What materialism is

[69dodge]

Originally posted by JustGeoff
We don't experience any "information" - not in the sense we experience mind and matter. I think the best way of answering your question here is to point to mathematics and zero again. Your question translates to: "Why to we have positive numbers and negative numbers but not xxxxxxative numberx?" Why is our number scale dualistically symmetrical around 0 instead of triplicateley symmetrical? Seems like an absurd question to me. 0 = 1 + -1. That is a dualism. Why not "0 = 1 + -1 + %1"? I don't know how to answer you question except to say that most people don't ask it. What would the %1 represent?

I don't see how matter vs. mind has anything to do with positive vs. negative numbers.

The three complex cube roots of unity add up to zero, just as 1 and -1 do.

Zero is neither positive nor negative, and it's a number too.

You can find lots of dualisms if you look around, but that's just because it's such a general concept. All those dualisms aren't necessarily related to each other in any fundamental way.

 

[c4ts]

Whoever said mathematics had anything to do with materialism?

Perhaps Ian, but he's usually way off.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff, I read the paper last evening. Quite interesting. It seems to me that Rorty is saying:

Metaphysics has been unable to come up with a description of "the way things are" that is satisfactory to a large number of philosophers.

Therefore, ontology is a hopeless enterprise and we should abandon it. I'm with him so far.

However, from there he goes on to assume:

There is also no way to come up with a reasonable description of "the way things appear to be."

And so suggests we also abandon epistemology and declare all ways of knowing equal. I believe the history of "ways of knowing" show this assumption not to be valid.

"To stop dividing culture into the hard and the soft areas would be to cease to draw up two lists: the longer containing nominalizations of every term used as the subject of a sentence and the shorter containing all the things there are on heaven and earth."

There is a longing in this sentence that I think may be borne of an aching fatigue.

~~ Paul

 

[Dr Adequate]

Dr Adequate



Just a clarification: You went on ignore because of your attitude towards me. I have no intention of reading any more of your posts, because it is almost impossible to do so without being dragged down to your level, and I have no intention of going there. I will allow you a few days to calm down, and then I will take you back off ignore and see whether next time you are capable of challenging me without trying turn it into a pub brawl.

In future, if you actually want to challenge me on a substantive point, and you actually want me to respond to that challenge then leave out the snarling attitude, the jackboots and the personal insults. Otherwise you'll just go straight back on ignore, regardless of whether or not anything you have posted actually deserves a response. I am simply not interested in talking to someone who goes off the deep-end, with little or no provocation, like you did in this thread (BillHoyt syndrome). There is simply no point in doing so.

What a delightful blend of self-importance and self-pity.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

"A fully humanist culture ... will emerge only when the we discard the question "Do I know the real object, or only one of its appearances?" and replace it with the question "Am I using the best possible description of the situation in which I find myself, or can I cobble together a better one?"

This seems the crux of the matter. To me, he's suggesting we discard ontology (real object) and replace it with epistemology (best possible description).

No no no!

It is essential for Rorty that he abandons epistemology at the same time he abandons ontology - otherwise he risks ending up in the sort of position you find yourself in (where your epistemological view "forces" an ontological view).

However, finding the best possible description is a search for knowledge. This will lead to certain ways of knowing being preferred over others because they result in more universally satisfying descriptions.....

Rorty has a coherentist theory of truth. He absolutely wishes to avoid the sort of reasoning you are talking about here, because of the problems it leads to.

I don't see how he can avoid either preferred ways of knowing or the utter chaos of every individual having different descriptions (which certainly wouldn't lead to a pleasant humanist culture).

The chaos is avoided by coherentism. This is directly relevant to what you have been saying in this post:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/

Coherentist Theories of Justification

Coherentism is a view about the structure of justification or knowledge. The coherentist's thesis is normally formulated in terms of a denial of its contrary foundationalism. Coherentism thus claims, minimally, that not all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief.

This negative construal of coherentism occurs because of the prominence of the regress problem in the history of epistemology, and the long-held assumption that only foundationalism provides an adequate, non-skeptical solution to that problem. After responding to the regress problem by denying foundationalism, coherentists normally characterize their view positively by replacing the foundationalism metaphor of a building as a model for the structure of knowledge with different metaphors, such as the metaphor which models our knowledge on a ship at sea whose seaworthiness must be ensured by repairs to any part in need of it. Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationlists, with different varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific relationship among beliefs appealed to by that version.

Basically, you are trying to defend some sort of foundationalism, which basically amounts to a scientific/materialistic sort of foundationalism. And you are suggesting that without such a foundation, chaos would ensue. Rorty doesn't just reject scientific foundationalism - he rejects all foundationalism. He has no single foundation to his knowledge.

