Is there a necessary being? kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fMhoiKaZr8DFh58.html
@Trynottoblink Жыл бұрын
White text on a black background is so much easier on the eyes, thanks for this and keep doing it
@j.samuelwaters817 ай бұрын
As compared to what? Looking at his actual face? Rude 😂 [edit: I've discovered my error, however I will leave my uniformed outburst unaltered for internet posterity]
@thattimestampguy Жыл бұрын
0:33 The World Is The Way It Is • Modal language, useful fiction, not objective feature. 1:56 Metaphysical Tendency • Postulating True-Description 2:43 Worry: It’s Incoherent 7:30 Actions can be 2 properties and 2 properties only 9:18 1 Necessary World: There is only 1 way the world could be
@justus4684 Жыл бұрын
5:39 That relies on the assumption that "It is not the case that A (where A is an action) is permissible" iff "A is impermissible" But these aren't necessarily semantically equivalent Here: One denies that A has some property P, while the other asserts that A has some property Q To claim that "if A doesn't have P then A has Q" has the underlying assumption that all A's either have property P or Q But it is logically possible that some have neither I think you can somewhat avoid this problem by stating "The property of permissibility doesn't exist" There you have less ambiguity in the language
@JohnnyTwoFingers Жыл бұрын
I think he is likely using binary (true/false) logic without acknowledging/realizing it? (Or maybe it was mentioned and I missed it?). Binary logic makes reality appear WAY different, it's bizarre (and harmful) how this sort of thing isn't taught in school.
@justus4684 Жыл бұрын
@@JohnnyTwoFingers It's totally fine to operate on a binary logic here The problem is what the terms are taken to mean
@JohnnyTwoFingers Жыл бұрын
@@justus4684 I'd say it is problematic if you expect your results to be necessarily representative of reality. If you're just telling stories for entertainment or something like that it's adequate, but for "epistemically serious" thinking it is a bit dangerous.
@miniroundaboutinbrum7915 Жыл бұрын
@@JohnnyTwoFingers sort of …this was a critique of modal discourse as applied to moral questions. The problem identified was the binary outcomes produced in modal discourse
@wireless849 Жыл бұрын
You could further develop this by going into Quine’s vs Kripke’s interpretation of quantified modal logic. It is a deep debate with contemporary analytic philosophy and I do not believe it has been fully resolved. Kripke published a paper in Nous as recently as 2017 with some further thoughts on the topic. Metaphysicians obviously got completely on board with Kripke’s interpretation of modal discourse as it gave them stuff to write about again, yet I do not think the Quinean challenges have been adequately answered. It often comes down (as these things often do) to an assertion of intuition. For example Kripke would say something like “It clearly makes sense to interpret a set of possible worlds as a proposition” whereas I would say “no, actually, it doesn’t”. It can get technically complex so maybe not suitable for a KZfaq video, but maybe you could give it a try if you want?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I did actually do a few videos on this, way back at the beginning of this channel. Never got around to finishing the series though. They are titled "Quine's objections to modal logic"
@wireless849 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB cool I’ll take a look.
@jasoncruz198009 ай бұрын
Quine's view is self defeating, mostly because necessary things do exist and that is existence in of itself. I do think modality is reducible however, it gets technical quick
@mf_hume Жыл бұрын
Awesome video! Thanks for all the content you create
@Willwantstobeawesome Жыл бұрын
I think of modal properties similarly to probability in that they're used to describe situations in which there is ignorance. To say the world is necessarily the way it is almost presupposes knowledge about the world. The world might necessarily be the way it is but it would only then be necessarily the way described by a number of possible descriptions.
@authenticallysuperficial987424 күн бұрын
~P does imply N. There's nothing wrong with either claim though.
@TheLogvasStudio Жыл бұрын
I agree, that some modal claims, like the one with a change in fundamental particles, are vague. But when I say that cup neccessary was on the table at 5 pm, yesterday, I mean, that I have some justification(x), from which I could deduce, that the statement "cup was on the table at 5 pm, yesterday" is true. For example that could be video recording, or a testament of some witness. So, more formally: □P ∃x:Proof(x,P) ◇P ~∃x:Proof(x,~P) I don't think that it is possible to do reasoning without an idea of "justification", which I denote here as Proof predicate. All other entities involved in modal statements are purely logical. Therefore to deny modality is to put yourself in very fringe logical nihilist position, and fell out of the conventional rules of discource.
@zornrose3547 Жыл бұрын
I'm disposed to think of justification as an epistemic property, not a modal/metaphysical one. That is to say, you can accept that some things logically follow from others--in the sense that from one you can conclude with absolute certainty the other--without accepting that there's a set of possible worlds that ground that certainty or anything like that. (I take it Kane isn't arguing against epistemic possibility and epistemic necessity as concepts, which would be absolutely buck wild)
@zornrose3547 Жыл бұрын
Sure - perhaps I'm reading him more charitably than you are, then. I definitely took him to be endorsing modal monism, not modal nihilism. I appreciate you giving me these different terms. That being said, thinking something is metaphysically impossible isn't thereby an epistemic claim. People who believe in metaphysical modality might assign zero credence to the proposition "I do not exist" while maintaining that it's metaphysically possible for them not to have existed, and might think it's metaphysically impossible for 2567 multiplied by 5281 not to equal 498873 while granting that they might have done the calculation wrong.
