I meant when philosophers themselves claim they aren't looking at things in a probabilistic way. [...] This was one of those discussions where he didn't understand why I was so confused.
The point isn't that you don't do either.
He claimed that although he's comfortable talking about credences and probabilities, he's also comfortable talking about the world in a non-probabilistic way.
Your post is mainly talking about world in a non-probabilistic way. Given that's the case the professor with whom you are talking get's confused.
To me it looks like the problem is belief in belief of logical positivism.
My intuitive (!) position is that I'm aware I can't prove (even probabilistically) that I'm not a Boltzmann brain
The fact that you intuition is that you can't prove that you are not a Boltzmann brain, doesn't change that your intuition is that you aren't a Boltzmann brain.
I intuition is that P!=NP but at the same time I'm certain that I don't have the mathetical skills to prove P!=NP.
The fact that you don't have an intuitive mental distinction between "X is true" and "I can prove X is true" is a problem.
The point isn't that you don't do either.
Sorry, don't know what you mean to say here. Could you rephrase?
Your post is mainly talking about world in a non-probabilistic way.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
To me it looks like the problem is belief in belief of logical positivism.
Again, could you elaborate? I don't see any reason to associate anything I've said with logical positivism.
...The fact that you intuition is that you can't prove that you are not a Boltzmann brain, doesn't change that your intuition is that you aren't a Boltzmann brain
For a while now I've been trying hard to understand philosophical viewpoints that defer from mine. Somewhere along the line I've picked up or developed a lot of the LW-typical viewpoints (not sure if this was because of LW, or if I developed them earlier and that's what later attracted me to LW), but I know there are a lot of smart people out there who disagree with those viewpoints. I've tried to read articles and books on this, but they either don't address what I'm looking for somehow, or they're so technical that I have a hard time following them. I've also talked at some length with a philosophy professor, but our conversations often seem to end with me still being confused and the professor being confused about what it is I might be confused about.
I'm thinking maybe it'll help to get some input from people who do intuitively agree with my viewpoints, hence this post. So, can someone please tell me what the central arguments or motivations are for promoting the following:
Epistemology:
Ontology / philosophy of mind:
I suspect I'm having trouble with the ontology issues because of my trouble understanding the epistemology issues. Specifically, I keep getting the impression that most (all?) of the arguments for the ontology issues boil down to trusting philosophical intuitions and/or the way people use words. Something along the following lines:
Or the equivalent using the way people talk about things.
But this just seems totally ludicrous to me. If we trust cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, etc., and if those fields give us perfectly plausible reasons for why we might intuitively feel this way / talk this way, even if it didn't reflect the truth, then what could possibly be your motivation for sticking to your intuitions anyway and using them to support some grand metaphysical theory?
The only thing I can think of is that people who support using intuitions like this say, "well, you're also ultimately basing yourself on intuitions for things like logic, existence of mind-independent objects, Occamian priors, and all the other viewpoints that you view as intuitively plausible, so I can jolly well use whatever intuitions I feel like too." But although I can hear such words and why they sound reasonable in a sense, they still seem totally crazy to me, although I'm not 100% sure why.
Any help would be appreciated.