Peter Crowley

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

Heather and I are going to address Fauci's hearing today in the senate and put it in a context you won't hear anywhere else. https://t.co/yaP5fpezkv

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@emberix @ToKTeacher Kant was more concerned about the necessary conditions for knowledge and he was incorrect in most of the details. Knowledge, as Kant thinks of it, has much greater substrate neutrality than he realised. This can be better accommodated by the naturalistic turn.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@emberix @ToKTeacher It has a resemblance, but no. Where Kant failed in this respect was his move away from the naturalism of Hume and his misguided deference to Euclid. Much of Kant’s psychology of apperception is falsified by empirical psychology which shows that our perception isn’t even Euclidean

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl Called it. He’s playing fast and loose with the notions of “progress for…” and a free floating progress potential. When we show there’s no reason to believe that we will progress of necessity, he’ll pivot to the vapid notion of potential progress for anything.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl Forgive me, I was attempting to critique internally, from the point of view of one who believes it and what they should think… a potentially unhelpful belief (as most (all?) false ones are).

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl True. But I don’t and for exactly the same reason as you… what does it mean? I submit that whatever it might mean, it must trade on a dubious conception of necessity and our epistemic abilities to adjudicate such.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl Absolutely! Hence my question… might a belief in inevitability be the thing that negates inevitability?

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl Indeed. Again, we’re not disagreeing here.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl 3.
Modalities of necessity and possibility must be sufficiently transparent to us, both in terms of meaning and in terms of epistemology, for us to make such strong judgements about inevitability. And this - and I think I can confidently say I’m with Popper here - I deny.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl 2.
Hence, although we cannot rule out, epistemically, the catastrophic end of our own progress, this doesn’t mean it isn’t inevitable anyway. My intent here is only to steelman the thought which I join you in finding wanting.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl 3.
Why should we believe it inevitable when there are obvious counterexamples in our own history?
If progress is inevitable, is inevitable for us? That some notional free floating progress is inevitable seems irrelevant. Is it inevitably open ended?

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl 1.
To draw a further distinction. Metaphysically speaking, it may be inevitable. The question would have to become, but how would we know? Why should we believe it to be so? What would inevitable progress explain?…

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher @jiriknesl 2.
Might a belief in the inevitability of progress be the only thing that hamstrings that inevitability?
Knowledge of inevitability seems to require certainty regarding prediction and perfection in understanding.
…

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@RedElixier @ToKTeacher This is Humean idealism. Popper was most certainly not an idealist.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher More, the thought that people create knowledge is correct so far as it goes. But much knowledge is encapsulated sub-personally and is therefore not ours in the strictest sense. People are not empirically reflexively transparent any more than sensation is. Popper plus Sellars.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ToKTeacher Without some conceptual apparatus, we would not know evidence even when it was most obviously presented to perceptual apparatus.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@DavidDeutschOxf @EVKontorovich @JMilei Quite right. The “loss” of the Falklands would do little to punish the UK. It would relieve us of a dependency. For the islanders, I continue to take it that it would be an unwelcome, unwarranted punishment of innocence.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ilinxing Cheers! Thanks for that.

[Peter Crowley @PeterMCrowley]

@ilinxing @ToKTeacher Interesting.
A quick question though if I may; I’m very interested in the realism/anti-realism debate in philosophy. I’ve no recollection of coming across the term “non-realism”. Do you use this because you’re unsure of the specific label to apply? Or was this self-attributed?