RE my question on noncognitivism, I would say the argument goes something like 1. Non-radical autonomist arguments (e.g. moderate autonomist, moralist, ethicist, etc) say that art 'conveys' moral propositions 2. Art does not convey any propositions, a fortiori it does not convey any moral propositions (noncognitivism about art) 3. Therefore those arguments fail
Thanks for explaining. I don't find this argument persuasive, because it seems to me that things can be subject to moral assessment even if they don't convey moral propositions. Delia might hold a negative attitude towards other races, and we might find this worthy of condemnation even if she doesn't endorse any particular propositions concerning other races (perhaps Delia's racism manifests in "implicit bias"). Provided artworks are open to moral assessment, all we then need is some argument that the moral value of the artwork affects its aesthetic value. Additionally, suppose we're noncognitivists about morality... in that case, even moral judgments don't convey moral propositions. From that point of view, artworks wouldn't need to convey propositions in order to convey moral views.
2:17:00 I don't know much about this subject but when you don't smell anything, isn't that a kind of nothingness with respect to your sense of smell? of course you will have an experience because the smell isn't essential for consciousness, when we don't smell anything, it does not necessarily imply a complete absence of sensory experience. I feel you might be conflating the mental state of not smelling anything (which you called the positive character) (which is of course made up of stuff other than the smell) with the smell of "nothing" while comparing it with the sensory input of a particular smell. I'm not a philosopher and English isn't my first language so I apologize if i misinterpret or didn't understand your point.
Being autistic and having anxiety goes hand in hand. Especially with the "Asperger" variant. I suggest you research Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). It's an expression of autism where the individual despises demands and obligations. Wanting to avoid every day obligations, or feeling extremely anxious about an event on the horizon (even if it's a fun event like a party or vacation), disliking surprises (even positive ones) or a change of plans. Given that you've said you hate work (same) and think it's a scourge this definitely lines up with PDA autism. Looking at the way PDA expresses itself was quite an eye opening for me because it lined up so well with my experience. When I have to work on something I count every second before I have to leave, experiencing a constant form of light anxiety as I wish I could be anywhere else.
can you please share your meditations techniques? i want to transcend space and time, thanks also, i dont know if u find it interesting that in the apophatic traditions God is often referred to as pure nothingness, because nothingness is the unlimited and undifferentiated, and that the self is also nothingness, like in Stirner, and hence is God. that is Plotinus in a sense
I did a bunch of self-inquiry techniques that I learned from a friend. I would share them, but it took hours of conversation to teach each one, so it would be kinda hard to communicate in a comment. He's inspired by Douglas Harding's stuff so maybe you could look there. Yes, I'm aware of that overlap with Stirner -- it's very cool!
21:37 I sort of always just assumed that freeganism is vegan tbh. You're not harming any animals by eating garbage that was gonna decay away anyway. Like, on a purely structural/consistency level, I find it hard to imagine a compelling ethical system in which veganism is fine but freeganism is bad. (I can think of non-compelling ones, ofc)
Since you have empiricist leaning, have you looking into sellars work?. I think his myth of the given critique is spot on and i don't know if there are any good responses to it. I would be interested in hearing your take.
It's a problem for traditional empiricism, which treats concepts as derived from sense experience, or knowledge as grounded in sense experience, but I've never been a traditional empiricist. To me, empiricism involves a resistance to "explanation by postulation": that is, the tendency of philosophers to explain the success of various discourses by postulating theoretical entities of which that discourse provides true descriptions. Consider how a platonist might "explain" mathematics by postulating abstract objects that are correctly described by mathematical propositions. My empiricism is a rejection of this philosophical project. It's a kind of "stance empiricism", similar to that defended by Bas van Fraassen in his book "The Empirical Stance" (I have a video called "How to be an empiricist" that explains stance empiricism in more detail, if you're interested). I don't think Sellars presents any problem for this approach.
@@KaneB sounds interesting. Thanks for the response. I will look into it. I am not sure what exactly the concept "stance" means in this context. I mostly agree that the majority of analytic philosophy is doing descriptivist metaphysics with propositions. I am more on the inferentialist side and have embraced holism just so you know where I am coming from. I think all concepts are mediated. Regarding explanation by postulation wouldn't that rule out everyday objects and properties. My question is whether your position would collapse into Pyrrhonian skepticism with suspension of beliefs or is there a conceptual space in between those positions. I agree that if you go full skeptic there is no non question begging way to "refute" that position.
@@ReflectiveJourney The idea of "stance empiricism" is that empiricism should be interpreted as a set of values, attitudes, and commitments, rather than a set of beliefs. Empiricism is more like a political program than a scientific hypothesis. It's a stance, not a belief or a theory. First, I'm extremely sympathetic to skepticism, so I'm not too troubled about the idea that my position might collapse into Pyrrhonism. But it's worth noting that stance empiricism isn't really in conflict with belief in any particular things. Suppose I believe in God, because I assume that I have had a personal experience of God and I regularly engage in practices such as prayer and ritual, which I take to involve communication with God. Or suppose I am a mathematician, and I believe that numbers are platonic entities just because I find it more satisfying to view my work as exploring an abstract realm. Nothing in stance empiricism opposes holding beliefs on this kind of "personal faith". The problem is specifically with taking God or platonic numbers as theoretical entities that are postulated in an explanatory framework. Turning to everyday objects and properties, what do you mean when you say that stance empiricism "rules them out"? There is nothing problematic about describing the objects with which we interact, or about drawing distinctions between types of objects, as when I might distinguish "real" objects such as hands (that everybody else can see) and "illusory" objects such as afterimages (that only I can see). But now suppose that a metaphysician says that this practice involves giving true descriptions of a mind-independent world: there are various objects and properties independent of us, which enter into causal interactions with us, etc. and most of our beliefs about them are true. We can contrast this external world hypothesis with other hypotheses such as the brain-in-the-vat hypothesis, the evil demon hypothesis, etc., and we compare the theoretical virtues of these different hypotheses to show that the external world hypothesis is justified... I doubt a stance empiricist could get on board with this. To clarify my own view: I don't think there is any such thing as justification, period. However, I also don't think there is anything irrational about holding beliefs without justification. So I don't demand suspension of judgment.
