What is the strongest argument you know for antirealism?
From Aella; the external world is a meaningless hypothesis; given a set of experiences and a consistent set of expectations about what form those experiences will take in the future, positing an external world doesn’t add any additional information. That is, the only thing that “external world” would add would be an expectation of a particular kind of consistency to those experiences; you can simply assume the consistency, and then the external world adds no additional informational content or predictive capacity.
What is the strongest argument against moral realism?
Just as an external world changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience, moral realism, the claim that morality exists as a natural feature of the external world, changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience.
If you think nothing is “valuable in itself” / “objectively valuable”, why do you think so?
Consider a proposal to replace all the air around you with something valuable. Consider a proposal to replace some percentage of the air around you with something valuable.
The ideal proposal replaces neither all of the air, nor none of the air. In the limit of all of the air being replaced, the air achieves infinite relative value. In the limit of none of the air being replaced, the air has, under normal circumstances, no value.
Consider the value of a vacuum tube; vacuum, the absence of anything, has particular value in that case.
Which is all to say—value is strictly relative, and it is unfixed. The case of the vacuum tube demonstrates that there are cases where having nothing at all in a given region is more valuable than having something at all there. If the vacuum tube is part of a mechanical contraption that is keeping you alive, there is nothing you want in that vacuum tube, more than vacuum itself; thus, there is nothing that has, in that specific situation, objective value, given that the only sense by which we can make sense of objective value is a comparison to nothing, and in that particular case nothing is more valuable than the something.
How do you know that disinterested (not game-theoretic or instrumental) altruism is irrational / doesn’t make any sense?
Because you’ve tautologically defined it to be so when you said the altruism is disinterested. If I have no interest in a thing, it makes no sense to behave as if I have an interest in that thing. Any sense in which it would make sense for me to have an interest in a thing, is a claim that I have an interest in that thing.
From Aella; the external world is a meaningless hypothesis; given a set of experiences and a consistent set of expectations about what form those experiences will take in the future, positing an external world doesn’t add any additional information. That is, the only thing that “external world” would add would be an expectation of a particular kind of consistency to those experiences; you can simply assume the consistency, and then the external world adds no additional informational content or predictive capacity.
You can assume inexplicable consistency, but assuming a world is assuming explicable consistency.
Just as an external world changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience, moral realism, the claim that morality exists as a natural feature of the external world, changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience
Neither does subjective morality, except by changing your actions. But moral realism would change your actions too, if true and compelling. Ethics is supposed to relate to behaviour. You can make it look irrelevant by portraying people as purely passive entities that do nothing but attempt predict ther experiences, but the premise is clearly false.
You can assume inexplicable consistency, but assuming a world is assuming explicable consistency.
That is an additional assumption, not the same assumption. Additionally, the claim that the world’s consistency is explicable is just another assumption; you can’t explain why the external world exists, nor why it is consistent.
If you think “The universe exists” is a simpler explanation than “The universe exists because God created it”, because the former assumes only the existence of the universe, and the latter assumes an additional unprovable entity, then you should notice that “My experiences exist” is a simpler explanation than “My experiences exist because there is an external world I interact with”. In both cases the latter is an unprovable statement that only increases the complexity of the necessary assumptions.
Neither does subjective morality, except by changing your actions. But moral realism would change your actions too, if true and compelling. Ethics is supposed to relate to behaviour. You can make it look irrelevant by portraying people as purely passive entities that do nothing but attempt predict ther experiences, but the premise is clearly false.
“Compelling” is doing all the work there, and doesn’t require that the ethics objectively exist in the external world.
That is an additional assumption, not the same assumption
Yes. It’s an additional assumption that leads to greater explanatory power. If it had no such advantage, you should not make it, but since it does, it is not obviously ruled out by parsimony.
Additionally, the claim that the world’s consistency is explicable is just another assumption; you can’t explain why the external world exists, nor why it is consistent.
Even if you can’t deduce the amount of inexplicability to zero, you can reduce it.
My experiences exist” is a simpler explanation than “My experiences exist because there is an external world I interact with”.
Explanation of what? The rival accounts don’t do the same amount of work as each other.
“Compelling” is doing all the work there, and doesn’t require that the ethics objectively exist in the external world
I wasnt arguing for moral realism, I was arguing against ignoring agency.
Yes. It’s an additional assumption that leads to greater explanatory power. If it had no such advantage, you should not make it, but since it does, it is not obviously ruled out by parsimony.
It doesn’t add any explanatory power; it only seems to, because you’ve attached all your explanations to that external world. They don’t actually change when you get rid of the external world.
Suppose you live in a simulation. Do any observations become invalid? Are you going to stop expecting the things you have labeled apples to fall in concordance with the inverse-square law?
Suppose the external world isn’t real. Do any observations become invalid? Are you going to stop expecting the things you have labeled apples to fall in concordance with the inverse-square law?
The “external world” hypothesis adds no information to any of your models of your experiences; it predicts nothing.
I wasnt arguing for moral realism, I was arguing against ignoring agency.
