lol i thought so too at first. it’s clear there’s bell curves … the author says that higher IQ value leads to “reality is subjective and all is mental” worldview.
but then i thought, wait a moment, maybe the author is wise enough to recognize that higher IQ value is not always a good thing? maybe they actually don’t identify as being super-IQ? maybe they just want to live a chill live, and identify themselves somewhere in the middle of the curve? that would mean that the author does not actually think that all reality is just a thought construct …
For me the bias is not just in making idealist views look “higher IQ” but that they depict a person who just has the most basic self-evident views that are the most widespread and commonplace among people who don’t do philosophy at all (that there exists a material objective reality) as only possessing those views because they just got them from the television.
I think this is very common in philosophy, where people want to sound more interesting by positing very bizarre towers of metaphysics, which they claim are justified by some incredibly intellectual line of reasoning. They then paint normies as stupid for not believing that for not following their lengthy complex line of reasoning.
But quite often these lengthy complex lines of reasoning are just the author tricking themselves out of an obvious conclusion, by writing so much they obfuscate what is being talked about, so then it makes it look like their bizarre conclusions logically follow, when anyone who actually takes the time to parse that metaphysical tower will find it does not.
But they rely precisely on the fact that nobody will bother to parse it because it is too complicated, and then use the complexity as a sign of the “intellectualism” of the position.
I’ve always been a fan of defending the common man’s views by analyzing arguments against it, going over the tower of metaphysics and seeing if their conclusions really do follow and prove the common man wrong. I’ve never found any argument that necessitates they are wrong. Sometimes the arguments are strong enough such that you have to make some additional clarifications, but that only serves to better flesh out the position rather than to dismantle it, so there is nothing inherently “stupid” about the common position.
you missed the part where the meta physicians claim what they aren’t doing is metaphysics but science and logic, or something… and their inability to admit or understand that any logic of science is a metaphysical system…
history of philosophy is often a lot of finger pointing and posturing about ‘my philosophy isn’t metaphysics! it’s common sense!’
personally I’m more interested in the implications of idealism as a system in practice, but i’m a filthy pragmatist interested in the real world as it is, not as it ought to be.
You missed the part where metaphysicians claim that what they are doing isn’t metaphysics at all, but science and logic, or something along those lines.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.
The author’s bias in this is rather… apparent lol
lol i thought so too at first. it’s clear there’s bell curves … the author says that higher IQ value leads to “reality is subjective and all is mental” worldview.
but then i thought, wait a moment, maybe the author is wise enough to recognize that higher IQ value is not always a good thing? maybe they actually don’t identify as being super-IQ? maybe they just want to live a chill live, and identify themselves somewhere in the middle of the curve? that would mean that the author does not actually think that all reality is just a thought construct …
For me the bias is not just in making idealist views look “higher IQ” but that they depict a person who just has the most basic self-evident views that are the most widespread and commonplace among people who don’t do philosophy at all (that there exists a material objective reality) as only possessing those views because they just got them from the television.
I think this is very common in philosophy, where people want to sound more interesting by positing very bizarre towers of metaphysics, which they claim are justified by some incredibly intellectual line of reasoning. They then paint normies as stupid for not believing that for not following their lengthy complex line of reasoning.
But quite often these lengthy complex lines of reasoning are just the author tricking themselves out of an obvious conclusion, by writing so much they obfuscate what is being talked about, so then it makes it look like their bizarre conclusions logically follow, when anyone who actually takes the time to parse that metaphysical tower will find it does not.
But they rely precisely on the fact that nobody will bother to parse it because it is too complicated, and then use the complexity as a sign of the “intellectualism” of the position.
I’ve always been a fan of defending the common man’s views by analyzing arguments against it, going over the tower of metaphysics and seeing if their conclusions really do follow and prove the common man wrong. I’ve never found any argument that necessitates they are wrong. Sometimes the arguments are strong enough such that you have to make some additional clarifications, but that only serves to better flesh out the position rather than to dismantle it, so there is nothing inherently “stupid” about the common position.
you missed the part where the meta physicians claim what they aren’t doing is metaphysics but science and logic, or something… and their inability to admit or understand that any logic of science is a metaphysical system…
history of philosophy is often a lot of finger pointing and posturing about ‘my philosophy isn’t metaphysics! it’s common sense!’
personally I’m more interested in the implications of idealism as a system in practice, but i’m a filthy pragmatist interested in the real world as it is, not as it ought to be.
No, I didn’t. I agree with that. I have literally written an entire book criticizing how people conflate the mathematical models of modern physics with philosophical interpretations of those models, and then pretend their metaphysics is not philosophy but something “proved by the empirical evidence.”
The book was motivated precisely by the question I raised in my previous comment: does the common man’s position really have to be abandoned?
Philosophers, including physicists who write philosophy, very commonly point to modern physics as establishing the need to abandon certain common worldviews and adopt a new metaphysics. But they often present this not as metaphysics, but as something directly established by empirical reality, such that questioning it is treated as equivalent to denying science.
One example is the dominant interpretation of special relativity, which claims that space and time are ontologically relative. We can experimentally verify that clocks drift from one another exactly as the mathematics predicts, such as when two airplanes fly in opposite directions and meet again. The conclusion is then presented as empirically proven: space and time themselves must be relative.
But John Bell pointed out in “How to Teach Special Relativity” that the same mathematics can be given a different philosophical interpretation while preserving the same empirical predictions.
You can instead assume that spacetime is absolute, while objects in motion undergo physical effects that cause moving clocks to slow and rulers in the direction of motion to contract. The measurements of rods and clocks would then be emergent properties produced by absolute space and time plus these physical effects. The mathematics remains the same, but its ontological interpretation changes.
If physicists object that such an absolute rest frame could never be experimentally identified, that does not prove it does not exist. It means only that its existence is empirically undetermined. At that point, the usual response is Occam’s razor: if we cannot directly detect such a frame, we should eliminate it from our ontology.
My point is not that this is wrong. It may be a perfectly reasonable philosophical choice. My point is that Occam’s razor is a philosophical argument.
You have not empirically proven that space and time are relative. You have shown that relativity follows from the mathematics given a particular interpretation of what the mathematics represents. Choosing that interpretation over another requires an additional philosophical argument. If there were motivation to make an argument in response (which is a whole other topic, but I argue one can mount a strong counterargument), then it would lead to a philosophical debate, and that debate could not be settled empirically.
This is the broader point I am making: the same mathematics can be compatible with multiple ontological interpretations. Empirical evidence can constrain those interpretations, but it does not necessarily determine them uniquely.
So, if you are an extremely conservative skeptic who refuses to abandon the common man’s worldview unless doing so is strictly necessary, you can always ask whether the new worldview actually follows necessarily from the mathematics and empirical evidence.
Often, it doesn’t. The physical evidence motivates the metaphysical debate, but it does not wholly determine its outcome.