A commenter in the previous video said that the white backgrounds were hard on the eyes because they were too bright. Hopefully this has solved the problem!
Michael Huemer does a lot of talks with TH-camrs. I’d be interested in watching you two talk since you both have very different world views (as far as I know). I think a lot of other people would be interested in that too. Keep up the good work! We appreciate the time you put into these
I was thrilled with this topic and the way you present it, so cool and interesting!!! It's impressive how you can explain very subtle distinctions in a clear way. I just really freaking dig this video
It seems like if there is some sorta circularity in using reason to justify using reason, then the fault is with the question asker than with the defender of reason. “Why use reason?” could be restated as “What is the reason to use reason?” which is clearly asking one to use reason to justify itself. It’s like asking “What is the rule in monopoly that says you must follow the rules of monopoly?” and then getting mad when someone says “Oh yeah, that’s rule 23” By asking “Why use reason?” the asker has already admitted that reason will convince them.
That capacity circularity distinction was really cool, I wonder what other arguments people find clever solely on the basis of them not noticing that subtlety about capacity circularity versus actually fallacious circularity.
I see a possible answer: when we ask for a reason of something (an event, an action, for example), we made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason). There are many reasons for many things, but, when somebody ask for a reason to use reason, he ask for a reason to use any element of the universe of reasons. The problem is, that this is not how the categories of reasons and totality works. We cannot give a reason to the "set" of reasons, because the "outside" of this set is the absense of reasons (we cannot "made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason)"). We can ask the reasons for particular events, but is a missaplication of the categories beg for a reason to the total universe of reasons.
Haven't seen the video. I'm just guessing as to why use reason: More satisfying conversation. Suppose I didn't use reason. If someone asks "why the sky is blue", then I could reply "because I like grapes." That response doesn't satisfy. Assuming the rational person perused and asked "how does my liking of grapes affect the sky? If I stop liking grapes, then does the sky stop being blue?" To which I reply "my liking of grapes affects the sky by moldy socks. When I stop liking grapes then the sky is musical forklifts." By holding a standard of language, we have better communication.
Very nice video, Kane! I've been thinking about the same topic recently, and the concepts of "rule-circularity" and "concept-circularity" were new to me. But I wonder, creating these concepts as well as thinking about and using them still depend on reason, right? And that still is annoying to me! Do you have any thoughts about that?
Thanks! About the annoyance: what's the alternative, though? Would an argument made without reason be more compelling? Presumably not! I don't think there's any way to remove the circularity. The question is whether it's a problematic kind of circularity. I'm inclined to think not.
@@KaneB I agree that there is no alternative, that it's "psychologically impossible". I see a connection with the regress problem in epistemology, and I think here you are providing an answer that in some sense resembles the coherentism approach there (in the regress problem). Do you see it that way?
Kane b I am a Rationalist too I want to say that on the Capacity Circularity another e.g of this circularity is found in epistemology in the case of Reliabilism where it is said that Reliabilist forms of epistemic justification end up in a kind of circularity called epistemic Bootstrapping or simply bootstrap what can you tell us about this it is often taken to go against these forms of justifcation and it seems to be an e.g of Capacity Circularity or am I coming up with something unrelated to this video?
I'm unsure about the relation of the bootstrapping problem to capacity circularity. I don't think it would count as capacity circularity, since it doesn't necessarily involve using a capacity to defend the same capacity. As I understand it, the bootstrapping problem arises for pretty much any proposition that somebody might infer on the basis of a reliable belief-forming process.
Fundamentally, reasoning is just thinking about thoughts. Rather than just having thoughts and uncritically acting upon thoughts, we have a capacity to examine our thoughts. We can break thoughts down into component parts, such as realizing that thought A is actually a conjunction of B and C. We can consider why we hold particular thoughts, and we can imagine how we would react if we were to have some thought. We can use a system of logic to structure our thoughts about thoughts and allow us to write them down and communicate them precisely. The irrationalist position would say that we _shouldn't_ be thinking about thoughts. The video suggests that irrationalists cannot have reasons for this position and any argument for irrationalism would undermine itself, but that seems unfair to the position. An irrationalist can use reasoning, and even to hold the position of irrationalism is to have an opinion about thoughts which naturally requires thinking about thoughts. A person is irrationalist simply because when she thinks about thoughts she comes to the conclusion that thinking about thoughts is unwise. We should consider how someone might come to that conclusion and not just abstractly reject any irrationalist argument as _a priori_ self-defeating. For example, an irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts a waste of time and energy. Thoughts are not things in the world. You cannot eat a thought, nor does a thought give you shelter. To think about our thoughts is to turn our attention inward and distract ourselves from the world while we explore an imaginary maze of our own construction. You could spend a lifetime pondering whether A implies B, and in the end the world will have passed you by while you've accomplished nothing real. An irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts isn't just wasteful but can even be actively harmful. People are driven by fears and desires, and we're not mechanically precise reasoning machines, so when we engage in reasoning we tend to make mistakes. We catch some of our mistakes, but we're more likely to overlook mistakes that lead us toward conclusions that we desire and away from conclusions that we fear. The result is that reasoning becomes a gradual process of systematically fooling ourselves into believing the things that we wish to be true. We can construct vast edifices of logic to insulate us from the world by creating intricate arguments to demonstrate to ourselves that the world is how we wish it would be. Computers may potentially be relied upon to reason productively, but humans tend to get themselves into trouble when they try reasoning. There is an obvious difficulty in trying to use arguments to convince an irrationalist to accept reason, since an irrationalist is philosophically opposed to thinking about arguments, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible. Even an irrationalist will almost certainly still engage in reasoning. It's just like a smoker who thinks that smoking is unhealthy but still smokes. We just need to present the irrationalist with a way of thinking about reasoning that leads the irrationalist away from the conclusion that we shouldn't use reasoning.
I don't agree with your characterization of reasoning, but I think you might be right about this -- >> An irrationalist can use reasoning This is the case because an irrationalist can do anything at all. Kukla characterizes irrationalism as the view that "all arguments are untrustworthy", but there's nothing to stop an irrationalist holding the proposition that some arguments are trustworthy, or even that all arguments are trustworthy. There's nothing to stop an irrationalist holding any proposition imaginable. My inclination is to respond that although the irrationalist might make the same inferences we make, it wouldn't count as reasoning. That is, when the irrationalist infers from the premises "If A then B" and "A" to the conclusion "B", she's not actually engaging in reasoning, because this inference is not based on treating those premises as constraining what conclusion she may legitimately infer. Of course, this response raises trouble for my treatment of reason as a cognitive capacity, rather than as a set of rules, in dealing with the circularity problem. It seems pretty plausible that the irrationalist is engaging the same capacity as the rest of us, when she makes those inferences.
