Aristotle himself is replying to going concerns about "where justification terminates" and "syllogism skepticism" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting. Can you give us a reference in the Analytics?

This might be a position that could be added to ↪J's initial list of stances. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Quite possibly, and it raises a subtle question about whether there is a thing called a "realist epistemic stance," or rather whether it's the case that a certain epistemic stance will lead to realism (or the opposite). For instance, the second stance that Chakravartty offers, and I cited, was: "Empiricist stances, which question whether theorizing beyond the observable phenomena should be a basis for warranted belief." Arguably, such a stance could also be framed in @Joshs's terms: We have no basis for believing that an alleged debate between realism and antirealism is even coherent. This reading places realism and antirealism "downstream" from the epistemic stance itself.

Once the interpretation of terms like "fact" or "evidence" become dependent on an epistemic stance, we have to look for an interpretative truth that is outside the stance itself. How do we find it? — J

It requires a philosophical stance that doesn’t axiomatically take the human situation as an end in and of itself, and so is not so solely beholden to the aims of instrumental reason. In other words philosophy that questions existence against a broader context. It must be concerned with what matters, Tillich’s ‘questions of ultimate concern.’ Of course one must not then be so vain as to believe that such an unconditional imperative be the subject of merely propositional knowledge (for the reasons Wittgenstein gives.) And that sounds rather like a belief, doesn't it?

As for realism and anti-realism, I'm generally an advocate for the latter, but I find the peremptory description of 'anti-realist' unsatisfactory. For me, it signifies a stance which recognises the unavoidable subjectivity of judgement, even in the most apparently objective of cases. (This was the main subject of discussion in the thread on Sebastian Rödl.) Anyway, an antirealist may be perfectly realistic in the pragmatic sense of observing conventions, obeying laws, and so on. An anti-realist doesn't necessarily think that s/he can leap from heights and not be affected by gravity. Antirealism simply points out the fact that scientific judgement is always reliant on conditions and exclusions (i.e. the selection of what exactly is the subject of analysis). Even the most universally-applicable of scientific principles pertain to a specific set of phenomena. So drawing conclusions from them about 'the nature of reality' in a more general or philosophical sense, is precisely where realism begins to blur into scientism.

OK. And how do we want to fill in "good"?
— J

I have no idea. If you're just estimating the mean of a data set, sample size 19 and 20 are basically the same thing. It would be really hard to justify one or the other on any purely statistical basis. — fdrake

Or, I'm guessing, a purely "rational/theoretical" basis à la Pincock. This is where the specter of strategic rationality becomes a bit frightening. I'm certainly not saying Pincock believes this, but you can't help being concerned if your conception of rationality turns out to be so rigid, so precise, that it could engender an epistemic stance capable of mediating between sample size 19 and 20, and labeling one as obligatory and the other as incorrect. Another way of putting the concern would be: Could there be an epistemic stance so powerfully grounded in rationality that we could predict everything it would and wouldn't countenance "downstream," no matter the feedback? Kinda like the One True Dialectic -- it's obligatory to adopt it, and all subsequent beliefs are also obligatory.

By hierarchy I meant that there would be direction of influence between things that constitute the stance and things that constitute putatively factual level claims. By denying its existence I meant that a change in the putatively factual level claims may engender a change in what constitutes the stance. I was treating a discovery as a change in putatively factual level claims, specifically the discovery that 2 new data points had the majority of the benefit of 3. And I claim that this triggered evaluating the allocation of resources on that basis, whereas before it was largely a question of scientific accuracy. — fdrake

OK, good. I just didn't read/think about this carefully enough, sorry.

...a stance toward a stance? A meta-stance? Who knows. Notably all of these answers would be inferential, they involve giving reasons. — fdrake

That's right. This is what happens when reason-giving is understood as rigidly inferential. So, part of what we want from a rationalist account is a way to either get out of this nightmare, or show why it doesn't matter. To what else must we appeal besides inference?

Whereas, and this is a big complication I think, people may be caused to adopt stances, paradigms of interpretations and so on — fdrake

And here's an answer to my anguished cry :smile:: EDIT: [Should we] talk about causes rather than reasons?

The "true reason" that someone values what they value might terminate in describing a cause or telling a story, rather than giving a reason. — fdrake

Your use of scare-quotes around "true reason" says it all: Are we willing to accept a cause or a narrative as a reason? It would not be a theoretical reason, as Pincock understands one. And here the question of level is really critical. If you tell me your belief in ghosts is caused by growing up around people who believed in ghosts, I'll say "Thanks much" and completely ignore this as a reason for me to believe in ghosts. From a rationalist perspective, a reason is supposed to be "for everybody." Chakravartty and Pincock both discuss this, and as you'd imagine, Chakravartty believes some reasons can be valid for you but not for me, while Pincock thinks this is loose talk, and that a "true reason" asks for universal consent.

