how can there be an epistemic barrier between our perception of reality and our linguistic framework for describing reality? isn't the linguistic framework a direct result of the perception itself?
+AntiCitizenX hello ACX, never heard of you before(to my dismay). one of the people i sub to liked your video here, so i checked it out. after going through some of your uploads... yup... earned a sub from me :p philosophy has never been my strong point(but i am a pragmatist, thank you for giving me the proper term)
Scientists seem to believe that truth is what works (to quote William James), but what works is not necessarily the truth, and maybe much simpler to use. On a different tack... In logic, given true axioms, you can only get true results, but with false axioms, you can get anything you want. Why would you want to live in a universe that is only a subset of a meta-universe where anything is possible? I prefer to live in a larger universe where nothing, not even middles, are excluded.
Это одно из моих любимых видео всея Ютуба. Вас тоже смотрю с удовольствием 😊 (Вообще я просто испытал приток какого-то неожиданного позитива, увидев комментарий от Вас, и понял, что не могу не отреагировать)
I really like how you think. Having been involved in the new-age, hippie, pseudo-psychology comunity for several years during my education, i must say it is so refreshing to adopt this stance. Everything is clear, simpler and less stresfull, and most important, it works.
+Sinclairelim I'm going to operate under the assumption that those people will say "well that's not what *truth* means". Post-modernist semantics games are annoying and impractical. A lot of the wishy-washy, hyper-ambiguous, "truth is subjective" types don't like science or pragmatism as an explanation of reality preferring instead to derogatorily call it "scientism" (as if a religion) and claim it's just as dogmatic as fundamentalist supernatural belief system.
At the end of the day, our evolved brains are essentially Bayesian engines assessing the probability of things being true based on prior experience and evaluation of new evidence coming through our sensory organs. That marvellous engine is sadly prone to many bugs though ...
+Sébastien Laberge true. we didn't evolve to be correct or see things accurately, we evolved to survive by working together. that lets lots of bugs creep in.
no need to simplify as "bugs", on the way to finally find the Truth, we sometimes go a "not exactly right" direction, we can manage it afterwards, may be this or not this life. focus to unTruth (there is no false but unTruth, inside those we thought Truth) then all right will come.
This is the crux. The random result of randomly evolved stardust, can never produce truth. All you have are chemicals and neurons. Who's to say who's chemicals and neurons are correct. This is the very definition of absurdity.
Man, I am a philosophy student and your explanation was more clear and usefull than most I have heard from my colegues. When I finish my undergrad, I wanna make a PhD in pragmatism epistemology (I'm very interested in empirical knowledge and the pragmatic aproach (Specially Peirce and Haack). I'll share your videos with my friends. (I am not fluent in english yet. So, I'm sorry if I wrote something wrong).
+iggypopshot And evolution is a physical manifestation of this process. Among a myriad of propositions, for which only those whose consequences that are compatible with reality (and only reality at that particular time and place) continue with further explorations of variety among the details of it's original proposition. Life (or Nature or pick your anthropomorphism), it seems, is trying to figure out "the truth", herself. Is it a coincidence that our evaluation and implementation of these processes to figure out the nature of our world are similar? Maybe. Or maybe I just need to pack another bowl.
You are correct. Mathematical Logic is a TOOL we use to analyze nature, or an idea, or whatever. It is not some independent ultimate truth about reality. IF something in reality behaves similar to something WE defined, then we can use OUR logic to make predictions about that something. If our prediction is way off, it's not that something is special---it's our logic that is flawed.
It's interesting that when people really put truth above all else and sacrifice it for nothing, they all arrive at exactly the same epistemology even without any of them influencing the other. I arrived at this epistemology before I watched King Crocoduck, and I watched him before I even heard about you. And yet, we all share precisely the same epistemology.
A wonderful Re-telling and clarification of one of his earlier videos. I always find that I got MORE out of his responding to peoples objections. He doesnt break too much new ground from the older video, but he does succinctly describe and defend his position. I particularly loved the. "Beliefs Drive Actions Actions have Consequences. Consequences are Objective." Couldnt say it better with 9 paragraphs, what he does in 9 words.
Well lets say we have a belief that I dont need to eat at all. Belief: I Dont need to eat Action: Not eating Consequence: Starving to death Its quite objective..
+TheAtheistChef You see, you only asserted that starving is the consequence of not eating, but how do you know that it's true? You've observed a correlation (between not eating and starving), but that's not causation, and it certainly doesn't prove that consequences are objective. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat, but we're talking about the truths of things. ;)
1. We see it all the time. We can empirically verify that not eating leads to death by starvation. All it takes to prove the " assertion" is observation. But fine lets change the example. Belief: Bullets fired at me wont hit me. Action: I get someone to fire bullets at me. Consequence: I get shot.
+TheAtheistChef "We can empirically verify" That's called verificationism, but there are other schools of thought, like fallibilism which this video briefly mentions. It goes deep, just look up the Münchhausen trilemma or the problem of induction, quite the rabbit hole.
I am so glad i fell on this video thank you for existing and trying to save humanity from its self inflicted confusion. It's slowing us all down. Good thing people like you still exist.
How can it be slowing us down when we aren't going anywhere? We certainly won't be around forever, and when we are gone, the universe won't care. There is no end goal, and the only goals that exist are the temporary ones we assert. And there is no necessary reason why anybody else need comply with your temporary asserted goals, especially if those goals contradict their own. Why should I desire peace and equality when I am the emperor? The only truth is the violence of my assertion for my particular goals. The rest is Deus Vult, and I am my own god.
You covered this before in the Responding to Objections series. Nice up-date. You could just say, "Truth is what works, Science works, therefore Science is true!" Then mic drop, and walk off the stage. Love your work.
+Uriah Christensen It really is an update. I'm glad you noticed that. My previous video used a lot of sloppy definitions and a had some faulty understanding of how all this stuff relates together.
Have you read anything by William James? Facts impose themselves on us, and we form a belief based off of them. Then the truth value of the belief is like the cash value of a bank note. If the belief is false, then the belief will not work, and has no usefulness. If the belief is true, then it will work, and is useful. So, Truth is something that happens to a belief upon action.
Uriah Christensen Yes, a lot of James's work was very similar to my own line of thinking. He asked many of the same questions I did, and even arrived at very similar answers. I just hope I was able to express those ideas in a more modern context.
I really liked this, as well as the previous one. The previous one is actually what got me looking into James, Pierce, and Dewey. I find that Pragmatism is the only reliable way that I can see to assign truth values to my beliefs about the phenomena I experience. If one is trying to correspond a proposition to some noumena when all we have is phenomena, then the correspondence theory is stuck in an epistemological dilemma.
Wow, thank you for this very clear explanation of "truth".... which I will forget in 2 days. But no worry, I've bookmarked it, and I probably will come back many a time !
This video convinced me that subscribing to this channel was a worthwhile decision. And I've only seen one other video of yours before, the one on omnipotence. Excellent work.
I really really like this. After watching too many videos about philosophy I start to feel like I know less after doing so. So many philosophers seem to want to turn everything into goo. Nothing is solid, nothing is real. I've even heard about people who literally believe the world is illusory. I wonder how they cross the street.
18:32 This pretty much the conclusion I came to when I was talking intro philosophy. Though, I couldn't articulate it as well as you did in your video.
so I listen to hours of philosophy almost every day. this video is the best I've ever heard on theories of truth and their usefulness. I'm spreading this video and subscribing.
I think you're putting correspondence theory to a higher standard than it deserves. The definition of truth is not in itself an epistemology and it doesn't need to be. What truth is and how we go about determining it are two separate questions. I think when we claim something is true, what we mean is this: "truth is that which corresponds to the version of reality I experience, assuming that the reality I experience corresponds to objective reality." With that assumption made, the definition becomes less vacuous. A question on axiomatic formalism. A common definition of knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). A common objection to JTB is the gettier problem, to which I tend to be inclined to modify the definition of knowledge to JTB, where the justification is also a JTB. For instance, you might see a jumping man next to you who looks like Johnny Depp and think, "I know that Johnny Depp is jumping", where the justification is composed of 2 propositions: the person next to you is Johnny Depp, and the person next to you is jumping. If Johnny Depp is actually miles away but coincidentally jumping, you would still have a JTB, but the justification would not be a JTB, so that's why it doesn't seem to be knowledge. The problem with this is you must show that every subsequent justification is a JTB, and eventually you fall upon axiomatic statements. I don't think this solved the problem of skepticism, however. A = A, to be known, would require a justification. I suspect many would say "A=A because the definition of A is A", which would imply the following principle: "If the definition of A is A, then A=A". But of course any skeptic would then ask, "how do you know that if the definition of A is A, A=A?" Even avoiding the problem of the reliability of our senses, we're still going to have to justify claims that we have no choice but to presuppose. So is knowledge of our world possible, even if our senses can be perfectly trusted? I also don't think pragmatism solves epistemology, at least not in the sense you seem to think it does. Even if you acknowledge that you can't prove the correspondence of your experience to objective reality, you still have to deal with the skepticism of other assumptions science makes. For instance, the gravitational constant = 6.67408 × 10^-11. Who's to say that 5 seconds from now it won't equal 6.67408 * 10^-5? Science has to presuppose several things, such as the consistency of the laws of nature, the principle that all events have some cause, and of course that observations can be used as data to model reality. Even worse, if you can trust that the laws of nature are guaranteed to remain constant, everything has a cause of some sort, and your senses are reliable, how do you know that your cognitive faculties that you use to come to conclusions based on your perceptions can be trusted? It's true, I'll avoid a bus if I see it, but that's because I am conditioned to do so. If someone were to continue asking me why it's wise to avoid a bus, I would eventually run out of answers.
"Pragmatism is the ultimate measure of all philosophical truths" Pragmatism is a belief system, with assumptions, thus it can only measure truth within that framework. You simply stated your position (one I sympathize with ), but you haven't "solved" anything, philosophy is not that easy. Unless you define philosophy as pragmatism, but then it's just a tautology.
Just saw this. I think ACX should have gone into an explanation of what Metaphysics would be like after we accept pragmatism. As a fellow Neoclassical pragmatist, I believe he should have went with Dewey's and James' understanding of a system in line with immediate empiricism. It's a postulate where metaphysics becomes about the generic traits of existences present within actual experience as such.
Now this definition of truth has a problem. That it breaks the fundamental law of logic that's the law of non-contradiction. Now, why do I say that? Because there is no objective standard of practicality in the first place. For example we can take this sentence: “Atoms have electrons, protons and neutrons.” Now this sentence is practical for a scientist. But for me this sentence is impractical. Now I will say that sentence is true and false at the same time. Just because it's practical and impractical at the same time for different people? No! Because it will break the law of non-contradiction that a statement can't be false and true at the same time. So, here for resolving that problem we have to remove the criteria practicality here for calling it true and false without contradiction.
- Hey, let's discuss truth! - Ok! To be fair, first let's get rid of all assumptions and start from the ground up! - Right! - ... - ... - squirrel squirrel. - fladgibommmm ...BAPHUSTA!
Absolutely feckin' awesome. Now... cue the comments from the outraged fuckers who think that sitting around on your arse expelling flatulence from your ears is a valid a valuable tool for allowing us to understand and manipulate _physical_ reality.
+The Realistic Nihilist If the statement were "Jesus of the bible" then yes, I would agree. Perhaps, this Jesus is someone AntiCitizenX met a year ago, and was told he hated ponies outright. Yay for linguistic ambiguity!
@@charkopolis well, thing is, dont were have a bit of responsibility to understand people right? if we just say "yay linguistic ambiguity" I could literally argue that my cat is a dog and you would not be able to do a darn thing about it. yes it dose suck that all rellvent information of words cant be contained inside the words themself, but thats kind of the problem with this world.
