jamest wrote:

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, your posts continue to show you have no idea what a logically sound argument is, therefore your claim that your explanation of metaphysics having a sound basis is delusional.

I particularly enjoy your guarantee that your jumbled mess of metaphysical assertions are not only true but worthy of a future Nobel prize, and not only that, you go on to top your mumblings by saying that the mess you strew here should place you on par with Newton. Such egoism and desperation!

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote::yawn2:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote:

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?

Not for you, I'm fucking dead to you, remember? I took you at your word, so you can take me at mine. This is the last time I will respond to you in any way.

Oldskeptic wrote:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Oldskeptic wrote::yawn2:

SpeedOfSound wrote:

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?

Not for you, I'm fucking dead to you, remember? I took you at your word, so you can take me at mine. This is the last time I will respond to you in any way.

Ok play dead then
Your yawn pissed me off
Twice
Roll over
Play dead

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

How can you go on claiming this without addressing the refutations of your argument? You should address my posts or shut the fuck up. All you do is repeat your tired fucking assertions. Try backing them up. But that must be beyond your abilities because you don't seem to have anything to back up your bullshit.

Just make "science" out to know nothing, and do fuck all, and you think you are home free. Make "science" your philosophical whipping boy and you think you've got the job done. Guess again mister genius. It doesn't work that way.

Science deals with reality. You seem to deal in fantasy.

SpeedOfSound wrote:

Pebble wrote:As I see it metaphysics is just trying to make sense of the universe based on incomplete evidence. In this respect once there is evidence we are dealing with 'physics' or science. The role of metaphysics is thus to create the speculative world view that can be affirmed or rejected through evidence, rather that something that itself deals in evidence.
The clashes arise when the reliability of the evidence itself is questioned - if this is done in a rational fashion, no problem (e.g. Metzinger) if one gets into dualism and the like there are serious problems.
So by definition only 'logic' is a prerequisite for metaphysics - evidence actually moves the issue out of metaphysics.

So in your estimation metaphysics would be a way of creatively defining or at least sketching structures? If so I am with you on that. I even believe that this is how good new science is born.

Yeah, that's pretty good. But I also think every paradigm has its own metaphysics in that we make assumptions about the world- that is our paradigm- and those assumptions constitute a metaphysics. Like if you posit a creator.deity, it explains a lot of stuff at low resolution but you also might make a bunch of extra models about how.the.creator works. You can also go.with a materialist metaphysics and assume that matter is the fundamental stuff of the.universe or idealism and assume that mind is.the fundamental stuff of the universe or whatever but the models are.still the.metaphysics outside of a pure instrumentalist approach. I will read the other thread but won't have a chance.to respond today.

changed my mind again

jamest wrote:

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.

Oh wait, those scientific papers don't contain made up shit, they contain data. Without which, all the fantasising dressed up as "reason" you care to come up with is meaningless.

jamest wrote:

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 asserted why metaphysics has a sound basis.

Fixed it for you.

jamest wrote:I haven't once suggested that metaphysics has a sound basis upon any premise you can concoct within your imagination.

I leave imaginings to assertionists.

jamest wrote:

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

Your assertion certainly is.

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

You keep asserting this, James, but that's all you ever do. And what's more, until you have data to support your premises, assertions is all you'll ever have.

jamest wrote:Your problem is that you've failed to consider the epistemological limitations of observation

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

As opposed to the epistemological limitations of pretending that your assertions are something other than the products of your reectal passage?

jamest wrote:wrt making ontological/metaphysical conclusions.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

What was that I kept schooling you on, James? Oh, that's right, the fact that unless your precious "metaphysical" theory accounts for observational data, it's in no position to erect proclamations about the purported "irrelevance" thereof, because it's incomplete. The moment any metaphysical theory remedies this deficit, then by definition, it starts formulating observationally testable assertions. But you keep pretending that this isn't a problem for your precious ""metaphysics", and that all you have to do is keep peddling assertions in order to make them magically become fact.

jamest wrote:In fact, that's the failing of science as a whole.

