Right; the point of these thought experiments is to elicit intuitions about non-substantive questions, like what “know” means.
Ahem! Those questions are highly substantive. They are just not very empirical. Confusing verifiability and meaningfullness is a Very Bad Habit of Thought picked up from LW, IMNSHO.
You’ll have to explain your claim that “What does ‘know’ mean?” is a substantive rather than confused question (rational-tabooing “know” does appear to solve all the problems), because I’m quite sure I’m not the only one for whom this is not obvious or who has evidence saying otherwise.
Confusing verifiability and meaningfullness is a Very Bad Habit of Thought picked up from LW, IMNSHO.
Errh, non-sequitur much? I don’t see where there’s a relevant example of a confusion between verifiability and meaningfulness in this conversation.
I do agree that LWers are more likely to pick up this bad habit, and that it is not beneficial compared to many other, much healthier possible habits of thought. It just doesn’t seem directly relevant to mention that here.
Here’s an idea: Let’s taboo ‘substantive’. I suspect that by ‘substantive’ some of you mean ‘important,’ while others of you mean ‘concerning the extra-mental world’ or ‘carving Nature at its joints.’
So: Are we arguing about whether our criteria for saying people know or fail to know things matter? Or are we aguing about whether there’s a completely human-independent ‘fact of the matter’ about what the word ‘know’ does, or ought, mean?
Obviously purely conceptual questions can nevertheless be very humanly important; they can be conceptually deep. (Even completely arbitrary issues of rule-picking and definition-choosing can be extremely important. For instance, it matters a lot that we all agree on whether to drive on the right or left side of a given road, even though it’s fundamentally arbitrary which side we all agree on.) And, equally obviously, most joint-carving questions are not humanly important at all.
Ahem! Those questions are highly substantive. They are just not very empirical. Confusing verifiability and meaningfullness is a Very Bad Habit of Thought picked up from LW, IMNSHO.
I thought that was my catchphrase.
You’ll have to explain your claim that “What does ‘know’ mean?” is a substantive rather than confused question (rational-tabooing “know” does appear to solve all the problems), because I’m quite sure I’m not the only one for whom this is not obvious or who has evidence saying otherwise.
Errh, non-sequitur much? I don’t see where there’s a relevant example of a confusion between verifiability and meaningfulness in this conversation.
I do agree that LWers are more likely to pick up this bad habit, and that it is not beneficial compared to many other, much healthier possible habits of thought. It just doesn’t seem directly relevant to mention that here.
Here’s an idea: Let’s taboo ‘substantive’. I suspect that by ‘substantive’ some of you mean ‘important,’ while others of you mean ‘concerning the extra-mental world’ or ‘carving Nature at its joints.’
So: Are we arguing about whether our criteria for saying people know or fail to know things matter? Or are we aguing about whether there’s a completely human-independent ‘fact of the matter’ about what the word ‘know’ does, or ought, mean?
Obviously purely conceptual questions can nevertheless be very humanly important; they can be conceptually deep. (Even completely arbitrary issues of rule-picking and definition-choosing can be extremely important. For instance, it matters a lot that we all agree on whether to drive on the right or left side of a given road, even though it’s fundamentally arbitrary which side we all agree on.) And, equally obviously, most joint-carving questions are not humanly important at all.