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xiphiasI thought it might be useful just to jot down the basic things that govern how I see the world, just in case anyone was interested. Just for reference, and in case it might be useful for other people.
To start with, I divide things into two categories -- the physical and the metaphysical. The physical universe includes everything that can be observed, detected, or measured. It includes phenomena which can be analyzed, for which models can be formulated to predict future events, and from which past events can be deduced. The way I use the terms, "science" can be defined as "all inquiry into the physical universe." Not all sciences are advanced enough to make accurate predictions (economics is an example of a science in its infancy, which, at its current level of development is somewhat useful in some circumstances, but which can not, yet, be generally trusted. However, it IS a science by my definition, because the phenomena which it studies ARE observable and modelable, even if the models aren't there yet), and, indeed, it may be that some phenomena simply can't be actually modeled, because they are complex enough that analyzing them would take more computing power than can theoretically exist within the universe, but, nonetheless, you can tell how they COULD be modeled and predicted.
Truths about the physical universe, I call "facts."
The metaphysical universe, on the other hand, is made up of things which CAN'T be observed and analyzed, by their natures. Not stuff that we can't CURRENTLY observe, but stuff which simply couldn't be observed at ALL. Concepts of ethics, morality, justice, honor -- these are metaphysical things. But they genuinely exist and are real. The question of "is this specific action right or wrong" has an actual, true answer, just as much as "what wavelengths of light does chlorophyll metabolize most efficiently?" The difference is that the answer to the latter is a "fact", while the answer to the former -- and this is one of the confusing bits -- is an "opinion". By one definition of "opinion."
I use the word "opinion" to refer to several very different things. The first meaning of "opinion" is "a thing that a model of the physical universe predicts, when the model is not yet reliable." If the model works, then the opinion will actually be a fact. If the model is flawed, then the prediction may fail, and the opinion will turn out NOT to be a fact.
This definition of "opinion" falls within the physical universe, and is part of scientific inquiry. It means "best guess". This form of opinion is useful, in that the models being used, while perhaps not completely reliable, are still accurate enough to give a better-than-random-chance of being facts. A doctor's medical opinion is an example of this definition. If my doctor's opinion is that my symptoms will most likely be ameliorated by a particular treatment, that opinion is more likely than not to be a fact -- and whether the opinion was correct will only be known later.
Note, however, that this kind of "opinion" IS either right or wrong.
The second form of "opinion" deals with questions which fall neither within physical OR metaphysical inquiry, and therefore DON'T have actual right or wrong answers. This is probably the most common meaning -- and the least useful. If I say that "Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is the best filmed Shakespeare in existence," that statement would only be true or false if Plato's idea of Ideal Forms was accurate, and there exists a platonic ideal filmed Shakespeare, and a true way of determining closeness to the ideal, and if we define "best" as "closest to the platonic ideal."
In my understanding of metaphysics, none of those things are true, and therefore not only is it impossible to determine the truth of "Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is the best filmed Shakespeare in existence", but the statement actually lacks a truth value at all. I'll make the statement, and mean it, but I understand that this is a matter of taste only, and not one that is actually true or false.
Also in this category is the creation of categories. Whether a particular thing falls within a particular category is a scientific question, about the physical universe, the categories themselves are human-defined and have no external existence. One clear example of this is the demotion of Pluto from planet status. Nothing about Pluto changed, but our arbitrary human definitions of categories did, and an object that fit an old definition didn't fit the new one. Whether Pluto fits one definition of "planet" or another is a scientific question. What set of attributes the category called "planet" defines is an opinion with no truth value. There is no inherent "planet-ness".
I believe that categories have no physical OR metaphysical existence. Nonetheless, they're darned USEFUL -- it really helps communication. If an astronomer declares that they have discovered an extrasolar planet in a different solar system, it's nice to have actual understandable and agreed-upon definitions of "extrasolar", "planet", and "solar system".
Which brings us to the final category in my understanding of reality, and my third mutually-exclusive definition of "opinion". This consists of things like "right" and "wrong", "justice", "mercy", "honor", things like that.
In my understanding of reality, these are things that actually metaphysically exist. Other people believe that these are human-created categories, like "planet" or "bug" or "nation", but I believe that they are actual things that exist external to culture and belief.
They're not detectible by scientific method, though, and therefore, there is no way to determine it.
