3:25:00 ( About Free will): The answer is really very simple: If the world is fundamentally deterministic, then you have one and only one History compatible with ( any, arbitrary ) initial conditions. This is what happens with Laplacian / Newtonian determinism: If we specify our data at some moment of time, it is possible, in principle, for a physical entity ( like Laplace's demon) to predict the future and retrodict the past in full detail. So, in such deterministic/ predictable Universes there's no room for compatibilist free will, decisions, or anything related. So we can be almost certain ( with Bayesian confidence 99.999%) that our real World is fundamentally Probabilistic. Exactly as in standard Quantum Mechanics. Objective/ fundamental/ irreducible Probability means, simply, that there are many possible Histories compatible with any specific ( arbitrary chosen) initial conditions. This is entirely necessary for the existence of any notion of free will, even the most restricted!
Thank you for your usually enjoyable videos. In most cases I find myself in agreement with your philosophical positions. By the way, I am also one of those PhDs who couldn't find a job in Academia. You are right that it's not easy.
Sort of regret putting my question in meme form, so I really appreciate an answer that's better than it deserved. I can understand a PSR as a kind of postulate that says "We're doing science here, we're going to assume there's something further". Insert other field of study as needed. That feels like a good basis for our intellectual inquiries. Keep going and if you can't keep going then keep thinking about how to keep going. My problem really kicks in when it's wrapped up as a metaphysical principle that's true (especially when put to use in theological arguments), which is a mighty big claim in the same way brute facts are. We'll end up with some infinite regress of explanations, bruteness, or some self-explaining fact. Brute facts at least seems plausible enough to not tie myself to a PSR, and PSR seems at least problematic enough to not spin strong arguments from it.
Thanks for your answers, Kane. I appreciate your time and insight. (56:17 - 1:02:41). Reading Aquinas is like having your teeth pulled; a good buddy of mine is a devoted Thomist, and he tortures me with it. That said, I don't reject Thomas's metaphysics in the same way that you do. But. . .it's a lot.
Pseudo-Dionysius's "Mystical Theology" is a stunningly beautiful piece of writing. I don't see it as having much to do with religion or God as I would normally think of the term, though. You might as well frame it in terms of the Kantian noumena, or in terms of the ground of being and non-being, or whatever else. I guess that's my impression of apophatic theology in general: the aspects of it that are compelling aren't really about what it presents itself as being about -- that is, it's not really giving us a *theology*. But perhaps it points in the direction of something profound about experience/reality, and that's worthwhile.
@@KaneBloved it as well! 2 questions: 1) why don’t you have as much interest in Phil of religion? 2) u said u had respect/ admiration for ontological arguments. What do u make of Godel’s if ur familiar at all with it
Thank you, Kane for responding to my questions! But I believe you misunderstood my third question (I only realised now that I haven't formulated it accurately). What I meant was, since the scientific antirealist sees science as a useful tool only, can they use a scientific theory (eda) in philosophical arguments?
Yes, I think they can. You might present the argument as a challenge to the internal coherence of particular worldviews. You can argue for the claim: *If* you believe that contemporary evolutionary theory provides a correct account of the origin of human beings, then the moral realist has no way to account for moral knowledge. Whether you affirm the antecedent of that conditional is irrelevant to the threat this raises to most moral realists, because most moral realists do affirm the antecedent. Indeed, many of them are more confident about the antecedent than they are of the denial of the consequent. Many philosophical arguments involve adopting different positions for the sake of argument, and then working out the consequences of those positions. Of course, this kind of strategy has its limits. If you don't affirm the truth of contemporary evolutionary theory, then this theory can't provide you with a reason to reject moral realism. You won't take yourself to be closer to an answer about whether moral realism or moral antirealism is correct. But that's fine; there are other things you can do with philosophical arguments.
Wow, genuinely thought I was the only one who enjoyed eating beans like that. Love em. Cannellini, pinto, haricot, black eyed beans, kidney beans, broad beans, butter beans, borlotti beans, chick peas. Just warmed up in microwave maybe with some pepper and some chilli sauce or something. Fibre, protein, 2 of your 5 a day. Just such a good contribution to the diet.
I think the reason you never see a consensus on “solutions” to “philosophical problems” is just that there are no philosophical problems. There isn’t any theory independent way of stating a problem that all philosophical parties will agree to being a fair statement of the problem. Your own example of scepticism is telling here, since almost no defender of scepticism prior to the 20th century would accept the most popular contemporary framings of “the problem of scepticism ”. As the conversation continues, so too the topic changes subtly. There are different ways of thinking, and they converse, but there is no list of problems all the talkers are working on.
It’s not going to do any good to make any anti support for animal agriculture since you already agree with the position but I will say this: when you cut something out cold turkey you really quickly establish a new baseline and your enjoyment of food won’t really go down. It’s some sort of biological/psychological thing that’s akin to jumping in cold water. You can do it man!
As someone whose been vegan for a couple of months this is only true for like 60 percent of food, some vegan stuff just tastes worse and there's no getting around it (maybe things are different when you've been vegan for years but at that point I doubt you'd still remember what non vegan food tastes like)
@@InefficientCustard Edit: This ended up weirdly long and probably isn't worth reading haha Yeah I mean im sure if I did a side by side with lots of things the non-vegan one might be better, but if I compare how much I enjoy like a vegan cake now to how much I enjoyed a non vegan cake before I was vegan I think it would be similar. And for stuff like just a hunk of meat or cheese, its been so long that it sincerely seems gross so its no burden to avoid it. I've gotten the wrong order sometimes and ate it anyway and it now causes me to literally feel nauseous/throw it up. After being vegan for a few years now, the toughest part is just the social aspect when you can't find stuff while out with friends and people assume you have a moral superiority complex. Ironically, its the reputation vegans have earned that is the worst part about being vegan for me.
That response to the first question is just discouraging. Haha. I study physics and the way you described yourself is precisely what I'm. The worse part is that the only thing that I think I care for is research. Oh, well...
Oh it would be so interesting if some of Sellars' or Brandom's strains of thought would sip into your and you'll think of some ways of accomodating it in your worldview. That's promising because around 2 years ago you weren't interested in sellarsians at all
regarding freeganism, PETA has actually taken a positive stance towards eating roadkill, so there might be some openness towards eating meat when doing so doesn't support animal agriculture and isn't the result of deliberately killing animals
To advocate Culling predators and to advocate forms of extreme vegetarianism is compatible historically as in case of classic Indian metaphysics which appears to rely on some ontology of the body existing in a subtle material form as a person who requires sacrifices to be made in quantity that happened to be a similar kind of species so as to give the person the ability to exist after desolation of their body in a form that would give a respectful appearance to the gods. The logic seems to favour keeping out tigers in favour of livestock like cattle which suggests a moral community based on realism. The ideology of aesthetic realism that informs sustainable farming of livestock entails extreme vegetarianism and ritualistic culling of predators like in the scientific sequel blade runner 2047.
At around 19:30 you said that: “I don’t think that the logical problem of evil works” and earlier you said: “I know that there are ways out of it (the problem of evil). But I wish to disagree with you that there are no ways out of the problem of evil, at least when it comes to the triomni god. I could write a very detailed response, but I would love to see some of the “cool responses” you think that can get around the problem.
My favourites are: (1) Endorse a Cartesian conception of omnipotence, i.e. God can do anything without limit, including realizing contradictions. So permitting evil can be logically incompatible with perfect goodness, but God can be perfectly good and permit evil anyway. (2) Endorse open individualism about personal identity. In that case, every sentient being is literally identical with God; any suffering that is experienced is simply God realizing such experiences for himself, and there's nothing morally problematic about that. The trouble is that if you think through the consequences of these positions, you end up with a conception of God that departs pretty radically from that which is assumed by most of the philosophers who are trying to solve the problem of evil.