This is also relevant:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherentism

The main criticism facing coherentism is probably simplest to state from the point of view of someone who holds to the correspondence theory of truth. It is that there is no obvious way in which a coherent system relates to anything that might exist outside of it. So, it may be possible to construct a coherent theory of the world, which does not correspond to what actually occurs in the world. In other words, it appears to be entirely possible to develop a system that is entirely coherent and yet entirely untrue.

It is surprisingly difficult to even state the problem from the point of view of a coherentist, because the phrase "correspond to reality" has a different meaning in a Coherentist system. For a Coherentist, reality is exactly the entire coherent system. It is simply not possible for a coherent theory not to correspond to reality, if reality is the very same thing as the entire coherent system.

Put another way, coherentists might reply to the critic that any substantial system that was not true would by definition contain some contradictions, and so be incoherent.

Paul posted:

I get the feeling he likes science just fine, but he doesn't want it to have a special status. Trouble is, the reason science works at all is because if its unique way of knowing.

It's not that he "doesn't want it" to have a special status. The problem is that he knows all too well the problems associated with trying to defend the claim that it deserves a special status. He would view your claim as a claim that science gives us some sort of "absolute truth", and his response would be that there is no such thing.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/

2. Against Epistemology

2.3 Rationality, Science, and Truth
Attacking the idea that we must acknowledge the world's normative constraint on our belief-systems if we are to be rational subjects, Rorty has drawn a great deal of criticism that takes science, particularly natural science, as its chief reference point. Two general kinds of criticisms are often raised. The first insists that science consists precisely in the effort to learn the truth about how things are by methodically allowing us to be constrained in our beliefs by the world. On this view, Rorty is simply denying the very idea of science. The other kind of criticism seeks to be internal: if Rorty's view of science were to prevail, scientists would no longer be motivated to carry on as they are; science would cease to be the useful sort of thing that Rorty also thinks it is (see, eg., Bernard Williams, "Auto da Fe" in Malachowski). However, Rorty's view of science is more complicated than he himself sometimes implies. He says: "I tend to view natural science as in the business of controlling and predicting things, and as largely useless for philosophical purposes." ("Reply to Hartshorne," Saatkamp 32) Yet he spends a good deal of time drawing an alternative picture of the intellectual virtues that good science embodies (ORT Part I). This is a picture which eschews the notion that science succeeds, when it does, in virtue of being in touch with reality in a special way, the sort of way that epistemologists, when successful, can clarify. It is in this sense specifically that Rorty disavows science as philosophically significant. Good science may nevertheless be a model of rationality, in Rorty's view, exactly in so far as scientific practice has succeeded in establishing institutions conducive to democratic exchange of view.

[continues....]

Rorty is a person who clearly has what might be called "naturalistic" or "atheistic" tendencies, but he is also somebody who is acutely aware of the pitfalls that continually haunt people trying to coherently defend that sort of viewpoint. Specifically, he is acutely aware of the problems caused by people making subjectivist arguments. There is almost a continual repetition of those subjectivist arguments on this board. I spent two years making them myself, Ian makes them, lifegazer tries to make them... And I think that there are a lot of exasperated people trying to resist and deny the guts of those arguments, usually by resorting to epistemological arguments which, IMO, simply don't work. What is different about Rorty is that he has accepted that you can't ignore or defuse those subjectivist arguments so instead of committing himself to fighting a battle he knows he can't win he uses an entirely different strategy which takes on board the subjectivist arguments, and neutralises them. In doing so, he has to reject both foundationalism and representationalism and replace them with coherentism and anti-representationalism. The down-side to this, which has clearly not escaped you, is that Rorty ends up being a postmodernist. This is the price he pays for wanting a truly coherent belief system, instead of one which is built on a priviledged foundation which eventually ends up being impossible to coherently defend. The problem with foundationalism is that you end up being forced to defend the foundation, and there's usually no way to do it which actually works. The only way to avoid this problem is to not have a foundation at all.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't see how matter vs. mind has anything to do with positive vs. negative numbers.

They are both dualisms.

The three complex cube roots of unity add up to zero, just as 1 and -1 do.

OK, I am afraid I am not a mathematician, so I can't comment on this.

Zero is neither positive nor negative, and it's a number too.

Well, that is highly debatable. I know quite a few people, one of them a maths teacher, who would say that zero is not a normal number at all, but some kind of infinity.

You can find lots of dualisms if you look around, but that's just because it's such a general concept. All those dualisms aren't necessarily related to each other in any fundamental way.

