As with the fear of death video, my thinking on this has been influenced by my fuck buddy Unknown Knowns Philosophy. We haven't recorded a conversation on this topic yet, but hopefully will in the future.
The concept of "denial" exists in a context of p or not p. While the context can exist inside of trivialism, it cannot exist in parallel to trivialism. If we want to evaluate trivialism vs. nontrivialism, we need to say what it means to deny in a context agnostic to trivialism. P or not p seems foundational (in a descriptive, not prescriptive, sense) to how almost all humans evaluate systems of belief. Kabay describes 'p or not p' as something incidental to classic logic, permitting diathelism and thus trivialism from diathelism, but I don't think it is; I think it is the foundation of classic logic. To evaluate the behavior of the trivialist, I can only imagine a trivialist acting in a nontrivialist world, the world I believe I inhabit, as a trivialist world is impossible for me to imagine. (Kabay does the same; he never once asserts that the trivialist does in fact eat glass.) As long as I assume nontrivialism, I'll also assume realism and physicalism. If the trivialist is conditioned to eat bread instead of glass, we might also say that they are conditioned to believe bread is nutritious and glass is sharp. I have no insight into beliefs except through behavior, verbal or otherwise. "Belief" is a model, a way of predicting behavior. If someone says "glass is nutritious" but chooses to instead eat bread, I do not say that they believe that glass is nutritious; I say they are lying. Claiming to be a trivialist is no more a window onto belief than claiming to have a girlfriend in Canada. Really, in order to evaluate whether belief in trivialism is compatible with directed behavior, we have to rigorously define "belief" (and everything else as well.) That seems an impossible task to me. (But if we were living in a trivialist world, all of this would hold, and none of it would hold, and everything between and beyond as well.) I want to say that we generally have a very difficult time adopting bizarre positions in attempts to evaluate them. I don't expect anyone to be able to tell me what it's like to be a trivialist. This goes for radical skepticism as well as trivialism. Elsewhere, you've said that a radical skeptic would have no reason to prefer exiting the door to the window; but to the radical skeptic, they can't say that they did exit the the door, or that they exited at all, or that they exist, or that you're providing arguments against the actual existence of radical skepticism, which requires an actuality of which they remain skeptical. Their response to "Why didn't you walk out the window?" might only be "I didn't? What makes you say that?" Likewise, the trivialist might say, "But I *did* eat the glass!" We just do not agree with the trivialist or the radical skeptic on enough to even *begin* to have a conversation with them. In any case, I think you'll find that trivialists agree with me here on all counts, so clearly I win the debate.
Your videos are scarier than horror movies. And more exciting!! That is an insane point you made-that every view is included within trivialism. I agree with it and also the implication that there is nothing you can say to convince a trivialist. I still think that if trivialism is false, then a trivialist can be distinguished conceptually from other people. For a nontrivialist, there are some propositions which they are acquainted with but which they do not accept. This is not the case with a trivialist, since there are no propositions which they are acquainted with and which they do not accept. So If I personally were to become a trivialist, there would be a big change: I would start accepting a lot of things that I currently do not accept. If I were to become a skeptic, I would stop accepting a lot of things that I currently do accept. Whether that's the best course of action given those views is another matter; I'm just saying these things based on the definitions of "trivialist" and "skeptic" you gave. Also, I take a deflationary view of truth, and I'm an anti-realist about composite objects and abstract objects. I think the only things that exist are immaterial souls and then physical stuff. I am also certain that experiences occur. I do not accept the proposition that experiences do not occur. So the temptation to either trivialism or total skepticism is low for me.
> I still think that if trivialism is false, then a trivialist can be distinguished conceptually from other people. For a nontrivialist, there are some propositions which they are acquainted with but which they do not accept. This is not the case with a trivialist, since there are no propositions which they are acquainted with and which they do not accept. But this is false. as trivialists accept the truth of the proposition that only some propositions are true so they will have propositions they dont accept
@@Akari-og1lk But it is false that there are any propositions that a trivialist does not accept. That’s what differentiates me from a trivialist. You're right that a trivialist accepts the truth of "Only some propositions are true". But that doesn't stop them from accepting every proposition. They still accept every proposition. I don't accept every proposition. Hence I am not a trivialist.
@@ChrisBandyJazzi disagree.Since by any meaning if F is the set of all propositions that trivialism hold consequently it's negation also belong to F/ notF belong to F.Then since not F is part of trivialism that state "only some proposition true" consequently it's domain isn't the whole domain of trivialism which mean someone can hold notF and reject the propositions outside of notF while being trivialism since notF is part of trivialism.
I think that you are right about the impossibility of externally determining if someone is a skeptic or a trivialist, but i don't think that you can derive from that that everybody is actually a trivialist or a skeptic, or that trivialism and skepticism are indistiguishable from other philosophical stances. First, the problem with externally finding out the philosophical stance of a person doesn't just apply to this stances, it applies to all stances: a person could allways speak falsely or be a robot that falsely pretends to be expressing meaningful propositions and, from that point of view, you could say that every position is undefeatable. The problem of what it means to hold some stance or other must depend on the beliefs that people hold as mental states (as you suggested later). Now, it would be a mistake, i think, to confuse the fact that mental states determine what stance you hold with the notion that you actually hold whatever stance you believe you hold. For example: i could tell myself that i am humean while actually being wrong about it (maybe i think that i have a stable Self and i didn't took that into account when describing my own stance). You can be a realist about the philosophical stance you hold (that is, you can believe that there is a matter of fact regarding your stance that is independent of your reflective self-conception), so you could be wrong about what your stance actually is. You could believe that you are a trivialist or a skeptic while actually not being so. In fact, i would say that the problem of the "point of view of the skeptic" could be reversed: you could ask "From the point of view of a non-skeptic: what would it look like to be a skeptic?" and the fact is that the non-skeptic could not fully grasp it (as the skeptic could not fully grasp what it means to actually be a non-skeptic). If someone is actually a non-skeptic, she could try to "not hold any beliefs" and say "i do not hold any beliefs", but she would actually hold that as a belief (because if that werent the case, she would not be a non-skeptic). From that point of view, non-skepticism is also undefeatable because for a non-skeptic person every argument used against her presupposes the belief in something and silence or suspention of judgement doesn't count as a counterargument. My point is: from the outside, it is impossible to determine if someone holds a certain stance or not, because you only hear or read words and interpret them (and in that process interpretation there is allways room for mistake); from the inside, it is tricky to do it, because you could be mistaken about your own stance. This raises a serious problem about knowing your stance and the stance of other people, but it doesn't imply that stances themselves are indistinguishable. It's distinguishability, in fact, is implied in the relevance of this debate.
Other way of formulating what i've just said is this: meaningfully conceiving the notion of "defeatability/non-defeatability" requires entering into the non-skeptic/non-trivialist way of thinking in wich duality is meaningful and its opposites (the true and the false) are distinguishable. If you do not enter that way of thinking, then you will conclude not only that trivialism/skepticism is undefeatable, but also that non-skepticism and non-trivialism are also undefeatable (and, of course, that all of them are also defeatable, because contradictions would be acceptable). I think that you are formulating this video from the point of view of a non-skeptic/non-trivialist, that is, from the point of view that there is a meaningful distinction that implies duality and non-contradiction because if you didn't the message would not be informative at all (you could also have argued about how every position is undefeatable, non-skepticism indluded), and you might as well be silent for twenty minutes. The whole debate about defeatability/undefeatability implies the meaningfulness of the concept of "defeatable". A non-skeptic sees every argument as an argument in favor of her position for the sole fact that an argument implies a belief, and views silence as irrelevant; a skeptic is incapable of understanding an argument used against her because the comprehension of said argument would imply the belief that the argument is such and such, and thus is immune to critic. For a trivialist every argument is the same, since every argument is valid, and thus cannot be defeated because she will agree to everything; for a non-trivialist, trivialism is defeated in precisely that same fact, since acceptance of contradictory arguments is just what it means to be defeated. The "debate" between a non-skeptic and a skeptic, or between a non-trivialist and a trivialist is no debate at all, since the conditions that allow each stance to be what it is deny, at the same time, the possibility to comprehend the contrary stance. A true encounter between advocates of this stances would result in a total impossibility to comunicate.
Cool video. I think one issue (there's a few but I'll just say one) I immediately find with the dilemma is that there's an emotional component to belief, wherein if something were to be genuinely accepted ("everything is true"), there are persons that will feel settled and others that will be disturbed once it actually "clicks." One. I'm not sure if Trivialism could ever "click" because what would have to be genuinely, whole-heartedly assented to is an infinite number of contradictions. Two, if it did "click," I think it would generate such an immediate psychic dissonance that it would result in a psychotic break or Trivialism would be doxastically spit out like a nasty piece of food. Otherwise, I think it's simply an idea that places third-person, theoretic pressures on our first-person doxasfic dispositions, but would never actually exist within a mind as it theoretically would have to.
Interestingly, Paul Kabay, who is pretty much the sole defender of trivialism in contemporary philosophy, thinks that embracing trivialism leads to ataraxia. This is of course more famously associated with skepticism, so this is perhaps another point where trivialism and skepticism lead in the same direction.
@@KaneB Interesting. I suppose it's just hard for me to imagine an actual trivialist in the world. Part of my response is influenced because I'm writing on and reading Linda Zagzebski rn who talks a lot about beliefs relation to emotions and such. epistemic exemplars,.,etc
i suspect that it's rather rare to find people who live in trivialism-induced ataraxia that doesn't collapse during / after someone tortures them, or when pressed to abandon trivialism or they will be killed.
Re: How to distinguish other people or oneself from a trivialist. As you point out in the video everything that someone might do is predicted under the hypothesis that they are a trivialist. Let's for the sake of argument adopt a (rough) version of a belief-desire psychology of behaviour: Agent A will exhibit (voluntary) behaviour B iff A believes that B probabilizes some event E and A desires that E. The trivialist desires some things and believes everything. And arguably for any given behaviour we can postulate some belief and desire pair, aswell as suitable background beliefs, that predicts it given the belief-desire theory. So if someone is a trivialist in any given situation they might do anything. And because this is so any behaviour that we, the hopefully non-trivialists, might exhibit is something a trivialist might do under the circumstances that we are in. Therefore, everything that we might do is compatible with the hypothesis of trivialism given the belief-desire theory. But that does not make trivialism a good explanation of our behaviour. After all, since the trivialist might do anything, no one could predict someones behaviour on the basis of thinking they are a trivialist. But we do regularly predict people's behaviour and hence our ordinary belief ascriptions for the people around us are better and more justified theories of their psychology.
Paul Kabay's 'Defense of Trivialism' is intended to be partially ironic, partially exploring a position that he disagrees with by playing the role of a character who believes in that position. Kabay is not a trivialist, nor is he even a dialetheist, he believes in the principle of non-contradiction. He used to have a website and stated this explicitly on his website. I think that when you said that there were sincere trivialists you had him in mind.
This is the 3rd video of yours that I've inspired (someone has a crush). This is probably my favorite among my ideas that I've shared with you. I've seen comments and elsewhere people saying that "I can get beyond trivialism by rejecting the notion of propositions generally inwhich trivialism depends" but this fails of course because the trivialist accepts every criteria for what could be admitted as a proposition, meaning it takes every utterance and non-utterance to be a proposition, this means trivialism isn't just about propositions, it means that trivialism is actually everything that there is, and also nothing, and also only a very specific part of what there is. So it goes way beyond propositions.
