(August 12, 2012 at 7:52 pm)apophenia Wrote: I'm not sure what you are referring to here. We are aware of physiological reactions through qualitative experiences which we call emotion. (Or by scientific measurement.) I don't know what you mean by "equating physiological reactions with emotions". I did no such thing. An example here is the notion of referred pain. We may feel a pain in a certain part of our body, but the pain is caused by a physiological state occurring elsewhere in our body. We don't experience physiological reactions, we experience emotional states caused by physiological events or conditions. To speak of equating physiological reactions with emotions is nonsensical. Physiological reactions are physical phenomena. Emotions are mental phenomena. A physical phenomena can't be identical with a mental phenomenon, unless one is perhaps referring to brain states.
I'm referring to your calling physical sensations such as hunger and sleepiness emotional phenomenon. Just because something is experiential in nature does not make it an emotion.
(August 12, 2012 at 7:52 pm)apophenia Wrote: If the statement that there are foundational truths has no determinate value, then the theory that is foundationalism is of indeterminate validity. You seem to be eagerly biting your nose off to spite your face. If foundationalism isn't asserting that there are foundational truths, or that it is true that there are foundational truths, then what is it asserting? Is it asserting that "there might be foundational truths but it's indeterminate whether there are or not" ? I don't think you have thought through the implications of proposition P being of indeterminate truth value. If proposition P has no determinate truth value, then foundationalism is dead.
I'm simply pointing out the risk of generalizing that statement. Whether or not that statement has determinate truth value (or any statement for that matter) would depend upon the type of foundationalism chosen, i.e. which axioms one chooses to begin with.
For example, one of the axioms of a foundational theory might be "the truth of any statement depends upon the derivibility from foundational axioms", a definition which automatically makes those axioms as neither true, nor false, while at the same time not invalidating the theory as a whole.
(August 12, 2012 at 7:52 pm)apophenia Wrote: Indeed I do, which is why I noted it wasn't a completed refutation. However, it is not clear to me that P is a foundational truth. So at minimum, you and I differ as to it being a foundational truth. I'd say that, prima facie, it's a bad sign for any hypothetically foundational concept or truth that two reasonably intelligent people are diametrically opposed as to whether it is a foundational truth. Since you're the one asserting that it is foundational, the onus is upon you to demonstrate why it, proposition P, or any basic concept / foundational truth is identifiably a foundational truth, as opposed to another proposition, say Q, which is not. What properties and characteristics must a proposition possess in order to be considered a foundational truth. What procedure do we use to partition the set of all beliefs, propositions, or concepts into basic and not basic? (And, "because Genkaus thinks it is" is not a satisfactory argument. Also note that this is why I brought up the trilemma: if you have to justify proposition P on the basis of other propositions or concepts, you've made foundationalism circular and thus vacuous. How do we identify basic concepts / truths?)
The measure I choose is whether or not its negative can be asserted without a contradiction.
(August 12, 2012 at 7:52 pm)apophenia Wrote: You're confusing the criteria by which we distinguish basic from non-basic concepts (or percepts) from the concepts or percepts themselves. It's a question of identifying a common property or properties which basic concepts share, regardless of the specifics of the concept / percept itself. If you can't determine how to separate the basic concept from a non-basic concept, foundationalism is, again, dead in the water. I find it rather interesting you would define foundational concepts in term of percepts. Firstly, that seems to lead down the hole of naive empiricism of the Humean sort, for which we know there are significant difficulties. Second, veridical and non-veridical percepts are not reliably distinguishable, so that would leave us with a purely phenomenological perspective, which is a rather barren landscape. But the most problematic is that percepts don't have truth values, nor do they explain many abstractions; so just like Perhaps, you would be bankrupting the explanatory and logical power that we require of foundationalism, at the expense of defensibility. A foundationalism that doesn't give rise to, at minimum, a logic, doesn't lead to many interesting places. Percepts as basic truths doesn't lead to anywhere useful. (Ignoring that phenomenological perspectives like Heidegger's and Sartre's do lead somewhere, just not the places we, in general, want to go with a foundationalist theory.) (On top of which, there are many important basic concepts, or potential basic concepts which aren't perceptual; the concept of a group of things and the transfinite being just two off the top of my head.)
The point I'm trying to make is the error of classifying all forms of foundationalism under one umbrella. There can be many different criterion for separating the basic and derivative concepts and the self-evident percepts being the basic ones is only one of them. One may also consider the common concepts derivable form all percepts as a basic concept as well or use irrefutability as a criteria.
Also, how exactly is "percepts as basic truths" bankrupting the explanatory power of that particular foundationalism?
Finally, your insistence on classifying all statements as true or false implies a prior acceptance of another epistemological theory.
