Why not phenomenal conservatism?

[@KaneB]

Outline of phenomenal conservatism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHzLhGyAjKeZirM Hume's skepticism about reason: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGLUiaN_n8mXZqM

[@Lojak-exe]

I hate how ppl like Jordan Peterson get extremely big but someone like Dr. Baker doesn't, at least not on the same level. Like, I've gotten more than 50% of my knowledge of philosophy from Kane and like 90% inspired by something I've seen on his channel. I'm following his modal logic videos rn and I can't believe he does this for free. Serious respect to Dr. Baker, thank you so much man.

[@Trynottoblink]

Yeah this channel is insanely good, he gives you a graduate-level education in philosophy for free

[@Eta_Carinae__]

It's our fault tbh. Very few people care enough about the subject to engage with it on it's terms; and instead need it fed filtered through/dumbed-down such that they may be enticed into interest. It happens with every subject. I feel like we fucked JBP up with the same mechanism. He may have been an interesting PI in an alternate reality, but we reflected the vapidity given to us by communicators back onto him in the form of validation, and it allowed him to create an easy band-pass for one group, and not the other since everyone within one essentially said exactly the same thing.

[@Lojak-exe]

@@Eta_Carinae__ I feel like JBP has great work on psychology, and I think it's dumbed down by people who oppose him, although, I do think his philosophy is severely lacking. But I do think you're 100% right on the idea that people just aren't interested, at least as much now. There was sorta the golden age of atheism and battles on religion like a decade ago, now people don't seem as interested😥

[@uninspired3583]

I feel gross about comparing this to what JP does. they aren't in the same ballpark.

[@yaboihere494]

Jordan Peterson has some good wisdom and a desire to help people, but he is so consumed by anger, fear, and depression. The man has demons that truly get in the way of his message. Kane is much more objective and academic, so I agree the two can't really be compared.

[@GoldenMan-Gaming]

