# Justification of Epistemology **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 10, 2004, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934 "2004-11-10T00:09:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/61 "2004-11-13T18:39:50Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > As far as I can tell, you would say, on the other hand, that a doctrine is a Foundationalist one if and only if it affirms that every belief is justified by inference from other beliefs. > > Do I have you right, here? No, not really. As I keep saying, foundationalism, at its root, no matter what brand or variety, may be identified by the notion that justification is _linear_. It is the linearity that ensures that every justifed belief has some foundation; hence, the name — foundationalism. Again, it helps to consider how one may break from foundationalism in order better to grock what foundationalism is. The first way is the way the skeptics did it: that is, to deny even the possibility that there is ever epistemological justification. The second way was practically unthinkable for a very long time because, without being properly contextualized, it seemed absurd on its surface. And that is to discard the entire underpinning foundation itself and substitute in its place some other structural cohesion. In other words, posit that a belief may be justified, not by following linearly from some other belief, but by following from either a confluence of beliefs or from _some coherent necessity_ — hence, the name “coherentism”. Some philosophers have likened foundationalism to a ladder and coherentism to a spider’s web. Another popular metaphor for coherentism is a ship at sea, which, even in isolation (with no attached foundation) is itself a coherent thing. What is repaired is what needs to be repaired. What is built is what needs to be built. Thus, justification arises, not from inference, but from coherence. It is an holistic worldview. In that worldview, justification does not need a foundation; rather, a foundation needs justification. Such a comparison helps shed light (at least for me) on what distinguishes one school of thought from another. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/62 "2004-11-13T18:54:13Z")
_Liberal,_ Fair enough. I think I see what you mean now, and I think I don’t disagree except on minor details. I still like my way of putting it better than your way of putting it, but that’s a matter of stylistic preference now rather that a matter of substantive disagreement. I admit I’m suprised people have said Foundationalism is like a ladder while Coherentism is like a web, since it’s my understanding that it is not requisite for a doctrine to be Foundationalist that it think each belief follows from some _single_ other belief. But maybe that’s a misunderstanding of the metaphor, or maybe it’s in some way taking the metaphor too far, or on the other hand, maybe some representative Foundationalists _have_ held this to be the case and I just am not aware of this. In any case, I hope you didn’t stop reading at the point from which you snipped a quote from my post. (Did you?) -FrL- > [@Liberal](#): > > No, not really. As I keep saying, foundationalism, at its root, no matter what brand or variety, may be identified by the notion that justification is _linear_. It is the linearity that ensures that every justifed belief has some foundation; hence, the name — foundationalism. Again, it helps to consider how one may break from foundationalism in order better to grock what foundationalism is. The first way is the way the skeptics did it: that is, to deny even the possibility that there is ever epistemological justification. The second way was practically unthinkable for a very long time because, without being properly contextualized, it seemed absurd on its surface. And that is to discard the entire underpinning foundation itself and substitute in its place some other structural cohesion. In other words, posit that a belief may be justified, not by following linearly from some other belief, but by following from either a confluence of beliefs or from _some coherent necessity_ — hence, the name “coherentism”. Some philosophers have likened foundationalism to a ladder and coherentism to a spider’s web. Another popular metaphor for coherentism is a ship at sea, which, even in isolation (with no attached foundation) is itself a coherent thing. What is repaired is what needs to be repaired. What is built is what needs to be built. Thus, justification arises, not from inference, but from coherence. It is an holistic worldview. In that worldview, justification does not need a foundation; rather, a foundation needs justification. Such a comparison helps shed light (at least for me) on what distinguishes one school of thought from another. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/63 "2004-11-13T19:03:01Z")