2:29:40 that would still be considered vegan, it akin to it not being immoral to eat road kill. Vegans are concerned less about avoiding animal products because they're animal products but more because you/paid someone to abuse and kill the animal for taste pleasure. Like cannibalistic tribes, people are less appalled of cannibalistic tribes when they find out the bodies they eat are already dead and that the people aren't murdered for others to eat them
I'm happy to accept whatever label you prefer; I don't really care to get into a semantic dispute about how to define the term "vegan"... but in my experience, the term is standardly used to refer to people who avoid the use of animal products. (This is how the term is used on the wikipedia page for "Veganism"; it's how the term is used by the Vegan Society, according to their webpage on "definition of veganism"; it's the definition you get when you google "vegan definition"...)
@@KaneB The vegan society definition is often debated amongst vegans, but I was mostly referring to the philosophy behind veganism rather than the definition used which actually just mostly tells us what the vegans practically do
In regards to road kill, I think there are serious issues. Assuming one has enough nutritional resources, then eating the road kill is a problem. Because by consuming the nutrition from that source when you don’t require it means that you have prevented other carnivores from accessing them. Hence selfishly consumed something you don’t need depriving others that do need it. Vegans frequently ignore the ecological implications of choices. Environmental veganism is superior.
@@Liliquan on the other hand, humans are part of ecosystems too, and plausibly I think, the environmental cost of slightly reducing the calories available to some carnivores is tiny compared with the cost of buying mass grown/produced vegan food. from an environmental perspective, I think even some kinds of hunting will be better than eg buying the same amount of calories in rice
@@Liliquan that sounds reasonable, I don't think vegans would have a problem with conceding that it probably is better to not eat the read kill when your nutritional needs are met
skube's question at 2:03:15 was exactly the same one I had- I also think you'd be great at providing a balanced analytic defence of the trans-inclusive position and would give good responses to the likes of Tomas Bogardus. I thought Bogardus' case (based on the YT vids I've seen) was well-organized and easy-to-follow for laypeople whilst maintaining some philosophical rigour. I've been looking for something similar on the trans-inclusive side but have been struggling to find such content (your discussion with Diane was interesting but imo a little too disorganized and a little too jargon-heavy for a layperson like myself). I do feel like there's a severe lack of accessible philosophical defences of the trans-inclusive position out there, and I think that void needs to be filled, even if it's not by you. For an idea of the sort of content I'm talking about, you could have a read of Sophie Grace Chappell's analogy between trans people and adoptive parents, which I thought was also an excellent piece. If your primary reason for not making such a video is avoiding random transphobic people on the internet, would you consider making a private video for patrons instead? Or perhaps confining the topic of discussion exclusively to what you called the "metaphysical/psychological" arguments, whilst avoiding the political / moral panic arguments... I suspect such a video might be less likely to invite unpleasantness? Ofc at the end of the day it is your decision what not to make, and I respect whatever you choose to do! But I'm sure many people are interested in this topic.
I appreciate your confidence in my ability to handle this topic well! Anyway, yeah, I'd be more open to exploring arguments about the metaphysics of gender or whatever... it's just I don't see that debate as having much to do with trans-exclusionary political positions. Granted, transphobes will sometimes present the debate in those terms: they make claims about the metaphysics of gender and then use that to support their political movement. (Actually, the pro-trans side will often do this as well.) I don't think there's really much connection there, though. When I read the philosophical work on the nature of sex and gender to which transphobes sometimes appeal, I ask myself: if I came to agree with these views -- e.g. if I came to agree with Bogardus that the "trans inclusion problem" for ameliorative inquiry cannot be solved, or if I came to agree with Byrne that, as a matter of conceptual analysis, "woman" = "adult human female" -- would this make any difference at all to how I would treat trans people? And the answer is almost always "no". To me, it's similar to how homophobes used to push the idea that being gay is a choice, and then some people would respond to that by arguing that people have no control over their sexualities... but this debate is just irrelevant to whether we should discriminate against gay people. (The point, after all, is that there is nothing wrong with being gay: if it is a choice, it's a perfectly acceptable one. Conversely, when a behaviour is damaging in some way, we should still take steps to prevent it, even if it isn't under voluntary control.) So I might well do a video in which I look at the philosophical debate about gender, but I probably wouldn't frame it as a response to transphobic arguments.