@Nickesponja Жыл бұрын
I think the most reasonable view here is modal skepticism. It doesn't seem like we have any reliable way of checking whether modal properties exist, or what those properties are, so skepticism towards them is the most reasonable position.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I don't think there's anything unreasonable about holding beliefs without justification, and I find holding beliefs more fun than suspending judgment.
@Nickesponja Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB Based worldview
@unknownknownsphilosophy7888 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB How do you know you are holding beliefs right now and not suspending judgement right now? You don't... you could say you are suspending judgement right now and still do all the same things and have just as much fun.. why would suspending judgement be in anyway different than the way things are right now? How is it less fun?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@unknownknownsphilosophy7888 Why, per my own view, would I need to have any justification for my belief that I'm holding beliefs right now? I can just go ahead and believe that I'm holding beliefs. I don't need a reason. As it happens though, I do have a reason. I know I'm holding beliefs, as opposed to suspending judgment, on the basis of a tingle I felt in my massive hairy balls. It is an indisputable axiom that ball tingles provide prima facie justification, and that the larger the balls, the greater the justification. Unfortunately for you, none of your arguments will ever be sufficient to outweigh my ball tingles.
@Opposite271 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB This are the two most based comments I have ever read.
@calebp6114 Жыл бұрын
Have you ever read Alexander Pruss' 'Necessary Existence'? Its the best case for necessitarianism I have found. Edit: It argues for the existence of a necessary foundation of reality, not that contingent events do not exist.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
No, never read that
@captainzork61096 ай бұрын
Majesty of Reason had Dr. Amy Karofsky on. The host and their audience are contingentists, and Dr. Karofsky is a necessitarian. Thus, that proves to be a rather interesting clash between perspectives She, by the way, does argue against contingentarianism. And thus the host provides some very challenging objections to her view, to which she is able to respond rather eloquently. She gave off the impression she'd been very thorough and comprehensive in her analysis. All in all it was a wonderful discussion between two impressive intellectuals, which you might want to check out if the topic is of interest to you (:
@darrellee81945 ай бұрын
Seems like it’s possible 😊 To throw away possibility, and keep necessity, leaving you with a kind of super determinism.
@filosofiadetalhista Жыл бұрын
My thought: Modality is based on causal properties. For true counterfactuals, their antecedents logically imply their consequents when we take into account all causal properties. This position avoids the Necessitarianism objection. Yes, modal discourse would still make sense even if Necessitarianism were true. This is because Determinism comes from causal properties.
@Ockerlord Жыл бұрын
6:01 I think the obvious coherent answer is that I can adopt the view that nothing is morally permissible and therefore everything is morally impermissible. Which is just another phrasing of the view that there is no objective morality that could guide our actions.
@davidantinucci8027 Жыл бұрын
Fantastic talk. How about future contingencies? Are they / should they be understood in terms of modal properties?
@quinncowdroy5164 Жыл бұрын
Deleuze presents an interesting argument against the possible in Begsonism, stemming from the fact that all that we have ever experienced has been real. In proposing that what currently exists was at once point possible, we are projecting the real into the past sans its actuality and saying that from here what currently exists followed. We imagine that the real is the possible with something added which causes it to be actualized, but in fact it is the other way around. The possible is the real with nonexistence added. So here we've gotten things backwards and confused the more for the less, the antecedent with the consequent. We only imagine that the possible exists by assuming that nonexistence is primary (which is in fact the very opposite of what direct experience tells us), and thus the argument for it is circular.
@Eta_Carinae__ Жыл бұрын
On the dimensionless particles thing: it might be a bit of an oxymoron. I assume "dimensionless" means having dimension 0, and we're strictly concerned with spatio-temporal dimensions. Technically a dimension 0 vector space exists, but it only contains the 0 vector, so a dimensionless particle basically needs to be located at the origin everywhere, regardless of where you measure it. You _might_ be able to get away with a kind of soupy-object that satisfies this, but I'd think that's not a particle, since particles are defined as having space-time coordinates. It just might be worth an errata on the example, since it may be a contradiction in terms.
@RyanApplegatePhD Жыл бұрын
Dimensionless in this context is synonymous with calling the particle a point or point particle or even having zero volume/spatial extent.
@sillysad31987 ай бұрын
basically a claim of the "possibility" if translated into honest terminology is a claim of the Existence Of A Definitive Class to which the given observable thing belongs, and does not exhaust this class.
@oOneszaOo Жыл бұрын
The argument for modal anti-realism could go something like this: (1) Modal realism conflates epistemology and ontology. (2) In order to disprove (1), modal realists would need to provide sufficient evidence for the existence of modal properties. (3) Ontology does not depend on epistemology (e.g. from the epistemological utility of numbers it does not follow that mathematical platonism is true) (4) The evidence modal realists provide for the existence of modal properties does not go beyond the epistemological utility of modal properties (e.g. their explanatory or predictive power). (5) From (3) and (4), the evidence modal realists provide is insufficient for satisfying (2). (6) If (1) is true, modal anti-realism is more plausible. (7) From (5), (1) is true. (8) Hence, from (6) and (7), modal anti-realism is more plausible. I am not sure you could ever fully disprove modal realism. At best you might manage to make it a position as implausible as mathematical platonism.
