For those jumping here from the sidebar, the post all of this is in connection to was a discussion of Alan Goff's claims about positivism at Signature. While I'm sympathetic to many of his elements, I think Goff is perhaps conflating naturalism with positivism. It also appears that he is pushing the "everything is apologetics" position a tad too far. Even if, as I agree, everything is apologetics in one sense. I think as a pragmatic matter we separate them out by degree.
This has become the thread that never dies. Although it is an interesting enough topic with the key actors in the debate contributing, so I certainly am not complaining in the least. Even so, I've added a few extra pages of comments. If you post a comment here it will go to the last page.
David: OK, what evidence is there to support the proposition: "A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it"?
Mr. Ostler: I don't believe that your question is a very good response to my charge that you emphasize peripheral issues to obscure the arguments made against you.
That said, I don't quite understand the point of you question, since (as I stated earlier) I see no very good reason why rules must be self-satisfying.
That said, one might contend (a) that statements for and against which we can adduce evidence are always observed to be meaningful (If you have a counter-example, I'd appreciate it) and (b) that no nonsense statements can have evidence adduced for or against them (again, counter-examples appreciated). And thus one may offer evidence that supports the proposition "A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it."
David, why should we believe the positivist rule? It is one thing to claim that a rule need not be self-satisfying. It is quite an other to say that such a rule is true. Merely saying that you can't think of a meaningful statement with no evidence seems a poor choice. I think statements about God are quite meaningful but clearly the positivist does not. So since the positivist will simply exclude as meaningless any example I'd give, I don't see how that is a terribly effective approach.
Mr. Goble, your question raises the bar considerably. Mr. Ostler asked how positivism could have a breath of validity, and you ask how it can be true. As I move from clarifying to advocating, I enter much shakier territory. Indeed, I'm not certain that I'm even up to the task. I'm not a philosopher, nor am I expert in any field of philosophy. Nevertheless, I'm happy to talk about my views, as long as their shortcomings aren't taken as the shortcomings of positivism.
That said, I'll need a bit of time to put together a detailed answer.
David: The real issues here are: (a) whether Dan or some others who reject the spiritual experiences of the saints are positivists; and (b) does positivism hold water. Secondarily, the question is whether assessment of evidence is belief-set or theory-dependent and how that impacts the arguments for or against the judgment that such experiences are or are not "real". At least, departing from Alan Goff's discussion, that is how the discussion gets framed as I see it (the real side issue is the "evidence" that makes the experience of the threee witnesses more or less believable or "probable"). I believe that Dan's own arguments show that he is in fact a posivitist -- though he has now backed off of much of what he earlier claimed and now attempts to avoid sounding like a positivist.
As for positivism, it seems to me that you are simply propositionally up in the night. If you give me a criteria for meaningfulness and your own critiera cannot pass the test it establishes, then it shows that you have an internally contradictory view. What follows is that if your criteria is correct, then your criteria is meaningless. Since you are the one asserting that the criteria is one we ought to adopt (for reasons you have yet to address even in the least respect), you are the one that must demonstrate the validity of your criterion.
I don't have any obligation to give counterexamples to your positivist criterion since it is literally either contradictory or meaningless. Nevertheless, as for counterexamples, how about the statement - "There are universals." Show me the evidence for that one. Or how about, "On a frictionless plane, an object in motion remains in uniform motion." Or how about, "I believe you" as compared to "I see a vision of angels."
So you see, as I see the discussion, it is now your attempt to demonstrate that the long discredited view of positivism is one that should be countenanced as sound that is peripheral. However, it is telling that you would charge me with obfuscating and that you would then demand counterexamples to the positivist criterion.
BTW, the issue of whether there is an adequae probability theory is directly relevant to the issue of the validity of the positivist and/or naturalistic criteria since if we cannot weigh the evidence or tell how strongly it weighs, then the "evidence" doesn't count for posivitists. Moreover, since claims that the "evidence shows that it is likely or probable or more believable" that the three witnesses were deluded requires weighing evidence, it is essentially relevant whether the evidence in fact can be weighed in any way other than merely a subjective opinion. Here I challenge Addictio to give us some good way of weighing evidence for or against such spiritual experiences being mind-independent that does not merely beg the question against the believer or that doesn't merely express an opinion that cannot be ADEQUATELY challenged by saying, "that's not the way I see it."
David, rather than use the word true then use the word valid. How is positivism valid. i.e. is the a valid argument for the key statement of positivism or do we have to take it on faith? The problem is that the positivist will use that statement of criteria to exclude knowledge. So the appeal to examples will always fail.
You are saying we ought accept a statement that seems rather bothersome and incompatible with the way we think.
Mr. Ostler, I do not believe that what you put forth as "counter-examples" are, indeed, counter-examples. Nor do I believe that they accomplish what you intend them to accomplish.
I sited as evidence (in sum) that the ability adduce evidence for or against a statement is a sufficient condition for its meaningfulness. You purport to have offered meaningful statements for which no evidence can be adduced. Not only are such statements not counter-examples to my stated evidence. But they seem to constitute evidence against the verification principal, and thus establish the notion that evidence can be adduced for or against the principal of verification. This, of course, renders it meaningful.
I'm not sure that I understand your reasoning about why rules must be self-satisfying, because it appears to be so manifestly incorrect. The way I understand it is that Tarski showed pretty convincingly that no consistent language can contain its own semantic rules. Thus, your identification of an instance in which a language can be construed as inconsistent with regard a proposed semantic rule seems pointless.