What if I claim myself to be an irrationalist because it is impossible for a person to be totally reasonable and rational. Anyone who seems to be reasonable and rational ONLY because there is no OBVIOUS flaws in their reasoning. A so-called rationalist can be an alcoholic. It's very probable that ANY rationalist found on earth has a degree of flaws in their reasoning. People who call themselves rationalist ONLY because the unreasonable and irrational side of them is well hidden. It's very understandable that we are all pretend-to-be rationalist.
@@raythink I'm not sure what that has to do with the form of irrationalism discussed in this video. Rationalists can make mistakes. For the irrationalists, there are no mistakes.
The last few slides were really interesting. After thinking about them for a while, I think the only way you could make the capacity-circular argument is to assert that arguments do not exist without the capacity of reason - the existence of the capacity for reason is a necessary condition for any argument to be made. In that sense reason would be a property of arguments. This touches on various realist/non-realist debates. What would a world without the capacity for reason look like? What would it mean for p->p not to exist (talking of arguments not existing seems odd, but speaking of them being ‘invalid’ or ‘unsound’ would not seem to make sense in a world without the capacity to reason on this account)
Re realism/non-realism, a big concern I had about the last part of the video was that it seems to rest on the view that arguments and propositions exist as mind-independent abstract objects or something like that. As an empiricist, this is not a picture that I find attractive! Arguments are things that people do... but then arguably, capacity-circularity is a property of arguments themselves after all.
@@KaneB I think you would then be led to some sort of Quinean position - reason is embedded in our “web of belief”. You could say something like: It does not make sense to think about reason as somehow separate from our constantly changing set of beliefs about the world. It consists in the ways in which our beliefs “hang together” and interact with reality. You might say that the concepts of “reason” and “argument” under examination in this debate are a sort of epiphenomenon, ghostly abstractions bereft of all power, substance and value.
Nice video. Would this distinction between premise-circular and capacity-circular help with the Problem of Induction? We have the capacity to induction, so we don´t need a justification for it?
Your videos are fantastic. I'd love to see a video on how non-naturalists in metaethics have coped with "epistemic access" objections to non-naturalist moral realism. I've never understood how it is that these non-naturalists understand our physical brains as being able to "latch on" to moral truths that are somehow out there.
3:37 I wrote a comment about that a while ago🙂 5:25 My objection would be: Even though that argument doesn't assume validity of reason, it only shows that to reason has benefits, the validity of reason is assumed in that moment where you make the choice to follow that over other options.
I don't know if you read these, but I wonder if you could draw any connections between reason and libertarianism. Determinism almost seems to align well with irrationalism in that reason itself would only be a product of causal relationships. I don't know if you've ever discussed it, but I also wonder how this might connect to the ancient controversies of rhetoric.
This reminds me of self-refutation arguments and their use in metaphysical discourse. If possible, could you relate this video content to either Mackie or Boyle's interpretations of self-refutation?
@@KaneB Think TH-cam took my response with the link down, but Mackie's 'Self-Refutation: A Formal Analysis' is a great read that works all the way to Descartes' cogito argument! Either way, thanks for all the great videos.
Even from the account in this video, it can safely be said that there's no such person as an "anti-rationalist" ("anti-reasonist"?). Sure, some philosophers have rhetorically or poetically claimed to be one - and at the same time undermined their own position in doing so. Some have even noted that they were doing so! So is this position worth pursuing even despite all this? I would say that it is - in the same way that the self-referential arguments against relativism, Derrida's claim that "every concept deconstructs itself", etc. need to be tackled. (Stephen Stich's 'The Problem of Cognitive Diversity" is a very powerful and almost-persuasive account of some of these issues.) By the way, although "premise circularity" and "rule circularity" are clearly different - I'm still not entirely sure why one is deemed to be acceptable and the other isn't. In other words, pointing out the difference isn't itself a defence of rule circularity. I know that there is detail in the video on this, but I'm not sure if it sank in.
I'm also pretty skeptical of the attempts to defend rule-circularity. I think the distinction is worth noting though, partly just to illustrate different kinds of circularity, and partly because there are lots of philosophers who have appealed to the distinction in response to inductive skepticism. Anybody who finds it compelling in that context could appeal to the it here as well. Of course, my own approach here doesn't depend on the distinction, since I don't see the argument as either premise- or rule-circular.
I am wondering when you discuss the concept of premise circularity: aren't all deductive arguments premise circular, at least implicitly? You say that 'the premise that the bible was written by God, implicitly assumes that God exists... as it couldn't have been written by something non-existent' Suppose any deductive argument: P1) If A then B P2) A C1) Therefore B Don't P1) and P2) assume C1), as A could not be without B. I can't seem to understand the distinction between regular deductive reasoning and premise circularity.
In a sense, yes. Deductive arguments are non-ampliative; the conclusion does not contain more information than is already asserted by the premises. But notice that in your example, although (P1) and (P2) jointly assume (C1), neither (P1) alone, nor (P2) alone, assumes (C1). It's only when (P1) and (P2) are conjoined that you can derive (C1). In that sense, the argument might tell us something we didn't realize -- namely, that we are committed to (C1). Deductive arguments can reveal the consequences of what we already accept. I suppose this is premise-circular in a broad sense. "I can't seem to understand the distinction between regular deductive reasoning and premise circularity." Bear in mind that even "A, therefore A" is a valid deductive argument. Begging the question is an informal fallacy.
I don't think it's impossible to coherently argue that reason, as an activity, isn't worthwhile. But I do think any such argument necessarily implies it's own conclusion is irrelevant. And of course that it's irrelevance is irrelevant. But then also that the irrelevance of it's irrelevance is irrelevant. And so on. The same can't be said of arguments against things like communication or not killing yourself. This might be an important distinction here
An irrationalist can hold any kind of proposition, and any available inference procedure, without committing to reasoning. From the premises "if A then B" and "A is the case" to the conclusion "Therefore B", an irrationalist might hold that this argument is a practical (and perhaps useful) way he thinks, or he can holds that this is simply the way of thinking that he and other people usually have, in such a way that he can not avoid it. But the irrationalist would not have to see such arguments as a set of rules that limit the kind of conclusions that can be drawn given some premises, although he can certainly accept the fiction of engaging in rules of implication, as if these could really be justified without using rational procedures (perhaps on grounds of some kind of consensus). Did I get you right, Kane?
