"...and so to demolish your friends arguments, you can point out their catagory errors to them, and then watch your circle of friends rapidly dwindle." 😂😅
Thanks for providing the best video I’ve seen on this topic. My interpretation based on your description is that categories are convenient but ultimately meaningless unless we provide the teleological context.
Thank you, I appreciate that! And yes, I think that's about right. In some cases, of course, a speaker will make it all-too obvious that he is confusing categories.
@@BenedictBeckeld For sure, but for example in multi-layered applications such as the medical mismanagement of chronic pain, what I see now is a huge category mistake that explains the failure of the approach. I am actually going to make a spontaneous video on this right now and will cite your video.
2:49 That's not a very good example. While art can reflect on different topics, art itself is distinct from those topics as it cannot be reduced to them. Signifier =/= signified. The medium=/= the message. Art intuitively carries aesthetic value.
Let's see it in adjacent fields. Literature, movies, joke etc. The content might be valuable, the delivery can and has varied in merit. Shakespear took semi-obscure, regional stories and delivered cultural masterpieces spanning centuries. Delivery & timing are kings in comedy. Famous, talented directors are "set apart" precisely by skill, mastery in their craft. Music virtuosos, the concept relies on that. Skill is intimately tied to art, not just a historical accident, it's alive today. I believe this era of anti-aeshetics will cede, for art outlives ideologies.
The category "art" is indeed distinct from the category e.g. "funny", but "funny" is in this case still *involved* in "art" and cannot be neatly separated out from it. And so if you're saying that a work of art is funny, you're making a statement about that work of art, even if not about every aspect of it. And to take your own example: "comedy" and "timing" are distinct categories, but "timing" is involved in "comedy", and so if you make a statement about a piece of comedy's timing, you're making a statement about an aspect of that piece of comedy.
Sort of, since it draws an analogy between a metaphysical entity and a physical object, but it depends on one's interpretation of Russell's argument and on what one thinks he wants to accomplish with it. It is, in any case, quite a poor bit of reasoning, and can certainly not be used as some philosophically ignorant atheists (e.g. Dawkins) think it can be used, since it leads to the conclusion that positive statements require proof and negative statements don't - which ends up being but a silly language game, because theistic views can be phrased negatively, and atheistic views can be phrased positively, which is one of several reasons why Russell's teapot is useless in religious debate. Ultimately, the onus of proof is on neither side of that debate (which is lucky, since proof is impossible for either side).
@@BenedictBeckeld @Benedict Beckeld That made me think of how easy is to pass fallacious arguments between public(just Google "is Russell's teapot a valid argument?" And you'll know what I mean). And no one will notice it. I was using this argument and didn't notice until I found an article that discuss the argument. And I didn't take it seriously since everyone is using the argument and that's it.(sorry for my bad English)
Indeed one must be careful about these things - lots of people with little philosophical education will throw these arguments around in a dogmatic way, without understanding them, but there is already a number of good rejections of Russell's teapot from a variety of philosophers, and not just religious ones. (In my opinion, Russell's main importance is really as a mathematician, not as a philosopher in the more traditional sense.) It is true that theists cannot claim that atheists must disprove divine existence, but atheists don't have any such claim against theists either.
That was extremely engaging and informative and quite witty too. I've actually diarised the publication date for your book on oikophobia (how geeky is that!) It would be really great to see you in a larger virtual auditorium e.g. in conversation with any number of worthy very well known thinkers or commentators (Pinker, Harris, Brand, Haidt, McWhorter etc). I'm pretty certain you wouldn't always agree on everything (that would be pretty pointless) but a) I believe there'd be much of value for others to hear from such discourse and b) you'd get a well deserved wider audience (although I have a sneaky suspicion you might view the latter aspiration with some disdain🤣👨🎓 ).
Thank you very much! And if "Western Self-Contempt" sells well enough, perhaps I'd be able to have conversations with some of those people, as you suggest. (I can perhaps already betray that my book contains some rather severe critique of Pinker's "Enlightenment Now", but hopefully he wouldn't take it personally.)