Is it necessary to believe in the proposition "all propositions are true" in order to be a trivialist, or is it not necessary to do anything, because we are all trivialists anyway?
@@EdgarQeryou don't need to as trivialism implies that they're counterpart must be true hence i think most of us would fall into this category/being trivialist by become it's counterpart(only some proposition are true).Some might argue "sure but that doesn't stop a trivialist to accept that everything is true" but those proposition are still part of trivialism if you find this difficult to imagine let say you believe a F whose domain is all natural number/it contain an infinite amount of proposition and let G be a subset of believe F whose domain let say 100/it contain 100 proposition then you could believe G without accepting the whole domain of F since G is part of F
For me the power of trivialism is his unrefutability. It is the nuclear weapon of Skepticism. As a Skeptic I can go as follows: 1. Assume trivialism to be true. 2. Then every belief B is false because ~B is true. 3. We cannot prove 1. false (because to do so we‘d have to commit circular reasoning at one point). 4. Ergo, we cannot rule out every belief to be false, i.e. Skepticism. p.s. It doesn‘t help that every belief is also true, it just adds to the confusion that serves the Skeptic‘s point of our cluelessness.
While everything I believe is shared with trivialism, if I converted to trivialism, I'd end up adopting new ideas. For instance, I currently do not think that I am on Mars, but if I were a trivialist, then I would. From my current non-trivialist point of view, those two are quite different. Of course, if I was a trivialist, then "I shouldn't care that I'm on Mars" or "I should verbally deny to Kane B that I think I'm on Mars" would be contained therin (as would infinite other redundant reasons to do whatever), so *you* can't tell the difference, but I can at least tell for my self.
As with most topics in philosophy, it is important to approach trivialism from the appropriate perspective. It is easy to slam one's head against a wall trying to hopelessly argue against trivialism using a naive approach. Instead we should bear in mind that when a trivialist says "trivialism is false", she does not mean that trivialism is false. Trivialism is not an opinion about the world where the trivialist actually thinks that all things are true. Clearly a trivialist does not think that trivialism is false, or else she would not be a trivialist. Instead we should recognize trivialism for what it is: an opinion about the semantics of claims. While most people categorize some claims as true and some claims as false, a trivialist decides that all claims should be considered true, and so a trivialist is working with very different semantics from usual. In effect, a trivialist is speaking a different language that happens to use words that sound exactly like English words but have very different meanings. So then in debating with a trivialist, we should approach the problem as if we were approaching a person who does not speak English. We must either translate what we wish to say into the language of trivialism, convince the trivialist to switch to speaking English, or else find some other language that we can all share for the purposes of discussion. It may be difficult to translate English into trivialism because the concepts of true and false are so fundamental to everything we ever say in English. To do without them is extremely puzzling and it would be interesting to see how two trivialist would talk to each other in order to get some clues as to how their language works in practice.
>> Clearly a trivialist does not think that trivialism is false, or else she would not be a trivialist They'd agree with that though. Trivialists are not trivialists (at least by their own lights).
Incidentally, there are two people I know of who unambiguously defend trivialism. As far as I can tell, both of them see it more as a spiritual/mystical position than having to do with semantics. There are ways of presenting trivialism as a semantic theory -- we might hold that (a) the logic of natural language is classical and (b) natural languages generate true contradictions, e.g. Liar paradoxes. If those conditions hold, then natural language is trivial. But then the answer to that is to construct an artificial language that either uses a paraconsistent logic or that removes the contradictions. This isn't the kind of trivialism I'm talking about in this video.
@@KaneB "Trivialists are not trivialists (at least by their own lights)." Naturally they would say they're "not trivialists". And of course they would also say they "are trivialists". They don't use the word "not" in the way that English speakers use that word, and trivialists are not bound by the usual rules for its use. "There are two people I know of who unambiguously defend trivialism. As far as I can tell, both of them see it more as a spiritual/mystical position than having to do with semantics." Using English in a way that breaks the usual rules of English doesn't seem like a mystical position. It's just a matter of language. Presumably they are aware of how normal English is spoken and they do not constantly speak as trivialists. If they do constantly speak as trivialists, then we should expect to understand them little better than if they were speaking Sanskrit. What does it mean when a trivialist says that something is mystical, considering that this same trivialist would also say that it is not mystical? The only way to figure it out would be to study how trivialists talk to each other and attempting to reverse-engineer their language.
@@Ansatz66 >> It's just a matter of language I don't see any reason to accept this, except in the trivial (ha!) sense that any difference in belief can involve a difference in language in that, if we have different beliefs, we will sometimes say different things. >> If they do constantly speak as trivialists What would it mean to "speak as trivialists"? How is the way you or I speak different to how a trivialist might speak? Why shouldn't I interpret both you and me as trivialists, and so study how we talk to each other in order to understand the trivialist's language?
@@KaneB : A difference in language occurs when people make the same sounds or write the same symbols, but they have different intentions for how those sounds or symbols will be interpreted. It is certainly possible for different beliefs to lead to this sort of mismatch in intended interpretations, but trivialism seems like an especially extreme example. "What would it mean to 'speak as trivialists'?" That is no small question, since to truly answer it we would need to explain how to interpret the things that a trivialist says, and I don't know how to do that, but the key sign that someone is speaking as a trivialist is that they will violate the law of non-contradition in ways that no English speaker ever would. A trivialist would not be troubled by saying both "X" and "not X" as if there were no conflict between these statements. Still, I cannot explain why trivialists do this or how they intend for this to be interpreted. That is the barrier in understanding that must be overcome before one can productively argue against trivialism. "How is the way you or I speak different to how a trivialist might speak?" It is subtle because the words sound exactly like English in both cases, but here is a simple test. We can ask two questions: Is the moon made of cheese? Is the moon *not* made of cheese? If we answer "yes" to both questions, then we are clearly not speaking ordinary English and there is a fair chance that we are trivialists. "Why shouldn't I interpret both you and me as trivialists, and so study how we talk to each other in order to understand the trivialist's language?" Because if we are not actually trivialists then anything that you learn through that study would be misleading.
I'm not sure about the "impossible to defeat in debate" part. I think of the goal in a debate as simply getting your opponent to affirm whatever proposition you're arguing in favor of, which will be trivially easy in the case of debating a trivialist. There's no requirement to first establish that your opponent previously disagreed with you, right?
I think that, as with skepticism, the NON-trivialist can distinguish themselves from the trivialist. While I agree that one can’t argue with a trivialist, I think using the following example we can set up a distinction: I say “this rock is round,” by which I also mean that “it is false that this rock is not round (pointy, edged, idk).” The trivialist, of course, will affirm this as well as the propositions that “this rock is NOT round (whatever this means)” and “it is false that this rock is round.” Here, I think, we can define the non-trivialist negatively to the trivialist: the non-trivialist is someone who doesn’t affirm all propositions (in this case, the latter two). The trivialist of course does and doesn’t have access to this perspective, but I think the non-trivialist can confidently distinguish themselves in this way. But also let me know if I missed something haha because it clearly doesn’t seem so simple to Kane and others. Edit: this is my only nitpick by the way. Other than this I loved this video and it got me to think about the connection between these views I hadn’t thought of before, while further exacerbating the problems I see with skepticism. Honestly I think trivialism fills in a lot of the holes in a radical skeptic’s methodology, while also allowing one to endorse their own view as a proposition, which is a bonus (although also affirming the negation still feels a bit strange).
What about this: An agent A can distinguish himself from the trivialist T as soon as T makes a proposition that A knows he would not make. However, there is no proposition (or action) A can make that would convince a third party B that he is distinct from T (because T includes all propositions/actions including self-referential ones). But, given that it is in principle possible for A to distinguish himself from T, B is left to estimate the true state of affairs. This is not particularly bad spot to be in, because it is akin to answering "no" to the question "is there a pink elephant in your bathroom?", i.e. even though the person in question does not have sure knowledge that there is no pink elephant, he is still able to confidently answer no. I suppose this argument hinges on A being able to distinguish himself from T. Of course the thought "I would not make that proposition" is something T could think as well, but T would do so in the knowledge that he is a trivialist. The problem appears to require accessing some knowledge "outside of oneself" about the size of ones proposition space (which, for non-trivialists, should be less than T). After that, convincing others that you are not T is in principle impossible, but in practice simple.
I'm not going to assert that the moon is made of cheese. So if some trivialist asserts, "the moon is made of cheese", then I can distinguish myself from that particular trivialist. But there can be some other trivialist who asserts all and only the propositions that I assert, and more broadly, who will think and behave in exactly the same ways that I think and behave. What can I do to distinguish myself from this trivialist? >> but T would do so in the knowledge that he is a trivialist The trivialist believes "trivialism is false" and "I am not a trivialist". How can he know that he's a trivialist if he doesn't even believe it?
@@KaneB But if you distinguish yourself from some particular trivialist, then you've distinguished yourself from trivialism in general. From this perspective, the predicament is reversed: it becomes hard for a trivialist to establish himself as a trivialist. In other words, the "trivialist" that asserts all the same propositions as you do, and behaves as you do, would somehow have to know that he would assert everything else, and behave/think in all other possible ways. Without this knowledge, the trivialists' position is consistent with your position, and your position is consistent with the trivialists' -- so are you a trivialist, or is he not a trivialist? Why would you prefer one over the other? At worst you now end in a draw between trivialism and an alternative position
trivialist: hi, it's true that you will not cut all of my fingers off from my hands. ~the "you" cuts all of the trivialist's fingers off from their hands. trivialist without any fingers left: it is true that my fingers have not been cut off. 👌🏼
I'll try to convince you that I am not a trivialist: To me, philosophy is the search of some kind of truth. Just like our eyes only perceive parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to see(If we saw the whole spectrum, how could I differentiate anything?). So in the search of a truth, I have to be able to discriminate between something, in order to perceive what is true or false. So, trivialism is useless to me, because it does not differentiate anything. Also, if I meet a trivialist, it might be true that I must beat him up, no?
This sounds like something a trivialist would say. The trivialist agrees that searching for truth requires discrimination, and that trivialism is useless for that because it does not differentiate anything. >> Also, if I meet a trivialist, it might be true that I must beat him up, no? Sure.
13:25 You got it Now what's the problem for the skeptic? 13:40 That is not clear at all Why can't he say it? Because there is a reason not to do it? The skeptic is agnostic about if reasons exist, so that's not a problem 14:15 How would you know that nothing is stopping you? Maybe everything is stopping you
I'm not claiming that there is any problem for the skeptic. >> Why can't he say it? Exactly my point, lol. The skeptic can say anything, including what I just said she can't say.
The fact that radical scepticism undermines its own position is not a surprise to me. I am an absolute sceptic - I just deny the claim that justification or warrant or etc is needed to in order to rationally adopt a position. You can adopt any position you like as long as you keep it open to criticism and are willing to reject it once there is criticism of it. This position isn’t self-undermining and any criticism of it from a position that is self-undermining, is immediately rejected. So for instance a justificationist might ask what is the the justification for my position. And I would say - there isn’t one. They might then assert that you cannot believe something without it being justified. I would say well neither me nor you can accept that position that you are offering since it counsels its own rejection. My position would be left unscathed by this analysis, which is just a rejection of the position that you need to justify your position, since it is self-undermining. This was Bartley and Popper’s answer to the problem of rationality. And so far there has been no successful criticism of it.
