Title should actually be "What's the fanciest Tu Quoque argument we could possibly make?"

Sure, but since logical positivism claims that it does not, in fact, do the thing, it's not a fallacy in this specific case. The title could just as well be "Why logical positivism fails to adequately answer questions of the human experience despite claiming to do just that."

Just because you can tag a dismissive Latin name for a fallacy (and admittedly, this does precisely meet the naive definition of Tu Quoque) on an argument doesn't make it fallacious.

ah the fallacy fallacy

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Aka "the problem with reducing every single question to formal logic". Really, the comment I replied to is a perfect example of the flaws in logical positivism - not every question can be reduced to proposition and counter-proposition, much less anything "verifiable" or falsifiable. "Logical fallacy" =/= "wrong".

If you can't verify or falsify you're just speculating. What's the point in pretending there's any philosophical value in baseless speculation beyond exercising your philosophical "muscles"?

This was frustrating to read. In the beginning of the damn article it cites the actual purpose of Logical Positivism, which is to dispense with wasteful & specious nonsense. If our musings are not anchored to reality in some small way, through the thinnest of tethers of evidence, then EVERYTHING which comes from such musings are nonsense and can be treated as such! To do otherwise is to open ourselves to a literal INFINITE Hall of absurd ideas, all of which have equal footing to waste our entire LIVES by their volume of time taken from us. The anchor to reality is what protects us from nonsense.

Here is the acknowledgement of the purpose of Logical Positivism from the beginning of the article:
"logical positivism mounted one of the most scathing attacks on the very idea that the nature of reality could be known by reflection alone, a priori, from the so-called philosophical armchair. Logical positivism sought to put an end to what it regarded to be irresolvable metaphysical pseudo-disputes by arguing that genuine knowledge claims must be verifiable, that there must be, at least in principle, evidence that can be cited to determine whether a claim is true or false. Claims which cannot be found to be either true or false in this way, the argument goes, express meaningless propositions, and the treatises in which they are contained should be confined to the flames, just as Hume suggested."

AAAAAaand here is the wasteful reading which suddenly COMPLETELY forgets what was just cited in the beginning of the article:
"The demand that knowledge claims should be verifiable, that there must be evidence that can be provided to substantiate one’s views, seems to be reasonable enough; rejecting it would lead to a form of dogmatism. But what the logical positivists also assumed is that the criterion of verification that belongs to the empirical sciences is a universal criterion of meaning, not a domain-specific criterion that merely determines what does and does not count as a genuine scientific hypothesis. They uncritically extended the criterion of verification which governs empirical enquiry to all claims (bar tautologies) rather than acknowledging it as a heuristic principle of scientific enquiry."

We do not suddenly place Logical Positivism ONLY as a tool for Scientific inquiry which has no place in other endeavors of knowledge. It is a general shield which should be placed into EVERY consideration as a failsafe against lost time of thought and, just as important, against ignorance. The simple phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" shows that it's safe to make small assumptions about things for efficiency sake, but the more impactful a claim, the stronger it's tether to reality should be.

The best example of Logical Positivism helping mankind IMO is Special Relativity and General Relativity. Einstein held one empirical truth constant about the nature of the Universe, that the Speed of light is constant from ALL reference frames. From this empirical VERIFIABLE truth, he can then make all manner of implications and logical steps to unravel the nature of the fabric of reality itself. Such awe-inspiring truth is impossible without that initial tether to reality, evidence.

My guy what? We're talking about philosophy not science. It's all literally just speculating. You think Plato put people in a cave?

Philosophy is not a hard science. Actually, you could probably argue that lack of strict, reliable verifiability is exactly where philosophy begins and the sciences end. Not every question can be settled with airtight logic or an experiment; sometimes all you have is a better or worse argument

Really? That makes all morality and most human relationships pure speculation...

All sorts of everyday things refuse to submit to positivist analysis, but we agree to common values anyway. Let's not quibble over what individual things may or may not be good, but the fact that we all (humans) seem to agree that there is such a thing seems somewhat important to me. You may disagree with the idea of "goodness" being used as data, but I think it's probably more dangerous to get embroiled in a philosophy that demands that there can be no such thing.

I may be missing something here.

>>Since the verification principle cannot easily be accommodated within the Humean fork, according to which all meaningful propositions must be either empirical propositions about matters of fact or analytic propositions concerning relations of ideas, it looks suspiciously like a foundational principle for a positivist metaphysics. Positivism, it seems, does not dispense with metaphysics; it merely proposes a different kind of (naturalist) metaphysics. Failure to reflect on the logical status of the verificationist principle, to acknowledge it as a heuristic principle which governs scientific knowledge of reality, therefore, not only encourages a form of methodological monism, one which denies the autonomy of other forms of knowing; it also betrays a commitment to an uncritical realism which assumes scientific method reveals the ultimate nature of reality and, in so doing, places science in the position once occupied by metaphysics as the science of pure being.

The interesting thing about "other forms of knowing" is that they'd have to be verified to prove that they can provide justified, true belief (i.e. knowledge), no? If not, how can we know they're true or not? And all of those forms of knowing will require their origins in sensation, for anyone born without sensation will never develop self-awareness or language because they need their senses to acquire those things through association and contradistinction.

As for scientific method revealing the ultimate state of reality, wouldn't that actually be beyond the scope? If you dispensed with metaphysics then the "ultimate nature of reality" is beyond your epistemology beyond a few language games like "I think therefore I am" which can't actually get around ideas like philosophical zombies and simulations.

Scientific method and verification as the arbiter of truth shifts to the generation of meaningful knowledge (i.e. epistemology) in a seemingly reliable frame of reference, regardless of the "ultimate nature of reality". For an open-ended scientific approach, it doesn't matter if that's a dream of Azathoth, the Matrix or the only existing real universe. It's just working with what is actually available to make realistic inferences and deductions. This doesn't fail verification in that if it didn't work, we'd have no expectation that all the things we engineer will work, and yet they do. It may not be a perfect metaphysical proof, but it is a strong, albeit open-ended epistemological justification.

Word salad for people who never studied science.

