Using personal preference or personal intuitions as priors instead of some objective measure along the lines of Solomonoff Induction
You can't do Solomonoff induction in real life. That by itself seems to be a good reason to look for something else.
As to objective/subjective priors, note that the classic Bayesian understanding of probability is as "subjective belief" which is what drives frequentists hopping mad. If you accept this concept of probability then there shouldn't be any problem with using subjective (="personal") priors.
But this just seems totally ludicrous to me. If we trust cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and if those fields give us perfectly plausible reasons for why we might intuitively feel this way / talk this way, even if it didn't reflect the truth, then what could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway and using them to support some grand metaphysical theory?
My intuitions haven't killed me yet. The human race pretty much runs on intuitions, and it's still around.
I will be goddamned if I'll give absolute trust to cognitive science and evolutionary psychology considering the problems science has with lack of replication. Also, science has a tendency to Find More Stuff, which would suggest that one should have a little humility about building very much metaphysics on science.
Doing science (so far at least) requires a pretty naive approach. Scientists behave as though they think they make choices and they believe that they can read their instruments accurately.
All this being said, I wouldn't mind if there was more investigation into people's intuitions about how the world and people work.
My intuitions haven't killed me yet. The human race pretty much runs on intuitions, and it's still around
The anti-intuition crowd need to demonstrate that they are no using any intuitions at all.
Not looking at the world in a probabilistic way
Philosophy has long had the hope that eventually, somehow, it would find a set of elegant axioms from which the rest would regrow, like what happened in math. Several branches of philosophy think they did collapse it to a set of elegant axioms (though upon inspection, they actually let the complexity leak back in elsewhere). I think there's a fear, not entirely unjustified, that if you let probabilistic reasoning into two many places then this closes off the possibility of reaching an axiomatization or of ever reaching firm conclusions about interesting questions. Today, it's been long enough to know that the quest for axiomatization was doomed from the start - or at least, the quest for an axiomatization that wasn't itself a probabilistic thing. So allowing probabilistic reasoning shouldn't seem like a big scary concession anymore, but on the other hand, it's still difficult and most philosophers aren't dual-classed into maths.
Using personal preference or personal intuitions as priors instead of some objective measure along the lines of Solomonoff Induction
Unfortunately, Solomonoff Induction falls off the table as soon as the questions get interesting. As a next-best-thing, intuition is not all that bad. I'd criticize a lot of philosophy, not for grounding ideas in intuition, but for treating intuition as a black box rather than as something which can be studied and debugged and improved. Most LW-style philosophy does bottom out at intuition somewhere, it just does a better-than-usual job of patching over intuition's weaknesses.
Moral realism
When you're getting started on learning game theory, there is a point where it looks like it might be building towards an elegant theory of morality, something that would reproduce our moral intuitions and being a great Schelling point and ground morality really well. Then it runs into roadblocks and doesn't get there, so we're stuck with a hodgepodge metaethics where morality depends on an aggregation of many peoples' preferences but there are different ways to aggregate one persons' preferences and different ways to aggregate groups' preferences and some preferences don't count and it's all very unsatisfying. But if you haven't hit that wall yet or you're very optimistic or you're limiting yourself to sufficiently simple trolley problems, then moral realism seems like a thing.
Mathematical Platonism
This is a trap door into silly arguments about subtleties of the word "exist" which are cleanly and completely separated from all predictions. But if you want to engage with ideas like a mathematical multiverse, you do end up needing to think about subtleties of the word "exist", and math ends up looking more fundamental than physics.
Libertarian free will (I'm looking for arguments other than those from religion)
I'm not sure what libertarian free will is in relation to the rest of the ideas about free will, but I find thinking about free will gets a lot easier if you first acknowledge that our intuitions are guided by the idea of ordinary freedom (ie, whether there's a human around with a whip), and then go a step further and just think about ordinary freedom instead.
The view that there actually exist abstract "tables" and "chairs" and not just particles arranged into those forms
These ideas come back in slightly different forms when you start considering mathematical multiverses and low-fidelity simulations of the universe. For example, if you accept the simulation argument, and further suppose that the simulation would not be full-fidelity but would be designed to make this fact hard to notice, then you get the conclusion that certain abstract objects exist and their constituent particles don't.
