The Existential Crisis

[Age]

Your idea of 'useful' is not being able to tell red from blue? Frankly no, I do not think anything I do could be described as 'useful' in the sense you apply it.

When you tell me HOW you've told them apart you've defined your method.

Apparently that's how science works.

You can't even do it for something as trivial as colors. I don't expect you to be able to do it for any complex issues like morality.

But telling and explaining HOW I tell things apart, including the very simple issue of morality, is an extremely simple and easy thing to do, as can be evidenced, and proven.

[Skepdick]

But telling and explaining HOW I tell things apart, including the very simple issue of morality, is an extremely simple and easy thing to do, as can be evidenced, and proven.

Stop telling me it's easy and show me how easy it is.

[Skepdick]

I looked at them.

I looked at them too. And then what did you do?

According to who? Certainly not the Paul Feyerabend who famously wrote 'Against Method'. Which Feyerabend are you 100% in favour of?

Are you sure you've read the book?

He was against method. Singular.
He was certainly not against methods. Plural.

"Anything goes" implies that there is SOME method.

Why can't you tell me what YOUR method is?

Well yeah Skepdick, telling colours at different ends of the visible spectrum apart is trivial. That you find it difficult is laughable.

Is that the best strawman you could come up with?

Telling colors apart is trivial for me too.

I am not asking you to tell me THAT you have done it.
I am asking you to tell me HOW you have done it.

You looked at it.... and then... the answer miraculously appeared?

If I were a philosopher of morality, that would be a problem.

You are a philosopher of science. And you can't even science.

Ethics is one of those things we haven't yet managed to turn into a science.

And what caricatured version of "science" do you have there?

Remove humans from the decision-making process? Let the models think for us?

If one day we do, it will almost certainly be with help from computer scientists.

It's already a "science". Our great great great great mothers had it figured out.

In the language of the Christians: All of you are sinners!
Which neatly translates into English: All of you are wrong!

Wisdom comes in knowing that it's not always wrong to be wrong.

But not ones such as yourself who insist that the tautology 'murder is immoral' is some kind of insight.

What sort of "insight" do you expect? Do you expect to outsource your thinking?

The history of science is littered with cranks who thought that some method suited to one field was universally efficacious.

Yes! NOT dying is universally efficacious to scientists.

You don't need to do science to be alive, but you need to be alive to do science.

Whatever use you find for having to define your method for contrasting red and blue in computer science, you haven't made your case that it isn't simply needless obfuscation in other fields.

We don't have ANY use for contrasting red and blue.
But we have ALL the use for contrasting things like true and false.

You can't even do it for trivial stuff. Why do you think you can do it for anything else?

[Belinda]

Age wrote:

Is there a way to produce a non-linguistic description of X?

Some artists make non-linguistic, non-symbolic, descriptions of x, and n too. Such descriptions are characterised by self reference .
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/lauriemull/ ... ferential/

A picture of a pipe with caption "This is not a pipe" and Skepdick's coloured propositions have the same logical structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

Paralinguistic information, because it is phenomenal, belongs to the external speech signal (Ferdinand de Saussure's parole) but not to the arbitrary conventional code of language (Saussure's langue).

[uwot]

Why can't you tell me what YOUR method is?

...we have ALL the use for contrasting things like true and false.

If you really can't remember all the times I have made my methods absolutely clear to you, lemme try and put them all in one box:
1. Cartesian scepticism. The only thing that I take to be absolutely true is that there is something going on that involves phenomena.
2. Humean scepticism. There is no logical connection between one phenomenon and another.
3. Story telling. Make some shit up that adequately accounts for the phenomena.
4. Underdeterminism. Accept that no matter how good a story is, there will be others that are equally adequate.
5. Empiricism. Test a story.
6. Pragmatism. Use whatever story works best for you.
Think that covers it. Michael Faraday summed it up rather well:
"All this is a dream. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency."

[Skepdick]

Why can't you tell me what YOUR method is?

...we have ALL the use for contrasting things like true and false.

If you really can't remember all the times I have made my methods absolutely clear to you, lemme try and put them all in one box:
1. Cartesian scepticism. The only thing that I take to be absolutely true is that there is something going on that involves phenomena.
2. Humean scepticism. There is no logical connection between one phenomenon and another.
3. Story telling. Make some shit up that adequately accounts for the phenomena.
4. Underdeterminism. Accept that no matter how good a story is, there will be others that are equally adequate.
5. Empiricism. Test a story.
6. Pragmatism. Use whatever story works best for you.
Think that covers it. Michael Faraday summed it up rather well:
"All this is a dream. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency."

How is it that you can say so much when dealing with nothing in particular (e.g truth and falsity), yet when I ask you to explain your method for choosing the label of a color you can say nothing at all?

Perhaps you are an expert on truth/falsity? I can always reframe my question to align with your area of "expertise"

A. The true "red" is THIS RED and the false "red" is THIS RED.
B. The true "red" is THIS RED. and the false "red" is THIS RED

Which method/experiment are you using now?

[uwot]

Which method/experiment are you using now?

Skepdick, every time that you have asked me to identify the red red, I have unerringly identified the red one. So from my list:
6. Pragmatism. Use whatever story works best for you.
Given that my method is so far 100% successful, why do I need to know how that method works?