You seem to have misunderstood my openness to counter-examples. I did not intend to divert the discussion, but merely to indicate that I'm open to discussing problems with my purported evidence. (And I should note that no counter-examples appear to have been provided.)
Lastly, the positivist doesn't care to delve into matters of "mind-independence" or even speculate as to what constitutes the ultimate furniture of the universe. Most positivists agree with Schlick that experiences are, as such, incorrigible. What we make of them is largely a matter of explanatory consistency.
David, I think there may be a fundamental misunderstanding here.
Verificationalism in positivism generally means an appeal to fundamental pieces of empirical evidence. My sense is (and this might explain your view of Quine as well) that you are using both verify and evidence in much looser senses. You seem moving more towards a pragmatic, rather than positivistic conception.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but that sure is how it sounds. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to clarify what constitutes acceptable evidence (since that was a big part of the positivist position) as well as when something is verified.
I bring this up as the main complaint against positivism is that it depended upon an often overlooked kind of Humean epistemology that ended up undercutting its main assertions. That's certainly the approach Blake is arguing from. If you reject those, it seems to me that you reject positivism.
David:
Your assertion that my counterexamples constitute evidence againt positivism and thus show positivism to be meaningful is way off of the mark. These are examples of meaningful statements for which no empirical evidence can be adduced one way or the other to support them or refute them -- and you certainly haven't provided any such evidence. As such, they are meaningful statements that don't meet the positivist criterion and thus constitute direct counterexamples to the criterion. I suspect that you don't understand or grasp positivism and what counts for or against it -- there's nothing wrong if you don't, but it's best not to pontificate about matters that yuo don't grasp well. Moreover, adducing counterexamples of propositions that don't meet the posivitist criterion is not empriical "evidence" against the criterion but a logical disproof. Logical statements can demonstrate a truth without any evidence at all. For example, "if all men are mortal, and I am a man, then I am mortal," can be asserted without ever knowing whether there are in fact any instances of mortal men.
I suspect that Dan doesn't understand the very criteria that he proposes to impose on the evidence and that is why the discusssion that Alan raises is important. In a sense, we all do it because that is the way we are built. The argument shows that Dan couldn't meet his own criterion of evidence that he insists the evidence should meet. That is the positivist's problem in a nut-shell.
Mr. Ostler: You asked me how the verification principle be applied to itself. I answered that it doesn't need to, but that it can. I am not (yet) arguing that it is a valid principle. Instead, I am trying to address your statement that the verification principle should apply to itself. Once we settle this issue, I'll be happy to discuss whether it's a valid principle. That said, I'll recapitulate:
(1) You've made a logical error in your assessment of my evidence for the verification principle. I claim "(a) that statements for and against which we can adduce evidence are always observed to be meaningful... and (b) that no nonsense statements can have evidence adduced for or against them" (emphasis added). As a matter of logic, you have not provided any counter examples to this evidence. The negation of these would be (~a) that statements for and against which we can adduce evidence are not always observed to be meaningful, and (~b) that some nonsense statements can have evidence adduced for or against them. Your purported counter-examples to my evidence are of neither type (~a) nor (~b). This is why I have said that you have provided no counter-examples to my evidence.
I'd like to stress that I site evidence in favor of the verification principle merely to show that (as I formulated it) it can be applied to itself. Make no mistake: I'm not arguing for the principal of verification (yet).
(2) It is contradictory to claim both (a) the verification principle can't be assessed using evidence, and (b) it can be refuted with evidence. Therefore, the very exercise of providing counter-examples defeats your claim the verification principle cannot be assessed using evidence. In other words, you can't claim that it is demonstrably false and meaningless by its own criteria at the same time.
(3) According to Tarski's theory of how meta-languages work, semantic rules should not be considered to belong to the languages they describe. So (according to Tarski's formulations) if we consider the verification principle to be a semantic rule, it needn't apply to itself. Arguing with Tarski on this point is beyond my capabilities, but I'm not so wedded to his theories that I wouldn't be open to an argument against them. So if you've got some arguments, I'd love to hear them.
(4) I have not addressed the issue of the statements that you claim have meaning but no verification. Again, I consider that a separate argument. I have no aversion to taking it up at some point, but right now I'm trying to nail down the points on the arguments at hand; viz., the application of the verification principle to itself.
Now that I've tried to clarify my previous comments, I'll address the new material from your latest post.
I'm disappointed to read
Mr. Ostler: ...it's best not to pontificate about matters that you don't grasp well.
I do not believe that this is a fair statement. I've done my utmost to address you in the most clear and unassuming manner possible.
Mr. Ostler: Moreover, adducing counter examples of propositions that don't meet the posivitist [sic.] criterion is not emprical [sic.] "evidence" against the criterion but a logical disproof. Logical statements can demonstrate a truth without any evidence at all. For example, "if all men are mortal, and I am a man, then I am mortal," can be asserted without ever knowing whether there are in fact any instances of mortal men.
I do not really understand the thrust of your argument here.
Just to be clear, the principal of verification only applies to synthetic statements, so if you are expecting it to apply to itself, then it must be taken as synthetic as opposed to analytic. By contrast, I take your variation on the Barbara syllogism to be analytic. (And yes, Mr. Goble, I'm aware that some people discount the analytic/synthetic distinction.)
