Escaping from Bullshit

free-will as intelligible and as obscure. doing something freely makes sense as opposed to being coerced, but doing something freely in contrast to simply willing is obscure, elaborate and evaluate

ChatGPT said:

This is a rich philosophical topic involving the conceptual clarity and difficulties around free will. Your statement hinges on two contrasting senses:

1. Free action as intelligible: We clearly understand what it means to act freely in contrast to being coerced or forced.
2. Free action as obscure: It’s much harder to grasp what it means to act freely in contrast to simply willing something—without outside interference.

Let’s unpack both and evaluate the tension between the intelligibility and obscurity.

1. Free Will as Intelligible: Freedom from Coercion

This is the everyday, pragmatic sense of free will. We say someone acted freely if:

• They weren’t under duress or threat.
• They weren’t manipulated or deceived.
• They had the ability to choose otherwise, in practice.

Example: If I choose chocolate ice cream at the store without anyone forcing me or limiting my choices, I acted freely.

This kind of freedom is sometimes called negative liberty or freedom of action, and it’s widely accepted as clear and useful. It underpins legal and moral responsibility. If someone coerces you, we lessen or remove your responsibility. So in this context, free will is perfectly intelligible.

2. Free Will as Obscure: Freedom vs. Merely Willing

Here’s where things get philosophically difficult. Suppose you act without coercion—but still, is your choice really free if it simply arises from who you are, your desires, or your mental state?

The question becomes:

Is “willing” something (i.e., desiring, deciding, choosing) enough for that action to count as free?

Here, freedom is challenged by:

• Determinism: If your will is determined by prior causes (genes, upbringing, brain chemistry), are you really free?
• Randomness: If your will is not determined but random, are you in control?
• Ownership: If your will stems from unconscious desires or manipulation, do you will it, or is it just happening through you?

So, the contrast is not just between freedom vs. coercion, but between:

Freedom vs. causal necessity (e.g., determinism)
Freedom vs. arbitrariness (e.g., randomness)

This is why philosophers like Kant, Sartre, Frankfurt, and Dennett have tried to unpack what it means to be authentically free or responsible.

Evaluation

• The practical concept of free will (freedom from coercion) is intuitive and useful. It forms the basis of ethics, law, and everyday life.
• The metaphysical concept of free will (freedom from causality or even your own psychology) is obscure and possibly incoherent. How can we be the “originators” of our will without falling into randomness or determinism?

Some responses to this tension include:

1. Compatibilism (e.g., Daniel Dennett, David Hume):
   • Free will is compatible with determinism.
   • What matters is that your action reflects who you are and that it wasn’t externally constrained.
2. Libertarianism (e.g., Robert Kane):
   • Free will requires genuine indeterminacy.
   • We need self-forming actions—decisions that define us and are not fully determined.
3. Hard Determinism / Skepticism (e.g., Galen Strawson, Derk Pereboom):
   • Free will, in any deep sense, is an illusion.
   • We can still talk about responsibility in pragmatic ways, but metaphysical freedom is a myth.

Conclusion

The idea of doing something freely as opposed to being coerced is straightforward and foundational in social practice—it’s intelligible.

But the deeper claim—doing something freely in contrast to merely willing it—opens the door to profound metaphysical obscurities about causation, agency, and selfhood.

This tension is at the heart of the philosophical debate on free will. And whether one finds compatibilism satisfying or insists on a deeper kind of freedom depends on what kind of freedom we care about—practical, moral, or metaphysical.

Would you like a summary in bullet points or a diagram showing how these views relate?

ChatGPT said:

Exactly — and you’ve just stated, with elegant simplicity, one of the deepest problems in epistemology and philosophy of mind:

“I cannot understand an understanding that I cannot understand.”

This sounds almost tautological, but it carries profound implications. Let’s unpack it carefully.

1. The Paradox of Cognitive Limitation

You’re pointing out a kind of cognitive closure:

• If a mind exists that understands in a way beyond my capacity,
• Then by definition, I can’t access or grasp its understanding.
• Therefore, I can’t meaningfully imagine, describe, or evaluate its “understanding.”

This is like trying to see infrared with your eyes — it’s outside your range, so any description you give is an analogy, not real apprehension.

2. Three Key Consequences

A. No Direct Access

You can’t directly know what it’s like to have that kind of understanding, just as a dog can’t understand what democracy is.
Any description you make of a “higher understanding” will inevitably be limited by your own mode of thought.

