“Self-evident” in the sense that they don’t need any starting assumptions whatsoever.
Have you ever seen such a proposition? I don’t think that I have. Not a single sage of recorded history has been able to come up with something whose self-evidence convinced everyone. And if someone is unconvinced, how shall you convince them, if it’s “self-evident”?
The point I am making repeatedly because others don’t seem to get it is that if there is no way to justify the premise that the world exists without resort to assumptions, then we’re no better than the people who believe in God on faith.
What is this? If you have any unjustified belief, you are identical with someone who pays no heed to rationality at all?
And what does this have to do with probability in particular? You originally asked about probability, so I recommended works on the foundations. Even if none of them persuade you that they are a sound basis, at least you will be informed about the arguments and conceptual structures that people have created, at which point you may be able to productively search for something better.
But now you have broadened this to a requirement for a refutation of the Evil Demon/Matrix scenario. I see no possibility of any such refutation, because sufficient powers can always be attributed to the Demon/Skynet/Lizard Overlords/NSA to explain away any putative refutation. If there is a refutation, you will have to find it yourself.
I mentioned John C. Wright earlier, and there is more to say. He finds the ultimate foundation in the uncaused cause that is the Originator of all causation, the Good that needs no justification because it is the Originator of all that is good, proves their existence by the argument against infinite regress, and recognises them in the world as the Christian God, specifically as preached by the Roman Catholic Church. You could work out from that what his self-evident truths might be, for him to build these arguments on, but his actual self-evident truths are the religious visions that he had. He was never argued into any of this by the arguments that he presents (and neither am I, an atheist).
Self-evidence is a subjective property of a belief. The experience of self-evidence is the absence of experience of justification for the thing believed.
I explained my context was the refutation of philosophical scepticism in general- what I was after should have been clear.
1- You assume that the criterion of self-evidence should be based on being universally convincing. Why should this necessarily be so? Self-evidence comes when the contrary proposition simply doesn’t make sense, as it were (simplistic example: free will). The question is how to deal with that with regards to demonstrating the validity of probability/induction.
2- Because the fundamental starting assumption is unjustified, we are no more justified in believing we know the truth than the people who believe in God on faith.
Self-evidence comes when the contrary proposition simply doesn’t make sense, as it were (simplistic example: free will).
“Free will” is a concept, not a proposition. What is the proposition about free will that you are claiming to be self-evident, and its opposite “not making sense”?
The concept of free will doesn’t make sense, so the proposition of its truth turns out to be self-evidently wrong after a certain amont of thought. It’s still self-evident because it requires no assumptions.
I don’t think “the concept of free will” refers to any particular concept. Different people use that phrase to mean different things, some of which are coherent, some of which are not. I don’t think it’s useful to discuss without a precise definition, and I suspect given a definition, it won’t be necessary.
So he does (though not at the very start of what I linked to). My mistake. Nevertheless, Dennett does take it seriously, as do various other philosophers, as indeed does Eliezer right here. So on what grounds do you dismiss it as “self-evidently” wrong? Merely an inability to say why it seems wrong to you?
Not so self-evident, then? Sam Harris puts out a bunch of arguments, and Dennett puts out a bunch taking a different view, and lots of other philosophers argue these and other points of view, and you agree with Harris, but what role is “self-evidence” playing here? It looks like any other sort of argument, where people put forth evidence of the ordinary sort, and deductions, and intuition pumps, and so on, and because it’s philosophy, no-one is persuaded by anything (except for graduate students adopting the dominant views of wherever they’re studying).
You’ve read Harris, and it seems have had some sort of conversion experience. That is, you have acquired a belief without being able to access the reasons that you hold it, and take this to be a fact about the belief, its “self-evidence”. But lots of other people—Dennett, for example—have read Harris and had a completely different experience, and find his view not self-evident at all.
It is self-evident in that it follows logically without any sort of assumptions whatsoever, merely by examining the concept of free will. Perhaps you mean something different.
The concept and the thing conceived of are two different things. Sunrises did not cease when heliocentrism began. That someone conceptualises something in a way that can easily be knocked down does not mean that there was nothing there. Dennett makes this point in his review.
Then Sam Harris has written an entire book to demonstrate that when a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around to hear it, it doesn’t make any sound.