But suppose the explanandum is "Why I have adopted epistemic stance X." Can we opt out at the very beginning of the endless-justification-by-inference loop, by replying with a cause? That would be, in Pincock's terms, a "practical reason." He doesn't think it's enough, because it's not "appropriately connected to the truth." We'll see more of this in Part Two. For now, I think this point you raise about what counts as a "true reason" lies at the heart of the debate. The answer will affect everything, from judgments about upstream-downstream relations, to issues about obligation or voluntarism.

beholden to the aims of instrumental reason — Wayfarer

the subject of merely propositional knowledge — Wayfarer

Weirdly, this is what I was writing about to @fdrake when your post appeared. In that context, we looked at the idea of "cause" as a way out of strategic (instrumental) reason's circles. What you're talking about, if I understand you, is yet a different form of escape, if it can be found.

And that sounds rather like a belief, doesn't it? — Wayfarer

Just to clarify -- "belief" in this discussion has been used to refer to something like JTB, that is, a warranted belief that would result from propositional knowledge. I think you're using "belief" to mean the opposite, or near-opposite -- something that is held on unconditional grounds that connect to a sense of being that is non-propositional. Neither is right or wrong, of course, I just want to avoid talking at cross-purposes.

I find the peremptory description of 'anti-realist' unsatisfactory. — Wayfarer

I think your refinement of it is fine, and we should ask ourselves: Using this understanding of antirealism, would Pincock still be a realist? I believe so. Even a generous and sensible view of how antirealism works in practice (or a commitment to an inevitable Rodelian subjectivity) is probably not going to sway a non-voluntarist about stances.

Part Two

In his paper, Christopher Pincock gives two arguments that he says demonstrate that someone who adopts a realist epistemic stance must do so, on pain of incoherence.

The realist should reject voluntarism about stances, and so insist that their stance is tied to theoretical reasons. . . . My suggestion is that the realist should maintain that their realist stance is rationally obligatory. How might this defense go? — Pincock, 7

I’ll try to lay out the first argument in this Part Two, while pointing out that Pincock himself does a very good job, and it’s worth reading this in its entirety rather than my paraphrase.

First, a preliminary point which I’ve raised before. We can say that, for Pincock, the term “theoretical reasons” is essentially equivalent to “reasons that are rationally obligatory.” And we know that Chakravartty objects to this characterization, claiming that it begs the question against the very idea of stance voluntarism: “On the voluntarist view, rational choice and rational obligation are distinct concepts and cannot be run together.”

So let’s keep this dispute in mind, in what follows.

Pincock’s first argument is a reductio designed to show that, if an epistemic realist takes the position that their stance is not obligatory, they will arrive at “pragmatic incoherence.” Therefore, they should claim that realism is obligatory.

To set this up, Pincock describes a typical instance of inference to the best explanation (IBE), which characterizes the kind of inference he believes realists can and should draw. This involves an account of Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment with kite, key, and lightning. The realist will say that Franklin concluded that “lightning is an electrical discharge” (call this L) because he had a reason for so concluding. He needed to understand that his evidence is evidence for L. He needed to grasp a principle of inference that can link his evidence with L.

Pincock distinguishes Franklin’s epistemic stance from another one that Franklin might have taken. He might have said, “I’m disposed to claim to know L when I have this kind of evidence. It’s just what I do, or what seems best to me; others may do differently.” For Pincock, this wouldn’t give Franklin reasons for his claim that L. Pincock asks us to imagine how this “non-theoretical” Franklin would respond to a challenge to his claim about L: He has nothing at his disposal that would count as a reason for others to adopt, so he would have to be silent in the face of his challengers. The actual Franklin, though, scientific realist that he was, can reply with an account that involves how evidence is connected to knowledge claims. This account will not necessarily carry the day, nor will it have to result in an indisputable knowledge claim, but it does consist of alleged reasons for beliefs that are meant to be convincing for anyone, not just statements about “how I proceed when I see X and Y.”

Now, here is the core of Pincock’s incoherence argument, in which he asks us to imagine a realist who does not believe that their epistemic stance is obligatory:

A realist who is also a voluntarist about stances will admit to their own realist stance, but also allow that there is no reason that obliges them to adopt that realist stance. Consider a claim to knowledge that the realist advances on the basis of their evidence and their realist stance, such as Franklin’s L. A realist who is also a voluntarist about stances and who reflects on this situation is immediately landed in a pragmatically incoherent situation. . . . First, they put forward the claim L as something they believe to be true. Second, they are aware that this belief is due in part to their realist stance. Third, as a voluntarist about stances, they admit that they have not adopted their realist stance on the basis of any reasons that reflect the truth.

As we have seen, the voluntarist explains the adoption of a stance by appeal to the person’s desires and values. If these desires and values have no connection to the truth, then the realist must admit that their resulting beliefs are not appropriately connected to the truth, and so not known. . . . The realist must admit to themselves that they know they could acquire this belief whether it was true or not. This is the pragmatic incoherence: by the realist’s own lights, one of their beliefs, which they take to be true, is also something that they admit to themselves that they would have whether it was true or not. The only way to restore coherence and to maintain one’s voluntarism about one’s stance is to withdraw any claim to know that is based on one’s stance. For the realist, this means abandoning their realism. — Pincock, 5-6

There are a number of issues raised by this argument, which Pincock discusses carefully. One, inspired by Bernard Williams, concerns whether one can actually “acquire a belief” without believing it to be true. Another concerns whether such a question applies only at the level of doxastic belief, not the choice of epistemic stance.

