Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[emjay]

Just to clarify what I meant when I said beauty etc was arbitrary, I didn't mean the content that we judge to be more or less beautiful... i.e. the Sistine Chapel vs a child's finger painting... though that is as well, but rather the actual measure that we call beauty is arbitrary... there might be some animals that do not detect/represent what we call beauty. The way I see it is that any and every changeable thing in consciousness represents some changeable state or measure in the neural networks of the brain. The most obvious examples of that are our sensory qualia (colour, sound, pain etc) but I see no difference other than subtlety between them and any other emotion or sense we can feel, including the sense of the beauty of something... it's something that can come into and go out of awareness. So the only questions for me are what beauty is a measure of, why it's needed, and how is it achieved in the NNs. There is the arbitrary, subjective kind of beauty that is learned and/or conditioned and different in everyone and that's comparatively easier to theorise about than the innate, natural sense of beauty that seems to be pretty universal... of which your Sistine Chapel example is a good example. It's a mystery to me too. My best guess is that it's a measure of 'majesty', similar to the awe you feel when standing in front of a mountain. Would the Sistine Chapel be more beautiful if you were actually standing in it looking up, as opposed to looking at a picture of it? I think it would. I think that sense of awe that accompanies looking at something large and with multiple depths of focus (?parallax(es)) is a kind of inherent measure of beauty that we have... a kind of mixture of fear and wonder. But that's just a guess... there's probably many types of beauty, innate or not, and composite or not (i.e. mixtures of different emotions, like awe may be).

I think you put that well.  I don't mean to discredit the subjective and relative nature of experience, but only to suggest that it matters less than objective standards (of truth, beauty, justice, etc.); that our judgments are oftentimes affected by both, and that good philosophy is by and large an exercise in learning how to better discriminate between the two.

Fair enough. I'll get to my issues with objective standards further down, but no disagreement that our judgements are affected by both the subjective and what may or may not be objective standards, but what we treat and/or perceive as such.

I won't put words into your mouth but it may be the case that you and I have a fundamentally different way of viewing the world, in that you may be looking 'out there' for objective beauty etc, but to me technically there is no 'out there' because everything out there must first be translated, through neural signals, into a model 'in here' and only that is perceived... and moreover, everything we perceive about anything [implicitly; in the model]... every differentiated and changeable state in consciousness... is part of the same system and signifies something in the state of that system. So at that fundamental level, I can't see beauty or any other emotion/sense/perception as anything other that a measurement of some state of the system. So that's why I tend to have difficulty with these 'objective' discussions, and don't usually partake.

I agree that epistemologically we can only speak of knowledge about the world "out there" as it has been modeled by neural networks and the patterns that have developed "in here"; but in terms of the ontology of "being" -- both of the microcosm ("in here") and of the macrocosm ("out there") -- I think we are justified in our projects to understand both, and that epistemology is fundamentally related to the ontology of the world "out there" in ways that make such attempts possible.  Whether or not ontology includes abstract objects which can only be conceived by minds but are every bit as real as -- if not more than -- the interactions between bodies, which seem to make the existence of abstract objects knowable by creatures such as ourselves, is, in my view, an open question.  But I should distinguish one thing:  Even if abstract objects or "essences" are in some sense distinct from bodies, it does not necessarily mean that they are separately existing entities.  The physical and the abstract may or may not be two properties of some further substratum that is ultimately unknowable.

Fair enough on the first sentence, but I admit I'm ignorant on the meaning of the rest... what you mean by abstract objects distinct from bodies. But that'll come in time as I read your recommended reading.

That could imply one of two things; that objectively truth is something that both we and evolution aim for for whatever reason or that we have only modelled and expanded upon what we know from our own mental experience... just as we are incapable of and have no desire to create art for senses that we do not possess, in which case our pursuit of truth through formal logic would just be indicative of the expansion of our own mode of thought into the outside world and the exponential benefits that provides for learning both in terms of magnitude and scope (as in knowledge shared, and passed down through the ages through writing etc)... but not necessarily indicative of that 'truth' being anything other than a certain arbitrary nature of the brain being emulated. I'm not saying I don't think truth exists, but I'm just illustrating some possibilities.

