Peter Pehlivanov

• Peter Pehlivanov 30 May 2022 20:24 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Perplexed’s comment on: Mak­ing Beliefs Pay Rent (in An­ti­ci­pated Ex­pe­riences)

  Perplexed, I’m not sure I understood what you meant by

  you can’t have a theory of meaning which deals only with consequences of statements being true but not with what actions put the universe into a state in which the statement becomes true.

  Or if I agree with it at all. Wouldn’t statements about what actions make certain statements true simply be part of the first category? I don’t see a problem with only having statements and their consequences. I see you’ve made this comment 12 years ago, so I don’t know how you would stand on this today.

• Peter Pehlivanov 30 May 2022 16:44 UTC

  0 points

  on: The Mar­tial Art of Rationality

  Sounds great. Loving this so far.

  I’d recommend to others to keep philosophy of science in mind. Philosophy of biology doesn’t have the nicest things to say about evolutionary psychology (at least relative to other scientific disciplines). It’s not about throwing evopsych out, it’s about understanding its limitations in informing us about human nature.

  Also, keep in mind an interesting truth I’ve noticed: you might feel in some cases that you’re “in the truth.” But that itself is qualitatively a culture like any other. If you justify a hierarchy based on, say, evopsych, you’re not “in the truth”, you’re in yet another a culture that justifies its inequalities through a story (even if that story is scientific and truthful).

  Edit: Adding the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on evolutionary psychology: https://​​plato.stanford.edu/​​entries/​​evolutionary-psychology/​​

• Peter Pehlivanov 18 May 2022 17:06 UTC

  1 point

  in reply to: Just Learning’s comment on: What Do We Mean By “Ra­tion­al­ity”?

  I’d say you shouldn’t force yourself to believe something (epistemic rationality) to achieve a goal (instrumental rationality). This is because, in my view, human minds are addicted to feeling consistent, so it’d be very difficult (i.e., resource expensive) to believe a drug works when you know it doesn’t.

  What does it even mean to believe something is true when you know it’s false? I don’t know. Whatever it means, it’d have to be a psychological thing rather than an epistemological one. My personal recommendation is to only believe things that are true. This is because the modern environment we live in generally benefits rational behavior based on knowledge anyway, so the problem doesn’t need to surface.