Calilasseia wrote:Ah, the sweet sound of Cito demolishing bad ideas.

I may disagree with him about some things, but credit where it's due, when he mixes his left-field brand of humour with analysis, the end result is scintillating to behold. Crusti croc est mea snax, but Cito di Pense is frequently the banquet.

I've always thought so.

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

kennyc wrote:Did we get an example of metaphysical evidence yet?
(he asks again?)

Because jimmy will not respond to #1121, except with his diatribe about parrots and insulting his intelligence, I am going to assume his metaphysical evidence is the part where 'I jimmy, being of sound mind, have observations'. From this meager bit he, genius that he is, proves that there can be only one.

That's it! His whole spiel is based on what he considers so utterly profound that he can't be bothered by mortals like myself questioning it. I observe therefore I am an observer. So fucking profound! Wonder what it says for the rest of us that we hit upon that little gem when we were still wearing diapers?

Why are you giving me shit, mortal? Was the popcorn sour?

When are you going to get around to answering my questions in and following post #1121? Oh Godly One.

Oldskeptic wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Or no evidence at all. Where the evidence is incomplete metaphysicians have a tendency to go beyond the evidence and proclaim a truth that fits with what they already believe or wish to be true. Where there is no evidence at all they have not been shy about stating wild guesses as the truth.
...

Do you have an example of this that is modern and out there in the community of philosophers?

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Stop talking bollocks. Metaphysicists realise that the universe we observe/know is not 'reality', so the point of metaphysics is to comprehend the reality underpinning said observations/knowledge.

You can't just assume/assert that the physical universe is reality and decide that metaphysics is the effort to find a pure physics. What a load of shit!!!!!!!!!

In this respect once there is evidence we are dealing with 'physics' or science.

FFS. I give up.

jamest wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Stop talking bollocks. Metaphysicists realise that the universe we observe/know is not 'reality', ....

So. Do you have some examples of what you are stating here out there in the world of contemporary philosophy?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

kennyc wrote:Did we get an example of metaphysical evidence yet?
(he asks again?)

Because jimmy will not respond to #1121, except with his diatribe about parrots and insulting his intelligence, I am going to assume his metaphysical evidence is the part where 'I jimmy, being of sound mind, have observations'. From this meager bit he, genius that he is, proves that there can be only one.

That's it! His whole spiel is based on what he considers so utterly profound that he can't be bothered by mortals like myself questioning it. I observe therefore I am an observer. So fucking profound! Wonder what it says for the rest of us that we hit upon that little gem when we were still wearing diapers?

Why are you giving me shit, mortal? Was the popcorn sour?

When are you going to get around to answering my questions in and following post #1121? Oh Godly One.

I responded to post 1121, remember? And now I can't remember why you complained about my response, and can't be arsed to look. You're looking at jadedness.

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:
Because jimmy will not respond to #1121, except with his diatribe about parrots and insulting his intelligence, I am going to assume his metaphysical evidence is the part where 'I jimmy, being of sound mind, have observations'. From this meager bit he, genius that he is, proves that there can be only one.

That's it! His whole spiel is based on what he considers so utterly profound that he can't be bothered by mortals like myself questioning it. I observe therefore I am an observer. So fucking profound! Wonder what it says for the rest of us that we hit upon that little gem when we were still wearing diapers?

Why are you giving me shit, mortal? Was the popcorn sour?

When are you going to get around to answering my questions in and following post #1121? Oh Godly One.

I responded to post 1121, remember? And now I can't remember why you complained about my response, and can't be arsed to look. You're looking at jadedness.

You did not answer the question. You Huffed and you Puffed and the question remains. Which part of it exactly is the metaphysical evidence? Is the evidence that you feel that you observe? Or you think you do? Or you remember having observed?

I just want you to clearly admit the evidential part. Separate it from the inference. Or do I have it all wrong?

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:
Why are you giving me shit, mortal? Was the popcorn sour?

When are you going to get around to answering my questions in and following post #1121? Oh Godly One.

I responded to post 1121, remember? And now I can't remember why you complained about my response, and can't be arsed to look. You're looking at jadedness.

