I think the problem is with the implicature. For the deflationist, speaking literally, I think the problem is with the implicature. For the deflationist, speaking literally, the statement "A star is made of an ideal gas." means same as the statement "It is true that a star is made of an ideal gas." But the implicature is different. When you say that X is true (and you're not just using true as a useful quantifier, as in "everything she said is true"), you're "stomping your foot", so to speak, which you wouldn't want to do when idealizing. So the pragmatics of true might not be deflationary, but its semantics might be. That's not something I found in the literature or anything; it's just a response I thought of.
Hey! I’ve really enjoyed your content and it's helped me deepen not only my philosophical understanding and worldview but also my academic ambitions (neuroscience and psychology)! I've seen that a lot of your content/lectures tend to be heavily focused on naturalism, empiricism, and philosophy of science (and _maybe_ pragmatism? I only assume so based on your talks on instrumentalism haha! Correct me if I'm wrong on anything!), which is really nice for me since, I’m strongly a naturalist, and your content on empiricism has developed my empirical world outlook! I was once a scientific realist, but now I’m mostly an instrumentalism/pragmatism since it makes the most sense, for me, when making analytical assessments, accurate predictions, and empirical results at my work, as I'm currently a therapist at a children’s psych hospital, and I've had to familiarize myself with Steven C. Hayes’ functional contextualism (mix of pragmatism and contextualism) philosophy to guide patients through acceptance and commitment therapy. And your content on instrumentalism and empiricism has _also_ helped me to deeper understand my practice by quite a bit! Thank you for your wonderful content! I also enjoy that you make great lectures and meditations on such topics as cosmology, misanthropy, pessimism, modal logic, agnosticism, skepticism, and many others. But that has got me thinking that you don't seem like you’re much into rationalism, existentialism, or idealism (of course, I could be wrong). So, I was just wondering, what are your views on topics such as dialectics or phenomenology? I’m mostly asking because, recently, I’ve finally gotten around to beginning to understand G.W.F. Hegel and his content almost seems like it’d be a topic you’d lecture on haha! Dialectics, particularly Hegelian dialectics (applied to naturalism rather Hegel’s idealism), has played a major role in my line of thought thus far, and since empiricism plays a major role in the Hegelian dialectical process, I was wondering what your thoughts were, since you seem to strongly favor empiricism! Thank you! Also, I know you did a video on Galen Strawson’s panpsychism, but I haven't been able to get to that one quite yet, so I was curious if your favor panpsychism or materialism, since, as far as I know, both are equally as empirically verifiable.
I'm not sure if I'm a pragmatist. I have a lot in common with pragmatists, but I worry that pragmatists often tend to conflate success and truth. A large part of my philosophical work has assumed that there is a significant distinction between success and truth, and that success is not a reliable indicator of truth (this is the antirealist/instrumentalist element). Some of the major figures in pragmatism are explicit about denying or at least downplaying the success/truth distinction. However, many people who know more about pragmatism than I do have told me that this isn't really an essential part of the pragmatist tradition. >> So, I was just wondering, what are your views on topics such as dialectics or phenomenology? I don't know those topics. I don't think I've ever even read Hegel. If I did, I don't remember any of it now. With respect to existentialism, I am quite interested in Max Stirner, who I think is often viewed as a precursor to the movement. Beyond that though, my background is really just in the analytic tradition. >> so I was curious if your favor panpsychism or materialism, since, as far as I know, both are equally as empirically verifiable I vacillate between saying that I'm simply agnostic, and saying that neither of these is actually well-defined. As an empiricist though, I'm generally pretty skeptical of metaphysical theorizing.
“If we didn't disapprove of slavery, then slavery wouldn't be wrong.” I’m not really sure how this could even catch the realist intuition that this is false. If in some hypothetical world everyone, including the slaves, didn’t disapprove of enslavement, why would a realist claim it is wrong?
The slaves are still miserable, they are still treated cruelly, etc. They just don't form the judgment that it's morally wrong. Imagine if the slaves were convinced that their condition is appropriate punishment for sins in a past life or something like that; and imagine that the people teaching them this know that it's BS, invented just to keep the slaves docile. Most realists (and antirealists for that matter) would say that this arrangement is unjust.
