Thank you for posting this! This is one of my favorite arguments. "Irrationality is not mere lack of reason, but a disease or perturbation of reason" (in "Rational Animals"). But Davidson said that we could still be brains in vats with true beliefs that are actually about our vat world. That isn't very comforting for the anti-skeptical realist.
neurons fireing in a particular pattern are responsible for a religious nut contemplating their religion and seeing how 'true' it is even though it may be blatantly contradictory. how do you take it to be impossible in principle for this to just occur all the time? We are talking about demons and things like that, and you dont seem to complain...
Hi EverettsVLOG, have you ever met anybody who was wrong about everything? Of course not, its just impossible to be both rational (in the sense of being able to hold a conversaition well enough to be interpretable) and wrong about everything. Think about a wacky statement said by a religious whack-job: e.g. "Jesus hates gay marriage!!" Ok, we disagree with the whack job about that, but in order to know he's talking about Jesus, we have to agree with him about most (cont)
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) of the facts about Jesus, otherwise we wouldn't know who he was talking about. Similarly, we must agree on most of the facts about marriage, or we wouldn't know that he was talking about marriage, instead of, say, dancing. In order to make any sense out of anybody at all, you have to both agree with each other on almost everything. Disagreement can only take place in the context of massively shared agreement. (cont)
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) this, of course, only gets us to agreement--what's to prevent us both from being totally nutty and wrong about the world? For this, you have to look at the process of language learning or the process of radical interpretation. Say you were plopped down in some foreign country and had to learn their language. You'd have to do it by pointing at various objects, asking what the word for that object was, etc. Its a triangular relationship between you, (cont)
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) the person teaching you, and the world. You would have to take the objects in the world, which both of you can observe and interact with, as the cause of the person's believes about that object. What's more, in order to have any hope of learning the language, you would have to interpret that person as having mostly true beliefs about the world--the person knows the correct word for the objects you are pointing at, etc. (cont)
(cont, to Everett) Of course, we all go through this process when we learn our first language. Our parents interact with us through a shared world. This shows that it is inherent to the very nature of language that it is a public, intersubjective thing. And it is inherent to the very nature of rational belief that it is mostly correct about the shared world.
yea its pretty fun actually, im thinkin about going back to philosophy with my channel... was thinkin about recording a vid on my best solution to my skeptical arguments... it still doesnt get anyone any important epistemic access although thats not suprising. it is difficult to even set up any kind of philosophy because im convinced that in principle the manipulation of my consciousness by external entities does not have any logical bounds.
randy this is an interesting point, and you made it before, but i dont think it is pertainent to the epistemological issues. i agree that in order to converse with someone successfully, you need to assume they share many beliefs with you. this doesnt imply that the beliefs are actually correct, which is what is in question here. in fact, in order to gain anything 'epistemic' from your argument, one would have to take as an axiom that 'one must assume other people make sense'(i hate assumptions
Think about language learning---a process which is explicitly epistemological. :-) If you are going to learn somebody's language from scratch, you have to assume that they are mostly correct about the world. If you don't make that assumption, you'll never be able to interpret them. For example, they tell you the word for "rabbit" is "gavagai"---but you interpret them as being mostly wrong, so you think that their word for rabbit isn't "gavagai". You'll never learn their language (cont)
(cont, to Everett) that way. It is a necessary precondition of learning somebody's language that they are mostly correct about the world you share. The kicker is that this also applies to your first language. If you can speak and have a conversation with anybody at all, you know that you both are mostly correct about the world you share, otherwise you wouldn't be able to make sense out of each other at all.
i agree with what you are saying - assuming that you share beliefs with someone is necessary in order to understand them IF they are thinking they same thing you are. But you DONT know if they are thinking anythign like what you are thinking, and you CANT know, epistemically. Even if the conversation runs smoothly, that could jsut be due to demons fucking with your interpretations of each other, in fact you might not even be talking to someone at all
Hi Everett, if the demon is interception the communication, then you are triangulating with the demon, not the other person. If you can learn a language which the demon is presenting you with, its not essentially different talking with a demon, you're still going to share a lot of true beliefs about the world with the demon. If the demon is presenting you with an illusion, you are going to share a lot of true beliefs about the illusion. (cont)
(cont, to Everett) if the demon puts you in an illusion (stuffs you in the matrix, say) it doesn't change anything--if you can talk with the demon about the world created by the matrix, you are still mostly correct about the world created by the matrix. Recall, its the SHARED world for which this works.
randy, nobody is denying that one can 'learn about illusions without knowing they are illusions'. This is satisfied by any belief you can imagine. if i think god exists, well then i have a true belief about an illusion. the point of the skepticism is that, as you have described it, we cant know whether we are being deluded in most things.
But for example this means that the beliefs that you and I share (even if I were a demon) are true. most all of the beliefs you have are absolutly correct. What more cold you want from a solution to skepticism? omniscience? Even if this isn't an illusion there are always going to be places I can't go to--I can't check and see what's under the rocks on mars. But I do know that I am largely correct about the world as presented to my senses. What more do you want?
jewish,all too jewish... beyond these gestures and attitude of "hollywood smart guy" copied from woody allen and seinfeld there is only frustration and intellectual impotence ...
Hi touchiongstoves, ha your going to laugh at this. There are two books by Kirk Ludwig entitled "Donald Davidson". The first is an anthology of very well-written articles introducing various aspects of Davidson's philosophy. The second is an endlessly long two-volume critique which I was never able to get through :-) Get the first one. Also, the book by Simone Evenine isn't half bad.
Ok-I've been found out-Yes, one of my aliases is Goober the Atheist. I'll clear up what actually happened. First, because I was standing behind you two, I could see the spoon of blueberries on the table hidden by the green square. 2+2=5 was just me recommending that great song by Radiohead. Fish falling from the sky? Happened to my great great great Uncle Joseph Muse in 1832 in Cambridge, Maryland. But yes I have to concede on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - I was delusional. Great vid
I like so much when you talk about the god of skeptisism Randy! With your black board and big heads colored stickmans, man! And you are very charitable! I suddenly realize (with your help)from where that expression came from. Used often, before by educated people.
Randy - you look very "Castro" in this video. Your chalkboard illustrations are beautiful and your argument is lucid.
However, of course you completely side-step all of the insolvable problems of representational truth by positing the "true" existence of 'goober atheist' as someone who actually exists apart from the duo considering him. If the duo in this example is being "fed" the goober and his false beliefs, then it is still a shadow play. (cont.)
However, Quine is correct that an internal consistencey can be deduced by the duo in regards to the beliefs of the atheist fiction confronting them. This is best summarized by a quote from Spinoza that I have been looking for since your series began - but haven't found it. Still looking and will post when that happens!
LOL "castro" yeah I guess :-) Maybe you can be my Che. anyrate, I was so damn rushed to squeeze this all into 10 minutes, but this argument, in its entirety, doesn't really presuppose that goob and everett are outside of me. Recall rather that I spend some time upfront arguing that Everett's argument can't be proven from the first person point of view. This indicates that the argument structure is rather of this form: (cont)
(cont, to Trollschool) Let A be the sentence "aGoS can deceive me". Let B be the sentence "most of my beliefs can be wrong". Everett and I both agree that A is true. Where we disagree is whether A implies B. He says yes, I say no. This video tries to argue that the answer really is no, this way: (cont)
1. If you want to prove that A implies B, there's two strategies you might use. You might try it from the first-person perspective, or you might try it from the intersubjective perspective.
2. You can't do it from the first-person perspective (see vid for why)
3. And you can't do it from the intersubjective perspective (see vid for why)
4. Therefore, since you've run out of options, you can't prove that A implies B at all.
(cont, to Trollschool) so I really don't see where this vid sidesteps any issues, makes any untoward presuppositions, or anything like that. I think Davidson is a total genius.
Well, I think that's excellent and I can't really respond to it without finding the Spinoza quote for further reference, unfortunately the aGos seems to be keeping it from me ...
I pointed out circularity in your argument on your vid wall. you then said this:
"all worldviews are in some sense circular"
be more specific. I dont see how logic itself could be circular as circularity is a concept of logic/reasoning. Further (even if it is), to respond to my pointing out the flaw in your argument with "all worldviews are flawed" is actually a non sequitur. It still means your worldview is flawed. Wheres the flaw in mine? Thats what im ineterested in.
a circular ARGUMENT is one in which you use a PREMISE to justify itself. Logic isnt a PREMISE. Logic is a framework which deals with premises. This is why its hard to see how logic is circular, although it is "UNFOUNDED" in the sense that there is no 'meta-logic' with which to derive it. However one could simply say that logic *describes* our reasoning, and start from there. Which is what i do - tell me if u see a prob. with this. To say logic is circular would be circular.
And on what ground do you decided on the premise/framework distinction? What supports your framework other then that it is the premise you start from in order to understand the world?
It's 7.ooam here, madness. But here's an argument that might at least begin to make a case for the kind of global skepticism that I'm (perhaps wrongly) imputing to Everett.
1. It is conceivable that computers will outstrip our human capacities.
(The simulation argument now follows, affording peculiar powers, as it does, to computers such that they may generate some so-called matrix etc. I can't countenance such an argument, so I have the weaker claim, hence:) (c.)
2. "Biosynthetic" technologies will outstrip our human capabilities, though we may remain, so to speak, human, with all our desires, creativity etc.
3. Invasive rather than destructive biological interaction yields significant evolutionary change, i.e. that of the prokaryote/eukaryote or of neuronal patterning pregnant with linguistic
4. It is possibly the case that there be future events beyond our realm of conceivability. (4) is a valid inference from (3) iff one is to consider our best scientific evidence.
5 The limits of our conceivibility, in so far as we do not admit of any supernatural entities or enterprise, can possible be the case. (5) is a valid inference only if there be some kind of epistemically principled way of determining what conceivibility amounts to
i.e. we can infer from the findings of our best science.
6. It is possible that some so-called matrix could in the far, far future be created, or run, or whatever. It's creator may or may not possess human attributes; the weaker claim is that such a matrix would retain some sorts of human attribute.
7. How might we rule out the possibility of our now being in such a matrix.
Okay, going away for a few days. I'll leave you to savage it at will.