You did not answer the question.

I attempted to. What you mean is that I didn't do so to your own subjective satisfaction.

You Huffed and you Puffed and the question remains. Which part of it exactly is the metaphysical evidence? Is the evidence that you feel that you observe? Or you think you do? Or you remember having observed?

Metaphysical evidence is evidence of anything that is not an observed thing. The observer is not an observed thing, yet can be reasonably inferred from the act of observing. Thus, reason provides the evidence for a [particular] metaphysical conclusion, which happens to provide us all with a sound basis upon which to do metaphysics. So the metaphysical evidence [in this case] amounts to the [obvious] reasoning that the act of observing is requiring of an observer.

I just want you to clearly admit the evidential part. Separate it from the inference.

Why is inference not evidence? Are you aware that [even] science is greatly dependent upon the utility of inference? Indeed, without inference, NO scientific conclusions would be possible. Think about that.

Or do I have it all wrong?

Yes, you've always been wrong about most things.

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:
When are you going to get around to answering my questions in and following post #1121? Oh Godly One.

I responded to post 1121, remember? And now I can't remember why you complained about my response, and can't be arsed to look. You're looking at jadedness.

You did not answer the question.

I attempted to. What you mean is that I didn't do so to your own subjective satisfaction.

You Huffed and you Puffed and the question remains. Which part of it exactly is the metaphysical evidence? Is the evidence that you feel that you observe? Or you think you do? Or you remember having observed?

Metaphysical evidence is evidence of anything that is not an observed thing. The observer is not an observed thing, yet can be reasonably inferred from the act of observing. Thus, reason provides the evidence for a [particular] metaphysical conclusion, which happens to provide us all with a sound basis upon which to do metaphysics. So the metaphysical evidence [in this case] amounts to the [obvious] reasoning that the act of observing is requiring of an observer.

I just want you to clearly admit the evidential part. Separate it from the inference.

Why is inference not evidence? Are you aware that [even] science is greatly dependent upon the utility of inference? Indeed, without inference, NO scientific conclusions would be possible. Think about that.

Or do I have it all wrong?

Yes, you've always been wrong about most things.

The brown part is interesting.

So. You are calling what can be inferred metaphysical evidence. You have no other evidence other than what can be inferred? How about what you infer from?

That would be like I said. That you observe. That's your foundational evidence and the rest is inference.

So I take it that metaphysical evidence is whatever kind of shit we make up in our heads. Cuz you say we can't observe it. Kind of what we all suspected.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Or no evidence at all. Where the evidence is incomplete metaphysicians have a tendency to go beyond the evidence and proclaim a truth that fits with what they already believe or wish to be true. Where there is no evidence at all they have not been shy about stating wild guesses as the truth.
...

Do you have an example of this that is modern and out there in the community of philosophers?

I thought I was fucking dead to you?

Oh well, that seems to be about as true as you not reading Cito's posts for the last year.

jamest wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Stop talking bollocks. Metaphysicists realise that the universe we observe/know is not 'reality'

Correction, this is frequently asserted, usually as the starting point for the construction of a gigantic assertionist Laputa. The degree of congruence of the observed universe with whatever "actual reality" may be postulated to exist is unknown. I've never seen any metaphysician provide an actual answer to this question, and this includes people with far greater credentials in this field than you. For a reason I shall come to in a moment.

jamest wrote:so the point of metaphysics is to comprehend the reality underpinning said observations/knowledge.

Wrong. The point of metaphysics is to determine what questions to ask with respect to this, as a means of illuminating our understanding of the issues. The methodologies allowing answers to said questions to be determined, are frequently external to metaphysics. Indeed, Aristotle himself placed his treatises on logic at the beginning of his works, and thus sought to make those treatises a foundation upon which the later deliberations could be built. It's also interesting to note that Aristotle valued empirical evidence far more than many of the metaphysics fanboys here, but that's a separate question.

jamest wrote:You can't just assume/assert that the physical universe is reality

As opposed to the all too frequently peddled assertion by you and others here, that the opposite is the case?

jamest wrote:and decide that metaphysics is the effort to find a pure physics.