I'm sure you have no expertise on this so a video would be unlikely. But one day if you're ever interested you should do a video on some anti-philosophies like Zen who attack rationality in some unique ways (I'd mention since we both like experimental Jazz music it should be noted that the Zen worldview had a huge influence on Jazz and certain musical innovations particularly within experimental Jazz. Zen thought hugely influenced John Cage, Zen has very interesting perspectives on art, maybe a premise by which to explore this topic more). Zen premises attacks on typical rationality from an alternate perspective from that of the irrationalist and the skeptics.Their point is that rationalism is just hopeless in accessing reality because descriptive knowledge is simply the wrong tool, they posit that the correct tool is to access reality via tacit knowledge, the metaphor being that if we're dreaming the means by which we awaken from the dream is not by having more and more philosophical conversations within that dream, we wake up through a more direct process called "awakening" which is something that happens rather than something we descriptively catalog. But in waking up in the morning there is a very deep sense in which we seem to gain access to a richer and truer plain of reality, not by means of our descriptive success while dreaming, but through means of a tacit shift. The Zen premise being that we should explore the tacit means by which to access reality instead of focusing the majority of our time on the descriptive ones. This isn't without empirical findings either, when activity in the default mode network of the brain is completely suppressed via meditation (or other interventions) one feels like they wake up from their waking life (and their sense of self vanishes) and when the default mode activity returns they don't have the sense that things are going back to normal, but rather a sense that they are going back into a dream of being a person they never were (namely the person they've been their whole life) essentially the feeling of entering back into a dream of being themselves, and when this is done 80% of participants have a persistent sense that their normal waking life is not real in the way it used to feel and what happened to them when the default mode network was off felt much more real than regular life. What is fascinating it doesn't need be accompanied by hallucinating anything narrative or visual, there is just the deep sense of "waking up from waking life" and this experience alters them into the future with profoundly positive psychological effects (this has been replicated many times). In hallucinations false audio seems "equally real" to objectively heard audio, what I'm talking about isn't a feeling of equal or equivalent reality but a feeling more real than real without anything added in (like visions etc.) William James might have used the word "mystical experiences" to describe this but we can do away with that sappy language and just talk in terms of the default mode network and the fact it plays a role in letting us feel like we have awakened from our normal everyday life and that this has long term benefits that are non-trivial especially on existential fears like the fear of death or for those with terminal illnesses. I think it would be silly to just write this off, scientists and philosophers work in a two mode paradigm now (Waking life/night time dreaming) and knowing these two reality modes gives us access to analogies and a vision of the world we can use to put things in a certain perspective. But if there is a third mode (Ego Death/Waking life/night time dreaming) then to not be acquainted with that third mode it just seems like a weird Ostrich move. Like if you've had a mystical experience your intellectual capacity doesn't alter, like I didn't start believing in God, I didn't start believing in reincarnation and I'm still watching Kane B youtube videos haha, but it does alter just the general feeling that this life is real, because you've been exposed to something that feels like a whole other inexplicable layer of existence, like Mary going from her black and white room to the color room, something of that magnitude or bigger, I always wish philosophers and scientists knew that what William James was talking about feels as big as Mary leaving her black and white room, there is a "this changes everything feel" and a stupid person might use this to justify some religious nonsense, but it really at least gave me the sense that the radical skeptics have a far deeper point than most philosophers admit because they simply have zero tacit exposure to anything except their normal waking life and some weird nighttime dreams.
I did briefly discuss Zen and John Cage on a video on 4'33" a while ago. Beyond that, yeah, this is outside my expertise. Though if you really wanna see a video on it, you're welcome to come on the channel to discuss it. My initial reaction to this is that it feels like changing the subject. To say that descriptive knowledge is the "wrong tool" seems strange to me, because as I see it, descriptive knowledge often isn't a tool at all but is the goal of the inquiry. Descriptive knowledge is simply what I'm aiming for. Maybe we'll say that descriptive knowledge isn't the right tool for "accessing reality", but I'm not sure I care about accessing reality. I'm not sure what it even means to access reality. Probably this is my empiricism speaking! I find the dream example puzzling. I'd say that dreams are straightforwardly part of reality. I agree that there is an intuitive sense in which I have a kind of access to reality in waking life that I do not have in dreams, but this strikes me as exactly a matter of descriptive success. The problem with dreams is that while dreaming, I have a host of false beliefs. (At least, I think I do. This depends on what account of dreaming we accept. But I think the standard position is that dreams involve false beliefs. For example, I might believe that my brother is a hamster, rather than believe that I am a dreaming that my brother is a hamster.) After all, the same shift from ignorance to enlightenment occurs not just from dreaming to waking, but from standard dreams to lucid dreams. Once I realize, "oh, I'm dreaming!", I'm inclined to say that I'm accessing reality. It's just a different part of reality to what I access when I form beliefs on the basis of sensory perception. What allows me to access reality in the lucid dream is the true belief that I'm dreaming. It's the move from holding the belief that my brother is a hamster, to holding the belief that I'm dreaming that my brother is a hamster. There are contexts where descriptive knowledge is a tool, but then it strikes me as extremely implausible that it would in general be the wrong tool. For example, if I'm trying to work out whether or not to get the Pfizer vaccine or the AstraZeneca, I will appeal to various propositional beliefs. I don't see any useful alternative to that. As I understand it, Zen isn't attempting to offer an alternative to that. Of course, the issue here is not about accessing reality. I just want to know which option offers the most effective protection, with the fewest side effects.
@@KaneB Man I can't believe I missed your John Cage video, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, I'd love to have a discussion with you, I'm launching a youtube podcast this week actually, my first guest was this double Phd philosophy guy Bernardo Kastrup who has some pretty crazy modern idealist views (I disagree with him about so much but it was very fun to talk to him) Would you mind if we had a talk, if I could re-post it on my channel as an episode of my podcast. I agree with almost all of what you said above by the way and the lucid dream part hits a little on what I'm getting at here. There is a way that lucid dreaming overturns a false belief, but there is also a way in which the experiential quality of the dream is distinctly altered when one becomes lucid in a dream, one is no longer gripped or convinced or propelled automatically by the dream in the same way. I've also suffered like you from sleep paralysis so have had a bunch of weird sleep experiences. I'd just put this forward, we seem to gain a perceptual resolution richness when we wake up from a dream, dreams have a dimmer and weaker perceptual richness and yes "the content" of dreams are lush but there is a sense for most people that dreams are perceptually much hazier than waking life. We also seem to gain a much greater continuity in waking life than we do within dreams where the dream world's continuity is very shoddy. I mean most of peoples beliefs about their waking existence are tied to the fact that there seems to be continuity in life. When we wake there is also this experience that the dream world ceases to convince us and capture us, some dream scenario might make us anxious in the dream, but we wake up and that anxiety can evaporate because we cease to be convinced of its relevance or reality. I just find it quite fascinating that what happens during a mystical experience provides all the same boosts we get from exiting a dream into normal life, except this time it feels like exiting normal life into something grander. Because the mystical state provides an enormous increase in the perceptual richness of everything but also there is no longer a sense of the kind of discontinuities that are present in normal waking life, meaning since you and I are seemingly discrete there is a sense in which we are discontinuous from one another and that feeling and sense just utterly collapses during a mystical state, feelings of being a discrete entity or agent just stops being there and there is a sense just like waking from a dream that one's everyday problems were never actually there and are instantly resolved like how dream scenario anxieties are resolved when you wake from a dream, in the mystical experience one's life problems go away and there is empirical evidence that this has extreme efficacy for some of the biggest most existential life problems we can name, like the terror one experiences facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, a pretty big problem I'd say, but these mystical experiences show amazing efficacy in overturning those fears completely, this has been shown in study after study. So going from dream to waking life we have this felt enhancement of perceptual richness, continuity, and a profound relief from our ceasing to be convinced by something that wasn't there in the way we thought it was. The mystical experience provides this exact same "felt" enhancement of the same 3 factors but its our normal waking life that gets overturned and its parameters that seem to be dispelled as opposed to the nighttime dream being dispelled. Why I think this is philosophically interesting is that if there is another mode of reality that seems in total opposition or seemingly overturns our normal assumptions, then ignoring it or never spending time in this mode seems to be overlooking something quite profound. Like it is clear at this point that the default mode network in the brain being on or off seems to regulate whether one has a "mystical experience" or not. But it seems a kind of ideological move to assume that just because that network being "on" is the default that it must correspond to reality, it might just correspond with survival success while it being "off" might correspond more with what reality is intrinsically like, but it seems very doubtful to me that they are hallucinations, having a great familiarity with mystical experiences they aren't really additive or subtractive like a hallucination is, what shifts or changes seems to be a more fundamental paradigm that seems very far outside what any of our human language was designed to talk about, where as hallucinations are quite easy to capture in language, even if quite surrealistic language. Another philosophically relevant point of "Mystical experiences/What Zen talks about" to me seems to be what it does for your notion of "ineffability" and whether or not ineffability truly is a paradox or not, also maybe changing our feelings about the plausibility of things like dialetheism. Anyway sorry for the long ramble, I have to say a channel that mixes philosophy of science stuff with talks about experimental music and art is exactly my kind of thing (one of a kind really). So I'd love to talk if you want to.