Oh, and just one last question (sorry for so many, I'm just always curious) - since you seem to align with pessimism, nihilism, and skepticism, what are your thoughts on (secular) Buddhism? I know you're an egoist, which can go against one of the main doctrines of Buddhism (kinda) depending on how you look at it, but Hume’s _bundle theory_ , as you’re most likely very well aware of, is incredibly similar to _non-self_ , _impermanence_ , and the _five aggregates_ . Hume’s definition of causality also reminds me, vaguely, of Buddhism’s doctrine of _dependent_ _origination_ (as well as the _karmic cycle_ , if one were to interpret that in a secular deterministic way) -- I figured I’d ask since Buddhism sort of has a foundation in pessimism ( _suffering_ ), nihilism ( _emptiness_ ), and skepticism ( _the_ _unanswered_ _questions_ & _the_ _imponderable_ _questions_ ), as well as its ties with Humean philosophy. To me, personally, I find Buddhism, when extracted from its religious metaphysics, offers an interesting philosophy and subsequent lifestyle which embraces pessimism, nihilism, and skepticism as a means to obtaining peace and liberation, plus I think it utilizes the concept of _faith_ in a very unique and unorthodox manner when compared to other “spiritual” or “religious” traditions, as in, instead of faith in God or faith in the Divine, but has a rather pluralistic use of faith, such as faith in one’s growth on the path, or faith in the unknown. Also, for me at least, it seems very compatible with naturalism, pragmatism, and empiricism. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thank you! Sorry for the long questions!
It seem to me that moral discourse is somewhat similar to legal discourse, in that people are playing a word game that sounds like propositions, they feel like they are making propositions, but they wouldn't sign up to any concrete physical or metaphysical interpretation of what exactly they are saying. So that noncognitivism is wrong because they do mean to assert, but error theory is wrong too, because the sort of fail to refer. But it also not quite true that the speech us meaningless, since it is pronounced with intention and received accordingly. There seem to be something spatial with that sort of speech, as if the game itself is the meaning. Did I just declare myself an uneducated pragmatist?
I have no understanding of different theories of truth (or idealisations in science), but would there be a difference between asserting a statement and entertaining a hypothetical? Like the difference between saying something is actually the case and just imagining if something were the case and what would follow from that. If so, could you say that idealisations in science are more like entertaining hypotheticals for pragmatic reasons? I may have just completely missed the point but it was just a thought I had. Also in terms of fictionalism being simpler than the complex semantics of quasi realism I guess I would grant you that if I thought fictionalism made sense but I don't personally understand how it does. If I'm not mistaken, the fictionalist says that if moral properties were to exist they would be these weird mysterious things and that even though they don't actually exist its still useful to pretend they do. But if they are so weird and mysterious, it's not clear what we're even supposed to be pretending. For example, I don't think unicorns are real but I can imagine what they would be like if they were, I could engage in a fiction with unicorns. But I have no idea what a 'human right' would be like if it actually existed. I have no coherent conception of this entity called a 'human right' that somehow gives everyone categorical reasons for action, so I don't really know what to imagine.
My worry about that kind of move is that all the work that was being done by a robust conception of "truth" still has to be done, but we're just framing it in terms of different kinds of "assertion". So we're deflationary about truth, but now have to give a robust account of assertion. I dunno, maybe deflationists are happy with that. But if the same kind of work has to be done either way, I'm not sure what we're gaining. That's an interesting point about fictionalism. The way that I tend to think about it is that the fiction is that there are categorical reasons for action. When I say that slavery is wrong, I'm saying that you ought not to enslave people, regardless of what your own desires, values, and attitudes are. Now, I can't make sense of how desire-independent reasons are supposed to work. I don't know what these would be like, if they actually existed. I'm not sure this is a problem though. I also don't know how, for example, paradoxes concerning time travel would be resolved, were sci-fi type time travel actually possible, yet I can engage with fictions like Doctor Who because the actual mechanics of time travel isn't important to follow the stories.