I'll try to give what I think are some quick responses to your concerns, they probably won't be very conclusive though. 1. What are Seemings: I agree that "seeming" is super vague in English, but what all of these mental states have in common is that they have representational content (i.e. content which is trying in some sense to represent something, with a mind-to-world direction of fit) and lack the commitment, acceptance, or agreement (however you want to spell it out) which beliefs have. When we think about perceptions, perceptions are obviously seemings in this sense: they have representational content which you are not committed to (etc.) in the way you would be if you believed in that content. And, when you think about how perceptions can justify beliefs, one way in which they do so is through that representational non-belief content. For example, if I see you waving at me, my perception has the representational content of "Kane Baker is waving at me" or something like that, and intuitively I can justify a belief with the same content because of what I am seeing (i.e. the content of my perception, namely that "Kane Baker is waving at me"). Why isn't that enough? 2. Facts and Truth: I don't know what proposition you are conceiving of in this section (the words "fact" and "truth" are used in many different ways, and during Western education we are often taught a false dichotomy between "fact" and "opinion" as if we can't have opinions about objective truths), but I think you are conceiving of "truth" and "facts" as objective. If you are, then all your anti-objective intuitions about the wrongness of slavery do is give you some defeasible justification against the wrongness of slavery being objective, but that's totally consistent with the subjective truth or fact that "slavery is wrong." If you aren't conceiving of "truth" and "facts" as objective, then I doubt many people share that intuition. Subjectivists commonly think of "my truth" or "facts about my morality", and even non-cognitivists usually have all the Frege-Geach style intuitions about truth entailments for moral claims. If you claim to see a purple elephant whenever morality is brought up in conversation, but almost nobody else does, you should probably conclude that there is no purple elephant. 3. Malleability: I don't really understand what you are saying here. Typically, (non-cartoon) objects on a TV appear to be 3D and real. We can believe that they are 2D and not real (as we usually do), but they appear 3D and real. For example, if I asked you to put your hand through a piece of glass while hiding the fact that the piece of glass was secretly a TV, then I bound your hand in place and played a video of a knife blade getting closer to your hand, it would appear as if you were about to get stabbed. This is also why, in stories, a time-traveler or other-worlder who sees a TV for the first time often says things like "Why did you stuff people into this tiny box?", because it appears that the people on TV are 3D and real. So, I have no idea what you mean when you claim that you can make real world people appear 2D and not real like on a TV, because people don't appear that way on TVs to most of us. Of course, you can pretend that reality is 2D and not real, just like I can pretend that the TV stuff is 3D and real (even when I know it's not), but that normally doesn't change how things appear (e.g. I can pretend the floor is lava and even think of it as if it were lava without it actually looking like lava). Now, there are some cases of this malleability (e.g. Necker cubes), and those cases raise questions about whether malleability is a defeater and if so what kind of defeater it is, but I don't see why those cases would pose a problem for phenomenal conservatism. 4. Defeaters: Yeah, the view that appearances give you defeasible justification (phenomenal conservatism) is consistent with the view that all such justification is defeated (perhaps for malleability reasons, though again I have no idea how the world appears to you when you compare it to movies appearing to be 2D and not real). This is roughly what I think about moral intuitions (I am an error theorist who thinks that most moral intuitions face undermining defeat from debunking explanations...the intuitions which remain are either conditionals which are consistent with error theory or they are overridden by the evidence for error theory). I don't think I've watched the Hume video, but all epistemological theories end up in those kinds of infinite regresses unless you hold that you can be justified in believing P without being justified in believing that you are justified in believing that P. This is why (to my knowledge), pretty much all epistemologists do infact hold something like that. 5. Undiscovered Defeaters: Phenomenal Conservatives are usually internalists who think that only things you are aware of can be defeaters. If so, then defeaters you are unaware of cannot defeat your justification. However, you might be aware of a defeater even without knowing exactly what it is (e.g. you might know that there was some defeater for belief P last time you thought about it, but be unable to recall exactly what the defeater was). In such cases where you know there is a defeater even if you don't know what it is, it seems reasonable to discount the defeasible justification in your belief in way proportional the epistemic probability that there is a defeater (combined, in possible, with the probability about the strength of the defeater). Yet, what you seem to be saying here is that the mere possibility of a future defeater should fully defeat our seemings, and that seems mistaken. Instead, you should discount the defeasible justification in your belief in way proportional to the probability of you actually encounteringing a future defeater (given that you are aware of such probabilities...if you aren't aware, then there is no defeater). 6. Dialectic: I don't think this portion is very well thought-out. First, all (reasonable) views allow that different individuals can each have justified beliefs based on different sets of evidence, and that can happen with phenomenal conservatism if the beliefs are based on different sets of seemings. These sorts of stalemates are not a problem for phenomenal conservatism any more than they are for other views. Second, you shoudn't just be basing your beliefs on your appearances, but other people's as well. If you say you see a purple elephant and I don't see it, we should ask others to check if there really is a purple elephant. Now, asking others is difficult in philosophy (mosly because normal, non-philosophers only have a very tenuous grasp of what a philosophical intuition is, since those sorts of intuitions aren't thought about much in everyday life), but in principle a lot of the sort of stalemates you mention here could be resolved by getting better evidence about how things appear to people. Third, if someone is presenting a reason to doubt their seemings, then they are presenting a potential defeater, and a good-faith debate can be had about whether that defeater actually defeats seemings (and if it does, why it does/doesn't defeat perceptual seemings and result in skepticism, too).

[@otavioraposo6163]

Amazing response. I'm baffled.

[@lanceindependent]

I am increasingly seeing people appeal to phenomenal conservatism in discussions and then not presenting anything in the way of further argument for their position. It is coming to be a kind of conversation stopper. People are using in these ways: (1) Someone will see it seems that X, so now the burden is on whoever they're talking to show that X isn't the case. (2) People will say that it seems "to us" that X, uncritically presuming things seem the same way to others. Philosophers routinely make empirical claims about how everyone else thinks without bothering to check. Nonphilosophers often do this, too. (3) People treat their seemings not simply as some prima facie justification, but as an epistemic blank check. You could say "It seems that X" then if someone presents reasons to be skeptical, you may concede there's a better case against X. But often people instead just say "No, it *really* seems that X!" which is then used to override the defeater. One can repeat this ad infinitum to treat one's seemings as arbitrarily stronger than any set of defeaters. Phenomenal conservatism doesn't entail (1) - (3), but it's being misused in these ways, and it may result in causing far more harm to discussions than any benefit.

[@yellowjacket5995]

I always find it odd how people say they don't believe in justification, and then go on discussion issues like anyone else, as if such a view has zero implications. For instance, their denial of justification doesn't at all deter them from trying to justify all of their views.

[@Doctor.T.46]

Paul Churchland talks a lot about folk psychology. In science, the seemings develop into hypotheses and can be empirically tested. Seemingly in philosophy can be explored through thought experiments. What we shouldn't do is allow seemings to develop into beliefs...unless support is demonstrable.

[@MBarberfan4life]

Well, it seems to me that skeptical arguments reduce to the skeptic having the seeming or intuition that commonsense epistemology is flawed. That's self-defeating.