@@KaneB Hmm interesting take! So you say the metaphysical questions don't affect how trans people ought to be treated, or the political stuff. I agree that whether being gay is a choice or not has no bearing on whether we should discriminate against gay people, or the morality of being gay. I also agree that whether or not "woman" = "adult human female" has no bearing on how we should treat trans people in certain respects (obviously they should be no discrimination against them when it comes to hiring, promotions in the workplace, getting married, etc). I also think that whether or not "woman" = "adult human female" has no bearing on whether we allow children to undergo gender reassignment surgery, or whether we allow trans individuals to compete with cis individuals in sports (since the underlying issues here revolve around a minor's ability to make informed decisions, and fairness in competition- they've got nothing to do with whether a given person "really" is a woman or not). But shouldn't whether or not "woman" = "adult human female", at the very least, affect how we address people, and whether we refer to trans women as women or not? And I feel it should also affect what pronouns we use, if we assume that pronouns like "she/her" should be used to refer to women. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems to me like quite a political issue?
@@cirusa12 Let's say we accept that women are adult human females. Verity is a trans woman, i.e. "biologically male". So strictly speaking, it's false that Verity is a woman. Let's also say we accept that "she/her" pronouns refer to women. So strictly speaking, it's false to say things such as "she's sitting over there" or "I talked to her yesterday" when referring to Verity. The problem is that there is no requirement that people refrain from uttering false propositions at all times in all circumstances. Some philosophers argue that there are no colours, so strictly speaking, all sentences attributing colours to objects are false. Clearly though, this view doesn't commit us to refraining from using colour language. There will be plenty of circumstances where I will say things like, "the purple shirt is in the cupboard," even if I think that really, no objects have colour properties such as purple. Philosophical views about the metaphysics of colour or the semantics of colour language don't make any difference in everyday contexts, where colour language is an extremely useful tool for classifying objects. Similarly, I could think that it's false that Verity is a woman, but then continue to say "Verity is a woman", and continue to use "she/her" pronouns when referring to Verity.
@@KaneB Ah that's a fair point- I guess we often use terms incorrectly, like when we say a particular object weighs x kilograms instead of 9.81x Newtons (strictly speaking, weight shouldn't be measured in kilograms, as that's a unit of mass). While I agree that "there is no requirement that people refrain from uttering false propositions at all times in all circumstances", I do still feel that a proposition's being false gives us *some* reason not to utter it (as I assume most of us want to say and believe things that are true). Of course it's not a decisive reason, and we may have better reasons for uttering false propositions (to make things less confusing for others, for amelioration, general utility, etc). But I feel like it's a reason all the same. Incidentally, one of Byrne's research interests is the philosophy of colour- I think he believes colours are physical properties.. maybe that partly explains why he thinks women are biological females.
@@KaneB Exactly. Who cares if it's "true or false", we can construct the definition of the word woman to make it true or false, at will. The argument at stake is "shall we construct the definition of the word 'woman' in a way that justifies shitting on trans women, or not?". Seems obvious to me.
Hey Kane! I wanted to run something by you regarding your point about nothingness. You mentioned the possibility that nothingness could be paradoxical because the absence of something can be perceived as a positive. This brought to mind Vasubandhu's discourse on ignorance in the abhidharmakosa. Many people commonly interpret the absence of knowledge as ignorance, viewing the absence of something as a positive notion. However, Vasubandhu found this perspective problematic, as he believed that ignorance, according to the four noble truths, was the root cause of suffering. He argued that a mere lack of something lacks causal force. So, instead of defining ignorance as a lack of knowledge, he proposed a different understanding: "an opposition to knowledge," although the exact meaning of this remains open to interpretation. Drawing on this concept, I wondered if nothingness could similarly be understood as "an opposition to somethingness"? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this! p.s. I'm glad you came around on animal ethics!
I like the concept of freeganism since it has implicit moral vagueness that justifies numbers as monetary value validated by the nation-state being transferred freely for a product in the global capitalist system which as a token like subject 'I' do vaguely inhabit of as a type qua citizen. So rather than dumpster diving a token 'I' can opt to capitalism diving as a free ride based on where the I sits in the global supply chain. So in this sense eating meat is like being a Buddhist in for example Thailand where the monk excepts the input but did choose to carry the bowl along the crowd of merit makers whom are known to offer meat. So being guilted is in a sense agnentless but not trivial given suffering is inherent in food production if worms also suffer due to land being tilled for crops, not to mention transportation of grains that require closing the continent with trucks that cause road kill of endangered species. So in a sense I defer my agency to a form of organisational psychological egoism. The organisational pre modifier is intergovernmental interdependent relations that contains individual behaviour. The psychological part is the benefit agents draw as intentionality to reproduce the act again out of need (animal spirits as economists dub it, similarly to the Cartesian sense but for leveraging global simulated needs). The ego part involves modes of comparative self categorising in regards to leadership/subordinate stratification that are based on social structures of need to position self in positional system based on anthropological drives for control of resources and so on. So one might 'me' be inclined to eat once a day and occasionally not eat for 48 hours or more. Arguably persons do less harm, even if meat is consumed such as free range non humans kept nearby as opposed to non dairy ice cream consumption that is 1000km from a farm or nothing but coke at fast food outlet that has the investors gaining a passive income and enabling them do untold harms through the high end leisure corporate sector. So the overarching conclusion is freeganism as a prototype of non violence consumption joins forces with passive income investors who inhabit the periphery of global consumption and in a sense are in binary relationships through modes of commodity surplus and of social capital stereotyping to enhance their respective identity political positions within social categorisation of a political community which implies both meat eaters are family resemblances in relation to global farming practices and to that extent are voting in opposition but paradoxically voting voting for each other therefore enlisting the voter's paradox. However the more serious nature of the paradox is that by consuming grain could translate in harming endangered species if the source of the grain is within that zone. The point I am making is that paradox can be hidden within complex systems, and so moral reasoning can give a person a false positive moral consequences albeit our normative aspirations are genuine, mind independent (part of a political community) and casually evident empirically through inference, and definitely not an illusion given its lived experience through verification by others of my moral intuitions through multi modal expressions.