Correct. Science requires the use of the scientific method. Which in some fields of study is impossible to achieve - either because there exists no way to isolate multivariate systems (while maintaining social ethical norms) or the experiment is not repeatable. Even social sciences truly do not meet the strictest of criteria, and instead are domains of inferrred causality.

>That makes all morality and most human relationships pure speculation...

Nonsense. I can trivially confirm is an action is moral or not. Just because moral truths are subjective doesn't make them not truths or unverifiable.

Not every question in the physical sciences can be settled with airtight logic either. I'm not sure how that demonstrates the value of speculation on this.

You can apply the scientific method to anything you can measure.

>Even social sciences truly do not meet the strictest of criteria, and instead are domains of inferrred causality.

Preposterous. You do not need to demonstrate direct causality to apply the scientific method. The scientific method is a method of investigation that can be applied to anything not a set of direct casual results.

You hit the bull's eye. "other forms of knowing" is just a blanket term with nothing defined, because there is no other form of actually reliably knowing without empiricism. Even mathematics starts with presuppositions and tautologies stemming from "the number of things we can physically count", which happens to be an empirical base. Even our intuitive "warm fuzzies" start from aggregate experiences which all correlate to an idea.

You think everything Plato said was purely speculation?

>It's all literally just speculating.

Philosophy might be all about speculating when you confine yourself to arguing with the natural sciences about metaphysics. For some of us at least philosophy is more than just unverifiable speculation and is something that should be lived and applied. Or at least the useful parts can be applied.

What you’re dismissing as ‘speculation’ is just part of the character of philosophy as a discipline

Truth in that framework is entirely meaningless.

Big oof.

Except there is plenty of philosophy that can be applied and tested. It's incorrect to think speculation and unverifiability are inherent to philosophy. Philosophy originally included the investigation of the natural world.

It seems to me the only reason to separate speculative philosophy from the rest and gatekeep it as the only "true philosophy" is to retain the pretense of authority on things like metaphysics compared to physicists who are also capable of engaging in philosophy.

The physical universe itself changes length, position, casual order of events, and the rate of the passage of time depending on your frame of reference. Subjective truths are still true.

The fallacy fallacy is a dumb fallacy, because the purpose of the initial claim is to hold up an idea as true. If the claim is a fallacy, then there is no longer direct support for the idea, which directly leads to having no support to believe such a thing. The fallacy fallacy is just Gin Rummy in The Boondocks rambling: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", yeah no shit, but you don't go believing there are invisible Russian elves in your oven heating things for you, because you don't have EVIDENCE they're there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVQB1TVcD2k

Variations over time aren't "subjective truth", what even are you saying, my dude?

I'm not talking about "variations over time". I'm talking about getting two different measurements depending on your frame of reference.

>what even are you saying, my dude?

I'm saying you should probably learn the conceptual basics of special relativity.

>Not every question can be settled with airtight logic or an experiment; sometimes all you have is a better or worse argument

From the most skeptical point of view, all we ever have is a better or worse argument. That's the basis of statistics, rooted in probability theory (and very Humean).

We can only sample from observable space across time. Our counterfactual probabilities may be vanishingly small, but they can never be zero.

Sure there are philosophical sub fields—probably most notably analytic philosophies of cognition and perception—that are amenable to science, and often the philosophers working in these fields are in dialogue with scientists. But this is pretty far from being representative of the field as a whole.

As far as I’m concerned physicists are as welcome to the party as anyone else but you’re just not going to be settling via the scientific method whether Nietzsche’s account of ressentiment or Schopenhauer’s account of willing are accurate takes on the world anytime soon.

Principia Mathematica and subsequent set theories don't start from things you can count, they start from the empty set and the non-empty set. It's similar to basing a metaphysics on "I think therefore I am".

So you think the scientific method is the only way to verify truth?

The fallacy fallacy doesn't apply to arguments that are indeed fallacies but rather that appear to be fallacies.

I read the article FYI mods.

Again. I’m sorry to all the philosophy students, grad students and others out there trying to ‘make it’ using their degree. I’d remind them first of all that Schlick and co of the logical positivist fame lived at the poverty level for years and taught in classrooms without heat for atleast a few years due to the economic situation after the Paris peace treaty. Thats dedication to knowledge or perhaps, dare I say it, love of wisdom?

Anyway, I digress, but this idea that every one who graustes is going to be getting traction and making a living doing pop philosophy in blogs and on YouTube is just awful to me. This article is so bad and so amateur I can’t tolerate it. It doesn’t understand logical positivism, it doesn’t explain it correctly. and it certainly doesn’t offer a new insight into it. Thsi of course woudlnt make it past screening for a journal. Yet here it is confusing people who perhaps aren’t familiar with logical positivism and the Vienna circle.

‘Engage with the article’ I have and I won’t bother typing up any more about its specifics than I have to. It’s fundamentally flawed. It’s written to keep fresh content on a Blog and i suppose that’s all we can say. The author didn’t respect the topic enough to give it the time it deserves and the result is nonsense (allusion intended).

I’m not a logical positivist apologist but I just want to say this is so poor I can’t even tolerate not saying saying to warn the rest of you to steer clear of this mess.

Variations of location, time, and relative velocity are immaterial to objective reality. They're not "subjective truths", they're second-order measurements.

I'm well aware of special relativity Mr. 200 IQ.

Even the hard sciences are the domains of inferred causality.

Hume remarks about billiard balls

>if I see one billiard ball rolling toward another, how do I know that the second ball will move when it is struck?

That is, experience is a necessary precursor to knowledge. And our observations are limited to only the confines of the single experiment from which they emerge. Repeated measurements add evidence of a causal outcome, but the state space of our observations is necessarily a subspace of the entire space of observable outcomes and we also assume the state space is time-invariant. We can therfore never be absolutely certain about anything because we can never be absolutely certain about the space we haven't sampled (which is admittedly a bit of a tautology)

>You think everything Plato said was purely speculation?

Yes, they're literally called Allegories.

>should be lived and applied

I think you misunderstand what it means to speculate an idea. A speculation is forming a theory. You cannot prove or falsify a theory with anecdotal experience because people see the world in such different ways.

It's fine to live it out, but I think you've really misunderstood the point of philosophical discussion if you think that there's no value in discussing ideas from a purely hypothetical perspective. Which is really ironic cause much of what Plato does is discuss ideas from a purely hypothetical perspective.

