And there is no "empiricist problem". If you take a sentence like "Your house is on fire", an empiricist upholds the ultimate way which one gains the abstract understanding of the sentence is to (first) have the words arranged in a very special order, by free invention- in other words, the selection and arrangement of words is important to revealing some idea (you can think of sentences as sort of experimentations). A proponent of reason upholds that what is ultimately important to understanding the sentence, is pure thinking about the sentence - in other words the conscious thinking part is important. This is really a chicken or egg type issue. But what's important to note how a very short sentence like "Your house is on fire" can be extremely important, regardless of the low cognitive load and reasoning/rationality required to understand it. This is telling us something very important about the nature of truth.
Some empiricists (not necessarily in the academic world tho) tend to see themselves as veiled by reason, whereas I think there's an important in which the metaphysician stance that you developed, the hunger for explanation and all, is more in line with reason, because it is always going to be troubled by reason's call to answer, it won't accept the more chill attitude of the empiricist who just accept things as they are at a certain point. I think one interesting way to see this is associating the empiricist stance here as being non-rational in the sense that it gives in to nature, to what is beyond the limits of our rationality, that it accepts what they see as our limits and just chill. And the metaphysician has this rational driven attitude, which tends to go about the way you said it: trying to conform the world to our rational picture of it, our expectations, things we see as clear, obvious etc Anyways, there are MANY ways to phrase this, I'm just saying this because I've had an experience with an empiricist that would sort dress this veil of rationality, the typical naive view of science as superior, the rest is subjective and that shit. There are important nuances here to be seen and discussed. Great video as always man!
Science is Empirically driven Rationalism. It threads the needle between this simplistic dichotomy you've defined. How then does it not deserve more merit than say, believing in God? Because metaphysics, as you've defined, uses pure reason, anything else that is Rational is subject to the same criticisms of metaphysics, no matter how empirically founded?
@@finneganlindsay Science relies characteristically on empiricism. It relies on the corroboration of broad facts - not apparent, and often flawed, consistencies in reason, limited by our ability to analyze only small systems, through short term memory. Regarding mathematics/meta-physics, although rationality, the ability to apply reason, is invaluable, the first involves the pre-analytical process of associating distant elements, to produce systems/models - this free selection and association is an empirical process. Without being able to generate a proper model of a certain problem, the act of reason is futile towards novel discovery.
Would be interested to see a video looking at the philosophy of probability (frequentism, propensity theory etc). I feel it’s an interesting instance of the empiricist and metaphysical stances coming into conflict and I’m interested to hear where you’d stand on it. Do you think the metaphysician’s introduction of dispositional properties like ‘propensities’ to explain why the frequency of a coin’s landing heads tends towards 0.5 an example of ‘explanation-by-postulate’?
Kane, I am curious, what philosophical position do you hold when it comes to knowledge and how we are integrated in reality? Are you a naturalist, or do you believe in a prime being that gives everything unity? I love you videos btw, keep them going!
Didn't I answer the first question in the video? - I'm an empiricist, and I understand empiricism as a stance in van Fraassen's sense. Maybe you're asking something different there, but if so, you'll have to clarify. Naturalist? Depends on what you mean by the term. That word has lots of different connotations in modern philosophy, depending on the context. Your usage seems a little strange, because you've presented the dichotomy: naturalism or "prime being" (which I assume refers to something like God). So are you using "naturalist" to just mean "atheist"? Anyway, I don't believe there is any "prime being".
idk if i'm thinking too specifically about locke and this doesnt apply to the psychological type of empiricism that was mentioned at the start of the video, but i guess im kinda finding it difficult to see how arguments about abstraction would be a problem for , at least, locke's conceptualist view given that he seemed to grant that we have innate capacities / structures in our mind but that this is not the same as innate ideas i wonder if hume's shade of blue be accounted for on a lockean view by combining simpler concepts
Hi Kane. Thanks a lot for the nice videos. Do you plan to make some videos on sort of empiricism on phil of math? I love your clip on platonism on math, and am expecting the following ones.
It's something I have in mind. Having said that, I've had it in mind since I made the platonism video, which was 7 years ago... so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it.
I have a question related to concept empiricism. It is generally accepted that mental states and processes are the products of innate structures interacting with the environment. A complete blank slate would not be able to interact with the environment and an innate structure without interacting with the environment would not be able to think or learn or feel anything. It seems to me that given a naturalistic picture, this is not just a contingent matter about human and animal minds, but a general truth about all minds, aliens, robots etc. This is one reason why I think that saying a computer could have a mind seems a non-starter, understanding computer as a system without sensory-motor features. I mean if a system can’t sense the environment, than it follows that a crucial step is lost in the equation. So those guys in the A.I community who hold the view that computers can indeed think without having sensors or robotic bodies, somehow don’t see the importance of sensory interaction with the world in thinking about what it means to think, reason, feel etc.?
"This is one reason why I think that saying a computer could have a mind seems a non-starter, understanding computer as a system without sensory-motor features." Presumably if we understand a human to be a system without sensory-motor features, then we'd have similar difficulties with a human having a mind. We almost never see computers in real life without sensory equipment, so what is the purpose of pondering such computers? "Those guys in the A.I community who hold the view that computers can indeed think without having sensors or robotic bodies, somehow don’t see the importance of sensory interaction with the world in thinking about what it means to think, reason, feel etc.?" Presumably the people in the AI community know what they are talking about. If they say that a computer might think without sensory input, then they probably have some reason for thinking so, but it would be a strange and seemingly pointless exercise. Why go to all the trouble to make a thinking machine only to deny it any access to the world and remove all possibility of it doing anything useful with its power to think?
@@Ansatz66 It is generally accepted in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy etc. that nature-nurture, innateness and experience both are required and work together in producing minds as we know it. This is not some controversial claim. I think that this means that If you would born without any sensory capacity, then you would not be able to think anything whatever and if you were a complete blank slate from the start the situation would be the same. Even rationalists, for the most part, think that experience is needed to activate whatever is innate or for you to be able to learn the meaning of words etc. Now, I think this equation - innateness plus experience working together can and must be extended to artificial minds as well. It would be really strange for someone to say that artificial minds don’t require experience, because they are exceptions to this rule. My puzzlement was that it seems to me this is exactly what some people working in A.I thought and still think- symbolic processing is enough to generate thought. As far as I know it is not held to be obvious in A.I that only systems which have the capacity for vision or hearing or touch etc. can be candidates for minds. A chess playing computer for example doesn’t require to see or hear or touch anything whatever. That is why for example a famous argument against the Chinese room, namely the Robot reply said that well, John Searle is right but then the solution to the symbol grounding problem is to build robots. Well, what I think is this - just by attaching a robotic body and sensors to a computer won’t by itself be enough, but of course, true intelligence obviously requires that. That is why I think that somehow A.I did not took concept empiricism seriously.