Maybe I'm off the mark here, but I understand counter-examples to be either (A) the kind of thing that is used to refute the premise of a valid argument to show that it is not sound, or (B) an instance of an argument with true premises and a false conclusion to demonstrate that the argument is invalid. Please inform me if I've left anything out. Given the 2 options I'm aware of, it does not seem that we are talking about (B), and with (A) the existence of a counter-example will always be an empirical question when dealing with synthetic premises.
Mr. Ostler: The argument shows that [Mr. Vogel] couldn't meet his own criterion of evidence that he insists the evidence should meet.
You keep saying things like this. But I can't see how you've addressed the arguments that I've put forward. You've claimed that the verification principle is meaningless because it doesn't satisfy it's own condition for meaning. I've explained (a) that it doesn't need to (see (3) above), and (b) that it can if you think it must (see (1) above). Although you continue to rail on the verification principal, I don't see that you've laid a finger on either (a) or (b).
David: If all you claim is (a) and (b), then my response is -- so? I agree that if one can adduce empirical evidence for a proposition then it must have at least some meaning or we cannot know what counts as evidence. I also agree that no one can produce evidence for a non-sensical claim since it really doesn't claim anything at all. So? Neither of these princples come close to establishing the verificationist criterion for positivism. These are not instances of the verification principle -- they merely assert that we must know what something means in order to adduce evidence for or against it. It doesn't follow that no statement is meaningful unless we can adduce evidence for it -- and the statements that I gave above (which you have studiously avoided) are examples of that fact. A logical argument is not "evidence" of the type we're discussing since clearly one can argue for universals for instance; there just isn't any possible empirical evidence for them. Empirical evidence can establish particulars but not universals.
I think that you don't get what Clark and I are saying regarding "evidence." The distinction that I thought was quite clearly intended was the logical/empirical distinction of which you are apparently aware. With regard to analyticity, I'm at least persuaded enough by Quine that I wonder if analytic/synthetic is a valid distinction -- but if you prefer we could work with that one as well.
Just invoking Tarski's principle that the semantic rules of language we adopt don't need to comply with the semantic rules seems to be nonsense and doesn't make it so. How can we make sense of the semantic rules if they don't comply with the semantic rules that govern language? For example, if I adopt the rule: "all sentences must have verbs (at least implicitly)"; it wouldn't make any sense to suggest that we can leave verbs out of sentences that state semantic rules and still have meaning. So we have the rule "all sentence must verbs (at least implicitly)" -- it's just nonsense. Our rules cannot escape the rules of semantic meaning.
So are you now saying that "all synthetic statements have meaning only if they meet the verification criterion"? You assert that the verification criterion need not meet this rule because it is analytic. Yet that just seems to be wrong. The statements you have given are not analytic and the verificationist criterion per se is certainly not merely analytic -- the predicate does not merely analyze the subject as in all other analytic statements. I don't think that we can say that the principle is true merely by looking at it and seeing what it means. So the assertion that the principle is analytic appears to me to be false -- and rather plainly so.
As to counterexamples, the sentences that I have identified don't meet the verificationist criterion and yet I take it that you would agree they have meaning. Ergo, the criterion is false. Your conditions for counterexamples are not exhaustive. Clearly, if I can give a counterexample to the verificationist princple then you are obliged to show that they are not counterexamples for some reason -- you haven't done that. As for counterexamples to (a) and (b), I've already agreed that no one can give counterexamples because they are trivially true.
Mr. Ostler, I find your last post to be altogether baffling.
You asked in your first comment on this page, "what evidence is there to support the proposition: 'A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it'?" I site evidence, and you agree that the evidence is correct. And now you ask, "so what?" Since I'm not certain what prompted your question, I cannot attach a deeper meaning to my answer than simply that it responds to your question.
You seem to think that you can dismiss out of hand Tarski's contention that no consistent language can contain its own semantic rules. You simply identify a few semantic rules that don't lead to inconsistencies and state, "...it's just nonsense. Our rules cannot escape the rules of semantic meaning." If you wish to do away with Tarski's theories of metalanguage, you'll have to at least propose solutions to the problems that they solve.
Moreover, I emphatically do not claim that the verification principle is analytic, nor must it be if it is a semantic rule; Tarski does not take semantic rules to be analytic.
I am well aware that you disagree with the verification principle, but you started by saying that, "it cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness," and I have demonstrated that this statement is incorrect. Indeed, that this statement is incorrect was the entire point of my posts thus far on this page. Whether you still disagree with the verification once it's shown to meet its own demand for meaningfulness is completely beside the point.
I get the impression that you don't think that this is a very serious argument. If I am correct in this impression, I would suspect that you should be able to offer substantially better arguments than you are fielding. At any rate, this is a serious argument that has been taken up rather recently by serious epistemologists. As regards the application of the verification principle to itself, following is an excerpt from an essay I dug up this evening by Michael Dummett that speaks to the issue rather more clearly than I can:
Conceptual relativism is the doctrine that we cannot escape this predicament: we are trapped inside our language, or our conceptual scheme, and cannot survey it from the outside. The weakness of this view is that, if it were correct, it is hard to see how we could so much as be aware of our entrapment: not only could we not step outside what encloses us, but we could not so much as form the conception that it had an exterior....
