148. Aristotle's Infinite Regress & Intuition | THUNK
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- Aristotle found a problem at the foundations of epistemology: an infinite regress of justification.
Links for the Curious
Reason & Intuition (Parsons, 1998) - logic.harvard.e...
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Intuition - plato.stanford...
Aristotle's Logic - plato.stanford...
Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification - plato.stanford...
Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification - plato.stanford...
"Regress Argument," on Wikipedia - en.wikipedia.o...
And all of that assuming that our reasoning is accurate in dealing with reality. Quantum mechanic's have taught us a lot about humble. It seems to me that this is a neverending discussion. But very very enjoyable
Some of my favorite discussions are neverending. :D Glad you enjoy them, too!
First time found you. Well done and thank you.
I wanted to add that in Spinoza the highest form of knowledge even above experience and logic is intuitive knowledge and understanding the whole.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Another amusing thing is that the very claim itself, that all things end (or rather don't) in infinite regress, is also unfounded in the same way.
Aristotle may have said it like that, I don't know I never read the original. But the Greek School of Scepticism stated it a whole different way avoiding the criticism you made..
A member of the Sceptic School would be taught to say, "so far in my life no-one has made an argument to me that is not an infinite regress, however each day I live in hope someone will."
This was an interesting discussion on intuition, and what role it should play in coming to our conclusions. My partner and I assert that an intuition is only the beginning of inquiry, and not the justification or reason of a held conclusion; intuitions are merely the "knowledge" stage of thinking, but we must progress into understanding before we can come to the truth. The term "self-evident" is not necessarily an intuition to us, but something is self-evident when we've worked the process of thinking, and moved from knowledge, to understanding, removed the contradictions, and come to the truth of the matter, which is wisdom.
For context, we use the Trivium method of critical thinking, which is the first three of the liberal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, also known as knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. An intuition should be trusted, but only as an initial data point in the knowledge phase of asking questions (what, where, when, who), and not the logic/reasoning phase (why). I would think that something is self-evident because it is observable in nature, and repeatable, as deductive, inductive, and/or abductive reasoning will bring us to the conclusion through our observations and careful testing.
The Trivium's Methodology:
knowledge + understanding - contradictions = wisdom (truth)
impartial or concealed knowledge + contradictions - understanding = folly (lies)
The chains of ideas that thrive are those that a population thinks explains the universe better than the concurrent chains of ideas. So as we go deep in this chain of ideas, they can be accepted for a bigger population, that believe that the 'basic assumptions' are 'self evident' although they can't be fully proved.
In math, there are some statements where A -> B and B -> A. However, this is not circular, since you will only need to use if of those implications to show both are true, provided you have another way to show either are true. I think the same applies with the coherence web. While there may be circular reasoning, it does not mean that you are using all segments if the circle simultaneously.
Regarding coherence v correctness: I do not believe logic or philosophy can prove correctness, because our rules of logic require axioms to make claims and the rules themselves are axiomatic. The only way to prove the statement true is to prove the axioms true, which the system cannot do itself. While some things may be proven true via the sciences, fields like ethics may remain improvable, and it will be down to illogical faculties like intuition to assert what is true. But logic and philosophy can show coherence by proving relationships between assertions. And so, I believe the web of belief being coherent is sufficient for it to be acceptable reasoning. We can show no more.
BTW this is one of my favorite channels, what made you want to make it and what keeps it appealing to you?
Thanks! You're my ray for the day. :D
I've always loved talking about stuff like this with people who are also excited about it, & this seemed like a good way to close the inferential distance so anyone can pick up an idea & run with it. What keeps it appealing is comments like this.
THUNK thank you for commenting and for filming, hope you continue loving this 😁
Unfortunately, most conversations I have with those around me revolve around reiterations of facts. I find that boring. Ideas are much more interesting. Don't ever stop thunking :)
(Great video, great channel, as always. Obv)
Thanks! :D
The content of this channel is fucking genius.
