Dismiss Dis
by rsbakker
I came across this quote in “The Hard Problem of Content: Solved (Long Ago),” a critique of Hutto and Myin’s ‘radical enactivism’ by Marcin Milkowski:
“Naıve semantic nihilism is not a philosophical position that deserves a serious debate because it would imply that expressing any position, including semantic nihilism, is pointless. Although there might still be defenders of such a position, it undermines the very idea of a philosophical debate, as long as the debate is supposed to be based on rational argumentation. In rational argumentation, one is forced to accept a sound argument, and soundness implies the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument. Just because these are universal standards for any rational debate, undermining the notion of truth can be detrimental; there would be no way of deciding between opposing positions besides rhetoric. Hence, it is a minimal requirement for rational argumentation in philosophy; one has to assume that one’s statements can be truth-bearers. If they cannot have any truth-value, then it’s no longer philosophy.” 74
These are the kind of horrible arguments that I take as the principle foe of anyone who thinks cognitive science needs to move beyond traditional philosophy to discover its natural scientific bases. I can remember having a great number of arguments long before I ever ‘assumed my statements were truth-bearers.’ In fact, I would wager that the vast majority of arguments are made by people possessing no assumption that their statement’s are ‘truth-bearers’ (whatever this means). What Milkowski would say, of course, is that we all have these assumptions nonetheless, only implicitly. This is because Milkowski has a theory of argumentation and truth, a story of what is really going on behind the scenes of ‘truth talk.’
The semantic nihilist, such as myself, famously disagrees with this theory. We think truth-talk actually amounts to something quite different, and that once enough cognitive scientists can be persuaded to close the ancient old cover of Milkowski’s book (holding their breath for all the dust and mold), a great number of spurious conundrums could be swept from the worktable, freeing up space for more useful questions. What Milkowski seems to be arguing here is that… hmm… Good question! Either he’s claiming the semantic nihilist cannot argue otherwise without contradicting his theory, which is the whole point of arguing otherwise. Or he’s claiming the semantic nihilistic cannot argue against his theory of truth because, well, his theory of truth is true. Either he’s saying something trivial, or he’s begging the question! Obviously so, given the issue between him and the semantic nihilist is the question of the nature of truth talk.
For those interested in a more full-blooded account of this problem, you can check out “Back to Square One: Towards a Post-intentional Future” over at Scientia Salon. Ramsey also tucks this strategy into bed in his excellent article on Eliminative Materialism over on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. And Stephen Turner, of course, has written entire books (such as Explaining the Normative) on this peculiar bug in our intellectual OS. But I think it’s high time to put an end to what has to be one of the more egregious forms of intellectual laziness one finds in philosophy of mind circles–one designed, no less, to shut down the very possibility of an important debate. I think I’m right. Milkowski thinks he’s right. I’m willing to debate the relative merits of our theories. He has no time for mine, because his theory is so super-true that merely disagreeing renders me incoherent.
Oi.
Milkowski does go on to provide what I think is a credible counter-argument to eliminativism, what I generally refer to as the ‘abductive argument’ here. This is the argument that separates my own critical eliminativism (I’m thinking of terming my view ‘criticalism’–any thoughts?) from the traditional eliminativisms espoused by Feyerbrand, the Churchlands, Stich, Ramsey and others. I actually think my account possesses the parsimony everyone concedes to eliminativism without falling mute on the question of what things like ‘truth talk’ amount to. I actually think I have a stronger abductive case.
But it’s the tu quoque (‘performative contradiction’) style arguments that share that peculiar combination of incoherence and intuitive appeal that renders philosophical blind alleys so pernicious. This is why I would like to solicit recently published examples of these kinds of dismissals in various domains for a running ‘Dismiss Dis’ series. Send me a dismissal like this, and I will dis…
PS: For those interested in my own take on Hutto and Myin’s radical enactivism, check out “Just Plain Crazy Enactive Cognition,” where I actually agree with Milkowski that they are forced to embrace semantic nihilism–or more specifically, a version of my criticalism–by instabilities in their position.
Three Pound Brain 
passed this along to MM so hopefully he will chime in.
Hi,
I find this dismissal extremely unhelpful. Let me explain why. I don’t need a complete theory of truth or argument to present my line of argument. It’s sufficient to say that anyone engaged in the philosophical discourse asserts what they claim. If you don’t, then of course, my argument won’t get off the ground. But then you’re not doing philosophy. So, basically, yes, I do presuppose that the notion of truth is required for doing philosophy. It’s not required to bake bread, whistle or throw stones, or quite obviously not to write poems. All these things may be interesting and satisfying activities. But they ain’t philosophy. Or science, for that matter.
And frankly, I cannot see any way to assert semantic nihilism without claiming that semantic nihilism is true. But if you don’t assert it, no problem. That’s why it’s safer to be a skeptic.
So: do you assert that the claim of semantic nihilism is true or not? (Not that I would be holding my breath).
And this doesn’t beg the question because? It’s natural to assume that your implicit understanding is the understanding–this is something everybody does. The vitalists, famously.
I think semantic nihilism is true. I just think that I know what truth-talk amounts to. There is no such thing as truth, though the word, and the work it does, most certainly does exist. There doesn’t need to be any such spooky entity, be it Platonic or Wittgensteinian, as ‘truth’ to state that such a statement is true. If you disagree, then it’s incumbent on you to explain why–to engage in philosophical debate. You present your theory of truth, and show how it is more true than mine. Is it more parsimonious? Does it possess more explanatory power? Is it more self-consistent? Can it hope to command any consensus?
It’s not question begging because this is the basic assumption of all argumentative discourse. And of course, this is an assumption. So? You also need to assume the rules of logic, otherwise, your talk will be gibberish.
And sorry, the facts of your biography are not an argument. The very fact that you think something is true is just an anecdote. I don’t care what you think, frankly. I only care if I need to agree to your reasoned argument.
Why this is not vitalism? Because obviously there’s a different account of life, one that does not need any special vital force. But notice that it doesn’t mean that a dead parrot is the same as a living one (cf. Monty Python). You can explain away the vital force easily. But you cannot explain away truth, which is as spooky as conjunction, multiplication or integer numbers. It’s just a relational property. Nothing spooky about it. Read Tarski.
It sounds like you’re saying you’re not begging the question because your assumption is compulsory for everyone—that you’re not begging the question because everybody is begging the question. I don’t get it. Could you clarify the form of your argument? Can you spell this assumption out in uncontroversial terms? If not, why? How do you know it’s compulsory? What in Tarski assures you haven’t run afoul some kind of cognitive illusion? Maybe logical notations are simply tools, ways to simplify things to maximize actionability. Maybe this is why there’s so many varieties, and so much controversy regarding their nature. Are you saying there is no controversy about these things? Why do your second-order assumptions regarding truth and logic automatically trump my second order assumptions?
