satyr you need some better masochists-------
I like how you speak to me as if I’m an archetype rather than an individual.
I suppose criticizing people does have it’s merits, there’s probably too little of it in our society.
I agree.
Dennett was all over university level philosophy in my experience - successfully making the experience very basic, boring and limited - as with all analytical philosophers, regretably the only type that seem to have any prominence in the field today.
I’ve said before, on another thread, the only philosopher of any contemporary value is Žižek.
Lol. What’s the controversy?
I don’t really agree, Sil. Dennett has made a lot of contributions to acceptance of atheism, which is a very important social issue. He’s made contributions to the acceptance of science, which is also important, and has made important philosophical contributions too.
When I hear the criticism “analytic philosophy is boring”, I think of the criticism “math is boring”. Neither are objectively true, of course; plenty of people find both to be fascinating. But they are both subjects prone to students finding their subject matter boring. I don’t think this is a good criticism, though – why should finding the truth be exciting? Ideally it would be, but there is no truth more pure or objective than math, and yet it’s the most difficult and most boring subject for most people.
Analytic philosophy shares several traits with math. Predisposition towards boredom may be one. This stems from the analytic method. You lose excitement via this method – but you gain everything else. Precision, accuracy, reliability. The analytic method only makes your conclusions better, even if it makes the process of obtaining those conclusions less enjoyable.
There is a way online to appraise a website. Find out what ILP is worth and divide it by the number of posts and I think that’ll give you the number you need.
Why would I be looking for objective truth? I think we already covered that there are multiple truths, only some of which are narrow and reduced enough to be limited to a single truth. If I loved wisdom, I’d want an array of truths to draw from - a single truth has a bottom that contains plenty of wisdom, beyond which you cannot go unless you think outside that truth. So do you gather all that wisdom and then stop? - limiting yourself from broader wisdom? - that’s where we get poor philosophers who will never create anything, who will never reveal anything exciting.
Anyone beyond the understanding of a single truth has much more wisdom to gain from searching for the exciting than the objective. This is a thread about value, which goes beyond the limited value of finding the objective end of things.
In terms of limited use that’s fine by me. Christians bore me and science results in non-boring stuff being made. Though there is still an abundance of boring scientific stuff being churned out, and a lot of residual Christian thinking in secularism - which is solvable through contributions toward economics. When’s Dennett gonna branch out to that?
At the moment, like all analytical philosophers, he’s just bandwagonning - still forcing old methods and traditions through to complete exhaustion rather than looking at what happens after that. There’s probably still some milk left for them, but in terms of influence… well, no analytical philosophers are going down in history with nearly the same impact as Plato etc.
Things have moved on from precision, accuracy and reliability - with chaos and fractals and all that. The excitement used to be in analytic method hundreds of years ago. It’s not exciting anymore because things have moved on, though despite that - boring conservatives can’t see further and move on, and you get the equivalent of continuous re-makes of the same films that add in some faddish new addition and nothing more. Only the dregs of wisdom are left.
Since I love philosophy, I want to be part of its movement into new exciting realms.
Sil, I disagree with most of what you say, but I fear our disagreement is either irreconcilable or semantic, and either way doesn’t sound like a fun conversation. But I can say something – dare I say “objective” – on one point:
In all science professions, this is completely wrong. The emphasis is absolutely on those three things. In any field of science, people want to say as much as they can, with the most accuracy possible, about interesting or relevant topics. Chaos theory says (very informally of course) that sometimes there will be systems (e.g. weather) where if you have less than perfect knowledge, you can only predict so far in the future before your predictions are wildly incorrect. That’s fine – the emphasis by weather scientists is still on predicting as far as possible, as well as possible (although of course you might not know that to look at recent weather accuracy trends. But that’s a different story).
In non-analytic post-modern Judith Butler type philosophy, yes, precision and accuracy and reliability, and hell, all semblance of rationality and common sense sometimes go out the window. But in every field of science, I can assure you, we still want to say as much as we can, as accurately as possible, about whatever we can.
This is a shame. I find lots of value in trying to bridge gaps between different interpretations. Of course, this is exactly in line with my current approach to wisdom - connecting different truths with varying degress of success. I think you’ve indicated the same sentiment of cutting our losses once before - so my offer may not be of mutual interest. In which case, yes - I will accept if you want to leave it at simple disagreement.
I am aware of this - despite movements away from reductionist science, many scientists wish to remain faithful towards the value to be gained from what can be reduced with any reasonable accuracy.
