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ultimatively you will come to the conclusion that many things, including logic are wasting peoples time, and that the truth does not even exist inside the philosophically only relevant sphere, which lies in the connections between humans. logic is symply technology. we will always be fooled and exploited by others or do it by ourselves, because within the human realm truth can not exist. which ultimately touches only practically relevant aspect of philosophy, which is ethics. and there you will find that even in the material world, the boarder of facts fade into obscurity
yeah except for the fact that those imaginations are what allowed for abstract maths and physics... these imaginations are what allow us to reach exponential growth lol. You are kinda low ish level, sure your iq is high but you have literally no intution and creativity lol. philosopy or rather imaginations are what let us get to the next level because there are somethings we can't observe lol we can intuite. i am just a 70 iq african but have a phd from uk university lol,
To me, philosophy is about the pursuit to know oneself. It's about how can I better understand myself and the world around me. I don't think it's about unveiling the deepest mysteries of existence.
Mate you are absolutely brilliant. To be as fluent with words with the level of confidence behind them as you demonstrate should be a primary goal for any a man who wishes to make an impact. Great work.
The most exciting channel on RUclips. Seriously fun and edifying. Unsolicited Advice dude, you have made my life a tiny bit better. Thanks from California
I was just daydreaming about this today when someone accused scientists of being “materialistically fixated”..I thought to myself: I am actually fixated on the type of thinking that has communicative utility, not just for communicating the reasoning with others but also with myself; if our thoughts can be represented with clarity and structure then mistakes can be found definitively. We can’t check if we’re being dumb if our thinking is not made explicit, at least to ourselves! I respect this videos message deeply
I personally see great value in the western esoteric ideas of balance between the intangible (emotional, nonphysical, mental world) and the tangible (physical, material, observable) realities. I can see arguments for sticking to the logical side strictly, but it ignores a huge part of what makes being human so wonderous and meaningful. It's a quick way to end up where we are today, obsessed with material means of production and an 'objective' reality. Would be tragic to erase our ability to imagine and be curiously engaged with ideas that don't exist logically yet, because how else are we supposed to invent new things and conceptualize new ideas that have never previously existed?
I don't know if i see any particular tension between logical positivism and imagination - logical positivism does not denigrate imagination, it simply seeks to clarify what is imagined from what is observed.
@@athanasios328 Just look at evolution: it constantly adapts, i.e. invents, and becomes more complex as do our (humanities) ideas. It started off with simple life forms: they fed on inanimate objects, i.e. minerals, simply gathering in the darkness with very few senses. Those were herbivores. Then they got hunted by carnivores who had to develop more senses to find and detect them and weapons to overpower and kill them. Then more senses, new biomes, feelings and finally consciousness. We have to carry this legacy further, into uncharted territories, like those before us have.
I love that you mention cleansing ones pallet at the very end 😅🤌🏾 it is just perfect! I have to agree with some of what you pose in this vid relative to language, logic and truth because some are positions that are absolute facts. But I also must advise that one employ great discernment with much of what you stated. It is impossible to logic our way out of being an object that is self-aware with layered limitations and agency which is subject to the overarching objective truths of object reality (truths which are often invisible to us when we begin to discuss, investigate or discover them) at every scale. The idea that we could just go off of what we are able to prove empirically and achieve better results than through multivalent and variable modes of operation that are inclusive as opposed to exclusive; is one that due to our position being causally looped forwards and backwards far beyond our ability to perceive empirically, by definition an idea that is not logical at all. From my perspective, and in my opinion at least. No offense meant or taken on my end 😌🤙🏾 just putting out a few thoughts that seem relevant based on what you put forth in your vid. Thanks for the thought provocation Noble Sir 🤓🙏🏾
This is exactly the sort of thing I love that verificationism produces as a conversation starter! I think one of its great strengths is just that it gets people talking about methods of investigation, and encourages us to explore which forms of philosophy we want to pursue
Your channel is amazing, keep making those videos they are literally the most informative videos on philosophy, logic, writers and other stuff. You manage to say so much in such little time you don't waste words either. Great job dude
@@unsolicitedadvice9198no problem, also wanted to say that finding such a channel like yours amongst the sea of useless and non-informative content is very difficult. You teach me more than my teachers do 😂
I do agree with much of this and believe it's very useful as AJ Ayers was saying. Though straight-up utility of a thing doesn't necessarily provide meaning and spiritual wonderings are not always pointless as much of scientific progress hasn't occurred through logic alone. I definitely think there is great value here as clarity and logic certainly helps with much of a person's life and humanity's as a whole. I just think without sparks of creativity, ambiguity and randomness the potential of human ingenuity, invention and zest to life is too limited.
I know what you mean. I sometimes think that this does not track how great discoveries are made in practice. Apparently the question that inspired Einstein to eventually formulate General Relativity Theory was "what would it look like if I ran alongside a beam of light", which is an unverifiable statement as (according to my friend who is much better acquainted with physics than me) this is impossible even in principle
I learned a lot of philosophy, a lot of them are in conflict especially with eastern and western and once you’re overloaded with that information now you don’t know what the truth is. Existential Crisis hits hard again, Especially with someone who made a lot of bad decisions in life. And addition to that fellows with OCD. It sucks sometimes because you’re haunted with these questions. ENDLESS QUESTIONS that has really no answers
Yup especially a lot of thought experiments for me nihilism and gnosticism caused me a lot of anxiety and especially the butter fly dream thought experiment
This is why I resist going down the philosophical rabbit hole, even though my philosophy of science class has prompted me to think about it from time to time. When it comes to my philosophy on science I consider myself an instrumentalist but I still find the illusion that it leads to truth alluring. Philosophy breaks that illusion.
Philosophy ends when experience begins . when one has a realization based on direct experience , words become an expression instead of an inquiry , which is found in philosophy . However, it is NOt philosophy that creates the experience/realization because it does not contain the inherent ability to transcend its own activity which is essential in realizing that which philosophy appears inside of as consciousness awake to itself .
I realize that I read some Ayer ages ago, a few years into studying philosophy, and it lodged in deep with me. I guess that's part of the reason I didn't finish my philosophy studies. I switched to psychology. While not on a very sure footing, it at least has the potential to yield empirical, and thus verifiable, knowledge about human beings. (Don't noone mention, Popper.) About the last bit, how verificationism might be criticized for being unverifiable (a bit like how Hume was criticized, as far as I recall, and told that he could put commit his own work "to the fire"), didn't Russell and Whitehead sort of show that you really can't get anywhere in logic without making some assumptions? Edit: I forgot to leave a kudos. I really liked this video and your explanation of Ayer's view was very clear and easy to follow. I'll check out your other videos, I think.
I’m not a mathematician so I may be wrong here, but I think 2+2=4 being a tautology actually depends on the axioms you choose to use. If one uses the Peano axioms for example one can prove 2+2=4 which would make it closer to a theorem than a tautology. No mathematician in their right mind would actually call it a theorem because the proof is trivial for them and the statement isn’t that interesting. But under those set of axioms it’s a statement that can be proven using pure deductive reasoning.
Yes I get what you mean. It’s partly because Ayer thinks of theorems as types of tautologies, seeing as in his view proofs don’t add any new content, but rather reveal what was already there “in” the axioms for everyone to see and make use of
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 That’s an interesting way to look at tautologies and probably valid because I don’t think mathematicians are consistent in how they use the term. I guess if you want to think of it that way that would make all statements that follow from pure deductive reasoning, not just mathematical proofs, tautological in nature. Because pure math isn’t inductive or abductive like science and parts of philosophy. Maybe that was obvious already but I’m not too into philosophy and only learned about tautologies from a proof writing course I did for my math minor. I only took one Philosophy of Science course in college and to be honest I did not enjoy the course after a certain point because the arguments got too abstract or metaphysical for my liking and they felt like unfair critiques of science to me, even though I couldn’t articulate why. For a while afterward I thought I had a distaste in philosophy but I think I might just not like thinking about metaphysics for extended amounts of time because the questions they pose seem meaningless to me.
“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect” -Bertrand Russell
I've seen a few of your videos now and I am baffled you don't have more subscribers! You present your points very clearly in a way that grips the viewer, well done and keep it up!
I haven't read Ayer... but if you're explaining him correctly... his proposals seem to be just Kant repackaged. To me, Kant says that our innate metaphysical conceptualizations are only known & validated through experience. Kant lead me to exactly what you explain Ayers philosophy to be - A proposition isn't true unless I can verify it through experience. If an analytical object ( mind object ) can't be shown in experience... that is, become synthetic knowledge (understood/known thru the combo of Intellect and sense data,) it's only an object in a head & can only be that until shown in experience. This just throws away so much philosophical, theological and, yes, scientific garbage... that is claimed external of the mind... that can't be shown to be that : Heaven, Hell, Solipsistic ideas of all kinds, Multiverses, etc., etc. I'm gonna try Ayer, but it seems that he may be merely repackaging the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction of Kant... as I have understood it.
It's absolutely beautiful to see you explain such extensive topics in a charming and graspable manner. My interest in philosophy and literature has recently rekindled, and one of the reasons is you. I would love to see you discuss more themes and motifs in literature and various niche philosophical ideas. You will do great. Best of luck.
Have you considered doing a video or even a series unpacking the philosophy of the Bible and Christianity? Beyond any doubt Christianity has been the driving philosophical force behind Europe for the past 2000 years and has given rise to the most advanced and successful civilisational group in history.
I once made a comment in a livestream chat. "3 philosophers at lunch can argue endlessly abiut how many of them were at the table." An immediate reply was, "Define table." Absolutely hillarious, and so apropos!
There is a part of me that truly appreciates the modality of thinking that is rather fixated on a worldview of sure knowledge founded in posteriori considerations. Still it's basing it's ontological views on many assumptions that it doesn't always see that it's making. I cannot go into dissertation length descriptions here of all the essential ways this has been done by these logical positivists and similar schools of philosophers. What I will say is so many things I've found to be true are not substantially tangible, they're not (at least yet) directly testable, they're not the things that sciences are as concerned with, but still founded in truth and reasonable given forms of evidence. The most important lengths of things that have to do with the cosmos and our apparent existence are quite slippery and yet present in many ways, there is a sort of spiraling pattern here that some poetic statements actually attain a grasp on and satisfy a yearning of knowledge, a sense it's beholden. Still to rigorously prove these things out for linear conceptions is not what anyone seems to be able to do and that's why we strive endlessly in the means of our meaning, that being to try to solve the impossible existential hermeneutic. Peace be onto you all, YQA
The view that many grew to disdain in the late 1800s onwards was in large part idealism particularly the kind people like F.H. Bradley supported, which was known as British Idealism which ultimately stemmed from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Apparently Bradley upset Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore so much that it was this frustration that gave way to analytic philosophy. Of course that philosophy has been both incredibly productive and the branch that would dominate the 1900s until today. However, that Idealism is seen as unverifiable metaphysics says far more about the person making the claim than it does about it as a philosophy. The arguments are there and in my opinion very clear as to what it is claiming and it is neither mine nor anyone else's job to educate those that don't understand it. Most interestingly it is also the direction that science is increasingly turning toward as its limits, especially in physics, have seemingly come to a bit of a stand still in the past decade or so. Things like the double slit experiment, relativity and the speed of light, the observer problem, the ever illusive issue of consciousness and other similar issues keep those most involved in those things pushing out toward new perspectives and its no surprise that many of those new perspectives fall within the jurisdiction of Idealism.
I am not sure that any of the relevant philosophers ever claimed that outer world does not exist. Descartes and Kant discussed the question, but not in order to prove such radical skepticism (Kant actually said that it's a scandal that no one has so far proved the existence of the outer world - and then he ventured to this task). I think that Ayer mainly discussed the metaphysics of British Hegelians (F.H. Bradley, Bosanquet, etc) and sometimes I am not sure that he has ever read some serious work of classical metaphysics. This misunderstanding of continental philosophy was quite fashionable among logical positivists (just read Gilbert Ryle 's interpretation of Heidegger). That being said, I am very pleased with your presentation, it was interesting, clear and well structured.
