LOL. Love it when you resort to explaining how low we are in your list of priorities. Gotta keep a grip on the situation, heh?

Oh how I wept with laughter at such wit.

The real joke is instead how you keep claiming to want a debate before bottling it yet again.

...bear in mind that you seem to be sometimes adding the clause "give or take a bit", and so making a probabilistic statement about the Eiffel Tower. Your claims about there being "a truth" are couched in the language of an inductive inference.

So again, there is an internal inconsistency you need to address.

If you are happy with the fundamentally probabilistic metaphysics of pragmatism, then you ought to come clean and say so. A degree of ambiguity or uncertainty is part and parcel of any constraints-based ontology. It is not a problem for my approach, and indeed its an epistemic advantage.

Among other things, it gives an even deeper justification for induction as a method. We have no choice but to talk about the generality of an average, a mean, that is our reasonable leap beyond any available evidence.

We never see "the average" in observing a probabilistic world. We only see a variety of particular instances when we get out and measure. And yet we happily treat the average as the reality, the truth. You are doing that too - and perhaps you have dropped mention of the "give or take a bit" for that reason?

It reveals that scratch a nominalist and you find a realist. Generality is not just an idea, an arbitrary product of inductive argument, but a real fact of the world. Apparently. :)

You, I and whoever else is reading this are most probably competent users of English. As such we show that we can use "...is true" correctly. Now providing a definition is providing synonyms, and hence leads to circularity - words defining more words. — Banno

So I have to provide definitions and you get to hide behind commonsense usage?

Seems legit. :)

It follows that pragmatism is not a theory of truth, although of course it re-defines the word "truth" to its own ends. — Banno

Again, how could that be the case in your world of no definitions?

Some modicum of consistency please. If it works for pragmatists to have adopted their behaviouristic "redefinition" as a community, then it works for them. You yourself have taken away your own grounds to criticise.

Sometimes I really can't believe your apparent lack of embarrassment as you loudly scrape the bottoms of those barrels.

Well, no, it isn't. Truth is quite distinct from belief. Pragmatism leaves truth unaddressed. — Banno

It treats it as the limit of inquiry. That might be a different answer to the one you have in mind - not that you could have a definition in mind! - but it is still the issue being addressed.

Justification leads to belief, not to truth. — Banno

As you seemed to want to believe, justified belief leads to a generalised coherence. Things become "true" as they become so fundamental in that fashion.

This is the difficulty of arguing against you. You do a better job of constantly contradicting yourself. You are revealing what happens when you eschew the goal of a unitary metaphysics (well, at least a unitary view that is slightly more complex than naive realism). You praise generalised coherence. But your epistemology sadly lacks that very advantage.

Pragmatism, together with other substantive theories such as coherence and foundationalism, offer neat ways of justifying our beliefs. But they do not explain what truth is. That's right - I am saying that pragmatism is a good thing. But not as an explanation of truth. — Banno

So again, what is this "truth" you keep referring to? Apart from a naive realism about the world being a collection of facts.

Sure, you will say it is something unanalysably fundamental. And why it is sayable - you keep mentioning it - it is also to be consigned to the metaphysically unspeakable. You mustn't explain it.

But bullshit is a pretty obvious thing to. It's obvious when someone is bullshitting their way through a discussion.

The issue here is that despite rejecting the notion of truth, you continue to speak of objective truth. — Banno

I can't both redefine truth and reject truth. Especially when you are saying truth is undefinable. So you are both misrepresenting me and also talking illogical bollocks again.

I can speak of objective truth as a limit. And that is what I did.

If you have a counter argument, great, that is what you then tap out into a wee post in reply. But if your only defence is to lie about things I've just said, that makes your position truly hopeless.

What would be wrong would be to assert that there is only one method that can be used to decide. As if the way one decided the height of the Eiffel Tower were the same as the way one decides the declaration of human rights or that one loves one's partner. Pragmatism does not answer all such questions. — Banno

Again, pragmatism can still have the aim of covering all the epistemic ground between the opposing limits of the objective and the subjective.

So it starts with rejecting both naive realism and idealism. But then accepts that knowledge is indeed framed by those two complementary epistemic limits.

And it is engaged with the challenge of finding an epistemic method which does span the whole gamut.

So while you may take a view that it fails in its goals (having told me you have deliberately read no Peirce at all), at least there is nothing wrong in the way it sets out its grand metaphysical project.

I mean what do you think "a theory of truth" would be? A whole bunch of different theories, depending on whether we are talking of towers, politics or partners?

While you are carefully avoiding the challenge of defining truth, you certainly seem to be claiming that there is some unified theory of truth to be had.

So once again, your story is full of holes and self-contradictions. A very poor effort when all is said and done.

Avoid Banno's posts by setting up a straw Banno. — Banno

???

Straw Banno writes your profile?

The Eiffel Tower
Still unanswered. Is the tower 324m tall, give or take a bit?

I say that it is, and further that it is true that the tower is 324m tall.

But you can't. All you can do is say that you believe that it is 324m tall.

It's a failure to commit on your part. — Banno

Again, what do you mean by "true"? You want to make a naive realist point without having to defend doing that. So that is the dodge I always pull you up on.

I am happy to commit to the justification of belief in pragmatic fashion. Truth is just another way of saying I can show I have no good reason to doubt.

If you want to defend your own naive realist framing, get on with it. Quit bottling the challenge. :)

But for fun, do you believe the tower is 324m tall yourself? Just tell me yes or no! And how.

