Keith Russell

Greetings:

An 'altruist' is what everyone wants everyone else to be...

Keith.

bd-from-kg

faustuz:
Well, you’re pretty close but not dead on. A motive always consists (according to the “standard model” at any rate) of a desire together with a belief that an action will tend to fulfill it. Dread is an emotion, not a desire, so we have to ask: what’s causing the dread? The answer, of course, is the mother’s love for her child, which involves a powerful desire for its welfare. The dread is the fear that this desire will be frustrated (to put it mildly).

The bottom line is that, as I said in my reply to Chris, the mother’s love for her child is what’s driving the whole show: the desire, the dread, the grief, etc. But by far the strongest desire involved is the desire for the good of the child. (Of course we’re assuming that the situation is “normal”: the mother loves the child, she has no unusual motives that we don’t know about, etc.) So the most important motive is to further the child’s interest (in this case by saving its life).

bd-from-kg

jpbrooks:

Because they would apply to any world whatsoever.

No. The falsifiability criterion does not apply to all statements, only statements about the real world.

This can be made a little more precise. Consider the set of all logically possible worlds. (Technically this isn’t a “set”, but that’s not really germane here; this is just a way of thinking about such things.) Some statements are true in any of these worlds, so the fact that such a statement is true in this world tells us nothing about which of the possible worlds we happen to be living in. The reason we can be certain that such a statement is true is that we don’t have to know which world we’re living in to verify it; we can determine its truth simply by reflecting on its meaning.

Other statements (such as that Chicago is north of Texarkana) are not true in all possible worlds. These statements in effect make claims about which of the possible worlds we live in. So they can only be verified by observing the world we live in.

Now the undecidability of the continuum hypothesis is in the first category; it is true in all logically possible worlds. And therefore it tells us nothing about which of the possible worlds we are living in. This is what I mean by saying that it’s not a statement about the real world: it doesn’t say that the world is this way and not that.

The fallacy of pure logical positivism is that it claimed that the falsifiability criterion could be applied to all (non-tautological) statements. But it’s pretty well accepted that falsifiability (or something like it) is a valid criterion for the meaningfulness of empirical statements – i.e., statements that purport to be about the real world, to say that it’s one way and not another, or to put it another way, to rule out some possible worlds as candidates for being the real world. At the very least, there must be some theoretically possible observations that would count as evidence for, and others that would count as evidence against, the statement.

That’s what’s wrong with unfalsifiable versions of PE or PH. They appear to be saying that people are this way and not that; that human minds work in certain ways and not in others. But on analysis it turns out that they’re true no matter how human minds work; they’re consistent with any possible observations whatsoever. No possible facts would constitute evidence against them. The problem with unfalsifiable theories is not that we can’t find out whether they’re true, but that they make no assertions; in the final analysis they’re meaningless.

AnthonyAdams45

... but I wanted to drive home a point you made earlier, one undermined by the last sentence of your latest post.PE's claims are meaningless as empirical statements. One can posit PE as a metaphysical entity, although I shouldn't think anyone would really want to do so.

Actually what I was most hoping to learn from this thread was the answer to the second part of your initial question: Why does anyone believe this claim to be true. I look at my own life and know that I have consciously acted against my own best interest repeatedly, sometimes to my ruin, sometimes to help others, sometimes to the ruin of others. How anyone can reflect on their own motives and not see times where they acted from altruist or onther non-self-interested motives iis beyond me! Or maybe I've just lived too much.

jpbrooks

And yet logical and mathematical theories are generally not considered to be "meaningless".

Before moving on, I would like to emphasize that I am opposed neither to the idea of falsifiabilty in general nor to that of empirical falsifiability (as it applies to science) in particular. I only see a problem in the way that the falsifiability criterion is sometimes used.

I agree, but I'm still uncertain about what to call such a "collection" if we can't call it a "set". It seems clear that it must be a thing that is in a more inclusive category than a set because it contains sets.

Correct. But, just out of curiosity, is its meaning arbitrarily stipulated or are there limits placed on the range of possible meanings that can be applied to it?

I wholeheartedly agree that it would be meaningless to apply an empirical falsification criterion to non-empirical claims. But that only places a restriction on the way that the criterion is used. It has nothing to do with the meaningfulness of the claims outside of the context of empirical falsifiability.

The empirical falsifiability criterion itself might provide a good example as to why this must be the case. The empirical falsifiability criterion is not empirically falsifiable because in order to falsify it, we would have to affirm it, (that is, falsifying it would require us to implicitly hold it to be true) which is the same thing as saying that it cannot be made false.