>I'm well aware of special relativity

I'm not the one calling differences caused by separate frames of reference "variations over time"

>Variations of location, time, and relative velocity are immaterial to objective reality.

If differences in frames of reference weren't material to objective reality they would be unnecessary to describe objective reality. As you are no doubt aware General Relativity is necessary to correctly describe reality.

It depends on what your criteria for ‘truth’ are, which I think is exactly what we’ve been debating here. What degree of uncertainty are you comfortable with? To call a statement ‘true’ does it have to be testable? Repeatable? Is a strong argument good enough?

I think a great deal of philosophy tends to allow for more leeway here than standard scientific practice, and you seem to have stricter criteria than the average philosopher. Personally I think propositions arrived at via the scientific method are probably the ideal form for truth but that for certain questions this isn’t always a possible method of investigation—or not possible at this moment in history. To me, that doesn’t make the ‘speculative’ answers any less interesting or valuable, at least as possibilities, but yeah they could be wrong

>It's fine to live it out, but I think you've really misunderstood the point of philosophical discussion if you think that there's no value in discussing ideas from a purely hypothetical perspective.

I never said that. In my first comment I acknowledged that becoming a better thinker is through philosophical speculation is value speculation provides.

>Which is really ironic cause much of what Plato does is discuss ideas from a purely hypothetical perspective.

Hypothetical discussions and speculative discussions aren't the same thing. Allegories are perfectly capable of conveying verifiable truths.

>I think you misunderstand what it means to speculate an idea.

You're fixating on the word speculate unnecessarily. My question was about the alleged total lack of verifiability of philosophy.

>stricter criteria than the average philosopher.

Perhaps the opposite. I don't consider subjective contradictions between perspectives to be the same as a paradox or untruth.

>My question was about the alleged total lack of verifiability of philosophy

I'll repeat myself. Anecdotes do not falsify or verify anything. Philosophy is purely anecdotal.

Philosophy is about how you experience things. Your experience can never be an absolute fact, therefore you can never verify anything, nor can you find it false. One person's heaven is another person's hell.

There are no absolute facts in the realm of philosophy.

Just because subjective truths can appear to contradict each other doesn't mean those truths aren't true. The physical universe changes length, order of events, the rate of passage of time, and more based on your frame of reference. Yet we consider those things to be objective reality.

I'm not sure why it is such a leap to conclude that morality and such are subjective truths and the apparent dissonance is just that, apparent.

>There are no absolute facts in the realm of philosophy.

People use axioms all the time in philosophy.

No it's not, it's literally as I described it, which is why it's stupid.

from Wikipedia: "Argument from fallacy (also known as the fallacy fallacy) – the assumption that, if a particular argument for a "conclusion" is fallacious, then the conclusion by itself is false."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

My point being that the fallacy fallacy is a red herring that leads you away from good epistemology, because the truth of a claim arrived at from a fallacy is irrelevant until substantiated regardless.

Science is a philosophy in this sense, and the discussion is about supplanting it as the single source of valid knowledge.

The thing is, it works. It makes sense. And it doesn't require speculation. Unlike the rest of this hogwash.

Another fresh case of old news catching up with someone.

Not everything can be verified with a simple logical calculus, most of everyday use of language can't be verified this way as it's not based on assertions (on the contrary, standard assertions which can be logically verified are just a tiny part of everyday use of language).

within professional philosophy logical positivism has been discredited since at latest the 60s

Ah, I didn't realize "fallacy fallacy" was actually an established term, I was just being cheeky. The definition I gave was just me stating my intended meaning.

I suppose I agree that the "fallacy fallacy" you're referring to is a red herring although that's not necessarily clear to me either. It might be important to note that when you've struck down an argument for A that doesn't mean that you've successfully made an argument for not A. Rather what you should do is downgrade A to whatever epistemological status it had before the aforementioned argument was made.

Is there someone that can trim the fat for me here I'm having a hard time digesting this article.

>Not everything can be verified with a simple logical calculus

There is no domain relevant to this conversation where simple logical calculus can verify everything. I also didn't ask for verification for everything or any one thing. I asked what the value is in speculating on things that cannot be verified.

I may be reaching here but doesn't quantum mechanics exist because you can make much more accurate models of the universe if you build the model on the basis that there isn't much that really is verifiable or falsifiable.

“True justified belief” is not a good criterion for knowledge (cf. Gettier)

>Subjective truth

You mean a belief? Because nobody is saying you can't have your beliefs.

>The physical universe changes length, order of events, the rate of passage of time, and more based on your frame of reference. Yet we consider those things to be objective reality.

This is a false equivalency, you can measure the universe and how frames of reference change. You cannot measure a person's perspective or how their view changes.

>I'm not sure why it is such a leap to conclude that morality and such are subjective truths and the apparent dissonance is just that, apparent.

Because you're equating subjective truths to objective measurements.

Look, let's use an example. If you take 2 identical space ships and send them through an identical journey across the stars, they will end up in identical places. If you take 2 identical people and send them through an identical journey through life, they will end up as entirely different people.

That's why I don't think it makes any sense to treat the two in the same way. You can't say that the universe is subjective in the same way as humans because it behaves predictably while humans do not.

So, I am no expert in Set Theory by a LOOONG long shot, regardless please hear me out.In Principia Mathematica, Chapter 1, right when it starts with Preliminary Explanations: "The notation adopted in the present work is based upon that of Peano, and the following explanations are to some extent modelled on those which he prefixes to his Formulario Mathematico."

I reference all this to point out that the book is built upon an older work, which is based on Logical Positivism. Russell's work is based on Direct reference theory, which he supported. The ideas in Principia Mathematica arise from, as I stated in my previous comment "the number of things we can physically count" i.e. Direct Reference Theory.

Please read the opening paragraph of the Wiki for Direct reference theory, it leads straight back to Logical Positivism, all of which Bertrand Russell was a proponent of.

Edit: The smallest of empirical tethers can lead to astonishing discoveries.

No I don't mean a belief.

>Because you're equating subjective truths to objective measurements.

