Cool. :up: :up:

I think you may well enjoy Anthropocentric Purposivism conceptually. — AmadeusD

Interesting. There's a theory for everything and everyone, isn't there? Perhaps this is a kind of soft-Aristotelian, telos affair.

On Talbott’s view, this marks the core limitation of naturalism as it is usually conceived: it attempts to reduce context-driven, interpretive behaviour to physical causation alone. That is the conflict in a nutshell. — Wayfarer

This doesn't seem right. A naturalist isn't restricted to casual explanations only. So long as any contextual, interpretive explanation can ultimately resolve to a casual explanation.

Looking at the behavior of playing chess. A naturalist might explain the how in terms of the neural architecture that supports this ability, and the dopaminergic reinforcement that drives the behavior. And the why, in an analysis of game playing, that it fosters social connection, reinforces hierarchy, and most importantly it is a platform for learning. Each of these in turn might be subject to a how and a why analysis. Eventually, the whys will resolve to hows: to a discussion of adaptive advantage, and how such advantage propagates across generations.

A naturalism that was restricted to purely casual explanations would be hopeless! This seems like a cartoon straw man.

Even if intelligibility “comes to light” only in the act of knowing, we still need an account of why that disclosure is normatively answerable to truth—i.e. why it can be correct or incorrect rather than merely an internally coherent projection. If the possibility of error is to be taken seriously, then disclosure must be constrained by what is the case. This seems to require that reality itself be intelligible in more than a merely relational sense. — Esse Quam Videri

I'd say statements are normatively answerable to truth because our communities are set up in a manner such that we can demonstrate "true" or "false". Norms come from social groups acting together rather than from being.

Though here "the act of knowing" isn't as much a psychic as a social act -- a statement made to a body of fellow thinkers, and not a proposition believed by a given subject of the external world.

:up: I would add that if intelligibility is merely 'pragmatic', then our beleif in our capacity to understand reality would be an illusion. It would seem as if we can understand (in part) but we would be wrong to believe we do.

I'd say statements are normatively answerable to truth because our communities are set up in a manner such that we can demonstrate "true" or "false". Norms come from social groups acting together rather than from being.

Though here "the act of knowing" isn't as much a psychic as a social act -- a statement made to a body of fellow thinkers, and not a proposition believed by a given subject of the external world. — Moliere

I agree that norms of assertion and justification are socially articulated, and that standards of evidence and demonstration are embedded in communal practices. But while social practices can explain how we enforce norms (what counts as warranted, what gets sanctioned, what gets treated as knowledge), they don’t yet explain why those norms are (in principle) answerable to something beyond communal consensus. I’m happy to grant that epistemic norms are socially mediated — but that mediation itself seems to presuppose an independent constraint: the difference between what is justified-for-us and what is actually the case. Otherwise it becomes hard to make sense of inquiry as genuinely corrigible rather than merely internally self-stabilizing.

Yes—exactly. If intelligibility is reduced to pragmatic usefulness, then “understanding” collapses into successful prediction and control. But then the naturalist has given up the stronger claim that our beliefs are answerable to how reality is in itself, rather than merely to what works for organisms like us.

In that case, it’s not that science becomes false, but that its truth-claims are quietly reinterpreted as instruments. And once that slide happens, it becomes unclear what grounds the normativity of truth and correctness rather than just adaptive success.

they don’t yet explain why those norms are (in principle) answerable to something beyond communal consensus. — Esse Quam Videri

I'm not sure that they are. Though...

Otherwise it becomes hard to make sense of inquiry as genuinely corrigible rather than merely internally self-stabilizing. — Esse Quam Videri

I don't think that follows, either.

Couldn't it be the case that norms are always historically bound -- situated, not trans-communal, etc. -- and yet successfully refers, describes, and so forth? I.e. one could make true statements?

Couldn't it be the case that norms are always historically bound -- situated, not trans-communal, etc. -- and yet successfully refers, describes, and so forth? I.e. one could make true statements? — Moliere

Yes, I agree that norms can be historically situated and yet we can still make true statements.

My point is about what makes that success intelligible. If norms are wholly internal to a community, then “true” collapses into “licensed by current communal standards,” and any notion of correction becomes hard to distinguish from mere change in consensus. We could still shift norms, but we wouldn’t have a basis for saying we were previously mistaken rather than merely operating under different standards.

Put differently: the very idea of “successful reference” seems to presuppose a distinction between what is warranted-for-us and what is actually-the-case, because success and failure aren’t defined by communal uptake alone. That’s the sense in which inquiry appears answerable to something beyond consensus, even if it is always socially mediated in practice.

I'm curious: how would you cash out the distinction between "warranted-for-us" and "actually-the-case" if the norms of correction are understood as entirely internal to practice?

I'm curious: how would you cash out the distinction between "warranted-for-us" and "actually-the-case" if the norms of correction are understood as entirely internal to practice? — Esse Quam Videri

My thought here is that I jumped in when you were on board with the general phenomenological thrust of things: to use an idea from @fdrake "warranted-for-us" and "actually-the-case" are mutually determinative of one another -- you don't get one without the other, they mutually constitute one another as a contrast, that sort of thing.

So the norms of correction are either neither internal/external or both/and external/internal. Which in turn would mean that we can't sneak in an "well, ultimately it's being" or "well, ultimately it's us"

to use an idea from fdrake "warranted-for-us" and "actually-the-case" are mutually determinative of one another -- you don't get one without the other, they mutually constitute one another as a contrast, that sort of thing.

