| Chit-Chat » Suggesstions for the forums and issues for moderation. » 6/26/2015 6:12 pm |
- John West
- Replies: 125
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Jeremy Taylor wrote:I like Daniel's idea of sharing and discussing essays, though I would think many contemporary essays have a copyright (as much as I don't really think intellectual property should exist) that means they aren't allowed to be broadly shared, so we would have to focus on older ones.
Though, I assume that if a university is sharing PDFs publically, they have the proper permissions to do so. So, linking to those PDFs on those sites probably fine.
| Chit-Chat » Suggesstions for the forums and issues for moderation. » 6/26/2015 3:36 pm |
- John West
- Replies: 125
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DanielCC wrote:
Things are a bit busy for me at present but I'd definitely still be up for it. Made we should wait till we've a few more people involved though? Of course it would be necessary to ask around and reach a decision re the choice of book beforehand otherwise we'd all end up going off into our specialist subjects and leaving others perplexed.
It's up to you. My only input is that it ought to be about classical theism. Several others here are almost certainly better informed about classical theist-related and philosophy of religion literature than me.
One of the things you said you wanted to accomplish was to get more people reading authors like Scotus, right?
It may be worth checking the old scholastic bookshelf for ideas, too.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 12:14 pm |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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Just to add:
John West wrote:iwpoe wrote:Metaphysics has to seek its own grounds proper to its status as fundamental, not seek to borrow some alien method- even a deductive one.
Not according to Quine.We should avoid getting caught up in insubstantive semantic issues, too. If we want to call it all, including the scientific method here, metaphysics (naturalized metaphysics, usually), then we can do that. Quine's view isn't a strictly anti-metaphysical view. It's a project to naturalize metaphysics.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 11:53 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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iwpoe wrote:
I mean, how does that actually deal with the problem? One has just sunk the problem into a problem both of competing scientific approaches (which are the norm, though not emphasized as such) and competing metaphysical interpretations of prevailing apporaches.
I slid in with a ninja-edit right before you posted precisely to clarify this point (sorry). It helps by putting a constraint on the type of internally coherent metaphysics that may or may not be correct.
iwpoe wrote:Metaphysics has to seek its own grounds proper to its status as fundamental, not seek to borrow some alien method- even a deductive one.
Not according to Quine.
iwpoe wrote:Also, I'm not sure what it would mean to say that natural science and metaphysics not be contiguous with each other. Even if one held via a metaphysics that science was an illusion, one would presumably still need an ontology of that illusion and its viscitudes.
Consider Quine's scientific realism. If we're scientific realists and take the findings of the scientific method seriously as Quine wants, then it rules out a Cartesian demon scenario (which would, among other problems, require an instrumentalist view of scientific posits.) So, even though the Cartesian demon scenario can be made internally coherent, it's not contiguous with scientific realism.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 11:09 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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Oh, as I understand, Quine was fine with metaphysics, especially if they're indispensable to our best scientific theories. He just didn't think that we should be able to strike out scientific theories with metaphysical arguments. Instead, he thought natural science and metaphysics should be contiguous, with the hypothetico-deductive method leading the investigations[1]. In fact, in a sense, Quine (and his era of philosophers) mark the end of positivism and verificationism (and even gave some of the decisive arguments against verificationism), and the start of contemporary philosophers taking metaphysics seriously again.
…
One reason for Quine's methodology was that he was concerned about how we might select between competing, seemingly plausible, internally coherent metaphysics (only one of which, after all, can be correct)[2], and thought we should anchor our metaphysics in our best scientific theories, partly, to help deal with this.
For what it's worth, I agree with Quine only insofar as I think metaphysics and natural science ought to be contiguous with each other. But I approach metaphysics with a broadly Aristotelian methodology, in short, because I distrust the idea of building a metaphysic on uncertain inductive inquiry (as in science) instead of rigorous, deductive reasoning (based on undeniable first principles, like the law of non-contradiction, and equally undeniable, basic, self-evident features of reality, like change).