But I’ll cut to the chase and say that I think the argument as a whole can be defeated simply by denying the characterization of what a stance voluntarist does. Pincock’s language includes phrases such as “no reason that obliges them,” “not adopt[ing] their realist stance on the basis of any reasons that reflect the truth,” “no connection to the truth,” and “not appropriately connected to the truth.” These all-or-nothing characterizations can only hold water if we accept Pincock’s idea that a theoretical reason must result in rational obligation. (I should point out that the first phrase, “no reason that obliges them,” would be conceded by Chakravartty. But he would not concede that there are no theoretical reasons that could have a bearing, or influence the decision – merely that they don’t result in rational obligation, and that others could have different reasons for their stances, or weight them differently.)

As we know, Pincock maintains that the stance voluntarist has no theoretical reasons of any sort for their adoption of a stance. For Pincock, only “desires and values” can form the basis for (voluntarily) adopting a stance. Once again, if we look back at Chakravartty’s description of how he understands an epistemic stance, this seems to be a misreading:

An epistemic stance is an orientation, a collection of attitudes, values, aims, and other commitments relevant to thinking about scientific ontology, including policies or guidelines for the production of putatively factual beliefs . . . — Chakravartty, 1308

Or perhaps it’s not so much a misreading as an interpretation which claims that, if all theoretical reasons create obligations, then everything on Chakravartty’s list has to be something else, since Chakravartty is claiming to be a stance voluntarist. It may also be a sort of challenge: If this list is not merely disguised “desires and values,” then tell us directly what the theoretical element is. What “other commitments” do you have in mind?

In any case, Chakravartty’s response to the incoherence argument is straightforward:

Let me generalize this contention [that stance voluntarism is inconsistent with realism] in a way that I believe Pincock would accept, by parity of reasoning: in this case (ex hypothesi) no one would have a reason to adopt their own or any other rational stance – the concern presumably applies across the board – because there is no rational obligation to go one way or another. Lacking rational obligations and recognizing the rationality of those with conflicting stances, it would be indefensible, incoherent even, to adopt any such option. — Chakravartty, 1311-12

The epistemic realist, of course, wants to say that this argument applies only against other stances; there is something unique about the stance supported by strictly “theoretical” reasons. Chakravartty says that the only way this could be made compelling is by accepting the conflation of rational choice with rational obligation, which, as we’ve noted, seems to beg the question against the voluntarist:

The very idea that a given stance must be rationally obligatory to be rationally chosen is precisely what stance voluntarism denies. . . . On the voluntarist view, rational choice and rational obligation are distinct concepts and cannot be run together. — Chakravartty, 1312

And Chakravartty points out what we’ve alluded to several times now: a non-question-begging argument would have start with an understanding of rationality that precludes alternative rational standards completely:

But this would require something more than what has been provided [by Pincock]: a compelling argument for . . . a theory of rationality in light of which such a demonstration could be given. This, however, is a tall order. — Chakravartty, 1312

In fact, Pincock does offer such an argument, which I’ll look at in Part Three. But for now, do you agree that the pragmatic-incoherence argument requires this “tall order” if it’s going to go through in a non-question-begging way? I believe Chakravartty is right about this.

Your use of scare-quotes around "true reason" says it all: Are we willing to accept a cause or a narrative as a reason? — J

I'm going on my own hobby horse here, rather than trying to do any exegesis.

I think generally people accept narratives as reasons. Since they serve as explanations. eg He took a cookie from the jar and ate it, and he ate it since he was hungry. That's a story, it makes sense.

I think people only treat causes as reasons when the causes serve as part of a story. Compare:

The man had a feeling.
He went to the cookie jar.

To

The man was hungry.
He went to the cookie jar.

Even if the sensation in the first story was hunger, you'd only make sense of the story by inferring that the sensation was food related on the basis of the second sentence, which paradigmatically is hunger. Nothing in the story tells you that it is hungry, or food related, except the context of the phrase "the cookie jar" bleeding over into the first sentence.

Contrast to:

The man had a feeling.
He stood up.

Much more ambiguous. You might read that in terms of determinedness, or needing to pee. Absolutely nothing there. The nature of the cause needs to be understood in the context of the event it caused in order to serve as an explanation for it.

I've had a short story in my head for a while now, but I've not figured out a way of writing it. It concerns an argument between two partners that leads to their immediate break up, but they were very happy up until the argument. One partner's shoes had started rubbing their feet that morning. The other partner had put on a tiny amount of weight and felt it in their belt buckle. That lead to them both being irritated all day, which snowballed. The distal cause of their break up is totally and pointlessly irrelevant to their lives. I've found it quite difficult to plan, since the raw contingency of their uncomfortable clothing on that day gets seen as incidental, and how they react to the world around and each other gets given the locus of responsibility due to how it has to be described. If they have an argument, even if they're only saying what they're saying distally because of uncomfortable clothes, we go proximately for character traits. They both look like arses, or it looks like a failed relationship. It's difficult to make something a story beat if it resists any sense of narrative.