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Oh, you mean the "failing" that led to the eradication of smallpox? The "failing" that led to humans walking on the Moon? The "failure" that led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson? As opposed to the real failings of your precious "metaphysics" to come up with anything other than rectally extracted assertions?

jamest wrote: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.

You presented some facts? When did this happen?

jamest wrote:Some twat from Oxford or Berkeley, etc., will one day get the praise for changing everything.

Only when the individual in question presents genuine evidence instead of rectally extracted assertions. But do keep pretending that your assertions dictate to reality, James, whilst the rest of us point and laugh at your farcical pretensions in this vein.

jamest wrote:Truth is, I beat the fucker to it.

Wow, talk about Dunning-Kruger. The only thing you've beaten anyone to here, James, is demonstrating that you think rectally extracted assertions count for more than data.

jamest wrote:Hence, I humbly accept my [much] belated nobel prize for shafting atheism/materialism/science up the arse and creating said shift.

And this wet dream of yours continues to be precisely that, an ideological wet dream.

jamest wrote:Please move my coffin next to Newton. I couldn't have done it without him.

SpeedOfSound wrote:changed my mind again

So, er.... wait... the intentional stance. What did it permit you to predict? How did it fail?

You remember my old line about the archery contest where the target is declared after the arrow is loosed...

Now: I have it on good authority that metaphysicis is the art of understanding the right questions to ask. What was the question again? The difference between perception and hallucination, from the inside, as it were?

This usually gets dealt with the epepke way, with a few interesting comments about unusual ways of walking into walls. When do we learn from experience? When not? Are those some of the right questions to ask? Is the right question to ask only, "What are the right questions to ask?"

See Vaz Scep: First, we discover recursion. Eventually, we discover (or at least invent) stack discipline. Probably can't properly recurse unless we do that, anyway. The human brain doesn't enforce its own stack discipline. At least that much is obvious.

Maybe when jamest talks about 'reason', he's accidentally referring to the way thoughts happen in a temporal order. That gets the Captain Obvious award from Cito.

BWE wrote:Yeah, that's pretty good. But I also think every paradigm has its own metaphysics in that we make assumptions about the world- that is our paradigm- and those assumptions constitute a metaphysics. Like if you posit a creator.deity, it explains a lot of stuff at low resolution but you also might make a bunch of extra models about how.the.creator works. You can also go.with a materialist metaphysics and assume that matter is the fundamental stuff of the.universe or idealism and assume that mind is.the fundamental stuff of the universe or whatever but the models are.still the.metaphysics outside of a pure instrumentalist approach. I will read the other thread but won't have a chance.to respond today.

The key that makes a '.' is not really close enough to the space bar to produce a '.' instead of a ' '. Not on my QWERTY keyboard, anyway. This could be happening with a keyboard that's had too much tea spilled into it. The metaphysical lesson to take away is that the intentional stance is like a keyboard that's had too much tea poured into it. OR: Maybe the intentional stance is like the Dvorak keyboard of human thought. It allows you to talk faster, but doesn't produce thoughts that any other stance can't produce. The moving finger hunts and pecks, and moves on.

jamest wrote:I've explained why metaphysics has a sound basis.

That's just jamest discovering the word 'basis' and the word 'explain'. 'Basis' is a cool word. Mathematicians use it, and beyond that, it means, "I'm not fucking going to argue this point", which 'already' only underscores.

James, if you've done that, you should have a perma-link to it. Otherwise, all you mean is that you're always already explaining why metaphysics has a sound basis. You make no secret of your opinion that jamest is the sound basis of metaphysics. That's the comedy sketch you bring in when the critique gets a bit heavy....

Fenrir wrote:

chairman bill wrote:

Calilasseia wrote:... the forum cat.

There's a forum cat? Nobody told me.

It's a metaphysical cat. Noone can tell you about the cat, you have to observe it experiencing observation for observed yourself.

hackenslash wrote:Yep, we've had him for years. Came over from the old forum, in fact:

Calilasseia wrote:

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

You keep asserting this, James, but that's all you ever do. And what's more, until you have data to support your premises, assertions is all you'll ever have.

