User:Lucidish/Outlook

Outlook

Note: this page is bloated with jargon, not because I like to write this way, but because the material here is bloated self-indulgence. The mark of a serious work of philosophy is that it is written in plain language. Be warned.

Natural philosophy

• Philosophy is continuous with almost all intellectual endeavor. This is true both historically and in practice. This is metaphilosophical naturalism.
  • Science is nothing but a method of description of the world. All consequent scientific explanations are philosophical. To the extent that any explanation is considered scientific, it is because it deals in the scientific method of describing the world.
• Pure Metaphysics (esp. as a study of first causes) is generally irrelevant. [i.e., I neither know nor care about whether any god(s) exist.] Kant referred to this as indifferentism.
  • What matters is happiness and misery, and by proxy, all those things causally related to human wellbeing which are within its sphere of control. This is hedonism.
  • To the extent anything needs to be said about metaphysics, we may consult the interpretations of theoretical physics, and use whatever methods of describing the categories of perception which are at our disposal.
    • Nominalism is my favored method of describing experience, both in the natural and social sciences.
    • It makes sense to investigate into the aggregate theory (math) of numbers instead of dwelling on set theory, which includes such absurdities as empty sets.
      • There is no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as a natural kind. By the same token, there is no good reason to discount the notion. This is light skepticism.

Philosophical anthropology

• There is a foundation for knowledge. The foundation is a method. The process of creating knowledge consists of optimally justified beliefs. This is a fusion of internalism and reliabilism.
  • Arguments over the discrete and the continuous are perceptual issues, not metaphysical ones.
  • The information of the senses is ajustified. The empirical program is founded on a fog which is not itself truth-functional. IE: "The blob which I hold before my eyes which I call a 'hand'" can be neither true nor false because it is not a proposition: it lacks a predicate.
    • A subject term in a statement is a subjective identification of an abstract object within a proposition, while the predicate is a prediction of later, optimal identifications.
    • An object is a collection of properties which form some pattern and which is uniquely distinguished by tactile sensation.
    • "Truth" and "falsity" can act as neither subjects nor predicates in a basic proposition. As a consequence, at least one form of Kurt Godel's paradox -- i.e., "This sentence is false" -- is a non-propositional, meaningless non-problem, because it lacks a predicate. Other forms, however, are still puzzling.
  • No propositional knowledge is a priori. If any things are "prior" to experience, it must be those skills which are associated with well-functioning human faculties. In other words, there are no innate thoughts, let alone innate propositions; there are only innate faculties.
  • Knowledge hinges upon possible recall. All the rest - our skills, and the unconscious - are subjustified, and hence, underknown.
  • The mind is whatever is brains do which is unique to them. It's one of those philosophically strange ideas, where an action (thinking) is treated as if it were an entity (thought). I take this to be a kind of biological naturalism.
  • There is an analytic-synthetic distinction. All analytic truths (save names given to qualia) are assumptions from experience about universals. However, the universal being designated, and hence the content of the statement, is (in the case of analytic statements) merely between conventional signs and senses. The content of a synthetic statement is between a variety of different senses whose signs are taken to be a matter of indifference.
    • Non-local references (i.e., to Caesar) are a complex of overlapping senses; a causal theory of names is nonsensical, literally lacking the content that is crucial to common use (and hence, meaning). History should be considered to be a special kind of fiction because it involves an epistemology that relies more upon trust than upon the force of impressions. Local references (i.e., to my hand) are also a complex of senses, but approach something far closer to a pure referential activity.
• Reason (in the relevant sense, as a verb) is the set of optimal social and intellectual steps that a person ought to take when considering propositions in order to come to assent or dissent from them. Reason (as a verb) is a method, not a faculty.
• Free will has nothing to do with determinism. It is merely the conscious mind exercizing control over the body and emotions. It is identical with agency. See compatibilism.
• I believe in consequentialism, and that pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value. I also believe that agency is an incorrigible value.
  • I believe in the fundamental rule of utilitarianism so long as it is used in the hands of those who have some sort of worldly wisdom. That means that it lacks the publicity condition, and also means that it may never be a canon in abstract ethics, though it may serve a purpose in meta-ethics.
    • Modern (social) liberalism would satisfy the above requirements.
• Agency is the control over the world by the conscious mind.
  • An action is any consequence which we attribute to be the result of agency.
  • A minimal action is the relation between one's agency and the smallest conceivable goal under its scope.
  • An ability to do something is the possibility of performance of it under ordinary conditions (though we usually only use the word if we believe it to be a likely possibility). Any information held in the brain which does not have the possibility of performance is not competence. Moreover, to the extent that normativity is a sensible concept, competence is normative.
  • A collective action may or may not be the result of collective agency. Collective agency exists when there is a group. It does not exist when there is an aggregate who happen to give rise, through minimal actions, to some greater act.
• Normativity is a puzzling notion which describes the peculiar, asymmetrical nature of a mere individual holding a value. It dissapears when values are understood to be descriptions of a kind of interaction. Values supervene upon attributions of other-regarding attitudes. While there is a fact-value distinction, from a social point of view, it is merely an appearant one.
  • Thus, values are public. (Wittgenstein held this view about language.)
  • Methodological individualism seems to be a prudent philosophy of social science because it forces us to commit to the fact-value distinction when it forces us to examine individuals alone. Individualism is advised due to the fact that consciousness is inherantly personal.
• A culture is the collection of popular behaviors and ideas, where the particular persons are taken to be a matter of indifference. In contrast to a society, where the individual members are taken to be signficant, and the non-demographic processes behind the generation of a culture can be examined.