Can a nominalist who doesn't believe in the reality of categories complain about category errors? There is probably a way you can restate your claims using nominalist terminology. I imagine that might lead to somewhat convoluted and verbose propositions, but it would be an interesting challenge.
Yes, he can. The fact that categories aren't "real" does not mean that they are not an important hermeneutical tool. Physical particulars exist, and they can be arranged.
@@BenedictBeckeld I was having a conversation with the chatgpt AI and asked it about the 3 laws of logic, at this point it claims not to have any personal opinion, which is a conversation in itself, but it gave some terminology I've never heard of before, and some schools of thought that critique them on some basis I'm yet still to know, but it's facinating the way we transfer data among ourselves as humans, encrypted yet we still manage to reach understanding or perceiveed at least as it is demonstrated by the results, it bring to mind the P value, and Gödels Theorem of Incompleteness, man there's always so much to learn, and it hard to distinguish what's worth it to explore and what ideas are just a waste, but maybe it's good that people come up with ways to test our hypothesis to falsify them and it's structure so that we can rebuild them anew, isn't that the human condition, always reactive to it's environment, as it is driven by the brain influenced in obscure ways by the code of it's ancestors, pushed by its genetics seeminly aimlessly to feed it's body of resources while the clock of it's demise keeps ticking away, yet the mind seems to live inside as a separate entity just there for the ride to enjoy it while it last, and to suffer enough just to develop the ability appreciate the joy, to have a reference point like a Ying Yang, and yet we still are the CNS and PNS, the Default mode network and the task positive network, always seeking coherence and striving for correspondence, even in the face of paradoxical self referencial realities
@@BenedictBeckeld but anyways before I went into a crazy tangent there for a second, what do you think about the 3 laws of logic, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, do they not apply universally to any thought and any system?
@@WayneJohn-fq6cn A nominalist can certainly "categorize his words" - that's what it means to use categories as a hermeneutical tool. There's a lot of misunderstanding on the part of realists as to what nominalism actually constitutes. The laws you mention are universal, yes. But of course they can be challenged, as for example in Aristotle's own discussion of future contingents in his Hermeneutics, when he describes the principle of bivalence, i.e. not A V B, but (A V B) as a distinct third possibility.
Think you mislabeled cat error with the art comic. Funny/likable fairly easily differentiated from criteria for quality (good/shit). I see people in the comic distinguishing criteria for good art vs criteria for funny art or art with likable politics. And I think I get comics point questioning “aren’t they the same?” And pointing out we don’t always know how to parse our reaction. But I don’t think the answer is “we can assume all criteria for what makes good art are the same”. Annoying and ruins the joke but I think obviously true. I would characterize this as a joke that plays on category differences, meaning while the idea is probably to laugh at the audience’s reaction its more I effective at ironically pointing out that a lot of people judge art distinctly from whether it’s, for example, likable politically. And I think that’s probably more obvious and interesting than just whether all art can be considered political.
Thank you for commenting. The people aren't saying "shit art" vs. "funny art"; they're saying "shit art" vs. "funny", not realizing that these categories are involved in each other. That is, they're excluding "funny" from the category "art". I refer you to the answer I gave to the comment by "Untilitpases" to this video. (And I think your point sort of agrees with me, more or less: "ironically pointing out that a lot of people judge art distinctly from whether it’s, for example, likable politically" - yes, precisely.)
@@BenedictBeckeld thanks. I agree they are excluding funny from their criteria of art. -And that in the comic the presumption is that good/shit art is a category that includes politics and humor. What I’m saying is that it would not (commonly in the real world outside the comic) be a category error. we can’t make the presumption the comic does simply because it’s so common for people to judge art as good/bad by distinct criteria from how they judge politics and humor. There’s a lot of legit variety behind judgements about what makes art good or bad or even if degree of quality is meaningful. We might highly value Wagners work despite the nazi history. We might enjoy and agree with the politics of Shepard Faireys work and consider it sub par mimicry as art. We can do this because the criteria for good/bad art can be distinct, is commonly, even if not always. The irony I was referring to is that the comic could just as well be making a category error..but that we go along with its presumption to enjoy the joke and suspend real world complexity to enjoy the commentary about category errors.