Have you ever seen such a proposition? I don’t think that I have. Not a single sage of recorded history has been able to come up with something whose self-evidence convinced everyone. And if someone is unconvinced, how shall you convince them, if it’s “self-evident”?
What is this? If you have any unjustified belief, you are identical with someone who pays no heed to rationality at all?
And what does this have to do with probability in particular? You originally asked about probability, so I recommended works on the foundations. Even if none of them persuade you that they are a sound basis, at least you will be informed about the arguments and conceptual structures that people have created, at which point you may be able to productively search for something better.
But now you have broadened this to a requirement for a refutation of the Evil Demon/Matrix scenario. I see no possibility of any such refutation, because sufficient powers can always be attributed to the Demon/Skynet/Lizard Overlords/NSA to explain away any putative refutation. If there is a refutation, you will have to find it yourself.
I mentioned John C. Wright earlier, and there is more to say. He finds the ultimate foundation in the uncaused cause that is the Originator of all causation, the Good that needs no justification because it is the Originator of all that is good, proves their existence by the argument against infinite regress, and recognises them in the world as the Christian God, specifically as preached by the Roman Catholic Church. You could work out from that what his self-evident truths might be, for him to build these arguments on, but his actual self-evident truths are the religious visions that he had. He was never argued into any of this by the arguments that he presents (and neither am I, an atheist).
Self-evidence is a subjective property of a belief. The experience of self-evidence is the absence of experience of justification for the thing believed.
I explained my context was the refutation of philosophical scepticism in general- what I was after should have been clear.
1- You assume that the criterion of self-evidence should be based on being universally convincing. Why should this necessarily be so? Self-evidence comes when the contrary proposition simply doesn’t make sense, as it were (simplistic example: free will). The question is how to deal with that with regards to demonstrating the validity of probability/induction. 2- Because the fundamental starting assumption is unjustified, we are no more justified in believing we know the truth than the people who believe in God on faith.
“Free will” is a concept, not a proposition. What is the proposition about free will that you are claiming to be self-evident, and its opposite “not making sense”?
The concept of free will doesn’t make sense, so the proposition of its truth turns out to be self-evidently wrong after a certain amont of thought. It’s still self-evident because it requires no assumptions.
I don’t think “the concept of free will” refers to any particular concept. Different people use that phrase to mean different things, some of which are coherent, some of which are not. I don’t think it’s useful to discuss without a precise definition, and I suspect given a definition, it won’t be necessary.
It does make sense to Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, who have both given it more than “a certain amount of thought”.
I think that’s all that need be said here.
Not true- Sam Harris concludes it’s incoherent. That’s at the VERY START of what you linked to.
So he does (though not at the very start of what I linked to). My mistake. Nevertheless, Dennett does take it seriously, as do various other philosophers, as indeed does Eliezer right here. So on what grounds do you dismiss it as “self-evidently” wrong? Merely an inability to say why it seems wrong to you?
Sam Harris, for a start, gives very good reasons. Maybe you should read him- he puts it better.
Not so self-evident, then? Sam Harris puts out a bunch of arguments, and Dennett puts out a bunch taking a different view, and lots of other philosophers argue these and other points of view, and you agree with Harris, but what role is “self-evidence” playing here? It looks like any other sort of argument, where people put forth evidence of the ordinary sort, and deductions, and intuition pumps, and so on, and because it’s philosophy, no-one is persuaded by anything (except for graduate students adopting the dominant views of wherever they’re studying).
You’ve read Harris, and it seems have had some sort of conversion experience. That is, you have acquired a belief without being able to access the reasons that you hold it, and take this to be a fact about the belief, its “self-evidence”. But lots of other people—Dennett, for example—have read Harris and had a completely different experience, and find his view not self-evident at all.
It is self-evident in that it follows logically without any sort of assumptions whatsoever, merely by examining the concept of free will. Perhaps you mean something different.
The concept and the thing conceived of are two different things. Sunrises did not cease when heliocentrism began. That someone conceptualises something in a way that can easily be knocked down does not mean that there was nothing there. Dennett makes this point in his review.
Then you mean a different thing by “free will” then me- I was referring to free will in the popular conception.
Then Sam Harris has written an entire book to demonstrate that when a tree falls in the forest and no-one is around to hear it, it doesn’t make any sound.