However, since it is (empirically) unfalsifiable, to assume that it is (nevertheless) meaningful and true means that empirical falsifiability cannot be used to rule out the meaningfulness and truth of non-empirical claims.

Or perhaps, like the falsifiability criterion itself, they may make assertions about things that cannot be confirmed directly by empirical observation. Thus, any further inquiry or deliberation about them must be done outside the context of science.

I'll be back later.

The AntiChris

faustuz

Of course. No problem.
You may well be right and I said as much at the start of this discussion (on the "Murder for Gain" thread). However, I doubt very much whether bd-from-kg would agree.

Chris

Mr. Sammi

bd-from-kg,

i must commend your professionalism, otherwise I would'nt feel like I have any giving in me, and to boot, I don't luv you!

* * *

On the whole it seems to me as if 'some' altruistic behaviour may be an emergent component of emotions (feelings). This emergent sensation may be strong and bold enough to impel one towards altruistic behaviour. I use the term sensation here, because it was just 'that', a sensation, which emerged from the particular combination of experience, and emerged with enough 'will' of itz own to override selfish sensibilities and cause the responsive action, which would play out as experience.

However as this sensation diminishes, the altruistic behaviour would diminish, (cry here) they won't be back tomorrow.

* * *

Like the clothed guy who jumped into the pool to help a kid having difficulties, then when it was over, he gets angry, because he spoiled his summer suit in the effort.


Sammi Na Boodie ()

bd-from-kg

The AntiChris:

Well, I would have thought that by now it would be obvious to anyone that our dispute is not about “semantic nuances”, but about how human beings actually “work”; about what drives their behavior.

Your position is that all acts, including apparently altruistic ones, are ultimately “motivated by the perception of a potential emotional payoff” – i.e., that consciously or subconsciously, the ultimate reason for doing anything is always that the agent anticipates either some increment of happiness (meaning any desirable emotion) or some reduction in unhappiness (meaning any undesirable emotion) for himself. This implies that the only kind of thing that anyone ever really wants as an end in itself is that he should have (or avoid) a subjective experience of some kind; that everything else is desired ultimately only as a means to some such end.

Along these lines, you argue that “To say that the mother's motive was solely to save the child is exactly the same as saying her motive was to avoid the pain of losing her child”. And “You're making the mistake of thinking of the mother's desire to avoid grief and her desire for her children to live as two, separate, entities. I have argued that they are one and the same...” It seems clear that you’re saying that the apparently ultimate desire of a mother for her children to live is really a product of her desire to avoid grief, which is therefore the real ultimate desire (or the product of yet another desire). And if you were to become convinced that this isn’t a viable theory, you’d attribute her desire for her children to live to an underlying desire to have or avoid some other emotion or subjective experience. In other words, you believe that no one can ultimately desire anything but to have or avoid certain mental states (i.e., subjective experiences); that any other desires must ultimately be founded on some such desire.

I reject this theory, as do the great majority of modern philosophers. (In fact, most of them think that it’s not even to be taken seriously.) If you think that I’m misinterpreting them, look at the literature for yourself. Most philosophers believe (as I do) that people desire some things other than subjective experiences as ends in themselves, or for their own sake. Is this a disagreement about a “semantic nuance”? I think not. If it is, an awful lot of ink has been spilled over a semantic nuance.

bd-from-kg

jpbrooks :

True enough. Only statements that are purported to be about the real world can properly be declared to be meaningless if they fail the falsifiability test.

The whole point is that the person making the assertion has a responsibility to make it clear just what he’s asserting; if he can’t there’s no point paying any attention to him. And sometimes the process of making this clear will reveal that he doesn’t really mean anything.


On the contrary, it has a lot to do with their meaningfulness. If a statement cannot be falsified, its meaning cannot be defined operationally. Far from relieving the person making it of the responsibility of explaining what it means, it imposes on him the responsibility of first explaining in what sense it is meaningful. This is far from a simple task. In fact, in a great many cases it will turn out that there is no sense in which it’s meaningful. And in others (like Ockham’s Razor), elucidating the sense in which it is meaningful can be very illuminating. But we’re getting far afield from the original subject.

I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here, but certainly the falsifiability criterion is unfalsifiable. On close inspection it turns out to be an analysis (or falls out of an analysis) of what (or if you prefer, how) empirical statements mean. Naturally such a thing cannot itself be an empirical statement.

But if so, they’re not making assertions about the real world. And the problem is that their advocates clearly intend them to be understood as saying something about the real world.

I’m not sure that there’s any point in discussing this point further on this thread. I think that practically everyone here understands why the “unfalsifiability” objection is relevant (to versions of PE and PH to which it applies).

AnthonyAdams45

I still wish someone would explain why they came to believe PE to be true, when it is so patently false.