It's true that when it comes to category errors in the real world, much of it depends on what a person has in mind when he says something (as I say in the video), and on the context in which a person uses a certain word. But to say that people commonly do something does not necessarily entail that a category error can't be found in it. As I imply in the video, if by "art" they mean something closer to "skill" (the original meaning of Latin "ars"), then indeed it would not be a category error. I don't think we're in that much disagreement.
@@BenedictBeckeld agreed. Comic as commentary implies we reconcile with real world and begs comparison. Comic as joke we suspend the potential inaccuracy. Art just happens to be one of those subjects where criteria get torn down and rebuilt constantly.
This video was useful but I find your assessment of monotheism absurd. The idea that a Monotheistic God is better because its definition can change at will is total bs. Not only is this more of a thing in pagan polytheistic religions where if the principles of a certain God are shown to be false or amoral, then you can just pick a different God within that religion. With monotheism, particularly Abrahamic monotheism you have to keep a consistent definition. (Omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.) Christians, Jews and Muslims are practically obsessed that everyone gets Gods nature straight and that they are on the same page.
First, anyone interested in serious discussion should not refer to his interlocutor's opinions as "bs". Second, you're completely misconstruing what I said. I never said a monotheistic god is simply "better" in a normative way (I'm an atheist myself). Specifically, you're confusing two different roles of religion: theology on the one hand (the nature of the monotheistic deity, which indeed is fixed), and a deity's role as a safeguard against what can go physically wrong in a society (i.e. the monotheistic gods are harder to blame than are the pagan gods - a fact that is borne out in lots of literature - which makes the former stronger).
@@BenedictBeckeld Firstly, you will have to excuse me. Were I am from, calling an argument bs is an acceptable and even polite way of refuting a persons position. Secondly, you are the one misunderstanding me. I knew that when you said "better" it was a back handed compliment. You are basically saying that its a benefit for those who in your view, are deceived by religion that they may continue to deceive by changing the official definition of God as they see fit. Also, the number of the amount of Gods you believe has absolutely nothing to do with if any of those Gods have unknowable aspects to him/them. Your argument is also not a "fact that is borne out by the literature." It is an argument that some literature makes. That argument is, to put it in my native tongue, bs. I also find the implication that A God having unknowable aspects is somehow a ploy to be objectionable. I could lobby the same criticism at science for its portrayal of quantum mechanics. Science cannot tell you the position of a subatomic partial and also its momentum at the same time, so they tell you that no one can know these things. I could lobby this criticism at science but I wont because I consider that to be bad faith criticism regardless of what framework it is applied to.
Sure, no problem, thanks. But I didn't misunderstand you. I've been trying to correct a misconstruction of my own words: I don't think I used the word "better" at all, and so I wanted to correct that. And I also didn't say that they're "changing the official definition". I said that monotheistic gods are nebulous enough to have any faults ascribed to a lack of human understanding. I also did not say that it was the "number" as such of polytheistic gods that made them vulnerable in this sense, but rather their plasticity, which is opposed to nebulousness. I also didn't say that the unknowable nature of monotheistic gods is a "ploy", which suggests a deliberate scheme. (Finally, I'm not saying that "some literature makes" the argument that monotheistic gods are blameless; I meant that if you look at the literature, poetry etc. produced by early Christian writers and that by pagan ones, the distinction to which I referred becomes clear.) I'm happy to discuss, but I can't just engage in a series of contradictions; if you want to converse, you have to stick very closely to what I actually said. Thank you in any case, and all the best.
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"...and so to demolish your friends arguments, you can point out their catagory errors to them, and then watch your circle of friends rapidly dwindle."
😂😅
Thanks for providing the best video I’ve seen on this topic. My interpretation based on your description is that categories are convenient but ultimately meaningless unless we provide the teleological context.
Thank you, I appreciate that! And yes, I think that's about right. In some cases, of course, a speaker will make it all-too obvious that he is confusing categories.