Seems pretty fishy, Marcin. Magical even. In fact, a common complaint you find amongst us dissenters is that arguing against intentionalists it’s like arguing against fundamentalist Christians: more foot-stomping than reasoning. If I could give you a well-formed empirical hypothesis explaining how someone such as yourself could be fooled into thinking their semantic assumptions where apodictic, would you listen to that? Or would you assume it impossible on apriori grounds? How are these grounds not question begging?
This assumption is compulsory for anyone engaged in giving arguments. Apparently, you try, so you have to assume it, as long as there is a difference between giving reasons and brainwashing. That’s all. You need to give me true premises to make the argument against me. Read Copi and Cohen. Or any textbook in logic.
Really, any naturalistic philosopher without some positivist dogma has to say that all things used in natural science are kosher. Logic and truth are used and quantified over. End of story. And no, there’s no problem with logical pluralism. But that’s another issue.
“as long as there is a difference between giving reasons and brainwashing.”
Is there? If so, what does it consist in? If that question sounds outrageous to you, then you need to ask yourself what distinguishes your outrage from that of so many others perplexed by various ‘unthinkable’ possibilities that have become a matter of scientific course over the years. It could be (and I don’t think this) that reason is best theorized as a special form of ‘brain-washing.’ How could you possibly answer such a question in advance? On the basis of what evidence? Adduce it: I assure this is an evidence friendly site!
Meanwhile, I think it’s safe to say that cognitive science is a morass of confusions, incompatibilities, and conundrums at the theoretical level–a discipline that cannot even agree on how to formulate its explananda (!), let cook up any consensus commanding definitions. Something has to explain that. Maybe it’s assumptions like yours.
Science, meanwhile, has a track record of dismaying traditional assumptions. The whole point of this site is to seriously consider the worst-case scenarios. When you do take these scenarios seriously, the tu quoque becomes an obvious irrational strategy (‘bad brainwashing?’), a way to immunize discourses against questions on the basis of assumption alone.
“Logic and truth are used and quantified over. End of story. And no, there’s no problem with logical pluralism. But that’s another issue.”
I agree with this entirely. What does it have to do with understanding what logic and truth actually consist in? So the consensus-commanding, empirically vindicated, naturalistic theory of logic is… There is none. If you want to stack up the evidence for your interpretation versus others, I’m fine with that: so what is the evidence that logic and truth are what you think they are as opposed to what I think they are?
I just don’t see any way out for you. It would be nice for you if your interpretation were not an interpretation but just ‘how it is,’ but unfortunately, you have an interpretation, in which case, your tu quoque clearly begs the question.
thanks for this, hopefully Scott will respond soon.
Well, if you think there’s no difference between brainwashing and giving arguments, then there’s no point in arguing. For the record: I don’t find it outrageous to ask the question, I asked it myself.
So let me just state it clearly: brainwashing does not require you to entertain claims and evaluate them as sound logical arguments, with true premises and correct rules of entailment. Whereas argument, as any textbook will elucidate, requires exactly this. You are forced to accept all the conclusions of sound arguments whose premises you accept as well. And really, I did change my mind because of the arguments many times, even if the aesthetically speaking, the position seemed to be boring or horrible.
The difference is then in trying to see whether you can justify your claims, and justifications aim at truth, or something close enough. You may try to dismiss this kind of talk. Good for you. But not good enough for anyone interested in this kind of questions. Saying that you believe this or that is just changing the topic, and, frankly, a bit narcissistic. Why should it matter? Well, the only reason it could ever matter is that you had some reason, some motivation to accept some claims, or that you had some reliable way of discovering that the claim is more probable than some other one.
(And for naturalistic logic, you seem to be quite out of date. We have tons of interesting research and clear hypotheses. Start with Stenning & van Lambalgen; then you may try Oaksford & Chater for a change; then maybe some Gardenfors).
Basically, I think the basic question, asked long time ago by Dennett to Rorty: what map would you choose if you were to find your way to my institute if I invited you? The map of Warsaw, where I am based, or maybe the map of Cairo? Of course, Rorty would pick the map of Warsaw. Would you? And if not, why Cairo and not Budapest?
The question is what do justifications consist of, not whether we require them for argumentation. No one is disputing the shape of truth-talk, Marcin–what’s at dispute is the explanation. And it seems pretty clear that tu quoque arguments simply beg that (horribly impoverished) explanation. You do see this, don’t you?
The fact that you would adduce interest, motivation, and aesthetics to bolster your position doesn’t do your position any argumentative favours. Nor does the (unfortunate) oblique ad hominem. Even less, the suggestion that there are uncontroversial second-order explanations of what logic amounts to (!). Narcissist’s generally think they’re right because they have God (or some X) on their side, and as it stands, I’m not sure how you’ve done anything but stomp your feet and do this, aside from a little sabre rattling.
“Basically, I think the basic question, asked long time ago by Dennett to Rorty: what map would you choose if you were to find your way to my institute if I invited you? The map of Warsaw, where I am based, or maybe the map of Cairo? Of course, Rorty would pick the map of Warsaw. Would you? And if not, why Cairo and not Budapest?”
The map of Warsaw. Why? Because that’s where you live.
You can tell me that saying as much begs your notions of truth, but that just puts you on the hook for telling me why your notion of truth is the better notion.
In other words, right where we began, with my question.
Sorry, you seem to miss the basic logical points. Yes, my argument is ad hominem. But there are proper ad hominem arguments.
You may say that I beg the question. I don’t. The burden of proof is always on the side of the antirealist. Let me elucidate: John Heil and C.B. Martin have argued this point at length in their paper “The Ontological Turn”. Here’s the relevant quote from page 35:
“We propose the following precept:
(P) In evaluating a strain of antirealism, scrutinize the resulting ontology.
In many cases, we believe, the charm of the antirealist position wears thin once its ontology is made explicit.
By way of illustration, imagine that someone denies the existence of natural divisions in the world: all depends on language. Language “carves up” reality; and to the extent that language is arbitrary or conventional, so are the elements of reality. Before you rush to embrace a view of this sort, however, you should ask yourself what it implies about the ontology of language. The nonlinguistic world is made dependent on language. But what is language, and what are the repercussions of privileging it in this way? Are we supposed to regard tables, mountains, and electrons
with suspicion, while accepting syllables and morphemes as immune to doubt? If the world is a linguistic construct, then it is hard to see how language could itself be a part of the world. But then what is it? In this case it would not do to regard language
as an abstract entity. That would imply, absurdly, that concrete entities—tables, mountains, and electrons—depend for their being on an abstract entity. But if language is concrete, why should it be exempt from the kinds of dependence thought to pertain to other concrete entities?”
