In a variant of the hoary old ‘ungrounded morality’ question, Barry Arrington has a post up at Uncommon Descent which ponders how a ‘materialist’ could in all conscience take a position as clinical ethicist, if he does not believe that there is an ultimate ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer. I think this betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of clinical ethics. In contrast to daily usage, ethics here is not a synonym for morality.
I can understand how a theist who believes in the objective reality of ethical norms could apply for such a position in good faith. By definition he believes certain actions are really wrong and other actions are really right, and therefore he often has something meaningful to say.
My question is how could a materialist apply for such a position in good faith? After all, for the materialist there is really no satisfactory answer to Arthur Leff’s “grand sez who” question that we have discussed on these pages before. See here for Philip Johnson’s informative take on the issue.
After all, when pushed to the wall to ground his ethical opinions in anything other than his personal opinion, the materialist ethicist has nothing to say. Why should I pay someone $68,584 to say there is no real ultimate ethical difference between one moral response and another because they must both lead ultimately to the same place – nothingness.
I am not being facetious here. I really do want to know why someone would pay someone to give them the “right answer” when that person asserts that the word “right” is ultimately meaningless.
(The last question is an odd one. You would pay someone to give you the “right answer” so long as they believe that there is such a thing?)
Of course you don’t have to go far into medical ethics before you get to genuine ethical thickets. The interests of a mother versus those of the foetus she carries; the unfortunate fact that there aren’t the resources to give every treatment to everyone; the thorny issues of voluntary euthanasia or ‘do not resuscitate’ decisions; issues raised by fertility treatments; cases such as the recent removal from hospital of Aysha King; the role of a patient’s own beliefs. There aren’t many right answers, when you get beyond the obvious things that you don’t need to pay someone to set guidelines for.
It is a bizarre argument to regard moral relativism as a bar to this job. A moral absolutist may believe that blood transfusion is wrong, that faith in the lord is the way to get better, that embryos should never be formed outside a uterus, or some other such faith-based notion. And they have to persuade others of different, or no, faith that this decision is indeed what objective morality dictates, and whatever their own views on morality they must accept that. So I don’t agree that the ‘grounding’ of an atheist’s personal moral principles has any bearing on their candidacy.
Flanagan et al 2007 which I linked to here, separates relativism, pluralism, and relationism. The final section of the linked reply PDF provides the most detail on his views.
He relies mostly on reasoning and arguments to contrast his approach with unadorned relativism. I think Kitcher takes the pragmatic approach further by explicitly calling morality a technology for increasing altruism (he justifies that dimension for measurement as a scientific choice, not a moral choice).
Using Kitcher’s ideas, if the pragmatic approach in general involves looking at how well things work, then we compare moral systems by looking at how well they work to implement increasing altruism.
Flanagan does make that same general point about effectiveness being used to compare moral systems, but Kitcher’s idea, if fully implemented, would make it operationalizable by scientific measurement.
In both cases you still have pluralism. But in theory with Kitcher there are cases where you can use scientific (*) measurement to say system A is better than B or that system C built by combining norms from A and B will be better than both of A and B. (As well as cases where you have to say there is insufficient information to tell as of yet).
————————
(*) assuming you agree psychology, sociology, and anthropology can be considered sciences, of course.
BruceS,
I like this part of the Flanagan paper:
I tend to like statements I agree with. It’s just common sense, stylized.
Me too, petrushka.
Which reminds me that I also enjoyed this:
In any event, we must assume that most people have at least some tendencies towards their own good; minimally, people must want some good things some of the time. Moreover, as noted above, these wants must be amenable to the general constraints of cooperative activity. In addition to these evolutionary constraints, we have theories, traditions, putative authorities, and other resources to help us work out intrapersonal and interpersonal tensions. With the relevant information, reasoning skills, and patience, we can arrive at objective values and truths (deploying a very unobjectionable notion of truth). This is possible on a relational model.