@@KaneB Ok yeah, I’m not sure I really understand that point about needing to give a robust account of assertion, would you say that entertaining a hypothetical is a type of assertion? Would making a distinction between assertion and entertaining hypotheticals require a robust account of assertion? I don’t know much about this topic at all so maybe I’m just missing something. I think I see where you’re coming from with fictionalism. I guess my issue is not just that I don’t know what categorical reasons for action would be like if they existed, it’s that I don’t see moral rules/values as the kinds of things that it makes sense to talk about as existing/not existing. I’m not sure exactly what I’m concerned with when I wonder what moral rules/values to endorse (maybe one concern is that they fit with my intuitions) but I’m not particularly concerned about them corresponding to some objective moral reality. Along the lines of something you’ve mentioned before, if there were some metaphysical basis for moral values and it turned out they dictated that homosexual sex was wrong it wouldn’t change my lack of an issue with it. Let’s say you take moral rules to be useful heuristics/conventions for rational agents acting in their self interest. If these rational agents endorsed these moral rules and agreed to constrain their behaviour in line with them I don’t think it adds anything to see them as engaging in a fiction, they are just agreeing to respect conventions and using heuristics to guide their behaviour in a way that will be helpful to them in the long run. I would see the non-cognitivist as giving a more plausible account of what these agents are doing e.g. making commitments and adopting certain attitudes; rather than make-believing some sort of metaphysical reality. I guess it would be the same as legal rules or social conventions. I don't think people need to believe in a 'Form of the Legal' or 'Form of the Socially Acceptable' to take these rules/conventions seriously, they just need certain attitudes. So I guess I’m more sympathetic to non-cognitivism for those reasons, I’m not sure about quasi realism though.
@@samsklair4701 >> I don’t know much about this topic at all so maybe I’m just missing something. I don't know much about it either. I'm not really sure what to say to your questions. But my point is this. It seems to me that I can point to lots of examples in which we state things we know to be false. This a problem for the deflationist, because they take "it is true that P" to be equivalent (in some important sense) to just "P". But I can give you lots of "P (and it is false that P)." Now, one obvious response here is that in these cases, people are not really asserting "P". "It is true that P" will only be equivalent to genuine assertions of P. But the purported counterexamples I've offered aren't genuine assertions. Well, now it seems like we need some theory that distinguishes genuine assertions from ersatz assertions. What makes something a genuine assertion? Here's an intuitive answer: S genuinely asserts that P just in case S believes that P corresponds to the way the world is. I doubt a deflationist would want to accept that analysis! (Or maybe they would. Maybe a correspondence theory of assertion doesn't have the problems that the deflationist sees with a correspondence theory of truth?) >> Let’s say you take moral rules to be useful heuristics/conventions for rational agents acting in their self interest. On this view, the fiction would be that all rational agents do in fact, or would under "ideal" conditions, agree to a particular set of rules. When I say that "slavery is wrong", I'm assuming that all rational agents would take themselves to be bound by it, or something along those lines. I should note that when I say fictionalism is simpler, what I have in mind is just that fictionalists can deal with moral semantics in a much more straightforward way. They can take moral statements at face value. They don't need to construct elaborate expressivist theories to deal with the embedding problem. There are other alternatives that are also simpler in this respect, such as relativism and constructivism.
@@KaneB Ok I think I see your point about assertion. The correspondence theory of assertion does seem intuitive for many statements but I don't think it does for moral statements. I dunno, maybe I would want a different theory of assertion for moral statements where what it is to genuinely assert a moral statement is to be committed to act in accordance with the moral view you are expressing e.g. to genuinely assert that murder is wrong is to be committed to avoiding/condemning murder. Maybe what all assertions have in common on this view is that they express some commitment of the speaker. Assertions like "the sky is blue" may express a commitment to seeing the statement as corresponding to the world, whereas moral assertions express commitments to act in certain ways. I guess my attraction to non-cognitivism is that I'm pretty convinced by the view that morality is necessarily practical/connected to action. If moral reasoning is a type of practical reasoning I.e. reasoning about what to do, then the conclusions of moral reasoning need to have some motivational force. Desire-like attitudes provide that motivational force but ordinary beliefs do not. I guess that's why I think there is some point to developing a logic of attitudes. Cognitivist accounts may be simpler/more in line with common sense, but I think they miss the point.
You're right. Idealizations are models that are used to approximate reality when a fully accurate analysis is too daunting, too expensive, etc. No sane scientist or engineer has ever asserted that stars are composed of ideal gases. I don't see any utility in a hypothetical ("if stars were composed of ideal gases, then X, Y, and Z follow.")