Hi s, suppose we are in the matriix. We're still not globally wrong about the world, we are globally RIGHT about the simulation which the computer is generating for us.
Absolutely. But I'm not so sure you're getting the metaphysical import of this. To grant that we are in a matrix is to
grant that, on a metaphysically realist picture, it is possibly the case that we are globally wrong about the world, say if unknown to its inhabitants, the simulation was running backwards, or certain colour properties had been inverted, and so on. Yet,on an epistemologically realist picture, we would be globally right about the world. (c.)
That's why Ev and Rdy's being globally right about Duper follows from their being outside the circle; because being outside the circle amounts to perceiving any possible simulation as real, at least in so far as it is immediately present to them. So, in granting that Ev and Rdy could be in a simulation of some kind is just to concede Everett's point - it is possible that there be some circle into which Ev and Rdy are bound, (c.)
such that, neccesarily, Ev and Rdy could _not_ come to know whether or not they are indeed in some kind of simulation. And that's why, I think, you're both kind of right - Everett on the metaphysical question, and yourself on the epistemic one. There need be no dilemma here; you're both talking about mutually compatible arguments, which, when plugged together, yield a pretty decent thesis.
(One final clarification: Everett is right about the metaphysica only in so far as he ditches the ASGOS, and posits instead my bio-synthetic deceiver, as laid out in the earlier argument. As you say in your reply to him, the ASGOS is inconceivible, whereas, I think, the bio-syth. deceiver mitigates a problem of this kind. That, you implied, at least for brevity (I'm sure it was only that) by conceeding me the point about the matrix.
Is randy's epistemology talking about how things "are"? If so, then we cannot verify the assumption of "Intersubejctive verifyability", which means that the epistemic assumption/criteria is only *possibly* correct. Which is just the same skepticism in new cloths.
If hes NOT talking about how things *are*, then my argument STILL applies the reasoning uses in applying his rule.
Hi Everett, After viewing your video response to Randy, your skepticism is perhaps more extreme than I had once thought. Maybe the following argument, being a logical one, would fall under the same kind of suspicion. There is, however, a sense in which such skeptical claims can be seen as mere instantiations of certain intuitions about the world, which are no more reliable, or indeed less reliable, than other kinds of possibility-claim.
(cont. Ev) I'm not making a geniune point about this here though as I'm not entirely sure what your position is. But here's an argument (posted earlier for Randy) which may give added epistemologically entitlement to any picture arguing for a global deceiver.
1. It is conceivable that computers will outstrip our human capacities.
(The simulation argument now follows, affording peculiar powers, as it does, to computers such that they would generate some
so-called matrix etc. I can't countenance such an argument, so I have the weaker claim, hence:)
2."Biosynthetic" technologies will outstrip our human capabilities, though we may remain, so to speak, human, with all our desires, creativity etc.
3. Invasive biological interaction rather than destructive biological interaction yields significant evolutionary change, i.e. that of the prokaryote/eukaryote or of neuronal patterning pregnant with linguistic
4. It is possibly the case that there be future events beyond our realm of conceivability. (4) is a valid inference from (3) iff one is to consider our best scientific evidence.
5 The limits of our conceivibility, in so far as we are not to admit of any supernatural entities or enterprise, can possible be the case. (5) is a valid inference only if there be some kind of epistemically principled way of determining what conceivibility amounts to i.e. we can infer from the findings of our
6. It is possible that some so-called matrix could in the far, far future be created, or run, or whatever. It's creator may or may not possess human attributes; the weaker claim is that such a matrix would retain some sorts of human attribute.
7. How might we rule out the possibility of our now being in such a matrix.
Hi s, I think I am getting the metaphysical import of this, in the following way. suppose there is a wise man, who lives in a village. He knows everything there is to know about that village, but knows nothing (and explicitly claims to know nothing) about the world outside of his village. Is that wise man globally wrong about the world? No, there are many things he's ignorant of, but he's not globallly wrong. (cont)
(cont, to s) similarly, if we only claim to have knowledge about things which we can intersubjectively agree about, we are like the wise man. We DO have knowledge of that--even though it may be a simulation, we arn't globally wrong about the world, we are globally right about the simulation. We just have to admit, as the wise man of the village does, that our knowledge is limited to our own village. We may be (in fact, we are) globally ignorant; we arn't globally wrong.
Just a quick one. Yes, I agree with all of that. So, maybe I am not explaining myself so well.
_Within_ the simulation you just can't be globally wrong. I agree with both you and Davidson on this point. But such a simulation could be other than how the real world really plays out. i.e. in the simulation, green is really blue, there is more gravity in the sim world than there is in the real world (say because the sim would then be simplier to compute).
But, crucially, these metaphysical possiblities could not show up in your village example.
Now, its absolutely right that in positing the simulation one has to do so in an epistemically principled way. So then, no computer simulation - desires, reasons for the sim all count against the simulation argument;no AGoS - that's just an intuition about the world. On the bio-synthetic construal of a deceiver, however, you can handle the desires/reason/will objection for the creating of a simulation
- what human-synthetic organism would not want to play god? - while, at once, specifying what has to happen in the future for there to so much as be this possiblility of a global simulation i.e. it is possible in respect of the great evolutionary leaps that our best science have found of past events(i.e, protokayrote invasion, language capacity.) So what I am claiming is this.
1. You can't be globally wrong in the simulation with respect to the simulation.
2. You can be globally wrong in the simulation with respect to the world within which the simulation is created. (But this would take much work and imagination i.e. to manipulate the simulated world such that it could be so distinct from real world).
3. You can never know whether you are globally wrong about your world, whether it is or is not a simulation, but, nonetheless, you can't rule out its possibility.
Hi s, I don't understand why you think that ignorance of the world outside of your village is any different than ignorance of the world outside of the matrix? e.g. gravity, I can imagine a village inside of a centrifuge :-)
"but [he] knows nothing (and __explicitly claims to know nothing__)" about the world outside of his village."
I would need a little more information before I could respond. Does the old man know there to be a world outside of the village as some kind of contiquent fact, that is, inasmuch as he knows the set of existence conditions for such a world, but without actually knowing anything of the character of that world; or does he infer its existence from something else?
Hi s, good question; I suppose what the wisest of wise men would say, when asked "is there anything beyond the mountains which surround your village?" would be "I don't know."
Distinguishing metaphysical ignorance from epistemic ignorance:
If the old man's village is in a centrifuge, and the world outside is not, then he can simply leave his village, head over the mountains, which is to say, he can leave the centrifuge. Each of these places, the village and the world beyond the mountains, remain available to him physically, at least in terms of their metaphysical possibility - maybe he can no longer walk, and leave his house etc., (c.)
but any such constraint is wholly epistemic, not metaphysical (there is some possible set in which he could make it over the mountains). To this extent then, the village and the world-posited-by-the-old-man (important here to distinguish between any real world and that brought to mind epistemically by the old man, so excuse the jargonising hyphens) are either in the real world together or in a simulation together. (c.)
But the world in which the matrix is created, were it to exist, affords the old man no such transgression. It is not a question of the old man's lacking continguent information about the world, it has to do with the logical impossibilty of his ever finding out whether the sim exists or not, and moreover, the logically impossibilty of his ever coming to know any one contiguent fact about that world (that is, while the sim is running successfully). (c.)
Hi s, is it really logically impossible for the guy in the matrix to learn about the real world? Seems to me that he could be unplugged. Much as we might give a fellow in a village a scholarship to Harvard, who otherwise might never get out of his village.
Hi Randy. And that's what I'm trying getting at i.e. to be unplugged is distinct from one's getting out of the village. I'll finish off and see if its any clearer by the end
...(that is, while the sim is _running successfully_). And it's also about his never being able to stumble out of the simulation, as opposed to the way in which he might one day set out across the mountains and put pay to his epistemic ignorance, or else, in some other thought-world, turn up at Harvard uni. to pursue a research career, or to put out a fire on the campus or whatever (I'll come to 'being unplugged' later).
The picture above can be distilled into the following two claims. (c.)
Hi S, this is a response (as requsted) to your email you sent me... If I understand you correctly, your saying that that the impossibility for the poor but wise villager to know about the outside world is of a different order than the impossibility of a person born in a simulated universe to know about the world the simulation was running in. I still don't see any difference: for example, I could give a television or a web connection to the villager. Seems to me like the sysadmin (cont)
(cont, to s) of the simulation could, in like mannar, give a person born in the simulation a web connection or a television which gave the person in the simulation knowledge of the outside world. Yes, No, maybe?
The villager case I have elaborated deals with his '_present_ homebound' case alone. Whatever werre to happen in the future is no logical neccesity of that present case. And likewise, it is possible that the inhabitant of the simulation lives and dies in the sim without knowing s/he is a sim; again I need only go on logical possibility here.
Such examples as unplugging, internet connections, and the like, while legitimate trajectories to pursue, would merely involve stipulating a greater degree of sophistication _within_ the case; they are not themselves counter-examples of that case. And I'm really only responding to the thought-world that you yourself have provided - I'm considering those conditions under which the old man knows all the contingent facts about his village (c)
, yet knows nothing of the world beyond the village (his village being in a centrifuge); and, I am positing - because it is logically possible - that if there were such a thing as a simulated world, minimally, one inhabitant could live and die therein without coming to know the fact that it is in a sim. On this picture I wanted to show what the difference between epistemological ignorance and metaphysical ignorance. (c.) So,
Hi s, sure, both the villager and the simPerson *might* never learn about the wider world; but its logically possible that they could, so I don't see any material distinction here. I mean, I'll never learn about what it would be like to have Maralyn Monroe find me irresistibly sexually attractive either (sob!) but does that imply any sort of cosmic disparity in ignorance between me and the village wise man, or me and the simPerson?
And I'm saying, as you know, that it is logically possible for the villager to find out something about the wider world that the simperson could not. okay, what is it that the old man can do that the simperson cannot do (bearing in mind the conditions of the original thought-world !!) such that he might gain knowledge of the wider world, and in so doing mark his case as distinct from that of the simperson: (cont.)
