Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?

[bennyboy]

There are no metaphysical theories that pass even elemental tests of evidence.  

Sure there are.  

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And if you think you know the truth, it's because you are mistaking a reflection of your own nature as an insight into whatever's behind the mirror.

Meh, we work with what we've got.  If there's something behind the mirror, hidden from us, then there's something behind the mirror...hidden from us.  

I'd like to outline a thought experiment, and you can tell me how you would classify some of the statements, if you don't mind.

I'd look to a worm, and say, "That worm cannot know some things because of its limitations." I can see what it cannot because I don't have those limitations. I can kind of understand what a bat is doing because of a basic understanding of sonar, but I cannot know what it's LIKE to be a bat using sonar; this is due to my limitations.

So I'd take this and extend it into the unknown-- I'd say there must be some things which can be experienced, but not by me, since I do not believe I am a maximally complete organism. Those things are not so much metaphysical as inscrutable.

But what if Bob walks into the room and says, "Show me the evidence"? Would you categorize my understandings of worms and bats as evidence for my proposition? What if I start talking about all possible beings and their capacities to experience? Would you say that there must be infinite ways in which an organism could experience truth which we cannot?

[emjay]

Sure there are.  

Great news! Please produce

Meh, we work with what we've got.  If there's something behind the mirror, hidden from us, then there's something behind the mirror...hidden from us.  

I'd like to outline a thought experiment, and you can tell me how you would classify some of the statements, if you don't mind.

I'd look to a worm, and say, "That worm cannot know some things because of its limitations." I can see what it cannot because I don't have those limitations. I can kind of understand what a bat is doing because of a basic understanding of sonar, but I cannot know what it's LIKE to be a bat using sonar; this is due to my limitations.

So I'd take this and extend it into the unknown-- I'd say there must be some things which can be experienced, but not by me, since I do not believe I am a maximally complete organism. Those things are not so much metaphysical as inscrutable.

But what if Bob walks into the room and says, "Show me the evidence"? Would you categorize my understandings of worms and bats as evidence for my proposition? What if I start talking about all possible beings and their capacities to experience? Would you say that there must be infinite ways in which an organism could experience truth which we cannot?

Oh that's what you mean Interesting question. It seems to me that the answer will come down to whether sub-contexts of a larger context are sub-truths of that larger context or conflicting truths. For instance in my ABCD vs JKLM post, if those are considered sub-contexts of a larger uber-context, are B or K still true - ie stable - in the case of the uber-context? In other words do they represent truths at different levels of scrutiny (constrained by different levels and configurations of sensory access to features of that uber-reality), or do they conflict entirely... ie would a maximally perfect organism - capable of sensing everything in the environment and using the same neural process to create a model of it's stable features - detect those same patterns... in the model would it represent the B and K as stable features as well as the the uber-patterns, or does the particular configuration of senses extract different patterns than would apply to the whole. I don't know but I think the question might be possible to investigate (at a lower scale obviously) in a neural network model or maybe even just with reason.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure there are.  

Great news!  Please produce

Why?  You'll waste our time bickering over evidence by reference to what you believe to be contradictory evidence - which is kind of the point.  

I'd like to outline a thought experiment, and you can tell me how you would classify some of the statements, if you don't mind.

Sure, np.

I'd look to a worm, and say, "That worm cannot know some things because of its limitations."  I can see what it cannot because I don't have those limitations.  I can kind of understand what a bat is doing because of a basic understanding of sonar, but I cannot know what it's LIKE to be a bat using sonar; this is due to my limitations.

You -don;t- know what it's like to be a bat, to know that you can't know..you'd have to know something that you don't know.  

So I'd take this and extend it into the unknown-- I'd say there must be some things which can be experienced, but not by me, since I do not believe I am a maximally complete organism.  Those things are not so much metaphysical as inscrutable.

There are things which are experienced, but not by you, you produced evidence to that effect by reference to bats sensory abilities............hell, I experience things you don;t experience. Thankfully, we're not limited to our human ears when we investigate sound, our human eyes when we muse over light, or any individuals experience when we make truth claims.  

But what if Bob walks into the room and says, "Show me the evidence"?  Would you categorize my understandings of worms and bats as evidence for my proposition?  What if I start talking about all possible beings and their capacities to experience?

You -did- show the evidence.  Your understanding of bats possessing sensory abilities that you do not is not the evidence, the fact that they do and you don't..is the evidence.  If you start talking about all possible beings as a hanging phrase then it will never materialize into anything even remotely as worthwhile as your comments regarding yourself and a bat.  It would only be a statement that lent itself well to vaguery and obfuscation.

 Would you say that there must be infinite ways in which an organism could experience truth which we cannot?

No, I wouldn't...because my use of the term truth isn't as malleable as your own, like I keep telling you, over and over again.  I don;t have to wonder whether or not there are a great many ways that creatures can experience.  That much is well evidenced just in the small set of creatures here, on earth.  Truth, however, is the product of a well defined system, so unless your bats and worms and possible beings are manufacturing logical statements..............

So, again, experience, evidence, truth. These terms are not interchangeable. We don't experience truth, we arrive at truth.