So the norms of correction are either neither internal/external or both/and external/internal. Which in turn would mean that we can't sneak in an "well, ultimately it's being" or "well, ultimately it's us" — Moliere

I see what you mean, but to my mind the function of “actually-the-case” is intrinsically asymmetric in the sense that it can overturn what is warranted-for-us, whereas the opposite does not hold. This asymmetry is precisely what underwrites the possibility of error. We revise what is warranted in light of what is the case, not vice versa.

Thoughts?

Thoughts? — Esse Quam Videri

My thought is we do both, and more.

There is sometimes an asymmetry -- but I'd put it that this is when we're approaching a collective practice. The asymmetry comes from how many people of importance would say what, and that asymmetry can be on either side of this (from the perspective of Being) merely conceptual divide.

I grant the sociological point that we often revise both directions — what gets treated as “warranted” shifts, and what gets treated as “the case” shifts as inquiry unfolds. And of course authority and consensus play a major role in how communities stabilize belief.

That said, the asymmetry I have in mind isn’t about which side has more rhetorical or institutional weight in a given historical moment. It’s about the normative status of truth itself: even if “important people” determine what counts as warranted, they don’t thereby determine what is actually the case — which is precisely what it means to say that communities (and authorities) can be mistaken.

If we collapse the normative distinction between warrant and truth, mustn't we relinquish the possibility of an entire community being wrong, even while fully satisfying its own norms of justification?

If we collapse the normative distinction between warrant and truth, mustn't we relinquish the possibility of an entire community being wrong, even while fully satisfying its own norms of justification? — Esse Quam Videri

I don't think so.

This is the co-constitution going on, I think. Yes, we're talking about something. That's what talking often is. And we can satisfy our own norms while being oblivious to something outside of those norms.

I didn't collapse the distinction between warrant and truth -- I don't think there's even a distinction to be had there except that they are different things**. With both we're definitely talking about how we talk about, though, rather than referring to thing itself.

But what it is we are talking about in the first place is decided by our interest -- so it's not so much Being that we're talking about but a facet, an affordance, a temporal part that may never be again.

**"warrant" I associate with justification. "truth" I associate with statements -- i.e. a statement of the proper form is either true or false.

So a statement is about what is, and a justification is about why I believe something is.

I think your last paragraph is exactly right: warrant concerns justification, whereas truth concerns what is the case. I’m completely on board with that distinction.

I'm less sure about the suggestion that we’re only ever “talking about how we talk about” rather than referring to the thing itself. I agree that our interests determine which aspect of reality we’re talking about (we always carve out a facet, an affordance, a temporal slice, etc.). But that selectivity doesn’t seem to imply (on its own) that truth is merely an intra-discursive status rather than a genuine answerability to what is.

In fact, the possibility you mention — that a community can satisfy its own norms while being oblivious to something outside those norms — seems to presuppose precisely the asymmetry I’m pointing to: that what is warranted-for-us can fail to coincide with what is actually the case. If “truth” isn’t ultimately a constraint beyond our practices, in what sense is the community oblivious rather than simply operating within a different discourse?

I think your last paragraph is exactly right: warrant concerns justification, whereas truth concerns what is the case. I’m completely on board with that distinction. — Esse Quam Videri

:up: Cheers.

I'm less sure about the suggestion that we’re only ever “talking about how we talk about” rather than referring to the thing itself. I agree that our interests determine which aspect of reality we’re talking about (we always carve out a facet, an affordance, a temporal slice, etc.). But that selectivity doesn’t seem to imply (on its own) that truth is merely an intra-discursive status rather than a genuine answerability to what is. — Esse Quam Videri

I want to note that I only meant that we're talking about how we talk about when we're talking about metaphysics, epistemology, science, and so forth -- we can certainly talk about more than our words.

Does that untangle some thoughts, or make things more confusing?

In fact, the possibility you mention — that a community can satisfy its own norms while being oblivious to something outside those norms — seems to presuppose precisely the asymmetry I’m pointing to: that what is warranted-for-us can fail to coincide with what is actually the case. If “truth” isn’t ultimately a constraint beyond our practices, in what sense is the community oblivious rather than simply operating within a different discourse? — Esse Quam Videri

"both/and" is my guess here, at least in the abstract.

They're both oblivious and operating within a different discourse -- suppose the many years of Ptolemaic astronomy.

They said true things, of course. Their predictions were better than Galileo's.

Yet to describe the universe as if the earth is the center of it is oblivious.

That helps, yes — and I agree that in metaphysics/epistemology we’re often clarifying the conceptual norms governing our discourse rather than straightforwardly “describing objects”.

For me, the Ptolemaic case nicely illustrates the asymmetry I’m trying to get at. They were warranted given their evidence and conceptual resources, and they certainly made many true claims and successful predictions. But the reason we call the geocentric framing “oblivious” rather than merely “a different discourse” is precisely that it failed to track what was actually the case. The discourse ultimately shifted because reality didn’t cooperate with it.

So I’m happy to grant the “both/and” descriptively — different discourse and genuine error — but the notion of genuine error seems to require that “what-is-the-case” is not itself fixed by our discursive norms, even if our access to it is always mediated by them.

In other words, we are forced to revise discourse to accommodate what-is-the-case, whereas what-is-the-case refuses to be forced into inadequate conceptual schemes.