And when during the day is it so exactly 324m tall? Are we now talking about the hot Eiffel tower that is 15cm taller in the heat of the midday sun, or the one that is 15cm shorter when night falls and its cools down?

Do we in fact now have two Eiffel towers. Or a vast ensemble - one for every nanometre of variation.

Oh goodness, how do we measure the height as it expands/contracts unevenly as the sun hits only one side. It can bend 18cm away from the sun. So which is its true height now - the actual distance to the ground or the full distance if it were standing up straight?

Of course, Banno the tourist guide doesn't need to care. He just reads his facts off Wiki. But Banno the scientist might want to rely on some more careful process of inquiry. A hand-waving approach always makes for poor philosophy.

For fun, as you won't ever set out a counter position when making your scoffing noises about mine, let's take this profile statement you make.

Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present king of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition.

Beliefs range over propositions. (arguably, they might be made to range over statements: Fred believes the present king of France is bald.)

Beliefs set out a relation of a particular sort between an agent and a proposition.

This relation is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.

The logical problem here, the philosophical interesting side issue, is that beliefs overdetermine our actions. There are other beliefs and desires that could explain my going to the tap.
______________

We know some statement when at the least we believe it, it fits in with our other beliefs, and when it is true.

The "fits in with other beliefs" is a first approximation for a justification. Something stronger is needed, but material implication will not do.

Discard Gettier. The definition is not hard-and-fast.

It does not make sense to ask if we know X to be true; that's exactly the same as asking if we know X. The "we only know it if it is true" bit is only there because we can't know things that are false.

If you cannot provide a justification, that is, if you cannot provide other beliefs with which a given statement coheres, then you cannot be said to know it.

A belief that is not subject to doubt is a certainty.

Now let's analyse and see how different it really is from what I would say.

Statements are combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present king of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition.

As I understand the distinction you want to make, it seems to be that only a statement that is both crisply definite and an actual possibility is a truth-apt proposition. The semantics have to have a real world basis. There must be here an actual present king of France, and baldness must be an actual state a head could have.

I guess my question is then whether you are making this distinction simply in the spirit of "good practice", or whether you think it is a black and white distinction with no pragmatic wiggle room.

For instance, I would claim that there is always irreducible ambiguity or vagueness in any such proposition. How do we define "bald". That in itself is a standard Sorites paradox example.

And how do you handle fictional or modal possibilities. There are books or logical worlds where there are French kings that are variously bald or hirsute in ways that give propositional meaning to the statement.

So I can go along with this distinction as a target if what you are stressing is that a well-formed logical assertion is about some actually possible state of the world - because "truth" only really applies to the relation that we pragmatically have with a world. It becomes silly to even talk about truth or falsity except in a context where there is a world to determine that truth or falsity to the propositioner floating the proposition.

Beliefs range over propositions. (arguably, they might be made to range over statements: Fred believes the present king of France is bald.)

Beliefs set out a relation of a particular sort between an agent and a proposition.

This relation is such that if the agent acts in some way then there is a belief and a desire that together are sufficient to explain the agent's action. Banno wants water; he believes he can pour a glass from the tap; so he goes to the tap to pour a glass of water.

OK. The idea of beliefs now brings that pragmatic relation between a self and its world into focus. It highlights that there is the larger thing of a relation. There has to be a causal coupling such that beliefs drive actions, and then those actions feed back to impact the beliefs.

This stresses the embedded and ecological nature of the reasoning relation we have with the world against other possible approaches to truth. Understood this way, it just is pragmatism. Where it might fall short is that it doesn't seem to continue on to the semiotic consequences of a modelling relations view of the mind and what it can know of the world.

The semiotic view of course adds that the "mind" in fact only deals in signs of the world. The psychological goal is construct a self separate from the world. And so the world - as some set of physical energies - must be filtered in a way that transforms it into an Umwelt. It must be experienced in terms of a set of signs that are readable at the level of automatic habit. We don't have to think about an apple being red - even though redness is already a qualitative interpretation by the brain. We just "see" the apple as red. That is the Umwelt we experience - our map by which we navigate the territory.

Of course, this triadic semiotic view of our relation to the world is more complex. The usual way to frame things is dyadic and representational. There is just us (with our experiences) and the world that our sense-data are representing. However - for a theory of truth that aims to be realistic in terms of the actual psychological structure of human conception - we do need to follow through from simply asserting a practical embeddedness in the world to an understanding of the relation that is fully (bio)semiotic.

But in general, I take this to state that - contra to idealist theories which might want to found themselves on impractical doubts about the world even being there - you are asserting that theories of truth start with the world already being in play. So hard dualism is out. Some kind of physicalism is the case. A psychological machinery of some kind is assumed to be involved in the whole affair.

I of course agree with that basic pragmatic stance. In the end, it is silly to doubt there is the world out there - in some sense. And so epistemology's job is to understand the more fundamental thing of the "modelling relation" that connects "minds" and "worlds".

However, the semiotic view says it would then be dangerously like naive realism to take the "agent" for granted in some fashion as a "real thing" - a fundamental and unanalysable bit of ontological furniture. The semiotic view is that the self emerges from the modelling as well - as the necessary distinction that is producing the counter-concept of "the world".

So Banno might want his drink of water. And his actions might achieve that as the drink is really there to be had. But a truly rigorous semiotic analysis would have a lot of questions about this reified "Banno". As well as about the "world" that this Banno reifies as some set of interpretable signage.

The logical problem here, the philosophical interesting side issue, is that beliefs overdetermine our actions. There are other beliefs and desires that could explain my going to the tap.