It would not be a theoretical reason, as Pincock understands one. And here the question of level is really critical. If you tell me your belief in ghosts is caused by growing up around people who believed in ghosts, I'll say "Thanks much" and completely ignore this as a reason for me to believe in ghosts. From a rationalist perspective, a reason is supposed to be "for everybody." Chakravartty and Pincock both discuss this, and as you'd imagine, Chakravartty believes some reasons can be valid for you but not for me, while Pincock thinks this is loose talk, and that a "true reason" asks for universal consent.

I think "universal consent" is a good way of putting it. "Universal comprehension" is also a component of it. people have to understand what they're consenting to. Even ff people agreed that, like in the second story, the man's feeling made him stand up, it serves as a reason for him standing up only by narrative juxtaposition/co-contextualising the feeling and standing up. And that's something I did in writing the sentences, not the hypothetical man standing up. And certainly not the partners with their uncomfortable clothing.

The reason I'm favouring this termination of explanations into causes is that correctly noticing causes doesn't have to make much sense. You don't need the content of a cause to be reasonable, or even explicable, just to notice that it really is a cause.

Which perhaps makes a meta-methodological commitment to believing things that seem to be true regardless of why, but if that's not axiomatically posited as part of a reasonable stance, what's the point in calling some stances reasonable and some not.

It's difficult to make something a story beat if it resists any sense of narrative. — fdrake

It would probably matter whether either partner was aware of the irrelevant distal cause. Matter in terms of how to handle it as a story, that is. If you're within either or both points of view, and if your PoV doesn't include the requisite awareness, then yes, it's a narrative challenge. You'd have to find a way to show the reader what's really going on, while keeping the characters unaware of it. But this can be done. It's a twist on the "unreliable narrator/protagonist" idea. Or of course you could allow yourself an omniscient authorial viewpoint and simply inform the reader what's going on.

In any case, I completely agree that, in our non-philosophical lives, we accept stories as reasons, when they have the appropriate narrative explanatory form. We accept physical causes too, and unconscious motives as well. The peculiarly "rational" reason (a reason for everybody?) seems to come into play when we try to justify beliefs, rather than explain actions. And there's the middle ground of explaining beliefs: Your (narrative) reason for believing in ghosts gives an explanation for the belief, in one sense, but not in the sense of "justifying a true belief." That would require the other kind of reason, which is public and meant to be persuasive.

So terminating at causes is fine, as long as we're not pointing to a cause as the source of a JTB. Problem is, that seems to be what Pincock (and perhaps any rationalist) demands. The inferential loop seems to go on and on, as long as we insist on that special variety of "true reason." And we can't simply say, "Well, then stop at cause here as well," because we can see why it won't explain a JTB, except perhaps coincidentally.

Even if people agreed that, like in the second story, the man's feeling made him stand up, it serves as a reason for him standing up only by narrative juxtaposition/co-contextualising the feeling and standing up. And that's something I did in writing the sentences, not the hypothetical man standing up. — fdrake

I'm stuck a bit on this. Are you saying that the man, if we asked him why he stood up, would deny the feeling as a cause, or say he wasn't aware of it? Yes, you wrote it that way, but he could agree, couldn't he? Or perhaps this goes back to the "unreliable narrator" question. Let's change the example back to "loses his temper at his partner." And let's say his therapist, who knows him well, realizes that this occurred because the guy got triggered by a certain phrase that connected to a childhood trauma. But the man himself might not know this, and might give a completely different reason. So the therapist is somewhat in the role of you, the author: They know something about this character that the character does not. Is it, then, a reason? Different intuitions are possible here. I'd say it is a reason, and point to the many different ways we use that term. But for the man, as I think you're saying, it can't be a reason unless he goes beyond "narrative juxtaposition" and actually accepts the account.

You don't need the content of a cause to be reasonable, or even explicable, just to notice that it really is a cause. — fdrake

OK, but as above: You do need the content to be reasonable if we're working toward warranted belief.

a meta-methodological commitment to believing things that seem to be true regardless of why — fdrake

Sorry -- regardless of why we believe them, or regardless of why they're true?

You do need the content to be reasonable if we're working toward warranted belief. — J

I suppose there's a couple of types of content involved. If you established that X causes Y through an experiment, then that's an excellent justification for believing it. But that's far for explaining why X causes Y. So if someone were to say "X happened, that's why Y happened", and someone challenged it: "Why?", you could point to the experiment. But that doesn't tell you the mechanism, it doesn't explicate the why. It demonstrates it. The first type of content would be what suffices to demonstrate truth, the second type of content would be what serves as an explication. They both might work as reasons, but they don't both work as stories or explications, and only attempting to specify a mechanism would tell you why.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that the content of the claim doesn't need to make any kind of sense to serve as an excellent justification, it just needs to be established as true. And in context noting causes, without any further commitment to mechanism or generality, might serve as a terminus of giving reasons. Putting it in -isms, a kind of foundationalism which uses every passing contingency.

