Important Distinctions about Attitudes.

For those still following the Youtube exchange, I noticed Anderson has posted a couple of new responses (yet still no answer to the original question!). He seems to be a bit confused. For one thing, Anderson appears to be conflating things I've said with those that Spencer has said in the exchange. Case in point: Spencer talks about things "beyond (Gangadean's) epistemic horizon" and Anderson keeps using that phrase. But he's entirely missed Spencer's original point. I take it that the original point is captured in this quote from Spencer.

Also, Gangadean seems to be unjustly assuming that no facts exist beyond his epistemic horizon. If his soul were eternal in time, it could still be the case that a set of undiscoverable facts exist, given his epistemic limitations. Donald Rumsfeld famously called such facts "unknown unknowns".

The point there is just that there are some things that we don't or can't know. For some reason Anderson keeps trying to force a non-sequitur, here as if a kind of extreme skepticism should follow if what Spencer says here is true. But everyone should grant that there are some things that we don't/can't know (e.g., the current position of every electron in the universe). And the reason that Anderson seems to think skepticism follows from "there are some things we don't/can't know" is that he somehow takes this to entail that "reason is not ontological." But I just don't see the connection.

Anderson writes,

We still aren't in agreement if we can even assess arguments. If reason isn't ontological, reason doesn't apply to being, then it won't matter whether there is or is not a contradiction because perhaps there are contradictions in reality. I think reason is ontological. As I understand it you aren't sure one way or the other. So you aren't saying it isn't, but you also aren't saying it is. Perhaps the eternal is non-eternal and you've reached your epistemic horizons.

Again, I think that he's getting his wires crossed. He seems to be picking up on the point that I (not Spencer) raised about doubting or calling into question the proposition that some things are clear/certain in the way that Gangadean defines 'clear' or 'certain'. And then he's gone on to talk about whether or not reason is ontological (rather than about the principle of clarity). Spencer's original claim doesn't call either of those into question. Maybe Anderson is confusing his quantifiers here and reading "there are some things we can't know" with "everything is such that we can't know it."

Still, I want to address Anderson's remarks head-on because I think they'll be instructive and will help those unfortunate souls still attempting to follow the rather confusing conversation on Youtube. To do so, let's imagine he's talking to someone like me, someone that is unsure that the principle of clarity is true, and likewise uncertain that reason is ontological. What I want to explore is whether or not being unsure that reason is ontological entails that one cannot meaningfully evaluate any arguments or make basic distinctions as he seems to charge above. This is just another iteration of the standard Gangadeanian, boogeyman approach which I spoke about here---if you deny that we can be certain of basic things, then something absurd follows.

I'll use the proposition that "reason is ontological" as our target claim. To say "reason is ontological" is just a fancy way of saying that, at least sometimes, our beliefs reflect reality (the way the world is). To say that one is not certain or has doubts concerning it, is not the same as outright denying the claim or affirming the opposite. So if I say that I am not certain that reason is ontological, what I'd be saying is that I'm not certain that our beliefs ever accurately reflect reality. Now it turns out that there is more than one way to not be sure that something is the case. I'll enumerate three. 

1) No belief: I might have no opinion whatsoever about some issue--say because I've never even thought about it. If I have no opinion about whether or not reason is ontological (for example), then I'm not certain that it is.  

2) Indifference: I could believe that it is equally likely that reason is ontological and that it isn't. That's not quite the same as the above state because at least I have some sort of attitude towards the proposition, but it's one of ambivalence. We might model this by saying that I assign .5 to the proposition that reason is ontological and .5 to the proposition that it isn't, for example. Again, if I'm in this state (i.e., I think it's a toss up) regarding a proposition, then I'm not certain that it's true. 

3) Uncertain Belief: But there's a third way. I could believe that reason is ontological, without being absolutely certain that it is. For instance, I might believe that reason is ontological but also that it's at least possible that I'm wrong, even though unlikely (perhaps even very unlikely). One way to describe my state is that I believe that it is more likely than not (perhaps, vastly so) that reason is ontological. If you want to model this in terms of probabilities, then my belief here in the proposition that reason is ontological is going to be any value that is greater than .5, but less than 1 (it might even be very close to 1). In fact, most of our beliefs are going to fall into this category.

I think Anderson is trying to force someone like me (and perhaps Spencer) to say that their view about reason being ontological, is akin to the state of indifference described in 2). That's perhaps because in Anderson's mind, if you are thoroughly ambivalent about whether or not your beliefs ever reflect reality, then I guess consistency demands that you adopt the same ambivalence in your beliefs about basic distinctions (being vs. non-being). This in turn is supposed to be absurd and hence grounds to accept wholeheartedly that reason is ontological (or deny your original ambivalence). I don't see how that follows, but I won't press the point, here. We can grant Anderson that questionable inference and still resist his main approach. The main takeaway here is that 3) describes a manner in which one can have it both ways. One can be less than sure (unsure) that reason is ontological, believe that it is, and thus have every basis to draw basic distinctions, evaluate arguments, and whatever other activity that the Gangdeanians take to be important, as I've already argued here.

My most recent posts and memes have been circling a set of related distinctions which Gangadeanians like Anderson have not taken sufficient care to track.

Morpheus recently taught us that

A person can (consistently) be less than sure that P, without believing that P is false.  

A person can (consistently) doubt that we can be certain that P, without believing that P is false. 

The "think about it" dude taught us that

A person can (consistently) doubt that anything is clear to reason, while taking themselves to know all kinds of things (i.e, skepticism isn't rationally required for those that call into question the principle of clarity). 

And now we can add to our list:

A person can (consistently) be less than sure that P, while believing (even, confidently) that P.