Dennis wrote:

I've unfortunately wounded my hand so it is very hard for me to type. I'll skip to the relevant parts.
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Either take a brake from writing or sue the man who said something inappropriate to the bartender whom you punched, Dennis. Regardless, I hope your hand heals.

Timocrates, that made me laugh I'll tell you what happened later. But thanks for that. Thanks Timocrates and Incessable, I've mostly recovered. I know the people on this forum have prayed for me, so thanks for that. 

On to business.

Incessable wrote:

When you use the word "probability" here, do you mean it in a frequentist or Bayesian sense. If we adopt a Bayesian interpretation of probability, it is just assigning a number to how much confidence we have (or ought to have) in the truth of a proposition; as such, I don't see how the concept of probability is necessarily inapplicable to metaphysical propositions.

Dennis wrote:

This reminds of me of how people tend to appeal to the Anthropic Principle or things as such as 'Random' as a way to get a free metaphysical ticket due to their method which only sidesteps the issue by some ad hoc reasoning.

Your subjective states of affairs on choosing one proposition over the other is not relevant. And as such, only relevant to your preferential affairs. The issue of which is the right metaphysic is not about your subjective affairs or mine, it's about what reality is, and how well our intellect is able to apprehend it. John West introduced me to this wonderful dispositional account of colors by Armstrong and J.J.C Smart.[1] I'm not sure if Smart meant it to be dispositional in nature, but I consider their efforts to have proved that color and its perception are intimately tied, to the effect that color is not separable from its perception. I'm currently working through Anna Marmodoro's book on Aristotle On Perceiving Objects,[2] if she changes my mind, I'll let you know. My point being, I believe that some subjective affairs, may really turn out to be dispositional affairs first, and that preference can be argued to come under the wings of disposition.


Consider the fact that you and I both drink coca-cola, our tongues have the same disposition when it receives the cola. Yet, we have a difference of opinion. If things like taste could be reducible in the same way color is with regard to its perception, we can at least affirm that we taste the same thing. Could it not be attributed to our particular instantiation of humanity, and our tongue, throats etc.? Certainly, it could. But now we're no longer talking about probability in the Bayesian sense, we're talking about how natures are particularized and how this affects us. How is Incessable's instantiation of Humanity different from Dennis's humanity? What are the consequences of this same-ness and difference? We're no longer discussing probability now, we're talking about the consequences of a stance on the problem of universals, whether realist, conceptualist or nominalist.

But moreover, the question of choosing one over the other would concern aesthetics of some sort, or something else. There are far too many hurdles too be crossed before we declare that things as such as taste, perception, and anything else, including reason is a normative affair.

Incessable wrote:

You may well be right there. The problem I see: we can try to use basic principles of rationality to decide which metaphysical system to adopt, but if the choice of metaphysical system determines what the basic principles of rationality are, then the entire project of using reason to choose a metaphysical system could turn out to be circular.

Two thousand years, and counting, but the problem is the same. Nominalism vs Realism. And this is what the Existentialists exemplify. My teacher introduced the problem of the universals in just exactly the way you've put it because I was a new and liked Existentialism [now, I despise it]. [3] Almost every single philosophical issue hinges upon what kind of stance we take on this issue, since whatever stance we take on this issue, will necessarily give us the lens with which we will see the world, and everything in it. Logic and reason included. As such, the issue must be settled on independent grounds, and that's why we always argue Realism vs Nominalism.

Incessable wrote:

I understand the distinction. Is the principle of parsimony a generic principle of reasoning, or a discipline-specific one? If the latter, then you are right that the fact that some version of the principle proves fruitful in the natural sciences is no reason to suppose the same version ought to be adopted in metaphysics; however, if the former is true, then the success of one version in the natural science is evidence that the same version should be adopted in metaphyics.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean here, but I'll say that the principle of parsimony  which is not translatable in the formulae you mentioned. The translation does not preserve ontological parsimony, even if it does some other purpose. Your translation of what parsimony is, would count for some theoretic for science, perhaps. But other people should be talking about this, rather than I. There are different kinds of explanans, scientific and metaphysical. My claim is; the translation simply isn't a preservation of ontological parsimony. It is a preservation of one's subjective states of affairs about 'x'.

A: How much confidence do you have in x, rather than y?

B: A lot more than in y.

A: Why? What reason do you have to do that?

B: Because, given the evidence, it's much more probable for x to be, than for y.

A: What is this probability grounded upon?

B: On science.

A: But it's not discussing science.

B: So what?

A: That's utterly question-begging and wrongheaded.