@@tomcollector9594 Yes, you're welcome to repost it anywhere. Perhaps you could email me to set up a day/time? Anyway, you've given me a bit to think about there. I'll do some reading up on this topic, before we talk about it -- if this is what you'd like to talk about (I'm happy to discuss other stuff). Are there any particular articles that you'd recommend? Specifically on mystical experience, Zen, and the notion of different kinds of access to reality.
I think the circularity isn't about reason itself, but about epistemological rationalism. If you ask to a rationalist why he thinks rationalism is right the only answer he can give is "because i used rationalism". Similarly, if you ask to an empiricist why he thinks empiricism is right the only answer he can give is "because i used empiricism". The truth of this epistemological points of view seems to be tautological. I think rationalism, empiricism and irrationalism are a kind of reason. Reason is just this abstract concept, not necessarily refers to what the word means
Circularity is No Problem at all, If it is of no vicious Nature, meaning by that a circle of selfjustification without necessity to it, but rather mere presupposition and the consquence of trying to argue for what is wrong. But the other Kind of circularity, that of Analytical Truth as is it Sometimes Said, is Not only of No Problem, but the most certain and Plain instance of Truth, which is implied by any Claim and search of Truth. And with those one finds that necessity, that is that, which is at all convincing. Now to the Question of the Video. It is No Problem, that all possible attempt to answer the Question would necessitate reason, for this is simply what is the Matter with it. Reason is inevitable, therefore one understands its necessity, or Vice versa. It is Like asking, why a circle is circular, for one either understands the genuin necessity, or one does Not understand at all of what one is speaking and furthermore asking for. indeed, the Question is, although possible to understand, unsound, as it seems to imply an alternative, to which one demands a further reason for it Not obtaining. But there is No further reason possible, which can be understood. Therefore, it is unsound to ask for any more, as it presupposes Something wrong. At Last, it is therefore Not Question begging, for No Question can be bagged, unless one has Not yet understood, which is Natural then, until one has come to it. To ask the Question is precisely Like asking why one should adhere to Logic for valid argumtation, as If one could argue validly without it, which only proves, that one does Not understand, what one is speaking of. Like those asking, why that, which is, is, and rather Not, referring Not to why it is somewhat and somehow, but simply being. As If that, which is, could Not be, which is totally Impossible. And that can be understood, and alike it is Here. This is therefore the answer and the Question is answered, No doubt about it.
Seriously though - hardly any if none of the current neural net deep learning kinds of AI algorithms so successful at their limited goals - AlphaGo, Self Driving - are using reason. ( But arguably future AIs should? ). Some might argue though that the kinds of stochastic probabilistic methods employed are a form of reason? But certainly not syllogistic.
I remember listening to something with Alex Malpass about some forms of scepticism I think you can apply here, which is to say that the extent to which arguments against reason can be taken seriously is the extent to which I can reject them. Suppose reason is somehow faulty or illusory. When the irrationalist or a-rationalist tries to convince me of that then they're not actually giving me any motivation to take them seriously. They're not actually posing any threat to my position because they don't have reasons against my position. But if I were to take them seriously, that's just to take reason itself seriously.
21:40 "There is in principle nothing that could convince a rationalist to change *her* mind" I suspect that you misspoke here, it sounds like you said "her" instead of "their", which is like saying only women can be rationalists. Again, you likely misspoke, just saying to give a heads up if someone else watches this and gets the wrong idea. Keep up the good work.
No, I didn't misspeak. However, you misquoted me. What I said there was: "There is in principle nothing that could convince an irrationalist to change her mind." Perhaps you will take this to suggest that only women can be irrationalists. I take it to suggest that Kane B prefers to imagine women when she's talking.
@@nesslig2025 Well you've obviously never read any philosophy written in the last 30 years as it is now pretty much standard practice to use 'her', and the grounding is the idea of inclusivity. So jog on.
Colored backgrounds look nice.
A commenter in the previous video said that the white backgrounds were hard on the eyes because they were too bright. Hopefully this has solved the problem!
@@KaneB It did, thank you!
@@saityavuz76 Thanks for suggesting the change!
Michael Huemer does a lot of talks with TH-camrs. I’d be interested in watching you two talk since you both have very different world views (as far as I know).
I think a lot of other people would be interested in that too.
Keep up the good work! We appreciate the time you put into these
Yeah, I'm planning on getting in touch with him. There have been a few people already who have mentioned that they'd like to see me talk to him.
I was thrilled with this topic and the way you present it, so cool and interesting!!! It's impressive how you can explain very subtle distinctions in a clear way. I just really freaking dig this video
This is the best video you've ever made.
It seems like if there is some sorta circularity in using reason to justify using reason, then the fault is with the question asker than with the defender of reason.
“Why use reason?” could be restated as “What is the reason to use reason?” which is clearly asking one to use reason to justify itself. It’s like asking “What is the rule in monopoly that says you must follow the rules of monopoly?” and then getting mad when someone says “Oh yeah, that’s rule 23”
By asking “Why use reason?” the asker has already admitted that reason will convince them.