Well before you launch into yet another failed assertionist enterprise, you might want to factor into your thinking, such as it is, the fact that many questions once considered to be purely the remit of metaphysics, are now firmly questions residing within the realm of physics. A particularly exquisite example being the question of whether the universe is infinite in extent or not. After the publication of the first works on general relativity by Albert Einstein, quite a few physicists realised the cosmological implications of treating gravity as curvature of spacetime arising from matter. This led immediately to a demonstration that the large-scale geometry of spacetime would be dependent upon the amount of mass in the universe. Below a critical value, the curvature of spacetime would be hyperbolic, and such a spacetime cannot be closed and bounded. At the exact critical value, the curvature of spacetime would be flat or Euclidean, and again, such a spacetime cannot be closed or bounded. Above the critical value, the curvature of spacetime would be spherical (or, more properly, hyperspherical), and would be closed and bounded by definition as a result. Therefore, answering the question of whether or not the universe is infinite in extent, became nothing more than a search for mass. Of course, in the case of a closed, bounded, hyperspherical topology, other evidence would point to this, such as the arrival on Earth of light from a given object in two different directions simultaneously.

The discrepancy between the observed amount of mass in the universe, and the nature of the observed large-scale geometry of spacetime, is of course what led to the emergence of dark matter theories, to supply the missing mass that would be required to produce the observed large-scale spacetime curvature.

Oh what was that you said about empirical evidence being purportedly "irrelevant" to assess metaphysical claims again?

jamest wrote:What a load of shit!!!!!!!!!

As succinct a description of many of your posts as one could wish for.

jamest wrote:

In this respect once there is evidence we are dealing with 'physics' or science.

FFS. I give up.

If only.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

jamest wrote:
I responded to post 1121, remember? And now I can't remember why you complained about my response, and can't be arsed to look. You're looking at jadedness.

You did not answer the question.

I attempted to. What you mean is that I didn't do so to your own subjective satisfaction.

You Huffed and you Puffed and the question remains. Which part of it exactly is the metaphysical evidence? Is the evidence that you feel that you observe? Or you think you do? Or you remember having observed?

Metaphysical evidence is evidence of anything that is not an observed thing. The observer is not an observed thing, yet can be reasonably inferred from the act of observing. Thus, reason provides the evidence for a [particular] metaphysical conclusion, which happens to provide us all with a sound basis upon which to do metaphysics. So the metaphysical evidence [in this case] amounts to the [obvious] reasoning that the act of observing is requiring of an observer.

I just want you to clearly admit the evidential part. Separate it from the inference.

Why is inference not evidence? Are you aware that [even] science is greatly dependent upon the utility of inference? Indeed, without inference, NO scientific conclusions would be possible. Think about that.

Or do I have it all wrong?

Yes, you've always been wrong about most things.

The brown part is interesting.

So. You are calling what can be inferred metaphysical evidence.

Yes, reason suffices as evidence. If it didn't, then we'd have to reject all scientific knowledge, as it's all been grounded upon the reasoned analysis of our observations.

You have no other evidence other than what can be inferred? How about what you infer from?

I infer from my observations of sensations/quale, which [as I've recently explained to Cali] are completely distinct to my INFERRED observations of the world via those sensations/quale. People tend to use the term 'observational evidence' wrt to worldly evidence. I'm not sure that there's a technical word which distinguishes between these two types of observations, but it is certainly a fact that we do not observe the world in the same manner as we observe our sensations/quale.

… Nobody observes the world. They observe quale/sensations. We infer the existence of the world from those observations… and then assume that we're observing the world. This isn't true at all. Which is why observed B by A, is not B itself.

No James, reason does NOT suffice as evidence, and I've explained why. Namely, it is possible to construct an infinite number of logically true sentences using the propositional calculus, none of which would be regarded as remotely applicable to the real world by any sane human being. Rules of inference cannot magically confer a truth-value status upon premises. Thus far, the most reliable means of determining the truth-value of premises, has been testing the concordance thereof with data. Which has serious implications for a data-free "metaphysics".

