Could you elaborate on what you mean?
Let's start with 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.
I keep getting the impression almost directly translates to My intuition tells me. You still base your chain of reasoning on it.
Almost none of the reasoning in your post can be expressed by predicate logic and/or probability theory.
While we are at it, it's worth noting that the intuition that probability obviously extends logic is doubtful.
I don't see any reason to associate anything I've said with logical positivism.
You don't see how the claim that everything is explainable with logic and probability theory relates to logical positivism?
Again, my issue is with taking intuitions far beyond these fundamental we-need-to-start-somewhere levels and using them as strong evidence of truth.
You choose a particular set of where to start that's highly culturally charged. Anna Wierzbicka argues for example in "Imprisoned in English" that it makes sense to start with fundamentals that nearly all human cultures agree on such as there being mothers and fathers but for example not brothers as some cultures have that concept while others don't.
You start with the idea that complex concepts like mean, intuition, reason, associate, indicate, issue and evidence as all being fairly straightforward basics while Anna Wierzbicka would take neither of those as fundamentally basic.
All of them are heavily charged with a lot of cultural associations that you likely hold unquestioned because you learned them as a child and never questioned them.
I keep getting the impression almost directly translates to My intuition tells me. You still base your chain of reasoning on it.
Hear, hear!
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.