I have never said that I don't know what "X" means; that is your own distorted version. Stop wasting my time. — Janus

Ah. So you jumped into a discussion that you should not have...

See ya.

Well, then what's the point of presenting gibberish? Are you just a troll, after all?

Bald assertions won't do here Janus. Read the thread. Quote me where you disagree. Show me what I've claimed that is false, and then explain what makes it so. Otherwise...

I'm not interested. Make an argument. I can and have without subsequent valid objection or refutation.

Ah. So you jumped into a discussion that you should not have...

See ya. — creativesoul

Actually I was involved in the discussion before you jumped in with comments directed at, and based upon misunderstandings and/or distortions of, what both Pseudonym and I had written. Stop being a clown and acquire a little good faith if you honestly want to engage in some intelligent discussion. I'm tired of your empty posturing. On the other hand if you just want to be a troll, you are succeeding mightily well...

Like I said...

I've presented arguments for my position. Address those in an acceptable manner, or present your own, and I'll gladly critique those as I expect another to critique my own. None of us are capable of recognizing our own mistakes all by ourselves. I mean, it is humanly impossible to knowingly believe a falsehood. So...

Your move, I've explained what I'm interested in...

There are certain things which exist in their entirety prior to our becoming aware of them, and prior to language itself. Truth(as correspondence to the way things were and/or are), meaning, and rudimentary thought and belief are such things. Because these things exist in their entirety prior to language, any and all arguments and/or statements which conclude and/or assume otherwise are wrong, by virtue of not corresponding to the way things are and were.
— creativesoul

This honestly appears to me to be gibberish. I have tried a few times to read some sense into it and failed. Perhaps our ways of thinking, our presuppositions, are so remote from each other as to preclude the possibility of any meaningful discussion between us. I suspect this is so also based on past experiences with you. Happy thinkin' dude.... — Janus

There are simple techniques for building bridges of mutual understanding, even when two people hold opposing views. I mean, it's no secret that some folk are capable of understanding positions that are contrary to their own.

It does not follow from the fact that a reader does not understand an author's argument that the argument is meaningless(gibberish).

Honest folk do not usually edit posts in such a way as to completely change the context from which the reader draws some important aspects of understanding. For whatever reason, that has been done here. The part above beginning with "this honestly" and ending with "happy thinkin' dude" was put into place after I had resigned from the thread.

That said, it warranted response...

Too much unnecessary language use only results in adding nothing more than unnecessary confusion to the discussion.
— creativesoul

Well you haven't actually argued against anything I've said... — Janus

And yet, this thread shows otherwise.

Honest folk do not usually edit posts in such a way as to completely change the context from which the reader draws some important aspects of understanding. For whatever reason, that has been done here. The part above beginning with "this honestly" and ending with "happy thinkin' dude" was put into place after I had resigned from the thread. — creativesoul

That's not true. You quoted what I had said, this exact text:

This honestly appears to me to be gibberish. I have tried a few times to read some sense into it and failed. Perhaps our ways of thinking, our presuppositions, are so remote from each other as to preclude the possibility of any meaningful discussion between us. I suspect this is so also based on past experiences with you. Happy thinkin' dude.... — Janus

and responded with "We agree". I have not altered that post at all before or since your response, and this would have been easy enough to prove if you hadn't deleted the evidence. Your response (now deleted) was posted at 13:31:33. I responded immediately with this:

Well, then what's the point of presenting gibberish? Are you just a troll, after all? — Janus

This was posted at 13:33;03, exactly 90 seconds later and clearly shows that I thought you had agreed that what you had written was gibberish.

I was surprised that you would say 'we agree" to that post and I now believe you didn't read it carefully, and realizing that, you wanted to save face, and came up with this bullshit claim that I altered the text, and deliberately deleted the evidence so that I could not definitively expose your lie. The nerve you have to speak of "honest folk"! So, now you've gone down considerably further in my estimation.

Metaphysics assertions led to contradictions, as Kant showed. We can prove that the world is created and not-created, and so. The metaphysics is not an object of experience or understanding, but of desires. We know that the concept of God, World and Soul are contradictory, but we make how if they would exist (in a regulative way) because often we want that they were real.

There are simple techniques for building bridges of mutual understanding, even when two people hold opposing views. I mean, it's no secret that some folk are capable of understanding positions that are contrary to their own.

