The substantive issue to me is that no metaphysical debate can rely on classical (binary) logic, because set membership (properties) of 'focal concepts' is contextually transient. — fresco

Confusing ideas and epistemology with ontology. How novel. :roll:

You've posted the exact same argument before. You didn't get much of a discussion, because the idea is trivial and there is not much to discuss. — SophistiCat

Yeah, I don't see how this is arguable, really. You could just point to the fact that cells divide to become two cells with all of the features that one had, but humans do not similarly divide.

What is actually new in this interpretation?

I think it's rather close to the Copenhagen interpretation in quantum physics.. just enlarged to be something of an overall philosophy thanks to rampant methodological reductionism, — ssu

Yeah, after reading a bit about and by Kastrup yesterday, I got the impression that it's a wide-ranging Copenhagen interpretation, half-motivated by Kastrup's background with qm, including working at CERN, and half-motivated by his religious beliefs.

Unfortunately the 30 pages or so that I checked out of his book Why Materialism is Baloney read like a stereotypical Christian apologetics text, and not like a book written by someone capable of academic philosophical writing.

Disappointingly, he seems to base a lot of his argument against materialism on what he considers to be a lack of a materialist explanation of consciousness . . . with (a) the typical complete absence of anything like an analysis of or list of (demarcation) criteria for explanations, and (b) the typical complete absence of any sort of competing explanation. It's basically the old, "I don't consider anything an adequate explanation of this, so God did it"--just not in those exact words, because that doesn't make the sale.

Well, you can better identify what folks are doing, how they're doing it and indications of the sorts of things they can probably do, at least.

Even with technical aspects, there still are no factual/human-independent valuations. It still comes down to what people like/dislike, and it's still a fallacy to say that something is a factual value just because there's a consensus about it (that's simply the argumentum ad populum fallacy).

People mistake consensuses, widespread agreement for facts independent of the widespread opinion as such.

Perhaps, that what words imply does not necessarily correspond to what is. — Merkwurdichliebe

Okay, but my comment wasn't in the vein of "what words imply corresponds to what is." So I'm not sure what that has to do with my comment.

Actual existing and thinking about existence are two different things. — Merkwurdichliebe

What does that have to do with my comment about what words imply?

Surely you guys are missing the point that human word 'existence' implies 'functional for human purposes'. — fresco

Doesn't that depend on how an individual is thinking about the term?

I judge this to be contrary and you don’t. One of us is wrong, agree? FIN — I like sushi

Sure. So what you'd have to do is show some sort of evidence for there being a fact that one possibility is better or worse than another. (Anything you'd like to use as an example --this chord progression versus that one, this melody versus that one, this piece of music versus that one--whatever example will most easily serve the demonstration of a fact that one thing is better than another.)

First, if you read what I just wrote, I obviously believe there can be experts in general.

It's just that you can't be an expert on value judgments, because there's nothing to be correct or incorrect about.

You bring up "singing in key" for example (which as an expert on music theory/composition myself--it's one of two fields I have degrees in and it's the field in which I earn a living--I can tell you is a different idea than intonation, or being "on pitch"). An expert understands what is meant by "in key" or "in tune"/"on pitch" (even though there's plenty of ambiguity in those notions; we still can describe what is conventionally referred to by those terms), and we can hear when something is "in key" or "in tune"/"on pitch", but what no one can be an expert on is whether it's better to sing "in key" or "in tune"/"on pitch" or not. That's because there's no fact (re what's better) to be correct or incorrect about in that regard. You can get correct or not that "Most people prefer singing that's 'in key' or 'in tune'/'on pitch'," but you can't get correct that it's better to do what most people prefer, because there's no fact in that regard.

The same thing goes for composition in general re keys, chords, progressions, melodies, counterpoint, large-scale structures (say a 12-bar blues versus sonata form or whatever), and so on. You can be an expert when it comes to identifying such things, identifying relationships between them, and so on, but you can't be an expert when it comes to claims that any content is better than any other content.

The point is that in order to be an expert at x, it has to be possible to get claims about x right or wrong.

