Learned Hand Finally Gets There

_{Barry Arrington
September 14, 2015

Intelligent Design

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Intelligent Design}

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Who says internet combox discussions are never fruitful? After almost two weeks of back and forth, Learned Hand has finally come around on the infallibility of the law of identity.

LH before: I cannot therefore be logically, absolutely certain of anything—not even that A=A.

LH today: Defining A as equal to A is defining A as equal to A; the proposition is not fallible if the only metric is its own definition.

Now if we could only convince him that he does not have to doubt whether he is Mount Everest.

Comments

LH:
Defining A as equal to A is defining A as equal to A; the proposition is not fallible if the only metric is its own definition.
I will repeat my question from comment 1. How do you know the proposition is not fallible?Barry Arrington_{September 15, 2015
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Carpathian had an interesting comment on another thread: I believe that my experience in life suggests that when one side of a debate starts to lose, they start attacking the messengers instead of the message. I believe this has happened with IDists as their arguments are the first to change into emotional statements and posts like this one. It's interesting how much time BA spends attacking messengers, and how assiduously he avoids any conversation that would require stating and discussing his own beliefs. I went to a fight night over the weekend. I observed some people getting in the ring, exposing themselves to hard knocks. I observed some people talking tough and howling abuse from the stands. Both sorts got what they wanted out of it, because each wanted very different things. I know which sort I'd rather be.Learned Hand_{September 15, 2015
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We can reliably and conclusively determine that the standard “torturing babies for fun is immoral” is infallibly true (true in all possible worlds and situations) because it is self-evidently true (whereas morality would be absurd if the statement were false in any situation). “Torturing babies for fun = immoral” is as infallibly certain as “A=A”. How do you determine whether morality is “absurd”? This seems like an “I know it when I see it” standard. If so, how do you distinguish “It’s incompatible with the standards by which I was raised and/or my biological biases” from “It’s incompatible with a transcendent moral standard”?Learned Hand_{September 15, 2015
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We have been very patient with eigenstate, but enough is enough. He will be in moderation for a couple of days. The tiger will change its stripes before BA permits dissent at Uncommon Dissent. BA, there’s a difference between having a conversation and mining what I have to assume are hundreds of comments for out-of-context snippets, searching for any inconsistency that would support yet another jibe about lying and idiocy and so on. Of course you can make cuts that create the appearance of inconsistencies—and probably actual inconsistencies, although I don’t think you’ve got one here. How on earth could people have a rolling conversation about serious ideas and never write something that can’t be seen as an overextension of their position, or unclear, or badly interpreted? Screeching about it in order to score points is the furthest thing from actually engaging with ideas of your own. It’s yet another substitute for reasoned conversation. Building the wall to keep the focus on reviling them, rather than showing any stronger or better ideas on offer inside the wall. If people want to know what I think, they should read my comments at the linked threads. Eigenstate did a great job of exploring the ideas and drawing out greater clarity, when I was not writing with any careful attention to the difference between A=A measured only by its own definition and A=A as you use it, conflated with the physical world and moral notions. Eigenstate is right. Both on the question at hand and by identifying your preferred substitute for reasoned discussion: tell people what they really think, insult them for it, and move on. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you actually have a mature, serious conversation about ideas here. Have you? Can you link us to it? For example, you ask: “I do have one question for LH. How does he know the proposition is not fallible?” Even a casual reading of these conversations would show that I’ve answered this question many times. I don’t assert that my position is infallible. I assert only that you, SB, and others have failed to articulate any way that we can know a proposition infallibly. I think I posted a stronger statement at TSZ, suggesting that I could be certain only that I cannot be certain; that was an overstatement. So, how do you know that a proposition about the physical or moral world is infallible? People keep asking, and you keep banning and insulting. Why not try thinking instead? Are your conclusions based on ideas at all, or just things you want to believe?Learned Hand_{September 15, 2015
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Seriously torturing is a degree thing? God help us from these maniacs.Andre_{September 15, 2015
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William J Murray:
“Torturing babies for fun = immoral” is as infallibly certain as “A=A”.
They are not the same thing at all. Real life is analog and is experienced in "degrees", not as a set of boolean statements. Babies are tortured for fun every day, it is the "degree" that is the problem. Watch videos on social sites and you will see babies being given lemons or limes while their parents film them. When the baby starts to cry the audience starts to laugh. As always, IDists tend to over-simplify debates. Babies being tortured for fun has nothing to do with A=A or self-evident truths.Carpathian_{September 15, 2015
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// Additional questions for Learned Hand //
StephenB: Can you be absolutely certain that you are not Mount Everest? Can you be absolutely certain that anyone who says that you are is in error? Please explain your answers as clearly as you can.