It does not follow from the fact that a reader does not understand an author's argument that the argument is meaningless(gibberish). — creativesoul

I was thinking on your response, and life requires variety -- I was doing other things. So sorry for the delay.



So you're proposing something of an ethic -- two approaches towards argument depending upon the consequences of said decision. There's a lot after that which I spent some time writing out and subsequently deleting to attempt focusing more in my response.

To attempt a rephrase: your ethic is considering another wrong is only important (meaningful?) in instances where our shared world of experience is effected by whatever it is we are arguing over.


Were I a practicing Christian then it would seem that a broadly Buddhist conception of the world is pretty important to me in the sense that it is wrong and Christianity is right, where bridges can be built by a multiplicity of concepts (consider how long bridges have been around in relation to the theory of gravity). Whether bridges stand or fall is important to the extent that we desire a bridge -- but the theory we use to get there doesn't matter insofar that the end-goal is achieved. The salvation of another's soul is of utmost importance. So hierarchy is justified on the basis of this greater good. (FWIW, I do not subscribe to Christian beliefs, so I do not feel this way towards Christianity at all -- but it's a common enough stance to take that this should make sense)

That is merely factual. Perhaps it is factual and the Christian is wrong in the ethical sense to consider their worldview as something which must be aggressively defended and propogated, but should be presented in a passive one-way manner without investment to people who follow along some other tree-line.

For myself I have a hard time believing in hierarchy at all -- but I don't think that dispassionate discussion amounts to much either. So I don't know which of the two options I should pick. Something should be at stake in a debate whether that "at stake" is relative to our shared world of experience or not -- that doesn't seem so important to me as a rule for how we ought to approach debates. Further I'd say that decidability doesn't seem to relate to this "at stake", though maybe decidability is something we can put to the wayside now as it seems like something of an after effect in your proposed ethic -- you're concerned with the shared world of experience, and not whether some debate is decidable or not.

To you an aggressive, two way exchange where we consider another person wrong and utilize hierarchy to maintain agreement is justified in the case where our shared world of experience is going to be the same. If our shared world of experience is the same regardless of which branch we happen to believe in making a distinction then it is better to have a one-way, passive approach to a debate. Only in this way can a debate between two positions be meaningful -- meaningfulness is dependent upon approach, which is appropriate or not depending upon whether or not what we are talking about makes a difference in our shared world of experience.

To me I'm uncertain that the aggressive two-way exchange is justified, nor is the one-way justified. Surely we care about what we talk about. I care about philosophy, so Italk about it. But am I demanding of you agreement with me? I'm presenting reasons to you to explain myself, and persuasion is a part of that. But I've also edited a great deal and cut out a great deal upon re-reading it and reflecting -- so a part of this debate is also self reflecting, it is asking questions about myself. It's not purely an act of certainty from myself to make you conform with myself. It's an exploration, a play -- a play I am not disinterested in at all. A play which has stakes (though are the stakes of our shared world of experience? Maybe, maybe not).

Is that a third way? Or is that passive, merely because it is not authoritarian? If that be the case, then I don't know if I'd consider bridges to be the basis for authoritarianism either. If we care about a bridge standing then we can build the bridge and see if it stands -- but the ideas we use to get there, like gravity, aren't part of that end-goal so much. They are just as undecidible as other things, because they are interpretations, and not the shared world of experience. In fact "shared world" is itself just a metaphysical belief (one which I happen to share a belief in).

If the bridge stands then we're done. But to get there play is more important than hierarchy, experiment is what allows for discovery. Maybe there will be better bridges in the future for such play. In which case even the undecidable, that which is beyond our immediate world of experience, should be debated about -- because that's how we got gravity, after all. Newton didn't just say "well I don't see it, so I should propose this in a dispassionate manner for consideration" -- he thought he was right.

I'm sorry for the long delay replying. Interestingly (to me anyway), the reason I took such a long break is exactly the topic we're discussing here. I got a bit fed up with the pointlessness of the whole argument/counter-argument cycle which is pursued as if it were actually going to reach some conclusion despite the fact that it is infinitely possible to derive a theoretical counter-argument to any argument. It's like expecting all of cricket to one day end as we finally decide that the bowler is better then the batter. But the bowler's never going to run out of ways to throw balls and the batter's never going to run out of ways to hit them away. Anyway, cricket is nonetheless fun (for some) and this is nonetheless fun when one can rise above the morose disillusionment with the pointlessness of it all.