**Frylock** , thanks for the overview. I think I’m in that naturalized camp. (And I think you misspoke here … the goal is _to_ think of it as normative … not to worry about what ought to be, rather to be interested in how knowledge is produced in the world.) The rest ends up seeming contrived and artificial. And yes there is an overlap with cognitive psycology. Neural networks and adaptive resonance theory as models of knowledge production are forms of epistemology. Artifical intelligence is occasionally trying to simulate these sorts of processes even if they do so by evoking different mechanisms. People like me have been attracted to discussions of epistemolgy not from an interest in philosophy, but from a hope that the formalized systems may help provide models and tools for an understanding of how things really work and/or how one could hope to better model them artificially. Some additional comment to **eris** - > [@](#): > > _Qualia do not exist without an observer; we assume that the physical bases of the qualia do independently exist and that they correlate with qualia in some way._ Qualia do not exist without an observer, but no comment on the latter, only that an account of qualia does not require them to be caused, though we do talk of qualia in a way that might suggest an independent physical base but for which an independent physical base in an ontological sense is not the test of truth. I would concurr that an independent reality need not exist for an epistemology to exist (although I thik it gets silly to not assume one) but this intersects with the concept of social knowledge and shared conceptual spaces. Along with past discussions that have included **AHunter** on sanity vs insanity and if reality is merely a group consensus. We, each of us, function as units in the societal organism. To some large degree it matters less rather our qualia correlate well with an independent reality, than whether they are compatable with function in our environment which includes to a highly significant extent our society. In this very cogent sense functional reality is a group consensus and sanity is relative to the group consensus. This follows implicitly from your position that “an independent physical base in an ontological sense is not the test of truth.” ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/64 "2004-11-13T19:05:22Z")
uh that should be "whether our qualia … " sorry. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/65 "2004-11-13T20:07:22Z")
Whoa, the stakes have certainly been raised this weekend: will my credibility be shot if I _don’t_ respond with an epic multiscreen essay? 🙂 Fascinating subplots abound in this thread, but I’ll restrict myself to the three people who have addressed me directly. First, **erl** , grateful as I am for the effort and time you clearly put in there, I’m afraid I’m still at a loss to see how the heck we actually _differ_. I have said, time and again, that if reality is that which is “knowable” then reality **is** mind-correlative (as well as me-, life- and carbon-correlative). Does that make _me_ a transcendental idealist? And the central point of the entire thread is that nothing can ever really be _known for certain_ - there is only that which is “known” according to a particular epistemology. When I ask you “Do you agree that there were no minds for 13 billion years?”, I am asking you whether you _know_ this, but whether you **believe** it - whether you “output a truth decision” to that statement. When I ask you how you explain the origin of mind, I am not asking you what you _know is correct_, but which alternative you _choose_ - what you _guess_ is. And so I ask again: _Does the explanation you currently choose for the origin of the mind require any non-physical element?_ Now, I admitted at the very beginning that, just as the explanation for the origin of magnetic north in terms of physical molten iron or the explanation for the origin of abrupt climate change in terms of physical atmospheric molecules is by no means “complete”, so it is that the neuropsychological explanation for every single aspect of the mind in terms of memory and cortices is not complete: that is the challenge of the millennium. But just as we would not appeal to anything but the _physical_ for explaining magnetic north or past ice ages, do you _believe_, do you _guess_, that the mind is **ultimately** explained by the physical? There will _never_ be a “complete” description of this thing you call “reality”. The universe is _how it is_ - there is no reason (nor indeed even reason to _believe_) that the mathematical or liguistic description of that will ever be _perfect_. As for your point regarding monism, well, mass, energy and fundamental forces are all ultimately arrangements of _spacetime_, and time is ultimately a dimension of _space_, and so the physicalist can quite happily monistically assert that **everything is space**. All I am trying as hard as I can to ascertain is whetehr you are proposing a _dualism_ of mind and not-mind, which is why I simply cannot fathom how you cannot bring yourself to admit that the universe for 13 billion years most definitely comprised _not-mind_. What _was_ it otherwise? You simply seem to answer “I don’t know”. Again, I am not asking you to _know_, I’m asking what your _guess_ would be with the rhetorical gun to your head. I cannot help but get the feeling that we are still talking at cross purposes. It seems like you are intent on discussing the vagaries