You only think that because you don't understand Relativity. Length, time's rate of passage, and the order of events is not an objective measurement if you measure from different frames of reference.

>If you take 2 identical people and send them through an identical journey through life, they will end up as entirely different people.

What makes you think that?

Edit:

>You cannot measure a person's perspective or how their view changes.

That's silly. You just ask.

>You only think that because you don't understand Relativity. Length, time's rate of passage, and the order of events is not an objective measurement if you measure from different frames of reference

Measurement is the key word here. The issue isn't that they are different, the issue is that they are measurable. You can demonstrate in absolute mathematics what is happening and why it looks different from different perspectives.

I challenge you, how do we measure people's perspectives?

>What makes you think that?

Because identical twins exist and they don't end up as the same people despite the fact that their genetic and nurtured environment are the same.

"It might be important to note that when you've struck down an argument for A that doesn't mean that you've successfully made an argument for not A. Rather what you should do is downgrade A to whatever epistemological status it had before the aforementioned argument was made."

I agree, where we differ is that "A" is a claim of truth, and if that claim is based on a fallacy, Logical Positivism says A should be disregarded until it's been substantiated, which is exactly what we've been talking about this whole time and why I still think the fallacy fallacy is dumb.

It's true that there are some people who dismiss discussion of idealism and solipsism as a waste of time, but then there are also plenty of trained scientists who seriously consider and model ideas like multiverses and that we are in a simulation. The reality is that building models of reality or developing logical systems that are exploratory and not based in evidence is a part of science. But you cannot claim they are reality until you link them to data.

So if considering panpsychism and idealism are under the purview of logical positivism, even if most people would consider it a waste of their time and choose to spend their efforts somewhere else, then what other forms of knowing are there? Something that dismisses logic entirely, or posits an immeasurable form of the soul, or makes other grand dogmatic statements that cannot be supported? Why should I believe in heaven and hell versus reincarnation and entry into Buddha-lands versus an infinite list of other things I could invent?

I think part of this article's problem is mixing together the traditions and institutions of science with bare statements about logic and sensory experience.

>I challenge you, how do we measure people's perspectives?

You ask. It isn't that complicated.

>Because identical twins exist and they don't end up as the same people despite the fact that their genetic and nurtured environment are the same.

That's absurd. Twins only have very similar environments not identical ones.

>You ask. It isn't complicated.

Ok great explanation thanks.

Look, this has been fun, but it's pretty clear neither of us is going to budge an inch. We each hold our beliefs quite strongly. This has been an interesting conversation though, and I hope you have a nice day.

You think Einstein actually rode in an elevator to determine if he could tell the difference between that and gravity?

In theory, yes. But invariably social sciences (and if we are being honest, this is why we even have a taxonomic differentiation) have immense problems when it comes to repeatability. Repeatability is a key requirement. If your hypothesis does not qualify the domain concretely, then when results don’t support the original experiment’s conclusion - they get tossed. Practically, the ability to isolate the differences in the null-case in my experience Make reproduction not viable. Because of this, the social sciences do not have academia in those fields judging experiments by anything other than practical validation of steps taken before publishing. Largely it’s the best we have to garner understanding behaviors, and that is acceptable.

But is it a science? I apologize but no. Without verification, there is no axiomatic leverage that guarantees an outcome.

And don’t get me started with how these sciences abuse the rate of error in order to resolve inconsistent output.

>Ok great explanation thanks.

A truth being hard to check and there not being a truth are not the same thing.

>But is it a science? I apologize but no.

It's okay. I accept your apology for your ignorance on what the scientific method is.

No, you're just attributing a meaningless distinction to an important one.

> If differences in frames of reference weren't material to objective reality they would be unnecessary to describe objective reality.

You're entirely forgetting that you're talking about a mathematical MODEL of reality.

This is suggestive evidence, but you would have to do better than that to demonstrate your claim.

Byeeeee have a nice day

>You're entirely forgetting that you're talking about a mathematical MODEL of reality.

You're entirely forgetting Relativity has been experimentally confirmed.

Ah man, you got me. It's a shame Einstein doesn't have a ton of mathematics and data to back up his ideas.

Lol that's a fair assessment. I'm not going to use more time on a thread I feel is thoroughly discussed.

I think the fallacy fallacy is intended to avoid poisoning the well through an easily refutable argument and favor of some proposition.

If a proposition is argued poorly it can be seen as less true than a proposition that wasn’t argued at all. This is commonly a useful observation, but strictly speaking it is fallacious.

I just wanted to say that both sides build models that may or may not be eventually tested. The testing is still critical to make any statement about reality, but the discussion is still worthwhile

> As for scientific method revealing the ultimate state of reality, wouldn't that actually be beyond the scope?

Yes. Science is concerned with iteratively approximating / revealing reality. This is an asymptomatic process. There is no expectation of ever reaching "ultimate" reality.

So what is?

I believe you are aware of the ongoing debate that has been had for centuries on this very topic. If you would like to comment on why my assertion of repeatability when only problematic propositions (meaning those that rely on statistical domains, and not Boolean) are used.

Seriously, I come here to learn. All in good faith. I respect anyone that uses the term “preposterous” outright… so I want to understand where you’re coming from.

Oh, we're agreeing then

> just a blanket term with nothing defined

Can't a room of 10 people with varying life experiences, different cultural background, different education level, intellectual capacity coexist with somethings not defined?

> Even mathematics starts with presuppositions and tautologies stemming from "the number of things we can physically count", which happens to be an empirical base.

Could you please care to explain what do you mean? I am a bit confused by the 'counting of physical things' as there are many branches of mathematics that are not interested in numbers, or at least not in numbers for physical counting.

I have a very rough understanding of ZFC as foundations of mathematics but as far as I know the usuals axioms in ZFC do not involve numbers at all.

Nothing about what I just said keeps all these people from co-existing. You want to know what absolutely keeps LOTs of people from co-existing though? Dogma. Dogma unbounded by empiricism, because it leaves people in contentious silos of belief with no way to paddle to one another.

Dogma is intimately tied with knowledge, just of the illogical, unrevealed kind. I'm saying that no knowledge can exist in the motley crew because they can't verify/justify it to each other because they each have different experiences. Maybe there can be overlap in some cases, but as an alternative to your kind of dogmatism, I would say that they exist in a continuous stream of agnosticism. Can they not? And in this stream of ignorance, knowledge is revealed by contingency rather than absolutes.