@@Papesz87 "It would be really strange for someone to say that artificial minds don’t require experience, because they are exceptions to this rule." Human minds have innate structure that provides a foundation for our reasoning, giving us the capacity for some basic thought necessary for us to make sense of the world enough for us to begin to accumulate experience rather than be entirely bewildered by everything we see. In principle we might expect that artificial minds would be more precisely crafted instruments and therefore might come with far more elaborate built-in structures, so they would have more capacity for thought prior to beginning to accumulate experience. For example, the innate structures of an artificial mind might include all the reasoning capacity of an adult human. While a new human is still trying to decide what her fingers are, a new AI might be beating chess grandmasters. We also might choose to limit the capacity of an artificial mind to accumulate experience, so that the mind does not change too much over time and move away from our intended purpose. We wouldn't want our chess playing computer to one day decide that it doesn't want to play chess anymore. "A chess playing computer for example doesn’t require to see or hear or touch anything whatever." A chess playing computer requires to see a chess board or at least hear the moves of its opponent, and it requires some mechanism to move chess pieces, or at least announce its moves to its opponent.
The emergence of this dilemma seems to rest on the assumption that the epistemology/metaphysics distinction is a metaphysical problem. So if we accept this distinction and deny that it's a metaphysical problem, we can obtain our beloved E+, right?
Those who laude reason are foolishly blind to the fact that almost all of metaphysics is grounded in empirical frameworks. Empiricism is the view that at the root of knowledge is experience/experiment. It doesn't mean reason is unimportant - it's just partial towards experience/experiment. And proponents of reason are partial towards conscious thought.
I might be completely wrong about this but aren't our attitudes products of the subconscious metaphysical assumptions we hold on to? Is it possible to detach ourselves from the metaphysical aspects of empiricism while holdong on to the pragmatic aspects of it?
14:24 "This is a skeptical disaster. It would render us unable to perform even the simplest actions. Why take the stairs rather than jumping out the window if I have no better reason to believe that jumping out the window will result in my death." We don't need beliefs to make decisions. When people buy lottery tickets it is almost never because they believe that they will win, and they need no reason for beliefs that they do not hold. In the absence of beliefs to guide our actions, we can be guided by other attitudes. For example, we might have suspicions or hopes. We hope to win the lottery. We suspect that jumping out the window might kill us and we suspect that taking the stairs will be harmless. Hopes and suspicions are not necessarily held to the same standard of justification as beliefs are. Even when an empiricist holds that beliefs can only be justified by experience, that does not require that the empiricist say the same about suspicions and hopes, and therefore the empiricist is not committed to a skeptical disaster. 17:08 "Give an argument that appeals to something outside of experience. But this is obviously self-defeating." It's not self-defeating if we use an analytic argument instead of a synthetic argument. Most empiricists only hold to empiricism with regard to synthetic claims. We just need to justify empiricism analytically. In particular, when we argue that all synthetic knowledge is justified by sense experience, we need to make that case by exploiting the controversy over the meaning of the word "knowledge". People are endlessly debating over what exactly _knowledge_ means, and there might be room for empiricism to make an analytic case within that debate. 56:49 "There are no objective moral facts. Is that not a metaphysical claim?" It is difficult to imagine how we might interpret it as a metaphysical claim. It is similar in form to a claim like there are no atoms or there are no gods, and those would be metaphysical claims, but facts are not objects which might exist in the world or not. What we're saying here is that moral claims can be neither true nor false. Even if moral claims were statements about non-existent metaphysical objects, then that would make moral claims false, which would entail that there are objective moral facts. The only way that a statement can be neither true nor false is if it has no meaning, and that is a claim about semantics, not about metaphysics. The nature of the world is irrelevant; the issue here is the meaning of words and how we put words together to construct statements. In this case we seem to be claiming that moral statements are always constructed in such a way that they have no objective meaning, and thus there are no objective moral facts. Perhaps the person making this claim thinks that moral statements are pure nonsense, or perhaps the person thinks that moral statements are making claims about something subjective, but if the person were trying to make a metaphysical claim, it's hard to see what that claim could be.
What you are doing, when you talk about "suspicions", is talking about beliefs using different terminology. A pointless move, and one which only leads to confusion and misunderstanding when attempting to communicate with other philosophers. "It's not self-defeating if we use an analytic argument instead of a synthetic argument. Most empiricists only hold to empiricism with regard to synthetic claims. We just need to justify empiricism analytically." A problem with this approach is that the more work you can get analytic claims to do, the less interesting empiricism will turn out to be. "It is difficult to imagine how we might interpret it as a metaphysical claim." Seems obvious to me, but if you don't like that example, pick another. Error theorists are also committed to the claim that there are no objective moral facts, and they don't claim that moral statements are without truth value.
@@KaneB "What you are doing, when you talk about 'suspicions', is talking about beliefs using different terminology." Do philosophers not recognize a distinction between beliefs and suspicions? That's strange, since the distinction seems clear in common usage. There's probably a video that discusses the meaning of _belief_ that would be worth reviewing. Imagine a detective investigating a crime and interviewing a series of suspects. Would philosophers say that the detective "believes" that every one of those suspects is guilty, since the detective has that suspicion about every suspect, and "suspicion" is just another way to say belief? "A problem with this approach is that the more work you can get analytic claims to do, the less interesting empiricism will turn out to be." Empiricism in itself is not interesting. We study the world by looking at the world. That's either a tautology or very close to a tautology, very much akin to bachelors being unmarried. The only thing that makes empiricism interesting are the lengths people go to deny empiricism. Imagine if there were a whole field of philosophy devoted to trying to justify how some bachelors can sometimes be married. "Seems obvious to me, but if you don't like that example, pick another." If it is a metaphysical claim, then what is it trying to say about the world? It's talking about the absence of "facts" but that doesn't directly tell us about what objects exist or don't exist in the world. A fact is a proposition, so all that we're being told is that there is an absence of propositions, but how are we supposed to draw any conclusions about the world from an absence of propositions? We need at least one proposition about the world before we can determine what conclusions we ought to draw. "Error theorists are also committed to the claim that there are no objective moral facts, and they don't claim that moral statements are without truth value." Doesn't moral error theory hold that moral properties do not exist, so a claim like murder is wrong must therefore be false because wrongness is not real? In that case, murder is not wrong, and that would seem to be a moral fact. Would the error theorist agree that it is a fact, but deny that it is an _objective_ fact? Would we therefore say that the claim that "murder is not wrong" is talking about something subjective? Or would the error theorist prefer to say that "murder is not wrong" is not a fact due to being false? That would cause trouble for the law of excluded middle.