There is still some predictability in this, and this is useful in a general way. Despite the fact that variance in results stays the same no matter how much you refine your methods, relative consistency remains and can be harnessed and applied to all sorts of new technologies. And as long as scientists remember they are technically only dealing in generalities that are only applicable to a limited amount of experience, then they will know their place and admit that there is more to be dealt with without science. Elsewhere is where the newness is to be found, and the excitement. I think it’s somewhat perverse to knowingly limit one’s love (of wisdom) - but on this matter we apparently differ.
The value of ILP posts is in that some of us do not limit our love of wisdom, and thus may touch on something new and exciting. But this assumes you value excitement over the old and conservative, and that you do not like to limit your love. And obviously there is no objective consensus on this one, just like there is no objective truth anywhere (unless that’s how you need to interpret things).
Well, you’ve swayed me. Somewhat. Let’s try this and see how it goes!
So, I’ll start by saying what I believe and why, sticking to material that I find to be relevant to our past two posts.
First, objective vs. subjective truths. I believe that we (as people) are all part of a universe that has its own laws. I believe these laws are independent from what we believe those laws are. (If I drop an apple, and believe hard enough that it will float, it will still fall.) I don’t believe this with 100% certainty because that would be silly, but I believe it to a great degree, because this idea fits everything I’ve experienced, and everything that other people tell me they experience.
Because of this, I believe that there is a realm that I can call “objective truth” which consists of all the statements that are true “about the universe”. Laws of physics would be objectively true. Even though there are probably other universes with different laws of physics, let’s just stick to this universe for the sake of conversation. Sentences like “Twiffy likes math” are also objectively true. Sentences like “Santa Claus exists” are objectively false.
Then there is the realm of subjectivity. Every person has a variety of beliefs. Some of these beliefs reflect, or contradict, objective facts. Some people believe in Santa, or believe that Twiffy does not like math, or believe that evolution does not take place. But others of these beliefs are “opinions”, beliefs the individual has that are neither objectively true nor objectively false, but something else entirely. “Cilantro is disgusting.” would be one of these statements. The term “disgusting” doesn’t even have meaning to the universe. That claim has no objective truth value. But subjectively, it is true for me, and false for many others. Presumably the sentence “Twiffy thinks Cilantro is disgusting” is objectively true. Presumably all moral claims (Murder is bad etc.) are subjective truths.
So we have this subjective / objective divide. Of course I’m sure you’ve thought about all this before, but the reason I bring it up is because I think the distinction is very important, and is helpful when we talk about “multiple truths”. To my mind there are only objective and subjective truths, and when you say “multiple truths”, I think “subjective truth”. I think “differing moral beliefs”, “differing cultural backgrounds”, etc. Things that make people different, but cannot meaningfully be classified as objectively right or objectively wrong.
Enter science. Science could reasonably be defined as the study of objective truth. All science is about objective truth in this sense; math studies objective truth that is independent from the laws of physics, and relies solely on logic. Physics studies the most fundamental objective truths that depend on the laws of physics. Chemistry and Biology study emergent properties of physical systems. Psychology, even higher, and so on.
Most of the humanities study aspects of subjective truth. What it’s like to be from a certain culture. The morality of war, the emotions of love.
Philosophy is an interesting mix. Historically, it’s been filled with both. Metaphysics, abstractly, is mathematics applied to traditional philosophical questions. But some philosophers historically have focused on more subjective matters, such as morality, art, beauty, wisdom, and so on.
So with this perspective in mind, here are some of my responses.
Objective truth is scientific truth, which is remarkably important and useful. Subjective truth is also important, but since it depends on the individual, my looking for the subjective truths of others is only useful up to a point. It’s useful to know what categories of belief are probably subjective, but once you know that, knowing the exact details of someone’s subjective beliefs are often very uninteresting. Do you like vegetables? Are you a libertarian? How often do you choose to bathe? Much less interesting than many questions of objective truth. Chaos theory and fractals are objective truth. Black holes. Computers. Quantum mechanics.
This isn’t to say subjective truth isn’t important – as I’ve said, it is. But I think a lot of post-modern viewpoints would degrade science to a religion, or to subjective truth, or to something dispensible and inferior to the beautiful machine of culture. I disagree with all of this. Ironically, the denigration of science is something that only those who live surrounded by the luxuries that science has produced, and who are therefore insulated from the harshness of having to cultivate your own food and manually maintain your own existence, can claim.
I think they have inherent value, like the sun.
No you don’t, LT. Don’t go being a troll now.