10:00 That is not true. Equality has a definition in axiomatic set theory (x = y is defined as: for all z, z being a member of x is equivalent to z being a member of y). And transitivity follows from that definition.
Yeah, science! Hahaha Thank you for making this thought-provoking video. I had found a lot of things in philosophy very confusing, but late in the video, especially when you mentioned pragmatism and how a question of the number of angels on a pin is irrelevant, I felt relieved. I remember hearing about philosophies that were difficult to understand, and I admit that while I have an interest in philosophy, it's off-putting when it becomes difficult to understand. One thing that also came to mind about this was the culture of political correctness and identity politics in today's society. It can become so confusing, to say the least
"The pragmatic scientific method therefore is the measure of all philosophical truth." That's a bit of a broad stroke. What about mathematical truth? Metaphysical insights? Sensory perception (the state of consciousness itself)? Historical epistemology? Legal judgments? The latter two cases don't apply science science rigorious theorization and experimentation is impossible but I can understand that that's a minor issue.
*What about mathematical truth?* We covered that. It is encompassed by science. *Metaphysical insights?* Meaningless gibberish. *Sensory perception* We already covered that. You're asking questions that were dealt with in great detail. *Historical epistemology?* Pragmatic scientific method. *Legal judgments?* Irrelevant to the fundamentals of epistemology.
Thanks for the reaction! I don't often have channel owners commenting on a video 2 years old (let alone on the same day). I think what you write is mostly true, but if and only if you assume that science is any form of pragmatic knowledge gathering, as opposed to the methodology of theoretization and experimentation (mostly reserved for physics, biology, chemistry and suchlike). Mathematics isn't acknowledged as a scientific field; you don't use science to prove theorems (and besides, I don't think mathematicians are all that pragmatical - without applications or practical consequences in mind). As for metaphysics, I was hoping for a more sophisticated answer. All physics ultimately rest on metaphysics. You can't talk about "force" without conceptualizing it. The law of causation? I'd count that as metaphysics. But I understand it if you'd call all of this simple, not-so-interesting postulates, upon which science - the interesting stuff - is built (at this point, metaphysics, physics and mathematics kind of fuse into one). Still this field of "postulates" is probably richer than one might consider - almost every word can be elaborated on. Also I can see how you are right to call questions like "just what is matter" asked 2000 years ago a bunch of mumbo jumbo, as recent quantum physics and general relativity have been shaking our ideas on nature in ways nobody could have predicted. In any case, these theories were untestable and philosophers of nature would have been better off doing science (if they knew what it was). Sorry, I'm rambling. (Speaking of quantum physics, what's your stance on the truth of the various interpretations - or formalisms - of it? Many histories, probabilistic, Copenhagen... is there truth to any one in specific, or is it nothing but mathematical equivalence and thus pointless to ponder over? If the latter, does that imply that you believe none of these can ever be disproven? Honest questions.) The reason I brought up consciousness in specific is because you can't prove consciousness. You can measure brain activity, and make conclusions by drawing analogy with your own sensory experience, but ultimately you won't know that there is someone "in there", thus giving rise to the problem of the philosophical zombie. I guess "science" is as close as you can get, beyond personal experience of course. As for the last two, that's exactly what I meant with the definition of science. History definitely isn't science according to any conventional definition, for reasons already given. It is still pragmatic however, which is why I was reluctant to bring them up in the first place.
@@orktv4673 *Mathematics isn't acknowledged as a scientific field* No, but it is definitely a critical aspect of the scientific process. *As for metaphysics, I was hoping for a more sophisticated answer.* I was dead serious when I said "meaningless gibberish." Metaphysics is a buzzword used by pseudo-intellectuals to sound smart without saying anything coherent. The very definition of that word is not even agreed upon by philosophers. *Speaking of quantum physics* Many worlds. *The reason I brought up consciousness in specific is because you can't prove consciousness.* Define consciousness and explain it in terms of empirically predictive models. Then we'll talk. *History definitely isn't science according to any conventional definition* Historical method is very much justified in accordance with pragmatic scientific methods, but that is a very long and complicated issue.
@@AntiCitizenX "No, but it is definitely a critical aspect of the scientific process." Of course it is. You use mathematics to understand nature. But it's exactly for that reason that we consider them different. Mathematics defines things as true (axioms) and derives new truths through established rules; mathematical truths that are 100% certain. Physics's truths can never be assured with perfect certainty. Therefore they are fundamentally different and I don't see how we are not seeing eye to eye about this. "I was dead serious when I said "meaningless gibberish."" I am sure you were. Let's not get caught up in broad terms that we disagree with; I'll give three cases that I would consider having to do with truths that can't be established through rigourous observation: 1. Cogito ergo sum. It is an absolute fact that I exist, and it is for you an absolute fact that you exist. And it's not an empirical observation; existence is a necessity for sensing, thinking and observing. There is no doubt. 2. Falsifiability. Is this not a case in and of itself? You explained it yourself in this very video. The notion that a theory (in the broadest sense) can never be confirmed but only be disproven is a conclusion derived from the _concept_ of observation, not from any particular observation. And this holds true for all of philosophy of science. 3. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I thought I'd illustrate my point with an actual metaphysical work (this is what Kant called it). Would you call this work of titanic importance to philosophical development "gibberish"? Pull no punches if you actually would. I'm just a humble theoretical phycisist, and I've tried to read Kant, and I found it quite impenetrable; I'm really trying to see just how far you go in this. His conclusions aren't the interesting thing, if any of his work is "valid" (i.e. it has any epistemological merit), I'm satisfied.
@@orktv4673 *You use mathematics to understand nature. But it's exactly for that reason that we consider them different.* So? Am I supposed to disagree with this? It's like you didn't actually watch the video. *Physics's truths can never be assured with perfect certainty. Therefore they are fundamentally different and I don't see how we are not seeing eye to eye about this.* I never once said or implied otherwise.
I love it! This is just the video I needed in my epistemological existentialism of recent, but since it hasn't been quenched despite being calmed, I question further: what about the philosophical problems science cannot solve? What do we answer them with? How do we know if those answers are proper or not?
@@thek2despot426 peace of mind People get paralyzed with regards to decisions or are forever plagued by certain things I don't need your answer anymore btw. Such things aren't meant for science by definition.
Fucking Love it! Been using a Pragmatist function to assign truth values to propositions for quite some time now, without even realizing it. I'm just finishing up my degree in astrophysics, and I really enjoyed the mathematical philosophy. You should make a video explaining it in more depth, or maybe actually using a somewhat realistic example in a pragmatists world view and boil down their thought process to assign truth to values using the math! Your crossing the road example was excellent, but something like that but perhaps more complicated, and then use the truth values to have some character make a decision.
does this mean ignorance is bliss so long as it cant become in-covenant ? i dont know is all i feel left with help ? or is there non Also dose this mean only testable beliefs that interact with other testable beliefs may as well be used so long as they work or are convent or am i getting this wrong ?
I'm wondering if you're working on a video about the synthetic/analytic distinction, it sounds right to me, but from what I've seen your defense of it is the 2/3 majority consensus of academic philosophers, a source of knowledge you seem to disavow to some extent. Additionally people usually mention a priori / a posteriori distinction for a full 2x2 box of possible kinds of statements, what od you make of that?
My “defense” about 2/3 majority is simply a response to the argument that I’m making some sort of fringe controversial statement. There is a massive trend in philosophy to disavow the A/S distinction as some kind of stupidly debunked thing to say, when really it is the de facto standard in mainstream philosophy and epistemology.
I think it's fine to define truth for purposes of philosophical discussion as a linguistic/semantic property. However I don't think it can be categorically stated that truth is "not some intrinsic, metaphysical quality of reality itself" unless a basis for the charge can be made. Truth as a property of propositions is not what truth is, it's one of the things truth does. Truth as a metaphysical quality of reality itself on the other hand is an actual definition--maybe the only proper working definition--of what truth IS. Truth that inheres the essence of existents seems an actual explanation for why propositions are coherent, can correspond and are found to be useful (pragmatically speaking).
*Truth as a property of propositions is not what truth is, it's one of the things truth does.* Technically, a truth value is just a member of a binary set {T,F}. We then map propositions to that set, and we can only do so by defining rules for doing. That's the strictest, formal definition of truth in all of philosophical and mathematical logic. You are welcome to define other concepts of truth, but I can promise you right now that it will either be terribly flawed, inconsistent, or outright incomprehensible.
I don't think your promise of incomprehensibilty holds. On the other hand, every complex philosophical system is flawed. I agree with the idea of value as binary. This works wonderfully for positing a fundamentally true reality that is fragmentally falsified. Fragmental falsification can intuitively be recognized to pass from essence to material existence through choice, despite the fundamental p vs ~p problem. For example the choice to experiment with drugs often leads to physical addiction and the falsification of body and mind. The fact that we know intuitively to define rules for logical and rational discussion, that intellects (to varying degrees of efficiency) automatically recognize patterns, make plans, formulate useful scientific experiments, devise and abide by rules of law, recognize moral dilemmas, etc. are things we would do naturally if we were value-endued (T-F) beings operating in a value-endued universe. This view is not "incomprehensible", though your position--" If your rules follow anything significantly different, then your entire sense of epistemology is irrelevant and worthless to me"--suggests a closed mind and unwillingness bordering on inability to think outside your box. So be it, but shutting out anyone who fails to live up to or abide by one's epistemic standards traps one inside a pretty small world.
elmerfud551 *This view is not "incomprehensible", though your position--" If your rules follow anything significantly different, then your entire sense of epistemology is irrelevant and worthless to me"--suggests a closed mind and unwillingness bordering on inability to think outside your box.* By definition, any rejection of pragmatic measures for synthetic propositions is an outright admission of pure irrelevance. It means you have categorically detached your epistemology from any sense of action and consequence. I can therefore unilaterally accept your entire argument outright, and literally NOTHING in my life will functionally change as a result. I'm sorry if that sounds like "closed mindedness" to you, but I went out of my way to explain this to you in this very video. Since you have utterly failed to address this problem in any capacity, my point still stands and pragmatism wins.
"Utterly failed....in any capacity..." AntiCitizen places hands over ears and chants "nyah, nyah, nyah..." repeatedly as a defense against those who refuse to succumb to his dogma. So be it.
elmerfud551 I like how you accuse me of being closed-minded right after I explained my position to you and presented mu argument in its defense, while your immediate response was to ignore the thing entirely and pretend it never happened. I am getting awfully sick and tired of manipulative liars around here.
You ended the video with: "So unless your truth assignment can somehow facilitate my desire to solve actual problems and reliably predict the outcomes of my actions, then by definition and admission it is irrelevant and worthless. Pragmatic Scientific Method therefore is the ultimate measure of ALL philosophical truth." Any time somebody says "all" and "truth" and "ultimate" in the same sentence, my skepticism signals an alarm in my mind. I hope it does for you too. While I agree that pragmatic empirical rationalism (PER) is a solid epistemology, it strikes me as a wee bit egocentric and subjective. As philosophers, we should be pursuing models of realism that are "one size fits all" not "this size fits me, fuck you if you think otherwise." It's entirely possible somebody could pragmatically, empirically, and rationally decide something is true, when it could objectively be false, and they go about living their lives normally because they had a desirable outcome. You're equating beliefs and decisions with desirability, which is prone to cognitive biases. I completely understand that the cognitive-behavioral distinction is necessary, but the Principle of Consistency is way more important that the Criterion of Falsifiability when it comes to pragmatism, and was worth mentioning in this video. If something is consistently true, then it will always be true irregardless of time and place. This separates the boys (pursuit of provisional beliefs that result in egocentrically desirable outcomes), from the men (pursuit of consistent beliefs that result in desirable outcomes for all). I think if we want to marry epistemology with ethics (which is what I think you're trying to do), then we cannot absolve ourselves from cognitive biases. If you invoke falsifiability as your only arbiter of what can be a potentially true or false, then your epistemology defaults to a single heuristic process, and you'll have no way of measuring non-empirical claims. Particularly, discussions about morality, beauty, justice, existentialism, causality, contingency, meaning, or freedom are abstract in nature and make no predictive claims that can be empirically falsified. With PER, it seems awfully easy to justify true beliefs ex post facto according to whatever preference for a desired outcome you had to begin with. But hey, every philosophy has problems at the end of the day. So, fuck it.