But what happens when things break down, when disagreement endures? How to determine which side is correct? Imagine two individuals in a moral dispute. The dispute need not be grave, but let’s suppose that they judge it worthy of sustained discussion. Let’s further suppose (to make things advantageous to an amenable outcome) that the dispute involves persons otherwise well disposed to one another, who will be curious, sincere, and willing to expose themselves to risk, all of which are generally necessary to resolving moral disputes. So investigations are made; questions are answered (hopefully in good faith); authorities are cited; reasons are exhausted; and appeals fail to gain assent. Disagreement persists.
But do I agree with the perspective that Flanagan, et. al are generally taking in their paper? Dunno, I’d have to think a lot more about it. I don’t understand all of their claims, which I like to think is sometimes their fault–but quien sabe?
Seconded. And let us know what you think of the Noe book. I’ve had it for years and never opened it.
I tend to label people who think moral disputes must be resolvable, moralistic. I think it’s a personality trait rather than a philosophy.
People who think unresolved issues can remain unresolved are called friends, countrymen, spouses.
I will risk opening a can of worms by saying that one of the benefits of Christianity (having little to do with religion or theology) is institutionalizing the concept of forgiveness, adding it to the social repertoire. Prior to forgiveness, we had revenge, punishment, restitution, blood money and such. They all persist, but forgiveness is a nice arrow in the quiver.
It’s a low maintenance item, seldom requiring sharpening or refurbishing due to wear.
petrushka,
Forgiveness is one of Ross’s prima facie duties. I don’t remember whether he credits Christianity with discovering(?) it.
ETA: Actually, maybe it’s atonement or reparation.
walto,
I’ll respond in more depth later, but a quick observation for now: you’ve stated elsewhere (using Sellars’ terminology) that you think the “scientific image” must generally be made consistent with the “manifest image”. Since the manifest image is largely shaped by intuition, and the scientific image conflicts with these intuitions, then by asserting the primacy of the manifest image, you are suggesting a privileging of intuition over reasoning.
For example, scientific reasoning shows us that so-called “solid” objects are mostly made up of empty space, despite our intuitions to the contrary. To assert that the manifest image is correct in this case, and that the scientific image must be made consistent with it, is to privilege intuition over reason.
If so, then why the prickly response when I suggest that you are letting intuition overpower reason in the case of your assertions regarding objective morality?
I’m not crediting Christianity for inventing forgiveness; just for making it official policy. My knowledge of history is lacking, so I don’t know if other cultures have had similar ideas.
But I can think of nations and cultures that have been ridged in their moral codes.
I think of human organizations as being liquid, slurry or solid. I find that image more useful than whether I agree with people or not. I am most comfortable with slurry.
I would say that intuitions come is more than one flavor. Learning is the process of adapting and refining our responses to the world. And instrumentation can be part of that process.
I would not try to draw a sharp divide between naive intuition and sophisticated intuition. It’s a continuum.
It’s a good question, and you’re right that I do think that common sense and ordinary language require a certain kind of privilege. I think I may have posted this before, but there is an entertaining fable from Hall’s _Philosophical Systems_ on this issue.
It was Sellars’ view that the survival of the manifest image is explained by a rough correspondence between that world and the scientific image, analogous to the rough correspondence between predictions made by means of the Boyle-Charles Law and the actual behavior of gases. Although he takes common sense to be ultimately false, he concedes that it is competent for most of the ordinary purposes of life. He took the Feyerabendian position that the fact that the manifest image has evolved through centuries of interaction between people and their environment to provide no unchallengeable philosophic sanctity: the greater accuracy and explanatory power of the scientific framework shows common sense to be literally false.
Sellars doesn’t deny that the scientific image is methodologically dependent on the manifest, but he insists that, as it is nevertheless complete—i.e., can provide all that is true about the world, the entire manifest image (which he takes to be rival, rather than complementary) may (eventually) be dumped without loss.
