“Porcupines can shoot their quills”

>pursuing a masters in philosophy

This means as much as a hope, prayer, or wish. Wanting to accomplish something isn’t an accomplishment.

Does anyone have any recommended readings, thoughts, or musings on the idea of "truth"?

I'm familiar with Hericlitus, and have studied the pre-Socratics, at least what's left of them. The article notes that materialism started to form piecemeal in the "last three millennia", which includes Hericlitus. When I say ancient, on the other hand, I mean really ancient, like 5000-10000 years; as well as what remnants of it exist in written record, what anthropologists studied in tribal cultures, and what has carried over into modern religions. The last 3000 years are a transitional phase.

What you call a “shortcut” merely describes a model.

You accuse me of using YouTube knowledge, but I’m pursuing a masters in philosophy while you’re here saying “yes but have you considered that the mind uses schemas to process information”. Nobody doubted that and only someone who learned psychology on YouTube would think this is insightful

ABSTRACT:

> Our interest is in the possibility of there being a philosophically interesting set of useful false beliefs where the utility in question is specifically epistemic. As we will see, it is hard to delineate plausible candidates in this regard, though several are promising at first blush. We begin with the kind of strictly false claims that are said to be often involved in good scientific practice, such as through the use of idealisations and fictions. The problem is that it is difficult to see that there would be any epistemic utility in believing such claims, as opposed, say, to merely accepting them. Next we turn to the challenge posed by epistemic situationism , which when embedded within a plausible form of virtue epistemology appears to show that sometimes purely situational factors can play a significant explanatory role in one’s cognitive success. But again it is hard to see how the role that these epistemically beneficial situational factors contribute can be cashed out in terms of epistemically useful false beliefs on the part of the subject. Finally, we turn to the Wittgensteinian conception of hinge commitments ,commitments that are held to be epistemically useful even if false. While the epistemic utility of these commitments is defended, it is argued that one cannot make sense of these commitments in terms of belief. Support is thus canvassed, albeit in a piecemeal fashion, for the thesis that the prospects for there being philosophically interesting cases of epistemically useful false belief are poor.

I think there's several materialists you would be interested in reading about, Heraclitus being one, whose birthdate is placed somewhere in the 6th century BCE. His writings only survive in fragments (like Socrates) quoted by his contemporaries but you still get the general gist. The idea that our systems of thought are often imperfect reflections of the material world is touched on by a vast amount of people, and certainly we've had a few epistemic shifts since animism (paganism, Christianity and Islam, the Enlightenment etc.) Some fun quotes about the constant flux (or fire translated from Greek) of the world:

"This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will be an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out."

"We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being through strife necessarily."

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” (The things we categorize are always in states of change.)

​

As a modern person, you might be surprised how close Heraclitus gets to a modern understanding - materialism has always existed on an intuitive level, just not the tools to confirm it definitively!

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/

>We should always remember that science is supposed to help understand the world, but the world isn't limited to science. In other words, social aspects of our lives are just as important as learning anything else.

I wouldn't disagree - "the proper study of man is man" is something that seems truer to me as time goes by. Unfortunately, it is also the study most plagued by preconceived notions, and the prevalence of those in the social sciences is what makes me question whether they yet deserve to be called 'sciences' at all. Still, it's something to aspire to...

I suppose I'm tilting at windmills to object to the author using "science" when they evidently mean "the rationalist assumptions of the social sciences", much as I object to claims of a "replication crisis in science" when, again, the data applies to the social sciences.

But then, I evidently have time to tilt at windmills, otherwise I wouldn't be on reddit.

It is interesting to see how difficult it can be for people to see outside the framework of science, when they have spent much of their life living with that perspective. To call the title excessive, you have to see the point being made first.

We should always remember that science is supposed to help understand the world, but the world isn't limited to science. In other words, social aspects of our lives are just as important as learning anything else. Just because they are difficult to study through the framework of science, doesn't mean they are not important or worse - that they are inferior in any way. If anything, they are more important than the material sciences because it involves the interpreter i.e. the scientist and it is far more difficult to study. That being said, I agree with you that the social sciences are poor overall currently. But that's not because the field is poor, but those who are leading it are terrible at it - like what you have mentioned yourself.

It seems harsh to suggest that the author has little understanding of science, but the alternative charge is one of choosing an excessive title.

Virtually nothing in the article relates to "science" - it is entirely about a certain number of disciplines which call themselves the "social sciences", but which you won't find in the science buildings of a university, and for good reason. In general, the social "sciences" actually exemplify the problem Socrates originally pointed out:

>Socrates made it clear that many people simply believed in things because they have always believed in them, and not because it made rational sense.

Much of social science consists of pet theories about humanity dressed up in the borrowed robes of science - a case of using rationality, or rather rationalisation, to bolster what we believe to be intuitively, or instinctively, or traditionally, or conventionally, to be the case. Hard to do otherwise, when the human mind is still largely a black box into which one can put almost any set of claims.