Learned Hand: No, and no.

Learned Hand: Obviously I don’t think I’m Mount Everest, (…)
Are you absolutely certain that you don’t think that you are Mount Everest?
Learned Hand: (...) and if someone said that I was, it wouldn’t even cross my mind that they could be right.
Are you absolutely certain that it wouldn’t cross your mind? Finally, are you absolutely certain that you are not totally convinced that you are Mount Everest?Box_{September 15, 2015
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Barry Arrington @ 4:
The real question is what motivates him to engage in such insane denials? I have to admit that I am utterly flummoxed by it. He knows he is lying. I know he is lying. Everyone else who reads his comment knows he is lying. What in the world motivates such outrageous conduct. It I did not see it myself I would not believe it.
He can't help himself. It has become his nature. I have watched liars lie for years, and I have noted their inability to admit even the simplest of truths. I have observed their self-destructive behavior (as a consequence of losing the trust and charity essential in routine communication and cooperation) over matters both mundane and mission-critical. This fellow suggests a mechanism for something I have suspected for years: Dishonesty reduces applied intelligence: re-wires the brain
What I am suggesting is that, although the fundamental efficiency of neural processing is an hereditary characteristic which is robust to environmental differences and changes (short of something like destructive brain pathology - encephalitis, neurotoxin, head injury, dementia etc) - habitual dishonesty (such as is mainstream among the modern intellectual elite) will generate brain changes, and a long-lasting (although probably, eventually, reversible) pathology in applied intelligence - such that what ought to be simple and obvious inferential reasoning becomes impossible. [emphasis Charles]
I would add impossible not only in communication with others but equally impossible when alone and merely analyzing (rationalizing) information they find disagreeable. They are a waste of bandwidth. They could tell me the sky is blue and I wouldn't believe them without checking, and knowing they will change their position and then deny their own conflicted words exactly quoted back to them, their "contributions" are needless and fruitless, and my (our) time is better spent in more productive and enlightening exchanges. As for 'educating the onlookers' about the fallacies of intellectually dishonest posters, I would reiterate my suggestion of a "heads on pikes" list of past intellectual attrocities committed by such, and simply link to that list rather than waste further bandwidth on their posts. It isn't censorship, it's clearing chaff.Charles_{September 15, 2015
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Andre asks:
"Popperian,,, I’ll ask you too, how do you know that you don’t know?"
Indeed, given atheistic/materialistic premises, there is no 'you' to know or not know. There is only an illusion of a person, an illusion of 'you', who thinks (if illusions could think) that he might be mistaken in his perceptions:
“We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good.” Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor "What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”" Jerry Coyne "The neural circuits in our brain manage the beautifully coordinated and smoothly appropriate behavior of our body. They also produce the entrancing introspective illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world. This powerful illusion has been with humanity since language kicked in, as we’ll see. It is the source of at least two other profound myths: that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning and that there is a person “in there” steering the body, so to speak." [A.Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide To Reality, Ch.9]
So since there is no 'you' in materialism, and yet the fact that we do exist as persons is the most certain thing about reality that we can know,,,
David Chalmers on Consciousness (Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem) – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
,,,then a better question to militant atheists would be, "how do 'you' know that there is no 'you' to not know anything for certain?" Or perhaps more simply, "How do 'you' know that 'you' are an illusion?
"I think the idea of (materialists) saying that consciousness is an illusion doesn’t really work because the very notion of an illusion presupposes consciousness. There are no illusions unless there is a conscious experience or (a 'person') for whom there is an illusion." Evan Thompson, Philosopher - author of Waking, Dreaming, Being
Supplemental quotes on the atheists abandonment of the scientific method in regards to explaining conscious experience i.e. in regards to explaining 'you': Contemporary physicist Nick Herbert states,
"Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot."
Physician and author Larry Dossey wrote:
"No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians' hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it." http://www.merkawah.nl/public_html/images/stories/ccvsgwrepr.pdf
bornagain77_{September 15, 2015
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Popperian: Some critics of epistemological fallibilism claim that it rests on an axiom that there is no absolute knowledge (sometimes expressed as the contradiction “This much is certain: nothing is certain”[citation needed]). But this was shown early on by Popper and others to be a misconception: fallibilism requires no such assumption, and makes no claims — indeed its method has no interest in — demonstrating such a statement.[6]