Yeah I listened conference about Sellars where discussants pointed out that deflationists must direct their efforts on adequate account of assertion, which they mostly don't, something along these lines.
Political theory often observes that assertions within authoritarian structures are subject to a hierarchy of truth. In such systems, truth is determined not by empirical evidence or objective merit, but by the pronouncements of those in power. This creates a quasi-realist environment, where the political system operates as an absolutist state with top-down control. Individuals within this state must constantly gauge their position relative to others. If they perceive themselves as lower in the hierarchy, their own beliefs, even if objectively true, cannot be validated within the system. This means that even if someone demonstrates a truth through meritocratic means, their findings may be dismissed if they are not in a position of authority. Thus, to survive and thrive within an absolutist state, individuals must adopt a quasi-realist stance, aligning their beliefs with those of the ruling class. The more convincingly a subordinate embraces this quasi-realism, the better their chances of improving their own standard of living and that of their family. This acceptance of subjective truth extends beyond object facts and permeates interpersonal relationships, creating a social realism where individuals prioritize maintaining the appearance of conformity over pursuing objective truth. In essence, living within an absolutist state necessitates a compromise on personal beliefs and a prioritization of social standing. This can lead to a distortion of truth and a suppression of individual expression, as people adapt to the demands of the system to ensure their own well-being.
I want to stop at 16:00 to comment that a lot of deflationists-esque philosophers like Blackburn and Huw Price have been influenced by Rorty and Davidson. Rorty explicitly said he wanted to ditch any notion of philosophical discussion trying to get 'something' right', he didn't believed there was anything for philosophers to get right about. That's why he named one of his philosophical papers volumes 'Philosophy as Cultural Politics', he saw philosophy as a sort of literary genre where we concern ourselves on how to make apparently conflicting vocabularies and conceptual tools compatible, to find compromise, happy redescriptions, etc. So yeah, to some guys philosophers should become 'sort of' politicians.
Perhaps I'm being unfair in treating quasi-realism as a specifically metaethical position. Though it's worth noting that most quasi-realists insist that philosophers do get things right. They don't want to ditch notions like rightness (even "mind-independent rightness"); they want to vindicate them! Even if Rorty might have seen himself more as a politician, he didn't talk like one -- at least not in this respect. He was quite clear that on his view, a lot of traditional analytic philosophy is just confused.
That's probably not going to happen, I'm afraid. I don't find Stoicism particularly interesting. Well, maybe their contributions to propositional logic are interesting. I might do a video on that some day.
@@KaneB what do you think about their concept that nothing can be good or bad unless it is up to you? It's sort of like saying, if I get hit by lightning it's not bad because I've done nothing bad. And to bear it only is something good. So the Stoic can always be good, whether burning alive or laying in a bed.
@@KaneB cool beans. I used to be more into the stuff you are into. But somehow the Stoics changed me. Maybe because I had kids and was looking for something to help raise them better. For me Stoicism is the perfect philosophy for parenting. So if you ever have kids, I recommend revisiting the Stoics. It's just such a super simple philosophy, it's great for kids or people who are not into philosophy.