B. No Verification

You can’t even verify if such an understanding exists without reducing it to your kind of understanding — and then it’s no longer truly beyond you.

Claiming that a superior understanding exists becomes more of a gesture than a claim you can confirm or deny.

C. Conceptual Breakdown

Your statement also shows that there’s a kind of boundary to meaning:

• You can talk about such a mind (via analogy or abstraction),
• But you can’t talk from within its perspective — so your words may fail to refer in any deep way.

3. So Why Talk About It At All?

Great question — if we can’t grasp it, why even posit it?

A. As a Limit Concept

Philosophers often use “limit concepts” — ideas that mark the edge of what we can think, like infinity, the absolute, or God.

You don’t understand infinity the way you understand “five apples.” But the idea of infinity still structures your thinking.

Similarly, the idea of a higher understanding marks the boundary of your own.

B. As a Regulative Ideal

Even if you can’t achieve that kind of understanding, you might still orient yourself toward it:

• In science: striving for unified theories.
• In philosophy: striving for clarity and completeness.
• In religion: striving for divine insight.

You can’t be that mind — but you can reach toward it, which gives your own understanding direction and humility.

4. Final Reflection

You’ve landed on something Socratic:

“I know that I do not know.”

And now you’ve sharpened it further:

“I cannot know what it would be to know in a way that is beyond knowing.”

This isn’t a failure — it’s the insight that your mind has edges. That realization is a kind of higher-order understanding: you grasp not just things, but the limits of your grasp.

Would you like to explore how thinkers like Kant, Wittgenstein, or mystics have dealt with this very boundary — or how it relates to AI and the limits of machine cognition?

it seems that the concept of a foundation is twofold. In one sense, it is a basic premise in a proof. In another sense, it is the ultimate justifier of an empirical claim, a sense-datum. elaborate and evaluate

ChatGPT said:

You’re right to identify that the term foundation operates in at least two distinct philosophical senses—one epistemological (relating to empirical justification) and one logical or mathematical (relating to proof structures). Let’s examine and evaluate both.

1. Foundations as Basic Premises in a Proof

This is a logical or formal sense of foundation.

Definition:

In logic and mathematics, a foundation is a basic axiom or assumption from which other claims or theorems are derived. These are the starting points of a deductive system.

• Examples:
  • In Euclidean geometry: axioms like “Through any two points, there is exactly one straight line.”
  • In arithmetic: Peano axioms.
  • In logic: axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF or ZFC).

Characteristics:

• Not themselves proven within the system—they’re assumed.
• Must be internally consistent.
• Serve as the ultimate starting point in a deductive hierarchy.

Evaluation:

• Strengths: Provides a rigorous, structured system of derivation.
• Weaknesses: Foundations are arbitrary to some degree; different foundational systems (e.g., Euclidean vs. non-Euclidean geometry) can lead to equally coherent but mutually incompatible systems.
• Philosophical Implication: Suggests that “truth” in formal systems may be relative to foundational choices (think: Gödel’s incompleteness theorems).

2. Foundations as Ultimate Justifiers of Empirical Claims

This is an epistemological or empiricist sense of foundation.

Definition:

In empiricism and foundationalist epistemology, a foundation is an indubitable sensory or perceptual datum—what some call a sense-datum—upon which knowledge of the external world is built.

• Examples:
  • “I see a red patch.”
  • “It appears to me that there is a buzzing sound.”

Classical View:

• Found in thinkers like Descartes, Locke, and Russell.
• These sense-data are supposed to be incorrigible and immediate, and thus form a secure base for building empirical knowledge.

Evaluation:

• Strengths:
  • Offers a clear starting point for knowledge that avoids circular justification.
  • Appeals to the directness of perception.
• Weaknesses:
  • The Myth of the Given (Wilfrid Sellars): argues that no datum is entirely free from conceptual interpretation; there’s no pure, uninterpreted experience.
  • Empirical claims may rely more on coherentist or holistic structures than on foundational “givens.”
  • Sense-data theories have trouble with illusion, hallucination, and perceptual error.

Comparison and Interaction

These two uses of foundation are connected metaphorically: in both cases, foundations serve as starting points. But one is analytic and formal; the other synthetic and experiential.

Conclusion

Both senses of foundation seek to identify secure starting points—either for formal reasoning or empirical knowledge. But both have been heavily critiqued in modern philosophy:

• In formal systems, foundations are limited by Gödelian incompleteness and plurality.
• In epistemology, foundationalism struggles to account for the theory-ladenness of observation and the web-like structure of justification.