“I am not teaching philosophy here. What I am saying has nothing to do with philosophy. It is absolutely experimental and experiential. My effort is to create a scientific religion - the psychology of the buddhas. So I am giving you experiments and I am giving you possibilities to experience something that you have not experienced yet. This is a lab, a workshop. We are bent upon doing something - I mean business here! Philosophy is not the concern at all.
"I am very anti-philosophic and I avoid philosophy because it is playing with shadows, thoughts, speculation. And you can go on playing infinitely, ad infinitum, ad nauseam; there is no end to it. One word creates another word, one theory creates another theory, and you can go on and on and on. In five thousand years much philosophy has existed in the world, and to no purpose at all. "But there are people who have the philosophic attitude. And if you are one of them, please drop it; otherwise you and your energy will be lost in a desert
“I am not teaching philosophy here because I am teaching no-mind. And if you become a no-mind all philosophy disappears: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - all philosophies disappear; Hegelian, Kantian, Russellian - all philosophies disappear. If the mind disappears, where can the philosophy exist? Where can it grow? Mind is the breeding ground of philosophy.
"Let the mind disappear. And the beauty is, when there is no mind and nobody to philosophize and nothing to philosophize about, one comes to know. Philosophy is the blind man’s effort. It is said: Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night, searching for a black cat which is not there….”
“I am not a philosopher. The philosopher thinks about things. It is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing with a clarity which comes when you put your mind aside, when you see through silence, not through logic. Seeing is not thinking. “The sun rises there; if you think about it you miss it, because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it. In thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then can you see it. “Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes. It gives its own color, its own idea to the reality. It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality; it is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth. “All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. Either you know it, or you don't. If you know it, there is no need to think about it. If you don't, then how can you think about it? “A philosopher thinking about truth is just like a blind man thinking about light. If you have eyes, you don't think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process; it is a byproduct of meditation. “Hence I would not like my way of life to be ever called a philosophy, because it has nothing to do with philosophy. You can call it philosia. The word ‘philo’ means love; ‘sophy’ means wisdom, knowledge - love for knowledge. In philosia, ‘philo’ means the same love, and ‘sia’ means seeing: love, not for knowledge but for being - not for wisdom, but for experiencing.” Philosophy Is the Worst Wastage of Human Intelligence that Is Possible “I am not a philosopher. The philosopher thinks about the truth. His approach is rational. Reason is his instrument, and here just the opposite is the case. I am an irrational man. And the people who have gathered around me - around the world - the appeal to them is my irrationality, because reason has failed so utterly. For three thousand years in the West, ten thousand years in the East, philosophers have been struggling to find the truth, and not a single philosopher has been able to find it. “The way of philosophy does not go with truth at all. It is just rational gymnastics. So one philosopher can argue against another philosopher, and they go on arguing for centuries, but they have not come to agreement on a single point. Philosophy is the worst wastage of human intelligence that is possible. When I say I am not a philosopher, I simply mean that my approach towards reality is not through the head, it is through the heart. “I also say that I do not preach a religion because religion is something like love - you cannot teach it. There is no way to teach love, and if you teach love and somebody becomes trained under your teachings, he may go to Hollywood and become an actor, but he will never become a lover. Your very teaching, your very discipline will be the barrier. So I say I don't teach religion. Religion is something that passes heart to heart, not head to head. The moment religion passes head to head, it becomes theology. It is no more religion.”
A mix of both, non philosophical, and philosophical, might be nice you somehow have to think or you'll stagnate, you somehow have to halt thinking or you'll get lost You can never ever understand something fully, it wouldn't allow you to, you can go deeper and deeper but you'll never get there. For me, it's just fun, nothing is actually important, any answer can be found in every way, in which way you wanted that applies also to understanding oneself, you'll never know who you really are, in my current understanding of the world, knowing anything including yourself truly is impossible. You could still try though, you'll find bizarre and fascinating stuffs.
There are three different kinds of philosophy which aim at different ends; •Truth Wisdom is the most universal answers to the most universally meaningful questions. It encompasses ontology, mereology, meta-philosophy, metaphysics, proto-physics, meta-epistemology, where meta-ethics. •Practical Wisdom is custom answers to individual problems. •Academic Philosophy is about social acceptance proven by credentials earned primarily through compliance.
Sort of...Yes, philosophy as "pursuit of fundamental truth" or "necessary conditions of knowledge" or some such gibberish is dumb, as in speechless. The "meaning is verification" of the positivists became the "truth is justification" of the pragmatists, following the linguistic turn to its iconoclastic end. They are still with us, and for them philosophy, even logic, is best thought of as a type of therapy, which many of us can attest to.
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 nice. I definitely got that vibe. I advocate for pragmatism every chance I get. Now I'm subbed and notified so...Do it. But you have to mention Rorty.
I may have to treat them one-by-one. I would love to follow the old roots of pragmatism in James and Peirce through Rorty and Brandom to Mizak and Price, but I fear if I do it in one video it will be 4 hours long P.S. thanks for subscribing :)
Glad to find a philosopher that hates metaphysics the way I do. Metaphysics is what turned me off to philosophy for a very long time because I thought that's all it was. I found boring, unintuitive, arrogant, and useless.
Philosophy is a mental circus. It's something you read or hear and then do. To know the self we should go beyond the mental processes. The self, as well as life, is an experience or act. Not a philosophy. So philosophising is just going around in circles since you can't think outside of your own limited memory and experience. The expansion of consiousness will make any philosophy redundant and give us freedom and competence in any faculty. Philosophies are just mental circus and the mind is a barren wastland of thoughts and fantasies. Consciousness is the very core of life and life isnt a philosophy. Understanding comes from involment. The deeper we arebinvolved in life the greater our lives will be
I take the idea of verification to simply denote the need that a statement about reality be substantiated in some sense of the word. Thus, it is a tool by which one can examine an argument for vacuousness. It seems I need to read his material, since, I might be able to address the criticisms. This would also seem to demand that I review the best case of metaphysics. --- I would have no issue with the idea of "Objective Morality" IF the claimants of such provided a criteria by which moral claims could be independently adjudicated, given that the idea of something being objective with regard to reality entails that such can be known independently of the claimant. However, they never provide a means by which such can be done. I would have no issue with the idea of a "God" IF the claims of such had something by which such was shown to be an aspect of reality. Currently, claims of a God are as meaningful as claims of Last Thursdayism. It simply has me wondering about the person's reasoning capacities; while thinking about the power of indoctrination/inculcation. I would have no issue with astrology IF there was a there shown to be there. --- Any recommendations for book concerning metaphysics (special emphasis on books which define and defend the idea)? I think I may at some point take up AJ Ayers charge, but I need to know that what I suspect as being an enemy of rational grounding is in fact the enemy I currently think it to be.
The "all men are mortal" claim is as unverifiable as the statement about the invisible cat. No matter how many men we observe, I can always claim that there is a single immortal man, that we haven't checked just yet (or maybe he is not yet born). We are just forced to believe that **most** men are mortal and draw our conclusions from that.
Ah yes that’s a good point that Ayer does address. He says such statements are “weakly verifiable” so observations can evidence them but not conclusively confirm them in the same way a mathematical truth can (he ends up saying all empirical claims fall into this camp)
@@picklerick777 How can you ascertain that infinite lifespan is impossible? Science advances all the time and is seemingly exponential in it's progress. Because there are barrier's that exist currently, that does not mean that they will always continue to exist. We do not know how much we know do not know, therefore ascertaining the limits of possiblity is the height of ignorance.
This was both an excellent video and an excellent way of understanding philosophy However, I find that a problem with verificationism is that some metaphysical aspects of reality are unverifiable, though impossible to determine just as "nonsense". For example, it is absolutely impossible to verify the existence of other's peoples conscience, or even to know that there is a relation between the soul and the body or if it's just a lot of matter acting according to causal relations. Those are important questions which come from unverifiable experiences of reality but which can't be discarded.
Ironically, logicism itself is meaningless insofar as it is incapable of doing justice to content because it abstracts from empiricism. Logicism is itself a metaphysical theory, since it conveys a certain worldview. Ayer does the same with his emotivism. (Funnily enough, the ideal of having to be logical can also be dissolved emotivistically). It doesn't work without metaphysics. For me, therefore, skepticism towards any theory is a waste of time, because it is an attitude that wants to refrain from making any judgment at all and therefore shirks responsibility and is, moreover, self-contradictory.
Wittgenstein announced the death of philosophy with the Tractatus. He attempted to write a "logically perfect" subset of natural language (austrian, then translated to english). It is an odd syntax to wrap your mind around but provides immense insight into the nature of mental phenomena/states/configurations. Especially the "Picture Theory of Language". "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent - L.Witt He later did change his mind in Philosphical Investigations where he realized natural languages, by design, allow for contradictions making them by definition absolutely imprecise. The polymorphic and ambiguous natural of nature language can therefore only be used to describe events/states of affairs as sorts of language games, and the words are only used to approximate the complete understanding of the phenomenon or "truth".
To summarize, as a logical positivist, Ayer held to a principle of verification that stated a proposition is factually significant if and only if it is a tautology or if it is possible to be empirically observed under conditions that would allow it to be rendered true or false. This principle of verification is not only an impractical philosophy to follow due to its renouncement of ethics, aesthetics and science but it is also a self-refuting one due to the principle of verification being unable to be verified and not being a tautology. It is because of these reasons that Ayer’s principle of verification and logical positivism as a whole be rejected
Yeah essentially! If you want to do justice to that intuition, we need some other philosophical framework. Though I personally think that the intuition the logical positivist is getting at is something more like “philosophy should be useful” but interpreted through this diehard empiricist lens. If we drop the lens we might get somewhere with the intuition
And now for something completely different, I think many philosophers tie themselves in metaphorical knots seeking literal universal truths in a reality where there is nearly always an exception and most things are probabilistic. If we can't look outside of ourselves, it is very difficult to find validation. Whether some act is wrong depends on the agreed definition of wrong
This is one my favorite (very very amateur and recent) past-times, trying to see empty philosophical arguments. My only two real examples of this are the philosophical zombie and free will is an illusion, which I believe boil down to the same fallacy/illogical case, that is the 'further fact'. For p-zombies Chamlers points out that implicit in the problem is that the existence of conscious experience is a further fact, not based in materialism. I believe this is the same as the free-will is an illusion argument/grift. Implicit in the free-will argument is that that free-will could possibly be coming from some other place that is not a materialistic process. Stating that free-will is an illusion is essentially just re-stating, but very inaccurately, that we live in a materialistic or physics based world. If you argue that free will is an illusion because it emerges from a physics based world, then you have to argue that everything else is an illusion too, everything we know emerges from the same physics based world. That may be valid but doesn't seem very useful. Implicit in the idea in free-will is an illusion, is that free-will could be driven by something outside the physical realm, otherwise why even bring it up, and more to the point, why single out free-will. In the free will case I think it's popular because it bugs us (our soul hah!), and sells books, but I suspect there are many more philosophical arguments which are just language games rather than insights.