[1] Part of this is tied up with Quine's view that when we confirm a scientific theory, we confirm the theory whole. So, crudely, if I posit a quark and part of what's required for the theory I'm making that posit based on is existential commitment to mathematical entities, Quine argues I would be intellectually dishonest if I were a realist about the quarks, but not the mathematical entities the theory on which I'm making that posit require to work.
[2] Quine famously wrote:
[i]Any statement can be held true come what may, if we mak
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 10:06 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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iwpoe wrote:
I mean, what makes a position like that in any way related to one like Rosenberg or Dawkins?
I have no idea. Presumably they would say they both follow something like Quine's definition of naturalism and take the scientific method seriously, or something.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 9:59 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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I think it's important to point out though, that truthmaking isn't reference. For instance, consider the statement "Unicorns don't exist.” This is almost certaintly a true statement, but clearly it doesn't refer to a not-existent. That would be absurd. Instead, we can say the statement “unicorns don't exist” is true in virtue of the totality of horse-like animals, none of which are single-horned. I'm not saying you're implying this, by the way. I just think it's important, in a thread partly about Platonism, to point out so that people don't mistake truthmaker talk for the old argument from reference.
There are plenty of other good reasons why intellectually honest people should admit universals.
| Chit-Chat » Suggesstions for the forums and issues for moderation. » 6/26/2015 9:30 am |
- John West
- Replies: 125
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iwpoe wrote:
What was it Daniel said? I didn't catch them.
I was thinking of this quote (from here):
Daniel wrote:Failing that even something [...] where every couple of months we all decide on a book to read and discuss it afterwards. Or even just an essay maybe - that way we could just share it around in PDF form so people need not worry about massive costs.
Though, he may have just been lowballing. Still, there are a lot of good philosophy of religion books, of which I would have never even heard if not for conversations online. There is so much literature, sometimes it's hard to [even hear] of it. But I'll leave it to him to decide if this is something he's still interested in.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 9:11 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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And then you get some really weird naturalists. For example, one of the guys at that conference I linked holds that everything reduces mathematical entities (ersatz particles, I think -- a bit different from Tegmark). He's one of the co-authors of Ladyman and Ross's Every Thing Must Go.
iwpoe wrote:I never quite understood how exactly in the end Russell maintained his atheism. If you think "north of" is real why is the Form of the Good troubling?
I myself am open to something like the Hegelianism of Russell's youth, but I'm not sure that can easily get you to anything like the kind of modern scientistic atheism taken for granted now, or if it's even a non-theism.Certainly nothing like what Dawkins thinks. Russell held to the existence of universals. For example, in his earlier works, I understand he held to the existence of full-on, Platonic Forms or at least "free-floating" abstract objects. In his later works, he dropped the Forms but held that all objects were just bundles of instantiations of universals.
| Theoretical Philosophy » PP - Platonism vs. Naturalism - A Lecture by Lloyd Gerson » 6/26/2015 9:00 am |
- John West
- Replies: 21
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Well, there's some contention about what exactly a naturalist is in the first place. I call someone a naturalist (small “n”) if they adhere to Quine's definition of naturalism:
naturalism. the abandonment of the goal for a first philosophy. It sees natural science as an inquiry into reality, fallible and corrigible but not answerable to any supra-scientific tribunal, and not in need of any justification beyond observation and the hypothetico-deductive method.(Quine, Five Milestones of Empiricism)
Quinean naturalism, confirmational holism, and the Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis[1] lead directly to some type of realism about mathematical entities. It's the bread-and-butter realist argument in philosophy of mathematics, and most philosophers of mathematics—including people trying to undermine it like Hartry Field—agree that it goes through.
Moreover, I think most philosophers doing work on universals these days agree that they are forced to admit at least Aristotelian universals, or tropes (abstract particulars). For example, D. M. Armstrong, who defines naturalism as the thesis that nothing exists outside of space and time, was one of the foremost advocates of Aristotelian realism about properties and relations (until he died last year).
But sometimes (especially in philosophy of religion), Naturalists (I use a large “N” for them) use the term synonymously with a sort of mechanistic, physicalistic view of reality.
[1]The Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis is that ”We ought to have ontological commitment to all and only the entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theories.” I drop the "and only", because I think it's arbitrary and actually weakens the argument, but most naturalists would not.