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?