Hmm. Do you mean we put a narrative spin on the actions we find ourselves involved with? We can concoct any number of "reasonable" stories for why A led to B?

I think this again is just getting into the real world mechanics of cognition. The self that concocts such explanations is just that part of "us" that has the learnt and cultural skill of inductively framing hypotheses that are concrete in ways that make them testable. And then the actual holistic nature of forming intentions and making decisions defies complete capture by simple reductionist causal statements.

We want to say that A led to B as that is the "proper form" for analytic thinking. But the brain operates in a fashion that is more like Bayseian induction - holistically constraints-based processing. It doesn't have to do the one right thing. It just has to eliminate as many of the things that might go wrong as possible. So I can want to hit the tennis ball cleanly out of the centre of the racket to hit a spot two inches from the line. But all I can really do is limit the amount of miss-hit to an acceptable degree so that the ball winds up near enough to an aiming point to do the damage.

The shot is overdetermined in the sense that there is some general envelope of miss-hits that still do the job. And it is not a logical problem as a constraints-based logic says all you can aspire to do is limit the uncertainty of our actions in the world. Pragmatically, we show we already believe that to be the case by building in an error margin by aiming just inside the line rather than right at it.

And the same ought to be the case with any theory of propositional truths. A statement can't point straight at the facts. It can only constrain matters so that we minimise our uncertainty that "the truth" lies within the bounds we have picked out by our assertion. And it is not a problem as we can always tighten up the constraints if the accuracy seems an issue. We can measure things more closely and report on the results of that.

We know some statement when at the least we believe it, it fits in with our other beliefs, and when it is true.

The "fits in with other beliefs" is a first approximation for a justification. Something stronger is needed, but material implication will not do.

Right. So now we want a version of JTB. And the justification bit ought to involve generalised conceptual coherence, not just a representational correspondence based on particulars matched to particulars.

That is certainly my view, if so. That is holism at work. That is how a self or agent would emerge to be the stable centre of things. As Peirce said, you can doubt anything, but not everything at once. There is that backdrop ground of belief - those "propositional hinges" we've been talking about - which is necessary to the whole business.

But again, justified beliefs seem enough for a theory of truth. Truth - as some absolute transcendent reality - drops out of the picture because there is only, in the end, the relativity of a modelling relation. Absolute truth is replaced by minimal reason to be uncertain.

And semiotics would make an even stronger statement. Our experience of the world couldn't even be noumenal as that runs counter to the very logic of a modelling relation. A map mustn't be the territory - as how the hell are we going to fold up a landscape of mountains and rivers so that it fits neatly into our back pocket? We want to reduce our knowledge of the actual world to a system of easily navigated signs. And this crucially changes the very notion of what "truth" aspires to be about.

It does not make sense to ask if we know X to be true; that's exactly the same as asking if we know X. The "we only know it if it is true" bit is only there because we can't know things that are false.

This is where you are guilty of sleight of tongue I would say. You use "to know" in a naive realist sense that presumes the world to be some "state of affairs". The facts are just the facts. But they can never be that as to be meaningful, they must become interpreted signs. They are only facts in the sense of being already part of an ongoing habit of interpretance.

So yes, when we assert we know, we mean that our belief is really justified. The true bit does drop out as what we are speaking about is our confident certainty.

And your own earlier stab at coherence or holism seems to argue against you here. That says we can't "know things that are false" - but on the grounds of conceivability. Your over-determinism accepts we could have understood the world in many lights - depending on our intentions, even if those intentions were constrained by the "facts of the world" to which they then were exposed by acts of inquiry.

You can't have it both ways. If all we ever know is the result of pragmatic inquiry, then falsehood and truth both drop out due to generalised coherence - until there is some reason that we find our backgrounding state of belief to be inadequate for some reason and set about inquiring further.

There is no point talking about the truth of the thing-in-itself as truth, as a property, is a property of the modelling relation and not of the "world" - the world being just that aspect of the relation which we know in a background interpretive way, just as we also know about the "we" that is meant to be the agent, the self, that is the stable centre of all this knowledge business.

Externalism doesn't fly. Epistemology has to find its rigour in developing an internalist discourse that does the best possible job.

A belief that is not subject to doubt is a certainty.

Or near enough.

Well, summing up, I see a lot of pragmatism in your counter to idealism. Truth-telling doesn't even make sense without some world out there anchoring things.

Yet then this fails to continue on. Recognising that there is a modelling relation brings up the reality of the self that anchors the other side of the equation. And also, if there is a real world out there, it is not even in our interests to see it nakedly for what it is. We need to be able to look and see a world that has us in it. We need a world that is already transformed into a system of signs, an umwelt. Our perceiving of the world has to include the division that produces us as the "self" doing the perceiving. And that degree of meaning has to be built into the "simple facts" - like that the apple is "red".

So in my approach, a theory of truth has to fit with the facts of psychology. And if the psychological story is pretty complex, new and unfamilar, that's just how it is. It is still the foundation.

But your approach does still seem mired in a naive realism. It starts to make the pragmatic case against idealism. But then reverts to a naive realism framing just as soon as it has put a little distance from the foe. The world is some set of actual and definite facts. The mind just reflects that facticity in direct fashion - re-presenting the external in some internal theatre of private experience.

And then some kind of behaviourist epistemology becomes the "rigorous" way to deal with private experiences at a communal or philosophy of language level. We can speak objectively about how people act. We can assert propositions and use behaviour as evidence that there is generalised coherent agreement among a community about the way the world truly is. Or at least the degree to which a belief is not being doubted.