It doesn’t add any explanatory power; it only seems to, because you’ve attached all your explanations to that external world. They don’t actually change when you get rid of the external world
The value of the external world theory is that it explains why science works at all, not that it explains anything in particular.
Suppose you live in a simulation. Do any observations become invalid?
Who says that’s all I care about? Everyone knows that it’s a short step from instrumentalism to anti realism, but not everyone is starting at instrumentalism.
I wasnt arguing for moral realism, I was arguing against ignoring agency.
The value of the external world theory is that it explains why science works at all, not that it explains anything in particular.
No—the validity of inductive logic explains why science works at all. There’s no prior reason to expect inductive logic to be valid in an arbitrary external world.
Note the importance of “external”—if we omit external, then the word “world” just refers to the common factor of our experiences whatever that is, and we don’t actually disagree.
That is, anti-realism holds that nothing provably exists outside the mind. The argument comes down to “A world which is internal to our mind, and a world that is external to our mind, is not differentiable”. For what reason would you expect the internality or externality of the world to have a bearing on whether or not inductive logic applies?
Suppose the entire universe boils down to a mathematical equation; everything is one equation, maybe a fractal, which from a point of simplicity gives rise to complexity. What difference do we expect to encounter if that mathematical equation exists inside of our mind, as opposed to outside of it? If the universe is the expression of that equation, and the equation is compatible with induction, then we should expect induction to work without regard to whether the universe is internal or external to our mind.
That’s a very weak form of anti realism. If 0 and 1 aren’t probabilities, nothing is absolute proveable.
Sure. Is realism the claim that reality probably exists, or definitely exists, however?
What do “inside” and “outside” mean?
In a sense, it’s a statement of dependence. If our minds are inside the world, then if the world stops existing, so do our minds. If the world is inside our mind, then if our mind stops existing, then so does the world.
In another sense, it’s a statement of correspondence. If our minds are inside the world, then the map-territory distinction is ontologically important (note that the mind-territory distinction is itself an anti-realist position, as it argues that there is no direct correspondence between the world and the contents of our mind). If the world is inside our mind, then the map-territory distinction is indistinguishable from any other state of confusion.
. Is realism the claim that reality probably exists, or definitely exists, however?
There are multiple versions of both realism and anti realism. You can even make them overlap.
In another sense, it’s a statement of correspondence. If our minds are inside the world, then the map-territory distinction is ontologically important (note that the mind-territory distinction is itself an anti-realist position, as it argues that there is no direct correspondence between the world and the contents of our mind). If the world is inside our mind, then the map-territory distinction is indistinguishable from any other state of confusion
But you seem to favour a rather specific alternative involving fractals and stuff. Why wouldn’t that be empty? Isn’t evidence for realism, evidence against anti realism, and vice versa?
If making predictions really is the only game in town, then your alternative physics needs to make predictions. Can it?
Well, if my crackpot physics is right, it actually kind of reduces the probability I’d assign to the world I inhabit being “real”. Seriously, the ideas aren’t complicated, somebody else really should have noticed them by now.
But sure it makes predictions. There should be a repulsive force which can be detected when the distance between two objects is somewhere between the radius of the solar system and the radius of the smallest dwarf galaxy. I’d guess somewhere in the vicinity of 10^12 meters.
Also electrical field polarity should invert somewhere between 1 and 10^8 meters. That is, if you have an electrical field, and you measure it to be positive or negative, if you move some distance away, it should invert to be negative or positive.
Are these predictions helpful? Dunno.
Either way, however, it doesn’t really say anything about whether the world is internal or external.
From Aella; the external world is a meaningless hypothesis; given a set of experiences and a consistent set of expectations about what form those experiences will take in the future, positing an external world doesn’t add any additional information. That is, the only thing that “external world” would add would be an expectation of a particular kind of consistency to those experiences; you can simply assume the consistency, and then the external world adds no additional informational content or predictive capacity.
Just as an external world changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience, moral realism, the claim that morality exists as a natural feature of the external world, changes nothing about your expectations of what you will experience.
Consider a proposal to replace all the air around you with something valuable. Consider a proposal to replace some percentage of the air around you with something valuable.
The ideal proposal replaces neither all of the air, nor none of the air. In the limit of all of the air being replaced, the air achieves infinite relative value. In the limit of none of the air being replaced, the air has, under normal circumstances, no value.
Consider the value of a vacuum tube; vacuum, the absence of anything, has particular value in that case.
Which is all to say—value is strictly relative, and it is unfixed. The case of the vacuum tube demonstrates that there are cases where having nothing at all in a given region is more valuable than having something at all there. If the vacuum tube is part of a mechanical contraption that is keeping you alive, there is nothing you want in that vacuum tube, more than vacuum itself; thus, there is nothing that has, in that specific situation, objective value, given that the only sense by which we can make sense of objective value is a comparison to nothing, and in that particular case nothing is more valuable than the something.
Because you’ve tautologically defined it to be so when you said the altruism is disinterested. If I have no interest in a thing, it makes no sense to behave as if I have an interest in that thing. Any sense in which it would make sense for me to have an interest in a thing, is a claim that I have an interest in that thing.