*If you invoke falsifiability as your only arbiter of what can be a potentially true or false, then your epistemology defaults to a single heuristic process, and you'll have no way of measuring non-empirical claims.* At what point did I ever invoke falsifiablity as my ONLY arbiter of true and false? I specifically went out of my way to list many other perfectly valid truth assignment functions within the realm of analytic propositions. *As philosophers, we should be pursuing models of realism that are "one size fits all" not "this size fits me, fuck you if you think otherwise."* Except science is exactly the "one size fits all" you're asking for. It is physically impossible to live your life without science, because any attempt to do so would only result in getting run over by a bus. You're also perfectly welcome to offer up some other system of truth assignment for synthetic propositions, and I again listed plenty of viable candidates. The only problem is that any such function is immediately worthless and irrelevant, by definition. I can concede your entire epistemology outright, and literally nothing in my life will be different as a result. At best, the only philosophical difference you will have made at the end of the day is the arbitrary mapping of some meaningless bunch of propositions to some binary set. Whooptie fucking do. So it's not just me that doesn't care about your alternative truth assignments, but literally everyone else on the planet, including yourself.
The final segment beginning at 19:19 with the related discussion on fallibism and falsifiability is great for science and the scientific method, but you need other principles to discuss other topics relevant to daily life. This video lacks said principles, and so I can only judge it on the merits of what was said, not what wasn't said. Feel free to send me an essay or make another video that flushes out the cognitive-behavioral gap a bit further if you like. What I'm getting at is decisions like "what should I eat for dinner?" to an extent involve some degree of irrationality (such as what you feel like eating), that are difficult to predict. The problem has multiple solutions, which could all be desirable. We're humans after all, and not Vulcans, so our dinner plans may inherently be irrational. Yes, I can use science to quantify decision making (with the binary assignment), but there's no empirical way to affirm the "right choice" for myself, in the moment, with empirical evidence. A good model of realism embraces a degree of irrational behaviors, because the human experience is full of them. There is a natural tension between logic and ethics, and science doesn't resolve that tension outright, thus it isn't a "one size fits all" model of realism. It is as though Pragmatic Empirical Rationalism takes a cold hard look at Idealism and says "fuck you, you analytic/synthetic bitch!" without looking in the mirror and seeing that science itself is full of analytic/synthetic distinctions, but just because they're empirical, they're somehow better? OK. Science is great for science, it's terrible at building and guarding worldviews and completing any given model of realism that accounts for the totality of the human experience (irrational behaviors, split decisions, what is best in life, etc.). Admit that PER is an incomplete model of realism, and move on. I'm not trying to play "gotcha," here. Constructive criticism is all part of a healthy discussion. Reject it or not, it makes no difference to me. A simple "thanks, those are some good points" could be equally as pragmatic and desirable, no?
Gordon Tubbs *but you need other principles to discuss other topics relevant to daily life.* Such as? What "other principles" could you possibly care about that extend beyond the act of making choices and dealing with the consequences? *We're humans after all, and not Vulcans, so our dinner plans may inherently be irrational* 1) I crave pizza (incorrigible) 2) Therefore, if I eat pizza, I will enjoy my dinner (empirical prediction based on prior experience given #1) 3). Therefore, if I want to enjoy my dinner, I should eat pizza (contrapositive #2) How was any of that "irrational?" *A good model of realism embraces a degree of irrational behaviors,* There is nothing irrational about sense experience and the resulting decisions that flow from them. It is only irrational when your decisions have no logical or empirical connection to that data. *There is a natural tension between logic and ethics* Says who? If your ethics are illogical, then maybe that's a subtle clue to fix your broken ethical system; not the other way around. *without looking in the mirror and seeing that science itself is full of analytic/synthetic distinctions,* Did you not even watch this video? I fully embraced the analytic/synthetic distinction. I went out of my way to explain this thing in great detail and give it a big, fat, sloppy blow job. Like, seriously man. Watch this video again, because I don't think you fully understand what I've been arguing.
You know, the common response I see you give is "watch the video again, you just don't understand it." Well, I've watched the video several times now, as well as many of your other videos. Either I'm a total idiot who doesn't deserve a response, or I'm just not "getting" whatever you're trying to argue. In either case, watching the video over and over isn't going to advance our discussion if I have a fundamental disagreement with you - it just may mean I'm struggling to articulate my criticisms well enough. For that I apologize. So, let me see if I can't boil them down to some simpler statements that you can answer directly and succinctly. >> I believe what you are arguing for is the superiority of an empirical epistemology over abstract epistemology when it comes to determining what truth is. (This may seem obvious, but I just want to make sure we're basically on the same page.) >> I believe that Pragmatic Empirical Rationalism can be used to justify true belief and practice of a hedonistic and egocentric life. >> I believe PER fails to address some of the more fundamental ideas that bind our society and culture together, such as Beauty, Justice, Music, Freedom, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Gordon Tubbs *Either I'm a total idiot who doesn't deserve a response, or I'm just not "getting" whatever you're trying to argue.* I'm sorry, but when I openly embrace the analytic/synthetic distinction as a central feature of basic epistemology, it really kind of irks me to see someone like yourself come out claim that I'm doing the exact opposite. I can only assume you either didn't pay attention or you just missed those parts. It's perfectly understandable, because this entire video is crazy dense with information. Even so, the only response I can really give you at this point is "please watch again." Otherwise, you're just arguing against straw men. So... now that you've watched the video again, did you notice the many parts where I proudly declare my undying love for the analytic/synthetic distinction? (okay, I'm exaggerating... but seriously, I did embrace the A/S thing at several points)
I think that although this view is basically very sound it misses at least one important detail. I am definitely an atheist who loves the scientific method so don't worry I don't think I will say anything too insane here. By science we can make accurate predictions about what will happen when we do a specific action, or when a specific event happens. That is all well and good but unless we have some reason to decide one outcome is objectively better than another we still have no way to decide how to act. For example, let's look at the example of crossing the street. We can deduce using science that certain methods of crossing will result in us making it to the other side safely. Others might cause us or someone else to get harmed or cause legal action or damage to property. It is obviously not hard to assign truth values in such a way that we will be able to see which result is which. But that does not help us unless we have a reason to prefer one future over another. All people basically agree on the axiom that "A future where I am unharmed is preferable to a future where I am harmed." This seems to be a very reasonable axiom, but it is not derived from any scientific observation. Infact, no amount of scientific observation can ever lead us to any statement of preferability unless we have a preview statement of preferability to build from. So to build a truth function that encourages outcomes that benefit humans it is necessary to give at least scientifically arbitrary statement a value of true. Otherwise all of our truth statements say nothing about morals and have nothing to say about what we should and should not do. So unless we take at least one axiom of preferability as true, all of pragmatism, and by extension science, fails to drive actions, and is therefore reduced to useless rhetorical gibberish. **Drops Mic** I do genuinely really like this video though, despite that little failure.
It doesn't matter whether or not you care about your future. By definition, if you behave in ways that take no interest in your safety, then it will not be very long before people like yourself simply disappear entirely and get replaced by those of us who do care. We therefore win, by default, no matter what you care to think, because that's just naturally what has to happen. It is also completely meaningless to "derive" a preference via axioms or rules of inference. They are propositions of subjective mental states, which renders them "true" by the principle of mental incorrigibility. You are welcome to guide your epistemology by some other maxim, and as I stated very clearly, any such maxim it is worthless and irrelevant by its own definition. I will therefore not care to employ it, and neither will anyone else who has a vested interest in planning a future without dying.
@@AntiCitizenX “I will therefore not care to employ it, and neither will anyone else who has a vested interest in planning a future without dying” Perhaps not the best choice of words there, since I hardly believe there are many people “planning a future without dying” That might seem snarky but this is actually an important point. Your “pragmatism” has no input on death-which is prudent as there can be no empirical claims about death since it is quite final. But without any such comment on death, how can we possibly categorize any actions as favorable or unfavorable in regards to safety? Naturally one might deduce from the actions of another that death is not favorable, especially to the family of the deceased, but that would not be an empirical deduction on death in regards of the deceased, since it is not you that is experiencing the death. “By definition, if you behave in ways that take no interest in your safety, then it will not be very long before people like yourself simply disappear entirely and get replaced by those of us who do care.” I would agree with this statement, but it still takes an axiom of preferability to care about survival in the end. What is grounding this axiom in which you care who is the dominant voice, or who survives? It surely isn’t empirical in nature, as we can’t know if it is pragmatic to survive without first experiencing death, and thus we don’t know if survival is favorable, and in turn, if social dominance really matters. Anyways, I would have to agree with @Jesse Slater, that this is a rather unfortunate hole in your logic :/
@@AntiCitizenX it's funny, because my interests, as well as many of my opinions have changed over the last years, but this is something I just can't get over with. Any discussion about anything is meaningless without a good understanding of truth.
+Pasxali K Trust the scientific method because the scientific method trusts nothing. Of all the people in the world, the one who takes no one at their word is the hardest to fool. Science starts at a position of doubting everything and proceeds to give it all a chance to fail by conducting an endless series of experiments designed to force every idea to either live up to its promises or fail and be dismissed. "Do you use science to prove your science right?" No, science never proves anything right. All science does is give ideas a chance to fail by testing them. No amount of testing will prove an idea true, but false ideas will sometimes be revealed as false. "If no, why do you trust in the scientific method?" Because false ideas can only be revealed by testing them, so we do the scientific method to try to weed out the bad ideas from the good.
+Pasxali K *Do you use science to prove your science right?* "Science" is not a proposition and has no truth value. You can only "do science" or "not do science."
Clearly you're just repeating what some zealots told you to say without thinking about what you're saying. What makes it worse is the the video never claimed that science was a claim, and thus cannot be true or false. Think for yourself, don't be a sheep.
AntiCitizenX I disagree. That's like saying Math is no proposition and therefore is not true nor false, you can only "do maths" or "not do maths". But in reality everyone thinks he knows maths, because they "learned" it in school, yet still I hardly remember the last time all students in a class simultaneously wrote A grades in maths all the time, everywhere. So apparently math has to be learned first by other humans, then still some do it properly, and some do it wrong or poorly. Where does your science fit into this analogy? Is science always right aslong as you "just do it"? Sorry, but if you truely believe that you must have missed some lessons about scienctific history in your education. Science revises itself all the time. God on the other hand is said to reveal himself to the people (not by one particular religion, but by many), people dont have to "learn" god from other people necessarily, there are lots of testimonies of personal revelations and experiences. The fact that there are so many different religions is evidence of that, otherwise if it was only something people "told" other people we would only have one religion in this world, namely whichever spawned first. That is not the case. Poeple have different interpretations of god, because god is said to have revealed himself in different times to different people, who where isolated populations. In ancient times technology didn't allow and enable people to travel quickly neither was there ways of communication near realtime, like we have it today.