of a programming language when I’m trying to find out which factory you think the computer came from. I see no difference between a thing which _exists_ and a thing which is _real_. Do you? **Meatros** : No, you guessed right first time. The supernatural and the physical (_ie._ natural) are by definition mutually exclusive. Unless you find someone that thinks God is made of atoms, the physicalist would deny God just as he or she denies _anything_ non-physical (_ie. meta_physical). **otherwise** > [@](#): > > I do not have the ability to explain subjective awareness. That inability does not prevent me from pointing out that as an explanation, “the physical” is inadequate and controversial, to say the least. I asked you to, at least, _provide an alternative_, so that we may each subjectively pick one which suited us, after subjecting each of them to the full arsenal of our most rigorous analytic tools. > [@](#): > > There was no point at which I had no subjective awareness; On the operating table itself, you formed no new memories. Unless you are tautologically _defining_ awareness to be that which you remember, your awareness **disappeared** for that time. This seems a trivial semantic point to me really, but I’m happy to discuss it further if you think there’s something important I’m not getting. > [@](#): > > (BTW, did you have any response to my claim that what you were describing is “objective” observation of brain function, and by definition, subjectivity cannot be studied objectively?) Nothing can be studied objectively. The only things that can “study” are biological computers called humans, which can only ever do _anything_ **subjectively**. Again, this to me is semantically trivial. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/66 "2004-11-13T20:35:03Z")
**Dseid,** My understanding is that to call something “normative” is to say it has something to do with determining how we “ought” to procede. In my lexicon, “normative” in this context is the opposite of “descriptive” which tries to describe how things “are” rather than how they “ought to be.” I think this is the right usage of the word Normative, but I could be wrong. Do you want to fight about it? (That was a joke… 😛 If it seemed out of left field, then never mind… :smack: ) Anyway, on this usage, naturalized epistemology, since it says “Let’s stop worrying about how we ‘ought’ to come to hold our beliefs, and instead explore how we ‘do’ come to hold our beliefs,” is a movement _away_ from normative epistemology. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![Faldage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Faldage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faldage)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/67 "2004-11-13T21:03:07Z")
The quintessential epistemological question is: “WTF, dude?” The most cogent response that I know of is a Zen whack up side the head. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/68 "2004-11-13T21:12:22Z")
> [@Faldage](#): > > The quintessential epistemological question is: “WTF, dude?” > > The most cogent response that I know of is a Zen whack up side the head. Schopie, get back in your grave. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/69 "2004-11-13T21:15:05Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > _Liberal,_ > > Fair enough. I think I see what you mean now, and I think I don’t disagree except on minor details. > > […snip…] > > In any case, I hope you didn’t stop reading at the point from which you snipped a quote from my post. (Did you?) > > -FrL- No, we’re just trying to finish some remodelling before dear Mother-in-Law arrives for Christmas. Perhaps one day, we can discuss this or some other matter at length. You’re a good egg, as they say. Your charm is disarming. Hang in there, and best of luck with your doctoral pursuit. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/70 "2004-11-13T21:35:08Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > **Dseid,** > > My understanding is that to call something “normative” is to say it has something to do with determining how we “ought” to procede. In my lexicon, “normative” in this context is the opposite of “descriptive” which tries to describe how things “are” rather than how they “ought to be.” > > I think this is the right usage of the word Normative, but I could be wrong. Perhaps this is an example where my “space” for a word and yours do not overlap well enough? 🙂 I understood “normative” as meaning the standard or normal or usual way of doing something. I now suspect that your understanding is more likely more correct - relating to the proceeding according to a standardized method. In any case, I am more interested in how we (at the various scales of “we”), actually develop knowledge, than in models of how certain thinkers use those methods to decide how we ought to develop knowledge. And I understand you to call that to be a “naturalized epistemology”. I’m not sure that the others intended to not be naturalized though … ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/71 "2004-11-13T21:45:32Z")
