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Goon Danton posted:Logical Positivist spotted. Nope.
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Mar 30, 2016 18:28
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Philosophy is important because if we let philosophers stay in the general population they could conceivably have an impact on policy.
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Mar 30, 2016 18:44
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Can't wait for a gamma ray burst to wipe us all out and finally end these debates once and for all.
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Mar 30, 2016 18:50
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Goon Danton posted:More sincerely, philosophy is important because it attempts to answer questions of "why" It doesn't actually do that. When science evolved from philosophy it left behind only the unanswerable questions. Contemporary philosophers seem to be perfectly okay with the idea that modern philosophy can't definitively answer any questions.
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Mar 30, 2016 19:26
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QuarkJets posted:It doesn't actually do that. When science evolved from philosophy it left behind only the unanswerable questions. Contemporary philosophers seem to be perfectly okay with the idea that modern philosophy can't definitively answer any questions. Hmmm, scientific truth is perhaps not the only truth. Science left behind the scientifically unresolvable issues. I don't think it's true that, with science, one can know everything there is to know. Also I don't think modern philosophers sit around all day in armchairs, chewing their pipes contemplating Plato's Theaetetus. I'm not knowledgeable in the area of modern philosophy, but your idea sounds absurd. Ok maybe your post was not serious, the more I think about it... I don't know how likely that is in the libertarian thread!
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Mar 30, 2016 19:36
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QuarkJets posted:It doesn't actually do that. When science evolved from philosophy it left behind only the unanswerable questions. Contemporary philosophers seem to be perfectly okay with the idea that modern philosophy can't definitively answer any questions. I understand what you mean, but they're not unanswerable questions. It's just that there exist infinitely many answers, because the choice of first principles is arbitrary. Metaphysics is basically out as a result, because it's all castles in the clouds, and epistemology is, while interesting, very much ivory tower-type stuff. Broadly speaking, episteme belongs to science these days. But the techne branch of philosophy, like politics, aesthetics, and ethics, is just as vital as it ever was.
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Mar 30, 2016 19:46
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Jack of Hearts posted:there exist infinitely many answers, because the choice of first principles is arbitrary. If this is a problem that infects philosophy, then it also infects the sciences. I think philosophy can give us certainty, to the extent that that notion even makes sense, about conditionals whose antecedents are (perhaps arbitrary) fundamental truths. Like Quine said, any proposition can be held true come what may, as long as we are willing to revise background assumptions. Which means that metaphysics (Edit: and science, too!) is a game of determining what are the ontological costs for maintaining whatever position. Critiquing a position in metaphysics almost always involves demonstrating that it is inconsistent with some more dearly held position. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 20:09
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SHISHKABOB posted:Hmmm, scientific truth is perhaps not the only truth. 