***** "Is science always right as long as you just do it?" Science is neither right nor wrong. Science is merely a technique to try to improve our understanding of the world. It provides no answers for you to evaluate as true or false. It is merely the practice of testing our ideas, and those ideas that survive our best tests earn the privilege of being trusted above other ideas. Using well-tested ideas has put people on the moon; that is the strength of science. "If it was only something people told other people we would only have one religion in this world, namely whichever spawned first." I think you underestimate people's ability to disagree with each other. Even if all the world had a single religion, people would quickly break off into their own sects that better reflect their tastes. Just think of how the Protestants split from the Catholics.
Biblical inerrancy also has another problem; it is internally inconsistent. For instance, Genesis 1's creation account contradicts that of Genesis 2. Even if we knew nothing about the creation of life and the universe, we must necessarily reject at least one of the biblical accounts. Internal inconsistencies literally disprove a model with 100% certainty.
When it comes to truth values informing actions and actions having consequences, I don’t actually need to conclude that the world outside my mind actually exists in order to conclude that I should behave a certain way. For instance I know that I have unpleasant experiences, such as pain, fear, and sadness, pleasant experiences such as excitement, happiness, and pleasure, and neutral experiences such as seeing and hearing regardless of whether or not the world outside my mind exists. It’s possible to conclude that I should behave in ways that I know are likely to have certain desired affects on those experiences without necessarily concluding that the world outside my mind exists. I can also conclude that the world outside my mind is a useful fiction that is unreasonably effective at predicting my experiences similar to how it’s sometimes argued that math is a useful fiction that is unreasonably effective at predicting how the world behaves.
How is it “useful fiction” to observe that actions have consequences, that those consequences are NOT determined by your whims, and that you are not immediately aware of the causal interactions that lead to them? That’s what we are talking about when we refer to the “external world.” It’s all the stuff beyond your immediate perception that appears to translate your actions into future consequences.
People should just, ya know....read the Pragmatists so they can understand what ACX is getting at. Start with Peirce, James, and Dewey then see what happens.
This video is my Bible. I now follow the truth assignment structure of "What is truth? inerrancy". Actually I think I disagree on truths definition where I'll accept truth as an assignment for the value true within prepositional logic, but also I will accept the correspondence theory of truth as a distinctly separate definition of truth used colloquially as a tautologically phrased shorthand for mind independent reality which is unknowable but conceptually exists. I think the second definition would apply in the phrase "knowing the truth"
Even better philosophy "does it help me win videogames and puzzle-games?" Does me sitting their pondering about the Gods that run the Mushroom Kingdom enable me to solve the lore of the videogame or get Mario to the finish-line? No? Golly... that's useless
it's the old philosophical debate between idealists and materialists. The idealists won and we had the middle age, then the materialists won and we still live in this world. We still see idealists today, thinking that the "Truth" is outside of our world and abstractions are possible and are the "truths". I think this is the main problem. But, I have a biais: I'm materialist.
So glad you agree with me that debates are worthless bullshit. That is why I have never watched a single political debate. Ever. In my 50+ years. Never will. And, specifically, thank you for mentioning Western courtrooms. I recall reading somewhere that in the Soviet Union, there was none of this artificial distinction between "civil" versus "criminal" crimes. That has nothing whatsoever do to with the issue of the idiocy of deliberately constructing an adversarial legal system, but more the fact that, something that the law cultists (judges, lawyers, and the police officers and prison guards who defend them) take as some sort of absolute "truth": the sharp division between an action which is criminal versus something civil you could get "merely" sued for, is just a non-objective artifice.
Well done Sir! Very comprehensive and available to share with my Christian friends! After they understand this video, all I have to do is ask "What predictions do the claims of Christianity make?" And then the debate is over!
Now this definition of truth has a problem. That it breaks the fundamental law of logic that's the law of non-contradiction. Now, why do I say that? Because there is no objective standard of practicality in the first place. For example we can take this sentence: “Atoms have electrons, protons and neutrons.” Now this sentence is practical for a scientist. But for me this sentence is impractical. Now I will say that sentence is true and false at the same time. Just because it's practical and impractical at the same time for different people? No! Because it will break the law of non-contradiction that a sentance can't be false and true at the same time. So, here for resolving that problem we have to remove the criteria of practicality here for calling it true and false without contradiction.
That truth exists at all shows that there has to be a standard of what is right and what is false. Truth is not a human construct. If there was not a single person on earth, truth would still exist. Since it exists, there must be the one who sets the standard and that one is what Christians call God. It is God’s nature that he is truth. He is the standard for all truth. That’s why Jesus said “I am the truth.”
But you have to admit, no matter how much science advances, no one would argue we got to the point that science has left humanity with no need for philosophy
Technically speaking we ate just brains in a vat, the vat being our skulls, and or bodies being the vessel our brains in a vat operate and use to make contact with the outside world, we are our brains.
Possibly the most pragmatic definition of Pragmatism I've ever heard (in this context, I can't think of higher complement). I'd be curious to hear, what do you think of the "FoundHerentism" of Susan Haack?
As the name might suggest, it combines coherentism and foundationalism in such a way as their virtues eliminate their respective vices. I think it's clever, though (as your video points out), probably not as important as realizing that truth is knowledge that "pays it's way". Look forward to more!
Hi! So from what i have seen in this (amazing) video is that the objective part of science comes from the consequences and reliability? I am confused. It was my prior understanding that science wasn't certain and operated with confidence values (the more fundamental the science, the more accurate the value). But I fail to understand empiricism, and so fail to understand empirical evidence. Can you help?
Thanks for your question. Let me see if I can answer it. Objective does not mean certain. It just means independent of your opinions and desires. When you make a choice, consequences follow, and you cannot “debate” them. That’s the foundation in which science can claim objectivity, even if we still cannot “know” things with absolute perfection.
@@AntiCitizenX Thanks for the reply! So... something is objective when its causes are outside of our minds? So a rock would be considered a part of objective reality if it does not change when i think about it?
Ok there is a section I got to where it say Beliefs drives actions, Actions have consequences, Consequences are Objective. This is hypothetical. But I believe and assert my propositional truth that I need your car and cash to get to my destination. I even caused bodily harm towards you.. What determines in your mind why there should be consequences for my actions?
What am I suppose to prove? If I see you and your car. And I believe I need your car and cash for survival reasons at that moment to satisfy my need; even to the point of causing bodily harm if you try to stop me. I am asserting my propostional truth that this action is good and right to satisfy me need. since there is no Objective Truth. I'm going in more detail. So my question is for you. Using your concept, What determines in your mind why there should be consequences for my actions if my action? Why do you say I have to prove any think it is my asserted propositional truth by defenition my judgement my opinion. Because there is no Objective Truth.
*What am I suppose to prove?* All you did was assert some proposition out of nothing. Specifically, "I believe and assert my propositional truth that I need your car and cash to get to my destination." That's not a proof of truth or a statement of fact. It was a bare assertion and nothing else. *I am asserting my propostional truth that this action is good and right to satisfy me need.* See? You're just asserting facts without evidence. Prove it. And while you're at it, please explain to me how this thought problem is relevant to the principle of truth assignment for synthetic propositions.
Finally (no sarcasm). I've felt an urge to make this same sort of presentation, but you did it far better than I ever could have. The lack of progress in (most of) philosophy (and especially the lack of even basic understanding of these concepts amongst the masses) is SOOOO frustrating. It's really not that difficult, and you explained it. The world we could be living in right now would be stupefyingly better if more people understood this. THANK YOU. Spamming all social media with this.
great video! i'd love to see your idea applied to some tricky dilemmas to derive their truth. maybe you have done this in other videos already? i can't remember. but basically i'm asking you to demonstrate the usefulness of your hypothesis (or should i call it a theory...)
7:35 You can know. If there is a null hypothesis that is literally the same as non-existence. This also applies to God, that's how we know God doesn't exist. It's irrelevant whether your right or wrong because we never would know that. Even if you were shown to be wrong, then what you know changes in the present. The past is irrelevant to what you know now.
There. I pretty much just solved all philosophy. You're welcome.
how can there be an epistemic barrier between our perception of reality and our linguistic framework for describing reality? isn't the linguistic framework a direct result of the perception itself?
+AntiCitizenX hello ACX, never heard of you before(to my dismay). one of the people i sub to liked your video here, so i checked it out. after going through some of your uploads... yup... earned a sub from me :p
philosophy has never been my strong point(but i am a pragmatist, thank you for giving me the proper term)
+AntiCitizenX Poor philosophers. They already have trouble finding something they can do and be paid for at the same time.
+AntiCitizenX "Truth is a label we assign to propositions" this is the best joke i've read this week.good job!
+Sam Levin Not really, because there are many tools of language like context dependent definitions and ambiguity that make it complicated.
As a scientist, I want to thank you for this very clear explanation of what science is and why we need it.
Hello, there! It's good to see you! :)
Scientists seem to believe that truth is what works (to quote William James), but what works is not necessarily the truth, and maybe much simpler to use. On a different tack... In logic, given true axioms, you can only get true results, but with false axioms, you can get anything you want. Why would you want to live in a universe that is only a subset of a meta-universe where anything is possible? I prefer to live in a larger universe where nothing, not even middles, are excluded.
Это одно из моих любимых видео всея Ютуба.
Вас тоже смотрю с удовольствием 😊
(Вообще я просто испытал приток какого-то неожиданного позитива, увидев комментарий от Вас, и понял, что не могу не отреагировать)
That ending was an implied mic drop if ever I've heard one. Brilliant!
+Martymer 81 Indeed. Cool to see your watch AntiCitizenX. I'm a recent subscriber to your channel. Great stuff you have over there.
+Martymer 81 thanks Marty! had you not liked the video, i would have never seen it. never heard of this guy before, but he friggin NAILED it :)
One of the best philosophy videos I've seen. Clear, concise and informative. 10/10.
I really like how you think. Having been involved in the new-age, hippie, pseudo-psychology comunity for several years during my education, i must say it is so refreshing to adopt this stance. Everything is clear, simpler and less stresfull, and most important, it works.
+Sinclairelim
That's exactly what I was going for!
+Sinclairelim I'm going to operate under the assumption that those people will say "well that's not what *truth* means". Post-modernist semantics games are annoying and impractical. A lot of the wishy-washy, hyper-ambiguous, "truth is subjective" types don't like science or pragmatism as an explanation of reality preferring instead to derogatorily call it "scientism" (as if a religion) and claim it's just as dogmatic as fundamentalist supernatural belief system.
+Sinclairelim Yeah, the more you ignore of philosophy the better off you are.
But this is pholosophy.
Sinclairelim Which pretty much threw out everything else out on the window.
At the end of the day, our evolved brains are essentially Bayesian engines assessing the probability of things being true based on prior experience and evaluation of new evidence coming through our sensory organs. That marvellous engine is sadly prone to many bugs though ...
+Sébastien Laberge
true. we didn't evolve to be correct or see things accurately, we evolved to survive by working together. that lets lots of bugs creep in.
no need to simplify as "bugs", on the way to finally find the Truth, we sometimes go a "not exactly right" direction, we can manage it afterwards, may be this or not this life. focus to unTruth (there is no false but unTruth, inside those we thought Truth) then all right will come.
true lots of microscopic "bugs" live on our faces
This is the crux. The random result of randomly evolved stardust, can never produce truth. All you have are chemicals and neurons. Who's to say who's chemicals and neurons are correct. This is the very definition of absurdity.
@@TheDeathInTheAir hahahahahaha
Man, I am a philosophy student and your explanation was more clear and usefull than most I have heard from my colegues. When I finish my undergrad, I wanna make a PhD in pragmatism epistemology (I'm very interested in empirical knowledge and the pragmatic aproach (Specially Peirce and Haack). I'll share your videos with my friends. (I am not fluent in english yet. So, I'm sorry if I wrote something wrong).
vinicius apolinario Thank you! I share your frustration with modern philosophy as well.
