Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[thrasymachus]

Consul wrote
"Philosophers who give great weight to intuitions need to offer some account of why such intuitions are reliable and are to be trusted; at least, they need to sketch how we would have acquired a reliable capacity of this sort. Descartes based his confidence in thought processes that involve 'clear and distinct ideas' upon the existence of a good God who would not deceive him. Upon what do contemporary philosophers of intuition base their claims? Of course, if the purpose of such philosophy is merely to codify and systematize the intuitions that (for whatever reason) are held, then a philosophy built upon intuitions will need no further basis. And it will have no further validity."

Philosophy built on intuitions? This sounds like Husserl, but I am sure that is not what Nozick had in mind; though he hovers around this.

One would have to isolate the intuition from the cognitive claim on it in order to make an affirmation. Does analysis of an intuition, something even as strong as say, causality, ever yield an intuition as such? Or isn't it that an intuition is already inextricable bound to an historical knowledge claim, and the best one can do is deal with paradigms just like empirical science does?

No, it is not intuition. It is hermeneutics. This is the bottom line....with the only exception being meta-ethics/meta-value/metaaesthetics (Wittgenstein agrees in his Tractatus. One cannot speak an intuition).

[The Beast]

I am only aware of an incomplete debate. An example of such will be whether gender is psychological, biological, or semantical. Claims like one of: “we never went to the moon” that gets revisited every year without any form or proofs of previous debates and with new inflows of scholars. Imagine the amount of reading required in the exposition of a counterclaim like: how much fuel was employed in the lunar vehicle? How about “the stolen election” Do we have access to the library of debates? Do they update? IMO A meta-arbiter is an institution presenting conclusions by percentages with the corresponding Q’s and A’s. A format like: Did Paul knew Jesus? (Paul being the first heretic). The answer is 100% no. He did not meet Jesus. Is Paul a Jesus’s follower? A: 100% Paul is a Jesus’s follower. Where is the proof? A meta-arbiter will have links to it for it and against it as well as those skeptics in missing, destroy, and corrupted proof. In all, the corresponding assignment of strong or weak paradigm… not a chance.

[Pattern-chaser]

I disagree. We can logically say one source of knowledge is more authoritative than another source without creating an infinte daisy chain of 'meta-arbiters.'

You are free to disagree, of course. But your disagreement makes no sense to me. It seems to me that "we can logically say one source of knowledge is more authoritative than another source", and that this will create a "daisy chain of 'meta-arbiters".

[thrasymachus]

I am only aware of an incomplete debate. An example of such will be whether gender is psychological, biological, or semantical. Claims like one of: “we never went to the moon” that gets revisited every year without any form or proofs of previous debates and with new inflows of scholars. Imagine the amount of reading required in the exposition of a counterclaim like: how much fuel was employed in the lunar vehicle? How about “the stolen election” Do we have access to the library of debates? Do they update? IMO A meta-arbiter is an institution presenting conclusions by percentages with the corresponding Q’s and A’s. A format like: Did Paul knew Jesus? (Paul being the first heretic). The answer is 100% no. He did not meet Jesus. Is Paul a Jesus’s follower? A: 100% Paul is a Jesus’s follower. Where is the proof? A meta-arbiter will have links to it for it and against it as well as those skeptics in missing, destroy, and corrupted proof. In all, the corresponding assignment of strong or weak paradigm… not a chance.

But you deal here with mundane matters that are easily corrupted. Epistemology looking for a foundation, or, some top "tier" that subsumes all other knowledge claims, will not find it here. One wants an absolute! And from there establish an epistemology.

What is there, the question asks, that can be called epistemically absolute? From there one can move to ontology. But alas, if there is such an absolute, and I think there is, it is a difficult move from this to the kinds of problems you outline. The best one can hope for is a clearing away of the clutter of thought in order to align with this absolute.