So,

Yes, I think I am proposing something of an ethic, but that's more to do with my approach to philosophy, than something specific to this topic. I think that there is really no other sensible question than "what should I do next?" which is ultimately (I think) an ethical one. I wouldn't characterise it quite the way you have though.

It's not so much about our shared world as about my personal future. If you hold a view which I think might impact negatively on me and my interests, then I will use whatever technique available to change your view. That might be rational argument, but that rarely works and it's more likely to be rhetoric, or even outright deception if necessary. The ethical component here is that I'm presuming an ethical person, and what I consider to be 'my interests' are derived from ethics, not hedonism (although I think the two are closer than most, but that's another discussion). So basically, argument (no matter what form it takes) in order to bring about some ethical goal seems justified by the ends, since the means are relatively harmless.

This is where what you go on to say about the vast quantity of subject matters which do have some investment in our shared experience diverges from the approach I'm trying to argue for. Simply being invested in our shared experience is not enough. There has to be some ethical goal in order to justify the aggressive approach. It seems legitimate, to take your example, for a committed Christian to argue with some fervor against abortion, or the sins of others, since they might reasonably consider that they're achieving some ethical goal (the saving of souls). It seems far less justifiable for that same Christian to argue with fervor over, say the cosmological argument (I'm presuming here that no one's soul is going to be saved by reluctantly admitting that there must be a god on logical grounds!). That seems far more about suppressing inconvenient arguments against a passionately held belief than about convincing others of anything at all.

My only interest is in philosophy as therapy. As I've said many times, I see little evidence of any progress being made on any argument about 'the way the world is' to the extent that those who passionately believe it is one way are forced to concede that it is, in fact, another, outside of science. And science holds this unique position not because of the magic of its method, but because it deals in things described by their effects. So, from a therapeutic point of view, I only see it as harmful to persist in the notion that some metaphysical positions can be demonstrated to be incontrovertibly 'right' in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it cannot.

I'm sorry for the long delay replying. Interestingly (to me anyway), the reason I took such a long break is exactly the topic we're discussing here. — Pseudonym

It's all good. I take breaks too. :D

I think that your response gets to the heart of the matter better anyways. Where you state:

I think that there is really no other sensible question than "what should I do next?" — Pseudonym

I was able to reread your previous post and see a different emphasis.

Where I got "shared world of experience" from was when you were talking about the effects of electricity in a computer, and your example of two engineers where one believed in gravity and the other did not yet both wanted to build a bridge. My strategy was two-fold: to demonstrate that we can accomplish goals, such as bridge building, with competing and contradictory beliefs about the world. So bridge building has been around a very long time, well before the theory of gravity and Newton and all that. And then also to point out that we have better bridges now specifically because of what I would term metaphysical speculation which was two-way and aggressive. Newton is a great example of this because in his time metaphysics and science weren't separate fields of study as they are now, and he was extremely aggressive on such points -- yet that sort of passion and vigor is what allows us to build more complicated bridges now, since it laid the conceptual groundwork that would be necessary to build more impressive bridges.

Also, I'm perplexed by the two-fold categorization of approach when it comes to myself. I feel passionate about philosophy, I can be aggressive, but I don't think I'd endorse all forms of aggressiveness. Further, I don't think I'd say my interest is dispassionate, one way, passive, or something along those lines.



But now I would say that it seems to me that your approach to philosophy as therapy is consistent, except for the exception you give science. You say science is unique...

because it deals in things described by their effects. So, from a therapeutic point of view, I only see it as harmful to persist in the notion that some metaphysical positions can be demonstrated to be incontrovertibly 'right' in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it cannot. — Pseudonym

Ancient skepticism is a hallmark case of therapeutic philosophy. They even go so far as to say that arguments are literal medicine, so we need not feel attached to any argument but rather should view them as a way of persuading people of the virtues of skepticism. Those who deviate from the skeptical path are ill, and those who take their medicine are cured.

But for you you're talking about your interests, from an ethical point of view. So an aggressive argument is justified only if there are souls to be saved (in the Christian case) or your personal ethical ends are being served (close to but not the same as hedonism) - so not the same as skepticism in that the end goals differ (or the set of possible end goals are wider than what the ancient skeptic would say).