Great video as always! For me it seems obvious that trivialism only deals with propositions, so all i need to do is not make propositions :^) then im finally free from the burden of being considered a trivialist by you! Oh the freedom! OR Alternativily i could just be a pragmatist in the pure sense, and simply reject propositions in favour of actions :^) But i don't mind being defined as a lable by others, so i wouldn't offer any strategy, as i don't care about lables
About not stating propositions -- Kabay has a paper called "Interpreting the Divyadhvani" where he argues that the central doctrine of Jainism is trivialism, and that the founder of Jainism communicated this doctrine by sitting motionless in silence. Of course, trivialism is defined in terms of propositions, but one way to look at it is that it's using propositional language to point towards something non-propositional. My friend Unknown Knowns Philosophy is a trivialist, but I think he sees trivialism as the propositional analogue of Zen, a tradition which treats propositional thought as the wrong tool for apprehending reality. Whatever you say, you are asserting the content of trivialism. But a trivialist need not say or do anything in particular. A trivialist can also be a pragmatist who rejects propositions in favour of actions.
@@KaneB Interesting story (Bro)! I knew about the jains, but i assumed the doctrine about truth was about subjectivism. I guess it does make more sense to see it as trivialism. Its an interesting approach. Trivialism really seems trivial then, if its niether about propositions, nor about rejecting them infavour of actions in the world. When all is said and done, the only option would be to not argue with the lable at all, afterall its just a lable, and lables have no causal power unless you give it to them. All ideas have to use you as a medium, either to be intellegable or to have any effect what so ever. Labeles amongst philosophers aren’t really that important either, we mostly use them to save time, or mental capacety. Which often leads to misunderstandings either way. For all i know i might be considered a trivialist, a subjectivist, heck Even a solipsist by others, or i might define myself by ideas which sound cool, but really aren’t that practical or intlegable. But of course this is an entirely diffrent story when we dont take that route, if we accept lables, we Get to see them as meaning something beyond ouer mental maps, and now they suddenly turn into these great abstractions. They move into the domain of reality. We are suddenly communists, capitalists, or any personal identity. Even reality becomes a lable (material reality, immaterial / idealistic reality, metaphysical reality ect.) as if the lable changes anything about reality in the first place. Then your practicality fucked, the very means you used as a tool, have become your reality. So lableing is either useless, or only as usefull as your goal allows it to be. But niether of Those actually does anything substancial with reality. The only view that could ever do anything, would be one where the very ideas you hold change reality, these types of idealistic notions are truely diffrent, but they dont seem to hold true. The only thing we ever see are either people who wish for precisely the things they Get (such as the story of the King in the little prince) Or people who are indistinguishable for me and you, who use ideas as tools for actions. There seems to be no direct means for ideas to do anything in the world.
@@KaneB Trivialism accepts every criteria for what could be admitted and accepted as a proposition. Which means that everything that is typically considered non-propositional is propositional by trivialism's lights. Trivialism cannot be escaped by avoiding propositions because one has presupposed a criteria for propositions that has certain omissions, but trivialism in accepting every possible variant of what could constitute a proposition actually winds up just "being" everything, every utterance and non-utterance is both a proposition and not-a-proposition and everything in between (and neither) by trivialism's lights
interestingly, you can distinguish a trivialist from a normal person in that the latter would answer no when presented with propositions. from this it follows never too trust someone who never says no
A trivialist believes that all propositions are false as much as they believe that they are all true. Just take any proposition P that the trivialist believes and consider it's negation ¬P which the trivialist also believes.
If I have spoken with a lot of paradoxes, then one can pragmatically consider me a trivialist, else one should gradually add some confidence into the probability that I'm not a trivialist if one wants to achieve something through conversing.
One should interpret somebody as a trivialist only if what they claim is only compatible with trivialism, since trivialists can distinguish themselves from non-trivialists
This is the craziest video you ever done and I love it LOL But if you can prove that something is true and not false would be game over for both, no?! Trivialism survival seems to depend on the possibility of everything be true and false at the same time. Skepticism survival on impossibility of know if anything is true or/and false.
@@janethompson6289 There's is no foundation for what's is true and not false or/and true and false is at list one believe of skepticism that must be truth and not false. So denied this criteria is denied skepticism. Ask if a person think a believe is truth and not false. Them ask if the same person think a the same believe is false. Trivialist will say yes for both questions, so he accept something to be truth and false, you found him.
@@janethompson6289 About Skepticism: If you don't believe there's is no foundation to knowledge or that foundation of knowledge can't be know, so there's is no reason to be absolutely Skeptical about knowledge. Do not matter what trivialism agree, they are not the center of the universe. What matters is if you realize or not if I believe all believes can be true and false at the same time. I do not believe this shit, I give you no reason to believe I do.
I am not sure I find this very defensible (or interesting to be honest but that may just be my ignorance) of a position in either case. To me the way you've described both these positions seems to fall into the category of vacuous truths. In both cases the "freedom" of beliefs or claims you speak of originates from the antecedent in itself being false, therefore the consequent can be anything. Because of this I heavily disagree with your point that there isn't a distinguishing factor between these two extreme positions and their contrast; the difference is the ability of being able to INFER the truth value of the consequent. For example, imagine if you're playing a game where there are ten buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and the red button always makes you win. In the average case the person would always win because they'd always press the red button. But for the trivialist they have a 1/10 chance of winning since they can't consider any aspect of the situation at all; every button is every color and not every color, and they are and aren't buttons, etc. etc. so they can't inference anything to base a decision on since all the information is essentially uniform. So I find it very surprising that you say they have less constraints towards beliefs when they are basically forced to have the same belief in every circumstance and situation; it seems much more restricted and forces them to act on probability. I also disagree with how you state that because they can speak/think something that is inline with our rules that they are in fact acting within those rules themselves, or basically that because we can share two same values of a consequent that our RULES are aligned. It's as if you're suggesting they're a superset or something of non-trivialist/non-skeptics when in reality their rule is essentially given anything return true (which is why you rightfully liken the two to each other since they have the same rule structure) which is an extremely limiting constraint as demonstrated in the prior example. So because of their inability to express falsehood (because given any statement regarded false by them they must necessarily also regard it as true) they retain overlap with rules outside of these two positions but never the less can never fully express the ruleset; that is to say they can never EXCLUSIVELY express something as true or something as false, both must always be true.
>> But for the trivialist they have a 1/10 chance of winning since they can't consider any aspect of the situation at all Why can't they do that? The trivialist can agree that there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win. >> I also disagree with how you state that because they can speak/think something that is inline with our rules that they are in fact acting within those rules themselves... I'm not sure what your point is in this paragraph, to be honest. What I'm saying is that since the trivialist and the skeptic can say and think anything at all, they can speak and think in conformity with a given set of inference rules. That is, whatever reasoning behaviour the rule requires of us, the trivialist and the skeptic may engage in the exact same reasoning.
@@KaneB >> Why can't they do that? The trivialist can agree that there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win. Because from the perspective of a trivialist everything is true, including there not being 10 buttons, all the buttons are every color and not every color, etc. So if they genuinely had this perspective why would they choose to function like the non-trivialist as originally described? From their perspective there isn't any more reason to say "there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win" than to say literally any other proposition; from their perspective it's true that there both is and isn't a game, and that they've both won and lost already before even playing. They have no basis to make any decision because they already believe that everything that has and could ever happen (and of course could not happen) has happened (and not happened); how could anyone make decision since, given every possibility and non-possiblity is true, they have an infinite number of things to consider when making an action? It's absurd to think anyone could function in true accordance to this idea, and if the argument is just "they would just always say what the non-trivialist would say is true" then it's absurd to think a true trivialist would ever consistently choose to say or do what a non-trivialist would say or do given that again every choice (and otherwise) is of equal value to them because they are true. They cannot have a preference of choice because there would be no reason to; everything from their perspective is the same (true). >> What I'm saying is that since the trivialist and the skeptic can say and think anything at all, they can speak and think in conformity with a given set of inference rules. That is, whatever reasoning behaviour the rule requires of us, the trivialist and the skeptic may engage in the exact same reasoning. What I am trying to get at is that someone like a trivialist could never express falsehood and so it'd be incorrect to say it's the EXACT same reasoning. Let me try to be a bit more explicit. Imagine there are three people: a speaker, a trivialist and a non-trivialist. The speaker states to the trivialist "All bachelor's are unmarried", and they of course respond "true". Then the speaker states to them "All bachelor's are married" and they also again respond with true. The speaker asks the same to the non-trivalist, they say true when told bachelor's are unmarried but FALSE when told that they are married. There is no way that the trivialist in this situation can match the reasoning behavior of the non-trivialist and say "false" like the non-trivialist because they can only say "true" by definition of trivialism itself. Now of course if the speaker stated "There are no married bachelors" both the trivialist and non-trivialist would say "true", but again it would be wrong to say this is the exact same reasoning. From the perspective of the trivialist their reasoning is every proposition is true so therefore anything the speaker states to them is true, while from the perspecitve of the non-trivialist they are reasoning with classical logic. This distinction between the trivialist being unable to say false while the non-trivialist can say false isn't simply semantic, it's an explicit difference in reasoning. TL;DR they cannot speak and think anything at all, they can only speak and think everything is true. If this is not the case explain to me how the trivialist would ever say "false" to a statement spoke by the speaker?
Hello Kane. This has nothing to do with the present video but I thought I might try making a request. I enjoyed your modal logic episodes and would like to understand relevance logic better than I do. If you ever feel up to making a relevance logic video, you might be the first person on youtube to do so. You would certainly be the best to do so. :)
I don’t really care what someone actually believes and I am not trying to persuade anyone of anything. What I care about is finding arguments and whether they challenge my own position to see if it needs revising. It doesn’t matter whether the person who offers me that argument actually believes it. So to me whether or not I can convince other people of my beliefs is really not that relevant.
Wait. Why would it be the case that I am definitely a trivialist? (From your perspective).Wouldn’t it just be the case that it is underdetermined. Everything I tell you is compatible with me being a trivialist, but it’s also compatible with me not being one.
I think about the trivialism stuff like this: For all propositions P the trivialist claims that P is true But if there is one proposition that isn't true, then trivialism is false So "The dog is barking" being false would get you to non-trivialism You could make the move where you take " "The dog is barking" is false" and say this is true But the content of a proposition is different to the truth value of the proposition, so this doesn't help the trivialist If there is one proposition that is false, then Trivialism is false
But the trivialist agrees that trivialism is false. So that's not a problem from her point of view. (And, of course, it is a problem from her point of view.)
The trivialist thinks that all propositions are false. So you don't have to convince her that at least one proposition is false. She's way ahead of you lol
@@KaneB Only if all propositions being false is content of a proposition Like you could say that the trivialist agree with everything But this only is because as soon as you talk about agreement, you talk about agreeing about **something** That thing is a proposition and the trivialist thinks that all props are true But I am talking about the truth value itself, which here must not be content of a proposition
Im not sure whzy it would matter if someone expressed beliefs with non contradiction and they are coherent beliefs under non trivialism. Why should I care if I myself, or the other person, is secretely a trivialist if it doesnt affect the beliefs that the person holds?