While he thought that “a theoretical framework can achieve first-class status only if a proper subset of its expressions acquire a direct role in observation,” and conceded that hadn’t happened yet, he claimed that such a development is inevitable. That’s how Sellars rejected the thesis of “the inviolability of observation concepts”: even if scientific concepts now acquire their meanings only through correlation with common sense terms and achieve their verification only through common-sense perceptual observations, neither of these facts are eternally inescapable. In a word, he believed that we could someday learn to perceive red as n-m angstroms.
Hall responded to Sellars’ scientism this way:
Then he gets to his fable regarding what he takes to be the untoward consequences of Sellars’ view of the eventual ascendancy of the language of physics.
Then he gives us the moral he thinks we should take from his story:
Thank you for sharing that “fable”. It probably applies more forcefully to Churchland than to Sellars, but that’s neither here nor there.
I think it would a disaster if the replaceability of the manifest image by the scientific image stood or fell with the critique of the Myth of the Given — though that is pretty clearly what Sellars himself thought. It would be a disaster because the critique of the Myth of the Given is true, and the replaceability of the manifest image by the scientific image is absurd.
What I would defend, though, a far more modest version of the replaceability thesis than the one Sellars himself defended. On my conception — which also has some echoes in Sellars — we should notice that our discourse is “polydimensional” (Sellars’s term). Less metaphorically, we inhabit the world through a plurality of norm-governed discourse practices and correlated sensorimotor skills. Empirical science has authority for us only with regard to “matter-of-factual” discourse, and not with regard to any of the other dimensions (e.g. semantical, mathematical, ethical, etc.). So the other dimensions of discourse are subject to constraint by science only to the extent that they make matter-of-factual claims.
(I’m writing a blank check on ‘matter of factual’ here, and I’m not happy about it.)
What the critique of the Myth of the Given shows us is that we should adopt epistemic holism and semantic holism about the structure of discourse per se — though I would add, in a deeply un-Sellarsian way, that embodied coping acts as a ‘practical foundation’ for all discursive practices (even mathematics, probably). More provocatively, embodied coping is what plays the role of “sheer receptivity” that Sellars problematically assigned to sense-impressions. (That’s the central claim of the book, which should be published in November.)
In that regard, we can accept the critique of the Myth of the Given without being saddled with the problematic claim that it is even possible for the discourse of science to swallow up all the other kinds of discursive practice through which we engage with the world and conceptualize both the world and ourselves.
To go back to the “are objects solid?” question, it depends on “with regard to which discursive practice?” With regard to our everyday dealings with them, yes; with regard to fundamental physics, no. Does fundamental physics have “ontological priority” over our everyday dealings? Sellars clearly thought so. I don’t know because I don’t know what “ontological priority” really means, or why it matters.
Reminds me of Susan Blackmore’s claim that she lives her life without the “user illusion” that she has free will. She’s not referring to her intellectual stance, but rather to her day-to-day way of life. Her manifest image, I guess.
Scroll down to “rejecting the illusion” if you do not want background information on the concept and what others think.
I thought that Action in Perception was extremely good, but he was preaching to the converted — from my point of view, he just updates some parts of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception with relevant neuroscience and defends that view against various contenders in the analytic tradition. That definitely needed to be done, so Noe’s book does a service to philosophy of mind, but it does mean that I read the book somewhat uncritically, since I was already convinced of its claims before I began.
It seems that most religious or even secularistic fundamentalists are trapped inside some type of epistemological foundationalism, over-enamored with epistemic justifications that have been grounded in primal realities. It further seems that it is often more important to them THAT others of us are similarly foundationalists, less important precisely HOW or where we ground or justify our various propositions.
Maybe, at some level, some of them are in touch with the situation that reality’s initial, boundary and limit conditions remain undescribed, leading, at best, to a plurality of competing tautological accounts, all with different levels of epistemic parity, risk and virtue, perhaps a few of them even equiplausible in these regards. In this case, regarding ultimate realities and concerns, as when confronted with equiprobable situations, regarding our more proximate realities and concerns, perhaps they realize that we all, at one time or another, are confronted with existential disjunctions, which entail a “living as if” thus and such is the case, wherein we wager and risk a response that seems to be the most life-giving and relationship-enhancing, whether governed by adaptive and survival imperatives or putative transcendental precepts.