The old man can, within the bounds of our thought-world under normal conditions, simply set off over the mountains to find out about the wider world. That is his _choice_, it is through his powers of volition or sense of curiosity or whatever that he does so. For his ignorance is of an epistemic kind, and it is both logically and practically possible for him to so do.
The simperson, on the other hand (within our thought-world under normal conditions: that of a successfully generating simulation) has no such option. (1)He can't by means of his own volition or indifferent curiousity simply set out across some physical feature to find what 'there is'. He is - under normal conditions, or at least logically possible conditions - forever bound to experiencing his sim-world, and he's never going to stumble out of it; (c.)
(2) And he could not so much as posit, in a non-trivial way, such an orignary world as existing outside of his sim-world, without without deploying some kind of sophiscated philosophical argument. The old man can simply say of the wider world from his village, pointing at the mountains, 'I don't know what's over there'. No such move is available to the sim person. (c.)
So (1) is a metaphysical constraint and (2) is an epistemic constraint which follows from the character of the metaphysical constraint.Together, they identify what distinguishes the case of the old man from the case of the sim person, or, in other words, one's being in a centrifugal village from one's being in a simulation; (c.)
or, in still other words, one's being chiefly epistemically ignorant (the old man) from one's being cheifly metaphysically ignorant.
(It is, of course, logically possible that the sim would somehow break down etc. and all manner of other possible things, hence my 'normal conditions caveatt).
Hi s, I still don't understand why it is LOGICALLY impossible for the simperson to find out about the word outside of his simulation. To be logically impossible, it has to be contradictory. But I don't think it would be contradictory for, say, his sysadmin to give him television which shows tv shows from the outside world, or even to build him the sim person a little robot which the sim person could drive around in the outside world and explore around. (cont)
(cont, to s) It seems the limitation the simperson faces wouldn't be any different from the wise man if, say the wise man were in jail. The jailer would have to first let him out of jail in order for the wise man to wander over the mountains. Similarly, the sysadmin would have to build a little robot explorer for the sim person. But I don't see any logical barrier for the sim person to learn about the outside world, only a contingent, practical one.
The difference really only shows up if we allow the sim person to explore his world, and the old man to explore his world, in the manner laid out in your original thought-world, thus entails (1) and (2). But when we consider these other examples we have already lost that moment, so to speak. The old man, bound to his world (though not now to his village) can find out more about any uncentrifugal place in his world, and in no way has he to trancendence that world.
The sim person, on the other hand, would have to transcend his simworld in order to experience, say gravity, weaker gravity, as it occured, there, in the orignary non-simworld. And since he is by definition bound to his simworld, that would be contradictory, or logically impossible - whereas the old man's experiencing a non-centrifugal world beyond the mountains is not.
Sorry, I was glossing as we seem to be rehearsing earlier points. The old man, being bound to his world, can leave his centrifugal-village, and find out more about the wider world. He does just that, and so he comes to know some noncentrifugal place beyond the mountains. But in no way has he to trancendence his world in order to do so; he merely leaves his village. (c.)
And it is in no way contradictory that he is both(1)bound to his world,(2)and happens upon some other gravity-experience.
The sim person, on the other hand, would have to transcend the simworld in order to experience the kind of gravity experienced in the originary-world; for, as earlier framed, the bio-syth deceiver has created a simworld, such that gravity is stable there, but its effects are much increased than in the originary world. (c)
What is at stake here is that, since he is bound to the sim, and he is epistemically ignorant (of the sim) as is the old man (of the wider world), he could not _both be_ (1)bound to his world, and (2)experiencing
gravity in the originary world. That is, for the simperson (1) and (2)together is contradictory.
The trick is that they both have to be epistemically ignorant in the same way, so no internet connections etc. but while the old man is merely epistemically ignorant, the simperson is both metaphysically and epistemically ignorant.
Rush job I know, but it is all there in the other posts, where it is broached in a more satisfactory way.
Hi s, what is the moral you're trying to conclude? I mean, I see that the old man and the sim person are each bound in their own prisons with different kinds of chains, and different proceedures would be needed to set them free. But it seems that both could be set free. (e.g. the simperson could get a robotic body). Seems to me though that neither one of them could be considered to be globally wrong about their worlds, so the skeptical arguments still wouldn't hold water.
But the prison metaphor is not analogous to the village-sim thought-world. And to grant you that it is is just to grant that the picture you're espousing misses nothing out. (In any case, in freeing themselves, the old man and the simperson would no longer be epistemically ignorant, so such possible outcomes cannot bear on the specific problem at issue).
What I'm claiming more generally then is that by begining with the Davidsonian picture,in having that picture in play from the start, means to say you're never going to have those metaphysical assumptions show up.
It touches on some of the points Dummett was making in the interview I posted. Methodologically speaking (though not semantically speaking, of course), it is like, say postulating a cogito and trying to work out certain philosophical problems from there: The philosophical coverage is impaired by the conceptual appartus that one is using to posit those problems.
As to the moral. Well, it was all about global skepticism. You're claiming that one can't be globally wrong about one's beliefs. I'm claiming - distinct from Everett's more radical skepticism - that, on an epistemological construal (that is, within the simworld), one _can't_ be globally wrong about one's beleifs. But, on a metaphysical construal, crucially, one _can_ be globally wrong about one's beleifs (i.e. in respect of the originary or real world where the simulation is built).
(1)I needed an argument that entitled me to posit the existence of a simulation, rather than merely conjure one up fortuitously; hence my bio-synth deceiver, which mitigated against standard objections to the simulation argument, such as computer-desire, anthropormorphism, and so on.
I have argued this claim in the following way: (1)I needed an argument that entitled me to posit the existence of a simulation, rather than merely conjure one up fortuitously; hence my bio-synth deceiver, which mitigated against standard objections to the simulation argument, such as computer-desire, human-centricism, and so on.
(2) (It follows that) it is possible that the bio-synth deceiver would change certain parameters in the simworld, increased gravity, nature of time, colour inversion, representation, grammar and so on. I have also said that
it would take much trial and imagination to work the sim in this way. But it is, at least, possible, such that the perceived world could be global wrong with respect to the simperson (which is to say, mostly wrong and not wholly wrong in respect of
his entire set of beliefs; for instance, his understanding of height, and relations between particulars could hold in both worlds.
(3) But, in agreement with yourself, those beliefs, on the other hand, furnished within the sim itself , and when pertaining to the simworld itself (and to one another in, if you like, a web of beliefs) are in fact globally right.
But they are globally right, only in respect of the simperson's having them in the simworld when taking that simworld intuitively to be his real world. This is, of course, an epistemological point. Being mostly right, there, in this sim is just to say that it's the domain where charity has taken hold.
4)Your counterexample - an old man, who lives in a centrifugal-village, and knew nothing of the wider world is in fact in the same position as the simperson in the sim - I have argued against.
I said that, yes, both persons are epistemically ignorant, but what the simperson could not do and the old man could, counts as a deeper metaphysical ignorance. The old man can simply walk out of the centrifugal-village, and have some other gravity-experience. The simperson could not. And so,beyond the domain of radical interpretation,
, it does indeed hold that the simperson's beliefs about the world bear the possibility of being globally wrong. (The last point would again need the comment about the differences in their logical possibilities, but then we're there.) Or, something like that anyway.
Hi s, but what if the old man couldn't simply walk out? Being in jail wasn't a metaphor. What if the wise man were in jail? Would his ignorance about the world outside his village suddenly go from being epistemological to being metaphysical?
No, not at all. That's not even an epistemological constraint, leave aside, a metaphysical one; for he, as you have said, knows everything there is to know about the village. It's but a practical constraint i.e. there is some set of circumstances under which he 'could' leave, his world being the way it is, just as it is possible that he 'could' leave the village, and have another gravity-experience without some metaphysical transcending of that world. (cont.)
The simperson, his world being the way it is, 'could not' have another kind of gravity experience, unless he were in some sense transgress his world, or for the deceiver to change it. For it is not logically possible to have that other kind of gravity-experience, 'his world the way it is'. Have you read Kripke's 'Naming and Neccesity', Randy? I'm not a semantic essentialist or anything of the kind. But it has yielded a kind of discourse that is apt to cope with
these kinds of metaphysical claim, in a way that the Davidsonian truth-functional semantical account cannot. In fact, it is more or less controversial in philosophy these days to claim that the Davidson picture suffices in the way you suppose it can. (That is not a counter claim though, it's just a sociological point).
Hi s, sure, I've read "Naming and Necessity". But my claim is the simperson's constraint just just a practical constraint as well. The sim person could be given a robotic body in the real world. There's nothing logically, necessarily, or metaphysically impossible about giving the simperson the opportunity to explore the world outside of his simulation. Why am I wrong? :-)
Yes, you're right. But he could not do so through his own volition, whereas the old man could. In that sense the simperson is bound to his world. Sure, it is logically possible to do that, as I have said 'were the deceiver to change the sim' etc. But the world 'as it is' or was in the original thought-world, say at time t, is where the distinction shows up. There, at time t, it is logically impossible for the simperson to find out about the real world
I suppose you're 'wrong', then, in using these examples either to make claims about what could entail from a state of affairs at t, or else, in positing other states of affairs at t, - e.g the simperson has a robotic body - instead of keeping with the original thought-world . You 'wrongness' has more to do with a methological quirk. Sometimes you just have to take the state of affairs at t as laid out - that is, if it is logically possibily - and go from there.
That's why I can agree with you're claims about robotics, internet plug-ins, and so on, because the moment where the real philosophical puzzlement arises has already slide from its frame. It's like saying, for example, Mary in her black and white room, knows all there is to know about the (c)
colour-experience of red etc. Only to have someone claim, 'but the black and white room may have, in respect of certain neurones, such-such' , or, ' what if she were to cut herself in the room or to mensturate'. Now, if we can't allow the thought-world to exist as it is, at t, for the sake of further contemplation, then Mary's never going to get out of her room.