@@KaneB Thanks for responding on a short notice. When it comes to Absolutism, I tend to view it as a naive form of omnipotence. For the moment you open the door to allow god to do literally ANYTHING he wants, is the moment you open the door to all sorts of absurdities. If god can do all sorts of contradictory things, like creating a married bachelor, we kiss logic and our rational thinking goodbye, for now on what grounds are we allowed to comprehend this god? On what grounds are we justified to put labels on him such as benevolent? Further, if he’s able to be and create all sorts of contradictions, so he is, at least in theory, both good and evil, alive and dead, existing and not existing. What’s being done here is simply picking and choosing whichever contradictory qualities that would “solve” this problem and attribute it to him. Finally, the most important and natural implication of this is, if he truly can allow for contradictories why not allow for a world devoid of gratuitous evil? I suspect the answer to this question would be along the line of: he works in mysterious ways, which isn’t really an answer as much as it is admitting ignorance. For the second response, if I am understanding this correctly, essentially we all are god, like a sort of pantheistic notion. And so god subjected himself to the same level of suffering that his subjects are experiencing, which he created in the first place. I fail to see how this answers the problem, sure god is experiencing the same anguish and pain every living thing is experiencing but that doesn’t make it right or good in any way. If I set a homeless person on fire and then do the same to myself to experience what he’s experiencing, that doesn’t make what I did initially right or good. Finally, I do agree with your comment that these responses if taken seriously would lead to a god that’s farther then the god of the Bible or Quran or any other text, and if anything it shows how much the problem of evil really is a devastating blow to the Abrahamic god.
@@abdallam4039>> is the moment you open the door to all sorts of absurdities Yes. That seems fine to me, though. Cartesian omnipotence is the only kind of omnipotence really worthy of the name as far as I'm concerned. >> And so god subjected himself to the same level of suffering that his subjects are experiencing, which he created in the first place No, it's not that God is subjecting himself to the same sufferings that I experience. The idea is rather that I am simply identical with God, so any suffering that I experience is experienced only by God and by no other being. Here's a model that might make this more intuitive. Suppose that God exists. God can do anything (or at least anything logically/metaphysically possible; we need not assume Cartesian omnipotence for this). So one of the things that God can do is simulate for himself exactly what it would be like to be me. That is, he can realize for himself exactly the mental content that I have. It's analogous to the "Roy" game from Rick and Morty: th-cam.com/video/szzVlQ653as/w-d-xo.html
Regarding a good theistic argument: What about Fermi's paradox? It seems there are only two solutions: either humans are (almost) alone, which defies the secular notion that humans are nothing special, or the universe is deliberately regulated (with a universal rule against artificializing the universe) which is quite a theistic stance. What do you think? Do you have a video on Fermi's paradox?
My guess has always been that civilization is extremely rare, and that when it does arise, it doesn't last long. I don't think this is contrary to anything in a secular/naturalist worldview. I suppose it means that humans are special in some sense, but only in the way that, say, a neutrino that interacts with an atom of chlorine in a neutrino detector is special. I have a few videos on the philosophical questions associated with the search for extraterrestrial life -- see my "Philosophy of SETI", though unfortunately I never finished it.
@@KaneBWhen you say "doesn't last long" you mean "always die out before they build self-replicating starships"? Always? Such a universal rule without a single exception does seem like an anti-naturalist hypothesis. (Unless by "rare" you mean "virtually unique", much much more rare than neutrino detection.) Thanks for the pointer to your SETI videos - sounds interesting.
@@KaneB It seems that a social law (one that applies to different independent civilizations rather than to inanimate objects) that holds without exceptions, or even one that holds with very few exceptions, is miraculous and introduces an order to the universe that is unexpected from a secular viewpoint.
@@yoramgt I just don't see anything miraculous or even particularly unexpected about that. We have evidence of exactly one planet on which civilization has arisen, and its future prospects are questionable at best.
Hey Kane! I disagree with what you said about hinge epistemology, but first off let me thank you for the channel and the content, you're great! Now I think the reading of hinge epistemology you presented is a common one, but I don't think it does justice to what Wittgenstein has to say. Let me begin by briefly presenting the views of a different philosopher: Michael Williams. Williams thinks that knowledge (and justification) cannot be an object of theory. Propositions cannot be justified or unjustified simpliciter, so for example there is no such thing as a class of privileged foundational propositions from which everything else has to be inferred. He thinks that traditional epistemology thinks of the relationships of justification between propositions as fixed independently of any context or practice. Now he means this as a theoretical diagnosis of skepticism (he believes that this sort of foundationalism is the source of most skeptical arguments). Wittgenstein, on the other hand, wants to offer a therapeutic solution, trying to argue that ultimately the skeptic doesn't make sense, but I hope that the similarity with Williams will be clear. Hinge propositions for Wittgenstein are not "assumed" for the sake of engaging in a practice. Rather, they are the *background picture* against which people live their lives; our lives are constituted by different practices. So you don't come to believe a hinge proposition or justify it, and when somebody asks you to justify it, you dismiss them. You learn to engage in different practices and behave in certain ways (think of his theory of meaning) and if you try to reflect on yourself, you will find that the picture you have in mind is that the earth has existed for many years, and people have minds like yours, and so on. Notice that hinge propositions actually change. They constitute a much wider class than traditional epistemology would allow: they include the proposition that very few people have been to the moon, for instance (which could change). They are just *expressions* of the way we think and behave IN ORDINARY LIFE. Now, you could disbelieve all of that when you're doing philosophy, but your practices (as you admit) won't change. But if you don't change anything about your life, then are your "theoretical" beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head? Do they make sense in the first place? Your admission that life would go on as usual is all that matters to Wittgenstein; because true skepticism for him would be rejection of a whole way of life and a whole practice. (Skepticism about other minds for example would be the inability to see people as anything other than huge machines that you feel nothing for). He's not offering a proof that no demon will suddenly tell you that your life has been a dream; nobody could do that! He's just trying to show us that skeptical doubts are idle and meaningless in the face of life, where the concepts of knowledge and justification have their ordinary sense. Now there's a lot of stuff here that you could disagree with, but I have tried to show that Wittgenstein's views are much deeper (and much more different) than those of traditional epistemologists.
