped of their position - there'd be none left.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

No more than science has to arise from philosophy of science, or plants have to arise from botanists, or that rivers cannot run until there's a cartographer around to chart them.You're confusing the thing being studied with the results of that study. Indeed, epistomologists study ways of telling truth from fiction.That does not mean that we need depend on them to tell truth from fiction. Every child is born with the ability to do this. It's a funny sort of "derision" where the object of derision is promoted to Distinguished Professor at a prestigious Australian university.Do you have any actual examples of real, consensus derision? Real consensus enforcement of rigor in philosophy? Watson's comments were, in fact, precisely an example of an unpopular view that gets widely criticized - differences in intelligence between races. As a result of continuing to hold it nonetheless, he's in the process of essentially being ejected from the scientific community.On the other hand, the worst thing that you can seem to dig up on those three figures - who are by no means the only modern supporters of dualism, you've completely ignored the example of Western religious belief - is that some people wrote papers and disagreed with them, but that's been my point all along.People write papers and disagree, but it's never settled. Dualism continues to be supported; anti-dualism continues to be supported. People adopt dualism because its consistent with their ideology. People attack dualism because its inconsistent with theirs. It's never settled because philosophy provides no way to settle it; it's a field with no rigor. In 10 years, dualism and anti-dualism will still be held by significant numbers of philosophers. In 50 years, dualism and anti-dualism will still be held by significant numbers of philosophers. In 100 years, dualism and anti-dualism will still be held by significant numbers of philosophers. It'll never change because philosophy is a field with no rigor; no way to get rid of wrong ideas.Compare that to, say, the competition of any two theories in the sciences. There's a brief period of overlap where there are supporters of both camps and a large contingent of the undecided; over time, the right theory gains popular support while the supporters of the wrong theory aren't able to convince anybody except by fiat; eventually, all the supporters of the wrong theory have either repudiated it or died, and the other theory enjoys practically universal support among the consensus of serious scientists. The wrong theory is relegated to historical interest (as in, "look how dumb these old boobs were, they supported phlogiston theory!") if it's not forgotten altogether.There is no philosophy so wrong that you cannot find large contingents of serious, respected philosophers defending it openly. That's a phenomenon that is simply unlike anything in the sciences, but it's abundantly like theology and economics, two other fields that have no rigor.

I didn't make that argument. And children have credulity - so they aren't all that good at it.Nevertheless - since epistemology is the study of knowing truths from fictions, and rigour is the ability to tell truth from fiction - it follows that rigour is epistemological in its nature. Rigour is a matter of epistemology. You don't need to know that you have an epistemology, or what one is, or the arguments for or against it in order to be using an system of epistemology. Likewise you don't need to know what a brain is to use it. You raised one yourself - 20 critical arguments against the position. A professor of philosophy might hold unorthodox views, like a professor of science might. That doesn't stop them being excellent educators of the subject, and it doesn't mean that all of their work is criticised. Yes, but there is significant difference in degree. One is an unpopular view that many many people hold a strong opinion on so people distanced themselves from him to distance themselves from his opinions which interest many people -the other is a view that is unpopular within a field. I haven't ignored western religion. I'm fairly sure my earlier large post covered this very issue. You want cake and to eat it. On the one hand, you say that religion is philosophy and you deny that science is. Philosophers basically separated themselves from religion a long time ago - they let them at those old arguments - criticising them in their works from time to time. Science continues to be supported. Anti-science continues to be supported. That's humans for you. Yes I believe I have discussed the blessed position of science in its studies...and how its subject matter allows for more certainty. And yet...their positions cannot be proven and people still hold positions that the majority have rejected. What can you do but criticise them? But since science is a methodology that derives from particular philosophy - that's obvious. In 100 years time there will still be people who are religious and believe in miracles. It sucks, but I fail to see how this means anything interesting with regards to the topic.To me you continue to just say: In this subset field that studies very predictable and logical things, there is more certainty between its practitioners than the rest of the field which tends to study things which are much less predictable (if at all) and often illogical in appearance.I'm just trying to get you to understand my position since you seemed to have completely got it wrong. Do you think you can at least understand my position before the thread ends?