> [@erislover](#): > > I believe knowledge is per se a social phenomenon. It is an act of investigation and categorization, the latter of which is not “really” possible from a purely subjective perspective because the activities involved in the pursuit of knowledge lose their coherence on a subjective level. For this and other reasons, qualia is an unnecessary expansion of entities. Qualia cannot really explain a whole lot and serves no purpose. Especially if one posits physicalism (I don’t recall you talking about qualia, but that post just brought it to mind.) However, > [@SentientMeat](#): > > No, you guessed right first time. The supernatural and the physical (ie. natural) are by definition mutually exclusive. Unless you find someone that thinks God is made of atoms, the physicalist would deny God just as he or she denies anything non-physical (ie. metaphysical). This statement is a little confusing. I see no reason why the physical must only contain subatomic particles and energy: for instance, you could envision a whole separate world in which matter is composed of the four classic western elements, but without any metaphysical components to it, and it could still be understood by physicalism. Similarly, if there are seemingly “supernatural” phenomena that nonetheless transmit information to the “physical” universe, I see no reason to treat them separate, metaphysically. All is material, even Heaven, were it to exist (if even one bit of information were successfully transmitted between Heaven and Earth.) ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/72 "2004-11-13T21:59:21Z")
**SentientMeat** : > [@](#): > > I asked you to, at least, _provide an alternative_, so that we may each subjectively pick one which suited us, after subjecting each of them to the full arsenal of our most rigorous analytic tools. Well, to be precise, you stated that I was “…free to propose an alternative explanation”; an offer which I declined. I can’t really pick an explanation that suits me because, as I have stated, the most rigorous analyses I’ve read (or been able to muster myself) do not, IMO, even come close to meriting the term “explanation”. At best, they are very interesting, very incomplete _speculations_, including physicalism and the various WAGs of cognitive science. > [@](#): > > On the operating table itself, you formed no new memories. Unless you are tautologically defining awareness to be that which you remember, your awareness disappeared for that time. This seems a trivial semantic point to me really, but I’m happy to discuss it further if you think there’s something important I’m not getting. Hmmm… this makes me think that maybe there’s something important _I’m_ not getting. In the above quote, the second sentence doesn’t seem to follow from the first, unless I’m reading you wrong (a distinct possibility). How does “not forming new memories” equal the disappearance of awareness? Also, when you claim my subjective awareness has disappeared, how do you know? What evidence do you have of my subjective awareness (let alone it’s disappearance) besides my say so? ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/73 "2004-11-13T22:38:37Z")
(Sorry, guys, for this slight hijack…) **Liberal** > [@Liberal](#): > > Your charm is disarming. You know, you’ve got me thinking about myself. It looks to me from this experience and from many other experiences that I am a real sucker for reconciliation. But there is a certain necessary condition for a reconciliation to occur, and maybe, just maybe, in the absence of that condition, I create it. To get to the good part at the end. (Catch my drift?) So now you’ve got me thinking I’m crazy. Or at least suspecting it a little. And if my suspicions are correct, then I owe you an apology in at least this regard. But anyway, thanks for sticking with the conversation. -FrL- ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/74 "2004-11-13T23:19:28Z")
Quick comment, **Sentient**. > [@plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism](#): > > Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. **I don’t believe this is true.** That is where we differ. ‘Physical’ is not an ontological category, it is a category of concept. There is nothing to supervene on. It is possible we might align our opinions by considering “supervenient” properties to be my properties that “transcend the manifold of sensation” but I don’t think you are using “physical” like I am using “sensation”, soooo… More in a bit, I just woke up after my huge posts last night/this morning. Hey, I found an interesting article (haven’t finished reading it yet) in the context of this post talking about Putnam’s brand of realism–that might be like transcendental idealism. Maybe **Sentient** and I will finally reconcile our differences? 🆒 [http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/papers/internalrealism.html](http://www.trinity.edu/cbrown/papers/internalrealism.html) ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/75 "2004-11-15T11:48:22Z")