I mean, I tend to favor work by fucking geniuses, so there's that. ;) Thanks!
It is funny to me that Aristotle described infinite regress two millennia prior to Russell's attempt at grounding mathematics in axiom-free logic. I do wonder whether Russell was legitimately trying to find the ground truth (turtle??) or he just thought set theory would be a better placeholder than Euclid's axioms.
(After all, Russell himself wrote the history of Western Philosophy, no way he wasn't aware of Aristotle's position)
Russell's work actually did a lot for establishing a basis for arithmetic in raw logic & a couple basic assumptions. (Euclid's axioms were more for geometric relationships, AFAIK, not arithmetic.) It's true that, if logic turned out to be false/unjustified, the Principia Mathematica would be sort of moot, but we'd have bigger problems. :P
I wonder if you could approach coherentism by disallowing circular reasoning. You'd have to be pretty diligent to make sure that wasn't happening though, which seems unrealistic. Much like how its unrealistic to map out all of the messy connections of trillions of brain cells to capture the sum of a person, or how its unrealistic to record and measure the infinite many causes and their causes and their causes etc. leading up to a particular effect. But maybe one day.
I much prefer the coherentism approach anyway since it doesn't enforce a single line of justification. Weak as it is to fallacies, at least it's more representative of our lived realities. Much as we want to be devoid of broken thinking, we all do it, and coherentism reflects that reality.
I do like foundationalism too though. Foundations seem a little arbirltrarily chosen, sure, but again, if we approach it from the perspective of trying to model human logic instead of just logic abstractly, foundationalism can also be useful.
the whole point of coherentism is that circular reasoning may be considered "softly valid". In other words, A->B->A does not necessarily mean A and B are true, but paradox like A->B->not(A) is a clear sign of problem. The more cycles lead back to A, the more likely it is true, because the chance you just happened to not hit a paradox decreases.
The truth is justifications are simply explanations we make up in our minds in order to make sense of the World around us. Outside of our existential ignorance and our need to make sense of the World around us, there is no why or reason for anything. Remember, Non Existence can never be. Which is to say everything in the history of Eternity has always existed and will always continue to exist unchanged for Eternity. Since everything is eternally existent in the absolute and metaphysical sense, there can be no reason or cause for anything, apart from the reasons we make up in our minds. :)
(BTW Truth in the strictest philosophical sense can only be deduced a priori. Everything that can't be deduced a priori has an element of uncertainty, due to underlying assumptions that haven't been or can't be deduced a priori. A priori deductions about Existence itself are called Ontological Deductions, and they are Metaphysical Truths that are logically certain to be true.)
Foundationalism is problematic that it is saying reasoning is justified by a self evident instinct, but then goes on to justify why a self evident instinct should be believed or can existed, it's a circular argument. Functionalism just replaces an infinite regress with a circular argument, it's Agrippa Trilemma again as usual. All rational arguments are based upon, a circular argument, an infinite regress or an assumption without evidence.
David Hume on the other hand believed instinct should be trusted over reason, he pointed out instincts are part of us so are empirical. He was saying this before evolution, now with evolutionary evidence we know we have evolved the particular instincts we have for good reason.
I'd love if we could have a THUNK episode on Agrippa Trilemma!
Agreed
Duly (triply?) noted! ;) I'll put a script in the works.
Instincts have very likely evolved in this fashion for good reasons, but it's pretty clear that those reasons aren't aligned with truth in all cases, & in some cases are demonstrably antagonistic to it. (Also: what faculty was telling Hume that instinct should be trusted over reason, I wonder? ;) )
Instincts seem to have evolved for either personal or species survival primarily... I guess having a long life and being wrong better than having the famous last words "but it was the was the logical thing to do."
Alvin Platinga also wrote the really excellent evolutionary argument again naturalism which expands the point you
just made. Another video script for the works perhaps??
yea but some people's instincts go against others. people can have 2 completely opposing instincs
I find it funny that the belief that (P or not P) is not necessarily true is called intuitionistic logic, when it's so intuitive.
