Philosophy Now Forum

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:20 pm What do you think determination is?

Oh, that's a neat trick! Dodge the question by appropriating it.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:20 pm How could you know this if you can't accurately observe eyes, optic nerves and the like?

Through various measurements and approximations which produce models with tolerable failure rates.

All models are wrong. Some are useful. The map is not the territory etc etc etc.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:26 pm

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:20 pm What do you think determination is?

Oh, that's a neat trick! Dodge the question by appropriating it.

Well why are you asking me if you're using the term yourself? We're back to playing stupid a la pretending to need definitions of terms that you shouldn't need definitions for--especially in this case because you're using the term yourself just a moment later. I'm not interested in doing philosophy by playing stupid. That's a pet peeve of mine rather.

Through various measurements and approximations which produce models with tolerable failure rates.

Measurements of what and how would we be checking the failure of anything?

All models are wrong. Some are useful. The map is not the territory etc etc etc.

We'd need to be able to access some territory to be able to say this. Otherwise we'd have no ground for it.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:38 pm Well why are you asking me if you're using the term yourself? We're back to playing stupid a la pretending to need definitions of terms that you shouldn't need definitions for--especially in this case because you're using the term yourself just a moment later. I'm not interested in doing philosophy by playing stupid. That's a pet peeve of mine rather.

I didn't ask you for a definition of a term?

I am asking you for a model/theory of determination.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:38 pm We'd need to be able to access some territory to be able to say this. Otherwise we'd have no ground for it.

Then lets pretend you are a solipsist and I am a figment of your imagination.
Or you can go to the other extreme - brain in a vat; or we live in the Matrix.

Your metaphysical theory make not one iota of difference as to how we conduct science and what mental models we walk away with.

A model is just a model. It isn't the thing being modelled. The stupid claim that all models are wrong - fashionable fifty years ago - assumes the fantasy possibility of a model that's right, without bothering to explain what that could be: a description that is the described. It's the same stupidity as denying the existence of things-in-themselves.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:51 pm A model is just a model. It isn't the thing being modelled.

No shit!

That's why it's called a model.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:51 pm The stupid claim that all models are wrong - fashionable fifty years ago - assumes the fantasy possibility of a model that's right, without bothering to explain what that could be: a description that is the described. It's the same stupidity as denying the existence of things-in-themselves.

There's fuckall assumption about a "right" model. It's implied in the name - model. That's why we say ALL models are wrong. Because there's zero chance of ever arriving at model that is "right". A model that is sufficient - maybe, not a model that is "right".

A "thing-in-itself" would be PRECISELY a "model that is right".

You don't have one of those!

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:59 pm

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:51 pm A model is just a model. It isn't the thing being modelled.

No shit!

That's why it's called a model.

The problem is that there's no ground for knowing this if you can't access (via knowledge-by-acquaintance) things that aren't models. It's just like saying something is an illusion while not being able to access just what the illusion is getting wrong. You need to be able to access that in order to fuel the claim that something is an illusion.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:03 pm The problem is that there's no ground for knowing this if you can't access (via knowledge-by-acquaintance) things that aren't models. It's just like saying something is an illusion while not being able to access just what the illusion is getting wrong. You need to be able to access that in order to fuel the claim that something is an illusion.

Then I guess I don't have any knowledge. I am just really good at guessing!

Maybe it's not the illusion, maybe it's just the drugs they feed us in The Matrix!

The more I practice - the luckier I get at making the best out of the hallucinations!

At what point are you going to grok that I don't claim anything about anything? Except the claim that Philosophy is bullshit.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:04 pm Then I guess I don't have any knowledge. I am just really good at guessing!

Maybe it's not the illusion, maybe it's just the drugs they feed us in The Matrix!

The more I practice - the luckier I get at making the best out of the hallucinations!

You have no ground for anything other than solipsism. All you'd be saying is that you're predicting your own mind.

At what point are you going to grok that I don't claim anything about anything?

That's just a way of saying that you don't really get what claims are.

Evolution/Creation/Age-whatever he goes by here is similar with his aversion to saying that he believes anything. It's all very infantile, really, and it's particularly weird when it amounts to a way of rebelling all while you're admiring conformism a la constructivism/knowledge by consensus (while ignoring the issue of how you can even know what anyone else would be saying or doing to detect a consensus in the first place) . . . it's a big mess that's probably motivated by psychological issues/personal relationship issues in your past.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:31 pm You have no ground for anything other than solipsism. All you'd be saying is that you're predicting your own mind.

Sure. That's what I am predicting now anyway - my experiences of whatever it is that I am experiencing.

I don't expect transcendence from empiricism.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:31 pm That's just a way of saying that you don't really get what claims are.