Quetzal, failing to produce an example of anyone taking the position he says they do ('philosophy is everything'), whisks the goal posts into the next county thus: You'll have to take that complaint to your Straw Man in Charge of Nonsense.My claim is as I stated it:

'How do you know?' It's a question worth asking anywhere knowledge itself is a goal.

You quoted this yourself.Do you deny that the question 'How do you know?' is worth asking?If so, say so. In speaking of being 'actually covered' you assume, rather than prove, the conclusion you draw: that the experience is real.A person who dreams about a fall can dream about mud and toes. During the dream he says 'This is real.' He wakes up and decides the opposite.The question remains. What criteria are you using to decide which experience is real? No, your argument does.So far you have made no reasoned case to support your contention that certain questions should be taboo for the human species to ask or discuss. You merely state your lack of interest in exploring any of those questions yourself.You can put your objection on more substantial grounds any time you wish. Just explain, using reason rather than personal likes and dislikes, why human beings are better off not asking themselves the question 'How do you know?'___________________Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

If so, then there's nothing there to attack, either .Jon

Sure, in the way plants are botanical "in their nature." That still doesn't mean that there were no plants until there were botanists. yet, that's exactly what you would have us believe about rigor and epistemology. Not promote them to "Distinguished Professor", for instance; fire them from their administrative position at the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory, for instance; see that they never are allowed to lead research in their field, for instance.Science is ruthless about enforcing rigor, to the point of destroying people's livelihoods over it. In nearly 300 posts, you've yet to actually present an example of philosophers doing anything comparable. If you're admitting that the dearth of rigor in philosophy is simply a result of philosophers being limited to "studying" only those things for which rigorous study is not possible, then you're continuing to prove my point - philosophy is a repository for unanswerable questions. Because science and religion are two different things, but philosophy and philosophy are the same thing. If you can attempt to hold the same position throughout, yes, I imagine I can lock onto it.

Maybe you didn't notice? I had already done that. Perhaps Quetzal did not feel the need to duplicate my work?Maybe you could read all the posts in this thread, instead of merely some of them, and you would not look so ill-informed about what has occurred and what goal-posts, if any, have been moved.

Except the unjustified perception that there is actually something there.That's worth attacking, IMO.

Not at all. We've obviously had ways of telling truth from fiction before philosophy sprung up and matured. They were really shit. We're superstitious by nature - we have a tendency to defer to an alpha male figure (authority) (that is we are credulous), and we have a tendency to see unseen hands at work in mundane events. Without training (school for example), we tend to be very bad at understanding the world. We can think pretty damn well when it comes to simple stuff - but we are prone to error when dealing with anything untrivial - without having been trained in a discipline. Yeah, fuck academic freedom. Anybody disagrees with the consensus and we fire them. That's what we should be doing after all. It's so obvious now that you mention it. It surely is the best way to advance knowledge. Anybody proposing a new idea that doesn't get accepted within x amount of months - and still holds onto that idea themselves - should be fired immediately. Actually, we should half bury them and throw fist sized stones at them...just to make sure they won't be having any more ideas.That's presumably why Micheal Behe doesn't hold a professorship in a science. Oh...wait...but...oh. That's not what I'm arguing - you really don't get my position yet do you? I'm arguing that some fields study things where patterns and predictions are easier, that different epistemology is required for other studies and the grey areas are sometimes larger than in other areas where the grey areas are very small.Unfortunately grey areas do exist, even in natural philosophy and the conclusions reached with its associated methodology.You are now defining rigorous, not as the ability to tell false models from true models, but as the degree of certainty one can have in that. In that case you are saying nothing more impressive than philosophy isn't the same thing as science.Really crash, not all things that are part of being human can be studied with the same kind of precision as we can do when we study science. If that is your sole problem with philosophy you could have just said that. It isn't a problem for philosophy, it's a problem for being human, and it is a problem that philosophy attempts to solve as best as is possible for irrational illogical behaving killer apes to solve. And if science and religion are two different things - so is philosophy and religion.However, I hold that science is a methodology stemming from materialistic philosophy concerned with the natural world and that contemplation is a methodology stemming from idealistic philosophy concerning itself with morality. I came into the discussion with the following definition: I still hold that position and haven't wavered. I've just tried explaining it in a variety of different ways to help you understand my position. Perhaps I should have just repeated myself over and over again with the same words - but the evidence of my senses indicated that this was not a productive or pragmatic approach.I hoped to clear a few things up before the thread was over because you still seemed hopelessly unaware of what my position was, but I see that I just confused you further. If that is the case, nevermind...I'lll see you in another thread where we may find ourselves arguing against the metaphysics or epistemology of a creationist and I'll quietly chuckle at the irony. I don't hold out any hope of changing your mind, unfortunately. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