Excelente, amigo! Compartilhar esse tipo de informação útil é de imenso benefício pra todos nós :)
So... Tell me more about this..... Science.
+iggypopshot
It works. Bitches.
+AntiCitizenX
Ahh, I see... As always Nice vid man, and the Dawkins quote sealed the deal.
+iggypopshot
And evolution is a physical manifestation of this process. Among a myriad of propositions, for which only those whose consequences that are compatible with reality (and only reality at that particular time and place) continue with further explorations of variety among the details of it's original proposition. Life (or Nature or pick your anthropomorphism), it seems, is trying to figure out "the truth", herself.
Is it a coincidence that our evaluation and implementation of these processes to figure out the nature of our world are similar? Maybe. Or maybe I just need to pack another bowl.
009blush both is good with me, blush ;))
+iggypopshot Sup iggy. Haven't crossed paths with you in a long time. Good to see you.
Thank you for explaining the useful parts of philosophy and not mentioning the useless stuff.
That’s what I do! Thanks for noticing.
What is truth? Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more...
lol
Isn't that "What is love?"? Coincidentally, also a point of contention among philosophers.
You are correct. Mathematical Logic is a TOOL we use to analyze nature, or an idea, or whatever. It is not some independent ultimate truth about reality.
IF something in reality behaves similar to something WE defined, then we can use OUR logic to make predictions about that something. If our prediction is way off, it's not that something is special---it's our logic that is flawed.
It's interesting that when people really put truth above all else and sacrifice it for nothing, they all arrive at exactly the same epistemology even without any of them influencing the other. I arrived at this epistemology before I watched King Crocoduck, and I watched him before I even heard about you. And yet, we all share precisely the same epistemology.
A wonderful Re-telling and clarification of one of his earlier videos. I always find that I got MORE out of his responding to peoples objections. He doesnt break too much new ground from the older video, but he does succinctly describe and defend his position. I particularly loved the.
"Beliefs Drive Actions
Actions have Consequences.
Consequences are Objective."
Couldnt say it better with 9 paragraphs, what he does in 9 words.
+TheAtheistChef "Consequences are Objective" How do we know this?
Well lets say we have a belief that I dont need to eat at all.
Belief: I Dont need to eat
Action: Not eating
Consequence: Starving to death
Its quite objective..
+TheAtheistChef You see, you only asserted that starving is the consequence of not eating, but how do you know that it's true? You've observed a correlation (between not eating and starving), but that's not causation, and it certainly doesn't prove that consequences are objective. I'm not saying you shouldn't eat, but we're talking about the truths of things. ;)
1. We see it all the time. We can empirically verify that not eating leads to death by starvation. All it takes to prove the " assertion" is observation.
But fine lets change the example.
Belief: Bullets fired at me wont hit me.
Action: I get someone to fire bullets at me.
Consequence: I get shot.
+TheAtheistChef "We can empirically verify" That's called verificationism, but there are other schools of thought, like fallibilism which this video briefly mentions. It goes deep, just look up the Münchhausen trilemma or the problem of induction, quite the rabbit hole.
I am so glad i fell on this video thank you for existing and trying to save humanity from its self inflicted confusion. It's slowing us all down. Good thing people like you still exist.
+failsatpancakes
Thanks for watching!
How can it be slowing us down when we aren't going anywhere? We certainly won't be around forever, and when we are gone, the universe won't care. There is no end goal, and the only goals that exist are the temporary ones we assert. And there is no necessary reason why anybody else need comply with your temporary asserted goals, especially if those goals contradict their own. Why should I desire peace and equality when I am the emperor? The only truth is the violence of my assertion for my particular goals. The rest is Deus Vult, and I am my own god.
You covered this before in the Responding to Objections series. Nice up-date. You could just say, "Truth is what works, Science works, therefore Science is true!" Then mic drop, and walk off the stage. Love your work.
+Uriah Christensen
It really is an update. I'm glad you noticed that. My previous video used a lot of sloppy definitions and a had some faulty understanding of how all this stuff relates together.
Have you read anything by William James? Facts impose themselves on us, and we form a belief based off of them. Then the truth value of the belief is like the cash value of a bank note. If the belief is false, then the belief will not work, and has no usefulness. If the belief is true, then it will work, and is useful. So, Truth is something that happens to a belief upon action.
Uriah Christensen
Yes, a lot of James's work was very similar to my own line of thinking. He asked many of the same questions I did, and even arrived at very similar answers. I just hope I was able to express those ideas in a more modern context.
I really liked this, as well as the previous one. The previous one is actually what got me looking into James, Pierce, and Dewey. I find that Pragmatism is the only reliable way that I can see to assign truth values to my beliefs about the phenomena I experience. If one is trying to correspond a proposition to some noumena when all we have is phenomena, then the correspondence theory is stuck in an epistemological dilemma.
Thanks for sharing the script. Makes it MUCH easier to follow along and deeply reflect on the content.
Awesome video. I always come back to your channel for clarifications like these.
AntiCitizenX is among the best educational content producers on youtube. Thanks for another great video!
+Nathan Wood
Thanks for watching!
That's it. That's where the rubber meets the road, both literally and figuratively. Go argue materialism with a fast moving Mack Truck.
Wow, thank you for this very clear explanation of "truth".... which I will forget in 2 days. But no worry, I've bookmarked it, and I probably will come back many a time !
Love your channel. Keep up the good work. :)
This video convinced me that subscribing to this channel was a worthwhile decision. And I've only seen one other video of yours before, the one on omnipotence. Excellent work.
I really really like this. After watching too many videos about philosophy I start to feel like I know less after doing so. So many philosophers seem to want to turn everything into goo. Nothing is solid, nothing is real. I've even heard about people who literally believe the world is illusory. I wonder how they cross the street.
Or *why* they cross it.
Fair Witness lol
This channel is a masterpiece and very much underrated
Thank you!
He's back! Thank my nonexistent god!
My nonexistent god is better than yours because reasons!
I define AntiCitizenX
as God, so god dose exist, hes right here hosting this channel
I could not help but picture Sye Ten Bruggencate standing in front of 'The Thinker' and saying "How can you know that?"
18:32 This pretty much the conclusion I came to when I was talking intro philosophy. Though, I couldn't articulate it as well as you did in your video.
so I listen to hours of philosophy almost every day. this video is the best I've ever heard on theories of truth and their usefulness. I'm spreading this video and subscribing.
Thanks!
I really appreciate this channel.
Yay!!! I was worried you weren't doing any more videos. Thanks for the new one! :)
I think you're putting correspondence theory to a higher standard than it deserves. The definition of truth is not in itself an epistemology and it doesn't need to be. What truth is and how we go about determining it are two separate questions. I think when we claim something is true, what we mean is this: "truth is that which corresponds to the version of reality I experience, assuming that the reality I experience corresponds to objective reality." With that assumption made, the definition becomes less vacuous.
A question on axiomatic formalism. A common definition of knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). A common objection to JTB is the gettier problem, to which I tend to be inclined to modify the definition of knowledge to JTB, where the justification is also a JTB. For instance, you might see a jumping man next to you who looks like Johnny Depp and think, "I know that Johnny Depp is jumping", where the justification is composed of 2 propositions: the person next to you is Johnny Depp, and the person next to you is jumping. If Johnny Depp is actually miles away but coincidentally jumping, you would still have a JTB, but the justification would not be a JTB, so that's why it doesn't seem to be knowledge. The problem with this is you must show that every subsequent justification is a JTB, and eventually you fall upon axiomatic statements. I don't think this solved the problem of skepticism, however.
A = A, to be known, would require a justification. I suspect many would say "A=A because the definition of A is A", which would imply the following principle: "If the definition of A is A, then A=A". But of course any skeptic would then ask, "how do you know that if the definition of A is A, A=A?" Even avoiding the problem of the reliability of our senses, we're still going to have to justify claims that we have no choice but to presuppose. So is knowledge of our world possible, even if our senses can be perfectly trusted?
I also don't think pragmatism solves epistemology, at least not in the sense you seem to think it does. Even if you acknowledge that you can't prove the correspondence of your experience to objective reality, you still have to deal with the skepticism of other assumptions science makes. For instance, the gravitational constant = 6.67408 × 10^-11. Who's to say that 5 seconds from now it won't equal 6.67408 * 10^-5? Science has to presuppose several things, such as the consistency of the laws of nature, the principle that all events have some cause, and of course that observations can be used as data to model reality. Even worse, if you can trust that the laws of nature are guaranteed to remain constant, everything has a cause of some sort, and your senses are reliable, how do you know that your cognitive faculties that you use to come to conclusions based on your perceptions can be trusted? It's true, I'll avoid a bus if I see it, but that's because I am conditioned to do so. If someone were to continue asking me why it's wise to avoid a bus, I would eventually run out of answers.
This is the long form version of Dawkins's "Science. It works, bitches."
"Pragmatism is the ultimate measure of all philosophical truths"
Pragmatism is a belief system, with assumptions, thus it can only measure truth within that framework. You simply stated your position (one I sympathize with ), but you haven't "solved" anything, philosophy is not that easy. Unless you define philosophy as pragmatism, but then it's just a tautology.
Anticitizenx, you should really reply to this.
Just saw this. I think ACX should have gone into an explanation of what Metaphysics would be like after we accept pragmatism. As a fellow Neoclassical pragmatist, I believe he should have went with Dewey's and James' understanding of a system in line with immediate empiricism. It's a postulate where metaphysics becomes about the generic traits of existences present within actual experience as such.
Now this definition of truth has a problem. That it breaks the fundamental law of logic that's the law of non-contradiction. Now, why do I say that? Because there is no objective standard of practicality in the first place. For example we can take this sentence:
“Atoms have electrons, protons and neutrons.”
Now this sentence is practical for a scientist. But for me this sentence is impractical. Now I will say that sentence is true and false at the same time. Just because it's practical and impractical at the same time for different people? No! Because it will break the law of non-contradiction that a statement can't be false and true at the same time. So, here for resolving that problem we have to remove the criteria practicality here for calling it true and false without contradiction.
A very nice find. Seems to nicely package my direction / conclusions.
16:54 «I have yet to encounter a single philosopher who could successfully argue with a speeding bus»
Dat's ork filosofy fo' ya' >:D
- Hey, let's discuss truth!
- Ok! To be fair, first let's get rid of all assumptions and start from the ground up!
- Right!
- ...
- ...
- squirrel squirrel.
- fladgibommmm ...BAPHUSTA!
What philosopher is this Chewbacca guy?
Truth and reality will never be the same.
Absolutely feckin' awesome. Now... cue the comments from the outraged fuckers who think that sitting around on your arse expelling flatulence from your ears is a valid a valuable tool for allowing us to understand and manipulate _physical_ reality.
+TheLivingDinosaur
I was hoping you'd respond with something like this. That always makes my day!
Well, based on the comment section, there are some non-trivial problems with pragmatism like determining non-practical truths, such as beauty.
No there's not. Who cares about whatever the fuck beauty is. Contemplating that is a waste of time. Especialy in this post Snuggie world.
Thank you for the video. Your vids are educational for me and they inspire me to make my own videos. Have a nice day!
Jesus hates ponies is true. It's vaccuosly true.
+The Realistic Nihilist
lol... you're actually right about that!
+The Realistic Nihilist
If the statement were "Jesus of the bible" then yes, I would agree. Perhaps, this Jesus is someone AntiCitizenX met a year ago, and was told he hated ponies outright. Yay for linguistic ambiguity!
