Naturalism cannot provide a solid foundation for truth- it cannot explain why the mind corresponds to reality; in fact it cannot account for the existence of the mind as a qualitative entity. Pragmatism just ignores this and proceeds to claim to know things.
To lay my cards clearly on the table, which I have done before: the only answer to these questions is the existence of a creator God and substance (or more) dualism. In an odd way I’m actually in agreement with Strangeloop: methodological dualism necessitates substance dualism.
It is not enough to simply “throw out naturalistic evolution.” You would then have to provide an alternative account of knowledge, one that explains how and why (and when) our minds correspond with reality. Mises certainly agreed with the plausibility of the theistic approach:
Do you think that the laws of economics and human action can be derived from (Christian) revelation (i.e., scripture)?
I would follow Plantinga and say that we can only know things via our minds and senses when are working when they the way they were designed to which implies a creator God. Now beyond this I don’t as yet have a worked out theory however at least it provides some solid foundations from which to build.
Yes. From Genesis 1 it is clear that God acts in the Misesian sense and since Adam is made in his image he can clearly act. Further the disutility of labour can be accounted for by the fall. For more on this I’d check out Gary North. He’s nearing completion of an economic commentary on the whole Bible which he intends to follow with a Human Action style systematic treatise on the subject.
Now that being said, I believe that they can be derived by natural reason also- in Hoppe’s words, denying the action axiom is a performative contradiction. The disutility of labour I’d take as a general inductive statement (within a theistic, and quasi aristotilean, framework, that i hope to develop, this becomes uncontraversial)
Well lots of things but in this context I’d argue, following Plantinga, that the only non-arbitrary criterion for our mind and senses to discover truth is if they are working they were designed to and implicitly they were desgnied to discover such truth. This therefore implies a creator God.
However my main point was that substance dualism is required to qualitatively distinguish man from creation- Mises’ argument was merely pragmatic and not based upon a sound metaphysically foundation.
What is “substance dualism”? I mean there are things like emotions which exist, yet don’t exist anywhere. They aren’t compatible with spatial position. Is that enough to establish that there is a “substance dualism”?
Why can’t you just say that they evolved biologically? Or, easier yet, why don’t you just consider where they came from to be an unanswerable question? Maybe the basic parts of our mind are ultimate givens. I mean, that would make sense, considering we are using the basic parts of our minds to look at the basic parts of our minds.
I just don’t get where a “creator God” comes in. Where can I observe this “creator God”?
And what does “arbitrary” mean in this context?
And what do you mean by “truth”? Correspondence with reality? Or utility?
I am pretty sure that he meant what they ended up doing based on it, not that their metaphysics was correct. Which is why I said “as far as it describes the method of the natural sciences”. But maybe he didn’t mean that either. I just checked and the part which I was remembering actually said “pragmatism” and “empiricism”, not “positivism”.
The way I understand the term substance dualism is that there exists the material realm made of atoms and an immaterial realm made of, for want of a better word, spirit. I believe there are many aspects of humans that establish it in particular the existence of libertarian free will, as opposed to compatibalism (I make a case here https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/does-praxeology-imply-that-there-is-no-free-will/12964/26 )and as you point out emotions themselves would lend itself towards substance dualism since without it there cannot be a subject to feel, only atoms exist as my signature states.
Naturalistic evolution cannot account establish a foundation for truth ascetaining senses, merely survival ascertaining senses; to survive doens’t mean you have true beliefs. To say that the question is unanswerable is just atheistic hand waving. Now treating them as ultimate givens is correct however only in an epistemological sense- we know truly that these parts exist and exhibit these criteria; however it doesn’t follow from that we cannot create a solid foundation as to how they do exist.
It depends of course what you mean by observe. If you mean by the 5 senses then no except if you lived in Palestine in the 1st century AD, at a burning bush etc ie non-repeatable events. With introspection, conscience etc you can reflect on his existence and via prayer can actually commune with him.