So, for example, you can't be an expert on Elvis Presley if you don't know that he was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, if you don't know that he was in a film called Clambake, if you don't know that he did a duet with Kitty White on a song, "Crawfish," for another film, King Creole, and if you don't know that DJ Fontana was the drummer on over 450 Elvis recordings, including "Hound Dog", while Ron(nie) Tutt was often his drummer in Elvis' later years. It's not that knowing those things is sufficient to be an Elvis expert, but knowing them is required to be an Elvis expert. They're basic facts about Elvis that one can be correct or incorrect about.

However, one can not be an expert on value judgments about Elvis. Saying that Elvis' version of "Hound Dog" artistically surpasses Big Mama Thornton's version, or saying that "Hound Dog" is a better song than "Old MacDonald" (which Elvis does a version of on the Double Trouble soundtrack), saying that the Beatles were superior artists to Elvis because they wrote their own music, saying that Elvis was a superior artist to the Shaggs despite the fact that the Shaggs wrote their own music, and so on, are not things that one can get correct or incorrect. There's no option for expertise on such matters, because there are no facts to know or be ignorant of when it comes to making value judgments. Knowing that Elvis didn't write his own music (aside from handful of "courtesy" songwriting credits) while the Beatles did is subject to expertise--you can get that correct or incorrect, but claiming that it's artistically better to write one's own material is not subject to expertise, because there is no fact in that regard to get right or wrong.

Do the various practitioners of the aptly named GRIEVANCE STUDIES deserve this fraud? Is this fraud unethical? — Bitter Crank

Yes to the first question, and no, it's not unethical in my view. What's unethical in my view is to be an apologist for bullshit, for gobbledygook. If they can be fooled by nonsense, it's a valuable thing to fool them and let it be known that they were fooled. Maybe that will teach them to be more critical, more intellectually honest.

Evidence for it would have to be evidence of valuations occurring independently of any person, any person's judgment, proclamation, etc.

That sounds like a meaningless and disjointed argument. Are you suggesting that the value of football players to a club is completely arbitrary? — I like sushi

No. I'm not saying it's arbitrary (presumably you mean that in the sense of "random.") I'm saying that the value of football players to a club is not an extramental fact. It's a matter of how much the individuals who are doing the valuing actually value someone, for the reasons they value them. They can't get that right or wrong, because there's nothing to get right or wrong. But that doesn't matter, of course. What they care about are what they value and why they value it as individuals.

Your ability to choose better players for a team is an ability to understand the value of the players. — I like sushi

What it is in the first place to be a "better player" is for individuals to value certain things over others, and the "better thing" has more of the stuff an individual values. Different individuals value different things (as is very obvious if you talk to many people). It's not arbitrary, but there are no facts to get right or wrong re values qua values, either.

People certainly choose players they feel are better, and some other people will agree with them, especially when it comes to something like players chosen for a team. That doesn't imply that there are any facts they're getting right or that they can be more or less experts on when it comes to values.

I am not suggesting value judgement id infallible, but I would argue against anyone claiming value is purely a subjective matter - that doesn’t make any sense to me. — I like sushi

If value is objective in some way, show the evidence for it.

Show me how possessing knowledge of an area makes no difference to the value of the judgements made. — I like sushi

The value of the judgments made is subjective/it's something that each individual determines for him/herself based on highly variable criteria. So I wouldn't say that it makes no difference. It's that the difference it makes, if any, is potentially different for each individual.

This is just the point I'm making. There are no value facts to get right or wrong. Hence why we can't be more or less of an expert on value.

Show me that someone who’s never seen or played a game of football has as much expertise as someone who’s been playing professionally all their lives at the highest level and who has been successful in management too. — I like sushi

They have just as much expertise with respect to value judgments, since no expertise is possible for value judgments.

Obviously the one person knows a lot more about the facts involved with playing football. It's just that those facts include no values.

Why can’t you see how some people can be experts? — I like sushi

You can't be more or less an expert in a field where there aren't facts to get right or wrong. So one can't be more of an expert than another when it comes to values, better/worse, etc. qua values.

