myron_tho

Karma: −79

myron_tho Oct 29, 2012, 12:02 AM
−11 points
in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

What do you think we could use to make arguments, if not logic?

Why should consciousness or aesthetics reduce to arguments of any kind? Why should they be amenable to formalization in agreement with a rather bizarre epistemic position?

It doesn’t justify itself in terms of an undeniable logical proof but in terms of a process that cannot be escaped and which is intrinsic to every aspect of human behavior.

That is an unfortunately narrow encapsulation of human nature.

Fuck off.

You mad bro?

Maybe you should re-calculate your emotions for a more reasonable outcome.

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 11:37 PM
−5 points
in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

I think you might accept it but have hidden flaws within your reasoning process that lead you to misunderstand your own beliefs.

Prove it.

I think that if you truly rejected this position then you would be unable to make decisions or understand arguments in aesthetic or ethical or consciousness related domains.

This speaks more to the limitations of your ability to think outside your box than it does to problems with my, or anyone else’s, thinking. You’re so married to the Computer Metaphor that the possibility of thought and experience outside of it is simply inconceivable; of course this leaves you wide-open to charges of pseudo-science.

It has no ultimate foundation, but the foundation that it does have is intrinsic to the very mode of our existence and our values, and that makes it the best.

If it is intrinsic to our mode of existence then it does have a foundation, so which is it?

I still find it hilarious (and not in a good way) that you’re so insistent on treating your particular notion of values as justification for what is “best”; as if there is no such thing as a historical contingency or accident that might just call that into question on a deep level.

Even Kant figured this out in the 1700s. Score one more for philosophy.

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 11:33 PM
−5 points
in reply to: Vaniver’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

calculate beauty

This is why these arguments are not taken seriously.

Why should I (or anyone outside this circle) accept that this is a claim to be taken seriously? It sounds like you’ve found a fine metaphor that you believe can encompass any and all forms of mental activity and thus can “explain” anything put to it.

Freudian psychoanalysis can make the same claim to truth about the mind, of course, so you’ve offered up on rational case for why anyone should accept this as true.

See what happens when you ignore philosophy?

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 11:15 PM
−5 points
in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

I think that rationality encompasses all of those things entirely and don’t understand why you believe differently.

I don’t believe it because I am persuaded by arguments against treating consciousness and some features of consciousness as rational (that “useless” Continental philosophy as well as related arguments by John Searle, if you’d like a look).

This epistemic condition is inevitable, because you ARE a thinking subject. If you prioritize a different epistemic condition above this one I don’t understand how you can go about living your life.

It clearly isn’t inevitable if I am a thinking subject and do not accept that everything in reality boils down to formal rationality, which I do not.

There’s no logical reason to give rationality privileged grounds. But I think that people should choose epistemic systems which connect to their own understanding of the way reality works. I think this on a value-level basis, not a logical metaphysical one.

I have no issue with this reasoning (although I obviously disagree with it). The issue arises from bold claims to capital-T Truth status, which are built on flimsy grounds.

I don’t believe that aesthetics is meaningless. I don’t know why you think rationality believes that.

Because aesthetic enjoyment is non-rational.

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 10:58 PM
−1 points
in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

There is no logical way that I can prove to you that reality exists. If you want one, I am sorry. Nonetheless, my senses tell me that reality exists and that logic works and that my values are good. I accept those senses because the alternative is to embrace groundlessness and the total destruction of meaning.

I have no exceptional quarrel with scientific realism nor the existence of an objective and mind-independent reality. I am however skeptical, firstly, of the idea that restricting inquiry into that domain to “rationality” is needlessly constraining, and secondly that privileging “objective” modes of inquiry leaves out very important matters—like consciousness, ethics, and aesthetics, to name a few.

You do not show how other philosophies can solve the problems I outline. You have no offense against rationalism. Rationalism has offense against other philosophies because rationalism works. Even if rationalism doesn’t work, it appears to, and is the inescapable condition of my life. I can’t help but think in terms of logic and induction and empiricism, and I refuse to embrace any abstract form of truth without a tangible connection to my own internal understanding of the universe.

Indeed, I do not show how other philosophies may solve the problems because I question their status as problems at all. To treat everything as a “problem” that can and must be solved by Mighty Intellect is to implicitly endorse a particular epistemic, if not metaphysical, position—a position that takes for granted a particular status of thinking subjects as they relate to mind-independent reality and other beings—and I simply choose not to endorse that position, or more to the point, not to endorse it as uncritically as the locals here are wont to do.

To repeat my earlier point: why should rationalism be given privileged grounds? The no-miracles argument is about the only thing you’ve got to hang a hat on, and it is trivial to point out that there are many instances just in science alone where we don’t have knowledge and may never be able to acquire it. This is without even getting into arguments about why “progress” and “doing things” should be the ultimate measuring stick of usefulness, let alone truth.

