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Metajustification
- it seems to me that a lot of the philosophical "work" involved in arguing for a position takes place at the "meta" level, i.e. at the level of choosing evaluative frameworks of some sort to apply to philosophical problems (or to put it yet another way: at the level of choosing normative frameworks within which to assess descriptive philosophical facts)
- but then one might ask: how does the same thing not occur at the "meta" level too? how is the most interesting level not the "meta-meta" one and so on?
- a possible answer may be found in the change in justification that appears to take place once one moves to the "meta plane"
- it seems that a lot of the time a metajudgement is a consequentialist judgement, i.e. a metaphilosophical approach is justified in terms of its consequences at the level of philosophical theory (its ability to dissolve particularly vexing philosophical quandries, etc.)
- by making the judgement at the meta level dependent on the next level _down_ instead of _up_ (up moves possibly being characteristic of what takes place in ordinary philosophical discourse), the potential infinite regress problem is overcome
— it would also be interesting to explore why one would wish to postulate more than two levels on which philosophy (or any other human (?) action) takes place
— an intial thought in response to this: perhaps if one wished to advocate some sort of pluralism of normative frameworks, then one would need another "upper" in which to situate this view normatively also?
- another interesting question: which is primary, the metaphilosophical or the philosophical?
— indeed, that question itself seems to presuppose some other normative framework in which the metacontent can be viewed as descriptive and thus assessed
- of course, the fact that content at the meta level is argued for in a consequentialist way seems to point to another level of theory: the level at which the consequentialist doctrine is positted
- however, can one avoid this by somehow positting that consequentialist reasoning is "primitive" (i.e. that it seems to be the sort of thing one could almost have prerationally)?
- A side note occurs to me here: perhaps one can embark on a sort of phenomological project with respect to these foundational matters. Just as on some level we just _do_ experience the external world, and some level we just _do_ hold our beliefs, reasoning, etc. to have foundations. But what can one "get out" of such a realisation?
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Chris Wilcox
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[[red There's a very similar issue in philosophy of statistics. But it can't be resolved downwards using consequentialism! Because one of the two base-level positions I'm interested in evaluating is consistent with consequentialism and the other one isn't, so to assume consequestianlism would be unfair. Or at least would short-circuit the discussion.
Jason ]]
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See also Metaljustification