That capacity circularity distinction was really cool, I wonder what other arguments people find clever solely on the basis of them not noticing that subtlety about capacity circularity versus actually fallacious circularity.
Your videos are always so neat and insightful! Love them
Amazing content as usual. Please never stop making these videos.
Kane B вступил в ШУЕ
Great topic, great video. 👍 Thanks for the effort you put in.
agreed, really good video. really good topic, really good presentation.
I see a possible answer: when we ask for a reason of something (an event, an action, for example), we made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason). There are many reasons for many things, but, when somebody ask for a reason to use reason, he ask for a reason to use any element of the universe of reasons. The problem is, that this is not how the categories of reasons and totality works. We cannot give a reason to the "set" of reasons, because the "outside" of this set is the absense of reasons (we cannot "made intelligible something appealing to other thing (the reason)"). We can ask the reasons for particular events, but is a missaplication of the categories beg for a reason to the total universe of reasons.
your channel is gold. thank you!
Haven't seen the video. I'm just guessing as to why use reason:
More satisfying conversation.
Suppose I didn't use reason. If someone asks "why the sky is blue", then I could reply "because I like grapes."
That response doesn't satisfy. Assuming the rational person perused and asked "how does my liking of grapes affect the sky? If I stop liking grapes, then does the sky stop being blue?"
To which I reply "my liking of grapes affects the sky by moldy socks. When I stop liking grapes then the sky is musical forklifts."
By holding a standard of language, we have better communication.
Very nice video, Kane! I've been thinking about the same topic recently, and the concepts of "rule-circularity" and "concept-circularity" were new to me. But I wonder, creating these concepts as well as thinking about and using them still depend on reason, right? And that still is annoying to me! Do you have any thoughts about that?
Thanks! About the annoyance: what's the alternative, though? Would an argument made without reason be more compelling? Presumably not! I don't think there's any way to remove the circularity. The question is whether it's a problematic kind of circularity. I'm inclined to think not.
@@KaneB I agree that there is no alternative, that it's "psychologically impossible". I see a connection with the regress problem in epistemology, and I think here you are providing an answer that in some sense resembles the coherentism approach there (in the regress problem). Do you see it that way?
Your presentation skills has improved
Kane b I am a Rationalist too I want to say that on the Capacity Circularity another e.g of this circularity is found in epistemology in the case of Reliabilism where it is said that Reliabilist forms of epistemic justification end up in a kind of circularity called epistemic Bootstrapping or simply bootstrap what can you tell us about this it is often taken to go against these forms of justifcation and it seems to be an e.g of Capacity Circularity or am I coming up with something unrelated to this video?
I'm unsure about the relation of the bootstrapping problem to capacity circularity. I don't think it would count as capacity circularity, since it doesn't necessarily involve using a capacity to defend the same capacity. As I understand it, the bootstrapping problem arises for pretty much any proposition that somebody might infer on the basis of a reliable belief-forming process.
@@KaneB oh ok
Fundamentally, reasoning is just thinking about thoughts. Rather than just having thoughts and uncritically acting upon thoughts, we have a capacity to examine our thoughts. We can break thoughts down into component parts, such as realizing that thought A is actually a conjunction of B and C. We can consider why we hold particular thoughts, and we can imagine how we would react if we were to have some thought. We can use a system of logic to structure our thoughts about thoughts and allow us to write them down and communicate them precisely.
The irrationalist position would say that we _shouldn't_ be thinking about thoughts. The video suggests that irrationalists cannot have reasons for this position and any argument for irrationalism would undermine itself, but that seems unfair to the position. An irrationalist can use reasoning, and even to hold the position of irrationalism is to have an opinion about thoughts which naturally requires thinking about thoughts. A person is irrationalist simply because when she thinks about thoughts she comes to the conclusion that thinking about thoughts is unwise. We should consider how someone might come to that conclusion and not just abstractly reject any irrationalist argument as _a priori_ self-defeating.
For example, an irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts a waste of time and energy. Thoughts are not things in the world. You cannot eat a thought, nor does a thought give you shelter. To think about our thoughts is to turn our attention inward and distract ourselves from the world while we explore an imaginary maze of our own construction. You could spend a lifetime pondering whether A implies B, and in the end the world will have passed you by while you've accomplished nothing real.
An irrationalist might say that thinking about thoughts isn't just wasteful but can even be actively harmful. People are driven by fears and desires, and we're not mechanically precise reasoning machines, so when we engage in reasoning we tend to make mistakes. We catch some of our mistakes, but we're more likely to overlook mistakes that lead us toward conclusions that we desire and away from conclusions that we fear. The result is that reasoning becomes a gradual process of systematically fooling ourselves into believing the things that we wish to be true. We can construct vast edifices of logic to insulate us from the world by creating intricate arguments to demonstrate to ourselves that the world is how we wish it would be. Computers may potentially be relied upon to reason productively, but humans tend to get themselves into trouble when they try reasoning.
There is an obvious difficulty in trying to use arguments to convince an irrationalist to accept reason, since an irrationalist is philosophically opposed to thinking about arguments, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible. Even an irrationalist will almost certainly still engage in reasoning. It's just like a smoker who thinks that smoking is unhealthy but still smokes. We just need to present the irrationalist with a way of thinking about reasoning that leads the irrationalist away from the conclusion that we shouldn't use reasoning.
I don't agree with your characterization of reasoning, but I think you might be right about this --
>> An irrationalist can use reasoning
This is the case because an irrationalist can do anything at all. Kukla characterizes irrationalism as the view that "all arguments are untrustworthy", but there's nothing to stop an irrationalist holding the proposition that some arguments are trustworthy, or even that all arguments are trustworthy. There's nothing to stop an irrationalist holding any proposition imaginable.
My inclination is to respond that although the irrationalist might make the same inferences we make, it wouldn't count as reasoning. That is, when the irrationalist infers from the premises "If A then B" and "A" to the conclusion "B", she's not actually engaging in reasoning, because this inference is not based on treating those premises as constraining what conclusion she may legitimately infer. Of course, this response raises trouble for my treatment of reason as a cognitive capacity, rather than as a set of rules, in dealing with the circularity problem. It seems pretty plausible that the irrationalist is engaging the same capacity as the rest of us, when she makes those inferences.
What if I claim myself to be an irrationalist because it is impossible for a person to be totally reasonable and rational. Anyone who seems to be reasonable and rational ONLY because there is no OBVIOUS flaws in their reasoning.
A so-called rationalist can be an alcoholic. It's very probable that ANY rationalist found on earth has a degree of flaws in their reasoning.
People who call themselves rationalist ONLY because the unreasonable and irrational side of them is well hidden.
It's very understandable that we are all pretend-to-be rationalist.
@@raythink I'm not sure what that has to do with the form of irrationalism discussed in this video. Rationalists can make mistakes. For the irrationalists, there are no mistakes.