Are you saying that the man, if we asked him why he stood up, would deny the feeling as a cause, or say he wasn't aware of it? — J

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter whether he was aware of it or not, were it the true and only cause. Whether there was an explication beyond "It's true that his clothing caused the break up" would be irrelevant, even if it made no sense. That's what I was getting at. Extremely narratively unsatisfying explanations that amount to "stuff just happened this way, it was established thus".

Sorry -- regardless of why we believe them, or regardless of why they're true? — J

Regardless of why we believe them if they are believed because they're true. Or just because they're true, regardless of why we believe them. Like the break up because of the uncomfortable clothes. True, utterly useless as an explication, and no one would believe it because it's not a cromulent story.

But for the man, as I think you're saying, it can't be a reason unless he goes beyond "narrative juxtaposition" and actually accepts the account. — J

Yeah. I've invited the reader to juxtapose them, but the man would be utterly insane if he blamed his partner leaving him on his itchy underwear. Even if he's totally correct.

Pincock distinguishes Franklin’s epistemic stance from another one that Franklin might have taken. He might have said, “I’m disposed to claim to know L when I have this kind of evidence. It’s just what I do, or what seems best to me; others may do differently.” For Pincock, this wouldn’t give Franklin reasons for his claim that L. Pincock asks us to imagine how this “non-theoretical” Franklin would respond to a challenge to his claim about L: He has nothing at his disposal that would count as a reason for others to adopt, so he would have to be silent in the face of his challengers. The actual Franklin, though, scientific realist that he was, can reply with an account that involves how evidence is connected to knowledge claims. — J

There is an unstated allegory lurking behind this example, or so it seems to me. Here the effect of an electrical impulse on the key is an allegory for scientific explanation in general which relies on reasoning to the best explanation. The best explanation for the particular observation in this case is the effect of lightning on the key. This is a very specific situation with an identifiable causal sequence. It seems to me that the alternative presented by the 'non-realist' Franklin would be more typical of a more general, or a less specific, type of problem. An example would be instrumentalism in atomic physics. As is well known, instrumentalism keeps shtum about what kind of entity is being measured by observation (wave or particle?) Consequently it doesn't offer a thesis about the ultimate nature of what is being observed, only that 'this kind of observation produces this measurement outcome'. In this context, the anti-realist attitude that 'we can't really account for why we get this outcome' is quite reasonable. You could say that it leaves the question open (which is also a commendable scientific attitude in my view). By conflating pragmatic coherence with rational obligation, Pincock oversimplifies the range of legitimate epistemic responses. Instrumentalism, for instance, operates within a perfectly coherent rational framework yet explicitly avoids metaphysical commitments—a stance that clearly avoids the "pragmatic incoherence" Pincock accuses voluntarists of.

My question is what's even the appeal of this way of thinking? Seems more like a way of telling others how they ought to think... when it's generally those who think outside the box that press the envelope...

I dont get why people even argue about this kinda shit... "because these epistemic receptors were triggered its obviously gotta be sameness of stimulation between people even though they don't share a homology of nerve endings between the two... to the point its oblogatory for everyone because we all share the same neurons and thought processes..."

Sorry but we're not all one normal person who thinks all the same way...who are exact replicas of the next with the same genetic code and make up and same neurons...

Posterior Analytics 1.2 is the big discussion. It shows up in other parts of the Organon more tangentially. From the SEP article on "Aristotle's Logic:"

1. Whatever is scientifically known [i.e., known as necessary, through its causes] must be demonstrated.

2. The premises of a demonstration must be scientifically known.

[Critics] then argued that demonstration is impossible with the following dilemma:

1. If the premises of a demonstration are scientifically known, then they must be demonstrated.

2. The premises from which each premise are demonstrated must be scientifically known.

3. Either this process continues forever, creating an infinite regress of premises, or it comes to a stop at some point.

4. Either it continues forever, then there are no first premises from which the subsequent ones are demonstrated, and so nothing is demonstrated.

5. On the other hand, if it comes to a stop at some point, then the premises at which it comes to a stop are undemonstrated and therefore not scientifically known; consequently, neither are any of the others deduced from them [how Wittgenstein is often interpreted].

6. Therefore, nothing can be demonstrated [or at least not prompter quid, from causes, from premises that are better known than their conclusions].

A second group accepted the agnostics’ view that scientific knowledge comes only from demonstration but rejected their conclusion by rejecting the dilemma [see PA 1.3]. Instead, they maintained:

1. Demonstration “in a circle” is possible, so that it is possible for all premises also to be conclusions and therefore demonstrated.

Aristotle does not give us much information about how circular demonstration was supposed to work, but the most plausible interpretation would be supposing that at least for some set of fundamental principles, each principle could be deduced from the others. (Some modern interpreters have compared this position to a coherence theory of knowledge.)