Hi s. if I understand you correctly, you're saying that I have to take the simworld as it is: the simperson does not have a robot body. He therefore can't learn about the real world. So far we agree. But you seem to want to go on to say that it is therefore logically impossible for the simperson to learn about the outside world. The reason you want me to conclude that is that you want to keep the simworld "as is." Well... (cont)
(cont, to s) here's the problem I have with that: you are trying to use one world (the simworld 'as is') to make an inference to what is logically possible. But when evaluating whether something is logically impossible, you can't just limit yourself to just one world. For it to be logically impossible, you have to rule it out in all possible worlds. But we both seem to agree that it is possible for the sysadmin to give the simperson a roboto body and leet him explore the real world.(cont)
(cont, to s) therefore, I would have to conclude that it is NOT logically impossible for the simperson to learn about the outside world. Seems like this holds even if we take the simworld 'as is'. It seems like the simperson's ignorance about the outside world is merely contingent--not different in kind from the ignorance which a prisoner has of the world outside the prison.
Hi Randy, the claim is not that it is logically impossible to explore the originary world. If that were the case I would be ruling against robotic bodies, and the like (and could quite rightly, be seen as holding to the thought-world at t illegitimately). My claims are in fact weaker ones. The set-up runs as follows:
(a)Some happening beyond the simperson's domain of understanding would have to occur - i.e. changing the simulation in some way - for him to come to know a continguent fact
about the originary world, that is, for an epistemic
transgression of this sort to take place. That such a happening could occur _is_ logically possible.
(b)The old man, on the other hand, by means of his 'own understanding', coupled with his walking over the mountains, could come to know some contiquent fact about his wider world. There is no epistemic transgression here; he himself is an agent of that change So, we can now ask of the thought-world at t:
(1) Could the sim and the centrifugal-village be otherwise? Yes, they could. These states of affairs do not hold in all possible worlds.
(2) Could the simperson at t come to fill-in his epistemic ignorance 'my means of his own understanding' in the same way that the old man could. No, it would need some kind of change beyond his domain of action and contemplation.
There is no sense in which the simperson, possessing human faculties of understanding, and having no robotic body etc. could of himself come to know a continguent fact about the originary world. So, (3)I am claiming of this relation, viz. simperson's-case = oldman's-case, that it holds in no possible worlds, that it is a logical impossibility.
(4)I am not, however, claiming that the thought-world at t is itself neccesarily the case, i.e. that it holds in all possible worlds.
I don't get it. Yeah, the wise man and the simperson have different avenues of epistemic access. But then again, so do the blind man and the deaf man. I don't see any point in drawing any distinction between a blind man, a man in jail, and the sim person. Each has certain epistemic avenues open or blocked to them, but none of them are globally wrong.
I can do no more, Randy. That kind of distinction is not what I have in mind at all. There is a genuine point to be had in all this, I swear. It seems to be staring out at me. I wonder if anyone else can see what I'm getting at.
And my final claim is this. The constraint on the simperson's knowledge consists in his embeddedness in the external environment (and an ensuing epistemic ignorance), whereas the constraint on the old man's knowing has not to do with his embeddedness in the external environment - he could have, say another gravity-experience by simply leaving the village; the constraint on his knowledge is a purely epistemic one.
A playful cavett: Rdy: But the thought-world at t could be otherwise? sws: Yes, it could. R: So [on a metaphysical construal], how might 'the simperson's-case = oldman's-case is neccesarily not the case' hold? sws: The simperson could come to fill-in his epistemic ignorance my means of his own understanding
i.e. robotic body, but not at t, it would be in some other possible world, and such a world is, of course, possible for, as I concur, the thought-world at t is not neccesarily the case.
Hi s, I see where the simperson and the wise man in jail are constrained in different ways. I guess all I really want to prove is that neither one of them is globally wrong.
Sure. It's what Davidson would say as well. Actually, the exchange we've been having kind of reminds me of the Macdowell-Davidson discussion (I'll post it in due course). In it, you get Macdowell pushing some or other thesis in Davidson's face, to which Davidson responds implacably by saying, 'I..I..I..I don't know w..w..what that kind of thing could be'. This goes on for about two hours, of course.
Hi Randy, maybe the dialectic has reached some kind of impasse because you're both running arguments pass one another. The way I see it (though I have not followed all the earlier comments) is that you seem to be making some epistemic claim about the externalism of the content of mental states, from which, you would say, one can infer what skepticism, if any, we're entitled to; whereas Everett is tending towards some metaphysical (cont.)
claim in so far as it would involve each and every one of the blue characters on the chalkboard. That's to say, one could not have Ev and Rdy acting in the way they do in the scenario, they couldn't observe passively what the AGOS is up to.
So, on the construal above, one might introduce a circle on the chalk board around Guper, Everett and Randy, representing their shared world; place arrows pointing from the "red mouse" towards the heads of the three characters. (cont.)
Now, when Ev assigns to Guper a false beleif, he could no more rule out the possibility of _his_ assigning that beleif incorrectly than he can be sure that the _content_ of
Guper's beleif be false. Indeed, the same goes for Rdy who, in virtue of assigning a correct belief to Guper, cannot be certain that his own beleif - the beleif that he is assigning a beleif to Guper - comes out in the way he supposes it does. (cont.)
Everett would say, (though he's probably going to refute all of this) that you're never going to get a blue character outside the cirle, you're never going to get Ev or Rdy or Sw or whoever outside the cirle in order observe Guper's behaviour in the way
you have them observing it in the scenario. That's why, perhaps, Davidson's notion is at heart an epistemic claim that does not touch on the metaphysical point. (c.)
You need some further metaphysical argument to set up the world you need in order to get the notion of charity off the ground. Or else, elucidate to Everett - in the third person view - why it's intuitively appealing but epistemically unintelligable to place a blue character outside the circle.
Hi s, it seems to me to be quite legitimate to insist that while we are debating the issue, that both everett and myself are outside of the circle of confusion spun by the aGoS. Here's why: he claims that such a god is possible. I, being an atheist, claim that no such god is possible. Notice I'm being very generous to Everett here: I'm not saying that I will believe him only if he ACTUALLY shows me a person befuddled by the aGos (cont)
(cont, to s) rather, I'm only asking that he show me that it is POSSIBLE for somebody to be so befuddled. I argue that it is impossible to give any evidence that somebody has been befuddled by the aGoS. Its like saying that sure you can't prove that Jesus rose from the dead or that the Christian God exists, but you should nevertheless believe it because if you don't you'll go to hell.
(cont, to s) the christian might say that the atheist is making an epistemic case wheras he (the christian) is making a metaphysical case. Well, the christian might be true, but the atheist is under no obligation to believe the christian under those circs.
It does kind of sounds like that. But Everett could quite as legitimately claim that if he conceeds your both being outside the circle, then the charity argument goes through. And it's precisely because, as I have said, one can't be sure that in judging a beleif to be true or false one is doing so correctly that Ev and Rdy can so much as begin the discussion outside the circle. I'm going to throw a sketch of an argument together, and see if Everett's position has some teeth.
Ha hateNeverCeasesHate! Sorry to disappoint you, but yeah, this whole intersubjective schtick was worked out by VERY SMART american pragmatist philosophers (Quine, Davidson, Sellars, Rorty) during the 2nd half of last century.
I disagree with your assertion that we don't have "feelings" of correctness. But then you already knew that. Are you trying to tell me that you don't have those "Now I get it" or "That doesn't make sense" feelings? I just don't buy it. Our brains, and all our thoughts (including rational thought) have an emotional underpinning.
Hi Javier, I don't think that the feeling constitutes the belief. Most of the things I belief I haven't even thought about. For example, I believe that Maralyn Monroe isn't on the moon. I believed that yesterday, but I had no feeling about that belief until and after I thought about that belief. Therefore, the feeling can't constitute the belief.
(cont, to CousinoMacul) now suppose somebody disagrees with me about that. They can say all kinds of things: "You didn't really have that belief until you thought about it!" or "you actually had a feeling which constituted that belief 10 years ago, but you forgot about it" yadda yadda. The thing is, as long as we're talking about first-person, subjective phenomena, we'll never convince each other, because how can we prove or disprove that we have those feelings? (cont)
(cont, to CousinoMacul) The thing about subjective experiences (actually, pretty much the definition of subjective experiences) is that they are incorrigible. If you claim to be in pain, everybody takes that as conclusive evidence that you are in pain. Similarly, if you claim that your feelings and emotions constitute your beliefs, well I can't dispute that--you are the final authority of your subjective. But by the same token, you can't dispute me if I say that I don't get those feelings.
Hi Javier, you maybe right about the genesis of beliefs, but I think that Davidson's argument here is neutral on that, so it would still apply. yes? no? Maybe?
Thank you for posting this! This is one of my favorite arguments. "Irrationality is not mere lack of reason, but a disease or perturbation of reason" (in "Rational Animals"). But Davidson said that we could still be brains in vats with true beliefs that are actually about our vat world. That isn't very comforting for the anti-skeptical realist.
GodlessPhilosopher 1 year ago
neurons fireing in a particular pattern are responsible for a religious nut contemplating their religion and seeing how 'true' it is even though it may be blatantly contradictory. how do you take it to be impossible in principle for this to just occur all the time? We are talking about demons and things like that, and you dont seem to complain...
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
Hi EverettsVLOG, have you ever met anybody who was wrong about everything? Of course not, its just impossible to be both rational (in the sense of being able to hold a conversaition well enough to be interpretable) and wrong about everything. Think about a wacky statement said by a religious whack-job: e.g. "Jesus hates gay marriage!!" Ok, we disagree with the whack job about that, but in order to know he's talking about Jesus, we have to agree with him about most (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) of the facts about Jesus, otherwise we wouldn't know who he was talking about. Similarly, we must agree on most of the facts about marriage, or we wouldn't know that he was talking about marriage, instead of, say, dancing. In order to make any sense out of anybody at all, you have to both agree with each other on almost everything. Disagreement can only take place in the context of massively shared agreement. (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) this, of course, only gets us to agreement--what's to prevent us both from being totally nutty and wrong about the world? For this, you have to look at the process of language learning or the process of radical interpretation. Say you were plopped down in some foreign country and had to learn their language. You'd have to do it by pointing at various objects, asking what the word for that object was, etc. Its a triangular relationship between you, (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to EverettsVLOG) the person teaching you, and the world. You would have to take the objects in the world, which both of you can observe and interact with, as the cause of the person's believes about that object. What's more, in order to have any hope of learning the language, you would have to interpret that person as having mostly true beliefs about the world--the person knows the correct word for the objects you are pointing at, etc. (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Everett) Of course, we all go through this process when we learn our first language. Our parents interact with us through a shared world. This shows that it is inherent to the very nature of language that it is a public, intersubjective thing. And it is inherent to the very nature of rational belief that it is mostly correct about the shared world.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
oh yea, and howve things been randy lol
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
lol things have been alright, looks like lately you've been arguing with lots of apocalyptic survivalist whack-jobs...
