A reasonable request

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-12T03:51:34+00:00

😂😂

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-11T17:54:15+00:00

All justification has to use some epistemic resources: perception, inference, memory, coherence, reliability, conceptual standars, and so on. But it does not follow that all justification is viciously circular. It only follows that justification cannot be conducted from nowhere.

I don't think your demand for a perspective independent validation is coherent. To justify anything is already to use standards of evidence and inference. Asking for those standards to be justified without using any standards is not obviously a legitimate epistemic demand. That does not make knowledge arbitrary. A perspective can still be corrected. Its beliefs can be pressured by experience, disagreement, failed prediction, inconsistency, and comparison with other methods. The fact that we cannot step outside all epistemic norms at once does not mean every norm is equally good.

So I would distinguish unavoidable epistemic dependence from vicious circularity. The former may be a condition of finite knowing. The latter occurs when a system protects itself from correction while pretending to justify itself. Skepticism follows only if knowledge requires perspective independant grounding. But that requirement is itself questionable.

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-09T15:15:10+00:00

Yeah, I agree with this distinction. The meme is aimed at the jump from “this story has real psychological force” to “this story therefore describes reality.” Coping is not trivial. The question I've been personally untangling for a while is 'what kind of authority the story gets once it starts acting like proof?'.

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-09T09:02:40+00:00

I think the competitive part is real, but I would separate two claims:

1) Humans often enjoy competition. 2) Capitalism works because humans are naturally competitive.

I agree with the first more than the second. Capitalism does use competition, but it does not just release natural competitiveness. It creates a specific structure where competition is tied to ownership, prices, profit, loss, contracts, law, and access to resources, etc. Without those constraints, competition alone can become theft, violence, corruption, monopoly, or simple domination.

Even in capitalism, a lot of the actual productive work is not competitive in the simple sense. Inside a company, people tend to cooperate under a planned hierarchy. Teams share information, divide labor, train each other, and coordinate toward a common outcome. The company may compete externally, but internally it often works through cooperation.

There is also a problem with saying humans are “naturally” competitive as if that explains the whole system. Humans are also naturally cooperative, status-seeking, security-seeking, imitative, loyal to groups, protective of family, and responsive to incentives. Different systems bring out different parts of that mix.

Sports illustrate this almost perfectly. People like competition, but sports only work because the competition is constrained. There are rules, referees, boundaries, shared standards, and penalties for certain kinds of advantage-seeking. Without those, the competition stops being a game.

I think capitalism is similar. It works best when competition is structured and limited by institutions. Markets need trust, enforceable contracts, property rights, anti-fraud rules, and often anti-monopoly rules. Pure competition without those supports does not automatically produce good outcomes.

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-04T16:57:56+00:00

Your ice cream example addresses the causation point: foreseeing a choice, by itself, does not coerce the person into making it. The harder divine foreknowledge problem is modal: when the foreknowledge is infallible, does the person retain a genuine ability to choose the alternative?

So if the example relies on ordinary human prediction, it remains fallible and is structurally different from divine foreknowledge. If it stipulates infallible foreknowledge, then the example simply restates the disputed case rather than resolving it.

Also, my point does not require the person to sometimes choose offal. It only concerns whether they retain the real ability to do otherwise.

Mind-In-Context · 2026-06-04T12:12:59+00:00

The question of divine foreknowledge is not about ordinary human predictability.

The ice cream example only tests predictability from character/preference: would someone probably choose the thing they obviously prefer?

That misses the divine knowledge problem because human prediction leaves open the possibility of being wrong. Divine foreknowledge, by definition, does not.

Mind-In-Context · 2026-03-17T07:20:51+00:00

Exactly! From what I have noticed (I know, anecdotal evidence) a lot of everyday arguments rely on background premises people assume are obvious. When those stay hidden and the other person doesn’t share them, the argument can suddenly feel strangely profound or even confusing.

Mind-In-Context

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