So, are hallucinations relations between observable entities? This could tell us a lot about how jamest conflates observation and experience and data. You'll never see him attempt to comment on this, except to make statements about all data, when the whole point is to discard some data. James can't bring himself to discard anything because that might involve discarding god. It's arbitrary, too, as a means of keeping the faith by keeping everything.

Let us all join in prayer that jamest will come to an insight from God that there is no such thing as metaphysical evidence. Wait...

Oldskeptic wrote:By mistake I hit submit instead of preview before I was finished. I completed this post in edit.

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.

I have an issue with people wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater - sure there is an awful lot of hogwash but that is not to say metaphysics is 'wrong' - just its abuse. If one doesn't rigorously formulate the right questions then interrogation of the unknown is unfocused.

Oldskeptic wrote:

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

Not so fast. It would be physics or science if it stopped there, with what the evidence shows, but it often does not. While physicists and other scientists like to make predictions about what further evidence will show based on current evidence, seldom is it claimed to be true until the results are in. Metaphysics is under no such restraints, it may go on its merry way making any statement that its "logic" permits, which is just about anything.

Except that it is reasonable to interrogate actual levels of certainty. That which has been held as unquestionable (Newtonian physics) has subsequently been revised. We are now comfortable with the idea that our best theories may need revision, this was not always so. But now we still regard the 'fundamental laws of nature' as inviolable - we should not, rather they should be simply regarded as almost certainly correct based on the overwhelming volume of evidence - otherwise discrepant evidence will be rejected rather than leading to new insights.

Oldskeptic wrote:

The role of metaphysics is thus to create the speculative world view that can be affirmed or rejected through evidence, rather that something that itself deals in evidence.

Speculative world views from philosophers are not needed any longer, and science today doesn't really deal with them.

Wrong - the fruit bats have their role like everyone else. Some of the initial experiments with electricity were not undertaken in the hallowed halls of science, rather by magicians and street artists.

Oldskeptic wrote:

The clashes arise when the reliability of the evidence itself is questioned - if this is done in a rational fashion, no problem (e.g. Metzinger) if one gets into dualism and the like there are serious problems.
So by definition only 'logic' is a prerequisite for metaphysics - evidence actually moves the issue out of metaphysics.

Too bad there is so much bad logic out there. Enough for all metaphysicians to have a piece of it.

One can also have perfect logic and the wrong starting point!

Pebble wrote: But now we still regard the 'fundamental laws of nature' as inviolable

What's this 'we' business, paleface?

Nobody with any understanding of how science actually works has any such regard. This is the view that natural laws are prescriptive, which is a deep misunderstanding of scientific epistemology. They simply aren't prescriptive, they're descriptive.

hackenslash wrote:

Pebble wrote: But now we still regard the 'fundamental laws of nature' as inviolable

What's this 'we' business, paleface?

Nobody with any understanding of how science actually works has any such regard. This is the view that natural laws are prescriptive, which is a deep misunderstanding of scientific epistemology. They simply aren't prescriptive, they're descriptive.

How do you know my facial colour?

I do seem to remember incredulity was a strong sentiment when neutrinos were claimed to exceed the speed of light, yes enough people took the information seriously to investigate, but has the original researchers not been 'open minded' enough accept their data, such results could have been dismissed as impossible. Others would have done so, rightly in this instance, but understanding is improved by finding out why you are wrong too.

Pebble wrote:How do you know my facial colour?

That's a throwback to an old TV advert for, IIRC, shredded wheat. They're about to engage in a fight with some Indians, when Tonto notices that they're eating breakfast, and that they've had 3 shredded wheat. The Lone Ranger says something like 'we're going to have a tough time', to which Tonto replies 'what you mean 'we', paleface?'