@james1098778910 Жыл бұрын
What would it mean for modal properties to exist or not to exist? I don't see how that could have any meaning. The word exist is applicable to chairs and fictional characters, not to 'possible' and 'impossible'. It is possible for me to do 20 push ups, and it doesnt make sense to ask if it is 'actually possible' or if this is just a fiction.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I'm sympathetic to this approach; indeed, talk of modal *properties* already strikes me as strange. When I say that the cup could have failed to exist, or could have been put in a different location, it's not at all clear that I'm attributing the property of possibly-not-existing or possibly-being-located-differently to the cup. I certainly find it hard to conceive of what modal properties could even be -- no doubt, this is one reason I incline towards modal antirealism. All the things that philosophers have postulated as playing the role of modal properties (Lewis's concrete worlds, maximal consistent sets of propositions, mathematical entities, etc.) just don't seem to bear the right kind of relations to actual things to be the modal properties of actual things. For example, when I say that the actual cup could have been put in a different location, Lewis says that what makes this true is that there exists some other possible world in which a counterpart of that cup has been put in the counterpart of the different location. But it's hard to see why any facts about things in other worlds would have anything to do with *this cup*. The same issue arises for the other suggestions. (IIRC, this was a point made by Kripke against Lewis's modal realism specifically; I don't think Kripke saw that the problem holds for all accounts of modal properties.)
@scambammer6102 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB seems like "modal anti-realism" is a contradiction in terms. What's anti-real is modality.
@Dan-ii5wz Жыл бұрын
Great video! Another promising way one could motive a modal antirealism is epistemic. How exactly does our ability to imagine/conceive of different possibilities latch on to the underlying modal reality in a way that gives us true knowledge of the modal facts? This is somewhat analogous to Benacerraf's integration problem for mathematical Platonism. I'd recommend Amie Thomasson's new book 'Norms and Necessity' (2021), where she develops a more sophisticated normativism about modality, but also discusses this particular problem for modal realism in chapter 7. (She also has a few journal articles on the topic which seem to be the precursors to the book, so they are probably worth a read too)
@seanclements93255 ай бұрын
this description is salty as hell but i love it
@wenaolong Жыл бұрын
Modality is a property of the world which is modeled. There are no modeled properties of the world that are not real properties of the world. That is, the phenomenal world to which our "modeling mechanism" has direct access. Even if it is just a property INTERNAL to such a mechanism, that mechanism holds the property by which and through which it accesses and realizes itself in and through a world. Therefore it is a real property of the world, to that precise extent. Emergence of the phenomenon without understanding it does not make it suspect as to inherent reality. Reductive definition must resort to claims about the inherent reality of some base property, which is undoubtedly a vicious regress into circularity or self-contradiction.
@joshnicholson6194 Жыл бұрын
I am not radically against this position; although, like you, I have no argument for it. RIP Kripke.
@firstaidsack Жыл бұрын
Why should one be a modal antirealist if you can always be a Necessitarian? This way you can be agnostic about modal properties and participate in discussions while keeping a (possibly strong) tendency towards Necessitarianism.
@Ohaupt Жыл бұрын
Very interesting. Being a avid Kripke reader myself I have wondered how real this modal way of looking at the world is. I do believe in God, though now I wonder if I believe in a necessary being. Watching your video I cannot help by wonder if your position allows you to use modal logic when you find it convenient and dismiss it when it does not please? In that case it may not be logic at all but just an elaborate justification of preference. Unless you don't believe in modal logic at all.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I take logics in general to be useful tools for systematizing reasoning and discourse. I wouldn't say I believe in any particular logical system.
@G_Doggy_Jr8 ай бұрын
How does your modal anti-realism relate to (e.g.) David Lewis's modal realism? It seems to me that there isn't too much difference between your views. Both want to say that there are no intrinsically modal properties. For Lewis, modal statements, such as statements about unactualised possibilities, can be true, if they quantify over non-actual worlds. Your "necessitarian" view isn't altogether different, apart from the fact that there are no worlds other than the actual world, which means that many of our modal statements (e.g., "I could have written this comment on a vimeo video") are false.
@JamesAndrewMacGlashanTaylor Жыл бұрын
It seems that there cannot be a "knock down" argument for modal anti-realism because if there was, then modal anti-realism would have to be true "necessarily". Any argument, that is to say argumentation itself, presupposes modal properties. Or am I confused on this? Would modal anti-realism imply a rejection of logical realism? Furthermore, you seem to focus on necessity as the sole modal property but of course there is also contingency and contrariness, no? Thus, any proposal of a way the world might be again already presupposes modal properties, no? I think you might have been trying to address this last point, but I wasn't sure if I was picking up what you were putting down exactly. Frankly I am not sure I am even using these concepts appropriately in this context so, there's that!
