Ok. I don’t think 1 is a Bayesian issue by itself. That’s a general rationality issue. (Speaking as a non-Bayesian fellow-traveler of the Bayesians.)
2,3, and 4 seems roughly accurate. Whether 3 is correct depends a lot on how you unpack occurrence. A Bayesian is perfectly ok with the central limit theorem and applying it to a coin. This is a statement about occurrences. A Bayesian agrees with the frequentist that if you flip a fair coin the ratio of heads to tails should approach 1 as the number of flips goes to infinity. So what do you mean by occurrences here that Bayesians can’t talk about them?
But there then seems to be a total disconnect between those statements and your later claims and even going back and reading your earlier remarks doesn’t give any illuminating connection.
No matter how many times a coin has come up heads or tails, that information has no bearing on what position the coin under my hand is actually in. You can make statements about what you believe it will be; but that is not the same as saying what it is.
I can’t parse this in any way that makes sense. Are you simply objecting to the fact that 0 and 1 are not allowed probabilities in a Bayesian framework? If not, what does this mean?
I’m saying that the Bayesian framework is restricted to probabilities, and as such is entirely unsuited to non-probabilistic matters. Such as the number of fingers I am currently seeing on my right hand as I type this. For you, it’s a question of what you predict to be true. For me, it’s a specific manifested instance, and as such is not subject to any form of probabilistic assessments.
Note that this is not a claim that we do not share a single physical reality, but rather a question of the ability of either of us to make valid claims of truth.
I’m slowly beginning to understand your thought process. The Bayesian approach treats the number of fingers you currently see on you right hand as a probabilistic matter. The reason it does this, and the reason this method is preferable to those which treat the number of fingers on your hand as not subject to probabilistic assessments is that you can be wrong about the number of fingers on your hand. To demonstrate this I could describe any number of complex scenarios in which you have been tricked about the number of fingers you have. Or I could just point you to real instances of people being wrong about the number of limbs they possess or people who outright deny their disability.
Like anything else a “specific manifested instance” is an entity which we are justified in believing so long as it reliably explains and predicts our sensory impressions.
The reason it does this, and the reason this method is preferable to those which treat the number of fingers on your hand as not subject to probabilistic assessments is that you can be wrong about the number of fingers on your hand.
True, but irrelevant. It would have helped if you had continued to read further; you would have seen me explain to JoshuaZ that he had made exactly the same error that you just made in understanding what I just said.
The specific manifested instance is not the number of fingers but the number of fingers I am currently seeing. It is not, fundamentally speaking, possible for me to be mistaken about the latter (caveat: this only applies to ongoing perception, as opposed to recollections of perception).
Like anything else a “specific manifested instance” is an entity which we are justified in believing so long as it reliably explains and predicts our sensory impressions.
It is not proper to speak of beliefs about specific manifested instances when making assertions about what those instantiations actually are.
The statement “I observe X” is unequivocably absolutely true. Any conclusions derived from it however do not inherit this property.
Similarly, I want to note that you are close to making a categorical error regarding the relevance of explanatory power and predictions to this discussion. Those are very important elements for the formation of rational beliefs; but they are irrelevant to justified truth claims.
The specific manifested instance is not the number of fingers but the number of fingers I am currently seeing. It is not, fundamentally speaking, possible for me to be mistaken about the latter (caveat: this only applies to ongoing perception, as opposed to recollections of perception).
Perceptions do not have propositional content- speaking about their truth or falsity is nonsense. Beliefs about perceptions like “the number of fingers I am currently seeing is five” do and can correspondingly be false. They are of course rarely false but humans routinely miscount things. The closer a belief gets to merely expressing a perception the less there is that can be meaningfully said about it’s truth value.
Similarly, I want to note that you are close to making a categorical error regarding the relevance of explanatory power and predictions to this discussion. Those are very important elements for the formation of rational beliefs; but they are irrelevant to justified truth claims.
Perceptions do not have propositional content- speaking about their truth or falsity is nonsense.
Unless you are operating within the naive realist framework.
Beliefs about perceptions like “the number of fingers I am currently seeing is five” do and can correspondingly be false.
You’ve fallen into that same error I originally warned about. You are conflating beliefs about the nature of the perception with beliefs about the content of the perception.
The closer a belief gets to merely expressing a perception the less there is that can be meaningfully said about it’s truth value.
True but irrelevant to this discussion. I never claimed that there were absolute truths accessible to an arbitrary person which were of significant informational value. I only asserted that they do exist.
A rational belief is a justified truth claim.
Then I guess my epistemology doesn’t exist. I must have just been trolling this entire time. I couldn’t possibly believe that this is statement is committing a categorical error.
