I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing all that special about double crux if you’re used to having discussions with people on the order of being professional philosophers; double crux is just a fancy name for what I would have previously called arguing in good faith. It is special though in that many people are neither naturally shaped such that they naturally disagree with others that way or have no been trained in the method, so giving it a special name and teaching it as a technique seems worthwhile since the alternative is you know there is a “right” way to argue that converges towards truth and a “wrong” way that doesn’t and teaching people to do the move where they find the beliefs their ideas hinge on and analyze that hinge in a way that might alter it and thus the entire belief network is hard if you can’t precisely describe how to do it.
I feel quite confident that you already know the skill being called double crux based on the conversations I’ve seen you participate in LW, though I also understand how it can look like there is some “magic” in the technique you’re not getting because it feels pretty magical if you learn it late in life and are then like “oh, that’s why all my disagreements never go anywhere”.
Something I’m unsure about (not having spent extensive time among professional philosophers) is whether they specifically do the thing where you try to change your own mind (contrasted with debate, where you try to change each other’s mind, good-faith-or-no). I’m not sure this is officially what doublecrux is supposed to be, but it’s how I’ve personally been conceiving of “Strong Form Doublecrux”.
I have some skepticism because it seems like philosophy as a field hasn’t converged on positions much so they can’t be that good at it.
I think philosophers who are good at philosophy do change their own minds and do seek out ways to change their own minds to match what they know and reason (they, if nothing else, strive for reflective equilibrium). This is of course not what everyone does, and academic philosophy is, in my opinion, suffering from the disease of scholasticism, but I do think philosophers on the whole are good at the weaker form of double crux that takes two people and that they remain open to having their mind changed by the other person.
Philosophy mmight not have the goal of converging. It can be more valuable to generate all the possible options and to preserve solution prototypes. If everybody was using the same framework you would have effectively cut the growth space for new frameworks to zero. I philosopher is much happier that you have thought throught the problem rather than that you have come to the right conclusion.
Part of the reason why phisophy makes use of doublke cruching is precisely the presence of multiple frameworks. What passes as proof in one framework does not in the other. Another is accceptance of interest in forms of arguments whose strength is unknown. It’s perfectly reasonable to explore what kind of arguments we can make if we accept ad hominem as a valid argument even if we don’t know whether that is a good standard or even if we know that is a bad standard. Thus reading a philosphical literature it’s likely that somebody in the discussion shares your starting point which makes their processing relevant to your private one. And if you change principles and lose interest in one author it’s likely that another one is closer to your new position.
One relevant option is that philosophers think in terms of worldviews. Since single discusser have relatively random viewpoints what is socially established on what kinds of arguments fly with what kinds of groups. thus a working argument is one that is compliant to the groups axioms.
I’m not necessarily arguing doublecrux is better than whatever philosophers are doing for the purposes philosophers are doing it. Just, it seems (probably?) like it’s actually different to me.
[note that in the next few posts in this sequence I’ll be going into how to use doublecrux when in different worldviews, based on my experience so far. Which Vanilla Doublecrux doesn’t obviously handle, but I think the extension is relatively straightforward, and also important]
I think it’s worth pointing out that there’s nothing all that special about double crux if you’re used to having discussions with people on the order of being professional philosophers; double crux is just a fancy name for what I would have previously called arguing in good faith. It is special though in that many people are neither naturally shaped such that they naturally disagree with others that way or have no been trained in the method, so giving it a special name and teaching it as a technique seems worthwhile since the alternative is you know there is a “right” way to argue that converges towards truth and a “wrong” way that doesn’t and teaching people to do the move where they find the beliefs their ideas hinge on and analyze that hinge in a way that might alter it and thus the entire belief network is hard if you can’t precisely describe how to do it.
I feel quite confident that you already know the skill being called double crux based on the conversations I’ve seen you participate in LW, though I also understand how it can look like there is some “magic” in the technique you’re not getting because it feels pretty magical if you learn it late in life and are then like “oh, that’s why all my disagreements never go anywhere”.
Something I’m unsure about (not having spent extensive time among professional philosophers) is whether they specifically do the thing where you try to change your own mind (contrasted with debate, where you try to change each other’s mind, good-faith-or-no). I’m not sure this is officially what doublecrux is supposed to be, but it’s how I’ve personally been conceiving of “Strong Form Doublecrux”.
I have some skepticism because it seems like philosophy as a field hasn’t converged on positions much so they can’t be that good at it.
I think philosophers who are good at philosophy do change their own minds and do seek out ways to change their own minds to match what they know and reason (they, if nothing else, strive for reflective equilibrium). This is of course not what everyone does, and academic philosophy is, in my opinion, suffering from the disease of scholasticism, but I do think philosophers on the whole are good at the weaker form of double crux that takes two people and that they remain open to having their mind changed by the other person.
What percentage of professors of philosophy do you consider to be good at philosophy?
Philosophy mmight not have the goal of converging. It can be more valuable to generate all the possible options and to preserve solution prototypes. If everybody was using the same framework you would have effectively cut the growth space for new frameworks to zero. I philosopher is much happier that you have thought throught the problem rather than that you have come to the right conclusion.
Part of the reason why phisophy makes use of doublke cruching is precisely the presence of multiple frameworks. What passes as proof in one framework does not in the other. Another is accceptance of interest in forms of arguments whose strength is unknown. It’s perfectly reasonable to explore what kind of arguments we can make if we accept ad hominem as a valid argument even if we don’t know whether that is a good standard or even if we know that is a bad standard. Thus reading a philosphical literature it’s likely that somebody in the discussion shares your starting point which makes their processing relevant to your private one. And if you change principles and lose interest in one author it’s likely that another one is closer to your new position.
One relevant option is that philosophers think in terms of worldviews. Since single discusser have relatively random viewpoints what is socially established on what kinds of arguments fly with what kinds of groups. thus a working argument is one that is compliant to the groups axioms.
I’m not necessarily arguing doublecrux is better than whatever philosophers are doing for the purposes philosophers are doing it. Just, it seems (probably?) like it’s actually different to me.
[note that in the next few posts in this sequence I’ll be going into how to use doublecrux when in different worldviews, based on my experience so far. Which Vanilla Doublecrux doesn’t obviously handle, but I think the extension is relatively straightforward, and also important]