Now, what I am doing in my paper and here is to try to understand complete semantic nihilism, or the claim that nothing ever is true. The ontology of this position implies that its very claim cannot be true; hence, you cannot apply the normal standards of evaluating arguments as described in logic textbooks and in philosophy. Now, of course, I do presuppose such standards. If you say that this begs the question, I don’t really care, because you don’t really mean this. (You don’t mean anything, for that matter, if you are a complete semantic nihilist, which you probably aren’t, as you would deny that I say anything that you can understand — or at least you should). And we know from the debate on the fundamental logic that it’s not circular if you use logic to describe logic that is supposed to be fundamental. You need to use any tool good for that purpose and as long as it can be replaced or used by others reliably, it’s fine (remember the boat described by Neurath?). So here’s the trouble: you cannot avoid truth-talk when trying to describe truth-talk. You can try but then your point is no longer truth-evaluable, and hence of no interest to anyone trying to follow the argument, rather than ideology.
You try to say that the very standards are at stake. No. They are not, at least if you want me to follow your argument. If you don’t, if you just want to market your position, or make it more popular, simply draw a meme, make a selfie or pay people to click a link. These will work much better. So yes, this is as much as I will assume.
All reductio arguments work this way: you don’t really need to have a proper point if your opponent’s point leads to a contradiction. And yours (if you are a complete semantic nihilist) does. So no way, trying to say that I commit petitio principii won’t work. This is overridden by my reductio.
You don’t take semantic value at face value yourself. Consider this: Why do you think the fact that I live in Warsaw is relevant to your success in navigating Warsaw were you to do so? Why would it be better than the map of Cairo in this? Of course, because it’s the map of Warsaw. What does this mean, exactly?
BTW: I don’t think I’m stomping my feet, I’m rather bored. Sorry if it sounds this way but my native tongue is not English. I would be much more nuanced and ironic in Polish. But that’s life.
Argument ad quotation… hmm. I’m asking you what your theory of truth-talk is, and why I should accept it as self-evidential. You keep avoiding the question. Are you the kind of person who simply assumes that their positions, not matter how controversial, must be absolutely true? Because you’re really starting to sound like that kind of person. Surely you have some sense of just how dumbfounded we all are on these topics. I applaud your a priori intuitions, but trusting them the degree you do just strikes me as naïve. More traditional certitudes promising more traditional confusion.
And I find rather implausible, all this bored too-cool-for-school stuff. You sound young to me, and brittle. Like someone being careful not to sound committed to the debate, yet having some sense of the traffic this post is receiving. The strange thing is that I once bought into the tu quoque myself–I know why–viscerally–you just want to wave your hands to make the absurdity go away. Eventually, I realized I was waving my hands so much because hand-waving was all I had. All I was doing was ducking questions and repeating the tu quoque over and over again:
This is classic–a wonderful illustration, in fact. Everything depends on what ‘truth evaluable’ consists in, doesn’t it? Does it consist in the application of heuristic cognitive systems in adaptive problem-ecologies?
Is this not a valid empirical question to pose of ‘truth-talk’?
You can stamp your feet all you want, but there’s no a priori way of making this question go away. If truth-talk is heuristic, something that works wonderfully here yet crashes and burns there, then you have yourself a dilemma, because it means that truth-talk can do a heap of work without there being anything resembling ‘truth.’ But what you do at this juncture is reflexively re-apply truth-talk cognition, and cry ‘Foul! Either this claim is true or this is nonsense!” to which I simply shrug and say, “Yes, this is exactly the kind of impasse we should expect, were truth-talk heuristic.” So on my account, what you’re doing is applying the truth-heuristic out-of-school, in contexts where all it can do is generate the kind of crash spaces that philosophers inhabit for a living. It seems self-evidential to you because you suffer metacognitive neglect (and how could you not?): as religion demonstrates, no intentional mode of cognition comes with an explicit ‘misapplication indicator,’ so when you apply intentional cognition to the question of intentional cognition it not only seems natural, it seems necessary! We should expect the tu quoque!
And now your find yourself in the dilemma of arguing that truth is not heuristic (on a priori grounds?), even though if it were heuristic, it would explain this entire dialectic we’re having quite admirably, including why humans should be prone to make precisely these kinds of mistakes. In cognitive ecological terms, it can be entirely true that there is no such thing as truth, because truth is just such a damn good communicative shortcut. The performative application of the truth-heuristic is entirely appropriate because it really is the case there is no such thing as truth. There is no reason to infer any application of the truth heuristic entails some commitment to some supernatural function or entity.
I agree this is an ugly, even horrifying view, but then many traditionalists say the same of evolution. If anything, lack of aesthetic appeal counts in its favour. And it has explanatory power. It makes testable claims. It lets us move on. What does your contrary theory of truth explain? And again, what, for that matter, is your theory, and why should I accept it as self-evidential, especially when I can explain far more far cheaper with my own theory?
To continue answering your questions: Maps of places bearing the same names as the places I go typically effect my arrival. The full explanation of this is an enormous enterprise, but the easiest/cheapest thing to say is that maps bearing ‘Warsaw’ are generally true of Warsaw.
I just used a handy dandy heuristic there, not truth as you conceive it, however it is you conceive it.
The point being, the tu quoque begs the question. Obviously. My fear is that you’ve committed too much face to rationally approach this issue, that you’ll resort to another tu quoque and more ‘good’ ad hominem. Or pretend you’re really as bored as you say you are.
It’s unfortunate it turned out this way.
All right, my theory of truth in formal logic is Tarski’s theory of truth.
There are at least three meanings of ‘truth’: (1) logical value (this is what Tarski’s theory is of); (2) true statements / representations (usually in plural); (3) truthfulness / sincerity.
Of course, there is nothing that warrants that limited beings such as ourselves making assertions are always right. Sometimes we take things to be true which in reality aren’t. This is what you’re concerned with, and I am not. I am presupposing that limited agents can always make mistakes. But if we want to understand what they assert, we should consider what it would take were these assertions true. Namely, there would be certain facts that would satisfy (in Tarskian sense) their claims.
If you want a deeper theory of how mental representations could correspond to reality via structural resemblance, you may read Isaacs or Cummins. My paper on this topic is now under review.
Satisfied?
So you think this is what understanding assertions consist in? Implicitly considering truth conditions? Or do you think this is merely one of the things we do in deliberative contexts?
Most importantly, why am I unconsciously committed to any such speculative position (as opposed to my own speculative position on the heuristic notion of truth)?
By my lights, your position screams heuristic neglect. We have no access to our position with superordinate systems, and as such we have to make do otherwise if we want to find ways to communicate the reliability of our comportments to others. Truth-talk, ”The snow is white’ is true,’ communicates that we, at this moment, possess actionable comportments, that the snow is white. Truth and representation are incredibly economical ways of doing this. When our mechanic repairs our car, we have no access to her personal history, the way continual exposure to mechanical issues has honed her problem-solving capacities, and even less access to her evolutionary history, the way continual exposure to problematic environments has sculpted her biological problem-solving capacities. We have no access, in other words, to the vast systems of quite natural relata that make her repairs possible. So we call her ‘knowledgeable’ instead; we presume she possesses something – a fetish, in effect – possessing the efficacy explaining her almost miraculous ability to make your Ford Pinto run: a mass of true beliefs, representations, regarding automotive mechanics.
