On Saturday, February 22, 2020 at 10:40:12 AM UTC-7, PGC wrote:
On Thursday, February 20, 2020 at 1:55:39 PM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal
wrote:
On 20 Feb 2020, at 01:20, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 2/19/2020 12:15 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
Wittgenstein is at the core really of *linguistic pragmatism *
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism>
Languages are tools. There is no truth "out there".
My view is that "true" means different things in different
contexts.
And in different modes (of self-reference). The platonists dis
understand that the absolute truth requires faith in something
beyond “my consciousness” or “consciousness” (to take into
account Terren Suydam’ remark).
Wittgestein up to now still has the upper hand with those old
arguments over anybody proposing science based ontological
packages metaphysically: language will seduce people to
overgeneralize, to confuse personal mysticism with reality, to
engage in false equivalencies between terms used in formal
contexts and everyday use of language, scientism etc. Slowly,
yours truly is coming around to the idea that folks agreeing on
ontology/reality/religion, which would guide research in some
allegedly correct direction; spilling over positive effects into
the world... that Wittgenstein may prove correct in that this is a
confused product of muddled armchair thinking, not because of his
generally negative stance, but because there seem to be positive
developments out there that he couldn't have informed those
arguments with.
I see/predict metaphysics shifting from the naive armchair forms
of identity, reality, matter etc. practiced here on this list with
profound erudition, walking in circles for 20 years now
(Wittgenstein says thousands of years) to optimization and more
efficient pursuit of value and benefit questions instead, through
say orchestration of highly sophisticated forms of organization
applied to education, governing, finance, technology, problem
solving, applied or theoretical etc. that are permissionless,
universally accessible, require no hierarchy of politics,
charlatan experts, control freaks, their sycophants, and bibles of
some Messiah achieving miracles such as eternal life,
self-duplication etc.
Metaphysical setups that place less emphasis on truth, trust,
power, control, or proof and more emphasis on "can entities such
as ourselves be highly organized, solve specific survival problems
over short and long terms, without trusting each other + instead
assuming that folks will be opportunistic and idealistic?"
Example: we don't agree on what reality may be, but we do agree on
the need for habitable living space in the long term, nutrition,
water, health, limiting self-destruction, expensive wars,
standards of living etc. quite clearly. There ARE more appropriate
politics and economics on the horizon. Metaphysics here, shifting
our old-school conceptions of what first principles are, and you'd
refute Wittgenstein instead of running from him. Engineering
incentive and not what the game is but /how/ the game of life on
this planet could be.
About this, it is clear to me that in “I think thus I am”,
Descartes use the “first person” I. Indeed he start from the
doubt. Dubito ergo cogito, cogito ergo sum. Descartes did not
prove the existence of Descartes, bit of his own
consciousness, hoping others can do the same reasoning for
themselves. Consciousness always refer to a first person
experience implicitly: like God (truth) it is not a thing.
You concede to Terren that "true means different things in
different contexts" but everyday like clockwork you still barrage
the list with your use of "large truth, 3p, reality that cannot be
named, mechanism is incompatible with physicalism" and all the
rest of it. I used to wonder why you don't pursue contact with
linguists, physicists, a wider audience, and philosophers but this
has ceased to surprise me. PNGC
I think I finally got it -- what mechanism means for Bruno -- namely,
that a human being can be perfectly simulated by a computer. But if
that's what he means, how does it follow that mechanism is
incompatible with physicalism?
