My website!!

[Urban Ranger]

/me gives Azazel a high-five

[Az]

You know it, sista!

[Whaleboy]

Agathon, fundamentally your argument stems from the principle that because you believe "cat's cant fly", and taking that as the truth, but you (as the proponent of that point of view, not you personally) provide no evidence for why that is the case out of the context of your own perception, and the paramaters in which cats can't fly. Excepting of course the statement that "cats cant fly for a given context", but then I have dealt with that.

Nope. The very fact that relativists can understand us and we them disproves it

How so? Assuming my position on pseudo-objectives to be true, it is precisely the latter notion that destroys it!

since I have to hold most of his beliefs to be true and the same as mine) in order to have him mean anything or to express a false belief

I find a strawman in your argument there. You do not in relativism have to hold his beliefs to be true, whereas you can hold yours to be true. You do however have to recognise that his beliefs are true for him, and yours are not necessarily so. The pseudo-objective judgement condition that I explained is the precise reasoning behind that.

Would you agree with the statement that "In the absense of something to judge, all is equally valid"?

And that is impossible because in order to understand him at all I have to assume that most of his beliefs are true

Again, not true. You don't have to assume they are true, only that they are true for him. In your personal experience, in mine, I'm sure in everyone's, we all find it perfectly easy to communicate with other people with whom we disagree. The way in which we do this is what is called in psychology a "theory of mind", which is something we develop around the age of 3/4 which enables us to "read peoples minds", or have a part of our intellect emulate their mind, in order for us to understand it. At no point do we have to believe that they are correct.

Even in this debate, we are discussing an issue for which we have clearly different views, mine being the relativist, yours being the absolutist (or objectivist?). We clearly disagree, however, we are able to communicate perfectly well because we have shared assumptions (cultural/lingual/social/logical etc) that are unrelated to the context of our discussion, which in this case is absolutism vs relativism.

In a universe where snow does not exist, the noun "snow" is an empty term

Another problem is the lingual distinctions you are making. While the noun "snow" would not be recognised in such a world, one assumes there to be the same language in that hypothetical world, but the recognition of the concept of snow would be non-existent. In that case, you could describe it as solid water precipitation aggregating on the ground forming a layer of cold slippery **** that causes you to fall on your ar5e.

That's ethics. It has nothing to do with general alethic relativism

Perhaps, but I am not advocating total relativism (just more relativism than absolutism in that context.

It doesn't "create" anything.

It creates a different concept to be slotted in place of the old one in my mind! Cheers!

I won't counter the rest of your arguments because I have already done so, however:

A world where squares are round is logically impossible, but a world where snow does not exist is perfectly possible

It most certainly is possible, just not in this universe (I refer to the region 28billion LY across directly affected by the big bang). In this universe, it is impossible "not" to have snow, and have humanity existing to perceive it. Please dont make me explain, I hate thermodynamics .

Presumably all this means is that there is a set of propositions (infinitely large) which properly describe the world at every instant of time. Theologically minded theologians have been saying for years that this is what God knows, so it's hardly a new idea

Maybe not, but I haven't had the benefit of official philosophical education, all I know I taught myself, and that was mainly in terms of styles of thinking, so that idea was new to me!. The set of infinitely large propositions, or rather the fractal of contexts and pseudo-objectives becoming that (in n+1 dimensions) is precisely the case, but as one goes into the infinity you refer to, it goes to n+2, and thus we cannot understand it. I assume there is no god to understand it either, however, in the traditional sense of an omnipotent god, I believe that my argument can still stand, because by definition, we will never achieve that state of perception.

But this is such a bizarre view, it is hard to know where to start. The terminology is ill-defined. At one point a "wildcard" is said to be a personal disposition to believe something; but it isn't clear what role it is supposed to play

We're all different, we all have different preferences. This could mean us as individuals, groups or societies etc. When faced with a choice, we are presented with say two points of view. Both are equally valid. However, one of them then appeals to us more, so we choose it. That is judgement by psuedo-objectives, but it is the wildcards, be they a personal disposition, an institutional mandate, the law, or whatever, that causes us to take preference. Note that wildcards are only such when referring to the context in question, the decisions to be made, otherwise, they are contextual and preferences, decided by other wildcards.

It does not.

Does too

I don't have to prove that there is not a God if I can prove that the symbol "God" is meaningless

Why is that absurd, I can do that now:

Any god to us is a merely a being that is far, far more powerful than us, and therefore to us would appear as being a god (magic cauldron stuff), However, this god is meaningless because his powers are still finite, but as he is a god to us, in relativism we acknowledge that our view is that he is a god, whereas others would take a different view.