But Aristotle reasons:

If the skeptic is right, discursive knowledge is impossible.
But discursive knowledge is possible.
Therefore the skeptic is wrong.

(Note, if the skeptic rebuts this claim, they cannot possibly claim to know their own rebuttal's truth without contradicting themselves).

Wherefore Aristotle launches into his discussion of noesis, intellectual consideration, although sense knowledge is important here too (Aristotle recognizes many more "types of knowledge" than most other philosophers, but even Plato has 4-5, versus often just 1-2 today). But the case for noesis isn't fully made in the logical works, since it is supported by the psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics of De Anima, the Physics, and Metaphysics, which amounts to more of a "metaphysics of knowledge" than a modern epistemology, in that it doesn't start from skepticism in the way most modern epistemology does.

The recognition of the crucial role of intellectus as opposed to solely ratio (discursive computation-like justification), is, in part, what leads to the dominance of "virtue epistemology" for much of philosophical history, until Descartes introduces the alluring idea of "tearing everything down" and then "building it back up with the perfect method."



That makes sense. The dominant form of "realism" has become loaded with a host of metaphysical assumptions, making the distinction somewhat fraught. So, for instance something like John Deely's semiotics, based in the tripartite semiotics of the Doctrina Signorum, is "realist" but does not hold to the axiomatic assumption of much realism, that consciousness is a contingent, accidental representation of a sort of "bare noumena" reality. Signs, meaning, are present virtually in things. And while it would be hard to claim that the Thomist position is "anti-realist" it is also not "realist" in the sense of ontological truth lying outside Intellect. I suppose Hegel would be another example where the suppositions "realism" is often loaded with is fraught.

I dont get why people even argue about this kinda shit.. — DifferentiatingEgg

Sure, different philosophers have different interests, and worry about different things. I understand this isn't the thread for you.

1. Whatever is scientifically known [i.e., known as necessary, through its causes] must be demonstrated. . . . et al.

Yes, this "circle problem" is very much in the spirit of the voluntarism/obligation debate. One question: by "demonstration," do you take these thinkers to mean inferential or logical proof of validity? Presumably, at any given point we enter the circle, we're equipped with premises that don't (at that moment) require demonstration, so does "demonstration" describe a "downstream" process (to use the language we're developing on this thread)? Starting from premises and reasoning to conclusions?

But Aristotle reasons:

If the skeptic is right, discursive knowledge is impossible.
But discursive knowledge is possible.
Therefore the skeptic is wrong. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ummm . . . but you don't think this works, do you? How does it not simply beg the question?

(Note, if the skeptic rebuts this claim, they cannot possibly claim to know their own rebuttal's truth without contradicting themselves). — Count Timothy von Icarus

That would depend on whether the skeptic believes that it's discursive knowledge itself which is leading them to conclude that discursive knowledge is impossible. I have little sympathy myself for radical skepticism, but in fairness I think the skeptic can rebut the claim without also needing to claim that the rebuttal is discursive knowledge. Or, if "rebut" is too strong, let's say "show the claim to be highly implausible."

I understand that noesis and intellectus are meant to come to the rescue here, as in so many other places where Greek thought is contrasted with 20th century emphases on strictly (and literally) "rational" thought. Making this rescue attempt attractive is hard, even though I suspect it's correct in some fundamental ways. I'm reminded of this, above:

something that is held on unconditional grounds that connect to a sense of being that is non-propositional. — Wayfarer

Would you agree this is similar to the desideratum you (and perhaps Aristotle) seek?

This is really interesting. Does Franklin have to be a non-realist or a "non-theoretical-reasons" guy in order to hold out for agnosticism about a particular question in science? I think Pincock would be happy to say that scientific realists do this too -- indeed, they must, if the evidence isn't sufficient to justify an explanation. The question is whether the realist could extend this stance to include a case where a clear outcome is available, but without explanation. Is this necessarily (as you put it) "the anti-realist attitude that 'we can't really account for why we get this outcome'"? I'd like to know what Pincock would say. Perhaps it would be something like, "True, we don't at the moment know why. But if the result is indeed correct, then an explanation is knowable; we have to keep looking."

I agree with your overall point about the Franklin example being something of an outlier, but I believe a realist could acknowledge this without putting their stance into question. But of course Pincock has chosen the Franklin example with a purpose in mind, and could be accused of picking some low-hanging fruit, I suppose. Not every IBE works out so tidily.

By conflating pragmatic coherence with rational obligation, Pincock oversimplifies the range of legitimate epistemic responses. Instrumentalism, for instance, operates within a perfectly coherent rational framework yet explicitly avoids metaphysical commitments—a stance that clearly avoids the "pragmatic incoherence" Pincock accuses voluntarists of. — Wayfarer

I think so. Once again, he'd have to show that instrumentalism can't be understood as "avoiding metaphysical commitments," and that these commitments are at odds with theoretical reasons as he defines the term. As Chakravartty says, it's a tall order, but we haven't seen anything so far that indicates it's impossible. And Pincock does offer such an argument (not about instrumentalism specifically), which I'll discuss later.