I can’t remember exactly what I said about hinge epistemology in the video, though to clarify, I was just sharing some thoughts about it as a general programme in epistemology, rather than as specifically Wittgenstein’s position. Some comments on hinge epistemology as you describe it here: >> So you don't come to believe a hinge proposition or justify it, and when somebody asks you to justify it, you dismiss them. You learn to engage in different practices and behave in certain ways (think of his theory of meaning) and if you try to reflect on yourself, you will find that the picture you have in mind is that the earth has existed for many years, and people have minds like yours, and so on. When you claim that we dismiss the requests for justification of hinge propositions, is this intended as a descriptive claim? If so, it’s straightforwardly false: I do not dismiss such requests, and neither do plenty of other people. This would be very strange as a response to skepticism, since obviously, anybody who finds the skeptical arguments attractive or even just puzzling will not be somebody who simply dismisses such requests for justification. So perhaps it is a normative claim: When somebody requests justification for a hinge proposition, we ought to dismiss this request. But why ought we do that? Pretty clearly, my values here are very different from Wittgenstein’s, so there would need to be an argument that there is something problematic about the values I hold. As I see it currently: I get a great deal of pleasure from engaging with skeptical arguments; I don’t care whether or not philosophical reflection has practical payoffs, though as it happens, there are useful practical applications of skepticism (more on this shortly); and so far, there have never been any negative consequences to me as a result of my thinking about these issues. I doubt that engaging in practices requires that people have any particular “pictures in their minds”. Of course, I can reflect on what I do, and I can come up with “pictures” of what my action is and how that action is possible; and maybe there are some very sophisticated actions that do require this kind of reflective, representational thought. I see no reason to suppose that this is true of action in general. A spider exhibits rather complex behaviours when it builds its web; must it have a “picture in its mind”? (Given some of Wittgenstein’s other views, or at least views that are sometimes attributed to him, it’s rather amusing to read that he apparently thought that rule-following must be based on mental representations.) More importantly though, when I reflect on my life and the things I do, it seems perfectly obvious to me that this is all compatible with the brain-in-vat picture, and the dreaming picture, and the Evil Demon picture, and a host of other skeptical scenarios. Indeed, it’s not just that everything is compatible with these pictures. Sometimes when I act, I explicitly will have such pictures in mind. This is because I sometimes use external world skepticism as a tool for dealing with social anxiety. If I know that I am going to be in a situation that I am likely to find uncomfortable, I will run through a bunch of skeptical arguments, and assume the belief in a skeptical scenario. This can help quite a lot. By treating the event as a mere dream, a mere game, I avoid getting mentally caught up in it. (This is what I was referring to above re practical applications of skepticism.) >> But if you don't change anything about your life, then are your "theoretical" beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head? Do they make sense in the first place? Your admission that life would go on as usual is all that matters to Wittgenstein; because true skepticism for him would be rejection of a whole way of life and a whole practice. Yes, as it happens, those skeptical scenarios do have practical applications, as mentioned above. But suppose they didn’t. So what? Why do they need to “do” anything? As I see it, the practical applications of skepticism are a nice bonus. Practical utility is simply not what I’m interested in when I’m thinking about philosophy. If I had cared about achieving practical ends, I would have become a scientist, or a businessman, or a car mechanic… or pretty much anything other than a philosopher. Perhaps these skeptical arguments don’t make sense - I’m sympathetic to meaning skepticism as well - but I can’t see anything uniquely problematic about them relative to any other claims. As for Wittgenstein’s claim that this is not “true” skepticism, well fine, I’ll grant him his definition of skepticism. In which case, what I’m talking about, and what other epistemologists with similar interests are talking about, is not really skepticism. Maybe we could call it “quasi-skepticism”. I don’t care what we call things. I use the word “skepticism” only because that’s the accepted term. The important point is that I can reflect on skeptical arguments and suspend judgment about, say, the existence of the external world, while continuing to perform actions like I did before (or perhaps: have the appearance of continuing to perform actions like I did before). It’s similar to how a person might reflect on arguments for moral anti-realism, and become a moral anti-realism, while continuing to make first-order moral judgments. >> (Skepticism about other minds for example would be the inability to see people as anything other than huge machines that you feel nothing for). A skeptic of other minds does not deny the existence of other minds, but rather suspends judgment about them. So I’m not sure why skepticism would involve seeing other people as mere automata. But anyway, suppose skepticism did involve this kind of solipsism. Must you then feel nothing for other people? Well, do you feel nothing for the characters in films? Presumably, you do not attribute minds to film characters. But films can move us profoundly; indeed, seeing a tragic film might move a person to tears more easily than the sufferings of real people. Perhaps, when we engage with fiction, we do not feel genuine emotions for the characters depicted. But we don’t feel nothing. If it turned out that there was no external world, that my whole life was a mere dream, this would be a genuine loss: I would sometimes feel rather lonely, knowing that love is no longer reciprocated. (This is why, although skepticism can be useful in some contexts, I do not endorse skepticism all the time. Sometimes it’s very valuable to believe that I’m engaging with real people.) But I wouldn’t simply lose all my emotions. That just doesn’t seem to be how our minds work.
Another point regarding the penultimate paragraph. Suppose I adopt the dreaming picture; I take it that my life is a dream. Notice that I could ask exactly the same questions about the common sense picture: "Sure, you can disbelieve that you're dreaming when you're doing philosophy, but your practices (as you admit) won't change. So are your theoretical beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head?..." Am I supposed to privilege the common sense picture merely because it came first? Or merely because it's popular? None of that seems relevant. The point, as far as the skeptic is concerned, is that these hypotheses are on empirically equivalent; nothing I've ever experienced is sufficient to decide between them. The fact that my practices remain in place after adopting the dreaming picture only illustrates this point. So it's no surprise that life can go on as usual after switching from one to other. If this shows that the dreaming picture is in some way meaningless, then the common sense picture is condemned for the same reason. Life goes on as usual when you switch from the common sense picture to the dreaming picture; it also goes on as usual when you switch from the dreaming picture to the common sense picture.
@@KaneB Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me! I will try to keep my reply short so as not to bother you. When I say that we dimiss skepticism in ordinary life, I mean it as a quasi-descriptive claim. However, I don't mean that always do that; it is undeniable that skepticism has had a tremendous pull on philosophers for a long time and Wittgenstein (and anybody doing this kind of destructive-quietist type of philosophy, like Rorty and Heidegger) acknowledges this. The context in which we dimiss skepticism is when we are directly involved in a practical activity: does skepticism has any force when you're standing in a line to pay for something, or trying to cross the street in a hurry because you're late? These are the contexts which Wittgenstein would care about. A skeptic about other minds in the traditional sense of course suspends judgement, and does not view people as mere automota, and may go on in his dealings with people as usual on a purely psychological basis. But this is not really a skeptic, because he doesn't reject the form of life in which he engages with people: there is no distinction between the theoretical and the practical here, either you live your life in a certain way or you don't. An analogy with morality may help: Suppose you believe there are no moral facts, do you stop being a moral person? No, moral commitments are still something you care about, and this doesn't have to rest on a fact. Similarly, skepticism about morality for Wittgenstein isn't the rejection of moral facts; it's the rejection of a whole way of life (living morally and recognizing the authority of certain ought claims). True skepticism about other minds would similarly NOT be a suspension of judgement about a theoretical proposition, but a rejection of a whole way of life. Appealing to mere psychology that keeps us going in the face of our theoretical beliefs has no force here, because, as I said, the distinction between the practical and theoretical is not sharp here. I think my general point is that Wittgentein's views have to be understood in light of his general quietest attitude and his theory of meaning. He recognizes that language can play tricks on us that are extremely easy to fall victim to, giving rise to theorizing about epistemology and caring about quasi-skepticism as you describe it. His claim is not that such doubts are merely impractical, but that they are just nonsensical in a way. They are fun thoughts to entertain, but concepts like knowledge and justification don't have any meaningful sense outside of ordinary life.
Just another point: I do not mean to say that we have some mental representations in our minds when we engage in practices. Rather, I just mean that the world-picture (which is a term Wittgenstein himself uses) is the things we implicitly accept but never question. For him, we are initiated as children into some social practices by learning to do different things, and we learn some common-sensical and fundamental things implicitly and indirectly (such as that the world exists, and people have minds). Outside of philosophical contexts people regard questions about these things as pointless and maybe even insane, and that is what matter to Wittgenstein. Surely, it's really fun to do philosophy still, but you're not (to him) making progress or discovering anything more than that some language tricks are very alluring and fun to think about.