So yeah, I'm still feeling your account falls way short because it targets a level of objectivity that is not just functionally impossible, but not even in fact functional. It is an account that by-passes the central psychological realisation that we don't even want to see the world as it really is, but the world that has us in it, and so the world that is already transformed into a "private"* set of meanings.

* The meanings aren't literally private of course as they are going to be biologically shared across a species with a common neuro-evolutionary heritage, as well as being shared across humans by a culture of linguistically structured conception. So we don't wind up back in solipsistic territory. As said, the "self" is also recognised as part of the "truth-producing" business here.

So we are agreed that you are not offering a theory of truth. — Banno

That could depend on how you are defining truth, Banno. So how are you defining truth?

I'm not too sure what objective truth is. Are there subjective truths, to oppose them? And if so, are they amenable to the same pragmatic analysis? Or are there subjective truths but no objective truths? — Banno

If you think I am not offering a theory of truth, how could I possibly answer that? So evidently - despite what you just said - you agree that I'm offering a theory of truth.

You again didn't directly address the question of the height of the Eiffel Tower. Is it 324 metres, give or take a bit? — Banno

Ohh. Suddenly it's "give or take a bit". Is that the bit that doesn't matter - a difference that doesn't make a difference?

So is this question now still the same as your earlier version? Or has the ground shifted?

While you are at it, how does your theory of truth deal with the issue. From what you said in this thread, your theory is....

"P" is true IFF P.

That's as close as can be got, and I have said it to the point of tedium. — Banno

So we have: "The Eiffel Tower is 324 metres high, give or take a bit" is true IFF The Eiffel Tower is 324 metres high, give or take a bit.

Fine. But how do we get from that truth condition to a belief that is in fact justified and therefore true? What is the reasonable thing to do to validate the proposition? How do we establish the truth or falsity of this statement in practice?

I shouldn't have to ask really. But you always go oddly silent when called on to explain the grounds why one would assent to such a statement as if there were an unassailable fact.

I'm sure that is because you would have to sound pretty Peircean in your answer. But surprise me.

I don't accept that there are two types of truth - subjective and objective. — Banno

Those would be the complementary limits on pragmatically justified belief. So all actual belief would lie within those opposing extremes.

Thus you could say all belief is just belief. And yet also there is the standard distinction between belief that is at one extreme, just an individual's idiosyncratic view - their personal truth - and at the other end, the kind of truth that aims to be as impersonal as possible.

What there isn't is your naive realist truth - a truth in which no person is involved as a believer with a purpose giving shape to that truth.

The naive realist is a representationalist. S/he looks at the world and sees facts. A Peircean realist looks at the world and see signs. The facts are already part of a semantic structure. That is how we can know anything. We are looking at meaning from the get go.

That explains why the naive realist feels both so convinced by the transparent simplicity with which they just look and "see the world", and why naive realism is so wrong as an epistemology.

I think it best to take the notion of truth as unanalysable, as fundamental. — Banno

So you are banging on about something you can't even bang on about in your own admission?

Unanalysable! Give me a break. You are just making excuses for why you haven't got a theory yourself. What a cop out.

Let's go over validity and induction again, and let me know if we agree. — Banno

Where have I claimed that abduction or inductive confirmation are "valid"? Why do you harp on about something which is not an issue anyone is disputing?

Hanover put it very neatly. But in typical fashion, you just blanked his inconvenient truth.

Deduction may be valid but it produces no new knowledge. It is syntactically closed and, by design, can't. And that is why the species of induction are so much more important in the end - if you actually want to create new knowledge. You have to be able to go beyond the known to improve on what you've got. Scientific reasoning then ensures that error-minimising feedback is built into that loop of thought.

Induction is why deduction even has a job.

You confuse truth and belief. Yep, I've pointed that out before. You do not have a theory of truth, you have a theory of belief. — Banno

Not a problem. That's what I say. Pragmatism is a theory of justified belief - as well as a theory of how the notion of objective truth is a naive realist pipedream.

Now maybe you want to define truth as tautological truth. But I just call that a theory of tautology. If you have a syntax closed in a way that prevents any possible semantic leakage, then sure, it is "truth preserving" in its grammar.

But only logic wonks would call syntactical water-tightness "truth". It's not what we really mean by truth, is it?

So, then, what is the height of the Eiffel tower? Is it 324 metres? When I ask you questions like this you seem to need to add some sort of explanation when a simple yes or no would suffice. Why the added complexity? — Banno

Well given that I like to be as careful as possible about epistemology, then of course I can't just accept the idiotic simplicities of a naive realist answer.

So if you don't like "complicated" answers, that's your tough shit. Don't pretend to be an epistemologist.

An oddly eccentric view of logic - since it has been shown here that induction and abduction are invalid. — Banno

Wow really! >:O

I'd be interested to see you come clean about things like your inability to state a truth or give an accurate measurement and your rejection of logic and the concealed scientism that underpins your views. — Banno

Those are just your misreprentations of what I have said. And I’ve corrected you on them often enough.

Truth is what we believe in the long run following a process of reasoned inquiry.

Acts of measurement are informal and so always reflect the embeddness, the intentionality, of the person(s) seeking the answers. Accuracy is a pragmatic thing, not an absolute one.

I don’t reject predicate logic or deductive syntax. I place them within a more holistic view of logic that is triadic.

My scientism is hardly concealed. Nor the fact that I am a holist or systems scientist rather than a reductionist or atomistic scientist.

So your complaints are just bullshit. You’ve heard me say these exact same things many times. It is not me who bottles it when the discussion gets detailed and your general lack of a choherent position is exposed.