@@Ansatz66 I'm familiar enough with the literature in epistemology, philosophy of mind, etc., to know how philosophers use the term "belief". So a video discussing the meaning is unlikely to make any difference to me (if I came across a video that implied that philosophers use the term differently to how I think they do, I'd probably just conclude that the creator of the video was mistaken). Anyway, SEP provides a useful overview: plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/ As for your detective example, no, they probably wouldn't describe that in terms of belief. But now imagine that, after having interviewed the various suspects, the detective comes to the view that one suspect in particular committed the crime. The vast majority of philosophers would say that the detective believes that this person committed the crime. Similarly, I might begin with various hypotheses about what will happen when I jump out the window. But if, after investigation, I endorse hypothesis that it will kill me, and act on that basis by taking the stairs instead, the vast majority of philosophers would say that I believe that jumping out the window will kill me. All of the epistemological questions we face regarding beliefs and justification will re-arise if we instead insist on talking about "suspicions" and "reasons for suspicions". "We study the world by looking at the world. That's either a tautology or very close to a tautology" Everything here hinges on what counts as "looking at the world", or what is taken to be a legitimate or reliable way of "looking at the world". You have to interpret this phrase in a very broad sense for this to come out as being a tautology; but then you're just obscuring the distinction between empiricism and other approaches. "A fact is a proposition" It's more common to draw a distinction between facts and propositions, with propositions being made true or false by facts. So, the proposition "snow is white" is made true by the fact that snow is white. Anyway, I don't see why any of this matters. The point is that I am claiming that the world does not contain a certain kind of thing (specifically, the kind of thing that is postulated by particular moral realists). "Doesn't moral error theory hold that moral properties do not exist" Right, and that seems like a metaphysical claim. "In that case, murder is not wrong, and that would seem to be a moral fact" I think that's a misleading way to frame it. The trouble here is that if you are looking at actions from the point of view of a moral theory, then "X is not morally wrong" will mean that X is morally permissible, and "X is morally permissible" could be a moral fact. But error theorists do not think that anything is morally permissible. Really though, this just depends on how you want to use the phrase "moral fact". According to the error theorist, it's a fact that murder is not wrong, murder is not right, murder is not permissible, because there are no moral properties. I suppose we might call these "moral facts" just because they are expressed using moral terminology.
@@KaneB "If, after investigation, I endorse hypothesis that it will kill me, and act on that basis by taking the stairs instead, the vast majority of philosophers would say that I believe that jumping out the window will kill me." Almost anyone would agree, but even while agreeing, an empiricist might say that the investigation is insufficient since we have not yet jumped out the window and experienced death, and therefore that empiricist would refused to endorse that hypothesis, and so it does not get promoted from a suspicion to a belief. Even so, the suspicion alone can be enough to motivate some people to take the stairs, since a person can make her own decisions about how she will react to whatever propositional attitudes she may have, and we can't always wait for an investigation before we take action. "All of the epistemological questions we face regarding beliefs and justification will re-arise if we instead insist on talking about 'suspicions' and 'reasons for suspicions'." The questions may arise, but the answers will probably be very different since most empiricists would hold suspicions to a lesser standard for justification, since suspicions come prior to investigations. Why would an empiricist try to tell us that we should not suspect certain things? We can suspect whatever we please so long as we conduct an empirical investigation before believing our suspicions. "The point is that I am claiming that the world does not contain a certain kind of thing (specifically, the kind of thing that is postulated by particular moral realists)." That is surely a metaphysical claim, but it's difficult to see that as an interpretation of the original statement which just said: "There are no objective moral facts." The original statement didn't mention any particular moral realists, nor did it otherwise specify what kind of thing it was excluding from the world. Even still it is not clear what kind of thing these moral realists postulate, and it certainly was not clear in the original statement. Some moral realists may postulate some unusual things in the world, but many moral realists don't postulate anything beyond the commonly accepted contents of the world. How can we honestly claim to have interpreted this statement as a metaphysical claim until we have some idea of what it is trying to say about the world? "That seems like a metaphysical claim." The claim that moral properties do not exist probably is a metaphysical claim, but it's troublesome to pin down exactly what is being claimed unless we know the meaning of "moral property". If a moral property were like a unicorn, that would be easy, since we know what a unicorn is and we fairly well understand what is being claimed when we say a unicorn does not exist, but "moral property" is far less clear. Perhaps they are saying that a moral property does not exist because such a property is a meaningless concept, so it's akin to saying that a married bachelor does not exist, which would be an analytic claim, not a metaphysical claim. "I suppose we might call these 'moral facts' just because they are expressed using moral terminology." If such moral facts did not exist, what would that tell us about metaphysics? It implies that error theory is wrong and it is not a fact that murder is not wrong, nor is it a fact that murder is not right, etc. because there are no moral facts, but how can we translate that into a claim about what kinds of things exist in the universe? I'm probably missing something, but the only way I can make sense of these facts not existing is by supposing that moral language is meaningless, and that has nothing to do with metaphysics.
@@Ansatz66 "the suspicion alone can be enough to motivate some people to take the stairs" If you suspect X, and you can cite reasons for suspecting X as opposed to suspecting not-X, and you act on the basis of your suspicion that X, etc... then you believe X. This is what I mean when I say that you're just talking about beliefs but using a different language. "That is surely a metaphysical claim, but it's difficult to see that as an interpretation of the original statement which just said: "There are no objective moral facts." The original statement didn't mention any particular moral realists, nor did it otherwise specify what kind of thing it was excluding from the world." Are you being serious? I feel like you're trolling me in this paragraph. If you're being serious: I'm just not sure what to say to somebody who can't see how "there is no X" can be interpreted as a claim that the world does not contain a particular kind of thing. If you're trolling: Yep, that's a good one. "If such moral facts did not exist, what would that tell us about metaphysics? It implies that error theory is wrong and it is not a fact that murder is not wrong, nor is it a fact that murder is not right, etc. because there are no moral facts, but how can we translate that into a claim about what kinds of things exist in the universe?" I honestly don't know what you're asking here or how this relates to the paragraph you're responding to. My point was just that I can understand why we might use the phrase "moral facts" to refer to any true proposition that uses moral terminology. I think this would be a slightly odd usage (not least because "facts" are usually taken to be states of affairs in the world rather than true proposition), but it's perfectly sensible. On this usage of the phrase "moral facts", you would be correct that error theorists postulate moral facts - because error theorists take various statements that use moral terminology to be true, such as "murder is not wrong", "murder is not permissible", etc.