Owaooo. Your video reminds me my philosophy class in high school long long time ago, in 1981 (under french education system). I explained "why philosophy is a pure waste of time" to my philosophy teacher. I did that in a classroom of about 40 students. The teacher was very angry, and felt like insulted. Me, at that time, was very intellectually aggressive and huge proponent of "optimization of time" as a science lover. Since that moment, I collected poor grades, sevral 8/20 on his tests. Despite this "unfair" grading, I kept second rank in the classroom ranking on all subjects combined. Again, my philosophy teacher was mad at me realizing that.😂😂😂
philosophy is very dear to me . I’m right in that . there is a person who doesn’t love philosophy as I do . that person is right, too . what a waste of time to argue about it . time spent arguing is time spent not loving . I view myself as a lover preeminently: to love is my only function . when I am not loving, I am malfunctioning . philosophy to me is the very practical discipline of being receptive to profound shifts in understanding that have me see through the eyes of love . what greater miracle can occur than to see through the eyes of love for an instant?
the word 'logic' being used so often, I feel moved to suggest the book _Reality_ by Peter Kingsley . ...some one at least will feel strangely called to follow up on this suggestion . after all, there’s always something magical going on
Thank you 😀 it gives me a better understanding of the position of Karl Popper, when contrasted with this. I have been thinking about logic, science etc. for some time. Might interest you: 1.- Logic started as rules for a game of words Athenians played, surprisingly it is very effective in the material world, and with computers, but works very badly with Human concerns; Epicurus, rightly I believe, condemned its use for general life (there is not enough of epicurean philosophy left to be sure of the extend of this); 2.- The blanket negation of all metaphysics ends in relativism, and not so good consequences; 3.- Most of the problems of mankind are solved (to a point) by "Legal Logic" which is NOT considered by most logicians and philosophers; 4.- Be very careful too long in the road of philosophy leads to doubt, depression, despair. Be of good 👍 cheer is possible to get a lot from philosophy. Cheers
Besides that the dichotomy between the „tautology“ or analytic and synthetic statements is not tenable, I think it is just false that statements can‘t be true or false if they are verifiable. If that would be true, what would justify me in buying life insurance if I can‘t experience what happens after I die? I would go even further and argue that the statement „There are no intelligent extraterrestials.“ is true or false even thought it may be unverifiable, because our best physical theory tell us that information from light may take too long to reach earth or humanity. I also think that Hilary Putnam argues convincingly in his text „What theories are not“ that verification is only possible under the background of scientific theory. If it doesn‘t we would need to say that the same statement has a truth-value and doesn’t, between a theory under which it is not verifiable and under a theory which it doesn‘t. For example: It may well be that the scientific theory of a given time, say 1970, is such that if you conjoin to it either the statement that the temperature in a certain place inside the sun is A or the statement that the temperature in that place is B, where A and B are very different tempera tures, no new observational prediction results. If a few years later, when scientific theory had changed, those state ments had become testable, they would now become true or false.
Unclear ideas can waste a lot of time. and the people presenting them want to be taken seriously and respected as if they had a clear idea. if they do not listen to valid critique and refuse to clarify, how would you avoid resenting them for stealing your time, focus, and energy?
Metaphysics is all of the deepest "What is the nature of..." questions; time, space, energy, matter, self, consciousness, infinity, paradox, etc. A philosophy is a coherent set of answers to a set of philosophical questions. The philosophy must be internally coherent to be rational and externally coherent to be useful.
testing a meaning were holistic and by holistic what is meant that you cannot test ideas alone by themselves. When one tests one idea you test every idea that is connected to that idea also. For example, if one tested a certain hypothesis and the data that returned was not that was to be expected that would not conclude that the hypothesis is false because something may have went wrong in testing the hypothesis. The method by which one is testing may itself be flawed and not the hypothesis. However we assume that the methods by which we are testing by are correct. These assumptions could very well be incorrect and not the hypothesis. One might argue that we can then test these assumed ideas that we have but there is no practical way that we could test all of our assumed ideas that we have while testing a hypothesis without running into an infinite regress. Quine argues that there is no scientific way to make sense of the analytic-synthetic distinction and this is the first of the two dogmas. If Quine is correct in this holism then we also test our analytic belief. However analytic beliefs are supposed to be immune from empirical testing according to Ayer! Quine argues that we have a web of beliefs in which all of our beliefs make contact with the world through experience which is to say our analytic beliefs are indeed subject to falsification. For example when testing a hypothesis such as “Grass is green”, we are not just testing that, we are testing everything that this idea is connected to. If it turns out that grass is not green we might revise one of our other hypotheses such as are our eyes working properly or are we looking at grass. Even analytic beliefs may be revised as such has happened in modern physics with quantum physics and non-Euclidean geometry. It is not impossible to revise our analytic beliefs and if we are testing these and they are not true by definition and are by experience then the analytic-synthetic distinction collapses which is fatal for logical positivists such as Ayer
Yeah, I want to do a video on “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” at some point because it’s a fantastic paper. I actually think Quine has a great overall philosophy which I tend to interpret as quite pragmatist (though this is definitely controversial, and might just be me and Huw Price’s biases showing). I wanted to talk about this in the video but it was an extra 2,000 words and I ended up cutting it. But I’m so glad someone mentioned it!
Absolutely not! I would gently describe myself as a neo-pragmatist (in the vein of Price and Peirce). In these videos I tend to want to present a strong and charitable interpretation of a given philosophical position though, as otherwise I don’t see the point in making them. I think there is a fair intuition that motivated logical positivism, which I would argue is pragmatist in spirit, and asks “what is the point in doing this?”. It is this underlying intuition that I respect in logical positivism. I just think that metaphysics is perhaps more useful than they do (after all, metaphysical interpretations of scientific theories can be immensely helpful for further theorizing). And clearly their formulation of this intuition in terms of meaningfulness and verification is not tenable.
I mostly agree with this. However, in defense of metaphysics and the like: something that might seem unverifiable might not actually be unverifiable. Or it might become verifiable in the future. Also, it's just fun to think about these things from time to time, regardless of the real world applications.
I'm not surprised that a 25 year old believed that he knew what was meaningful and what was not. He may have gone too far. His way of looking at reality seems appropriate for reductionist and materialist thinkers. Those types of people always seem a little irritated and dissatisfied with life. Even if they pretend to feel otherwise. Fundamentalist reductionism if you ask me.
Its a great antidote to the vapours of idealist metaphysics, but the claim by the Log. Pos that logic and meaning-making are somehow more intrinsically valuable activities seems unverifiable. If one kicks out the dubious metaphysics that goes with God, destiny, teleology, excatology etc, then logic takes its place as one more branch of primate psychology... no more intrinsically valuable than poetry and myth, or non-reproductive sexuality and music. Could we or would we want to live in a world without such wonderful madness? Many thanks for another straight-to-the punch presentation... always good to hear somebody getting to the core of the ideas without oversimplifying.
In my spiritual perspective, I assert that the universe is not inherently real. Drawing inspiration from the Vedas, they convey that for humans, identity transcends the confines of name and body; the ego, or the "me," ceases to exist upon realizing one's true nature. This self-awareness emerges when one detaches from the worldly illusions, acknowledging that everything is interconnected, and that the essence of oneself and the divine are indistinguishably united. The perceived reality of this world is a veil worn by those yet to uncover the truth, obscured by the glasses of individuality-commonly known as "me," "myself," or "I." Liberation from this illusion requires seeking one's dormant true self within, achieved through detachment from worldly attachments. It is through this journey that the realization dawns: the divine essence resides within oneself.
"Fundamental" means some kind of knowledge that is the base of all knowledge, in which you can not break it down. It is the foundation, meaning that it does not dependent on other knowledge. And even though modern philosophy seems to have over passed foundationalism, yet even in science, that is thought to contains "explainable facts", seams to be struggling to explain facts in deep level without ever reaching to some foundational fact that can not be explained ontologically.
I like these ideas, but ethics is ultimately empirically verifiable. One must simply study actors throughout history, the ethical standards of their containing society, and then the consequences of said ethical philosophy within said society. One can do this for society's ethical standards as well. Progressivism and Modern Ethical Standards lead to utopia. Amorality leads to Egoism, and Egoism leads to serfdom. THIS IS HISTORY. It's the consequences of all the minor interactions between people, and the economics of a society's emotions and shame/blame. Egoism allows power to accumulate and metastasize, and Modern Ethical Standards breed Heroes, Martyrs, and large bodies of selfless individuals ready to sacrifice of themselves for you and Mme. Ethics is tautological from the perspective of Sociology, History, Empirical Fact, and Consequentialism.
Induction isn't certitude, yet all philosophical reasoning begins with it. logical positivism is the moral equivalent of rank materialism and is useful only for those with self-centered minds. Metaphysics embraces all possibilities, not just those limited to the whins of a few.
I think that not only philosophy, but in fact the whole human / men's existence is about how to better understand oneself and the world around one. When you concentrate on this path, the mysteries of existence begin to unravel by themselves. And, what do you think leads to knowing yourself and the world around? Does sitting in an ivory tower of some "logical thinking" leads to a result better than going our and live? Know yourself and life in abstract remote philosophizing or in the practical confrontation with reality? Most of the old philosophical buffers pretend that thinking is better only because they just cannot live fully, where they are not able to "think out" their own lives not to speak about some generally usefull ideas.
For me, philosophy is a sense of meaning, I love to mix philosophy with psychology to see the world through different lenses, to understand why people act like they do, to help my dear ones become what they want to become, to understand myself why I act like I do. Metaphysics can be meaningful in my eyes though, when philosophy, psychology or science can't explain something, before becoming a madman because you can't understand what the truth is, you can rely on metaphysics, does that mean metaphysical answers are true? No, their purpose is to at least have an answer for something
At the end of the day doesn't it all just boil down to adopted cultural value systems we humans move in? Logic has utility for those who wish to submit to its rules and regulations, but expecting others to do so is often futile, and logic doesn't ground itself. It's grounded in either the common values of the users or else metaphysical assumptions that logic corresponds to reality and is of a specific well defined nature which can be agreed upon by "logical people." The pie in the sky philosopher is claiming to have access to special intuitions similar to the ones that the logical positivist has in regards to his logical thinking system. They are on equal footing and both projects are too ambitious, although in opposite directions. I submit to logic but to me it is mysterious and I cannot ground it so it lends itself to speculation about its grounding, about which I am uncertain. I see its utility in its capacity for dialog, which humans seem to instinctively try to play fair about much of the time. Multiple humans will point out when another human's arguments are logically fallacious. If logical fallacies are allowed into debate then where is the line to be drawn thereafter? Language is symbolic and how directly it corresponds to the reality it purports to symbolize is also debatable, even if the words used in a debate are ironed out between the parties, meticulously. Each person has a unique set of experiences which define the specific meaning of everything in life for themselves down to the smallest minutia. Two people do not share the same experiences and thus do not share common ground for defining meaning, but together they can relate and in this relationship new meaning and life continues as they move through the world together in dialog. Ayers experienced this dialog in the replies he received to his book, and that's where the conversation continued and we pick up the trail and continue to ponder. Philosophy is perhaps not about knowing but about questioning and continuing to relate to everything around us as deeply and honestly as we can. I have found that the danger in life is in those who think they know but do not. It's not in those who realize they don't know and who keep relating to each other and the larger world around them to continue to seek to change and grow. I know this danger from first hand experience with it, not because it's a law of the universe but it's the experience I have. Others seem to not have this experience or the need to even question. Some day whether I question or not, it appears I will be dead and will no longer know any of this any more than anyone did when they were alive.
Hello Joseph, I love your videos especially your video on Dostovesky's Notes from the Underground was thought-provoking. I genuinely think that this is one of the best philosophy content on YT. But I think that better editing will skyrocket the growth of this channel and make the content more presentable. This content is like a pile of gold bars kept in a dusty dilapidated wooden chest, all it needs is great repackaging, and trust me you will blow up in no time. As a Video Editor myself I suggest that for starters, you can change these things 1. Reduce the white gaps on the thumbnails 2. Change the thumbnail font to Roboto 'Black' 3. Try creating a faint glow effect on the thumbnail text rather than thick strokes These tricks will improve your CTR. The video itself can be presented in a much better manner Your content is too premium for this style of editing, and I would love to see your ideas reach more people. P.S.- A mellow classical bgm works wonders on videos in this niche.
@@its-really-that-easyHow do you reach out to him if not in the commentsection? I have this question because i would like to have a conversation with my favorite youtuber Alex o Connor.
It still remains that the verification principle is unjustified. It’s no different than a religious metaphysical claim by its own standards. It just keeps begging the question.
15:00 amazing point! something can be totally true and totally accurate and provide descriptive predictions, but at the same time be unverifiable! Eg. any true scientific hypothesis prior to the invention of the equipment needed to test that hypothesis. however, I see a flaw in my own example: perhaps the example is not truly unverifiable, we just wrongly believed that it was. So the exact definition of unverifiable is very important.
Truth is true before or whether it is ever observed to be true. In other words, truth exists quite apart from any evidence that may "verify" it. Ultimately, truth exists in axiomatic self-authentication.