As to why he comes in? A brief argument: The universe came into being (the idea of it being infinite in an actual sense is absurd). Therefore a creator exists. Now to qualitatitively differ from one another we need something other than matter to be the true subject. Therefore the creator creates the qualitatively seperate souls which are united with a body to make it our body. Now I am open to the idea that animals have souls although they probably aren’t rational and exibit qualitatively different attributes than human souls.
Taking the nature of acting man without a consistent metaphysical underpinning.
You said that you’re using the word “truth” to mean correspondence with reality. But truth as correspondence with reality only comes into play in using language. We make models which either correspond to reality or don’t. If a politician says that the increasing the minimum wage would help young, unskilled workers get back on their feet, we would say that he is wrong, but wouldn’t necessarily say that, from his point of view, he shouldn’t have said that. He might have known that increasing the minimum wage wouldn’t lead to those results, but knew that saying what he said would let him keep his power. In that case, what he said would be wrong, that is it wouldn’t correspond with reality, but why he said what he said would be right, that is it would be useful.
But, wait, being useful is corresponding with reality right there. Sure, it seems like his words don’t correspond with reality, but only if you don’t realize what he is trying to do, which is trying to stay in power. The images in his mind, such as an image of his saying those words in front of a crowd, and then him getting reelected, might have been in correspondence with reality. Before he gave the speech, he might have imagined himself saying those words (which he knows are, on the surface, not correct), then imagined the crowd going wild, and then him getting elected, all colored by belief. And then let’s say that he gives the speech with those words, everybody goes wild in the crowd, and then he gets elected. Sure, his words didn’t correspond to reality, but his actions did. His imagination corresponded with reality. He imagined something and believed it. And then it happened. If that isn’t correspondence with reality, I don’t know what is!
We have to be careful to not confuse those two things. When we talk about truth, we could either mean that the words, as models, correspond with reality, or that their actions correspond with reality. People often call the first truth and the second convenience, usefulness, or utility. But both of them have to do with building models which correspond to reality. The only difference is what level. In the first, you build a model corresponding with reality at the surface of language. And, in the second, you build a model corresponding with reality at the depths of your imagination, if you know what I mean.
So, when you say “to survive doesn’t mean you have true beliefs”, which one are you referring to? If you’re referring to the first one, then sure. But, if you’re referring to the second one, I’m pretty sure that nothing could survive for a really long time without a structure to how they imagine things. How could something just keep being “wrong” over and over, and keep surviving? “Well, if I move in this way, water will appear in front of me and I will be able to drink it.” But actually what really happened was that a tiger tried to attack him and the way that he moved let him escape. Oh, but wait. Who is to say that we don’t have things like that? We evolved to develop systems which work. And, oh wait: Our idea of truth is also simply a system which “works”. Evolution doesn’t care whether we run away for the right reason or not. It just cares whether we run away and our reason is systematic enough to happen at the right times.
But the problem with that is that it doesn’t really translate to anything else. Actually knowing things lets you translate those things to other things. If we quarantine somebody sick simply because we think that they are “cursed” and that we don’t want whatever cursed him to accidentally strike us when they were really trying to strike the cursed guy, we aren’t going to be able to translate that understanding to anything else. But, if we know that he is sick, which means that certain things in his body are doing certain things, that might lead us to thinking about how to kill those things and so on. This is a really bad example; but I can’t think of anything else. I’m not very clear on this subject, in case you haven’t noticed.
But, then again, why wouldn’t that be “true”? It would just be a model that we accept because of its usefulness. We accept that other people are conscious simply as a model to predict their movements. Or, at least I do that. I have no way of knowing whether you are actually conscious. Do you think that we need to invoke God to explain other people being conscious? Because, if you don’t invoke something, you will just have to stay in the skepticism that we don’t know whether other people are “really” conscious. Or maybe even the skepticism that such a question is totally meaningless. And, just like that model, the “cursed person” is also a model. Well, if we find that it doesn’t give us the analogies that we need to expand our knowledge (like imagining that the sickness is caused by tiny things made up of matter), we would get rid of it, and switch it out with something else.
