2) Again, pragmatism for me isn't about truth.

Right, but what do you mean by "there are no true ontological positions?" Maybe I have misunderstood. My assumption was that this meant there simply is no truth (or falsehood) as to positions about what really exists. For example, historical anti-realism. The position: "the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776" would be a position about what exist(s/ed), right? If there is no truth about this (an ontological position) but only measures vis-a-vis whether or not the methods we are pursuing are getting us the results we want, that seems to me to imply something like historical anti-realism, and a whole bunch of other anti-realisms.

But these sorts of anti-realisms bring up a host of issues. For instance, what is "justice" when facts (ontological positions) about the past (including murders, assaults, etc.) don't exist (cannot be true or false), but we are instead only interested in methods that produce the outcomes we seek? I feel like these are impossible to disentangle. Our desire for justice is bound up in questions of truth.

Maybe that's not how you meant it though?

1) As I see it, "what do I do next" is the fundamental question.

I'll be honest, I don't think I can fathom a psychology where this question isn't going to virtually always be massively informed by what someone thinks is true. I'm not sure how a method itself can be true, except analogously, by resulting in true judgements. Whereas, if "true method" just means "effective," then that starts to look to me a lot like "true = producing what I currently desire." Why? Because doesn't "effective" here just mean "producing the result we currently desire?"

Where am I going off the rails here?

I didn't say we should define truth in terms of usefulness. I don't remember bringing usefulness into this discussion at all. I said truth is a tool we use to help us decide how we should act.

See above. I may have misunderstood. The idea that "true methods" are those that get the results we want suggested to me that "true" here means "doing what we want," i.e. "useful towards some end."

Something else I didn't say.

Right, I just think it's something that follows from the denial of any truth/falsity for ontological positions. What exactly is episteme in if there are no true ontological positions?

This is very much in line with how I see science.

So I'd be open to saying even the expected results differ, that we want explanations from the natural sciences but interpretations from the human sciences. That may be. Where I've been hoping to link them is in the process enacted to produce whatever kind of knowledge they produce, all that business about careful procedures and communal self-correction. — Srap Tasmaner

I think you're absolutely right to do this. A good interpretation requires all the same care as a good explanation. Arguably the community that produces the "communal self-correction" may not be as universal for a given human science, certainly not for an art. But we still want "something like the truth," just as we do from science. The big difference, for me, lies in the explanandum. The science of acoustics gives causal accounts of sounds. The human science of musicology gives interpretations of musical events -- which are already being understood as more than sounds.

What about literary theory? That's a bit like musicology I suppose.

There is an idea, and I'm not really sure how much I agree with it, that the humanities (which classically, would not tend to include philosophy) deals with "humanistic knowledge."

Humanistic knowledge, on these accounts, comes from our reflections on art, literature, and the human experience. It is an immediate knowledge of the human condition, including our emotional, social, intellectual, and sensory lives as we experience them. Of course, some literature addresses or even attempts to dramatize philosophy. This means that work in the humanities sometimes points towards universal and necessary truths (i.e. in theory, the type of truths that demarcate science). Epic poetry is a great example here, or the works of Dostoevsky, or Borges, etc.

One of my favorite “strange books” is William Bloch’s The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel. The book details the mathematics of Borges’s story. Bloch goes through many fields of mathematics to investigate the necessary principles at work in fathoming such a library. Borges, by contrast, shows how human experience interacts with these principles, e.g. the desperation of “librarians” as they search for a book that will contain their life story and vindicate all their acts, or the way meaning becomes divorced from language if there is no intentionality behind it.

The elements Borges brings to his engagement with the mathematical construct of the library involve a sort of connatural knowledge, an intuitive humanistic knowing that is not reducible to analysis and concepts. He doesn't need to bring in mathematical knowledge to explore the topic. Such knowledge is profound, but pre-conceptual. The story is partly a look at our emotional reaction to the (practically) infinite.

That's the idea at least. It makes some sense to me. Some elements of literary theory strike me as more scientific (although they are sometimes ill-advised in this). But work on literature proper seems fairly distinct to me. Actually, I think the drive to make the humanities more "scientific" has tended to be bad for the humanities, leading to obscurantism at times and unhelpful approaches. I think the liberal arts in particular have a no less important, but quite different role to play (in some ways, a more essential role for a functioning republic).