It seems to me that the trivialist is engaged in a red herring Supposs i argue with a flat earther. I say: "The earth is not flat but you think it is so we disagree" And they reply : " wait but we both believe in clouds. We don't disagree about that right?" That would be a red herring. It is irrelevant that we both agree that there are clouds. That is changing the subject. The point is one of us thinks the earth is flat and the other one doesn't. Similarly suppose I argue with a trivialist Me: "I don't think I have three eyes but you do think I have three eyes therefore we disagree" Trivialist: " wait, but we don't disagree because I also think you have two eyes" This is a distraction. All it takes to demonstrate that I disagree with someone is to show that at least one of their beliefs is inconsistent with mine. And I have done so. The trivialist thinks I have 3 eyes. I don't think I do. So we disagree. Period. The fact that the trivialist can point to other beliefs they have that ARE consistent with mine is irrelevant to the fact that they already hold beliefs that are inconsistent with mine. I am well aware that a trivialist might respond to this entire comment by simply saying " I agree with everything you just said lol, so we don't disagree" I hope I have shown why that would just be another red herring. Another attempt to distract from the disagreement I have already pointed out. In other words, the fact that the trivialist can agree with my criticism of him ( namely, that they think something I don't) doesn't take away the truth of that criticism (namely, that they think something I don't) Just because the trivialist will believe everything I do doesn't mean I will believe everything the trivialist believes. If you had a scroll with a list of all my beliefs and a scroll with a list of the trivialists beliefs, the lists would be different. And whenever I point to something on the trivialists list that is in conflict with something on my list, the trivialists reaction is to find something else on their list that is not in conflict with what I pointed out. But I hope I have shown why that move is a red herring. Anyways sorry for the long rant but this argument triggered me lol.
Just because the trivialist will agree with everything I say doesn't mean I will agree with everything the trivialist says. As long as I can point to an example of something the trivialist might say that I don't believe I have succesfully expressed my disagreement.
I guess this follows with "anything can be derived from nonsense". I do feel sorry for philosophy students. The concept of absolute truth pushes people into such untenable positions.
@@KaneB in philosophy, something os either true or it is false. This is called the law of the excluded middle. So, by pursuing truth instead of evidence and knowledge, learners of philosophy get pushed into strange positions like trivialism and skepticism.
@@InventiveHarvest There are philosophers who deny the LEM. More generally, radical skepticism is really unpopular and there's literally just one dude who defends trivialism. I think a bigger problem with philosophy is the huge number of philosophers who see the discipline as little more than a tool to rationalize whatever happen to be the "common sense" views of their culture. I think that much of what I say in this video can be framed in terms of evidence and knowledge. E.g.: How do I know that you are not a trivialist? What evidence is there that you are not a trivialist?
@@KaneB if I say something is false, that is evidence that I am not a trivialist. Does it make it certain that I am not a trivialist? No, but it points towards the direction that I am not a trivialist.
@@InventiveHarvest Trivialists believe that everything is false. If you say, e.g. "it is false that the moon is made of cheese", you have asserted part of the content of trivialism. So how does that point in the direction that you are not a trivialist?
idk what you mean by "useless". it might not be for everyone, but i think a lot of these more abstract areas of philosophy serve much the same role as art; it keeps us entertained, it gives us something to think over. a lot of more abstract mathematics is also like this.
I disagree. If analyzing both positions teach us the lesson that we should, for example, have rules that govern our doxastic dispositions, that matters alot. If I am better off acquiring and rejecting beliefs in one way than another, that is quite relevant to real-world concerns. It pressures our pre-philosophical dispositions, which is one of the main points of philosophy. Alsooo, I think it's just really fun.
@@esthersmith3056 maybe you could equate it to art perhaps. I tend to be turned off by it. These 2 positions reminded me of the “brain in a vat” interesting for some to ponder but ultimately useless in applying it to real-world scenarios. If I ever encountered a trivialist that agreed with every proposition and also agrees that holding contradictory views are important, that would be the end of the conversation. They’re clearly not interested in a useful conversation and could careless about being hypocritical. They’ll only say this in a philosophical conversation, they obviously cannot apply their views to the real-world or they would be either dead or in prison.
Although the parallel between skepticism and trivialism is kind of interesting i do generally agree with this criticism. Since people could take issue with the term useless, I'd just say that, personally, i find these sort of philosophical concepts to be boring conversation enders. I think Kane briefly touched on this, but suppose i don't even invoke these broad concepts but that im simply a language skeptic. I don't believe that the series of lines, pixels, sounds that we use to communicate have precisely identical meaning for every human being (which is probably technically true). Thus I cannot really evaluate the truth of anything anyone else says. Now come prove me wrong. Some of the context to this idea is worth considering, but as a philosophical notion it mostly shuts down discourse.
I agree, I don't think you need to make a 25 minute video to get across the point trying to be made here. If this was a 5 minute video on vacuous truths I think it'd be fine but never pointing out that they're based on a false antecedent the entire time will make the laymen feel affirmed at the idea common now that philosophy is just circular conversations that never go anywhere.
Trivialism is self-defeating. No one understands trivialism. The concept of trivialism doesn't exist. No one has ever thought about trivialism. But also, trivialism is self-evident, everyone understands it, it certainly exists, and we just can't stop thinking about it all the time. Trivialism is the cause of all my suffering. Vegans enjoy torturing animals. Sam Harris understands Hume. If trivialism, then, moral realism is true. KaneB is a moral realist. Checkmate.
Why has philosophy become a poker game all of a sudden. I literally have no interest philosophical in the contents of people’s minds. Only in the content of propositions and how to investigate it.
i call myself a trivialist, because underlying beneath all the layers of reality, in our pure cosmic existence we are all the universe and its energy articulated. if there is energy for something, every shade of every possible thing and every world inside of every possible thing exists, if this is false then how come different philosophers have different takes on what is the true nature of existence. if they can not prove who is correct and who is wrong through argument and language they will dismiss the problem, believing in something is accepting its energy because it resonates with you, for instance i can not believe there is only one true god in my individuality/ego/self but i know that if it can be believed it exists, not because of the loops of the mind, and also because of the loops of the mind, Both versions of the belief and everything in between them exists, everything is false exists and is true and also false, nothing exists is the truth and this comment is stupid is also the truth. if it is not to do with energy if the universe is a solid and things are truly separate from each other everything still exists at least in the hearts of humans, this true in the way i meant it and in the way you interpret it and in the world inside of it, beauty can be percieved in infinte ways, there are infite new artistic ideas because ultimately nothing can be created or destroyed only changed and the universe is infintely expanding, and this is also false
10:30 You wouldn't know if you should, because you are agnostic about whether oughts exist There is also no reason not to, because maybe reasons don't exist 10:45 But why would they? You can't force them to do anything with words, they just randomly do stuff😂
It seems to me that at the moment one becomes a trivialist, they’d have to literally stop in their tracks. Stop moving, stop thinking, stop breathing even. Because any action they *should* do is immediately countered by the equally true claim that they *should not* do that action. In order for the trivialist to do anything at all, they’d need some sort of method by which they decide whether or not they should perform a given action. In which case, they wouldn’t really be a trivialist then, would they?
Doesn’t your argument generalize to Catholicism? It’s not as though Catholicism as pre-given content. If I am a Catholic, anything I believe is part of the content of Catholicism. How do we differentiate Catholics from Protestants? We cant
I don't know much about Catholicism and Protestantism but I thought they had different views on some points, e.g. the epistemology of divine revelation. Protestants accept "sola scriptura"; Catholics do not.
@@KaneB that’s the problem! If I’m a Catholic & I accept sola scriptura, then Catholic content includes the sola scriptura. If you interpret me as a sola-scriptura-accepting Catholic, then you can’t differentiate me from a Protestant. That’s the same problem you’ve arrive at regarding trivialism and skepticism.
@@KaneB My idea is that the way you’ve reasoned about trivialism & skepticism gets wonky results about Catholicism & Protestantism. I take the wonkiness to be a mark of error in your reasoning. I reject, therefore, that you’ve reasoned well about trivialism & skepticism. Further, trivialists I’ve spoken to agree with me that you’ve mischaracterized their view. 😉
@@KaneB I think I figured out how to distinguish myself from trivialists. 1. Trivialists agree with me when I say that saying “I’m not a trivialist” is sufficient to distinguish myself from trivialists. 2. Trivialists are right about that. 3. Therefore, saying “I’m not a trivialist” is sufficient to distinguish myself from trivialists.
trivialism and skepticism defeat each other. by that i mean this: if a trivialist is caught disagreeing with anything, uk, skeptically, they dont hold that extreme position on the trivialism-skepticism spectrum anymore.
It seems to me that all that is required for someone to prove to you that they are not a trivialist is that they uphold the principle of non-contradiction. If P is true then not P is false (at the same time, in the same place, and in the same way). If they can maintain this compliance over some period of time, then during that time they were NOT a trivialist. One's status as a trivialist is born out in the deed, not in the word.
I don’t think it is psychologically possible to suspend judgment. So their position is refuted. That you should suspend judgement then becomes an impossible request and should be rejected. The claim that I suspend judgement is a judgement.
You can’t talk sensibly about trivialism. You say it is unbeatable, well if so, it has no content. Since content is what allows you to reject it once you have discovered that the content isn’t true. Trivialism doesn’t have this property, since no matter how you criticise it, you cannot reject it. Even if trivialism has the claim as part of it that you can reject it. You cannot. Can it be rejected? No. So trivialists might agree with everything you say. But I am not bothered about convincing them of anything. I would just move on.
I'm not a trivialist! Would a trivialist do this? mqC6j9zlyL6X46CA36Ow46MlVITyakmoLQtMkgjtLzXBWvpEegG2u2F21SWpg71F3CEbvyBEgbfpx5UMDP4OVnJAoPXzi2i7exznlF3WnXTH7ukFe64DACVk5m1v2Verig3S6FSXZMIXjDclRp4moT1iwitQcc3yhxIYB0yJ1SLoDUdfDYjBjAh2b1ZmxZTO1cTBIC4I
As with the fear of death video, my thinking on this has been influenced by my fuck buddy Unknown Knowns Philosophy. We haven't recorded a conversation on this topic yet, but hopefully will in the future.
Your WHAT
@@DaKoopaKing The dude with Rumsfeld mask.
@@GottfriedLeibnizYT I love how it's already become accepted lore that he wears a Donald Rumsfeld mask haha
these horseshoe theory memes are getting out of hand
Brilliant comment
After watching this video I am committed to 3 indisputable propositions
1. I have no hands
2. I have hands
3. I never said I didn't have hands
The concept of "denial" exists in a context of p or not p. While the context can exist inside of trivialism, it cannot exist in parallel to trivialism. If we want to evaluate trivialism vs. nontrivialism, we need to say what it means to deny in a context agnostic to trivialism. P or not p seems foundational (in a descriptive, not prescriptive, sense) to how almost all humans evaluate systems of belief. Kabay describes 'p or not p' as something incidental to classic logic, permitting diathelism and thus trivialism from diathelism, but I don't think it is; I think it is the foundation of classic logic.
To evaluate the behavior of the trivialist, I can only imagine a trivialist acting in a nontrivialist world, the world I believe I inhabit, as a trivialist world is impossible for me to imagine. (Kabay does the same; he never once asserts that the trivialist does in fact eat glass.) As long as I assume nontrivialism, I'll also assume realism and physicalism. If the trivialist is conditioned to eat bread instead of glass, we might also say that they are conditioned to believe bread is nutritious and glass is sharp. I have no insight into beliefs except through behavior, verbal or otherwise. "Belief" is a model, a way of predicting behavior. If someone says "glass is nutritious" but chooses to instead eat bread, I do not say that they believe that glass is nutritious; I say they are lying. Claiming to be a trivialist is no more a window onto belief than claiming to have a girlfriend in Canada. Really, in order to evaluate whether belief in trivialism is compatible with directed behavior, we have to rigorously define "belief" (and everything else as well.) That seems an impossible task to me. (But if we were living in a trivialist world, all of this would hold, and none of it would hold, and everything between and beyond as well.)