What they may be asking is, even if primal grounding eludes us all and existential injunctions are forced on all, if one’s ultimate stance is THIS, then how can one take a proximate stance like THAT?
Before responding to that, one wonders why the foundationalists of all stripes are not positively scandalized by the fact that, whoever or whatever (putative) primal reality is, S/he or It has made describing those foundations so problematical! Worse than that, even among those who share the same references and descriptions of our ontological foundations, the de-ontological derivations vary so widely regarding so many moral realities, anyway.
In reality, though, what we observe is that, despite all the plurality of human descriptions, norms and interpretations, because we are all similarly situated in this tragic human condition, we experience a great deal of solidarity and share most of the same evaluative posits based on similar needs and aspirations in this proximate reality.
From these noninferential evaluative posits, coupled with a fairly good consensus regarding our descriptions of proximate reality, our practical norms tend to converge. This is to recognize that, for the most part, both our diagnoses of and prescriptions for an ailing humanity will strategically merge (notwithstanding some intractable ethical thickets). How else, in 1948, could our many nations and belief systems articulate a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, without agreeing, first, on the existence of foundations, or, next, on a choice of foundations?
Finally, the great traditions, both East (the Tao) and West (the Law), have imputed to all wo/men of goodwill, that whatever is right, just and moral is written on each heart, hard-wired into our common sense and sensibilities, our moral senses and sensibilities, warranted, inchoately, even, in each person’s enlightened self-interest, which is a type of practical norm that quickly segues into an early stage of moral development.
And none of this requires syllogistic proofs, much less indubitable foundations and apodictic certainty (it better not!), just informal reasoning that converges on the general welfare and shared sensibilities of one another.
KN,
I would argue that on the question of solidity, there’s no reason that the manifest and scientific images can’t be reconciled. We simply have to recognize that the intuitive concept of solidity is flawed and needs to be modified to conform to the scientific concept, which is better supported by the evidence.
Scientists have no problem talking about solidity — there’s an entire field known as solid-state physics, after all — but their definition of solidity is entirely compatible with the notion that atoms consist of mostly empty space. And if you understand the physics, you can understand why solid objects seem to fill all of the space they occupy.
It isn’t necessary to abandon the notion of solidity or to accept a contradiction between the manifest and scientific images, with each relegated to a separate realm of discourse. We can simply accept that solidity isn’t what we thought it was, and modify the manifest image accordingly.
This poses a problem for walto, however, since he maintains the primacy of the manifest image and insists that the scientific image must change to accommodate it, rather than vice-versa.
(Note: I am not saying that the manifest image must always yield to the scientific image. There can be cases where the manifest image is better-supported than the scientific image, in which case it is the manifest image that should prevail.)
From Biology to Consciousness to Morality by Ursula Goodenough & Terry Deacon … Google this and grab the pdf for a great read!
[Delurking (“DL”) to correct another intentional misrepresentation (tsk tsk!)]
Haha NO.
[Relurking (“RL”)]
It’s great to see a new and obviously knowledgeable poster at TSZ.
I took the time to look at this paper, but his writing style is a challenge for an amateur like me.
Looking at the open press reviews of his latest book, as well as various blog exchanges about it, I see that the opinions on his scholarship practices, ideas, and writing style are definitely mixed, to say the least.
I’m still working my way slowly (compared to some people especially) though L&R; I take the following as their answer to your question:
I have not got to the part of the book where they justify the objective, ontological priority of certain patterns via information arguments, expanding Dennett’s compressibility ideas, I assume.
One drawback is that different sciences are needed to address different aspects of the manifest image. For example, a sufficiently advanced psychology/neuroscience might do much better than the manifest image counterpart (folk psychology) in explaining people’s behavior, but those sciences won’t help you much if you are trying to explain the tides.
The manifest image has the advantage of addressing all domains of a human experience, usually in a good-enough way. I suspect that is related to the moral of the Hall fable that Walt posted.