The existence of non-physical minds (I'm looking for arguments other than the argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness)
The idea of minds as cognitive algorithms leads to something sort-of like this; in that framing, minds are physical objects with a dual existence in platonic math-realm that diverges if physics causes a deviation from the algorithm.
Using personal preference or personal intuitions as priors instead of some objective measure along the lines of Solomonoff Induction
Solomonoff Induction is uncomputable, and even if you use a computable approximation, you can't calculate it because no-one's written a program to do that AFAIK.
So if you are trying to work out which hypothesis is simpler, how do you do that? You use your personal intuition.
Mathematical Platonism
I actually think this is plausible. The argument goes: can you imagine 2+2 equalling 3? Maybe this is a personal intuition thing, but it does feel like maths is discovered not invented. If I decided that the derivative of sin(X) is x^5, and used this maths to design an airplane, it wouldn't fly. The maths exists whether I want it to or not. In physics, the equation for the electron produced two results, and one was thrown away until the positron was discovered - the existence of the positron, which is a real, physical thing, could have been predicted by the mathematics.
This is the 'unreasonable effectiveness or mathematics'. If maths describes physics perfectly, and the electrons exist, then why don't the equations for the electrons exist to the same extent?
Now, if you buy this argument, and if chairs, tables and morality can be described in terms of maths, then maybe the platonic form of a chair exists, and maybe moral realism exists? Admittedly, this generalisation is a lot more dubious, for one thing there are probably a very large number of moral systems and chairs which can be mathematically described, so this argument is less 'there exists a perfect platonic form of a chair' and more 'there are an infinite number of platonic chairs'.
The existence of non-physical minds
One argument is to go for broke and argue that the physical world does not exist at all. We know the mental world exists, because we have experiences, so the simplest explanation is that only the mental world exists and the physical world is an illusion. This then leads to libertarian free will.
(I don't actually buy this argument, I'm just explaining it.)
Not looking at the world in a probabilistic way
Because its higher status to believe in something 110%, even if this is gibberish? Because having unreasonable faith is good psychosomatically?
You underestimate the power of the dark side epistemology.
One argument is to go for broke and argue that the physical world does not exist at all. We know the mental world exists, because we have experiences, so the simplest explanation is that only the mental world exists and the physical world is an illusion.
If you define the debate to be about 'mental world' exists, it's worth noting that 'mind' is an English word that very particular to English and doesn't have direct translations in most other languages.
That's quite surprising and interesting. wikipedia says that the philosophers behind idealism were Indian and Greek in classical times, German and British in the 19th century. So I imagine that even if 'mind' doesn't translate, there must be some similar word to allow discussion. Maybe 'soul' or 'spirit'?
That's quite surprising and interesting. wikipedia says that the philosophers behind idealism were Indian and Greek in classical times, German and British in the 19th century.
If you observe the there were Greek philsophers that found idealism meaningful and observe that in contempory English the notion of a mental world doesn't make much sense, you have two choices:
1) Blame the Greeks as being incohrent
2) Blame the contempory English the notion of a mental world (and mind) as incoherent
It's worth noting that the phrase continental philosophy, with basically means European philosophy not based in English, is much friendlier to idealism than Anglo-thought.
I am aware that language does shape the way we think to some extent, but it seems to me quite a stretch to say that our entire view of reality is largely determined by whether our language contains a word for 'mind'.
And it is interesting that analytical philosophy seems to dominate in English-speaking countries, but the difference between analytical and continental philosophy is far more than just materialism vs idealism.
I am aware that language does shape the way we think to some extent, but it seems to me quite a stretch to say that our entire view of reality is largely determined by whether our language contains a word for 'mind'.
I don't suggest that a single word shoulders all the burden but it's worth being aware that the premade categories determine which concepts are easily expressible
I have heard in particular that this is true of German. "German has no word for 'mind'" is how I have heard it put.
