• Janus
    15.5k


    The problem is that if there are a whole lot of naive realists who all believe different things, as you claim, then there could be no coherent view that we could call 'naive realism'.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    I didn't actually say anything like "they all believe different things."

    At any rate, what you should be doing when you refer to naive realism is describing the views of particular people who call themselves naive realists. "Particular people" can be a large number of them, especially if what they believe as naive realism is similar.

    That's what we do when we write dictionary/encyclopedia/"companion" articles on views, by the way. We describe what particular people who identified as an x-ist believed with respect to their x-ism, and typically we spend part of the time picking out different species of the view, especially popular or influential species.

    What's not the case is that they believe something that someone else who doesn't identify as an x-ist believes is entailed by (parts of) the view. That's fine territory for criticism of the view from whatever other perspective, but it doesn't "draw" the view itself.
  • Janus
    15.5k
    Views aren't governed or delimited by what some set of individuals who don't hold the view believe is logically entailed by the view, where what they believe is logically entailed isn't something that the view-holders have expressed as the view.Terrapin Station

    This is quite wrong. If some naive realists don't see some logical entailment of their view and posit that as part of it, and other naive realists do see the said logical entailment and posit it as being part of their standpoint, what then? which ones are the naive realists?

    On the other hand, even if all naive realists have not realized that some logical entailment of their view holds because it is implicit in it; that wouldn't change the fact that the logical entailment holds, because if it really is a logical entailment, it must hold.
  • Janus
    15.5k


    There is either one 'correct' version of naive realism or there are various versions of it. Which one do you want to claim?
  • Janus
    15.5k
    What's not the case is that they believe something that someone else who doesn't identify as an x-ist believes is entailed by (parts of) the view. That's fine territory for criticism of the view from whatever other perspective, but it doesn't "draw" the view itself.Terrapin Station

    This is again nonsense. If someone is looking out on a view of the mountains and there is say a cabin which is clearly visible; but she simply doesn't notice it; it does not follow from that that the cabin is not a part of the view.
  • Michael
    14.1k
    Views aren't governed or delimited by what some set of individuals who don't hold the view believe is logically entailed by the view, where what they believe is logically entailed isn't something that the view-holders have expressed as the view.Terrapin Station

    This is wrong. Pointing out what is entailed by someone else's position is a big part of arguing against that position. Realists might argue that idealism entails solipsism, that solipsism is false, and so on that grounds idealism is false. Putnam argues that realism entails global scepticism, that global scepticism is false, and so on that grounds realism is false.

    It doesn't matter if you believe X but not Y. If Y follows from X then to avoid contradiction you must either accept both or deny both.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    This is quite wrong. If some naive realists don't see some logical entailment of their view and posit that as part of it, and other naive realists do see the said logical entailment and posit it as being part of their standpoint, what then? which ones are the naive realists?John
    You're quite wrong that it's quite wrong.

    The first problem there is that you believe there are facts whether something is logically entailed by something else, and the right people, the ones who get the facts right, are the ones with the license to claim a view.

    First, the idea that there are facts re entailment is wrong.

    Secondly, even if that weren't wrong, that's not actually how this works in practice. People believe that different things are entailed by the same foundational claims, and that's one thing that creates splits so that you wind up with x-ist(1s) and x-ist(2s) and so on--that is, different species of x-ists. Re "which ones are the x-ists" that simply works via a combination of popularity, influence and stature. What tends to be left out is views that are very different that are neither popular nor influential or that are not held by someone of stature.

    It's also worth pointing out that not at views are something like logical arguments in the first place, so entailment isn't even apt for those.
    There is either one 'correct' version of naive realism or there are various versions of it.John
    I'd never say there are correct versions of a view. Just popular and/or influential versions. What can be incorrect, however, is to say that "x-ism is F" when (almost) no one who identifies as a x-ist says/believes F.
  • Janus
    15.5k
    Yes. Logic is nothing more than how individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations.Terrapin Station

    This is incomplete, it should read "Logic is nothing more than how all individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations, when they think coherently.

    Logic is binding because it is the intersubjectively universal and binding law of discourse. If someone refuses to admit that their utterances are subject to logical critique; they are simply refusing to play the inter-subjective game and are basically playing with themselves, mentally masturbating in other words, instead of engaging in intercourse with others
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    This is incomplete, it should read "Logic is nothing more than how all individuals think about the world at the most abstract, generalized "level" of relations, when they think coherently.John
    Haha--but that would be wrong.

    "Intersubjective" doesn't amount to anything other than the fact that people can agree with each other and act in concert with each other, by the way. And to claim that such agreement makes anything correct is to claim an argumentum ad populum.
  • Janus
    15.5k


    It seems to me you're not interested in serious discussion at all, just in mouthing off. As such, there is no point engaging with you. I wonder how many times you've heard that? Hopefully, for your sake one day it might sink in. :-}
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    Haha. Someone not agreeing with you or accepting you as a relative authority etc. is "not interested in serious discussion at all." Nice one.
  • Janus
    15.5k


    If you want to claim that views and the claims they make are not necessarily logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose entailments that logically followfrom them, then that amounts to claiming that views just are what they are in total isolation and that any attack of a view is reducible to merely saying 'that's wrong'.