@@BenedictBeckeld For sure, but for example in multi-layered applications such as the medical mismanagement of chronic pain, what I see now is a huge category mistake that explains the failure of the approach. I am actually going to make a spontaneous video on this right now and will cite your video.
@@BenedictBeckeld I just made a 2-hour video on this and will send you a link via your website contact page.
@@AlexVasquezICHNFM Great, thanks, I look forward to watching it!
@@BenedictBeckeld I am editing the video right now -- this will probably take all day. I emailed you a short while ago through your website.
Great selection of examples, thank you!
Thanks!
Is a category just a set? So if you think in terms of set theory, it would make it simple, no?
Very interesting! Thank you!
Thanks!
Very helpful, thank you
Thanks, glad to hear it!
Funny. Thanks
2:49
That's not a very good example. While art can reflect on different topics, art itself is distinct from those topics as it cannot be reduced to them. Signifier =/= signified. The medium=/= the message. Art intuitively carries aesthetic value.
Let's see it in adjacent fields. Literature, movies, joke etc.
The content might be valuable, the delivery can and has varied in merit. Shakespear took semi-obscure, regional stories and delivered cultural masterpieces spanning centuries. Delivery & timing are kings in comedy. Famous, talented directors are "set apart" precisely by skill, mastery in their craft. Music virtuosos, the concept relies on that. Skill is intimately tied to art, not just a historical accident, it's alive today.
I believe this era of anti-aeshetics will cede, for art outlives ideologies.
The category "art" is indeed distinct from the category e.g. "funny", but "funny" is in this case still *involved* in "art" and cannot be neatly separated out from it. And so if you're saying that a work of art is funny, you're making a statement about that work of art, even if not about every aspect of it. And to take your own example: "comedy" and "timing" are distinct categories, but "timing" is involved in "comedy", and so if you make a statement about a piece of comedy's timing, you're making a statement about an aspect of that piece of comedy.
Is Russell's teapot a category error?
Sort of, since it draws an analogy between a metaphysical entity and a physical object, but it depends on one's interpretation of Russell's argument and on what one thinks he wants to accomplish with it. It is, in any case, quite a poor bit of reasoning, and can certainly not be used as some philosophically ignorant atheists (e.g. Dawkins) think it can be used, since it leads to the conclusion that positive statements require proof and negative statements don't - which ends up being but a silly language game, because theistic views can be phrased negatively, and atheistic views can be phrased positively, which is one of several reasons why Russell's teapot is useless in religious debate. Ultimately, the onus of proof is on neither side of that debate (which is lucky, since proof is impossible for either side).
@@BenedictBeckeld @Benedict Beckeld That made me think of how easy is to pass fallacious arguments between public(just Google "is Russell's teapot a valid argument?" And you'll know what I mean). And no one will notice it. I was using this argument and didn't notice until I found an article that discuss the argument. And I didn't take it seriously since everyone is using the argument and that's it.(sorry for my bad English)
Indeed one must be careful about these things - lots of people with little philosophical education will throw these arguments around in a dogmatic way, without understanding them, but there is already a number of good rejections of Russell's teapot from a variety of philosophers, and not just religious ones. (In my opinion, Russell's main importance is really as a mathematician, not as a philosopher in the more traditional sense.) It is true that theists cannot claim that atheists must disprove divine existence, but atheists don't have any such claim against theists either.
That was extremely engaging and informative and quite witty too. I've actually diarised the publication date for your book on oikophobia (how geeky is that!)
It would be really great to see you in a larger virtual auditorium e.g. in conversation with any number of worthy very well known thinkers or commentators (Pinker, Harris, Brand, Haidt, McWhorter etc). I'm pretty certain you wouldn't always agree on everything (that would be pretty pointless) but a) I believe there'd be much of value for others to hear from such discourse and b) you'd get a well deserved wider audience (although I have a sneaky suspicion you might view the latter aspiration with some disdain🤣👨🎓 ).
Thank you very much!