[emjay]

@Khem. In my last response to Benny I think I may be conflating something again... truth and stable features extracted. Do you think I am? The patterns that a NN extracts... they're not truth per se are they... they're a 'what' to be explained, but they're not a 'why'... the 'why' is the causal context that explains them, and that's truth? And being representations, the 'what' itself can even be wrong... so there's a thing to represent (in the sense of a neuron representing a certain set of inputs) but it doesn't necessarily have to be accurate (ie technically every neuron represents something even if it hasn't 'learned' anything just by virtue of being connected up to a web of possible inputs, and even if it has, it can still partake in multiple relationships and therefore represent more than one thing at the same or different times, with respect to the rest of the network), so in those cases the 'truth' would be that the actual representation was wrong and did not correspond to any stable feature of the environment... and the context explaining that would be the truth. See why I wanted to leave neurons out of it? But it is still nonetheless interesting and something I'd like to get to the bottom of.

[The Grand Nudger]

In the exceedingly specific way that I've been using the term truth, yeah, it'd be a conflation.  I think it's useful to separate what is true from what is accurate for precisely that reason.  We can possess an accurate conclusion without that conclusion being a product of logical processes.   Similarly, the operation of a computational architecture might conform to the rules of boolean algebra but -not- the rules of propositional logic.  

I would be very, very surprised to find that our minds conformed to the rules of propositional logic, the standard of truth, whereas I would not be suprised to find that our minds conformed to the standards of machine logic...which are exceedingly capable of providing accuracy. The two might dovetail nicely around any given "what", but it would be a mistake to draw inferences or analogies about the one as though they uniformly extended to the other. They do not.

Wish they were, though, then we wouldn't need to wonder about anything, we could build a legitimate truth machine, lol. A calculator could provide us with the answers to the deepest questions of life. Unfortunately, that the operation of a gate yields a value of true has nothing to say in regards to truth as I use the term. It just means "on". So to any pattern extracted by an nn, however accurate, is just -on- in a vacuum. Hence the value of evidence in propositional logic, a way to generate sound propositions, rather than propositions-by-default.

[emjay]

In the exceedingly specific way that I've been using the term truth, yeah, it'd be a conflation.  I think it's useful to separate what is true from what is accurate for precisely that reason.  We can possess an accurate conclusion without that conclusion being a product of logical processes.   Similarly, the operation of a computational architecture might conform to the rules of boolean algebra but -not- the rules of propositional logic.  

I would be very, very surprised to find that our minds conformed to the rules of propositional logic, the standard of truth, whereas I would not be suprised to find that our minds conformed to the standards of machine logic...which are exceedingly capable of providing accuracy.  The two might dovetail nicely around any given "what", but it would be a mistake to draw inferences or analogies about the one as though they uniformly extended to the other.  They do not.

Wish they were, though, then we wouldn't need to wonder about anything, we could build a legitimate truth machine, lol.  A calculator could provide us with the answers to the deepest questions of life.

Nonetheless, the results of our reasoning process are represented in the system, as is the process itself, so however it arrives at the conclusion - the process of propositional logic - whether computationally as you imagine it or neurally as I imagine it, it gets there or at least it can get there (to truth). So just understanding that process, from either of our perspectives, might lead to such a (hypothetical) truth machine or at least to us fully understanding what truth is.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think we both agree on hat, that tjhe results are represented in the system.  The process itself is represented in the system.  There's no inherent difference between "nuerally" and "computationally" either.  

The trouble, from my perspective, is not understanding what truth is (because I take an exceedingly reductionist and systemic view of it, rigidly conforming to the system and refusing to extrapolate beyond the boundary of that system).  Truth, in my view, self describes as the product of valid arguments supplied with sound propositions.  The trouble is generating sound propositions. That's the only potential unknown in my view of truth. If you have them, the rest is systematic, understood, downright simple. If you don't, you have nothing. It's a mechanics view of truth, and I'm sure that it fails to satisfy the dreamers, lol.

[emjay]

I think we both agree on hat, that tjhe results are represented in the system.  The process itself is represented in the system.  There's no inherent difference between "nuerally" and "computationally" either.  

The trouble, from my perspective, is not understanding what truth is (because I take an exceedingly reductionist and systemic view of it, rigidly conforming to the system and refusing to extrapolate beyond the boundary of that system).  Truth, in my view, self describes as the product of valid arguments supplied with sound propositions.  The trouble is generating sound propositions.  That's the only potential unknown in my view of truth.  If you have them, the rest is systematic, understood, downright simple.  If you don't, you have nothing.

Yeah we do agree on that and yeah, I didn't phrase that very well about the difference between computation as you mean it and as how I mean it... maybe there is no difference in the end, just different ways of picturing it.

Fair enough. So the question is how are propositions generated? And that can come from a little bit of both sides of our processing equipment; from intuition and pattern recognition on the statistical side (i.e our irrational, emotional side), and reasoning on the logical side... so I like your use of the term 'dovetails' because I agree... the two sides work together in harmony to zero in on truth.

[The Grand Nudger]

Propositions are generated by thinking up whatever the hell we like.  Sound propositions are generated by a search for and assessment of evidence.  One is useful in determining truth, the other is not.

[emjay]

Actually, never mind. I'm not sure what the copyright rules are for quoting from past/specimen exam papers, even if referenced. But what was going to be here in this post was a list of the sorts of questions I'll be facing on the exam for my course, and commentary on how well it relates to this thread, including how helpful benny's going to be (whether he likes it or not... or for that matter whether I like it or not ) in studying the differences between indirect realism and idealism.