What do you think of, say, philosophers’ endless arguments of what the word “knowledge” really means? This seems to me one example where many philosophers don’t seem to understand that the word doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning apart from how people define it.
If Bob sees a projection of an oasis and thinks there’s an oasis, but there’s a real oasis behind the projection that creates a projection of itself as a Darwinian self-defense mechanism, does Bob “know” there’s an oasis? Presumably Eliezer would ask, “for what purpose do we want to answer the question?” However, many philosophers would prefer to unconstructively argue what semantics are “correct”. So my personal experience is that I don’t think Eliezer’s attacking a straw man here.
A similar example in grammar: many people think usage of “ain’t” is somehow objectively wrong, rather than being just an uncommon and frowned-upon dialect.
Frank, tcpkac:
What do you think of, say, philosophers’ endless arguments of what the word “knowledge” really means? This seems to me one example where many philosophers don’t seem to understand that the word doesn’t have any intrinsic meaning apart from how people define it.
If Bob sees a projection of an oasis and thinks there’s an oasis, but there’s a real oasis behind the projection that creates a projection of itself as a Darwinian self-defense mechanism, does Bob “know” there’s an oasis? Presumably Eliezer would ask, “for what purpose do we want to answer the question?” However, many philosophers would prefer to unconstructively argue what semantics are “correct”. So my personal experience is that I don’t think Eliezer’s attacking a straw man here.
A similar example in grammar: many people think usage of “ain’t” is somehow objectively wrong, rather than being just an uncommon and frowned-upon dialect.