I do seem to remember incredulity was a strong sentiment when neutrinos were claimed to exceed the speed of light, yes enough people took the information seriously to investigate, but has the original researchers not been 'open minded' enough accept their data, such results could have been dismissed as impossible. Others would have done so, rightly in this instance, but understanding is improved by finding out why you are wrong too.

That's nothing to do with the acceptance of natural laws as prescriptive or inviolable, and everything to do with healthy skepticism at observations showing that there are circumstances in showing that the laws do not hold. In short, such an event requires robust, evidence that can be tested on other experimental setups using the same methodology. That's what peer-review is for. We use existing understanding to probe whether or not the claims stack up, but throw that understanding out as soon as it's shown that they do. We look for experimental error, and errors in reasoning. This turned out to be an error in the experimental setup (a dodgy lead in one of the many connections, IIRC; I could have predicted this, as I work in audio production, and this is the source of the vast majority of problems one encounters in that environment).

Pebble wrote:
I do seem to remember incredulity was a strong sentiment when neutrinos were claimed to exceed the speed of light, yes enough people took the information seriously to investigate, but has the original researchers not been 'open minded' enough accept their data, such results could have been dismissed as impossible. Others would have done so, rightly in this instance, but understanding is improved by finding out why you are wrong too.

If you look carefully at the behaviour of those strongly committed to some metaphysical, er, stance, or other, you may find a contrast with the behaviour of scientists who, when confronted by the evidence that they're wrong, happily admit it. Scientists can be quite tough on one another at the symposium, and then go out for a jolly beery evening together.

There is no finding out 'why you're wrong', Pebble. What there is turns out to be the tracking down of a fault in your equipment or your calculations. That's not 'why', but rather 'how', and has nothing to do with being argued out of some, er, stance or other.

That's rather what you find at the soft end of things, in the social 'sciences', where attitude is blamed for faulty theory, instead of just plain ignorance. Nobody wins when the blind lead the blind.

Cito di Pense wrote:
There is no finding out 'why you're wrong', Pebble. What there is turns out to be the tracking down of a fault in your equipment or your calculations. That's not 'why', but rather 'how', and has nothing to do with being argued out of some, er, stance or other.
.

Can't find it now, perhaps some of the physicists on board will know the details - but positrons were evident in cloud chamber experiments before Dirac showed this was possible, resulting in its identification 4 years later. That would be an example of 'why' not 'how!

VazScep wrote:That quote is far too late as an example of something metaphysicians natter about. We could have used our 60 odd pages arguing over what differentiates an exact duplicate from the same thing. I'll start: the duplicate doesn't occupy the same spacetime location as the original the previous day.

This is the sort of stupid concern of metaphysics....Not good pragmatically, which is all metaphysics is. It's pointless drivel in the case of human language, but arguably important in the case of formal languages like programming languages, though the vote is still out on that one.

That sounds like rather an interesting discussion. After all, some of the most interesting conversations have no, or little, practical purpose. Unless you're Katie Hopkins, anyway.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Pebble wrote:
I do seem to remember incredulity was a strong sentiment when neutrinos were claimed to exceed the speed of light, yes enough people took the information seriously to investigate, but has the original researchers not been 'open minded' enough accept their data, such results could have been dismissed as impossible. Others would have done so, rightly in this instance, but understanding is improved by finding out why you are wrong too.

If you look carefully at the behaviour of those strongly committed to some metaphysical, er, stance, or other, you may find a contrast with the behaviour of scientists who, when confronted by the evidence that they're wrong, happily admit it. Scientists can be quite tough on one another at the symposium, and then go out for a jolly beery evening together.

There is no finding out 'why you're wrong', Pebble. What there is turns out to be the tracking down of a fault in your equipment or your calculations. That's not 'why', but rather 'how', and has nothing to do with being argued out of some, er, stance or other.

That's rather what you find at the soft end of things, in the social 'sciences', where attitude is blamed for faulty theory, instead of just plain ignorance. Nobody wins when the blind lead the blind.

Science isn't always quite as clear cut as that, Cito unless, by "calculations", you include faulty theory as a possible reason for a bad result of the calculations.