I'm still curious, what this achieves? Pretty much seems like a reprhasing of Quine. IE plagiarism.

I'm sure if you looked at it from the perspective of the values that might cause someone to adopt a particular stance, you'd find some commonality with your interests.

Sir Egg, I can't tell whether you really are curious. Your use of terms like "this kinda shit" and "plagiarism" leads me to believe that your mind is fairly made up. But I could be wrong.

A "demonstration" would generally be a syllogism in this context, although obviously there is a sense in which demonstrations can be less formal.

Ummm . . . but you don't think this works, do you? How does it not simply beg the question?

Points 1-6 are a discursive demonstration. The skeptic is claiming to have demonstrated that discursive knowledge through demonstration is impossible through the use of discursive demonstration. Hence, I don't think it's question begging, it simply shows:

A. The skeptics' argument is self-refuting (they are claiming to be able to demonstrate the insufficiency of demonstration).

B. The conclusion that discursive knowledge is impossible is absurd. But when one reaches an absurd conclusion the first step should be to check one's argument for validity and one's premises for truth. This intuition is often ignored today, and instead we follow out the absurdity and try to build whole "systems" atop it (e.g. instead of questioning Hume's premises, we accept a standing "problem of induction.")

C. It is also the case that the skeptics' argument flows from premises that are less well known (the nature of logic and knowledge) to a conclusion that seems very well known, our capacity for discursive learning and for the productive arts/techne that rely on it.

That would depend on whether the skeptic believes that it's discursive knowledge itself which is leading them to conclude that discursive knowledge is impossible. I have little sympathy myself for radical skepticism, but in fairness I think the skeptic can rebut the claim without also needing to claim that the rebuttal is discursive knowledge. Or, if "rebut" is too strong, let's say "show the claim to be highly implausible."

Perhaps, but Aristotle is responding to those who are claiming to demonstrate their claims through discursive reason. Yet if someone claims to have a noetic intuition that logic cannot yield knowledge or truth, I'd see little reason to believe them.

I understand that noesis and intellectus are meant to come to the rescue here, as in so many other places where Greek thought is contrasted with 20th century emphases on strictly (and literally) "rational" thought. Making this rescue attempt attractive is hard, even though I suspect it's correct in some fundamental ways. I'm reminded of this, above:

One cannot justify reason and argument through reason and argument in a non-circular manner. Hence, the misologist can never be refuted without in some sense begging the question and presupposing the proper authority of logos. Reason is defenseless. Likewise, proof, demonstration, argument, etc. must presuppose at least some inference rules (e.g. the laws of thought) to even get off the ground. One cannot justify all of one's inference rules without presupposing at least some. As Gadamer says, prejudices are a prerequisite for inquiry.

I don't think we need a "rescue attempt," but even were this so, it would be attractive at least in principle because the main alternatives seem to be dressed up versions of logical and epistemic nihilism (sometimes in democratized formats), and a radical divorce from reality.

However, "noetic position" is normally badly strawmanned as the hand-waving claim that "some things we just know," with little further investigation. However, I think there is a strong practical, psychological, and effective argument that can be made for the authority of logos that is developed through Plato's psychology and notions of freedom, and which reaches (IMHO) its greatest formulation in the Patristics, Desert Fathers, and the later Eastern ascetic tradition. Whereas there is also a physical and metaphysical justification that runs through Aristotle up through today (since obviously it is informed by advances in the natural sciences, etc.). Of course, acceptance of such discourses, their "attractiveness," will itself be contingent on the acceptance of the authority of logos, leading back us to the original dispute.

What can be said? "There is no arguing with a misologe" seems like a truism. One cannot expect to convince someone who denies the authority of reason and argument through reason and argument. But this is perhaps precisely why the neglect of the affective/emotional and practical path that runs through Plato and the Patristics, and the neglect of "epistemic virtue" (regulative and faculty) could stand to be remedied. The myopic focus on method presupposes that method can justify itself.

Related, Mark Burgess has a pretty good dissertation on the sorted history of critiques of noesis (what he calls "transcendental apriorism"), and at the very least it's true that engagement with it has generally been quite facile. Actually, it's a great reminder of how "great names" can accidentally poison discourse for generations, e.g. where you have Kant dominating views of a tradition he did not understand, Nietzsche dominating reception of an ascetic tradition he never seriously studied, etc.

I suppose there's a couple of types of content involved. If you established that X causes Y through an experiment, then that's an excellent justification for believing it. But that's far for explaining why X causes Y. So if someone were to say "X happened, that's why Y happened", and someone challenged it: "Why?", you could point to the experiment. But that doesn't tell you the mechanism, it doesn't explicate the why. It demonstrates it. The first type of content would be what suffices to demonstrate truth, the second type of content would be what serves as an explication. They both might work as reasons, but they don't both work as stories or explications, and only attempting to specify a mechanism would tell you why.