We suffer superordinate system neglect, and as such can only make due utterly blind to the high-dimensional details of our cognitive predicament. ‘Truth-talk’ is this making due, on my account. But since this superordinate system neglect is itself neglected, we’re have a decided tendency to confuse this powerful trick for the very frame of intelligibility.
“So you think this is what understanding assertions consist in?”
Of course NOT. Understanding assertions involves much, much more. But you should not expect me to write up a theory of communication in a blog comment, should you?
I only claim that understanding assertions *involves* this. It’s just one of the essential components
“Implicitly considering truth conditions? Or do you think this is merely one of the things we do in deliberative contexts?”
We do this explicitly in deliberative contexts. And surely, when we ponder difficult questions, we do it in the deliberative manner. Or at least we should.
“Most importantly, why am I unconsciously committed to any such speculative position (as opposed to my own speculative position on the heuristic notion of truth)?”
This is not speculative. This is just a social convention of WEIRD human beings. If you were, say, a Maoist leader, your followers would better not ponder truth conditions of your assertions, as Maoist discourse is not truth-preserving (it abounds in logical contradiction, normally). Considering the truth value could get you killed in China during the Cultural Revolution. But it just so happens that this is a very useful convention in a debate.
“By my lights, your position screams heuristic neglect. We have no access to our position with superordinate systems, and as such we have to make do otherwise if we want to find ways to communicate the reliability of our comportments to others. ”
Why should it matter, really? Suppose you say you have a proof that the circle may not be squared. Your opponent is justified in asking you to justify your point, and the lack of your access to your subpersonal cognitive processes makes absolutely no difference to your commitment to justify the point you’re making in a deliberative context. If you are unable to justify your position, your opponent is justified in rejecting it (until you present a proof) as bullshit.
Notice: this kind of practice has worked fine for mathematicians for some two thousand years. Nobody needs to know their subpersonal process to understand whether a proof in elementary geometry is right or not.
Notice also that communication is different from mere representation. Namely, these are different processes and need not be accounted for in the same way. It’s a genuine conceptual possibility that communication does not involve any representation but only operators on mental representation (as Mark Bickhard claims in his account of linguistic communication). But it’s a completely different question from the one you’re trying to ponder.
“Truth-talk, ”The snow is white’ is true,’ communicates that we, at this moment, possess actionable comportments, that the snow is white. ”
Not at all. I may claim that a given proposition is true without ever having any possibility to act on the assumption that it is true, or to verify its truth. You may have a hypothesis whose implications go beyond the realm of the humanly possible. For example, before spectral analysis was discovered, the age of stars was not actionable at all; there was no way to verify hypotheses about the age of stars, and Comte claimed that these hypotheses are meaningless. But as soon as we discovered the verification methods, we could verify these (a day after Comte published his notoriously bad book).
“Truth and representation are incredibly economical ways of doing this. When our mechanic repairs our car, we have no access to her personal history, the way continual exposure to mechanical issues has honed her problem-solving capacities, and even less access to her evolutionary history, the way continual exposure to problematic environments has sculpted her biological problem-solving capacities. We have no access, in other words, to the vast systems of quite natural relata that make her repairs possible. ”
I don’t see how this is relevant. Consider a Greek mathematician again: should Euclid wait for the cognitive neuroscience to be completed? Your position seems to imply that ‘Elements’ are necessarily wrong because Euclid didn’t know how his brain works. But just like with a car mechanic, you can do things without really knowing everything about them. The interesting bit is that you can talk of truth of a proposition without knowing any psychology. These are different issues.
It’s just another issue whether what you say is true and what mechanisms are responsible for your discovery of this truth. These things may be biographically connected but there is no logical connection here, hence, we may distinguish, after Reichenbach, the context of justification from the context of discovery. Both are important to our knowledge of science but sometimes it makes sense to distinguish them. This is one of the cases: you may discover some truth without really knowing (like Columbus discovered America), and it’s another matter what justifies this piece of knowledge. People usually talk of intuition when they stuck upon something that seems to be true but they have no way of justifying it. I call these just ‘hunches’.
So while it’s a genuinely interesting how cognitive mechanisms work, knowing how they work is not the same as knowing whether their products are useful or, to drive the point closer to home, true. We’re talking only about products of (your) mental processes here.
I’m not a big fan of Frege, Husserl and Twardowski, but there’s a grain of truth in their rejection of psychologism in logic: you don’t need to know psychology to know whether a given inference is correct or not. These issues are, to some extent, independent, even if I would love to know psychological mechanisms of how we reason in detail.
This is interesting because I actually see you arguing my point here: to whit, there’s a big difference between applying a heuristic device and explaining a heuristic device. If the point is to explain things like ‘truth-talk’ and the like, then being stranded with very little information is a problem–the problem, in fact. What I’m saying is that intentional cognition is no more applicable to the problem of explaining intentional cognition than geometrical cognition is applicable to the problem of explaining geometrical cognition. Why? Because the question of the nature of intentional cognition does not belong to the problem ecology of intentional cognition. And how could it, given the sheer amount of information intentional cognition ignores?
The mechanics of intentional cognition, meanwhile, are entirely relevant to the application of intentional cognition to this extent: they provide a means of understanding the limits of applicability. And more importantly, there’s no way in advance to say in what other ways they might prove relevant: that’s an empirical question. As it stands, yes, mechanistic explanations of mathematical cognition are irrelevant to the solution of mathematical problems (short issues of intellectual disability, and so on). But they are, however, entirely germane to the question of what mathematics is. How else would we answer this question short gathering as much information as we possibly can?
This is the tradition’s grand confusion: the notion that we could use radically heuristic modes of cognition to solve themselves.
There is absolutely no reason to think that you cannot use logic to describe logic, mathematics to describe mathematics, or language to describe language. It might be true that you cannot use propositional calculus to express the first-order predicate logic but your arguments do not seem to come even close to showing that.
” Because the question of the nature of intentional cognition does not belong to the problem ecology of intentional cognition. And how could it, given the sheer amount of information intentional cognition ignores?”
This is preposterous. You may say the same thing about any successful theory in science. The sheer amount of information ignored by our best theories is immense. And science relies on reduction of redundant information. It abstracts away from irrelevant factors, and it should. This is the feature of scientific representation, not its bug. (See the recent discussion on abstract explanations, for example, topological explanations, for more precise formulations of this point).
You haven’t justified your point yet. And the consequence is a disaster: you don’t even mean it.
How about providing me with an example of mathematics explaining the nature of mathematics? Logic explaining the nature of logic? What constitutes them? How do they work? Why are they so effective?
The discussion would be less laborious if we both used a little more charity, I’m sure.
We can use language to solve the nature of language because that nature happens to lie within its own problem ecology–there’s no mystery. (That’s not to say there aren’t any complications, though).