The last few slides were really interesting. After thinking about them for a while, I think the only way you could make the capacity-circular argument is to assert that arguments do not exist without the capacity of reason - the existence of the capacity for reason is a necessary condition for any argument to be made. In that sense reason would be a property of arguments. This touches on various realist/non-realist debates. What would a world without the capacity for reason look like? What would it mean for p->p not to exist (talking of arguments not existing seems odd, but speaking of them being ‘invalid’ or ‘unsound’ would not seem to make sense in a world without the capacity to reason on this account)
Re realism/non-realism, a big concern I had about the last part of the video was that it seems to rest on the view that arguments and propositions exist as mind-independent abstract objects or something like that. As an empiricist, this is not a picture that I find attractive! Arguments are things that people do... but then arguably, capacity-circularity is a property of arguments themselves after all.
@@KaneB I think you would then be led to some sort of Quinean position - reason is embedded in our “web of belief”. You could say something like: It does not make sense to think about reason as somehow separate from our constantly changing set of beliefs about the world. It consists in the ways in which our beliefs “hang together” and interact with reality. You might say that the concepts of “reason” and “argument” under examination in this debate are a sort of epiphenomenon, ghostly abstractions bereft of all power, substance and value.
Nice video. Would this distinction between premise-circular and capacity-circular help with the Problem of Induction? We have the capacity to induction, so we don´t need a justification for it?
I love this channel
Your videos are fantastic. I'd love to see a video on how non-naturalists in metaethics have coped with "epistemic access" objections to non-naturalist moral realism. I've never understood how it is that these non-naturalists understand our physical brains as being able to "latch on" to moral truths that are somehow out there.
Thanks a lot! I've been doing quite a bit of metaethics recently so I might well get around to that. I can't promise anything though!
I would recommend the book: The Outer Limits of Reason
3:37
I wrote a comment about that a while ago🙂
5:25
My objection would be:
Even though that argument doesn't assume validity of reason, it only shows that to reason has benefits, the validity of reason is assumed in that moment where you make the choice to follow that over other options.
Yeah, the question in the recent AMA is what inspired me to make the video.
@@KaneB
It's a pleasure 🎩
I don't know if you read these, but I wonder if you could draw any connections between reason and libertarianism. Determinism almost seems to align well with irrationalism in that reason itself would only be a product of causal relationships. I don't know if you've ever discussed it, but I also wonder how this might connect to the ancient controversies of rhetoric.
Totally unrelated, but what are your thoughts on piracy?
👍
Excellent.... keep it up...👍🏻💯
Can’t wait to watch
This reminds me of self-refutation arguments and their use in metaphysical discourse. If possible, could you relate this video content to either Mackie or Boyle's interpretations of self-refutation?
I'm not familiar with their work on that subject.
@@KaneB Think TH-cam took my response with the link down, but Mackie's 'Self-Refutation: A Formal Analysis' is a great read that works all the way to Descartes' cogito argument! Either way, thanks for all the great videos.
Even from the account in this video, it can safely be said that there's no such person as an "anti-rationalist" ("anti-reasonist"?). Sure, some philosophers have rhetorically or poetically claimed to be one - and at the same time undermined their own position in doing so. Some have even noted that they were doing so! So is this position worth pursuing even despite all this? I would say that it is - in the same way that the self-referential arguments against relativism, Derrida's claim that "every concept deconstructs itself", etc. need to be tackled. (Stephen Stich's 'The Problem of Cognitive Diversity" is a very powerful and almost-persuasive account of some of these issues.)
By the way, although "premise circularity" and "rule circularity" are clearly different - I'm still not entirely sure why one is deemed to be acceptable and the other isn't. In other words, pointing out the difference isn't itself a defence of rule circularity. I know that there is detail in the video on this, but I'm not sure if it sank in.
I'm also pretty skeptical of the attempts to defend rule-circularity. I think the distinction is worth noting though, partly just to illustrate different kinds of circularity, and partly because there are lots of philosophers who have appealed to the distinction in response to inductive skepticism. Anybody who finds it compelling in that context could appeal to the it here as well. Of course, my own approach here doesn't depend on the distinction, since I don't see the argument as either premise- or rule-circular.
I am wondering when you discuss the concept of premise circularity: aren't all deductive arguments premise circular, at least implicitly?
You say that 'the premise that the bible was written by God, implicitly assumes that God exists... as it couldn't have been written by something non-existent'
Suppose any deductive argument:
P1) If A then B
P2) A
C1) Therefore B
Don't P1) and P2) assume C1), as A could not be without B.
I can't seem to understand the distinction between regular deductive reasoning and premise circularity.
In a sense, yes. Deductive arguments are non-ampliative; the conclusion does not contain more information than is already asserted by the premises. But notice that in your example, although (P1) and (P2) jointly assume (C1), neither (P1) alone, nor (P2) alone, assumes (C1). It's only when (P1) and (P2) are conjoined that you can derive (C1). In that sense, the argument might tell us something we didn't realize -- namely, that we are committed to (C1). Deductive arguments can reveal the consequences of what we already accept. I suppose this is premise-circular in a broad sense.
"I can't seem to understand the distinction between regular deductive reasoning and premise circularity."
Bear in mind that even "A, therefore A" is a valid deductive argument. Begging the question is an informal fallacy.
Is there relation between truth and reason?
I don't think it's impossible to coherently argue that reason, as an activity, isn't worthwhile. But I do think any such argument necessarily implies it's own conclusion is irrelevant. And of course that it's irrelevance is irrelevant. But then also that the irrelevance of it's irrelevance is irrelevant. And so on. The same can't be said of arguments against things like communication or not killing yourself. This might be an important distinction here
An irrationalist can hold any kind of proposition, and any available inference procedure, without committing to reasoning. From the premises "if A then B" and "A is the case" to the conclusion "Therefore B", an irrationalist might hold that this argument is a practical (and perhaps useful) way he thinks, or he can holds that this is simply the way of thinking that he and other people usually have, in such a way that he can not avoid it. But the irrationalist would not have to see such arguments as a set of rules that limit the kind of conclusions that can be drawn given some premises, although he can certainly accept the fiction of engaging in rules of implication, as if these could really be justified without using rational procedures (perhaps on grounds of some kind of consensus).
Did I get you right, Kane?
Reason is alignment of your concepts with the world. That is the justification for reason
I'm sure you have no expertise on this so a video would be unlikely. But one day if you're ever interested you should do a video on some anti-philosophies like Zen who attack rationality in some unique ways (I'd mention since we both like experimental Jazz music it should be noted that the Zen worldview had a huge influence on Jazz and certain musical innovations particularly within experimental Jazz. Zen thought hugely influenced John Cage, Zen has very interesting perspectives on art, maybe a premise by which to explore this topic more).