I appreciate your thoughtful approach.

I have some objections though.

I think you've supported thesis 2 better than thesis 1.

"Materialism", as I understand it, is not intuitive at all. I'm hesitant to guess anymore, but if I had to guess I'd say that "Dualism" is the "default" position of most people, if pressed; but mostly philosophy isn't interesting enough for people to define their categories that cleanly.

The reason it is not intuitive is because of all the problems you listed with it. It needs to be defended in some sense.

And I take umbrage with the notion of "default" in philosophy -- I think the default depends on one's environment they grew up in. So if you grew up in a spiritualist household then spirituality would be the "default", and so on for any other ontology.

:up:

I don't think materialism as a whole is intuitive. However, the main intuition, that "what is most real is what is common to what I can see and touch" does have a certain deep appeal. I suppose it also has to do with what can be verified. What can be sensed can be verified, and what can be sensed with several senses (the common sensibles) is most secure.

But I tend to agree with you. There is this fairly common narrative where materialism was just humming along swimmingly in the 19th and early 20th century and then-BOOM-all the sudden quantum nonsense and other problems crop up, ruining it all, and this is why we need pragmatism, idealism, [insert your prefered ism here]. Maybe the narrative even as some truth to it. But materialism always had many problems (not just consciousness, but even the goal-directedness of plants, gravity, magnets, electricity, mathematics itself, etc.) and you can certainly find people who pointed these out throughout its entire history, Berkely probably being the funniest:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal.I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

Right, but what do you mean by "there are no true ontological positions?" Maybe I have misunderstood. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think I've misled you. That statement is not central to my argument. I'm not even sure it makes sense. It's just what came to mind when I was responding to Tom Storm. It's speculative and I guess outrageous, but I think it's worth looking into. I don't expect most people, and certainly not you, to agree. I don't mean that as criticism. You and I have very different approaches to philosophy. I like and respect yours, but it is alien to how I think.

”Materialism", as I understand it, is not intuitive at all. I'm hesitant to guess anymore, but if I had to guess I'd say that "Dualism" is the "default" position of most people, if pressed; but mostly philosophy isn't interesting enough for people to define their categories that cleanly. — Moliere

I would have thought that scientific materialism is the default for the secular mainstream, even for those not familiar with the term, and who wouldn’t necessarily have thought it through. But the mainstream account of life’s origins, planetary formation, and so on, generally assumes that all of the underlying factors can be understood in physical or naturalistic terms (even given there is an allowance for a spectrum of belief.) In discussions on this and other fora, I’ve found many people assume that living beings can be understood in molecular or physical terms even if they haven’t given a lot of thought to it. (Also should be noted that there's confusion between scientific materialism and social materialism, as inordinate attachment to money and material possessions.)

And at the academic level, at least here in Australia, the scientific account of the origins of the Universe and living beings is presumptively materialist. Being a liberal culture, it is of course true that individual beliefs across the spectrum are expected. Belief in the soul, for instance, while not having any basis in science, is understood as being an individual prerogative, a belief one is entitled to hold. But it would generally be assumed that this has no basis in science.

(I might see if I can get one of the bots to find some polling data on the question.)

//In my view, something about Western culture forces this dilemma, or choice, on you. The religious account is anchored to the Biblical account, while the scientific worldview is explicitly defined in opposition to or the exclusion of it. That is writ large in the 'culture wars' over evolution and creation especially in America.//

My assumption was that this meant there simply is no truth (or falsehood) as to positions about what really exists. For example, historical anti-realism. The position: "the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776" would be a position about what exist(s/ed), right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've stated it explicitly several times in this thread. I don't think my understanding of truth is all that different from mainstream ones. It's a question of scope. I just don't think truth is fundamental. It is not the most important question philosophy asks. As I've said, it is a tool we use to help figure out what action we should take next.

I'll be honest, I don't think I can fathom a psychology where this question isn't going to virtually always be massively informed by what someone thinks is true. — Count Timothy von Icarus

An example. You brought up wu wei, what some translate as acting without acting, without intention. As I understand it, wu wei results directly not from "hearkening to others, but rather hearkening to oneself, nothing more." That means action grows spontaneously from our intrinsic virtuosities, our true nature without the intervention of conscious thought.

doesn't "effective" here just mean "producing the result we currently desire?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, it means producing the most appropriate action however that is defined. Not what I want, but what is best.