How can you know a stranger or know about a stranger or assume what a stranger is capable of? Tying this to ideals which justify multicultural societies that must tolerate indefiniteness within the grandeur society they all share.

I think we all accept a sort of apathetic attitude to getting to know our neighbors sometimes to justify living next to people we don't know/assume too much about. Or have no expectations of them. And this apathy rests on agnosticism rather than any knowledge. Although I can see a way out if we argue that we agree to definite laws that let us know the person next door is very likely not capable of doing anything too bad.

His claim that Bertrand Russel was a logical positivist? I thought was common knowledge. At least, that’s what I learned in jr. College and I’ve assumed it was true ever since.

I don't think you can learn/conceive of empty sets and non-empty sets (or that you think therefore you are) without sensation. While examples are thin on the ground*, the most reasonable self-awareness models rely on an ability to identify the self in one's environment and one's ability to move within it. Without sensation, brains, minds, whatever have nothing to define themselves into being.

*I did look into this years ago and found some rare cases of infants born without the ability to sense and obviously they did not develop properly and were effectively vegetables. Suggestive material exists for people with specific senses absent from birth missing certain experiences of self when dreaming and the like, although plasticity, rewiring the brain to use the visual systems with blindness have also been observed. The general point - that sensation precedes language, logic and self, and these things are genetically dependent on sensation in the hierarchy of knowledge - I think is defensible and reasonable to accept.

You can reword it to "tentative, seemingly reliable, predictable and useful conceptual relationships between abstracts and observations" if you like. I think we can usually clump together enough common ground to infer what was meant relative to the general thrust of the argument. I just wanted to be quick and non-weasel wordy with it.

Curious: "Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute — and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? Are the things you see around you real — or are they only an illusion? Do they exist independent of any observer — or are they created by the observer? Are they the object or the subject of man’s consciousness? Are they what they are — or can they be changed by a mere act of your consciousness, such as a wish? The nature of your actions — and of your ambition — will be different, according to which set of answers you come to accept. These answers are the province of metaphysics — the study of existence as such or, in Aristotle’s words, of “being qua being” — the basic branch of philosophy." ~ Ayn Rand

His (implied) claim that set theories start from empirical observations.

Ahh. Thanks for clarification. I had issues with that as well, but then, I’m a Pragmatist

And that's my very point - the fact that two people agree that THERE IS SUCH A THING as goodness is far more relevant than quibbles over whether or not some given action is good.

Also, using physical analogies to describe experiential realities is like using a piano arrangement to analyze a symphony written for a full orchestra. Every human knows that the experience of being alive is far richer and more significant than can be simply described. To describe a life fully is to live it out. To reduce human relationships and joy and suffering to nothing more than the interplay of chemicals and electricity inside a fatty lump of meat may be factual, in the sense that it is all that can be externally verified (and indeed might "truly" be all that there is) but nobody actually lives that way. We live as though there is some quality of reality in our own experience. It MATTERS when someone is in pain.

Logical positivism proposes a world where none of that is actually true, so whether or not it's the most truthful account of the universe, I'm going to keep living in the universe where I can believe that it's actually ontologically better to feed someone, rather than merely being a societally approved action.

Heh. I'm not a physicist, but if my understanding of quantum theory is at all correct it is a statistical rather than deterministic discipline. In principle, then, the model could be refined to arbitrary levels of precision, down to precisely predicting the probability of individual quantum events within a system. In that case it falls squarely into the magisterium of science, since it can make testable, repeatable predictions about events, even if they are probabilistic predictions.

My argument is that there are elements of the human experience which, even in theory, are not reducible to testable predictions. As a corollary, the /fact/ that in practice there are still many such elements which are not well understood scientifically (and if you disagree with this, I would invite you to find any psychological study of the past fifty years that has been verified to even two sigma of confidence in one or more follow up studies) means that ANY statement about the relationship between science and understanding the human experience is ultimately metaphysical speculation, including this one.

appeal to authority perhaps in the one place among human beings you would hope not to find it

Really?

At my university we literally had a speaker who was an expert on the history of philosophy and he explained why logical positivism exists and is important

I will attempt an answer, though we're nearing the basement bellow all of mathematics and logic, so it's not quite straight forward.
So I said "The number of things we can physically count", this was a gross over simplification. So I'm going to start at what ZFC is, from where it stems recursively.

ZFC is an axiomatization of Number Theory and Set Theory.
Number Theory is a direct abstraction of "Things we can count", so to speak.
Set Theory is the tricky part with reference to empiricism, so lets go deeper into what it's derived from.
Set Theory is the axiomatization of Naive Set Theory.
Naive Set Theory is just rudimentary definitions of the same concepts as Set Theory, described informally in natural language, rather than axiomatically. It is based on Discrete Mathematics.
Aaaannd Discrete Mathematics deals with Countable Sets, which expands into discrete integers, graphs, and logical statements.

The basis of ZFC is

1. boolean logic: yes/no, existence/non-existence.
2. discrete integers, i.e. "Things we can count"
3. graphs, i.e. "Things we can relate to one another in some way"

So I'll append my simplistic claim to something more inclusive of ALL of Mathematics, since what I originally said didn't quite make sense. Even mathematics starts with presuppositions and tautologies stemming from conditions in reality. From countable objects to abstractions of said numbers, relations of objects in reality to the abstracted graphs of hypothetical objects, and finally to what truth can be derived from said relations and the derivative algebra that's generate there of.

All deep systems of thought start with simple observations of reality, and as long as the derivative works there of are accurate and consistent I think that small tether to reality can lead to the sum total of the knowledge of mankind.

edit* added one "s". Also had to reformat because I lost my line-breaks.

it's historically significant in the way that alchemy is historically significant, and some influence does live on, especially among a certain generation of scientists who unwittingly absorbed the central ideas from faculty while they were in graduate school, but as john passmore wrote in 1967, "logical positivism is dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes." by that he meant that the central tenets, most significantly the verification criterion of meaning, had been demonstrated to be false.

Me too

Well actually no.