My third definition of "opinion" is related to this, and, sadly, is therefore difficult to tell from that second meaning. If I say that an action is ethical, my "opinion" is a statement with a truth value -- I might be genuinely correct or incorrect about that. Because these statements are not approachable with scientific inquiry, there is no generally-accepted way to test them.
All I can do is state my postulates, and use logic to build up my argument to explain how these postulates demonstrate the ethical, honorable, or whatever nature of the action under question. It's possible to work out through inquiry that IF these postulates are true, then the conclusion holds -- but it is NOT possible to use inquiry to determine the postulates in the first place.
To start with, I divide things into two categories -- the physical and the metaphysical. The physical universe includes everything that can be observed, detected, or measured. It includes phenomena which can be analyzed, for which models can be formulated to predict future events, and from which past events can be deduced. The way I use the terms, "science" can be defined as "all inquiry into the physical universe." Not all sciences are advanced enough to make accurate predictions (economics is an example of a science in its infancy, which, at its current level of development is somewhat useful in some circumstances, but which can not, yet, be generally trusted. However, it IS a science by my definition, because the phenomena which it studies ARE observable and modelable, even if the models aren't there yet), and, indeed, it may be that some phenomena simply can't be actually modeled, because they are complex enough that analyzing them would take more computing power than can theoretically exist within the universe, but, nonetheless, you can tell how they COULD be modeled and predicted.
Truths about the physical universe, I call "facts."
The metaphysical universe, on the other hand, is made up of things which CAN'T be observed and analyzed, by their natures. Not stuff that we can't CURRENTLY observe, but stuff which simply couldn't be observed at ALL. Concepts of ethics, morality, justice, honor -- these are metaphysical things. But they genuinely exist and are real. The question of "is this specific action right or wrong" has an actual, true answer, just as much as "what wavelengths of light does chlorophyll metabolize most efficiently?" The difference is that the answer to the latter is a "fact", while the answer to the former -- and this is one of the confusing bits -- is an "opinion". By one definition of "opinion."
I use the word "opinion" to refer to several very different things. The first meaning of "opinion" is "a thing that a model of the physical universe predicts, when the model is not yet reliable." If the model works, then the opinion will actually be a fact. If the model is flawed, then the prediction may fail, and the opinion will turn out NOT to be a fact.
This definition of "opinion" falls within the physical universe, and is part of scientific inquiry. It means "best guess". This form of opinion is useful, in that the models being used, while perhaps not completely reliable, are still accurate enough to give a better-than-random-chance of being facts. A doctor's medical opinion is an example of this definition. If my doctor's opinion is that my symptoms will most likely be ameliorated by a particular treatment, that opinion is more likely than not to be a fact -- and whether the opinion was correct will only be known later.
Note, however, that this kind of "opinion" IS either right or wrong.
The second form of "opinion" deals with questions which fall neither within physical OR metaphysical inquiry, and therefore DON'T have actual right or wrong answers. This is probably the most common meaning -- and the least useful. If I say that "Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is the best filmed Shakespeare in existence," that statement would only be true or false if Plato's idea of Ideal Forms was accurate, and there exists a platonic ideal filmed Shakespeare, and a true way of determining closeness to the ideal, and if we define "best" as "closest to the platonic ideal."
In my understanding of metaphysics, none of those things are true, and therefore not only is it impossible to determine the truth of "Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is the best filmed Shakespeare in existence", but the statement actually lacks a truth value at all. I'll make the statement, and mean it, but I understand that this is a matter of taste only, and not one that is actually true or false.
Also in this category is the creation of categories. Whether a particular thing falls within a particular category is a scientific question, about the physical universe, the categories themselves are human-defined and have no external existence. One clear example of this is the demotion of Pluto from planet status. Nothing about Pluto changed, but our arbitrary human definitions of categories did, and an object that fit an old definition didn't fit the new one. Whether Pluto fits one definition of "planet" or another is a scientific question. What set of attributes the category called "planet" defines is an opinion with no truth value. There is no inherent "planet-ness".
I believe that categories have no physical OR metaphysical existence. Nonetheless, they're darned USEFUL -- it really helps communication. If an astronomer declares that they have discovered an extrasolar planet in a different solar system, it's nice to have actual understandable and agreed-upon definitions of "extrasolar", "planet", and "solar system".
Which brings us to the final category in my understanding of reality, and my third mutually-exclusive definition of "opinion". This consists of things like "right" and "wrong", "justice", "mercy", "honor", things like that.
In my understanding of reality, these are things that actually metaphysically exist. Other people believe that these are human-created categories, like "planet" or "bug" or "nation", but I believe that they are actual things that exist external to culture and belief.