Are you willing to accept the notion that I am conveying to you a framework that you are currently unfamiliar with that makes statements about how truth, belief, and knowledge operate which you currently disagree with? If yes, then why do you actively resist comprehending my statements in this manner? What are you hoping to achieve?
Then I guess my epistemology doesn’t exist. I must have just been trolling this entire time. I couldn’t possibly believe that this is statement is committing a categorical error.
Are you willing to accept the notion that I am conveying to you a framework that you are currently unfamiliar with that makes statements about how truth, belief, and knowledge operate which you currently disagree with? If yes, then why do you actively resist comprehending my statements in this manner? What are you hoping to achieve?
What are you talking about! We’re talking about epistemology! If you want to demonstrate why a calling a rational belief a justified truth claim is a category error then do so. But please stop condescendingly repeating it. I actively “resist comprehending your statements”?! You can’t just assert things that don’t make sense in another person’s framework and expect them to not say “No those things are the same”.
In any case, if it is a common position in the epistemological literature then I suspect I am familiar with it and that you are simply really bad at explaining what it is. If it is your original epistemological framework then I suspect it will be a bad one (nothing personal, just my experience with the reference class).
Unless you are operating within the naive realist framework.
Is that your position?
You’ve fallen into that same error I originally warned about. You are conflating beliefs about the nature of the perception with beliefs about the content of the perception.
You keep doing this. You keep using words to make distinctions as if it were obvious what distinction is implied. I can assure you nearly no one here has any idea what you mean by the difference between the nature of the perception and the content of the perception. Please stop acting like we’re stupid because you aren’t explaining yourself.
I’m saying that the Bayesian framework is restricted to probabilities, and as such is entirely unsuited to non-probabilistic matters. Such as the number of fingers I am currently seeing on my right hand as I type this. For you, it’s a question of what you predict to be true. For me, it’s a specific manifested instance, and as such is not subject to any form of probabilistic assessments.
Actually, that’s a probabilistic assertion that you are seeing n fingers for whatever n you choose. You could for example be hallucinating. Or could miscount how many fingers you have. Humans aren’t used to thinking that way, and it generally helps for practical purposes not to think this way. But presumably if five minutes from now a person in a white lab coat walked into your room and explained that you had been tested with a new reversible neurological procedure that specifically alters how many fingers people think they have on their hands and makes them forget that they had any such procedure, you wouldn’t assign zero chance it is a prank.
Note by the way there are stroke victims who assert contrary to all evidence that they can move a paralyzed limb. How certain are you that you aren’t a victim of such a stroke? Is your ability to move your arms a specific manifested instance? Are you sure of that? If that case is different than the finger example how is it different?
Actually, that’s a probabilistic assertion that you are seeing n fingers for whatever n you choose. You could for example be hallucinating. Or could miscount how many fingers you have.
If I am hallucinating, I am still seeing what I am seeing. If I miscount, I still see what I see. There is nothing probabilistic about the exact condition of what it is that I am seeing. You can, if you wish to eschew naive realism, make fundamental assertions about the necessarily inductive nature of all empirical observations—but then, there’s a reason why I phrased my statement the way I did: not “I can see how many fingers I really have” but “I know how many fingers I am currently seeing”.
Are you able to properly parse the difference between these two, or do I need to go further in depth about this?
(The remainder of your post expounded further along the lines of an explanation into your response, which itself was based on an eroneous reading of what I had written. As such I am disregarding it.)
Ok. I don’t think 1 is a Bayesian issue by itself. That’s a general rationality issue. (Speaking as a non-Bayesian fellow-traveler of the Bayesians.)
2,3, and 4 seems roughly accurate. Whether 3 is correct depends a lot on how you unpack occurrence. A Bayesian is perfectly ok with the central limit theorem and applying it to a coin. This is a statement about occurrences. A Bayesian agrees with the frequentist that if you flip a fair coin the ratio of heads to tails should approach 1 as the number of flips goes to infinity. So what do you mean by occurrences here that Bayesians can’t talk about them?
But there then seems to be a total disconnect between those statements and your later claims and even going back and reading your earlier remarks doesn’t give any illuminating connection.
I can’t parse this in any way that makes sense. Are you simply objecting to the fact that 0 and 1 are not allowed probabilities in a Bayesian framework? If not, what does this mean?
I’m saying that the Bayesian framework is restricted to probabilities, and as such is entirely unsuited to non-probabilistic matters. Such as the number of fingers I am currently seeing on my right hand as I type this. For you, it’s a question of what you predict to be true. For me, it’s a specific manifested instance, and as such is not subject to any form of probabilistic assessments.