@@charkopolis well, thing is, dont were have a bit of responsibility to understand people right? if we just say
"yay linguistic ambiguity" I could literally argue that my cat is a dog and you would not be able to do a darn thing about it.
yes it dose suck that all rellvent information of words cant be contained inside the words themself, but thats kind of
the problem with this world.
who k@@KeimoKissaows, Yay for linguistic ambiguity!
@@MouseGoat can I meet your cat named "a dog"?
10:00 That is not true. Equality has a definition in axiomatic set theory (x = y is defined as: for all z, z being a member of x is equivalent to z being a member of y). And transitivity follows from that definition.
It's also a Peano axiom and therefore true by rote say-so within that framework.
I love this video so, so much.
I really like all of your content , but this is by far your best video in imo
Thanks
+stefan klisarov
Thanks for watching!
Finally found a fellow pragmatist!
That was the greatest 20 minutes of my life. Thank you, AntiCitizenX.
Yeah, science!
Hahaha
Thank you for making this thought-provoking video. I had found a lot of things in philosophy very confusing, but late in the video, especially when you mentioned pragmatism and how a question of the number of angels on a pin is irrelevant, I felt relieved. I remember hearing about philosophies that were difficult to understand, and I admit that while I have an interest in philosophy, it's off-putting when it becomes difficult to understand.
One thing that also came to mind about this was the culture of political correctness and identity politics in today's society. It can become so confusing, to say the least
"The pragmatic scientific method therefore is the measure of all philosophical truth." That's a bit of a broad stroke. What about mathematical truth? Metaphysical insights? Sensory perception (the state of consciousness itself)? Historical epistemology? Legal judgments? The latter two cases don't apply science science rigorious theorization and experimentation is impossible but I can understand that that's a minor issue.
*What about mathematical truth?*
We covered that. It is encompassed by science.
*Metaphysical insights?*
Meaningless gibberish.
*Sensory perception*
We already covered that. You're asking questions that were dealt with in great detail.
*Historical epistemology?*
Pragmatic scientific method.
*Legal judgments?*
Irrelevant to the fundamentals of epistemology.
Thanks for the reaction! I don't often have channel owners commenting on a video 2 years old (let alone on the same day). I think what you write is mostly true, but if and only if you assume that science is any form of pragmatic knowledge gathering, as opposed to the methodology of theoretization and experimentation (mostly reserved for physics, biology, chemistry and suchlike). Mathematics isn't acknowledged as a scientific field; you don't use science to prove theorems (and besides, I don't think mathematicians are all that pragmatical - without applications or practical consequences in mind).
As for metaphysics, I was hoping for a more sophisticated answer. All physics ultimately rest on metaphysics. You can't talk about "force" without conceptualizing it. The law of causation? I'd count that as metaphysics. But I understand it if you'd call all of this simple, not-so-interesting postulates, upon which science - the interesting stuff - is built (at this point, metaphysics, physics and mathematics kind of fuse into one). Still this field of "postulates" is probably richer than one might consider - almost every word can be elaborated on. Also I can see how you are right to call questions like "just what is matter" asked 2000 years ago a bunch of mumbo jumbo, as recent quantum physics and general relativity have been shaking our ideas on nature in ways nobody could have predicted. In any case, these theories were untestable and philosophers of nature would have been better off doing science (if they knew what it was). Sorry, I'm rambling.
(Speaking of quantum physics, what's your stance on the truth of the various interpretations - or formalisms - of it? Many histories, probabilistic, Copenhagen... is there truth to any one in specific, or is it nothing but mathematical equivalence and thus pointless to ponder over? If the latter, does that imply that you believe none of these can ever be disproven? Honest questions.)
The reason I brought up consciousness in specific is because you can't prove consciousness. You can measure brain activity, and make conclusions by drawing analogy with your own sensory experience, but ultimately you won't know that there is someone "in there", thus giving rise to the problem of the philosophical zombie. I guess "science" is as close as you can get, beyond personal experience of course.
As for the last two, that's exactly what I meant with the definition of science. History definitely isn't science according to any conventional definition, for reasons already given. It is still pragmatic however, which is why I was reluctant to bring them up in the first place.
@@orktv4673 *Mathematics isn't acknowledged as a scientific field*
No, but it is definitely a critical aspect of the scientific process.
*As for metaphysics, I was hoping for a more sophisticated answer.*
I was dead serious when I said "meaningless gibberish." Metaphysics is a buzzword used by pseudo-intellectuals to sound smart without saying anything coherent. The very definition of that word is not even agreed upon by philosophers.
*Speaking of quantum physics*
Many worlds.
*The reason I brought up consciousness in specific is because you can't prove consciousness.*
Define consciousness and explain it in terms of empirically predictive models. Then we'll talk.
*History definitely isn't science according to any conventional definition*
Historical method is very much justified in accordance with pragmatic scientific methods, but that is a very long and complicated issue.
@@AntiCitizenX "No, but it is definitely a critical aspect of the scientific process."
Of course it is. You use mathematics to understand nature. But it's exactly for that reason that we consider them different. Mathematics defines things as true (axioms) and derives new truths through established rules; mathematical truths that are 100% certain. Physics's truths can never be assured with perfect certainty. Therefore they are fundamentally different and I don't see how we are not seeing eye to eye about this.
"I was dead serious when I said "meaningless gibberish."" I am sure you were. Let's not get caught up in broad terms that we disagree with; I'll give three cases that I would consider having to do with truths that can't be established through rigourous observation:
1. Cogito ergo sum. It is an absolute fact that I exist, and it is for you an absolute fact that you exist. And it's not an empirical observation; existence is a necessity for sensing, thinking and observing. There is no doubt.
2. Falsifiability. Is this not a case in and of itself? You explained it yourself in this very video. The notion that a theory (in the broadest sense) can never be confirmed but only be disproven is a conclusion derived from the _concept_ of observation, not from any particular observation. And this holds true for all of philosophy of science.
3. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. I thought I'd illustrate my point with an actual metaphysical work (this is what Kant called it). Would you call this work of titanic importance to philosophical development "gibberish"? Pull no punches if you actually would. I'm just a humble theoretical phycisist, and I've tried to read Kant, and I found it quite impenetrable; I'm really trying to see just how far you go in this. His conclusions aren't the interesting thing, if any of his work is "valid" (i.e. it has any epistemological merit), I'm satisfied.
@@orktv4673
*You use mathematics to understand nature. But it's exactly for that reason that we consider them different.*
So? Am I supposed to disagree with this? It's like you didn't actually watch the video.
*Physics's truths can never be assured with perfect certainty. Therefore they are fundamentally different and I don't see how we are not seeing eye to eye about this.*
I never once said or implied otherwise.
May 1000 Velociraptors descend upon those who dislike your videos. LOL
I love it! This is just the video I needed in my epistemological existentialism of recent, but since it hasn't been quenched despite being calmed, I question further: what about the philosophical problems science cannot solve? What do we answer them with? How do we know if those answers are proper or not?
Before answering, first answer this: what practical utility is gained or lost depending on what answer we get?
@@thek2despot426 peace of mind
People get paralyzed with regards to decisions or are forever plagued by certain things
I don't need your answer anymore btw. Such things aren't meant for science by definition.
Fucking Love it! Been using a Pragmatist function to assign truth values to propositions for quite some time now, without even realizing it.
I'm just finishing up my degree in astrophysics, and I really enjoyed the mathematical philosophy. You should make a video explaining it in more depth, or maybe actually using a somewhat realistic example in a pragmatists world view and boil down their thought process to assign truth to values using the math!
Your crossing the road example was excellent, but something like that but perhaps more complicated, and then use the truth values to have some character make a decision.
does this mean ignorance is bliss so long as it cant become in-covenant ?
i dont know is all i feel left with help ? or is there non
Also dose this mean only testable beliefs that interact with other testable beliefs may as well be used so long as they work or are convent or am i getting this wrong ?
The real question should be: what is Shrek
when is shrek?
I'm wondering if you're working on a video about the synthetic/analytic distinction, it sounds right to me, but from what I've seen your defense of it is the 2/3 majority consensus of academic philosophers, a source of knowledge you seem to disavow to some extent.
Additionally people usually mention a priori / a posteriori distinction for a full 2x2 box of possible kinds of statements, what od you make of that?
My “defense” about 2/3 majority is simply a response to the argument that I’m making some sort of fringe controversial statement. There is a massive trend in philosophy to disavow the A/S distinction as some kind of stupidly debunked thing to say, when really it is the de facto standard in mainstream philosophy and epistemology.
I think it's fine to define truth for purposes of philosophical discussion as a linguistic/semantic property. However I don't think it can be categorically stated that truth is "not some intrinsic, metaphysical quality of reality itself" unless a basis for the charge can be made. Truth as a property of propositions is not what truth is, it's one of the things truth does. Truth as a metaphysical quality of reality itself on the other hand is an actual definition--maybe the only proper working definition--of what truth IS. Truth that inheres the essence of existents seems an actual explanation for why propositions are coherent, can correspond and are found to be useful (pragmatically speaking).
*Truth as a property of propositions is not what truth is, it's one of the things truth does.*
Technically, a truth value is just a member of a binary set {T,F}. We then map propositions to that set, and we can only do so by defining rules for doing. That's the strictest, formal definition of truth in all of philosophical and mathematical logic. You are welcome to define other concepts of truth, but I can promise you right now that it will either be terribly flawed, inconsistent, or outright incomprehensible.
I don't think your promise of incomprehensibilty holds. On the other hand, every complex philosophical system is flawed. I agree with the idea of value as binary. This works wonderfully for positing a fundamentally true reality that is fragmentally falsified. Fragmental falsification can intuitively be recognized to pass from essence to material existence through choice, despite the fundamental p vs ~p problem. For example the choice to experiment with drugs often leads to physical addiction and the falsification of body and mind. The fact that we know intuitively to define rules for logical and rational discussion, that intellects (to varying degrees of efficiency) automatically recognize patterns, make plans, formulate useful scientific experiments, devise and abide by rules of law, recognize moral dilemmas, etc. are things we would do naturally if we were value-endued (T-F) beings operating in a value-endued universe. This view is not "incomprehensible", though your position--" If your rules follow anything significantly different, then your entire sense of epistemology is irrelevant and worthless to me"--suggests a closed mind and unwillingness bordering on inability to think outside your box. So be it, but shutting out anyone who fails to live up to or abide by one's epistemic standards traps one inside a pretty small world.
elmerfud551
*This view is not "incomprehensible", though your position--" If your rules follow anything significantly different, then your entire sense of epistemology is irrelevant and worthless to me"--suggests a closed mind and unwillingness bordering on inability to think outside your box.*
By definition, any rejection of pragmatic measures for synthetic propositions is an outright admission of pure irrelevance. It means you have categorically detached your epistemology from any sense of action and consequence. I can therefore unilaterally accept your entire argument outright, and literally NOTHING in my life will functionally change as a result. I'm sorry if that sounds like "closed mindedness" to you, but I went out of my way to explain this to you in this very video. Since you have utterly failed to address this problem in any capacity, my point still stands and pragmatism wins.
"Utterly failed....in any capacity..." AntiCitizen places hands over ears and chants "nyah, nyah, nyah..." repeatedly as a defense against those who refuse to succumb to his dogma. So be it.
elmerfud551
I like how you accuse me of being closed-minded right after I explained my position to you and presented mu argument in its defense, while your immediate response was to ignore the thing entirely and pretend it never happened.
I am getting awfully sick and tired of manipulative liars around here.