As mentioned above, I requested a research report from gemini.google.com on the question:

What percentage of people in liberal democractic societies e.g. Britain, Germany, Canada, US, are inclined to accept scientific materialism as the best explanation for the nature of existence?

Gemini churned through tens of websites and research reports to produce this report (google docs format, 6,322 words). I was mistaken in believing that a majority of persons in liberal democratic societies fully accept scientific materialism although it is increasing in popularity in proportion to the decline in religious affiliation. There are many complexities and nuances, not least due to the fact that many who profess no religion still believe that there are questions science cannot answer. Part of the conclusion:

Across Britain, Germany, Canada, and the United States, there is an undeniable and accelerating trend of secularization, characterized by a significant increase in religiously unaffiliated individuals, particularly among younger generations. This demographic shift is fundamentally reshaping the religious landscape of these liberal democracies. Despite this, a full philosophical commitment to scientific materialism—understood as the belief that only matter exists and that science can ultimately explain everything—is not the dominant worldview in any of these societies.

(I will leave that report online for future reference.)

Congratulations -- this is actual evidence that helps settle an actual question! We philosophers don't often get to experience such a giddy pleasure.

What about literary theory? That's a bit like musicology I suppose. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but with an intriguing difference. We know what the "uninterpreted bones" of musical sounds are -- the paraphernalia of acoustics, which is a science and can be mastered without any reference to music. What would be the equivalent for literature? It's tempting to say, "the 'uninterpreted' marks on paper" (scribbles, as @Harry Hindu often says), but is that right? The information we get from acoustics is immediately applicable, and essential, to most of what we want to say about musical events. That's not the case for "scribbles" and literature though. Nothing about the physical composition and shapes of (what we learn to recognize as) letters seems even slightly relevant to the interpretation of literature. It's as if the "bones" of literature begin with interpreted objects -- letters, words, sentences.

Can you expand on what you mean by materialism, beyond these caricatures:

the idea that 'everything is collocations of atoms, ensembles of balls of stuff,' or that 'things are what they are made of' — Count Timothy von Icarus

If materialism is, as you assert, a popular and intuitively attractive view, then I don't find your characterizations of it plausible.

I don't think that's true. You've inferred something I didn't imply. — T Clark

Did you read the third sentence?

Unless we want to say that science has an end which has nothing to do with determining what is "ontologically" true? — Leontiskos

Unless we want to say that science has an end which has nothing to do with determining what is "ontologically" true? — Leontiskos

I might want to say that, I’m not really sure. I’m not sure when you say it you mean the same thing I do when I say it. Whatever, I guess I’m lost. I don’t see how this relates to the question you and I are discussing.

Which is fine, I've just been avoiding committing to some major difference between the natural sciences and the human or social sciences, because I've been trying to clarify ― or insist upon or defend or something ― that there is some genuine continuity, that the political scientist is as much a scientist as the physicist. — Srap Tasmaner

But look at this argument: <One scientist is as much a scientist as another; therefore all sciences are equally scientific>.

I have been trying to raise the elephant in the room: Does "scientific" mean anything at all? (Or else "more scientific" and "less scientific"?) Does "pseudoscientific" mean anything at all? Is there any strategy for learning that is not scientific?

I think you've given those questions short shrift, to say the least. In fact you've mostly just ignored them.

Note too that the descriptions of science you have given seem to contradict your claim that there are non-scientific ways of knowing. For example I asked:

Do you think there are non-scientific strategies for learning? — Leontiskos

You responded:

Surely. Given the distinction between knowing that and knowing how, it stands to reason there's a difference between learning that and learning how... — Srap Tasmaner

And then a few sentences later, you effectively contradict your, "Surely," and seem to say that science is a(ny) strategy for learning what can be known (and therefore there are no non-scientific strategies for learning):

I think I'm okay with restricting science to a strategy for learning what can be known, and I also want to say it is something like the distillation of everything we have learned about how to learn what can be known. — Srap Tasmaner

If you think this account is mistaken I would challenge you to begin with my question, "Do you think there are non-scientific strategies for learning?," and try to find a clear answer in your responses.* Namely, a clear example or description of non-scientific strategies for learning.