The proper response to the predicament depends upon its proper diagnosis. If, as I think, Tarski's diagnosis is essentially correct, Wittgenstein's response in the Tractatus is altogether too drastic. The difficulty does not arise, on this diagnosis, from the intrinsic ineffability of the functioning of our language, nor from the fact that, as philosophers, we are primarily interested in features of our language that it shares with all other natural languages. It arises, rather, from our attempting to include that part of the language which embodies conceptual apparatus by means of which we attempt to describe its functioning in the language whose functioning we are describing. If therefore, we conceive ourselves as giving a description of the functioning only of that fragment of our language which does not contain the expressions that serve as theoretical terms in that description, we shall escape the predicament. We shall say nothing either self-contradictory senseless: we shall merely construct a theory that cannot be applied to the statements of that theory itself.
If this is the correct response to the predicament, it follows that no one had the right to ask how the verification principle was to be verified: properly understood, it did not purport to apply to itself. It was not considered either as a synthetic, meaningful only if verifiable, or as an analytic statement, consequent upon conventions governing the use of words: it fell altogether outside of the scope of the dichotomy.
David: Look again. The statements to which I say, "so what?" are your (a) and (b) and not the statement that you substitute that I criticized: 'A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it.' (a) and (b) of course are not the same. I'm getting the idea that you charged me with obfuscation because you are yourself a master of such tactics and engage in a bait and switch as a matter of regular practice. Your comments from Dennett are interesting, but they offer no reason at all to believe that the verification principle has any merit. Moreover, such special pleading has not been widely accepted because it is a desperate attempt to revive a principle that violates all of its own rules of meaningfulness. How do we assess the meaningfulness of the statment 'A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it'? If it is altogether outside of the discourse or rules of language then what can it express? Just so I'm crystal clear: the princples that you stated that I agreed with are not the statment that you now assert I agree with.
Dennett is one philosopher that I rather regularly disagree with and I don't buy his diagnosis of the problem. Just what does it mean to say: "It arises, rather, from our attempting to include that part of the language which embodies conceptual apparatus by means of which we attempt to describe its functioning in the language whose functioning we are describing. If therefore, we conceive ourselves as giving a description of the functioning only of that fragment of our language which does not contain the expressions that serve as theoretical terms in that description, we shall escape the predicament"? He appears to be saying that there are statements that are neither analytic nor synthetic nor are they part of the language that they describe. So just what is left for this type of language? As I said earlier, the statement, "there are universals" seems to me to be perfectly meaningful and yet it cannot satisfy the verificationist criterion. I think I know what the criterion asserts (i.e., it is meaningful), it simply appears not to be true and, worse, if I generalize it, it turns out to be false because it cannot apply to itself.
So if what Dennett says it true, then I think that basically any principle can escape the charge that it not valid because it doesn't apply to the type of language that we are analyzing. You can drive a Mack truck through that hole. Needless to say, I'm not impressed.
Mr. Ostler: You're talking about the wrong philosopher. The one that I quote is Dummett, Michael Dummett. He's very different from Daniel C. Dennett, and he's quite a bit more influential. He's an anti-realist and a Frege scholar, and you can read more about him here.
You keep wanting to change the subject to whether the verification principle is correct.
Let's be perfectly clear: You stated that the verification principle, "cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness." And you are wrong about this quite apart from the question from whether the verification principle is valid.
David: You keep saying that I have not shown that the verification principle cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness and that I am wrong about that. In fact, you have already admitted that we must make a complete exception for the verification principle so that it doesn't apply self-referentially; otherwise, it is meaningless. So what you assert is simply a contradiction of your actual position. You don't claim that the principle can meet its own demand of meaningfulness, you claim that it is an exception to that demand! I claim that it cannot meet its own demand of meaningfulness -- and I take you to have conceded that point by adopting Dummett's position who says that the demand for meaningfulness that the principle makes cannot be applied to itself because it is outside the kind of language it applies to. So quit denying what you assert -- it drives me mad to dialogue with someone who consistently contradicts what they say and when it is pointed out to them they persist in refusing to see it.
As for Dennett and Dummett -- my bad. I am quite aware of Dummett's work (as well as Dennett's) and I simply mis-spelled it (and I don't give a fig for spelling as you've undoubtedly noticed). I had Dummett in mind -- but I also disagree regularly with Dennett on issues of free will and compatibilism.
I find Dummett to be problematic, although he clearly is influential. Typically when I investigate his writings I find that he conflates issues that ought to be kept separate. (Although I admit while saying such a thing that I set myself up for a fall since I'm no Dummett expert) However I certainly think his paper on Realism ends up muddled. (And I once found the paper fairly influential in my thinking - now I regret the paths it led me down)
Anyway, I think I'll stick with my earlier position David. I think you have adopted a kind of pragmatism and merely think it is positivism. I find your appeal to Tarski interesting as well. It seems a similar path to the one Gödel took which ended up leading him out of positivism towards more of a platonic realism position. Indeed, somewhat ironically, the Gödel path ends up heading (IMO) very much towards the Deconstruction position of Heidegger and Derrida. However I don't want to get into Gödel since I recognize he is probably one of the most intellectually abused figures in philosophy. Invoking him in an argument ends up being only a few steps away on the fallacy warning detector from invoking Hitler or Nazis in an argument. (Ironically a fallacy also often appearing in discussions of Heidegger and Derrida)
I think you and Blake are going around in circles, so let me repeat my earlier questions you didn't address. What constitutes verification and what constitutes evidence? It seems to me that the positivists had clear answers to that (best exemplified in Carnap) while I suspect your answers will be more in line with the pragmatist tradition.