Of course. Obviously, not all forms of heuristic neglect are equal, which is precisely why we need to ferret out those that lead to philosophical miasma and the inability of cognitive science to even formulate its explananda let alone explain any of them. The fact is, certain modes of cognition ignore certain fixed modes of information. We are opportunistic cognizers, and we’ve evolved a wide variety of ways to derive solutions on the basis of mere cues. I see this as empirical fact. How could it be otherwise? But the bigger question, really, is the skeptical one: why should anyone take a priori arguments against empirical hypotheses seriously?
It really is the case that human cognition is fractionate and heuristic. It is entirely possible that our inability to intuit this nature could play havoc with our attempts to understand ourselves. It really could turn out to be the case that your deliberative certainty is the product of a cognitive illusion, deriving from the misapplication of low information metacognitive capacities to the theoretical question of the nature of cognition and experience. (This would explain the perpetual underdetermination characterizing intentionalism in a very parsimonious way. In fact, it provides a high level mechanism that I think cognitive neuroscience is confirming more and more every day.)
Isn’t this now a question for science to resolve? Or does your tu quoque make it go away?
“How about providing me with an example of mathematics explaining the nature of mathematics? Logic explaining the nature of logic? What constitutes them? How do they work? Why are they so effective?”
How about reading my comments and not asking unrelated questions? I don’t even know what you mean by “nature of logic” or “nature of mathematics”, and this is not pertinent to our dispute. I was just saying that you can use logic to describe logic, not its nature (what the hell would that be?). Just pick any book by Johann van Benthem. Or Principia Mathematica.
You try to argue just because we are fallible we always fail cognitively. This is ridiculous, and obviously undermines your position. How about thinking that your own idea is simply too parochial to be true?
Let’s take this one:
“why should anyone take a priori arguments against empirical hypotheses seriously?”
If this is a really empirical hypothesis, then fine, a priori arguments stink. But yours is a contradiction, as my reductio shows. Contradictions are not empirical, they are false in all possible worlds, and there is no world that could make them true.
So please, try to formulate one strong empirical hypothesis, and I will applaud. So far, you have just stated the trivial facts such as the one that people use heuristics. Big news, indeed. And you have this trivial possibility:
“It is entirely possible that our inability to intuit this nature could play havoc with our attempts to understand ourselves. ”
It’s possible but this hypothesis is one of the most boring hypotheses one could formulate. We cannot actually debunk it, as it may be true in some distant possible world, and you still win. It’s like saying that Carlsberg is probably the best beer in the world. Just a weasel phrase.
All in all, your hypothesis has a very low informative value. Try to have some serious hypothesis that has empirical content. Karl Popper may be your guide. Note: if your hypothesis is: nothing ever has any meaning, then again, contradiction strikes. But if you say that we may be unable to know something, then it’s so vague and woolly that I wonder why you find it worthwhile. Try to avoid “possibly”, and your hypothesis will be much more interesting.
Of course, we cannot know everything. There are problems that would take too much time for any physical device to solve (probably most NP-complete problems with high n). So what? More interesting question is whether the most important questions about ourselves belong to this category. Nobody has ever shown that. That would be indeed a most interesting result.
However, even if this result is true, you would have to prove that intentionality does not exist or its nature cannot be known, which does not seem to follow, unless you can prove we cannot know what intentionality is. Which would be indeed striking because I think we know, and there’s no magic there at all.
Hmm. So let’s parse this…
Which claims are empirically impossible because conceptually unintelligible here?
1) It really is the case that human cognition is fractionate and heuristic
2) It is entirely possible that our inability to intuit this nature could play havoc with our attempts to understand ourselves.
3) It really could turn out to be the case that your deliberative certainty is the product of a cognitive illusion, deriving from the misapplication of low information metacognitive capacities to the theoretical question of the nature of cognition and experience.
None of them is contradictory. 1) is trivially true; 2) and 3) are uninteresting. But none of these is the claim of semantic nihilism that I criticize.
I could easily quote some things I consider important. For example, I could say that you could model sentence segmentation in Polish using regular expressions. (It is; I have papers showing this). But how would this be relevant to semantic nihilism? Please try to stay on topic.
By the way, I never used the word “unintelligible” because I consider many contradictions to be intelligible (at least prima facie).
Uninteresting? Taken together, they imply that it could be true there no such thing as truth, or reference, or meaning, or any of the intentional posits that have cognitive science in disarray.
[waits for stomping foot…]
No, the fact that X is possible does not imply that not X does not occur. Non sequitur.
Try to show what rules of inference justify your conclusion. As such, your conclusion simply does not follow. It may be false when your premises are true, which shows that it’s an invalid inference.
BTW: you seem to confuse truth and certainty. These are completely different things. Your conclusion seems to imply that certainty may be unattainable. Hell yes!
Hmm. Charity, please. At this point I’m just trying to argue the mere possibility you might be wrong and that I might be right. Why would I argue for more when that’s all I need to defeat the tu quoque?
As far as I can tell, you’ve already conceded me my point (the empirical possibility of 1-3), so now you’re trying to hammer a wedge of irrelevance between that concession and your tu quoque. I’m dying to know how this is supposed to work! Is it because I necessarily have to be talking about something other than truth-talk? Confusing truth-talk for certainty-talk, is that it?
“Charity, please. At this point I’m just trying to argue the mere possibility you might be wrong and that I might be right. Why would I argue for more when that’s all I need to defeat the tu quoque?”
Charity?! You’re saying you endorse semantic nihilism that I criticize and then you talk about something completely different. I don’t see any connection between semantic nihilism and skepticism. Sorry. And I never criticized skepticism as self-refuting. Never!
“As far as I can tell, you’ve already conceded me my point (the empirical possibility of 1-3), ”
If this is your point, then you may be right, though I think that 3) is very unlikely.
“so now you’re trying to hammer a wedge of irrelevance between that concession and your tu quoque. I’m dying to know how this is supposed to work! Is it because I necessarily have to be talking about something other than truth-talk? ”
What’s your conclusion then, exactly. Please, I’m dying to see how you get a claim about truth out of your premises. And what rules of inference you use. PLEASE!
“Confusing truth-talk for certainty-talk, is that it?””
Exactly. I’m a confessed fallibilist. I don’t even understand how people could think that we can be certain of anything we claim. But certainty is a subjective state while truth is objective.
So you could be wrong about the tu quoque?
Even about 2 + 2 = 4. Though it’s not very likely.
Lol! Fallibilism, huh?
Look. My point still holds. I’m not positing a Cartesian demon that can spoof analytic verities; I’m hypothesizing a picture of cognition that explains a good deal, including your tu quoque. You agree that my hypothesis is an empirical possibility, so you agree that the tu quoque begs a certain picture of cognition, namely, one wherein my picture of cognition is false. In other words, your tu quoque is question-begging.
LOL. Really, your point is so confused that I see no point in further debate. Read some Popper on fallibilism for a start.