But if therapy be the guide then the end-goal is what justifies the approach, up to an including non-rational means. At least that's what I get from you saying:

That might be rational argument, but that rarely works and it's more likely to be rhetoric, or even outright deception if necessary. — Pseudonym

But how does that square away with the unique place of science? What gives it a pass, from a therapeutic perspective? And if the goal is what justifies any means, be they rational or not, why would science get a pass on this?

Science is interested in making claims on what is the case. At least, on its face. I suspect, given the unique position you've given science, that we agree on this much. To me that means that we would care about things like truth, evidence, inference, and knowledge. But truth, evidence, inference, and knowledge are not grounded in ethical goals, in what we ought to do next. From the perspective of the question "What should I do next?" they are only worthwhile if what we should do is generate knowledge in a specific way, a scientific way. And the history of science shows how this knowledge is ethically neutral -- it can be used for great harm or great benefit. It can threaten the world with nuclear holocaust, and it can cure polio. Knowledge of the world brings about power. It doesn't bring about the wisdom required to wield such power.

I'd say it does this specifically because it's merely concerned with truth about what is the case. But this is not moored to any ethical consideration about what we should do next.

If that be the case it seems to me that you believe in more than philosophy as therapy -- you must also believe that science tells us what is the case in order to give it a unique place among fields of knowledge. You'd have to give favor to things like current evidence, and causal frameworks -- a bare minimum epistemology and metaphysic, but they still count as more than "what should I do next?" none-the-less. Unless you can somehow link this approach to your therapy, it seems to me that this is just a case of special pleading.

I bring up the ancient skeptic for that reason -- to highlight how this is special pleading in light of a therapeutic philosophy. For the skeptic any claims on knowledge, be they evidential and based on cause or otherwise, were secondary to the goal. Arguments were medicine to bring someone to the perspective that they withhold judgment. (of course this is a general treatment. Specific skeptics differ, and it's a richer tradition than a few sentences gives credit)

Or, at least, why it seems to me that this is special pleading. How do you reconcile these commitments, to the only sensible question you introduce, evidentialism, and a belief in cause?

I hope this will explain, though I'm not entirely sure what you're asking.

I'm vaguely in agreement with Quine with regards to the lack of a distinction between science and metaphysics but with a very clear idea that there is a grade from the very metaphysical to the very scientific. So when I say 'science' it is usually out of laziness, referring to the end of that scale which is sufficiently 'sciency' to be worth engaging in the process of getting it 'right'.

I see philosophy (from a therapeutic point of view) as dealing with varying degrees of uncertainty. So to use your bridge example, there is very little uncertainty about the fact that the bridge stays up, so very little work for philosophy there, mostly engineering. There's a small degree of uncertainty about why the bridge stays up, but by comparing theories to other things we know (as well as the fact that the bridge stays up), we can be fairly sure. It's probably gravity, and nuclear forces. It might be kind fairies, but that doesn't seem to be consistent with other things we're even more certain about. The question of whether we should have a bridge at all is, by comparison, a sea of uncertainty, a lot of work for philosophy to do, some work for science providing the sorts of facts we all agree on, but mostly philosophy providing possible explanations for people to try on, see if they like them.

So, yes, there's a lot of science where therapeutic philosophy comes in. The line is not clear, but I think two things are clear. 1) there is some progression from the very poorly agreeable metaphysics to the very widely agreeable science and 2) it gets less and less possible to come to any meaningful agreement and as to what is 'right' the further along that scale one goes in the direction of metaphysics.

To answer your question as straightforwardly as possible (though missing a good deal of subtlety in doing so), it's not that science gets a unique pass, it's that the more 'sciency' a matter gets, the less need there is for any therapeutic philosophy to help us cope with uncertainty because we all find it very easy to agree and to feel certain about that agreement.

I hope this will explain, though I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. — Pseudonym

Eh, not entirely unusual there. I always wish I was more clear, and upon rereading what I write some time later wish I had said it better. I guess I'm just expressing what appears to me to be a conflict in your thinking -- one which, on one side, makes sense of all you say, but on the other side, seems like you'd be more liable to agree with me in saying that metaphysical disagreement is meaningful in the way that it is productive. In particular I have in mind science, which to me isn't all that different from metaphysics though a distinction can be drawn (and is, though I think that it's more an accident of our particular moment in history).