The move towards quasi-realism is just the result of the acknowledgement that one can engage in a moral discourse. There are no concessions involved, besides maybe a commitment to some basic account of truth which could resemble the Tarskian model-theorethic approach (I don't think its unthinkable that, for example, certain ethical claims could, in the same way as approximate scientific claims do, "correspond" in some sense to some features of some another possible world, if I may use a Kripkean-Lewisian metaphor, so an antirealist about science shouldn't have a problem with attributing truth to moral claims, although they don't tell us much about the world in case of our world, it seems). I think it would be harmful for philosophy (and perhaps for our everyday lives) to consider moral discourse redundant. If one commits oneself to the claim that stealing is wrong, one should be reminded, if one does steal for one's own benefit, that he's inconsistent with his views. Law also operates in deontic claims and I don't think there's anything inflationary or controversial about the claim that the question of whether one's actions agree with the law or don't is intelligible. Considering that these cases already in my opinion involve the assumption that moral claims have propositional content beyond the assertoric force (using a Fregean-Dummetan term), I think a radical variety of antirealism about morals is unsatisfactory and even somehow paradoxical. When an antirealist says that ethical or scientific theories are merely 'good guesses' and that there's no guarantee they will converge on the capital-T truth, and thus the whole notion of a capital-T truth is unintelligible, he already speaks in a semi-quasi-realistese. I mean: If there's no content to a moral claim, one can't say he believes it or that there could be or couldn't be some agreement about it - these notions wouldn't make any sense if they were merely descriptions of the popular opinion or whatever. We just don't have to mythologize objectivity. Your antirealism furthermore seems to me like a kind of reductive empiricism which dissolves all modal claims and turns them into descriptive claims (often about the present). This, again, harms moral discourse because it seems to imply that disagreeing with the popular opinion is equivalent to being wrong (I don't think you mean to say that but you provide an account that is simply flawed in this way). Instead of mythologizing metaphysical objectivity, we get to mythologize the popular opinion. All of this for preserving a kind of descriptivism. I don't care if we get to satisfy any realistic intuitions, I'm an amateur philosopher. But if it's a real advantage for professional philosophers, I think it's not a bad idea to do it in addition to the aforementioned pros. Sorry if I missed some points of your rant, I was watching your video in the background.
It's not a position I'm inclined towards, but it's an interesting idea. What's not so clear is how this supposed to support quasi-realism. A genuine realist would presumably say that this is just not what they mean by "truth" ("fact", "property", etc.), so in fact this "truth" theory doesn't vindicate anything that they care about.
I can't think of any context where we could assert something but couldn't say "it's true". Usually in the case of idealisations we're just describing a fictional entity (see fictionalism about scientific representation), and what we say is true of this entity. Example: student: "shouldn't the pendulum decelerate?" Prof: "no, because there's no friction" student: "oh yes it's true".
I don't think that any particular account of models works universally, but I find the direct representation view more plausible in many cases. So I don't find your response to the idealization problem persuasive.
@@KaneB whatever view of representation you adopt, my point is that there doesn't seem to be any problem in responding "it's true" when someone mentions an idealisation: "We're talking about an infinite gas here, so blabla" "Oh, it's true". In any case, I would like to see a more mundane example of an "honest" falsehood assertion. I mean, modelling in science is a very specific activity (modelling is not the same as asserting something), and idealisations are sufficiently troublesome that many philosophers debate them, so it is not a very convincing counterexample to deflationism. Is it really true that we *often* assert falsehood ("honestly") as you say?
@@KaneB what is plausible to me is that in some context we would talk about a fictional entity and there's no problem in saying "it's true" (describing an ideal pendulum in a classroom for example). In other, more applied contexts, we wouldn't *assert* the idealisation. We would *not* say "the star is an infinitely extended gaz" but rather "we model the star as...". In either case, assertions and truth go hand in hand. I'd like to have a genuine counterexample of an assertion to which we couldn't answer "it's true".
@@qyuyuyn On the direct representation view, there are no models, only model-descriptions, which are asserted of targets (or "stated" of targets, or "said" of targets, or whatever, if you don't want to say "asserted"). We imagine the target as if it had different properties. I don't find it particularly natural to say that such descriptions are "true", and given how common it is to speak of them as "useful falsehoods" and suchlike, it seems I'm not alone in this. I don't know why it would matter whether or not a suggested counterexample is "specific activity". Though I grant that the example might be rebutted by adopting a different account of how idealizations work. >> In other, more applied contexts, we wouldn't assert the idealisation As I suggested in the video, I don't really have a problem with this move, but now it seems that all the work that was being done with a robust theory of truth is just shifted onto our theory of assertion. That is, in response to somebody saying "P", we might say that this is a false assertion, and so a counterexample to deflationism, or we might say that it's not really an assertion at all, even though it has the "surface form" of assertion. That saves deflationary truth, but now we need a theory of genuine assertion. I don't see what we've gained, all things considered.
