Your first premise for both of these syllogisms is "If not A then not B." The skeptic then goes on to say, "Not A, therefore not B."

This merely repeats the conditional premise as a conclusion.

Your Moore however goes on to say "B, therefore A."

I am pointing out to you that the inverse ("If A then B.") of your opening premise is not supported.

Nor is your conclusion that "if B then A." In other words, Moore's logic is very faulty.

I very much beg to differ in that opinion, because it is in this that Berkeley's argument is immune to people kicking stones and raising their hands for display. Brains in Vats can kick stones and raise their hands; their bodies and their worlds are within their brains/minds/sensory experiences. Moore does not KNOW that he has any hands except the hands of his sensory perceptions, which are ideas in his brain/mind/sensory perception. Therefore his argument and actions are meaningless.

J

Samm

---------- Post added 03-26-2010 at 02:51 PM ----------

But how can a physical demonstration confirm the truth of an analytic statement?

I suspect that that is what kennethamy meant, but that he inadvertently omitted the second "not".

---------- Post added 03-26-2010 at 09:13 PM ----------



But how can a physical demonstration confirm the truth of an analytic statement?

As I said before, I think the truth is that all material objects are solid, and that kicking a solid object (like Johnson's stone) is confirmation, but not a demonstration, in the mathematical sense of "demonstration" that the solid object is material. I would venture that all material objects are solid is necessary, but I would not think it was analytic. But, of course, that raises other issues.

...yes, but technically, the way you're forumulating it is not the actual premise the skeptic needs to offer reasons for plausible belief, so the skeptic is going to wriggle out of it.

The skeptic is not actually claiming that he himself doesn't know that he is a BIV, so why should he have to offer reasons for its plausibility? Nor is the skeptic claiming you do not know you are a BIV because you are not actually claiming that you are a BIV. Rather, the skeptic is claiming you do not know that you are not a BIV--which is just another way of saying that you do not know that you have hands because you lack the warrant sufficient for demonstrating your presupposed knowledge that you are not a brain in a vat.

So since the skeptic isn't required to offer you reason why he thinks it is more plausible that you don't know you are a BIV because you are not actually claiming that you are a BIV, this is not a burden the skeptic is actually carrying. All the skeptic has to do cite the high standards of warrant implicit in the first premise as reasons for your not knowing you have hands which is what Samm keeps doing.

---------- Post added 03-26-2010 at 02:21 PM ----------



Why on earth are you so upset?? I am not criticizing your answers. I am critiquing your misunderstanding of the actual problem Moore is addressing. So the discussion hasn't even got started.

It is clear that you are not actually understanding the context of this new type of anti-skeptical argument since Moore is a contemporary philosopher well-acquainted with even the most die-hard modern BIV skeptics such as Keith Lehrer, and his arguments are well-known throughout all skeptic literature. So Moore is not as near as dense as you so conveniently take him to be. It is much more likely you don't understand the problem at stake than that Moore was that stupid. Be somewhat sensible and just admit when don't understand something. There is nothing wrong with asking questions all the time. I know I sure do it!!

I truly think "Everything solid is material" is analytic. It makes Berkeley's denial that much more counterintuitive and johnson's example nothing but an illustration of the already intuitively obvious. So there is no need for demonstrations or empirical confirmation of it.

As I said before, I think the truth is that all material objects are solid, and that kicking a solid object (like Johnson's stone) is confirmation, but not a demonstration, in the mathematical sense of "demonstration" that the solid object is material. I would venture that all material objects are solid is necessary, but I would not think it was analytic. But, of course, that raises other issues.

Following Wittgenstein, I would call it a grammatical proposition. But that would raise a host of other issues.:devilish:

Yes, and the first question would be, what does "grammatical proposition" mean?

It is a rule for the use of a word (or words) that resembles a description.

Like:
"Nothing can be red and green all over."
or
"Every rod has a length."


But I probably shouldn't even have mentioned it. I don't want to derail this interesting thread.

I don't see why you would think so. How would that sentence be true in virtue of the terms used in it? As I said, it might be a necessary truth, but why would it be analytic? (Unless you think that it is analytic that all necessary truths are analytic. But why would you think that?).

I very much beg to differ in that opinion, because it is in this that Berkeley's argument is immune to people kicking stones and raising their hands for display. Brains in Vats can kick stones and raise their hands; their bodies and their worlds are within their brains/minds/sensory experiences. Moore does not KNOW that he has any hands except the hands of his sensory perceptions, which are ideas in his brain/mind/sensory perception. Therefore his argument and actions are meaningless.