> [@](#): > > Maybe **Sentient** and I will finally reconcile our differences? Hold on, I’m still trying to ascertain what they are! That paper was certainly interesting, but I _still_ feel that you’re talking programming while I’m taking computer-manufacture. I apologise in advance for employing such a crude rhetorical device, **erl** , but I hope your eminently affable nature will indulge me. I am going to present some propositions, some of which we’ve had already, to which I will give the physicalist “guess” in an _Agree/Disagree_ tick. I would be grateful if you could do the same for the transcendental idealist (TI). (Remember, I am not asking for _certainty_ in any proposition - only for your current _guess_ given the alternatives.) [ul][li]For 13 billion years there were no minds. The universe _comprised **not-mind** _. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]For those 13 billion years, the universe **existed**. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Stellar nucleosynthesis, planet formation and abiogenesis happened in those mind-absent 13 billion years. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Minds appeared at some point in the subsequent 700 million years. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]A fertilised human ovum has no mind: the mind appears at some point in the subsequent months or years. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]The mind can be drastically affected by simple molecules and forces, and cognitive science and neuropsychology explain many aspects of the mind. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]It is not **logically necessary** to propose anything other than the self, _ie._ pure solipsism. I simply think that solipsism has extremely poor _explaining_ power. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Things other than me **exist**. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Things other than me are **real**. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]It is not **logically necessary** to propose anything other than _selves_ (_ie._ minds). _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Things other than minds **exist**. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/ul]Now, if I have read you correctly, the rhetorical gun to your head would have you _Agree_ing to all of these. Our difference would come here:[ul][\*] I simply think that minds have extremely poor _explaining_ power. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/li][li]Things other than minds are **real**. _Physicalist_: Agree. _TI: ?_[/ul]Again, I simply cannot understand how one could agree to those propositions regarding solipsism but not to the “collective solipsism” of the subsequent propositions. Be that as it may, I would like to explore this statement of yours:[/li] > [@](#): > > I do not believe that [everything supervenes on the physical.] And yet earlier you said that reality _could_ be constituted of the physical, and further: > [@](#): > > You use these base physical components, I use properties, and we both describe the same world. This sounds like a zoologist and a molecular biologist describing a lion, or a meteorologist and a thermodynamicist describing a cloud. (It distinctly _doesn’t_ sound like a mathematician, or an artist, or a cleric describing a lion or a cloud.) Are we _really_ so different? Fundamentally, are you suggesting that **the non-physical _emerges_ from the physical** over those 700 million years, or those months and years after conception? Please _please_ answer this in as simple and straightforward a manner as you can, and I will (pun unintended) let the matter drop. 🙂 I guess I’m happy enough to desist from badgering you further on the issue of the existence and/or reality of the physical, _ie._ things which are not themselves minds and have never “interacted” with a mind in any way (but which would definitionally _have to_ do so in order to be “known”). What I _do_ seek to avoid is, in debates regarding the scope of science or empirical investigation of the “supernatural”, immediate dissolution into _this_ debate we’re having now regarding the existence or reality of the physical. For example, the debate could proceed likewise: **SDMB Member/Guest OP:** Can God/ghosts/maths/beauty be scientifically proven? **SentientMeat:** Science is an epistemology which proceeds by testing hypotheses about physical entities. Unless God (or ghosts, or 1+1=2) has a **measureable physical effect** which can falsify a given hypothesis, they are outside the scope of scientific investigation. **Solipsist** : I am all that exists. You and the universe spring forth from my mind. The existence of the physical is unnecessary. I don’t know _why_ I imagined you writing what you did, and indeed I cannot propose an explanation for how I emerged from _not_- **me** , but I still choose that non-existent explanation over all others. **SentientMeat:** Thank you for your input, **Solipsist** , but would you mind if I continued as though reality comprised _more_ than just your mind, as the other 6 billion minds called “humans” agree? **Solipsist** : My mind wills you to continue. But you are making unnecessary metaphysical assumptions, and I reserve the right to call you on it whenever I please. **SentientMeat:** In that case, perhaps a different debate might be worthwhile. What does everyone think about the bombings in Iraq? **Solipsist:** Not so fast. Explosives