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
yea its pretty fun actually, im thinkin about going back to philosophy with my channel... was thinkin about recording a vid on my best solution to my skeptical arguments... it still doesnt get anyone any important epistemic access although thats not suprising. it is difficult to even set up any kind of philosophy because im convinced that in principle the manipulation of my consciousness by external entities does not have any logical bounds.
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
I'd love to hear your latest thoughts about this.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
randy this is an interesting point, and you made it before, but i dont think it is pertainent to the epistemological issues. i agree that in order to converse with someone successfully, you need to assume they share many beliefs with you. this doesnt imply that the beliefs are actually correct, which is what is in question here. in fact, in order to gain anything 'epistemic' from your argument, one would have to take as an axiom that 'one must assume other people make sense'(i hate assumptions
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
Think about language learning---a process which is explicitly epistemological. :-) If you are going to learn somebody's language from scratch, you have to assume that they are mostly correct about the world. If you don't make that assumption, you'll never be able to interpret them. For example, they tell you the word for "rabbit" is "gavagai"---but you interpret them as being mostly wrong, so you think that their word for rabbit isn't "gavagai". You'll never learn their language (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Everett) that way. It is a necessary precondition of learning somebody's language that they are mostly correct about the world you share. The kicker is that this also applies to your first language. If you can speak and have a conversation with anybody at all, you know that you both are mostly correct about the world you share, otherwise you wouldn't be able to make sense out of each other at all.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
i agree with what you are saying - assuming that you share beliefs with someone is necessary in order to understand them IF they are thinking they same thing you are. But you DONT know if they are thinking anythign like what you are thinking, and you CANT know, epistemically. Even if the conversation runs smoothly, that could jsut be due to demons fucking with your interpretations of each other, in fact you might not even be talking to someone at all
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
Hi Everett, if the demon is interception the communication, then you are triangulating with the demon, not the other person. If you can learn a language which the demon is presenting you with, its not essentially different talking with a demon, you're still going to share a lot of true beliefs about the world with the demon. If the demon is presenting you with an illusion, you are going to share a lot of true beliefs about the illusion. (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Everett) if the demon puts you in an illusion (stuffs you in the matrix, say) it doesn't change anything--if you can talk with the demon about the world created by the matrix, you are still mostly correct about the world created by the matrix. Recall, its the SHARED world for which this works.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
randy, nobody is denying that one can 'learn about illusions without knowing they are illusions'. This is satisfied by any belief you can imagine. if i think god exists, well then i have a true belief about an illusion. the point of the skepticism is that, as you have described it, we cant know whether we are being deluded in most things.
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
But for example this means that the beliefs that you and I share (even if I were a demon) are true. most all of the beliefs you have are absolutly correct. What more cold you want from a solution to skepticism? omniscience? Even if this isn't an illusion there are always going to be places I can't go to--I can't check and see what's under the rocks on mars. But I do know that I am largely correct about the world as presented to my senses. What more do you want?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
This helped me grasp what the Principle of Charity is about... thanks!
Vampir5 3 years ago
jewish,all too jewish... beyond these gestures and attitude of "hollywood smart guy" copied from woody allen and seinfeld there is only frustration and intellectual impotence ...
entropia34332 3 years ago
??? what the hell are you talking about?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
very convincing reasoning Randy..principle of charity somehow reminds me of communicative rationality of Habermas
portoxali 3 years ago
thanks portoxali.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Quit re-shaping my worldviews, damn it!
rowsdowersavesus 3 years ago
LOL :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
More cackling (Dummett) and endearing hesitation (Davidson) from these two fine minds...
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Thanks == that makes some people happy :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Randy, which artist's version is that?
msa1985 3 years ago
Hi msa, its by Leon Bonnat--they think it was a study for a painting which may or may not have ever gotten painted. The fully picture is magnificent.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Thanks touchignstoves! Davidson is a total Genius.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
You're welcome! I want to find out more about Davidson. Which book would you recommend?
touchingstoves 3 years ago
Hi touchiongstoves, ha your going to laugh at this. There are two books by Kirk Ludwig entitled "Donald Davidson". The first is an anthology of very well-written articles introducing various aspects of Davidson's philosophy. The second is an endlessly long two-volume critique which I was never able to get through :-) Get the first one. Also, the book by Simone Evenine isn't half bad.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
test
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Ok-I've been found out-Yes, one of my aliases is Goober the Atheist. I'll clear up what actually happened. First, because I was standing behind you two, I could see the spoon of blueberries on the table hidden by the green square. 2+2=5 was just me recommending that great song by Radiohead. Fish falling from the sky? Happened to my great great great Uncle Joseph Muse in 1832 in Cambridge, Maryland. But yes I have to concede on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - I was delusional. Great vid
2bsirius 3 years ago 2
LOL thanks Goob :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I like so much when you talk about the god of skeptisism Randy! With your black board and big heads colored stickmans, man! And you are very charitable! I suddenly realize (with your help)from where that expression came from. Used often, before by educated people.
Merci for this one again!
Boucrate 3 years ago
Randy - you look very "Castro" in this video. Your chalkboard illustrations are beautiful and your argument is lucid.
However, of course you completely side-step all of the insolvable problems of representational truth by positing the "true" existence of 'goober atheist' as someone who actually exists apart from the duo considering him. If the duo in this example is being "fed" the goober and his false beliefs, then it is still a shadow play. (cont.)
Trollschool 3 years ago
However, Quine is correct that an internal consistencey can be deduced by the duo in regards to the beliefs of the atheist fiction confronting them. This is best summarized by a quote from Spinoza that I have been looking for since your series began - but haven't found it. Still looking and will post when that happens!
Trollschool 3 years ago
LOL "castro" yeah I guess :-) Maybe you can be my Che. anyrate, I was so damn rushed to squeeze this all into 10 minutes, but this argument, in its entirety, doesn't really presuppose that goob and everett are outside of me. Recall rather that I spend some time upfront arguing that Everett's argument can't be proven from the first person point of view. This indicates that the argument structure is rather of this form: (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Trollschool) Let A be the sentence "aGoS can deceive me". Let B be the sentence "most of my beliefs can be wrong". Everett and I both agree that A is true. Where we disagree is whether A implies B. He says yes, I say no. This video tries to argue that the answer really is no, this way: (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Trollschool)
1. If you want to prove that A implies B, there's two strategies you might use. You might try it from the first-person perspective, or you might try it from the intersubjective perspective.
2. You can't do it from the first-person perspective (see vid for why)
3. And you can't do it from the intersubjective perspective (see vid for why)
4. Therefore, since you've run out of options, you can't prove that A implies B at all.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to Trollschool) so I really don't see where this vid sidesteps any issues, makes any untoward presuppositions, or anything like that. I think Davidson is a total genius.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Well, I think that's excellent and I can't really respond to it without finding the Spinoza quote for further reference, unfortunately the aGos seems to be keeping it from me ...
Trollschool 3 years ago
LOL Trollschool, keep wrestling with the Gods; if you try sometimes, you get what you need....
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
"principle of charity" ... not the "principle of fairness"? ... would not the opposite be principally misrepresentation?
ok, enough for my short rant ;-)
bpabbott1st 3 years ago
A rose by any other name....
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Brilliant Randy!
oldiousnei 3 years ago
Thanks oldiousnel!
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Interesting. And with bonus references to philosophers I possibly can agree with. Thanks. :)
trondreitan 3 years ago
Thanks trond!!
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I've already tried my own Quineian argument on Everette. Needless to say it didn't work.
I think he'll come around in time. I most philosophers go through a radical skepticism it's kind of like intellectual puberty.
JackGlycon 3 years ago
I pointed out circularity in your argument on your vid wall. you then said this:
"all worldviews are in some sense circular"
be more specific. I dont see how logic itself could be circular as circularity is a concept of logic/reasoning. Further (even if it is), to respond to my pointing out the flaw in your argument with "all worldviews are flawed" is actually a non sequitur. It still means your worldview is flawed. Wheres the flaw in mine? Thats what im ineterested in.
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
There are no contradictions because there are no contradictions.
Thank isn't circular?
JackGlycon 3 years ago
a circular ARGUMENT is one in which you use a PREMISE to justify itself. Logic isnt a PREMISE. Logic is a framework which deals with premises. This is why its hard to see how logic is circular, although it is "UNFOUNDED" in the sense that there is no 'meta-logic' with which to derive it. However one could simply say that logic *describes* our reasoning, and start from there. Which is what i do - tell me if u see a prob. with this. To say logic is circular would be circular.
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
And on what ground do you decided on the premise/framework distinction? What supports your framework other then that it is the premise you start from in order to understand the world?
JackGlycon 3 years ago
Charity? ZOMG! Charity -> Other People -> Collectivism -> Marx -> Hegel -> Nationalism -> HITLER!
You NAZI!
matowana 3 years ago
yes, I'm one of those epistemic collectivists :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
WRONG!! Hegel clearly leads to Stalinism. Our buddy Randy is a fucking commie!
JackGlycon 3 years ago
Even worse... he´s a KANTIAN!!!
ScientificDiscussion 3 years ago
LOL yes, I'm an evil KANTIAN spewing transcendental arguments about the conditions under which knowledge can be had!!! SNARL!!!
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
THE LEGEND OF EMANUEL KANT!!
*flees*
JackGlycon 3 years ago
It's 7.ooam here, madness. But here's an argument that might at least begin to make a case for the kind of global skepticism that I'm (perhaps wrongly) imputing to Everett.
1. It is conceivable that computers will outstrip our human capacities.
(The simulation argument now follows, affording peculiar powers, as it does, to computers such that they may generate some so-called matrix etc. I can't countenance such an argument, so I have the weaker claim, hence:) (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
2. "Biosynthetic" technologies will outstrip our human capabilities, though we may remain, so to speak, human, with all our desires, creativity etc.