As you are a native German speaker, could give us, as a case study in the phenomenon, an account of how one talks in German about the range of things that in English would be called mental phenomena? Google Translate suggests for "mind" the words der Geist, der Verstand, die Meining, der Sinn, die Gedanken, die Sinne, das Gemüt, das Denken, das Gedächtnis, and das Gehirn, but a dictionary, still less Google Translate, can't tell me the nuances being expressed here. (However, the first two seem to be of similar breadth to "mind", the others being more about specific faculties.) Are there differences in what can be easily said, or are English and German on this subject as interchangeable as rectangular and polar coordinates?
I have heard in particular that this is true of German. "German has no word for 'mind'" is how I have heard it put.
While we are at the topic of German/Anglo differences I would start with what I learned in my first philosophy course. It was an extracurricular activity. In it the teacher explained to us that the talk of schools of philosophical thought and that a philosopher is either being a member of school A or school B is one of those things that the Anglo's like to do.
That's particular annoying when American's talk about Democrat and Republican political thought and suggest that you are either a Democrat or a Republican and that someone dictates your political beliefs.
German intellectual thought has the ideal of "Bildung". Anna Wierzbicka tells me that "Bildung" is a particularly German construct. According to it you learn about different view points and then you develop a sophisticated opinion. Not having a sophisticated opinion is low class. In liberal social circles in the US a person who agrees with what the Democratic party does at every point in time would have a respectable political opinion. In German intellectual life that person would be seen as a credulous low status idiot you fails to develop a sophisticated opinion.
If you ask me a political question of: "Do you support A or B." my response is to say: "Well, I neither want A or B. There are these reasons for A, these reasons for B. My opinion is that we should do C that solves those problems better and takes more concerns into account." It's not like A is the high status option and I can signal status by saying that I'm for A.
If we take the issue of hardcore materialism, then a statement like: "One of the functions of the heart is to pump blood." wouldn't be a statement that can be objectively true because it's about teleology. The notion of function isn't made up of atoms.
There's little to be gained to proscribing to the hardcore materalist perspective and it makes a lot of practical sense to say that such as statement can be objectively true. That means gotten a more sophisticated view of the world. Not only statements that are about arrangements of atoms can be objectively true but also statements about the functions of organs. That move is high status in German intellecutal discourse but it might be low status in Anglo-discourse because it can be seen as being a traitor to the school of materalism.
Of course that doesn't mean that no Anglo accepts that the statement can be objectively true, but on the margin German intellectual norms make it easier. After Hegel you might say that thesis and antithesis come together to a synthesis instead of thesis or antithesis winning the argument.
Are there differences in what can be easily said, or are English and German on this subject as interchangeable as rectangular and polar coordinates?
You can translate "I change my mind" with "Ich ändere meine Meinung" but neither "Geist" nor "Verstand" would be appropriate in that context. The closed English word to Meinung would be opinion.
It's likely possible to write a book about the difference between how German's and Anglo's talk about mental processes.
German intellectual thought has the ideal of "Bildung". Anna Wierzbicka tells me that "Bildung" is a particularly German construct. According to it you learn about different view points and then you develop a sophisticated opinion. Not having a sophisticated opinion is low class. In liberal social circles in the US a person who agrees with what the Democratic party does at every point in time would have a respectable political opinion. In German intellectual life that person would be seen as a credulous low status idiot you fails to develop a sophisticated opinion.
I've actually been told, by someone with more social skills than myself, to stop articulating complex political opinions because it makes me seem indecisive and weak.
If we were just talking modern politics rather than philosophy, then, well, apologies for being tactless, but I would suspect that the difference is that in Germany, showing too much loyalty to a political party is a reminder of Nazism. The US hasn't had similar authoritarianism, so there isn't the aversion to excessive party loyalty. Moreover, if German culture has always rewarded more balanced, sophisticated political views, then I am surprised that fascism did take hold in Germany.
Moreover, if German culture has always rewarded more balanced, sophisticated political views, then I am surprised that fascism did take hold in Germany.
I haven't said "balanced". You pattern match against an existing context when I talk about a pattern that doesn't exist in English in the same way.
Apart from that it's true that Nazism was anti-intellectual while Bildung is a value of the intellectual class. Nazism also didn't win in the 30's in a two sided conflict. The political sphere at that time wasn't one-dimensional.
Anna Wierzbicka tells me that "Bildung" is a particularly German construct. According to it you learn about different view points and then you develop a sophisticated opinion.