In regards to psychological egoism, i’d prefer a positive explanation to a negative one. Instead of pity driving action, it could very well be pleasure. I get joy from helping others. One can explain then why we occasionally help others but not consistently. Because the joy we get is insufficient or maybe something else is more pleasurable in the immediate.
To me, deriving joy from helping others just is altruism. I don't see what more is required to be an altruist, than that you get positive feelings when you help other people. So I wouldn't consider this an egoistic explanation.
@@KaneB What of the cases whereby someone occasionally gets joy from helping and occasionally gets joy from leaving them helpless. Are they occasionally altruistic and occasionally sadistic? In both cases though, they are egoistic which seems to apply to all cases. Why did helping person A make me feel good whilst ignoring person B make me feel good. Probably due to some egoistic attitude towards the different people.
In this video you list conversations, health, food, and sleep as your important things. In terms of these categories, how are you doing? It's ok not to answer if you don't want.
My apologies for getting your views on physicalism wrong: I had watched your views about arguments against physicalism you posted last year. i don’t recall what I misremembered which gave me the impression you were sympathetic towards physicalism. Either way I’ll have to more thoroughly engage with your work so I don’t make such a mistake again Thank you for answering my question regardless
You're not allowed to ignore that Nietzsche had syphilis BUT Kant has gonorrhoea and Lao Tzu always wants to cuddle even in the Summer when it's way too hot at night. What now?
@@attackdog6824 Well, another possibility is that I don't spend *all* my time looking at youtube comments, haha. Anyway yeah, I like Penderecki, particularly his stuff from the 60s and 70s... I'm not so keen on what I've heard of his later work.
Question: Does Truth exist? Answer: It cannot not exist, therefore it exists and the Question is, with all respect, meaningless, but maybe at least thereby somehow Enlightening.
I don't want to oversell the problem here, since there are some claims in nutrition science that are very well established: we know that trans fats are bad, that the average Westerner consumes too much sugar, that everybody needs particular vitamins, etc. But some general problems with determining the health effects of different types of diet: (1) Beyond the easy cases like trans fats, we're usually dealing with small effect sizes. (2) There are a ton of confounding variables that are extremely difficult to control. These include other foods, since the effect of a given food can be dependent on what other foods you eat. (3) A given food might have a small positive effect in one respect and a small negative effect in another, which makes it even harder to make an overall assessment of its impact on health. (4) A given food might have different effects on different people. Given the differences between people's bodies, it's not surprising that people might respond differently to the same meals, and there is some empirical evidence supporting this (see e.g. Zeevi et al, "Personalized nutrition by prediction of glycemic responses") (5) The methodologies in the field are often questionable, such as using self-reporting to figure out what people are eating despite evidence that this is unreliable, either because people lie about what they eat, or they just forget. (6) Nutrition science also seems to be particularly susceptible to funding biases from the food industry.
Why are you a relativist and not a eliminativist about truth? It seems to me that your conception about truth has not much to do with folk beliefs about truth. -that truth consists in correspondence with objective state of affairs. -that true proposition are true independent of one’s conceptual-scheme. -that utility more or less correlates with truth in some kind of „no miracle“ sense. So why even call it „truth“? Why not eliminating the notion entirely?
I think all of the standard theories of truth, including correspondence theory, are compatible with relativism. I discuss this in this video: ua-cam.com/video/5YOiOZm3KQY/v-deo.html Anyway, I'm skeptical of your claims about what the folk beliefs about truth are. I suppose that correspondence theory, at least in its simple versions, is fairly in line with common sense. But I doubt that most laypersons have any intuitions at all about whether truth is independent of one's conceptual scheme, or the degree to which utility correlates with truth. Actually, if anything, I would predict that most people would see a significant distinction between utility and truth (though I don't know of any studies on this).
@@KaneB I am inclined to agree with you about the first and third point. But I am not sure about the second point. -It seems to me that many Christians and Muslims would disagree with relativism, I mean how can your faith be the only correct one if its truth-value is relative to different conceptual-schemes. -I could also imagine that most people would think that truth is independent of one’s judgment, and that therefore it must be something absolute, this inference may be invalid but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t think that way. But maybe I am completely mistaken and I am just extrapolating my own past intuitions upon others.
You have it the wrong way around - your hypochondriasis is what leads you to focus on and obsess over your bodily sensations, your bodily sensations don't predispose you to develop an obsession with them. Hypochondriasis is the cause, rather than the effect of a sensitivity towards one's bodily sensations.
absolute chad
Thanks dawg
RE my question on noncognitivism, I would say the argument goes something like
1. Non-radical autonomist arguments (e.g. moderate autonomist, moralist, ethicist, etc) say that art 'conveys' moral propositions
2. Art does not convey any propositions, a fortiori it does not convey any moral propositions (noncognitivism about art)
3. Therefore those arguments fail
Thanks for explaining. I don't find this argument persuasive, because it seems to me that things can be subject to moral assessment even if they don't convey moral propositions. Delia might hold a negative attitude towards other races, and we might find this worthy of condemnation even if she doesn't endorse any particular propositions concerning other races (perhaps Delia's racism manifests in "implicit bias"). Provided artworks are open to moral assessment, all we then need is some argument that the moral value of the artwork affects its aesthetic value.