are real only insofar as they interact with my mind… I hope you can see my dilemma: **Physics** studies the **physical**. If any discussion of science (or indeed _anything_) requires an extremely tortuous path in which I must define what a “physical entity” is to the satisfaction of both you and **Solipsist** , I must surely give up even before I begin. “Physical”, I suggest, is an extremely useful word for discriminating things like stars and lions and temporal lobes from things like God and pi and truth. In certain (rare) threads I might propose an explanation of how, say, “truth” could arise from a biological computer outputting a linguistic or mathematical sentence contingent on a test constructed in such a way as to produce binary results, one of which is labelled “true” (representing “_how the universe **is** _”, rather than “_how the universe **is not** ”_), and you could argue with me to our mutual enjoyment. But _any_ debate could become _this_ debate - we must surely talk about the ahem real world _sometime_. **other-wise** : Can you not even pick the _best_ explanation of a bad lot, given that none will _ever_ be perfect? As for the general anaesthesia point, I contend that under sufficiently deep anaesthesia one is **not aware**. I cannot _know_ this anymore than I can know that I am not in a simulated reality or that the sun will rise tomorrow: it is simply what the evidence suggests beyond all reasonable doubt. If you have evidence which introduces reasonable doubt, I’d be happy to discuss it further. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/76 "2004-11-15T12:20:48Z")
I am tired of defending myself against charges of solipsism. Nothing I have said remotely indicates that I believe I am the only one that exists, or that I am the source of all knowledge, or that I can only know about my own mind, or anything of the kind. Furthermore, I have not suggested that the universe is made of anything, so I don’t see why it matters that minds have not always existed. I very much wish to remain silent on the issue because, as I’ve said, I do not believe it is necessary in order to develop epistemology that answers the questions we agree on. I admit that in my last post I was a little short by suggesting “there is nothing to supervene on”, but the point is pretty plain. **You accept a mind-independent reality that you can know. I do not think we can know any mind-independent reality.** I feel this point has been plain. > [@](#): > > I simply think that minds have extremely poor explaining power. Compared to what?! Particles? > [@](#): > > Things other than minds are **real**. Stressing the word ‘real’ is not going to help us out of this position. I have to go out of town; I should be back on Wednesday. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/77 "2004-11-15T13:23:15Z")
**erl** , my friend, I can only apologise if I come across as a belligerent or boorish dimwit - your replies have been impeccably reasonable and erudite, as ever. I seek only to establish where we two differ, and where you differ from a solipsist - I did not mean to imply that you _are_ one, only to understand your arguments for _rejecting_ solipsism. Safe trip - don’t feel you must respond on Wednesday, we’ve all the time in the world to continue. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/78 "2004-11-15T14:25:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Can you not even pick the best explanation of a bad lot, given that none will ever be perfect? **Sentient** , I cannot pick “the best explanation of a bad lot” because as I _have clearly stated at least twice_, I have heard no argument that even comes close to meriting the term _explanation_. Even the “best” ones have glaring holes, are couched in terms that are ill-defined or have no agreed upon meaning, and WRT the _physical_ data, have contradictory evidence or no evidence at all. ( **SentientMeat** , I need to phrase this next statement so it’s clear and to the point… please understand it’s driven by curiosity, not snarkiness) Why the abhorrence of ambiguity? Personally, I would _love_ to have a explanation of subjective awareness, but again, I’ve seen nothing that would merit that level of confidence. Why the insistence on picking a winner when we we’re not even sure what the _game_ is yet? > [@](#): > > As for the general anaesthesia point, I contend that under sufficiently deep anaesthesia one is **not aware**. I cannot know this anymore than I can know that I am not in a simulated reality or that the sun will rise tomorrow: _it is simply what the evidence suggests beyond all reasonable doubt_. If you have evidence which introduces reasonable doubt, I’d be happy to discuss it further.