Well, perhaps that comes down to a matter of opinion. Personally, I think they are indeed related to each other. I think it is a fundamental feature of existence. It exists everywhere from mathematics and ontology to Hegel's dialectical metaphysics and Newtonian mechanics. I can't prove this deductively - I have to rely on inductivism - what I see is a repeating pattern.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff, I read the paper last evening. Quite interesting. It seems to me that Rorty is saying:

Metaphysics has been unable to come up with a description of "the way things are" that is satisfactory to a large number of philosophers.

Therefore, ontology is a hopeless enterprise and we should abandon it. I'm with him so far.

Yes, this is certainly part of his position. Although if you read his book I think you'd be surprised how close he comes to arguing for a sort of eliminative materialism without actually doing it.

However, from there he goes on to assume:

There is also no way to come up with a reasonable description of "the way things appear to be."

And so suggests we also abandon epistemology and declare all ways of knowing equal. I believe the history of "ways of knowing" show this assumption not to be valid.

"To stop dividing culture into the hard and the soft areas would be to cease to draw up two lists: the longer containing nominalizations of every term used as the subject of a sentence and the shorter containing all the things there are on heaven and earth."

There is a longing in this sentence that I think may be borne of an aching fatigue.

Yes, Rorty is a man who has carried a heavy intellectual burden. He is a deeply controversial figure in 20th century philosophy. Not least because his claim amounts to the death of analytical philosophy - but it is only dead for people who properly understand what killed it. He is deeply unpopular amongst the faculty at my Uni. When I mentioned his name at my interview last year there was a doubletake and a sharp intake of breath from both of the people interviewing me. Their response was "Rorty's position is not very popular in the staff room." Not surprising, really.

By trying to defend an epistemologically-priviledged status for science, he would view your position as a misguided attempt to wake the dead.

But thankyou for reading the paper, and I'm glad you liked at least some of it.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
It is essential for Rorty that he abandons epistemology at the same time he abandons ontology - otherwise he risks ending up in the sort of position you find yourself in (where your epistemological view "forces" an ontological view).

I understand that he wants to abandon epistemology, but I don't see how he can if he wants to "use the best possible description of the situation."

Rorty has a coherentist theory of truth. He absolutely wishes to avoid the sort of reasoning you are talking about here, because of the problems it leads to.

The Wikipedia entry for coherentism begins:

"Coherentism is belief in the coherence theory of justification --- an epistemological theory opposing foundationalism and offering a solution to the regress argument. In this epistemological capacity, it is a theory about how belief can be justified. Coherentism also refers to the coherence theory of truth."

How is Rorty escaping epistemology?

"It is surprisingly difficult to even state the problem from the point of view of a coherentist, because the phrase "correspond to reality" has a different meaning in a Coherentist system. For a Coherentist, reality is exactly the entire coherent system. It is simply not possible for a coherent theory not to correspond to reality, if reality is the very same thing as the entire coherent system."

There is still an epistemological basis here, namely that we know things by building a coherent system describing those things. Perhaps it is not truly an epistemology because it makes no claim to correspond to any objective reality?

It's not that he "doesn't want it" to have a special status. The problem is that he knows all too well the problems associated with trying to defend the claim that it deserves a special status. He would view your claim as a claim that science gives us some sort of "absolute truth", and his response would be that there is no such thing.

But science makes no claim to absolute truth. It only claims to be a certain replicable method of constructing a model of what we experience. In fact, it seems to me that science tries to construct a coherent system just along the lines that Rorty suggests.

The down-side to this, which has clearly not escaped you, is that Rorty ends up being a postmodernist. This is the price he pays for wanting a truly coherent belief system, instead of one which is built on a priviledged foundation which eventually ends up being impossible to coherently defend. The problem with foundationalism is that you end up being forced to defend the foundation, and there's usually no way to do it which actually works. The only way to avoid this problem is to not have a foundation at all.

I do not understand how Rorty thinks we can construct any coherent system without starting with some foundational assumptions. How would we start? Is it a project to create an elaborate fiction movie with lots of people acting as continuity checkers?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hi Paul

How is Rorty escaping epistemology?

By having more than one way of looking at the world, none of which takes precedence over the other, but all of which must fit together coherently.

"It is surprisingly difficult to even state the problem from the point of view of a coherentist, because the phrase "correspond to reality" has a different meaning in a Coherentist system. For a Coherentist, reality is exactly the entire coherent system. It is simply not possible for a coherent theory not to correspond to reality, if reality is the very same thing as the entire coherent system."

There is still an epistemological basis here, namely that we know things by building a coherent system describing those things. Perhaps it is not truly an epistemology because it makes no claim to correspond to any objective reality?

Correct. In fact Rorty refuses to acknowledge that the word "objective" really means anything at all. There is only "inter-subjective agreement". He also refuses to use the word "relativism".

