Cool okay. I think I agree with that. In the sense that what a mistake is depends on what our goals are. So an idea A for problem P1 might be a success, but for problems P1 + P2 a mistake, say. That makes sense to me. I recognise this from CF.
I think we could come up with a new goal that our existing knowledge couldn’t solve. That’s not finding a present error to fix. That’s changing the character of our existing knowledge by coming up with new criteria for it to meet? Maybe that is finding an existing error, in a way? It’s asking question, trying to find out what our knowledge can and cant do. I’m not sure. I’m getting a little lost here. I also don’t know how relevant this is to my original point.
I agree that considering things mistakes/errors or not depends on our goal/problem. I don’t know how helpful saying that we always make mistakes is if what a mistake is depends on your goal.
As for my initial point regarding this, my response to actually_thinking, I could’ve been a lot clearer. I read what actually_thinking wrote here (bold added):
As implying that CR (or Elliot, in characterising CR) had made this very argument (which I disagreed they did). And I read it as actually_thinking pointing out a logical error in an argument that no one was making. How I initially responded, i.e:
Was too broad/vague for what I intended. I think you’re right that Elliot (in CF) implies that we always make mistakes if what a mistake is depends on our goal. So what I’m saying here isn’t true.
What I intended was clarified more when actually_thinking pointed out the same thing again in response to something else I said:
When I use it, I mean it in a metaphysical and epistemological sense. It is more than just a tautology. I am me, and not someone else. You are Elliot, not me. This is not about symbolic logic. This is about metaphysical reality and epistemological identity.
You are right. I use certain as “absolutely sure” or “undoubtable” or “indisputable”. I know that even these words might lead to slightly different interpretations here but that is not my intention either. I will give four sentences that are the same: 1. I am absolutely sure that I am myself. 2. It is undoubtable that I am myself. 3. It is indisputable that I am myself. 4. I am certain that I am myself.
Differentiating these meanings is only pedantic and serves nothing in the way of truth, in my view.
When there is reason given to not be absolutely certain about things such as, “I am myself” I regard this as leaving the door open to interpreting “I am myself” as possibly wrong. I view this statement as “absolutely certain” instead of “not yet refuted”. I think it is rational to claim certainty of some things even while acknowledging that I am fallible. In this case (of saying that “I am myself”) there is no way that my fallible mind is wrong. It is true, certain and factual without a doubt or possibility of being wrong, uncertain or incorrect.
Do you find any difference between this statement:
and this statement:
?
In the second quote you say you are absolutely certain that you are yourself, but in the first quote you take out the “absolutely” part. Is there any difference when you don’t use the word absolutely? I think you’re unsure of when you should use “absolutely” in front of “certain”, cuz why exclude it? I think that also makes me think that you’re unsure about the certainty of a thing.
By certain you seem to mean something like ‘completely convinced’?
I think undoubtable and indisputable are confusing terms. Anything can be doubted or disputed. I can doubt my existence. Though I may (and do) find my doubts unconvincing. So I conclude that I exist. I don’t think there is any idea that one couldn’t conceivably doubt or dispute.
So for those terms to mean anything useful, I think they have to mean unable so far to be refuted by any doubts or disputes. Only in that sense do I consider my existence undoubtable or indisputable.
I’m completely convinced that you exist btw. But I could be wrong (e.g you could be a sophisticated AI). I’m completely convinced that I exist too, but I could be wrong (e.g the theories behind the concepts ‘I’ or ‘existence’ that I use to understand that idea could turn out to be wrong in a relevant way.)
I think CR means by certainty a guarantee or assurance that some idea is true.
If something is impossible to attain, then pursuing it is pointless, right?
Certainty in the CR sense would require knowing that all possible criticisms of an idea are wrong in advance. It’s like having a guarantee that a species will never go extinct ever. But in order to have that, the species has to actually know how to solve every problem that it could ever face in advance, and it can’t have that. It can only create knowledge by evolution, by trial and error, by the critical method.
There is no possible method to achieving certainty in the CR sense. There are only methods for tentatively sorting ideas into the categories ‘unrefuted’ and ‘refuted’ i.e the critical method. Tentatively sorting ideas by whether they have so far survived criticism is no guarantee of survival against future criticism (which hasn’t been thought of yet). It’s like how every living organism today is part of an unbroken chain of successfully reproducing ancestors dating back ~3.7 billion years. But that’s no guarantee that they will survive to reproduce, in fact I think most of them don’t (I could be wrong there)?