Zen premises attacks on typical rationality from an alternate perspective from that of the irrationalist and the skeptics.Their point is that rationalism is just hopeless in accessing reality because descriptive knowledge is simply the wrong tool, they posit that the correct tool is to access reality via tacit knowledge, the metaphor being that if we're dreaming the means by which we awaken from the dream is not by having more and more philosophical conversations within that dream, we wake up through a more direct process called "awakening" which is something that happens rather than something we descriptively catalog. But in waking up in the morning there is a very deep sense in which we seem to gain access to a richer and truer plain of reality, not by means of our descriptive success while dreaming, but through means of a tacit shift. The Zen premise being that we should explore the tacit means by which to access reality instead of focusing the majority of our time on the descriptive ones.
This isn't without empirical findings either, when activity in the default mode network of the brain is completely suppressed via meditation (or other interventions) one feels like they wake up from their waking life (and their sense of self vanishes) and when the default mode activity returns they don't have the sense that things are going back to normal, but rather a sense that they are going back into a dream of being a person they never were (namely the person they've been their whole life) essentially the feeling of entering back into a dream of being themselves, and when this is done 80% of participants have a persistent sense that their normal waking life is not real in the way it used to feel and what happened to them when the default mode network was off felt much more real than regular life. What is fascinating it doesn't need be accompanied by hallucinating anything narrative or visual, there is just the deep sense of "waking up from waking life" and this experience alters them into the future with profoundly positive psychological effects (this has been replicated many times). In hallucinations false audio seems "equally real" to objectively heard audio, what I'm talking about isn't a feeling of equal or equivalent reality but a feeling more real than real without anything added in (like visions etc.)
William James might have used the word "mystical experiences" to describe this but we can do away with that sappy language and just talk in terms of the default mode network and the fact it plays a role in letting us feel like we have awakened from our normal everyday life and that this has long term benefits that are non-trivial especially on existential fears like the fear of death or for those with terminal illnesses. I think it would be silly to just write this off, scientists and philosophers work in a two mode paradigm now (Waking life/night time dreaming) and knowing these two reality modes gives us access to analogies and a vision of the world we can use to put things in a certain perspective. But if there is a third mode (Ego Death/Waking life/night time dreaming) then to not be acquainted with that third mode it just seems like a weird Ostrich move. Like if you've had a mystical experience your intellectual capacity doesn't alter, like I didn't start believing in God, I didn't start believing in reincarnation and I'm still watching Kane B youtube videos haha, but it does alter just the general feeling that this life is real, because you've been exposed to something that feels like a whole other inexplicable layer of existence, like Mary going from her black and white room to the color room, something of that magnitude or bigger, I always wish philosophers and scientists knew that what William James was talking about feels as big as Mary leaving her black and white room, there is a "this changes everything feel" and a stupid person might use this to justify some religious nonsense, but it really at least gave me the sense that the radical skeptics have a far deeper point than most philosophers admit because they simply have zero tacit exposure to anything except their normal waking life and some weird nighttime dreams.
I did briefly discuss Zen and John Cage on a video on 4'33" a while ago. Beyond that, yeah, this is outside my expertise. Though if you really wanna see a video on it, you're welcome to come on the channel to discuss it.
My initial reaction to this is that it feels like changing the subject. To say that descriptive knowledge is the "wrong tool" seems strange to me, because as I see it, descriptive knowledge often isn't a tool at all but is the goal of the inquiry. Descriptive knowledge is simply what I'm aiming for. Maybe we'll say that descriptive knowledge isn't the right tool for "accessing reality", but I'm not sure I care about accessing reality. I'm not sure what it even means to access reality. Probably this is my empiricism speaking!
I find the dream example puzzling. I'd say that dreams are straightforwardly part of reality. I agree that there is an intuitive sense in which I have a kind of access to reality in waking life that I do not have in dreams, but this strikes me as exactly a matter of descriptive success. The problem with dreams is that while dreaming, I have a host of false beliefs. (At least, I think I do. This depends on what account of dreaming we accept. But I think the standard position is that dreams involve false beliefs. For example, I might believe that my brother is a hamster, rather than believe that I am a dreaming that my brother is a hamster.) After all, the same shift from ignorance to enlightenment occurs not just from dreaming to waking, but from standard dreams to lucid dreams. Once I realize, "oh, I'm dreaming!", I'm inclined to say that I'm accessing reality. It's just a different part of reality to what I access when I form beliefs on the basis of sensory perception. What allows me to access reality in the lucid dream is the true belief that I'm dreaming. It's the move from holding the belief that my brother is a hamster, to holding the belief that I'm dreaming that my brother is a hamster.
There are contexts where descriptive knowledge is a tool, but then it strikes me as extremely implausible that it would in general be the wrong tool. For example, if I'm trying to work out whether or not to get the Pfizer vaccine or the AstraZeneca, I will appeal to various propositional beliefs. I don't see any useful alternative to that. As I understand it, Zen isn't attempting to offer an alternative to that. Of course, the issue here is not about accessing reality. I just want to know which option offers the most effective protection, with the fewest side effects.
@@KaneB Man I can't believe I missed your John Cage video, I'll have to check it out. Yeah, I'd love to have a discussion with you, I'm launching a youtube podcast this week actually, my first guest was this double Phd philosophy guy Bernardo Kastrup who has some pretty crazy modern idealist views (I disagree with him about so much but it was very fun to talk to him)
Would you mind if we had a talk, if I could re-post it on my channel as an episode of my podcast.
I agree with almost all of what you said above by the way and the lucid dream part hits a little on what I'm getting at here. There is a way that lucid dreaming overturns a false belief, but there is also a way in which the experiential quality of the dream is distinctly altered when one becomes lucid in a dream, one is no longer gripped or convinced or propelled automatically by the dream in the same way. I've also suffered like you from sleep paralysis so have had a bunch of weird sleep experiences.
I'd just put this forward, we seem to gain a perceptual resolution richness when we wake up from a dream, dreams have a dimmer and weaker perceptual richness and yes "the content" of dreams are lush but there is a sense for most people that dreams are perceptually much hazier than waking life. We also seem to gain a much greater continuity in waking life than we do within dreams where the dream world's continuity is very shoddy.
I mean most of peoples beliefs about their waking existence are tied to the fact that there seems to be continuity in life. When we wake there is also this experience that the dream world ceases to convince us and capture us, some dream scenario might make us anxious in the dream, but we wake up and that anxiety can evaporate because we cease to be convinced of its relevance or reality.