And if "Western Self-Contempt" sells well enough, perhaps I'd be able to have conversations with some of those people, as you suggest. (I can perhaps already betray that my book contains some rather severe critique of Pinker's "Enlightenment Now", but hopefully he wouldn't take it personally.)
Can a nominalist who doesn't believe in the reality of categories complain about category errors? There is probably a way you can restate your claims using nominalist terminology. I imagine that might lead to somewhat convoluted and verbose propositions, but it would be an interesting challenge.
Yes, he can. The fact that categories aren't "real" does not mean that they are not an important hermeneutical tool. Physical particulars exist, and they can be arranged.
The mental gymnastics to avoid categories must be on another level, good luck arguing that without categorizing your words
@@BenedictBeckeld I was having a conversation with the chatgpt AI and asked it about the 3 laws of logic, at this point it claims not to have any personal opinion, which is a conversation in itself, but it gave some terminology I've never heard of before, and some schools of thought that critique them on some basis I'm yet still to know, but it's facinating the way we transfer data among ourselves as humans, encrypted yet we still manage to reach understanding or perceiveed at least as it is demonstrated by the results, it bring to mind the P value, and Gödels Theorem of Incompleteness, man there's always so much to learn, and it hard to distinguish what's worth it to explore and what ideas are just a waste, but maybe it's good that people come up with ways to test our hypothesis to falsify them and it's structure so that we can rebuild them anew, isn't that the human condition, always reactive to it's environment, as it is driven by the brain influenced in obscure ways by the code of it's ancestors, pushed by its genetics seeminly aimlessly to feed it's body of resources while the clock of it's demise keeps ticking away, yet the mind seems to live inside as a separate entity just there for the ride to enjoy it while it last, and to suffer enough just to develop the ability appreciate the joy, to have a reference point like a Ying Yang, and yet we still are the CNS and PNS, the Default mode network and the task positive network, always seeking coherence and striving for correspondence, even in the face of paradoxical self referencial realities
@@BenedictBeckeld but anyways before I went into a crazy tangent there for a second, what do you think about the 3 laws of logic, identity, non-contradiction, and excluded middle, do they not apply universally to any thought and any system?
@@WayneJohn-fq6cn A nominalist can certainly "categorize his words" - that's what it means to use categories as a hermeneutical tool. There's a lot of misunderstanding on the part of realists as to what nominalism actually constitutes.
The laws you mention are universal, yes. But of course they can be challenged, as for example in Aristotle's own discussion of future contingents in his Hermeneutics, when he describes the principle of bivalence, i.e. not A V B, but (A V B) as a distinct third possibility.
Think you mislabeled cat error with the art comic. Funny/likable fairly easily differentiated from criteria for quality (good/shit). I see people in the comic distinguishing criteria for good art vs criteria for funny art or art with likable politics. And I think I get comics point questioning “aren’t they the same?” And pointing out we don’t always know how to parse our reaction. But I don’t think the answer is “we can assume all criteria for what makes good art are the same”. Annoying and ruins the joke but I think obviously true. I would characterize this as a joke that plays on category differences, meaning while the idea is probably to laugh at the audience’s reaction its more I effective at ironically pointing out that a lot of people judge art distinctly from whether it’s, for example, likable politically. And I think that’s probably more obvious and interesting than just whether all art can be considered political.
Thank you for commenting. The people aren't saying "shit art" vs. "funny art"; they're saying "shit art" vs. "funny", not realizing that these categories are involved in each other. That is, they're excluding "funny" from the category "art". I refer you to the answer I gave to the comment by "Untilitpases" to this video. (And I think your point sort of agrees with me, more or less: "ironically pointing out that a lot of people judge art distinctly from whether it’s, for example, likable politically" - yes, precisely.)