3. Invasive rather than destructive biological interaction yields significant evolutionary change, i.e. that of the prokaryote/eukaryote or of neuronal patterning pregnant with linguistic
capabilities.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(retry)
4. It is possibly the case that there be future events beyond our realm of conceivability. (4) is a valid inference from (3) iff one is to consider our best scientific evidence.
5 The limits of our conceivibility, in so far as we do not admit of any supernatural entities or enterprise, can possible be the case. (5) is a valid inference only if there be some kind of epistemically principled way of determining what conceivibility amounts to
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
i.e. we can infer from the findings of our best science.
6. It is possible that some so-called matrix could in the far, far future be created, or run, or whatever. It's creator may or may not possess human attributes; the weaker claim is that such a matrix would retain some sorts of human attribute.
7. How might we rule out the possibility of our now being in such a matrix.
Okay, going away for a few days. I'll leave you to savage it at will.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, suppose we are in the matriix. We're still not globally wrong about the world, we are globally RIGHT about the simulation which the computer is generating for us.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Absolutely. But I'm not so sure you're getting the metaphysical import of this. To grant that we are in a matrix is to
grant that, on a metaphysically realist picture, it is possibly the case that we are globally wrong about the world, say if unknown to its inhabitants, the simulation was running backwards, or certain colour properties had been inverted, and so on. Yet,on an epistemologically realist picture, we would be globally right about the world. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
That's why Ev and Rdy's being globally right about Duper follows from their being outside the circle; because being outside the circle amounts to perceiving any possible simulation as real, at least in so far as it is immediately present to them. So, in granting that Ev and Rdy could be in a simulation of some kind is just to concede Everett's point - it is possible that there be some circle into which Ev and Rdy are bound, (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
such that, neccesarily, Ev and Rdy could _not_ come to know whether or not they are indeed in some kind of simulation. And that's why, I think, you're both kind of right - Everett on the metaphysical question, and yourself on the epistemic one. There need be no dilemma here; you're both talking about mutually compatible arguments, which, when plugged together, yield a pretty decent thesis.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(One final clarification: Everett is right about the metaphysica only in so far as he ditches the ASGOS, and posits instead my bio-synthetic deceiver, as laid out in the earlier argument. As you say in your reply to him, the ASGOS is inconceivible, whereas, I think, the bio-syth. deceiver mitigates a problem of this kind. That, you implied, at least for brevity (I'm sure it was only that) by conceeding me the point about the matrix.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Is randy's epistemology talking about how things "are"? If so, then we cannot verify the assumption of "Intersubejctive verifyability", which means that the epistemic assumption/criteria is only *possibly* correct. Which is just the same skepticism in new cloths.
If hes NOT talking about how things *are*, then my argument STILL applies the reasoning uses in applying his rule.
Tell me more about your bio-synthetic deceiver
EverettsVLOG 3 years ago
Hi Everett, After viewing your video response to Randy, your skepticism is perhaps more extreme than I had once thought. Maybe the following argument, being a logical one, would fall under the same kind of suspicion. There is, however, a sense in which such skeptical claims can be seen as mere instantiations of certain intuitions about the world, which are no more reliable, or indeed less reliable, than other kinds of possibility-claim.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(cont. Ev) I'm not making a geniune point about this here though as I'm not entirely sure what your position is. But here's an argument (posted earlier for Randy) which may give added epistemologically entitlement to any picture arguing for a global deceiver.
1. It is conceivable that computers will outstrip our human capacities.
(The simulation argument now follows, affording peculiar powers, as it does, to computers such that they would generate some
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(c. Ev)
so-called matrix etc. I can't countenance such an argument, so I have the weaker claim, hence:)
2."Biosynthetic" technologies will outstrip our human capabilities, though we may remain, so to speak, human, with all our desires, creativity etc.
3. Invasive biological interaction rather than destructive biological interaction yields significant evolutionary change, i.e. that of the prokaryote/eukaryote or of neuronal patterning pregnant with linguistic
capabilities.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
4. It is possibly the case that there be future events beyond our realm of conceivability. (4) is a valid inference from (3) iff one is to consider our best scientific evidence.
5 The limits of our conceivibility, in so far as we are not to admit of any supernatural entities or enterprise, can possible be the case. (5) is a valid inference only if there be some kind of epistemically principled way of determining what conceivibility amounts to i.e. we can infer from the findings of our
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
best science.
6. It is possible that some so-called matrix could in the far, far future be created, or run, or whatever. It's creator may or may not possess human attributes; the weaker claim is that such a matrix would retain some sorts of human attribute.
7. How might we rule out the possibility of our now being in such a matrix.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, I think I am getting the metaphysical import of this, in the following way. suppose there is a wise man, who lives in a village. He knows everything there is to know about that village, but knows nothing (and explicitly claims to know nothing) about the world outside of his village. Is that wise man globally wrong about the world? No, there are many things he's ignorant of, but he's not globallly wrong. (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) similarly, if we only claim to have knowledge about things which we can intersubjectively agree about, we are like the wise man. We DO have knowledge of that--even though it may be a simulation, we arn't globally wrong about the world, we are globally right about the simulation. We just have to admit, as the wise man of the village does, that our knowledge is limited to our own village. We may be (in fact, we are) globally ignorant; we arn't globally wrong.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Hi Randy,
Just a quick one. Yes, I agree with all of that. So, maybe I am not explaining myself so well.
_Within_ the simulation you just can't be globally wrong. I agree with both you and Davidson on this point. But such a simulation could be other than how the real world really plays out. i.e. in the simulation, green is really blue, there is more gravity in the sim world than there is in the real world (say because the sim would then be simplier to compute).
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
But, crucially, these metaphysical possiblities could not show up in your village example.
Now, its absolutely right that in positing the simulation one has to do so in an epistemically principled way. So then, no computer simulation - desires, reasons for the sim all count against the simulation argument;no AGoS - that's just an intuition about the world. On the bio-synthetic construal of a deceiver, however, you can handle the desires/reason/will objection for the creating of a simulation
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
- what human-synthetic organism would not want to play god? - while, at once, specifying what has to happen in the future for there to so much as be this possiblility of a global simulation i.e. it is possible in respect of the great evolutionary leaps that our best science have found of past events(i.e, protokayrote invasion, language capacity.) So what I am claiming is this.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
1. You can't be globally wrong in the simulation with respect to the simulation.
2. You can be globally wrong in the simulation with respect to the world within which the simulation is created. (But this would take much work and imagination i.e. to manipulate the simulated world such that it could be so distinct from real world).
3. You can never know whether you are globally wrong about your world, whether it is or is not a simulation, but, nonetheless, you can't rule out its possibility.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, I don't understand why you think that ignorance of the world outside of your village is any different than ignorance of the world outside of the matrix? e.g. gravity, I can imagine a village inside of a centrifuge :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
"but [he] knows nothing (and __explicitly claims to know nothing__)" about the world outside of his village."
I would need a little more information before I could respond. Does the old man know there to be a world outside of the village as some kind of contiquent fact, that is, inasmuch as he knows the set of existence conditions for such a world, but without actually knowing anything of the character of that world; or does he infer its existence from something else?
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, good question; I suppose what the wisest of wise men would say, when asked "is there anything beyond the mountains which surround your village?" would be "I don't know."
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Distinguishing metaphysical ignorance from epistemic ignorance:
If the old man's village is in a centrifuge, and the world outside is not, then he can simply leave his village, head over the mountains, which is to say, he can leave the centrifuge. Each of these places, the village and the world beyond the mountains, remain available to him physically, at least in terms of their metaphysical possibility - maybe he can no longer walk, and leave his house etc., (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
but any such constraint is wholly epistemic, not metaphysical (there is some possible set in which he could make it over the mountains). To this extent then, the village and the world-posited-by-the-old-man (important here to distinguish between any real world and that brought to mind epistemically by the old man, so excuse the jargonising hyphens) are either in the real world together or in a simulation together. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
But the world in which the matrix is created, were it to exist, affords the old man no such transgression. It is not a question of the old man's lacking continguent information about the world, it has to do with the logical impossibilty of his ever finding out whether the sim exists or not, and moreover, the logically impossibilty of his ever coming to know any one contiguent fact about that world (that is, while the sim is running successfully). (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, is it really logically impossible for the guy in the matrix to learn about the real world? Seems to me that he could be unplugged. Much as we might give a fellow in a village a scholarship to Harvard, who otherwise might never get out of his village.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Hi Randy. And that's what I'm trying getting at i.e. to be unplugged is distinct from one's getting out of the village. I'll finish off and see if its any clearer by the end
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
...(that is, while the sim is _running successfully_). And it's also about his never being able to stumble out of the simulation, as opposed to the way in which he might one day set out across the mountains and put pay to his epistemic ignorance, or else, in some other thought-world, turn up at Harvard uni. to pursue a research career, or to put out a fire on the campus or whatever (I'll come to 'being unplugged' later).
The picture above can be distilled into the following two claims. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi S, this is a response (as requsted) to your email you sent me... If I understand you correctly, your saying that that the impossibility for the poor but wise villager to know about the outside world is of a different order than the impossibility of a person born in a simulated universe to know about the world the simulation was running in. I still don't see any difference: for example, I could give a television or a web connection to the villager. Seems to me like the sysadmin (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) of the simulation could, in like mannar, give a person born in the simulation a web connection or a television which gave the person in the simulation knowledge of the outside world. Yes, No, maybe?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
The villager case I have elaborated deals with his '_present_ homebound' case alone. Whatever werre to happen in the future is no logical neccesity of that present case. And likewise, it is possible that the inhabitant of the simulation lives and dies in the sim without knowing s/he is a sim; again I need only go on logical possibility here.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
wow, the damn things working now.