I just find it quite fascinating that what happens during a mystical experience provides all the same boosts we get from exiting a dream into normal life, except this time it feels like exiting normal life into something grander. Because the mystical state provides an enormous increase in the perceptual richness of everything but also there is no longer a sense of the kind of discontinuities that are present in normal waking life, meaning since you and I are seemingly discrete there is a sense in which we are discontinuous from one another and that feeling and sense just utterly collapses during a mystical state, feelings of being a discrete entity or agent just stops being there and there is a sense just like waking from a dream that one's everyday problems were never actually there and are instantly resolved like how dream scenario anxieties are resolved when you wake from a dream, in the mystical experience one's life problems go away and there is empirical evidence that this has extreme efficacy for some of the biggest most existential life problems we can name, like the terror one experiences facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, a pretty big problem I'd say, but these mystical experiences show amazing efficacy in overturning those fears completely, this has been shown in study after study.
So going from dream to waking life we have this felt enhancement of perceptual richness, continuity, and a profound relief from our ceasing to be convinced by something that wasn't there in the way we thought it was. The mystical experience provides this exact same "felt" enhancement of the same 3 factors but its our normal waking life that gets overturned and its parameters that seem to be dispelled as opposed to the nighttime dream being dispelled.
Why I think this is philosophically interesting is that if there is another mode of reality that seems in total opposition or seemingly overturns our normal assumptions, then ignoring it or never spending time in this mode seems to be overlooking something quite profound.
Like it is clear at this point that the default mode network in the brain being on or off seems to regulate whether one has a "mystical experience" or not. But it seems a kind of ideological move to assume that just because that network being "on" is the default that it must correspond to reality, it might just correspond with survival success while it being "off" might correspond more with what reality is intrinsically like, but it seems very doubtful to me that they are hallucinations, having a great familiarity with mystical experiences they aren't really additive or subtractive like a hallucination is, what shifts or changes seems to be a more fundamental paradigm that seems very far outside what any of our human language was designed to talk about, where as hallucinations are quite easy to capture in language, even if quite surrealistic language. Another philosophically relevant point of "Mystical experiences/What Zen talks about" to me seems to be what it does for your notion of "ineffability" and whether or not ineffability truly is a paradox or not, also maybe changing our feelings about the plausibility of things like dialetheism.
Anyway sorry for the long ramble, I have to say a channel that mixes philosophy of science stuff with talks about experimental music and art is exactly my kind of thing (one of a kind really). So I'd love to talk if you want to.
@@tomcollector9594 Yes, you're welcome to repost it anywhere. Perhaps you could email me to set up a day/time?
Anyway, you've given me a bit to think about there. I'll do some reading up on this topic, before we talk about it -- if this is what you'd like to talk about (I'm happy to discuss other stuff). Are there any particular articles that you'd recommend? Specifically on mystical experience, Zen, and the notion of different kinds of access to reality.
@@KaneB Where do I find your email?
@@tomcollector9594 kanebaker91@gmail.com
Yes! dark background!
I think the circularity isn't about reason itself, but about epistemological rationalism. If you ask to a rationalist why he thinks rationalism is right the only answer he can give is "because i used rationalism". Similarly, if you ask to an empiricist why he thinks empiricism is right the only answer he can give is "because i used empiricism". The truth of this epistemological points of view seems to be tautological.
I think rationalism, empiricism and irrationalism are a kind of reason. Reason is just this abstract concept, not necessarily refers to what the word means
Circularity is No Problem at all, If it is of no vicious Nature, meaning by that a circle of selfjustification without necessity to it, but rather mere presupposition and the consquence of trying to argue for what is wrong.
But the other Kind of circularity, that of Analytical Truth as is it Sometimes Said, is Not only of No Problem, but the most certain and Plain instance of Truth, which is implied by any Claim and search of Truth. And with those one finds that necessity, that is that, which is at all convincing.
Now to the Question of the Video. It is No Problem, that all possible attempt to answer the Question would necessitate reason, for this is simply what is the Matter with it. Reason is inevitable, therefore one understands its necessity, or Vice versa. It is Like asking, why a circle is circular, for one either understands the genuin necessity, or one does Not understand at all of what one is speaking and furthermore asking for. indeed, the Question is, although possible to understand, unsound, as it seems to imply an alternative, to which one demands a further reason for it Not obtaining. But there is No further reason possible, which can be understood. Therefore, it is unsound to ask for any more, as it presupposes Something wrong.
At Last, it is therefore Not Question begging, for No Question can be bagged, unless one has Not yet understood, which is Natural then, until one has come to it.
To ask the Question is precisely Like asking why one should adhere to Logic for valid argumtation, as If one could argue validly without it, which only proves, that one does Not understand, what one is speaking of. Like those asking, why that, which is, is, and rather Not, referring Not to why it is somewhat and somehow, but simply being. As If that, which is, could Not be, which is totally Impossible. And that can be understood, and alike it is Here.
This is therefore the answer and the Question is answered, No doubt about it.
well done
do a video about Mereological nihilism
Seriously though - hardly any if none of the current neural net deep learning kinds of AI algorithms so successful at their limited goals - AlphaGo, Self Driving - are using reason. ( But arguably future AIs should? ). Some might argue though that the kinds of stochastic probabilistic methods employed are a form of reason? But certainly not syllogistic.
do stuff about Cioran guy, he was intellectually honest and brave to use reason...always
I'm not familiar with his work.
Reason and faith are not in contradiction despite what the nominalists and the successors have proposed
I neither use Reason *or* Logic nor the (grim) Reaper. I'm sentient - so use .... LIVE!
FL gang
I remember listening to something with Alex Malpass about some forms of scepticism I think you can apply here, which is to say that the extent to which arguments against reason can be taken seriously is the extent to which I can reject them.
Suppose reason is somehow faulty or illusory. When the irrationalist or a-rationalist tries to convince me of that then they're not actually giving me any motivation to take them seriously. They're not actually posing any threat to my position because they don't have reasons against my position. But if I were to take them seriously, that's just to take reason itself seriously.
I’m jumping out of the window anyway, you can’t stop me
I think a whole other thing is, that you dont choose what you believe.
0:29
Because it's irrational 🙃
Don't knock it til you try it
why was this recommended to me 😭
Because my videos are fantastic and should be recommended to everyone.
@@KaneB TH-cam has finally acknowledged that
21:40 "There is in principle nothing that could convince a rationalist to change *her* mind"
I suspect that you misspoke here, it sounds like you said "her" instead of "their", which is like saying only women can be rationalists. Again, you likely misspoke, just saying to give a heads up if someone else watches this and gets the wrong idea. Keep up the good work.
No, I didn't misspeak. However, you misquoted me. What I said there was: "There is in principle nothing that could convince an irrationalist to change her mind." Perhaps you will take this to suggest that only women can be irrationalists. I take it to suggest that Kane B prefers to imagine women when she's talking.
You're reaching
@@carnivorous_vegan I am not, just saying that people can take this the wrong way.
@@nesslig2025 Well you've obviously never read any philosophy written in the last 30 years as it is now pretty much standard practice to use 'her', and the grounding is the idea of inclusivity. So jog on.
@@neoepicurean3772 the word their is more inclusive them a gender specific word like her/he. non binary and other made up words