Depends what you mean by certain. But I think even in the CR sense we can’t. Because its truth depends on theories of logic that we can’t guarantee that we won’t find flaws in one day.
A is A is like axiom of logic or something right? We just conjecture that it’s true, because it seems true to us, and then we do logic using it. If it’s true then we wont run into any problems, so it doesn’t matter if we can guarantee that it’s true or not. As long as we’re looking for errors and willing to check our assumptions, using ideas that aren’t CR certain is fine.
No I think you’re right to say people use blankets. I think that’s true. If you mean by ‘certain’ that you think something is true, then using the term certain is probably okay.
I think it’s true in part because the idea that I am mistaken about every occasion that I’ve used a blanket and seen others use them or buy them them seems false to me. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. But I can’t guarantee it. Oh well.
I think i might have a similar position as @actually_thinking, cuz my first thought is how could you be wrong that people use blankets? Like it doesn’t sound right to me to know that people use blankets and then say you could be wrong at the same time. Is it wrong to think that it’s impossible for this statement to be wrong?:
Also I’m sorry if the statement is bad english. Something doesn’t sound right to me when i say it now like “use” isn’t specific enough. Maybe “People cover themselves in blankets” would be better. Also, I don’t know about saying “People” cuz it doesn’t sound specific in number.
Yeah
Ohhh ok I think I kind of get what you’re saying. Like, is having certainty in the CR sense mean you can tell the future? I think it takes time to think of many many possible criticisms so if you know all them are wrong then you can read the future.
Oh I like this example cuz it’s logical to me that if a species has a guarantee to not go extinct then it must know all the solutions to its future problems.
Im going to read your post again tomorrow cuz I think Im getting somewhere with it learning about CR
One thing is that it’s hard to think of good criticisms of true ideas. It can appear that something like “people use blankets” or “2 + 2 = 4” (edit: typo) are self evident and certain. But I think what’s happening is they appear self-evident because you’ve tried, even sub-consciously or intuitively, to think of how they’re wrong but haven’t come up with anything reasonable.
I think when you came up with that example, you selected an idea that you could think of no good criticisms of. That’s why it seemed so true and certain to you. So it was by considering whether or not the idea was wrong (by attempting to criticise it) that you chose the idea as being an example of a certain idea.
Another thing on that point. You don’t have to actually be able to think of a plausible way that an idea is wrong in order to consider whether it is wrong or not. You might just come up with implausible ways that it’s wrong. You could probably think of a few implausible ways that the idea “people use blankets” is wrong. Like that maybe aliens planted the memories of blankets in your mind like 5 seconds ago, etc.
Oh ok. Is something being true mean there are no present criticisms that refute an idea? I’ll try to engage with the original CR article too in another reply to try to learn more about CR.
Oh. Is it jumping ahead if I say that means 2+2=4 is in the category of unrefuted?
Yeah, like a meteor could wipe us out.
I think I could think of an example of there is no guarantee of survival against future crticism. I asked myself “what is the color of the blanket in front of me?” and then I say, “The blanket is white.” A second later I forgot it had a pattern of black polka dots. So then I refute the idea that the blanket is white and say, “The blanket is white with black polka dots.” I think mentioning the black polka dots is important cuz it answers the question of “what is the color of that blanket?”
There was no guarantee that, “The blanket is white.” could not get refuted in the future even if it sounded true in the moment.
Yeah, defining the word sounds important, cuz your “certain” might not be the same as my “certain”.
Just cuz one sees no flaws in a theory or idea today doesn’t mean there will be no flaws in the future? I swear the context of an idea sounds important cuz like what’s the context that an idea is true or false?
Both definitions being true would imply solipsism or subjectivism. Whether or not an idea is currently refuted depends on what humans have thought of or not. So that would mean either that our unrefuted ideas could change reality or some other thing that would contradict objective reality. Consider what would happen if an unrefuted idea got refuted and replaced with another unrefuted idea. Each idea would have to be true before and after the refutation respectively, and thus reality would get changed once we changed our unrefuted ideas.
Yes that’s very likely what actually_thinking meant. It’s very unlikely anyone who doesn’t already think in BoI terms would interpret it the way I did. So I was probably context dropping here. But at the same time you were talking about Elliot’s ideas and I thought he has the BoI mindset so I brought it up. I think this is an interesting discussion now, anyways.