I think it may be arbitrary to the extent that we as a species could have evolved brains which enjoyed the taste of plastic, or hands that boasted of seven fingers instead of five, but I don't think it is arbitrary that we have the intuitive understanding that 1+1=2 or that torturing a child to derive sadistic pleasure is morally wrong.  These are facts about ourselves as subjects of experiences, yes, but unlike mental events that merely express or reveal our personal preferences, these latter are, as you put it, "pretty universal."  Does an appeal to our evolutionary history undermine an interpretation of these universal traits that defines them to be features of and in the world as well as minds, that minds have not invented but discovered?  I don't think so, at least as long as we want to avoid a slide into extreme subjectivism or relativism, positions which I don't find intellectually defensible.  But perhaps I'm rushing to judgment and have overlooked a more moderate interpretation that retains the objectivity of rational determinations, whether these be about truth, morality, or aesthetically pleasing experiences, without placing this objectivity "out there"... To put it a different way, if we were to delineate three views, call them A, B, and C, as...

A. "Man is the measure of all things."
B. "God is the measure of all things."
C. "The Good (the True, The Just, etc.) is the measure of all things."

...I would go with C.  But admittedly, I haven't the slightest clue what the Good or the True is outside of my experience of it , that is, my experience of making different judgments about the world, and believing that at least some of these are true (or good, or beautiful, etc.) regardless of my having been previously unaware of them.  Maybe it is "no more" than something like an overarching "principle of rationality."  But what is said principle, and if it is not distinct from brain activity, at least we have to acknowledge that we have, in some capacity, discovered(?) such principles to be responsible for that very brain activity, whether its math or physics or the relations that these bear to one another.  What I find most significant is that we have accomplished this using those principles (of, and/or made possible by, rationality).  It's almost like one big circle jerk.

Again, what I mean by arbitrary in this case is probably a rare view, but it just comes from my mechanistic/reductionistic view of the mind, psychology, and neuroscience. What I mean is that it's arbitrary in the sense that in my view, each changeable aspect of consciousness represents a changeable state of the underlying system, and therefore as a whole a conscious system can be described as an arbitrary collection of states... and a different system (say another type of animal when referring to biological systems) represents a different collection of states. So from my perspective, when defined/viewed like that, there's nothing special about any particular state... they come into awareness, they change, they leave awareness... regardless of what phenomenological form they take. Perhaps to put it in your terms, that's the core essence of a conscious perception, regardless of type? And moreover, the system represented by states includes the 'observer'... what has the illusion of being the homunculous... the self, is a state like any other in my view. Therefore there is no distinction between the observer and the observed, the content and the container, the measured and the measurement... all are represented states that come, change, and go.

Granted when two similar systems are compared, such as from the same species of animal, there may be some shared states... which would likely be what we would call the innate aspects of the animal... those states that represent the [evolutionary] 'design' of the system... from above paragraph they would most likely be on the 'container' side of the equation... the actual visual field and its form etc... along with any innate drives for the animal. In this view I would class beauty as one of those shared innate states... the measurement itself... the ruler as it were. And likewise there would be some states that are less shared and more unique/subjective... generally on the content side of the equation. It may turn out to be the case that all sentient life shares some of these states at a core level, depending on how you define life, for instance if you say that all life, at its core, seeks what it wants/needs to survive and seeks to avoid what is dangerous to that survival, then arguably all life would have states representing attraction and aversion, of which beauty could be an example.

Moving on. On the question of truth, I think the explanation that makes the most sense to me is that evolution drives towards truth simply out of necessity... only those creatures with an accurate (i.e. true) model of the world (in the sphere in which they inhabit, and the constraints of that environment) will prosper. And then we, using the gifts that evolution has given us (the ability to reason), have emulated and exponentially expanded upon those processes by taking them out of our heads into formal systems of thought that can be shared and built upon through language and writing etc. So in that sense I can agree that there is some sort of objective truth that both we and evolution drive towards. But I'm still not comfortable really calling it that until I understand what you mean by objective truth. But close enough for the time being.