Johnson and Moore both miss the mark, even if Berkeley's conclusions are faulty because they miss the mark on Berkeley's aruments.

Samm

Let me be brief, Extrain.
Oh, puh - leeeaze!!!
Go dream your dreams and believe that your beliefs are beyond challenge. You're as intransigent as anyone here, and that says a lot.
I won't be bothered with you any more.
Samm

Apparently he just means that when I am standing on an stone, I am Idea-standing on an Idea-stone in an Idea-space.

I seriously doubt Berkeley would want to say that Ideas are extended in actual space. So perhaps Ideas can be extended in the Space-Idea?

You might want to take into consideration these two things before you contend Ideas are spatiall extended--just for your own benefit:
(1) Special Theory of Relativity says Space is a "fabric" warped by matter itself, and that there is no such thing "Absolute" space.
(2) Though it hasn't been proven, many string-theorists today think that space is actually material, just like the normal things we take to actual material bodies.

If I can really cut the bread in space, then the bread is extended in space, and hence a material object. But bread and rocks can only be Ideas, and Ideas are not materially extended in space. So I doubt that's the conclusion Berkeley wants.

But he was standing on an Idea-stone that was Idea-external to his mind's Idea-leg, Idea-body, Idea-brain within a not-so-common-sense perspective.
Are you now denying stones, bodies, and brains are Ideas?

nah...you don't know what you're talking about.

Ideas are just as real as material objects. Material objects are just as real as Ideas. But of course, Berkeley disagrees with the latter.

But if we can't know the stone-in-itself, and we can't know whether the stone-in-itself exists, then how can we know that the stone-in-itself doesn't exist either?

But this isn't an argument. This is just Berkeley stipulating his own Dogma. He says,
A person has no Idea of what Matter is, or its relation to other things.
In other words, a person doesn't know what "it-is-in-itself" (whatever that means), or what relation this completely "unqualified Lockean substance" bears to all its primary and secondary qualities.

I disagree, primarily because the term "thing-in-itself" is non-sensical, and Berkeley has no reason to be calling material objects by this name. So I think we do know what matter is, and the relations it stands in to other objects. I still know what Material substances are, and I recognize them by their various properties and the affects they have on my sense organs

Like Kant before me, and in opposition to Berkeley, I contend that we don't even know if there is any such thing as "the thing-in-itself." Like Kant, I think the "thing in itself" is merely a theoretical device designed to show to metaphysicans like Berkeley that we cannot say anything at all about the alleged non-existence of entities that are potentially beyond the bounds of all possible sense-experience and conceptual capacity. Therefore, I don't have to be at the present time perceiving an entity for that entity to exist; nor do I have to be conceiving it in order for that entity to exist. That entity can exist independent of my perception of it. And there is nothing incoherent about asserting that.

I also contend that this Matter can exist independently of mine and everyone else's perception (maybe not God's). And stones, rocks, trees are not Ideas; they are material things.

Like Kant before me, and in opposition to Berkeley, I contend that we don't even know if there is any such thing as "the thing-in-itself." Like Kant, I think the "thing in itself" is merely a theoretical device designed to show to metaphysicans like Berkeley that we cannot say anything at all about the alleged non-existence of entities that are potentially beyond the bounds of all possible sense-experience and conceptual capacity. Therefore, I don't have to be at the present time perceiving an entity for that entity to exist; nor do I have to be conceiving it in order for that entity to exist. That entity can exist independent of my perception of it. And there is nothing incoherent about asserting that.

I can't help but think of the only 'definition of God' that I have ever found remotely satisfying - a circle, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere.
Seems strangely relevant.

There exists, then, a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason
-- not one in which a bungler might entangle himself through lack of knowledge, or one which some sophist has artificially invented to confuse thinking people, but one inseparable from human reason, and
which, even after its deceptiveness has been exposed, will not cease to play tricks with reason and continually entrap it into momentary aberrations ever and again calling for correction.

"I contend that we don't even know if there is any such thing as "the thing-in-itself."

But this could be interpreted to say something like this: to be is to be perceived does not mean that what is not perceived, is not. What is not perceived neither is, nor is not. To infer that a thing is not, when it is not perceived, is just to imagine its non-existence - which is why it seems absurd. So the argument 'being in perception' does not say anything about what is unperceived, because there is no unperceived thing.