I suppose I don't see a very reasonable distinction between the two. There are degrees of uncertainty even in very well rooted empirical matters. Uncertainty, from my perspective, doesn't come to define metaphysics. And if metaphysics is the study of what is the case then science is a part of all that -- and, depending on how we might feel about certain forms of argument, it can be a large or a small part (or the entirety or completely separate from, at the extremes of commitment).

From my experience with science agreement is not easy, nor is it even common. So disagreement in science is something that seems very normal to me. Science is uncertain and rife with disagreement. It's almost the engine of science. The products of science are just accidents of history, things we have garnered thus far and are always up for reinterpretation or experiment. To me it does not seem so easy to find agreement and feel certain about it from the scientific perspective. And that becomes more apparent in the details, rather than in the textbooks. Even in cases of engineering, which rely upon the highly specific circumstances and empirical testing.

To me, at least, there is no certainty in science any more than there is certainty in the ambiguity of what I ought to do. So therapy seems equally applicable in both cases.

Maybe I just feel more affinity for Quine's thoughts on the lack of a distinction. Or, better to say, on the lack of a distinction with rigor -- I can get a feel for what people mean, but I can't see the difference really. So we either reject science as an arbiter of truth, if we are thorough-going and oddly consistent therapeuticians, or we somehow reconcile the notion that philosophy is therapeutic and we still care about truth in spite of what therapeutic value it might bring.

It seems to me perhaps that the key issue around the extent to which science and metaphysics differ is the extent to which agreement can, or should, be found. Afterall, my opposition to much argumentative debate in metaphysics is that its pointless. If argument might reasonably yield agreement on some matter which requires it, then it's worth going through the process.

So the scale I see with pure science at one end, metaphysics at the other (and perhaps the 'softer' sciences in the middle) is one that measures the extent to which agreement is readily achievable. This is largely a psychological issue. There may be deep metaphysical reasons for it, but it's sufficient for me that for some reason we seem to readily agree on the things we see, hear or measure, whereas we tend to disagree interminably on things we think and feel.

Another, completely separate scale measures the extent to which agreement is important to one's ethical objectives. Here we might have fundamental ethics at one end (it's really important that everyone agrees murder is wrong), and the density of a black hole at the other (everyone in the world could quite feasibly have a different opinion about that and everything would still be basically fine).

Where an issue is located on the two scales determines whether it is better to argue the point rationally, argue the point rhetorically, or not argue the point at all but maybe just listen and talk openly to others.

Having laid that out, if you don't mind putting up with my framework for a moment, it seems like you're saying that some science is actually quite far along the 'difficult to get agreement on' part of scale 1, and plenty of the sort of metaphysics I might dismiss as pointless is actually quite far along the 'really important to get agreement on' end of scale 2. Is that a fair translation of your view into my framework?

Having laid that out, if you don't mind putting up with my framework for a moment, it seems like you're saying that some science is actually quite far along the 'difficult to get agreement on' part of scale 1, and plenty of the sort of metaphysics I might dismiss as pointless is actually quite far along the 'really important to get agreement on' end of scale 2. Is that a fair translation of your view into my framework? — Pseudonym

Yeah, I think that's fair. And I'm glad you set out the framework because it helps me to disentangle the argument better -- I can see clearly where our disagreements over the point of arguing metaphysics seem to lie. Or, at least, where we have been having a back and forth and now why I've been a bit confused at times in our conversation.

Yeah, I think it's at least half to do with definitions. Taking Quine's scale of metaphysical enquiry, I'm simply defining an enquiry as 'science' by it's place on the scale, so the question of some science being difficult to ever agree on doesn't arise for me. If it's the sort of thing that's unlikely to ever yield agreement, no matter what sense-based evidence we use, then it isn't 'science' for me, simply by definition. To be clear, there's a very important distinction between 'agreed on' and 'agreeable on'. Some scientific theories might be very widely dis-agreed on, but they're still science because they are widely agreeable on, even if such agreement is not yet forthcoming. Metaphysical theories I'm defining as those which are not widely agreeable on even though some of them might be very widely agreed on.

A subtle distinction. :D

I let this sit for a bit because my immediate thoughts were repetitions of things I had already said. Nothing new has come over the past few days so I think we might have just reached that point where this is where we disagree, but I'm not certain what else could be said to elucidate our persuade one way or the other.