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I can give an argument to the effect that P is true; this need not be an argument to the effect that P is necessarily true. The latter would be a much stronger claim. Consider, for example, the argument that Planet Nine exists based on orbital anomalies of Kuiper belt objects. Few people would take this as an argument for the necessary existence of Planet Nine! I do also talk about the cup on my table, which is usually taken to be contingent. I think a description of the way the world is just that: a description of the way the world is. I can tell you the way things are without attributing any modal properties to these states of affairs. The description "there is a cup on my table" is compatible with it being only contingently true that there is a cup on my table and it being necessarily true that there is a cup on my table (as the necessitarian would claim)... So why wouldn't it be compatible with the claim that there just are no modal properties, no necessity, possibility, contingency, etc.?
@fanboy8026 Жыл бұрын
can you do a video about epistemic pehnomenalism
@ZoiusGM11 ай бұрын
I recently learnt about necessitarianism and it resonates with me; enough to make me modal anti-realist. But I have a question: if necessitarianism is true, does modal logic and counterfactuals become completely obsolete and a waste of time by philosophers? You said that in our daily life a necessarianist could still be able to speak as if modality exists. What about philosophically?
@Opposite27110 ай бұрын
I think there might be a way to save counterfactuals. At least to me, it seems like that even if something could not have happened, there might still be truths about what happens if it would have happened. Could doesn’t seem to contradict a Would.
@OBGynKenobi Жыл бұрын
Are you talking about objective existence? What if you hallucinate that there's a cup in front of you, and so to you, it exists?
@alltimelowinzasion Жыл бұрын
i take issue with the idealization section. if we can suppose an ideal gas, what stops us from supposing an ideal gas that obeys certain laws? to answer your question of "how would things in such a world behave?" i say "how i want them to" (where i'll cleverly choose this to be similar to our world somehow, so it has a use here). what stops us from tracking facts, then? define a state, define how states progress, and then just calculate things mini gripe: they are not "dimensionless" particles, they are dimension 0 particles, more commonly called points
@authenticallysuperficial987424 күн бұрын
Sacred/corrupt is a false dichotomy. Possible to not be / Necessary is a true dichotomy.
@cremasca Жыл бұрын
❤️👍❤️
@markpaul1383 Жыл бұрын
Could the cup have failed to exist? The necessitarian will say no, of course not. Nothing that exists exists contingently. If something exists, it exists necessarily. But the last two sentences just seem to be restatements of the necessitarian view. The necessitarian still has to indicate how it is that the cup could not have failed to exist. Perhaps he does that by appealing to some set of initial conditions, sufficient more or less to bring about the existence of the cup. He then says that in virtue of the actual fulfillment of the initial conditions, that cup had to come to exist. There's no way that cup doesn't exist if those initial conditions are set and met. But if the cup is destroyed via some powerful destructive force, what can the necessitarian say then? Of course, what happens to the cup in this regard is also the result of the initial conditions being met. Those conditions are necessary. But the cup no longer exists. If it no longer exists, then maybe it did at one time have to exist, but because it doesn't exist now or any longer, it is not the case that it has to exist. And if it doesn't have to exist, it doesn't necessarily exist. But if it doesn't necessarily exist, necessitarianism is false. How does the necessitarian get around this? Does he say that in some way the object still exists after it has been destroyed? That doesn't seem promising. Does he say that my liberal use of temporal modifiers modifying existence is cheating ("existing no longer", etc.)? I don't think this is a good strategy either, particularly with physical, manufactured goods: they don't exist (prior to manufacture), then they do (post manufacture), and then they don't again (post destruction). Maybe the necessitarian view is silly, after all? What do you think?
@CuriosityGuy6 ай бұрын
Necessitarian could say that at time x, the cup necessarily exists. But at time y, it necessarily does not exist.
@markpaul13836 ай бұрын
@@CuriosityGuy Yep. But that's crazy, right? Anything that necessarily exists (a) exists in every possible world, and with a temporal analogue, exists at all times, i.e. there shouldn't be a time when it doesn't exist & (b) could not have failed to exist, i.e. it wouldn't make sense to say it didn't exist. So, if at y, it fails to exist, then it isn't true at x that it necessarily exists (or existed).
@ahmedbellankas2549 Жыл бұрын
1- if possible worlds are identical to imaginary worlds then modal facts don't exist; 2- possible worlds are identical to imaginary worlds; C- modal facts don't exist. For 2,when i say socrates could have been a mathematician,i'm just imagining socrates being a mathematician,so what's the difference between that and saying socrates could have been able to breath fire,maybe for this case the identity of indecernibles works,at what depth should i go to say that p is possible and i'm not just imagining p. That's a suggestion.
@philbelanger2 Жыл бұрын
We know at least one thing about how things would be if there was an ideal gas: the gas in question would obey the ideal gas law.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I don't think we know that, unless you're just stipulating that an ideal gas is one that obeys the ideal gas laws. But as for how a gas consisting of dimensionless particles (etc.) would behave, there's no fact of the matter in my view.