This manner of confusion is indicative of the sort of pro-pluralism I find on TPF. Someone really wants pluralism among the sciences, but then it turns out that they have enormous trouble giving a meaningful definition of science. What I find is that the pluralist has a tendency to make the words they use meaningless. My thesis here is that pluralism will begin to fail insofar as 'science' begins to mean anything substantial at all.


* That same question was asked again towards the end of . Both questions did not seem to receive a clear answer. Else, if a non-scientific strategy for learning is one which is non-reflective or non-critical, then apparently there are some sciences which are less scientific than others. It looks to be uncontroversially false that each science is equally capable of recognizing its own mistakes.

I have been trying to raise the elephant in the room: Does "scientific" mean anything at all? (Or else "more scientific" and "less scientific"?) Does "pseudoscientific" mean anything at all? — Leontiskos

"Scientific" means something like this - Following a formal set of procedures to study phenomena. Those procedures, vastly simplified here, should include the following:

• Initial observations
• Establishment of a conceptual model of the phenomena based on those observations
• Identifying a particular aspect of the model to evaluate
• Developing a procedure to allow that evaluation. The procedure should include documentation; quality control and assurance; a description of the procedures, materials, and equipment to be used; a description of how the data collected will be reduced, validated, and reported.
• Implementation of the experimental procedure
• Data reduction, validation, and reporting
• External review
• Revision of conceptual model based on results
• Repeat process.

Of course this is a cartoon and it's only my first swing, so please don't try to nitpick it apart. It's the overall approach I'm interested in describing.

Yeah, please, don't nitpick it apart!

Yeah, please, don't nitpick it apart! — karl stone

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful enmity.

Okay, that's a good start. It seems to me that, given your substantial notion of science, pluralism among the sciences will not hold.

I could give an alternative argument for this view. Do we agree that sciences can progress (and possibly regress)? For example, do we agree that the field of molecular physics fulfilled your criteria better in the 20th century than in the 19th century? If so, then it seems that molecular physics was more scientific in the 20th century than in the 19th century, and therefore scientific pluralism does not hold between 19th and 20th century molecular physics. We simply cannot say that both were equally scientific.

The next step isn't so hard. It's just the idea that that difference between 19th and 20th century molecular physics is also possible between different contemporaneous sciences, and in all likelihood inevitable. Scientificity ebbs and flows within fields and between fields. How could it be otherwise?

My thesis here is that pluralism will begin to fail insofar as 'science' begins to mean anything substantial at all. — Leontiskos

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful enmity. — T Clark

Then you are already two steps behind!

It seems to me that, given your substantial notion of science, pluralism among the sciences will not hold. — Leontiskos

I don't agree.

do we agree that the field of molecular physics fulfilled your criteria better in the 20th century than in the 19th century? — Leontiskos

No. We know more now than we did then. We have better technologies for investigation. I don't know enough about the practice of of molecular biology in the 19th century to know if the level of rigor met all the standards I've laid out.

It's just the idea that that difference between 19th and 20th century molecular physics is also possible between different contemporaneous sciences, and in all likelihood inevitable. Scientificity ebbs and flows within fields and between fields. — Leontiskos

I don't buy this. Psychology is less precise than physics. That's inevitable. As I've stated elsewhere in this thread, this has been partly ameliorated by adding more "hard" science to the study of psychology, e.g. cognitive science.

I have been trying to raise the elephant in the room: Does "scientific" mean anything at all? (Or else "more scientific" and "less scientific"?) Does "pseudoscientific" mean anything at all? Is there any strategy for learning that is not scientific? — Leontiskos

Let's go back to this for a second. You've identified more scientific, less scientific, and pseudoscientific. You don't seem to have left any room for badly performed science. Is that less scientific or only lower quality. Haute cuisine is good cooking while my macaroni and cheese made with Velveeta is bad cooking, but they're both cooking.

,

Here is a silly example. Suppose someone is a dog speed pluralist. All dogs are capable of running at the same top speed.

In response we could point to the same dog at a young age, a prime age, and an old age, noting differences in speed. We might point to differences in speed within the same litter or breed. We might point to differences between breeds (size, breeding purpose, etc.). We could easily infer that given the way that speed varies over an individual dog's life and between dogs of the same breed, therefore speed will also vary between breeds.

This is obvious, but I want to say that scientificity is not a great deal less obvious. There is a generation of people that really like egalitarianism, and they project it everywhere. Yet the simple fact of the matter is that almost nothing in nature or in life is equal. Therefore sweeping generalizations of equality are almost always wrong, such as, "All the sciences are equally scientific."