    Of course this must also apply then to the things you claim. What you say also must not be subject to any logical critiques of its emtailments, simply because there aren't any. This also means that your claims by your own lights have no significance or implications beyond themselves. In that case they warrant no further response.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    If you want to claim that views and the claims they make are not necessarily logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose entailments that logically followfrom them, then that amounts to claiming that views just are what they are in total isolationJohn
    That would only be the case if you define "total isolation" as "views 'and the claims they make'" (what's the difference between the two, by the way?) "are not logically dependent on presuppositions that underpin them and do not themselves presuppose (i) entailments (ii) that logically follow from them" (isn't (ii) redundant with (i) by the way?). If that's what you mean by "isolation," then sure, that conditional would work. After all, If P, then P. If you'd have something else in mind by "isolation," then I don't agree that it follows that "views are in total isolation" in that case.

    Of course, the fact that I disagree that that follows if it's not tautologous doesn't imply that it's not your view, or that your view is something different than that. You view is indeed just what it is, as you've stated it, because that's what you believe. That's what makes it your view, that particular view, etc.

    . . . and that any attack of a view is reducible to merely saying 'that's wrong'.John

    That's basically the case anyway; we just often flesh out the reasons that we feel something is wrong.

    Of course this must also apply then to the things you claim. What you say also must not be subject to any logical critiques of its emtailments, simply because there aren't any.John

    Which nicely shows that you don't understand my views (both as my views and if you prefer, per what logically follows from them, if, per my understanding of logic, you have any decent ability with it whatsoever). First off, no one ever said anything resembling "there aren't any entailments." What I said was that (let's use names instead of variables for a moment) Joe's beliefs about the entailments of Frank's views, where Frank does not have present-to-mind the supposed entailments, are not themselves Frank's views. Maybe they'll become part of Frank's views, as Frank thinks about them and agrees with them, or maybe Frank will disagree, and they won't be part of Frank's views. What there "isn't any of" is views that no one thinks. And there aren't any logical entailments that no one thinks. But that doesn't imply that there are no logical entailments.

    What Frank says is subject to Joe's logical critique of its entailments (and I had already explicitly pointed this out in an earlier post, it would take me a few minutes to find it, though, as I don't recall the exact wording I used), because Joe is of course going to give his take on it and tell us why he disagrees if he does. Joe might think that q is implied by Frank's belief that p, whereas Frank might disagree with Joe on that in a variety of ways. Joe thinking that q is implied by Frank's belief that p doesn't make it the case that Frank's view is that q. And every view is someone's. Again, views do not exist outside of people holding them. At any rate, so then we know that Joe doesn't agree with Frank's view because Joe believes that it implies that q, and Joe doesn't believe that q, whereas Frank believes differently. And then each person is going to decide for themselves, if they're interested in it, whether they agree with Frank or Joe or neither of them. Often it's neither--those are the two "laws" of philosophy after all: (1) For every philosopher, there is an equal and opposite philosopher. (2) They're both wrong. ;-)

    This also means that your claims by your own lights have no significance or implications beyond themselves.John

    Significance and implication are ways that people think about things. My comments have that insofar as people think about them in those ways (and then they have those things to those particular people), and they do not have them insofar as people do not think about them in those ways.

    In any event, you don't need any sort of elaborate justification for not replying to me if you're not interested in what I say and you don't want to reply to me. You can simply choose to do something else instead. It's fine with me either way. I'll continute to do my thing regardless.

    In my opinion, most of what I'm pointing out above is so obvious and basic that it seems odd that I have to spell any of it out. Of course, I've long been familiar with logical (and mathematical and general abstract existent) realists/platonists, but it never seemed to me that there were actually view realists/platonists around, because that seems so absurd to believe . . . but I've run into a couple of you (not just on this site) in the last couple days. I suppose I should have figured that there were view realists/platonists around, since there are folks who believe just about every other imaginable absurd thing (and that's a lot of what attracted me to philosophy in the first place), but I just hadn't run into someone who had made their view realism/platonism explicit prior to the last couple days.
  • Janus
    15.5k


    None of what you say here shows that you have the least understanding of what I have been saying or that you are making any effort to genuinely engage. It's simply not worth making any effort on my part; I have better things to do. From what I have seen of your posts on this site and the old PF, they don't reflect much undrestanding of the issues at all, and mostly amount to nothing more than empty sophistry. I won't trouble you again.
  • Terrapin Station
    13.8k
    None of what you say here shows that you have the least understanding of what I have been saying or that you are making any effort to genuinely engage. It's simply not worth making any effort on my part; I have better things to do. From what I have seen of your posts on this site and the old PF, they don't reflect much undrestanding of the issues at all, and mostly amount to nothing more than empty sophistry. I won't trouble you again.John
    At least you have confidence I suppose. Well, or at least attitude/arrogance. Not sure that's the same thing.
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