Isn't it "you learn about different viewpoints and then you invade Poland"? Do the Russians have a similar construct?
X-D
Do the Russians have a similar construct?
As aI said Anna Wierzbicka considers it unique to the German language. She wouldn't say that if the concept would exist the same way in Russian.
A different German speaker here.
In English you have a whole cloud of related words: mind, brain, soul, I, self, consciousness, intelligence. I don't think it's much of a problem that German does not have perfect match for "mind". The "mind-body-Problem" would be "Leib-Seele-Problem", where "seele" would usually be translated as "soul". The German wikipedia page for philosophy of mind does use the English word "mind" once to distinguish that meaning for "Geist" from a different concept from Hegel that I never heard about before ("Weltgeist").
Then again I don't have much need to discuss philosophy of mind with the people around me, so maybe that's why I don't feel the need for a German word is more like "mind".
But I do have massive problems with talking about epistemological concepts in German. Help from other German speakers would be very welcome. I don't know how to talk about "degrees of belief" in German. Or how to call those things that get updated when we learn new evidence ("beliefs" in English).
If you translate the noun "a belief" into German ("ein Glaube") and back into English, it will always come out as "faith" (as in " the Buddhist faith" or in "having faith in redemption"). A different candidate would be "Überzeugung", but that literally means conviction (something you belief with absolute certainty). Hardly seems like a good word for talking about uncertainty. Wikipedia uses "Grad an Überzeugung" to translate "degrees of belief", but gives the English in parentheses to make sure the meaning is clear. I don't like it. "Eine Überzeugung" sounds wrong.
"Evidence" is another difficult one. The closest might be "Beweis", but that means "proof". Then there is "Evidenz", but I've only ever seen that word used to translate "evidence based medicine". The average German would be unlikely to know that word.
But I wonder if Less Wrong has given me a skewed view of the English language. Maybe the way LW uses "belief" wouldn't feel so natural to the average native speaker. Maybe the average native speaker has quite a different notion of what "evidence" means.
Native English speaker, so I may be way off... but surely 'beliefs' would be 'Verständnis'? And for 'evidence', wouldn't you usually use a verb ('to provide evidence') instead of a noun, something like 'unterstützen'?
"Verständnis" seems totally wrong to me. It's from the verb "verstehen" (to understand, to comprehend). It usually means "understanding" ("meinem Verständnis nach" -> "according to my understanding"). Maybe if you use it in a sentence?
I think "Vermutung" (and it's synonyms) is pretty much what I was looking for. Maybe it's even better than "belief" in some ways, since "belief" suggests a higher degree of confidence than "Vermutung" does.
"unterstützen" (to support something) seems right, thanks. But it's useful to have nouns. Also "das unterstützt deine Behauptung nicht" is much wordier than "that's not evidence".
"Evidenz ist all das, was eine Vermutung unterstützt."
I don't usually make a mental distinction between understanding and belief, but that is probably not common.
So if you are trying to work out which hypothesis is simpler, how do you do that? You use your personal intuition.
I was using Solomonoff Induction as an example of a system that uses Occamian priors. My question was on those who assert that they don't use Occamian priors at all, or for that matter any other type of objective prior. This usually seems to lead either to rejecting Bayesian epistemology in general or to asserting that any arbitrary prior works. I actually have no problem (in theory) rejecting Bayesian epistemology, as long as you still use some sort of probability-based reasoning.
When I referred to "personal intuitions" I meant controversial or arbitrary-sounding personal intuitions, such as "I feel there's a god" or "I feel abortion is immoral" and then using those intuitions not as some sort of evidence but as priors. I get why someone would perhaps use universal intuitions as priors, along the lines of "there exists an external material world", but why use an intuition where you know the next person over likely has a different intuition?
Your choice isn't "Statistically correct prior" versus "Arbitrary prior", your choice in the real world is between arbitrary priors and nothing at all.
When I referred to "personal intuitions" I meant controversial or arbitrary-sounding personal intuitions, such as "I feel there's a god" or "I feel abortion is immoral" and then using those intuitions not as some sort of evidence but as priors.