I want to say that we generally have a very difficult time adopting bizarre positions in attempts to evaluate them. I don't expect anyone to be able to tell me what it's like to be a trivialist. This goes for radical skepticism as well as trivialism. Elsewhere, you've said that a radical skeptic would have no reason to prefer exiting the door to the window; but to the radical skeptic, they can't say that they did exit the the door, or that they exited at all, or that they exist, or that you're providing arguments against the actual existence of radical skepticism, which requires an actuality of which they remain skeptical. Their response to "Why didn't you walk out the window?" might only be "I didn't? What makes you say that?" Likewise, the trivialist might say, "But I *did* eat the glass!" We just do not agree with the trivialist or the radical skeptic on enough to even *begin* to have a conversation with them.
In any case, I think you'll find that trivialists agree with me here on all counts, so clearly I win the debate.
Your videos are scarier than horror movies. And more exciting!!
That is an insane point you made-that every view is included within trivialism. I agree with it and also the implication that there is nothing you can say to convince a trivialist.
I still think that if trivialism is false, then a trivialist can be distinguished conceptually from other people. For a nontrivialist, there are some propositions which they are acquainted with but which they do not accept. This is not the case with a trivialist, since there are no propositions which they are acquainted with and which they do not accept.
So If I personally were to become a trivialist, there would be a big change: I would start accepting a lot of things that I currently do not accept. If I were to become a skeptic, I would stop accepting a lot of things that I currently do accept. Whether that's the best course of action given those views is another matter; I'm just saying these things based on the definitions of "trivialist" and "skeptic" you gave.
Also, I take a deflationary view of truth, and I'm an anti-realist about composite objects and abstract objects. I think the only things that exist are immaterial souls and then physical stuff. I am also certain that experiences occur. I do not accept the proposition that experiences do not occur. So the temptation to either trivialism or total skepticism is low for me.
> I still think that if trivialism is false, then a trivialist can be distinguished conceptually from other people. For a nontrivialist, there are some propositions which they are acquainted with but which they do not accept. This is not the case with a trivialist, since there are no propositions which they are acquainted with and which they do not accept.
But this is false. as trivialists accept the truth of the proposition that only some propositions are true so they will have propositions they dont accept
@@Akari-og1lk But it is false that there are any propositions that a trivialist does not accept. That’s what differentiates me from a trivialist.
You're right that a trivialist accepts the truth of "Only some propositions are true". But that doesn't stop them from accepting every proposition. They still accept every proposition.
I don't accept every proposition. Hence I am not a trivialist.
@@ChrisBandyJazzi disagree.Since by any meaning if F is the set of all propositions that trivialism hold consequently it's negation also belong to F/ notF belong to F.Then since not F is part of trivialism that state "only some proposition true" consequently it's domain isn't the whole domain of trivialism which mean someone can hold notF and reject the propositions outside of notF while being trivialism since notF is part of trivialism.
Hello can you please make a video about transcendental realism especially tony lawson view on it and how that relate to social sciences
I think that you are right about the impossibility of externally determining if someone is a skeptic or a trivialist, but i don't think that you can derive from that that everybody is actually a trivialist or a skeptic, or that trivialism and skepticism are indistiguishable from other philosophical stances. First, the problem with externally finding out the philosophical stance of a person doesn't just apply to this stances, it applies to all stances: a person could allways speak falsely or be a robot that falsely pretends to be expressing meaningful propositions and, from that point of view, you could say that every position is undefeatable. The problem of what it means to hold some stance or other must depend on the beliefs that people hold as mental states (as you suggested later). Now, it would be a mistake, i think, to confuse the fact that mental states determine what stance you hold with the notion that you actually hold whatever stance you believe you hold. For example: i could tell myself that i am humean while actually being wrong about it (maybe i think that i have a stable Self and i didn't took that into account when describing my own stance). You can be a realist about the philosophical stance you hold (that is, you can believe that there is a matter of fact regarding your stance that is independent of your reflective self-conception), so you could be wrong about what your stance actually is. You could believe that you are a trivialist or a skeptic while actually not being so. In fact, i would say that the problem of the "point of view of the skeptic" could be reversed: you could ask "From the point of view of a non-skeptic: what would it look like to be a skeptic?" and the fact is that the non-skeptic could not fully grasp it (as the skeptic could not fully grasp what it means to actually be a non-skeptic). If someone is actually a non-skeptic, she could try to "not hold any beliefs" and say "i do not hold any beliefs", but she would actually hold that as a belief (because if that werent the case, she would not be a non-skeptic). From that point of view, non-skepticism is also undefeatable because for a non-skeptic person every argument used against her presupposes the belief in something and silence or suspention of judgement doesn't count as a counterargument.
My point is: from the outside, it is impossible to determine if someone holds a certain stance or not, because you only hear or read words and interpret them (and in that process interpretation there is allways room for mistake); from the inside, it is tricky to do it, because you could be mistaken about your own stance. This raises a serious problem about knowing your stance and the stance of other people, but it doesn't imply that stances themselves are indistinguishable. It's distinguishability, in fact, is implied in the relevance of this debate.
Other way of formulating what i've just said is this: meaningfully conceiving the notion of "defeatability/non-defeatability" requires entering into the non-skeptic/non-trivialist way of thinking in wich duality is meaningful and its opposites (the true and the false) are distinguishable. If you do not enter that way of thinking, then you will conclude not only that trivialism/skepticism is undefeatable, but also that non-skepticism and non-trivialism are also undefeatable (and, of course, that all of them are also defeatable, because contradictions would be acceptable). I think that you are formulating this video from the point of view of a non-skeptic/non-trivialist, that is, from the point of view that there is a meaningful distinction that implies duality and non-contradiction because if you didn't the message would not be informative at all (you could also have argued about how every position is undefeatable, non-skepticism indluded), and you might as well be silent for twenty minutes. The whole debate about defeatability/undefeatability implies the meaningfulness of the concept of "defeatable".
A non-skeptic sees every argument as an argument in favor of her position for the sole fact that an argument implies a belief, and views silence as irrelevant; a skeptic is incapable of understanding an argument used against her because the comprehension of said argument would imply the belief that the argument is such and such, and thus is immune to critic. For a trivialist every argument is the same, since every argument is valid, and thus cannot be defeated because she will agree to everything; for a non-trivialist, trivialism is defeated in precisely that same fact, since acceptance of contradictory arguments is just what it means to be defeated. The "debate" between a non-skeptic and a skeptic, or between a non-trivialist and a trivialist is no debate at all, since the conditions that allow each stance to be what it is deny, at the same time, the possibility to comprehend the contrary stance. A true encounter between advocates of this stances would result in a total impossibility to comunicate.
Cool video. I think one issue (there's a few but I'll just say one) I immediately find with the dilemma is that there's an emotional component to belief, wherein if something were to be genuinely accepted ("everything is true"), there are persons that will feel settled and others that will be disturbed once it actually "clicks." One. I'm not sure if Trivialism could ever "click" because what would have to be genuinely, whole-heartedly assented to is an infinite number of contradictions. Two, if it did "click," I think it would generate such an immediate psychic dissonance that it would result in a psychotic break or Trivialism would be doxastically spit out like a nasty piece of food. Otherwise, I think it's simply an idea that places third-person, theoretic pressures on our first-person doxasfic dispositions, but would never actually exist within a mind as it theoretically would have to.
Interestingly, Paul Kabay, who is pretty much the sole defender of trivialism in contemporary philosophy, thinks that embracing trivialism leads to ataraxia. This is of course more famously associated with skepticism, so this is perhaps another point where trivialism and skepticism lead in the same direction.
@@KaneB Interesting. I suppose it's just hard for me to imagine an actual trivialist in the world. Part of my response is influenced because I'm writing on and reading Linda Zagzebski rn who talks a lot about beliefs relation to emotions and such. epistemic exemplars,.,etc
i suspect that it's rather rare to find people who live in trivialism-induced ataraxia that doesn't collapse during / after someone tortures them, or when pressed to abandon trivialism or they will be killed.
Modern problem requires ancient solutions
Trivialism is the opposite of skepticism. Both of them are extreme
Re: How to distinguish other people or oneself from a trivialist.
As you point out in the video everything that someone might do is predicted under the hypothesis that they are a trivialist.
Let's for the sake of argument adopt a (rough) version of a belief-desire psychology of behaviour:
Agent A will exhibit (voluntary) behaviour B iff A believes that B probabilizes some event E and A desires that E.
The trivialist desires some things and believes everything. And arguably for any given behaviour we can postulate some belief and desire pair, aswell as suitable background beliefs, that predicts it given the belief-desire theory. So if someone is a trivialist in any given situation they might do anything. And because this is so any behaviour that we, the hopefully non-trivialists, might exhibit is something a trivialist might do under the circumstances that we are in. Therefore, everything that we might do is compatible with the hypothesis of trivialism given the belief-desire theory.
But that does not make trivialism a good explanation of our behaviour. After all, since the trivialist might do anything, no one could predict someones behaviour on the basis of thinking they are a trivialist. But we do regularly predict people's behaviour and hence our ordinary belief ascriptions for the people around us are better and more justified theories of their psychology.
Paul Kabay's 'Defense of Trivialism' is intended to be partially ironic, partially exploring a position that he disagrees with by playing the role of a character who believes in that position. Kabay is not a trivialist, nor is he even a dialetheist, he believes in the principle of non-contradiction. He used to have a website and stated this explicitly on his website. I think that when you said that there were sincere trivialists you had him in mind.
Hi Kane B, just wondering, will you be doing videos on pragmatism? Richard Rorty's attacks on epistemology for example
This is the 3rd video of yours that I've inspired (someone has a crush). This is probably my favorite among my ideas that I've shared with you. I've seen comments and elsewhere people saying that "I can get beyond trivialism by rejecting the notion of propositions generally inwhich trivialism depends" but this fails of course because the trivialist accepts every criteria for what could be admitted as a proposition, meaning it takes every utterance and non-utterance to be a proposition, this means trivialism isn't just about propositions, it means that trivialism is actually everything that there is, and also nothing, and also only a very specific part of what there is. So it goes way beyond propositions.
Is it necessary to believe in the proposition "all propositions are true" in order to be a trivialist, or is it not necessary to do anything, because we are all trivialists anyway?
@@EdgarQeryou don't need to as trivialism implies that they're counterpart must be true hence i think most of us would fall into this category/being trivialist by become it's counterpart(only some proposition are true).Some might argue "sure but that doesn't stop a trivialist to accept that everything is true" but those proposition are still part of trivialism if you find this difficult to imagine let say you believe a F whose domain is all natural number/it contain an infinite amount of proposition and let G be a subset of believe F whose domain let say 100/it contain 100 proposition then you could believe G without accepting the whole domain of F since G is part of F
For me the power of trivialism is his unrefutability. It is the nuclear weapon of Skepticism. As a Skeptic I can go as follows:
1. Assume trivialism to be true.
2. Then every belief B is false because ~B is true.
3. We cannot prove 1. false (because to do so we‘d have to commit circular reasoning at one point).
4. Ergo, we cannot rule out every belief to be false, i.e. Skepticism.
p.s. It doesn‘t help that every belief is also true, it just adds to the confusion that serves the Skeptic‘s point of our cluelessness.