So clearly truth-telling doesn't require epistemology, does it?Now, there's certainly merit in thinking about how to improve on the practice of truth-telling, but the sort of philosophical navel-gazing that constitutes epistemology has nothing to do with that."I refute it thus" is the greatest failure of epistemology. It's the proof that the epistemology you so prize adds nothing to human knowledge - rather, it subtracts from it. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize I was talking to David Fucking Horowitz. Sure, let's just open the biology doors to the ID'ers and the creationists. Let's make sure that the Flat-Earthers have as many offices in the geography departments. Let's extend economics appointments to supply-side and Chicago-school economists. (Oops, too late.)Let's make sure there's ample space and plenty of research money for the "luminaries" of wizardology and unicorn science. Jesus, Mod, how credulous can you even be? The problem with philosophy is that the whole thing is a gray area. It's all a fog of uncertainty - because, without rigor, there's no way have any certainty about anything.Sure, there are holes in our scientific knowledge. The problem with philosophy is that it's all holes. That's fine. Religion is theology, if you would prefer, combined with assorted folk beliefs, the study of which would be anthropology. If that quote is your position, I don't see how it's in any way oppositional to mine. It doesn't substantiate any rigor in any of those subfields, nor in philosophy as a whole. If that is truly your position then it is, at best, orthogonal to mine, not oppositional. If there's been any confusion here, it's been the result of you trying to portray an irrelevant, orthogonal position as something that undermined my position. I can and will do so as soon as someone shows me the rigor. After nearly 300 posts it's astounding that no one has been able to.

No, never said it does. Having a method of telling truth from fiction is an epistemological methodology. Actually, that's exactly what it is. But we can go around in circles all day. If Creationists and IDers are actually good at what they do, then sure. If they can teach the consensus views, if they are fantastic scientists then go right ahead. Or, if someone who has been a scientist for a while wants to talk about the arguments in favour of ID - be my guest. Welcome to LeHigh university. This debate has been marred by your constant sniping, your accusations at a lack of integrity, misrepresentation and so and so forth. Can you take part in a rigorous debate with an mind that is open to the possibility that you might be wrong? Why the attitude, Crash. We're just having a debate about philosophy, for Jesus' sake! Yes yes, that's your opinion. Contradicted by your earlier opinion that some of philosophy is rigorous and so on and so forth. Next time you argue that a proposition isn't falsifiable I'll promise not to point out the fact that falsifiability is a philosophical concept and is thus a gray area. Well I'm leaving this debate confused as to what rigour is. Is it the ability to tell truth from fiction within certain explicit boundaries as defined by you? What's the greyest it can be before it is no longer rigour? That's a debate for another time, but you now know what my position on rigour is - that it is simply holding to an epistemology rigorously. I understand your position Crash - it's just I think you are wrong. Your argument regarding rigour doesn't make sense at all, and I've not been able to tease any sense out of. The best I've managed is this:Some areas of human investigation and thought has barriers preventing it from knowing certain things. Some propositions are entirely capable of being true, but there is no way to have any confidence if they are false or true. These propositions are philosophy and are entirely pointless.Now - I agree that they are philosophy and that they are pointless. One of the things that has emerged in philosophy is the idea that if an idea could be true or false, with no way of knowing the two, it is basically meaningless. Thus, modern philosophy tries to make statements that can be verified or falsified at least in principle. Sometimes the practice of verification is less easy, sometimes it is very easy. I can easily verify that my cup will fall if I let go. It is less easy to verify that the the most socially acceptable thing to do would be sweep up the mess.That is a problem with being human, not with the discipline of trying to figure stuff out. You are essentially pointing to the limitations of humans as if this rendered trying to figure out those limitations and deal with them somehow flawed. It is, to some extent, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, or that its only use is to help get laid. Rigour is an object of study for epistemology. After nearly 300 posts it's astounding that you keep repeating this refrain, along with a post count. You cannot assume your conclusions, thus there cannot be a 'rigour' that 'operates' above epistemology level in some meta-capacity. One can use one's ideas of rigour to show faults in other fields of philosophy, but one cannot use one's ideas of rigour to prove one's idea of rigour. It simply doesn't make sense, and again this is not a problem for philosophy - it's just a limitation of not being omniscient.