I think most people just hold things like faith and emotions higher than logic and probability. Asking, say "how do you know that murder is wrong?" would, I imagine, freak out some people who aren't philosophers. The whole idea that belief in god is a matter of probability is not held by many people, and moreso with moral questions. Most people, including intelleginet, educated people, do not seem to think that any justification for political opinions is needed except 'anyone who disagrees with me is evil/stupid'.
Its actually worse than this - there are people who are deeply uncomfortable with having a notion of truth at all, because if there is a notion of truth, then some people are right and some people are wrong, and the idea that people might be wrong about something is offensive.
Listen, what does "physical" even mean. Apparently, it's all made up of weird non-classical probabilities underneath. It doesn't seem like a very solid foundation to build a rock out of, and yet here we are.
My reading suggests the issue is this: You have some set of axioms, which you seem to be conflating to some extent with priors, because you hold the precepts of Bayesian reasoning as direct axioms, and those axioms are the logical constructs in which you run your brain. Other people have different axioms. You're asking for a set of logical steps, using your axiom set, by which you can "prove" their axioms, so that you can run theirs as well.
The idea of holding different axioms sounds insane to you, and you have trouble articulating why. It's because they're different axioms than those you think in. It sounds insane to you because it is; any attempt you make at it is going to be like somebody who only speaks English trying to imagine what it feels like to think in Japanese. You don't "think" in that language, and until you can, you're only aping it, using unintelligible nonsense where logic should be.
Is this a fair assessment?
Mathematical Platonism
Jimrandomh has addressed this well. I'll add that if you feel as confident of reductionism as the last two items on your list would suggest, it seems odd to reject out of hand the idea that we could reduce everything to math. (I don't believe in any version of Tegmark IV, but I'm open to arguments.)
For all I know, many who claim to believe in Platonism have something like this in mind, and it just isn't clear to you because philosophical terminology is not optimized for your understanding (or, indeed, for any individual's goals).
Not looking at the world in a probabilistic way
Your post has only one instance of naming a probability and that's not 100%.
You say thinks like "The only thing I can think of is that people who support using intuitions like this say". There you speak about people having an identity that consists of them using an intuition a certain way. Not that they are using the intuition to 80% in a certain way but that they generally use them in a certain way.
But this just seems totally ludicrous to me. If we trust cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and if those fields give us perfectly plausible reasons for why we might intuitively feel this way / talk this way, even if it didn't reflect the truth
In a similar way you can argue that you don't have any evidence that you aren't a Bolzmann brain and therefore shouldn't act as if you are sure that you aren't. You always have to use thinking tools that aren't perfect.
I think you might make progress if you look at trying to understand the epistemology and ontology that you are actually using instead of focusing on the epistemology and ontology you think one should use.
Your post has only one instance of naming a probability and that's not 100%.
I meant when philosophers themselves claim they aren't looking at things in a probabilistic way. I actually had this conversation with my philosophy professor. He claimed that although he's comfortable talking about credences and probabilities, he's also comfortable talking about the world in a non-probabilistic way. This was one of those discussions where he didn't understand why I was so confused.
In a similar way you can argue that you don't have any evidence that you aren't a Bolzmann brain and therefore shouldn't act as if you are sure that you aren't. You always have to use thinking tools that aren't perfect.
Understood (I think). My intuitive (!) position is that I'm aware I can't prove (even probabilistically) that I'm not a Boltzmann brain, and I can't prove a bunch of other things. Which either leads me to accept certain very basic things without justification (along the lines of EY's where recursive justification hits bottom, or to just go with a pragmatic view of truth. Personally I'm fine with both of those.
I understand that you have to start somewhere (or else accept that you can't get anywhere in finding objective non-pragmatic truth), but what I have a hard time understanding is when people continue using intuitions far beyond the starting point to make grand metaphysical assertions.
I meant when philosophers themselves claim they aren't looking at things in a probabilistic way. [...] This was one of those discussions where he didn't understand why I was so confused.
The point isn't that you don't do either.
He claimed that although he's comfortable talking about credences and probabilities, he's also comfortable talking about the world in a non-probabilistic way.
Your post is mainly talking about world in a non-probabilistic way. Given that's the case the professor with whom you are talking get's confused.
To me it looks like the problem is belief in belief of logical positivism.