All of this gave us a choice. The foundation of everything that we do is utility. But there are many different things which could be useful to you. For most people, it isn’t building models at the surface of language which correspond to reality. But, for a select few, which we call scientists, that it precisely what is useful. Why couldn’t biological evolution explain that there could be people who, for some reason, think that building models at the surface of language which correspond with reality is the most convenient thing to do? But keep in mind that all action is building models which correspond to reality. The only difference between a scientist and somebody else is that the scientist likes to bring their models out of their imagination and to the surface of language.
Also, keep in mind that this idea of truth (where things can correspond with reality on the surface of language, under the surface, or both) accounts for how people lie. Lying is being wrong on purpose. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? No, not when there are two layers: the first being corresponding on the surface of language, and the second being corresponding under the surface of language. A liar finds that the models which correspond to reality in his imagination translate to saying things which he knows don’t correspond to reality on the surface of his language.
To conclude, we are built to try to build models in our imaginations which correspond to reality, and that sometimes translates to building models on the surface of language which correspond to reality; and people can choose to devote their life to trying to unify those two things. After all, they might spend all of their time imagining that the models which they imagine are the same as the models which they put down on paper. That doesn’t need any further explanation. People can choose to try to make what they say the same as what they think.
But the problem is that we can’t exclude the idea that we might be like the person wanting to drink the water, and imagining that moving in a certain way would get him to the water, but really that movement got him away from a tiger; and his “wanting to drink water” and “where is the water” system is so systematic, that it always triggers in the right way when a tiger attacks him. Well, in that case, how could we say that by “water” he means something different than we mean by “tiger”? We couldn’t. Apparently they mean the same thing.
If the point got lost in the length, here it is: (1) The only thing that we can do is to try to build models which correspond to reality, but that there are two ways of doing that: on the surface of language or through your actions. (2) You have to do the second, but it is optional whether you doing the second leads to you doing the first. And (3) it is nonsense to say that you could build a model in the second sense that is “usefully incorrect”, simply because that would be wordplay. If somebody always runs from a tiger in the way which leads to him escaping because he gets thirsty and starts looking for water, really what he means by “thirsty” and “looking for water” is what we mean by “scared of a tiger” and “trying to escape from the tiger”. Something can only be “usefully incorrect” if we are talking about using language which isn’t correct in the first sense but is correct in the second sense.
No, I don’t mean necessarily through one of the five senses. I can observe and come up with an idea of fear, yet fear doesn’t exist as something that I can touch, hear, see, smell, or taste.
First, I don’t know where you got the idea that “the idea of it being infinite in an actual sense of absurd”. Why couldn’t the universe just always exist? Why does it have to have a beginning and an end?
Second, if you assume that it is absurd to say that something exists forever, and that you need to invoke a creator, what about the creator itself? Doesn’t the creator need a creator? This argument is so old that I almost feel embarressed bringing it up. But I also don’t understand how you could use the “the universe needs a creator” argument, considering that it suffers from such a ridiculously simple flaw. If something needs a creator to exist, the creator needs a creator. How could anybody miss that? So I assume that I’m just missing something. Maybe you have a new spin on that argument or something.
But, if you say something like that “well, God is immaterial, and only material needs a cause”, my response is pretty simple: What the hell is an “immaterial cause” and how could I observe it? And why couldn’t we just call the whole universe “immaterial”, assume that something “immaterial” doesn’t need a cause, and move on?
What is a “consistent metaphysical underpinning”? What does “metaphysical” mean to you?
I thought you may go down this line. Lets change your scenario slightly- suppose you run away from the tiger since you believe it to be a demon possessed and as such exhibited awesome strength and power that it would kill you if you didn’t run away immediately. You run and hide and the tiger doesn’t kill you. You survive but believe that the tiger is not only a tiger, in the sense we would both, I assume, understand but believes also that it exhibits demon like qualities, supernatural tenacity, madness etc. In this scenario how would this lead to a true knowledge? Useful incorrectness would seem to be useful.
Sorry I should have linked you a more in depth argument I use. I was in a rush. Your best bet is too read these two threads in which I answer objections to general thesitic arguments. The first has my reformulation of the cosmological argument in it.