No worries, my friend. We’re all confused, including you, and Popper (!). At least my confusion is open to scientific surprises. Yours amounts to stipulating away the possibility of startling and troubling alternatives. I can paint a hypothetical picture of how your tu quoque turns on a cognitive illusion (you assume the universal application of the truth-heuristic), which in turn implies there’s no a priori short cuts when it comes to understanding the nature of cognition, and your counter-argument is… Foot stomping. Hand-waving. Citing controversial sources as scripture.
You provided an interesting twist here and there, but I think it’s pretty clear you’re all wriggle.
Really, really, all you have shown is that you don’t defend semantic nihilism. And that you confuse it with skepticism.
I dunno buddy. There’s no meaning on my account. Like ‘God,’ ‘meaning’ is a term we use to great effect in a broad, but limited range of cognitive ecologies. Meaning as an ‘entity’ or ‘pragmatic function’ or a ‘condition of possibility’ or an ‘interpretative stance’ is a philosophical pipe dream. If you want ‘semantic nihilism’ to apply to any position at all, then it should apply to mine. Otherwise, who are you talking about? Give me a figure, and then I’ll ask you why they aren’t implicitly begging my assumptions rather than yours. All I have to do is raise this possibility to demonstrate you’re just begging the question.
The tu quoque is a philosophical dead end. A disastrous one, I think we’ll soon come to see. I know it’s hard for you to see: that’s why I was trapped in analogues of your position for so long. Wasted years, spent going around the ancient philosophical carousel. Now, all I see is undiscovered country, ways to explain things people think fundamentally inexplicable, ways to make empirical bets on what the science will find and what this means for humanity.
Good luck. Save humanity. But you have no idea what you’re talking about. I admitted that my reductio, not tu quoque (you confuse these) is as unlikely to be true as 2 + 2 =.4.
You insist I’m a skeptic, not a semantic nihilist, and so my argument doesn’t apply to your tu quoque. Now (when it’s clear I am a semantic nihilist) you insist your argument is a reductio, not a tu quoque.
And then you say I don’t know what I’m talking about…
While conceding that what I describe is an empirical possibility–but a boring one, you initially say. Then an irrelevant one because… well…
All in the name of refusing to admit you’re begging the question against a position that no one–you seem to think–espouses! Yeesh.
Traditional philosophy in a nutshell, I suppose. I would wish you luck in turn, but it’s pretty clear you make your own! Me, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and see what the science has to say. I don’t have the faith in ‘reason’ you do.
Wishing that science prevails to a philosopher of science is really nice. Thanks. I also think that science, which is based on the denial of such absurd ideas as semantic nihilism or social constructivism, will prevail.
Anyway, your attempt at the justification has no connection whatsoever to the claim of semantic nihilism (which says that nothing ever is true or has any meaning). The conclusion is just what you believe. Good for you. Better than belief in chemtrails, I suppose. But just as well justified.
So I don’t know how you defend your position. I guess simply with rants that go forever. OK. Good for you. This is probably how you think science is made.
But what I show is not tu quoque. I show that should one accept the claim of semantic nihilism, then one would have to say that the claim is meaningless as well. It couldn’t be true, and it has to be true if one claims it (this is how one understand the word ‘to claim’ in English). You say it’s speculative, I say this is corpus linguistics.
Of course, one can make tu quoque by saying that you also use the word ‘claim’ as I do. But anyway, if you defend, or otherwise say you are a semantic nihilist, you, thereby simply think it’s true. This is what is normally meant by such a locution. Of course, it leads to a contradiction.
But since your words don’t mean anything anyway, I thank you for agreeing with me because I can easily say that you mean that you really embrace semantic realism. You cannot deny this. This is the really fun part. 🙂
So thanks for embracing my position. Yeah, the hard problem of content was solved. Thanks.
To be honest, I love the battling back and forth: I find so many academic philosophers are timid–almost institutionally. Not so you, Marcin!
And I keep forgetting how counter-intuitive all this stuff is. It actually has to involve quantum-like suspensions of intuition to be understood, primarily because these systems can only be misapplied when applied to themselves. As a philosopher of science, you realize this possibility cannot be rejected out of hand. And you also realize that what seem to be your most fundamental intuitions are not immune to radical revision.
What I’m saying is what feels to you like one continuous problem-ecology needs to be understood in terms of the operation of cognitive modes. I think it’s true there’s no such thing as truth. I can say this because the effective application of truth-talk has nothing to do with the existence of ‘truth,’ but rather nested selection systems. When I say something is ‘true’ I’m cuing, triggering cognitive operations in myself and others. This form of cuing provides tremendous advantages in many contexts, but as with so many intentional posits, things go awry when we begin reflecting on it. The ‘truth’ seems like it has to be a special kind of property, one somehow enabling us to make the claims we make. If we can’t find that property in nature (and how could we?) we assume it lies somewhere else, that it’s transcendental or pragmatic or what have you, something grand that can only be found outside nature, as some kind of condition of communication altogether. And since it’s outside of nature, well then, we have no need to understand it naturally.
To me, and I’ll be frank, this sounds like more, self-congratulatory, supernatural chicanery of the kind we find in fairly all traditional, prescientific domains of knowledge–rational theology. It represents a staggering series of commitments to positions without any hope of resolving their incompatibilities.
I’m saying truth-talk can be better explained if we view it heuristically. But like quantum-mechanics, you have to leave the intuitive deliverances of reflection behind.
Don’t shut the door. I’m starting to get some real traction with this stuff. You’ll see.
Thanks for noting that heuristics are important. Ludwig Boltzmann has stressed that in his rebuttal of phenomenalism in his discussion with Ernst Mach. So great that you agree with Boltzmann, one of the greatest minds in the history of heuristic research. Yes, getting closer to truth is one of the best heuristics in science, and you are right that there is nothing supernatural about truth. Thanks for admitting you are not a semantic nihilist again.
No reason to beg your supernatural theory when I have my own naturalistic one, but thanks for begging the question one last time for the edification of our viewing members! You know what they say: just because epicycles work, doesn’t mean you have to assert their existence… 😉
Save your breath. You’re confusing reductio with tu quoque. And I admitted just that it’s as unlikely to be true as ‘2 + 2 = 4’. Your argument is invalid and implausible.
I would like to point out that it’s extremely difficult for someone with even some avocational interest in philosophy to grasp why Milkowski’s argument is wrong. In order to claim it is “wrong”, you have to have some concept of wrongness and why it would fit into that category- namely your own ‘rightness’ (or perhaps ‘usefulness’ might suit your purposes better).
It’s strange because I can arrive at semantic nihilism by following hard-to-refute ideas from the natural sciences, but once you’re there you’re left wondering “how the fuck did I get here, this place smells awful” and arguments like Milkowski’s offer a “get out of jail free” card that wisk you right back to Disneyland.
This is exactly why they’re so destructive, I think.