My intuitive (!) position is that I'm aware I can't prove (even probabilistically) that I'm not a Boltzmann brain
The fact that you intuition is that you can't prove that you are not a Boltzmann brain, doesn't change that your intuition is that you aren't a Boltzmann brain.
I intuition is that P!=NP but at the same time I'm certain that I don't have the mathetical skills to prove P!=NP.
The fact that you don't have an intuitive mental distinction between "X is true" and "I can prove X is true" is a problem.
The point isn't that you don't do either.
Sorry, don't know what you mean to say here. Could you rephrase?
Your post is mainly talking about world in a non-probabilistic way.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
To me it looks like the problem is belief in belief of logical positivism.
Again, could you elaborate? I don't see any reason to associate anything I've said with logical positivism.
The fact that you intuition is that you can't prove that you are not a Boltzmann brain, doesn't change that your intuition is that you aren't a Boltzmann brain.
Of course I intuit that I'm not a Boltzmann brain, and of course I act as if I'm not. Not sure where I indicated otherwise. Again, my issue is with taking intuitions far beyond these fundamental we-need-to-start-somewhere levels and using them as strong evidence of truth.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
Let's start with Specifically, I keep getting the impression that most (all?) of the arguments for the ontology issues boil down to trusting philosophical intuitions and/or the way people use words. Something along the following lines.
I keep getting the impression almost directly translates to My intuition tells me. You still base your chain of reasoning on it.
Almost none of the reasoning in your post can be expressed by predicate logic and/or probability theory.
While we are at it, it's worth noting that the intuition that probability obviously extends logic is doubtful.
I don't see any reason to associate anything I've said with logical positivism.
You don't see how the claim that everything is explainable with logic and probability theory relates to logical positivism?
Again, my issue is with taking intuitions far beyond these fundamental we-need-to-start-somewhere levels and using them as strong evidence of truth.
You choose a particular set of where to start that's highly culturally charged. Anna Wierzbicka argues for example in "Imprisoned in English" that it makes sense to start with fundamentals that nearly all human cultures agree on such as there being mothers and fathers but for example not brothers as some cultures have that concept while others don't.
You start with the idea that complex concepts like mean, intuition, reason, associate, indicate, issue and evidence as all being fairly straightforward basics while Anna Wierzbicka would take neither of those as fundamentally basic.
All of them are heavily charged with a lot of cultural associations that you likely hold unquestioned because you learned them as a child and never questioned them.
I keep getting the impression almost directly translates to My intuition tells me. You still base your chain of reasoning on it.
Hear, hear!
I intuitively feel that there really are objective morals (or: objective mathematics, actual free will, tables and chairs, minds).
Therefore, there really are objective morals (etc.).
"Morals" is just a word. But unlike some other words, it's not 100% clear to me what it means. There is no physical entity that "morals" clearly refers to. There is no agreed upon list of axioms that define what "morals" is. That's why, to me, "there are objective morals" doesn't feel entirely like a factual statement.
I might justify that there are objective morals by relying on my intuition. But that's not because I think intuitions are reliable sources of knowledge. That's because I think intuitions are the correct normative source of how we use words (together with common usage, I guess).
It's till possible that my intuitions contradict each other, or that they contradict facts. So they are not sufficient to say with confidence that objective morals exist. But they are relevant.
The existence of non-physical minds (I'm looking for arguments other than the argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness)
There's actually some medical evidence for this, but it's considered to be outweighed by evidence for mental materialism (eg lesions, Phineas Gage). There are case studies of people diagnosed with hydrocephalus as adults, who had something like 25% of the brain mass of the average adult, and yet this didn't seem to affect their mental abilities at all. I've heard of people citing this as evidence of mental tasks being performed by an invisible soul, not by neurons.
EDIT: (In case you want more info, here's the blog post where I heard about this. This is a personal blog I follow, but it links to some more official articles: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116)
Trusting philosophical intuitions and/or the way people use words to the point of making strong metaphysical claims about the world, despite the findings of cognitive science / evolutionary psychology / experimental philosophy / etc. that there doesn't seem to be any good reason to trust those intuitions / ways of talking
How about "there is no alternative"? (bu you have a further intuition that pointing out that we are all in the same boat regarding intuition is "crazy"...hmmmm)
Moral realism
What are the alternatives? Subjectivism is much more broken than STEM types tend to realise.