Please can you provide a term in place of "context", which I use to mean one or more equally valid subjectives, plus a pseudo-objective to judge them. I dont see that holism has to apply to the word context, but hey I'm open!

I warn you now. Don't ever attempt to tell me what Plato means unless you want to be severely embarrassed

Bring it on Could it be argued that what plato means in that respect is largely irrelevent, largely because of what he actually means, sending you around in circles until you view it in the context of ...contexts for each individuals interpretation, accepting all as equally valid, but yours as valid for you?

(I can send you a rough copy of the majority of my translation of Plato's Sophist if you like)

Go for it, my email is on my site.

The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Thats not very scientific or logical is it?!?! I would take a more structuralist approach, by instead of analysing a game of chess in terms of the moves that are made, I would analyse them in terms of the moves that could have been made, in the context of each move. You can apply to same thing to the method I use to analyse stuff, and hopefully my (i)"all that can be" -> (ii)"all that is" makes some sense after that.

I find this explanation completely opaque

Love the metaphor! Why do you find it "opaque" and what specifically do you mean by the term?

But it needs to be explicated in plain language. As it stands it seems confusing

To the point where it makes the concepts incomprehensible??

How ironic that the opposite is occurring here.

So either I am using scientific concepts in philosophy with adequate justification, or I am using philosophical concepts in science without adequate justification (which was never the case if I may say so myself).

But global relativism about truth seems to me to be mistaken

Can you summarise your position then?

I have translated German myself and Greek

My foreign languages skill equates to enough French to cause a diplomatic incident. Still I don't recognise languages skill to be necessary to understand such works, especially since there are such competent translators out there .

It depends what you mean by "valid". No, if that term is being used as philosophers use it

Enlighten me . What I mean by valid is true, holds, relevant or applicable for a given set of conditions forming a context. Out of context therefore, all is equally valid, all is 0 validity.

Fair enough. I don't know quite what he thinks

But that makes it more fun don't you think . In all seriousness, you do know what I think, just realise that I tend to use terms in the familial sense whereas philosophers would use them to mean more specific things. Again I havent had the benefit of training in the "correct" way to do things, but have been told on numerous occasions by numerous people that do know the "correct" way to do things in philosophy, that my thought processes, methods of analysis, and resultant views on the conceptual level, are more than adequate.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by elijah
Agathon, fundamentally your argument stems from the principle that because you believe "cat's cant fly", and taking that as the truth, but you (as the proponent of that point of view, not you personally) provide no evidence for why that is the case out of the context of your own perception, and the paramaters in which cats can't fly. Excepting of course the statement that "cats cant fly for a given context", but then I have dealt with that.

It doesn't matter whether or not I believe cats fly or do not. All that example shows is how the concepts of belief and meaning are interdependent. A consequence of this view is that relativism is false.

How so? Assuming my position on pseudo-objectives to be true, it is precisely the latter notion that destroys it!

But your position is that alethic relativism can be true and presumably that we can understand your statements, although not necessarily agree with them. Unfortunately, the fact that we can understand your statements and you ours shows, with a little argument, that relativism is false. Of course relativists can protest till the cows come home that they are right, but the very fact of protesting undermines their position.

I find a strawman in your argument there. You do not in relativism have to hold his beliefs to be true, whereas you can hold yours to be true.

No, you don't understand. You absolutely have to hold that most of his beliefs are true and the same as yours for any interpretation to proceed. When we attempt to translate an unknown language we have to make a guess about the claim the speaker is making, and the paradigm case of making a claim is holding a proposition true.

You do however have to recognise that his beliefs are true for him, and yours are not necessarily so.

Unfortunately they are. And his for me. Without large shared belief systems communication is impossible. And as long as the person is actually a language user I can translate what he says. There will of course not be one correct translation, but there will be one that is most useful for communication.

The pseudo-objective judgement condition that I explained is the precise reasoning behind that.

But there is no such thing. Objectivity and subjectivity are not extra theoretical givens, but theory embedded concepts.

Would you agree with the statement that "In the absense of something to judge, all is equally valid"?

You could say that all is equally invalid. Since the "validity" is precisely nought.

Again, not true. You don't have to assume they are true, only that they are true for him.

Yes, but they are your beliefs, they are true for you as well and for any conceivable person I attempt to interpret or every single entity that can be held to entertain propositional attitudes. Therefore, since it is universal, we might as well just say "true".