So, fallibilism doesn’t require the assumption that “nothing is certain”. Is that for certain? Are fallibilists certain about that? I’m just asking. Also the method of fallibilism has “no interest in demonstrating such a statement”. Is that a fact? Can we be certain about that? I want clarity. I would like reassurance from fallibilists here.Box_{September 15, 2015
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Popperian, thanks for the content.... I'll ask you too, how do you know that you don't know?Andre_{September 15, 2015
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Popperian said
Moral fallibilism is a specific subset of the broader epistemological fallibilism outlined above. In the debate between moral subjectivism and moral objectivism, moral fallibilism holds out a third plausible stance: that objectively true moral standards may exist, but that they cannot be reliably or conclusively determined by humans.
This is, of course, false. We can reliably and conclusively determine that the standard "torturing babies for fun is immoral" is infallibly true (true in all possible worlds and situations) because it is self-evidently true (whereas morality would be absurd if the statement were false in any situation). "Torturing babies for fun = immoral" is as infallibly certain as "A=A". Moral fallibilism is thus demonstrable false, and moral objectivism demonstrably true.William J Murray_{September 15, 2015
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And then why do most atheists claim exemption from falsifiability?
"In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable; and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality." Karl Popper - The Two Fundamental Problems of the Theory of Knowledge (2014 edition), Routledge “On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” - Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003 It’s (Much) Easier to Falsify Intelligent Design than Darwinian Evolution – Michael Behe, PhD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T1v_VLueGk “The National Academy of Sciences has objected that intelligent design is not falsifiable, and I think that’s just the opposite of the truth. Intelligent design is very open to falsification. I claim, for example, that the bacterial flagellum could not be produced by natural selection; it needed to be deliberately intelligently designed. Well, all a scientist has to do to prove me wrong is to take a bacterium without a flagellum, or knock out the genes for the flagellum in a bacterium, go into his lab and grow that bug for a long time and see if it produces anything resembling a flagellum. If that happened, intelligent design, as I understand it, would be knocked out of the water. I certainly don’t expect it to happen, but it’s easily falsified by a series of such experiments. Now let’s turn that around and ask, How do we falsify the contention that natural selection produced the bacterial flagellum? If that same scientist went into the lab and knocked out the bacterial flagellum genes, grew the bacterium for a long time, and nothing much happened, well, he’d say maybe we didn’t start with the right bacterium, maybe we didn’t wait long enough, maybe we need a bigger population, and it would be very much more difficult to falsify the Darwinian hypothesis. I think the very opposite is true. I think intelligent design is easily testable, easily falsifiable, although it has not been falsified, and Darwinism is very resistant to being falsified. They can always claim something was not right.” - Dr Michael Behe The Law of Physicodynamic Incompleteness - David L. Abel Excerpt: "If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise." If only one exception to this null hypothesis were published, the hypothesis would be falsified. Falsification would require an experiment devoid of behind-the-scenes steering. Any artificial selection hidden in the experimental design would disqualify the experimental falsification. After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: "No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone." https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Incompleteness Confusing Fantasy with Science - Kirk Durston - August 3, 2015 Excerpt: Silk and Ellis, in their concern for the damage that string and multiverse theories are doing to the integrity of physics, write: "The consequences of over claiming the significance of certain theories are profound -- the scientific method is at stake. To state that a theory is so good that its existence supplants the need for data and testing in our opinion risks misleading students and the public as to how science should be done and could open the door for pseudoscientists to claim that their ideas meet similar requirements." So what is the solution? As I proposed earlier, a return to the scientific method. As Silk and Ellis put it: "In our view, the issue boils down to clarifying one question: what potential observational or experimental evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory is wrong and lead you to abandoning it? If there is none, it is not a scientific theory." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/08/confusing_fanta098221.html The Origin of Information: How to Solve It - Perry Marshall Where did the information in DNA come from? This is one of the most important and valuable questions in the history of science. Cosmic Fingerprints has issued a challenge to the scientific community: “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.” “Information” is defined as digital communication between an encoder and a decoder, using agreed upon symbols. To date, no one has shown an example of a naturally occurring encoding / decoding system, i.e. one that has demonstrably come into existence without a designer. A private equity investment group is offering a technology prize for this discovery. We will financially reward and publicize the first person who can solve this;,,, To solve this problem is far more than an object of abstract religious or philosophical discussion. It would demonstrate a mechanism for producing coding systems, thus opening up new channels of scientific discovery. Such a find would have sweeping implications for Artificial Intelligence research. http://cosmicfingerprints.com/solve/