BTW - Addicto had a comment on the previous page that I think everyone overlooked as it was the last post on that page.
I'll touch upon a few of his points.
Addicto: For example, is Blake's (or Clark's?) position that ALL historical inquiries about and accounts of historical events must be judged by, evaluated under, some probabilty-theory standard?
I think Blake was more contrasting what several thought was the claim for objective probability. (i.e. that X is more probable than Y) Certainly if one makes that claim one must back it up which means one must have an objective way to determine probabilities - something that seems rather rare in historical studies. i.e. probability was invoked to suggest probability claims are problematic.
As I've said numerous times now (probably more than a half-dozen) I don't think Dan intended probable to be meant in objective terms. I think he himself fully admitted the subjective nature of it. i.e. probable simply means more believable.
The critique I, and I suspect Blake, offer is that this subjective element is often repressed in presentations. When it is overtly repressed, one often ends up adopting a kind of positivism. Yet if we recognize that our judgments of probability (in the second, looser and subjective sense) are themselves perspectively bound, then we can see limits in our arguments.
My impression, from back when Dan was still contributing to the discussion, was that Dan inconsistently agrees with this in practice.
Addicto: On that latter question, I think Goff is (and recognizes he is) in a minority among LDS apologists who write about the Mormon past. Folks like Peterson and Hamblin, for example, don't advocate and don't want anything to do with "postmodern" philosophical assessments of the nature of historical inquiry.
As I said way back in my initial comments, in practice we don't need to appeal to postmodernism to establish the problems here. We can simply say that we don't have all the evidence and that Mormons claim evidence that changes how we interpret the data. No need to point out that evidence is always theory laden. (Although I think that true) We just need to point out missing evidence.
This is important, since I think the distinction between the non-postmodern Mormon view and the postmodern view is that the postmodern view is a general critique of any narrative that tries to be the last word on the subject. However it is so theoretical a critique that I don't think it is as helpful as a discussion of evidence Mormons claim. (i.e. claims of spiritual experiences)
So on the one hand I agree with you. On the other I'm also sympathetic to Goff's claims, as I think them correct. But I certainly agree that there are more fruitful approaches to this issue, from the point of view of apologetics and rhetoric.
Mr. Ostler: You keep saying that I have not shown that the verification principle cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness and that I am wrong about that.
Wrong. I claim to have demonstrated that it can meet its own demand. On my first post on this page I dispatch with your assertion that it can't meet it's own demand by showing both (a) that it does, and (b) that it doesn't even have to. The fact that both of these are true (as opposed to just one) makes your position that the verification principle can't meet it's own demand especially weak.
Mr. Ostler: In fact, you have already admitted that we must make a complete exception for the verification principle so that it doesn't apply self-referentially; otherwise, it is meaningless. So what you assert is simply a contradiction of your actual position.
Wrong again. I claim exactly what I asserted in my first post on this page; viz., (a) that it can meet its own demand, but (b) that I don't claim it needs to.
Mr. Goble: I think you and [Mr. Ostler] are going around in circles...
I think it's more a matter of Mr. Ostler failing to realize that his rather boorish and presumptive assertions about positivism (e.g., it not having a "breath of validity" because it "it cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness") have been shown to be incorrect.
Mr. Goble: let me repeat my earlier questions you didn't address...
I do plan on getting to those questions. I've gotten sidetracked trying to demonstrate to Mr. Oster what I feel should be obvious to anyone who's paid attention to our exchanges.
David: This is the last time I intend to address you on the subject of Positivism because you just don't seem to get it. I am befuddled as to why you cannot see that the princple cannot be applied to itself or it becomes self-referentially meaningless by its own standards of meaning. You have shown neither (a) nor (b) -- and you don't even seem to get what Dummett is saying (though you brought him up) about the fact that the verification principle does not apply to itself -- although he does say that the demand is illegitimate as you claim in (b). However, he has merely asserted that the principle doesn't apply to its-self without any real argument so far as I can see and I cannot see reason to believe that the principle is not a statement that must meet its own criteria. That is, it is a case of special pleading and ad hoc exceptions. What Clark wrote is much of what I would have said as well. As for your claim that I have shown that the principle meets its own demand of meaning I can only wonder what fantasy world you're living in.
In fairness to you Ostler, I'll frankly admit that this pattern of argument is familiar to me (i.e., having my positions recited back to me as caricatures of what I'd said, and trying to nail down a target that would move every time I seemed on the verge of proving my point).
My conversations with most of my BYU philosophy professors tended to have much the same flavor that my conversations with you have. At the time, I was much younger and more impressionable, so I took it as more of and indication that philosophy just wasn't my thing. At this point in my life, I'm quite prepared to say that you're plain clueless--and that's verifiable.
You can take this for what it's worth, with careful consideration of the source and his background.
David, I don't think you've shown the critiques of positivism to be invalid. As I've said, it all rests upon what one means by verify and evidence. Likewise the appeal to Tarski is really just Carnap's point that the real debate is what language to use. (i.e. were are merely quibbling about language choice) But, what the positivists argue is that the proper language choice is a language where the language has clear rules and ultimate constituents in terms of elements of empirical knowledge. Without that latter connection, the statement of verificationism is not positivism. If verificationism isn't tied to the particular language choice of the positivists, then what you have is merely a form of pragmatism. (And indeed you'll find quite a few similar discussions in the early pragmatists in terms of what constitutes a meaningful statement - such as in Peirce's famous pragmatic maxim)
The reason Blake raises the question he does is that there is no reason to pick the language the positivists do from within the project of positivism itself. The justification itself can't be found within that movement but ends up being something determined socially. But if that element has social grounds, then doesn't that undermine the entire project? To merely appeal to Tarski and the problem of formal languages avoids the central problem. What grounds positivism? You seem to admit that nothing does, that positivism itself can't be verified.