That’s an interesting way of putting this matter. I do think you should take a look at Thomasson’s _Ordinary Objects_ if you have a chance.
BruceS,
Thanks, Bruce. Yes, there was the Deacon “affair” about which he was formally exonerated. Both he and Ursula Goodenough, who co-authored, survive academic peer review w/little trouble. We’ll submit their arguments, of course, on their own merits w/o authoritative appeals, much less blogospheric ad hominems.
keiths:
walto:
walto, a week ago:
If the issue of solidity is an exception to your general rule, then what are the criteria by which you identify the exceptional cases?
Bruce,
Libertarian free will is a great example of a prominent and intuitively compelling feature of the manifest image that must nevertheless be abandoned.
It’s also interesting that you can figure this out without consulting the scientific image. Libertarian free will is incoherent on its own terms.
Keith:
Is that a “you” as in me (ie Bruce). Or a “you” as in “one” (ie anyone)?
I am sympathetic to an approach that I understand people like Pat Churchland and Dennett take: we need an approach to the actions of agents that keeps moral responsibility; probably “free will” has too much baggage to be a useful term.
It’s a “you” as in “one”.
The scientific image tells us that the mind is instantiated in the brain, but one doesn’t need to know that in order to reject libertarian free will, which is incoherent even in dualist terms.
Some irony in the reviewers:
The nastiest review that I saw which dwelt on writing style and questions about citing relevant sources was from McGinn. Of course, he has had his own (different) issues recently related to academic propriety.
Another less nasty but negative review was from Fodor. He himself was recently subject both to nasty book reviews and blogosphere attacks on his latest book (I am not saying I agree with Fodor’s view of NS).
Anyway, enough gossip (for now).
I will re-attempt the paper as he seemed to me to be presenting, among other things, an approach to naturalistic ethics which differs from the Kitcher approach I recently read and I am interesting in other ways of thinking about this.
Kitcher’s view of ethics as “social technology” is much easier for an ex-IT person like me to follow, however.
Why, one wonders, would one write ‘change to accomodate’ rather than simply directly quote ‘be made consistent with’? And then the answer comes: if the the writer is keiths, that is how he rolls.
Science needn’t change anything to accomodate commonsense–it can’t be confirmed at all without it. As I’ve repeated a dozen times on this thread–this isn’t a matter of various beliefs (like that the earth is flat or that chairs have no spaces) being true or false. It’s about the basic applicability (at all) of various categories, like truth, knowlege, externality, and value.
To be consistent, you should be a verificationist of the phenomenalist type about physical objects. If you’re content to define values in terms of personal preferences, you should be equally insistent that we define chairs into sense-data or permanent possibilities of sensation.
Bruce,
I am a compatibilist on the question of free will, like Dennett, but I have problems with some of his ideas regarding moral responsibility.
I think that the idea of ultimate moral responsibility — the kind needed to justify retributive punishment — is a fiction, though an extremely intuitive and compelling one. Another example of the manifest image gone awry.
It would make a good topic for an OP.
walto,
I wrote ‘change to accommodate’ because a) it was accurate, and b) it wasn’t a direct quote. We paraphrase ideas all the time without directly quoting them. Why on earth would you object to that, especially since you do it as much as the rest of us?
If you think I’ve misrepresented you, then please explain how this…
…is a misrepresentation of this…
You might also want to explain why you agreed when I wrote this…
Your response:
Two days ago you said I was “right” and that it was a “good question”; now it’s an egregious misrepresentation. Consistency and honesty aren’t your strong points, walto.
Why not take the energy you habitually funnel into false accusations and rededicate it toward making your philosophical positions coherent and defensible? We would all benefit.
There is a certain kind of privilege, but you are still wrong! Just because it is privileged in a way science is not doesn’t mean that science should or has to change anything it’s doing. It can’t go on at all without recognizing that commonsense is first in terms of method–just as science is privileged in terms of result. That is a nuance (I get that’s not your thing).