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It's not that he "doesn't want it" to have a special status. The problem is that he knows all too well the problems associated with trying to defend the claim that it deserves a special status. He would view your claim as a claim that science gives us some sort of "absolute truth", and his response would be that there is no such thing.
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But science makes no claim to absolute truth. It only claims to be a certain replicable method of constructing a model of what we experience. In fact, it seems to me that science tries to construct a coherent system just along the lines that Rorty suggests.

In a way, this is true. But the problem is that it doesn't make any effort to be coherent with things outside the domain of science - to the point where many people around here end up having great difficulty explaining how scientific knowledge can be related to non-scientific knowledge. For Rorty, science doesn't just have to be coherent with itself. It has to be coherent with everything else as well - and if science becomes inextricably entangled with materialism then it cannot do this, for reasons which all the participants in these debates must be very well aware of by now.

quote:
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The down-side to this, which has clearly not escaped you, is that Rorty ends up being a postmodernist. This is the price he pays for wanting a truly coherent belief system, instead of one which is built on a priviledged foundation which eventually ends up being impossible to coherently defend. The problem with foundationalism is that you end up being forced to defend the foundation, and there's usually no way to do it which actually works. The only way to avoid this problem is to not have a foundation at all.
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I do not understand how Rorty thinks we can construct any coherent system without starting with some foundational assumptions. How would we start? Is it a project to create an elaborate fiction movie with lots of people acting as continuity checkers?

You could use the following analogy:

Foundationalism is like building one large tower, climbing to the top and surveying all that is around you. Coherentism is like building many towers, climbing to the top of all of them, and combining all the different views from the many towers. So, yes, you do need to start with some foundational assumptions in order to build the "many towers", but you do not have to rely on any single set of foundational assumptions. Once you have your coherentist view of the land, the combined view from the many towers, it no longer matters if the foundations of one particular tower need to be reviewed or replaced or accepted as faulty or limited. In fact, ones worldview can even survive the complete destruction of individual towers. The foundationalist, by contrast, has all of his eggs in one basket. His one tower might afford a great view of some parts of the land, but other parts are too far a way for him to see. Worse, the foundations of his one tower are the foundations of his entire system of knowledge and any threat to those foundations is a threat to bring down his entire system of knowledge and leave him with nothing at all. As a result, when those foundations are challenged (for whatever reason) the foundationalist will usually lose all interest in anything other than the defence of those foundations. He will defend them at all costs, and one of those costs is an inability to properly see or understand things which can only be understood if you have an unobscured view from one of the other towers.

 

[Iacchus]

Sounds much more like holism.

 

[hammegk]

JustGeoff, could you comment on what Rorty's 'towers' might have as bases -- that do not collapse to one of the two Cartesian viewpoints?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
By having more than one way of looking at the world, none of which takes precedence over the other, but all of which must fit together coherently.

I don't see how that does anything but make his (meta)epistemology more complex.

Correct. In fact Rorty refuses to acknowledge that the word "objective" really means anything at all. There is only "inter-subjective agreement". He also refuses to use the word "relativism".

Then I have a suggestion. Given that we have dumped ontology, epistemology no longer refers to anything absolute. So we can use it to refer to all the ways of knowing that Rorty wants to utilize. Without ontology, epistemology really is only inter-subjective agreement. (But I still think some of those ways of knowing will produce a lot more agreement than others.)

In a way, this is true. But the problem is that it doesn't make any effort to be coherent with things outside the domain of science - to the point where many people around here end up having great difficulty explaining how scientific knowledge can be related to non-scientific knowledge. For Rorty, science doesn't just have to be coherent with itself. It has to be coherent with everything else as well - and if science becomes inextricably entangled with materialism then it cannot do this, for reasons which all the participants in these debates must be very well aware of by now.

I'm not sure how we're going to make "the earth orbits the sun" coherent with "the sun orbits the earth" unless we say something completely silly like "they are coherent in that they are two opposing viewpoints that pople hold."

In his angst over this issue, I think Rorty might throw out the baby with the metaphysical water.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm not sure how we're going to make "the earth orbits the sun" coherent with "the sun orbits the earth" unless we say something completely silly like "they are coherent in that they are two opposing viewpoints that pople hold."

Yeah, but you've chosen a silly example. Not many people are going to be able to incorporate "the sun orbits the earth" into a coherent system of knowledge. The relevant examples aren't nonsense-science but things like the human sciences and the arts - especially things like philosophy and psychology.

The difference is that the foundationalist (be he a materialist or be he an insane idealist like lifegazer) is limited to interpreting everything he encounters within the boundaries of the framework of his foundation. Everything else is rejected, resisted, ignored or attacked. So large swathes of philosophy and the human sciences end up being meaningless - or at the very least completely disconnected from any "secure knowledge". A coherentist doesn't have any such problem.