Now, I'm not saying this is exactly what you're saying, but if you're saying anything as such. This kind of subjective states of affairs isn't reasoning, as how I see it, it's only a settlement of one's epistemological issues. And sure, there's that. But that's not metaphysics, we should be careful not to conflate the two. Some issues like Max Black's Iron Sphere's might be unsettling, and it really bothers me at night. I'm totally unequipped to deal with the counter-example. But that for some other time, I just wanted to say, there are cases where one may be unable to see what the issue is, in essence. The case of probability is purely a subjective states of affairs case which owes itself to the restriction of epistemic access [we are not all knowing]. Arguments as such from pessimistic meta-induction are still an appeal either to possibility under the guise of possibility. 

I'm still somewhat sympathetic to arguments for contrastive underdetermination. It is not the case that the argument is reducible to end up being circular, but rather, since the conclusion has been reached by a valid reasoning, I can't really say it's reducible to an appeal to possibility. John, could please say something on this affair for me? I'd greatly appreciate it. I'm not sure if the claim that since contrastive underdetermination happens, that purely unconceivable alternatives equal with mere possibility. I think they are different, if they are reducible to mere possibility, please correct me.

My point, Incessable, is that none of these people are appealing to probability, and in turn implicitly appealing to possibility. They are vehemently arguing against the propositions, absent probability.

Incessable wrote:

Isn't rationality inherently normative? An agent is rational if they are using their faculty of reason in the proper way, irrational if using it in an improper way–and these words proper and improper are normative terms. A rational argument is one which ought to be accepted by a rational agent; an irrational argument is an argument which a rational agent ought reject.

In short, no. You have defined rational arguments circular-ly, leaving out what it means to be rational. Rationality concerns the power of the human substance. What counts as a proper and improper usage of the power are not subjective statements. I would define reason as a power of a rational substance. As such, the following will be its groundwork upon which the castle is built.

http://iteadthomam.blogspot.com/2012/05/quaeritur-are-secondary-substances-same.html

They are the study of, and the subject matter of logic. Ones reasoning may be subjective, for all we know, we could probably never avoid this! But even then some sort of answer to the Universals will come to play. Since, the agent is what reasons, and the ontological status of reason has to be decided on independent grounds. "Whether intelligibility is from the mind, or from the world?" 

The subject matter and the study of logic is nowhere near subjective. 

A thing cannot both be, and not be something in the same respect at the same time.

If now you're going to argue against first principles, you are sure to try. But I suggest Aristotle's Book IV on the metaphysics before doing that. And notice, the ones who actually argue this have implicitly committed themselves to some form of Nominalism. They disconnect the mind from the world, Aristotelians do not take kindly to that. 

A friend of mine once thought to himself "Why is it so difficult to learn these concepts?" And he thought that it really shouldn't be, because the meaning of a sentence, that is, a relation, can only hinge on the meaning of handful of logical operators such as 'x is in y' or 'x is sufficient for y' and so on. So he took to creating some kind of symbolic language that he'd use to translate troublesome passages into it in order to understand them easily by putting some real hard work into it. And then one day he realised that he'd just been trying to make his own form of mathematical logic and gave up. You get your modals of possibility, contingency and necessity in the thin-nest sense of the terms from experience. To get into what they actually mean? That's where metaphysicians come into play. No one's going to be dealing rough diamonds here, we're all focused on polishing them to make them shine. This is what matters. If you are drunk (not saying that you are, or that you drink) and somehow manage to lose your car keys at night under a street lamp, it would be utterly silly to assume that the car keys could not have fallen anywhere but under the lamp-spot, and thus not search anywhere beyond the light of the street lamp. This is simply bad because it doesn't exhaust the possibility of where the keys might have fallen. In the same vein of argument, it is simply terrible to deal with metaphysical issues with rough notions of what it means to be 'possible,' especially so when it is reduced to probability, which is simply the elaboration of the roughest stone. One may elaborate all they want, but I'm not buying it till it shines. You have to dig deeper than that.

And on another note, Richard Swinburne and Adolf Grünbaum heavily disagreed on what the principle of parsimony concerns. Dr. Swinburne gave a Bayesian argument for the existence of God from various features of the universe. So it's definitely worth looking into, unfortunately I can't seem to find a place where all the papers are in one place. If someone can find that, I would appreciate that a ton!


I expect the forum members to chip in, in due time, and correct both you and me if we're wrong at any step of the way, and/or add to what we're talking of. This is the Holy week, so if I don't reply quickly, just assume that I'm busy with my duties in real life.

[1]The paper is entitled, "On Some Criticisms of a Physicalist Theory of Colors" by J.J.C Smart. If you can't find this online or on JSTOR, message me and I'll send you the papers myself.
[2]http://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Perceiving-Objects-Anna-Marmodoro-ebook/dp/B00LA5V2R4
[3]http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/universals-medieval/