3:06 actually there is a third one "the question is improperly phrased or can be interpreted differently to have different answers"
He addresses this indirectly at 4:23
You ended the video with: "So unless your truth assignment can somehow facilitate my desire to solve actual problems and reliably predict the outcomes of my actions, then by definition and admission it is irrelevant and worthless. Pragmatic Scientific Method therefore is the ultimate measure of ALL philosophical truth." Any time somebody says "all" and "truth" and "ultimate" in the same sentence, my skepticism signals an alarm in my mind. I hope it does for you too.
While I agree that pragmatic empirical rationalism (PER) is a solid epistemology, it strikes me as a wee bit egocentric and subjective. As philosophers, we should be pursuing models of realism that are "one size fits all" not "this size fits me, fuck you if you think otherwise." It's entirely possible somebody could pragmatically, empirically, and rationally decide something is true, when it could objectively be false, and they go about living their lives normally because they had a desirable outcome. You're equating beliefs and decisions with desirability, which is prone to cognitive biases.
I completely understand that the cognitive-behavioral distinction is necessary, but the Principle of Consistency is way more important that the Criterion of Falsifiability when it comes to pragmatism, and was worth mentioning in this video. If something is consistently true, then it will always be true irregardless of time and place. This separates the boys (pursuit of provisional beliefs that result in egocentrically desirable outcomes), from the men (pursuit of consistent beliefs that result in desirable outcomes for all).
I think if we want to marry epistemology with ethics (which is what I think you're trying to do), then we cannot absolve ourselves from cognitive biases. If you invoke falsifiability as your only arbiter of what can be a potentially true or false, then your epistemology defaults to a single heuristic process, and you'll have no way of measuring non-empirical claims. Particularly, discussions about morality, beauty, justice, existentialism, causality, contingency, meaning, or freedom are abstract in nature and make no predictive claims that can be empirically falsified. With PER, it seems awfully easy to justify true beliefs ex post facto according to whatever preference for a desired outcome you had to begin with.
But hey, every philosophy has problems at the end of the day. So, fuck it.
*If you invoke falsifiability as your only arbiter of what can be a potentially true or false, then your epistemology defaults to a single heuristic process, and you'll have no way of measuring non-empirical claims.*
At what point did I ever invoke falsifiablity as my ONLY arbiter of true and false? I specifically went out of my way to list many other perfectly valid truth assignment functions within the realm of analytic propositions.
*As philosophers, we should be pursuing models of realism that are "one size fits all" not "this size fits me, fuck you if you think otherwise."*
Except science is exactly the "one size fits all" you're asking for. It is physically impossible to live your life without science, because any attempt to do so would only result in getting run over by a bus. You're also perfectly welcome to offer up some other system of truth assignment for synthetic propositions, and I again listed plenty of viable candidates. The only problem is that any such function is immediately worthless and irrelevant, by definition. I can concede your entire epistemology outright, and literally nothing in my life will be different as a result. At best, the only philosophical difference you will have made at the end of the day is the arbitrary mapping of some meaningless bunch of propositions to some binary set. Whooptie fucking do. So it's not just me that doesn't care about your alternative truth assignments, but literally everyone else on the planet, including yourself.
The final segment beginning at 19:19 with the related discussion on fallibism and falsifiability is great for science and the scientific method, but you need other principles to discuss other topics relevant to daily life. This video lacks said principles, and so I can only judge it on the merits of what was said, not what wasn't said. Feel free to send me an essay or make another video that flushes out the cognitive-behavioral gap a bit further if you like.
What I'm getting at is decisions like "what should I eat for dinner?" to an extent involve some degree of irrationality (such as what you feel like eating), that are difficult to predict. The problem has multiple solutions, which could all be desirable. We're humans after all, and not Vulcans, so our dinner plans may inherently be irrational. Yes, I can use science to quantify decision making (with the binary assignment), but there's no empirical way to affirm the "right choice" for myself, in the moment, with empirical evidence.
A good model of realism embraces a degree of irrational behaviors, because the human experience is full of them. There is a natural tension between logic and ethics, and science doesn't resolve that tension outright, thus it isn't a "one size fits all" model of realism. It is as though Pragmatic Empirical Rationalism takes a cold hard look at Idealism and says "fuck you, you analytic/synthetic bitch!" without looking in the mirror and seeing that science itself is full of analytic/synthetic distinctions, but just because they're empirical, they're somehow better? OK. Science is great for science, it's terrible at building and guarding worldviews and completing any given model of realism that accounts for the totality of the human experience (irrational behaviors, split decisions, what is best in life, etc.).
Admit that PER is an incomplete model of realism, and move on. I'm not trying to play "gotcha," here. Constructive criticism is all part of a healthy discussion. Reject it or not, it makes no difference to me. A simple "thanks, those are some good points" could be equally as pragmatic and desirable, no?
Gordon Tubbs
*but you need other principles to discuss other topics relevant to daily life.*
Such as? What "other principles" could you possibly care about that extend beyond the act of making choices and dealing with the consequences?
*We're humans after all, and not Vulcans, so our dinner plans may inherently be irrational*
1) I crave pizza (incorrigible)
2) Therefore, if I eat pizza, I will enjoy my dinner (empirical prediction based on prior experience given #1)
3). Therefore, if I want to enjoy my dinner, I should eat pizza (contrapositive #2)
How was any of that "irrational?"
*A good model of realism embraces a degree of irrational behaviors,*
There is nothing irrational about sense experience and the resulting decisions that flow from them. It is only irrational when your decisions have no logical or empirical connection to that data.
*There is a natural tension between logic and ethics*
Says who? If your ethics are illogical, then maybe that's a subtle clue to fix your broken ethical system; not the other way around.
*without looking in the mirror and seeing that science itself is full of analytic/synthetic distinctions,*
Did you not even watch this video? I fully embraced the analytic/synthetic distinction. I went out of my way to explain this thing in great detail and give it a big, fat, sloppy blow job.
Like, seriously man. Watch this video again, because I don't think you fully understand what I've been arguing.
You know, the common response I see you give is "watch the video again, you just don't understand it." Well, I've watched the video several times now, as well as many of your other videos. Either I'm a total idiot who doesn't deserve a response, or I'm just not "getting" whatever you're trying to argue. In either case, watching the video over and over isn't going to advance our discussion if I have a fundamental disagreement with you - it just may mean I'm struggling to articulate my criticisms well enough. For that I apologize. So, let me see if I can't boil them down to some simpler statements that you can answer directly and succinctly.
>> I believe what you are arguing for is the superiority of an empirical epistemology over abstract epistemology when it comes to determining what truth is. (This may seem obvious, but I just want to make sure we're basically on the same page.)
>> I believe that Pragmatic Empirical Rationalism can be used to justify true belief and practice of a hedonistic and egocentric life.
>> I believe PER fails to address some of the more fundamental ideas that bind our society and culture together, such as Beauty, Justice, Music, Freedom, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Gordon Tubbs
*Either I'm a total idiot who doesn't deserve a response, or I'm just not "getting" whatever you're trying to argue.*
I'm sorry, but when I openly embrace the analytic/synthetic distinction as a central feature of basic epistemology, it really kind of irks me to see someone like yourself come out claim that I'm doing the exact opposite. I can only assume you either didn't pay attention or you just missed those parts. It's perfectly understandable, because this entire video is crazy dense with information. Even so, the only response I can really give you at this point is "please watch again." Otherwise, you're just arguing against straw men.
So... now that you've watched the video again, did you notice the many parts where I proudly declare my undying love for the analytic/synthetic distinction? (okay, I'm exaggerating... but seriously, I did embrace the A/S thing at several points)
Man, I love your videos.
I think that although this view is basically very sound it misses at least one important detail.
I am definitely an atheist who loves the scientific method so don't worry I don't think I will say anything too insane here.
By science we can make accurate predictions about what will happen when we do a specific action, or when a specific event happens. That is all well and good but unless we have some reason to decide one outcome is objectively better than another we still have no way to decide how to act.
For example, let's look at the example of crossing the street. We can deduce using science that certain methods of crossing will result in us making it to the other side safely. Others might cause us or someone else to get harmed or cause legal action or damage to property.
It is obviously not hard to assign truth values in such a way that we will be able to see which result is which. But that does not help us unless we have a reason to prefer one future over another.
All people basically agree on the axiom that "A future where I am unharmed is preferable to a future where I am harmed."
This seems to be a very reasonable axiom, but it is not derived from any scientific observation. Infact, no amount of scientific observation can ever lead us to any statement of preferability unless we have a preview statement of preferability to build from.
So to build a truth function that encourages outcomes that benefit humans it is necessary to give at least scientifically arbitrary statement a value of true. Otherwise all of our truth statements say nothing about morals and have nothing to say about what we should and should not do.
So unless we take at least one axiom of preferability as true, all of pragmatism, and by extension science, fails to drive actions, and is therefore reduced to useless rhetorical gibberish.
**Drops Mic**
I do genuinely really like this video though, despite that little failure.
It doesn't matter whether or not you care about your future. By definition, if you behave in ways that take no interest in your safety, then it will not be very long before people like yourself simply disappear entirely and get replaced by those of us who do care. We therefore win, by default, no matter what you care to think, because that's just naturally what has to happen.
It is also completely meaningless to "derive" a preference via axioms or rules of inference. They are propositions of subjective mental states, which renders them "true" by the principle of mental incorrigibility. You are welcome to guide your epistemology by some other maxim, and as I stated very clearly, any such maxim it is worthless and irrelevant by its own definition. I will therefore not care to employ it, and neither will anyone else who has a vested interest in planning a future without dying.
@@AntiCitizenX “I will therefore not care to employ it, and neither will anyone else who has a vested interest in planning a future without dying”
Perhaps not the best choice of words there, since I hardly believe there are many people “planning a future without dying”
That might seem snarky but this is actually an important point. Your “pragmatism” has no input on death-which is prudent as there can be no empirical claims about death since it is quite final. But without any such comment on death, how can we possibly categorize any actions as favorable or unfavorable in regards to safety? Naturally one might deduce from the actions of another that death is not favorable, especially to the family of the deceased, but that would not be an empirical deduction on death in regards of the deceased, since it is not you that is experiencing the death.
“By definition, if you behave in ways that take no interest in your safety, then it will not be very long before people like yourself simply disappear entirely and get replaced by those of us who do care.”
I would agree with this statement, but it still takes an axiom of preferability to care about survival in the end. What is grounding this axiom in which you care who is the dominant voice, or who survives? It surely isn’t empirical in nature, as we can’t know if it is pragmatic to survive without first experiencing death, and thus we don’t know if survival is favorable, and in turn, if social dominance really matters.
Anyways, I would have to agree with @Jesse Slater, that this is a rather unfortunate hole in your logic :/
I still come back from time to time to watch this video
It’s one of my best!
@@AntiCitizenX it's funny, because my interests, as well as many of my opinions have changed over the last years, but this is something I just can't get over with. Any discussion about anything is meaningless without a good understanding of truth.
Do you use science to prove your science right?
If yes, how do you know your science is right?
If no, why do you trust in the scientific method?
+Pasxali K
Trust the scientific method because the scientific method trusts nothing. Of all the people in the world, the one who takes no one at their word is the hardest to fool. Science starts at a position of doubting everything and proceeds to give it all a chance to fail by conducting an endless series of experiments designed to force every idea to either live up to its promises or fail and be dismissed.
"Do you use science to prove your science right?" No, science never proves anything right. All science does is give ideas a chance to fail by testing them. No amount of testing will prove an idea true, but false ideas will sometimes be revealed as false.
"If no, why do you trust in the scientific method?" Because false ideas can only be revealed by testing them, so we do the scientific method to try to weed out the bad ideas from the good.