They're not detectible by scientific method, though, and therefore, there is no way to determine it.
My third definition of "opinion" is related to this, and, sadly, is therefore difficult to tell from that second meaning. If I say that an action is ethical, my "opinion" is a statement with a truth value -- I might be genuinely correct or incorrect about that. Because these statements are not approachable with scientific inquiry, there is no generally-accepted way to test them.
All I can do is state my postulates, and use logic to build up my argument to explain how these postulates demonstrate the ethical, honorable, or whatever nature of the action under question. It's possible to work out through inquiry that IF these postulates are true, then the conclusion holds -- but it is NOT possible to use inquiry to determine the postulates in the first place.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 02:58 am (UTC)If you say, "Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD is the best filmed Shakespeare in existence," that is in fact a statement with a truth value - but it's a statement about YOU, not about the film. It says something about how that film - a real, physical object (or at least a real experience) affects you, a real physical person.
More relevant to my everday experience... if I say "She's beautiful," or, "He's a jackass," or "That's wonderful," those are statements about me. (Which among other things, helps me keep my cool when someone says something unpleasant about me - it's not saying anything about me at all; it simply says how I'm affecting that person. If I don't want to affect them that way, I may be able to do something else; if I don't mind affecting them that way, then I don't have to. But I have the information.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 11:28 am (UTC)I don't divide the world into physical and metaphysical. I don't feel like I have enough information for that to be for me a meaningful statement. For me the central jumping off point is not knowing. (Long before I would have considered myself Buddhist. Now, in that context, I might say "無知" but mostly because I still feel a certain glee of finding things that I so painstakingly assembled for myself in texts written hundreds (thousands) of years ago, in a language I already read and love. My observation has been that people tend to waste a lot of time believing in things that they don't actually know, and which they can't actually know... and for that matter, mistaking their heuristics for interacting with the world with the actual world and thereby blinding themselves to what is actually there. I like to think that starting from not knowing makes me a better scientist and better Buddhist. (Not everyone would agree, but I haven't yet heard a particularly compelling argument to the contrary.)
If there is some kind of basic meaning to the universe, from which things like ideas about good and bad and such might be derived, I haven't yet run across it. So my current heuristics model meaning as something not innate to the universe, but that people create from their interactions with the universe. So, subjective, and yet something that we can also pass around between us. Over the course of human history we have built up many ethical concepts, and a huge proliferation of expressions thereof. A whole side of human existence is an ongoing conversation about meaning. I guess, starting from this footing, it's not really much of a jump to see why I vaguely group a lot of this stuff under aesthetics. Which to many people sounds as if I have decided they are frivolous and unimportant... but that mostly reflects their own reading of aesthetics. Not mine. To start with the universe as we experience, and try to make it better strikes me as pretty wondrous.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 02:23 pm (UTC)Considering ethics and epistemology to be part of aesthetics isn't how I do it, but it makes sense to me. By your definition, it sounds like you'd determine right action to be that which is most beautiful, that which creates most beauty, and therefore that which makes the world more beautiful. Seems reasonable to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 03:49 pm (UTC)The world is the world. I don't pretend to understand it, and as it happens I find it beautiful even when it's terrible, but that's, well, just fortune. So, truth is beauty, but that's happenstance. Is beauty truth? I suppose you could come up with some definitions of truth for which that would be so, but many people choose to believe in a great many pretty things that do not mesh particularly well with the world as we experience it. I don't see much point of coming up with a definition by which those things aren't beautiful (especially considering my penchant for spculative fiction) so... not for me.
It's not quite so much that right action is what makes the world most beautiful, as that, having not found some external basis for ethics, I've come to the conclusion that "good" is essentially an aesthetic judgement. It's not that things that are beautiful are necessarily good, it's that I think good things are beautiful, a kind of beauty that I find particularly valuable, and one I strive to create in the world. I see this all as a subset of aesthetics because I see it as a fundamentally creative process. Aesthetics is how we look at the world and say "that's great!" and also look at other things and say "and that's not great! and I'm going to fix it!"
And that's pretty much exactly how I look at ethics. I mean, there are all kinds of things that are part of that evaluation. Compassion. Justice. (Notice compassion comes first.) A fair bit of utilitarianism. But they are all, for me, at core, aesthetic criteria.