Wisdom is not spam to be censored, destroyed and ignored. Religious people don't understand behaviors are moral or immoral for a reason, not because "the Bible says it". Religious people think what is moral or immoral is what others told them it is. Religious people don't think for themselves how to behave morally and join and follow the herd. If in the Bible was written to litter the streets was rewarded with heaven the streets would be full of rubbish, like they are currently. Is littering the streets moral behavior? Then why the streets whereever you go are dirty?. Because Allah or Jesus didn't talk about littering christians and muslims think it is fair game to make dirty the streets for others. I never met in my life a religious person who is a good person. Let what i just said sink in. Unfortunately for religious people God exists because logically it is impossible the existence of the creation or finitude without the creator or infinitude, and Time and Space is perfect and nobody ever got away with pretending to be a good person not being one. To end the war the discovery that atheism is a logical fallacy has to be news. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. I will rephrase the atheist logical fallacy to facilitate the understanding. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is "sky daddy" to conclude wrongly no creator exists because "sky daddy" doesn't exist. For God's sake, listen to me because you are deceived and eternity is an awful long time being oneself unhappy having been deceived with a lie that looks like a lie. You have to get out of the circle. I am suffering a censorship.
Tl;dr: Materialists continue to misunderstand idealism and attack the weaker opponents (the subjectivists/solipsists) instead of the stronger (absolute/Platonic); so basically the same thing that has happened every 50 years or so for the last 2000 years, except it's now "scientific" and "actually right, trust me". Ayer was awfully alienated from the possibility that his premises were wrong, and was way too confident in empirical knowledge.
Well, as somebody who studies continental philosophy, I agree that XIX century metaphysics went beyond what was reasonable, but the same, for the opposite reason, can be said of analytic philosophy. Godel destroys both, yet, the problem of what consciousness, being and language are it's not something that can be faced renouncing completely to metaphysics, otherwise it starts looping around. That being said, Wittgenstein "logical form" has deep roots in metaphysics.
This video is brilliant! Probably the best one I watched this month. I instantly subscribe. Keep the good work up! The information was presented in an easy to understand way to non-philosophers, however it retained the key ideas. As additional benefit, it made my non-naturalist moral realist friends a bit angry, so that is like a bonus!😹
Emotivism = the hurrah/boo theory of morality. Crude or what?. How do you feel about an interlocutor refusing to engage in philosophical debate with you because he or she thinks you have made a grammatical error? 'The study of philosophy is as much hindered by the conceit that will not argue, as it is by the argumentative approach. This conceit relies on truths which are taken for granted and which it sees no need to re-examine; it just lays them down, and believes it is entitled to assert them, as well as to judge and pass sentence by appealing to them. In view of this, it is especially necessary that philosophizing should again be made a serious business. In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize, and how to evaluate philosophy, since he possesses the criterion for doing so in his natural reason-as if he did not likewise possess the measure for a shoe in his own foot. It seems that philosophical competence consists precisely in an absence of information and study, as though philosophy left off where they began. Philosophy is frequently taken to be a purely formal kind of knowledge, void of content, and the insight is sadly lacking that, whatever truly there may be in the content of any discipline or science, it can only deserve the name if such truth has been engendered by philosophy. Let the other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy-without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor truth'. - Hegel, 'Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807.
This is a very well-made and interesting video but I disagree with the philosophy being discussed because I believe there are things that are extremely important but cannot be verified by observing the physical world for example the the question of how you should live your life or if God exists are some of the most important questions you can possibly ask because they influence every other choice you make in your life so they demand an answer even if you can't find an answer in the physical world.
Qualitatively, you have a love of learning. Quantitatively, you have propositional calculus. That Ayer produced this work at the age of 25 is no surprise. Ask anyone who took logic.
I mean the debate about whether logical reasoning is the only means to gain insight has been had over and over and I don't think it was very insightful. As you point out yourself, positivism was a thing and it didn't stick around for any significant time. Even if the world functioned on rational principles deep down, then given the limited scope of humans, it doesn't seem that persuing that route would lead to satisfaction, let alone happiness. You seem to talk negative about the idea of "the outside world doesn't exist", but it was exactly enlightenment advocates like Hegel, building on Kant, who pushed such ideas so as to reconcile the before them competing disciplines of empiricism and rationalism. Both empiricism and rationalism had put extreme barriers on what we can know. I'm not against being silent about philosophy, but claiming there's something "true" about logical reasoning is also just another postulate, adopted to achieve something humans want. It's a mode of operation that, like religion or physical exercises, say, gave us some lasting positive and negative impacts and insights. And even if we adopt a logicist viewpoint and argue that doing sport is really just applied science in the end, we'd end up with a cold machinistic worldview, a Heideggerian nightmare that humanity should try to avoid even if it was right at the end.
And this is the problem with modern philosophy - it tells us nothing about how to live our lives and as such becomes equivalent to modern theology which is similar. The answers to the questions ‘what is a philosopher?’ and ‘what is a theologian? are then the same. Someone who answers questions no one is asking.
I actually think this is a really fair criticism. There is a danger that if philosophy starts dismissing questions that people care about then all it is potentially doing is leaving people unsatisfied. If people keep asking metaphysical questions, then I think there is a strong chance there is something valuable in there, even if we can't immediately see it
7:30 - Following this "logic" you also render many aspects of scientific thinking as well as just progressive thinking or novelty in thought as meaningless... Which in turn implicates a natural hindrance to evolution and expansion of thought, ideas, scientific knowledge and knowledge in general. If this type of thinking had been employed across the totality of human consciousness at earlier stages of our development we may have stayed blind to all of the many things that we now are able to see, and effect in the world around us. Why would we look for molecular structures or even just air born pathogens as a cause relative to our experience of reality if we do not have the abstract layer of thinking that we refer to as imagination? The type of thought which allows us to see the unseen, hear the unheard, touch the unfelt, to catch wind of that which has no smell and develop a taste for that which has no flavor... These forms of thinking are also rendered meaningless and untrue or non-sense... To see cosmic bodies far outside of our sensory limits on the macro scale of reality or to "see" (really more like perceive effect and define) the atomic scale of reality down into the micro scale beneath or sensory limits in the other direction... Or to move information along radio wave frequency from one end of the globe to the other on sounds that we cannot hear with our ears making audible frequency ranges which we are able to hear thousands of miles away from the original source... Or for us to be able to grab hold of a single particle and throw it through a loop causing it to interact with matter in ways that allows us not only to "see" the unseen but to touch that which we cannot touch in a sense... Or to detect things in the air that have no scent to our sensory apparatus, but are quite noticeably tangible in their ability to kill us at any number of varying rates... Or the ability to have a sense of conceptual or perceptual taste for art or music or even styles and forms of logical deduction or forms of thinking and modes of thought... To develop and refine our pallets through the exploration of the spectrum of flavors of information that we are able to perceive especially when we do so at the edge of what we are capable of perceiving, is how we gain our most profound insights... It is in that which we are currently unable to know that we will find that which we do not yet know... Just a little food for thought that seemed to be in good taste to be commented here I think it just makes sense to posit in light of your statement about rendering things meaningless. Might be a bit much to digest, my apologies for the lengthy comment, I hope it is of value instead of just being a tldr sort of deal 😅🤙🏾
The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty. Knowledge is justified belief and the two methods of obtaining that justification, logical necessity and empirical probability, both ready on replication. To the extent similar starting conditions lead to similar results, that gives justified belief that they will do so again in the future as they have in the past.
The problem with Ayer is his view on metaphysics. He claims that if something is not verifiable it is meaningless, but I do not know what his criteria is to determine this. Your example with the cat is indeed meaningless, but your words of intangible, invisible, and inneffectuality cannot be applied to a transcendent God. God by nature created everything. Also I wonder if Ayer thinks we have a Spirit or Soul, and what is a thought? All these things are not physical yet we know they are occuring. His philosophy of changing our way of thinking; to remove transcendental language and just say something is distasteful as opposed to morally wrong, is fishy. I wonder how he thinks this can possibly be applicable or even a productive alternative (I think it is a very destructive view of language) our society and most of the world is ruled by the laws of God. And changing our language to remove Him will eventually remove His laws and eventually murder and all heinous acts will get less and less detestable with each additional act. Ayer also claimed to be an atheist later in his life, which is a foolish thing to be. I think that language, truth and logic are the important things to discuss, but they do not just apply to things that we can perceive.
But the whole premise is, to talk about God is meaningless because God does not exist because God goes beyond the realm of sense experience. Ayer was an empiricist first of all.
I think you must account for time when thinking about verification, in theoretical math some things are assumed and only much later verified once the tech enables(like the higgs boson)
Yes it’s a good point! I think Ayer manages to address it by talking about whether something can “in theory” be verified (though it’s worth noting this comes with its own problems)
ohh you ated...some people around me are so interesting in that they will just say a collection of words longer than 7 letters and hope that it strings a meaningful sentence...ayer put this into a book ❤
Philosophers have been asking themselves the same questions for thousands of years, and I believe they will keep asking the same things for a long time. I wonder if they'll get to a solution at some point? Or perhaps Wittgenstein was right.
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I dont know how old you are i think arround 25?🙂 (Im 40).
But i like how serious you take philosophy👍
ultimatively you will come to the conclusion that many things, including logic are wasting peoples time, and that the truth does not even exist inside the philosophically only relevant sphere, which lies in the connections between humans. logic is symply technology. we will always be fooled and exploited by others or do it by ourselves, because within the human realm truth can not exist. which ultimately touches only practically relevant aspect of philosophy, which is ethics. and there you will find that even in the material world, the boarder of facts fade into obscurity
What a truly sad, sad man Ayer was. By its own criterion poor Ayer's main principle was meaningless, since there is no way of verifying it!
@@swerremdjee2769 - 'serious' is the word! 😐
yeah except for the fact that those imaginations are what allowed for abstract maths and physics... these imaginations are what allow us to reach exponential growth lol. You are kinda low ish level, sure your iq is high but you have literally no intution and creativity lol. philosopy or rather imaginations are what let us get to the next level because there are somethings we can't observe lol we can intuite. i am just a 70 iq african but have a phd from uk university lol,
To me, philosophy is about the pursuit to know oneself. It's about how can I better understand myself and the world around me. I don't think it's about unveiling the deepest mysteries of existence.
That’s a really interesting perspective!
It's both, philosophy could lead you to non-duality If you stick to it.
@@isaacm4159 Good point
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 thank you! I’m looking forward to watching your video when I get home.
Look, I think you're overcomplicating it. Just accept Jesus as your savior in your heart and your heart will tell you the truth.
Keep up the amazing work man. Seriously this channel is NEEDED nowadays & you articulate yourself very well.
Thank you! That’s a very kind comment and gift
Very happy to find this channel
It really makes philosophy digestable without the need to read hundreds of pages
Hope you continue the good work.
Thank you! I’m glad you are liking the videos
Mate you are absolutely brilliant. To be as fluent with words with the level of confidence behind them as you demonstrate should be a primary goal for any a man who wishes to make an impact. Great work.
Thank you so much! That is very kind of you to say
That's easy to portray with all the splicing done.
The most exciting channel on RUclips. Seriously fun and edifying. Unsolicited Advice dude, you have made my life a tiny bit better. Thanks from California
Ah thank you! That’s so kind of you to say!
I was just daydreaming about this today when someone accused scientists of being “materialistically fixated”..I thought to myself: I am actually fixated on the type of thinking that has communicative utility, not just for communicating the reasoning with others but also with myself; if our thoughts can be represented with clarity and structure then mistakes can be found definitively. We can’t check if we’re being dumb if our thinking is not made explicit, at least to ourselves! I respect this videos message deeply
Putting things into words is a dialectic exercise in and of itself if you do some sort of critical thinking.
I personally see great value in the western esoteric ideas of balance between the intangible (emotional, nonphysical, mental world) and the tangible (physical, material, observable) realities. I can see arguments for sticking to the logical side strictly, but it ignores a huge part of what makes being human so wonderous and meaningful. It's a quick way to end up where we are today, obsessed with material means of production and an 'objective' reality. Would be tragic to erase our ability to imagine and be curiously engaged with ideas that don't exist logically yet, because how else are we supposed to invent new things and conceptualize new ideas that have never previously existed?