@philbelanger2 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB You could indeed define an ideal gas that way. Alternatively, you could make counterfactual assumptions from which you can mathematically derive the ideal gas law. Either way, you would only be assuming the the laws of logic and mathematics hold in any counterfactual situations. I think most people would be ready to accept this.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@philbelanger2 First, I'm an instrumentalist about logic. I don't think there is a universally correct logical system; the appropriate logic to use is determined by our goals plus background facts about the domain into which we are inquiring. More importantly, even on more standard views of logic, I'm not sure how we could logically derive the ideal gas law from the counterfactual assumptions. This is because what is entailed by the counterfactual description of an ideal gas is dependent on auxiliary hypotheses about the counterfactual world that are simply not available. To logically derive how the ideal gas would behave from the description of the ideal gas, we would need to include a host of other facts in our counterfactual assumptions. Nobody ever does adds such assumptions; presumably, it would be practically impossible for anything other than extremely simple worlds.
@philbelanger2 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB It all depends on what assumptions you make. If you simply postulate that the gas is composed of atoms that have no volume, then obviously you won't get far. But if you assume (for example) that the speed of the atoms is given by the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution, you can derive the ideal gas law. That will hold no matter what auxiliary hypotheses you make.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@philbelanger2 I feel like I'm misunderstanding you, because it seems trivially easy to add auxiliaries that would block the derivation of the ideal gas law in that case. For example, imagine a world in which the point particles, on interacting with other point particles, spontaneously gain mass. Of course, you can stipulate that this is not the world you are considering, and you can make the same stipulation for any other "deviant" auxiliary I suggest, but in practice this accounts to saying "and no auxiliaries that block the derivation of the ideal gas law hold."
@ReadrOFilz Жыл бұрын
Critique of "there are no modal properties". I think the arguments presented are insufficient. My viewpoint is generally nominalist. That is, generally sceptical about abstract entities' existential status. Indeed, what is it "to exist"? It's to employ quantifiers, as in: for some x... for all x... To be generally nominalist, is to not quantify over abstractions. That would surely include properties. So, I could agree that modal properties don't exist, only in the sense that we need not quantify over them. But there's no metaphysical punch in that - we need not quantify over any properties at all. That does not inhibit in the slightest that the nominalist can discourse about any properties at all, that are real properties of things. Some people of course talk about properties that have no instances in existing things. Again, this has no metaphysical punch. Cases: If done artistically, it's a form of entertainment, as in fantasy fiction. Thus in the first Harry Potter novel, Fluffy is a three-headed dog. You can learn this as merely a detail of a good story. If a group of people think a fantasy fiction is true, that's (sadly) a collective delusion; not at all comparable (without more investigation) to historians soberly speaking, for example, about unrealized modal possibilities. As in: Possibly Hitler had been assassinated in 1944, if a certain briefcase with a bomb in it had ended up a little closer to the dictator. See how unlike some false religion this is. Again, go to a class in Euclidean geometry. The R^2 plane has zero thickness and is infinitely extended, they say. This is a mathematical abstraction. No existing thing has such properties. Yet geometry is a deductive science, proving difficult theorems from the axioms. Aside from the delight arising from learning pure mathematics, geometry's abstractions advance our reasoned understanding of nature. If there are statements with straightforward truth conditions in the real world, containing modal properties, then there's no reason to discriminate against such properties; as compared to any other properties people attribute to things.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I'm interpreting properties in a deflationary way here: for instance, to say that there are colour properties is, per my usage, just to say that some things are coloured. I assume we could rephrase modal anti-realism in a way that would be nominalistically acceptable (and if not, so much the worse for nominalism, since I will sooner accept abstracts and universals into my ontology than I will modality). I'm a bit confused about what you mean when you say that those cases have no metaphysical punch. As I see it, there are no three-headed dogs. There is no R^2 plane. And there are no possible events that happened to Hitler. "then there's no reason to discriminate against such properties" I think it's fine to discriminate against properties without reason.
@yusufahmed3678 Жыл бұрын
I am wondering whether you also are an anti-realist about libertarian freewill. And if so, what do you make of the intuition we have about us having libertarian freewill?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
Libertarian free will requires that the universe is indeterministic -- that particular events could have been otherwise. Since I deny that there are modal properties, I deny that the universe is either deterministic or indeterministic. The universe is just the way it is, and that's all. I also reject libertarian free will for other reasons. First, if free will is supposed to be something that is of any practical relevance to us, I can't see how there justification of belief in free will would depend on the outcome of abstruse metaphysical debates. I don't think that metaphysical debates matter to anyone except metaphysicians. But any view on which free will requires indeterminism is one that grounds free will in such abstruse metaphysics. So it feels to me like libertarian views start off on the wrong track. Second, I find Galen Strawson's incoherence argument against free will fairly attractive. As for the intuition about us having libertarian free will, well, I simply don't have that intuition, and I'm skeptical that most ordinary people have that intuition. Speaking just for myself, it seems very obvious on reflection that my thoughts and decisions just happen -- that is, when I actually pay attention to my thoughts and decisions, and I ask myself "why did I do this?", I find that I have no answer. The thoughts and decisions just occur, with my awareness as a passive observer. So I don't really accept that there is any intuition to account for here.