But regarding the other things... morality, beauty etc, the problem I see with how you seem to be describing it, is that any 'objective standard' seems to me to at the very least to presume the existence of sentient life capable of perceiving it, and more specifically, of a particular form of life to which it is tailored. In other words, if moral truths are absolute and unchanging, just waiting out there to be discovered, what is their scope? To what do they apply? Would a hypothetical alien form of life, completely different from human or any other life on earth, benefit from it for instance? Or would there be another, different one for them? I admit I am very confused by this and may be fundamentally misunderstanding what you mean by objective standards, but those are the questions that come to mind as my knowledge stands. It just seems to imply that if objective truths have to be tailored to a particular audience... human morality for humans, bee morality for bees etc, then it just just makes it arbitrary again. From my current position I'd simply say that all inherent morality, beauty etc is just innate... part of our evolutionary design... shared and inherited states of the system. Are you for instance suggesting that there is a web of objective truths out there, comprised of essences and what have you, and therefore that a moral truth applies to some class in that framework?

So of your three choices as it stands I would have to choose A, but I suppose I would replace 'man' with 'system' such that 'the system is the measure of all things, whatever that system may be.' As I said, I am willing and interested to explore your perspective and that of Plato etc (if different), but I don't think I'm in the position to do so yet without further reading... I don't think I even understand the basics... it's clearly completely alien to my way of thinking. One thing I will say though is this; we're only in a position to have this discussion because of 'the gift of reason' that evolution has furnished us with... no other animal has intellectually conquered the world and that's because they don't have the capacity to reason. So we can only probe the depths of truth, objective or not, through the use of tools that evolution has already discovered/invented for us. So yes, I do see what you mean by the circle jerk... like we're caught in some huge cosmic dance where the system and its 'designer' (ie evolution) have the same goals (ie the pursuit of truth), and both feed off and expand upon what the other has learned in a sort of feedback loop.

So in my thinking, the essence of say a chair would simply be the stereotype of a chair, and that would be in essence a statistical summary (though neurally much more involved than that, and not as clear cut) over all examples of chairs I've ever seen. And the question of what makes the perfect, or absolute, chair is related to this; that far from there being an objective perfect chair, it would be, in my opinion, different for every individual and based on their individual representations of chairs... that there is no absolute chair and it's all subjective based on prior experience.

But this information that occasions the modeling of different objects in the mind, interpreting some of these objects to be "partakers in chair-ness," still involves the "problem of universals," that something "out there" -- as represented by these various sensations -- shares these common properties which can be categorized by a machine that is as much a part of the whole "out there"; that is, it begs the question as to whether these relations exist in (a) the subject, (b) the object, or © both -- or (d) only in the resulting interactions between them.  So long as we discard (a), I think we have grounds for discussing "objective" truths, values, etc.

Again there seems to me to be a scope problem with this... a chair is only a chair because we perceive and use it as such... or that's how I see it at least. It's something we've fashioned out of materials for our use, but ultimately it's just an arrangement of materials. So I don't see how you can rule out (a), but I guess even without knowing what it's for, other animals could form a representation of it, and identify the same stereotypical essence of it. But to the extent that its essence includes its purpose... if it does... then it might only make sense as a chair, to its designers/users... humans.

I have to say, as much fun as it is trying to define things and find their essence with logic, I think it's ultimately a fool's errand that will always be left wanting... because it is trying to model with reason and logic a system that is inherently fuzzy logic in nature. That's not to say it's not worth doing and that there aren't plenty of useful examples of systems of generalisation/categorisation... such as the philosophical stuff we're talking about, the notion of tags in websites etc for categorising things into more than one category at a time, just as the brain does, classes in programming etc. It's good that reason has tamed and capitalised on those processes but all I'm saying is that the true essence can only be found by the fuzzy systems that find it... that logic is too discrete and will always have boundary problems.

That may be true, in part, but it is only logic that can get us to the point of distrusting logic.  I find that not only profound but very reassuring (especially as someone who is studying to be a philosopher by trade).  

Fair enough... I concede that point. If anything I've learned from this post is that logic... reason... is key to it all, and as I said we now build upon our innate logical abilities exponentially by taking them out of the mind, so the sky's the limit in what can be achieved with it