[@humank3985]

I know some popular psychologists on media often make arguments like “slavery is wrong,” but I don’t think that is what “psychology” actually pursues. At least it’s not part of my practice as a psychologist. Psychology is more interested in mental acts associated with a phenomenon rather than making moral judgments. For example, questions such as “what drives the individual differences between those who believe slavery is right and those who don’t?”, “How does slavery affect victims' mental health?”, “What’s the differences between a society wherein slavery is prevalent and where slavery rarely exists?” are what psychologists ask. Also, psychology is open to defeaters. Psychology is based on empiricism so psychologists know that there can be a black swan. That is why psychological conclusions are based on probabilities (often based on statistical odds) rather than being in a definitive form. Many times, defeaters are what psychologists actively seek. Remember that psychopathology is all about atypicality. Without studying oddities, psychologists can’t really understand individual differences. So the psychologists who exaggerate seamings as facts? They are forgetting who they are.

[@otavioraposo6163]

Outstanding video. Very interesting thoughts and challenges. I would love a video like this where you go through your general epistemological outlook and your motivations for it.

[@avaragedude6223]

at 19:32 "i don't think there is such a thing as justification" could you elaborate?

[@blamtasticful]

I think you may be wrestling with the claim that rejecting Phenomenal Conservatism (PC) is self-defeating. The PC proponent may make a self-defeat claim about arguing that the seeming, that seemings almost always have defeaters that will be discovered, is a defeator to seemings currently being justifcatory while currently seeing no defeators. This would be because one is presuming that seemings are justificatory while currently seeing no defeaters in order to undermine the notion that seemings always provide justification in the current absence of defeaters

[@MsJavaWolf]

My main problem with how phenomenal conservatism is often used it's that people argue from a seeming about some vaguely defined everyday concept to very concrete, technical philosophical positions. It seems to me that slavery is wrong, it seems clearly false though that slavery is stance-independently wrong but then people say that "wrong" just means "stance-independently wrong". Some everyday judgement, maybe even just an emotion, is used to justify an abstract meta ethical claim. Same with free will, I used to say that I think free will is real but then someone asked me: "If we were to rewind time, could you act otherwise or would you always act the same?", it was clear to me that I would act the same. "Is your decision a product of your physical brain?", yes it is, "Is your decision outside of the laws of cause and effect?", no it isn't. So despite maybe having intuitions that free will is real, I definitely never had the intuition that *libertarian* free will is real and it's not like they convinced me through an argument, they basically just explained what libertarian free will is. Again, many just say that free will just IS libertarian free will and would count my vague intuitions about free will in general in favour of an abstract philosophical position, even though my intuitions clearly go against everything that distinguishes libertarian free will from other conceptions of the will.

[@JamesAndrewMacGlashanTaylor]

Or the Donald Rumsfeldian "unknown unknowns". The mere existence of this bucket or category is a defeater. The bucket may be empty, but we can never know. And because we can never know its contents, full or empty, it is a matter of epistemic responsibility for it to be there as a place holder. And that it is there, it necessarily functions as a defeater.

[@colorblindzebra]

Hi, sorry but I dont know where to ask this but: would make a long series about transhumanism/posthumanism/singularity where you could make links or comparison with many concepts/theories/domains (logic, epistemology, etc.) you covered in your channel over the years? It has not been made anywhere else to my knowledge, and would for sure be quite stimulating/interesting/informative. Thank you for your excellent content!

[@injinii4336]

Interesting. You can engage in a disassociative state at will.

[@DrexisEbon]

I simply disagree that justifications are why we have beliefs. Justifications may be how we solidify and explain to others what we think the causes are for our minds to precieve things as being likely real or likely true, but I would argue that a belief is really just a mental state of thinking something is likely real or true. Your experiences and dispositions probably play a larger role in making you think something is likely true than your reasoning about why you've had these experiences. A justification is just someone's attempt to explain to others why you have this psychological state. In reality, you have very little if any control over what you believe because you can only control what you're exposed to in so far as you can control your environment but which environment you put yourself into is largely determined by your dispositions and innate preferences which are largely genetically determined. How much of you is something you chose to be is a really difficult question to put a hard number on, but I lean towords hard determinism. You still need to act and think and make decisions, but which decisions you make are made for reasons that you didn't ultimately have much control over. You do have some minor ability to contradict acting towords what you perceive as your own best interests, but this is largely just for some greater psychological profit which you value more than you value your other perceived best interests. In short it has marginal utility to act towords your beliefs but you don't really set your beliefs. This is why I view it as incredibly important that we as a society do what we can to think about which beliefs are best suited towords the ends of creating future individuals who have more sense of choice and ability to thrive as reasoning animals and that we breed as responsibly as we possibly can.