Mathematical Platonism
Fairly popular in STEM circles!
Libertarian free will (I'm looking for arguments other than those from religion)
Arguments for naturalistic libertarian free will tend to be towards its coherence/possibility rather than its reality. Check out Tony Dore and Robert Kane
The view that there actually exist abstract "tables" and "chairs" and not just particles arranged into those forms
What do you mean? Platonism?
The existence of non-physical minds (I'm looking for arguments other than the argument from the Hard Problem of Consciousness)
Why? That's the main argument, and a serious challenge for reductive physicalism.
Penrose's arguments for Platonism, with commentary:
"Our individual minds are notoriously imprecise, unreliable and inconsistent in their judgements" "Road to Reality", Roger Penrose, p12-13
So when we do maths we are not using our minds, but something else? Or maybe we are just using our minds in disciplined way -- after all, the discipline of maths has to be painfully learnt.
"Does this not point to something outside ourselves with a reality that lies beyond what each individual can achieve?"
What is achieved by individuals is achieved by individuals. How can some transcendent realm speak through the mouth of an individual?
"Nevertheless, one might take the alternative view that the mathematical world has no independent existence, and consists of certain ideas which have been distilled from our various minds, and which have found to be totally trustworthy, and are 'agreed by all', for example, or 'agreed by those in their right mind's, or 'agreed by those who have a PhD in mathematics' (not much use in Plato's day), and who have a right to venture an authoratiative opinion".
Which mathematical world? The world of mathematics so far proven and understood, or the world that is waiting to be explored? However few mathematicians there are, there is no contradiction that they carry the world of known mathematics around in their heads. The fewer there are, the less there is to carry round. Perhaps Penrose thinks they must carry the whole Platonic world around to act as a "standard", but mathematical proof doesn't work by direct inspection of Platonia, it works slowly and painfully by axioms and deductions.
"There seems to be a danger of circularity here; for to judge whether someone is in his or her right mind requires some external standard"
External to them, yes...but when we make such judgements, we ue finite and earthly resources. The idea that Platonia provides a once-and-for-all absolute standard is not of much use unless it can be explained how the standard is applied. The actual standard against which a proposed arguemnt is tested involves the community of mathematicians checking it with their flawed and finite minds. Platonia might provide a higher standard, but it is not one anyone has ever succeeded in employing.
"What I mean by this existence is really just the objectivity of mathematical truth".
And what does thatmean? Existence is existence, truth is truth. People who disbelieve in Platonism can still believe in the epistemic objectivity of mathematics.
"well, you're also ultimately basing yourself on intuitions for things like logic, existence of mind-independent objects, Occamian priors, and all the other viewpoints that you view as intuitively plausible, so I can jolly well use whatever intuitions I feel like too."
It's true that a priori using intuition is about as good as using an intuitive tool like inductive reasoning. However, induction has a very very strong track record. The entire history of science is one of humans starting out with certain intuitive priors, and huge numbers of them being challenged by experimental evidence. Babies learn about the world using induction, so each one of us has a mountain of evidence supporting its usefulness. Once you perform a Baysian update on that evidence, intuition looks like a much less useful predictor of future events.
Sure, you can deny the validity of induction. You can also claim that "I think therefor I am" is invalid because it isn't based on anything. (What is this "therefore" concept? What is "I"? What does it mean to "exist"?) You can even decide when to use induction versus intuition based on whim or based on which conclusion you want to “prove”. It’s just that doing so is incoherent.
Yes, I did just use an informal form of inductive reasoning, by using observations of evidence to demonstrate that induction seems valid upon reflection. Yes, that makes me feel dirty inside. But you have to start somewhere, and we don't really have any better options. It should be noted that anyone who says "intuition is a better option" learned those 5 words through induction, and probably uses induction to override intuitions every day. It is mathematically provable that no mathematical system can assert its own soundness without becoming inconsistent. We can't prove the validity of induction using induction. The best we can do is try to falsify the hypothesis "induction is valid". If looking at the track record of induction seemed to indicate that it wasn't valid, then we'd have an even worse mess on our hands, but fortunately that isn't the case. If someone can come up with a better alternative to induction, they'd better be able to demonstrate that it is better.