@scambammer6102 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB "when I actually pay attention to my thoughts and decisions, and I ask myself "why did I do this?", I find that I have no answer." really? I find that hard to believe. Most of our actions can be explained by biological imperatives, like the need to eat, sleep, reproduce, obtain safety and comfort and socialize.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@scambammer6102 "really?" Yes "I find that hard to believe" Okay "Most of our actions can be explained..." That's not incompatible with what I said. If my actions are driven by "biological imperatives", then (a) there is no particular reason why this biological imperative would need to be accessible to conscious reflection and (b) even if the biological imperative is accessible to reflection, I need not identify with it -- it may feel like I am being pushed by some force outside my control, as opposed to freely choosing my actions.
@scambammer6102 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB conscious reflection is a tool that humans need to survive. It is a biological imperative for our species. And we have no choice but to identify with it, however much we tell ourselves otherwise.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@scambammer6102 I don't take myself to have any responsibility or control over whatever my "biological imperatives" are. I don't see this as giving me free will. Anyway, whatever one's account of such "biological imperatives", at this point we are well beyond the *intuition* of libertarian free will that the original commenter was talking about.
@ashkenassassin7219 Жыл бұрын
This is a side topic that is different from the topic in the video but related.The problem is just this something is useful if it gives desired results this is distinct from something being true.We wouldn't want truth if it were useless but that is irrelevant to whether something is true or not and that is the conflation that some people make, I'm not accusing you of making this conflation btw but I've watch many videos where you pull out the pragmatist card.The point is just this there can be useful lies we have all done so my point is just because it's useful doesn't make it true and it puzzles me when someone does call it true.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
I'm not sure why you think I'm pulling that card. I'm not a pragmatist and the distinction between truth and utility plays a central role in my philosophical views. I do sometimes give a "pragmatic justification" or "pragmatic account" of particular practices but I don't take such pragmatic accounts to give us any reason to believe that these practices are accessing the truth. That's the whole point of calling it a "pragmatic account": the practice is explained in terms of its utility, rather than in terms of it delivering true beliefs.
@muhammadshahedkhanshawon3785 Жыл бұрын
Are you a necessitarianist?
@thehairblairbunchjones6209 Жыл бұрын
These arguments seem to concern metaphysical modality, but are you also sceptical of the purely logical kind of modality?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
It depends on what you mean by "purely logical kind of modality" -- but I'm an instrumentalist about logic so I'm not going to accept that the world has modal properties in virtue of logical relations. For example, it might be claimed that it is "logically possible" to travel faster than light, because faster than light travel does not in itself entail contradiction. But contradiction is only a problem if you are using particular logical systems. Also, interestingly, even those logics on which contradiction is a problem arguably do not, strictly speaking, rule out contradiction. In classical logic, it's rather that a contradiction entails everything, and that's a result that we take to be disastrous. It's not clear that this shows contradiction to be impossible in any sense, though. Classical logic can deal with contradictions just fine: ex falso quodlibet tells you what can be derived in classical systems when contradictions are asserted, just as modus ponens tells you what can be derived when a conditional and its antecedent are asserted. (Of course, we can just stipulate the Law of Non-Contradiction as an axiom. Then I guess we rule out contradiction. But we can stipulate anything we like as an axiom.)
@thehairblairbunchjones6209 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB I remember you expressing scepticism concerning the idea of one true logic before in relation to stuff like dialetheism, so I know where you’re coming from. However, I am curious what you would then say about conceptual impossibility more broadly. Are you also sympathetic towards Quinean scepticism about the distinction between conceptual and empirical truths? Or would you accept that we can get enough purchase on the idea of meaning to say that e.g. it is impossible for there to be a surface which is simultaneously green and red all over, because the way we use those words rules that out, and not because of a general logical truth that is independent of the content of the propositions being operated upon using whatever logical system?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@thehairblairbunchjones6209 Yeah, I'm sympathetic to Quine on this point. It's fine for a person to stipulate the meanings of their terms. You can say that, by definition, you are going to use the term "bachelor" to mean "unmarried man", in which case, we know that you will endorse the proposition that all bachelors are unmarried, come what may. But this same move can be made to save any proposition whatsoever. I could similarly stipulate that I am using the term "swan" to mean "white bird with properties x, y, z", in which case, no empirical observations can threaten my commitment to the claim that all swans are white. Well, none can do that as long as I insist on defining terms that way. It's rare that anybody commits themselves to stipulative definitions such as this, however. I take it that generally, concepts do not have extensions -- that is, there is no determinate set of things in the world that a concept picks out. Here is a toy example to illustrate what I mean. We observed a bunch of white birds which we labelled "swans". After observing numerous such white swans, we come to believe that all swans are white. Then we encounter a bird that has very similar characteristics to swans, except that it is black. The question is: does the concept "swan" apply to this bird? My view is that there is no fact of the matter. We could use the term "swan" to cover both these white birds and black birds, in which case we will take this as the discovery that some swans are black. Or we could take it that swans are white by definition, in which case we have simply discovered a new type of bird. In practice, it turned out to be far more useful from the point of view of biological theorizing to alter the definition of "swan" -- indeed, these days in biology, "swan" is defined in terms of phylogeny rather than similarity of physical characteristics -- so we say there are black swans. But this was up to us. The important point is that prior to the negotiating the meaning of "swan" after the observation of these new black birds, it was indeterminate whether or not "swan" correctly applied to those birds. Also, a comment about the "nothing can be red and green all over" example. This strikes me as a paradigm example of an empirical discovery, not a conceptual truth. Of course, nothing prevents a person from using colour terms in such a way that this proposition is ruled out by definition. But I see no reason to suppose that any normal person does use colour terms in that way. I think that the reason why we believe that nothing can be red and green all over is simply that we have observed countless coloured items, and we have found that none of them appear to bear two colours simultaneously. I can fairly easily imagine an object that is both red and green all over, though -- that is, I can create a "mental image" of simultaneous red + green (and my capacity for visual imagery is relatively poor).