@@TheInsecureSkeptic It's no bother. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain Wittgenstein's approach. Unfortunately, the way this comes across to me is that he is strawmanming his skeptical opponents. The notion of "true skepticism" as involving an inability or an unwillingness to engage in various everyday practices is simply not what most skeptics are talking about. To be sure, there are important questions about the relation between skepticism and action. A classic objection to skepticism is that global suspension of judgment would lead to aparaxia, an inability to perform actions. But if that claim is playing a role in Wittgenstein's argument, then he needs to argue for it; he can't simply build it into the definition of "skepticism" that skepticism entails aparaxia and then use this to attack those who identify as part of the skeptical tradition. For one thing, skeptics have been addressing the aparaxia objection for literally thousands of years. By analogy, suppose I were to claim that "true theism" involves the belief that there is no evil whatsoever in the world, that all things are good. Of course, there are people who call themselves "theist", and who present arguments for the existence of God, who have different takes on the problem of evil, but they are not true theists because they don't reject the form of life in which they make negative judgements about aspects of what is supposed to be a perfect being's creation. This would be a blatant strawman. I'm entitled to argue that theists are committed to the position that there is no evil. But I need to actually argue for this, not merely assume it. I don't think anybody would take me seriously if I simply built into the definition of "theism" that it involves believing that there is no evil and refraining from making negative judgements about things. The same point applies to skepticism about morality. You say that for Wittgenstein, skepticism about morality is rejection of a whole way of life. At best, Wittgenstein is simply changing the subject, refusing to engage in the conversation that the rest of us are having. He's welcome to do that, of course. But if this is presented as an objection to moral anti-realists in the philosophical literature, then it is a blatant strawman - and I really do mean *blatant*; I mean it is the kind of thing that I would call out if I saw it on an undergrad essay. There is a caveat to this. Wittgenstein might claim, on the basis of his theory of meaning, that skepticism in the traditional sense is meaningless. Then “true skepticism” might be taken as his proposal for a meaningful position that is at least in the vicinity of what the traditional skeptics were trying to say. However, if that is his strategy, I’m still not sure what the argument for it is supposed to be. >> does skepticism has any force when you're standing in line to pay for something Well, what does it mean for skepticism to "have force"? Given Wittgenstein's characterisation of what counts as true skepticism, I take it that I could only say that skepticism has force in such circumstances if I were to literally stop standing in line. Maybe I would need to cease engaging in any coherent behaviour. But this, of course, is not how I (or most epistemologists) think of skepticism. Per the standard view of what skepticism is, the answer is yes, it can have force in such circumstances. Contra Hume, who apparently left his skeptical reflections in the seminar room, I'd say that nothing stops us from reflecting on skeptical arguments, and even finding those arguments compelling, in our everyday life. Of course, nothing compels us to reflect on such arguments either, and most of the time, in most everyday contexts, I'm simply concerned with things other than skepticism. But if that is enough to condemn skepticism, then it equally condemns every anti-skeptical argument, and also everything Wittgenstein wrote. (Luckily for the anti-skeptics, obviously that isn't enough to condemn skepticism. It is not a compelling objection to an argument that most people most of the time don't think about the argument.) It's not that we do or in some sense should dismiss skepticism in practical contexts. Rather, we just don't think about it in such contexts. Similarly, we don't think about evolution by natural selection, we don't think about Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain", we don't think about the long-term social impacts of the Black Death… >> Outside of philosophical contexts people regard questions about these things as pointless and maybe even insane Do they? My brother is not remotely interested in academic philosophy, but he has occasionally wondered about skeptical scenarios. Just look at popular media like “The Matrix”. These are not arcane theories understood by only an elite few. But suppose you’re right. How is this any kind of objection to asking such questions? I implicitly accept a particular world-picture - fine. But then I notice that various other pictures are compatible with all of my experiences. This makes me doubt the world-picture I had previously assumed. The problem with this is supposed to be… what? That the initial world-pictures happens to be very popular? That people find it pointless or silly to talk about? I don’t see why I, or anybody else interested in these questions, should care about that.
I don't know if violating bodily autonomy is what makes rape bad. Someone who is conscripted to fight a war, I'm not sure whether mandatory conscription is morally ok but doesn't seem permissable kill an innocent person to prevent yourself from being conscripted. You could spend years in dangerous conditions, following orders and having little control over your life, so it seems to be a pretty severe limit on what you can do with your body. I guess you could make a distinction between cases which cases which explicitly involve forcing foreign objects into a person's body. Like someone injecting you with a vaccine against your will or forcing something you don't want to eat down your throat. I just don't know why it would permissible to respond with lethal force to violations of this second kind and not the first.
@@KaneB Rape is bad because it harms the victim greatly, that's why it's permissible to kill a rapist in self-defence. You seem to be identifying the primary harm of rape as a violation of the victim's bodily autonomy. Arguably in sum being conscripted involves a greater violation of bodily autonomy, it lasts much much longer after all. If you end up saying being conscripted is worse than being raped than something has gone wrong with your account somewhere.
@@InefficientCustard I think that being conscripted to fight in a war is significantly worse than being raped. This isn't (merely) a conclusion that I'm committed to as a result of whatever moral principles I've said that I hold. It's also where my intuitions lie. Moreover, if your reasoning for why rape is bad is merely based on the risk of harm, then I'm not sure why you would regard my attitude as so absurd. Whether we assess it in terms of risk of physical or psychological harm, being conscripted to fight in a war will often involve a very great risk of harm.
@@InefficientCustard Protip: If your aim is to convince me to change my mind about this stuff, you might want to find a different example than conscription into war. I'm a Hobbesian at heart; I think that war is just about the worst possible outcome and that we should do everything we can to avoid it. There isn't really anything in the normal course of human societies that fills me with as much horror and disgust as conscription. To me, everyday crimes like rape pale in comparison.
17:43 that's veganism, it's an industry boycott, bottom-up. The whole point is to reduce demand. Procuring animal flesh by any means other than supporting it money is not a radical idea and is a commonly accepted position amongst vegans. That's not a controversial or contested view point to vegans. I would say, that while shoplifting does hurt the animal agri industry, it does actively involve doing something against the law which comes with its own risks. The risk reward is poor. By contrast being vegan is a non action, it's choosing not to do something. Also, shoplifting is not a victimless act, this would hurt the livelihood of shop keepers etc who are only middle men in the supply chain and disrupting this way doesn't guarantee an impact on the supply/demand in the same way other more common forms of activism would. Also, pretty sure you said you were basically a vegan a few AMAs ago, i'll have to dig that up. Maybe it was the lack of B12 messing with you.
suppose it was human meat in the grocery stores do you think encouraging shoplifting Human meat would be a good strategy? or would it just even further normalize and validate to consumers the murder of humans for food...
I know you've spoken on pessimism and described yourself as a pessimist in the general context of life as it is now. Have you ever experimented in taking drugs to enhance the experience to see if they can make life worth living in some sense? I know you say you aren't depressed, but I've known people who have said that they aren't depressed who say their life improved after starting anti depressants or smoking weed or microdosing psychedelics. I guess what I'm asking is can you imagine any of these drugs making life worth living?
I'm wary of drugs because I used to get frequent panic attacks in the past. Maybe drugs would help with that as well, though. But then for drugs that have the "feel good" effect there is the issue of dependency and side effects, which might make me feel worse in the long run. (I'm aware that this isn't an issue with all drugs.)
‘Fundamentally lazy and not very ambitious’ .. me too bro, me too
Same
literally me, fr fr
$$$/Connections?
Kane: * shows muted part of the AMA *
People that can lip-read: I'm gonna destroy this man's whole career
3:25:00 ( About Free will): The answer is really very simple:
If the world is fundamentally deterministic, then you have one and only one History compatible with ( any, arbitrary ) initial conditions.
This is what happens with Laplacian / Newtonian determinism:
If we specify our data at some moment of time, it is possible, in principle, for a physical entity ( like Laplace's demon) to predict the future and retrodict the past in full detail.
So, in such deterministic/ predictable Universes there's no room for compatibilist free will, decisions, or anything related.
So we can be almost certain ( with Bayesian confidence 99.999%) that our real World is fundamentally Probabilistic.
Exactly as in standard Quantum Mechanics.
Objective/ fundamental/ irreducible Probability means, simply, that there are many possible Histories compatible with any specific ( arbitrary chosen) initial conditions.