I think that’s approximately the same as what I said here:
It’s almost the same. IIRC I was thinking about writing something about choosing/creating/coming up with new goals as well.
I wasn’t decided on which explanation would explain “always being at the beginning of infinity.” I see problems with the infinite precision explanation. Also because I haven’t concluded the sub points I’m not decided on “always being at the beginning of infinity” either.
This is a useful concept to be familiar with, but note that CF has another one: every idea is part of infinity many true IGCs (idea, goal, context triples) and infinitely many false IGCs. Truth is related to working at a goal (solving a problem, being successful at some purpose) and the same idea or statement is true for one goal and false for another (and this can vary by context too).
CF says ideas can’t be evaluated as true or false in isolation. When people appear to evaluate an idea alone, they may be including some G or C as part of the idea, which is OK (how to group stuff is a matter of terminology and organization, not truth). Or they may be making assumptions about the G and C without realizing it, so they are evaluating the idea in terms of some unstated G and C, not in a universal way, but they think it’s a universal evaluation. Both of these things get in the way of giving an idea multiple evaluations. Then because people don’t give ideas multiple evaluations, they are losing out on a huge amount of complexity and nuance, so they try to make up for it by making their one evaluation of an idea complex and nuanced, which actually leads to a ton of problems like evaluating ideas by degrees of goodness instead of as true or false.
When doing evaluations of ideas, I think it’s important to see multiple components, like problems and solutions, not try to evaluate a single thing in isolation. You could say and the goal is to correspond to reality and the context is the specific multiverse we live in, and that’s fine for some statements like “that’s a cat” but that goal and context can be overly broad so not very useful, and also it doesn’t apply well for many types of goals, like if my goal is to win a race, and my idea is to train hard beforehand, it’s not clear what that has to do with correspondence to reality but it can be true or false that my strategy will work (at least if you provide more detail).
What was Popper’s theory of truth? I would gladly read any chapter he wrote about it.
I’ve been wondering whether CF is actually pragmatist. I mean the definition of pragmatism and not the tradition of pragmatist philosophies of Pearce, James and Dewey. The definition according to wikipedia:
According to CF, is an idea true if it’s unrefuted then?
What if we keep the goal as correspondence to reality but have more specific contexts?
The strategy is dependent on theories of training which are dependent on theories of the human body which is about correspondence to reality. Are there theories that can’t be connected to something with a clear correspondence to reality relationship? Abstract theories perhaps?
How does CF deal with the strategy being bad but you won the race by luck? I guess it’s that CF evaluates an idea based on its refutation status and not on its predictive success (like pragmatism/instrumentalism does?).
I believe he wrote about it in a few places. I thought I read about it first in Conjectures and Refutations so I searched the term ‘correspondence’ and found a section titled: 2. The Theory of Objective Truth: Correspondence to the Facts from the essay Truth, Rationality, and the Growth of Scientific Knowledge.
I skimmed about half the section. I’m not sure that’s the definitive place to look but it seems okay to start.
Does CF think that the correspondence theory is mistaken, or just that it’s too limited or something? I don’t fully understand CF’s idea yet, but it seems compatible with the correspondence theory, and it seems to give insight into the correspondence theory. It also seems to allow for things like moral truth which the correspondence theory is kinda vague on? The CF version seems more powerful or like a more general theory of evaluating ideas.
It seems CF says truth means an idea achieves a goal in a context. This is an objective theory of truth like the correspondence theory. I suspect the correspondence theory can be interpreted as a special case of how CF evaluates ideas? Not sure, but it seems that way.
As for whether we should rationally conclude that an idea is true, CF wouldn’t say that we can conclude it’s true if it’s unrefuted. Only if it’s unrefuted and has no unrefuted rivals.
Is it right to say biological evolution adapts genes for the purpose of having grandchildren? Idk wat the roughly part means.
I dont wanna get ahead but are all these results purposes of biological evolution?
Most effective? Sounds like it’s related to numbers. Sounds like fractions
It’s hard to think of arbitrary or random information.
Oh I was thinking designed by a higher creator. Makes more sense now
Oh wow. Designer? I didnt think that since ideas are designed that there could be a designer. I keep thinking that designed ideas come from higher up or nowhere.