Additionally, suppose we're noncognitivists about morality... in that case, even moral judgments don't convey moral propositions. From that point of view, artworks wouldn't need to convey propositions in order to convey moral views.
1:21:37 I appreciate the thought you gave this question
2:17:00
I don't know much about this subject but when you don't smell anything, isn't that a kind of nothingness with respect to your sense of smell? of course you will have an experience because the smell isn't essential for consciousness, when we don't smell anything, it does not necessarily imply a complete absence of sensory experience. I feel you might be conflating the mental state of not smelling anything (which you called the positive character) (which is of course made up of stuff other than the smell) with the smell of "nothing" while comparing it with the sensory input of a particular smell.
I'm not a philosopher and English isn't my first language so I apologize if i misinterpret or didn't understand your point.
Being autistic and having anxiety goes hand in hand. Especially with the "Asperger" variant. I suggest you research Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA). It's an expression of autism where the individual despises demands and obligations. Wanting to avoid every day obligations, or feeling extremely anxious about an event on the horizon (even if it's a fun event like a party or vacation), disliking surprises (even positive ones) or a change of plans. Given that you've said you hate work (same) and think it's a scourge this definitely lines up with PDA autism. Looking at the way PDA expresses itself was quite an eye opening for me because it lined up so well with my experience.
When I have to work on something I count every second before I have to leave, experiencing a constant form of light anxiety as I wish I could be anywhere else.
can you please share your meditations techniques? i want to transcend space and time, thanks
also, i dont know if u find it interesting that in the apophatic traditions God is often referred to as pure nothingness, because nothingness is the unlimited and undifferentiated, and that the self is also nothingness, like in Stirner, and hence is God. that is Plotinus in a sense
I did a bunch of self-inquiry techniques that I learned from a friend. I would share them, but it took hours of conversation to teach each one, so it would be kinda hard to communicate in a comment. He's inspired by Douglas Harding's stuff so maybe you could look there.
Yes, I'm aware of that overlap with Stirner -- it's very cool!
The straight line missions are some of the best content out there period, whether youtube or otherwise
21:37 I sort of always just assumed that freeganism is vegan tbh. You're not harming any animals by eating garbage that was gonna decay away anyway.
Like, on a purely structural/consistency level, I find it hard to imagine a compelling ethical system in which veganism is fine but freeganism is bad. (I can think of non-compelling ones, ofc)
Stirner truely turned hegel on his head, how did this influence your hate of hegel? :^)
do you still use 4chan?
Would be fun to see you debate Ask Yourself on NTT.
Since you have empiricist leaning, have you looking into sellars work?. I think his myth of the given critique is spot on and i don't know if there are any good responses to it. I would be interested in hearing your take.
It's a problem for traditional empiricism, which treats concepts as derived from sense experience, or knowledge as grounded in sense experience, but I've never been a traditional empiricist. To me, empiricism involves a resistance to "explanation by postulation": that is, the tendency of philosophers to explain the success of various discourses by postulating theoretical entities of which that discourse provides true descriptions. Consider how a platonist might "explain" mathematics by postulating abstract objects that are correctly described by mathematical propositions. My empiricism is a rejection of this philosophical project. It's a kind of "stance empiricism", similar to that defended by Bas van Fraassen in his book "The Empirical Stance" (I have a video called "How to be an empiricist" that explains stance empiricism in more detail, if you're interested). I don't think Sellars presents any problem for this approach.
@@KaneB sounds interesting. Thanks for the response. I will look into it.
I am not sure what exactly the concept "stance" means in this context. I mostly agree that the majority of analytic philosophy is doing descriptivist metaphysics with propositions. I am more on the inferentialist side and have embraced holism just so you know where I am coming from. I think all concepts are mediated.
Regarding explanation by postulation wouldn't that rule out everyday objects and properties. My question is whether your position would collapse into Pyrrhonian skepticism with suspension of beliefs or is there a conceptual space in between those positions. I agree that if you go full skeptic there is no non question begging way to "refute" that position.
@@ReflectiveJourney The idea of "stance empiricism" is that empiricism should be interpreted as a set of values, attitudes, and commitments, rather than a set of beliefs. Empiricism is more like a political program than a scientific hypothesis. It's a stance, not a belief or a theory.
First, I'm extremely sympathetic to skepticism, so I'm not too troubled about the idea that my position might collapse into Pyrrhonism. But it's worth noting that stance empiricism isn't really in conflict with belief in any particular things. Suppose I believe in God, because I assume that I have had a personal experience of God and I regularly engage in practices such as prayer and ritual, which I take to involve communication with God. Or suppose I am a mathematician, and I believe that numbers are platonic entities just because I find it more satisfying to view my work as exploring an abstract realm. Nothing in stance empiricism opposes holding beliefs on this kind of "personal faith". The problem is specifically with taking God or platonic numbers as theoretical entities that are postulated in an explanatory framework.
Turning to everyday objects and properties, what do you mean when you say that stance empiricism "rules them out"? There is nothing problematic about describing the objects with which we interact, or about drawing distinctions between types of objects, as when I might distinguish "real" objects such as hands (that everybody else can see) and "illusory" objects such as afterimages (that only I can see). But now suppose that a metaphysician says that this practice involves giving true descriptions of a mind-independent world: there are various objects and properties independent of us, which enter into causal interactions with us, etc. and most of our beliefs about them are true. We can contrast this external world hypothesis with other hypotheses such as the brain-in-the-vat hypothesis, the evil demon hypothesis, etc., and we compare the theoretical virtues of these different hypotheses to show that the external world hypothesis is justified... I doubt a stance empiricist could get on board with this.