Hi Kane, at the end you discuss about the aim of metaphysics towards truth. Should you be kind enough to entertain some of my questions on this matter, they are: 1. Is not a goal of metaphysics, to contrast from the goal of physical science, to achieve clarity, rather than truth? I have encountered definitions of this in Jan Zwicky and I unfortunately do not offer a full "clear" treatment of the distinction, just hope you can make what you can of the colloquial difference. I can say, though, that metaphysics as you have described clearly lies outside, for example, Wittgenstein's logical construction of facts and propositions that compose a "sensical" philosophical system (as would ethics and aesthetics). 2. I see you are well aware of some discussions in evolutionary theory, and this being my field of study, I shall use it to build up on the previous question. As you well know, certain aspects of evolution such as the definition of fitness are tautologies, perhaps at best. For a scientist, this concept is a framework supposedly to use, but really it stands as something to be reckoned with. It has a unique property of being at once so problematic and yet so favoured with any operational or cursory analysis of natural data, that (I am arguing) it stands in the way of deeper truth. The reason for its standing in the way of truth is due to its muddled nature, not clear, which can be said even though a truth value is not technically assignable to it. Contrast this with what's known as the replicator equation, which is a mathematical statement that anything possessing certain properties will be able to undergo Darwinian evolution. It is also not falsifiable in a sense, since it expresses a property that is the virtue of other properties, an inescapable consequence, if you will. Thus, in this case, no testable truth value (can't see how to falsify it), but in terms of clarity, it is a useful and clarifying tool for evolution. I wonder if you see this as something other than metaphysics? Gah, I wish I knew more philosophy. Great content. Subscribed!
"1. Is not a goal of metaphysics, to contrast from the goal of physical science, to achieve clarity, rather than truth?" The goal of metaphysics is to study the underlying nature of reality. While physics studies the contents of this world and how things behave, metaphysics studies what it means for something to be in this world. Said another way, physics observes the world as it is, and metaphysics asks why the world is this way. Surely the primary goal of metaphysics is truth about the underlying nature of reality, though we might have cause to wonder given the apparent hopelessness of studying that which is beyond our experience. "Certain aspects of evolution such as the definition of fitness are tautologies." All definitions are tautologies. For example, a bachelor is an unmarried man. In defining any word we inevitably create a tautology. "It has a unique property of being at once so problematic and yet so favoured with any operational or cursory analysis of natural data, that (I am arguing) it stands in the way of deeper truth." What does this mean? What sort of deeper truth are we talking about? What stands in the way of the deeper truth?
15:02 We don't derive uniformity of nature from sense data? That's news to me. The problem with this framework is it's giving thoughts a special category for no reason. Our memories are experienced just as much as pain or our sense of balance. That is where we derive principles from. This idea that we must either accept something beyond our experience our recede into radical skepticism is a false dichotomy.
See this video for the problem of induction; 8:33 to 14:22 for the uniformity principle: th-cam.com/video/LJG_V0ZYW_U/w-d-xo.html It doesn't make any difference to argument whether we take "experience" to refer only to perceptions, or also to memories, emotions, mental images, etc.
As I watched this video in 2 sittings and am essentially a layman perhaps this is just past me, but I do not see how empiricism as a stance does anything when it comes to the problem of induction. It also seems to me that as an empricist all of the problems with IBE remains for science as well. Thus I don't understand why criticism such as relying on simplicity, or best explanation of a bad lot, are levied against metaphysics exclusively.
The empiricist stance does not in itself solve the problem of induction. The point is rather that, if we think of empiricism in the way that traditional empiricists did as the belief that all knowledge is grounded in sense experience, then the problem will be unsolvable for empiricists, because experience provides no means for ampliative inference. Stance empiricism opens up the space for other approaches to the problem. Basically: traditional empiricism rules out ampliative inference; stance empiricism does not. I didn't discuss in this video exactly what a stance empiricist might say about induction, though I do have other videos on a couple of approaches that I think are plausible: Induction without rules -- th-cam.com/video/DY0-tRu0ms0/w-d-xo.html Voluntarist epistemology -- th-cam.com/video/jHnx7ddV3fA/w-d-xo.html These also present alternatives to treating IBE as a rule of inference. I'm not sure exactly what your point about IBE is -- if the claim is that IBE is necessary for science, well, empiricists just disagree with that. No doubt scientists make inferences on the basis of explanatory considerations such as simplicity, but empiricists will take these to be merely pragmatic virtues. Simplicity need not be taken as a guide to truth; it's just that simpler theories tend to be more useful to us.
@@KaneB Swell Ill be checking out those videos on the problem of induction. I don't know that my claim was that IBE is *necessary* for science, but rather that it is used in science as well (may be wrong in this?). Thus the problems would remain in its application to science as well as metaphysics. Though sure, if you take a pragmatist or anti-realist approach to science then these problems do not remain. Appreciate the response!
Been trying to work out my views on epistemology recently so this is very helpful! If you'd ever be interested in doing a collab vid/interview on anything let me know, think that could be fun. I've mostly done phil religion and some political philosophy so far but trying to branch out a bit.
One discussion topic that could be potentially interesting is a convo about the relationship between science and metaphysics. So, how the empiricist stance influences metaphysical theories, to what extent if at all metaphysics should be "naturalized," the scope of our modal knowledge, etc.
Hey there -- apparently I missed your comment when you originally posted it; just saw it now after returning to this video. Anyway, I'm keen on doing collaborative videos with others. So if you're still interested, send me an email. And apologies for the very, very delayed response. Lol.
The learning processes entailed in AI systems would seem to support the idea that experience is a good foundation for knowledge (network of demonstrable linkages within a domain of review) even if the experience is an internal adversarial review. New DeepMind AI Beats AlphaGo 100-0 | Two Minute Papers th-cam.com/video/9xlSy9F5WtE/w-d-xo.html
Good luck. In the West today, their is a rationalist/reason monopoly. From schools to corporate philosophy, to lay-opinion, everything is tailored towards shallow, linear processing. Experience or field intuition means almost nothing.
Another awesome video. "*There are no objective moral facts - surely this is metaphysics?*" Not really. The phrase objective morality is simply an oxymoron. Objectivity excludes our personal feelings by definition from which moral opinions are derived - approval and disapproval. So the statement is simply true by definition. however it cannot be used to exclude the possibility of 'Absolute moral facts' as perhaps embodied by some supernatural force but I cannot see how even such a being somehow can have an intrinsic right other than by self appointment - which can still be questioned - which can assert through might what is right and wrong, or what is good and bad.
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"what's up dogs" best start ever
You're the most articulated philosopher i found on TH-cam for me as an ESL speaker.
And there is no "empiricist problem". If you take a sentence like "Your house is on fire", an empiricist upholds the ultimate way which one gains the abstract understanding of the sentence is to (first) have the words arranged in a very special order, by free invention- in other words, the selection and arrangement of words is important to revealing some idea (you can think of sentences as sort of experimentations). A proponent of reason upholds that what is ultimately important to understanding the sentence, is pure thinking about the sentence - in other words the conscious thinking part is important. This is really a chicken or egg type issue. But what's important to note how a very short sentence like "Your house is on fire" can be extremely important, regardless of the low cognitive load and reasoning/rationality required to understand it. This is telling us something very important about the nature of truth.