@thehairblairbunchjones6209 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB so, am I right in saying that your position is that while you could have analyticity by stipulation, it is in fact rare, and so conceptual necessary truths are more or less a myth in practice?
@thehairblairbunchjones6209 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB also, just to clarify the example, what I meant was that no surface can be red all over and green all over at the same time. Not that it can’t be the case that the surface is partly red and partly green and no part is any other colour. Because while the latter is empirical and false, the former does seem to me conceptual. Not that the specific example matters too much. Thanks for taking the time to reply btw.
@havenbastion Жыл бұрын
Modality is, like all statistics, the upper limits of uncertainty. It does not represent a real state of the world but of the mind.
@konberner170 Жыл бұрын
So you have to be a meta-empiricist to say that it is not the case that existence is necessary for empiricism? Seems like burden shifting to me. Empiricism is indeed a metaphysical commitment, regardless of any meta level you put over it. As for where I agree, your notion from Pragmatism that the usefulness is the best test for modal usage, I agree. IF you want to do certain practical things with science (or anything with science) you must commit to empiricism as part of your metaphysical framework, and this does involve some modal properties.
@natanaellizama6559 Жыл бұрын
In regards to your view of incoherence it would certainly entail the positions being incoherent if we accept that the concepts are contradictory, that’s just logic. Error-theory would have to dictate the statement is meaningless not that it is false, for if it is false, the negation of the statement would be logically true. Now, we can have a small discussion of the terms and their meaning, but taking the usual meaning and making it not about language but about concepts, the incoherence of such moral error theory would persist as well about the Divinity. How does that relate to the modal discourse? Well, are the concepts of necessary and possible such kinds of terms? Clearly yes, they are rational ‘a priori’ concepts that are contradictory. One cannot, on intellectual honest terms reject their rationality or their contradiction. Necessary and possible are exclusive and contradictory, and they also are mere analytic terms. In a weaker sense that seems the most reasonable position to take, and in the stronger sense it would be the only reasonable position to take. Either presents a fatal objection to your own defense relating the incoherence. I also disagree in that I think it’s perfectly possible to conjure a metaphysical realm of properties by logic. In fact, logic seems to me to be one such realm of metaphysical properties. In the weakest sense, the success of the model suggests a correspondence to reality. There’s also the issue that we are discussing of the possibility that there are no modal properties, so if that is not the case, modal realism is false, why should we, other than within linguistic terms or in pragmatic ends care about the statement? That is, the very speech is given using a modal discourse and if the discourse is merely pragmatic or linguistic, why should we philosophically care about it?
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
>> "In regards to your view of incoherence it would certainly entail the positions being incoherent if we accept that the concepts are contradictory, that’s just logic. Error-theory would have to dictate the statement is meaningless not that it is false, for if it is false, the negation of the statement would be logically true. Now, we can have a small discussion of the terms and their meaning, but taking the usual meaning and making it not about language but about concepts, the incoherence of such moral error theory would persist as well about the Divinity." I take the incoherence objection to be naive, and the purported counterexample of moral error theory and "divine properties", plus the accompanying explanation, to be a knock-down response to it. You can, of course, just insist that the purported counterexample doesn't work, and that incoherence holds by virtue of the logical relations between modal/moral/divine terms. I'm not really sure where to proceed from here, though. I say that some people have blonde hair; Frank insists that all people have black hair -- what more can I do after taking him outside and pointing at a person with blonde hair? (Well, I suppose there are plenty of things I could do, but I suspect it would be a waste of my time. I feel the same way here; the incoherence objection is clearly hopeless in my view, and I think I've said enough to refute it.)
@natanaellizama6559 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB I don't think wish to be rude, for I admire you but I think your response fails to interact at all with my argument. You're just reaffirming your position without acknowledging a counter-argument has been made. I'm not merely claiming it doesn't work, I'm making an argument as for why it doesn't. Now, the argument may indeed be flawed, but a counter-argument would have to be made.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@natanaellizama6559 To deal with the incoherence objection, I gave two counterexamples and an explanation about how those counterexamples work. Your response consists of just insisting that the counterexamples don't work. What am I supposed to do with that?