+Pasxali K
*Do you use science to prove your science right?*
"Science" is not a proposition and has no truth value. You can only "do science" or "not do science."
Clearly you're just repeating what some zealots told you to say without thinking about what you're saying. What makes it worse is the the video never claimed that science was a claim, and thus cannot be true or false.
Think for yourself, don't be a sheep.
AntiCitizenX I disagree.
That's like saying Math is no proposition and therefore is not true nor false, you can only "do maths" or "not do maths".
But in reality everyone thinks he knows maths, because they "learned" it in school, yet still I hardly remember the last time all students in a class simultaneously wrote A grades in maths all the time, everywhere.
So apparently math has to be learned first by other humans, then still some do it properly, and some do it wrong or poorly.
Where does your science fit into this analogy?
Is science always right aslong as you "just do it"?
Sorry, but if you truely believe that you must have missed some lessons about scienctific history in your education.
Science revises itself all the time.
God on the other hand is said to reveal himself to the people (not by one particular religion, but by many), people dont have to "learn" god from other people necessarily, there are lots of testimonies of personal revelations and experiences.
The fact that there are so many different religions is evidence of that, otherwise if it was only something people "told" other people we would only have one religion in this world, namely whichever spawned first.
That is not the case. Poeple have different interpretations of god, because god is said to have revealed himself in different times to different people, who where isolated populations. In ancient times technology didn't allow and enable people to travel quickly neither was there ways of communication near realtime, like we have it today.
***** "Is science always right as long as you just do it?"
Science is neither right nor wrong. Science is merely a technique to try to improve our understanding of the world. It provides no answers for you to evaluate as true or false. It is merely the practice of testing our ideas, and those ideas that survive our best tests earn the privilege of being trusted above other ideas. Using well-tested ideas has put people on the moon; that is the strength of science.
"If it was only something people told other people we would only have one religion in this world, namely whichever spawned first."
I think you underestimate people's ability to disagree with each other. Even if all the world had a single religion, people would quickly break off into their own sects that better reflect their tastes. Just think of how the Protestants split from the Catholics.
Biblical inerrancy also has another problem; it is internally inconsistent. For instance, Genesis 1's creation account contradicts that of Genesis 2. Even if we knew nothing about the creation of life and the universe, we must necessarily reject at least one of the biblical accounts. Internal inconsistencies literally disprove a model with 100% certainty.
Truth to be called so must be true unconditionally at any part of space or time. Period.
So in other words, you didn't watch the video. Thanks.
When it comes to truth values informing actions and actions having consequences, I don’t actually need to conclude that the world outside my mind actually exists in order to conclude that I should behave a certain way. For instance I know that I have unpleasant experiences, such as pain, fear, and sadness, pleasant experiences such as excitement, happiness, and pleasure, and neutral experiences such as seeing and hearing regardless of whether or not the world outside my mind exists. It’s possible to conclude that I should behave in ways that I know are likely to have certain desired affects on those experiences without necessarily concluding that the world outside my mind exists. I can also conclude that the world outside my mind is a useful fiction that is unreasonably effective at predicting my experiences similar to how it’s sometimes argued that math is a useful fiction that is unreasonably effective at predicting how the world behaves.
How is it “useful fiction” to observe that actions have consequences, that those consequences are NOT determined by your whims, and that you are not immediately aware of the causal interactions that lead to them? That’s what we are talking about when we refer to the “external world.” It’s all the stuff beyond your immediate perception that appears to translate your actions into future consequences.
Love your channel. Keep up the good work!
Its sad that many are scared to go outside their comfort zone and look around... The truth is out there!!
*cue X-Files music
Dun duh dun duh dun duh
This is fantastic, very well made. Exactly what I was looking for
People should just, ya know....read the Pragmatists so they can understand what ACX is getting at. Start with Peirce, James, and Dewey then see what happens.
This video is my Bible. I now follow the truth assignment structure of "What is truth? inerrancy".
Actually I think I disagree on truths definition where I'll accept truth as an assignment for the value true within prepositional logic, but also I will accept the correspondence theory of truth as a distinctly separate definition of truth used colloquially as a tautologically phrased shorthand for mind independent reality which is unknowable but conceptually exists.
I think the second definition would apply in the phrase "knowing the truth"
Beautifully articulated - thanks so much for sharing!
Even better philosophy "does it help me win videogames and puzzle-games?"
Does me sitting their pondering about the Gods that run the Mushroom Kingdom enable me to solve the lore of the videogame or get Mario to the finish-line? No? Golly... that's useless
it's the old philosophical debate between idealists and materialists.
The idealists won and we had the middle age, then the materialists won and we still live in this world.
We still see idealists today, thinking that the "Truth" is outside of our world and abstractions are possible and are the "truths".
I think this is the main problem.
But, I have a biais: I'm materialist.
this is so awesome i have been searching for a video to debunk those who say data reliance isnt supported by data!
This video is like a proof of de Groot's Empirical Cycle.
Nicely done.
Oh wow. I actually understood it. Nice video.
So glad you agree with me that debates are worthless bullshit. That is why I have never watched a single political debate. Ever. In my 50+ years. Never will. And, specifically, thank you for mentioning Western courtrooms.
I recall reading somewhere that in the Soviet Union, there was none of this artificial distinction between "civil" versus "criminal" crimes. That has nothing whatsoever do to with the issue of the idiocy of deliberately constructing an adversarial legal system, but more the fact that, something that the law cultists (judges, lawyers, and the police officers and prison guards who defend them) take as some sort of absolute "truth": the sharp division between an action which is criminal versus something civil you could get "merely" sued for, is just a non-objective artifice.
Well done Sir! Very comprehensive and available to share with my Christian friends! After they understand this video, all I have to do is ask "What predictions do the claims of Christianity make?" And then the debate is over!
Now this definition of truth has a problem. That it breaks the fundamental law of logic that's the law of non-contradiction. Now, why do I say that? Because there is no objective standard of practicality in the first place. For example we can take this sentence:
“Atoms have electrons, protons and neutrons.”
Now this sentence is practical for a scientist. But for me this sentence is impractical. Now I will say that sentence is true and false at the same time. Just because it's practical and impractical at the same time for different people? No! Because it will break the law of non-contradiction that a sentance can't be false and true at the same time. So, here for resolving that problem we have to remove the criteria of practicality here for calling it true and false without contradiction.
That truth exists at all shows that there has to be a standard of what is right and what is false. Truth is not a human construct. If there was not a single person on earth, truth would still exist. Since it exists, there must be the one who sets the standard and that one is what Christians call God. It is God’s nature that he is truth. He is the standard for all truth. That’s why Jesus said “I am the truth.”
Why are you just repeating the very thing that was shown to be wrong in this video?
I would love to heard Gary Edwards thoughts abouts this.
Plato don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no mo'...
But you have to admit, no matter how much science advances, no one would argue we got to the point that science has left humanity with no need for philosophy
Brilliant video. Thanks.
Good to see you again
Technically speaking we ate just brains in a vat, the vat being our skulls, and or bodies being the vessel our brains in a vat operate and use to make contact with the outside world, we are our brains.
Why don't more people understand this? Well done.
as long as you don't believe your own lies, there is hope
Possibly the most pragmatic definition of Pragmatism I've ever heard (in this context, I can't think of higher complement). I'd be curious to hear, what do you think of the "FoundHerentism" of Susan Haack?
I've heard of it but I don't know much about it.
As the name might suggest, it combines coherentism and foundationalism in such a way as their virtues eliminate their respective vices. I think it's clever, though (as your video points out), probably not as important as realizing that truth is knowledge that "pays it's way". Look forward to more!
Truth = One of two possible subjective conclusions to a proposition
Hi! So from what i have seen in this (amazing) video is that the objective part of science comes from the consequences and reliability? I am confused. It was my prior understanding that science wasn't certain and operated with confidence values (the more fundamental the science, the more accurate the value). But I fail to understand empiricism, and so fail to understand empirical evidence. Can you help?
Basically, is there any use for the word "objective" here?
Thanks for your question. Let me see if I can answer it.
Objective does not mean certain. It just means independent of your opinions and desires. When you make a choice, consequences follow, and you cannot “debate” them. That’s the foundation in which science can claim objectivity, even if we still cannot “know” things with absolute perfection.
@@AntiCitizenX Thanks for the reply! So... something is objective when its causes are outside of our minds? So a rock would be considered a part of objective reality if it does not change when i think about it?
Ok there is a section I got to where it say Beliefs drives actions, Actions have consequences, Consequences are Objective.
This is hypothetical. But I believe and assert my propositional truth that I need your car and cash to get to my destination. I even caused bodily harm towards you.. What determines in your mind why there should be consequences for my actions?
*But I believe and assert my propositional truth that I need your car and cash to get to my destination.*
Prove it.
What am I suppose to prove? If I see you and your car. And I believe I need your car and cash for survival reasons at that moment to satisfy my need; even to the point of causing bodily harm if you try to stop me. I am asserting my propostional truth that this action is good and right to satisfy me need. since there is no Objective Truth.
I'm going in more detail. So my question is for you. Using your concept, What determines in your mind why there should be consequences for my actions if my action?
Why do you say I have to prove any think it is my asserted propositional truth by defenition my judgement my opinion. Because there is no Objective Truth.
Forget the part that says " if my actions?" phrase is a typo
*What am I suppose to prove?*
All you did was assert some proposition out of nothing. Specifically, "I believe and assert my propositional truth that I need your car and cash to get to my destination." That's not a proof of truth or a statement of fact. It was a bare assertion and nothing else.
*I am asserting my propostional truth that this action is good and right to satisfy me need.*
See? You're just asserting facts without evidence. Prove it. And while you're at it, please explain to me how this thought problem is relevant to the principle of truth assignment for synthetic propositions.
Finally (no sarcasm). I've felt an urge to make this same sort of presentation, but you did it far better than I ever could have. The lack of progress in (most of) philosophy (and especially the lack of even basic understanding of these concepts amongst the masses) is SOOOO frustrating. It's really not that difficult, and you explained it. The world we could be living in right now would be stupefyingly better if more people understood this. THANK YOU.
Spamming all social media with this.
+AcidRain64
Thanks! Spread the word! :)
+AntiCitizenX Hey Anti, do you have any good philosophical book suggestions? I enjoy all philosophy, but mostly philosophy of religion.
Dylan Ost
Anything that says "mathematical logic" on the cover is a good start.
11:55
Wish you'd spoken about the analytic-synthetic distinction. We actually have many reasons to think that this distinction does not exist.
Over 2/3 of modern PhD philosophers disagree with you, my friend.
yeah, it's all just a big agreement like we can all agree most people see the world in a certain way and that's why science is so cool
Love this video and your channel. I'd love to know where you learned so much about pragmatic epistemology. Any reading recommendations?
I discover, BTW, I am pragmatic. LOL! You are a good presenter. Thank You.
great video! i'd love to see your idea applied to some tricky dilemmas to derive their truth. maybe you have done this in other videos already? i can't remember. but basically i'm asking you to demonstrate the usefulness of your hypothesis (or should i call it a theory...)
Complication. The truth is so simple a child will understand it. This world and everything in it including people is what is not true.
7:35 You can know. If there is a null hypothesis that is literally the same as non-existence. This also applies to God, that's how we know God doesn't exist. It's irrelevant whether your right or wrong because we never would know that. Even if you were shown to be wrong, then what you know changes in the present. The past is irrelevant to what you know now.
"...as if no one really knows what the rules are when engaging in this process."
Yeah, I think they call that, um, because they don't.
'Rules? There ain't no rules! We're trying to accomplish something!'
-Jefferson
Great video. Where did you learn about pragmatic epistemology ? Any book recommendations ?