Why should we invent new things and conceptualize new ideas?
I don't know if i see any particular tension between logical positivism and imagination - logical positivism does not denigrate imagination, it simply seeks to clarify what is imagined from what is observed.
@@athanasios328because that is the purpose of life, ergo humanity, ergo You and I.
@@pawejankowski9364 yeah, that sounds nice, but justify it.
@@athanasios328 Just look at evolution: it constantly adapts, i.e. invents, and becomes more complex as do our (humanities) ideas. It started off with simple life forms: they fed on inanimate objects, i.e. minerals, simply gathering in the darkness with very few senses. Those were herbivores. Then they got hunted by carnivores who had to develop more senses to find and detect them and weapons to overpower and kill them. Then more senses, new biomes, feelings and finally consciousness. We have to carry this legacy further, into uncharted territories, like those before us have.
I love that you mention cleansing ones pallet at the very end 😅🤌🏾 it is just perfect! I have to agree with some of what you pose in this vid relative to language, logic and truth because some are positions that are absolute facts. But I also must advise that one employ great discernment with much of what you stated. It is impossible to logic our way out of being an object that is self-aware with layered limitations and agency which is subject to the overarching objective truths of object reality (truths which are often invisible to us when we begin to discuss, investigate or discover them) at every scale.
The idea that we could just go off of what we are able to prove empirically and achieve better results than through multivalent and variable modes of operation that are inclusive as opposed to exclusive; is one that due to our position being causally looped forwards and backwards far beyond our ability to perceive empirically, by definition an idea that is not logical at all. From my perspective, and in my opinion at least.
No offense meant or taken on my end 😌🤙🏾 just putting out a few thoughts that seem relevant based on what you put forth in your vid.
Thanks for the thought provocation Noble Sir 🤓🙏🏾
This is exactly the sort of thing I love that verificationism produces as a conversation starter! I think one of its great strengths is just that it gets people talking about methods of investigation, and encourages us to explore which forms of philosophy we want to pursue
This!
You said what I was thinking quite elegantly!
Verificationism is quite the arrogant way of thinking
Your channel is amazing, keep making those videos they are literally the most informative videos on philosophy, logic, writers and other stuff. You manage to say so much in such little time you don't waste words either. Great job dude
Ah thank you! That means a lot!
@@unsolicitedadvice9198no problem, also wanted to say that finding such a channel like yours amongst the sea of useless and non-informative content is very difficult. You teach me more than my teachers do 😂
To top it off he’s quite the posh chap with a nice British accent 🫡 salute you
I do agree with much of this and believe it's very useful as AJ Ayers was saying. Though straight-up utility of a thing doesn't necessarily provide meaning and spiritual wonderings are not always pointless as much of scientific progress hasn't occurred through logic alone. I definitely think there is great value here as clarity and logic certainly helps with much of a person's life and humanity's as a whole. I just think without sparks of creativity, ambiguity and randomness the potential of human ingenuity, invention and zest to life is too limited.
I know what you mean. I sometimes think that this does not track how great discoveries are made in practice. Apparently the question that inspired Einstein to eventually formulate General Relativity Theory was "what would it look like if I ran alongside a beam of light", which is an unverifiable statement as (according to my friend who is much better acquainted with physics than me) this is impossible even in principle
I learned a lot of philosophy, a lot of them are in conflict especially with eastern and western and once you’re overloaded with that information now you don’t know what the truth is. Existential Crisis hits hard again, Especially with someone who made a lot of bad decisions in life. And addition to that fellows with OCD. It sucks sometimes because you’re haunted with these questions. ENDLESS QUESTIONS that has really no answers
It can definitely be paralyzing at points!
Yup especially a lot of thought experiments for me nihilism and gnosticism caused me a lot of anxiety and especially the butter fly dream thought experiment
@@exposingtruth600 dude got spooked by a butterfly :0
@@vermin5367 nah it was more or so the thought of the very fabric of my reality
This is why I resist going down the philosophical rabbit hole, even though my philosophy of science class has prompted me to think about it from time to time. When it comes to my philosophy on science I consider myself an instrumentalist but I still find the illusion that it leads to truth alluring. Philosophy breaks that illusion.
Philosophy ends when experience begins .
when one has a realization based on direct experience , words become an expression instead of an inquiry , which is found in philosophy .
However, it is NOt philosophy that creates the experience/realization because it does not contain the inherent ability to transcend its own activity which is essential in realizing that which philosophy appears inside of as consciousness awake to itself .
I realize that I read some Ayer ages ago, a few years into studying philosophy, and it lodged in deep with me. I guess that's part of the reason I didn't finish my philosophy studies. I switched to psychology. While not on a very sure footing, it at least has the potential to yield empirical, and thus verifiable, knowledge about human beings. (Don't noone mention, Popper.)
About the last bit, how verificationism might be criticized for being unverifiable (a bit like how Hume was criticized, as far as I recall, and told that he could put commit his own work "to the fire"), didn't Russell and Whitehead sort of show that you really can't get anywhere in logic without making some assumptions?
Edit: I forgot to leave a kudos. I really liked this video and your explanation of Ayer's view was very clear and easy to follow. I'll check out your other videos, I think.
I've recently discovered your channel and it's becoming one of my favorites already. Keep up the great work!
Thank you! I’m glad you like it
Science is rigor. Logic is a subset of science which is those relationships that always replicate.
Im literally half way through crime and punishment jst to watch your analysis of it 🤝
Ah thank you! That is very kind
I’m not a mathematician so I may be wrong here, but I think 2+2=4 being a tautology actually depends on the axioms you choose to use. If one uses the Peano axioms for example one can prove 2+2=4 which would make it closer to a theorem than a tautology.
No mathematician in their right mind would actually call it a theorem because the proof is trivial for them and the statement isn’t that interesting. But under those set of axioms it’s a statement that can be proven using pure deductive reasoning.
Yes I get what you mean. It’s partly because Ayer thinks of theorems as types of tautologies, seeing as in his view proofs don’t add any new content, but rather reveal what was already there “in” the axioms for everyone to see and make use of
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 That’s an interesting way to look at tautologies and probably valid because I don’t think mathematicians are consistent in how they use the term. I guess if you want to think of it that way that would make all statements that follow from pure deductive reasoning, not just mathematical proofs, tautological in nature. Because pure math isn’t inductive or abductive like science and parts of philosophy.
Maybe that was obvious already but I’m not too into philosophy and only learned about tautologies from a proof writing course I did for my math minor. I only took one Philosophy of Science course in college and to be honest I did not enjoy the course after a certain point because the arguments got too abstract or metaphysical for my liking and they felt like unfair critiques of science to me, even though I couldn’t articulate why. For a while afterward I thought I had a distaste in philosophy but I think I might just not like thinking about metaphysics for extended amounts of time because the questions they pose seem meaningless to me.
“Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possiblities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what the may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familar things in an unfamilar aspect” -Bertrand Russell
I've seen a few of your videos now and I am baffled you don't have more subscribers! You present your points very clearly in a way that grips the viewer, well done and keep it up!
I haven't read Ayer... but if you're explaining him correctly... his proposals seem to be just Kant repackaged.
To me, Kant says that our innate metaphysical conceptualizations are only known & validated through experience.
Kant lead me to exactly what you explain Ayers philosophy to be - A proposition isn't true unless I can verify it through experience.
If an analytical object ( mind object ) can't be shown in experience... that is, become synthetic knowledge (understood/known thru the combo of Intellect and sense data,) it's only an object in a head & can only be that until shown in experience.
This just throws away so much philosophical, theological and, yes, scientific garbage... that is claimed external of the mind... that can't be shown to be that : Heaven, Hell, Solipsistic ideas of all kinds, Multiverses, etc., etc.
I'm gonna try Ayer, but it seems that he may be merely repackaging the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction of Kant... as I have understood it.
It's absolutely beautiful to see you explain such extensive topics in a charming and graspable manner. My interest in philosophy and literature has recently rekindled, and one of the reasons is you. I would love to see you discuss more themes and motifs in literature and various niche philosophical ideas. You will do great. Best of luck.
Thank you! I’m so glad the videos are helpful and I hope you are enjoying your rediscovered love of philosophy!
Everything is a waste of time, including watching this video.
Time was created to be wasted
Have you considered doing a video or even a series unpacking the philosophy of the Bible and Christianity? Beyond any doubt Christianity has been the driving philosophical force behind Europe for the past 2000 years and has given rise to the most advanced and successful civilisational group in history.
I once made a comment in a livestream chat.
"3 philosophers at lunch can argue endlessly abiut how many of them were at the table."
An immediate reply was, "Define table."
Absolutely hillarious, and so apropos!
Philosophy alongside physics ask questions that absolutely destroy your mind ...
There is a part of me that truly appreciates the modality of thinking that is rather fixated on a worldview of sure knowledge founded in posteriori considerations. Still it's basing it's ontological views on many assumptions that it doesn't always see that it's making.
I cannot go into dissertation length descriptions here of all the essential ways this has been done by these logical positivists and similar schools of philosophers.
What I will say is so many things I've found to be true are not substantially tangible, they're not (at least yet) directly testable, they're not the things that sciences are as concerned with, but still founded in truth and reasonable given forms of evidence.
The most important lengths of things that have to do with the cosmos and our apparent existence are quite slippery and yet present in many ways, there is a sort of spiraling pattern here that some poetic statements actually attain a grasp on and satisfy a yearning of knowledge, a sense it's beholden. Still to rigorously prove these things out for linear conceptions is not what anyone seems to be able to do and that's why we strive endlessly in the means of our meaning, that being to try to solve the impossible existential hermeneutic.
Peace be onto you all, YQA
The view that many grew to disdain in the late 1800s onwards was in large part idealism particularly the kind people like F.H. Bradley supported, which was known as British Idealism which ultimately stemmed from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Apparently Bradley upset Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore so much that it was this frustration that gave way to analytic philosophy. Of course that philosophy has been both incredibly productive and the branch that would dominate the 1900s until today.
However, that Idealism is seen as unverifiable metaphysics says far more about the person making the claim than it does about it as a philosophy. The arguments are there and in my opinion very clear as to what it is claiming and it is neither mine nor anyone else's job to educate those that don't understand it. Most interestingly it is also the direction that science is increasingly turning toward as its limits, especially in physics, have seemingly come to a bit of a stand still in the past decade or so. Things like the double slit experiment, relativity and the speed of light, the observer problem, the ever illusive issue of consciousness and other similar issues keep those most involved in those things pushing out toward new perspectives and its no surprise that many of those new perspectives fall within the jurisdiction of Idealism.
I am not sure that any of the relevant philosophers ever claimed that outer world does not exist. Descartes and Kant discussed the question, but not in order to prove such radical skepticism (Kant actually said that it's a scandal that no one has so far proved the existence of the outer world - and then he ventured to this task). I think that Ayer mainly discussed the metaphysics of British Hegelians (F.H. Bradley, Bosanquet, etc) and sometimes I am not sure that he has ever read some serious work of classical metaphysics. This misunderstanding of continental philosophy was quite fashionable among logical positivists (just read Gilbert Ryle 's interpretation of Heidegger).
That being said, I am very pleased with your presentation, it was interesting, clear and well structured.
This is all still, by definition, "philosophy."
“I am not teaching philosophy here. What I am saying has nothing to do with philosophy. It is absolutely experimental and experiential. My effort is to create a scientific religion - the psychology of the buddhas. So I am giving you experiments and I am giving you possibilities to experience something that you have not experienced yet. This is a lab, a workshop. We are bent upon doing something - I mean business here! Philosophy is not the concern at all.
"I am very anti-philosophic and I avoid philosophy because it is playing with shadows, thoughts, speculation. And you can go on playing infinitely, ad infinitum, ad nauseam; there is no end to it. One word creates another word, one theory creates another theory, and you can go on and on and on. In five thousand years much philosophy has existed in the world, and to no purpose at all.