Technically speaking, what’s happening is that deliberation on normative cognition cues normative cognition, and the impenetrability of normative cognition very quickly begins to feel essential, something than cannot be mechanically solved. Automaticity is fluency in spades, and fluency cues sufficiency.
“mechanically solved” relies on something akin to “truth” though, no? The reason you can mechanize cognition* is that truth tables translate to the actions of gears, vacuum tubes or transistors.
Or is that normative cognition biting me again?
*Currently to the point of teaching a machine to beat a Go master.
All formal systems bottle systematicities and their potential transformations for use picking countless locks in the world. Most everyone would be inclined to pose truth-tables as the antithesis of heuristics, but for me, they’re the apotheosis, a cognitive mechanism allowing for a variety of systematicities to be deterministically decanted for various forms of behavioural uptake. Consciousness accesses only the shadow of this process (and how could it be any other way?), and nothing to indicate this shadow is anything but the source, so you assume its your metacognitive inkling of spontaneous constraint that’s doing the driving. The normative appears to come first. So instead of random recurrent neural networks trained to deterministically bottle systematicities and their potential transformations translating “to the actions of gears, vacuum tubes or transistors” it’s opaque ‘truth tables’ doing so.
That is a really interesting perspective to take (bullet to bite?). You should expect a fuckton of resistance to that position.
What you are saying is that “Yes” and “No” are not simple, basal, atomic concepts, but rather highly derived and totally opaque ones (BBT predicts they are delivered unto our consciousness as basal because it could be no other way).
Tracing our intellectual trajectory through Bakker Ontology is also very weird and puzzling. We have a world that’s deeply opaque in its nature, where “truth” and “meaning” are nowhere. Somehow, that world gives rise to nervous systems that through the bloody sieve of natural selection give birth to heuristics like “Yes” and “No”- highly effective heuristics… unbelievably effective heuristics once you start to consider the myopic primate activities known as “mathematics” and “science”. Somehow, this derived and myopic hodgepodge of heuristics is then able to turn around and look at itself and say “oh, yeah… this is all bullshit through and through, but it works!”
“What do you mean it works?”
“Well, smallpox vaccines and nuclear bombs yo.”
“So, you would say it is TRUE that we can reliably build nuclear bombs.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
It’s really, really weird.
But it makes biological sense of the very peculiar predicament we find ourselves in. In fact, I think it’s the very dilemma we should expect to find ourselves in, to be continually tossed into different crash spaces as we ask more and more questions that lie outside intentional modes of cognition.
There’s no getting around the fractionate, heuristic nature of human cognition. This puts the onus on purported naturalistic approaches to human cognition on how we could have escaped this predicament. And even then, they’ll need some independent explanation of why we should be having all this trouble. Heuristic neglect solves both in the same throw.
Ultimately, the question-begging character of the ‘self-refuting’
objection to EM becomes readily apparent when we see how easily it
could be adapted to block the displacement of any conceptual framework
whatsoever by spuriously transcendentalizing whatever explanatory
principle (or principles) happens to enjoy a monopoly in it at any
given time. Patricia Churchland provides the following example, in
which a proponent of vitalism attempts to refute anti-vitalism using
similar tactics: ‘The anti-vitalist claims there is no such thing as vital
spirit. But if the claim is true the speaker cannot be animated by the
vital spirit. Consequently he must be dead. But if he is dead then his
claim is a meaningless string of noises, devoid of reason and truth.’12
Here as before, the very criterion of intelligibility whose pertinence for
understanding a given phenomenon – ‘life’ in this case, ‘meaning’ in
the previous one – is being called into question, is evoked in order to
dismiss the challenge to it. But just as anti-vitalism does not deny the
existence of the various phenomena grouped together under the heading
of ‘life’, but rather a particular way of explaining what they have in
common, EM does not deny the reality of the phenomena subsumed
under the heading of ‘meaning’ (or ‘consciousness’), but rather a specific
way of explaining their characteristic features. (Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound pp. 16-17)
The problem Pat Churchland has is that she has no real way of explaining why a strategy so obviously question-begging in other contexts becomes so dastardly difficult to overcome when it comes to intentionality. Ray’s account of eliminativism in NU is a perfect case in point, given the way he promptly commits the very same question-begging tactic! It remains for me, one of the more mystifying reads in recent continental philosophy. Talk about blinking! Nihil apparently unbound.
Not a paper but Does this count?
It’s a gorgeous example!
well we’re not forced to give reasons (against freewill) in that we can’t (all too slowly!) learn to not give them but certainly the drive to try and reason with people about these matters is strong.
By why think ‘reasoning’ in their terms at all? Why not see it as a form of noise reduction, something pursued because you are so attuned.
was just referring to the language chomsky used, certainly a matter of habit/attunement/etc but is it just
noise reduction or trying to get/make my way?
They’re one and the same on a Bayesian scheme. Minimizing prediction error amounts to getting one’s way.
What’s always amazing about Rationalists is their complete disregard of rationality and reason…
Okay, he says: “In rational argumentation, one is forced to accept a sound argument, and soundness implies the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument. Just because these are universal standards for any rational debate, undermining the notion of truth can be detrimental; there would be no way of deciding between opposing positions besides rhetoric. Hence, it is a minimal requirement for rational argumentation in philosophy; one has to assume that one’s statements can be truth-bearers. If they cannot have any truth-value, then it’s no longer philosophy.”
So right off the bat he argues from principle: “the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument”. Every time I hear the word “truth” bandied about the shadow of some Idealist Universal seems always to raise its head out of the sinkhole. As if the Truth were some universal thing just sitting there passively that one could pluck out of the air, invent a principle to apply it, and find the valid rhetoric to fend off all who oppose it. One thinks of Graham Harman’s use of Undermining and Overmining to fend off any and all opposition: as if one could peg one’s enemies with rhetorical gestures and flourishes rather than experimental and empirical data.
And, of course, blatantly admits it: “Just because these are universal standards for any rational debate, undermining the notion of truth can be detrimental; there would be no way of deciding between opposing positions besides rhetoric.” Already, he fends off anyone who would “undermine” the universal and rational truth as “detrimental” to whom? Him? And, why? Because one would like some Derredean rhetorical deconstructionist be unable to decide the undecidable in “rhetoric”. What about the empirical facticity of actual data? Is his truth only based on rhetoric and the logic of linguistic or textual submission to the criteria of his rational universal premise? It’s like the blind leading the blind, his logic is circular and cut off from reality altogether.
And, why must one assume the minimal requirement that one’s argument must be bound to rational argumentation rather than empirical verification and experiment? Will one only be able to have truth as a rational truth-bearer statement rather than as an empirical and natural sense-bearing object?
And, of course, he actually gives us the final choice: “If they cannot have any truth-value, then it’s no longer philosophy.” One would have to say then: Why should science be bound to philosophy? Why not forget such philosophy for science? Science does fine without philosophy, and is able to provide truths without such premised reasoning and argumentation. So, maybe it is time to bury the philosophers and keep the scientists. Over and over I come to that conclusion.