And I don't want to "get it". Especially since I am supposed to "defend" my claims.

That seems like a rather stupid game to play.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:31 pm Evolution/Creation/Age-whatever he goes by here is similar with his aversion to saying that he believes anything. It's all very infantile, really, and it's particularly weird when it amounts to a way of rebelling all while you're admiring conformism a la constructivism/knowledge by consensus (while ignoring the issue of how you can even know what anyone else would be saying or doing to detect a consensus in the first place) . . . it's a big mess that's probably motivated by psychological issues/personal relationship issues in your past.

OK, Freud, but you got me figured all backwards. Besides having a loving family and being happily married, I have actually been right to the bottom of first principles thinking. Towards learning to speak precisely using formal languages I had to deconstruct my own linguistic framework and unlearn absolutely everything till I hit rock bottom and so, I see all metaphysic/language/conception and even my own mind as 100% instrumental - in a mind-space of infinite possibilities intent is first and foremost. This isn't even that unique - phenomenologists put primary import on intentionality.

Anyway, when I am put my mind towards solving a problem from first principles I start with a "clean slate" - there's just The Construct. A clean piece of paper and a pencil and my memories/knowledge. And when I am not applying my mind to problem solving I don't particularly feel obliged to hold any beliefs, or form any opinions about anything - I am perfectly content to just be and let life happen to me.

I tried explaining this to you last time and you didn't quite grok it so lets try again...

This is a cow. You see it - I see it. We both see it. This cow is in my garden - it's just there. Grazing.

Do you believe in it? Me - I don't know how to tell whether I do or don't. I have no idea what the verb "to believe" fucking means in relation to the cow.

When engaging in phenomenological bracketing I have no idea which part of the overall experience is the "belief".

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:31 pm it's particularly weird when it amounts to a way of rebelling all while you're admiring conformism a la constructivism/knowledge by consensus (while ignoring the issue of how you can even know what anyone else would be saying or doing to detect a consensus in the first place)

So you know how you get tired of having to explain how everything works?

All those "problems" you point to - they are only problems if you want them to be problems.

Consensus is not conformism. Consensus is real-time negotiation among disagreeing agents, who implicitly assume that they want to agree, and they accept that they can't ever agree to disagree and they are capable of detecting and overcoming the various systemic issues in representing and communicating knowledge in order to resolve the arising conflicts and disagreement.

Consensus algorithms are common knowledge to folks in my area of expertise.
It's a language game - quite literally rules and procedures. Mind you, the theory was developed long after the practice was mastered but having both at my disposal makes me wonder why you think detecting consensus is a "problem" of any sort. It's not a problem in theory OR in practice.

if all interlocutors understand the rules (and from trying to play the game with you, it's obvious to me that you don't) then consensus is trivial and rapid. Disagreement is the exception, not the norm. So, having worked in a setting where humans manage to bridge the consensus-gap with zero philosophical background it necessarily leads one onto pondering why Philosophers always disagree. At some point you end up pondering whether the contrarianism is intentionally manufactured; or whether Philosophers are genuinely inept at consensus.

It's probably because you have no idea how to be an individual as part of a collective is why you narrate what I am doing as "rebelling while admiring conformism". I see no conceptual conflict between individualism and collectivism, but then again resolving inner conflict to arrive at a choice is like 90% of what engineers do. Trade-offs...

I am an individual who understands how cooperation works and Philosophy doesn't strike me as a cooperative sport.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 2:55 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 6:21 am I don't agree with (2).
The physical referent of normatives are universal in all humans, thus the same for all people.

For many commonly held "oughts" I'm a "different person."--I have a lot of unusual moral views. And for almost all others, I know some "different people"

Perhaps you want to retract or edit the above post?

Ah--I didn't remember typing exactly that, and it didn't make sense to me out of context.

Re the context: I was explaining to Skepdick that morality isn't morality (a la what the vast majority of people are talking about/doing with respect to what they're naming "morality") if we're not talking about normatives. He said "Morality is the collective effort of ensuring the continued human survival and improved human wellbeing. Morality is about constructing a hospitable environment . . ." So using his own wording (which is one thing that threw me off--that's not wording I'd ever use on my own; I used it because I was repeating it back to him), I was trying to say, although I didn't make this explicit enough, that the very idea of "ensuring human survival" has an "embedded" "ought" in it, because logically, one has to think or feel that "We ought to ensure human survival" in order to be focused on that. Otherwise one would be neutral about ensuring human survival or one might even think "We ought to NOT ensure human survival."

