That is, we’re going around in circles. Suppose an agent that believes we should consider set W of worlds as possible and construct a decision theory based on this. Then this agent will evaluate agents who adopt W in order to develop their decision theory as making an optimal decision and they will evaluate agents who adopt a different set of worlds that leads to a different decision theory as making a sub-optimal decision,
Why? If agent B is has a different state of knowledge to A, B’s set of (apparently) possible worlds will be different, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse. If B has more knowledge than A, it’s ideas of possibility will be correspondingly better. In common sense terms, I should accept what an expert tells me about what is and isn’t possible. An agent should not regard itself as having the best decision theory because it should not regard itself as omniscient.
You might think that the circularity is a problem, but circular epistemology turns out to be viable (see Eliezer’s Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom).
No, the usual objections remain. If I say “you owe me a £1000 because you owe me £1000”, you would not accept that as validly justified.
Edit. IE , there are an infinite number of circular arguments, most if which you still reject.
It’s not clear whether Eliezer’s Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom is supposed to be a defense of circular justification, and it’s not clear how it works if it is. One could reconstruct the argument as “we have knowledge, and it’s not foundationally justified, so it’s circularly justified”, but that depends on our having validly justified knowledge, and on circular justification being the only alternative to foundational justification. And on circular justification actually being feasible.
And yet, despite epistemic circularity being our epistemic reality up to our circularly reasoned limited ability to assess that this is in fact the situation we find ourselves in, we manage to reason anyway.
We can only short circuit the various circularities, and directly demonstrate our ability to reason successfully, by using paragmatism and prediction...and that is only applicable to reasoning in some domains. The areas where they don’t work coincide with philosophical concerns.
The areas where they don’t work coincide with philosophical concerns.
As always, this is an interesting topic, because many of the philosophical concerns I can think of here end up being questions about metaphysics (i.e. what is the nature of stuff that lies beyond your epistemic ability to resolve the question) and I think there’s some reason perspective by which you might say that metaphysics “doesn’t matter”, i.e. it’s answers to questions that, while interesting, knowing the answer to them doesn’t change what actions you take in the world because we already can know enough to figure out practical answers that serve our within-world purposes.
It all depends on what you value. If you personally value knowing what things really are, then adopting instrumentalism or pragmatism will lose you some potential value.
I argue that for this it doesn’t, i.e. my case for how the problem of the criterion gets resolved is that you can’t help but be pragmatic because that’s a description of how epistemology is physically instantiated in our universe. The only thing you might lose value on is if you have some desire to resolve metaphysical questions and you stop short of resolving them then of course you will fail to receive the full value possible because you didn’t get the answer. I argue that getting such answers is impossible, but nonetheless trying to find them may be worthwhile to someone.
Why? If agent B is has a different state of knowledge to A, B’s set of (apparently) possible worlds will be different, but that doesn’t mean it’s worse. If B has more knowledge than A, it’s ideas of possibility will be correspondingly better. In common sense terms, I should accept what an expert tells me about what is and isn’t possible. An agent should not regard itself as having the best decision theory because it should not regard itself as omniscient.
No, the usual objections remain. If I say “you owe me a £1000 because you owe me £1000”, you would not accept that as validly justified.
Edit. IE , there are an infinite number of circular arguments, most if which you still reject.
It’s not clear whether Eliezer’s Where Recursive Justification Hits Bottom is supposed to be a defense of circular justification, and it’s not clear how it works if it is. One could reconstruct the argument as “we have knowledge, and it’s not foundationally justified, so it’s circularly justified”, but that depends on our having validly justified knowledge, and on circular justification being the only alternative to foundational justification. And on circular justification actually being feasible.
And yet, despite epistemic circularity being our epistemic reality up to our circularly reasoned limited ability to assess that this is in fact the situation we find ourselves in, we manage to reason anyway.
We can only short circuit the various circularities, and directly demonstrate our ability to reason successfully, by using paragmatism and prediction...and that is only applicable to reasoning in some domains. The areas where they don’t work coincide with philosophical concerns.
As always, this is an interesting topic, because many of the philosophical concerns I can think of here end up being questions about metaphysics (i.e. what is the nature of stuff that lies beyond your epistemic ability to resolve the question) and I think there’s some reason perspective by which you might say that metaphysics “doesn’t matter”, i.e. it’s answers to questions that, while interesting, knowing the answer to them doesn’t change what actions you take in the world because we already can know enough to figure out practical answers that serve our within-world purposes.
It all depends on what you value. If you personally value knowing what things really are, then adopting instrumentalism or pragmatism will lose you some potential value.
I argue that for this it doesn’t, i.e. my case for how the problem of the criterion gets resolved is that you can’t help but be pragmatic because that’s a description of how epistemology is physically instantiated in our universe. The only thing you might lose value on is if you have some desire to resolve metaphysical questions and you stop short of resolving them then of course you will fail to receive the full value possible because you didn’t get the answer. I argue that getting such answers is impossible, but nonetheless trying to find them may be worthwhile to someone.
Ok,but meta level arguments ar still subject to the problen of the criterion.