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Mar 30, 2016 20:22
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theshim posted:Perhaps you can think of some others, like historical truth, or personal truth? I can think of traditions passed through generational teaching as one way to preserve and categorize knowledge. This is speculation, but what I mean is oral traditions that teach about ways of living that have been used for many many generations. Stuff like that was not determined scientifically. I postulate that science cannot reproduce that knowledge. I'm using knowledge, truth, answers and "knowing" in general pretty interchangeably.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:37
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SHISHKABOB posted:I don't think it's true that, with science, one can know everything there is to know. I don't think it's true that, with his post, QuarkJets implied that one can know everything there is to know. Juffo-Wup posted:If this is a problem that infects philosophy, then it also infects the sciences. Philosophy is the one that apparently cares about a kind of formal "certainty," whereas science has no such baggage. The fact of arbitrary priors (in a Bayesian sense) ultimately washes out in scientific practice, and while there is no end-game "certain" Truth to discover, our ability to make increasingly precise models that predict observations maintains, to the point that the levels of uncertainty (i.e. chance of the results predicted by the model occurring randomly due to some fundamentally different model) in many physical laws are incomprehensibly small, which is all anyone needs. The only formally certain conclusions, I think, are found in formal mathematics. Once you start using colloquial words that are meant to describe a concept that isn't strictly defined from axioms in a propositional calculus, you're already hosed on the formal logic front.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:42
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theshim posted:Perhaps you can think of some others, like historical truth, or personal truth? I just needed to post that I appreciate this reference. It's a Picard quote from TNG
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Mar 30, 2016 20:45
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Sedge and Bee posted:Can't wait for a gamma ray burst to wipe us all out and finally end these debates once and for all. The universe will finally end humanity's free riding off the Sun.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:45
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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SHISHKABOB posted:I can think of traditions passed through generational teaching as one way to preserve and categorize knowledge. The process of taking hypotheses and testing them for failure cannot reproduce cultural knowledge? I believe that, generally, science takes ideas found in culture, and either disproves or refines them. The aim of science is motivated by the people employing it, after all. There are surely domains of valuable knowledge for which scientific experimentation is infeasible, such as "what is a good life," but the knowledge that science has secured for us is peppered throughout our fruitful exploration of these subjects.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:54
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Stinky_Pete posted:The process of taking hypotheses and testing them for failure cannot reproduce cultural knowledge? I believe that, generally, science takes ideas found in culture, and either disproves or refines them. The aim of science is motivated by the people employing it, after all. Let me tell you about a little Libertarian thing called Praxeology....
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Mar 30, 2016 20:56
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Stinky_Pete posted:Philosophy is the one that apparently cares about a kind of formal "certainty," whereas science has no such baggage. The fact of arbitrary priors (in a Bayesian sense) ultimately washes out in scientific practice, and while there is no end-game "certain" Truth to discover, our ability to make increasingly precise models that predict observations maintains, to the point that the levels of uncertainty (i.e. chance of the results predicted by the model occurring randomly due to some fundamentally different model) in many physical laws are incomprehensibly small, which is all anyone needs. If you're going to quote me to argue with something I said, don't cut off the quote in the middle of a loving sentence. A page ago, you were bemoaning the fact that all philosophers do is argue over how to define particular words, and now here you are hanging your whole theory of science on a quibble over the word 'certainty.' I'm beginning to think what I thought was hubris on your part is really just profound laziness.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:56
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Stinky_Pete posted:The process of taking hypotheses and testing them for failure cannot reproduce cultural knowledge? I believe that, generally, science takes ideas found in culture, and either disproves or refines them. The aim of science is motivated by the people employing it, after all. No actually science is bad. CommieGIR posted:Let me tell you about a little Libertarian thing called Praxeology.... I'm happy that praxeology proved that the world is flat.
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Mar 30, 2016 20:58
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Stinky_Pete posted:I don't think it's true that, with his post, QuarkJets implied that one can know everything there is to know.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:04
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Nosfereefer posted:It is a basic problem of the way we think, where we are able to create nonsensical statements which automatically seem deep. It's just a more modern turn on the old "what is the sound of one hand clapping". Stinky_Pete posted:Yeah, exactly. Every brain-in-a-jar or chain-of-simulations hypothesis is fundamentally unfalsifiable, and gets to share a table with the infinitely many unfalsifiable hypotheses about metaphysics that can be expressed in a language. Easy stuff. Stinky_Pete posted:No, I don't think there's an enormous body of [noteworthy] literature about the brain-in-the-jar style of postulate, any more than that can be said of ghosts. Juffo-Wup posted:If you're going to quote me to argue with something I said, don't cut off the quote in the middle of a loving sentence. A page ago, you were bemoaning the fact that all philosophers do is argue over how to define particular words, and now here you are hanging your whole theory of science on a quibble over the word 'certainty.' No, I was bemoaning the fact that that's what some philosophers do. I'm happy to distinguish between formal certainty, which is as certain as a human can be about the validity of a series of statements in a propositional calculus, and Certainty, which I take to mean the assessment that a statement's probability of truth is equal to 1. Science gives us colloquial certainty (about matters which we are well-equipped to study empirically), which is simply a very high probability (e.g. 0.9999). Cingulate posted:Again, no offense, but you haven't read up on what anybody else has said about these topics have you? Nobody who's on a pedestal, I guess.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:10
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Science gives us knowledge. The question is then, what is knowledge?