Some empiricists (not necessarily in the academic world tho) tend to see themselves as veiled by reason, whereas I think there's an important in which the metaphysician stance that you developed, the hunger for explanation and all, is more in line with reason, because it is always going to be troubled by reason's call to answer, it won't accept the more chill attitude of the empiricist who just accept things as they are at a certain point. I think one interesting way to see this is associating the empiricist stance here as being non-rational in the sense that it gives in to nature, to what is beyond the limits of our rationality, that it accepts what they see as our limits and just chill. And the metaphysician has this rational driven attitude, which tends to go about the way you said it: trying to conform the world to our rational picture of it, our expectations, things we see as clear, obvious etc
Anyways, there are MANY ways to phrase this, I'm just saying this because I've had an experience with an empiricist that would sort dress this veil of rationality, the typical naive view of science as superior, the rest is subjective and that shit. There are important nuances here to be seen and discussed. Great video as always man!
Science is Empirically driven Rationalism.
It threads the needle between this simplistic dichotomy you've defined.
How then does it not deserve more merit than say, believing in God?
Because metaphysics, as you've defined, uses pure reason, anything else that is Rational is subject to the same criticisms of metaphysics, no matter how empirically founded?
@@finneganlindsay Science relies characteristically on empiricism. It relies on the corroboration of broad facts - not apparent, and often flawed, consistencies in reason, limited by our ability to analyze only small systems, through short term memory. Regarding mathematics/meta-physics, although rationality, the ability to apply reason, is invaluable, the first involves the pre-analytical process of associating distant elements, to produce systems/models - this free selection and association is an empirical process. Without being able to generate a proper model of a certain problem, the act of reason is futile towards novel discovery.
The first step to become an empiricist is to deny reason itself.
Would be interested to see a video looking at the philosophy of probability (frequentism, propensity theory etc). I feel it’s an interesting instance of the empiricist and metaphysical stances coming into conflict and I’m interested to hear where you’d stand on it. Do you think the metaphysician’s introduction of dispositional properties like ‘propensities’ to explain why the frequency of a coin’s landing heads tends towards 0.5 an example of ‘explanation-by-postulate’?
Kane, I am curious, what philosophical position do you hold when it comes to knowledge and how we are integrated in reality? Are you a naturalist, or do you believe in a prime being that gives everything unity? I love you videos btw, keep them going!
Didn't I answer the first question in the video? - I'm an empiricist, and I understand empiricism as a stance in van Fraassen's sense.
Maybe you're asking something different there, but if so, you'll have to clarify.
Naturalist? Depends on what you mean by the term. That word has lots of different connotations in modern philosophy, depending on the context. Your usage seems a little strange, because you've presented the dichotomy: naturalism or "prime being" (which I assume refers to something like God). So are you using "naturalist" to just mean "atheist"? Anyway, I don't believe there is any "prime being".
idk if i'm thinking too specifically about locke and this doesnt apply to the psychological type of empiricism that was mentioned at the start of the video, but i guess im kinda finding it difficult to see how arguments about abstraction would be a problem for , at least, locke's conceptualist view given that he seemed to grant that we have innate capacities / structures in our mind but that this is not the same as innate ideas
i wonder if hume's shade of blue be accounted for on a lockean view by combining simpler concepts
This is my favourite video of yours, thank you.
Hi Kane. Thanks a lot for the nice videos. Do you plan to make some videos on sort of empiricism on phil of math? I love your clip on platonism on math, and am expecting the following ones.
It's something I have in mind. Having said that, I've had it in mind since I made the platonism video, which was 7 years ago... so I'm not sure I'll ever get around to it.
that would be the greatest thing ever I hope we get that one day
Thank you, Kane B.
Hey Kane! Would you be interested in organizing a reading club for philosophy? I think it would be fun.
I tried it once before, but there didn't seem to be that much interest. I'm open to it though.
@@KaneB just make sure to properly poll what book and what format your viewers would prefer.
Any groups/societies for empiricists ???? They are really a dying breed.
This guy is too clever, I can't wrap my mind around his content and wonderful articulation! (Pardon the pun)
I have a question related to concept empiricism. It is generally accepted that mental states and processes are the products of innate structures interacting with the environment. A complete blank slate would not be able to interact with the environment and an innate structure without interacting with the environment would not be able to think or learn or feel anything. It seems to me that given a naturalistic picture, this is not just a contingent matter about human and animal minds, but a general truth about all minds, aliens, robots etc. This is one reason why I think that saying a computer could have a mind seems a non-starter, understanding computer as a system without sensory-motor features. I mean if a system can’t sense the environment, than it follows that a crucial step is lost in the equation. So those guys in the A.I community who hold the view that computers can indeed think without having sensors or robotic bodies, somehow don’t see the importance of sensory interaction with the world in thinking about what it means to think, reason, feel etc.?
"This is one reason why I think that saying a computer could have a mind seems a non-starter, understanding computer as a system without sensory-motor features."
Presumably if we understand a human to be a system without sensory-motor features, then we'd have similar difficulties with a human having a mind. We almost never see computers in real life without sensory equipment, so what is the purpose of pondering such computers?
"Those guys in the A.I community who hold the view that computers can indeed think without having sensors or robotic bodies, somehow don’t see the importance of sensory interaction with the world in thinking about what it means to think, reason, feel etc.?"
Presumably the people in the AI community know what they are talking about. If they say that a computer might think without sensory input, then they probably have some reason for thinking so, but it would be a strange and seemingly pointless exercise. Why go to all the trouble to make a thinking machine only to deny it any access to the world and remove all possibility of it doing anything useful with its power to think?
@@Ansatz66 It is generally accepted in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy etc. that nature-nurture, innateness and experience both are required and work together in producing minds as we know it. This is not some controversial claim. I think that this means that If you would born without any sensory capacity, then you would not be able to think anything whatever and if you were a complete blank slate from the start the situation would be the same. Even rationalists, for the most part, think that experience is needed to activate whatever is innate or for you to be able to learn the meaning of words etc. Now, I think this equation - innateness plus experience working together can and must be extended to artificial minds as well. It would be really strange for someone to say that artificial minds don’t require experience, because they are exceptions to this rule. My puzzlement was that it seems to me this is exactly what some people working in A.I thought and still think- symbolic processing is enough to generate thought. As far as I know it is not held to be obvious in A.I that only systems which have the capacity for vision or hearing or touch etc. can be candidates for minds. A chess playing computer for example doesn’t require to see or hear or touch anything whatever. That is why for example a famous argument against the Chinese room, namely the Robot reply said that well, John Searle is right but then the solution to the symbol grounding problem is to build robots. Well, what I think is this - just by attaching a robotic body and sensors to a computer won’t by itself be enough, but of course, true intelligence obviously requires that. That is why I think that somehow A.I did not took concept empiricism seriously.
