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Originally Posted by durkadurka33
Okay, so that's yet another proposal: Darwinian fitness is the 'goal' of a good BFP. But, we may still ask: is there a more fundamental feature which gives rise to such a feature? Is it truth, justification, knowledge? If not, why not? Is there a better theory that uses one of the latter concepts instead of the Darwinian concept?
If the Darwinian concept is right, then nothing can be better by definition (and it's also trivial to make examples that show that maximizing t, j, or k, are not maximum performers in this framework). Maybe there is a better theory. Maybe there isn't. What would you need to see to show you that one theory about the goal of BFP (darwinian) is better than another (hypothetical other) theory?
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Again, you're misunderstanding things at a fundamental level. You're assuming that a single unique answer to this must be determined before ANY other important work can be done.
No. As I've said plenty of times already ITT, you're quite welcome to hypothesize answers to some questions and analyze based on those hypotheses. If the goal is x, and some other stuff y, you should do z. I have no inherent problem with anything of that form.
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Sure, the work on prescriptive theories in some sense depends on the more fundamental questions
Exactly. You're basically answering the questions in the wrong order. As an analogy, I have a number written down between 1 and a million. You're all off coming up with theories, if the number is 1, this means x, and you should do y.. if the number is 2, this means d, and you should do f, etc. And some people just ignore that part and say you should do z, just because. It's the exact same problem that exists with ethics.
If you want to answer the questions out of order (figuring out what all of the million possible numbers mean before trying to figure out what the number is), knock yourself out, but when you're exploring a wide range of possibilities with no real idea what the answer to the first question is, it's a sign of inefficient and sloppy thought of the highest order (if the goal is to actually solve the problem, and not just to find something to write a paper about).
If you want to make prescriptions about how we ought to do something (and I don't see you disputing that this is a goal of epistemology or ethics), then you'd damn well better answer the first question before you even think about doing that. All the different conditional prescriptions in the world are wonderful, but until you know the actual condition, you can't know the proper prescription (well, ok, if you have it narrowed down to 2 possible conditions, and both somehow have the same prescription, but you should be able to get the point).
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but then we should all be doing metaphysics and that's it. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand intellectual investigations.
If your goal is to make an accurate prescription, then yeah, somebody had better do it.
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The position you've expressed begs the question about methodology...why do you take that position? Why is it useless to discuss what might follow on condition x rather than y even if we don't know whether x or y is true? You're begging the question here.
On the contrary. I've specifically said multiple times that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it as an intellectual exercise. What I have a problem with is passing that off as knowledge about or understanding of the actual condition.