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Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
"Claims demand evidence" always true?"


Evidently, yes.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
Actually K, just one more thought. Since it is my view that consciousness corresponds with which neural representations are most active in the network... which could be kind of pictured as consciousness representing the tip of the iceberg, 'presenting' that which bubbles up to the top as it were in an ongoing and constant battle of competition and inhibition dynamics... ie something like survival of the fittest [representation] in the brain... then there is perhaps an idle explanation along similar lines to how I'd explain meditation; in meditation the aim is to calm the mind. So instead of the usual maelstrom of thoughts, ideas, and sensations competing for your attention in consciousness, meditation starves them of attention and thus let's them drift on or die out, leaving a calm mind and thus allowing smaller and more subtle activations to bubble through into conscious awareness. The same principle at work just by going to bed at night... if you're anything like me, as soon as you close your eyes (and thereby shut off most visual sensations) and bed down at night when it's quiet (shutting off most auditory sensations), you find then your mind just fills with ideas. So the timing gap I've been talking about could be explained by just when something breaks through into conscious awareness in these terms... in this case, awareness of an itch.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
(January 15, 2017 at 1:00 pm)Emjay Wrote: Though just to say, in my opinion scratching your arse is not comparable to subconscious processes like the heart beating... it involves a choice to do so and/or a trigger to do so. So that doesn't cut it for me personally, but as you said that doesn't matter... they're just different theories.
IDK that it does.  I don't often think about cupping my balls...but my wife says I do it all the time.  I don't even remember having done it.  She says I do it when I'm lost in thought, lol.  Scratching my ass....well, I don't know when the last time I did that was but I'm willing to bet I do it all the time.  Either of these behaviors certainly -can be- conscious acts, but it also seems to be the case that they can be initiated sub or unconsciously and if it;s the case that both propositions (scratching as consciously -and- subconscionsly dircted actions) they aren't a reliable indicator of any disparity of position regardless of theory.  

Quote:Actually,  that said, those processes can come into conscious awareness and be acted upon (more so breathing than the heart rate) so there could be a similarity/connection after all. So scrub what I said.

Hehehe.  I'll get to other other post when the wife and I are done geeking out on the personality test cath put up. Haven't read it yet, so if any of the above seems redundant that;s why.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
Hehe, yeah I'm the same... usually when I'm watching TV. It's just a habitual/subconscious process most of the time.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
@Benny. Okay I'm up to date on the thread and I agree with Rhythm and think that you're equivocating. You seem to be doing exactly what I'm hoping studying philosophy will stop me from doing. Ie if you want to have a meaningful discussion, especially in philosophy and logic where words really matter, you have to be clear on the meaning/definitions of those words, and not using a different meaning than everyone else is... otherwise you'll just talk past each other as you've been doing. This applies both to you using a different definition of truth than Rhythm... his being philosophical/logical truth... and what in the context of this discussion should probably be considered the default definition of truth... it is the philosophy forum after all Wink So arguably the burden should be on you, rather than him to define a different usage of the word if one is being used... and to what you say about truth-in-context; sure there can be different truth values in different contexts but the way around that is simply to define which one you mean when you're talking about it or using it as part of a logical argument... otherwise it is equivocation as I understand the term and can only lead to confusion.

I had exactly the same problem at the beginning of this thread by talking about neural truth rather than philosophical truth... though granted I did say at the very beginning that my first post may or may not be relevant and it was just a thought dump... but later on, when I actually got into discussion with Mud, it became more and more clear that there was conflation/equivocation going on and that we weren't going to get anywhere... and that was my fault. Now I've resumed I don't want to make the same mistakes, hence saying to you that I make no claims (as yet) about how my neural theories relate to truth [in this philosophical context]... so as I see it there's no equivocation as long as I do not make any positive claims about philosophical truth based on it without first defining my use of the term and how it relates to the matter at hand.

I'm not ready to do that because I have yet to confirm to my own satisfaction the link between what we call philosophical truth... ie the truths arrived at by deductive or inductive logic... and neural 'truth' ie activation. I'm sure there is a correspondence but until I can translate this process of 'willful' logic into NN dynamics, such that I understand what's going on neurally at every stage of the reasoning process... only then can I personally consider them equivalent and be able to say to myself (rightly or wrongly... it is a theory after all) this phenomenal reasoning process translates into these neural processes, representations, and/or states.