[thrasymachus]

Pattern-chaser wrote
You are free to disagree, of course. But your disagreement makes no sense to me. It seems to me that "we can logically say one source of knowledge is more authoritative than another source", and that this will create a "daisy chain of 'meta-arbiters"

Unless, that is, you can discover a terminus at which all chains stop. Logic has its apriority. The world has its causality. But the language we use to say such things leads to more daisy chains (Derrida). Is there nothing that works here? Something in the world, not abstract, that has the same authority of Moses' tablets, but without Yahweh's anthropomorphized agency of issuance?

[LuckyR]

This thread reminds me of advice I was given very early in my professional career. Which was as a generalist (relatively inexpert in particular areas) when choosing an "expert" to consult on cases, choose the expert who you suspect will give the opinion/advice that you (as the non-expert) believe is most appropriate.

Who's the expert now?

[DustinM]

You are free to disagree, of course. But your disagreement makes no sense to me. It seems to me that "we can logically say one source of knowledge is more authoritative than another source", and that this will create a "daisy chain of 'meta-arbiters".

In a purely theoretical sense, yes, it would lead to an infinite regression daisy chain, but that's not how it works in practice. Take the US legal system for example. It's generally agreed upon that the constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, is the meta-arbiter of legal disagreements. We can have philosophical discussions about where the authority of the constitution comes from, but that doesn't stop us from saying the document is more authoritative than state law.

[Consul]

Philosophy built on intuitions? This sounds like Husserl, but I am sure that is not what Nozick had in mind; though he hovers around this.

One would have to isolate the intuition from the cognitive claim on it in order to make an affirmation. Does analysis of an intuition, something even as strong as say, causality, ever yield an intuition as such? Or isn't it that an intuition is already inextricable bound to an historical knowledge claim, and the best one can do is deal with paradigms just like empirical science does?

No, it is not intuition. It is hermeneutics. This is the bottom line....with the only exception being meta-ethics/meta-value/metaaesthetics (Wittgenstein agrees in his Tractatus. One cannot speak an intuition).

You'll find my reply in that thread: viewtopic.php?p=439003#p439003

[Pattern-chaser]

Is there nothing that works here? Something in the world, not abstract, that has the same authority of Moses' tablets, but without Yahweh's anthropomorphized agency of issuance?

My guess: no to both questions.

[thrasymachus]

Pattern-chaser wrote
My guess: no to both questions.

And you would have a great deal of support in this. There is no non propositional knowledge, is how it is often put. But what does one do with affective qualia? And by this, I refer to pain and suffering, bliss and misery, and so on.

[Pattern-chaser]

But what does one do with affective qualia? And by this, I refer to pain and suffering, bliss and misery, and so on.

Humans have wrestled with this question ... forever? We have found some answers, that some people find useful...?

[thrasymachus]

Pattern-chaser wrote
Humans have wrestled with this question ... forever? We have found some answers, that some people find useful...?

What humans? Hope you don't mean the constant bickering going on in a philosophy club. People come here to argue, that is, wrestle.

Twentieth century philosophical thinking is all based on this notion of a new beginning because there is so much metaphysical clutter. Such is the freedom of thought.

One such thinker is Husserl, who is, I believe, extraordinary. Here is a kind of mission statement from his Cartesian Meditations:

First, anyone who seriously intends to become a philosopher
must "once in his life" withdraw into himself and
attempt,
within himself, to overthrow and build anew all the sciences
that, up to then, he has been accepting. Philosophy wisdom
(sagesse) is the philosophizer's quite personal affair. It must
arise as Ms wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending
toward
universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from
the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute
insights. If I have decided to live with this as my aim the
decision that alone can start me on the course of a
philosophical
development I have thereby chosen to begin in absolute
poverty, with an absolute lack of knowledge.

Reading through Husserl's "Meditations", his "Ideas" and other works do not really presuppose any other reading. It really does depend on what one is looking for. Modern analytic philosophy is inherently disputatious at its core. I mean, this is what professional philosophers do in this vein. They are committed to clutter and wrestling.

Hard to break free of this, of course. Arguing is, after all, fun. But disingenuous.