These are pretty much my core motivations. I guess I see my life, mostly, as an artistic impulse. Well, I'm also pretty concerned with truth. I mean, evidence suggests that Truth as such is far to big to fit into my head. But even if the best I can hope for are marginally better approximations of truth, Truth still seems awfully worth pursuing. (Again, largely on aesthetic grounds.)
So... I am very interested in both truth and beauty, but I don't equate them ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 02:26 pm (UTC)I'd go a bit farther regarding categories (but then, I used to study categorization and inductive reasoning, within the field of cognitive psychology[1]).
* All categories are human-created approximations of reality. Indeed, categories are a subset of "theories" or "hypotheses"; it's just that categories focus only on features (i.e, which features are necessary, sufficient, distinctive, common, etc. for an exemplar to belong to a category, and to what extent), whereas theories can include additional means of representation and expression (such as if-then statements, mathematical formulations, etc.).
* Categories are "correct" to whatever extent that they accurately describe and predict the underlying physical reality. (You can have categories of metaphysical reality too, but then it's even harder to judge if a category is "good" much less "correct".) "Better communication" is a nice bonus of having a category that's both "good" and "agreed upon", but it's not, to me, the main effect or purpose of having categories. A category would exist just fine in someone's mind, and be used to draw inferences, even if it was never communicated to others.
* Mental categories don't consist of only necessary and sufficient (defining) features, but also all sorts of other stuff (probabilistic features, sense of "essence", etc.) that I'm not going to go into now (because it takes an entire lecture in my class :-). However, I will give one quick example. The category "bird" might be defined in one way (has particular anatomical structure, feathers, etc.) but most people's mental category of "bird" also includes non-defining features such as "probably can fly" and a (usually unstated) sense that there is an "essence" to being a bird. Those "extra" features explain why some birds are more "typical" than others, why some conclusions (generalization and analogies about birds) are more persuasive than others, and why one could perform complete plastic surgery on a bird to make it look and act like a fish but it'd still be a bird.
* People often
- get into arguments because they use the same label (e.g. "planet") but have different underlying mental categories
- get into arguments because they think in a binary way-- either a particular instance DOES or DOESN'T fit the category, without allowing for "more and less typical" and in-between states (really, if an example doesn't fit neatly in or out of a category, it's time to conclude "I have extended this category as far as it can go as a tool, and it's time to find a new tool/category/theory/whatever) [2]
- reify categories (once they have a mental category and a label/name, they think that's a real thing in the real universe)
- confuse the category (the mental approximation) with the reality
- fail to see other possible categories, ones that might describe/predict the universe better, or at least get at different aspects of it [3]
* Tying all this back to your epistemology, I mostly agree with you, except that I don't see a clean distinction between "metaphysics" and "categories" (none of it is "real') or even a clean distinction between "physics" and "metaphysics" (but it's nearly binary, and that's good enough).
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 02:27 pm (UTC)[1] Of course, the field of "cognitive psychology" is itself just a category :-)
[2] I have witnessed many pointless arguments that spring from the false beliefs that categories are binary and that categories consist solely of defining features. Among such overstretched categories I've seen argued: "conservative", "superhero", and "continent". Even seemingly-straightforward categories as "bachelor" ("unmarried man") run into problems (is a Catholic priest a bachelor?). In fact, the only categories that DON'T run seem to run into problems "at the edges"-- the only categories in which all instances really are cleanly "in" or "out"-- are (a) categories specifically designed as artificial and prescriptive, such as "military ranks" and (b) biological species (but only within a particular region and particular range in time-- once you look evolutionarily over enough time, even those "definitions" and "neat boundaries" break down).
[3] Indeed, I list "nonstandard categories" among my hobbies. Examples: The Nine Nations of North America, alternate categories/theories of "generations".
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-09 03:10 pm (UTC)Then we've got things that have SOME characteristics that we associate with life, but not others: viruses -- alive or not? Computer viruses -- alive or not?
And then we get into medical ethics: at what point is a PERSON dead? There's no bright line.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-07-10 02:09 pm (UTC)I understand why the legal system has to work with binary categories. It would be possible to build a legal system that didn't rely on binary categories like underage/18+, dead/alive, human/nonhuman, in violation/not, etc., but it'd be difficult and probably introduce more problems than it solved. (Even when the legal system does allow degrees, such as when assessing fault in a civil case, it does so in bizarre ways-- "OK, the grandfather is 30% to blame, the child not at all 'cause they're underage, the driver 45%, ...")
But "in binary categories" seems to be the only way some people can "think" at all.