I think I've made a pretty good start on that with my ABCD post, but whether my theory is good or bad doesn't make any difference whatsoever to you, anyone else, or the logical argument because all we're talking about is philosophical truth; so if I want to engage in that discussion I have to talk in those terms and so the only way neural truth - as I understand it from my theories - can enter the discussion is through equivalence, and if so then just as with phenomena I should be able to use the terms interchangeably, and therefore stick to the philosophical usage. All it would mean was that for me it would have neural 'backup' as it were that could in theory provide insight but whatever insight it did provide would still have to be put into logical/philosophical form before it could be used in an argument, so again, it makes no difference to you whether I'm right or wrong in my theory of mind.

Anyway, onto your other points. I don't really know what to say; we can't know about what exists outside our 'mundane' environment/context (ie the known universe), if anything. At best all it can be is theories but with no way to prove them. We can't know if there are any uber-patterns that explain things in this universe, or even outright contradict what we think we know about things. But I don't think that's cause to give up as it were on the environment we do have access to... it's all we've got regardless of what underlies it, if anything extra. There are still plenty of environment/context dependent truths and patterns to be found. They may not be the uber-truth, but if they're good enough to withstand logical/scientific scrutiny then they're stable enough to be useful. Like your photons... even if there is a larger pattern behind them that we can never know, and even if our scientific theories about them would be contradicted by that, the theories in place still make solid predictions about them and thus in all practical terms it doesn't matter.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
(January 15, 2017 at 9:34 pm)Emjay Wrote: @Benny. Okay I'm up to date on the thread and I agree with Rhythm and think that you're equivocating.
e tu, Brute? Smile

Quote:I'm not ready to do that because I have yet to confirm to my own satisfaction the link between what we call philosophical truth... ie the truths arrived at by deductive or inductive logic... and neural 'truth' ie activation. I'm sure there is a correspondence but until I can translate this process of 'willful' logic into NN dynamics, such that I understand what's going on neurally at every stage of the reasoning process... only then can I personally consider them equivalent and be able to say to myself (rightly or wrongly... it is a theory after all) this phenomenal reasoning process translates into these neural processes, representations, and/or states.
See, here's the thing that puzzles me about Rhythm, and now you. Truth-in-context is not jealous. A brain is still a brain, a neuron is still a neuron, and so on. In the context of our normal experience of life, and our basic understanding of brain and mind, we are going to agree. So long as that's the context in which we're discussing, there's no problem. It's when people say "Show me the evidence" with regard to metaphysical ideas that things go south-- obviously, metaphysical ideas will be abstractions of what we know-- extensions of as-above-so-below, for example; but you're unlikely to take many instances of as-above-so-below as evidence, any more than I am to take physical evidence as metaphysical evidence. Everyone knows the truth of this-- that we don't know, and that engaging in any kind of discussion about certain subjects means we are speculating just for something to do.

As for equivocation: I think calling the logic in logical positions "evidence" is an equivocation. Evidence means literally "that which is out into view," and taken literally, it would mean providing someone with a direct experience of a thing or its properties. If you want to take it in an abstract sense, then it means something like, "Showing that a new idea is coherent with those ideas which are already held," and perhaps "truth" is defined as "coherence with those ideas which are already held." I don't think those are very good definitions of those words. I really think for something to represent "truth," it must conform to an absolute objective source-- and the only way to establish this kind of truth is to establish a context in which subjectives are taken as objectives-- since there is nothing that we can interact with on a non-subjective level.

Quote:Anyway, onto your other points. I don't really know what to say; we can't know about what exists outside our 'mundane' environment/context (ie the known universe), if anything. At best all it can be is theories but with no way to prove them.
That's what metaphysics is. But some answers are still better than others, in my opinion. We can at least try to inject contexts. For example, I'd say that as we examine our universe at more and more primitive levels, things get more and more insubstantial, ambiguous, and downright squirrely. We know that QM involves definite observer effects, and that this is built-in to our universe. I'd therefore say it's reasonable to believe that if anything lies UNDER QM, i.e. QM supervenes on something, that something must be so incredibly ineffable and incomprehensible that it has to be expressed as a philosophical principle or quality.

Can I prove this? No, of course not. But given what we know in THIS context, I think it's a fair attempt to inject into that more basic context. Saying, "Show me" defeats the joy of this kind of philosophy-- playing with the known and speculating on the different ways it might interact with the unknown. Appeals to evidence in this case would be pointless and maybe a little rude.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
Things only go south when people ask for the evidence....if you don't have any.  

Angel

If a person finds themselves making excuses for their claims inability to pass a fundamental hurdle of logical assessment, their claims lack of parity with competing claims...who's problem is that? Defeating the joy, what does joy have to do with truth? Rude......it's rude to interrupt fantasy-called-philosophy?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
(January 16, 2017 at 12:50 am)Khemikal Wrote: Things only go south when people ask for the evidence....if you don't have any.  