One can be more of an expert than another when it comes to the meta aspects of value fields--ethics, aesthetics, for example, and one can be more of an expert than another in the factual considerations that we consider when valuing things, but none of those things are value themselves.

With values themselves, there's nothing to get right or wrong, in terms of correctly or incorrectly matching facts. So it's not possible to be more or less an expert in that.

"To some physicists, this indicates that all the matter, with its solidity and concreteness, is an illusion that only the mathematical apparatus they devise in their theories is truly real,"

The way I read this is that it's just reinforcement of the fact that physics is so mathematics-oriented in practice that at least some physicists take mathematical platonism even further, to a point of math-worship, basically. That's unfortunate, but understandable. It's simply an instantiation of the old "to a hammer, everything looks like a nail" tendency.

Yeah, right after I stopped to ask I saw that he got more into the stuff you were talking about.

First, leading up to that, when he says, "Religious beliefs give us a way of thinking of our lives which puts them in an emotionally satisfying context," which seems to be an important premise in his view for what follows, (a) that's not actually disagreeing with the "symbolic" view of religion that he said he didn't find useful, and (b) it doesn't seem to be saying anything other than it's a fiction that some people find it rewarding to believe or to at least act "as if" it were true. Or at least it's consistent with (b).

He says, "Science oversteps its bounds when it tells us we have no right to believe in God . . ."--science doesn't actually say anything like that. Science isn't going to tell us what rights we do and don't have. Anthropology might tell us what rights people say they and others do and don't have, but since there aren't any non-human facts about rights, science can't tell us any.

Then he says, "This way of reconciling science and religion requires us to abandon the idea that there is one way the world really is." No it doesn't. Nothing like that follows from noting that some people find emotional satisfaction in believing or "as if-ing" religious beliefs.

Re "easiest if one thinks of beliefs as tools . . . rather than [something like claims for representing reality]" In making a claim that "x is a tool for y" we're making a claim about what reality is like.

This is already too many different topics to discuss at once, and it's just from a couple minutes of a 60-minute video.

Also, "information" would need to be defined if we're making this sort of claim about it, because it's rather ambiguous.

As always, my first question is, "Wait--why would we believe this?"

We can make up fantasies all day long. Why would we believe any of them?

Here is a Rorty link giving a backcxloth to my assertion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3enH7ntOAM — fresco

Is there a particular part of this lecture that you'd say hones in on what you want to focus on in this thread? I'm just asking because I'm 15 minutes into it already and I'm wondering when Rorty is going to get to anything like what we've been discussing so far. (And that's actually making it more difficult for me to appreciate Rorty's presentation, because I'm focused on waiting for the punchline with respect to this thread to arrive.)

Maybe that absurdity really is the fact of the matter (that we’re not obliged to believe), but I wonder if that is sincerely believed by anyone. — AJJ

It's certainly believed by me that it's neither a fact nor true that there are things we ought/ought not believe.

I have a disposition that there are some things we ought/ought not believe, but that's different than saying that it's a fact or true that there are things we ought/ought not believe.

If I feel you ought to believe what I'm saying here that's an opinion or disposition I have. It's not a fact or true independent of me.

You didn't have to use the word "aware" to be saying that. Nothing anthropomorphic about it by the way. Frogs have senses, brains, etc.

The problem, as I see it, is that what we call 'dead insects' do not 'exist' for starving frogs because their mode of interaction is not attuned to dead insects. — fresco

I don't believe there's any way to know what frogs aren't aware of.

Oy vey

If it means something, it's not true that it means nothing, right?

Actually the word “fact” doesn’t even mean anything here. It means “state of affairs”, — AJJ

Isn't that contradictory? To say it doesn't mean anything and then turn around and say what it meams?

You still have to answer how it is that a proposition could match such a thing. — AJJ

I explained that, but I'll do it again, one step at a time.

Start with the word "cat." Do you understand how the word "cat" can correspond with a cat?

You’ll have to be clearer, I can’t make sense of that. — AJJ

Just start with this. You claimed that someone was saying or something implied the following:

"something that 'is the case' neither is nor is not the case."