To clarify my own view: I don't think there is any such thing as justification, period. However, I also don't think there is anything irrational about holding beliefs without justification. So I don't demand suspension of judgment.
Hey thanks for answering my question! appreciated it, especially the part about how empiricists would be out of a job without metaphysicians lol
2:29:40 that would still be considered vegan, it akin to it not being immoral to eat road kill. Vegans are concerned less about avoiding animal products because they're animal products but more because you/paid someone to abuse and kill the animal for taste pleasure.
Like cannibalistic tribes, people are less appalled of cannibalistic tribes when they find out the bodies they eat are already dead and that the people aren't murdered for others to eat them
I'm happy to accept whatever label you prefer; I don't really care to get into a semantic dispute about how to define the term "vegan"... but in my experience, the term is standardly used to refer to people who avoid the use of animal products. (This is how the term is used on the wikipedia page for "Veganism"; it's how the term is used by the Vegan Society, according to their webpage on "definition of veganism"; it's the definition you get when you google "vegan definition"...)
@@KaneB The vegan society definition is often debated amongst vegans, but I was mostly referring to the philosophy behind veganism rather than the definition used which actually just mostly tells us what the vegans practically do
In regards to road kill, I think there are serious issues.
Assuming one has enough nutritional resources, then eating the road kill is a problem.
Because by consuming the nutrition from that source when you don’t require it means that you have prevented other carnivores from accessing them.
Hence selfishly consumed something you don’t need depriving others that do need it.
Vegans frequently ignore the ecological implications of choices.
Environmental veganism is superior.
@@Liliquan on the other hand, humans are part of ecosystems too, and plausibly I think, the environmental cost of slightly reducing the calories available to some carnivores is tiny compared with the cost of buying mass grown/produced vegan food. from an environmental perspective, I think even some kinds of hunting will be better than eg buying the same amount of calories in rice
@@Liliquan that sounds reasonable, I don't think vegans would have a problem with conceding that it probably is better to not eat the read kill when your nutritional needs are met
skube's question at 2:03:15 was exactly the same one I had- I also think you'd be great at providing a balanced analytic defence of the trans-inclusive position and would give good responses to the likes of Tomas Bogardus. I thought Bogardus' case (based on the YT vids I've seen) was well-organized and easy-to-follow for laypeople whilst maintaining some philosophical rigour. I've been looking for something similar on the trans-inclusive side but have been struggling to find such content (your discussion with Diane was interesting but imo a little too disorganized and a little too jargon-heavy for a layperson like myself).
I do feel like there's a severe lack of accessible philosophical defences of the trans-inclusive position out there, and I think that void needs to be filled, even if it's not by you. For an idea of the sort of content I'm talking about, you could have a read of Sophie Grace Chappell's analogy between trans people and adoptive parents, which I thought was also an excellent piece.
If your primary reason for not making such a video is avoiding random transphobic people on the internet, would you consider making a private video for patrons instead?
Or perhaps confining the topic of discussion exclusively to what you called the "metaphysical/psychological" arguments, whilst avoiding the political / moral panic arguments... I suspect such a video might be less likely to invite unpleasantness?
Ofc at the end of the day it is your decision what not to make, and I respect whatever you choose to do! But I'm sure many people are interested in this topic.
I appreciate your confidence in my ability to handle this topic well! Anyway, yeah, I'd be more open to exploring arguments about the metaphysics of gender or whatever... it's just I don't see that debate as having much to do with trans-exclusionary political positions. Granted, transphobes will sometimes present the debate in those terms: they make claims about the metaphysics of gender and then use that to support their political movement. (Actually, the pro-trans side will often do this as well.) I don't think there's really much connection there, though. When I read the philosophical work on the nature of sex and gender to which transphobes sometimes appeal, I ask myself: if I came to agree with these views -- e.g. if I came to agree with Bogardus that the "trans inclusion problem" for ameliorative inquiry cannot be solved, or if I came to agree with Byrne that, as a matter of conceptual analysis, "woman" = "adult human female" -- would this make any difference at all to how I would treat trans people? And the answer is almost always "no". To me, it's similar to how homophobes used to push the idea that being gay is a choice, and then some people would respond to that by arguing that people have no control over their sexualities... but this debate is just irrelevant to whether we should discriminate against gay people. (The point, after all, is that there is nothing wrong with being gay: if it is a choice, it's a perfectly acceptable one. Conversely, when a behaviour is damaging in some way, we should still take steps to prevent it, even if it isn't under voluntary control.) So I might well do a video in which I look at the philosophical debate about gender, but I probably wouldn't frame it as a response to transphobic arguments.
@@KaneB
Hmm interesting take! So you say the metaphysical questions don't affect how trans people ought to be treated, or the political stuff. I agree that whether being gay is a choice or not has no bearing on whether we should discriminate against gay people, or the morality of being gay.
I also agree that whether or not "woman" = "adult human female" has no bearing on how we should treat trans people in certain respects (obviously they should be no discrimination against them when it comes to hiring, promotions in the workplace, getting married, etc).
I also think that whether or not "woman" = "adult human female" has no bearing on whether we allow children to undergo gender reassignment surgery, or whether we allow trans individuals to compete with cis individuals in sports (since the underlying issues here revolve around a minor's ability to make informed decisions, and fairness in competition- they've got nothing to do with whether a given person "really" is a woman or not).