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This'll be my last post. As a summary, I simply refer back to Message 261

Oh, God. Of course, you don't have a single word to say about the deplorable conduct of you and your peers in this thread.But you seem to have completely ignored my point about unicorn science and wizardology. If there's to be no standards at all, why not open the doors to everybody? Sure. That's why I keep asking to be shown the rigor - because my mind continues to be open to the possibility that there is rigor in philosophy, despite the fact that philosophy's defenders have been unable to do anything in 300 posts except misrepresent my position, offer disingenuous sophistry, call me names, appropriate the successes of other fields and essentially do everything but answer one very simple question I've been asking since page 4. It's impossible for me to believe this. How could you not understand my position? It's so simple I can state it in a single sentence - "philosophy has no rigor." Since both "philosophy" and "rigor" are terms that I've defined consistently, is it just that you don't understand words like "has" and "no"? Surely that can't be the case? You're absolutely right. Not a single word you said in that paragraph makes any sense whatsoever.

Human beings inquire. We ask questions about the world around us and explore those questions. We consider, debate, reject, accept and refine answers that others of our kind propose.Among the questions that appear in every culture and in every age one finds these:

What is best?
What is right?
What is real?
What is useful?
How do you know?

Many people look to traditions within their culture to provide the answers. But some individuals in ancient Greece made a noteworthy break with this habit.These individuals consciously regarded the notions of What Our Culture Teaches as separate from What Is Right. They made a place for skepticism. In seeking knowledge they accepted, for the sake of acquiring it, a healthy level of uncertainty about its results. Our answers are provisional, they said. New information may always come in. The best way to increase knowledge is not to stand pat on assumed answers, but to inquire. To ask, seek, test.This stance is now the stance of persons around the globe who value knowledge. Those who would know ask. We explore, examine, discuss, evaluate. We also refine. Over time our questions grow more focused, more accurate. For all that, our knowledge remains provisional. More information is always allowed in the door.Some have come forward to stand against this approach. 'Some questions don't need to be explored,' they say. 'The premises may be safely assumed. People who are curious beyond this should have their curiosity amputated.'This mindset is not new. Human beings have always existed who prefer to equate What My Culture Teaches with What Is Right. The approach has a certain ease of use about it. Premises come ready made.As individuals they can often make their way in life well enough. People navigated their ships by stars centuries before anyone could say what a star is. Farmers grew their crops without bothering themselves over why plants grow. Fishermen pulled up their harvest without asking why the ocean currents behave as they do. So it is that some scientists today can be equally content to go about their tasks without once asking how they know.Methods, in time, become traditions. For some, tradition seems an adequate enough guide. They feel little curiosity about where it comes from, what it is based on, what its limits might be.The fact remains: human experience has validated the worth of asking. All knowledge is connected (Message 210 ). We do well to trace the threads, seeking the sources and connections.Many people in ancient times looked up at the stars. They asked and discussed. Many scientists today look at their findings and do the same. If other individuals opt out of the discussion, the journey is no less worth undertaking for that reason. For us, as always for our species, discoveries await. The journey continues.______________Edited by Archer Opterix, : title.Edited by Archer Opterix, : ref.

Modulous has done us all a service by providing this excellent survey of the questions involved.This post deserves to be widely read. Many thanks.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Asking? Or answering?