Perhaps Rorty's position looks unneccesary to you - but you are thinking like a scientist and Rorty is a philosopher (even if he's a bit of an odd philosopher). I mean...isn't it clear that a foundationalist is forced to think inside a box, whereas a coherentist is not? The foundationalist will always try to argue that it's a very good box to think inside - perhaps the only box worth thinking inside.....but he remains stuck in his box.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

I have to go out now, so this is my last post.....

The odd thing about talking to you about this is that you seem to be half way between rejecting foundationalism and accepting coherentism. The classic characterisation of the debate between the two is as follows:

The foundationalist accuses the coherentist of having a knowledge-system which has no foundation.

The coherentist accuses the foundationalist of having a knowledge-system which is incoherent.

Yet you have already acknowledged that the two most commonly accepted foundations (materialism and idealism) are incoherent! From this POV, you sound like you ought to be a coherentist. Yet, when push comes to shove, you turn to epistemology and end up with a knowledge-system that looks almost exactly like materialism and end up being a foundationalist-by-proxy.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
Yeah, but you've chosen a silly example. Not many people are going to be able to incorporate "the sun orbits the earth" into a coherent system of knowledge. The relevant examples aren't nonsense-science but things like the human sciences and the arts - especially things like philosophy and psychology.

But even to decide if it's coherent requires some epistemological framework! Without one, I could reject logic itself and claim that both statements can be true at once.

I must not understand what philosophers mean by epistemology.

The difference is that the foundationalist (be he a materialist or be he an insane idealist like lifegazer) is limited to interpreting everything he encounters within the boundaries of the framework of his foundation. Everything else is rejected, resisted, ignored or attacked. So large swathes of philosophy and the human sciences end up being meaningless - or at the very least completely disconnected from any "secure knowledge". A coherentist doesn't have any such problem.

I don't understand what you're saying. The foundational framework can be quite general, as it is with scientific epistemology and no underlying metaphysic. Or does the foundational framework necessarily entail ontology? If so, then I am a coherentist since I reject ontology.

Perhaps Rorty's position looks unneccesary to you - but you are thinking like a scientist and Rorty is a philosopher (even if he's a bit of an odd philosopher). I mean...isn't it clear that a foundationalist is forced to think inside a box, whereas a coherentist is not? The foundationalist will always try to argue that it's a very good box to think inside - perhaps the only box worth thinking inside.....but he remains stuck in his box.

But a coherent system of knowledge will require a box, too. If I truly want no box at all, then I have to say that anything goes, which is just silly.

Yet you have already acknowledged that the two most commonly accepted foundations (materialism and idealism) are incoherent! From this POV, you sound like you ought to be a coherentist. Yet, when push comes to shove, you turn to epistemology and end up with a knowledge-system that looks almost exactly like materialism and end up being a foundationalist-by-proxy.

If this is so, then non-materialists are rejecting more than simply the idea that everything is made up from some "physical material." All I'm suggesting for an epistemology is something like "everything real can be described according to consistent rules that can be determined through observation of effects." I'm not sure what we can ease up in those axioms without also dooming Rorty's coherent system project.

Perhaps Rorty sees science as having a much more complicated ontologyical/epistemological basis, and so sees science as being in a tight box. I don't think science is as boxed in as he does.

This is interesting because it brings home the constant debate about whether skeptics reject claim X because it clashes with their metaphysic, or simply because the evidence is not convincing. I think it is most often the latter.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hi Paul

But even to decide if it's coherent requires some epistemological framework! Without one, I could reject logic itself and claim that both statements can be true at once.

I must not understand what philosophers mean by epistemology.

I don't think that the law of non-contradiction counts as epistemology, no. Rorty certainly doesn't include it as such.

At it's core, I think that the law of non-contradiction falls under the category of ontology of logic. It certainly feeds into other areas of philosophy: logic, metaphysics and epistemology being the obvious cases. And you might be surprised at the number of philosophers who even reject the law of non-contradiction. If pushed, I might even have to count myself as one of them.....

But Rorty can certainly get away with adhering to the law of non-contradiction without being accused of "indulging in epistemology".

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The difference is that the foundationalist (be he a materialist or be he an insane idealist like lifegazer) is limited to interpreting everything he encounters within the boundaries of the framework of his foundation. Everything else is rejected, resisted, ignored or attacked. So large swathes of philosophy and the human sciences end up being meaningless - or at the very least completely disconnected from any "secure knowledge". A coherentist doesn't have any such problem.
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I don't understand what you're saying. The foundational framework can be quite general, as it is with scientific epistemology and no underlying metaphysic. Or does the foundational framework necessarily entail ontology?

Is "scientific epistemology" really general? Seems quite specific to me.