bornagain77_{September 15, 2015
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From the Wikipedia entry on Fallibilism.
Another proponent of fallibilism is Karl Popper, who builds his theory of knowledge, critical rationalism, on falsifiability. Fallibilism has been employed by Willard Van Orman Quine to attack, among other things, the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements.
Sound familiar?
Moral fallibilism is a specific subset of the broader epistemological fallibilism outlined above. In the debate between moral subjectivism and moral objectivism, moral fallibilism holds out a third plausible stance: that objectively true moral standards may exist, but that they cannot be reliably or conclusively determined by humans. This avoids the problems associated with the flexibility of subjectivism by retaining the idea that morality is not a matter of mere opinion, whilst accounting for the conflict between differing objective moralities. Notable proponents of such views are Isaiah Berlin (value pluralism) and Bernard Williams (perspectivism). The view that human beings could be wrong about their moral beliefs, and yet still be justified in holding their incorrect beliefs, underpins quasi-realistic theories of ethics, such as Iain King's Quasi-utilitarianism; and was expounded by philosopher J. L. Mackie.
And we're just pulling this out of our *ss?
Some critics of epistemological fallibilism claim that it rests on an axiom that there is no absolute knowledge (sometimes expressed as the contradiction "This much is certain: nothing is certain"[citation needed]). But this was shown early on by Popper and others to be a misconception: fallibilism requires no such assumption, and makes no claims — indeed its method has no interest in — demonstrating such a statement.[6]
Apparently, Barry and company have no interest in actually presenting anything but a misrepresentation of views they disagree with.Popperian_{September 14, 2015
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In the first statement LH says he cannot be certain about anything, including but not limited to the proposition A=A. In the second statement he asserts that the proposition A=A is not fallible, i.e. “infallible.”
Surely, you can do better than this? Especially since I've referenced an entire article that addresses this supposed paradox, among others.
that human beings can be mistaken in anything they think or do is a proposition known as fallibilism. Stated abstractly like that, it is seldom contradicted. Yet few people have ever seriously believed it, either. That our senses often fail us is a truism; and our self-critical culture has long ago made us familiar with the fact that we can make mistakes of reasoning too. But the type of fallibility that I want to discuss here would be all-pervasive even if our senses were as sharp as the Hubble Telescope and our minds were as logical as a computer. It arises from the way in which our ideas about reality connect with reality itself—how, in other words, we can create knowledge, and how we can fail to. The trouble is that error is a subject where issues such as logical paradox, self-reference, and the inherent limits of reason rear their ugly heads in practical situations, and bite. Paradoxes seem to appear when one considers the implications of one’s own fallibility: A fallibilist cannot claim to be infallible even about fallibilism itself. And so, one is forced to doubt that fallibilism is universally true. Which is the same as wondering whether one might be somehow infallible—at least about some things. For instance, can it be true that absolutely anything that you think is true, no matter how certain you are, might be false?
And...
Popper’s answer is: We can hope to detect and eliminate error if we set up traditions of criticism—substantive criticism, directed at the content of ideas, not their sources, and directed at whether they solve the problems that they purport to solve. Here is another apparent paradox, for a tradition is a set of ideas that stay the same, while criticism is an attempt to change ideas. But there is no contradiction. Our systems of checks and balances are steeped in traditions—such as freedom of speech and of the press, elections, and parliamentary procedures, the values behind concepts of contract and of tort—that survive not because they are deferred to but precisely because they are not: They themselves are continually criticized, and either survive criticism (which allows them to be adopted without deference) or are improved (for example, when the franchise is extended, or slavery abolished). Democracy, in this conception, is not a system for enforcing obedience to the authority of the majority. In the bigger picture, it is a mechanism for promoting the creation of consent, by creating objectively better ideas, by eliminating errors from existing ones.
Do you have any actual criticism to the view presented in this article?Popperian_{September 14, 2015
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In anticipation of more of the "crazy" red herring, I'm merely suggesting that self-event truths are not special cases, but are explanations about how the world works which are extremely hard to vary. Posting that something different is happening, in reality, does not require us to abandon reason, etc. For example, when Einstein's theory indicated something vastly different was happening, in reality, as opposed to Newton, did we have to change the way we launched objects into space, redesign buildings, etc? No, we did not. In the same sense, unifying the way we adopt ideas and create knowledge does not require abandoning logic, reason, etc. From the Critical Rationalism entry on Wikipedia