As for this:

jamest wrote:… Nobody observes the world. They observe quale/sensations. We infer the existence of the world from those observations… and then assume that we're observing the world. This isn't true at all. Which is why observed B by A, is not B itself.

The part I've highlighted in blue above being a gigantic assertion on your part that you've never supported with anything other than the usual collapsed apologetic soufflés.

@Jamest:

It seems that you like to go away for a while after someone posts well thought out responses to your nonsense and then come back after you think it's blown over. Thereby avoiding the need respond to what you don't want to, or can't address. It doesn't work that way, and you need to face it.

If you have no response to what confounds you maybe you should reconsider your position. Avoiding it will not make it go away.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... l#p2046695

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post2 ... l#p2046718

VazScep wrote:

BWE wrote:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance

I thought I'd clearly implied that I'd read the fucking book, and don't need wiki links.

Well, you've done more than I then. However, I have read the.essay and I am pretty sure what you said is irrelevant to it. Regardless, I was just providing the information which would have given context to my point had I gone on to attempt to make it. But instead I am kind of enjoying this strange dick waving spectacle that has spontaneously erupted in this thread. It's like a.flash mob of people.claiming the biggest member. Fascinating.

Oldskeptic wrote::yawn2:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence.

Or no evidence at all. Where the evidence is incomplete metaphysicians have a tendency to go beyond the evidence and proclaim a truth that fits with what they already believe or wish to be true. Where there is no evidence at all they have not been shy about stating wild guesses as the truth.
...

Do you have an example of this that is modern and out there in the community of philosophers?

I thought I was fucking dead to you?

Oh well, that seems to be about as true as you not reading Cito's posts for the last year.

I catch few lines. Cito is much deader to me than you are though. It's all relative.

got that example?

Calilasseia wrote:No James, reason does NOT suffice as evidence, and I've explained why.

Then burn all papers produced by scientists, because not a single one of them was produced without the utility of reason.

Namely, it is possible to construct an infinite number of logically true sentences using the propositional calculus, none of which would be regarded as remotely applicable to the real world by any sane human being. Rules of inference cannot magically confer a truth-value status upon premises.

I've explained why metaphysics has a sound basis. I haven't once suggested that metaphysics has a sound basis upon any premise you can concoct within your imagination.

Thus far, the most reliable means of determining the truth-value of premises, has been testing the concordance thereof with data. Which has serious implications for a data-free "metaphysics".

Nonsense, since all data relates to the relations between observable entities, which [in principle] have fuck all to do with 'reality'.

Your problem is that you've failed to consider the epistemological limitations of observation wrt making ontological/metaphysical conclusions. In fact, that's the failing of science as a whole. But I can guarantee you now that the next big paradigm shift in both science and philosophy will revolve around the FACTS I am explaining to you here.

Some twat from Oxford or Berkeley, etc., will one day get the praise for changing everything. Truth is, I beat the fucker to it. Hence, I humbly accept my [much] belated nobel prize for shafting atheism/materialism/science up the arse and creating said shift. Please move my coffin next to Newton. I couldn't have done it without him.

jamest wrote:...
Yes, reason suffices as evidence. If it didn't, then we'd have to reject all scientific knowledge, as it's all been grounded upon the reasoned analysis of our observations.
...

I have the good sense to separate inference from evidence. The former is to be doubted initially and tested with the latter. You seem to mix the two up regularly. Declaring your very poor arguments are evidence and then blathering with certainty.

You need to get this straight in your head if you have any hope of ever making any sense.

BWE wrote:

VazScep wrote:

BWE wrote:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance

I thought I'd clearly implied that I'd read the fucking book, and don't need wiki links.

Well, you've done more than I then. However, I have read the.essay and I am pretty sure what you said is irrelevant to it. Regardless, I was just providing the information which would have given context to my point had I gone on to attempt to make it. But instead I am kind of enjoying this strange dick waving spectacle that has spontaneously erupted in this thread. It's like a.flash mob of people.claiming the biggest member. Fascinating.