In your personal experience, in mine, I'm sure in everyone's, we all find it perfectly easy to communicate with other people with whom we disagree.

Of course it is. That's not the point. The point is that there cannot be radical disagreement since interpretation requires that we attribute the vast background of our own beliefs to a person in order to interpret them at all.

The way in which we do this is what is called in psychology a "theory of mind", which is something we develop around the age of 3/4 which enables us to "read peoples minds", or have a part of our intellect emulate their mind, in order for us to understand it. At no point do we have to believe that they are correct.

I can't see into people's heads for the good reason that there is nothing to see except grey mush. All we have to go on in interpretation is the behaviour of the person we are attempting to interpret. If you agree to that then semantic holism is true.

Even in this debate, we are discussing an issue for which we have clearly different views, mine being the relativist, yours being the absolutist (or objectivist?). We clearly disagree, however, we are able to communicate perfectly well because we have shared assumptions (cultural/lingual/social/logical etc) that are unrelated to the context of our discussion, which in this case is absolutism vs relativism.

No. The fact that we are able to communicate shows that relativism is false. Truth, Belief and Meaning are interdependent as radical interpretation shows.

Another problem is the lingual distinctions you are making. While the noun "snow" would not be recognised in such a world, one assumes there to be the same language in that hypothetical world, but the recognition of the concept of snow would be non-existent. In that case, you could describe it as solid water precipitation aggregating on the ground forming a layer of cold slippery **** that causes you to fall on your ar5e.

That doesn't matter. Perhaps the natives don't have a single word for snow. That doesn't stop the interpreter. We don't have a single word for "Schadenfreude" yet we can translate that word using an English phrase.

Perhaps, but I am not advocating total relativism (just more relativism than absolutism in that context.

You certainly seem to be. Local relativisms are easier to defend since you could say that the truth makers for aesthetic judgements are simply a person's feelings. Global alethic relativism is out though.

I won't counter the rest of your arguments because I have already done so, however:

Not... You don't even seem to understand them.

It most certainly is possible, just not in this universe (I refer to the region 28billion LY across directly affected by the big bang). In this universe, it is impossible "not" to have snow, and have humanity existing to perceive it. Please dont make me explain, I hate thermodynamics.

But that's irrelevant to relativism. The same statement can have different truth values in different possible worlds or in the actual world (e.g. "It will rain tomorrow"). That doesn't entail that truth is relative to the believer.

Maybe not, but I haven't had the benefit of official philosophical education, all I know I taught myself, and that was mainly in terms of styles of thinking, so that idea was new to me!. The set of infinitely large propositions, or rather the fractal of contexts and pseudo-objectives becoming that (in n+1 dimensions) is precisely the case, but as one goes into the infinity you refer to, it goes to n+2, and thus we cannot understand it. I assume there is no god to understand it either, however, in the traditional sense of an omnipotent god, I believe that my argument can still stand, because by definition, we will never achieve that state of perception.

It doesn't matter whether anyone can. This is a statement of logical possibility. There certainly seems no logical barrier to omniscience.

We're all different, we all have different preferences. This could mean us as individuals, groups or societies etc. When faced with a choice, we are presented with say two points of view. Both are equally valid.

Why? Perhaps they seem to us to be of equal weight, but that is just a limitation on our knowledge. But who cares? Many true propositions are beyond our capacity to know, but that doesn't make them any less true. For example, the current temperature at the top of Olympus Mons is something I have no physical way of knowing. But that doesn't stop there being a current temperature on the top of Olympus Mons. Say I believed it was -10 degrees and it actually is that. Then my belief is true. I don't know that it's true, but it's still true.

However, one of them then appeals to us more, so we choose it. That is judgement by psuedo-objectives, but it is the wildcards, be they a personal disposition, an institutional mandate, the law, or whatever, that causes us to take preference. Note that wildcards are only such when referring to the context in question, the decisions to be made, otherwise, they are contextual and preferences, decided by other wildcards.

You are confusing our justification for believing that a belief of ours is true with the fact of whether it is true or not. The latter is a matter of correspondence with the facts. The former is a matter of the evidence we can marshal. They are two different issues.

Does too

How can an expression of transcendent realism entail relativism?

Why is that absurd, I can do that now:

Any god to us is a merely a being that is far, far more powerful than us, and therefore to us would appear as being a god (magic cauldron stuff), However, this god is meaningless because his powers are still finite, but as he is a god to us, in relativism we acknowledge that our view is that he is a god, whereas others would take a different view.