You can assume inexplicable consistency, but assuming a world is assuming explicable consistency.
Neither does subjective morality, except by changing your actions. But moral realism would change your actions too, if true and compelling. Ethics is supposed to relate to behaviour. You can make it look irrelevant by portraying people as purely passive entities that do nothing but attempt predict ther experiences, but the premise is clearly false.
That is an additional assumption, not the same assumption. Additionally, the claim that the world’s consistency is explicable is just another assumption; you can’t explain why the external world exists, nor why it is consistent.
If you think “The universe exists” is a simpler explanation than “The universe exists because God created it”, because the former assumes only the existence of the universe, and the latter assumes an additional unprovable entity, then you should notice that “My experiences exist” is a simpler explanation than “My experiences exist because there is an external world I interact with”. In both cases the latter is an unprovable statement that only increases the complexity of the necessary assumptions.
“Compelling” is doing all the work there, and doesn’t require that the ethics objectively exist in the external world.
Yes. It’s an additional assumption that leads to greater explanatory power. If it had no such advantage, you should not make it, but since it does, it is not obviously ruled out by parsimony.
Even if you can’t deduce the amount of inexplicability to zero, you can reduce it.
Explanation of what? The rival accounts don’t do the same amount of work as each other.
I wasnt arguing for moral realism, I was arguing against ignoring agency.
It doesn’t add any explanatory power; it only seems to, because you’ve attached all your explanations to that external world. They don’t actually change when you get rid of the external world.
Suppose you live in a simulation. Do any observations become invalid? Are you going to stop expecting the things you have labeled apples to fall in concordance with the inverse-square law?
Suppose the external world isn’t real. Do any observations become invalid? Are you going to stop expecting the things you have labeled apples to fall in concordance with the inverse-square law?
The “external world” hypothesis adds no information to any of your models of your experiences; it predicts nothing.
Agency isn’t relevant?
The value of the external world theory is that it explains why science works at all, not that it explains anything in particular.
Who says that’s all I care about? Everyone knows that it’s a short step from instrumentalism to anti realism, but not everyone is starting at instrumentalism.
Arguing against ignoring agency is two negatives.
No—the validity of inductive logic explains why science works at all. There’s no prior reason to expect inductive logic to be valid in an arbitrary external world.
There’s no reason to expect inductive logic to work in no world.
Note the importance of “external”—if we omit external, then the word “world” just refers to the common factor of our experiences whatever that is, and we don’t actually disagree.
That is, anti-realism holds that nothing provably exists outside the mind. The argument comes down to “A world which is internal to our mind, and a world that is external to our mind, is not differentiable”. For what reason would you expect the internality or externality of the world to have a bearing on whether or not inductive logic applies?
Suppose the entire universe boils down to a mathematical equation; everything is one equation, maybe a fractal, which from a point of simplicity gives rise to complexity. What difference do we expect to encounter if that mathematical equation exists inside of our mind, as opposed to outside of it? If the universe is the expression of that equation, and the equation is compatible with induction, then we should expect induction to work without regard to whether the universe is internal or external to our mind.
That’s a very weak form of anti realism. If 0 and 1 aren’t probabilities, nothing is absolute proveable.
What do “inside” and “outside” mean?
Sure. Is realism the claim that reality probably exists, or definitely exists, however?
In a sense, it’s a statement of dependence. If our minds are inside the world, then if the world stops existing, so do our minds. If the world is inside our mind, then if our mind stops existing, then so does the world.
In another sense, it’s a statement of correspondence. If our minds are inside the world, then the map-territory distinction is ontologically important (note that the mind-territory distinction is itself an anti-realist position, as it argues that there is no direct correspondence between the world and the contents of our mind). If the world is inside our mind, then the map-territory distinction is indistinguishable from any other state of confusion.
There are multiple versions of both realism and anti realism. You can even make them overlap.
Does any of that make an observable difference.
Not really, no. And that’s sort of the point; the claim that the world is external is basically an empty claim.
But you seem to favour a rather specific alternative involving fractals and stuff. Why wouldn’t that be empty? Isn’t evidence for realism, evidence against anti realism, and vice versa?
If making predictions really is the only game in town, then your alternative physics needs to make predictions. Can it?
Well, if my crackpot physics is right, it actually kind of reduces the probability I’d assign to the world I inhabit being “real”. Seriously, the ideas aren’t complicated, somebody else really should have noticed them by now.
But sure it makes predictions. There should be a repulsive force which can be detected when the distance between two objects is somewhere between the radius of the solar system and the radius of the smallest dwarf galaxy. I’d guess somewhere in the vicinity of 10^12 meters.
Also electrical field polarity should invert somewhere between 1 and 10^8 meters. That is, if you have an electrical field, and you measure it to be positive or negative, if you move some distance away, it should invert to be negative or positive.
Are these predictions helpful? Dunno.
Either way, however, it doesn’t really say anything about whether the world is internal or external.