This is entirely necessary for the existence of any notion of free will, even the most restricted!
Thank you for your usually enjoyable videos. In most cases I find myself in agreement with your philosophical positions. By the way, I am also one of those PhDs who couldn't find a job in Academia. You are right that it's not easy.
Sorry to hear that.
Mom said I could watch 1 more video before falling asleep
Sort of regret putting my question in meme form, so I really appreciate an answer that's better than it deserved. I can understand a PSR as a kind of postulate that says "We're doing science here, we're going to assume there's something further". Insert other field of study as needed. That feels like a good basis for our intellectual inquiries. Keep going and if you can't keep going then keep thinking about how to keep going.
My problem really kicks in when it's wrapped up as a metaphysical principle that's true (especially when put to use in theological arguments), which is a mighty big claim in the same way brute facts are. We'll end up with some infinite regress of explanations, bruteness, or some self-explaining fact. Brute facts at least seems plausible enough to not tie myself to a PSR, and PSR seems at least problematic enough to not spin strong arguments from it.
Thanks for your answers, Kane. I appreciate your time and insight. (56:17 - 1:02:41). Reading Aquinas is like having your teeth pulled; a good buddy of mine is a devoted Thomist, and he tortures me with it. That said, I don't reject Thomas's metaphysics in the same way that you do. But. . .it's a lot.
I’m curious as to your views of apophatic theology since it seems like standard arguments for God don’t move you.
Pseudo-Dionysius's "Mystical Theology" is a stunningly beautiful piece of writing. I don't see it as having much to do with religion or God as I would normally think of the term, though. You might as well frame it in terms of the Kantian noumena, or in terms of the ground of being and non-being, or whatever else. I guess that's my impression of apophatic theology in general: the aspects of it that are compelling aren't really about what it presents itself as being about -- that is, it's not really giving us a *theology*. But perhaps it points in the direction of something profound about experience/reality, and that's worthwhile.
@@KaneBloved it as well! 2 questions:
1) why don’t you have as much interest in Phil of religion?
2) u said u had respect/ admiration for ontological arguments. What do u make of Godel’s if ur familiar at all with it
Kane, can we schedule our new meeting date? Thanks!
The muted audio bit was funny 😂
Damn, some tracks from Civilization Phaze III sound great! Thanks for your recommendation
Thank you, Kane for responding to my questions! But I believe you misunderstood my third question (I only realised now that I haven't formulated it accurately). What I meant was, since the scientific antirealist sees science as a useful tool only, can they use a scientific theory (eda) in philosophical arguments?
Yes, I think they can. You might present the argument as a challenge to the internal coherence of particular worldviews. You can argue for the claim: *If* you believe that contemporary evolutionary theory provides a correct account of the origin of human beings, then the moral realist has no way to account for moral knowledge. Whether you affirm the antecedent of that conditional is irrelevant to the threat this raises to most moral realists, because most moral realists do affirm the antecedent. Indeed, many of them are more confident about the antecedent than they are of the denial of the consequent.
Many philosophical arguments involve adopting different positions for the sake of argument, and then working out the consequences of those positions. Of course, this kind of strategy has its limits. If you don't affirm the truth of contemporary evolutionary theory, then this theory can't provide you with a reason to reject moral realism. You won't take yourself to be closer to an answer about whether moral realism or moral antirealism is correct. But that's fine; there are other things you can do with philosophical arguments.
Wow, genuinely thought I was the only one who enjoyed eating beans like that. Love em. Cannellini, pinto, haricot, black eyed beans, kidney beans, broad beans, butter beans, borlotti beans, chick peas. Just warmed up in microwave maybe with some pepper and some chilli sauce or something. Fibre, protein, 2 of your 5 a day. Just such a good contribution to the diet.
^ kane’s alt account
what do you think happens after death?
Nothing.
I think the reason you never see a consensus on “solutions” to “philosophical problems” is just that there are no philosophical problems. There isn’t any theory independent way of stating a problem that all philosophical parties will agree to being a fair statement of the problem. Your own example of scepticism is telling here, since almost no defender of scepticism prior to the 20th century would accept the most popular contemporary framings of “the problem of scepticism ”.
As the conversation continues, so too the topic changes subtly. There are different ways of thinking, and they converse, but there is no list of problems all the talkers are working on.
It’s not going to do any good to make any anti support for animal agriculture since you already agree with the position but I will say this: when you cut something out cold turkey you really quickly establish a new baseline and your enjoyment of food won’t really go down. It’s some sort of biological/psychological thing that’s akin to jumping in cold water. You can do it man!
As someone whose been vegan for a couple of months this is only true for like 60 percent of food, some vegan stuff just tastes worse and there's no getting around it (maybe things are different when you've been vegan for years but at that point I doubt you'd still remember what non vegan food tastes like)
@@InefficientCustard
Edit: This ended up weirdly long and probably isn't worth reading haha
Yeah I mean im sure if I did a side by side with lots of things the non-vegan one might be better, but if I compare how much I enjoy like a vegan cake now to how much I enjoyed a non vegan cake before I was vegan I think it would be similar.
And for stuff like just a hunk of meat or cheese, its been so long that it sincerely seems gross so its no burden to avoid it. I've gotten the wrong order sometimes and ate it anyway and it now causes me to literally feel nauseous/throw it up.
After being vegan for a few years now, the toughest part is just the social aspect when you can't find stuff while out with friends and people assume you have a moral superiority complex. Ironically, its the reputation vegans have earned that is the worst part about being vegan for me.
That response to the first question is just discouraging. Haha.
I study physics and the way you described yourself is precisely what I'm.
The worse part is that the only thing that I think I care for is research.
Oh, well...
Hold up. Did I miss an AMA? But who will ask the silly questions now?!
Ikr
Oh it would be so interesting if some of Sellars' or Brandom's strains of thought would sip into your and you'll think of some ways of accomodating it in your worldview. That's promising because around 2 years ago you weren't interested in sellarsians at all
regarding freeganism, PETA has actually taken a positive stance towards eating roadkill, so there might be some openness towards eating meat when doing so doesn't support animal agriculture and isn't the result of deliberately killing animals
To advocate Culling predators and to advocate forms of extreme vegetarianism is compatible historically as in case of classic Indian metaphysics which appears to rely on some ontology of the body existing in a subtle material form as a person who requires sacrifices to be made in quantity that happened to be a similar kind of species so as to give the person the ability to exist after desolation of their body in a form that would give a respectful appearance to the gods. The logic seems to favour keeping out tigers in favour of livestock like cattle which suggests a moral community based on realism. The ideology of aesthetic realism that informs sustainable farming of livestock entails extreme vegetarianism and ritualistic culling of predators like in the scientific sequel blade runner 2047.
At around 19:30 you said that: “I don’t think that the logical problem of evil works” and earlier you said: “I know that there are ways out of it (the problem of evil). But I wish to disagree with you that there are no ways out of the problem of evil, at least when it comes to the triomni god. I could write a very detailed response, but I would love to see some of the “cool responses” you think that can get around the problem.
My favourites are:
(1) Endorse a Cartesian conception of omnipotence, i.e. God can do anything without limit, including realizing contradictions. So permitting evil can be logically incompatible with perfect goodness, but God can be perfectly good and permit evil anyway.
(2) Endorse open individualism about personal identity. In that case, every sentient being is literally identical with God; any suffering that is experienced is simply God realizing such experiences for himself, and there's nothing morally problematic about that.
The trouble is that if you think through the consequences of these positions, you end up with a conception of God that departs pretty radically from that which is assumed by most of the philosophers who are trying to solve the problem of evil.
@@KaneB Thanks for responding on a short notice.