Critical rationalists hold that scientific theories and any other claims to knowledge can and should be rationally criticized, and (if they have empirical content) can and should be subjected to tests which may falsify them. Thus claims to knowledge may be contrastingly and normatively evaluated. They are either falsifiable and thus empirical (in a very broad sense), or not falsifiable and thus non-empirical. Those claims to knowledge that are potentially falsifiable can then be admitted to the body of empirical science, and then further differentiated according to whether they are retained or are later actually falsified. If retained, further differentiation may be made on the basis of how much subjection to criticism they have received, how severe such criticism has been, and how probable the theory is, with the least[5] probable theory that still withstands attempts to falsify it being the one to be preferred. That it is the least[5] probable theory that is to be preferred is one of the contrasting differences between critical rationalism and classical views on science, such as positivism, who hold that one should instead accept the most probable theory. (The least probable theory is the one with the highest information content and most open to future falsification.) Critical Rationalism as a discourse positioned itself against what its proponents took to be epistemologically relativist philosophies, particularly post-modernist or sociological approaches to knowledge. Critical rationalism has it that knowledge is objective (in the sense of being embodied in various substrates and in the sense of not being reducible to what humans individually "know"), and also that truth is objective (exists independently of social mediation or individual perception, but is "really real"). However, this contrastive, critical approach to objective knowledge is quite different from more traditional views that also hold knowledge to be objective. (These include the strong rationalism of the Enlightenment, the verificationism of the logical positivists, or approaches to science based on induction, a supposed form of logical inference which critical rationalists reject, in line with David Hume.) For criticism is all that can be done when attempting to differentiate claims to knowledge, according to the critical rationalist. Reason is the organon of criticism, not of support; of tentative refutation, not of proof. Supposed positive evidence (such as the provision of "good reasons" for a claim, or its having been "corroborated" by making successful predictions) actually does nothing to bolster, support, or prove a claim, belief, or theory. In this sense, critical rationalism turns the normal understanding of a traditional rationalist, and a realist, on its head. Especially the view that a theory is better if it is less likely to be true is in direct opposition to the traditional positivistic view, which holds that one should seek for theories that have a high probability.[5] Popper notes that this "may illustrate Schopenhauer's remark that the solution of a problem often first looks like a paradox and later like a truism". Even a highly unlikely theory that conflicts current observation (and is thus false, like "all swans are white") must be considered to be better than one which fits observations perfectly, but is highly probable (like "all swans have a color"). This insight is the crucial difference between naive fablsificationism and critical rationalism. The lower probability theory is favored by critical rationalism because the higher the informative content of a theory the lower will be its probability, for the more information a statement contains, the greater will be the number of ways in which it may turn out to be false. The rationale behind this is simply to make it as easy as possible to find out whether the theory is false so that it can be replaced by one that is closer to the truth. It is not meant as a concession to justificationist epistemology, like assuming a theory to be "justifiable" by asserting that it is highly unlikely and yet fits observation. Critical rationalism rejects the classical position that knowledge is justified true belief; it instead holds the exact opposite: That, in general, knowledge is unjustified untrue unbelief. It is unjustified because of the non-existence of good reasons. It is untrue, because it usually contains errors that sometimes remain unnoticed for hundreds of years. And it is not belief either, because scientific knowledge, or the knowledge needed to build a plane, is contained in no single person's mind. It is only available as the content of books.
Popperian_{September 14, 2015
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eigenstate came in and, amazingly, tried to assert that there is no difference between LH’s first statement and his second statement. There is only so much willful disruption and dishonesty that we will tolerate.
Barry will tolerate plenty, if it distracts from the explanation he has still yet to provide. Namely, how he has infallibly identified and interpreted an infallible source of objective moral values, that allows him to solve moral problems, in practice. For someone who demands answers to questions, he's being quite evasive. Since he won't come out and explicitly present an argument or explanation, (and we're dishonest?) I guess I'll have to try piece something together on his behalf. My guess is that we got here as part of some kind of underlying argument, which he hasn't actually articulated. Specially, Barry seems to be implying there is no difference between the law of identity and the moral problem of unplanned, unwanted and dangerous pregnancies. The supposed self-evidence of one somehow is equal to the supposed self-evidence of the other. But even if, for the sake of argument, we assume the law of identity belongs to a special class which is self-evident, it's unclear how his view on abortion falls in the same category. However, Barry, if I got it wrong, feel free to point out exactly how I got it wrong, and how your view differs, in detail. Please be specific. I won't be holding my breath.Popperian_{September 14, 2015