@natanaellizama6559 Жыл бұрын
@@KaneB Again, with full respect and admiration, I didn't just say flatly "they don't work". The reason I gave for why they may not work is in relation to the concepts. I don't mean to be rude or obtuse on this. I honestly fail to see a meaningful response to my objection. This could very well be my fault and if so I would wish to be able to understand what it is that you think I'm missing. Your counter-examples are the same point: we need not accept the conceptual frame given, so while a logical connection between the concepts may be valid we need not accept the concepts themselves. But there are concepts that are analytical. They arise from the very premise of rationality. Concepts like contingent and necessary, are valid concepts in themselves and not given as relying upon a questionable experiential frame or 'a posteriori' frame like 'sacredness'. Their frame is a rational frame, so in order to reject them one would need to reject the rational frame. To speak of X implies the logical mode of !X. Those modes can only be rejected by rejecting a logical frame. The analytical duo of 'necessary' and 'possible' is self-evident in all forms of being for each implies the other, and any is implied in existence itself. It would be like denying the concepts of "being" and "non-being" or "contingent" and "necessary". Semantically it is nonsensical for it would imply that it is not possible that modal realism is true, already implying the conceptual and linguistic frame we are trying to avoid.
@KaneB Жыл бұрын
@@natanaellizama6559 >> "I honestly fail to see a meaningful response to my objection" You didn't give a meaningful objection. You just restated the original incoherence objection. There's nothing I can do with that, which is why you got nothing from me. I'm not much interested in arguing about whether or not your original comment contains a meaningful objection. I think it fairly clearly does not. Apparently you disagree with this interpretation. Cool. I'm just explaining why I responded the way I did.
@ninjaturtletyke3328 Жыл бұрын
5:50 I probably shouldn't say anything because you are probably speaking over my head and I need to digest more of your content and study more. And you also may just take into consideration what I'm about to say in which I'll just delete this comment. But I think this is a map and a territory problem. I like to think of these things on normative grounds. Or on terms of meaning. Which is probably a mistake because how do I justify that I have attachment to meaning? And I basically just make the assumption by the fact that animals, society, DNA, and other aspects of reality seem to be able to communicate meaning somehow. But what's important here isn't the material that the cup is made of. It's the meaning that seems to permeate throughout any entity that interacts with this subject matter. Any intelligent being comes who has a utility for cups comes to the conception of what a cup is. And I would say whatever thay is has to be objective. I can't see that as postulation. Because I have lots of evidence of people using different objects for the utility of what a cup does. Sometimes poorly like drinking water off a more or less flat disk and calling it a cup. But we have a conception of what a good cup does and why we want one. And the meaning there really exists just like the meaning that's communicated in dna. I know that may seem superficial. But I don't really see the need for anything deeper here to make the point. I deal with morality the same way. It seems to be the case that we are tending towards a reality with less imposition on will with the rules that we subjecte into ourselves as we get more resources. And we seem to recognize that we are hypocrites when we export that cruelty onto other countries. All the states of matter and the modality of any given situation does seem arbitrary. But the meaning doesn't seem that way. I would justify my position that meaning exists because of our methodology seems to make progress to demonstrate that. Otherwise how would communication be possible? How would you know when you misunderstood someone? How do we know that the cargo cults are horribly mistaken? And if meaning exists then what is it in reference to? Of course you could reject meaning. But I'm thinking you are rejecting the modality after it. But I'm kind of using the conception of some modality existing in the same way thay the cosmological argument seems to point at something. Yes we don't know what thay thing is. But there should be some objective thing or maybe many objective things at the center of why things exist. The reason we can differentiate things successfully I think vaguely points to something. And I think you can have a strong position that something like that exists without over reaching and postulating Edit: I'm not certain if I understand you yet since this is the first video I've watched of yours. The concern I have for what I'm saying is that my model may just be trivially true. Like I'm just saying A=A. I can't remember the name of the worldview that says contradictions actually exist. But if what I'm saying is consistent with that worldview then I don't think I can say I'm saying anything of substance. I beleive I'm making the claim that there is some coherency. Like I can't say what the other worlds you mentioned would be like with different kinds of points where we can communicate meaning that would have modal centers. But I think I could say if we had more of them then we would be able to communicate more clearly. I don't know if we would ever be able to justify them specifically. I am agnostic to any specific modal claim. Like the problem of meaning and the problem of solipsism could be the same problem. In where the reality above us does understand modality. And they just limited our access to certain objective facts. Which is why we are so limited. But if we had them then we could justify meaning and if we were in a simulation simultaneously. But my entire model is just dealing with how meaning seems to operate itself
@plastic2666 Жыл бұрын
Buncho nerds in this comment section.... Going to need to stretch and get a bigger toilet for all these swirlies...
@uninspired3583 Жыл бұрын
I love philosophy but man I find modal conversations difficult to follow. My eyes glaze over and my brain shuts it out. No disrespect to the presentation here, this is a me problem.
@joecotter6803 Жыл бұрын
This is all a reworking of the discussion whether the statement 'The King of France is bald'. It is meaningless, neither true or false. If you rework it to day 'If the King of France exists then he is bald'. This is false. Modal logic is just a symbol manipulation system and has little value.
@InventiveHarvest Жыл бұрын
This is once again caused by faulty dichotomous thinking used in philosophy. Just because the can is not not possible, does not mean it is necessary. This is because the can's existence is contingent, which is a third option.
@scambammer6102 Жыл бұрын
well the fourth option is that the can just is, and discussions about its necessity or contingency are mere semantics that have no relevance to its material existence.
@InventiveHarvest Жыл бұрын
@@scambammer6102 yes, I'm sure there are more than four options: plus a value could be put on the verisimilitude of the cup's existence.