The guy who came to speak at my university seminary specifically explained that it’s not dead and ultimately SHOULD replace metaphysics.

Any group of people willing to be identified as "agnostic" with reference to any ideas they hold sacred are very likely already proficient in epistemology.

I am not claiming that all knowledge must have absolute empirical evidence prior to acceptance. That premise would be so inefficient for anyone involved that they would be frozen in a recursive cycle of defining definitions before they can make a single decision.

What I am saying is that I empirically have black hair. I have personally measured this and so have many other people who have informally seen me. I may tell you in this thread that I have black hair, and you most likely will accept my claim without further investigation. You don't accept the blackness of my hair because I'm some arbiter of truth. You accept that I have black hair because you have experienced having hair and seeing black hair. You've experienced both ideas empirically. There is no need to scrutinize simple observations which we relate to in reality because many are already shared experiences.

Though we should rely on Logical Positivism to settle disputes about our beliefs, the more consequential or extreme a claim, the more important it is that it be substantiated by empiricism. Conversely, the less consequential and more mundane a claim, the need for empiricism becomes infinitesimal.

it'd probably be worth learning about this yourself. here's a great place to start: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/

I think that's reasonable, but would add that the tiniest amount of sensation leads to awareness of self and not self, and to location and relation. pinhole nerve clusters, hearing, or sensation of touch is enough for empiricism.

>I can trivially confirm is an action is moral or not. Just because moral truths are subjective doesn't make them not truths or unverifiable.

you can indeed but what about your neighbour? or someone from Iran?

all you can do is state if you think it is moral, not whether or not it is moral.

is it moral to murder someone trying to kill you? is it moral to kill people to save others? if a nation is trying to commit genocide and wont stop can you wipe them all out?

personally i think modern society is immoral in the extreme due to its worship of the individual, 10s of millions are left to rot at the bottom so the thousands at the top can sit on their asses and bludge off the rest and the ones in the middle have the gall to blame the bottom.

Remember folks, if it's non-verifiable its tantamount to whacking off.

I tend to go with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_minimalism

The guy is probably disingenuous AF like Adorno and friends.

It's not just that "somebody" demonstrated it false.

The very same authors and original proponents agreed that it was surpassed and wrong.

*philosophy of science

This so much.

I get wanting to have different views, but this isn't even trying to be edgy. It's just absolute contrived bullshit for (from?) people trying to fuel the anti-scientific circlejerk.

It's not just wrong in the very typical sense of the field that of course everything is going to have more than one interpretation, it simply makes up words out of thin air. It's false, a fabrication, a lie.

It blows my mind that rationalism is somehow put in opposition to it, and that they couldn't even be arsed to follow the name of the movement till the '50s.

Where else would they start?

Thanks for the resource!

very welcome! SEP is an incredible resource

Thank you for giving me flashbacks to the only class I ever flunked out of.

Good lord that stuff was hard. I could read the textbook and say "yes, I understand that." And then I could not repeat a word of it back to you 5 minutes later. It just didn't stick in brain at all.

Yeah I concur with this. There are no more logical positivists anymore, at least not in a renowned and/or academic setting.

>I am not claiming that all knowledge must have absolute empirical evidence prior to acceptance. That premise would be so inefficient for anyone involved that they would be frozen in a recursive cycle of defining definitions before they can make a single decision.

Luckily, evolution found a solution: belief.

>It's just absolute contrived bullshit for (from?) people trying to fuel the anti-scientific circlejerk.

A bit of a counterbalance to the pro-science circlejerk might be good for the memeplex we live in. Or, it may not...who knows, who cares.

Do you think I don’t know the SEP exists?

At the end of the day, I’m just citing the opinion of an expert in the history of philosophy

there may be a few experts here too, you never know 🫢

It serves to assist our survival at times, so I suppose.

You’re just being immature

> You hit the bull's eye. "other forms of knowing" is just a blanket term with nothing defined....

Maybe this is something different than what you're talking about, and it's likely not the best resource on it, but...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology > > > > Nearly all debates in epistemology are in some way related to knowledge. Most generally, "knowledge" is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, which might include facts (propositional knowledge), skills (procedural knowledge), or objects (acquaintance knowledge). Philosophers tend to draw an important distinction between three different senses of "knowing" something: "knowing that" (knowing the truth of propositions), "knowing how" (understanding how to perform certain actions), and "knowing by acquaintance" (directly perceiving an object, being familiar with it, or otherwise coming into contact with it).[16] Epistemology is primarily concerned with the first of these forms of knowledge, propositional knowledge. All three senses of "knowing" can be seen in our ordinary use of the word. In mathematics, you can know that 2 + 2 = 4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers, and knowing a person (e.g., knowing other persons,[17] or knowing oneself), place (e.g., one's hometown), thing (e.g., cars), or activity (e.g., addition). While these distinctions are not explicit in English, they are explicitly made in other languages, including French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian, German and Dutch (although some languages closely related to English have been said to retain these verbs, such as Scots).[note 1] The theoretical interpretation and significance of these linguistic issues remains controversial. > > > > In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell brought a great deal of attention to the distinction between "knowledge by description" and "knowledge by acquaintance". Gilbert Ryle is similarly credited with bringing more attention to the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. In Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi argues for the epistemological relevance of knowledge how and knowledge that; using the example of the act of balance involved in riding a bicycle, he suggests that the theoretical knowledge of the physics involved in maintaining a state of balance cannot substitute for the practical knowledge of how to ride, and that it is important to understand how both are established and grounded. This position is essentially Ryle's, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between "knowledge that" and "knowledge how" leads to infinite regress.

> ... because there is no other form of actually reliably knowing without empiricism.

I think you may have overlooked a fundamental problem: empiricism may be able to confirm that a proposition is true, but a lack of confirmation does not cause something that is true in fact to be false - it can certainly cause it to appear that way, but that's a different issue. This of course overlooks the "justified" part, but that is on a different level of reality than pure truth.

The point is: this very popular claim that ~"the exercise of strict epistemology" would render people immobile is demonstrably false. And while this may seem "trivially true", whether it actually is is a very different matter.

I'm honored that I could summon your PTSD a little bit.