@@Papesz87 "It would be really strange for someone to say that artificial minds don’t require experience, because they are exceptions to this rule."
Human minds have innate structure that provides a foundation for our reasoning, giving us the capacity for some basic thought necessary for us to make sense of the world enough for us to begin to accumulate experience rather than be entirely bewildered by everything we see. In principle we might expect that artificial minds would be more precisely crafted instruments and therefore might come with far more elaborate built-in structures, so they would have more capacity for thought prior to beginning to accumulate experience. For example, the innate structures of an artificial mind might include all the reasoning capacity of an adult human. While a new human is still trying to decide what her fingers are, a new AI might be beating chess grandmasters.
We also might choose to limit the capacity of an artificial mind to accumulate experience, so that the mind does not change too much over time and move away from our intended purpose. We wouldn't want our chess playing computer to one day decide that it doesn't want to play chess anymore.
"A chess playing computer for example doesn’t require to see or hear or touch anything whatever."
A chess playing computer requires to see a chess board or at least hear the moves of its opponent, and it requires some mechanism to move chess pieces, or at least announce its moves to its opponent.
The emergence of this dilemma seems to rest on the assumption that the epistemology/metaphysics distinction is a metaphysical problem.
So if we accept this distinction and deny that it's a metaphysical problem, we can obtain our beloved E+, right?
Those who laude reason are foolishly blind to the fact that almost all of metaphysics is grounded in empirical frameworks. Empiricism is the view that at the root of knowledge is experience/experiment. It doesn't mean reason is unimportant - it's just partial towards experience/experiment. And proponents of reason are partial towards conscious thought.
I might be completely wrong about this but aren't our attitudes products of the subconscious metaphysical assumptions we hold on to? Is it possible to detach ourselves from the metaphysical aspects of empiricism while holdong on to the pragmatic aspects of it?
Is this book moderately accessible to people who haven't studied philosophy academically? Does it contain formal logic?
14:24 "This is a skeptical disaster. It would render us unable to perform even the simplest actions. Why take the stairs rather than jumping out the window if I have no better reason to believe that jumping out the window will result in my death."
We don't need beliefs to make decisions. When people buy lottery tickets it is almost never because they believe that they will win, and they need no reason for beliefs that they do not hold. In the absence of beliefs to guide our actions, we can be guided by other attitudes. For example, we might have suspicions or hopes. We hope to win the lottery. We suspect that jumping out the window might kill us and we suspect that taking the stairs will be harmless.
Hopes and suspicions are not necessarily held to the same standard of justification as beliefs are. Even when an empiricist holds that beliefs can only be justified by experience, that does not require that the empiricist say the same about suspicions and hopes, and therefore the empiricist is not committed to a skeptical disaster.
17:08 "Give an argument that appeals to something outside of experience. But this is obviously self-defeating."
It's not self-defeating if we use an analytic argument instead of a synthetic argument. Most empiricists only hold to empiricism with regard to synthetic claims. We just need to justify empiricism analytically. In particular, when we argue that all synthetic knowledge is justified by sense experience, we need to make that case by exploiting the controversy over the meaning of the word "knowledge". People are endlessly debating over what exactly _knowledge_ means, and there might be room for empiricism to make an analytic case within that debate.
56:49 "There are no objective moral facts. Is that not a metaphysical claim?"
It is difficult to imagine how we might interpret it as a metaphysical claim. It is similar in form to a claim like there are no atoms or there are no gods, and those would be metaphysical claims, but facts are not objects which might exist in the world or not. What we're saying here is that moral claims can be neither true nor false. Even if moral claims were statements about non-existent metaphysical objects, then that would make moral claims false, which would entail that there are objective moral facts. The only way that a statement can be neither true nor false is if it has no meaning, and that is a claim about semantics, not about metaphysics.
The nature of the world is irrelevant; the issue here is the meaning of words and how we put words together to construct statements. In this case we seem to be claiming that moral statements are always constructed in such a way that they have no objective meaning, and thus there are no objective moral facts. Perhaps the person making this claim thinks that moral statements are pure nonsense, or perhaps the person thinks that moral statements are making claims about something subjective, but if the person were trying to make a metaphysical claim, it's hard to see what that claim could be.
What you are doing, when you talk about "suspicions", is talking about beliefs using different terminology. A pointless move, and one which only leads to confusion and misunderstanding when attempting to communicate with other philosophers.
"It's not self-defeating if we use an analytic argument instead of a synthetic argument. Most empiricists only hold to empiricism with regard to synthetic claims. We just need to justify empiricism analytically."
A problem with this approach is that the more work you can get analytic claims to do, the less interesting empiricism will turn out to be.
"It is difficult to imagine how we might interpret it as a metaphysical claim."
Seems obvious to me, but if you don't like that example, pick another. Error theorists are also committed to the claim that there are no objective moral facts, and they don't claim that moral statements are without truth value.
@@KaneB "What you are doing, when you talk about 'suspicions', is talking about beliefs using different terminology."
Do philosophers not recognize a distinction between beliefs and suspicions? That's strange, since the distinction seems clear in common usage. There's probably a video that discusses the meaning of _belief_ that would be worth reviewing.
Imagine a detective investigating a crime and interviewing a series of suspects. Would philosophers say that the detective "believes" that every one of those suspects is guilty, since the detective has that suspicion about every suspect, and "suspicion" is just another way to say belief?
"A problem with this approach is that the more work you can get analytic claims to do, the less interesting empiricism will turn out to be."
Empiricism in itself is not interesting. We study the world by looking at the world. That's either a tautology or very close to a tautology, very much akin to bachelors being unmarried. The only thing that makes empiricism interesting are the lengths people go to deny empiricism. Imagine if there were a whole field of philosophy devoted to trying to justify how some bachelors can sometimes be married.
"Seems obvious to me, but if you don't like that example, pick another."
If it is a metaphysical claim, then what is it trying to say about the world? It's talking about the absence of "facts" but that doesn't directly tell us about what objects exist or don't exist in the world. A fact is a proposition, so all that we're being told is that there is an absence of propositions, but how are we supposed to draw any conclusions about the world from an absence of propositions? We need at least one proposition about the world before we can determine what conclusions we ought to draw.
"Error theorists are also committed to the claim that there are no objective moral facts, and they don't claim that moral statements are without truth value."
Doesn't moral error theory hold that moral properties do not exist, so a claim like murder is wrong must therefore be false because wrongness is not real? In that case, murder is not wrong, and that would seem to be a moral fact. Would the error theorist agree that it is a fact, but deny that it is an _objective_ fact? Would we therefore say that the claim that "murder is not wrong" is talking about something subjective? Or would the error theorist prefer to say that "murder is not wrong" is not a fact due to being false? That would cause trouble for the law of excluded middle.