That doesn't prove that the concept has no meaning. In fact you just elucidated its meaning.

Please can you provide a term in place of "context", which I use to mean one or more equally valid subjectives, plus a pseudo-objective to judge them. I dont see that holism has to apply to the word context, but hey I'm open!

"Background beliefs"

Bring it on Could it be argued that what plato means in that respect is largely irrelevent, largely because of what he actually means, sending you around in circles until you view it in the context of ...contexts for each individuals interpretation, accepting all as equally valid, but yours as valid for you?

You obviously have never translated from the Ancient Greek then. Greek has rules of grammar and a lexicon. You can't just make it up (though some professors try).

Go for it, my email is on my site.

I'll tidy it up a bit. It was done for a prepared translation exam and is in what we call "translationese" for a large part. A sort of stretching of English to fit the Greek grammar.

Thats not very scientific or logical is it?!?! I would take a more structuralist approach, by instead of analysing a game of chess in terms of the moves that are made, I would analyse them in terms of the moves that could have been made, in the context of each move. You can apply to same thing to the method I use to analyse stuff, and hopefully my (i)"all that can be" -> (ii)"all that is" makes some sense after that.

I don't see what this has to do with the quotation. Unless you mean to be using the later Wittgenstein to bash his earlier incarnation.

Love the metaphor! Why do you find it "opaque" and what specifically do you mean by the term?

I can't see what it is supposed to mean.

To the point where it makes the concepts incomprehensible??

No, to the point you can explain it to trained philosophers.

So either I am using scientific concepts in philosophy with adequate justification, or I am using philosophical concepts in science without adequate justification (which was never the case if I may say so myself).

You seem to be using scientific concepts to make a philosophical point without arguing for their relevance.

Can you summarise your position then?

I did. Semantic holism.

My foreign languages skill equates to enough French to cause a diplomatic incident. Still I don't recognise languages skill to be necessary to understand such works, especially since there are such competent translators out there .

In the case of Classical Greek you are dealing with a dead language which doesn't have some of the philosophical words we have. Indeed Aristotle and Plato had to coin most of them. Did you know that they had no word for "quality" until Plato coined one. There are also terrible problems trying to understand what Plato's understanding of reality is, since the term he uses are used much more broadly.

Enlighten me . What I mean by valid is true, holds, relevant or applicable for a given set of conditions forming a context. Out of context therefore, all is equally valid, all is 0 validity.

You could as well say, all is equally invalid. But without a background of belief there are no claims and no truth anyway. But this does not entail relativism for the reasons I explained at length.

But that makes it more fun don't you think . In all seriousness, you do know what I think, just realise that I tend to use terms in the familial sense whereas philosophers would use them to mean more specific things. Again I havent had the benefit of training in the "correct" way to do things, but have been told on numerous occasions by numerous people that do know the "correct" way to do things in philosophy, that my thought processes, methods of analysis, and resultant views on the conceptual level, are more than adequate.

Philosophers use technical vocabulary for the same reason scientists do. It saves time.

I'm not attempting to piss on you in this debate. Philosophy is about debate and defending our ideas in argument. It seems to me that you would do well to read a few real philosophy books to get an idea of what has been tried and what objections might be raised.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Agathon
Fascist. (proper name or noun?)

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
and adjective

Strictly speaking Wombat, it should be "Fascistic" (Catholicism > Catholic) although most people except English pedants find "Fascistic" a bit difficult to say.

Hence many people use "Fascist" as an adjective.

[Agathon]

I sent you the Sophist. You must be a masochist if you want to read all that.

[Spiffor]

The site could do with direct links at the top of your articles (for example, at the very top of you article on Mill's Limit, there should be links to home, to relativism, to objectivity, etc.), as well as the bottom.

I've always thought of Arial as much easier to read than Times. Sure, arial is uglier, but beauty doesn't seem to be your page main's concern.

I support the blank background and black writing in the articles. These are long texts, so the clearer the layout, the better.

However, the Home section could be glitzier, as well as the about and the contact sections : keep the italic Times for Melville's quote, and add a nice background color in these pages. The menus in the Home section are perfect.

[Whaleboy]

It doesn't matter whether or not I believe cats fly or do not. All that example shows is how the concepts of belief and meaning are interdependent. A consequence of this view is that relativism is false

Ah I see. However, belief and meaning, or rather the specific association between need only apply to that specific context, which can only go up to the size of reality. In that sense, if you are a realist, the relativism would be false, but there are plenty of other refutations of realism.