The choice isn’t between one philosophy and many, which are equally justified, but between one philosophy which is my own and the one that I can’t help but believe, and others which are so abstract and deconnected from my own experiences and understanding that they fail to provide any sort of value in my life.

I can’t speak for everyone of course but I find immense value in aesthetics and in other non-rational modes of human experience, and equally, I find myself wary of philosophies that exclude such values and treat them as meaningless.

In reality all this article has done is show that philosophy is far from dead; LessWrong has simply chosen to adopt a particularly limiting form of it and decry everything outside that sphere.

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 10:14 PM
−3 points
in reply to: chaosmosis’s comment on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline

The brute fact of our existence is that some things work and others don’t, that some things seem right and others seem wrong. If someone is insistent upon denying reality, then that’s their affair, but they should know that there are consequences to this rejection. I consider the rejection of reality to be viceful, because those who do so reject their own current values and intutions in favor of an embrace of an abstract form of nihilism. Nihilism is much easier than acknowledging reality, but it’s also much worse, in my opinion.

This paragraph moves from (rightly) noting that we cannot establish certainty to, in the very next sentence, a confident assertion of truth without so much as an attempt at justification. Repeating unjustified claims ad nauseam is, despite the LessWrong belief that simply repeating a claim is enough to make it so, only illustrates why this project fails: the lack of justification (minus the invocation of Putnam’s “no miracles” argument, which is not as ironclad as you believe) is a very real problem for the brash and sweeping generalization that “philosophy is diseased and useless”.

As an aside, I find it interesting that you speak to me of “nihilism” given the argument for reductionism of the worst sort. Talk about “values devaluing themselves”; your own position is incompatible with value and meaning!

The lack of respect for philosophy here is telling; the consensus arguments here aren’t even consistent, let alone capable of making informed claims to truth. You cannot simply put forth a metaphysical position—and you are most certainly doing so despite the unwillingness to acknowledge your beliefs—and then handwave it away as “well we think it works so we’re right”.

The fact that it does work, or that it seems to work, is enough for me.

Works for what? In trivial cases of “common sense” where induction is more or less “right”? For some instances of medicine, electronics, other assorted applications of technology? I’ll grant you that too.

As a totalizing and unassailable account of humanity, the natural world, all possible knowledge? Absolutely not. Given that the consensus around here is that life and mind are reducible to rationality and technology metaphors, I hardly find this position surprising, although it is all but indefensible by your own stated positions.

myron_tho Oct 28, 2012, 8:57 PM
−11 points
on: Philosophy: A Diseased Discipline
I can see why philosophy is so bothersome to people who believe that rationality can and should be the only path to knowledge, and the equally troubled belief that reductionism applies to any science outside of physics.

So I have to ask: on what grounds do you rationally justify any of your own claims to Truth and Right? It certainly isn’t through empiricism, despite the vile form of scientistic reductionism that is evangelized around these parts. There is a form of reasoning at work behind these claims, of course, but without a clear philosophical grounding you’re left with a series of implicit, half-formed assumptions that you simply hold up as self-evident (they are not, which is why we have philosophy in the first place).

You will earn +5 points if you can justify any of your presuppositions regarding the superiority of “objectivity” and “rationality” as modes of inquiry without an appeal to metaphysics and the “magical categories” that your rationality-seeking brains reject a priori.

myron_tho Oct 14, 2012, 7:17 AM
0 points
on: An Intuitive Explanation of Solomonoff Induction
I’m interested to know how this methodology is supposed to diverge from existing methods of science in any useful way. We’ve had a hypothesis-driven science since (at least) Popper and this particular approach seems to offer no practical alternative; at best we’re substituting one preferred type of non-empirical criteria for selection (in this case, a presumed ability to calculate he metaprobabilities that we’d have to assume for establishing likelihoods of given hypotheses, a matter which is itself controversial) for the currently-existing criteria, along the lines of elegance, simplicity, and related aesthetic criteria which currently encompass inference to the best explanation.

With regards to the above metaprobabilities, how are we to justify these assumptions with regards to epistemic uncertainty? Popper and Hume have already shown us that, for all intents and purposes, we can’t justify induction and Solomonoff is no realizable way around that. I don’t see how substituting one mode of inference, based on a set of assumptions that are given no justification whatsoever, provides a superior or even a reasonably-supportable alternative to current methods of science.

This is undoubtedly a useful heuristic for establishing confirmation of what has been observed, but then again so is the research structure we already possess; to claim that such an unsupported and unjustified methodology as outlined in this article is in any way establishing “truth” above and beyond current methods of confirming hypotheses is to overstate the case to such a degree that it cannot be taken seriously.