[@ferdia748]

you should do a video on phenomenology ye mad thing

[@silverharloe]

Although the rest of the song doesn't fit at all, I nevertheless ended up with 'Walk Away' (by Joe Walsh) stuck in my head after listening to this, on the basis of the repetition of "seems to me" in the song :)

[@uninspired3583]

I think a shorter path to anti realism is to point out the numerous ways seemings can be mislead. biases, illusions, delusions, deceptions, even just the fact that neural networks as a core function take short cuts. just because my brain as a system does a sufficient job for me to navigate the world doesn't mean it does a sufficient job in addressing the nature of ontological questions. the scope of ontology is inappropriately large compared to the narrow scope of my experience. seemings are good enough for fitness, but not good enough to close off the infinite regress of "why"s

[@felixsanchez4805]

With regards to the slavery scenario. I think the seeming when you say slavery is bad, it’s going to be a seeming with regard to your stance on slavery and how you feel other people should view slavery (assuming that you feel that way) but I think where you jump off is that your seeming of slavery being bad doesn’t entail that there is some fact independent of what anyone believes that slavery is bad. And so your seeming is obviously referring to the notion of bad as not being stance independent. And I would follow this as well because I don’t think I can make sense of what it would mean for something to be stance independently bad which is going to have talk about stance independent reasons. But I still think that your seeming is justified and it would be similar to that it seems to me that chocolate cake is good . But I don’t think it’s a fact that cake is good. Because obviously it’s not a stance independent truth. It’s going to be dependent on what I feel about chocolate cake

[@Felipecamargo13579]

The ideia that there's always a defeater is very good. But the phenomenal conservatist argument that says it is the only option is already a good argument against it, since we already are all phenomenal conservatists, there is no need for this theory to exist In the end of the day it becomes just a rhetorical tool for people to ignore different conceptions.

[@lolroflmaoization]

You should checkout Reality + by David Chalmers.

[@InventiveHarvest]

Seemings to me are reason and/or evidence. Of course we can infinitely regress on this reason and evidence. Eventually this will get to base assumptions or sensory perceptions. A finer point can be put onto any statement. As such Justification is based on whether the statements lead to more sophisticated knowledge. We can derive the fact that slavery is wrong from the base assumption that people have individual desires. With just a few simple base assumptions we can derive complex economic theory. We can test this with data and econometrics. Skepticism does not lead to new knowledge or theories. Therefore it is a degenerate research programme - unjustified. It does not move the conversation forward. The fact that you can see, feel, manipulate your hands is a defeater for skepticism - so you should not believe in it. Again, I think if you read "proofs and refutations" by Imre Lakatos, the world will make more sense for you.

[@likklej8]

Projection surely?

[@squatch545]

"Slavery is wrong" is a fact insofar as this 'fact' describes people's attitudes. i.e. It is a fact that people feel slavery is wrong. In other words "slavery is wrong" is a socially constructed fact based on attitudes. It is not a fact about the universe in general. Same for 'true'. "Slavery is wrong" is true, insofar as it is true about people's attitude towards slavery. The 'wrongness' of it is based on attitudes, it is not a truth about the universe or the way the physical world is. This is why a statement like "Slavery is wrong" has to be unpacked carefully.

[@Bolaniullen]

does it seem like there is a world external to your own mind? if something being a fact to you means it has 0% ambiguity and no cartesian doubt there will be very few facts indeed truth statement can never have certainty, the best you can do is 'ballpark'' truth and go from there, you might be heading north instead of south but you can never ever be going 'true north' . ofcourse we want to lower the level of uncertainty to try and be as right as possible but in the wake of what we would normally want we may have to settle for a very low level of certainty, or high level of uncertainty since it is atleast higher than 0% probable that it's true and check if others share our seeming. if you have no defeaters and no arguments about something, what else is there to go on? nothing, well is sticking with nothing really more reasonable than going with the one point of data you have even if the certainty level is not as high as otherwise? isn't the cut off point for when something becomes too unlikely a inference rather than a likely inference, arbitrary in the absence of defeaters?

[@qcumberfiesta7122]

🧘‍♂️

[@RobWickline]

this is an actual philosophy channel and not another useless summary-of-a-thinker's-ideas channel

[@blankname5177]

[@notloki3377]

video not good enough to warrant so much of it. trapped in propositions, needs to open his heart and feel more. circumrambulation: the act of talking in circles around a point, with the eventual hope of finding center. focus less on thinking, and more on sensing and percieving. you are trapped in a maze of logic, looking for something which you cannot see because you are trying to tile the world with if-then statements. there will never be enough sentences to tile reality.