[Skepdick]

Skepdick, every time that you have asked me to identify the red red, I have unerringly identified the red one. So from my list:
6. Pragmatism. Use whatever story works best for you.
Given that my method is so far 100% successful, why do I need to know how that method works?

Every time I asked you to identity the red red - you have made an arbitrary choice!

I never asked you if your choice was "correct" or not (nor did I Imply your choice was "wrong") - I am merely asking you to explain HOW you have made the choice that you have made. I am asking you to explain your method for choosing!

But since you've decided to put your foot in it... how do you know that your choice (however you made it) was "correct and unerring" ?

A. THIS IS THE UNERRING/CORRECT RED.
B. THIS IS THE UNERRING/CORRECT RED.

How do you know that choosing A "works" ? Where is the "pragmatism" in your arbitrary choice?

[uwot]

Every time I asked you to identity the red red - you have made an arbitrary choice!

So what? Every time I have identified the red red, I have made the correct choice.

I never asked you if your choice was "correct" or not (nor did I Imply your choice was "wrong") - I am merely asking you to explain HOW you have made the choice that you have made. I am asking you to explain your method for choosing!

I told you: I looked at them.

But since you've decided to put your foot in it... how do you know that your choice (however you made it) was "correct" ?

Who cares? Whatever point you are trying to make, you haven't given me any reason to think it matters outside of your idiosyncratic obsessions.

[Skepdick]

So what? Every time I have identified the red red, I have made the correct choice.

How do you know it's "correct"?

You are like a student marking their own exam. What would signal "incorrectness" to you?

I told you: I looked at them.

Yes! You looked at TWO things. And then you chose ONE. How?

Looking and choosing are different verbs, right? How does looking cause choosing?

Who cares? Whatever point you are trying to make, you haven't given me any reason to think it matters outside of your idiosyncratic obsessions.

Oh. My point is the same as always. Philosophers are idiots. In particular - a Philosopher of science is not a scientist.

As of right now you can't account for your choices or their correctness and you don't even know how to falsify your hypothesis.
But you are asserting that your method (whatever it is) "works".

That's why falsification matters. It's negative feedback

[uwot]

Oh. My point is the same as always. Philosophers are idiots.

And you think you can make that point by making out that identifying red as red is problematic? Okie-dokie, if our problem is that we don't have a method by which can prove to ourselves that our choice of red is the correct one, tell me your method that makes you not an idiot.

But you are asserting that your method (whatever it is) "works".

That's right Skepdick, because idiot or not, I can identify red with the same accuracy as you.

[Belinda]

This is not not-red

This is not not-red

This is not not not-red

This is not not not-red

The symbol/sign/signal is not the thing itself , and any language about the symbol/sign/signal is self referential. My examples are about the uses of negatives. Do multiple negatives cancel each other out?

[Skepdick]

And you think you can make that point by making out that identifying red as red is problematic? Okie-dokie, if our problem is that we don't have a method by which can prove to ourselves that our choice of red is the correct one, tell me your method that makes you not an idiot.

You aren't hearing a thing of what I am saying. It's not your choice that makes you an idiot. It's not that you don't know HOW you've chosen that makes you an idiot. It's that you have NO WAY OF KNOWING if your choice is wrong - that's why you are an idiot.

A. THIS IS RED IS THE CORRECT RED
B. THIS IS RED IS THE INCORRECT RED

That's right Skepdick, because idiot or not, I can identify red with the same accuracy as you.

You can't really assert that without a criterion for inaccuracy! Idiot.

[Skepdick]

This is not not-red

This is not not-red

This is not not not-red

This is not not not-red

The symbol/sign/signal is not the thing itself , and any language about the symbol/sign/signal is self referential. My examples are about the uses of negatives. Do multiple negatives cancel each other out?

Great question the answer to which goes right to the core of one's logical foundations.

What you have demonstrated/discovered is the question of how to deal with double negation.

Classical logic uses double-negation elimination - that is, it simply discards double negations.
Intuitionistic logic doesn't. Double negations are treated constructively.

That's what makes it empirical/epistemic. Double negation (falsification in empirical terms) produces new information.

[Belinda]

This is not not-red

This is not not-red

This is not not not-red

This is not not not-red

The symbol/sign/signal is not the thing itself , and any language about the symbol/sign/signal is self referential. My examples are about the uses of negatives. Do multiple negatives cancel each other out?

Great question the answer to which goes right to the core of one's logical foundations.

What you have demonstrated/discovered is the question of how to deal with double negation.

Classical logic uses double-negation elimination - that is, it simply discards double negations.
Intuitionistic logic doesn't. Double negations are treated constructively.

That's what makes it empirical/epistemic. Double negation (falsification in empirical terms) produces new information.

Your discussion, Skepdick, considers the form of my examples, not the meanings. Same goes for your coloured texts , they are useful for illustrating form not meaning. It's unfair to ask how someone knows what red means, based on your coloured texts which refer to the form of the texts themselves , not the meaning of the texts.

If you asked "How do you know the font is red in the following : text ? I think that would be a genuine question that is not self referential.