Originally posted by Palynka
But there you reach my point. Humor theory was not verifiable in that period of time. In my view, logical positivists sell verifiability as an absolute barrier for what can be considered knowledge TODAY. But this clearly clashes with any serious historical view and therefore there cannot exist a defined line in the sand as they try to sell it.

The line mu ...[text shortened]... m on probabilities and therefore much more "grey" than the logical positivist admits it to be.

But humor theory was in principle verifiable, right? For example, Ayer would agree that the claim "there is life on Pluto" is in principle verifiable and meaningful, even though we can't verify it today.

Is this what you mean by a "claim on probabilities?" Like for now, we weigh the evidence and make our best guess as to whether there's life on pluto, until the day we can empiricaly verify it? If so, I think the positivists (and I as well) would agree with that.

I think you might be trying to go a bit further and say that we don't know today what sciene will be able to verify in the future. Perhaps future scientists will be able to build a ladder to heaven and verify that god is in fact there. If so, what seems like a a metaphysical claim today -- god exists -- becomes a physical claim tomorrow -- "god exists and he's over there!" But I think one can respond by saying that the claim "god exists, but know one can verify that fact" remains meaningless. And in a sense, the line remains rigid. But if I'm understanding you correctly, it's getting to the point where our differences seem to me small enough that I'm ready to shake your hand and call it good. But I know you won't hesitate to correct me if I got it totally wrong.



But I have one final question. It sounds to me like you're trying to open the door for a certain type of knowledge. I'm not trying to pidgeon hole you here, but I'm interested in knowing what that is. What, if anything, do you have invested in the verification debate?

As for me, I'm still struggling with positivism. I would prefer a world-view that is open to the insights of metaphysics in those areas science does poorly with. For example, Ayer can't tell us anything insightful about death, while Heidegger's more poetic approach speaks volumes. I suspect that you might share a similar sentiment. But the positivist world-view is one that I'm still trying to work through and appreciate as a moment in the history of thought. I see the verification principle as a very powerful idea and I appreciate your willingness to engage it and fight against it.

Originally posted by bjohnson407
But humor theory was in principle verifiable, right? For example, Ayer would agree that the claim "there is life on Pluto" is in principle verifiable and meaningful, even though we can't verify it today.

Is this what you mean by a "claim on probabilities?" Like for now, we weigh the evidence and make our best guess as to whether there's life on pluto ...[text shortened]... idea and I appreciate your willingness to engage it and fight against it.

If you have seen my arguments with vistesd and Bosse about Zen, you would know that I don't find poetic thoughts necessarily good philosophy. My views are much bleaker in that sense than you suppose. 🙂

My beef with such a view is that almost anything is potentially verifiable in the future because we cannot meaningfully predict the state of science in 1 million years. Will we travel to other universes, will we be able to meaningfully poke in several other dimensions if string theory is "correct"? Will we correct our imperfect knowledge about human and social psychology to show that Marx was correct or wrong with a likelihood of 99,99999%?

Because of these issues a concept of weak verifiability that includes future scientific developments is very unsatisfactory.

PS: Do I have something invested in this? I don't know. Perhaps the fact I'm a researcher in Economics and I sometimes feel the dismal science can only make the cut in a logical positivist's view if it's granted a favour! Yet our understanding of economics cannot be considered anything else than knowledge.

Originally posted by Palynka
If you have seen my arguments with vistesd and Bosse about Zen, you would know that I don't find poetic thoughts necessarily good philosophy. My views are much bleaker in that sense than you suppose. 🙂

My beef with such a view is that almost anything is potentially verifiable in the future because we cannot meaningfully predict the state of science in 1 ...[text shortened]... ur! Yet our understanding of economics cannot be considered anything else than knowledge.

You can take comfort in the fact that Economists tend to make better predictions than Meteorologists. But I'm not going to put my money on Marx being 99.9999% right. 🙂

Don't get me wrong, I think he understood capitalism and the human sciences as well as anybody, but he changed the world in ways in which I don't think he could have fully anticipated. I guess that's a topic for another thread.