Of course relativists can protest till the cows come home that they are right, but the very fact of protesting undermines their position

We can and we shall! jk. In all seriousness, I do not say that relativism should be applied over absolutists, using my terms, it boils down to two subjectives, relativism vs absolutism, both are equally valid as far as the relativist is concerned and so all that remains is debate, whose role is not to force one view over another, rather than to serve as mutual education, at least ideally.

You absolutely have to hold that most of his beliefs are true and the same as yours for any interpretation to proceed. When we attempt to translate an unknown language we have to make a guess about the claim the speaker is making, and the paradigm case of making a claim is holding a proposition true

Agreed, however, I do not see why that association extends beyond the context of the communicating persons, or the "large shared belief systems"

Objectivity and subjectivity are not extra theoretical givens, but theory embedded concepts

Aren't they all. To use your term, I find that opaque. I do not refer to objectivity in the usual sense, I presume you've read my article on my alternative.

You could say that all is equally invalid. Since the "validity" is precisely nought

Precisely

Therefore, since it is universal, we might as well just say "true"

No, thats a misunderstanding. Its precisely not universal because it is true for that context. If you mean "for all intents and purposes", then in the context of realism or pragmatism, I can go for that, however, I subscribe to neither of those doctrines.

The point is that there cannot be radical disagreement since interpretation requires that we attribute the vast background of our own beliefs to a person in order to interpret them at all

You never went to an all boys school did you? jk. As far as my understanding goes, that means that the subjectives are interdependent, and they must interact and share assumptions/beliefs in order to communicate.

I can't see into people's heads for the good reason that there is nothing to see except grey mush

I disagree, when one knows someone, one interprets behaviour (I use that term very loosely), and in the mind, forms something of an "equation" for that person. That allows them to have a priori knowledge of that person, in other words, they cognetively "emulate" that person.

You certainly seem to be

Nope, within a given individual context, absolutism is the only way to do things, however, in the case of divisible contexts, relativism applies.

You seem to be using scientific concepts to make a philosophical point without arguing for their relevance

My bad, I didnt include the thesis on TD in the original relativism article. I'll put up a preliminary essay on TD next time I update my site, I'll say its undated in my sig, you can take a look if you want. I come from a scientific background, I have a tendency to use occams razor rather liberally. In terms of how scientific method relates to philosophy, for the most part, science = reason, philosophy = reason. Of course in the latter case, philosophy is also an art and an exercise in imagination imo.

Semantic holism

Holism, the view that accounts of all the constituent parts of a whole and their associations with each other is inadequate as an account of the whole. The question is, are you trying to make an account of the whole, and is relativism an account of the whole?

Semantic, concerned with the meaning of symbols and lingual meanings.

That anywhere close?

In the case of Classical Greek you are dealing with a dead language which doesn't have some of the philosophical words we have

The good old days eh?

There are also terrible problems trying to understand what Plato's understanding of reality is, since the term he uses are used much more broadly

My understanding of Plato (which I freely admit is very limited) leads me to the conclusion that one shouldnt bother understanding what he thought. To me, philosophy is not about men long dead, rather, the concepts they left behind and how they relate to my view of the world. In that case, I feel it is acceptable to take the views of men like Plato loosely, down to the interpretation of the beholder.

without a background of belief there are no claims and no truth anyway

Yes, but with a background of beliefs, individuals forge their own views, and the resultant opinions, in the lack of P.objective judgement are equally valid/invalid. What I mean by that latter term is that it is illogical in the relativist sense to force one subjective over another.

Philosophers use technical vocabulary for the same reason scientists do. It saves time

That is true, but I dont believe it to be necessarily essential. I'm making the effort to learn, I'm reading as much stuff as I can, but I havent been at it for that long, so I'm probably still representative of those who are interested in philosophy, perhaps those with the cognetive ability, but without the training in the "proper" way to do things. Still, I dont think thats all bad, and doesnt necessarily relegate people to "pseudo-philosophers".

I'm not attempting to piss on you in this debate.

I know, I love a good debate, but that doesn't preclude respect for the others point of view . Indeed, from what I know of your background you've earned the right to be taken much more seriously than me in these matters, but still, what would we learn if such notions were to influence the nature of debates?

Thanks to all the suggestions for my site, I'll try to impliment them for the next update. I'll mention in my sig when its updated, and the date of that, so you can admire my fantastic use of terribly ugly fonts!