Thank you for indulging me. Here’s my rebuttal. A little lengthy, my apologies - see what you think:
The above quote relies on some major assumptions:
- Our senses sense some external world that we can sense a sensory picture of - once it has been transformed into an internal interpretation.
- Given “1”, these senses provide sufficient information of this external world as opposed to a very limited interpretation of it, such that we are “actually” mostly misled relative to a more complete sensory picture.
- The communicability of this sensory information shows everyone to have the same, or similar “enough” sensory picture - and people with sensory “deficiencies/anomalies” have an incomplete picture as opposed to a more complete picture. i.e. the general consensus is reliable.
- The consistencies that our senses indicate as reliably recurrent are “laws”/“truths” rather than simply what is most useful in terms of prediction.
With regard to assumptions 1 and 2, I am inclined to reject the notion of “an external world” that we have no immediate information about - only mediate information, mediated through our senses. It is only one’s own internal sensory picture that every person is witness to - the “external world” is only implied by the apparent general consensus mentioned in assumption 3. There is no Knox’s “God in the Quad”, privy to immediate information of everything in order to verify the accuracy of each individual’s mediate information.
With regard to assumption 3, just because most people find they can communicate about their individual interpretations does not make any collective agreement necessarily “true”. Although it is certainly useful to treat it as though it were. The word “truth” actually derives from loyalty - in this case, loyalty to the group consensus. Not surprising due to the social nature of humans, particularly concerning their reproduction being sexual.
These 3 assumptions reveal that “Objective Truth” is merely implied, subject to a social consensus that is assumed to be accurate due to agreement between not-necessarily-related subjective interpretations, and that this - along with the apparent use of this implication (as covered in assumption 4) - can amount to something we can call Objective Truth.
Obviously none of this directly implies there is necessarily no Objective Truth, though it shows that any conception at all of Objective Truth is reliant on Subjective Truths. To then claim that Objective Truth preceded Subjective Truths is to mistake cause for consequence. And any higher valuation of Objective Truth over Subjective truth is based on the social tendency of valuing consensus over direct individual knowledge - which is, of course, useful.
So all this, if accepted, has crushing implications on your paragraphs subsequent to the above quote.
With what I have to say in mind, Psychology’s “higher” emergence from the more fundamental Chemistry and Biology, and the even more fundamental Mathematics and Physics, is actually inverted.
Philosophically, it is necessary to question why would one want to think mathematically or scientifically - or even philosophically at all. This is a Psychological question, placing Psychology at the base, followed by Philosophy, followed by Mathematics and then the Sciences.
Subjective truths such as Culture, attitudes to war and love are moved further down with it - though it is in my opinion that Economics may in fact precede each of these things and all Psychology, Philosophy, Mathematics and Science etc. However, it is possibly necessary to question this with the Psychological question “why Economics?” And further, it may be necessary to equate Psychology with Philosophy as the love/value/wisdom in questioning intentional origins - and possibly to even equate Economics with Philosophy too, since neither the reliance of Philosophy and Psychology on Economic circumstance nor the question “why Economics” seems to be more fundamental than the other.
Cultural matters, and biases toward assumptions based on Social circumstances are each subject to Economic circumstance, as in the following quotes:
I have bolded the key words that betray Social bias in terms of value. The “importance”, “interestingness” and “usefulness” are predicated on utilitarian belief - that is there is an inherent bias toward what effects most people in the widest social sense. This explains your bias toward “objective” truth.
I have “degraded” Science to Psychology etc. (and I would do the same for religion) - Psychology in the sense of subjective valuation (rather than “truth”).
Economics fits into all this with the comment about those who live in luxury denigrating Science.
I have begun to discuss this point in another thread (about photons of all things). I correlate the predictive, more widely social use of Science with those who value control and the elimination of unpredictability more than excitement and lack of grounding. It is in fact in the interests of those who value excitement and lack of grounding to reject Science and the general belief in the “external world” that operates independently of anyone’s perception of it. And it is an Economic observation that the challenge for people is increasingly becoming to avert boredom rather than to merely survive at all. Comfort and predictability are coming to be taken for granted because of the sheer richness that historically preceding scientific movements of control and predictability has afforded us.
Science is becoming increasingly directed toward entertainment, and your average consumers are increasingly uninterested in the Science of any of this - only in the excitement and danger that scientifically manufactured technologies can offer them. So Science becomes revealed as Economically dependent, rather than objectively eternally “more important”. Though the valuation of excitement and danger would in all probability quickly disappear if scientifically created comforts disappeared. But rather than jumping to the conclusion that Science is therefore more fundamental than Economics, it must be noted that Science was only ever able to get off the ground at all due to certain Economic conditions being satisfied. So they are each related, with Science as a symptom of a certain Economic situation.
