Conventionalism

A while back, I indicated that I would start posting about my own ideas on philosophy.  But I have not posted much since then.  This is an attempt to resume that effort.

My own philosophy appears to be a variety of conventionalism.

I have previously stated that I am a behaviorist.  That does not change.  I see social conventions as, primarily, behavioral conventions.  A simple example is the convention that we should drive on the right side of the road.  This is a convention about behavior.

What is conventionalism?

According to Wikipedia:

Conventionalism is the philosophical attitude that fundamental principles of a certain kind are grounded on (explicit or implicit) agreements in society, rather than on external reality.

Conventionalism appears to be controversial within philosophy.  There is fairly broad acceptance that language is conventional, though there are disagreements about that, too.  Henri Poincaré was conventionalist about geometry, which seems right to me.  Some have argued that mathematics is conventional.  That is more controversial, and many philosophers believe that Quine refuted that position in his “Truth by convention”.  I’ll not that I disagree with Quine, and perhaps I’ll discuss that in a future post.

The election results

When a heavy snow storm dumps two feet of snow, some people blame on abortion; some folk blame it on sexual promiscuity; some folk blame it on global warming; some folk blame it on scientific experiments gone awry.

Me?  I just start clearing my driveway.  The blame game doesn’t achieve anything.

I won’t try to place blame for the election results.  I’ll just work on how best to cope with the world that we find ourselves in.