Angel

If a person finds themselves making excuses for their claims inability to pass a fundamental hurdle of logical assessment, their claims lack of parity with competing claims...who's problem is that? Defeating the joy, what does joy have to do with truth?  Rude......it's rude to interrupt fantasy-called-philosophy?

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

What you are willing to inquire into depends on why you are making the inquiry. Some do it to bring structure to the chaos around them, and some do it to push against the cage that binds them. But if you think you are a seeker of truth, and that that truth extends more than an inch beyond your nose, you are willfully ignoring the limitations of human understanding and perception.

Let me ask you-- do you really know as much as you think you do? Are your positions based on claims which have been supported with sufficient evidence? If you think so, then I'd like to discuss some examples of claims which you claim represent truth beyond truth-in-context, and see if you can provide evidence for them. I'm pretty confident that you can't.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
(January 15, 2017 at 11:41 pm)bennyboy Wrote:
(January 15, 2017 at 9:34 pm)Emjay Wrote: @Benny. Okay I'm up to date on the thread and I agree with Rhythm and think that you're equivocating.
e tu, Brute?  Smile

Blush Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude or anything but that's what I took from reading the thread, Rhythm's responses, and watching you two go round and round in circles the same way I'm so used to doing when I talk about neurons  Wink

Quote:
Quote:I'm not ready to do that because I have yet to confirm to my own satisfaction the link between what we call philosophical truth... ie the truths arrived at by deductive or inductive logic... and neural 'truth' ie activation. I'm sure there is a correspondence but until I can translate this process of 'willful' logic into NN dynamics, such that I understand what's going on neurally at every stage of the reasoning process... only then can I personally consider them equivalent and be able to say to myself (rightly or wrongly... it is a theory after all) this phenomenal reasoning process translates into these neural processes, representations, and/or states.
See, here's the thing that puzzles me about Rhythm, and now you.  Truth-in-context is not jealous.  A brain is still a brain, a neuron is still a neuron, and so on.  In the context of our normal experience of life, and our basic understanding of brain and mind, we are going to agree.  So long as that's the context in which we're discussing, there's no problem.  It's when people say "Show me the evidence" with regard to metaphysical ideas that things go south-- obviously, metaphysical ideas will be abstractions of what we know-- extensions of as-above-so-below, for example; but you're unlikely to take many instances of as-above-so-below as evidence, any more than I am to take physical evidence as metaphysical evidence.  Everyone knows the truth of this-- that we don't know, and that engaging in any kind of discussion about certain subjects means we are speculating just for something to do.

I don't really know what you're talking about here. By as-above-so-below do you mean that I have a theory grounded 'out there' which informs me about 'in here', and that from your perspective, 'in here' should take precedence for informing me about 'out there' because it's all I can directly know? If so, then I'd more characterise my position as a synergy between the two; experience informs and predicts about neural dynamics and neural dynamics inform and predict about experience, and their continued extremely high degree of correlation, is enough to convince me that they are one and the same, just different sides of the same coin. But your position does not compute for me... I can't get my head around it. On the one hand you say that we can agree on mundane things like the brain and mind in context, but on the other you seem unwilling to allow anything out there to inform you about in here.

Quote:As for equivocation: I think calling the logic in logical positions "evidence" is an equivocation.  Evidence means literally "that which is out into view," and taken literally, it would mean providing someone with a direct experience of a thing or its properties.  If you want to take it in an abstract sense, then it means something like, "Showing that a new idea is coherent with those ideas which are already held," and perhaps "truth" is defined as "coherence with those ideas which are already held."  I don't think those are very good definitions of those words.  I really think for something to represent "truth," it must conform to an absolute objective source-- and the only way to establish this kind of truth is to establish a context in which subjectives are taken as objectives-- since there is nothing that we can interact with on a non-subjective level.