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Mar 30, 2016 21:15
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Stinky_Pete posted:No, I was bemoaning the fact that that's what some philosophers do. I'm happy to distinguish between formal certainty, which is as certain as a human can be about the validity of a series of statements in a propositional calculus, and Certainty, which I take to mean the assessment that a statement's probability of truth is equal to 1. It's like you didn't even read what I wrote beyond where you cut off your quote.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:15
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Juffo-Wup posted:It's like you didn't even read what I wrote beyond where you cut off your quote. Yes I see now that you were referring to formal certainty as well. I maintain that formal certainty evaporates quickly in verbal arguments. SHISHKABOB posted:Science gives us knowledge. The question is then, what is knowledge? What is "is?" 
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Mar 30, 2016 21:23
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Stinky_Pete posted:Yes I see now that you were referring to formal certainty as well. I maintain that formal certainty evaporates quickly in verbal arguments. You're not after truth, you're after practicality. Why, then, are you interested in science and philosophy as competing vessels of the search for truth?
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Mar 30, 2016 21:28
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Stinky_Pete posted:I maintain that formal certainty evaporates quickly in verbal arguments. Yes, you certainly do. For reasons that you prefer to keep secret, I gather.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:36
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SHISHKABOB posted:You're not after truth, you're after practicality. Why, then, are you interested in science and philosophy as competing vessels of the search for truth? I don't think they're competing. I just have a beef with the idea of a bunch of people spinning their wheels on fruitless "problems" such as brain-in-vat or mind/body "duality."
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Mar 30, 2016 21:42
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Stinky_Pete posted:I don't think they're competing. I just have a beef with the idea of a bunch of people spinning their wheels on fruitless "problems" such as brain-in-vat or mind/body "duality." Ok, good, because you don't have to worry about that.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:43
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SHISHKABOB posted:Ok, good, because you don't have to worry about that. That's a relief!
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Mar 30, 2016 21:44
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As interesting as some of this is, it probably belongs in its own thread and not here in the Libertarian Mock Thread.
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Mar 30, 2016 21:52
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Who What Now posted:As interesting as some of this is, it probably belongs in its own thread and not here in the Libertarian Mock Thread. Agreed. Philosophy Thread is over here for those of you who want to keep going.
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Mar 30, 2016 22:42
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This isn't a mock thread. It just so happens that refuting libertarian ideas is so easy that you can perceive it as mocking
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Mar 30, 2016 22:53
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SHISHKABOB posted:Science gives us knowledge. The question is then, what is knowledge? Power, or so I've been told.
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Mar 30, 2016 23:37
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SHISHKABOB posted:Hmmm, scientific truth is perhaps not the only truth. I never said that it was, I said that philosophy provides no definitive answers to questions of "why" SHISHKABOB posted:Science left behind the scientifically unresolvable issues. I don't think it's true that, with science, one can know everything there is to know. I never said that it was, just that philosophy does not definitively answer any of the questions that science does not answer. If you think that's wrong, then you only need to provide one counterexample (but you won't, because modern philosophy provides no definitive answers, only speculative ones) SHISHKABOB posted:Also I don't think modern philosophers sit around all day in armchairs, chewing their pipes contemplating Plato's Theaetetus. I'm not knowledgeable in the area of modern philosophy, but your idea sounds absurd. I never said that they did. You sure are shooting down a lot of suggestions that I never made!