When it comes to Absolutism, I tend to view it as a naive form of omnipotence. For the moment you open the door to allow god to do literally ANYTHING he wants, is the moment you open the door to all sorts of absurdities. If god can do all sorts of contradictory things, like creating a married bachelor, we kiss logic and our rational thinking goodbye, for now on what grounds are we allowed to comprehend this god? On what grounds are we justified to put labels on him such as benevolent? Further, if he’s able to be and create all sorts of contradictions, so he is, at least in theory, both good and evil, alive and dead, existing and not existing. What’s being done here is simply picking and choosing whichever contradictory qualities that would “solve” this problem and attribute it to him. Finally, the most important and natural implication of this is, if he truly can allow for contradictories why not allow for a world devoid of gratuitous evil? I suspect the answer to this question would be along the line of: he works in mysterious ways, which isn’t really an answer as much as it is admitting ignorance.
For the second response, if I am understanding this correctly, essentially we all are god, like a sort of pantheistic notion. And so god subjected himself to the same level of suffering that his subjects are experiencing, which he created in the first place. I fail to see how this answers the problem, sure god is experiencing the same anguish and pain every living thing is experiencing but that doesn’t make it right or good in any way. If I set a homeless person on fire and then do the same to myself to experience what he’s experiencing, that doesn’t make what I did initially right or good.
Finally, I do agree with your comment that these responses if taken seriously would lead to a god that’s farther then the god of the Bible or Quran or any other text, and if anything it shows how much the problem of evil really is a devastating blow to the Abrahamic god.
@@abdallam4039>> is the moment you open the door to all sorts of absurdities
Yes. That seems fine to me, though. Cartesian omnipotence is the only kind of omnipotence really worthy of the name as far as I'm concerned.
>> And so god subjected himself to the same level of suffering that his subjects are experiencing, which he created in the first place
No, it's not that God is subjecting himself to the same sufferings that I experience. The idea is rather that I am simply identical with God, so any suffering that I experience is experienced only by God and by no other being. Here's a model that might make this more intuitive. Suppose that God exists. God can do anything (or at least anything logically/metaphysically possible; we need not assume Cartesian omnipotence for this). So one of the things that God can do is simulate for himself exactly what it would be like to be me. That is, he can realize for himself exactly the mental content that I have. It's analogous to the "Roy" game from Rick and Morty: th-cam.com/video/szzVlQ653as/w-d-xo.html
@@KaneB You can't be identical with a personal God.
Regarding a good theistic argument: What about Fermi's paradox?
It seems there are only two solutions: either humans are (almost) alone, which defies the secular notion that humans are nothing special, or the universe is deliberately regulated (with a universal rule against artificializing the universe) which is quite a theistic stance.
What do you think? Do you have a video on Fermi's paradox?
My guess has always been that civilization is extremely rare, and that when it does arise, it doesn't last long. I don't think this is contrary to anything in a secular/naturalist worldview. I suppose it means that humans are special in some sense, but only in the way that, say, a neutrino that interacts with an atom of chlorine in a neutrino detector is special.
I have a few videos on the philosophical questions associated with the search for extraterrestrial life -- see my "Philosophy of SETI", though unfortunately I never finished it.
@@KaneBWhen you say "doesn't last long" you mean "always die out before they build self-replicating starships"? Always? Such a universal rule without a single exception does seem like an anti-naturalist hypothesis. (Unless by "rare" you mean "virtually unique", much much more rare than neutrino detection.)
Thanks for the pointer to your SETI videos - sounds interesting.
@@yoramgt How is that anti-naturalist? (Not that you would need to say "always" anyway. "Almost always" would do the job.)
@@KaneB It seems that a social law (one that applies to different independent civilizations rather than to inanimate objects) that holds without exceptions, or even one that holds with very few exceptions, is miraculous and introduces an order to the universe that is unexpected from a secular viewpoint.
@@yoramgt I just don't see anything miraculous or even particularly unexpected about that. We have evidence of exactly one planet on which civilization has arisen, and its future prospects are questionable at best.
Damn anphil got the mute response XD
Hey Kane!
I disagree with what you said about hinge epistemology, but first off let me thank you for the channel and the content, you're great!
Now I think the reading of hinge epistemology you presented is a common one, but I don't think it does justice to what Wittgenstein has to say. Let me begin by briefly presenting the views of a different philosopher: Michael Williams.
Williams thinks that knowledge (and justification) cannot be an object of theory. Propositions cannot be justified or unjustified simpliciter, so for example there is no such thing as a class of privileged foundational propositions from which everything else has to be inferred. He thinks that traditional epistemology thinks of the relationships of justification between propositions as fixed independently of any context or practice. Now he means this as a theoretical diagnosis of skepticism (he believes that this sort of foundationalism is the source of most skeptical arguments). Wittgenstein, on the other hand, wants to offer a therapeutic solution, trying to argue that ultimately the skeptic doesn't make sense, but I hope that the similarity with Williams will be clear.
Hinge propositions for Wittgenstein are not "assumed" for the sake of engaging in a practice. Rather, they are the *background picture* against which people live their lives; our lives are constituted by different practices. So you don't come to believe a hinge proposition or justify it, and when somebody asks you to justify it, you dismiss them. You learn to engage in different practices and behave in certain ways (think of his theory of meaning) and if you try to reflect on yourself, you will find that the picture you have in mind is that the earth has existed for many years, and people have minds like yours, and so on.
Notice that hinge propositions actually change. They constitute a much wider class than traditional epistemology would allow: they include the proposition that very few people have been to the moon, for instance (which could change). They are just *expressions* of the way we think and behave IN ORDINARY LIFE. Now, you could disbelieve all of that when you're doing philosophy, but your practices (as you admit) won't change. But if you don't change anything about your life, then are your "theoretical" beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head? Do they make sense in the first place? Your admission that life would go on as usual is all that matters to Wittgenstein; because true skepticism for him would be rejection of a whole way of life and a whole practice. (Skepticism about other minds for example would be the inability to see people as anything other than huge machines that you feel nothing for). He's not offering a proof that no demon will suddenly tell you that your life has been a dream; nobody could do that! He's just trying to show us that skeptical doubts are idle and meaningless in the face of life, where the concepts of knowledge and justification have their ordinary sense.
Now there's a lot of stuff here that you could disagree with, but I have tried to show that Wittgenstein's views are much deeper (and much more different) than those of traditional epistemologists.
I can’t remember exactly what I said about hinge epistemology in the video, though to clarify, I was just sharing some thoughts about it as a general programme in epistemology, rather than as specifically Wittgenstein’s position. Some comments on hinge epistemology as you describe it here:
>> So you don't come to believe a hinge proposition or justify it, and when somebody asks you to justify it, you dismiss them. You learn to engage in different practices and behave in certain ways (think of his theory of meaning) and if you try to reflect on yourself, you will find that the picture you have in mind is that the earth has existed for many years, and people have minds like yours, and so on.
When you claim that we dismiss the requests for justification of hinge propositions, is this intended as a descriptive claim? If so, it’s straightforwardly false: I do not dismiss such requests, and neither do plenty of other people. This would be very strange as a response to skepticism, since obviously, anybody who finds the skeptical arguments attractive or even just puzzling will not be somebody who simply dismisses such requests for justification. So perhaps it is a normative claim: When somebody requests justification for a hinge proposition, we ought to dismiss this request. But why ought we do that? Pretty clearly, my values here are very different from Wittgenstein’s, so there would need to be an argument that there is something problematic about the values I hold. As I see it currently: I get a great deal of pleasure from engaging with skeptical arguments; I don’t care whether or not philosophical reflection has practical payoffs, though as it happens, there are useful practical applications of skepticism (more on this shortly); and so far, there have never been any negative consequences to me as a result of my thinking about these issues.