As to , I see this as a moral confusion more than anything else. "If we don't say that all the sciences are equally scientific, then we are being immoral," or, "If truth exists then some people will be wrong, and it is to make others wrong." What is needed is a way in which to be intellectually honest without being immoral.

(, I will come back to this post of yours)

Two directions need to be distinguished, namely analysis

Phenomena --> Physical concepts

Which expresses the translation of first-personal observations into third-personal physical concepts in relation to a particular individual, via ostensive definitions that connect that particular individual's observations to their mental state.

from synthesis

Physical concepts --> Phenomena

Which expresses the hypothetical possibility of 'inverting' third-personal physics back into first-personal phenomena - an epistemically impossible project that the logical positivists initially investigated and quickly abandoned.

I think Materialism is a metaphysical ideology that came about due to mainstream society overlooking synthesis and intepreting science and the scientific method, which only concern analysis, as being epistemically complete. Consequently, the impossibility of inverting physics back to first-person reality, was assumed to be due to metaphysical impossibility rather than being down to semantic choices and epistemic impossibility, leading society towards a misplaced sense of nihilism by which first-person phenomena are considered to be theoretically reducible to an impersonal physical description, but not vice-versa.

In response we could point to the same dog at a young age, a prime age, and an old age, noting differences in speed. We might point to differences in speed within the same litter or breed. We might point to differences between breeds (size, breeding purpose, etc.). We could easily infer that given the way that speed varies over an individual dog's life and between dogs of the same breed, therefore speed will also vary between breeds.

This is obvious, but I want to say that scientificity is not a great deal less obvious. — Leontiskos

Are you saying that scientificity is as easy to define and measure as speed? Isn’t that really the question on the table here? You and I disagree. I think scientificity is a very, very great deal less obvious.

If materialism is, as you assert, a popular and intuitively attractive view, then I don't find your characterizations of it plausible. — SophistiCat

I brought this up too. Old school materialism has intuitive appeal, I guess. Post QM materialism is utterly bizarre and counterintuitive.

It is based on the assumption that there is an intelligible structure in material reality which is to be discovered. — boundless

Are you saying that materialists deny this? Can you point to anyone, at any time in history, who held this position?

I brought this up too. Old school materialism has intuitive appeal, I guess. Post QM materialism is utterly bizarre and counterintuitive. — RogueAI

What do you think is olds-school materialism, and what is post-QM materialism? Again, examples of exponents of these views would help.

What do you think is olds-school materialism, and what is post-QM materialism? Again, examples of exponents of these views would help. — SophistiCat

*Old-school materialism is basically the “billiard ball” view of the universe—solid particles bouncing around in space, totally mindless, following fixed laws. Think Newtonian physics, where if you knew the position and velocity of every particle, you could predict everything. That kind of worldview felt intuitive: physical stuff acting on other physical stuff.

Post-quantum-mechanics materialism is way weirder. Now we’re talking about things like particles being excitations in underlying quantum fields—not little balls, but ripples in a weird, abstract ocean. Plus you get phenomena like entanglement and superposition, where cause-and-effect gets fuzzy and locality breaks down.

People trying to stay materialist after QM usually just shift the definition—like, “sure, it’s not solid matter anymore, but it’s still physical because it’s in a field.” But let’s be real, it’s a huge departure from the old view. The “matter” of today is more math-like than object-like. So yeah, I get why people still call it materialism, but it’s not the straightforward, common-sense materialism it used to be.

*Ai wrote some of this

I don't see how it's a caricature. That's the view of the world that unites the Ionian materialists. As mentioned in the post, different thinkers did have their own "x factors" to add to the view (e.g. Anaxagoras' Nous). Corpuscular mechanism, and the idea of primary qualities, was also quite popular, although again, some models included different additional factors or forces (yet some didn't).

Even in later periods, someone like Bertrand Russell, who was well-versed in the science of his day, could write:

That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

It's, at the very least, the view of "how science says the world is," I grew up with, and one I've heard repeated back to me many times over the years.

Plus, a lot of popular philosophical problems are framed in these terms. For instance, the "Problem of the Many," tends to assume that it's fair to say things just are nothing but "clouds of particles." That's precisely why the problem emerges.