TheAncientGeek comments on Help with understanding some non-standard-LW philosophy viewpoints - Less Wrong Discussion
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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 impressionalmost directly translates toMy 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.
You don't see how the claim that everything is explainable with logic and probability theory relates to logical positivism?
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
mothersandfathersbut for example notbrothersas some cultures have that concept while others don't.You start with the idea that complex concepts like
mean,intuition,reason,associate,indicate,issueandevidenceas 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.
Hear, hear!