If you want a debate, you’ve got one right here. But you don’t really want a debate where you have to give a position and then a proper defence. We’ve all seen that time and again.

No worries. I knew you would bottle it.

This thread has served to reinforce my rejection of induction as a rational process, recognising the ad lib nature of scientific enquiry. Belief, conviction, certainty and so on are best understood as decisions rather than the forced result of some algorithmic scientific process. — Banno

So if it ain't inductive and it ain't deductive, then how is the decision "rational"? Surely the whole bleeding point of epistemology - a theory of truth - is to have some actual theory about the best process for arriving at that destination?

What does a no-process system of belief look like, anyone?

Odd. First you promise that you will be getting back to me with a proper reply and then you edit your message to tell me to look up transcendental arguments.

Are you now telling me that you are not a Peircean because you prefer to be a Kantian? :D

well the basic logical issue in you argument is that it’s structure is that of a transcendental. Argument; that there is only one solution, pragmtism. — Banno

It's hard to be sure how to interpret this bizzarely incoherent sentence. But how would it be a problem if there were some transcendental argument in play, and what are you saying that argument is?

My post was about the irreducible ambiguity of speech acts and how that is indeed exactly what we would expect of a constraints-based view of logic. In the end, it is up to us - in informal fashion - to decide what counts as the "truth" in terms of some act of measurement or observation.

You seem to be talking about something else now. But then you don't even seem to be talking English anymore. And is that a half-empty bottle of red I spy on your kitchen counter?

So even if one entertains your view of ambiguity, pragmatism is one possibility among many. — Banno

So what is the alternative that you are championing here? And what flaw is there in Pragmatism. Be as precise as you like.

There is here a failure on your part to commit. Do you have a partner? Is your affection for them only probable? Is your respect for rationality based on certainty or just what suits your purpose? Do you have hands or are you only partially confident In hand utility? — Banno

Again you are choosing to talk past the case I've already made. Not very charitable, hey?

I've said Pragmatism is making the choice to believe. Indeed, the choice to ignore exceptions to the rule is part of the constraints-based deal. Uncertainty is irreducible. But also, we can find reasons for thinking that after a certain point - one defined in terms of our interests or purposes - any further differences fail to make a real difference.

So goose, swan or duck? Sometimes it doesn't matter. And sometimes it might.

There are always going to be differences. Is the three-legged rabbit still a rabbit? If Bonzo the dog's arse is a hair off the mat, is Bonzo still sat on the mat? But to the degree our semantics are aligned - and the semantics include our intentions - then we can all draw a line across reality with enough agreement to make translation second-nature rather than an arduous process of exegesis.

You keep relying on this easy translatability to speak like a naive realist. Who can deny the Cygnus atratus is a black swan? Who can deny the dog is on the mat? Who can deny your first sentence was in English? But as I am saying, you are relying on a principle of indifference to dismiss any skepticism. You are making a choice in terms of some concept of a self with its intentions. And that is not a formal thing. But Pragmatism gets us as close to formalising this epistemic state of affairs as epistemology can get. Hence science is pragmatism in practice. The proof is in the application.

I note that you try to divert the conversation to the red herring that pragmatism = Jamesian utility. And this is after I've already cited Russell's rightful dismissal of James ... and quiet praise for Peirce.

Just another example of how dismally you argue your case. Every time you get caught out, just pretend it never happened.

To remind you, here was a fulsome reply. Now rather than doing your usual of pretending it wasn’t said, then coming in later with claims of a refusal to reply, let’s see you respond with a counter argument.

Do you dispute the correctness of what I say here? If so, make a case.

But your spoken truths always rely on unspoken ambiguities.

Are we talking about adult black swans or their fluffy white goslings? Are we talking about "swans" as being generically Cygnus atratus, or Cygnus olor and Cygnus cygnus? Are we talking about black swans that include albino Cygnus atratus?

So we can resolve some of these ambiguities with more careful speech. We can say that is a member of the genus Cygnus. It is black.

Yet ambiguity is in principle irreducible in speech acts. We can only hope to constrain it. Which is where pragmatism comes in as it then only make sense to put so much effort into constraining the semantics of our utterances. The truths we tell turn out to have as least as much to do with our intentions as they do with "the facts of the world". — apokrisis

I prefer to read the papers. Now in your own words...

I am most impressed by Erik Verlinde. — Rich

Perhaps you could explain his entropic approach to gravity for our benefit? In your own words now, what is he saying?

deflection. Again. — Banno

Yeah. It would be useful if you could decide how you approach hinge propositions given your comments about me. But I fully expect you to take rapid evasive action as usual.

Quick, start waggling your naive realism again. That always attracts an inquisitive crowd.

the obsession with trinities is another odd thing about your scripture. — Banno

Trichotomies = hierarchical causal structure. Simple, innit?

Odd, also, that from what I understand Apo rejects the body of modern logic. But perhaps I misunderstand him, since that seems so absurd. — Banno

To deal with this one last misrepresentation, the logic you are talking about is designed for dealing with the particular or individuated. So of course it is part of the body of logic. It just ain't the whole - or holistic - story.

The whole story is triadic. It includes the logic of generality and the logic of vagueness.

I would rather say that there is a rational discourse that might reasonably be called induction, a rational discourse that is valid because it can always be framed in deductive form. — Janus

That is why Peirce was concerned with the proper grammar of reasoning. You need to wrap the deductive bit in the preface of an abduction and the conclusion of inductive confirmation.

Banno adopts the transcendental view of the naive realist. Or at least his speech acts are identical to a naive realist. So same thing.