So that leaves us back with the initial question I raised and which you still haven't answered. Why adopt positivism? When you say that the examples of meaningful statements that Blake provided which positivism would call meaningless count as evidence against positivism, you've already left positivism. You are no longer arguing about verification as a positivist would. Instead you've become a pragmatist. And if your argument for positivism is a pragmatic one, then your whole argument is self-refuting.
This then takes us to Quine. What Quine did, in a fashion fairly similar to deconstruction in Heidegger, Derrida or others, was to show that the language of the positivists was unstable. i.e. that Carnap's goal for a reduction in language to pure elements of experience was impossible. Put an other way, the language the positivists required (and, as I think we've all agree upon, required in a fashion unsupportable by positivism) was itself impossible.
Quine therefore had to move away from the kind of empiricism of Carnap and others towards a more pragmatic position. In doing so one of the big changes he took was to reject the kind of atomism we find in Russell, Carnap and others and adopt a holism. In doing so he ended moving away from the positivists and towards the continuity of Peirce and others. (Although, I hasten to add, there were significant differences between Quine and the main pragmatic positions.
BTW - there is a great commentary that was just listed at the Online Papers in Philosophy blog. The paper is "Quine's Word and Object". Unfortunately it is in MS-Word format rather than PDF, but is quite a good overview to see what Quine was doing. It has a rather thorough discussion of Carnap as well.
Mr. Goble David, I don't think you've shown the critiques of positivism to be invalid
I don't know who's comments you've been reading, but I haven't addressed the "critiques of positivism." I'm trying to stay on point, and my point is (and on this page I've argued this point to the exclusion of all other points) that I've adequately answered the question of whether the verification theory meets its own demand. That's all; nothing more.
I'll recapitulate one last time before I move on:
My formulation of the verification principle is ""A statement is meaningful if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it."
My first post on this page (the November 09, 2004 08:36 PM one) provides evidence for the verification principal. Specifically, I point out that verification is a sufficient condition for meaningfulness, which is some kind of evidence (it's not terribly important to my argument which kind) for it's being a sufficient and necessary condition. Since my formulation states that a statement can be meaningful "if and only if evidence can be adduced for or against it", and since I've provided evidence for it, I conclude that it is meaningful. Thus the verification principal meets its own demand. (Let me emphasize: This has nothing to do with whether it's valid; I simply mean to point out that it can be made to meet its own demand).
I've stated repeatedly, however, that I don't think that it's necessary for the verification principle to be verifiable, since it can be considered a semantic rule. And no consistent language contains its semantic rules.
Carnap, by the way, was a holist, as were several other members of the Vienna Circle. Maybe this is why you confuse Quine for a pragmatist.
Wasn't Carnap only a semantic holist? (I confess, that I may be mistaken, but it appears to me that Quine's holism is much more thoroughgoing)
Regarding the verification principle, the issue is (and remains) what is meant by evidence. To once again avoid that issue avoids the substance of the comments by both Blake and I. Rereading the top of this page though, I do admit that when Blake brought up the statement, he likewise didn't clarify what was meant by evidence. However I think contextually he clearly meant the statement as used by positivists.
Regarding Quine's pragmatism, I don't think that a controversial comment at all. Indeed even modern defenders of Carnap over Quine still acknowledge that a big part of the divide could be seen to be to role of pragmatism. One great article that is pro-Carnap that I found was "'Two Dogmas' - All Bark and No Bite: Carnap and Quine on Analyticity."
I've provided an instance of what I consider evidence. Unless you wish to say that this instance is not, in fact, evidence, then the definition of "evidence" doesn't much matter. But I don't see where anyone has argued that what I provide is not an instance of evidence.
And for the record, when I first stated the verification principle, I provided the following qualification:
Me: All of this, of course, hinges on what it means to adduce evidence for or against something, and about this, books have been written. Without committing myself to any side of such debates, I'll stipulate simply that such evidence must be inter-subjectively demonstrable and replicable, and we can perhaps debate what these mean later.
And the issue of semantic rules, this has nothing to do with evidence.
I do happen to know that I'm in the vast minority in considering Quine a logical positivist (I take Putnam's title to his review of Quiddities to be tongue in cheek). I need to develop a clear argument to explain to you why I think this is so. In this instance, I'm just pulling your chain.
At any rate, I have argued that it is incorrect to argue that the verification principle can't meet it's own demands. I've given two reasons why. I don't see any reasonably good arguments offered against either reason.
Instead, people keep telling me that I haven't established the validity of the verification principle and answered the critiques of positivism. For all that it matters, you might as well point out that I haven't established the value of giving women the vote.
But when you say "demonstrable and replicable" I don't see how that applies to Blake's examples. Further, unless you tie that to empiricism you still aren't a positivist. As you qualify at the beginning, all this hinges upon what counts as evidence.
I should add that I disagree with your view of what is evidence. It entails, for instance, that memory could never be evidence since it isn't demonstrable...