Unlike actual science, the social sciences neither really discover nor experiment at any level above the elephant's toenail - the shape of the elephant can then be deduced to be almost whatever one prefers. As a result, social science paradigms tend to follow social and political change rather than lead it - the opposite of the relationship between science and technology.

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Yeah, I totally get that it is an unlikely scenario, especially in our (and humanity’s) lifetime.

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Interesting idea.

But, I believe the case is inhuman. Astronomers rarely work independently. A rare discovery is never struck without an emotional response, especially if it's your lifelong goal to identify such a singular finding. That such a person would cooly make such a definitive conclusion and foresee such elaborate consequences outside his scope of expertise, is utterly irresponsible and thus immoral.

People in high levels of academics, corporations, and even government are never quacks (politicians are the weak link, obviously). Sure they make mistakes, and fall into moral hazards like the rest of us. They're usually highly cooperative and motivated individuals that rely on the work of others to advance in their own field. If they didn't follow or respect the work of their colleagues they'd most likely not make it far enough to be recognized. High achievers are not cynics in practical matters, they tend to work with high achievers and steer clear of others.

You don’t have to be comprehensive, which I would also suggest is both impossible and not useful. But if we are working out of an established framework, it is always good practice to disclose that. And arguing one view without considering alternatives hardly forms a “case” for anything.

Sure, we can make up scenarios all we want and use deductive reasoning. But if we agree this scenario is not realistic then this sort of makes my point, which is that this stops being “a case for withholding knowledge” that we can use in the real world and becomes “a conversation on reddit about withholding knowledge” for a fake scenario about a sun flare form the future. We can grant the assumptions and discuss the moral implications and it’s all good fun, to be sure. It just doesn’t have real world utility if our deductive process is starting from a place not congruent with the real world. That’s all.

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I agree with your first point. I do not claim to have made a comprehensive nor exhaustive defense. I’m a student and it’s just a blogpost, so take it for what it is. That said, I do plan to comeback to this and build upon it after I’m more familiar with the various positions and literature. And I will revise it to be more explicit and precise.

I dispute your second point, though, as it is a thought experiment and you should try and assume it to be the case, for the sake of argument. If it were the case, such that…then what are the moral implications of such and such…anyway, that’s the usefulness of thought experiments (though some people disagree and think thought experiments are useless; but I’m not one of those).

Third point, revisit my response to the second point above.

I have several reservations. First, the argument here seems to implicitly operate on utilitarianism. While using utilitarianism is not bad, per se, 1) the article does not make this perspective explicit, and 2) there are numerous other competing philosophical positions which would answer the question differently and those are not addressed here. The discussion would have been more rich if it had been more conversant with competing discussions of the good.

Second, “certain knowledge” of the future is sort of a poor assumption as it is debatable whether this would ever apply in the real world.

Third, finally, there are issues with the thought experiment. It is quite manufactured, such that (as is philosophical tradition at this point) other thought examples could easily be marshaled that directly contradict the arguments here and would point us to the opposite conclusion. The thought experiment is quite two dimensional and further fails to capture real world complexity. And so, in the end, is this really “A case for withholding knowledge” or is this a fake scenario about an sun flare from the future that was fun to discuss on reddit.

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A “moral wrong” really just means an action that leads to unfavorable circumstances, especially in regards to social behaviors. But even non-social behaviors, like masturbation or doing drugs, are considered immoral as they can be unhealthy for the agent. So we’re just saying that some actions tend to have good results and other actions tend to have bad results. This isn’t really affected by the existence or lack of free will. Punishment and guilt still serve their purpose: to regulate behavior.

Schopenhauer read the Oupnek'hat, which is a collection of Upanishads, mixed with the commentary of Shankara, which the freethinking sultan Dara Shikoh had ordered to be translated to Persian. According to the scholar Paul Deussen, it is an extremely bothersome work to read:

>Owing to the excessive literality with which Anquetil Duperron rendered these Upanishads word by word from the Persian into Latin, while preserving the syntax of the former language, — a literality that stands in striking contrast to the freedom with which the Persian translators treated the Sanskrit text, — the Oupnek'hat is a very difficult book to read ; and an insight as keen as that of Schopenhauer was required in order to discover within this repellent husk a kernel of invaluable philosophical significance, and to turn it to account for his own system. (The Philosophy of the Upanishads)

>Therefore, we may experience a subjective immortality upon the death of our ‘’current’’ body

Can you explain how you got this conclusion?

It should be noted that nationalism in the wake of the Napoleonic wars were still seen as a positive and liberating idea, especially for German speaking peoples who had never had their own singular state up to that point

Apologies for any poor formatting, I'm on my phone.

I think the problem is wider. You then write: "Luck is “like” a female, it isn’t actually one. This is because we understand more than past ages did about material causes, randomness and probability."

Your explanation of why the reader doesn't understand luck being a female but rather 'like a female' is insufficient. I get you're sticking with your argumentative line but there is another important point that, of course, anyone can be capricious. Certainly not just those who present feminine. Combine this with your quick use of 'a female' and the overall declarative tone of your piece and it comes off as if you're more sympathetic to the sexist tones of the analogy than you actually are.

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