Deduction is syntactically close and so of course can't introduce semantic novelty. It can only rearrange the facts it is given. So deduction can't know about the truth of the world - even the kind of pragmatic truth that is the truth of a semiotic relation between a self and its world.

Therefore "truth-telling" needs some way of introducing the underlying semantics in a sensible fashion. The inductive side of the equation needs to be formalised as possible - even if in the end it is going to be still irreducibly an art.

And that is Peirce's innovation - later sort of recapitulated by Popper. He didn't bother trying to make induction work as inverse deduction (even if it sort of does work that way). He broke induction into the complementary steps of hypothesis formation and hypothesis confirmation. And deduction stood inbetween as a fully formal connection. Deduction turns general concepts into particular predictions.

So as much as possible, human thinking was cast as a formal and grammatical habit.

I realise you understand this. I just wanted to sum up the critical gist of the thread again. :)

Does anyone else find it odd that Apo can't actually say that his metaphysics is true? He acts as if it is true, and speaks as if it is true; but it binds him never to utter that truth. Indeed, he can't make any truth claims. — Banno

So you have changed your position on hinge propositions all of a sudden. Curious.

The second premise is not just dubious, but wrong, as is the conclusion. And indeed, at least in my case, so is the first premise. — Banno

And yet the argument is valid. Curious.

Perhaps semantics is the basis of truth-telling more than syntax?

OK, bottom line is I could not put my faith in any of the grand philosophical schemes of the nineteenth century. — Banno

You mean like ... scientific inquiry. :D

The analytic turn - which is now ubiquitous - offers instead a set of rational tools with which to take philosophical issues apart... — Banno

You mean like whatever came after logical atomism sunk without trace as AP's grand philosophical scheme? >:O

Speaking things that cannot be spoken, such as "it is true that there are black swans"! He says that some statements can be true! — Banno

But your spoken truths always rely on unspoken ambiguities.

Are we talking about adult black swans or their fluffy white goslings? Are we talking about "swans" as being generically Cygnus atratus, or Cygnus olor and Cygnus cygnus? Are we talking about black swans that include albino Cygnus atratus?

So we can resolve some of these ambiguities with more careful speech. We can say that is a member of the genus Cygnus. It is black.

Yet ambiguity is in principle irreducible in speech acts. We can only hope to constrain it. Which is where pragmatism comes in as it then only make sense to put so much effort into constraining the semantics of our utterances. The truths we tell turn out to have as least as much to do with our intentions as they do with "the facts of the world".

As a biologist, you could have a hearty debate about the genus Cygnus. Are geese really so different? Are they not just chubbier members of the tribe, Cygnini? Or perhaps we need to be more restrictive about the true swans. There are grounds to rule out the coscoroba swan as a proper member of the subfamily, Cygninae.

So as usual, you make your simplistic statements about objective truths and pretend to be amazed when sensible folk roll their eyes. Of course we can say that's just Banno, taking his furtive pleasure in waggling his naive realism in public again, hoping to scandalise.

Pragmatism is for serious grown-ups. But you play in the corner with your little thing if you want to.

It was your focus on the "rate" which was the confusing issue.

If you had made a contextual claim - talked about the apparatus having some particular "interference pattern causing" arrangement - then it would have been clear that you weren't thinking the fact that individual events reflected the holistic constraints of their world was a puzzle. The issue of the "rate" making a difference couldn't even have arisen. It would be an obvious non sequitur - to you as well.

So I am taking a constraints-based view that endorses a spooky non-locality ... as it must. The path determines the nature of the event. If you have two slits open and unobserved, then the "particle" must take both of them to find its way to the detector screen. In just that single event, already the outcome speaks to the downward causal impact of the apparatus having a particular set-up in terms of its act of measurement.

And likewise, if there is just a single slit, or one of the two slits is being observed, then we get the statistics that that kind of path set-up would predict.

We can even choose to observe the slits after the particle is meant to have already passed and still change its statistics - the quantum eraser effect. So the spooky non-local holism transcends our ordinary notion of a smoothly unwinding passage of time. It seems causation can act backwards, with our choices as observers making changes that happened in the collective past of the Universe.

So yes, in some sense the full metaphysical picture of what is going on must transcend our usual Newtonian notions of space and time. It's non-local for Pete's sake!

And QM wavefunction formalism models this by talking about the evolution of the probabilities taking place in infinite dimensional Hilbert space. This is an abstract calculational space - although some interpretations would like to treat it as itself now the "true reality". Another can of worms along the lines of block universes, multiverses and modal realism.

But rather than treating a calculus of probabilities as a direct representation of an underlying metaphysical reality - that is, maxing out on fecundity of any numerical technique - I take the view that it is better to actually believe in a constraints-based ontology where classical regularity is what emerges from a generalised quantum potential. To the degree that you place macroscopic thermal constraints on existence, you will tend to restrict the kind of microscopic thermal fluctuations that then occur.

Any act of measure is a physical interference in that it creates an irreversible energy transfer and so forces that part of reality to become woven into the general emergent story which is the Cosmic clock of time winding down from the extreme energy density of the Big Bang to the least possible energy density of the Heat Death.

That is why the spread out wave-like potential of "an event" contracts, or decoheres, to become some highly located particle-like occurrence when there is any kind of thermal interaction. Time itself is emergent. Its "rate" is the cosmic-level rate at which the Universe is cooling or entropifying. And that flow of time is created out of a myriad of these little quantum events which fix the history of the Universe as some set of actual happenings - actual energy transfers.

So a post-QM theory - like a quantum gravity theory - is likely to explain time itself in this emergent fashion. And folk like Kauffman are talking about that.