"But there are people who have the philosophic attitude. And if you are one of them, please drop it; otherwise you and your energy will be lost in a desert
“I am not teaching philosophy here because I am teaching no-mind. And if you become a no-mind all philosophy disappears: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - all philosophies disappear; Hegelian, Kantian, Russellian - all philosophies disappear. If the mind disappears, where can the philosophy exist? Where can it grow? Mind is the breeding ground of philosophy.
"Let the mind disappear. And the beauty is, when there is no mind and nobody to philosophize and nothing to philosophize about, one comes to know. Philosophy is the blind man’s effort. It is said: Philosophy is a blind man in a dark room on a dark night, searching for a black cat which is not there….”
“I am not a philosopher. The philosopher thinks about things. It is a mind approach. My approach is a no-mind approach. It is just the very opposite of philosophizing. It is not thinking about things, ideas, but seeing with a clarity which comes when you put your mind aside, when you see through silence, not through logic. Seeing is not thinking.
“The sun rises there; if you think about it you miss it, because while you are thinking about it, you are going away from it. In thinking you can move miles away; and thoughts go faster than anything possible. If you are seeing the sunrise then one thing has to be certain, that you are not thinking about it. Only then can you see it.
“Thinking becomes a veil on the eyes. It gives its own color, its own idea to the reality. It does not allow reality to reach you, it imposes itself upon reality; it is a deviation from reality. Hence no philosopher has ever been able to know the truth.
“All the philosophers have been thinking about the truth. But thinking about the truth is an impossibility. Either you know it, or you don't. If you know it, there is no need to think about it. If you don't, then how can you think about it?
“A philosopher thinking about truth is just like a blind man thinking about light. If you have eyes, you don't think about light, you see it. Seeing is a totally different process; it is a byproduct of meditation.
“Hence I would not like my way of life to be ever called a philosophy, because it has nothing to do with philosophy. You can call it philosia. The word ‘philo’ means love; ‘sophy’ means wisdom, knowledge - love for knowledge. In philosia, ‘philo’ means the same love, and ‘sia’ means seeing: love, not for knowledge but for being - not for wisdom, but for experiencing.”
Philosophy Is the Worst Wastage of Human Intelligence that Is Possible
“I am not a philosopher. The philosopher thinks about the truth. His approach is rational. Reason is his instrument, and here just the opposite is the case. I am an irrational man. And the people who have gathered around me - around the world - the appeal to them is my irrationality, because reason has failed so utterly. For three thousand years in the West, ten thousand years in the East, philosophers have been struggling to find the truth, and not a single philosopher has been able to find it.
“The way of philosophy does not go with truth at all. It is just rational gymnastics. So one philosopher can argue against another philosopher, and they go on arguing for centuries, but they have not come to agreement on a single point. Philosophy is the worst wastage of human intelligence that is possible. When I say I am not a philosopher, I simply mean that my approach towards reality is not through the head, it is through the heart.
“I also say that I do not preach a religion because religion is something like love - you cannot teach it. There is no way to teach love, and if you teach love and somebody becomes trained under your teachings, he may go to Hollywood and become an actor, but he will never become a lover. Your very teaching, your very discipline will be the barrier. So I say I don't teach religion. Religion is something that passes heart to heart, not head to head. The moment religion passes head to head, it becomes theology. It is no more religion.”
A mix of both,
non philosophical,
and philosophical, might be nice
you somehow have to think or you'll stagnate,
you somehow have to halt thinking or you'll get lost
You can never ever understand something fully, it wouldn't allow you to, you can go deeper and deeper but you'll never get there.
For me, it's just fun, nothing is actually important, any answer can be found in every way, in which way you wanted
that applies also to understanding oneself, you'll never know who you really are, in my current understanding of the world, knowing anything including yourself truly is impossible. You could still try though, you'll find bizarre and fascinating stuffs.
There are three different kinds of philosophy which aim at different ends;
•Truth Wisdom is the most universal answers to the most universally meaningful questions. It encompasses ontology, mereology, meta-philosophy, metaphysics, proto-physics, meta-epistemology, where meta-ethics.
•Practical Wisdom is custom answers to individual problems.
•Academic Philosophy is about social acceptance proven by credentials earned primarily through compliance.
Sort of...Yes, philosophy as "pursuit of fundamental truth" or "necessary conditions of knowledge" or some such gibberish is dumb, as in speechless. The "meaning is verification" of the positivists became the "truth is justification" of the pragmatists, following the linguistic turn to its iconoclastic end. They are still with us, and for them philosophy, even logic, is best thought of as a type of therapy, which many of us can attest to.
I so want to make a video on the pragmatists. I studied with Hasok Chang and meeting Huw Price was one of the highlights of my time at university
@@unsolicitedadvice9198 nice. I definitely got that vibe. I advocate for pragmatism every chance I get. Now I'm subbed and notified so...Do it. But you have to mention Rorty.
I may have to treat them one-by-one. I would love to follow the old roots of pragmatism in James and Peirce through Rorty and Brandom to Mizak and Price, but I fear if I do it in one video it will be 4 hours long
P.S. thanks for subscribing :)
Glad to find a philosopher that hates metaphysics the way I do. Metaphysics is what turned me off to philosophy for a very long time because I thought that's all it was. I found boring, unintuitive, arrogant, and useless.
Philosophy is a mental circus. It's something you read or hear and then do.
To know the self we should go beyond the mental processes. The self, as well as life, is an experience or act. Not a philosophy.
So philosophising is just going around in circles since you can't think outside of your own limited memory and experience.
The expansion of consiousness will make any philosophy redundant and give us freedom and competence in any faculty.
Philosophies are just mental circus and the mind is a barren wastland of thoughts and fantasies. Consciousness is the very core of life and life isnt a philosophy. Understanding comes from involment. The deeper we arebinvolved in life the greater our lives will be
Philosophy, the science's, religion, spiritualism. All seeking the same thing. THE TRUTH. PEACE 🕊️........
Not at all. Continental philosophy has over the past 60 years at least sought but confusion, disruption, irrationality and the dyonisiacal.
I take the idea of verification to simply denote the need that a statement about reality be substantiated in some sense of the word. Thus, it is a tool by which one can examine an argument for vacuousness. It seems I need to read his material, since, I might be able to address the criticisms.
This would also seem to demand that I review the best case of metaphysics.
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I would have no issue with the idea of "Objective Morality" IF the claimants of such provided a criteria by which moral claims could be independently adjudicated, given that the idea of something being objective with regard to reality entails that such can be known independently of the claimant. However, they never provide a means by which such can be done.
I would have no issue with the idea of a "God" IF the claims of such had something by which such was shown to be an aspect of reality. Currently, claims of a God are as meaningful as claims of Last Thursdayism. It simply has me wondering about the person's reasoning capacities; while thinking about the power of indoctrination/inculcation.
I would have no issue with astrology IF there was a there shown to be there.
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Any recommendations for book concerning metaphysics (special emphasis on books which define and defend the idea)? I think I may at some point take up AJ Ayers charge, but I need to know that what I suspect as being an enemy of rational grounding is in fact the enemy I currently think it to be.
The "all men are mortal" claim is as unverifiable as the statement about the invisible cat. No matter how many men we observe, I can always claim that there is a single immortal man, that we haven't checked just yet (or maybe he is not yet born). We are just forced to believe that **most** men are mortal and draw our conclusions from that.
Ah yes that’s a good point that Ayer does address. He says such statements are “weakly verifiable” so observations can evidence them but not conclusively confirm them in the same way a mathematical truth can (he ends up saying all empirical claims fall into this camp)
Bulba suck ma deek. No man has been immortal nor will he ever be. Don't be dumb and look at objective logic.
That includes 1000s of years later when we have advanced medicines. Infinite lifespan is impossible.
@@picklerick777 How can you ascertain that infinite lifespan is impossible? Science advances all the time and is seemingly exponential in it's progress. Because there are barrier's that exist currently, that does not mean that they will always continue to exist. We do not know how much we know do not know, therefore ascertaining the limits of possiblity is the height of ignorance.
This was both an excellent video and an excellent way of understanding philosophy
However, I find that a problem with verificationism is that some metaphysical aspects of reality are unverifiable, though impossible to determine just as "nonsense". For example, it is absolutely impossible to verify the existence of other's peoples conscience, or even to know that there is a relation between the soul and the body or if it's just a lot of matter acting according to causal relations. Those are important questions which come from unverifiable experiences of reality but which can't be discarded.
Ironically, logicism itself is meaningless insofar as it is incapable of doing justice to content because it abstracts from empiricism. Logicism is itself a metaphysical theory, since it conveys a certain worldview. Ayer does the same with his emotivism. (Funnily enough, the ideal of having to be logical can also be dissolved emotivistically). It doesn't work without metaphysics. For me, therefore, skepticism towards any theory is a waste of time, because it is an attitude that wants to refrain from making any judgment at all and therefore shirks responsibility and is, moreover, self-contradictory.
Wittgenstein announced the death of philosophy with the Tractatus. He attempted to write a "logically perfect" subset of natural language (austrian, then translated to english). It is an odd syntax to wrap your mind around but provides immense insight into the nature of mental phenomena/states/configurations. Especially the "Picture Theory of Language".
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
- L.Witt
He later did change his mind in Philosphical Investigations where he realized natural languages, by design, allow for contradictions making them by definition absolutely imprecise. The polymorphic and ambiguous natural of nature language can therefore only be used to describe events/states of affairs as sorts of language games, and the words are only used to approximate the complete understanding of the phenomenon or "truth".
Ah Tractatus is a classic! It’s still one of my favourite books
To summarize, as a logical positivist, Ayer held to a principle of verification that stated a proposition is factually significant if and only if it is a tautology or if it is possible to be empirically observed under conditions that would allow it to be rendered true or false. This principle of verification is not only an impractical philosophy to follow due to its renouncement of ethics, aesthetics and science but it is also a self-refuting one due to the principle of verification being unable to be verified and not being a tautology. It is because of these reasons that Ayer’s principle of verification and logical positivism as a whole be rejected
Yeah essentially! If you want to do justice to that intuition, we need some other philosophical framework.
Though I personally think that the intuition the logical positivist is getting at is something more like “philosophy should be useful” but interpreted through this diehard empiricist lens. If we drop the lens we might get somewhere with the intuition
@@unsolicitedadvice9198Why can’t we take the verification principle as axiomatic?
And now for something completely different, I think many philosophers tie themselves in metaphorical knots seeking literal universal truths in a reality where there is nearly always an exception and most things are probabilistic. If we can't look outside of ourselves, it is very difficult to find validation. Whether some act is wrong depends on the agreed definition of wrong
This is one my favorite (very very amateur and recent) past-times, trying to see empty philosophical arguments. My only two real examples of this are the philosophical zombie and free will is an illusion, which I believe boil down to the same fallacy/illogical case, that is the 'further fact'. For p-zombies Chamlers points out that implicit in the problem is that the existence of conscious experience is a further fact, not based in materialism. I believe this is the same as the free-will is an illusion argument/grift. Implicit in the free-will argument is that that free-will could possibly be coming from some other place that is not a materialistic process.
Stating that free-will is an illusion is essentially just re-stating, but very inaccurately, that we live in a materialistic or physics based world. If you argue that free will is an illusion because it emerges from a physics based world, then you have to argue that everything else is an illusion too, everything we know emerges from the same physics based world. That may be valid but doesn't seem very useful. Implicit in the idea in free-will is an illusion, is that free-will could be driven by something outside the physical realm, otherwise why even bring it up, and more to the point, why single out free-will.
In the free will case I think it's popular because it bugs us (our soul hah!), and sells books, but I suspect there are many more philosophical arguments which are just language games rather than insights.