But shouldn't whether or not "woman" = "adult human female", at the very least, affect how we address people, and whether we refer to trans women as women or not? And I feel it should also affect what pronouns we use, if we assume that pronouns like "she/her" should be used to refer to women. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems to me like quite a political issue?
@@cirusa12 Let's say we accept that women are adult human females. Verity is a trans woman, i.e. "biologically male". So strictly speaking, it's false that Verity is a woman. Let's also say we accept that "she/her" pronouns refer to women. So strictly speaking, it's false to say things such as "she's sitting over there" or "I talked to her yesterday" when referring to Verity.
The problem is that there is no requirement that people refrain from uttering false propositions at all times in all circumstances. Some philosophers argue that there are no colours, so strictly speaking, all sentences attributing colours to objects are false. Clearly though, this view doesn't commit us to refraining from using colour language. There will be plenty of circumstances where I will say things like, "the purple shirt is in the cupboard," even if I think that really, no objects have colour properties such as purple. Philosophical views about the metaphysics of colour or the semantics of colour language don't make any difference in everyday contexts, where colour language is an extremely useful tool for classifying objects.
Similarly, I could think that it's false that Verity is a woman, but then continue to say "Verity is a woman", and continue to use "she/her" pronouns when referring to Verity.
@@KaneB Ah that's a fair point- I guess we often use terms incorrectly, like when we say a particular object weighs x kilograms instead of 9.81x Newtons (strictly speaking, weight shouldn't be measured in kilograms, as that's a unit of mass). While I agree that "there is no requirement that people refrain from uttering false propositions at all times in all circumstances", I do still feel that a proposition's being false gives us *some* reason not to utter it (as I assume most of us want to say and believe things that are true). Of course it's not a decisive reason, and we may have better reasons for uttering false propositions (to make things less confusing for others, for amelioration, general utility, etc). But I feel like it's a reason all the same.
Incidentally, one of Byrne's research interests is the philosophy of colour- I think he believes colours are physical properties.. maybe that partly explains why he thinks women are biological females.
@@KaneB Exactly. Who cares if it's "true or false", we can construct the definition of the word woman to make it true or false, at will. The argument at stake is "shall we construct the definition of the word 'woman' in a way that justifies shitting on trans women, or not?". Seems obvious to me.
Hey Kane! I wanted to run something by you regarding your point about nothingness. You mentioned the possibility that nothingness could be paradoxical because the absence of something can be perceived as a positive. This brought to mind Vasubandhu's discourse on ignorance in the abhidharmakosa. Many people commonly interpret the absence of knowledge as ignorance, viewing the absence of something as a positive notion. However, Vasubandhu found this perspective problematic, as he believed that ignorance, according to the four noble truths, was the root cause of suffering. He argued that a mere lack of something lacks causal force. So, instead of defining ignorance as a lack of knowledge, he proposed a different understanding: "an opposition to knowledge," although the exact meaning of this remains open to interpretation. Drawing on this concept, I wondered if nothingness could similarly be understood as "an opposition to somethingness"? I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this! p.s. I'm glad you came around on animal ethics!
I like the concept of freeganism since it has implicit moral vagueness that justifies numbers as monetary value validated by the nation-state being transferred freely for a product in the global capitalist system which as a token like subject 'I' do vaguely inhabit of as a type qua citizen. So rather than dumpster diving a token 'I' can opt to capitalism diving as a free ride based on where the I sits in the global supply chain. So in this sense eating meat is like being a Buddhist in for example Thailand where the monk excepts the input but did choose to carry the bowl along the crowd of merit makers whom are known to offer meat. So being guilted is in a sense agnentless but not trivial given suffering is inherent in food production if worms also suffer due to land being tilled for crops, not to mention transportation of grains that require closing the continent with trucks that cause road kill of endangered species. So in a sense I defer my agency to a form of organisational psychological egoism. The organisational pre modifier is intergovernmental interdependent relations that contains individual behaviour. The psychological part is the benefit agents draw as intentionality to reproduce the act again out of need (animal spirits as economists dub it, similarly to the Cartesian sense but for leveraging global simulated needs). The ego part involves modes of comparative self categorising in regards to leadership/subordinate stratification that are based on social structures of need to position self in positional system based on anthropological drives for control of resources and so on. So one might 'me' be inclined to eat once a day and occasionally not eat for 48 hours or more. Arguably persons do less harm, even if meat is consumed such as free range non humans kept nearby as opposed to non dairy ice cream consumption that is 1000km from a farm or nothing but coke at fast food outlet that has the investors gaining a passive income and enabling them do untold harms through the high end leisure corporate sector. So the overarching conclusion is freeganism as a prototype of non violence consumption joins forces with passive income investors who inhabit the periphery of global consumption and in a sense are in binary relationships through modes of commodity surplus and of social capital stereotyping to enhance their respective identity political positions within social categorisation of a political community which implies both meat eaters are family resemblances in relation to global farming practices and to that extent are voting in opposition but paradoxically voting voting for each other therefore enlisting the voter's paradox. However the more serious nature of the paradox is that by consuming grain could translate in harming endangered species if the source of the grain is within that zone. The point I am making is that paradox can be hidden within complex systems, and so moral reasoning can give a person a false positive moral consequences albeit our normative aspirations are genuine, mind independent (part of a political community) and casually evident empirically through inference, and definitely not an illusion given its lived experience through verification by others of my moral intuitions through multi modal expressions.
