GE Morton wrote: ↑April 2nd, 2020, 9:08 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: ↑April 2nd, 2020, 2:58 am
This is patent nonsense. Things that exist are different from terms or constructs with descriptive or explanatory utility. A thing that exists has no decriptive or explanatory utility. You're conflating the way things are with what we say about them.
Peter, you don't seem to grasp that the only evidence you have for "the way things are" is the phenomena that occurs in your own mind when you see, feel, hear (etc.) something. If you understand "reality" or "the way things are" to be anything beyond that, you're speaking of something you know nothing about, and cannot possibly know anything about. You're indulging in mysticism.
You can, of course, hypothesize an external reality as the cause of those sensory experiences that you have. That is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and some version of it is indispensible if we hope to explain those experiences. But that hypothesized reality remains a hypothetical one, not one of which you, or anyone, can claim direct knowledge.
And yes, I conflate "the way things are" with what we say about them. All that we know, or can know, about what exists, what is real, WITHOUT the intervention of concepts, words, theories, all of which are linguistic constructs, are those sensory phenomena. We need no theories, or even language, to be certain that those exist (as Descartes realized). But if we claim that is all that exists we become solipsists, the sole inhabitants of a very small universe that is utterly inexplicable.
So we hypothesize a much larger universe, and populate it with all manner of entities, processes, "natural laws," and such abstract entities as space, time, universals, minds, gods, demons, spirits, and endless other constructs, all of which aim to help bring some order, some predictability, to the kaleidoscope of sensory phenomena.
When you say, "You're conflating the way things are with what we say about them," you imply that you have some knowledge of "the way things are" that differs from "what we say about them." You have no such knowledge, and cannot. And of course, your statement is itself an example of "what we say" about "reality."
Yes, reality is what we say it is --- provided that what we say improves our understanding of what we perceive.
So, back to the issue: demonstrate that abstract things exist. Just saying they do is useless. The burden of proof is yours.
I've given several examples of that earlier. E.g., that Alfie can find his keys after Annabelle tells him where they are demonstrates that knowledge exists. You dismiss that because you've decided to restrict the word "exists" to a certain class of entities only, and demand that propositions asserting entities of other classes satisfy the truth conditions applicable to your "pet" class --- a restriction that is arbitrary, pointless, and woefully at odds with the everyday uses of that term.
Oh, please. So did the ether and miasma 'exist' until a better explanation came along? This is rubbish.
Nope. Because we now have better explanations, and when you adopt a new explanatory theory for some realm of phenomena the entities and processes postulated by the old theory get banished from the universe --- not only in the present, but for all time, because we naively believe the current theory is timeless and universal (which it almost certainly will eventually prove not to be).
And nearly all ontologies are mystical, but yours, according to which invented things are real, is limpidly rational. Oh-kay.
An ontology is mystical if presumes entities or realms of them inaccessible to direct experience. Which is not the same as postulating entities that contribute to undestanding and predicting that experience.
Please demonstrate the existence of an abstract thing such as truth, knowledge, beauty or justice.
Answered above. But of course, I can't demonstate it if you stubbornly refuse to count anything as a demonstration other than evidence applicable to your pet class of existents. You foreclose all answers a priori.
If they're just like trees and rocks, it should be a doddle. But, of course, they aren't just like trees and rocks, and you can't demonstrate their existence.
Yes, they are just like trees and rocks, insofar as their existence is established by the explanatory value they have. Trees and rocks are themselves conceptual constructs, invented to explain a large class of regularities and relationships in our phenomenal experience.
And there's the rub. A large majority of people on the earth do indeed think gods and other invented supernatural things explain the universe and what happens. So, in your ridiculous world, gods and demons, etc, are real. (Are you for real? I have my suspicions.)
Not in MY world. But they are in theirs. Which is the "real" world? Whichever one provides, at the moment, the better, more comprehensive, more reliable explanation of the phenomena of experience. That may now be our world. But it will surely not be considered "real" 10,000 years from now (if humans are still around by then).
In response to this post setting out a naively empiricist skepticism that used to be fashionable a few decades ago, I think the following, that I posted at another forum, addresses the irrationality of saying 'we can never know what reality is really like'.
Are all models wrong?
George Box claimed that ‘All models are wrong but some are useful’ - which begs the question: from which model can we deduce that all models are wrong? But, leaving that aside, there are other problems with the claim.
1 To clarify: Box probably didn’t mean all models are immoral. He likely used the word wrong to mean incorrect, inaccurate, imprecise, incomplete, imperfect – and so on. (Unbelievably, it seems necessary to point out that we can use the words right and wrong non-morally.)
2 A model can be said to be wrong only if it makes sense to say it could be right. But what would a model, map or description that is right – correct, accurate, precise, complete or perfect – look like? How much and what kind of information would it have to contain? The absurdity of these questions exposes the absurdity of the claim that all models are wrong.
3 We could not model a reality or map a domain to which we have no access, or of which we have no knowledge or information. In that case, any model or map we produce would be a fiction or fantasy, and its usefulness would be entirely fortuitous.
4 The solipsistic claim that we know or can know nothing about what we call reality is an affectation exposed at every turn by performative contradictions, of which the use of language to express the claim is merely one.
The fact is that all models are models – full stop. They are not and cannot be the things that they model or describe, which are features of reality. A factual assertion and its truth-value – and any assessment of ‘rightness’, accuracy, precision, completeness or perfection – can exist only within a descriptive context. So the claim that all models are wrong is incoherent.
To say we have no objective standard by which to assess how well a model describes reality, or that we can’t know if our claims are true or false, is to misconstrue the actual relationship – and radical separation – between a description and the described. The myth of propositions, the JTB definition of knowledge, correspondence theories, and truth-maker/truth-bearer ideas all demonstrate the conflation of what we say with what we say it about – as does the course of foundationalism – its existence and rejection.
All posited foundations for what we know – and (therefore) the truth of what we say – are merely models. What we call facts are such models, and they constitute the objective knowledge we express in language. We build and repair this knowledge on foundations and with materials of our own making. But that does not mean the edifice has no foundation, and so must be shaky. That we can always say more does not mean we can never say enough.
- By Cathal
- By Sy Borg