So I suppose what I'm saying is that the content of the claim doesn't need to make any kind of sense to serve as an excellent justification, it just needs to be established as true. And in context noting causes, without any further commitment to mechanism or generality, might serve as a terminus of giving reasons. Putting it in -isms, a kind of foundationalism which uses every passing contingency. — fdrake

The distinction between a justification and an explanation is excellent. I agree with everything you're saying here except whether justification alone can serve as a terminus of giving reasons. Or let me rephrase that: Certainly it does serve; long before humans knew anything about planetary motion, they were absolutely justified in believed that the "sun will rise" tomorrow; they just didn't know why. But . . . is that the same thing as "established as true"? Comes down to usage now, I suppose. We're used to thinking of establishing the truth of something as being able to explain not just our belief in the phenomenon, but how the phenomenon comes to be so constituted as to produce the regularities that result in our true belief. But, as you point out, is that really required? If we say "No," then we also seem impelled to say that scientists have no reason other than curiosity to motivate them to discover explanations for otherwise obviously true phenomena. That feels wrong, but I'll have to think more about it.

Regardless of why we believe them if they are believed because they're true. Or just because they're true, regardless of why we believe them. Like the break up because of the uncomfortable clothes. True, utterly useless as an explication, and no one would believe it because it's not a cromulent story. — fdrake

This makes me wonder whether the uncomfortable-clothes explanation could be true. I suppose it depends how you phrase it. "They broke up because they had an argument, largely caused by how each was feeling physically" seems believable enough. "She left him because of his itchy underwear" is surely inadequate . . . and is it even true? A bizarre version of the butterfly effect, which is also questionable as a good explanation of anything.

"They broke up because they had an argument, largely caused by how each was feeling physically" seems believable enough. "She left him because of his itchy underwear" — J

I suppose it would depend on if the nearest possible world without the underwear itchiness was also a world in which they were still together. Not that I like possible worlds much. It just seems also not to care about narrative and explication in the same was as causes don't.

Ummm . . . but you don't think this works, do you? How does it not simply beg the question?

Points 1-6 are a discursive demonstration. The skeptic is claiming to have demonstrated that discursive knowledge through demonstration is impossible through the use of discursive demonstration. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, Aristotle has to say that 1-6 purport to be, but are not, a discursive demonstration. Which upsets the whole apple-cart.

You're reading Aristotle's reasoning as follows:

If the skeptic is right, discursive knowledge is impossible.
But discursive knowledge is possible, because the skeptic has just engaged in it.
Therefore the skeptic [is wrong] has said something incoherent.

I'd respectfully suggest, then, that the argument needs to be expanded with an additional step:

If the skeptic is right, discursive knowledge is impossible.
The skeptic, in discussing this matter, has presented us with a piece of discursive knowledge.
So we see before us an example of discursive knowledge.
Therefore the skeptic has said something incoherent.

And this, I'm afraid, changes a lot. You or Aristotle can no longer avail yourselves of premise 2. You can't simultaneously say that what the skeptic has given us is discursive knowledge, while also denying the truth of what the skeptic says. All you can do is point to the incoherence of the entire chain of thought -- the usual liar's-paradox problems -- but we already knew this, that's precisely what we're trying to find a way out of.

Now if Aristotle could point to some other piece of discursive knowledge that was somehow self-credentialing, that would be different. But of course "self-credentialing" is so close to "question-begging" that I don't know if even that would advance us.

Well, I think this Pincock lives up to his name. That a stance may allow for the bridging of a gap in knowledge doesn't make it obligatory. Other stances can render the stance mutable imo, especially when theoretical lacks real-world relevance and practicality.

A theoretical win may not be able to be scalable for several reasons which might take a HOW-to approach. Quine details that we can't ever know WHY a something failed in an experiment that should technically work — in theory.

Forgot to say, I think the rest of your post, about noesis and misologism, is excellent. These are interests of mine as well, and I agree that noesis is often badly and tendentiously misunderstood.

Doesn't that amount to demanding that the absurd premise in a reductio be true in order for a reductio to be successful?

I'm not sure how to get to that generalization. Can you work it out using the example in question?

Considering this . . . I think you can make Aristotle’s argument go through if you drop the premise “The skeptic has presented a piece of discursive knowledge” (or “Points 1-6 are a discursive demonstration”):

1. The skeptic, in discussing this matter, claims to have produced a piece of discursive knowledge.

2. That piece of allegedly discursive knowledge purports to show that discursive knowledge is impossible.

3. Therefore the skeptic has said something incoherent or self-contradictory.

In other words, make it about what the skeptic says, not what they’ve actually done. In fact, I think you have to deny that the skeptic has done what they claim, i.e., present a piece of discursive knowledge. The whole question of discursive knowledge itself becomes weirdly beside the point; the skeptic is wrong because the form of the argument is wrong, not because there is or isn’t such a thing as discursive knowledge.

So this would not be a powerful enough conclusion to show that discursive knowledge is possible (one of the original premises of the argument as you gave it). In this version there is no longer a piece of discursive knowledge to point to. So perhaps this doesn’t get you (or Aristotle) where you’d like to go.