Even in our time with the emergence of the Neorationalists (Brandem, Brassier, Negarestani, et. al.) there has once again emerged this battle over philosophy/science in another age-old defense as Bakker has suggested.
Rationalists seem to hate empiricists and experience. Newton’s fourth rule of reasoning reads:
In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions. (Principia, Book III, Rule IV)
The rule is that we should treat well-confirmed propositions as true (or nearly true) until there are deviations that promote new research, which, in turn, lead us to refine our original propositions or reject them for new ones. But while one has a theory, one must not be distracted by possible differing explanations for the found regularities until one has empirical reason. One accepts a theory as true as a means to developing a better theory.
You and me both, but I always try to remember that the philosophical tradition is an inevitable outgrowth of everydayness–the attempt to make everydayness account for deep environmental information. Everyone on the planet universalized the truth heuristic not so long ago. Intentional philosophy is but a step toward post-intentional theory, a crash space we had to exhaust before we could move on to the terror of technoscientific adulthood. And who knows, maybe there is no workable beyond–perhaps everything does crash. Maybe every single technological civilization reaches the point where their basic heuristic toolkit crashes, and their civilization crashes with it. Maybe we need to add an H to the last variable of Drake’s equation!
Haha… that’s why I’ve turned to grotesque comedy and horror and macabre tales… if I’m going to lie, I might as well do it in the grand guginol style. 🙂
I like the lay of your plumage!
My heuristics don’t parse Milkowski as delivering a logical argument against your theories at all; he seems to talk about the rules of Philosophy Club, maybe comparable to a hypothetical rule about how you’re supposed to bring only falsifiable theories to meetings of Science Club. Rules like that aren’t necessarily a bad thing…
I’m not so sure. He’s critiquing a philosophical position in cognitive science, after all. On the other hand, eliminativism is a philosophical position–I’m not sure ingroupism is any less a critical charge to lay than question-begging.
My arguments are not against eliminativism. You’re confusing my paper with something else. I would even endorse some forms of eliminativism! (Not global eliminativism, as there are reasons to believe that intentional phenomena are real, but limited cases are really fine, that’s why Churchlands were never refuted by stupid self-refutation arguments. I even have published my rebuttal of these ill-conceived arguments in print, however, in Polish, in a companion to cogsci).
Welcome! But Churchland’s position does run afoul the ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ argument you give following the tu quoque–the same argument I would use against both the Churchlands and Rosenberg, for instance. I entirely agree with the need to be able to explain intentional phenomena before you can convincingly eliminate them. That’s my project here, and your description of semantic nihilism is entirely consistent with the global eliminativism falling out of the account of cognition I’m offering. (My most recent piece on the “Inscrutability Problem” gives a pretty concise account of my approach).
And I’m still not sure how the argument you give doesn’t beg the question! 😉
There’s no difference in principle between philosophy and science (and no, I don’t think theology is part of philosophy). Both play the same game: you need to justify your points and you do this discursively, at least that’s the avowed standard.
Churchland’s position is fine, as he explains intentionality reductively. All such reductions are fine because they show that the reduced thing exists.
Now, sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t follow your point in your blog entry on inscrutability problem. It’s stated in a verbose manner and I don’t grasp the main point at all. You seem to make a lot of fuss of the Bonini paradox, but you end up saying something like Colin McGinn with his mysterianism. That’s all I could grasp. But I don’t see how this is supposed to explain truth-talk at all. Sorry.
I guess you could say, to use Scott’s language, philosophy evolved in a shallow information environment, so science is philosophical pollution, and performative contradiction arguments are a form of hygiene, keeping philosophy from being contaminated by science. Oddly enough, economists often use math for the same purpose.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/banks-target-less-savvy-borrowers-credit-cards/
These are the kind of horrible arguments that I take as the principle foe of anyone who thinks cognitive science needs to move beyond traditional philosophy to discover its natural scientific bases.
I don’t know if it’s supposed to be hyperbolic, but for whatever it’s worth this sounds like ‘You’d agree with me if only you already agreed with me’. Is it really a discovery or just a leap of faith toward a natural scientific basis? It seems a matter of just providing a mechanistic parallel that is clearly practical and seeing them understand that model at least as a model (and that that understanding, if such a model were true, would simply be mechanistic and practical. Not ‘truth’). Talking about them ‘discovering’ anything seems like it is to have been provoked by Marcin’s hyperbole. That said, the whole ‘performative contradiction’ stuff is indeed a pain in the arse!
It’d be interesting to see them engage the idea of a truthless world – where mechanisms physically interact with other mechanisms (which one might call ‘sending a signal’) and these interactions seem to correlate with fewer of the interacted with mechanisms being destroyed by natural disasters. Just interactions and interactions, endlessly. No conclusion to the interactions (barring destruction or extinction). No conclusive truth.
I’m back at work on my dissertation, so I’m going to find SHIT-TONS of examples. Here’s one, from Strawson’s Individuals (35):
“This gives us a more profound characterization of the sceptic’s position. He pretends to accept a conceptual scheme, but at the same time quietly rejects one of the conditions of its employment. Thus his doubts are unreal, not simply because they are logically irresoluble doubts, but because they amount to the rejection of the whole conceptual scheme within which alone such doubts make sense. So, naturally enough, the alternative to doubt which he offers us is the suggestion that we do not really, or should not really, have the conceptual scheme that we do have; that we do not really, or should not really, mean what we think we mean, what we do mean. But this alternative is absurd. For the whole process of reasoning only starts because the scheme is as it is; and we cannot change it even if we would.”
Fabulous! Post it with your own Dis!
Well, obviously, this is a non-effective dismissal of a skeptic who won’t assert anything. Wholesale skepticism is not contradictory, of course, and it of course amounts to a rejection of traditional kinds of thinking. (This makes it different from semantic nihilism, which amounts to an assertion of a claim of semantic nihilism, not just adoption of a certain skeptical attitude).
Fair enough, but not all skeptics are of the opinion that they are doomed to ‘aphasia’ — non-assertion — at least, not understood the way dogmatists understand it. I’m glad to see that you make the key distinction, overlooked again and again throughout the history of philosophy, between ‘skepticism’ as suspension of judgment (i.e., skepticism as it was originally understood, in antiquity) and ‘skepticism’ as negative dogmatism.
If you have the time, check out some of Barbara Smith’s Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy. Chapter 5 is particularly interesting. Here’s its introduction:
Fascinating quote, and a very excellent topic. I would actually take issue with a good amount of the flattering genealogical stuff, though. But I will definitely check this out.
Yeah. I certainly don’t mean to endorse her particular conclusions — I’m not even sure what they are — but as you say, it’s a great topic, and it’s pretty damn refreshing to see someone taking head-on the tepid anti-skeptical strategies that we both know are way, way too common.