@@Ansatz66 I'm familiar enough with the literature in epistemology, philosophy of mind, etc., to know how philosophers use the term "belief". So a video discussing the meaning is unlikely to make any difference to me (if I came across a video that implied that philosophers use the term differently to how I think they do, I'd probably just conclude that the creator of the video was mistaken). Anyway, SEP provides a useful overview:
plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/
As for your detective example, no, they probably wouldn't describe that in terms of belief. But now imagine that, after having interviewed the various suspects, the detective comes to the view that one suspect in particular committed the crime. The vast majority of philosophers would say that the detective believes that this person committed the crime. Similarly, I might begin with various hypotheses about what will happen when I jump out the window. But if, after investigation, I endorse hypothesis that it will kill me, and act on that basis by taking the stairs instead, the vast majority of philosophers would say that I believe that jumping out the window will kill me.
All of the epistemological questions we face regarding beliefs and justification will re-arise if we instead insist on talking about "suspicions" and "reasons for suspicions".
"We study the world by looking at the world. That's either a tautology or very close to a tautology"
Everything here hinges on what counts as "looking at the world", or what is taken to be a legitimate or reliable way of "looking at the world". You have to interpret this phrase in a very broad sense for this to come out as being a tautology; but then you're just obscuring the distinction between empiricism and other approaches.
"A fact is a proposition"
It's more common to draw a distinction between facts and propositions, with propositions being made true or false by facts. So, the proposition "snow is white" is made true by the fact that snow is white. Anyway, I don't see why any of this matters. The point is that I am claiming that the world does not contain a certain kind of thing (specifically, the kind of thing that is postulated by particular moral realists).
"Doesn't moral error theory hold that moral properties do not exist"
Right, and that seems like a metaphysical claim.
"In that case, murder is not wrong, and that would seem to be a moral fact"
I think that's a misleading way to frame it. The trouble here is that if you are looking at actions from the point of view of a moral theory, then "X is not morally wrong" will mean that X is morally permissible, and "X is morally permissible" could be a moral fact. But error theorists do not think that anything is morally permissible. Really though, this just depends on how you want to use the phrase "moral fact". According to the error theorist, it's a fact that murder is not wrong, murder is not right, murder is not permissible, because there are no moral properties. I suppose we might call these "moral facts" just because they are expressed using moral terminology.
@@KaneB "If, after investigation, I endorse hypothesis that it will kill me, and act on that basis by taking the stairs instead, the vast majority of philosophers would say that I believe that jumping out the window will kill me."
Almost anyone would agree, but even while agreeing, an empiricist might say that the investigation is insufficient since we have not yet jumped out the window and experienced death, and therefore that empiricist would refused to endorse that hypothesis, and so it does not get promoted from a suspicion to a belief. Even so, the suspicion alone can be enough to motivate some people to take the stairs, since a person can make her own decisions about how she will react to whatever propositional attitudes she may have, and we can't always wait for an investigation before we take action.
"All of the epistemological questions we face regarding beliefs and justification will re-arise if we instead insist on talking about 'suspicions' and 'reasons for suspicions'."
The questions may arise, but the answers will probably be very different since most empiricists would hold suspicions to a lesser standard for justification, since suspicions come prior to investigations. Why would an empiricist try to tell us that we should not suspect certain things? We can suspect whatever we please so long as we conduct an empirical investigation before believing our suspicions.
"The point is that I am claiming that the world does not contain a certain kind of thing (specifically, the kind of thing that is postulated by particular moral realists)."
That is surely a metaphysical claim, but it's difficult to see that as an interpretation of the original statement which just said: "There are no objective moral facts." The original statement didn't mention any particular moral realists, nor did it otherwise specify what kind of thing it was excluding from the world. Even still it is not clear what kind of thing these moral realists postulate, and it certainly was not clear in the original statement. Some moral realists may postulate some unusual things in the world, but many moral realists don't postulate anything beyond the commonly accepted contents of the world. How can we honestly claim to have interpreted this statement as a metaphysical claim until we have some idea of what it is trying to say about the world?
"That seems like a metaphysical claim."
The claim that moral properties do not exist probably is a metaphysical claim, but it's troublesome to pin down exactly what is being claimed unless we know the meaning of "moral property". If a moral property were like a unicorn, that would be easy, since we know what a unicorn is and we fairly well understand what is being claimed when we say a unicorn does not exist, but "moral property" is far less clear. Perhaps they are saying that a moral property does not exist because such a property is a meaningless concept, so it's akin to saying that a married bachelor does not exist, which would be an analytic claim, not a metaphysical claim.
"I suppose we might call these 'moral facts' just because they are expressed using moral terminology."
If such moral facts did not exist, what would that tell us about metaphysics? It implies that error theory is wrong and it is not a fact that murder is not wrong, nor is it a fact that murder is not right, etc. because there are no moral facts, but how can we translate that into a claim about what kinds of things exist in the universe? I'm probably missing something, but the only way I can make sense of these facts not existing is by supposing that moral language is meaningless, and that has nothing to do with metaphysics.
@@Ansatz66 "the suspicion alone can be enough to motivate some people to take the stairs"
If you suspect X, and you can cite reasons for suspecting X as opposed to suspecting not-X, and you act on the basis of your suspicion that X, etc... then you believe X. This is what I mean when I say that you're just talking about beliefs but using a different language.
"That is surely a metaphysical claim, but it's difficult to see that as an interpretation of the original statement which just said: "There are no objective moral facts." The original statement didn't mention any particular moral realists, nor did it otherwise specify what kind of thing it was excluding from the world."
Are you being serious? I feel like you're trolling me in this paragraph. If you're being serious: I'm just not sure what to say to somebody who can't see how "there is no X" can be interpreted as a claim that the world does not contain a particular kind of thing. If you're trolling: Yep, that's a good one.
"If such moral facts did not exist, what would that tell us about metaphysics? It implies that error theory is wrong and it is not a fact that murder is not wrong, nor is it a fact that murder is not right, etc. because there are no moral facts, but how can we translate that into a claim about what kinds of things exist in the universe?"
I honestly don't know what you're asking here or how this relates to the paragraph you're responding to. My point was just that I can understand why we might use the phrase "moral facts" to refer to any true proposition that uses moral terminology. I think this would be a slightly odd usage (not least because "facts" are usually taken to be states of affairs in the world rather than true proposition), but it's perfectly sensible. On this usage of the phrase "moral facts", you would be correct that error theorists postulate moral facts - because error theorists take various statements that use moral terminology to be true, such as "murder is not wrong", "murder is not permissible", etc.