Keep spinning those wheels
12:48
How do you know that?
Is thinking about having a belief the same as having a belief?
If not, how do you know that you arent misremembering?
While everything I believe is shared with trivialism, if I converted to trivialism, I'd end up adopting new ideas.
For instance, I currently do not think that I am on Mars, but if I were a trivialist, then I would.
From my current non-trivialist point of view, those two are quite different. Of course, if I was a trivialist, then "I shouldn't care that I'm on Mars" or "I should verbally deny to Kane B that I think I'm on Mars" would be contained therin (as would infinite other redundant reasons to do whatever), so *you* can't tell the difference, but I can at least tell for my self.
As with most topics in philosophy, it is important to approach trivialism from the appropriate perspective. It is easy to slam one's head against a wall trying to hopelessly argue against trivialism using a naive approach. Instead we should bear in mind that when a trivialist says "trivialism is false", she does not mean that trivialism is false. Trivialism is not an opinion about the world where the trivialist actually thinks that all things are true. Clearly a trivialist does not think that trivialism is false, or else she would not be a trivialist. Instead we should recognize trivialism for what it is: an opinion about the semantics of claims. While most people categorize some claims as true and some claims as false, a trivialist decides that all claims should be considered true, and so a trivialist is working with very different semantics from usual. In effect, a trivialist is speaking a different language that happens to use words that sound exactly like English words but have very different meanings.
So then in debating with a trivialist, we should approach the problem as if we were approaching a person who does not speak English. We must either translate what we wish to say into the language of trivialism, convince the trivialist to switch to speaking English, or else find some other language that we can all share for the purposes of discussion. It may be difficult to translate English into trivialism because the concepts of true and false are so fundamental to everything we ever say in English. To do without them is extremely puzzling and it would be interesting to see how two trivialist would talk to each other in order to get some clues as to how their language works in practice.
>> Clearly a trivialist does not think that trivialism is false, or else she would not be a trivialist
They'd agree with that though. Trivialists are not trivialists (at least by their own lights).
Incidentally, there are two people I know of who unambiguously defend trivialism. As far as I can tell, both of them see it more as a spiritual/mystical position than having to do with semantics.
There are ways of presenting trivialism as a semantic theory -- we might hold that (a) the logic of natural language is classical and (b) natural languages generate true contradictions, e.g. Liar paradoxes. If those conditions hold, then natural language is trivial. But then the answer to that is to construct an artificial language that either uses a paraconsistent logic or that removes the contradictions. This isn't the kind of trivialism I'm talking about in this video.
@@KaneB "Trivialists are not trivialists (at least by their own lights)."
Naturally they would say they're "not trivialists". And of course they would also say they "are trivialists". They don't use the word "not" in the way that English speakers use that word, and trivialists are not bound by the usual rules for its use.
"There are two people I know of who unambiguously defend trivialism. As far as I can tell, both of them see it more as a spiritual/mystical position than having to do with semantics."
Using English in a way that breaks the usual rules of English doesn't seem like a mystical position. It's just a matter of language. Presumably they are aware of how normal English is spoken and they do not constantly speak as trivialists. If they do constantly speak as trivialists, then we should expect to understand them little better than if they were speaking Sanskrit. What does it mean when a trivialist says that something is mystical, considering that this same trivialist would also say that it is not mystical? The only way to figure it out would be to study how trivialists talk to each other and attempting to reverse-engineer their language.
@@Ansatz66 >> It's just a matter of language
I don't see any reason to accept this, except in the trivial (ha!) sense that any difference in belief can involve a difference in language in that, if we have different beliefs, we will sometimes say different things.
>> If they do constantly speak as trivialists
What would it mean to "speak as trivialists"? How is the way you or I speak different to how a trivialist might speak? Why shouldn't I interpret both you and me as trivialists, and so study how we talk to each other in order to understand the trivialist's language?
@@KaneB : A difference in language occurs when people make the same sounds or write the same symbols, but they have different intentions for how those sounds or symbols will be interpreted. It is certainly possible for different beliefs to lead to this sort of mismatch in intended interpretations, but trivialism seems like an especially extreme example.
"What would it mean to 'speak as trivialists'?"
That is no small question, since to truly answer it we would need to explain how to interpret the things that a trivialist says, and I don't know how to do that, but the key sign that someone is speaking as a trivialist is that they will violate the law of non-contradition in ways that no English speaker ever would. A trivialist would not be troubled by saying both "X" and "not X" as if there were no conflict between these statements. Still, I cannot explain why trivialists do this or how they intend for this to be interpreted. That is the barrier in understanding that must be overcome before one can productively argue against trivialism.
"How is the way you or I speak different to how a trivialist might speak?"
It is subtle because the words sound exactly like English in both cases, but here is a simple test. We can ask two questions: Is the moon made of cheese? Is the moon *not* made of cheese? If we answer "yes" to both questions, then we are clearly not speaking ordinary English and there is a fair chance that we are trivialists.
"Why shouldn't I interpret both you and me as trivialists, and so study how we talk to each other in order to understand the trivialist's language?"
Because if we are not actually trivialists then anything that you learn through that study would be misleading.
I'm not sure about the "impossible to defeat in debate" part. I think of the goal in a debate as simply getting your opponent to affirm whatever proposition you're arguing in favor of, which will be trivially easy in the case of debating a trivialist. There's no requirement to first establish that your opponent previously disagreed with you, right?
I suppose it depends on what your goals are. I was thinking of it in terms of attempting to persuade the opponent to change her mind.
This video convinced me that I am a trivialist, but in addition to that I'm also a non-trivialist.
Awesome video, lol. Very funny
I think that, as with skepticism, the NON-trivialist can distinguish themselves from the trivialist. While I agree that one can’t argue with a trivialist, I think using the following example we can set up a distinction: I say “this rock is round,” by which I also mean that “it is false that this rock is not round (pointy, edged, idk).” The trivialist, of course, will affirm this as well as the propositions that “this rock is NOT round (whatever this means)” and “it is false that this rock is round.”
Here, I think, we can define the non-trivialist negatively to the trivialist: the non-trivialist is someone who doesn’t affirm all propositions (in this case, the latter two). The trivialist of course does and doesn’t have access to this perspective, but I think the non-trivialist can confidently distinguish themselves in this way.
But also let me know if I missed something haha because it clearly doesn’t seem so simple to Kane and others.
Edit: this is my only nitpick by the way. Other than this I loved this video and it got me to think about the connection between these views I hadn’t thought of before, while further exacerbating the problems I see with skepticism. Honestly I think trivialism fills in a lot of the holes in a radical skeptic’s methodology, while also allowing one to endorse their own view as a proposition, which is a bonus (although also affirming the negation still feels a bit strange).
trivialism seems to be able to offer an completely different take on moral realism
Jason Dockstader's paper "Tiantai metaethics" talks about this
What about this:
An agent A can distinguish himself from the trivialist T as soon as T makes a proposition that A knows he would not make. However, there is no proposition (or action) A can make that would convince a third party B that he is distinct from T (because T includes all propositions/actions including self-referential ones). But, given that it is in principle possible for A to distinguish himself from T, B is left to estimate the true state of affairs.
This is not particularly bad spot to be in, because it is akin to answering "no" to the question "is there a pink elephant in your bathroom?", i.e. even though the person in question does not have sure knowledge that there is no pink elephant, he is still able to confidently answer no.
I suppose this argument hinges on A being able to distinguish himself from T. Of course the thought "I would not make that proposition" is something T could think as well, but T would do so in the knowledge that he is a trivialist. The problem appears to require accessing some knowledge "outside of oneself" about the size of ones proposition space (which, for non-trivialists, should be less than T). After that, convincing others that you are not T is in principle impossible, but in practice simple.
I'm not going to assert that the moon is made of cheese. So if some trivialist asserts, "the moon is made of cheese", then I can distinguish myself from that particular trivialist. But there can be some other trivialist who asserts all and only the propositions that I assert, and more broadly, who will think and behave in exactly the same ways that I think and behave. What can I do to distinguish myself from this trivialist?
>> but T would do so in the knowledge that he is a trivialist
The trivialist believes "trivialism is false" and "I am not a trivialist". How can he know that he's a trivialist if he doesn't even believe it?
@@KaneB But if you distinguish yourself from some particular trivialist, then you've distinguished yourself from trivialism in general. From this perspective, the predicament is reversed: it becomes hard for a trivialist to establish himself as a trivialist. In other words, the "trivialist" that asserts all the same propositions as you do, and behaves as you do, would somehow have to know that he would assert everything else, and behave/think in all other possible ways. Without this knowledge, the trivialists' position is consistent with your position, and your position is consistent with the trivialists' -- so are you a trivialist, or is he not a trivialist? Why would you prefer one over the other? At worst you now end in a draw between trivialism and an alternative position
Off-topic, but would love to hear your take on John Taurek's paper "Should the Numbers Count?".
trivialist: hi, it's true that you will not cut all of my fingers off from my hands.
~the "you" cuts all of the trivialist's fingers off from their hands.
trivialist without any fingers left: it is true that my fingers have not been cut off.
👌🏼
I'll try to convince you that I am not a trivialist:
To me, philosophy is the search of some kind of truth.
Just like our eyes only perceive parts of the electromagnetic spectrum in order to see(If we saw the whole spectrum, how could I differentiate anything?). So in the search of a truth, I have to be able to discriminate between something, in order to perceive what is true or false. So, trivialism is useless to me, because it does not differentiate anything.
Also, if I meet a trivialist, it might be true that I must beat him up, no?
This sounds like something a trivialist would say. The trivialist agrees that searching for truth requires discrimination, and that trivialism is useless for that because it does not differentiate anything.
>> Also, if I meet a trivialist, it might be true that I must beat him up, no?
Sure.
13:25
You got it
Now what's the problem for the skeptic?
13:40
That is not clear at all
Why can't he say it?
Because there is a reason not to do it?
The skeptic is agnostic about if reasons exist, so that's not a problem
14:15
How would you know that nothing is stopping you?
Maybe everything is stopping you
I'm not claiming that there is any problem for the skeptic.
>> Why can't he say it?
Exactly my point, lol. The skeptic can say anything, including what I just said she can't say.
@@KaneB
You are the gift that keeps on giving
The fact that radical scepticism undermines its own position is not a surprise to me.
I am an absolute sceptic - I just deny the claim that justification or warrant or etc is needed to in order to rationally adopt a position.
You can adopt any position you like as long as you keep it open to criticism and are willing to reject it once there is criticism of it.
This position isn’t self-undermining and any criticism of it from a position that is self-undermining, is immediately rejected.
So for instance a justificationist might ask what is the the justification for my position. And I would say - there isn’t one. They might then assert that you cannot believe something without it being justified. I would say well neither me nor you can accept that position that you are offering since it counsels its own rejection.
My position would be left unscathed by this analysis, which is just a rejection of the position that you need to justify your position, since it is self-undermining.
This was Bartley and Popper’s answer to the problem of rationality. And so far there has been no successful criticism of it.
Would a more practical take on this extreme skepticism be to tie it in with pyrronian skepticism?