Owaooo. Your video reminds me my philosophy class in high school long long time ago, in 1981 (under french education system). I explained "why philosophy is a pure waste of time" to my philosophy teacher. I did that in a classroom of about 40 students. The teacher was very angry, and felt like insulted. Me, at that time, was very intellectually aggressive and huge proponent of "optimization of time" as a science lover. Since that moment, I collected poor grades, sevral 8/20 on his tests. Despite this "unfair" grading, I kept second rank in the classroom ranking on all subjects combined. Again, my philosophy teacher was mad at me realizing that.😂😂😂
So, why you think Philosophy is a pure waste of time?
philosophy is very dear to me . I’m right in that . there is a person who doesn’t love philosophy as I do . that person is right, too . what a waste of time to argue about it . time spent arguing is time spent not loving . I view myself as a lover preeminently: to love is my only function . when I am not loving, I am malfunctioning . philosophy to me is the very practical discipline of being receptive to profound shifts in understanding that have me see through the eyes of love . what greater miracle can occur than to see through the eyes of love for an instant?
the word 'logic' being used so often, I feel moved to suggest the book _Reality_ by Peter Kingsley . ...some one at least will feel strangely called to follow up on this suggestion . after all, there’s always something magical going on
Thank you 😀 it gives me a better understanding of the position of Karl Popper, when contrasted with this. I have been thinking about logic, science etc. for some time. Might interest you: 1.- Logic started as rules for a game of words Athenians played, surprisingly it is very effective in the material world, and with computers, but works very badly with Human concerns; Epicurus, rightly I believe, condemned its use for general life (there is not enough of epicurean philosophy left to be sure of the extend of this); 2.- The blanket negation of all metaphysics ends in relativism, and not so good consequences; 3.- Most of the problems of mankind are solved (to a point) by "Legal Logic" which is NOT considered by most logicians and philosophers; 4.- Be very careful too long in the road of philosophy leads to doubt, depression, despair. Be of good 👍 cheer is possible to get a lot from philosophy. Cheers
We can prove that every man is moral.then why it is meaningless?
I'm glad I discovered this channel
This is silly. The statement philosophy is meaningless is illogical because it requires a "philosophy," to state it.
Besides that the dichotomy between the „tautology“ or analytic and synthetic statements is not tenable, I think it is just false that statements can‘t be true or false if they are verifiable. If that would be true, what would justify me in buying life insurance if I can‘t experience what happens after I die? I would go even further and argue that the statement „There are no intelligent extraterrestials.“ is true or false even thought it may be unverifiable, because our best physical theory tell us that information from light may take too long to reach earth or humanity.
I also think that Hilary Putnam argues convincingly in his text „What theories are not“ that verification is only possible under the background of scientific theory. If it doesn‘t we would need to say that the same statement has a truth-value and doesn’t, between a theory under which it is not verifiable and under a theory which it doesn‘t.
For example: It may well be that the scientific theory of a given time, say 1970, is such that if you conjoin to it either the statement that the temperature in a certain place inside the sun is A or the statement that the temperature in that place is B, where A and B are very different tempera tures, no new observational prediction results. If a few years later, when scientific theory had changed, those state ments had become testable, they would now become true or false.
Unclear ideas can waste a lot of time. and the people presenting them want to be taken seriously and respected as if they had a clear idea.
if they do not listen to valid critique and refuse to clarify, how would you avoid resenting them for stealing your time, focus, and energy?
Many ideas are unclear until they are. in fact your idea of ideas being unclear therefore meaningless is in fact.... very unclear.
Metaphysics is all of the deepest "What is the nature of..." questions; time, space, energy, matter, self, consciousness, infinity, paradox, etc. A philosophy is a coherent set of answers to a set of philosophical questions. The philosophy must be internally coherent to be rational and externally coherent to be useful.
The real is what works.
-Carl Jung
testing a meaning were holistic and by holistic what is meant that you cannot test ideas alone by themselves. When one tests one idea you test every idea that is connected to that idea also. For example, if one tested a certain hypothesis and the data that returned was not that was to be expected that would not conclude that the hypothesis is false because something may have went wrong in testing the hypothesis. The method by which one is testing may itself be flawed and not the hypothesis. However we assume that the methods by which we are testing by are correct. These assumptions could very well be incorrect and not the hypothesis. One might argue that we can then test these assumed ideas that we have but there is no practical way that we could test all of our assumed ideas that we have while testing a hypothesis without running into an infinite regress. Quine argues that there is no scientific way to make sense of the analytic-synthetic distinction and this is the first of the two dogmas. If Quine is correct in this holism then we also test our analytic belief. However analytic beliefs are supposed to be immune from empirical testing according to Ayer! Quine argues that we have a web of beliefs in which all of our beliefs make contact with the world through experience which is to say our analytic beliefs are indeed subject to falsification. For example when testing a hypothesis such as “Grass is green”, we are not just testing that, we are testing everything that this idea is connected to. If it turns out that grass is not green we might revise one of our other hypotheses such as are our eyes working properly or are we looking at grass. Even analytic beliefs may be revised as such has happened in modern physics with quantum physics and non-Euclidean geometry. It is not impossible to revise our analytic beliefs and if we are testing these and they are not true by definition and are by experience then the analytic-synthetic distinction collapses which is fatal for logical positivists such as Ayer
Yeah, I want to do a video on “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” at some point because it’s a fantastic paper. I actually think Quine has a great overall philosophy which I tend to interpret as quite pragmatist (though this is definitely controversial, and might just be me and Huw Price’s biases showing). I wanted to talk about this in the video but it was an extra 2,000 words and I ended up cutting it. But I’m so glad someone mentioned it!
are you a absolute logical positivist? like ayer according to you metaphysics is futile?@@unsolicitedadvice9198
Absolutely not! I would gently describe myself as a neo-pragmatist (in the vein of Price and Peirce). In these videos I tend to want to present a strong and charitable interpretation of a given philosophical position though, as otherwise I don’t see the point in making them. I think there is a fair intuition that motivated logical positivism, which I would argue is pragmatist in spirit, and asks “what is the point in doing this?”. It is this underlying intuition that I respect in logical positivism. I just think that metaphysics is perhaps more useful than they do (after all, metaphysical interpretations of scientific theories can be immensely helpful for further theorizing). And clearly their formulation of this intuition in terms of meaningfulness and verification is not tenable.
Oh we makin it outta the Renaissance with these thoughts 😂. Great video!
Haha! Thank you!
I mostly agree with this. However, in defense of metaphysics and the like: something that might seem unverifiable might not actually be unverifiable. Or it might become verifiable in the future. Also, it's just fun to think about these things from time to time, regardless of the real world applications.
I'm not surprised that a 25 year old believed that he knew what was meaningful and what was not. He may have gone too far. His way of looking at reality seems appropriate for reductionist and materialist thinkers. Those types of people always seem a little irritated and dissatisfied with life. Even if they pretend to feel otherwise. Fundamentalist reductionism if you ask me.
Its a great antidote to the vapours of idealist metaphysics, but the claim by the Log. Pos that logic and meaning-making are somehow more intrinsically valuable activities seems unverifiable. If one kicks out the dubious metaphysics that goes with God, destiny, teleology, excatology etc, then logic takes its place as one more branch of primate psychology... no more intrinsically valuable than poetry and myth, or non-reproductive sexuality and music. Could we or would we want to live in a world without such wonderful madness? Many thanks for another straight-to-the punch presentation... always good to hear somebody getting to the core of the ideas without oversimplifying.
In my spiritual perspective, I assert that the universe is not inherently real. Drawing inspiration from the Vedas, they convey that for humans, identity transcends the confines of name and body; the ego, or the "me," ceases to exist upon realizing one's true nature. This self-awareness emerges when one detaches from the worldly illusions, acknowledging that everything is interconnected, and that the essence of oneself and the divine are indistinguishably united. The perceived reality of this world is a veil worn by those yet to uncover the truth, obscured by the glasses of individuality-commonly known as "me," "myself," or "I." Liberation from this illusion requires seeking one's dormant true self within, achieved through detachment from worldly attachments. It is through this journey that the realization dawns: the divine essence resides within oneself.
"Fundamental" means some kind of knowledge that is the base of all knowledge, in which you can not break it down. It is the foundation, meaning that it does not dependent on other knowledge. And even though modern philosophy seems to have over passed foundationalism, yet even in science, that is thought to contains "explainable facts", seams to be struggling to explain facts in deep level without ever reaching to some foundational fact that can not be explained ontologically.
I like these ideas, but ethics is ultimately empirically verifiable. One must simply study actors throughout history, the ethical standards of their containing society, and then the consequences of said ethical philosophy within said society. One can do this for society's ethical standards as well.
Progressivism and Modern Ethical Standards lead to utopia. Amorality leads to Egoism, and Egoism leads to serfdom. THIS IS HISTORY. It's the consequences of all the minor interactions between people, and the economics of a society's emotions and shame/blame. Egoism allows power to accumulate and metastasize, and Modern Ethical Standards breed Heroes, Martyrs, and large bodies of selfless individuals ready to sacrifice of themselves for you and Mme.
Ethics is tautological from the perspective of Sociology, History, Empirical Fact, and Consequentialism.
Induction isn't certitude, yet all philosophical reasoning begins with it. logical positivism is the moral equivalent of rank materialism and is useful only for those with self-centered minds. Metaphysics embraces all possibilities, not just those limited to the whins of a few.
I think that not only philosophy, but in fact the whole human / men's existence is about how to better understand oneself and the world around one. When you concentrate on this path, the mysteries of existence begin to unravel by themselves. And, what do you think leads to knowing yourself and the world around? Does sitting in an ivory tower of some "logical thinking" leads to a result better than going our and live? Know yourself and life in abstract remote philosophizing or in the practical confrontation with reality?
Most of the old philosophical buffers pretend that thinking is better only because they just cannot live fully, where they are not able to "think out" their own lives not to speak about some generally usefull ideas.
For me, philosophy is a sense of meaning, I love to mix philosophy with psychology to see the world through different lenses, to understand why people act like they do, to help my dear ones become what they want to become, to understand myself why I act like I do.
Metaphysics can be meaningful in my eyes though, when philosophy, psychology or science can't explain something, before becoming a madman because you can't understand what the truth is, you can rely on metaphysics, does that mean metaphysical answers are true?
No, their purpose is to at least have an answer for something
At the end of the day doesn't it all just boil down to adopted cultural value systems we humans move in? Logic has utility for those who wish to submit to its rules and regulations, but expecting others to do so is often futile, and logic doesn't ground itself. It's grounded in either the common values of the users or else metaphysical assumptions that logic corresponds to reality and is of a specific well defined nature which can be agreed upon by "logical people." The pie in the sky philosopher is claiming to have access to special intuitions similar to the ones that the logical positivist has in regards to his logical thinking system. They are on equal footing and both projects are too ambitious, although in opposite directions. I submit to logic but to me it is mysterious and I cannot ground it so it lends itself to speculation about its grounding, about which I am uncertain. I see its utility in its capacity for dialog, which humans seem to instinctively try to play fair about much of the time. Multiple humans will point out when another human's arguments are logically fallacious. If logical fallacies are allowed into debate then where is the line to be drawn thereafter?
Language is symbolic and how directly it corresponds to the reality it purports to symbolize is also debatable, even if the words used in a debate are ironed out between the parties, meticulously. Each person has a unique set of experiences which define the specific meaning of everything in life for themselves down to the smallest minutia. Two people do not share the same experiences and thus do not share common ground for defining meaning, but together they can relate and in this relationship new meaning and life continues as they move through the world together in dialog.
Ayers experienced this dialog in the replies he received to his book, and that's where the conversation continued and we pick up the trail and continue to ponder. Philosophy is perhaps not about knowing but about questioning and continuing to relate to everything around us as deeply and honestly as we can. I have found that the danger in life is in those who think they know but do not. It's not in those who realize they don't know and who keep relating to each other and the larger world around them to continue to seek to change and grow. I know this danger from first hand experience with it, not because it's a law of the universe but it's the experience I have. Others seem to not have this experience or the need to even question. Some day whether I question or not, it appears I will be dead and will no longer know any of this any more than anyone did when they were alive.
Hello Joseph, I love your videos especially your video on Dostovesky's Notes from the Underground was thought-provoking. I genuinely think that this is one of the best philosophy content on YT. But I think that better editing will skyrocket the growth of this channel and make the content more presentable. This content is like a pile of gold bars kept in a dusty dilapidated wooden chest, all it needs is great repackaging, and trust me you will blow up in no time. As a Video Editor myself I suggest that for starters, you can change these things
1. Reduce the white gaps on the thumbnails
2. Change the thumbnail font to Roboto 'Black'
3. Try creating a faint glow effect on the thumbnail text rather than thick strokes
These tricks will improve your CTR. The video itself can be presented in a much better manner Your content is too premium for this style of editing, and I would love to see your ideas reach more people.