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Mar 31, 2016 00:05
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Stinky_Pete posted:What is "is?"  To scoot back on topic, I actually do gather there is a strain in libertarianism which rejects many modern scientific findings, not on the grounds of "well I think the medical establishment is exaggerating and raw milk is actually fine/colloidial silver actually helps me with my hypochondriosis," but on the grounds of "A = A, therefore quantum mechanics is inherently impossible." Which is where of course the whole praexology thing comes in, and I even remember in that last jrode thread, how he actually said you can't disprove Austrian economic theories with mere evidence, but you CAN reinforce or, perhaps, at MOST, slightly modify them -- introduce an epicycle or two -- all that you want.
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Mar 31, 2016 00:13
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Is there any good empirical evidence for a natural monopoly in the wild? I got linked to a mises.org thing but it cited real economists and it seems the Chicago school of real economists is skeptical of the idea that natural monopolies have been observed. They seem to have a fair point that utilities firms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries may have had ulterior motives when they made the case that they were natural monopolies, and classical economics was still in its infancy at the time, and there haven't been wild sightings since.
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Mar 31, 2016 01:54
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Arglebargle III posted:Is there any good empirical evidence for a natural monopoly in the wild? I got linked to a mises.org thing but it cited real economists and it seems the Chicago school of real economists is skeptical of the idea that natural monopolies have been observed. They seem to have a fair point that utilities firms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries may have had ulterior motives when they made the case that they were natural monopolies, and classical economics was still in its infancy at the time, and there haven't been wild sightings since. Presence of ulterior motives is not enough to cast aside their actual arguments for being natural monopolies, and I think that laying down multiple electric grids is inefficient. But to expand the idea beyond the classic utilities examples, TV networks are a natural...oligopoly, or you can consider the business of broadcasting over each network TV frequency band its own natural monopoly.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:16
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Nessus posted:
Oh right, because it's all correct by definition. It's not his fault reality isn't fitting those perfect inherently-true definitions.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:20
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Ayn Rand rejected quantum mechanics for exactly that reason. Also psychology, neurology, and evolution. Also biology and statistics, like any medical evidence that showed something she enjoys like smoking is harmful. Basically anything that implied humans are anything less than perfectly rational calculating machines was right out.
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Mar 31, 2016 02:28
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VitalSigns posted:Ayn Rand rejected quantum mechanics for exactly that reason. Also psychology, neurology, and evolution. Also biology and statistics, like any medical evidence that showed something she enjoys like smoking is harmful. Basically anything that implied humans are anything less than perfectly rational calculating machines was right out. They seemed to recognize the wisdom in this and the rationality too, but it troubled them nonetheless.
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Mar 31, 2016 03:05
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Stinky_Pete posted:What is "is?" Is: a verb of "being" or a "be verb", it defines the current state of an object. It is the "third person singular" be verb; with "am" being "first person"; and "are" being the "second person" and "third person plural" be verb. Used in combination with adjectives, prepositions, and continuous verbs. Ex.: Tom is sick. Sally is at the store. Joan is running. Present: Is Past: Was Future: Will be Past Participle: been Continuous: being It's okay, I teach English as a foreign language. I know it can be confusing sometimes. Now can we get back to libertarians?
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Mar 31, 2016 03:09
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Nessus posted:Apparently someone went to an Objectivist meeting and was asked "why don't you smoke?" "Well, I'm actually allergic, so I'd rather not." I'm pretty sure that was Rothbard, but it might have been John Hospers. I get my "Ayn Rand invited me over....oh my God holy poo poo" stories mixed up sometimes. Rothbard wrote a play about meeting  Carson Sand, Mozart Was A Red quote:CARSON (turning to KEITH): Keith, would you like a cigarette? Here, this is a particularly rational brand.
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Mar 31, 2016 03:31
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VitalSigns posted:Ayn Rand rejected quantum mechanics for exactly that reason. Wait, what? How? What? A is A, therefore no quantum mechanics? Seriously?
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Mar 31, 2016 03:46
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