Likewise, the increasing decadence in Philosophy is also apparently proportional to the Economic richness that we know today.
Are we banging our heads against the walls yet? 
I find ILP helpful…I learn from some of you…
But as usual there is too much bad behavior…
I would prefer a kinder, gentler ILP…
Does a mall rat eat chilli fries?
Sil, a fair amount of what you say I agree with, and is of course the basis of Decartes’ doubt. The reason why I introduced my beliefs the way I did is because I recognize, of course, that there is no reliable argument for objective truth. All I can say is what I experience, and there’s no reason why my experiences correlate with any “external world” in any sense. Fundamentally there is no way for me to show that there is such a thing as objective reality. I acknowledge all of this, and I know that philosophically that’s an important thing to acknowledge.
But once it’s acknowledged, it has to be moved past. Here’s why: if you can’t shrug your shoulders and say “I can’t prove it, but I’ve got to assume it’s there”, you can’t get ANYWHERE. You’re stuck with perceptions that have no basis to anything that could be called “objective”. Those perceptions seem to indicate that other entities similar to yourself exist, but of course that’s unreliable, and you have no philosophically good reason to believe that that’s the case. If we really, truly held that level of doubt, we’d be solipsists, and we wouldn’t be bothering to have this conversation because that would be a conversation with your perceptions, which is useless.
In any pragmatic sense, we have to assume that there is an objective reality, with other people, and that one’s senses, on average, give some indication of some part of this objective truth. If we don’t assume this, we can’t even talk meaningfully about science (after all, what is “science” to a solipsist?) or heirarchies of human endeavor or any such thing.
If we agree that there is an objective reality, and we agree that it has the property of predictability (e.g. all else equal, the same initial conditions result in the same cause) (again, not because a universe has to have this property, but because ours seems to, and if we don’t assume that we again don’t get anywhere), then the rest of what I say follows, to varying degrees. Science becomes the study of objective truth.
You point out that a lot of my normative statements have a utilitarian bias. Absolutely. Utilitarianism is a beautiful theory that I have attacked from all sides and never found fault with. Clearly you disagree; but since we can both (presumably?) agree that morality is subjective anyway, there isn’t a big point debating it, except in terms of what matches most closely to rules necessary for societal stabilization, and rules compatible with evolutionary psychology, neither of which I’m guessing you’re interested in.
(And if you don’t agree that morality is subjective, we can probably stop there too, since I doubt we’d get anywhere reconciling that difference.)
Uh oh, are you one of those “science kills mystery” people? I can’t summon up any respect for this point of view, simply because I think anyone who claims this has never actually gotten their hands dirty with science, or met real scientists. I’m a scientist, and I can tell you that the people who work in my field are precisely those with the sort of minds that most people admire in books but don’t have themselves. I don’t mean geniuses beyond all measure or anything silly like that – I mean that scientists are people who are genuinely excited by mystery and the unknown. They throw themselves into this mystery face-first, and don’t come out again until they’ve gotten dirty, explored everything, and seen all the wonder they can find.
On the other hand, people who seem to think that science kills the mystery, I find – and no personal offense is intended – to have a very limited capacity for curiosity. You see a bolt of lightning strike through the air, and you think, the mystery! Is some god angry? Is the sky rending apart? Then you learn that, no, in fact clouds are rubbing together so violently that hundreds of trillions of infinitesimal particles of electricity are surging between the ground and the air, heating the air so quickly that the expansion of the heat causes a heart-stopping boom. To a mind with true curiosity, this should only increase the wonder. How amazing, that such a phenomenon can happen! What are these infinitesimal charged particles? By what mechanism do they travel? Why does rapid expansion of air cause a boom rather than woosh? Why does their travel heat the air? To a mind with real intelligence and curiosity, any answer opens up a hundred new questions, and only increases the mystery. But so many people hear the explanation, and say “oh” as if that explanation settles the matter, and turn away in disappointment. How sad and limiting for them, to lack the fire to quest further into the unknown.
No, as someone who grew up in a culture that cared nothing for science, and then became a scientist myself, I can tell you that those who have dismissed science as “destroying wonder” never seem to have a spark of creativity or brilliance – and that scientists, more than most of the artists, philosophers, or poets I’ve met, often have a wonderful combination of vivid imagination for what could, somehow, somewhere, be possible, and the adventurous drive to explore untrodden ground. They leave their dry-sounding reports behind for those too timid or cowardly or unimaginative to seek for light in the same fashion.