P.S.- A mellow classical bgm works wonders on videos in this niche.
This is wonderful, reach out to him so u can help him
@@its-really-that-easyHow do you reach out to him if not in the commentsection? I have this question because i would like to have a conversation with my favorite youtuber Alex o Connor.
It still remains that the verification principle is unjustified. It’s no different than a religious metaphysical claim by its own standards. It just keeps begging the question.
Morality is a personal understanding of best practices. Ethics is best understood as formalized, usually shared, morality.
15:00 amazing point! something can be totally true and totally accurate and provide descriptive predictions, but at the same time be unverifiable!
Eg. any true scientific hypothesis prior to the invention of the equipment needed to test that hypothesis.
however, I see a flaw in my own example: perhaps the example is not truly unverifiable, we just wrongly believed that it was. So the exact definition of unverifiable is very important.
Truth is true before or whether it is ever observed to be true.
In other words, truth exists quite apart from any evidence that may "verify" it.
Ultimately, truth exists in axiomatic self-authentication.
Wisdom is not spam to be censored, destroyed and ignored. Religious people don't understand behaviors are moral or immoral for a reason, not because "the Bible says it". Religious people think what is moral or immoral is what others told them it is. Religious people don't think for themselves how to behave morally and join and follow the herd. If in the Bible was written to litter the streets was rewarded with heaven the streets would be full of rubbish, like they are currently. Is littering the streets moral behavior? Then why the streets whereever you go are dirty?. Because Allah or Jesus didn't talk about littering christians and muslims think it is fair game to make dirty the streets for others. I never met in my life a religious person who is a good person. Let what i just said sink in. Unfortunately for religious people God exists because logically it is impossible the existence of the creation or finitude without the creator or infinitude, and Time and Space is perfect and nobody ever got away with pretending to be a good person not being one. To end the war the discovery that atheism is a logical fallacy has to be news. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is the religious idea of the creator of the creation to conclude wrongly no creator exists because a particular idea of God doesn’t exist. I will rephrase the atheist logical fallacy to facilitate the understanding. Atheism is a logical fallacy that assumes God is "sky daddy" to conclude wrongly no creator exists because "sky daddy" doesn't exist. For God's sake, listen to me because you are deceived and eternity is an awful long time being oneself unhappy having been deceived with a lie that looks like a lie. You have to get out of the circle. I am suffering a censorship.
Tl;dr: Materialists continue to misunderstand idealism and attack the weaker opponents (the subjectivists/solipsists) instead of the stronger (absolute/Platonic); so basically the same thing that has happened every 50 years or so for the last 2000 years, except it's now "scientific" and "actually right, trust me". Ayer was awfully alienated from the possibility that his premises were wrong, and was way too confident in empirical knowledge.
hey there! htanks for the video, it was well written and explained its point excelently.
Well, as somebody who studies continental philosophy, I agree that XIX century metaphysics went beyond what was reasonable, but the same, for the opposite reason, can be said of analytic philosophy.
Godel destroys both, yet, the problem of what consciousness, being and language are it's not something that can be faced renouncing completely to metaphysics, otherwise it starts looping around.
That being said, Wittgenstein "logical form" has deep roots in metaphysics.
This has been a refreshing view on philosophy!
This video is brilliant! Probably the best one I watched this month. I instantly subscribe. Keep the good work up!
The information was presented in an easy to understand way to non-philosophers, however it retained the key ideas.
As additional benefit, it made my non-naturalist moral realist friends a bit angry, so that is like a bonus!😹
"We can test the statement 'all men are mortal'."
Oh no.
"By observing some of them."
Oh thank god.
It’s difficult to get that experiment past an ethics board
top 1 channel ever
Thank you! That’s very kind
Emotivism = the hurrah/boo theory of morality. Crude or what?.
How do you feel about an interlocutor refusing to engage in philosophical debate with you because he or she thinks you have made a grammatical error?
'The study of philosophy is as much hindered by the conceit that will not argue, as it is by the argumentative approach.
This conceit relies on truths which are taken for granted and which it sees no need to re-examine; it just lays them down,
and believes it is entitled to assert them, as well as to judge and pass sentence by appealing to them. In view of this, it is especially necessary that philosophizing should again be made a serious business. In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize, and how to evaluate philosophy, since he possesses the criterion for doing so in his natural reason-as if he did not likewise possess the measure for a shoe in his own foot. It seems that philosophical competence consists precisely in an absence of information and study, as though philosophy left off where they began. Philosophy is frequently taken to be a purely formal kind of knowledge, void of content, and the insight is sadly lacking that, whatever truly there may be in the content of any discipline or science, it can only deserve the name if such truth has been engendered by philosophy. Let the other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy-without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor truth'.
- Hegel, 'Phenomenology of Spirit', 1807.
This is a very well-made and interesting video but I disagree with the philosophy being discussed because I believe there are things that are extremely important but cannot be verified by observing the physical world for example the the question of how you should live your life or if God exists are some of the most important questions you can possibly ask because they influence every other choice you make in your life so they demand an answer even if you can't find an answer in the physical world.
Qualitatively, you have a love of learning. Quantitatively, you have propositional calculus. That Ayer produced this work at the age of 25 is no surprise. Ask anyone who took logic.
Funnily enough I did my masters mostly in logic
Kant may disagree, Kant argue against the idea 2+2=4 is true by definition (analytical). To him it is "synthetic a priori"
exactly. he stops short of questioning the nature of numbers and math and puts the OP in the same camp as the willfully naive.
You can say that philosophy especially metaphysics almost died twice, during Kant's time and during Ayer's time
He was right.
No he wasn’t. Rewatch the video.
@@athanasios328 i mean he was right about metaphysical philosophy.
I mean the debate about whether logical reasoning is the only means to gain insight has been had over and over and I don't think it was very insightful. As you point out yourself, positivism was a thing and it didn't stick around for any significant time. Even if the world functioned on rational principles deep down, then given the limited scope of humans, it doesn't seem that persuing that route would lead to satisfaction, let alone happiness. You seem to talk negative about the idea of "the outside world doesn't exist", but it was exactly enlightenment advocates like Hegel, building on Kant, who pushed such ideas so as to reconcile the before them competing disciplines of empiricism and rationalism. Both empiricism and rationalism had put extreme barriers on what we can know. I'm not against being silent about philosophy, but claiming there's something "true" about logical reasoning is also just another postulate, adopted to achieve something humans want. It's a mode of operation that, like religion or physical exercises, say, gave us some lasting positive and negative impacts and insights. And even if we adopt a logicist viewpoint and argue that doing sport is really just applied science in the end, we'd end up with a cold machinistic worldview, a Heideggerian nightmare that humanity should try to avoid even if it was right at the end.
So, in the end, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ?
And this is the problem with modern philosophy - it tells us nothing about how to live our lives and as such becomes equivalent to modern theology which is similar. The answers to the questions ‘what is a philosopher?’ and ‘what is a theologian? are then the same. Someone who answers questions no one is asking.
I actually think this is a really fair criticism. There is a danger that if philosophy starts dismissing questions that people care about then all it is potentially doing is leaving people unsatisfied. If people keep asking metaphysical questions, then I think there is a strong chance there is something valuable in there, even if we can't immediately see it
7:30 - Following this "logic" you also render many aspects of scientific thinking as well as just progressive thinking or novelty in thought as meaningless... Which in turn implicates a natural hindrance to evolution and expansion of thought, ideas, scientific knowledge and knowledge in general. If this type of thinking had been employed across the totality of human consciousness at earlier stages of our development we may have stayed blind to all of the many things that we now are able to see, and effect in the world around us. Why would we look for molecular structures or even just air born pathogens as a cause relative to our experience of reality if we do not have the abstract layer of thinking that we refer to as imagination? The type of thought which allows us to see the unseen, hear the unheard, touch the unfelt, to catch wind of that which has no smell and develop a taste for that which has no flavor... These forms of thinking are also rendered meaningless and untrue or non-sense... To see cosmic bodies far outside of our sensory limits on the macro scale of reality or to "see" (really more like perceive effect and define) the atomic scale of reality down into the micro scale beneath or sensory limits in the other direction... Or to move information along radio wave frequency from one end of the globe to the other on sounds that we cannot hear with our ears making audible frequency ranges which we are able to hear thousands of miles away from the original source... Or for us to be able to grab hold of a single particle and throw it through a loop causing it to interact with matter in ways that allows us not only to "see" the unseen but to touch that which we cannot touch in a sense... Or to detect things in the air that have no scent to our sensory apparatus, but are quite noticeably tangible in their ability to kill us at any number of varying rates... Or the ability to have a sense of conceptual or perceptual taste for art or music or even styles and forms of logical deduction or forms of thinking and modes of thought... To develop and refine our pallets through the exploration of the spectrum of flavors of information that we are able to perceive especially when we do so at the edge of what we are capable of perceiving, is how we gain our most profound insights... It is in that which we are currently unable to know that we will find that which we do not yet know...
Just a little food for thought that seemed to be in good taste to be commented here I think it just makes sense to posit in light of your statement about rendering things meaningless. Might be a bit much to digest, my apologies for the lengthy comment, I hope it is of value instead of just being a tldr sort of deal 😅🤙🏾
Oh to be fair, this is why Ayer says “in theory” verifiable for these reasons, but it is still a good point
*Language, Truth and Logic* was my first philosophy book, which I read as a teenager in the 90s, and which has influenced my philosophy to this day.
What do you think about transcendental argument for God, are you familiar with Jay Dyer?
The purpose of all knowledge, wisdom, and understanding is actionable certainty. Knowledge is justified belief and the two methods of obtaining that justification, logical necessity and empirical probability, both ready on replication. To the extent similar starting conditions lead to similar results, that gives justified belief that they will do so again in the future as they have in the past.
What do you mean by actionable certainty?
@@athanasios328 Justification sufficient to warrant accepting a particular fact it taking a particular action.
6:30 Are Tautology and A Priori knowledge the same?
Love your videos, thank you .
Thank you for watching!
The problem with Ayer is his view on metaphysics. He claims that if something is not verifiable it is meaningless, but I do not know what his criteria is to determine this. Your example with the cat is indeed meaningless, but your words of intangible, invisible, and inneffectuality cannot be applied to a transcendent God. God by nature created everything. Also I wonder if Ayer thinks we have a Spirit or Soul, and what is a thought? All these things are not physical yet we know they are occuring.
His philosophy of changing our way of thinking; to remove transcendental language and just say something is distasteful as opposed to morally wrong, is fishy. I wonder how he thinks this can possibly be applicable or even a productive alternative (I think it is a very destructive view of language) our society and most of the world is ruled by the laws of God. And changing our language to remove Him will eventually remove His laws and eventually murder and all heinous acts will get less and less detestable with each additional act.
Ayer also claimed to be an atheist later in his life, which is a foolish thing to be.
I think that language, truth and logic are the important things to discuss, but they do not just apply to things that we can perceive.
But the whole premise is, to talk about God is meaningless because God does not exist because God goes beyond the realm of sense experience. Ayer was an empiricist first of all.
I'm wearing a logical posti vest right now.
I think you must account for time when thinking about verification, in theoretical math some things are assumed and only much later verified once the tech enables(like the higgs boson)
Yes it’s a good point! I think Ayer manages to address it by talking about whether something can “in theory” be verified (though it’s worth noting this comes with its own problems)
ohh you ated...some people around me are so interesting in that they will just say a collection of words longer than 7 letters and hope that it strings a meaningful sentence...ayer put this into a book ❤
It is a fantastic antidote to stuff that sounds good but really doesn’t hold up
Philosophers have been asking themselves the same questions for thousands of years, and I believe they will keep asking the same things for a long time. I wonder if they'll get to a solution at some point? Or perhaps Wittgenstein was right.