Does praxeology disprove the Bible? I begin on the first page.
Metaphysical means, to me, the study of essences- the nature of things. Consistent in the sense that epistemology is temporally prior to metaphysics. ie we find out what is true, the qualities of acting man, then study what gives rise to such a phenomena.
I probably reference conscience in one of the threads. By introspection I meant reflecting on reality as we see it and what best explains it. As to prayer why not try it? Speak outloud in your head, whatever.
What are “demon like qualities”, “supernatural tenacity”, “madness”, and so on? What do those words refer to?
Keep in mind that models which tend to seem “usefully incorrect” in the second sense are really just models that aren’t useful in the long term or for anything else. When you look at the “crazy” models that primitive cultures use, what is really happening there is just that they haven’t really built a systematic, unified model. What is the difference between their models and ours? We have extensive models that apply to a lot of things; and they have disjointed models that each apply to a small set of things. What we consider the most realistic of the models are simply what have the most analogies with other parts of knowledge.
The point is that something can’t be “usefully incorrect” in the second sense, unless you are really just trying to say that it wouldn’t be useful in the long term. And then it would just be incorrect in the long term. In other words, in the second sense, “usefully incorrect” is a contradiction in terms unless you split them apart, and say that it is “useful” in the short term, but “incorrect” in the long term; but, then again, that would be the same thing as saying that it is “useful” in the short term, but “not useful” in the long term, or whatever. A model which doesn’t really apply to anything else wouldn’t be helpful in the long term, because, for obvious reasons, disjointed, ad hoc models applying to only tiny parts of reality aren’t really very useful for other parts of reality. It would be better to just have a big model which would apply to more things. That way we would be able to remember things more easily. There really isn’t much to having a big, unified model than being able to remember things more easily. If we have 1000 ad hoc models which describe their pieces of reality perfectly, versus having 1 model which describes all of that reality perfectly, what is the difference? The only difference is that, without the analogies, it would be really hard to remember all of those models. So people tend to try to unify their understanding. The only difference between (1) the primitive people who quarantine people because it works saying that those people are cursed by the gods and should be removed from everybody else so there isn’t any friendly fire (the gods accidentally hitting innocent people), and (2) us, who quarantine people for reasons that seem a lot more realistic, is that our models also apply to a bunch of other things. They aren’t totally ad hoc.
We have to try to cut through the words and see the actual meaning under the language. Sure, they might say “gods”, “cursed”, and whatever. But, in the end, they are simply doing what works. We do the same thing, except our knowledge is, to say the least, a bit more advanced.
If somebody says that a tiger has “demon like” qualities, which makes it have the strength and power to kill you, we can’t say anything other than this: I guess that by “demon like” they mean having the strength and power to kill you. Well, what is wrong with that? Don’t tigers have the strength and power to kill you? Well, the problem is that the “demon like” part doesn’t really explain anything. In the event that somebody decides to simplify it and simply say that it has the strength and power to kill you - and that is it - it would be just as useful. And that uselessness is the sense in which it is, well, useless - and incorrect. But, wait, what if it is just a ceremonial thing that they enjoy? Wouldn’t it be correct, if they just enjoy it for socializing or something? Well, some people have weird ceremonies. Who cares?
In case my point got lost in the length again, my point is this: We simply make models which are supposed to reflect reality and predict what will be reality. Nothing can be “usefully incorrect” in the second sense simply because that would be a contradiction in terms: The only time that we call things “usefully incorrect” in that sense is when we are talking about two different time periods. In the second sense of the word “truth”, there is nothing to correctness but utility. To make us less likely to make errors, we should just say “usefully useless”. But isn’t that a contradiction in terms? No, not when you are saying that it is useless for other parts of knowledge or other times - because it doesn’t have any analogies with anything - but that it is useful now, or in this part of knowledge.
If you don’t hold them accountable, society will collapse. Most people don’t want society to collapse.
What more do you need?
I would add that what “[being] bad” and “deserv[ing]” mean is simply that they should be “punished” so neither they nor anybody else commits the crime in the future.