And, yes, it’s pretty clear that you enjoy intentionally misrepresenting people you disagree with. It’s not exactly anything new, it’s has been your modus operandi since I’ve been here, and, I understand from others, before that. You should learn to embrace it, as all the rest of us have!
And, I know, I know, your advice for me is that when you intentionally misrepresent me, I should respond by meditating. Sorry to disappoint.
walto,
That’s silly. The scientific image clashes with the manifest image. If it didn’t, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place.
You’re equivocating on “common sense”. Science borrows some commonsense rules of reasoning from the manifest image, but it hardly accepts “common sense” wholesale. As I’ve mentioned, scientifically savvy folks reject the commonsense notion of solidity in favor of a scientifically informed one in which solid objects consist of mostly empty space.
The manifest image yields to the scientific image in this case and many, many others — contrary to your general rule.
It is about beliefs being true or false. You have claimed that objective values exist. That is a belief, and it is either true or false.
Not at all. As I’ve explained throughout the thread, we have good reasons for regarding chairs (and computer monitors) as objectively real. Those good reasons do not obtain in the case of objective morality or objective values.
petrushka,
Btwn speaking of unfocussed energy, I note that you have responded to no criticisms of your rarther primitive verificationism, preferring to repeat canards to which I have responded over and over again. Why is that, Father Williams?
Your view that factual propositions have just enough corroboration for your liking isn’t really anything but question-begging. Also, I have been quite consistent in denying that I mean by common sessne any of the earth-is-flat beliefs you keep imputing to me. That’s not equivocation, it’s your method of “argummentation.”
My previous post was so long ago that I’ve forgotten what I said. I’m not sure what you are responding to.
walto,
Sure I have, but it’s not clear that you understand what ‘verificationism’ means.
I haven’t claimed that talk of objective values is meaningless, as a verificationist would — I’ve simply pointed out that there’s no good reason to assert their existence.
Why assert something if you lack good reasons to do so? As I put it earlier:
Asking for good reasons isn’t ‘verificationism’, walto.
petrushka, to walto:
Although he addressed it to you, his response was actually to me.
I wasn’t actually responding to you, petrushka. When I post via my old, crappy blackberry, you never know what weirdness will ensue.
BTW, before keiths begins running around with my claim that the “method” of commonsense is privileged, let me explain. We can give the scientist his ergs and neutrons and quanta of energy, but if take away the cyclotrons, reactors and cloud chambers of his every-day world, his language will, as Hall said, “remain unattached, non-designative, that is, no language at all, certainly not a language descriptive of the external world.” What I mean by commonsense is found in the forms of language (like naming and predication and its basic intentionality) and, these I take to be non-empirical, so they cannot be opposed to any strictly scientific theories. The realms are separate: science has no method either for determining the nature of truth or for deciding between such positions as realism and idealism, and philosophy will not explain charmed particles. I have never suggested that science must be changed to accomodate commonsense or anything else. It’s a complete fabrication. When it comes to empirical questions, both commonsense and philosophy must always defer.
But, of course, this is all stuff I’ve said on TSZ a thousand times. So, naturally, what gets suggested as my view is stuff I’ve never said, and obviously don’t believe. That’s keiths’ way.
Of course your use of “good reasons” here is, again, simply question-begging. If you will only take scientific reasons as good, you obviously will not get values. Duh.
My claim that your position is verificationist stems from your insistence that if values (what you call “objectives values”–what you call “values” are preferences) can’t be proven to exist by some scientific procedure (preferably involving vacuum tubes) it is irrational to believe in them. As I’ve pointed out, the same might be said of truth and knowledge and the past. There are no empirical confirmation procedures available there either.
But we’ve been over this 50 times at least. You don’t like the idea of “objective values.” And you like the idea of truth, so one goes and the other stays.
Are you quietly dropping your accusation of ‘verificationism’, now that you understand what the word actually means?
No, I think you are a verificationist, and that your definition of it is too restrictive. See above.
walto,
It’s extremely bad blog etiquette for you to post a comment and then go back and add entire sections to it without prefacing them with an “ETA” or equivalent.
