Could you clarify if you have in mind any other characteristics that determine whether someone is or isn’t a philosophical pragmatist aside from “[believing] that we can reason our way toward capital-T Truth”? Although I’ve encountered discussions of philosophical pragmatism before, it’s definitely not my area of expertise. Additionally, I’ve not had this conversation about philosophical pragmatism with many EAs.
That being said, I think it’s reasonable to say that many if not most EAs probably believe “objectively verifiable ‘Truth’ is not attainable (but that doesn’t mean nothing matters or nothing is actually True).” It’s possible I’m slightly biased by my own beliefs, but in my experience such a point seems fairly non-controversial among thoughtful people: there are a lot of wrong ways to interpret the claim (e.g., “Truth is subjective”)—including bad assumptions regarding the implications for action and thought (e.g., “it’s impossible to reason about anything”)—but once you peel away the poor interpretations and highlight basic examples like “we can’t verify whether there is a demon tricking us all into thinking 2+2=4; we can’t verify that we don’t exist in a simulated reality with fake laws of logic”, most (thoughtful/non-offended) people will admit “okay, maybe we can’t be 100% certain about anything, but it’s still pretty close to 100% and those hypotheticals shouldn’t really influence our actions.”
Thanks for this. Here’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s first paragraph:
”Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a remarkably rich and at times contrary range of interpretations, including: that all philosophical concepts should be tested via scientific experimentation, that a claim is true if and only if it is useful (relatedly: if a philosophical theory does not contribute directly to social progress then it is not worth much), that experience consists in transacting with rather than representing nature, that articulate language rests on a deep bed of shared human practices that can never be fully ‘made explicit’.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism
I’d say pragmatism is as much a criticism of certain directions in philosophy as anything. It’s a method of asking of philosophical distinctions “what difference would that make.” But instead of turning toward skepticism it seeks to reorient philosophy and reasoning toward the fulfillment of human goals.
Outer universe with different math—We’re a simulation inside a different universe that runs on different math where 2+2!=4, but the math inside our universe is consistent. This is the same as 2+2=4 for most purposes. This is imaginable, I think...
Active demon—there’s a demon that controls all your inputs, in a way that’s inconsistent with any reasonable mathematics, but you can’t tell. This is the least likely, and if it were true I wouldn’t even consider myself a person.
Math is flawed—the whole concept of arithmetic, or all of mathematics, is inconsistent and it’s impossible to construct a system where you can actually prove 2+2=4. This doesn’t necessarily mean two apples and two apples makes four apples—it just means the apples behave like they do for other reasons than arithmetic. This is conceivable.
Could you clarify if you have in mind any other characteristics that determine whether someone is or isn’t a philosophical pragmatist aside from “[believing] that we can reason our way toward capital-T Truth”? Although I’ve encountered discussions of philosophical pragmatism before, it’s definitely not my area of expertise. Additionally, I’ve not had this conversation about philosophical pragmatism with many EAs.
That being said, I think it’s reasonable to say that many if not most EAs probably believe “objectively verifiable ‘Truth’ is not attainable (but that doesn’t mean nothing matters or nothing is actually True).” It’s possible I’m slightly biased by my own beliefs, but in my experience such a point seems fairly non-controversial among thoughtful people: there are a lot of wrong ways to interpret the claim (e.g., “Truth is subjective”)—including bad assumptions regarding the implications for action and thought (e.g., “it’s impossible to reason about anything”)—but once you peel away the poor interpretations and highlight basic examples like “we can’t verify whether there is a demon tricking us all into thinking 2+2=4; we can’t verify that we don’t exist in a simulated reality with fake laws of logic”, most (thoughtful/non-offended) people will admit “okay, maybe we can’t be 100% certain about anything, but it’s still pretty close to 100% and those hypotheticals shouldn’t really influence our actions.”
Thanks for this. Here’s Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s first paragraph:
”Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a remarkably rich and at times contrary range of interpretations, including: that all philosophical concepts should be tested via scientific experimentation, that a claim is true if and only if it is useful (relatedly: if a philosophical theory does not contribute directly to social progress then it is not worth much), that experience consists in transacting with rather than representing nature, that articulate language rests on a deep bed of shared human practices that can never be fully ‘made explicit’.” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism
I’d say pragmatism is as much a criticism of certain directions in philosophy as anything. It’s a method of asking of philosophical distinctions “what difference would that make.” But instead of turning toward skepticism it seeks to reorient philosophy and reasoning toward the fulfillment of human goals.
There are also like 3 different ways 2+2!=4.
Outer universe with different math—We’re a simulation inside a different universe that runs on different math where 2+2!=4, but the math inside our universe is consistent. This is the same as 2+2=4 for most purposes. This is imaginable, I think...
Active demon—there’s a demon that controls all your inputs, in a way that’s inconsistent with any reasonable mathematics, but you can’t tell. This is the least likely, and if it were true I wouldn’t even consider myself a person.
Math is flawed—the whole concept of arithmetic, or all of mathematics, is inconsistent and it’s impossible to construct a system where you can actually prove 2+2=4. This doesn’t necessarily mean two apples and two apples makes four apples—it just means the apples behave like they do for other reasons than arithmetic. This is conceivable.