I really don't know if you're genuinely asking, but linking a possible chain of inspirations through wiki pages is not a rigorous demonstration of their claim.

I'm on my phone, so I'm not going to link it. We had a discussion about the fallacy fallacy, which I will adamantly contend is stupid till my deathbed.
I agree with you that it's obviously terrible for someone to claim something is false based on faulty argument. I'm also saying that's a red herring, because if the only thing substantiating said claim was the fallacious argument, then there is no longer support to believe such a thing. It's not that I am saying "That's a fallacy, therefore your conclusion is false" I am saying your premise is wrong so I'm agnostic to the claim till it's substantiated, important difference.

They seem to have gone for the rortyan view that scientificism is a flawed form of redemption typical of modern times, unable to replace spirituality as renewed kind of faith. There might even be a solid point there but, as usual, they botched the argumentation pretty badly.

Iatv seems to be investing heavily on philosphy, also posting a lot here on reddit, but it should not be done like this. This is a borderline 'fake-news' style of doing philosphy, imho.

Yeah, it's pretty rough lol

I was picturing the wacky haired guy from Ancient Aliens. He's typing all furiously.

Without logical analysis what do we use?

Sounds right.

> We had a discussion about the fallacy fallacy, which I will adamantly contend is stupid till my deathbed.

Depending on which side of it you fall on, I will totally agree, or argue to the death!! 😂🙏

> I agree with you that it's obviously terrible for someone to claim something is false based on faulty argument. I'm also saying that's a red herring, because if the only thing substantiating said claim was the fallacious argument, then there is no longer support to believe such a thing. It's not that I am saying "That's a fallacy, therefore your conclusion is false" I am saying your premise is wrong so I'm agnostic to the claim till it's substantiated, important difference.

I think you may have missed my point: there is a level of "reality" where "absolute truth" (at least on some matters) exists, but since we do not have access to this level, we seem to have decided to ~pretend that it doesn't exist, or have decided on educational curriculum that does not cover it (causing it to appear to not exist, unless one learns about it elsewhere).

This is the distinction I tried to get at with"This of course overlooks the "justified" part..." - you were talking about Knowledge (JTB), but the "T" is typically/often completely independent from humans - our ability to measure it (empirically or otherwise) has no bearing on the actual underlying truth. But the way we describe reality is often other than this, and thus many people seem to believe it is this way.

logical positivism != logical analysis (fortunately!)

logical positivism is a constellation of views about knowledge and meaning which centers around the idea of identifying the meaning of a content-bearer (e.g. a statement about the color of grass) with its 'empirical content' (e.g. a certain kind of visual experience). it's just a theory (or more accurately, a theoretical temperament) like any other

We're mixing two distinct subjects.

1. The Fallacy Fallacy, which I contend is like a distracted dog chasing a squirrel of irrelevance.
2. Truthiness? Even Science approximates accuracy with reference to the most accurate of knowledge we have, rather than revealing absolute boolean truths about the Universe. I doubt we can reliably achieve such lofty goals with regularity.

My vote goes with empiricism for the win. If this argument had been made better, it might have at least muddied the waters. A better defense for rationalist Metaphysics would have been to connect it with a more contemporary conversation. Maybe..... Quantum entanglement stuff, or String theory. ? Not saying those are great, but it's just so old timey.

Hella steampunk vibes though. That's kinda fun.

>"the exercise of strict epistemology" would render people immobile is demonstrably false.

Have you ever taken psychedelics and become critical of all beliefs and experiences to the point of absurdity? Because it sounds like you've NEVER done anything like that.

I have some experience yes, although not with the absurdity part (other than realizing that "normal" consciousness/culture is undoubtedly and massively absurd, but that's not what you're getting at I don't think).

Are you a fan of them or a critic?

> 1. The Fallacy Fallacy, which I contend is like a distracted dog chasing a squirrel of irrelevance.

To me, the fallacy fallacy is a lot like "good/bad faith" - excellent rhetorical tools, and those who use them typically have little to negative interest in whether they are using them correctly. Occam's Razor would be another good candidate, as would "no evidence" and several other popular internet memes/heuristics.

> 2. Truthiness? Even Science approximates accuracy with reference to the most accurate of knowledge we have, rather than revealing absolute boolean truths about the Universe.

I agree, although that would get you in hot water with most Redditors, in my experience anyways. Peeople love love love their science!

> I doubt we can reliably achieve such lofty goals with regularity.

Mountains don't climb themselves, that's for sure!

I am a fan. I am saying that I have experienced absurd levels of critical thought to the point of absurdity and it absolutely stops action.

Nothing, the concept of truth is simply an empty and reflexive compliment we pay to those of our ideas that are useful in helping us do what we want to do, see Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

First, the title of this post made me cringe because it’s exactly the kind of philosophy that makes me cringe.

Second, I completely agree with your assessment of the scientific method. It creates a map, but is not the territory.

>ANY statement about the relationship between science and understanding the human experience is ultimately metaphysical speculation, including this one.

That most certainly makes sense to me.

They can be incapacitating at times!

Where do you fall on the "are (or can be) realer than reality" question - yea or nay? I'm a solid yea.

Is that a verifiable statement?

I don't disagree with that though, at least I don't think I do. If there is no evidence for a claim then it should be disregarded. But disregarding it is not the same thing as accepting the negation of it.

Did you do something useful today?

It feels like such a level of increase consciousness that more of reality is experienced in more ways.

Indeed. That's why I called it a Red Herring, because I've never seen anyone commit the falacy.

Many would argue that there are indeed other forms of knowing beyond or beneath language.

An example- the concept of physical intelligence; the continuous act of manipulating our body in space, using sensory inputs from our sensory organs, subconsciously. It's so innate that we forget that this is a condition we live with, always.

One may argue that this condition I describe is empirical, after all. It can be measured, observed, by nature of the veracity of the scientific studies' conclusions that are the evidence for my statements above. But.. In the process of waking life, we do not have to count anything, to "know" that this knowledge is real.

You seem to care in every thread with your riddles...

And STEMlord idiot balls aren't the whole there is about science.

Not at all. With the notable exception of post-modernism, which amounts to competitive obscurantism, positivism mostly just became social science and the humanities generally. With, again, the exception of the mental nonsense special Olympics over there, probably most people don't even consider something like the wholesale rejection of metaphysical explanations. It's presumed. That goes back straight to Comte.