Foundationalism doesn't neccesarily entail ontology. It just usually does entail ontology. The basic definition of foundationalism is any system of epistemic justification which relies on a certain set of "basic beliefs" which serve as a foundation for other beliefs. Materialism and Idealism are just the most obvious and most commonly held "basic beliefs" and, somewhat paradoxically, believers of both systems hold their "basic beliefs" to self-evident.

Having said all that...

http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/articles/miedema.html

Postmodern View, Pedagogy, and the Future

What needs to be done in order to overcome the postmodern predicament? From a pedagogical point of view we should, in line with Rorty, avoid every foundationalism related to ontology and epistemology and plead for a renewed attention for value orientation and ethics.

So its possible to be a foundationalist whose foundational beliefs are neither ontological nor epistemological. You clearly aren't an ontological foundationalist, but you probably are some sort of epistemological foundationalist and because of the epistemological viewpoint you have adopted it is effectively the same as materialistic foundationalism. Any scientific foundationalism is practicaly indistinguishable from materialistic foundationalism, from my POV. At least, science would need to evolve quite considerably before a scientific foundationalist could manage to avoid being a materialist foundationalist in everything but name.

quote:
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Perhaps Rorty's position looks unneccesary to you - but you are thinking like a scientist and Rorty is a philosopher (even if he's a bit of an odd philosopher). I mean...isn't it clear that a foundationalist is forced to think inside a box, whereas a coherentist is not? The foundationalist will always try to argue that it's a very good box to think inside - perhaps the only box worth thinking inside.....but he remains stuck in his box.
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But a coherent system of knowledge will require a box, too. If I truly want no box at all, then I have to say that anything goes, which is just silly.

That's not true. "Anything goes" was Feyerabends light-hearted quip about what constitutes an historically-accurate description of what makes science science. It certainly isn't true of coherentist theories of justification, because "anything goes" includes things which aren't coherent. It's not a box. The limitations on the coherentist are simply that all the knowledge he has accumulated, from all the different "towers", fits together as a coherent whole with no contradictions. This is in fact not an easy trick to pull off. It's actually quite restrictive. Personally, I have considerable difficulty pulling it off, which is why I hinted that if pushed I might even reject the law of non-contradiction. But the coherentist doesn't have a "box" in the way that a foundationalist does, because the coherentist has no "basic beliefs" which aren't justified by other beliefs. For the coherentist, every belief must be justified by it's coherency with all the others. For the foundationalist, the "basic beliefs" aren't justified at all - because they are supposedly "self-evident".

So if the question is "Is Paul a foundationalist?" then I have to ask you "Do you have some basic beliefs upon which all the other are built, or do you belief that everything you believe has to be supported by everything else you believe? If the answer is yes (to the former), then what are those basic beliefs?"

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Yet you have already acknowledged that the two most commonly accepted foundations (materialism and idealism) are incoherent! From this POV, you sound like you ought to be a coherentist. Yet, when push comes to shove, you turn to epistemology and end up with a knowledge-system that looks almost exactly like materialism and end up being a foundationalist-by-proxy.
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If this is so, then non-materialists are rejecting more than simply the idea that everything is made up from some "physical material." All I'm suggesting for an epistemology is something like "everything real can be described according to consistent rules that can be determined through observation of effects."

I think this just leads to questions about what you mean by "observation of effects". I suspect you would define "observation" differently to me. This is where my debates with SJC tend to break down - every time he claims it is possible to "observe somebody-else's mind". He has defined subjective experiences as brain processes and then claims he can observe a mind by observing the brain processes. If you would agree with that sort of claim then I think your epistemology ends up being ontology - because of the way you define "observe" and other words. For me, the only thing I observe is the contents of my own mind. Everything else is inferred, intuited or deduced.

I'm not sure what we can ease up in those axioms without also dooming Rorty's coherent system project.

Perhaps Rorty sees science as having a much more complicated ontologyical/epistemological basis, and so sees science as being in a tight box. I don't think science is as boxed in as he does.

This is interesting because it brings home the constant debate about whether skeptics reject claim X because it clashes with their metaphysic, or simply because the evidence is not convincing. I think it is most often the latter.

Well I think the problem there is what you find "convincing" and why you find it so. I've already said that the prime reason most skeptics find those claims of paranormalism which don't actually contradict science to be "unconvincing" has more to do with their underlying ontological beliefs than anything else. When I was a materialist I would have found it very difficult indeed to be convinced by any evidence at all that such things existed, simply because I had no way of incorporating them into my worldview. And I am not trying to downplay the power of the reasoning which holds those people in it's grip. Given Big Bang theory and Darwinism, materialism really does seem like the only game in town. It's only when you really stare the mind-body problem in the face that you are forced to seriously question it, and even then you are likely to be left with more questions than answers.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
Is "scientific epistemology" really general? Seems quite specific to me.