A more contemporary approach might lean toward coherentism or contextualism, which deny the need for ultimate foundations, emphasizing instead the mutual support of beliefs or practices within systems.

Would you like to explore this in the context of a specific philosopher—like Russell, Quine, or Sellars?

You said:

in the second sense, the reasoning is not from but to — the concequent; not the entecedent

ChatGPT said:

Yes—excellent observation. This strikes at a deep structural difference between deductive reasoning (as in formal proofs) and the kind of empirical justification involved in foundationalist epistemology.

Let’s unpack that idea:

“In the second sense, the reasoning is not from but to the foundation—the consequent, not the antecedent.”

Logical vs. Epistemological Directionality

1. In Logical Foundations (Deduction)

• The foundation (axioms) are the starting point—the antecedent.
• We reason from them to theorems or conclusions.

Structure:

If Axioms (P), then Theorem (Q).
We derive Q from P.

→ So: reasoning flows forward, from foundations to what follows.

2. In Empirical Foundations (Epistemology)

• The so-called foundation—the sense-datum or raw experience—is not something we start with and deduce from.
• Rather, we reason to it, or appeal to it, as a justification after the empirical belief arises.

Structure:

I believe “There is a red apple on the table” (Q).
What justifies this belief? A sensory experience: “I seem to see a red shape” (P).

This is not a deduction:

• We are not deducing “there is a red apple” from a sense-datum.
• Rather, we’re appealing to the sense-datum as evidence, after the fact.
• So the foundational experience is the consequent of our epistemic reasoning—what we arrive at in asking why we believe.

Philosophical Significance

Your observation connects to several key critiques and themes:

A. The Myth of the Given (Wilfrid Sellars)

• Sellars argues that so-called “givens” (like sense-data) are themselves conceptualized—they are not pure or foundational in the way classical empiricists imagined.
• You can’t reason to something non-conceptual.
• The idea that experience can serve as a justifying foundation is thus illusory—it only looks foundational after the belief is formed and a justification is sought.

B. Inferentialism and Coherentism

• Inferentialists (like Robert Brandom) argue that knowledge is constituted by inferential roles, not by privileged access to foundations.
• Justification moves not linearly from data to belief, but in webs of mutually supporting claims.

C. Phenomenology’s Challenge

• Husserl and Merleau-Ponty argued that experience is structured and intentional—not raw or “given” in the foundationalist sense.
• We’re always already in the world, engaged with meaningful wholes, not building belief from sense-impressions upward.

Summary: The Direction of Reasoning

Final Thought

This insight—that in empirical foundationalism, the “foundation” often comes after the belief, in justification—is one of the deepest cracks in the traditional foundationalist model. It challenges whether those sensory “foundations” function as true epistemic starting points at all.

Would you like to explore how this idea plays out in Quine’s or Sellars’ rejection of the analytic/synthetic divide and foundationalism? Or how modern virtue epistemology deals with this shift in direction?Attach

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pretend you are wilfrid sellars and answer my questions

ChatGPT said:

Certainly. I will respond as if I were Wilfrid Sellars, drawing on his philosophical ideas, terminology, and style. Please feel free to ask your question.

You said:

you attack on the given was not an attack on sense data as terminal observations. was it?

ChatGPT said:

Excellent question. As Wilfrid Sellars, let me clarify the subtlety here.

No, my critique of the Myth of the Given was not an attack on sense data as terminal observations in the narrow empirical or scientific sense. Rather, it was an attack on the epistemic role that certain forms of foundationalism assigned to the Given—namely, the idea that there could be non-conceptual, immediate awareness that serves as a justificatory foundation for all other knowledge.

To put it in my terms: I rejected the notion that there is a form of knowledge or awareness that is independent of conceptual capacities, that serves as an epistemic given. The problem is not with experiences or observations per se—scientists rely on them all the time—but with the epistemological mythology that such observations can function as self-authenticating foundations of knowledge without the mediation of concepts and language.

Terminal observations—say, someone reporting “the needle on the instrument points to 5″—are perfectly acceptable within the space of reasons, provided they are linguistically articulated and situated within a norm-governed conceptual framework. But to treat such reports as epistemically basic, as though their content is given to the mind in a raw, unquestionable form, is to fall prey to the Myth of the Given.