**(italics mine)** The italicized portion of your quote is what boggles me. Thus far, the only “evidence” you cite is: _“General anesthesia can be so deep that there is almost zero brain function…”_. I cannot fathom how or why “brain function” is held to be identical to “subjective awareness”, except as an ad hoc justification of physicalism. Also, you’ve posed a number of questions to **erl** , but seem loathe to answer mine. My questions are not just debate-ammo; I asked them because I respect your analytic abilities and I truly cannot see the mistake in my reasoning: a mind cannot “disappear” or be “un-aware”, because under **erl** ’s definition, awareness is what the mind _is_. If ever, at some point, you were _not_ aware, how would you know? For as long as you can remember, you’ve always been aware. This _must_ be the case, for what would a memory of non-awareness be a memory _of_? And I still don’t get how “not forming new memories” equals the disappearance of awareness. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/79 "2004-11-15T15:16:22Z")
> [@](#): > > **otherwise** : Why the insistence on picking a winner when we we’re not even sure what the game is yet? Choosing an explanation for the reality we find ourselves in is the game. When I hypothesise a vastly complex biological computer which, after 700 million years of evolution, sorts sensory input into different levels of memory, moderated by chemical emotion and facilitated by language, I imagine that _being_ that computer would _necessarily_ give rise to some kind of process for which “subjective awareness” would be an accurate label. If you think that this kind of explanation in terms of senses, memory, language and cortices is _inadequate_, well, so be it: I am merely interested in your _alternative_ if we are not to descend into nihilistic refusal to believe or countenance _anything_. As for my evidence that the organism on the table is not _aware_ when under deep anaesthesia, it does not respond even to being sliced up like halal livestock, nor does it do _anything_ which I or any other organism does when _I_ am “aware”, and having experienced it myself there was a period of an hour which my awareness cannot account for. Again, we seem to me to be merely riding a semantical carousel. One twin is dosed with sevafluorane in nitrous oxide, the other isn’t. Minutes later at 1pm, whatever this “subjective awareness” is, one twin has it and the other hasn’t. Later again, both have it again. Do you say that the dosed twin _is_ aware at 1pm, or not? What is the _difference_ between the two twins at 1pm? ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934/80 "2004-11-15T16:03:47Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > **erl** , my friend, I can only apologise if I come across as a belligerent or boorish dimwit - your replies have been impeccably reasonable and erudite, as ever. Now there’s no need to _lie_. 😛 > [@](#): > > I seek only to establish where we two differ, and where you differ from a solipsist - I did not mean to imply that you _are_ one, only to understand your arguments for _rejecting_ solipsism. Ah, well, that is one place to start. I think, if you wish to outline our differences, you are right to ask questions as to how I think about some things; however, I think you are missing the mark as to what questions to ask, and alas, I am not sure what direction to point you in. One thing we have in common is that we both explain the same phenomena _similarly_. It will do us no good to understand the divide by asking questions like, “Did the universe exist before humans?” because we will both say yes. As ever, we need to find where, exactly, we differ–and that is, I think, in two regions. One is in the status of categories, properties, or “universals”; how do they relate to knowledge and experience, and what privileged status they have, if any. _In this thread_ I have chosen to approach them purely from an epistemological standpoint; that is, what we can know about them. I, like Hume and Kant (and many others), do not think we can know whether or not they correspond to some mind-independent reality. (My knowledge of Kant is, however, superficial at this point in my investigations.) The other place we probably differ is in what this means to me (us, should you agree). I find the epistemological considerations _overwhelming_ to the point that, absence any formulation to the contrary, we can safely discuss such things as only being mind-correlative. From here, you might be able to see that, for example, I would espouse a coherence theory of truth rather than a foundational one. In times of epistemological stress I revert to deflationary truth models where I feel human language operates best. 😉 I’m a flexible guy in that way. I put very little stress on “underlying” ontological concerns only because I have not _yet_ been introduced to them in such a way that shows any epistemological gains. You’ll note that it is in this way that I made my presence known to the thread: _what do we have to gain, epistemically, from asserting independent ontological categories?_ > [@](#): > > Safe trip - don’t feel you must respond on Wednesday, we’ve all the time in the world to continue. We’ll see if I can sneak a few more responses in before I leave. I do have little breaks here and there. If I come up with what I consider to be a concice formulation of my rejection of solipsism that is possibly more lucid than the private language argument (which is motivating, but not sufficient) I will definitely make an effort to poke in here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/justification-of-epistemology/273934.md?page=5)