And, of course, this came from David Hume, who I could quote in the same way:
You are presupposing that “primitve” cultures’ beliefs are disjointed which is not necessarily the case. In certain eastern cultures pan theism is a perfectly unified theory- God is everywhere and in eveything so the reasoning is consistent and not ad hoc. In fact given your postion all positions are ad hoc and arbitrary. Further why does increased “accuracy” necessarily lead to survival.
Supposing that there is a particular breed of tiger known to the tribe which acts in a certain way. They then come accross a tiger which looks identical and exhibits the particular characteristics of the tiger yet is far more tenancious and seemingly “mad” than others. The then believe that an evil immaterial substance, a demon, is possesing the the tiger. This would then be a “useful” way of explaining the event. Now you may say it is clearly unuseful in the long run but only because of your pressuposed atheism.
It would seem that your argument, as with all naturalistic evolutionary arguments, essentially boils down to a justification by existence argument: it exists so it is more useful (or should) exist.
Btw do you believe natures, or essences, actually exist?
Who’s utility? Uncle Joe’s?
That presupposes the a necessary, deteministic link, between our states of satisfaction and our actions which praxeology does not assert, nor need to assert. All it claims is that when you act it is a preferred state than not acting. It does not follow that this wanting a better state causes the action, it could merely justify it.
Of course all of them are to some extent. Who would disagree?
Well, I couldn’t say anything except that I guess that “a demon is possessing the tiger” simply means that it is much more “tenacious” and “mad” than the others. I couldn’t say anything besides that I guess that they mean by “a demon is possessing the tiger” what we mean by “the tiger is unusually aggressive and so on”. And how could I have a problem with that? If we understand each other’s meaning, I hope that the words can’t do us any harm!
No, it doesn’t. I will clear up that misinterpretation in my next post.
What do those words refer to?
Huh? Did you read what I quoted?
Actually that is exactly what it asserts. Praxeology says that, if you are dissatisfied with your current situation to some extent, imagine that you would be more satisfied with a different situation, and see a causal connection between your current situation and the different situation; all of this together is acting. Wanting and believing together are acting. In the Misesian sense of acting, you couldn’t act without being dissatisfied with your situation. I mean this is in the definitions. If you think that the Misesian sense of acting doesn’t account for something, then you can explain that. But, until then, all I can say is that being totally satisfied and acting are contradictory, and that an “omnipotent God” would stamp out all of his dissatisfaction in one moment.
By the way, you don’t have to believe that God is omnipotent to be a theist. You could just believe that he is powerful enough to do things like create a universe, design life (or at least design the conditions for life), and so on.
We don’t need to prove that increased accurary necessarily leads to survival to show that natural selection could lead to having a foundation for truth. We just need to prove that natural selection could lead to having a foundation for truth. We need to prove that natural selection could equip us with the faculty for trying to search for “truth”, not that surviving itself makes us use that faculty at all times.
But, either way, I already covered this: Imagine somebody who keeps wanting to run at exactly the right times to escape from a tiger, but is really just getting thirsty and looking for water. Well, all that we could say is that I guess that by “getting thirsty and looking for water”, that person means what we mean by “scared of a tiger and trying to escape”. But that is only if it is really that systematic. If the belief just leads to the right outcome a few times, but not in the long term, then that is the sense in which we could call it wrong.
Can you come up with any examples of somebody being systematically wrong, but systematically doing the right thing at the right time? My point is that, every time that you think that you might have come up with a situation like that, you will realize that, really, you are just playing with words, because I will just being able to say “well, I guess that they mean by X what we mean by Y”.
We define words based on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction that things bring to us. If somebody always runs from a tiger at the right time to escape, and somebody else does the same thing, we don’t have any basis whatever for saying that the first person is “wrong” and doing something different than what the second person is doing. That is unless the belief of the first person leads him to screwing up in other areas. But, then again, that would give us a pretty easy answer: Screwing him up in other areas (or in the long term) is in what sense we can say that he is wrong.