Based on what you wrote, the embedded ought/should as embedded via the DNA/RNA,

No, no, that's nothing like what I was saying. I was saying that logically, "Morality is the effort of ensuring continued human survival . . . well-being" etc. implies that one is thinking normatives a la "We OUGHT to ensure human survival," "We OUGHT to ensure well-being," "Such and such OUGHT to count as well-being," etc. One could just as well think, "We OUGHT to NOT ensure human survival" and so on (and some people do think that).

If you insist otherwise, so be it.

then all normal people will act from the same based of ought/should thus will not feel differently.
Only the abnormal [psychiatric cases] will feel differently.

There's nothing normative about statistical normalcy. You keep assuming that there is.

We don't equate statistic normalcy with normative directly.

Note the meaning of 'normative'

Normative generally means relating to an evaluative standard. Normativity is the phenomenon in human societies of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible. A norm in this normative sense means a standard for evaluating or making judgments about behavior or outcomes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative

In this case, we have to verify and justify whatever has statistic normalcy qualify to be a normative as defined above.

That is because you don't have necessary depth in the neurosciences to understand the above.

Holy crap are you continually patronizing, lol. Would you like to compare our academic backgrounds?

I inferred that from what you posted re the lack of using such knowledge.

For philosophy sake, academic background is not critical. At present, academic philosophy is being condemned from all corners.
What is critical are the arguments you provide at present and the sufficiency of knowledge to back up those arguments.

Btw, do you have a degree is neuroscience?

The opposite of surviving is death.

And?
Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with normatives.

Note the definition of 'normative' above;

"...of designating some actions or outcomes as good or desirable or permissible and others as bad or undesirable or impermissible."

Who are you to insist 'avoiding death to survive' is not good or desirable.

As explained above, the above oughtness to survive implies avoiding premature death

There is no ought to "avoiding premature death."

As I had argued this can be verified and justified empirically and philosophically within a moral FSK, note 'moral' not any other FSK.

and that is a fact of human nature.

It might be a statistical norm, but STATISTICAL NORMS DO NOT IMPLY NORMATIVES. To suggest that they do is to fall to the argumentum ad populum fallacy. You keep simply assuming that statistical norms imply normatives, but they don't. It's simply falling prey to a tendency to be conformist.

Note the definition of 'normative' and avoiding premature death is good or desirable, else there are pains when one sense the threat of death.

Terrapin Station wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 3:15 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 3:08 pm If people were neutral about ensuring human survival then you would observe that human longevity remains steady over time. Neither improves nor worsens.
If people were thinking we ought to NOT ensure human survival then you would observe that human longevity worsens over time.

Not supposed to be responding to you, but it's worth clearing up your confused thinking here:

If there are a million people and 990,000 think one thing where only 10,000 think something different,, and where we're talking about communal trends, the 10,000 outliers aren't going to have much of an effect on what happens.

This implies nothing about the fact that in order to work to ensure human survival, you have to think or feel that we OUGHT to do that contra alternatives.

Moral oughts are not about thinking.

That various people have different thinking with sex or are even asexual does not mean there is no inherent generic sexual-drive-mechanisms in the brain and physical features in ALL humans that is coded in the human DNA.

It is same with moral facts of moral oughtness, i.e. there are inherent generic physical and moral mechanisms in the brain in ALL humans that is embedded in the human DNA.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Feb 20, 2021 9:51 pm A model is just a model. It isn't the thing being modelled. The stupid claim that all models are wrong - fashionable fifty years ago - assumes the fantasy possibility of a model that's right, without bothering to explain what that could be: a description that is the described. It's the same stupidity as denying the existence of things-in-themselves.

PH can you address this,
Things-in-Themselves Exist as Real?
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=32169

if you cannot prove it, you are the stupid one.

Skepdick wrote:

I am an individual who understands how cooperation works and Philosophy doesn't strike me as a cooperative sport.

Philosophy works neither cooperatively nor combatively but progressively as dialectic. A dialectic encounter may seem superficially combative even hostile, but in the longer term, and in the absence of bigotry, dialectics are how free cultures are dynamic and change as necessary alongside larger environmental changes; changes which include encounters with foreign ideas.

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Feb 21, 2021 10:19 am Philosophy works neither cooperatively nor combatively but progressively as dialectic. A dialectic encounter may seem superficially combative even hostile, but in the longer term, and in the absence of bigotry, dialectics are how free cultures are dynamic and change as necessary alongside larger environmental changes; changes which include encounters with foreign ideas.

It's always a dialectic when it's not a monologue. The question of cooperation is simply a question of whether the interlocutors consciously choose to work towards consensus or not.

Philosophy strives for keeping the conversation going ad infinitum, which necessitates disagreement. Which is the opposite of consensus.