The problem, as I think both Blake and I have pointed out, is that the issue isn't the verification principle as a statement independent of context, but rather the principle in the context of positivism. If you are simply saying we ought to take it independent of positivism, then I'm not quite sure the point. Who cares about such a verification principle and what is its relevance to the current discussion?
If what you say here is true, then I must confess that this whole page's comments appear to be little more than a diversion from the stated discussion. Since you intended to defend positivism and felt we were unfairly treating it, why this diversion to a principle of verification that isn't what we were critiquing at all? You do see how this is confusing to us as we thought we were still discussing positivism.
I'm not saying that the verification should be taken independent of positivism or out of context.
I'm simply saying whether the verification principle be deemed right or wrong, it is mistaken to say that (using Ostler's words) "it cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness." That's all.
This hinges on the question how we define evidence only to the extant that someone wishes to claim that what I've offered as evidence is not evidence.
For the record, I agree that this is a diversion. I did not ask how to verify the verification. In fact, when Ostler asked me how to verify verification, my first was to take him to task for bringing up a diversion. Specifically, I said, "I don't believe that your question is a very good response to my charge that you emphasize peripheral issues to obscure the arguments made against you."
And all of this was started by Blake's rather boorish and presumptive question about how positivism can have "a breath of validity."
At any rate, now that we've started down this path, you seem to be coming up with all kinds of excuses for why Blake isn't off his rocker when he supposes that I haven't shown that it's incorrect to say that verification "cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness."
David, surely you know that the standard critique of positivism is exactly what Blake stated. I mean this was hardly Blake being original...
The question is boorish for tone, not content. But surely arguing about whether Blake is boorish and presumptive is a diversion.
But even so, whether or not this is the "the standard critique of positivism" is entirely separate issue. You seem to be coming up with all kinds of excuses for why Blake isn't off his rocker when he supposes that I haven't shown that it's incorrect to say that verification "cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness." None of these excuses address the two arguments that I've put forth.
Once again (and last time) the issue is the verification principle as understood within positivism, not more pragmatic conceptions. Both Blake and I assumed that was what we were talking about, not the statement in general terms.
That's a cop-out.
No it isn't -- it is precisey the point.
Sorry Ostler, but the debate over whether it's correct to state that verification "cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness" does not hinge how we define evidence. Nor has anyone even attempted to offer any explanation of how it might. (I can't wait to see what caricatures of my arguments you toss back at me for this one, but it's a pretty safe bet that you'll conflate the issue of verification validity and verification self-applicability.)
Nor does the verification principle doesn't become self-applicable just because it's merged with pragmatism.
Whether you care to call me a pragmatist or a positivist matters not at all. Either way you're off your rocker if you think I haven't shown that you're incorrect to assert that the principle of verification "cannot meet its own demand for meaningfulness." (Try re-reading the thread--only carefully this time.)
Any more, this "standard critique of positivism" (as Goble puts it) is but a tired cliche. I'm no philosopher. Nor am I an expert on these matters. But I do know that much.
And if you want to sound like you know what you're talking about, you may do well not to refer to the status of semantic rules within Tarski's theory of metalanguage as an ad hoc exception.
This strikes me as an appropriate time to return to the comment that sparked new life into this thread. Specifically, I proposed that this thread be renamed, "Philosophers Behaving Badly."
In this page's discussion of verification, Ostler's method was to ask a very narrow question (how to show that verification can pass it's own test); criticize my answer for not addressing a different, broader question (how to show that verification is valid); and then, when his bait-and-switch was pointed out, dismiss the narrow question as inseparable from the different, broader question.
Sadly, this and other types of charlatanism are all too common among LDS nonfiction authors. Indeed, Mr. Ostler has a lot of company here. Just choosing an easy example off the top of my head: Anyone who has read Hugh Nibley's No Ma'am, That's not History recognizes that he's not arguing with Ms. Brodie as much as he's simply slurring her for the sake of the Church; history has sided with Ms. Brodie time and again to the expense of Nibley's claims.
Is this kind of behavior really appropriate? Isn't there something feeble and a little contemptible about reducing serious discussions to a bunch of Jerry Spence, win-the-argument-at-all costs sophisms?
And this brings us back full circle to the dispute between FARMS and Signature that Goble mentioned at the very top of this thread. I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, because I have friends who've published FARMS essays, but Ostler's behavior demonstrates what is too often the modus operandi for FARMS apologetics. As Mormons, I believe that we must demand better than this.
David, I think the problem is that how you interpreted Blake's question and how we did was quite different. You said earlier that this was a cop-out, but it isn't. What you see as philosophers misbehaving appears to me to simply be miscommunication. If, instead of attributing malice we instead seek to understand one an other a little better I think the problem might resolve itself. After all to me, it seemed like you were avoiding Blake's question by changing the question from positivism to pragmatism.
BTW, up on Weatherson's recent philosophy papers blog, there was an interesting bit about Carnap and Induction. It looks like it was a presentation at Berkeley and consists of a PDF generated from Powerpoint slides. Still it might be instructive here, given the previous discussion of probability.