I think what it looks like you're looking for may already exist (or at least have been proposed... possibly by Daniel Dennett... not sure) in the form of 'Theorist Fictions'; a way to turn subjective reports of experience into objective evidence... the verbal/written/communicated report itself is the evidence. No assumptions are made about the accuracy of their content... whether a person is lying, deluded, telling the truth whatever, but instead the evidential value comes from the behaviourist fact that someone communicated those words and must've had a reason to do so... in other words that much and only that is evident to an objective observer. So if you collate a few thousand Theorist Fictions, on say NDE's or meditative experiences, then you've got some real data to analyse. I would think such a collection would be just as interesting to you and me, but we'd both have very different approaches to how to analyse it. I'm guessing that your analysis would focus mainly on the reported phenomenal content/differences of experiences, looking for patterns there, but from my perspective experience is experience... all of it is amazing but there's nothing more amazing about a lucid dream say, than 'mundane' waking life except for how they're subjectively experienced by the self... they both have qualia so they're both equally amazing from that point of view. My analysis would focus on the fact that, under my theory, everything that is referred to in the document must have a neural representation to be noticed/referred to and associated with in the first place. Therefore without even looking at content... almost as if you replaced every referral to anything with a simple letter or code number... it could treated as something like a map of representations, activations, and their relationships... and thus with enough of them it would be a statistical goldmine of data that could be analysed looking for patterns of known or yet-to-be-explained neural dynamics. So for me, the first port of call is always to look for or propose a known or plausible neural explanation of any reported experience and only if it fails on that account, and looks destined to fail... ie looks like there is no potential whatsoever for it to be reconciled with neural dynamics in the future, would I consider the possibility of there being something else... something other-worldly or 'spiritual'. For instance, you talk about insight mediation and seem to consider it evidence of the spiritual, but to me there's a plausible neural explanation in line with my theory; that insight mediation allows focusing on lower layers of the transformation/abstraction hierarchy due to allowing the higher levels to drift away or die out... so for instance say you have a neural representation of a cube, which for simplicity consists of neural transformations line > square > cube, then the process of meditation... of calming the mind and starving representations of attention... allows the cube representation to deactivate thus allowing the next highest activation to break through into conscious awareness... the square. Thus from that perspective, insight meditation allows subtler and subtler perceptions of the relational structure of the things we experience. It's only a theory of course but the fact that it can even be conceptualised at all in neural... i.e. earthly... terms makes it far more plausible to me than any other worldly explanation, so there's no need to go any further.

Quote:
Quote:Anyway, onto your other points. I don't really know what to say; we can't know about what exists outside our 'mundane' environment/context (ie the known universe), if anything. At best all it can be is theories but with no way to prove them.
That's what metaphysics is.  But some answers are still better than others, in my opinion.  We can at least try to inject contexts.  For example, I'd say that as we examine our universe at more and more primitive levels, things get more and more insubstantial, ambiguous, and downright squirrely.  We know that QM involves definite observer effects, and that this is built-in to our universe.  I'd therefore say it's reasonable to believe that if anything lies UNDER QM, i.e. QM supervenes on something, that something must be so incredibly ineffable and incomprehensible that it has to be expressed as a philosophical principle or quality.

Can I prove this?  No, of course not.  But given what we know in THIS context, I think it's a fair attempt to inject into that more basic context.  Saying, "Show me" defeats the joy of this kind of philosophy-- playing with the known and speculating on the different ways it might interact with the unknown.  Appeals to evidence in this case would be pointless and maybe a little rude.

Yes but there's no way to join the dots from the outside to confirm any theory because you don't have access to the outside, if there even is an outside  Wink But sure, if it makes you happy, theorise away  Big Grin ... after all it could be considered like a 'thinking outside the box' puzzle like the one I'm stuck on at the moment in my Christmas present of a calendar of Mensa puzzles  Wink  Four boxes of numbers (ie contexts), something connecting them (ie an uber-context) but I have no idea what (and it's only a three out of five difficulty rating but I'm completely stumped). So you can theorise outside the box and if it makes useful predictions about inside the box (in my puzzle's case, what number the ? should be) then that would make it a more valid theory.
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RE: Is the statement "Claims demand evidence" always true?
(January 16, 2017 at 9:15 am)bennyboy Wrote: There are no metaphysical theories that pass even elemental tests of evidence.  
Sure there are.  

Quote: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.  

Quote:What you are willing to inquire into depends on why you are making the inquiry.  Some do it to bring structure to the chaos around them, and some do it to push against the cage that binds them.  But if you think you are a seeker of truth, and that that truth extends more than an inch beyond your nose, you are willfully ignoring the limitations of human understanding and perception.
The limits are what they are, whatever they are. 

Quote:Let me ask you-- do you really know as much as you think you do?
I have a pretty dismal view of "how much I know", lol....

Quote:Are your positions based on claims which have been supported with sufficient evidence?  If you think so, then I'd like to discuss some examples of claims which you claim represent truth beyond truth-in-context, and see if you can provide evidence for them.  I'm pretty confident that you can't.
All truth claims represent truth beyond "truth-in-context...since "truth-in-context" is an equivocation.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply



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