Originally posted by Palynka
But there you reach my point. Humor theory was not verifiable in that period of time. In my view, logical positivists sell verifiability as an absolute barrier for what can be considered knowledge TODAY. But this clearly clashes with any serious historical view and therefore there cannot exist a defined line in the sand as they try to sell it.

The line mu ...[text shortened]... m on probabilities and therefore much more "grey" than the logical positivist admits it to be.

Is it possible from a logical positivist viewpoint to know another person?

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Is it possible from a logical positivist viewpoint to know another person?

Do all of them live in deep and dark rabbit-holes?

Accidentally, is Cryptic your middle name?

Edit - Seriously, I think I know what you mean, but I think it's an equivocation of the word "know", as you are using the colloquial meaning of the word and infer in onto "knowledge".

Originally posted by Palynka
Do all of them live in deep and dark rabbit-holes?

Accidentally, is Cryptic your middle name?

Edit - Seriously, I think I know what you mean, but I think it's an equivocation of the word "know", as you are using the colloquial meaning of the word and infer in onto "knowledge".

It's just a straight fvkking question. I don't know how else to put it. I'm pretty sure you understand me well enough to tell me what you think.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
It's just a straight fvkking question. I don't know how else to put it. I'm pretty sure you understand me well enough to tell me what you think.

I don't see how anyone can claim he 'knows' himself, let alone others. I'm not good at justifying positions I don't agree with, but I think the LP would agree as he has a more restrictive concept of knowledge than me.

Originally posted by Palynka
I don't see how anyone can claim he 'knows' himself, let alone others. I'm not good at justifying positions I don't agree with, but I think the LP would agree as he has a more restrictive concept of knowledge than me.

So, it's possible that people can't help making metaphysical statements all the time. That the ban on metaphysical statements means that people can't really talk about themselves, since a lot of what they say is empirically unverifiable.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
So, it's possible that people can't help making metaphysical statements all the time. That the ban on metaphysical statements means that people can't really talk about themselves, since a lot of what they say is empirically unverifiable.

It's not a "ban" on metaphysical statements, it's simply a categorization of what can be considered knowledge and what cannot. People can talk about themselves, but this cannot be considered knowledge for the most part.

But what you're saying occurred to me, as well. I "know" that I like some types of food, but can this be considered knowledge? To me, yes but it's certainly not transferable. Much like qualia. I like to think of knowledge as both transmittable and accumulative so I avoided this type of approach.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Is it possible from a logical positivist viewpoint to know another person?

Nothing about verificationism rules out intimate personal knowledge of others.

Originally posted by bbarr
Nothing about verificationism rules out intimate personal knowledge of others.

So how can you verify how a person feels?

Originally posted by Palynka
So how can you verify how a person feels?

The verificationist test for meaning does not require our actually being able to verify the truth of a claim. It merely requires our being able to conceive of verification conditions for a claim. I can conceive of the verification conditions for claims about my own feelings, and hence I can conceive of these conditions for others. This is sufficient for claims about the feelings of others to be meaningful and, hence, for these claims to possible candidates of belief and knowledge. The next question is how we can come to know that particular claims about the feelings of others are true. I suggest asking them and observing their behavior.

Originally posted by bbarr
The verificationist test for meaning does not require our actually being able to verify the truth of a claim. It merely requires our being able to conceive of verification conditions for a claim. I can conceive of the verification conditions for claims about my own feelings, and hence I can conceive of these conditions for others. This is sufficient for cla ...[text shortened]... aims about the feelings of others are true. I suggest asking them and observing their behavior.

But what are these verification conditions then?

Originally posted by Palynka
But what are these verification conditions then?

How do you verify if you are in pain, or depressed, or anxious? You probably introspect and infer from the qualitative character of your experience, or from the train of your thoughts, or you step back and look at how you've been behaving or are disposed to behave.

Originally posted by bbarr
How do you verify if you are in pain, or depressed, or anxious? You probably introspect and infer from the qualitative character of your experience, or from the train of your thoughts, or you step back and look at how you've been behaving or are disposed to behave.

But if the source of such inferences are introspective then I don't see how we can use such methods so that we can have such verification conditions for others.