(no subject)
- From: "palma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <palma@xxxxxxxx>
- To: Bev Hogue <hogueb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, colloquium@xxxxxxxxxx, David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>, evolutionary-psychology@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Franz Huber <Franz.Huber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, oanderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Orion Anderson <libraryofsocialscience@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, phiddlosop@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>, wokshevs@xxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:23:18 -0400 (EDT)
I would suggest for those interested to watch (it is easy and web based)
on blogging heads the "semnar" with Sayre Mc Cord G (june 2008) on the
theme of the analogy between morality and mathematics
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008
wokshevs@xxxxxx wrote:
> A very fine, clarifying account provided by Donal below, imo. The same issue
> that Donal arrives at regarding mathematical knowledge is also an issue in
> moral knowledge. In *Truth and Justification*, Habermas discounts realism in
> the moral realm and goes the anti-realist route. (Moral judgements are
> justification-immanent, not justification-transcendent like truth.) And yet,
> he grants that justifiable validity claims to moral rightness - i.e., those
> upon which we can agree as to their generalizability (not "universalizability"
> a la Kant) under idealized epistemic conditions of symmetry and reciprocity
> -possess both a moment of construction and one of discovery. Our understanding
> of math may not be all that dissimilar from our understanding of morality. I
> hazard the guess that Habermas would admit moral knowledge into Popper's
> "World
> Three," on the assumption that Donal's reconstruction of Popper is accurate.
> Its
> moral inhabitants include all actual and possible moral judgements that
> satisfy
> epistemic conditions of generalizability as established within discourse.
>
> Thanks to Donal for some fine informative philosophizing here.
>
> Walter O.
> MUN
>
>
>
> Quoting Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Sun, 15/6/08, wokshevs@xxxxxx <wokshevs@xxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > Almost makes perfect sense to me. The fact that I don't
> > > know the constituents of
> > > DNA does not entail there is no objective knowledge of DNA.
> > > The harder part is
> > > generalizing my ignorance across all cognitive beings,
> > > past, present and
> > > future. In what sense would "knowledge" of DNA
> > > "exist" in such circumstances?
> > > Surely only as a possibility. And is possible objective
> > > knowledge really
> > > objective "knowledge?"
> >
> > The most important of these interesting comments is, to me, "Surely only as
> > a
> > possibility".
> >
> > While one might devil's advocate Popper's views ad nauseum (and his views
> > are, of course, worth this), a central problem is to address the existence
> > of
> > "objective knowledge" along a scale from 'actualised' knowledge [e.g.
> > 'knowledge' (or theories) we have reason to believe were, or have been,
> > encoded in W1 or 'thunk' in W2] to "objective knowledge" whose 'reality' is
> > not (as yet?) encoded on W1 or W2 and so, for example, is, at best,
> > something
> > that exists in "W3.3" [i.e. the realm of "objective knowledge" that has so
> > far not been encoded in W1 or W2 in any way, and in this sense has never
> > been
> > "actualised" by humans].
> >
> > We might then ask of this "W3.3" - is all of it humanly accessible i.e.
> > capable - at least potentially - of being "actualised" by humans? Even
> > should
> > we say 'yes' to this question, we might be invited to say where on the scale
> > of possibility this "potential" exists? [Clearly anything that actually
> > exists must be something that could possibly exist; but the mere fact
> > something could possibly exist hardly gives in itself any clue to the
> > likelihood that it might, or probably does - or will, exist].
> >
> > Take Popper's example of the sequence of natural numbers. He seems to
> > suggest
> > that this sequence did not exist in the world before we invented it [it did
> > not exist at the W1 'Big Bang' or whatever; it only came into existence
> > through an interaction of human W2 grasp of the concept of enumeration and
> > of
> > feedback between W2 and W3 constructs developed from such a concept]. He
> > seems to suggest, however, that while the sequence does not predate our
> > invention, there are objective properties to that sequence [e.g. 'odd and
> > even numbers', 'prime numbers'] that come into existence along with the
> > sequence i.e. these properties are there whether we realise it or not and
> > whether we encode them as such or not.
> >
> > But in what way are they not encoded in the enumerated sequence of natural
> > numbers? If they are there to be discovered, why can't we equally say that
> > the very sequence of natural numbers itself was there to be discovered i.e.
> > the sequence was _there_ to be discovered (as were the primes and odd and
> > even numbers contained within it) even before we invented a means to
> > spotlight its existence?
> >
> > I write this partly because I accept the following at face value and as
> > true:-
> >
> > > Note that to caricature a position is not necessarily to
> > > demean or discount it
> > > in any way. One can believe the position or idea to be
> > > itself quite profound,
> > > as I do in this cae, and try to gain further clarity about
> > > it by exaggerating
> > > some of its features within analysis.
> >
> > We are tottering it seems on the large issue of realism/anti-realism in the
> > theory of knowledge and, in particular, of mathematical knowledge.
> >
> > Donal
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________________
> > Sent from Yahoo! Mail.
> > A Smarter Email http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
> >
>
>
>
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