"I got covid ... when it first got out" and "I am successfully doctor"
This is so weird in the best possible way
In regards to psychological egoism, i’d prefer a positive explanation to a negative one.
Instead of pity driving action, it could very well be pleasure.
I get joy from helping others.
One can explain then why we occasionally help others but not consistently.
Because the joy we get is insufficient or maybe something else is more pleasurable in the immediate.
To me, deriving joy from helping others just is altruism. I don't see what more is required to be an altruist, than that you get positive feelings when you help other people. So I wouldn't consider this an egoistic explanation.
@@KaneB What of the cases whereby someone occasionally gets joy from helping and occasionally gets joy from leaving them helpless. Are they occasionally altruistic and occasionally sadistic? In both cases though, they are egoistic which seems to apply to all cases. Why did helping person A make me feel good whilst ignoring person B make me feel good. Probably due to some egoistic attitude towards the different people.
@@Liliquan Yes. I think this is the norm, actually. People seem to have a mix of altruistic sentiments and sadistic sentiments.
In this video you list conversations, health, food, and sleep as your important things. In terms of these categories, how are you doing? It's ok not to answer if you don't want.
Very well on the first three. Re sleep, I've always struggled with insomnia.
@@KaneB thanks
52:17 Thanks to that best friend
My apologies for getting your views on physicalism wrong: I had watched your views about arguments against physicalism you posted last year. i don’t recall what I misremembered which gave me the impression you were sympathetic towards physicalism. Either way I’ll have to more thoroughly engage with your work so I don’t make such a mistake again
Thank you for answering my question regardless
You're not allowed to ignore that Nietzsche had syphilis BUT Kant has gonorrhoea and Lao Tzu always wants to cuddle even in the Summer when it's way too hot at night. What now?
Hard to believe that it was even possible for Kant to acquire a sexually transmitted disease.
@@KaneB Turns out he liked being objectified way more than he let on, but you'll still get the moral lectures about it.
Didn’t answer my question I don’t think :(
What was your question?
Are you familiar with music of Penderecki?
@@KaneB specifically thinking about polymorphia
@@KaneB assume not then
@@attackdog6824 Well, another possibility is that I don't spend *all* my time looking at youtube comments, haha. Anyway yeah, I like Penderecki, particularly his stuff from the 60s and 70s... I'm not so keen on what I've heard of his later work.
Question: Does Truth exist?
Answer: It cannot not exist, therefore it exists and the Question is, with all respect, meaningless, but maybe at least thereby somehow Enlightening.
why do you think that diet science is bs?
I don't want to oversell the problem here, since there are some claims in nutrition science that are very well established: we know that trans fats are bad, that the average Westerner consumes too much sugar, that everybody needs particular vitamins, etc. But some general problems with determining the health effects of different types of diet:
(1) Beyond the easy cases like trans fats, we're usually dealing with small effect sizes.
(2) There are a ton of confounding variables that are extremely difficult to control. These include other foods, since the effect of a given food can be dependent on what other foods you eat.
(3) A given food might have a small positive effect in one respect and a small negative effect in another, which makes it even harder to make an overall assessment of its impact on health.
(4) A given food might have different effects on different people. Given the differences between people's bodies, it's not surprising that people might respond differently to the same meals, and there is some empirical evidence supporting this (see e.g. Zeevi et al, "Personalized nutrition by prediction of glycemic responses")
(5) The methodologies in the field are often questionable, such as using self-reporting to figure out what people are eating despite evidence that this is unreliable, either because people lie about what they eat, or they just forget.
(6) Nutrition science also seems to be particularly susceptible to funding biases from the food industry.
Why are you a relativist and not a eliminativist about truth?
It seems to me that your conception about truth has not much to do with folk beliefs about truth.
-that truth consists in correspondence with objective state of affairs.
-that true proposition are true independent of one’s conceptual-scheme.
-that utility more or less correlates with truth in some kind of „no miracle“ sense.
So why even call it „truth“?
Why not eliminating the notion entirely?
I think all of the standard theories of truth, including correspondence theory, are compatible with relativism. I discuss this in this video: ua-cam.com/video/5YOiOZm3KQY/v-deo.html
Anyway, I'm skeptical of your claims about what the folk beliefs about truth are. I suppose that correspondence theory, at least in its simple versions, is fairly in line with common sense. But I doubt that most laypersons have any intuitions at all about whether truth is independent of one's conceptual scheme, or the degree to which utility correlates with truth. Actually, if anything, I would predict that most people would see a significant distinction between utility and truth (though I don't know of any studies on this).
@@KaneB
I am inclined to agree with you about the first and third point. But I am not sure about the second point.
-It seems to me that many Christians and Muslims would disagree with relativism, I mean how can your faith be the only correct one if its truth-value is relative to different conceptual-schemes.
-I could also imagine that most people would think that truth is independent of one’s judgment, and that therefore it must be something absolute, this inference may be invalid but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t think that way.
But maybe I am completely mistaken and I am just extrapolating my own past intuitions upon others.
Take a shot every time Kane says he’s a relativist
You have it the wrong way around - your hypochondriasis is what leads you to focus on and obsess over your bodily sensations, your bodily sensations don't predispose you to develop an obsession with them. Hypochondriasis is the cause, rather than the effect of a sensitivity towards one's bodily sensations.
A good example of how introspection can be misleading, then!