Seems entirely general to me.

Foundationalism doesn't neccesarily entail ontology. It just usually does entail ontology. The basic definition of foundationalism is any system of epistemic justification which relies on a certain set of "basic beliefs" which serve as a foundation for other beliefs. Materialism and Idealism are just the most obvious and most commonly held "basic beliefs" and, somewhat paradoxically, believers of both systems hold their "basic beliefs" to self-evident.

I simply do not understand how Rorty intends to filter his system so that it is coherent, without some foundational assumptions about what makes things coherent. If his only foundation is logic, with no empirical foundation, then he's going to end up with a mess.

"Postmodern View, Pedagogy, and the Future

What needs to be done in order to overcome the postmodern predicament? From a pedagogical point of view we should, in line with Rorty, avoid every foundationalism related to ontology and epistemology and plead for a renewed attention for value orientation and ethics."

So we're going to pursue values and ethics without any foundation in the source of knowledge? What the hell would that even mean?

So its possible to be a foundationalist whose foundational beliefs are neither ontological nor epistemological. You clearly aren't an ontological foundationalist, but you probably are some sort of epistemological foundationalist and because of the epistemological viewpoint you have adopted it is effectively the same as materialistic foundationalism. Any scientific foundationalism is practicaly indistinguishable from materialistic foundationalism, from my POV. At least, science would need to evolve quite considerably before a scientific foundationalist could manage to avoid being a materialist foundationalist in everything but name.

I think you have in your mind a charicature of science.

So if the question is "Is Paul a foundationalist?" then I have to ask you "Do you have some basic beliefs upon which all the other are built, or do you belief that everything you believe has to be supported by everything else you believe? If the answer is yes (to the former), then what are those basic beliefs?"

I don't believe it's possible to believe in a finite number of things, none of which are taken to be axiomatic. At the very least, I need a method of filtering all possible beliefs down to a managable number, otherwise the task of cross-checking all beliefs for consistency is intractable. The filter is an epistemological framework that I have to take on faith. If Rorty's project is intractable, then it is no project at all.

Now, Rorty could say that we don't need to enumerate all possible beliefs to cross-check them, but merely cross-check every belief that anyone brings forth. So let's say I claim that I can make this mug of beer rise off the table just by thinking about it. Do we accept this "belief" at face value and begin the process of cross-checking it? If so, then this is some sort of marvelous new philosophy of naivete. If not, then what? How do we verify my claim without any foundation?

I think this just leads to questions about what you mean by "observation of effects". I suspect you would define "observation" differently to me. This is where my debates with SJC tend to break down - every time he claims it is possible to "observe somebody-else's mind". He has defined subjective experiences as brain processes and then claims he can observe a mind by observing the brain processes. If you would agree with that sort of claim then I think your epistemology ends up being ontology - because of the way you define "observe" and other words. For me, the only thing I observe is the contents of my own mind. Everything else is inferred, intuited or deduced.

Isn't this just playing with words? I don't need to say that I observe your mind. I can say that I infer things about your mind by observation and interaction with you. I certainly do not claim that I can experience your mind, at least not yet. Furthermore, it's clear that even you cannot observe all of your mind, nor even much of it at all when in certain states.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hi Paul

I simply do not understand how Rorty intends to filter his system so that it is coherent, without some foundational assumptions about what makes things coherent. If his only foundation is logic, with no empirical foundation, then he's going to end up with a mess.

Why?

You seem to be asking "how does a coherentist justify his beliefs?"

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/

....coherentists normally characterize their view positively by replacing the foundationalism metaphor of a building as a model for the structure of knowledge with different metaphors, such as the metaphor which models our knowledge on a ship at sea whose seaworthiness must be ensured by repairs to any part in need of it. Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationlists, with different varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific relationship among beliefs appealed to by that version.

So it's a sort of ongoing process, whereby all inconsistencies are sought out and eliminated as they are discovered, just as the person maintaining the ship replaces defective parts of the ship as they are discovered. Beyond that this gets complicated and all I can really do is recommend you read the link supplied above if you're interested enough to do so.

I don't believe it's possible to believe in a finite number of things, none of which are taken to be axiomatic. At the very least, I need a method of filtering all possible beliefs down to a managable number, otherwise the task of cross-checking all beliefs for consistency is intractable. The filter is an epistemological framework that I have to take on faith. If Rorty's project is intractable, then it is no project at all.

Now, Rorty could say that we don't need to enumerate all possible beliefs to cross-check them, but merely cross-check every belief that anyone brings forth. So let's say I claim that I can make this mug of beer rise off the table just by thinking about it. Do we accept this "belief" at face value and begin the process of cross-checking it?