>You seem to care in every thread with your riddles...

It's good exercise for the mind!

>And STEMlord idiot balls aren't the whole there is about science.

The quality, self-confidence, and "ambitiousness" of the fan base annoys me, perhaps similar to how atheists are bothered by fundamentalist (or all) theists.

I think the world could benefit from a sound articulation of the experience/mindset, that is approachable by (and non-offensive to) various ideologies.

Have you experienced detachment from Time?

>identified as "agnostic"

I'm talking about before identity comes into play. Identity is one of the three laws of logic/thought. I'm talking about a meta-analysis (such as "three laws of logic" that acknowledge identity within an identity already made).

In the meta-analysis, identity is contingent and unknown but follows certain principles (eg, correlation, verificationism, correspondence theory of truth). You've already gone through this. I'm just re-stating it because we agree in a lot.

>they hold sacred are very likely already proficient in epistemology.

I'm not saying they may be aware of their own agnosticism. Rather, agnosticism is something they implicitly accept by continuing their association in such a community. They may not know this is what it's called. For example, New York in the early 20th century. A lot of different cultures congregating and maintaining their own identity while collectively giving New York an identity of its own. This identity wasn't entirely defined but it didn't need to be to be.

>What I am saying is that I empirically have black hair. I have personally measured this and so have many other people who have informally seen me. I may tell you in this thread that I have black hair, and you most likely will accept my claim without further investigation. You don't accept the blackness of my hair because I'm some arbiter of truth. You accept that I have black hair because you have experienced having hair and seeing black hair. You've experienced both ideas empirically. There is no need to scrutinize simple observations which we relate to in reality because many are already shared experiences.

I don't disagree entirely while wishing to highlight the part where there is a continuous, perpetual construction of truth that is justified by its pragmatic value. As we walk down these philosophical halls together, we see the door marked "Utilitarianism" but we leave it closed for now.

The importance of acknowledging the pragmatic aspect is where we get stuck. And I think you alluded to this. We get stuck in analysis paralysis, neuroticism, an ouroboros, a mobius loop.

But getting stuck is not all bad. Sometimes it's validly pragmatic to get stuck. Like an art gallery where there is an open basis for analysis. Where various analyses, maybe even some that contradict each other, may be pragmatic. Or using Rorshack tests for therapy. Or again art but the kind of art that is banned in certain contexts because it threatens the authority.

Or the current political climate of "wokeness" where previously subjugated people gained a platform (internet) where they could gather and unionize against the bourgeoisie, who were and continue to be the arbiters of many "truths." Your hair being black or someone's skin being red become more that just mere, unquestionable correlation (pigmentation tied with color palettes). They potentially become political. An Aryan ideal of blondness, a football team's name become offensive. Truth becomes propaganda. Or rather, truth sheds its outer layer to reveal that it was always propaganda to some degree.

>"other forms of knowing" is just a blanket term with nothing defined, because there is no other form of actually reliably knowing without empiricism.

I'm not in disagreement with your stance thus far. Ironically, my contention started with the above quote (that I may have read wrong). "Nothing defined" is significant, non-trivial, politically relevant.

"Just a theory!" Really? A theory isn't the same as a hunch. It's when something has been rigorously tested by the scientific community, and is the highest level of scientific achievement an idea can gain. One might be luck to have the word used on their idea.

Even if the data we get seems to say something, and becomes accepted as a theory. It may still need refinement. So, a theoretical temperament is a good thing to use for fine tuning our understanding.

Please don't dismiss such discipline for the likes of Metaphysics my friend.

“Discredited” is a bit harsh. It’s certainly not the dominant position anymore, but I personally know of professional philosophers in my department who still more or less accept it.

Philosophers always like to talk about how they’ve disproven this or that idea. Generally speaking, it’s all a load of bull and the ideas will come back given enough time. Like, right now, I would say we’re going through a period where the sort of analytic philosophy of language that replaced positivism is itself being “discredited”, which is leading some to question whether we were too hasty with ditching the logical positivism thing.

I can speak from experience that there very much are prominent philosophers who take the idea seriously. Ideas come in and out of fashion. Positivism has been very out of fashion, now it’s less so.

I don't know. I've experienced extreme time dilation.

Never the "freezing" of it?

could you name a prominent philosopher who endorses the verification criterion of meaning?

i'm not aware of any contemporary philosophers who accept the verification criterion of meaning, though i'm sure there are a curmudgeon or two out there

The issue is how specifically you want to talk about logical positivism in the modern context. When I talk about it in the modern context, I don't mean a group of philosophers who hew to the precise line sketched out by the Vienna Circle and their supporters. I refer instead to a strain of thought that views logical positivism sympathetically. The idea isn't that they think the verification criterion of meaning is the end of the story and bulletproof, but rather that the critiques of it and the systems offered in place of them are not as convincing as was once thought. So the idea isn't so much that they're logical positivists through and through, but rather that they have sympathies towards the logical positivists and their project and have doubts about the critiques of their opponents. It's about a sort of reevaluation of the work of the logical positivists rather than a wholesale adoption of their ideas.

This is why I say "discredited" is a bit harsh, because while the view was once seen as entirely discredited, people have been reevaluating just how discredited it was. I'd also point out that this is a trend among younger philosophers (where younger means younger than 50, which, wow, weird to say).

excellent. yeah that's spot on

Taking the idea seriously doesn't mean adopting it exclusively and in its entirety. I'm talking about a reevaluation of the merits of the position and the work done in support of it.

I get where you are coming from, but then you should be attacking self-righteousness, smug and indeed ironically kinda some touch of dogmatism (or if not any, they are there to boast not to actually dicuss).

Counterbalancing jerks by tangentially making another wrong in the opposite direction seems just to call for more vitriol.

What if the actual problem lies where no one is looking: the Normies? 😮

Besides, if the science gang can't take a potshot now and then, maybe they don't have what it takes to hold the throne they somehow ended up sitting in.

The original proponents literally did that, and they decided the original core belief was misplaced.

Hence such label is not used anymore because they found a wholly superior position.