@@KaneB I'm not talking about interpreting or theorising here, I want a real life example of a scientist saying "this star is an infinitely extended gaz" (for example) where it wouldn't make sense to answer "this is true". My claim is that there are not. Again, presenting a model is not the same as asserting something about a target system (you never answer "it's true" or "is false" to someone pointing to a picture). If I show a caricature of a politics as an animal, I'm not literally *asserting* that the politics is an animal. You wouldn't here me say "X is an owl" for example, but perhaps "X looks like an owl in this respect" or "the owl represents X" (and you could say "it's true" if you agree). I don't think I'm theorising about assertions here, it's only a surface level description of what's going on, and I can't find any problem for deflationism in this description.
I asked myself what being safe means. I thought of what a hippie idea of safe would mean and then thought of how a conservative might define it. I don’t think we can have a consensus on moral truth. At least I’m not sure.
Isn't the problem with meta-ethical debates sometimes that they often focus on some sort of very purified kind of thing called 'the moral judgement', to the effect that some things have the property of being 'right' or 'wrong', some actions have the property that one 'ought to perform them' and so on. I am not sure how big of a role those kinds of judgements play in actual ethical discourse. If I say that slavery is unjust, or barbarous, or discriminatory or if I say that some person is benevolent or saintly or honest or a creep, have I then made a 'moral judgement'? It seems a perfectly 'factual' matter, for instance, whether someone is generous or selfish.Indeed, the whole idea that EVERYTHING WE SAY can be divided up into some neat dichotomy between 'descriptive' and 'evaluative' judgements seem to me to be a classical case of philosophical over-simplification. Where do we draw the line, in the examples I mentioned above? Can we always draw it? When are we just emoting (or whatever) and when do we pass into 'describing'? If anti-realism just says that it is never true when we say that something is 'wrong' or 'right' or when something 'ought not to be done', then I at least don't think that it is very disturbing.
I don't agree with you regarding moral realism (in fact I think that most of your arguments against it are really bad), but at least I can agree with the conditional: IF moral realism isn't attractive to us, then quasi-realism also shouldn't be attractive to us.
As somebody apparently attracted to realism, what's your view of quasi-realism? Do you think it captures realist intuitions well? I struggle to see why it would be attractive even to realists. It strikes me more as the worst of both worlds than the best.
@@KaneB I definitely agree with your last sentence. The reason why I'm a realist is because I believe "Treating another human being merely as a means to an end is prima facie morally bad" is true in the exact same way that "The sky is blue" is true, there's a truthmaker out there in the world which makes it the case (i.e. I believe in the correspondence theory of truth). So no, I don't think quasi-realism captures what I like about realism. If someone presented me with a flawless argument against realism, then I would become an error theorist, not a quasi-realist. I enjoyed your video a lot.
Which really bad arguments are you referring to? Seems to me we antirealists don't need to do much other than show arguments for realism are bad, and that there's no particularly good reason to think realism is true. Anything else is icing.
@@dominiks5068 Why do you think treating other people as a means to an end is prima facie morally bad? If I didn't think the sky was blue, there are things you could to to show me that this was the case. Is there anything can you do to show someone that the moral claim you endorse is true?
@@suzettedarrow8739 I've discussed a bunch of arguments across various videos, some of which are deductive or could easily be restated to be deductive. I have a metaethics playlist that collects these videos.
@@suzettedarrow8739 To be honest, I don't get much out of writing youtube comments. If I have a disagreement with somebody, I prefer to talk about it in person. So if the option of just playing a silly game presents itself, I'll take that over a "serious" discussion.
@@KaneB Great. Would you point me towards the arguments you’ve discussed? My question wasn’t asked in snark, although your answer was. I agree writing in comments is less than ideal. Unfortunately, it’s the only medium I’m which I available to me to ask you questions.
For a non cog A moral statement has no truth value so its not a proposition if P than Q Doesnt work for moral statements since for a non cog they are not propositions If hurray than boo Is simply not coherent Just like "If torture is wrong than paying someone else to torture is wrong" Is not coherent for a non cognitivist It can be coherent for a moral realist Just like some sentences dont make sense unless you are a dualist does not mean that dualism is true
Something like: If i have a negative attitude to torture than i also have a negative attitude to paying someone else to torture Is fine thou Just like If i dont like strawberry than i dont like strawberry cake Is fine Just both are non sequiturs in my opinion since there is no direct logicial connection (maybe i have an aversion only to doing torture myself and i might only have a problem with strawberry by itself)