I doubt that engaging in practices requires that people have any particular “pictures in their minds”. Of course, I can reflect on what I do, and I can come up with “pictures” of what my action is and how that action is possible; and maybe there are some very sophisticated actions that do require this kind of reflective, representational thought. I see no reason to suppose that this is true of action in general. A spider exhibits rather complex behaviours when it builds its web; must it have a “picture in its mind”? (Given some of Wittgenstein’s other views, or at least views that are sometimes attributed to him, it’s rather amusing to read that he apparently thought that rule-following must be based on mental representations.)
More importantly though, when I reflect on my life and the things I do, it seems perfectly obvious to me that this is all compatible with the brain-in-vat picture, and the dreaming picture, and the Evil Demon picture, and a host of other skeptical scenarios. Indeed, it’s not just that everything is compatible with these pictures. Sometimes when I act, I explicitly will have such pictures in mind. This is because I sometimes use external world skepticism as a tool for dealing with social anxiety. If I know that I am going to be in a situation that I am likely to find uncomfortable, I will run through a bunch of skeptical arguments, and assume the belief in a skeptical scenario. This can help quite a lot. By treating the event as a mere dream, a mere game, I avoid getting mentally caught up in it. (This is what I was referring to above re practical applications of skepticism.)
>> But if you don't change anything about your life, then are your "theoretical" beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head? Do they make sense in the first place? Your admission that life would go on as usual is all that matters to Wittgenstein; because true skepticism for him would be rejection of a whole way of life and a whole practice.
Yes, as it happens, those skeptical scenarios do have practical applications, as mentioned above. But suppose they didn’t. So what? Why do they need to “do” anything? As I see it, the practical applications of skepticism are a nice bonus. Practical utility is simply not what I’m interested in when I’m thinking about philosophy. If I had cared about achieving practical ends, I would have become a scientist, or a businessman, or a car mechanic… or pretty much anything other than a philosopher. Perhaps these skeptical arguments don’t make sense - I’m sympathetic to meaning skepticism as well - but I can’t see anything uniquely problematic about them relative to any other claims.
As for Wittgenstein’s claim that this is not “true” skepticism, well fine, I’ll grant him his definition of skepticism. In which case, what I’m talking about, and what other epistemologists with similar interests are talking about, is not really skepticism. Maybe we could call it “quasi-skepticism”. I don’t care what we call things. I use the word “skepticism” only because that’s the accepted term. The important point is that I can reflect on skeptical arguments and suspend judgment about, say, the existence of the external world, while continuing to perform actions like I did before (or perhaps: have the appearance of continuing to perform actions like I did before). It’s similar to how a person might reflect on arguments for moral anti-realism, and become a moral anti-realism, while continuing to make first-order moral judgments.
>> (Skepticism about other minds for example would be the inability to see people as anything other than huge machines that you feel nothing for).
A skeptic of other minds does not deny the existence of other minds, but rather suspends judgment about them. So I’m not sure why skepticism would involve seeing other people as mere automata. But anyway, suppose skepticism did involve this kind of solipsism. Must you then feel nothing for other people? Well, do you feel nothing for the characters in films? Presumably, you do not attribute minds to film characters. But films can move us profoundly; indeed, seeing a tragic film might move a person to tears more easily than the sufferings of real people. Perhaps, when we engage with fiction, we do not feel genuine emotions for the characters depicted. But we don’t feel nothing. If it turned out that there was no external world, that my whole life was a mere dream, this would be a genuine loss: I would sometimes feel rather lonely, knowing that love is no longer reciprocated. (This is why, although skepticism can be useful in some contexts, I do not endorse skepticism all the time. Sometimes it’s very valuable to believe that I’m engaging with real people.) But I wouldn’t simply lose all my emotions. That just doesn’t seem to be how our minds work.
Another point regarding the penultimate paragraph. Suppose I adopt the dreaming picture; I take it that my life is a dream. Notice that I could ask exactly the same questions about the common sense picture: "Sure, you can disbelieve that you're dreaming when you're doing philosophy, but your practices (as you admit) won't change. So are your theoretical beliefs doing anything? Do they just float free in your head?..." Am I supposed to privilege the common sense picture merely because it came first? Or merely because it's popular? None of that seems relevant.
The point, as far as the skeptic is concerned, is that these hypotheses are on empirically equivalent; nothing I've ever experienced is sufficient to decide between them. The fact that my practices remain in place after adopting the dreaming picture only illustrates this point. So it's no surprise that life can go on as usual after switching from one to other. If this shows that the dreaming picture is in some way meaningless, then the common sense picture is condemned for the same reason. Life goes on as usual when you switch from the common sense picture to the dreaming picture; it also goes on as usual when you switch from the dreaming picture to the common sense picture.
@@KaneB Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to me! I will try to keep my reply short so as not to bother you.
When I say that we dimiss skepticism in ordinary life, I mean it as a quasi-descriptive claim. However, I don't mean that always do that; it is undeniable that skepticism has had a tremendous pull on philosophers for a long time and Wittgenstein (and anybody doing this kind of destructive-quietist type of philosophy, like Rorty and Heidegger) acknowledges this. The context in which we dimiss skepticism is when we are directly involved in a practical activity: does skepticism has any force when you're standing in a line to pay for something, or trying to cross the street in a hurry because you're late? These are the contexts which Wittgenstein would care about.
A skeptic about other minds in the traditional sense of course suspends judgement, and does not view people as mere automota, and may go on in his dealings with people as usual on a purely psychological basis. But this is not really a skeptic, because he doesn't reject the form of life in which he engages with people: there is no distinction between the theoretical and the practical here, either you live your life in a certain way or you don't. An analogy with morality may help:
Suppose you believe there are no moral facts, do you stop being a moral person? No, moral commitments are still something you care about, and this doesn't have to rest on a fact. Similarly, skepticism about morality for Wittgenstein isn't the rejection of moral facts; it's the rejection of a whole way of life (living morally and recognizing the authority of certain ought claims). True skepticism about other minds would similarly NOT be a suspension of judgement about a theoretical proposition, but a rejection of a whole way of life. Appealing to mere psychology that keeps us going in the face of our theoretical beliefs has no force here, because, as I said, the distinction between the practical and theoretical is not sharp here.
I think my general point is that Wittgentein's views have to be understood in light of his general quietest attitude and his theory of meaning. He recognizes that language can play tricks on us that are extremely easy to fall victim to, giving rise to theorizing about epistemology and caring about quasi-skepticism as you describe it. His claim is not that such doubts are merely impractical, but that they are just nonsensical in a way. They are fun thoughts to entertain, but concepts like knowledge and justification don't have any meaningful sense outside of ordinary life.
Just another point: I do not mean to say that we have some mental representations in our minds when we engage in practices. Rather, I just mean that the world-picture (which is a term Wittgenstein himself uses) is the things we implicitly accept but never question. For him, we are initiated as children into some social practices by learning to do different things, and we learn some common-sensical and fundamental things implicitly and indirectly (such as that the world exists, and people have minds). Outside of philosophical contexts people regard questions about these things as pointless and maybe even insane, and that is what matter to Wittgenstein. Surely, it's really fun to do philosophy still, but you're not (to him) making progress or discovering anything more than that some language tricks are very alluring and fun to think about.
@@TheInsecureSkeptic It's no bother. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain Wittgenstein's approach.
Unfortunately, the way this comes across to me is that he is strawmanming his skeptical opponents. The notion of "true skepticism" as involving an inability or an unwillingness to engage in various everyday practices is simply not what most skeptics are talking about. To be sure, there are important questions about the relation between skepticism and action. A classic objection to skepticism is that global suspension of judgment would lead to aparaxia, an inability to perform actions. But if that claim is playing a role in Wittgenstein's argument, then he needs to argue for it; he can't simply build it into the definition of "skepticism" that skepticism entails aparaxia and then use this to attack those who identify as part of the skeptical tradition. For one thing, skeptics have been addressing the aparaxia objection for literally thousands of years.