Twiffy, you asked about the value of ILP posts–my answer is the discussion you’ve been having with Sil. I’m not a scientist, nor am I a philosopher, so I hope no one takes offense at what I say. We don’t know each other here, which often makes what some people say here difficult to understand, especially when they use subjective language. (I’m an English/literature MA–you’d think I would be able to understand subjective language. My favorite author is, however, Jane Austen because of the precision with which she uses language.)
It’s my opinion that the only way subjective language can come close to being understood is if the reader/listener has an idea of the subjective mind creating that language. You are easier for me to understand because of the precision you have with the language you use. This is something I’ve tried to say, here, but you’ve been more successful than I in saying it. Thank you.
I’ve always been fascinated with science and regret I never learned the languages of science and mathematics early on. In the photon thread, I gave my visualization of what I think a photon is and asked if it came close to scientific ‘reality’–unfortunately, for me, answers came from philosophers rather than scientists, so I’m still not sure. I’d still like to know.
This is why I like Dennett–while I may not completely understand his concepts (Consciousness Explained isn’t an easy bed-time read), I can, for the most part, understand his language. Fortunately, my husband–a mechanical engineer who specialized in gas dynamics in school–has also read the book and can talk to me about it. Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to re-read many sections to get an idea of some of the concepts. And Dennett uses what I call ‘plain language.’
This, then, is the value of ILP for me. Every so often, something will be said that rings a tiny bell in my mind, ushering in new thought, which I relish. I thank both you and Sil for this thread–and everyone else here who have taken the time to bear with me and to try to use ‘plain language’ in responding to me.
Our mutual responsibility is to say things such that they are easily understood.
And to understand things so that they can be easily said.
Liz, excellent post, I really couldn’t agree more. So many people – and very often philosophers – seem to either not recognize the value of plain speech, or possibly even to rely on obscure speech to give themselves an aura of authority.
Kant is a good example of this. A good contemporary example is Judith Butler, a Berkeley academic that I think embodies the antithesis of rationality and plain speech. To see why, check out her wikipedia page (below), specifically the “Commentary on Style” section.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler
I’m glad that ILP provides you with glimmers of insight, and if it does so, it’s worth every electron. I completely agree with your comments on Dennett.
The reason you are disappointed is because an internet forum attracts people from all ages and different backgrounds. And formal training or formal education does not ensure one is not infected with bad ideas. The whole of intellectual history is littered with stupid-geniuses who thought they knew everything, consider how George Cantor was mocked by his peers.
From Wikipedia:
Writing decades after Cantor’s death, Wittgenstein lamented that mathematics is “ridden through and through with the pernicious idioms of set theory,” which he dismissed as “utter nonsense” that is “laughable” and “wrong”.[8] Cantor’s recurring bouts of depression from 1884 to the end of his life were once blamed on the hostile attitude of many of his contemporaries,[9] but these episodes can now be seen as probable manifestations of a bipolar disorder.[10]
Would you have been one to mock George cantor because you couldn’t get his ideas? You’re under the false assumption that you’re infinitely capable of grasping other peoples perspectives, ideas and their “truth” and “worth” but science shows this is not the case.
If you’re interested in truth you should learn more about the limits of human reasoning.
A good book for you
amazon.com/Where-Mathematics … 465037712/
I want you to entertain the idea that we are all morons, and that there are ideas and truths that our minds cannot fathom given the physical limitations of our minds. The same way we can’t teach a monkey about quantum theory, the idea that you or our institutions have a monopoly on the forms of truth is absurd.
A better idea is to understand that each person’s mind is running a simulation (model) of the world, and each persons simulation of the world is severely incomplete. The process of translating thoughts between these seperate unviverses known as our minds is not a trivial undertaking. Spoken language is not enough to convey ideas.
We all know that everyone is not equal in intelligence, but we also know that intelligence is not linear well defined phenomenon. There are many people who may have a low IQ but have superior observational/analytical skills when it comes to different areas of knowledge. Truth is a process that is not linear, because in order to attain understanding one needs time and resources and the right physical processes going on in ones mind. We underestimate the influence of natural biological processes putting a limit on what kinds of things we can easily understand and what kind of connections and insights we can make. We are very limited beings and we need to understand that physical laws govern the process of what we can understand.
