For modern rationalists, that's almost a strawman. Rationalists are informed by their science, and modern science understands uncertainty much better, not just in the social domain but also in life sciences. And we can *reason* on uncertainty with statistics.
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Replying to @Blaisorblade @Jayarava
“True enough for this purpose” is an ontological matter, not an epistemic one. The issue is not uncertainty, it is indefiniteness. Rationalists frequently make this move, of changing the subject to uncertainty (for which they have a story) when the topic is indefiniteness.
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“HIV causes AIDS” is about as certain as anything we know; there is no meaningful doubt. However, what it means for it to be true is highly dubious ontologically. In fact, each of the three words in the statement is extremely ontologically indefinite.
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HIV is defined as “whatever vaguely-related viruses cause AIDS” and AIDS is defined as “whatever diseases are caused by HIV.” And no one has any workable story about what “causes” means, in general.
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Replying to @Meaningness @Jayarava
I agree philosophers have rightfully debated causality. But for AIDS and especially HIV, I'd wager that's not the definition, but at best "how we get to a definition".
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Replying to @Blaisorblade @Jayarava
Well… having looked into the matter in some detail, I think that as a matter of science, you are mistaken. HIV is polyphyletic; the only criterion for inclusion in the taxon is that it infects humans (not other primates).
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Replying to @Meaningness @Jayarava
So "HIV refers to a questionable list of viruses" is now an ontological issue?
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Replying to @Blaisorblade @Jayarava
It’s ontological in that the issue is that there is no Truth about whether a particular virus counts as HIV. If there were a Truth, but we had difficulty knowing that Truth, it would be epistemological.
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You can see that there is no Truth by means of sorites. Start from a clear case of HIV and change one base pair at a time. Exactly when does it cease to be HIV?
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Replying to @Meaningness @Jayarava
So either HIV is not binary, or it is just an ambiguous word, depending on how things are formally defined (which I don't expect biologists to bother doing). I study programming languages and logics, so I don't expect informal language to have precise meaning.
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Science is dissimilar to programming and mathematics. Almost nothing in science is perfectly well-defined. It is infeasible to do so.
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