Knock it off.
There may be a bit of hype there, since you are currently shown as having only 776 comments.
(And I’m just having a bit of fun pointing that out).
I do agree with your main point. Science is, to a significant extent, built on top of commonsense, and science would not be possible without that.
Sorry. Best to wait a few minutes before responding to one of my posts. I nearly always edit them.
Your violations are much worse than that kind of thing, btw.
Your etiquette violations are much worse than that kind of thing, btw.
You’re right. Prolly more like 400 times. Hyperbole.
walto,
It’s a good idea to read (and contemplate) your comments in the preview window before clicking on ‘Post Comment’. There’s no need to rush, and rushing is a bad idea — particularly when you are in high dudgeon, as you so often are.
From one of the sections you added to your comment:
My supposed “insistence” is either a figment of your imagination, a lie, or a failure of reading comprehension on your part.
I do not and have never insisted that a belief in objective values requires a “proof”, nor that justification must involve a scientific procedure, much less one involving vacuum tubes.
We’ve agreed that a scientific demonstration of objective morality or objective values is impossible, and so I have asked you for other good reasons to believe that objective values exist or that our consciences can tell us that something is objectively moral or immoral.
You offered a non-scientific procedure to demonstrate these things, but your procedure fails when applied to visual illusions, and there is even less reason to expect it to succeed when applied to objective values — as I explained in detail earlier.
Your “verificationist” accusation failed because I am not a verificationist even by your loose definition, as explained above.
What’s left? What’s a good reason for believing that values are objective, and that your conscience is basically reliable in judging what is or isn’t objectively immoral?
walto,
You’ve accused me of misrepresenting you. I’d still like you to justify your accusation.
From an earlier comment:
It’s your accusation. What’s your justification?
Those two statements say different things. So, yes, there’s a misrepresentation there. The first statement is not a paraphrase of the second.
I’m not sure how to explain it to you, because you do seem to have a problem with subtleties of language. There’s nothing in the second statement suggesting a need for change to the scientific image.
Neil,
Riiiiight. Well, give it a try. If I don’t get it, I’ll ask for help from someone who doesn’t share my linguistic deficiencies.
I really have answered this about five times already, but what the hell. NEITHER factual nor value statements are dispositively confirmable–all are always in danger of being wrong or at least needing revision. Your “good reason” list for factual statements simply goes on longer than my “good reason” list for value statements–and you beg the question by claiming that’s crucially important. It would be important only if I agreed that a statement must have scientific backing (perhaps involving a vacuum tube) in order to be worthy of belief. The visual claim and the value assertion are on a par except to the extent that you require a kind of scientific verification not available to value judgments.
BTW, since I didn’t have a good def. of “verificationism” handy last night, I looked around for a statement of the kind of weak verificationism I was talking about, and found this nice explanation from a paper in Erkenntnis in 1975 by a guy named Oshaka. It’s actually a bit weaker than I intended, but you get the idea. This is from the opening page:
Dummett has written a lot on this issue, as have Putnam and Timothy Williamson. But as you found it necessary to explain to me what the word means (for which, THANKS!!), maybe you should trust somebody else on recs.
Second, Neil was right (and I’ve also already explained twice) that your paraphrase was poor because you claimed that I said (actually that I “insist”) that according to my view science must be changed. I don’t think that, as I’m sure you know.
And, finally, what is the point of continuing this newest shitfest that you have instigated? You know my view, I know yours. You also know what I think of your style of argumentation. Is there some benefit to be provided to the world, by you bating me to insult you a dozen more times? If you actually enjoy that as much as I do, I could just throw a bunch of insults into my next post: we’d both be satisfied, and get it over with more quickly. Because what I don’t enjoy is these repetitions, and the pretense that airing these types of disagreements is instructive to anyone. Why can’t you stand it if somebody disagrees with you? (And please, no more of this “I’m happy to admit when I’m wrong” nonsense. There may be no human being in history of whom that remark is more hilariously false.)