No - you absolutely don't take that belief at face value. In fact, this one is quite easy to eliminate since it is incoherent with the basic laws of physics.

If so, then this is some sort of marvelous new philosophy of naivete. If not, then what? How do we verify my claim without any foundation?

It doesn't even need verifying, because it's impossible that it's true.

I guess we've probably taken this discussion about as far as it is likely to go.

Geoff.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"....coherentists normally characterize their view positively by replacing the foundationalism metaphor of a building as a model for the structure of knowledge with different metaphors, such as the metaphor which models our knowledge on a ship at sea whose seaworthiness must be ensured by repairs to any part in need of it. Coherentists typically hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationlists, with different varieties of coherentism individuated by the specific relationship among beliefs appealed to by that version."

This is just gook. You can model it any way you want, but if you are going to "repair" it then there has to be some assumptions about when it is working and when it is broken. Even if you could eliminate foundational beliefs, you'd have foundational relationships.

So it's a sort of ongoing process, whereby all inconsistencies are sought out and eliminated as they are discovered, just as the person maintaining the ship replaces defective parts of the ship as they are discovered. Beyond that this gets complicated and all I can really do is recommend you read the link supplied above if you're interested enough to do so.

It's quite tedious, but I'll give it a try. I detect an awful lot of machinations to avoid some simple epistemological assumptions.

No - you absolutely don't take that belief at face value. In fact, this one is quite easy to eliminate since it is incoherent with the basic laws of physics.

But there is nothing special about the basic laws of physics anymore. And it's only impossible if we assume the laws of phyiscs are accurate and complete, which no one assumes.

It doesn't even need verifying, because it's impossible that it's true.

It's not logically impossible, so it must be "impossible" based on some foundational assumptions.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hi Paul

This is just gook. You can model it any way you want, but if you are going to "repair" it then there has to be some assumptions about when it is working and when it is broken. Even if you could eliminate foundational beliefs, you'd have foundational relationships.

I'm not sure I understand this. "Repairs" are neccesary only when inconsistencies are found. So there is no "assumption" required about when it is working and when it isn't. It is working when it is consistent and coherent, and it is broken when it isn't. Where are the "assumptions" in such a model? I'm not sure what you mean by "foundational relationships" either. For the coherentist, all there is is relationships, and none of them are any more foundational than any of the others. The whole point is that there is no foundation. Any part of the system can potentially be the subject of a modification.

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So it's a sort of ongoing process, whereby all inconsistencies are sought out and eliminated as they are discovered, just as the person maintaining the ship replaces defective parts of the ship as they are discovered. Beyond that this gets complicated and all I can really do is recommend you read the link supplied above if you're interested enough to do so.
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It's quite tedious, but I'll give it a try. I detect an awful lot of machinations to avoid some simple epistemological assumptions.

Yes, there are a lot of machinations - and don't bother if you aren't interested. I only brought Rorty and coherentism up because you made a comment that "in philosophy, everyone has to have a metaphysical position." IMO, Rorty doesn't. But he does have to go to a great deal of effort to avoid making those ontological and epistemological foundational assumptions.

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No - you absolutely don't take that belief at face value. In fact, this one is quite easy to eliminate since it is incoherent with the basic laws of physics.
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But there is nothing special about the basic laws of physics anymore.

Just because they aren't intimately connected with a foundational assumption of materialism, it doesn't mean they are no longer the laws of physics. There is no reason why all of the established laws of physics cannot be incorporated into the coherentist system. They don't disappear simply because they are no longer foundational. They are still one of the things which needs to be incorporated into the system.

And it's only impossible if we assume the laws of phyiscs are accurate and complete, which no one assumes.

You don't need to make that assumption either. All you need to do is accept the laws of physics as we know them and understand them at the present time. If they change at a future time, and these changes create new inconsistencies, then the coherentist's system has to change with them.

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It doesn't even need verifying, because it's impossible that it's true.
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It's not logically impossible, so it must be "impossible" based on some foundational assumptions.

It's impossible because in order for it to be possible the basic laws of physics would have to be wrong. You can take a Humean stance on this and claim that even though we have always observed the laws of the conservation of energy to be obeyed in the past we cannot safely conclude they will always be obeyed in the future - but even with this caveat there is never going to be any reason to believe somebody's claim that they have invented a perpetual motion machine unless they can demonstrate to you that they have indeed invented such a machine. Until and unless they demonstrate it, any claim that they have done so can be rejected on the grounds that it incoherent with the coherentist's current system of knowledge.

So no - not logically impossible - but nevertheless it is just as easy for a coherentist to reject such claims as it is for a foundationalist.