By analogy, suppose I were to claim that "true theism" involves the belief that there is no evil whatsoever in the world, that all things are good. Of course, there are people who call themselves "theist", and who present arguments for the existence of God, who have different takes on the problem of evil, but they are not true theists because they don't reject the form of life in which they make negative judgements about aspects of what is supposed to be a perfect being's creation. This would be a blatant strawman. I'm entitled to argue that theists are committed to the position that there is no evil. But I need to actually argue for this, not merely assume it. I don't think anybody would take me seriously if I simply built into the definition of "theism" that it involves believing that there is no evil and refraining from making negative judgements about things.
The same point applies to skepticism about morality. You say that for Wittgenstein, skepticism about morality is rejection of a whole way of life. At best, Wittgenstein is simply changing the subject, refusing to engage in the conversation that the rest of us are having. He's welcome to do that, of course. But if this is presented as an objection to moral anti-realists in the philosophical literature, then it is a blatant strawman - and I really do mean *blatant*; I mean it is the kind of thing that I would call out if I saw it on an undergrad essay.
There is a caveat to this. Wittgenstein might claim, on the basis of his theory of meaning, that skepticism in the traditional sense is meaningless. Then “true skepticism” might be taken as his proposal for a meaningful position that is at least in the vicinity of what the traditional skeptics were trying to say. However, if that is his strategy, I’m still not sure what the argument for it is supposed to be.
>> does skepticism has any force when you're standing in line to pay for something
Well, what does it mean for skepticism to "have force"? Given Wittgenstein's characterisation of what counts as true skepticism, I take it that I could only say that skepticism has force in such circumstances if I were to literally stop standing in line. Maybe I would need to cease engaging in any coherent behaviour. But this, of course, is not how I (or most epistemologists) think of skepticism. Per the standard view of what skepticism is, the answer is yes, it can have force in such circumstances. Contra Hume, who apparently left his skeptical reflections in the seminar room, I'd say that nothing stops us from reflecting on skeptical arguments, and even finding those arguments compelling, in our everyday life. Of course, nothing compels us to reflect on such arguments either, and most of the time, in most everyday contexts, I'm simply concerned with things other than skepticism. But if that is enough to condemn skepticism, then it equally condemns every anti-skeptical argument, and also everything Wittgenstein wrote. (Luckily for the anti-skeptics, obviously that isn't enough to condemn skepticism. It is not a compelling objection to an argument that most people most of the time don't think about the argument.)
It's not that we do or in some sense should dismiss skepticism in practical contexts. Rather, we just don't think about it in such contexts. Similarly, we don't think about evolution by natural selection, we don't think about Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain", we don't think about the long-term social impacts of the Black Death…
>> Outside of philosophical contexts people regard questions about these things as pointless and maybe even insane
Do they? My brother is not remotely interested in academic philosophy, but he has occasionally wondered about skeptical scenarios. Just look at popular media like “The Matrix”. These are not arcane theories understood by only an elite few. But suppose you’re right. How is this any kind of objection to asking such questions? I implicitly accept a particular world-picture - fine. But then I notice that various other pictures are compatible with all of my experiences. This makes me doubt the world-picture I had previously assumed. The problem with this is supposed to be… what? That the initial world-pictures happens to be very popular? That people find it pointless or silly to talk about? I don’t see why I, or anybody else interested in these questions, should care about that.
Yay mine made it in 🤍
stop the wittgenstein slander 😰
I'll stop that when Wittgenstein stops sucking.
I don't know if violating bodily autonomy is what makes rape bad.
Someone who is conscripted to fight a war, I'm not sure whether mandatory conscription is morally ok but doesn't seem permissable kill an innocent person to prevent yourself from being conscripted. You could spend years in dangerous conditions, following orders and having little control over your life, so it seems to be a pretty severe limit on what you can do with your body.
I guess you could make a distinction between cases which cases which explicitly involve forcing foreign objects into a person's body. Like someone injecting you with a vaccine against your will or forcing something you don't want to eat down your throat.
I just don't know why it would permissible to respond with lethal force to violations of this second kind and not the first.
I think it's fine to kill an innocent person to prevent yourself from being conscripted.
@@KaneB
Rape is bad because it harms the victim greatly, that's why it's permissible to kill a rapist in self-defence. You seem to be identifying the primary harm of rape as a violation of the victim's bodily autonomy.
Arguably in sum being conscripted involves a greater violation of bodily autonomy, it lasts much much longer after all.
If you end up saying being conscripted is worse than being raped than something has gone wrong with your account somewhere.
@@InefficientCustard I think that being conscripted to fight in a war is significantly worse than being raped. This isn't (merely) a conclusion that I'm committed to as a result of whatever moral principles I've said that I hold. It's also where my intuitions lie. Moreover, if your reasoning for why rape is bad is merely based on the risk of harm, then I'm not sure why you would regard my attitude as so absurd. Whether we assess it in terms of risk of physical or psychological harm, being conscripted to fight in a war will often involve a very great risk of harm.
@@InefficientCustard Protip: If your aim is to convince me to change my mind about this stuff, you might want to find a different example than conscription into war. I'm a Hobbesian at heart; I think that war is just about the worst possible outcome and that we should do everything we can to avoid it. There isn't really anything in the normal course of human societies that fills me with as much horror and disgust as conscription. To me, everyday crimes like rape pale in comparison.
17:43 that's veganism, it's an industry boycott, bottom-up. The whole point is to reduce demand. Procuring animal flesh by any means other than supporting it money is not a radical idea and is a commonly accepted position amongst vegans. That's not a controversial or contested view point to vegans.
I would say, that while shoplifting does hurt the animal agri industry, it does actively involve doing something against the law which comes with its own risks. The risk reward is poor. By contrast being vegan is a non action, it's choosing not to do something. Also, shoplifting is not a victimless act, this would hurt the livelihood of shop keepers etc who are only middle men in the supply chain and disrupting this way doesn't guarantee an impact on the supply/demand in the same way other more common forms of activism would.
Also, pretty sure you said you were basically a vegan a few AMAs ago, i'll have to dig that up. Maybe it was the lack of B12 messing with you.
Vegans should eat oysters and backyard eggs 1000%%. No harm done and fantastic b12 and protein etc
>> pretty sure you said you were basically a vegan a few AMAs ago
Really? I must have been lying.
53:25
lol ur not as good at minimal music as i thought
What do you disagree with there?
Free like for the Nozick comment
suppose it was human meat in the grocery stores
do you think encouraging shoplifting Human meat would be a good strategy?
or would it just even further normalize and validate to consumers the murder of humans for food...
@ 15:53
I'd be inclined to support shoplifting in that case, sure.
I know you've spoken on pessimism and described yourself as a pessimist in the general context of life as it is now. Have you ever experimented in taking drugs to enhance the experience to see if they can make life worth living in some sense? I know you say you aren't depressed, but I've known people who have said that they aren't depressed who say their life improved after starting anti depressants or smoking weed or microdosing psychedelics. I guess what I'm asking is can you imagine any of these drugs making life worth living?
I'm wary of drugs because I used to get frequent panic attacks in the past. Maybe drugs would help with that as well, though. But then for drugs that have the "feel good" effect there is the issue of dependency and side effects, which might make me feel worse in the long run. (I'm aware that this isn't an issue with all drugs.)
Sad to hear that you don't like doing AMA videos. 😒
Why is silence your response to Carl Jung? Is it plainly that his work and the work of his contemporaries are not of interest to you?