Where are you getting that from?

I suggest that anybody actually interested in my position should listen to the Rorty clip before further comment. — fresco

You could have just gone, "I'm a Rorty fan. Let's casually discuss some of his ideas. Go!" That might have worked better.

The premise of the argument is that if there no objective values there would be no facts. The claim is that without the former there cannot be the latter. This is a determinate relation. — Fooloso4

The idea is rather that the values are a fact, somehow as a necessary upshot of facts in general. How that's supposed to work is left completely unattended, aside from saying that it's nonsense to believe otherwise.

If “is the case” means the same as “is a fact”, then something that “is the case” (since that just means “is a fact”) neither is nor is not the case, which (since “is the case” means “is a fact”) is to say it neither is nor is not a fact. — AJJ

Where is someone saying that something be a fact, or being the case, where the latter is another way of saying "is the case," isn't a fact or isn't the case? Where are you getting that from aside from using the terms as a synomym for "is true" and equivocating?

This doesn’t answer my question of how it is that a proposition can match something that neither is nor is not the case. — AJJ

We're not saying that the cat being on the mat is not the case. "Is the case" is another way of saying "is a fact." It's not another way of saying "is true" BECAUSE "true" is about the matching relationship.

Cool. I hadn't noticed any changes. The important thing is that we get the right info to anyone trying to understand this stuff.

That makes more sense. A valid argument means 'true premises implies true conclusion', which means 'not true premises or true conclusion', contradictions are never true, so the implication always holds when the premises are contradictory, so the argument is valid. Sub in a tautology into the conclusion part of the disjunction defining validity and it is valid too. — fdrake

That's what I said at the start though. Validity obtains when it's impossible for premises to be true and(/or--I add or for reasons I detailed in my first post) (It's impossible for) the conclusion to be false.

Therefore, when it's impossible for the premises to be true, as is the case when the premises are a contradiction (or are inconsistent), we have a valid argument.

But then if it’s a fact that the cat is sitting on the mat, then we must say that it is neither true nor false that the cat is sitting on the mat. — AJJ

The fact is neither true nor false. A proposition about the fact is true or false. Propositions are the sorts of things you say, such as "The cat is sitting on the mat." The way it's possible for the proposition to match is that the proposition has nouns/things/entities such as "cat" and "mat," and it posits a relation of those entities. That matches the fact-in-the-world.

The fact is not true because true is the relational property of (a proposition) matching a fact. Facts don't have a relational property of matching a fact.

Sure, so here are some things I found very quickly online for you.

https://www.uta.edu/philosophy/faculty/burgess-jackson/Technical%20Validity.pdf
That's a paper by philosopher Keith Burgess Jackson at UT Arlington. See the third paragraph

cstl-cla.semo.edu/hhill/PL120/handouts/exam%201%20partial%20answer%20key.docx
(That's an answer key from a quiz in a logic course from Southeast Missouri State University. See question #5)

http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/conted/critical-reasoning-2012/2012-11-05-week-4.pdf
That's from a presentation on logic/validity that someone gave at Oxford. See slide #21

Do you need more?

You’re giving “the matching” the name “true” there, not the proposition. — AJJ

Yes, the matching is what's true (on correspondence theory). The matching is a property of proposition. In other words, the proposition matches the fact due to the content/structure of the proposition.

To anyone reading this, please to not listen to Terrapin, and instead look at this excellent account from a citable resource. — fdrake

You're giving misinformation. I don't know why.

It's not even clear at this point if you agree that traditionally (that is, not in relevance logics, which aren't the traditional interpretation), any argument with contradictory premises is valid. This is the case for a very simple reason having to do with the definition of validity.

Do you agree with that or not?

If you don't agree with it, I can give you a bunch of citations from academic phil sources for it. I can explain it to you, too, if you need me to explain it to you.

Just to be clear. — fdrake

That was anything but clear.

It's very simple. Contradictory premises are sufficient for a valid argument (in non-relevance logics) due to the definition of validity.