[DustinM]

Humans have wrestled with this question ... forever? We have found some answers, that some people find useful...?

I'm not talking about human epistemology as a whole. I'm talking about epistemology for specific fields of study.

[Thomyum2]

I'm trying to formulate an idea of epistemology and I would like to see if it stands up to scrutiny. Imagine you have three sources of authority in your model of epistemology, A, B and C. Sometimes those sources disagree or contradict each other, so you use another source, which we'll call D, to adjudicate the disagreement and decide which one is correct. Given that type of scenario, would it be logically sound to say D has a higher tier of authority than A, B, and C?

Assuming that's true, a simplified secular epistemology might look like this:

1. Reason

2. Intuition, sense data, outcomes, authority figures (doctors, scientists, etc.)

And a simplified religious epistemology might look like this:

1. The Bible

2. Intuition, outcomes, authority figures (pastor, theologian), sense data

Regardless of what you put in the #1 slot, there must be only one authority source in that slot because it there were two authorities there, they might disagree, which would require another higher authority to adjudicate the disagreement.

Does that make sense?

This is an interesting discussion you've started here, but I think you might be going down the wrong track by basing an epistemology on a ranking of the authority of sources. In my mind, it raises the question of where does a source gain its authority in the first place? I would point out that a source only has authority if it is known to produce information of quality. In other words, authority is something that is earned - it isn't inherent. After all, a well that produces bad water or runs dry will cease to be a source. A source of knowledge keeps or loses its status as an authority based solely on its history of and reputation for providing good information.

I might suggest looking at the question from a little different angle. I’m reminded of William James’ insight here, which he summarized in saying that "the true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons." The final arbiter isn’t an authority – it’s whether or not the knowledge lives up to this standard when put to use.

So a secular epistemology, as I see it, would use as its ‘assignable reasons’ the evidence of the material world. In other words, is that knowledge (regardless of its source) accurate and useful in describing the facts or predicting the events that we will encounter in the world?

A religious epistemology is certainly a little more difficult to pin down since it deals with the ‘unseen’ rather than the sensible, including things such as morality, spirituality and meaning which aren’t empirically measurable. But I think the same standard would still have to apply – that the knowledge “prove itself to be good in the way of belief.” I’d offer that the Bible, for example, is held to be an authority simply because it has fulfilled that standard - by bringing about a deeper spirituality, or closer relationship with God, or whatever the case may be - for many of the Christians who have believed in it and put that to use in their lives over the years, and not because it is an authority that must be recognized as such a priori.

A thought-provoking topic, I look forward to following it.

[DustinM]

I’d offer that the Bible, for example, is held to be an authority simply because it has fulfilled that standard - by bringing about a deeper spirituality, or closer relationship with God, or whatever the case may be - for many of the Christians who have believed in it and put that to use in their lives over the years, and not because it is an authority that must be recognized as such a priori.

A thought-provoking topic, I look forward to following it.

Are you familiar with the epistemology of the Mormon church? I'm not Mormon, but I'm in a debate with one of their apologists about this topic. The apologist is arguing we can know the mind and will of God by following 5 epistemological 'witnesses': Intuition (spiritual experiences), Sense Data, Reason, Moral Outcomes, and Authority (religious leaders, the Bible, etc.). He says intuition is the root of knowledge in that model and the other four witnesses grow from that root, but none of the witnesses trump any of the other witnesses.

In short, I'm arguing that model has many problems, a primary one being the fact that it is heavily reliant on our own perception, logic, and ability to balance and properly apply the witnesses. If God does exist, it seems to make more sense to follow him by focusing on his word rather than focusing on ourselves.

If you're interested in that debate, I'm making my arguments in a 5-part video series.

1. My response to the Collective Witness Model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRd-YkJh0oY
2. My response to how they use scripture to support the model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gEEvzXX_o
3. The Tiers of Authority video will go live this Saturday
4. The following Saturday will be my response to philosophical analogies that came up in my conversation with a Mormon philosophy professor.
5. The final video will be a few direct questions that summarize the topic.