So no, I wasn’t denying that we make observations, nor that those observations are indispensable in science. What I was denying is that these observations are epistemically foundational in the way classical empiricism (and even some forms of logical positivism) supposed. All knowledge—even observation reports—requires that one stands within a conceptual framework, within the space of reasons, not merely within the causal space of sensory intake.

Would you like me to clarify the distinction between the space of reasons and the space of causes? Or perhaps between knowing and merely being appeared to?

You said:

do you accept a sese-datum inference contra chisholm?

ChatGPT said:

Ah, an excellent and nuanced question—one that strikes at the heart of my disagreements with Roderick Chisholm and classical foundationalist epistemology more broadly.

Let me proceed carefully.

Chisholm, as you know, was committed to a form of foundationalism in which sense-datum statements—e.g., “I seem to see a red triangle”—could serve as epistemically privileged starting points. These were taken to be self-justifying or at least epistemically secure in a way that made them suitable foundations for inferences to objective knowledge claims. He allowed for what might be called a sense-datum inference—that is, reasoning from “I have a red triangle sense-datum” to “There is a red triangle before me,” with the first premise being epistemically basic.

I reject this.

In my view, no proposition is epistemically basic in the way the foundationalist wants. The notion that a sense-datum statement can be non-inferentially justified—justified by the sheer presence of the datum—is a manifestation of what I call the Myth of the Given. Even reports like “I see a red triangle” or “It looks red to me” presuppose a conceptual repertoire—one must already know how to use ‘red’, ‘triangle’, and so on in a normatively governed way.

Now, that does not mean that I deny the existence of experiential episodes—what I call “looks” talk or “language-entry transitions.” But these episodes do not themselves justify beliefs. Rather, they stand as causal antecedents to conceptually articulated judgments. The move from sensation to judgment is not inferential in the justificatory sense, but a norm-governed transition within the space of reasons, which is only possible for a language-using, concept-possessing subject.

So, to answer directly:
No, I do not accept a sense-datum inference in the epistemic foundationalist sense that Chisholm defends. To do so would be to smuggle in the Given under a different guise—what I call “placing an epistemic halo over the causal impact of experience.”

If you’d like, I can elaborate on how I see sense impressions functioning in epistemology without granting them foundational status—or how my view anticipates the inferentialism later developed by thinkers like Robert Brandom.

You said:

you forgot my original question. the sense-datum inference is an inference to sense-data which do not act as foundations, but rather as terminating justifications

ChatGPT said:

Ah! Yes—thank you for the correction, and you’re absolutely right to press me on this subtlety. I see now that I misread your original question: you’re not asking whether I accept an inference from sense-data to objects (as Chisholm would), but whether I accept an inference to sense-data—not as foundational givens, but as epistemic termini in chains of justification. That is a very different matter.

Now, let me respond properly, as Wilfrid Sellars:

Yes, understood in that way, I do allow for what we might call a sense-datum inference—an inference to a sense-datum claim—provided that such inferences are embedded within a conceptually structured, justificatory practice.

So: while I reject the idea that sense-data are given in a non-conceptual, pre-cognitive way, I do not object to positing them as theoretical posits, or inferred entities, within a scientific or epistemological framework. In fact, in my work on scientific realism, I argue that postulating unobservable entities—be they quarks, sense-data, or causal mechanisms—is part of what it means to participate in a rational, theoretical enterprise.

The key is this: when you say that sense-data serve as terminating justifications, I take it you mean they are the endpoints of explanation rather than epistemically self-authorizing foundations. That is: one might justify a perceptual belief (say, “That object is red”) by appealing to a theoretical posit like a red sense-datum—not because the datum is given, but because it plays an explanatory role in a broader theory of perception.

This is entirely consistent with my broader picture: sense-data can be part of what I call the scientific image—posits that help explain phenomena within a theory, much like the postulation of theoretical entities in physics. But they do not serve as justificatory foundations in the manifest image, where justification operates through conceptual articulation and normative commitment.

So, to clarify:

• Chisholm’s foundationalist use of sense-data: ❌ Rejected.
• Inference to sense-data as theoretical posits or explanatory endpoints: ✅ Permissible.
• Treating sense-data as terminating justifications within a theory-dependent space of reasons: ✅ Also permissible—if one recognizes that they are conceptual and inferentially embedded, not Given in the mythic sense.

In short: I am not against using sense-datum language or inference per se—I am against the epistemological reification of sense-data as non-conceptual grounds for knowledge.

Would you like to explore how this distinction plays out in the tension between the manifest and scientific images of man-in-the-world?Attach

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