Great video as always!
For me it seems obvious that trivialism only deals with propositions, so all i need to do is not make propositions :^) then im finally free from the burden of being considered a trivialist by you! Oh the freedom!
OR
Alternativily i could just be a pragmatist in the pure sense, and simply reject propositions in favour of actions :^)
But i don't mind being defined as a lable by others, so i wouldn't offer any strategy, as i don't care about lables
About not stating propositions -- Kabay has a paper called "Interpreting the Divyadhvani" where he argues that the central doctrine of Jainism is trivialism, and that the founder of Jainism communicated this doctrine by sitting motionless in silence.
Of course, trivialism is defined in terms of propositions, but one way to look at it is that it's using propositional language to point towards something non-propositional. My friend Unknown Knowns Philosophy is a trivialist, but I think he sees trivialism as the propositional analogue of Zen, a tradition which treats propositional thought as the wrong tool for apprehending reality.
Whatever you say, you are asserting the content of trivialism. But a trivialist need not say or do anything in particular. A trivialist can also be a pragmatist who rejects propositions in favour of actions.
@@KaneB
Interesting story (Bro)! I knew about the jains, but i assumed the doctrine about truth was about subjectivism. I guess it does make more sense to see it as trivialism.
Its an interesting approach.
Trivialism really seems trivial then, if its niether about propositions, nor about rejecting them infavour of actions in the world.
When all is said and done, the only option would be to not argue with the lable at all, afterall its just a lable, and lables have no causal power unless you give it to them. All ideas have to use you as a medium, either to be intellegable or to have any effect what so ever.
Labeles amongst philosophers aren’t really that important either, we mostly use them to save time, or mental capacety. Which often leads to misunderstandings either way.
For all i know i might be considered a trivialist, a subjectivist, heck Even a solipsist by others, or i might define myself by ideas which sound cool, but really aren’t that practical or intlegable.
But of course this is an entirely diffrent story when we dont take that route, if we accept lables, we Get to see them as meaning something beyond ouer mental maps, and now they suddenly turn into these great abstractions. They move into the domain of reality. We are suddenly communists, capitalists, or any personal identity. Even reality becomes a lable (material reality, immaterial / idealistic reality, metaphysical reality ect.) as if the lable changes anything about reality in the first place.
Then your practicality fucked, the very means you used as a tool, have become your reality.
So lableing is either useless, or only as usefull as your goal allows it to be. But niether of Those actually does anything substancial with reality.
The only view that could ever do anything, would be one where the very ideas you hold change reality, these types of idealistic notions are truely diffrent, but they dont seem to hold true. The only thing we ever see are either people who wish for precisely the things they Get (such as the story of the King in the little prince)
Or people who are indistinguishable for me and you, who use ideas as tools for actions. There seems to be no direct means for ideas to do anything in the world.
@@KaneB Trivialism accepts every criteria for what could be admitted and accepted as a proposition. Which means that everything that is typically considered non-propositional is propositional by trivialism's lights. Trivialism cannot be escaped by avoiding propositions because one has presupposed a criteria for propositions that has certain omissions, but trivialism in accepting every possible variant of what could constitute a proposition actually winds up just "being" everything, every utterance and non-utterance is both a proposition and not-a-proposition and everything in between (and neither) by trivialism's lights
interestingly, you can distinguish a trivialist from a normal person in that the latter would answer no when presented with propositions. from this it follows never too trust someone who never says no
A trivialist believes that all propositions are false as much as they believe that they are all true. Just take any proposition P that the trivialist believes and consider it's negation ¬P which the trivialist also believes.
17:40
Do they?
How so?
If I have spoken with a lot of paradoxes, then one can pragmatically consider me a trivialist, else one should gradually add some confidence into the probability that I'm not a trivialist if one wants to achieve something through conversing.
One should interpret somebody as a trivialist only if what they claim is only compatible with trivialism, since trivialists can distinguish themselves from non-trivialists
15:25
And so you are free to choose
Isn't that wonderful
This is the craziest video you ever done and I love it LOL
But if you can prove that something is true and not false would be game over for both, no?!
Trivialism survival seems to depend on the possibility of everything be true and false at the same time. Skepticism survival on impossibility of know if anything is true or/and false.
@@janethompson6289 There's is no foundation for what's is true and not false or/and true and false is at list one believe of skepticism that must be truth and not false. So denied this criteria is denied skepticism.
Ask if a person think a believe is truth and not false. Them ask if the same person think a the same believe is false. Trivialist will say yes for both questions, so he accept something to be truth and false, you found him.
@@janethompson6289 About Skepticism:
If you don't believe there's is no foundation to knowledge or that foundation of knowledge can't be know, so there's is no reason to be absolutely Skeptical about knowledge.
Do not matter what trivialism agree, they are not the center of the universe. What matters is if you realize or not if I believe all believes can be true and false at the same time. I do not believe this shit, I give you no reason to believe I do.
I am not sure I find this very defensible (or interesting to be honest but that may just be my ignorance) of a position in either case. To me the way you've described both these positions seems to fall into the category of vacuous truths. In both cases the "freedom" of beliefs or claims you speak of originates from the antecedent in itself being false, therefore the consequent can be anything. Because of this I heavily disagree with your point that there isn't a distinguishing factor between these two extreme positions and their contrast; the difference is the ability of being able to INFER the truth value of the consequent.
For example, imagine if you're playing a game where there are ten buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and the red button always makes you win. In the average case the person would always win because they'd always press the red button. But for the trivialist they have a 1/10 chance of winning since they can't consider any aspect of the situation at all; every button is every color and not every color, and they are and aren't buttons, etc. etc. so they can't inference anything to base a decision on since all the information is essentially uniform. So I find it very surprising that you say they have less constraints towards beliefs when they are basically forced to have the same belief in every circumstance and situation; it seems much more restricted and forces them to act on probability.
I also disagree with how you state that because they can speak/think something that is inline with our rules that they are in fact acting within those rules themselves, or basically that because we can share two same values of a consequent that our RULES are aligned. It's as if you're suggesting they're a superset or something of non-trivialist/non-skeptics when in reality their rule is essentially given anything return true (which is why you rightfully liken the two to each other since they have the same rule structure) which is an extremely limiting constraint as demonstrated in the prior example. So because of their inability to express falsehood (because given any statement regarded false by them they must necessarily also regard it as true) they retain overlap with rules outside of these two positions but never the less can never fully express the ruleset; that is to say they can never EXCLUSIVELY express something as true or something as false, both must always be true.
>> But for the trivialist they have a 1/10 chance of winning since they can't consider any aspect of the situation at all
Why can't they do that? The trivialist can agree that there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win.
>> I also disagree with how you state that because they can speak/think something that is inline with our rules that they are in fact acting within those rules themselves...
I'm not sure what your point is in this paragraph, to be honest. What I'm saying is that since the trivialist and the skeptic can say and think anything at all, they can speak and think in conformity with a given set of inference rules. That is, whatever reasoning behaviour the rule requires of us, the trivialist and the skeptic may engage in the exact same reasoning.
@@KaneB
>> Why can't they do that? The trivialist can agree that there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win.
Because from the perspective of a trivialist everything is true, including there not being 10 buttons, all the buttons are every color and not every color, etc. So if they genuinely had this perspective why would they choose to function like the non-trivialist as originally described? From their perspective there isn't any more reason to say "there are 10 buttons, 1 red and 9 blue, and that the red button always makes you win" than to say literally any other proposition; from their perspective it's true that there both is and isn't a game, and that they've both won and lost already before even playing. They have no basis to make any decision because they already believe that everything that has and could ever happen (and of course could not happen) has happened (and not happened); how could anyone make decision since, given every possibility and non-possiblity is true, they have an infinite number of things to consider when making an action? It's absurd to think anyone could function in true accordance to this idea, and if the argument is just "they would just always say what the non-trivialist would say is true" then it's absurd to think a true trivialist would ever consistently choose to say or do what a non-trivialist would say or do given that again every choice (and otherwise) is of equal value to them because they are true. They cannot have a preference of choice because there would be no reason to; everything from their perspective is the same (true).
>> What I'm saying is that since the trivialist and the skeptic can say and think anything at all, they can speak and think in conformity with a given set of inference rules. That is, whatever reasoning behaviour the rule requires of us, the trivialist and the skeptic may engage in the exact same reasoning.
What I am trying to get at is that someone like a trivialist could never express falsehood and so it'd be incorrect to say it's the EXACT same reasoning. Let me try to be a bit more explicit. Imagine there are three people: a speaker, a trivialist and a non-trivialist. The speaker states to the trivialist "All bachelor's are unmarried", and they of course respond "true". Then the speaker states to them "All bachelor's are married" and they also again respond with true. The speaker asks the same to the non-trivalist, they say true when told bachelor's are unmarried but FALSE when told that they are married. There is no way that the trivialist in this situation can match the reasoning behavior of the non-trivialist and say "false" like the non-trivialist because they can only say "true" by definition of trivialism itself. Now of course if the speaker stated "There are no married bachelors" both the trivialist and non-trivialist would say "true", but again it would be wrong to say this is the exact same reasoning. From the perspective of the trivialist their reasoning is every proposition is true so therefore anything the speaker states to them is true, while from the perspecitve of the non-trivialist they are reasoning with classical logic. This distinction between the trivialist being unable to say false while the non-trivialist can say false isn't simply semantic, it's an explicit difference in reasoning. TL;DR they cannot speak and think anything at all, they can only speak and think everything is true. If this is not the case explain to me how the trivialist would ever say "false" to a statement spoke by the speaker?
Hello Kane. This has nothing to do with the present video but I thought I might try making a request.
I enjoyed your modal logic episodes and would like to understand relevance logic better than I do. If you ever feel up to making a relevance logic video, you might be the first person on youtube to do so. You would certainly be the best to do so. :)
I don’t really care what someone actually believes and I am not trying to persuade anyone of anything. What I care about is finding arguments and whether they challenge my own position to see if it needs revising. It doesn’t matter whether the person who offers me that argument actually believes it.
So to me whether or not I can convince other people of my beliefs is really not that relevant.
Kafkatrap; the philosophy
I'm not a Trivialist because I ONLY say trivialism is false and they say BOTH that trivialism is true and false and every other proposition.
Trivialists think that trivialism is false -- just false, not both true and false.
Wait. Why would it be the case that I am definitely a trivialist? (From your perspective).Wouldn’t it just be the case that it is underdetermined. Everything I tell you is compatible with me being a trivialist, but it’s also compatible with me not being one.
I think about the trivialism stuff like this:
For all propositions P the trivialist claims that P is true
But if there is one proposition that isn't true, then trivialism is false
So "The dog is barking" being false would get you to non-trivialism
You could make the move where you take " "The dog is barking" is false" and say this is true
But the content of a proposition is different to the truth value of the proposition, so this doesn't help the trivialist
If there is one proposition that is false, then Trivialism is false
But the trivialist agrees that trivialism is false. So that's not a problem from her point of view. (And, of course, it is a problem from her point of view.)
The trivialist thinks that all propositions are false. So you don't have to convince her that at least one proposition is false. She's way ahead of you lol
@@KaneB
He agrees that the prop "Trivialism is false" is true but he doesn't agree that "Trivialism is true" is false
@@KaneB
Only if all propositions being false is content of a proposition
Like you could say that the trivialist agree with everything
But this only is because as soon as you talk about agreement, you talk about agreeing about **something**
That thing is a proposition and the trivialist thinks that all props are true
But I am talking about the truth value itself, which here must not be content of a proposition
@@justus4684 Yes she does. She thinks all propositions are false.