Note that this is not a claim that we do not share a single physical reality, but rather a question of the ability of either of us to make valid claims of truth.
I’m slowly beginning to understand your thought process. The Bayesian approach treats the number of fingers you currently see on you right hand as a probabilistic matter. The reason it does this, and the reason this method is preferable to those which treat the number of fingers on your hand as not subject to probabilistic assessments is that you can be wrong about the number of fingers on your hand. To demonstrate this I could describe any number of complex scenarios in which you have been tricked about the number of fingers you have. Or I could just point you to real instances of people being wrong about the number of limbs they possess or people who outright deny their disability.
Like anything else a “specific manifested instance” is an entity which we are justified in believing so long as it reliably explains and predicts our sensory impressions.
True, but irrelevant. It would have helped if you had continued to read further; you would have seen me explain to JoshuaZ that he had made exactly the same error that you just made in understanding what I just said.
The specific manifested instance is not the number of fingers but the number of fingers I am currently seeing. It is not, fundamentally speaking, possible for me to be mistaken about the latter (caveat: this only applies to ongoing perception, as opposed to recollections of perception).
It is not proper to speak of beliefs about specific manifested instances when making assertions about what those instantiations actually are.
The statement “I observe X” is unequivocably absolutely true. Any conclusions derived from it however do not inherit this property.
Similarly, I want to note that you are close to making a categorical error regarding the relevance of explanatory power and predictions to this discussion. Those are very important elements for the formation of rational beliefs; but they are irrelevant to justified truth claims.
Perceptions do not have propositional content- speaking about their truth or falsity is nonsense. Beliefs about perceptions like “the number of fingers I am currently seeing is five” do and can correspondingly be false. They are of course rarely false but humans routinely miscount things. The closer a belief gets to merely expressing a perception the less there is that can be meaningfully said about it’s truth value.
A rational belief is a justified truth claim.
Unless you are operating within the naive realist framework.
You’ve fallen into that same error I originally warned about. You are conflating beliefs about the nature of the perception with beliefs about the content of the perception.
True but irrelevant to this discussion. I never claimed that there were absolute truths accessible to an arbitrary person which were of significant informational value. I only asserted that they do exist.
Then I guess my epistemology doesn’t exist. I must have just been trolling this entire time. I couldn’t possibly believe that this is statement is committing a categorical error.
Are you willing to accept the notion that I am conveying to you a framework that you are currently unfamiliar with that makes statements about how truth, belief, and knowledge operate which you currently disagree with? If yes, then why do you actively resist comprehending my statements in this manner? What are you hoping to achieve?
What are you talking about! We’re talking about epistemology! If you want to demonstrate why a calling a rational belief a justified truth claim is a category error then do so. But please stop condescendingly repeating it. I actively “resist comprehending your statements”?! You can’t just assert things that don’t make sense in another person’s framework and expect them to not say “No those things are the same”.
In any case, if it is a common position in the epistemological literature then I suspect I am familiar with it and that you are simply really bad at explaining what it is. If it is your original epistemological framework then I suspect it will be a bad one (nothing personal, just my experience with the reference class).
Is that your position?
You keep doing this. You keep using words to make distinctions as if it were obvious what distinction is implied. I can assure you nearly no one here has any idea what you mean by the difference between the nature of the perception and the content of the perception. Please stop acting like we’re stupid because you aren’t explaining yourself.
Actually, that’s a probabilistic assertion that you are seeing n fingers for whatever n you choose. You could for example be hallucinating. Or could miscount how many fingers you have. Humans aren’t used to thinking that way, and it generally helps for practical purposes not to think this way. But presumably if five minutes from now a person in a white lab coat walked into your room and explained that you had been tested with a new reversible neurological procedure that specifically alters how many fingers people think they have on their hands and makes them forget that they had any such procedure, you wouldn’t assign zero chance it is a prank.
Note by the way there are stroke victims who assert contrary to all evidence that they can move a paralyzed limb. How certain are you that you aren’t a victim of such a stroke? Is your ability to move your arms a specific manifested instance? Are you sure of that? If that case is different than the finger example how is it different?
If I am hallucinating, I am still seeing what I am seeing. If I miscount, I still see what I see. There is nothing probabilistic about the exact condition of what it is that I am seeing. You can, if you wish to eschew naive realism, make fundamental assertions about the necessarily inductive nature of all empirical observations—but then, there’s a reason why I phrased my statement the way I did: not “I can see how many fingers I really have” but “I know how many fingers I am currently seeing”.
Are you able to properly parse the difference between these two, or do I need to go further in depth about this?
(The remainder of your post expounded further along the lines of an explanation into your response, which itself was based on an eroneous reading of what I had written. As such I am disregarding it.)