David, your most recent comments have degenerated to nothing more than an ad hominem. Your FARMS smear campaign is a rather pitiful tactic -- though I am of course not affiliated with FARMS. It is ironic that you would stoop to an ad hominem attack because FARMS is so often charged with doing so. With the same judgment that you judge other.... It is no wonder to me that your discussions with your BYU professors in the philosophy department all had similar results for you -- your very judgments are merely a mirror for you to look into. As Clark noted, the problems that I raised with positivism are far from new or unique to me -- and to charge my comments in this discussion with somehow being mere sophism or charlatanism takes a lot of gall from someone who dares to call this thread "philosophers acting badly." As I stated earlier (and I would have been served to stick with it) there is nothing to be gained by discussing this matter further with you. If you want to believe that I am "off my rocker" or just "don't have a clue" so be it -- I am just glad that the thread has been preserved so that the record is clear. Once again, as ye judge others ...
Near the top of this page, in responding to Landrith, Blake also said:
"Moreover, since claims that the "evidence shows that it is likely or probable or more believable" that the three witnesses were deluded requires weighing evidence, it is essentially relevant whether the evidence in fact can be weighed in any way other than merely a subjective opinion. Here I challenge Addictio to give us some good way of weighing evidence for or against such spiritual experiences being mind-independent that does not merely beg the question against the believer or that doesn't merely express an opinion that cannot be ADEQUATELY challenged by saying "that's not the way I see it."
I can't tell whether I'm being unclear or not. To summarize: One argument Blake and Dan have been having is about the nature and status of "supernatural" (Dan's word) or "spiritual" (your word) experiences IN GENERAL. At that level I think the debate, because of its generality, becomes unweildy and, given the present state of scientific inquiry, at a practical level (e.g., what actually happened on a specific day involving the 3 BoM witnesses) is perforce open-ended and inconclusive.
The second kind of argument is about whether (and here we can bracket generalizing arguments about the etiological status of ALL claimed "spiritual" or "supernatural" experiences) we have sufficient evidence about the lives of the experiencers themselves and the events leading up to the event that the merits of competing conclusions about the cause of their reported experiences can rationally be evaluated and judged.
In the first sentence quoted above, Blake, you refer to a specific, particular event: the reported experience of the 3 witnesses. In the second, you "challenge" me to "give us some good way of weighing evidence for or against such spiritual experiences being mind-independent...." Do you understand the problem? Your "challenge" moves back up to the first kind of argument(s) I noted above, about what can be said or concluded about the nature or status of (all) "such spiritual experiences." Again, I don't see any point in arguing about what kind of evidence supports (or could support) an inference that ALL claimed "spiritual" experiences have purely psychological/biological causes.
A moment's reflection should make clear, however, that it doesn't follow from the present open-endedness (inconclusive status) of that kind of general inquiry and debate that the genuineness and credibility of any particular claimed spiritual experience or event is immune from rational scrutiny and evaluation based on historical and/or scientific evidence. It also doesn't follow that, in order to assess or undermine the credibility of a particular claimed spiritual or supernatural experience, one must resort to some kind of probability theory. That is, unless one maintains -- and I take it no one here has -- that all inferences about the occurrence of individual historical events must be evaluated and justified ("pass muster") under such a theory.
Which leads us back to the sort of general methodological critique of historical inquiry that Goff offers. Note that his critique applies to all, or virtually all, historical claims and inferences, not only to claims about supernatural or spiritual events.
As time permits (turns out that little private joke is on me), I'll return and address Clark's response to my last post.
On one level, I think that a helpful distinction, Addictio. (BTW - why the pseudonym?) Clearly there is a difference between a particular claim of a spiritual event and the general claim of a class of spiritual events. Having said that though, clearly how you answer the general claim will affect how you answer the specific claim.
For instance if one brings up certain secondary characteristics of false spiritual phenomena, those characteristics are only informative to specific claims if we can also determine whether they are present in true spiritual phenomena. If they appear in both types of phenomena, then clearly they can't establish much.
It was that point, that I think Blake was critiquing Dan with.
Wow, this was a topic that got a lot of people riled up.
I was most interested in the comments you made about the inappropriate tone of some apologetics. I read the Sunstone article you linked to and that got me thinking even more. The question is: Is there justification for such combative defense against publications that are injurious to the Church? I wrote a too-long post on the subject, digging up scriptures for both a yes and no position. Your excellent blog has inspired me to think and write once again... thanks Clark!
I think a big problem with apologetics is not knowing ones audience. I find that many apologetics seem written towards other apologists and seem designed to be sort of "pat on the back, look how good we are" sort of articles. When people having a crisis of faith or are non-members, such articles not only don't help - they turn people away. Even a lot of faithful Mormons get turned off and unfortunately start to lump all apologetics together. (I hear this a lot about FARMS with all FARMS articles getting lumped unfairly together due to what is actually a minority of papers)
I just joined up with the FAIR list and I note that they are constantly telling authors to worry about tone and audience. They are very careful to avoid ad hominen arguments. Whether that comes across all the time or not, I can't say. But I do note that I think more and more people doing apologetics are recognizing the problem.
Good points, Clark. I certainly wouldn't recommend reading FARMS reviews to anyone in my ward -- not so much because of their tone but because of the nasty cauldron of anti-Mormon literature they are battling over. However, I would recommend it to someone who had read the anti-Mormon stuff and wondered if it was all true.
I completely agree that a more civil and carefully worded apologetics is preferable. But using my analogy from the post I wrote, while we hope all of our "warriors" will be the composed and unflinching Captain Moroni/Helaman types, is their no room for an occasional Teancum?
The comments were so popular on this particular entry that I started up a a few more pages. If you post a comment here it will go to the last page.
not cool
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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