Some would call that faith. I'd counter that faith is belief regardless of evidence, and this is forming beliefs based on all available evidence. If that's faith, then so is every belief about anything.
You'll find more errors in your thinking seeking critics than supporters, and so your questions are good questions.
Using personal preference or personal intuitions as priors
Egoism fits that description. I wrote the book on it! "Confessions of a Failed Egoist" has all the answers. Read more at...
Tinyurl.com/theuniqueone
...Egoism fits that description.
In what way?
Given your url, I assume you're well aware of Stirner. I don't think his egoism fits that description.
Do you want to give us, say, one or two paragraphs that might help readers here judge whether following your not-even-actually-a-link is worth the trivial inconvenience it poses?
Egoism fits that description.
How so? Would you say that the sun arises tomorrow because you have an egoistic intuition that it does? Do you believe that personal preference shouldn't just be used to decide whether X or Y is better but also whether X or Y is true?
Not looking at the world in a probabilistic way
Note that only the future is probabilistic. The past is fixed, the probability of Putin ordering airstrikes in Syria is 1 -- it happened.
But also note that while the past may be fixed, your knowledge of the past is probabilistic. I assume there is evidence you could encounter that would convince you that Putin ordering airstrikes in Syria didn't actually happen.
But also note that while the past may be fixed, your knowledge of the past is probabilistic. I assume there is evidence you could encounter that would convince you that Putin ordering airstrikes in Syria didn't actually happen.
Which suggests the past might be just as probabilistic as the future.
But also note that while the past may be fixed, your knowledge of the past is probabilistic.
That is true -- as usual, distinguishing the map and the territory is a useful habit and the map is never perfect.
Or perhaps the future is also fixed, and it's incomplete models of the universe which are probabilistic. This includes models of the past, present, and future.
I don't know how to get MY model to have a probability of Putin's past actions to 1. I'm not knowledgeable enough to assign less than a hundredth of a percent to possibilities that someone else ordered airstrikes, or it's all fake, or something.
"What could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway?"
I have a theory which explains why you believe there was a past. It is that the world was created five minutes ago with false memories of a historical past. This theory shows why you would feel the way you do even if it didn't reflect the truth. So what could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway?
Because it is also possible that your intuitions are right, even if there are theories that could explain them even if they were wrong.
For a while now I've been trying hard to understand philosophical viewpoints that defer from mine. Somewhere along the line I've picked up or developed a lot of the LW-typical viewpoints (not sure if this was because of LW, or if I developed them earlier and that's what later attracted me to LW), but I know there are a lot of smart people out there who disagree with those viewpoints. I've tried to read articles and books on this, but they either don't address what I'm looking for somehow, or they're so technical that I have a hard time following them. I've also talked at some length with a philosophy professor, but our conversations often seem to end with me still being confused and the professor being confused about what it is I might be confused about.
I'm thinking maybe it'll help to get some input from people who do intuitively agree with my viewpoints, hence this post. So, can someone please tell me what the central arguments or motivations are for promoting the following:
Epistemology:
Ontology / philosophy of mind:
I suspect I'm having trouble with the ontology issues because of my trouble understanding the epistemology issues. Specifically, I keep getting the impression that most (all?) of the arguments for the ontology issues boil down to trusting philosophical intuitions and/or the way people use words. Something along the following lines:
I intuitively feel that there really are objective morals (or: objective mathematics, actual free will, tables and chairs, minds).
Therefore, there really are objective morals (etc.).
Or the equivalent using the way people talk about things.
But this just seems totally ludicrous to me. If we trust cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and if those fields give us perfectly plausible reasons for why we might intuitively feel this way / talk this way, even if it didn't reflect the truth, then what could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway and using them to support some grand metaphysical theory?
The only thing I can think of is that people who support using intuitions like this say, "well, you're also ultimately basing yourself on intuitions for things like logic, existence of mind-independent objects, Occamian priors, and all the other viewpoints that you view as intuitively plausible, so I can jolly well use whatever intuitions I feel like too." But although I can hear such words and why they sound reasonable in a sense, they still seem totally crazy to me, although I'm not 100% sure why.
Any help would be appreciated.