I think we have very different goals, and that the Popperian ones are better.
There is more to epistemology, and to philosophy, than math.
I’d say you are practically trying to eliminate all philosophy. And that saying you have an epistemology at all is very misleading, because epistemology is a philosophical field.
I think we have very different goals, and that the Popperian ones are better.
So could you be more precise in how you think the goals differ and why the Popperian goals are better?
There is more to epistemology, and to philosophy, than math.
I ’d say you are practically trying to eliminate all philosophy. And that saying you have an epistemology at all is very misleading, because epistemology is a philosophical field.
Huh? Do you mean that because the Bayesians have made precise mathematical claims it somehow ceases to be an epistemological system? What does that even mean? I don’t incidentally know what it means to eliminate philosophy, but areas can certainly be carved off from philosophy into other branches. Indeed, this is generally what happens. Philosophy is the big grab bag of things that we don’t have a very good precise feel for. As we get more precise understanding things break off. For example, biology broke off from philosophy (when it broke off isn’t clear, but certainly by 1900 it was a separate field) with the philosophers now only focusing on the remaining tough issues like how to define “species”. Similarly, economics broke off. Again, where it broke off is tough (that’s why Bentham and Adam Smith are often both classified as philosophers). A recent break off has been psychology, which some might argue is still in the process. One thing that most people would still see as clearly in the philosophy realm is moral reasoning. Indeed, some would argue that the ultimate goal of philosophy is to eliminate itself.
If it helps at all, in claiming that the Bayesians lack an epistemology or are not trying to philosophy it might help to taboo both epistemology and philosophy and restate those statements. What do those claims mean in a precise way?
Different people are telling me different things. I have been told some very strong instrumentalist and anti-philosophy arguments in my discussions here. I don’t know just how representative of all Bayesians that is.
For example, moral philosophy has been trashed by everyone who spoke to me about it so far. I get told its meaningless, or that Bayesian epistemology cannot create moral knowledge. No one has yet been like “oh my god, epistemology should be able to create moral and other philosophical (non-empirical, non-observational) knowledge! Bayesian stuff is wrong since it can’t!” Rather, people don’t seem to mind, and will argue at length that e.g. explanatory knowledge and non-empirical knowledge don’t exist or are worthless and prediction is everything.
By “philosophy” I mean things which can’t be experimentally/empirically tested (as opposed to “science” by which I mean things that can be). So for philosophy, no observations are directly relevant.
Make sense? Where do you stand on these issues?
And the way I think Popperian goals are better is that they value explanations which help us understand the world instead of being instrumentalist, positivist, anti-philosophical, or anything like that.
For example, moral philosophy has been trashed by everyone who spoke to me about it so far.
Have you never dealt with people who aren’t moral realists before?
And the way I think Popperian goals are better is that they value explanations which help us understand the world instead of being instrumentalist, positivist, anti-philosophical, or anything like that.
You are going to have to expand on this. I’m still confused by what you mean by anti-philosophical. I also don’t see why “instrumentalist” is a negative. The Bayesian doesn’t have a problem with trying to understand the world: the way they measure that understanding is how well they can predict things. And Bayesianism is not the same as positivist by most definitions of that term, so how are you defining an approach as positivist and why do you consider that to be a bad thing?
In order for any philosophy to be valid, the human brain must be able to evaluate deductive arguments; they are a huge component of philosophy, with many often being needed to argue a single idea. Wondering what to do in case these are wrong is not only unnecessary but impossible.
I don’t have any criticism of deductive logic itself. But I do have criticisms of some of the premises i expect you to use. For example, they won’t all be deductively argued for themselves. That raises the problem of: how will you sort out good ideas from bad ideas for use as premises? That gets into various proposed solutions to that problem, such as induction or Popperian epistemology. But if you get into that, right in the premises of your supposed proof, then it won’t be much of a proof because so much substantive content in the premises will be non-deductive.
Do you agree with the premises I have used in the discussion of Dutch books and VNM-utility so far? There it is basically “a decision precess that we actually care about must have the following properties” and that’s it. I did skim over inferring probabilities from Dutch books and VNM axiom 3 and there may be some hidden premises in the former.