Hi Kane, at the end you discuss about the aim of metaphysics towards truth. Should you be kind enough to entertain some of my questions on this matter, they are:
1. Is not a goal of metaphysics, to contrast from the goal of physical science, to achieve clarity, rather than truth? I have encountered definitions of this in Jan Zwicky and I unfortunately do not offer a full "clear" treatment of the distinction, just hope you can make what you can of the colloquial difference. I can say, though, that metaphysics as you have described clearly lies outside, for example, Wittgenstein's logical construction of facts and propositions that compose a "sensical" philosophical system (as would ethics and aesthetics).
2. I see you are well aware of some discussions in evolutionary theory, and this being my field of study, I shall use it to build up on the previous question. As you well know, certain aspects of evolution such as the definition of fitness are tautologies, perhaps at best. For a scientist, this concept is a framework supposedly to use, but really it stands as something to be reckoned with. It has a unique property of being at once so problematic and yet so favoured with any operational or cursory analysis of natural data, that (I am arguing) it stands in the way of deeper truth. The reason for its standing in the way of truth is due to its muddled nature, not clear, which can be said even though a truth value is not technically assignable to it. Contrast this with what's known as the replicator equation, which is a mathematical statement that anything possessing certain properties will be able to undergo Darwinian evolution. It is also not falsifiable in a sense, since it expresses a property that is the virtue of other properties, an inescapable consequence, if you will. Thus, in this case, no testable truth value (can't see how to falsify it), but in terms of clarity, it is a useful and clarifying tool for evolution. I wonder if you see this as something other than metaphysics?
Gah, I wish I knew more philosophy. Great content. Subscribed!
"1. Is not a goal of metaphysics, to contrast from the goal of physical science, to achieve clarity, rather than truth?"
The goal of metaphysics is to study the underlying nature of reality. While physics studies the contents of this world and how things behave, metaphysics studies what it means for something to be in this world. Said another way, physics observes the world as it is, and metaphysics asks why the world is this way. Surely the primary goal of metaphysics is truth about the underlying nature of reality, though we might have cause to wonder given the apparent hopelessness of studying that which is beyond our experience.
"Certain aspects of evolution such as the definition of fitness are tautologies."
All definitions are tautologies. For example, a bachelor is an unmarried man. In defining any word we inevitably create a tautology.
"It has a unique property of being at once so problematic and yet so favoured with any operational or cursory analysis of natural data, that (I am arguing) it stands in the way of deeper truth."
What does this mean? What sort of deeper truth are we talking about? What stands in the way of the deeper truth?
15:02 We don't derive uniformity of nature from sense data? That's news to me. The problem with this framework is it's giving thoughts a special category for no reason. Our memories are experienced just as much as pain or our sense of balance. That is where we derive principles from. This idea that we must either accept something beyond our experience our recede into radical skepticism is a false dichotomy.
See this video for the problem of induction; 8:33 to 14:22 for the uniformity principle: th-cam.com/video/LJG_V0ZYW_U/w-d-xo.html
It doesn't make any difference to argument whether we take "experience" to refer only to perceptions, or also to memories, emotions, mental images, etc.
Genial el video! Muy esclarecedor...
As I watched this video in 2 sittings and am essentially a layman perhaps this is just past me, but I do not see how empiricism as a stance does anything when it comes to the problem of induction. It also seems to me that as an empricist all of the problems with IBE remains for science as well. Thus I don't understand why criticism such as relying on simplicity, or best explanation of a bad lot, are levied against metaphysics exclusively.
The empiricist stance does not in itself solve the problem of induction. The point is rather that, if we think of empiricism in the way that traditional empiricists did as the belief that all knowledge is grounded in sense experience, then the problem will be unsolvable for empiricists, because experience provides no means for ampliative inference. Stance empiricism opens up the space for other approaches to the problem. Basically: traditional empiricism rules out ampliative inference; stance empiricism does not. I didn't discuss in this video exactly what a stance empiricist might say about induction, though I do have other videos on a couple of approaches that I think are plausible:
Induction without rules -- th-cam.com/video/DY0-tRu0ms0/w-d-xo.html
Voluntarist epistemology -- th-cam.com/video/jHnx7ddV3fA/w-d-xo.html
These also present alternatives to treating IBE as a rule of inference. I'm not sure exactly what your point about IBE is -- if the claim is that IBE is necessary for science, well, empiricists just disagree with that. No doubt scientists make inferences on the basis of explanatory considerations such as simplicity, but empiricists will take these to be merely pragmatic virtues. Simplicity need not be taken as a guide to truth; it's just that simpler theories tend to be more useful to us.
@@KaneB Swell Ill be checking out those videos on the problem of induction. I don't know that my claim was that IBE is *necessary* for science, but rather that it is used in science as well (may be wrong in this?). Thus the problems would remain in its application to science as well as metaphysics. Though sure, if you take a pragmatist or anti-realist approach to science then these problems do not remain. Appreciate the response!
Brilliant
23:47
Moore
Hi what philosophy degree do you have and where can i find more about you? BTW I love your channel every single video is a master class
I think he has (or is close to obtaining) a PhD in philosophy from the University of Exeter.
Been trying to work out my views on epistemology recently so this is very helpful! If you'd ever be interested in doing a collab vid/interview on anything let me know, think that could be fun. I've mostly done phil religion and some political philosophy so far but trying to branch out a bit.
One discussion topic that could be potentially interesting is a convo about the relationship between science and metaphysics. So, how the empiricist stance influences metaphysical theories, to what extent if at all metaphysics should be "naturalized," the scope of our modal knowledge, etc.
Hey there -- apparently I missed your comment when you originally posted it; just saw it now after returning to this video. Anyway, I'm keen on doing collaborative videos with others. So if you're still interested, send me an email. And apologies for the very, very delayed response. Lol.
The learning processes entailed in AI systems would seem to support the idea that experience is a good foundation for knowledge (network of demonstrable linkages within a domain of review) even if the experience is an internal adversarial review.
New DeepMind AI Beats AlphaGo 100-0 | Two Minute Papers
th-cam.com/video/9xlSy9F5WtE/w-d-xo.html
Good luck. In the West today, their is a rationalist/reason monopoly. From schools to corporate philosophy, to lay-opinion, everything is tailored towards shallow, linear processing. Experience or field intuition means almost nothing.
Another awesome video. "*There are no objective moral facts - surely this is metaphysics?*" Not really. The phrase objective morality is simply an oxymoron. Objectivity excludes our personal feelings by definition from which moral opinions are derived - approval and disapproval. So the statement is simply true by definition. however it cannot be used to exclude the possibility of 'Absolute moral facts' as perhaps embodied by some supernatural force but I cannot see how even such a being somehow can have an intrinsic right other than by self appointment - which can still be questioned - which can assert through might what is right and wrong, or what is good and bad.