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Alex Rosenberg's brain wrote an entire book without thinking about anything at all. Forget royalties!Mung_{September 14, 2015
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Eigenstate: In the “before” statement, his certainty obtained in the reasoning *about* the definition. In the “after” statement, the “aboutness” has been stripped away, (...)
No, Eigenstate, “aboutness” was already stripped away in the before statement. In fact there was never any reasoning *about* the definition. So this is where you go horribly wrong, that is, according to your own position.
Alex Rosenberg: Science must even deny the basic notion that we ever really think about the past and the future or even that our conscious thoughts ever give any meaning to the actions that express them. I don’t expect you to accept these outrageous claims without compelling arguments for them. The mistake is the notion that when we think, or rather when our brain thinks, it thinks about anything at all. (...) We have to see very clearly that introspection tricks us into the illusion that our thoughts are about anything at all. (..) It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all. The brain can’t have thoughts about Paris, or about France, or about capitals, or about anything else for that matter. When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong. Don’t misunderstand, no one denies that the brain receives, stores, and transmits information. But it can’t do these things in anything remotely like the way introspection tells us it does—by having thoughts about things. The way the brain deals with information is totally different from the way introspection tells us it does. Seeing why and understanding how the brain does the work that consciousness gets so wrong is the key to answering all the rest of the questions that keep us awake at night worrying over the mind, the self, the soul, the person. [A.Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide to Reality ,Ch.8, THE BRAIN DOES EVERYTHING WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL]
Box_{September 14, 2015
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eigenstate came in and, amazingly, tried to assert that there is no difference between LH's first statement and his second statement. There is only so much willful disruption and dishonesty that we will tolerate. We have been very patient with eigenstate, but enough is enough. He will be in moderation for a couple of days. But let's address his comment: LH1: "I cannot . . . be . . . certain of anything" LH2: "the proposition is not fallible" In the first statement LH says he cannot be certain about anything, including but not limited to the proposition A=A. In the second statement he asserts that the proposition A=A is not fallible, i.e. "infallible." "Infallible," of course, means "unfailing in effectiveness or operation; certain." eigenstate tries to rescue LH by inserting the word "about" in the first proposition. Does he think we can't read? Does he think we can't glance up to the OP and see that the word "about" appears nowhere in it? Does he think we can't read all of LH's other affirmations of radical falliblism, up to and including asserting doubt about cogito ergo sum itself? The real question is what motivates him to engage in such insane denials? I have to admit that I am utterly flummoxed by it. He knows he is lying. I know he is lying. Everyone else who reads his comment knows he is lying. What in the world motivates such outrageous conduct. It I did not see it myself I would not believe it.Barry Arrington_{September 14, 2015
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These people so fail at logic. But I guess that's the point? If I fail at logic, anything can be true? Is it just my imagination, or is eigenstate trying to use logic. He claims Barry is equivocating. Equivocation occurs over how terms are used in an argument. It presupposes the Law of Identity. Hey, I just came up with a brilliant idea! Let's use the Law of Identity to demonstrate the uselessness of the Law of Identity! Finally, we've found a use for the silly thing.Mung_{September 14, 2015
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Barry, you're equivocating again. In the "before" statement, his certainty obtained in the reasoning *about* the definition. In the "after" statement, the "aboutness" has been stripped away, and he's confined the statement to the qualities of the definition proper -- that's what "the only metric" speaks to in the claim. This is not a change, but a careful clarification forged out of a persistent misreading of LH's post by you. I understood this from the first pass. I just don't have the hostile intentions toward LH that make this such a stumbling block for you. LH's "Before" statement is still true, and so is his "After" statement. They are not interchangeable propositions. When reasoning about any definition D I cannot be certain my reasoning is sound. D as a definition only, without respect to the process of its formation, or any application in formulating synthetic propositions, does not avail of certain or doubt or any epistemic judgment. Thus, equivocation. And -- ho hum -- yet another representation of your opponent's position. There seems to be a pattern here...eigenstate_{September 14, 2015
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I do have one question for LH. How does he know the proposition is not fallible?Barry Arrington_{September 14, 2015
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