Do you agree with the premises I have used in the discussion of Dutch books and VNM-utility so far?
I don’t think so. You said we have to assign probabilities to avoid getting Dutch Booked. I want an example of that. I got an example where probabilities weren’t mentioned, which did not convince me they were needed.
I think we have very different goals, and that the Popperian ones are better.
There is more to epistemology, and to philosophy, than math.
I’d say you are practically trying to eliminate all philosophy. And that saying you have an epistemology at all is very misleading, because epistemology is a philosophical field.
So could you be more precise in how you think the goals differ and why the Popperian goals are better?
Huh? Do you mean that because the Bayesians have made precise mathematical claims it somehow ceases to be an epistemological system? What does that even mean? I don’t incidentally know what it means to eliminate philosophy, but areas can certainly be carved off from philosophy into other branches. Indeed, this is generally what happens. Philosophy is the big grab bag of things that we don’t have a very good precise feel for. As we get more precise understanding things break off. For example, biology broke off from philosophy (when it broke off isn’t clear, but certainly by 1900 it was a separate field) with the philosophers now only focusing on the remaining tough issues like how to define “species”. Similarly, economics broke off. Again, where it broke off is tough (that’s why Bentham and Adam Smith are often both classified as philosophers). A recent break off has been psychology, which some might argue is still in the process. One thing that most people would still see as clearly in the philosophy realm is moral reasoning. Indeed, some would argue that the ultimate goal of philosophy is to eliminate itself.
If it helps at all, in claiming that the Bayesians lack an epistemology or are not trying to philosophy it might help to taboo both epistemology and philosophy and restate those statements. What do those claims mean in a precise way?
Different people are telling me different things. I have been told some very strong instrumentalist and anti-philosophy arguments in my discussions here. I don’t know just how representative of all Bayesians that is.
For example, moral philosophy has been trashed by everyone who spoke to me about it so far. I get told its meaningless, or that Bayesian epistemology cannot create moral knowledge. No one has yet been like “oh my god, epistemology should be able to create moral and other philosophical (non-empirical, non-observational) knowledge! Bayesian stuff is wrong since it can’t!” Rather, people don’t seem to mind, and will argue at length that e.g. explanatory knowledge and non-empirical knowledge don’t exist or are worthless and prediction is everything.
By “philosophy” I mean things which can’t be experimentally/empirically tested (as opposed to “science” by which I mean things that can be). So for philosophy, no observations are directly relevant.
Make sense? Where do you stand on these issues?
And the way I think Popperian goals are better is that they value explanations which help us understand the world instead of being instrumentalist, positivist, anti-philosophical, or anything like that.
Have you never dealt with people who aren’t moral realists before?
You are going to have to expand on this. I’m still confused by what you mean by anti-philosophical. I also don’t see why “instrumentalist” is a negative. The Bayesian doesn’t have a problem with trying to understand the world: the way they measure that understanding is how well they can predict things. And Bayesianism is not the same as positivist by most definitions of that term, so how are you defining an approach as positivist and why do you consider that to be a bad thing?
In order for any philosophy to be valid, the human brain must be able to evaluate deductive arguments; they are a huge component of philosophy, with many often being needed to argue a single idea. Wondering what to do in case these are wrong is not only unnecessary but impossible.
I don’t have any criticism of deductive logic itself. But I do have criticisms of some of the premises i expect you to use. For example, they won’t all be deductively argued for themselves. That raises the problem of: how will you sort out good ideas from bad ideas for use as premises? That gets into various proposed solutions to that problem, such as induction or Popperian epistemology. But if you get into that, right in the premises of your supposed proof, then it won’t be much of a proof because so much substantive content in the premises will be non-deductive.
Do you agree with the premises I have used in the discussion of Dutch books and VNM-utility so far? There it is basically “a decision precess that we actually care about must have the following properties” and that’s it. I did skim over inferring probabilities from Dutch books and VNM axiom 3 and there may be some hidden premises in the former.
I don’t think so. You said we have to assign probabilities to avoid getting Dutch Booked. I want an example of that. I got an example where probabilities weren’t mentioned, which did not convince me they were needed.