Then whether you see reality behaving in a particle fashion, or a wave fashion, is really about the degree to which the inherent quantum uncertainty of any event has been constrained. If it is only weakly constrained - as in the very special thermal circumstances of a twin-slit apparatus - then you get "weird" single particle interference patterns. If it is more strongly constrained - as in that there is an act of observation effectively closing down one slit with its thermal interaction - then you instead get the kind of probability wave you would predict for the scattering of individual particles by a single narrow slit.

So this is a thoroughly contextual or holistic view - one where the organisation of the whole shapes up the identity of the parts. Particles are emergent features that reflect the constraints of their world.

And the wrinkle is that this emergent story applies even to space and time now as feature of that "world". Well, at least that is the story that quantum gravity would have to tell.

The problem is that physicists in general never study Bohmian Mechanics a little, much less thoroughly, thus they never passed through these phases and therefore they don't understand anything that Bohm's physics and metaphysics is offering. — Rich

Physicists don't think like crackpots. They've got better things to do than obsess over an interpretation with no observable consequences - and one not even able to make proper predictions in a relativistic setting.

So if BM had some metaphysical advantage in theory building - as in paving a way to a testable theory of quantum gravity - then the theoreticians would be all over it. No ambitious post-grad is going to overlook something that offers even an outside chance of stealing that ultimate glory. Your reading of the situation is comical just based on ordinary competitive human behaviour.

You will note that by contrast, holography is really hot. Every ambitious post-grad is all over that. They can see that bandwagon having an excellent chance of getting somewhere.

Sadly, your understanding of holography is as far off the mark as it is with anything else to do with physics. You've got stuck at the point where they mention a hologram as a helpful beginning analogy.

But if it's a wave, how can the rate NOT matter? — Wayfarer

Again, the wave refers to the probability of observing a particle at some location. It applies to the individual event and does not describe some collective weight of particles as you seem to imagine.

So the wave is happening, or evolving, while the emission/absorption event is happening. Its "rate" is one such probability wave per event. Or if you instead want to focus on the collective view that is the experimental apparatus expressing its statistics over time, then the rate is continuous over all the identically prepared events. The same probability wave is in play while trials are indistinguishable in terms of their spacetime reference frame.

So again, your issue seems to be to wanting to think of it as an actual wave - some kind of substantial force - rather than as a description of observables.

Of course you can go Bohmian despite all its well know issues - like no sensible way to give a relativistic version of BM, no good answer on the question of contextuality, etc.

And frankly - for me at least - there is just a basic metaphysical inelegance with a deterministic/substantialist ontology. QM really ought to be much more of a challenge to materialism and locality. So why try to make a Bohmian uber-materialism be the one that comes out right?

I mean I find it weird that the folk like Rich who seem happy with the whackiest kinds of idealism are also the first to commit to the most materialist versions of QM they can find. Well I guess maybe that if you treat the divine, or mind, as some kind of pseudo-substance, then perhaps there is some kind of consistency there.

Post that on Physics Forum I dare you. :)

So my question to you is: do you think my inference that 'what is causing the interference pattern is outside, or not a function of, space-time' is indeed 'gobbledygook'? Or do you think it's a valid inference? — Wayfarer

Your approach is confusing as you start off suggesting that rate ought to matter. So your mental picture seems to be that each event has to be "close enough" in spacetime for interference to occur ... between individual events. Distant events - distant in space or time would not "feel the force". But events happening close together, would.

But that is not what it is about. It is about the interaction between the measuring apparatus and the individual event. Every particle is travelling in an identical fashion down the same apparatus. So - if the slits are not being observed - every particle will show the same probabilistic result. It is the two slits which are constantly in interaction if you like. If both slits are always "open" and free from measurement, then every particle running the gauntlet will behave in wave-like fashion.

So the statistics reflect the shape of the path. The same path is always going to give the same result for every identically prepared particle, regardless of the rate of their release (so long as they don't come so thick and fast they do physically interfere with each other!).

Totally 100% wrong again. — Rich

The expert speaks.

Well that's your metaphysics and can be rejected for being too "nothing". — Rich

Coming from you, that's rich.

Bohmian Mechanics is real. — Rich

So reality is both fully deterministic and fundamentally tychic in your book? An interesting twist on quantum crackpottery.

The do nothing no-goodnik or the do-everything-over-achiever. It's all the same.. what is it all about. — schopenhauer1

Does it actually feel the same? And is there a balance of the two that feels even better?

You seem to be presuming your conclusions again. What you say does not tally with either psychological science or my own experience.

But perhaps you have proved the case for you?

...what matters is that we survive/maintain our comfort levels/get bored and need entertainment. — schopenhauer1

Sounds a pretty minimal idea of a life to me.

You reduce living to some kind of consumptive activity. You seem to see no role for creation, challenge and variety.

So again you assume your conclusions by speaking of life in as meaningless a way as you can imagine. Rhetoric 101.

I've asked people in other threads to explain Platonic perfection, what a utopia looks like, what does completeness look like, etc. No one usually has a good answer. — schopenhauer1

Utopia is already the wrong answer. Perhaps the dichotomies of heaven and hell, good and evil, just don't apply to nature. Your frame of reference is already wrong.

...what I am interested in is the nature of the so-called 'probability wave'. — Wayfarer

It is not some actual material wave hitting the screen. It is a description of predictable observables with a "wave-like" evolution in time.

In the same way, a quantum field is not a material field. It is a field-like description of observables.