Such examples as unplugging, internet connections, and the like, while legitimate trajectories to pursue, would merely involve stipulating a greater degree of sophistication _within_ the case; they are not themselves counter-examples of that case. And I'm really only responding to the thought-world that you yourself have provided - I'm considering those conditions under which the old man knows all the contingent facts about his village (c)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
, yet knows nothing of the world beyond the village (his village being in a centrifuge); and, I am positing - because it is logically possible - that if there were such a thing as a simulated world, minimally, one inhabitant could live and die therein without coming to know the fact that it is in a sim. On this picture I wanted to show what the difference between epistemological ignorance and metaphysical ignorance. (c.) So,
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
typo: 's/he in a sim'
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, sure, both the villager and the simPerson *might* never learn about the wider world; but its logically possible that they could, so I don't see any material distinction here. I mean, I'll never learn about what it would be like to have Maralyn Monroe find me irresistibly sexually attractive either (sob!) but does that imply any sort of cosmic disparity in ignorance between me and the village wise man, or me and the simPerson?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
And I'm saying, as you know, that it is logically possible for the villager to find out something about the wider world that the simperson could not. okay, what is it that the old man can do that the simperson cannot do (bearing in mind the conditions of the original thought-world !!) such that he might gain knowledge of the wider world, and in so doing mark his case as distinct from that of the simperson: (cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Well, it's this.
The old man can, within the bounds of our thought-world under normal conditions, simply set off over the mountains to find out about the wider world. That is his _choice_, it is through his powers of volition or sense of curiosity or whatever that he does so. For his ignorance is of an epistemic kind, and it is both logically and practically possible for him to so do.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
The simperson, on the other hand (within our thought-world under normal conditions: that of a successfully generating simulation) has no such option. (1)He can't by means of his own volition or indifferent curiousity simply set out across some physical feature to find what 'there is'. He is - under normal conditions, or at least logically possible conditions - forever bound to experiencing his sim-world, and he's never going to stumble out of it; (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(2) And he could not so much as posit, in a non-trivial way, such an orignary world as existing outside of his sim-world, without without deploying some kind of sophiscated philosophical argument. The old man can simply say of the wider world from his village, pointing at the mountains, 'I don't know what's over there'. No such move is available to the sim person. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
So (1) is a metaphysical constraint and (2) is an epistemic constraint which follows from the character of the metaphysical constraint.Together, they identify what distinguishes the case of the old man from the case of the sim person, or, in other words, one's being in a centrifugal village from one's being in a simulation; (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
or, in still other words, one's being chiefly epistemically ignorant (the old man) from one's being cheifly metaphysically ignorant.
(It is, of course, logically possible that the sim would somehow break down etc. and all manner of other possible things, hence my 'normal conditions caveatt).
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi Randy, can you see where I'm coming from in the above comments?
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, I still don't understand why it is LOGICALLY impossible for the simperson to find out about the word outside of his simulation. To be logically impossible, it has to be contradictory. But I don't think it would be contradictory for, say, his sysadmin to give him television which shows tv shows from the outside world, or even to build him the sim person a little robot which the sim person could drive around in the outside world and explore around. (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) It seems the limitation the simperson faces wouldn't be any different from the wise man if, say the wise man were in jail. The jailer would have to first let him out of jail in order for the wise man to wander over the mountains. Similarly, the sysadmin would have to build a little robot explorer for the sim person. But I don't see any logical barrier for the sim person to learn about the outside world, only a contingent, practical one.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
The difference really only shows up if we allow the sim person to explore his world, and the old man to explore his world, in the manner laid out in your original thought-world, thus entails (1) and (2). But when we consider these other examples we have already lost that moment, so to speak. The old man, bound to his world (though not now to his village) can find out more about any uncentrifugal place in his world, and in no way has he to trancendence that world.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
The sim person, on the other hand, would have to transcend his simworld in order to experience, say gravity, weaker gravity, as it occured, there, in the orignary non-simworld. And since he is by definition bound to his simworld, that would be contradictory, or logically impossible - whereas the old man's experiencing a non-centrifugal world beyond the mountains is not.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s. I didn't quite get that, can you rephrase?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Sorry, I was glossing as we seem to be rehearsing earlier points. The old man, being bound to his world, can leave his centrifugal-village, and find out more about the wider world. He does just that, and so he comes to know some noncentrifugal place beyond the mountains. But in no way has he to trancendence his world in order to do so; he merely leaves his village. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
And it is in no way contradictory that he is both(1)bound to his world,(2)and happens upon some other gravity-experience.
The sim person, on the other hand, would have to transcend the simworld in order to experience the kind of gravity experienced in the originary-world; for, as earlier framed, the bio-syth deceiver has created a simworld, such that gravity is stable there, but its effects are much increased than in the originary world. (c)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
What is at stake here is that, since he is bound to the sim, and he is epistemically ignorant (of the sim) as is the old man (of the wider world), he could not _both be_ (1)bound to his world, and (2)experiencing
gravity in the originary world. That is, for the simperson (1) and (2)together is contradictory.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
The trick is that they both have to be epistemically ignorant in the same way, so no internet connections etc. but while the old man is merely epistemically ignorant, the simperson is both metaphysically and epistemically ignorant.
Rush job I know, but it is all there in the other posts, where it is broached in a more satisfactory way.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, what is the moral you're trying to conclude? I mean, I see that the old man and the sim person are each bound in their own prisons with different kinds of chains, and different proceedures would be needed to set them free. But it seems that both could be set free. (e.g. the simperson could get a robotic body). Seems to me though that neither one of them could be considered to be globally wrong about their worlds, so the skeptical arguments still wouldn't hold water.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
But the prison metaphor is not analogous to the village-sim thought-world. And to grant you that it is is just to grant that the picture you're espousing misses nothing out. (In any case, in freeing themselves, the old man and the simperson would no longer be epistemically ignorant, so such possible outcomes cannot bear on the specific problem at issue).
(c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
What I'm claiming more generally then is that by begining with the Davidsonian picture,in having that picture in play from the start, means to say you're never going to have those metaphysical assumptions show up.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
It touches on some of the points Dummett was making in the interview I posted. Methodologically speaking (though not semantically speaking, of course), it is like, say postulating a cogito and trying to work out certain philosophical problems from there: The philosophical coverage is impaired by the conceptual appartus that one is using to posit those problems.
(c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
As to the moral. Well, it was all about global skepticism. You're claiming that one can't be globally wrong about one's beliefs. I'm claiming - distinct from Everett's more radical skepticism - that, on an epistemological construal (that is, within the simworld), one _can't_ be globally wrong about one's beleifs. But, on a metaphysical construal, crucially, one _can_ be globally wrong about one's beleifs (i.e. in respect of the originary or real world where the simulation is built).
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
I have argued this claim in the following way:
(1)I needed an argument that entitled me to posit the existence of a simulation, rather than merely conjure one up fortuitously; hence my bio-synth deceiver, which mitigated against standard objections to the simulation argument, such as computer-desire, anthropormorphism, and so on.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
I have argued this claim in the following way: (1)I needed an argument that entitled me to posit the existence of a simulation, rather than merely conjure one up fortuitously; hence my bio-synth deceiver, which mitigated against standard objections to the simulation argument, such as computer-desire, human-centricism, and so on.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(2) (It follows that) it is possible that the bio-synth deceiver would change certain parameters in the simworld, increased gravity, nature of time, colour inversion, representation, grammar and so on. I have also said that
it would take much trial and imagination to work the sim in this way. But it is, at least, possible, such that the perceived world could be global wrong with respect to the simperson (which is to say, mostly wrong and not wholly wrong in respect of
(c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
his entire set of beliefs; for instance, his understanding of height, and relations between particulars could hold in both worlds.
(3) But, in agreement with yourself, those beliefs, on the other hand, furnished within the sim itself , and when pertaining to the simworld itself (and to one another in, if you like, a web of beliefs) are in fact globally right.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
But they are globally right, only in respect of the simperson's having them in the simworld when taking that simworld intuitively to be his real world. This is, of course, an epistemological point. Being mostly right, there, in this sim is just to say that it's the domain where charity has taken hold.
4)Your counterexample - an old man, who lives in a centrifugal-village, and knew nothing of the wider world is in fact in the same position as the simperson in the sim - I have argued against.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
I said that, yes, both persons are epistemically ignorant, but what the simperson could not do and the old man could, counts as a deeper metaphysical ignorance. The old man can simply walk out of the centrifugal-village, and have some other gravity-experience. The simperson could not. And so,beyond the domain of radical interpretation,
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
, it does indeed hold that the simperson's beliefs about the world bear the possibility of being globally wrong. (The last point would again need the comment about the differences in their logical possibilities, but then we're there.) Or, something like that anyway.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, but what if the old man couldn't simply walk out? Being in jail wasn't a metaphor. What if the wise man were in jail? Would his ignorance about the world outside his village suddenly go from being epistemological to being metaphysical?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
No, not at all. That's not even an epistemological constraint, leave aside, a metaphysical one; for he, as you have said, knows everything there is to know about the village. It's but a practical constraint i.e. there is some set of circumstances under which he 'could' leave, his world being the way it is, just as it is possible that he 'could' leave the village, and have another gravity-experience without some metaphysical transcending of that world. (cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
The simperson, his world being the way it is, 'could not' have another kind of gravity experience, unless he were in some sense transgress his world, or for the deceiver to change it. For it is not logically possible to have that other kind of gravity-experience, 'his world the way it is'. Have you read Kripke's 'Naming and Neccesity', Randy? I'm not a semantic essentialist or anything of the kind. But it has yielded a kind of discourse that is apt to cope with
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
these kinds of metaphysical claim, in a way that the Davidsonian truth-functional semantical account cannot. In fact, it is more or less controversial in philosophy these days to claim that the Davidson picture suffices in the way you suppose it can. (That is not a counter claim though, it's just a sociological point).
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, sure, I've read "Naming and Necessity". But my claim is the simperson's constraint just just a practical constraint as well. The sim person could be given a robotic body in the real world. There's nothing logically, necessarily, or metaphysically impossible about giving the simperson the opportunity to explore the world outside of his simulation. Why am I wrong? :-)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Yes, you're right. But he could not do so through his own volition, whereas the old man could. In that sense the simperson is bound to his world. Sure, it is logically possible to do that, as I have said 'were the deceiver to change the sim' etc. But the world 'as it is' or was in the original thought-world, say at time t, is where the distinction shows up. There, at time t, it is logically impossible for the simperson to find out about the real world
(cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
I suppose you're 'wrong', then, in using these examples either to make claims about what could entail from a state of affairs at t, or else, in positing other states of affairs at t, - e.g the simperson has a robotic body - instead of keeping with the original thought-world . You 'wrongness' has more to do with a methological quirk. Sometimes you just have to take the state of affairs at t as laid out - that is, if it is logically possibily - and go from there.