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Question, is there mentioning of Jews in the American constitution ?
Great video by the by 👍🏼
Use an anchor to stop infinite regress. Then it's rather approximation, but that's enough. Another way would be consensus.
No mention of Susan Haack's Foundherentism = Foundationalism + Coherentism?'
Kind of analogous to a complex number being a Real plus an Imaginary. All polynomial roots are somewhere on the Complex plane - a + ib - not just on the Real OR the Imaginary axis.
I've only got so much runway, dude! ;) I might return to justification as a topic in the future, so we can take another pass at detailed positions like this.
Is the Law of non-contradiction apply to the claim:
There is no truth.
Because the claim is suggesting a truth claim, but the claims says there is no truth. So the claim is false, because it claims to be true.
Hey, kind of unrelated to the video (still great as usual), but do you know Robert Miles, from computerphile? Check out his channel, I think you'll find his videos on AI very interesting, specifically, watch the one on the Orthogonality thesis.
This is totally my jam. Subbed real hard.
Awesome!
The claim made by Aristotle "It is impossible that there should be a demonstration of absolutely everything, for then there would be an infinite regress.." is actually a non sequitur and a red herring. Using infinite regress as a justification for the claim may seem valid, but there are many things that can be justified without infinite regress, such as the claim itself that Aristotle makes. He provides no further justification and no further justification is needed if we are to accept his claim and justification. :)
In reality his justification of infinite regress has nothing to do with the claim that it is impossible for absolutely everything to be demonstrated, as many things can indeed be demonstrated without the need for infinite regress. Hence red herring. The conclusion in this case is placed before the justification, but it nevertheless does not logically follow from the premise of infinite regress. Hence non sequitur. :)
Good eye! Skeptical claims often suffer from this sort of self-defeating structure - the way I've seen people wriggle out of it is to not make the general case, but offer a structure for specific cases, e.g. rather than saying "all knowledge is impossible," you just wait for someone to claim knowledge & then demonstrate that that the chain of justification for that knowledge peters out somewhere. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I LOLED at 6:27 #Illuminatiwins
This reminds me of Godel's incompleteness theorem
Definitely - the recursive justification objection to foundationalism is straight out of Godel's handbook (which contains all handbooks which don't contain themselves).
Perhaps some metaphysical principle needs to be used to justify the foundation. A principle that talks about the metaphysical properties of foundations. For example causality. Then the metaphysical principle will be justified as being essential to the physical such that if it wasn't so. the physical just wouldn't work.
Not good enough. The foundation of epistemology can't be demonstrated via metaphysical principle, because w/o epistemology you can't know if it's true or not. You are back at circular reasoning with that one.
KohuGaly true but I think the foundation of any knowledge must be metaphysical, only a metaphysical concept can stop the infinite regress because beyond such metaphysical idea no knowledge can be gotten, if the metaphysical concept can be studied and refuted it becomes just an epistemological stance and becomes similarly affected by infinite regress
At 7:06 “recursive …” what did you say?
"...recursive Gödelian objection to the idea." 😆
@@THUNKShow thank you. Now my head is really spinning lol
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Cool haha must have missed it! Huge fan of the videos. Keep up the amazing content :)
If I answered you, would you believe me?
Probably, unless you happen to work for Infowars.
To hold something to be, is simply to say you believe it to be. Therefore, it is their believe, but no amount of belief can make a thing true or factual. This statement of preamble was not as a result of any research of any consequence. It only expresses the aspirations and beliefs of the people who had taken upon themselves the responsibility of forging a new country. You hold truth to be true, sounds like a stupid statement. The sentential interpretation would be " I hold this man to be a man. Truth does not need anybody to uphold or hold it, it is true regardless of what you think of it. It is more ridiculous especially if you believe a true to be true.