@@BenedictBeckeld thanks. I agree they are excluding funny from their criteria of art. -And that in the comic the presumption is that good/shit art is a category that includes politics and humor. What I’m saying is that it would not (commonly in the real world outside the comic) be a category error. we can’t make the presumption the comic does simply because it’s so common for people to judge art as good/bad by distinct criteria from how they judge politics and humor. There’s a lot of legit variety behind judgements about what makes art good or bad or even if degree of quality is meaningful. We might highly value Wagners work despite the nazi history. We might enjoy and agree with the politics of Shepard Faireys work and consider it sub par mimicry as art. We can do this because the criteria for good/bad art can be distinct, is commonly, even if not always. The irony I was referring to is that the comic could just as well be making a category error..but that we go along with its presumption to enjoy the joke and suspend real world complexity to enjoy the commentary about category errors.
It's true that when it comes to category errors in the real world, much of it depends on what a person has in mind when he says something (as I say in the video), and on the context in which a person uses a certain word. But to say that people commonly do something does not necessarily entail that a category error can't be found in it. As I imply in the video, if by "art" they mean something closer to "skill" (the original meaning of Latin "ars"), then indeed it would not be a category error. I don't think we're in that much disagreement.
@@BenedictBeckeld agreed. Comic as commentary implies we reconcile with real world and begs comparison. Comic as joke we suspend the potential inaccuracy. Art just happens to be one of those subjects where criteria get torn down and rebuilt constantly.
This video was useful but I find your assessment of monotheism absurd. The idea that a Monotheistic God is better because its definition can change at will is total bs. Not only is this more of a thing in pagan polytheistic religions where if the principles of a certain God are shown to be false or amoral, then you can just pick a different God within that religion. With monotheism, particularly Abrahamic monotheism you have to keep a consistent definition. (Omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.) Christians, Jews and Muslims are practically obsessed that everyone gets Gods nature straight and that they are on the same page.
First, anyone interested in serious discussion should not refer to his interlocutor's opinions as "bs". Second, you're completely misconstruing what I said. I never said a monotheistic god is simply "better" in a normative way (I'm an atheist myself). Specifically, you're confusing two different roles of religion: theology on the one hand (the nature of the monotheistic deity, which indeed is fixed), and a deity's role as a safeguard against what can go physically wrong in a society (i.e. the monotheistic gods are harder to blame than are the pagan gods - a fact that is borne out in lots of literature - which makes the former stronger).
@@BenedictBeckeld Firstly, you will have to excuse me. Were I am from, calling an argument bs is an acceptable and even polite way of refuting a persons position.
Secondly, you are the one misunderstanding me. I knew that when you said "better" it was a back handed compliment. You are basically saying that its a benefit for those who in your view, are deceived by religion that they may continue to deceive by changing the official definition of God as they see fit. Also, the number of the amount of Gods you believe has absolutely nothing to do with if any of those Gods have unknowable aspects to him/them. Your argument is also not a "fact that is borne out by the literature." It is an argument that some literature makes. That argument is, to put it in my native tongue, bs.
I also find the implication that A God having unknowable aspects is somehow a ploy to be objectionable. I could lobby the same criticism at science for its portrayal of quantum mechanics. Science cannot tell you the position of a subatomic partial and also its momentum at the same time, so they tell you that no one can know these things. I could lobby this criticism at science but I wont because I consider that to be bad faith criticism regardless of what framework it is applied to.
Sure, no problem, thanks.
But I didn't misunderstand you. I've been trying to correct a misconstruction of my own words: I don't think I used the word "better" at all, and so I wanted to correct that. And I also didn't say that they're "changing the official definition". I said that monotheistic gods are nebulous enough to have any faults ascribed to a lack of human understanding. I also did not say that it was the "number" as such of polytheistic gods that made them vulnerable in this sense, but rather their plasticity, which is opposed to nebulousness. I also didn't say that the unknowable nature of monotheistic gods is a "ploy", which suggests a deliberate scheme. (Finally, I'm not saying that "some literature makes" the argument that monotheistic gods are blameless; I meant that if you look at the literature, poetry etc. produced by early Christian writers and that by pagan ones, the distinction to which I referred becomes clear.) I'm happy to discuss, but I can't just engage in a series of contradictions; if you want to converse, you have to stick very closely to what I actually said. Thank you in any case, and all the best.