(c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
That's why I can agree with you're claims about robotics, internet plug-ins, and so on, because the moment where the real philosophical puzzlement arises has already slide from its frame. It's like saying, for example, Mary in her black and white room, knows all there is to know about the (c)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
colour-experience of red etc. Only to have someone claim, 'but the black and white room may have, in respect of certain neurones, such-such' , or, ' what if she were to cut herself in the room or to mensturate'. Now, if we can't allow the thought-world to exist as it is, at t, for the sake of further contemplation, then Mary's never going to get out of her room.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s. if I understand you correctly, you're saying that I have to take the simworld as it is: the simperson does not have a robot body. He therefore can't learn about the real world. So far we agree. But you seem to want to go on to say that it is therefore logically impossible for the simperson to learn about the outside world. The reason you want me to conclude that is that you want to keep the simworld "as is." Well... (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) here's the problem I have with that: you are trying to use one world (the simworld 'as is') to make an inference to what is logically possible. But when evaluating whether something is logically impossible, you can't just limit yourself to just one world. For it to be logically impossible, you have to rule it out in all possible worlds. But we both seem to agree that it is possible for the sysadmin to give the simperson a roboto body and leet him explore the real world.(cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) therefore, I would have to conclude that it is NOT logically impossible for the simperson to learn about the outside world. Seems like this holds even if we take the simworld 'as is'. It seems like the simperson's ignorance about the outside world is merely contingent--not different in kind from the ignorance which a prisoner has of the world outside the prison.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Hi Randy, the claim is not that it is logically impossible to explore the originary world. If that were the case I would be ruling against robotic bodies, and the like (and could quite rightly, be seen as holding to the thought-world at t illegitimately). My claims are in fact weaker ones. The set-up runs as follows:
(a)Some happening beyond the simperson's domain of understanding would have to occur - i.e. changing the simulation in some way - for him to come to know a continguent fact
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
about the originary world, that is, for an epistemic
transgression of this sort to take place. That such a happening could occur _is_ logically possible.
(b)The old man, on the other hand, by means of his 'own understanding', coupled with his walking over the mountains, could come to know some contiquent fact about his wider world. There is no epistemic transgression here; he himself is an agent of that change So, we can now ask of the thought-world at t:
(c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
(1) Could the sim and the centrifugal-village be otherwise? Yes, they could. These states of affairs do not hold in all possible worlds.
(2) Could the simperson at t come to fill-in his epistemic ignorance 'my means of his own understanding' in the same way that the old man could. No, it would need some kind of change beyond his domain of action and contemplation.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
There is no sense in which the simperson, possessing human faculties of understanding, and having no robotic body etc. could of himself come to know a continguent fact about the originary world. So, (3)I am claiming of this relation, viz. simperson's-case = oldman's-case, that it holds in no possible worlds, that it is a logical impossibility.
(4)I am not, however, claiming that the thought-world at t is itself neccesarily the case, i.e. that it holds in all possible worlds.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
I don't get it. Yeah, the wise man and the simperson have different avenues of epistemic access. But then again, so do the blind man and the deaf man. I don't see any point in drawing any distinction between a blind man, a man in jail, and the sim person. Each has certain epistemic avenues open or blocked to them, but none of them are globally wrong.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I can do no more, Randy. That kind of distinction is not what I have in mind at all. There is a genuine point to be had in all this, I swear. It seems to be staring out at me. I wonder if anyone else can see what I'm getting at.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
And my final claim is this. The constraint on the simperson's knowledge consists in his embeddedness in the external environment (and an ensuing epistemic ignorance), whereas the constraint on the old man's knowing has not to do with his embeddedness in the external environment - he could have, say another gravity-experience by simply leaving the village; the constraint on his knowledge is a purely epistemic one.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
A playful cavett: Rdy: But the thought-world at t could be otherwise? sws: Yes, it could. R: So [on a metaphysical construal], how might 'the simperson's-case = oldman's-case is neccesarily not the case' hold? sws: The simperson could come to fill-in his epistemic ignorance my means of his own understanding
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
i.e. robotic body, but not at t, it would be in some other possible world, and such a world is, of course, possible for, as I concur, the thought-world at t is not neccesarily the case.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, I see where the simperson and the wise man in jail are constrained in different ways. I guess all I really want to prove is that neither one of them is globally wrong.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Sure. It's what Davidson would say as well. Actually, the exchange we've been having kind of reminds me of the Macdowell-Davidson discussion (I'll post it in due course). In it, you get Macdowell pushing some or other thesis in Davidson's face, to which Davidson responds implacably by saying, 'I..I..I..I don't know w..w..what that kind of thing could be'. This goes on for about two hours, of course.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi Randy, maybe the dialectic has reached some kind of impasse because you're both running arguments pass one another. The way I see it (though I have not followed all the earlier comments) is that you seem to be making some epistemic claim about the externalism of the content of mental states, from which, you would say, one can infer what skepticism, if any, we're entitled to; whereas Everett is tending towards some metaphysical (cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
claim in so far as it would involve each and every one of the blue characters on the chalkboard. That's to say, one could not have Ev and Rdy acting in the way they do in the scenario, they couldn't observe passively what the AGOS is up to.
So, on the construal above, one might introduce a circle on the chalk board around Guper, Everett and Randy, representing their shared world; place arrows pointing from the "red mouse" towards the heads of the three characters. (cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Now, when Ev assigns to Guper a false beleif, he could no more rule out the possibility of _his_ assigning that beleif incorrectly than he can be sure that the _content_ of
Guper's beleif be false. Indeed, the same goes for Rdy who, in virtue of assigning a correct belief to Guper, cannot be certain that his own beleif - the beleif that he is assigning a beleif to Guper - comes out in the way he supposes it does. (cont.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Everett would say, (though he's probably going to refute all of this) that you're never going to get a blue character outside the cirle, you're never going to get Ev or Rdy or Sw or whoever outside the cirle in order observe Guper's behaviour in the way
you have them observing it in the scenario. That's why, perhaps, Davidson's notion is at heart an epistemic claim that does not touch on the metaphysical point. (c.)
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
You need some further metaphysical argument to set up the world you need in order to get the notion of charity off the ground. Or else, elucidate to Everett - in the third person view - why it's intuitively appealing but epistemically unintelligable to place a blue character outside the circle.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Hi s, it seems to me to be quite legitimate to insist that while we are debating the issue, that both everett and myself are outside of the circle of confusion spun by the aGoS. Here's why: he claims that such a god is possible. I, being an atheist, claim that no such god is possible. Notice I'm being very generous to Everett here: I'm not saying that I will believe him only if he ACTUALLY shows me a person befuddled by the aGos (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) rather, I'm only asking that he show me that it is POSSIBLE for somebody to be so befuddled. I argue that it is impossible to give any evidence that somebody has been befuddled by the aGoS. Its like saying that sure you can't prove that Jesus rose from the dead or that the Christian God exists, but you should nevertheless believe it because if you don't you'll go to hell.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to s) the christian might say that the atheist is making an epistemic case wheras he (the christian) is making a metaphysical case. Well, the christian might be true, but the atheist is under no obligation to believe the christian under those circs.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
correcting, it should be:
both intuitively appealing and epistemically intelligible to place a blue character outside the circle.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
It does kind of sounds like that. But Everett could quite as legitimately claim that if he conceeds your both being outside the circle, then the charity argument goes through. And it's precisely because, as I have said, one can't be sure that in judging a beleif to be true or false one is doing so correctly that Ev and Rdy can so much as begin the discussion outside the circle. I'm going to throw a sketch of an argument together, and see if Everett's position has some teeth.
sssswwwsssss 3 years ago
Love to see it; it would be awesome if you started making vids.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I loved your setup to this video. But oh, you didn't come up with it. Well, its a great argument anyway. (im writing this as I listen)
Ok, so the principle of charity is cool, but the setup was also very cool. I wonder if Everett will bite.
HateNeverCeasesHate 3 years ago
Ha hateNeverCeasesHate! Sorry to disappoint you, but yeah, this whole intersubjective schtick was worked out by VERY SMART american pragmatist philosophers (Quine, Davidson, Sellars, Rorty) during the 2nd half of last century.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I disagree with your assertion that we don't have "feelings" of correctness. But then you already knew that. Are you trying to tell me that you don't have those "Now I get it" or "That doesn't make sense" feelings? I just don't buy it. Our brains, and all our thoughts (including rational thought) have an emotional underpinning.
CousinoMacul 3 years ago
Hi Javier, I don't think that the feeling constitutes the belief. Most of the things I belief I haven't even thought about. For example, I believe that Maralyn Monroe isn't on the moon. I believed that yesterday, but I had no feeling about that belief until and after I thought about that belief. Therefore, the feeling can't constitute the belief.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to CousinoMacul) now suppose somebody disagrees with me about that. They can say all kinds of things: "You didn't really have that belief until you thought about it!" or "you actually had a feeling which constituted that belief 10 years ago, but you forgot about it" yadda yadda. The thing is, as long as we're talking about first-person, subjective phenomena, we'll never convince each other, because how can we prove or disprove that we have those feelings? (cont)
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
(cont, to CousinoMacul) The thing about subjective experiences (actually, pretty much the definition of subjective experiences) is that they are incorrigible. If you claim to be in pain, everybody takes that as conclusive evidence that you are in pain. Similarly, if you claim that your feelings and emotions constitute your beliefs, well I can't dispute that--you are the final authority of your subjective. But by the same token, you can't dispute me if I say that I don't get those feelings.
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
Beliefs themselves are not feelings, but they come from feelings.
CousinoMacul 3 years ago
Hi Javier, you maybe right about the genesis of beliefs, but I think that Davidson's argument here is neutral on that, so it would still apply. yes? no? Maybe?
randyhelzerman 3 years ago
I want a chalkboard like Randy's!
guitarfan67 3 years ago