Of course we then want to impute some kind of underlying reality that generates these observables. That is where all the interpretive machinery comes in, like physical pilot waves or spooky non-local connections.

So we can interpret the formalism in all sorts of metaphysical ways, the majority of which are then "bad" metaphysics. We would criticise them on grounds like that they are too profligate (many worlds), or too concrete (Bohmian mechanics).

It is fair enough to seek some kind of mental picture of what is "really going" on underneath the covers. However calling the evolution of a set of observables a "probability wave" is misleading as there is no actual wave in a material sense. It is just the pattern we see in our abstract model of how the probabilities of the situation will unfold.

I don't even know what that means "anti-evolutionary ethics". We can choose not to procreate. That in itself is obvious. — schopenhauer1

Is it that difficult? If evolutionary logic defines what is natural, then doing something contrary to that logic lacks a natural justification. You would have to explain why the choice - as a general one you advocate for a whole species - is not merely possible but somehow ethically cogent.

Do you mean to ask whether we as humans can reflect on our own existence, find it wanting, and decide not to continue procreating? In that case, indeed we can do that on an individual level. — schopenhauer1

Yeah sure. If that is your choice, then who cares. The breeders win in the end.

And that choice may be pretty rational if you put economic self-interest at the top of your list these days. Or if you feel that life is complicated enough already.

But it is where you elevate anti-natalism to a general good that your argument is in want of ... an actual argument.

I just like to keep the various different position clear and distinct, not mash them together as you are now doing in your recent anti-natal threads.

Of course, my argument all along is not everyone will stop procreating, but rather to get people to question the ends of their own existence, what they are living for in the first place, and to recognize certain aspects of existence- instrumental nature, striving-for-no-ends, etc. — schopenhauer1

OK. Then that is a change of tune. Great. You are not against procreation itself, you are against a social system with poor general outcomes.

Who could disagree there?

But how is seeing humans as acting a way that is part of this super-organism (i.e. cannot help but lead towards some telos) not simply being a self-fulfilling prophecy? — schopenhauer1

Well it probably is inevitable. But still, at least recognising the true nature of the situation gives a possibility of choosing a different path.

Or more pragmatically, if you view things as already fated by nature, you can make your own life plans accordingly.

In fact, by somehow promoting grandiose notions of participating in the super-organism, this seems more Romantic than many other philosophies you slap with that label. — schopenhauer1

How I am promoting rather than diagnosing?

:-} It's the paths that "interfere". They either add or cancel to create the interference pattern. It's a thing even in the classical wave mechanics view - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipath_interference

Piaget argued against claims by Chomsky and Fodor for a genetic basis of semantic language content. — Joshs

Yep. And while Piaget's structuralism is a big step in the right direction, I in fact am in the semiotic or social constructionist wing of the debate by being a Vygotskian on the issue of cognitive development.

So I am even less in the innate camp. Except I then argue that cultural evolution is just evolution continuing at a different level of semiosis - a linguistic one as well as a neural and genetic one.

That is why there can be both a sharp division and yet not really any division. All cognition is entrained to the constraint of being functional in an ecological sense in the long run.

Schop's arguments are always directed at supporting the rightness of anti-natalism. That is the real issue of the thread.

And Vygotskian psychology was a natural repost to Nihilism and Existentialism, so continues also to be one against the latest incarnation of the Romanticist's pessimistic tendency.

Well why was Newtonian determinism such a metaphysical surprise? Because it stands directly against the belief that we are creatures of capricious whims and desires.

In pre-scientific thinking, the world as a whole was understood animistically. It also operated like a mind. So the idea that physical events had no essential choice was a surprise given that context of expectations.

We can't induce generalities from particulars unless we already have some general reason to notice those particulars in the first place. Nature has to falsify some already extant mental prediction - one held implicitly at least. The facts have to be drawn to our attention by failing to fit.

That is why I keep stressing the other neglected side of the story - the principle of indifference that then becomes our tolerance for exceptions to the rule. No constraint on the accidental can ever be total (in the way that the deductionists/absolutists/mechanists dream it). So any "law of nature" has to be fundamentally a probability statement. And it becomes an informal judgement - part of the act of measurement - where to set a reasonable threshold on that.

Banno always likes to argue from a trancendental absolutist perspective - that there is a fact of the matter.

But Peirce kicked that logicist's nonsense for touch. Reality itself is probabilistic. Our modelling of that reality is self-interested. Those are the fundamental constraints in play when it comes any putative "theories of truth". We can draw lines across reality - such as where we feel that differences cease to make a real difference. But the lines are essentially informal and pragmatic. They are justified subjectively in the end.

But if we can also then define what would be maximally subjective, we do have a shot at defining what the maximally objective would be in contrast. Which is of course the stall that science sets up.

Each particle "interferes with itself" in the sense that it interacts with the apparatus in every way that it can. It takes every possible path, the combination yielding some sum of probabilities. So some paths add, some cancel. And that results in the "interference pattern" - even if one event could hardly show that by itself.

So it is the fact that the entire apparatus is kept constant over space and time that roots the interference pattern in space and time. If you fire enough identical particles at the slits, the same interaction between particle and path will be repeated. And so the interference pattern this will cumulative generate will slowly be revealed.

The conclusion that inductive reasoning is a product of our evolutionary development comes at the far end of a long process of inductive inference. So that cannot be the sense in which we help ourselves to induction: we did that long before we had any inkling of such far-reaching conclusions. — SophistiCat

You will have to explain why this "helping ourselves" is some kind of problem. It might be if you believed that deduction is more fundamental than induction or something. But how can it be if it is the other way around?