Im not sure whzy it would matter if someone expressed beliefs with non contradiction and they are coherent beliefs under non trivialism. Why should I care if I myself, or the other person, is secretely a trivialist if it doesnt affect the beliefs that the person holds?
19:00
Trivialist B
8:05
Is there a position where one disagrees with everything?
Sounds savage 😂
It seems to me that the trivialist is engaged in a red herring
Supposs i argue with a flat earther. I say: "The earth is not flat but you think it is so we disagree"
And they reply : " wait but we both believe in clouds. We don't disagree about that right?"
That would be a red herring. It is irrelevant that we both agree that there are clouds. That is changing the subject. The point is one of us thinks the earth is flat and the other one doesn't.
Similarly suppose I argue with a trivialist
Me: "I don't think I have three eyes but you do think I have three eyes therefore we disagree"
Trivialist: " wait, but we don't disagree because I also think you have two eyes"
This is a distraction. All it takes to demonstrate that I disagree with someone is to show that at least one of their beliefs is inconsistent with mine. And I have done so. The trivialist thinks I have 3 eyes.
I don't think I do. So we disagree. Period.
The fact that the trivialist can point to other beliefs they have that ARE consistent with mine is irrelevant to the fact that they already hold beliefs that are inconsistent with mine.
I am well aware that a trivialist might respond to this entire comment by simply saying " I agree with everything you just said lol, so we don't disagree"
I hope I have shown why that would just be another red herring. Another attempt to distract from the disagreement I have already pointed out.
In other words, the fact that the trivialist can agree with my criticism of him ( namely, that they think something I don't) doesn't take away the truth of that criticism (namely, that they think something I don't)
Just because the trivialist will believe everything I do doesn't mean I will believe everything the trivialist believes.
If you had a scroll with a list of all my beliefs and a scroll with a list of the trivialists beliefs, the lists would be different. And whenever I point to something on the trivialists list that is in conflict with something on my list, the trivialists reaction is to find something else on their list that is not in conflict with what I pointed out. But I hope I have shown why that move is a red herring. Anyways sorry for the long rant but this argument triggered me lol.
Just because the trivialist will agree with everything I say doesn't mean I will agree with everything the trivialist says. As long as I can point to an example of something the trivialist might say that I don't believe I have succesfully expressed my disagreement.
Wouldn't a difference between me and a trivialist be that if I ask a trivialist
Is trivialism true, they say yes. I say no.
Thought I was skeptique end up was trivalisme
I guess this follows with "anything can be derived from nonsense". I do feel sorry for philosophy students. The concept of absolute truth pushes people into such untenable positions.
I've never really thought of anything in terms of "absolute truth", and I'm not sure what that has to do with either trivialism or skepticism.
@@KaneB in philosophy, something os either true or it is false. This is called the law of the excluded middle. So, by pursuing truth instead of evidence and knowledge, learners of philosophy get pushed into strange positions like trivialism and skepticism.
@@InventiveHarvest There are philosophers who deny the LEM. More generally, radical skepticism is really unpopular and there's literally just one dude who defends trivialism. I think a bigger problem with philosophy is the huge number of philosophers who see the discipline as little more than a tool to rationalize whatever happen to be the "common sense" views of their culture.
I think that much of what I say in this video can be framed in terms of evidence and knowledge. E.g.: How do I know that you are not a trivialist? What evidence is there that you are not a trivialist?
@@KaneB if I say something is false, that is evidence that I am not a trivialist. Does it make it certain that I am not a trivialist? No, but it points towards the direction that I am not a trivialist.
@@InventiveHarvest Trivialists believe that everything is false. If you say, e.g. "it is false that the moon is made of cheese", you have asserted part of the content of trivialism. So how does that point in the direction that you are not a trivialist?
Philosophy is one of my favorite subjects, but I really feel positions such as these give it a bad name and useless in the real-world.
idk what you mean by "useless". it might not be for everyone, but i think a lot of these more abstract areas of philosophy serve much the same role as art; it keeps us entertained, it gives us something to think over. a lot of more abstract mathematics is also like this.
I disagree. If analyzing both positions teach us the lesson that we should, for example, have rules that govern our doxastic dispositions, that matters alot. If I am better off acquiring and rejecting beliefs in one way than another, that is quite relevant to real-world concerns.
It pressures our pre-philosophical dispositions, which is one of the main points of philosophy.
Alsooo, I think it's just really fun.
@@esthersmith3056 maybe you could equate it to art perhaps. I tend to be turned off by it. These 2 positions reminded me of the “brain in a vat” interesting for some to ponder but ultimately useless in applying it to real-world scenarios.
If I ever encountered a trivialist that agreed with every proposition and also agrees that holding contradictory views are important, that would be the end of the conversation. They’re clearly not interested in a useful conversation and could careless about being hypocritical. They’ll only say this in a philosophical conversation, they obviously cannot apply their views to the real-world or they would be either dead or in prison.
Although the parallel between skepticism and trivialism is kind of interesting i do generally agree with this criticism. Since people could take issue with the term useless, I'd just say that, personally, i find these sort of philosophical concepts to be boring conversation enders.
I think Kane briefly touched on this, but suppose i don't even invoke these broad concepts but that im simply a language skeptic. I don't believe that the series of lines, pixels, sounds that we use to communicate have precisely identical meaning for every human being (which is probably technically true). Thus I cannot really evaluate the truth of anything anyone else says. Now come prove me wrong. Some of the context to this idea is worth considering, but as a philosophical notion it mostly shuts down discourse.
I agree, I don't think you need to make a 25 minute video to get across the point trying to be made here. If this was a 5 minute video on vacuous truths I think it'd be fine but never pointing out that they're based on a false antecedent the entire time will make the laymen feel affirmed at the idea common now that philosophy is just circular conversations that never go anywhere.
Trivialism is self-defeating.
No one understands trivialism.
The concept of trivialism doesn't exist.
No one has ever thought about trivialism.
But also, trivialism is self-evident, everyone understands it, it certainly exists, and we just can't stop thinking about it all the time.
Trivialism is the cause of all my suffering. Vegans enjoy torturing animals. Sam Harris understands Hume.
If trivialism, then, moral realism is true.
KaneB is a moral realist.
Checkmate.
Why has philosophy become a poker game all of a sudden. I literally have no interest philosophical in the contents of people’s minds. Only in the content of propositions and how to investigate it.
16:34
There is no fact of the matter 😎
i call myself a trivialist, because underlying beneath all the layers of reality, in our pure cosmic existence we are all the universe and its energy articulated. if there is energy for something, every shade of every possible thing and every world inside of every possible thing exists, if this is false then how come different philosophers have different takes on what is the true nature of existence. if they can not prove who is correct and who is wrong through argument and language they will dismiss the problem, believing in something is accepting its energy because it resonates with you, for instance i can not believe there is only one true god in my individuality/ego/self but i know that if it can be believed it exists, not because of the loops of the mind, and also because of the loops of the mind, Both versions of the belief and everything in between them exists, everything is false exists and is true and also false, nothing exists is the truth and this comment is stupid is also the truth. if it is not to do with energy if the universe is a solid and things are truly separate from each other everything still exists at least in the hearts of humans, this true in the way i meant it and in the way you interpret it and in the world inside of it, beauty can be percieved in infinte ways, there are infite new artistic ideas because ultimately nothing can be created or destroyed only changed and the universe is infintely expanding, and this is also false
trivialism also doesn't require belief, an awareness is not the same as a belief as in letting it into you
10:30
You wouldn't know if you should, because you are agnostic about whether oughts exist
There is also no reason not to, because maybe reasons don't exist
10:45
But why would they?
You can't force them to do anything with words, they just randomly do stuff😂
It seems to me that at the moment one becomes a trivialist, they’d have to literally stop in their tracks. Stop moving, stop thinking, stop breathing even. Because any action they *should* do is immediately countered by the equally true claim that they *should not* do that action.
In order for the trivialist to do anything at all, they’d need some sort of method by which they decide whether or not they should perform a given action. In which case, they wouldn’t really be a trivialist then, would they?
Doesn’t your argument generalize to Catholicism? It’s not as though Catholicism as pre-given content. If I am a Catholic, anything I believe is part of the content of Catholicism. How do we differentiate Catholics from Protestants? We cant
I don't know much about Catholicism and Protestantism but I thought they had different views on some points, e.g. the epistemology of divine revelation. Protestants accept "sola scriptura"; Catholics do not.
@@KaneB that’s the problem! If I’m a Catholic & I accept sola scriptura, then Catholic content includes the sola scriptura. If you interpret me as a sola-scriptura-accepting Catholic, then you can’t differentiate me from a Protestant. That’s the same problem you’ve arrive at regarding trivialism and skepticism.
@@KaneB My idea is that the way you’ve reasoned about trivialism & skepticism gets wonky results about Catholicism & Protestantism. I take the wonkiness to be a mark of error in your reasoning. I reject, therefore, that you’ve reasoned well about trivialism & skepticism.
Further, trivialists I’ve spoken to agree with me that you’ve mischaracterized their view. 😉
@@KaneB I think I figured out how to distinguish myself from trivialists.
1. Trivialists agree with me when I say that saying “I’m not a trivialist” is sufficient to distinguish myself from trivialists.
2. Trivialists are right about that.
3. Therefore, saying “I’m not a trivialist” is sufficient to distinguish myself from trivialists.
trivialism and skepticism defeat each other. by that i mean this: if a trivialist is caught disagreeing with anything, uk, skeptically, they dont hold that extreme position on the trivialism-skepticism spectrum anymore.
Trivialism is arbitrary because its making no difference. Therfore its absurd and has no value and no Chance to make a difference in whatsoever.
It seems to me that all that is required for someone to prove to you that they are not a trivialist is that they uphold the principle of non-contradiction. If P is true then not P is false (at the same time, in the same place, and in the same way). If they can maintain this compliance over some period of time, then during that time they were NOT a trivialist. One's status as a trivialist is born out in the deed, not in the word.
Trivialism asserts the principle of non-contradiction too, though.
I don’t think it is psychologically possible to suspend judgment. So their position is refuted.
That you should suspend judgement then becomes an impossible request and should be rejected.
The claim that I suspend judgement is a judgement.
Woooooooooooooooooo
Believe nothing ever lol reality is what you choose, even then don't trust it! 😂
You can’t talk sensibly about trivialism. You say it is unbeatable, well if so, it has no content. Since content is what allows you to reject it once you have discovered that the content isn’t true. Trivialism doesn’t have this property, since no matter how you criticise it, you cannot reject it. Even if trivialism has the claim as part of it that you can reject it. You cannot. Can it be rejected? No.
So trivialists might agree with everything you say. But I am not bothered about convincing them of anything. I would just move on.
I'm not a trivialist! Would a trivialist do this? mqC6j9zlyL6X46CA36Ow46MlVITyakmoLQtMkgjtLzXBWvpEegG2u2F21SWpg71F3CEbvyBEgbfpx5UMDP4OVnJAoPXzi2i7exznlF3WnXTH7ukFe64DACVk5m1v2Verig3S6FSXZMIXjDclRp4moT1iwitQcc3yhxIYB0yJ1SLoDUdfDYjBjAh2b1ZmxZTO1cTBIC4I